My Bones Will Keep

Chapter 16

The other Side of the Herring-Pond

‘For under shore the swart sands naked lay.’

George Chapman

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‘PITY it was Inverness and not Edinburgh,’ said Laura, ‘because in Edinburgh, according to my Uncle Hamish, there would be two chief possibilities. The Castle Esplanade is one, but, in this case, I should say, a most unlikely choice because I simply don’t think you’d dare to risk attacking anybody there, even at night. The other one I’m thinking of is the Grassmarket, where, after 1660, they brought Covenanters to be hanged. What about the Grassmarket, Inspector?’

‘Unfortunately, although I appreciate your knowledge of Scottish history, we know Mr Bradan was attacked in Inverness, Mrs Gavin. Well, now, about your good man.’

‘He might have told me he was on a job. What is it? – piracy on the high seas, gun-running, smuggling?’

‘Perhaps a bit of everything. He went to Florida as the guest of a millionaire whom he’d helped at some time, it seems.’

‘Saved his kid from some kidnappers who had followed the family from the U.S.A. to London at the time of the Festival of Britain in 1951. We seem to be haunted by kidnappers all through this business, don’t we?’

‘The millionaire seems to have taken some time to repay his debt, then,’ said the inspector, ignoring the question.

‘Oh, no,’ said Laura earnestly. ‘He was always badgering us to go. I was the one who stood out. I didn’t think I’d fit in with a millionaire’s environment and, until this Edinburgh Conference turned up and we thought’ – she looked accusingly at Dame Beatrice – ‘we thought, I repeat, that I would be needed to aid and abet, Gavin refused to go alone. Anyway, this time, when the invitation came, I insisted that he accept it. I think the prospect of the fishing clinched it, you know.’

‘You don’t care for fishing, Mrs Gavin?’

‘Salmon and trout, yes. Barracuda, sharks and tunny no. I feel they’re above my weight.’

The inspector looked at her long limbs and splendid body and shook his head admiringly.

‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘from the reports he has sent back to New Scotland Yard and they have passed on to us, it was not so very long before your good man was fishing for something other than barracuda. Maybe you’ll mind a letter you wrote your young son, with marginal illustrations?’

‘Oh, Hamish, yes. I’ve written to him a number of times since we’ve been up here – picture postcards mostly – and I did send him some rather exaggerated drawings of the fabulous animals—’

‘Ay, those that are on the small, wooded inch with the maze, and which Dame Beatrice believes are symbolic.’

‘Yes. I thought he might be interested. I wrote him a short ledgend connected with each one.’

‘You did, so? Well, the wee laddie, it seems, was so pleased with the drawings and the old tales that he must send the letter to his daddy, with strict instructions that it was to be returned. Well, your good man has an alert mind and a seeing eye, and he was intrigued to notice that running between a Florida creek, where the fishing party was in camp, and, apparently, somewhere in the West Indies, were three tramp ships named, respectively, Basilisk, Werewolf and Gryphon.’

Laura looked at Dame Beatrice and raised her eyebrows.

‘I suppose Detective Chief-Inspector Gavin was struck by the coincidence,’ said Dame Beatrice non-committally.

‘You may say that, ma’am, especially as he had had the Scotsman and the London papers flown out to him so that he could keep in touch with events at home. There was a wee paragraph copied from the Freagair Reporter and Advertiser which bore out what Mrs Gavin had written to her laddie and which gave the locality of the inch on which she seen the models of the fabulous beasties.’

‘Young Grant’s report to his local paper, of course,’ said Laura.

‘Well, Detective Chief-Inspector Gavin is a very canny man and the coincidence of the names seemed to him so striking that he sent word to London and suggested that Scotland Yard might like to contact the Customs and Excise people, or possibly Lloyds, and find out a little more about these sonsie wee craft. It did not take long to discover that no boats under these names were registered with Lloyds.’

‘No, but these are,’ said Dame Beatrice delving into the pocket of her skirt and producing a small black notebook. ‘Of course, it may be fortuitous that the first two letters in each name correspond with the first two letters in the names of the boats in question, but there is another coincidence which, I think, may be worth nothing. Did our dear Robert obtain any impression of the tonnage of the boats he mentions?’

‘He did. He points out that he is only estimating the tonnage, but it seems that he is well acquainted with boats of all kinds…’

‘The Clyde,’ explained Laura. ‘He spent a lot of his boyhood at Dumbarton and Greenock.’

‘Aha. Well, before you show me your list, mistress, I’ll quote you what Mr Gavin has to tell. Here it is: Basilisk, about nine thousand tons, diesel driven, type made on the Clyde in about 1938. Werewolf, about the same size, steamship. Probably built a little earlier – say in the early 1930s. Gryphon, motor-ship, modern, about four thousand five hundred tons. All ships appear to be well-found. Captains and crew drink together but are unsociable with other people ashore. Suggest may be engaged in illicit liquor trade or gun-running. (Always chance of revolutions in these latitudes).

