My Bones Will Keep

Chapter 10

Loch Na Gréine

‘Deep asleep, deep asleep,

Deep asleep it lies,

The still lake of Semmerwater

Under the still skies.’

Sir William Watson

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‘AND what are we supposed to make of that tale?’ asked Laura, when young Grant had gone.

‘What are your own reactions?’ asked Dame Beatrice.

‘Those of Sherlock Holmes and the dog.’

‘Yes, I noticed that point. I suppose you would have been bound to hear the bell if he had rung for the boat to be brought over?’

‘Absolutely. It’s a fine big bell and rings out like the knell of doom and, whatever my shortcomings, I’m not hard of hearing. So the bell, like the dog, did nothing in the night. You know, we shall need to check that whole story with the Corries.’

‘You would regard them as reliable witnesses?’

‘I don’t really know. She struck me very favourable, but one can’t go by that. The point is whether their story fits young Grant’s and, if it doesn’t, we’ve got a platform from which to question him. Anyway, now that I know he’s a reporter, I shall give up suspecting him of being the murderer.’

‘Why should you do that? Did you not notice that there was another point on which his account of the evening differed from yours?’

‘Was there? Let’s see, now. Ah, I’ve got it! The piping. According to him – let’s see – he left Edinburgh at five, when the Conference rose, and went to Loch na Gréine on his motor-bike. It’s – good gracious me! – it’s a sheer stark impossibility!’

‘Did you not realise that, while he was talking?’

‘No, I didn’t I believe I was thinking of Inverness, not Edinburgh. So he actually had the crust to think he could persuade us that on two successive evenings he rode from Edinburgh at five and got to Lock na Gréine and across to Tannasgan before I left at about half-past ten. He must be crazy to think we’d swallow it.’

‘But you did swallow it,’ Dame Beatrice pointed out. She cackled harshly and Mrs Stewart, who had been a silent, interested listener while her fingers had been busy on the never-ending knitting of the Scotswoman, joined in with an appreciative chuckle.

Laura grinned and acknowledged the palpable hit, protesting, however, that she had spotted the lie about the time he had heard the piping and that when she had thought over young Grant’s story she would have seen the light about the journeys from Edinburgh.

‘What do you think happened, then?’ she asked.

‘He did ride to Loch na Gréine, that is certain,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘My guess, for what it is worth, is that he spent the night somewhere en route and came to the island on the same night as you did. It will be interesting to find out why he told such an obvious lie, and we must interview the Corries, as you say.’

‘If the police have been questioning them—and they must have done so – they may not be in much of a mood to confide in us,’ said Laura. ‘Mrs Corrie was a sweet soul so far as I was concerned, but I wouldn’t put it past her to be very, very sticky if she felt like it. As for Corrie, I didn’t hear him utter a word. All he did was to bring in the dishes at dinner and collect up as we finished each course. He might have been a deaf mute for all that I could tell.’

‘Well, you assert, on no evidence at all (so far as I can see), that young Grant is not the murderer,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘so who is your candidate? I gather you do not suspect the Corries?’

‘Well, I don’t know about him. And, somehow, I can’t see my eccentric red-beard in the rôle. What do you think?’

‘I have no idea, but I look forward to meeting him. Let us hope that he is still at An Tigh Mór.’

The following two days passed pleasantly and talk of the murder was shelved. Dame Beatrice sat on Mrs Stewart’s broad terrace above the rock gardens and gazed at the sea and the mass of Ben Caraid, or read Professor John Dover Wilson on What Happens in Hamlet. Laura was carted round the garden, again in remorseless and systematic fashion, by her hostess, and heard a great many more Latin names than she expected to be able to remember, but the sea and the mountains which surrounded the gardens were satisfying and soothing, and her hostess’s gentle voice and Edinburgh speech were music in the ears of one who had lived long in southern England.

The murder of the laird of Tannasgan was not mentioned again until they were ready to leave Gàradh. Then Mrs Stewart said:

‘I suppose, Beatrice, nothing will satisfy you until you’ve had a finger in the Tannasgan pie, but if you’ll take my advice, which, from a lifetime of knowledge of you, I am perfectly sure you will not, you will keep away from An Tigh Mór. Everybody knows there’s a curse on the place, and although, the Dear kens, I am not a superstitious body, there are things better not meddled with, and what has gone on in The Big House will be one of them, I’m thinking.’

