My Bones Will Keep

Chapter 6

The Piper’s Tune

‘…of which this one

In chief he urg’d – that I should always shun

The island of the man-delighting Sun.’

George Chapman

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‘INTERESTING,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Pray go on.’

‘I can do you the next bit myself,’ said Laura, ‘but we’d better have the revised version.’

The young man looked at her with loathing.

It’s no revised version you’ll be getting, but the authorised account,’ he protested, ‘and you can check it against your own knowledge. Now, then!’

‘My own knowledge isn’t extensive,’ said Laura, assuming a meekness she did not feel, but aware that Dame Beatrice did not want the witness antagonised beyond the point which had been reached. ‘Carry on. We’re all agog.’

‘I went to Tannasgan in answer to a letter from my uncle.’

‘Your uncle being the laird?’

‘No, no, Mrs Gavin. My uncle is the man Corrie. He wrote that there was a job going at An Tigh Mór. As I was finishing my term at the University and needed to make a little money during the vacation, this was good news, so I happened along to present myself to the laird.’

‘And got the job?’

‘I was on trial for a fortnight. If I suited it, I was to stay until the laird could get a permanent body. If not…’

‘And what were you expected to do?’ asked Dame Beatrice.

‘It doesn’t matter telling you that, for the laird is dead and, in any case, I didn’t carry out what he laid upon me and nobody can pretend that I did. My job was to sabotage, in any way that presented itself, the hydro-electrical scheme near Tigh-Osda.’

‘Did your uncle know the nature of this assignment?’

‘No, no. He was as horrified as I was, when I told him what I was expected to do. However, we were agreed that the laird was mad to think of such a thing, and that there would be nothing I could do about it.’

‘The laird was mad all right,’ said Laura, ‘but, as I believe I told you on Skye, I rather liked him.’

‘It’s as well that somebody did, then, for he was very short of friends, I’m thinking.’

‘How long had you been on Tannasgan when Mrs Gavin called there?’ asked Dame Beatrice. ‘She does not seem to have seen you until you met at the boathouse that night.’

‘A matter of two days, so, you see, apart from all else, I wouldn’t have known the laird well enough to want to murder him,’ the young man replied, ignoring the implication contained in her last remark.

‘That’s as may be,’ said Laura. ‘I’ve known myself to be in people’s company no more than half an hour and I’d find myself wanting to murder them.’

‘Ay, but that’s only in a manner of speaking. You’ve never translated the wish into action. Now the laird surely has been murdered, and…’

‘And you knew he was going to be. You’ve let that much out, haven’t you? You told us that the laird was murdered just as you were tying up the boat to set me ashore. How did you know what was happening?’

‘It was, first, the unearthly wailing and screaming on the pipes, and then the silence. The noise clearly told of the stabbing and the silence must have shown that he was dead.’

‘All this sounds as though you may have been an accessory before the fact. You knew he was going to be murdered?’

‘I did not, then. It was after I had the news of his death that I put two and two together.’ Young Grant sounded desperate.

‘What were you doing down at the boathouse when Mrs Gavin was leaving the house?’ asked Dame Beatrice.

‘I was having a quiet smoke and I was wondering, to tell the truth, how I could keep my position and take the laird’s wages without attempting to do the job I was to be paid for. Maybe it doesn’t sound over honest, but I comforted myself with the thought that I could always lend my Uncle Corrie a hand about the place and so earn my money that way.’

‘Who killed your employer? Do you know?’

‘I could not hazard a guess. According to my uncle, there were plenty who did not like him, and it did not take me two days to find out the reason. He was a stubborn, self-opinionated, selfish old stot.’

‘Was he a wealthy man?’

‘That’s not for me to say. He was a warm man, I think, but he kept just the two servants, my Uncle and Auntie Corrie. Still, they were on comfortable wages and the food was plentiful. They had no cause to grumble.’

‘But you had no idea of the value of his property?’ Dame Beatrice had taken over all the questioning and Laura retired into the background to wait until it seemed necessary that she should speak to the facts as she knew them. ‘Property, is it? He owned the loch and its fish and the islands on it and, of course, the house, but you could buy the lot, I dare say, for a few thousands. If the laird was rich, it was not in land and water. No, no. He had some other ways of making money. My uncle was telling me that when he wasn’t calling at the hydro-electric plant to complain, he was away to to Inverness or Edinburgh on business and would be from home perhaps a week at a time, sometimes longer, but my uncle did not know what his business was.’

The association of the names of the two cities brought about another association in Laura’s mind.

‘You say your name’s Grant?’ she asked.

‘It is, ay.’

‘You did say you were not related to the Grants who live at a house called Coinneamh Lodge?’