‘Hm!’ said Laura. Again she glanced at Dame Beatrice. ‘Did your man at Lloyds give any more help?’ she asked her.

‘I think so. Will you give us your conclusions first, Inspector?’

‘No, no, ladies first, Dame Beatrice.’

‘Well, from the list supplied to me, I have formed the theory that when these ships are in British waters they may be called by rather different names. I have a footnote here which my friend provided in answer to a question I particularly asked.’

‘And that would have been?’

‘What had happened to a ship, probably based on Leith, whose name began with the letters SA. Well, as it happened, my informant at Lloyds was able to inform me that a ship based on Leith, whose lawful trade appears to have been that of a collier, blew up and burnt out in the Gulf of Mexico two years ago. She was called the Saracen. She blew up, with all hands, and the cause of the explosion was unknown.’

‘What was the amount of the insurance?’

‘That I did not ask, but as my informant did not mention the matter, I take it that the insurance was adequate and the premiums not abnormally high, and that the underwriters had no proof or even suspicion of sabotage.’

‘Sabotage,’ said the inspector thoughtfully. ‘What gared you think of sabotage, ma’am?’

‘Simply that I cannot see why a cargo of coal, destined, it appeared, for Montevideo, should blow up at all. A fire, of itself, I could understand, but an explosion in such a ship sounds rather unlikely. Of course, I am biased by the fact that I believe these murders to be connected in some way with these ships which camouflage their names as soon as they are on the high seas. Then,’ she added thoughtfully, ‘we must get rid of that skian-dhu.’

‘That what?’ cried Laura. ‘But that and the barrel of rum are the most picturesque touches in the whole thing!’

‘We must get rid of the skian-dhu,’ her employer repeated. ‘It is a red herring so far as I can see.’

‘Now how on earth do you know that, ma’am?’ demanded the inspector. ‘I ken well that you’re a distinguished member of the medical profession, but you did not even see the body, let alone perform a postmortem on it! We’ve been keeping very quiet about the other injury, but there’s no doubt whatever that we believe the knife-wound was the death wound, ay, and the murderer must go on thinking so, too. But what way…?’

‘Well, I confess that, in the beginning, I was as much in the dark as the rest of the public. It was something Laura said which made me think that the stabbing might be a gesture on the part of somebody who wanted the murder to appear an even more dramatic business than it was.’

‘Good Lord! That young ass Grant!’ said Laura. ‘But what pearl of great price fell from my lips to put you wise about the knife-wound?’

‘When it was known that it was an empty cask of rum in which the body was found. Do you not remember asking…’

‘Whisky! Of course!’

‘And, of course, if the skian-dhu had any place in the matter, it ought to have been connected with whisky. Rum goes…’

‘With a cutlass and not with a skian-dhu,’ said Laura, slapping her hand on the arm of the chair. ‘Well, Inspector, what do you say about that?’

The inspector’s smile replied to her, but he spoke as well.

‘About that, Mrs Gavin, all that I can say has been said already. “There’s a chiel amang us taking notes.” I congratulate you on your logic and your powers of deduction, ma’am,’ he added gallantly, addressing Dame Beatrice. ‘Of course, whatever activities are going on in the West Indies, South America or Mexico (or anywhere else, for that matter), is not our business at present. No, no. But what is our business is murder.’

‘Well, you’ve got two murders on your hands, then,’ said Laura. ‘There’s the man who was pushed under a car in Edinburgh and now the laird of Tannasgan.’

‘I doubt whether the incident in Edinburgh was intended to result in death,’ said the inspector. ‘You couldna guarantee that the man would be killed. I am inclined to look upon it as a disciplinary action. It was intended to frighten and maybe punish somebody who was threatening to sell out to the police. I must look up the files. They may well cast a good deal of light.’

Laura and Dame Beatrice were about to take their leave when there came across the water the loud sound of a bell.

‘Somebody coming,’ said the inspector. He glanced out of the window. ‘Now, why ding the bell? Corrie is there with the wee boat. Ah, it is Mr Macbeth. It might be as well if you were not in evidence, ladies. Gin you would just efface yourselves, maybe…’

Dame Beatrice and Laura effaced themselves, the former at the bend of the stairs and the latter in the kitchen, and both heard the front door flung open. Macbeth’s voice cried violently:

‘Will you not bring that young man’s heart to me on a siller dish and with cresses heaped around it!’

‘Well, now, Mr Bradan,’ Dame Beatrice heard the inspector’s soothing voice respond, ‘what way is it that you’re speiring after Mr Grant’s youthful heart?’

‘Bradan? I am not Bradan! What gars you call me a salmon? I was born a Scot, like yourself.’

‘Come, come, now! Something has vexed you. Did you not get what you wanted at Tigh-Osda?’

‘I did not. You might just as well arrest me for my cousin’s murder and have done with it. Who am I, to protest my innocence?’