‘If I took your advice, Laura wouldn’t,’ stated Dame Beatrice. ‘She regards herself as a heaven-sent investigator of crime and thinks that Tannasgan is her especial province.’

‘Well, well, if you’ll not take my advice, at least have a care of yourselves.’

‘We always do that,’ said Laura. ‘I take care of Mrs Croc. and she takes care of me. Besides, she always totes a small gat on these little expeditions of ours. It scares me stiff. I can’t abide firearms, but I suppose it would be a very present help in time of trouble.’

They did not call in at the post office, but at Crioch Laura swam. Miraculously the weather still held up. There was a clear, almost Greek, light over the beautiful bay and a shimmer on the level, wet sands. The water, to Laura’s powerful, vigorous body, did not even strike cold. When she was dressed they had coffee in the hotel lounge before they took the turning for the Loch called Cóig Eich, the Five Horses, and the winding hilly road to Tigh-Osda and Tannasgan.

This time they did not follow the rough path to the bridge and the level-crossing which led to Mrs Grant’s house, but continued on the single-track road to Loch na Gréine, the Loch of the Sun, the Tom Tiddler’s Ground on which the island of Tannasgan formed a base. It was the second time that Dame Beatrice had seen the loch since the murder, for they had been obliged to pass very close to it on their way from Freagair to Coinneamh Lodge, but on that first occasion she had obtained only the most cursory view of the waters of Gréine as the car carried her past the little stone jetty from which Laura had embarked for the island.

George drew up on the verge to take the car off the road, and Dame Beatrice and Laura got out and walked to the jetty. Dame Beatrice looked at the iron ring in the stonework and then walked to the end of the tiny pier and gazed across the loch to the island and its house.

‘Nothing much doing, by the look of things,’ said Laura, joining her. ‘Have you seen the apparatus for summoning a boat?’

‘We might make use of it, I think,’ said her employer. ‘Will you operate it?’

Laura did this and then rang the bell. They waited for five minutes by Laura’s wristwatch and then she tried again, but again there was no response from the island. They could see two rowing-boats in the boathouse and this was too much for Laura. She went back to the car, retrieved her wet swimming costume, sheltered behind a convenient bush and, a couple of minutes later, was in the water.

George also had left the car, deeming it his duty to act as bodyguard, and he and Dame Beatrice stood on the bank and watched Laura’s progress. As usual, she swam fast, on a powerful freestyle, and they saw her scramble out and then get into the smaller of the boats.

‘I’ll just immobilise the car, madam. Mrs Gavin took her towel out,’ said George. ‘I hope she isn’t being rash,’ he added.

‘So, indeed, do I. I realised her intention, but she is a law unto herself, of course. Do you wish to visit the island, George?’

‘I have studied such accounts of the murder as have come my way, madam, and have listened to the conversations in public houses, and I feel a certain amount of curiosity about the affair. It is a little bizarre, madam, don’t you think? We have never been involved in anything quite like it.’

‘I would not have missed it for the world, George. Well, Mrs Gavin seems to be getting away quite safely.’

Laura pulled the heavy boat across the loch and George held on to it as soon as it reached the jetty. He tied up. Laura dried herself and dressed, then she and Dame Beatrice, followed by the chauffeur-henchman, stepped aboard. George courteously relieved Laura of the oars and they were soon across the water and tying up in the boat-house of the Island of Ghosts.

‘You saw no sign of life, I suppose?’ asked Dame Beatrice, when they had negotiated the planking and were standing on the lawn.

‘No sign and no sound,’ Laura replied. ‘I expect the place is deserted. Let’s go up to the house and have a look-see.’

As one who was acquainted with the terrain, she led the way. The front door was wide open.

‘It hardly looks as though the place is deserted,’ remarked Dame Beatrice. ‘It is almost as though visitors are expected. One would expect the front door to be closed, if not bolted and barred.’

Laura agreed and then added:

‘I hope the police aren’t still in charge. It will queer our pitch properly if they are.’

‘A policeman would be on duty at that door,’ said George, a slight distortion of his uniform indicating the presence of a heavy spanner in one of the deep pockets. ‘By your leave, Mrs Gavin, I’d better go in first.’