‘Coinneamh Lodge? No, I’ve no relatives living in such a place, so far as I know. And whereabouts would this Coinneamh Lodge be situated?’

‘Oh, somewhere between Freagair and Tigh-Osda, but nearer to Tigh-Osda. You have to cross the river and the railway-line to get there. It’s rather an isolated place, I should think. I wouldn’t want to live there myself, but I may have told you that I spent the night there’ – she had picked up a signal from Dame Beatrice that she was to go on talking – ‘after I’d driven Mrs Grant home from Tigh-Osda station after their station-wagon had broken down. I suddenly thought of it when you mentioned Inverness and Edinburgh and remembered that your name was Grant, the same as hers.’

‘And why would Inverness and Edinburgh bring all that to your mind, Mrs Gavin?’

‘Oh, because Mr Grant was going by train. He said that he was going to Inverness, but Mrs Grant told me he was going to Edinburgh, too. It just seemed a coincidence when you mentioned them,’

‘Oh, hardly that! Apart from Aberdeen and Glasgow, where else would a business man go but to Edinburgh and Inverness?’

‘I could tell you of quite a number of other places he might go to,’ retorted Laura; but she was prevented by Dame Beatrice from embarking upon this recital, for, before she could even mention Perth or any of the prosperous towns and cities of the Lowlands, Dame Beatrice again took the floor.

‘We have established, then, that you knew of a plan to murder the laird of Tannasgan,’ she said, taking out a notebook and pencil. Off his guard, Grant gaped at her like a stranded fish and then began to stutter.

‘Articulate clearly,’ said Laura. ‘You can’t have it both ways. Either I can give you an alibi for the time the piping stopped—in which case you knew the murder had just been committed, ergo you knew it had been planned—or I can’t. See what I mean? If the murder was committed while we were together in that boat, you didn’t do it, but if it was committed at any time when we were not together – well, you can’t come to me for an alibi, can you, however innocent you may be?’

‘I think, Mr Grant,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘that your best plan will be to tell us all you know.’

‘I can’t!’ said the young man abruptly.

‘You mean that the truth may involve your relatives, the Corries?’

‘I don’t know whom it would involve. I did not know the laird was to be murdered, or that the piping had anything to do with it. I found out afterwards – but I can’t let you know how.’

‘But, listen,’ Laura urged him. ‘If you knew nothing of what was to happen, why did you ask me in that wild sort of way how I knew a doctor might be needed? And why did you say, when the piping stopped, that that … whatever that was… was all over?’

The young man stared at her, then he smiled.

‘I knew there was something I’d forgotten,’ he said. ‘If you knew a doctor was needed, you knew, at that time, more about the murder than I did! What do you say to that? By God…’ he stood up and faced her… ‘if you can queer my pitch, so can I queer yours! We stand or fall together, Mrs Gavin! What about it? You had better think it over. My position on Tannasgan was more regular than yours, you know!’

He climbed to the courtyard of the hotel, shouted to the men in the ferryboat and in a short while Laura and Dame Beatrice saw him manhandling a motor-cycle down the steep, precarious steps to the little quay. Several times it looked as though he might lose his footing, but he recovered it and the men received the motor-cycle over the side of the boat and stowed it away.

The young man returned to the hotel for a small suitcase not much larger than a big attaché-case, descended the steps again and, this time, went on board. The boat backed away, then turned and sputtered across the loch to a long wooden landing-stage on the opposite side. Here the motor-cycle was unshipped, the small case strapped on to the luggage carrier and the whole equipage was bundled along the landing-stage and, not without effort, thrust up the bank and on to the road. The last the watchers saw was that it turned to the right at the top of the bank and took the lock-side road for Ardlui.

‘Thankful to see the back of him,’ said Laura. ‘Are you going to climb all those steps with me to look at the Falls of Arklet? Funny I should have mentioned going for a doctor as my reason for getting away from Tannasgan. Do you think he will blow his top and accuse me of knowing something about the murder?’

‘I will climb with you and admire Mr Wordsworth’s falls,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘As to the rest – well, we shall see.’

‘I shan’t lose sleep, at any rate,’ said Laura. ‘Besides, there’s always stout denial, an excellent and impregnable defence so long as one sticks to it. And there weren’t any witnesses, you know.’

Dame Beatrice rose and they climbed to the courtyard and crossed it to the foot of the steps which had been made beside the lashing, tumbling water. Dame Beatrice measured the ascent with her eye.

‘We have a long way to go,’ she said; but whether she referred to the climb up the rude stone steps beside the noisy and beautiful stream, or to the fact that the case of the stabbed laird of Tannasgan was only in its infancy, Laura did not enquire.