‘You may protest your innocence with all the voice you have, man. It was a good day you had when you invited Mrs Gavin – you mind her, do you? – to stay to dinner that time.’

‘Mrs Gavin? And who may she be?’

‘She will – ah, well, maybe you had better see her, for she’s here again.’ He called loudly, ‘Come, if you please, Mrs Gavin, for a word with Mr…’ He hesitated.

‘Grant,’ said Macbeth. Laura slipped noiselessly out of the kitchen, glanced up the stairs, received a confirmatory nod from Dame Beatrice and presented herself in the dining-room doorway.

‘Well, well,’ said Macbeth. ‘So the water-kelpie has come ashore again!’

‘Unicorn on leash,’ said Laura, advancing with a smile.

‘Unicorn?’ He looked puzzled. Laura waved a large and shapely hand.

‘One of the fabulous beasts not on display,’ she said. ‘What did happen to the salamander, by the way?’

‘Not by the way, but on the sea. Burnt out. I managed it myself to spite Cousin Bradan, but that he never knew.’

‘Nonsense!’ said Dame Beatrice, suddenly entering the room. ‘You knew nothing about it until you heard that it had happened. Now tell us about the bagpipes.’

‘The bagpipes? Oh, yes. Well, what about them?’

‘Why were they played on the night Mr Bradan died?’

‘Do you know about salmon?’ asked Macbeth.

‘Indeed I do. Their life-story has been a study of mine for many years.’

‘And of mine. Well was he called Bradan, good Gaelic for Salmon. He was spawned in the Spey, gravitated – I call it that because of the very strong pull – to South America, returned to his native river and has fouled it ever since. Now all that he held is mine.’

‘Yes,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘but could he really bear to disinherit his only son?’

‘His only son, say you? Well, but, mistress, what about Grant of Coinneamh?’

‘I see,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘And what about the young Mr Grant who lives at Crioch post office?’

‘Oh, that one,’ said Macbeth. He waved a hand, imitating Laura’s gesture. ‘That would be a collateral branch, maybe. A clansman, ay, but nothing – I would say nobody – to signify.’ He was extremely drunk.

‘But the bagpipes! You must remember the bagpipes? Mrs Gavin heard them and so did this young Mr Grant.’

‘Ah, so that’s the limmer you mean? I ken him well. He was a rare nuisance here, speiring after the laird. I was telling him I was the laird, but he would none of it. He said he would be claiming squatter’s rights until the laird came home, so I bade him go squat in the policies, for I would not have him in the house.’

‘Yes, he squatted in the boathouse,’ said Laura. ‘I nearly fell over him when I left An Tigh Mór that night. A fine old fright he gave me, because, of course, I wasn’t expecting to find anybody there. Still, he made up for it by rowing me across the loch, and it was then that we heard you playing a lament on the pipes.’

‘Me? That was no me.’

‘Corrie, then?’

‘No, no.’

‘Don’t tell me Mrs Corrie plays the pipes!’

‘It was no Mrs Corrie, although, between you and me, mistress, I do not believe they twae are married.’

‘That’s as may be. Well, there was nobody else on the island at that time, was there?’

‘Nobody but the Great Silkie of Sule Skerrie.’

Laura stared at him.

‘Oh, well,’ said Dame Beatrice, rising, ‘whoever played the pipes knew that Mr Bradan, or Salmon, was dead.’

But Macbeth was not to be drawn. Laura got up, too, and the inspector opened the door for them and followed them into the hall. Here he jerked his head towards the room they had just vacated and significantly tapped his forehead.

‘And you know he did not kill his cousin?’ murmured Dame Beatrice.

‘Impossible that he committed the deed with his own hand, but less certain that he was not the head of a conspiracy to make away with him.’

‘Is there any possibility that Grant of Coinneamh is Mr Bradan’s son?’

‘None in the world, ma’am. We know a good deal about that Mr Grant. We know that he has shipping interests and we know the names of the ships and that one of them, the Saracen, as you already know, blew up and was written off as a total loss.’

‘Sabotage, do you suppose? – or done to collect the insurance money?’ asked Laura.

‘There was no reason at the time for any suspicion, Mrs Gavin. She was not over-insured and she was a well-found ship, so far as we know. No, no. It was just one of those things and the case is too firmly closed for anybody to reopen it now, even if there seemed any reason for doing so.’

‘What happened to the officers and the crew?’ asked Dame Beatrice.

‘Unhappily, all lost. I would say they never stood a chance of surviving.’

‘I suppose it would be possible to obtain a list of their names?’

‘Certainly.’

‘I should be grateful if I could be furnished with such a list.’

‘You’re not suggesting…?’

‘It is a long shot, Inspector, but, as I think you will agree, we still do not know for certain what motive the murderer or murderers of Mr Bradan may have had for what they did to him.’

‘Motive?’

‘Well, self-interest, in one form or another, is seen to be a motive in most cases of murder, is it not?’ asked Dame Beatrice. ‘But in this case I would postulate revenge.’