‘Oh, rot, George!’ retorted the Amazon. ‘Women and children first! You ought to know that.’ She produced a bit of bicycle chain. ‘Wonderful what you can learn from the Teds. I am armed and well prepared. Together we can defend Dame B. from all the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Come the four corners of the world in arms and we shall shock them.’ At this point she tripped over the step. Dame Beatrice produced a small revolver from the capacious pocket of her skirt. ‘And God defend the right,’ concluded Laura piously, picking herself up and dusting herself down. ‘For goodness’ sake, put that thing away, Dame B. It gives me goose-pimples in the small of my back. I never did care about gats, as I told Mrs Stewart a while ago.’

She led the way to the dining-room door, turned the handle without a sound and then suddenly thrust the door open. The room was tenanted. Seated by the empty hearth was her red-bearded friend. Beside him on the table was what had been a bottle of Scotch. It was now merely a bottle which, no doubt, retained the aroma of Scotch, and the stertorous breathing of the sleeping man gave sufficient indication of where the contents of the bottle had gone.

‘What d’you know!’ said Laura, under her breath; then, in a whisper to Dame Beatrice, ‘Think he’s alone in the house?’

Dame Beatrice motioned to her and they crept back to the hall.

‘I think we must either wake him or return to the jetty,’ she said, when they were away from the dining-room door. ‘We can hardly explore the house under these circumstances. I had anticipated either that it would be empty, or else that we should encounter someone to whom we could explain ourselves, even though the someone turned out to be a policeman.’

‘I should judge,’ said Laura, ‘that the citizen in there is so far under the influence that, even if we did wake him, it might not be the easiest thing in the world to explain ourselves to him. In vinas veritas is all very well, but in my experience a superabundance of alcohol is apt to impair the intellect and stimulate little but the wrong reactions. Look here, how would it be if we rowed about on the loch for a bit? I’d like to see what the other side looks like.’

‘It would be taking a liberty, of course, but, as we have already put ourselves in an equivocal position, I think it cannot do much to darken our offence. Perhaps though we ought first to find out whether your friend is alone in the house.’

‘Well, I know where the kitchen regions are, so, swinging my bicycle chain in the approved fashion, I’ll go along, shall I, and take a gander around?’

Without waiting for an answer, she walked down the hall and through a green-baize door at the end of it. She came back almost at once and reported that nobody seemed to be about.

‘Did you try the kitchen door?’ asked Dame Beatrice.

‘Locked, but neither bolted not barred, so the Kirkintillochs may have gone shopping.’

‘The…?’

‘Oh, the old wife told me they came from Kirkintilloch. Their name’s Corrie. And that’s another funny thing. If Mrs Grant’s description of the laird was correct, the Corries aren’t a bit the kind of servants you’d think he’d engage, nor would they be likely to stay if he did. They’re really decent people.’

‘I think, you know, that people take the work they can get. Now I will give one more glance at your sleeping friend and then we will take to the boat, if that is what you would like.’

The red-bearded man was still asleep, so down to the boathouse they went.

‘Unless you wish for my services at the oars, madam, I suggest I stay here and apprise you with three short blasts on my police whistle if the gentleman wakes up, or strangers approach,’ said George, who appeared to be enjoying himself. Dame Beatrice agreed to this plan, but asked whether he would not be bored if they left him by himself. After all, he was one of the party.

‘Thank you for inquiring, madam,’ he said, ‘but I have my pocket sketching block and a soft black pencil. The views are extensive and imposing, and the air is clement. I shall do very well indeed.’

So Dame Beatrice and Laura left him, and Laura soon had the boat out on the loch and was pulling round to the blind side of the house. As she rowed past the white, windowless façade, she could see that the loch broadened, and when she had rounded the house, and come to the back of it, she could also see that Tannasgan was not the only island in the loch; it was merely the largest. From where she was, four stony outcroppings, one thickly wooded, came into her view. On the further shore of the loch rose the high, bare slopes of Ben Dun which she had seen from the opposite side, and with their backs to the lower slopes of the mountain and their suspicious, inquisitive gaze fastened on the boat and its occupants, were a dozen or so of wide-horned, shaggy, Highland cattle.

‘A picturesque group,’ remarked Dame Beatrice.

‘Highland cattle always look so young for their age, and Ben Dun is a fine chunk of Lewisian Gneiss,’ said Laura. ‘Learnt that at College and I’ve always been proud of knowing it. Nevertheless, the mainland, at the moment, does not attract me, so what about exploring that island with the trees on it?’

‘A childishly pleasant idea. Pray manoeuvre us thither.’

