My Bones Will Keep

Chapter 5

At Inversnaid

‘degged with dew, dappled with dew

Are the groins of the braes that the brook

treads through,

Wiry heathpacks; flitches of fern,

And the bead-bonny ash that sits over the burn.’

Gerard Manley Hopkins

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APART from a rather messy pilgrimage along the shores of Loch Lomond to some rocks known as Rob Roy’s Cave, and a steep and slippery climb up steps from the hotel past the Falls of Arklet, there is no walk from the Inversnaid Hotel except by the road through Glen Arklet and past the village at the top of the mill. This walk Laura took very early in the morning. She and Dame Beatrice had left George and the Jaguar on the western side of the loch and had crossed the water in the hotel launch on the previous afternoon. They were to stay the night before making their leisurely way to the north-west.

On Laura’s left, as she climbed the winding hill, were the lower slopes of Stob-an-Fhàinne, with a house here and there well-screened by trees. On her right was the laughing, sobbing, endlessly noisy Arklet Water as it cascaded turbulently downhill to Wordsworth’s Falls to crash impressively into Loch Lomond. Bushes and bracken grew thickly on the high banks, but whenever there was a gap Laura paused to survey the leaping water. Her progress, because of this, was slow and, looking at her watch when she reached the little church, she decided that by the time she reached the reservoir of Loch Arklet it would be as well to turn back. In any case, the road to Loch Katrine was less interesting at this point.

She stood awhile by the loch, but it had been made too functional for natural beauty and was now part of the Glasgow waterworks (its size having been just about doubled for this purpose), so she turned and strolled back towards the village, through which she had passed before gaining the loch-side.

Just as she reached the post-office a man came up the hill towards her and, with a sinking of the heart, she recognised her boatman. He stepped purposefully up to her and barred her way.

‘Oh, Lord! You again?’ she said, with distaste, remembering the note she had had from him.

‘Me again. You got the letter I left at Slanleibh?’

‘Yes, I did, but I don’t keep a diary.’

‘I thought you might not, so I’ll trouble you to sign a paper I’ve drafted out.’

‘Look here,’ said Laura, ‘ever since that night you helped me cross the loch from Tannasgan you’ve been dogging my footsteps. I thought at first it was coincindence, but I know better now, and I am not prepared to sign anything for you. Furthermore, this nuisance must now cease. It’s becoming something remarkably like persecution. I don’t wish to be unkind, but I’m beginning to feel absolutely haunted.’

‘You’ll sign my paper and then I’ll leave you alone.’

‘I’ve told you I’ll sign nothing. I understand your anxiety, but it’s no business of mine.’

‘You know that the laird of Tannasgan was murdered?’

‘Yes, I heard in Edinburgh that he’d been killed by stabbing, and his body put into a barrel’

‘That’s right. And when I go to the police with my story of how you skipped at dead of night from An Tigh Mór, what sort of position will you be in? No, no! You and I must stick together. Come, now. We go surety for each other.’

‘Kindly get out of my way. I want my breakfast,’ said Laura. She pushed past him, but he clutched her arm.

‘You and I must stick together,’ he repeated. Laura swung round. She was of Amazonian strength and fitness and of a high-mettled temperament. With her free hand she caught him a vicious blow on the nose and then wrenched herself away and strode off down the hill. She glanced back when she reached the first bend, but the man was making no attempt to follow her. He was mopping up the blood which was streaming from his nose.

Laura told Dame Beatrice the story at breakfast, and added that she hoped, most sincerely, that she would see no more of the young man. She wondered whether he had walked to Loch Katrine to take the Trossachs steamer. From Callander he could take a train and thus, although probably in a very roundabout way, get back to Freagair or as far as Tigh-Osda, if he had decided to return to Tannasgan. From what he had written and from what he had said, however, she thought he was far more likely to avoid the neighbourhood of the crime and might make for Inverness or go back to Edinburgh, from where he must have followed her to Inversnaid.