The loch was shallow close inshore to the wooded islet, and Laura paddled cautiously to the land. They tied up to a tree and, Laura leading the way, followed a rudimentary path which began at the water’s edge and disappeared into the woods.

‘Made by the police exploring all avenues, I expect,’ she said. ‘Wonder what they expected to find? You’d think they would have stuck to Tannasgan. I suppose it didn’t yield any clues.’

Dame Beatrice offered no criticism of this view, and they continued to follow the little path as it wound in and out among the trees. Laura very soon changed her opinion.

‘It wasn’t made by the police. It’s more like a bit of landscape gardening. It’s been worked out. It makes the woods seem ever so much bigger than they are,’ she said. She realised another thing, too, and gave voice after about another hundred and fifty yards of motiveless perseverance. ‘Makes you think of Three Men in a Boat,’ she observed.

‘In what way?’ Dame Beatrice demanded, interested to learn whether Laura’s deductions coincided with her own.

‘You know – the maze at Hampton Court.’

‘I see that you recognise the silver birch we are coming to.’

‘That, and the clump of heather in the shape of a half-moon, and the cotton-grass in that circular swamp and the little trench where peat has been dug.’

‘Amazing! I had not realised quite how observant you must be.’

‘I’m going to take a chance and see whether I can cut the cackle and get to the centre. You’d better stay here. I’ll yodel if I’m lucky.’

‘Very well, child.’ Dame Beatrice was quite capable of a little rough walking, but she was prepared to respect and encourage Laura’s pioneering spirit, and remained where she was to await Laura’s call.

This came even sooner than she had expected. Laura had plunged through a tangle of undergrowth and was able, almost immediately, to announce that her inconoclastic plan had worked out. She yodelled happily. Dame Beatrice followed the trail and, in the clearing which formed the centre of the maze, came upon an extraordinary and most unexpected sight.

Laura waved a large and shapely hand.

‘Welcome to Battersea Park,’ she said. ‘What do you think of the monumental masonry?’

Dame Beatrice inspected the inanimate tenants of the clearing. They made a strange addition to the living vegetation of birch and pine.

‘Let us look more closely at these petrified fauna of another and more picturesque age,’ she suggested. ‘Let us inspect these phenomena of the imagination of mediaeval man.’

They inspected them. All were fabulous beasts rendered crudely but powerfully by the hand of some amateur sculptor.

‘I observe the basilisk, the gryphon, the werewolf (at the moment of changing from man to wolf – very clever, that!), the salamander and the gorgon,’ said Dame Beatrice, after she had studied the exhibits in silence. ‘I wonder why the salamander is in pieces and is covered in what looks like soot?’

‘I wonder whether he carved them himself?’ said Laura, ignoring the work of some iconoclast

‘Our slumbering red-beard?’ suggested Dame Beatrice.

‘Yes. I told you about his fixation on fabulous animals, didn’t I?’

‘Yes, indeed you did. The discovery of this very permanent-looking stonework raises the question of whether An Tigh Mór was really the dead laird’s home – or, rather, whether the house we have just vacated is An Tigh Mór. I shall be interested to talk with our friend when he is able to carry on a conversation. Some of your suspicions may be justified.’

After a further study of the group, which was carved in Portland stone except for the basilisk, which, owing to its serpentine shape, was of bronze, they were about to find out whether the path continued among the trees on the other side of the clearing when they caught the sound of George’s police-whistle. They returned to their boat and were soon on the return journey to Tannasgan. George was at the boathouse to meet them, his heavy spanner in his hand. Taller by a head, and leaning on a cromach, the red-bearded man stood beside him and helped to pull the boat in. Laura stepped ashore and held out a hand to Dame Beatrice.

‘Well, well,’ said the tenant of An Tigh Mór. ‘To what will I be indebted for this honour?’

Laura gravely introduced him to Dame Beatrice as ‘my host and benefactor of some days ago, of whom I told you.’

‘Is Malcolm Donalbain Macbeth my name,’ said the man. It was a statement and, Laura felt with some reason, an alias.

‘That’s a very fine cromach,’ she said, indicating the walking-stick.

‘Ah, but the callant here has a spanner.’ said Malcolm Donalbain Macbeth. ‘Up to the house with you, till you tell me what way you stole off like a thief in the night when I was after offering you hospitality for a week.’

‘Dame Beatrice wants a word with you first,’ said Laura, grinning. ‘We only waited until you woke up. Is the whisky out of you?’

He took no manner of offense at this blunt question, but led the way to the house.