Before she left the hotel again, it occurred to her to ask at the office whether a Mr Grant had booked in. She described him. The receptionist looked rather suspicious, Laura thought.

‘A gentleman such as you describe booked in last night,’ she said. ‘His motor-cycle is still here. He came across with it in the launch while you were having your dinner. He was out walking the morn and has not yet been back for his breakfast, but his name is not Grant.’

‘My mistake,’ said Laura. ‘I met him on holiday and thought I recognised him this morning. I was certainly under the impression that he told me his name was Grant’

‘His name is Campbell.’

‘Ah, my hearing is not what is was.’

‘Is it not? Och, well, maybe Campbell would sound like Grant to a Sassenach.’

Laura thought it best to ignore this insult to her Highland ancestry. She nodded in her turn and followed Dame Beatrice into the open air.

‘Do you still want to put in the rest of the day here?’ her employer asked, when Laura told her that the man, Grant or Campbell, had booked in at the hotel and had spent the night under the same roof as themselves.

‘But perhaps the encounter had spoilt the place for you.’

‘No, of course not. What do you yourself feel about it?’

‘That, if you go off by yourself, I shall feel happier if you borrow a stout ashplant from the array which I noticed in the glassed-in porch.’

‘By no means a bad idea, although I’m hardly likely to meet our friend on the slopes of Ben Lomond.’

‘One never knows. You are proposing to climb, then?’

‘On second thoughts, said to be best, I believe I’d like to leave here after lunch and make for Fort William, where we’re booked for a bed tonight, so I shall give Ben Lomond a miss and take a scramble up the steps beside the falls and come back by road. But there’s no hurry for that. The weather, praise be, is fine, so we might as well take a seat out here and meditate. I always like an after-breakfast cigarette.’

It was while she was enjoying this as they sat on an uncomfortable bench provided by the hotel, that Grant-Campbell came back for a late breakfast. Either he did not notice (the seat was well below the level of the gravel forecourt of the hotel), or else he avoided looking at them, for he marched straight to the glassed-in porch and passed into the entrance hall.

Laura decided to stay where she was, in order to see what he did and where he went when he emerged. He did not keep her very long. After about thirty-five minutes he came out again and descended the rough flight of steps to board the hotel launch.

Laura earnestly hoped that they had seen the last of him, but this was not the case. He conferred for a short time with the two men who ran the launch as a ferry service, climbed the steps again, paused, and looked about him, then saw Laura. With a slightly exaggerated bow, which was intended to include Dame Beatrice, he asked whether he might share the seat with them. Laura scowled, but her employer gave the interloper an encouraging leer and moved up to give him room to sit down.

‘A pleasant prospect,’ she observed, waving a proprietory hand towards Loch Lomond. ‘Are you staying here long?’

‘I’m staying here as long as you do,’ he replied. I’m in trouble and I need this lady’s help. I don’t know why she refuses it.’

‘Possibly because she has not been told in sufficient detail why you solicit it. Should you not put all your cards on the table?’

‘Should I? Can I trust you?’

‘How do I know?’

‘Well, I can’t be worse off. I’m certain to be arrested, anyway.’

‘Even if Mrs Gavin and I are able to succour you?’

‘Oh, I don’t know! I’ve been on Mrs Gavin’s trail ever since the night I rowed her across the loch, hoping she’d consent to speak up for me when the time came. But women are flint-hearted, even when a man’s life may be at stake.’

‘But what makes you believe that Mrs Gavin can speak up for you, as you express it? Mrs Gavin, who is my personal private secretary as well as my young friend, has told me of her adventures, and nothing in her account, which, I am sure, has been of the fullest, gives me any reason to think that she can help you. What causes you to think she can?’

‘Because,’ said the young man, ‘Cù Dubh was murdered just as I was tying up the boat to set Mrs Gavin ashore, so, if there is any trouble, it will be up to her to clear me.’