My Bones Will Keep

Chapter 19

The Prodigal Son

‘From here the cold white mist can be discerned.’

Matthew Arnold

« ^ »

‘WELL!’ said Laura, when she and Dame Beatrice were again alone together. ‘What did you make of that?’

‘I do not think that Mrs Stewart’s son can help us any more than he has done. He told us what he could and it has not got us very much farther.’

‘What business do you think he had with Bradan?’

‘Just what he said. In other words, Mr Bradan’s firm was acting as a kind of carrier’s service. Beyond that, it was not for Stewart’s firm to enquire. I can see that Bradan’s business was perfectly respectable at first, but became illegal later.’

‘I wonder what Stewart’s did when they knew they’d lost the service?’

‘I imagine that the other directors were just as much relieved as Stewart was. Firms with a good reputation do not care to be mixed up with even the mildest of shady transactions, and there must have come a point when Stewart’s became suspicious.’

‘What do we do now?’

‘Well, of course, we might endeavour to contact Mr Bradan’s son.’

‘But he’s in prison.’

‘It might be interesting to hear his story. But, if I mistake not, I hear our dear Robert at the door.’

‘Well, I’m dashed!’ said Laura. Her husband was shown in by Célestine. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Come to eat you, my dear,’ stated Detective Chief-Inspector Robert Gavin, fondly embracing his wife. ‘How is the girl, after all this time?’

‘None the better for seeing you,’ responded his loving spouse. ‘Well, what’s the news?’

‘Very interesting,’ said Gavin. ‘Meanwhile, what’s to eat?’

Célestine, summoned from the kitchen, reported that Monsieur Robert’s wishes had been complied with, and that a steak and kidney pudding would be at Monsieur Robert’s disposal, together with potatoes and greens, in a matter of minutes.

‘Oh, many cheers,’ said Gavin. ‘Just what the doctor ordered.’

‘It is as monsieur ordered,’ retorted Célestine, tossing herself out. ‘Over the telephone today.’

‘I envy you, Dame Beatrice,’ said Gavin. ‘Your household never seems to change, except for my wife, who’s getting fat’ Laura hit him over the head with a folded newspaper.

‘And now, precious idiot, expound. We’ve been told of your exploits. Be precise,’ she said

‘Well, I can’t be terribly precise,’ said Gavin, relapsing into gravity. ‘I don’t think that what we’ve found out will do your case much good, Dame Beatrice, I don’t really believe that the rum-running, or even the arms racket, has anything to do with Bradan’s death.’

‘As I supposed,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘But I think I hear your meal going in. Away and sup. We will hear more when you are refreshed.’

‘Looks well, doesn’t he?’ said Laura, when her handsome husband had taken himself off to the dining-room. ‘Very bronzed and sunburnt.’

Dame Beatrice agreed.

‘I wonder how much money Mr Bradan left?’ she added. Laura looked surprised.

‘I thought we’d decided it was a revenge job. I certainly had that impression,’ she said. ‘Hadn’t we discarded the idea of a murder for gain?’

‘Well, it would not have been the first of those, child.’

‘I suppose,’ said Laura thoughtfully, ‘that rum-running and gun-running could be pretty lucrative. Yes, it’s quite an idea you have there. The only thing about all this which puzzles me – apart from the identity of the murderer, of course – is why you think the police are wrong about Bradan’s son. You do think they’re wrong, don’t you?’

‘What causes you to ask such a question?’

‘Oh, come, now, Mrs Croc. dear! If you thought they were right, you wouldn’t still be spending time on the case. Besides, as the police have pinched young Bradan and stuck him in the nick, they must believe that the murder was done for revenge on his part because he’d been disinherited. Now you think it was done to get Bradan’s money, and that looks like Macbeth.’

‘We shall know more when we find out how much Mr Bradan had to leave and exactly how he left it.’

‘I’d still like to know more about how the body got on to the island, or, in fact, whether it did. Do you suppose the inspector knows? If he does, he may not tell us. I suppose you’re going to use Gavin as a sort of stool-pigeon when we get to Edinburgh.’

‘I am not certain that I understand you.’

‘Go on with you! Of course you understand me. Gavin is to be our surety. The inspector will be tickled to death to meet him, and will spill all sorts of beans.’

‘Possibly in private to our Robert, but with a suggestion that the disclosures are for no ears but Robert’s own.’

‘Oh, no, that would be too bad. Anyway, he would naturally suppose that Gavin would pass the gen to the wife of his bosom.’

‘I am not at all sure about that, and, even if it were so, it might not be possible for the said wife to pass on the information to a third party – myself.’

‘Oh, well, let’s not cross any bridges until we come to them. I’ll go into the dining-room and tell him what we expect, shall I?’

At this transparent excuse for Laura to have her husband to herself for a bit, Dame Beatrice cackled, but not until Laura had gone out of the room. At the end of about three-quarters of an hour the two returned and seated themselves. Gavin gently patted his stomach.

‘Best meal I’ve had since I dined here last time,’ he said. ‘And now, Dame B., I am at your service.’

‘Well, what can you tell us?’

‘As I said before, very little that can help you. We found out – thanks to Laura and my own rather talented young son – that there were some interesting goings-on in the West Indies and so on with regard to liquor and guns, but what on earth can be the connection between them and the death of Bradan is, at present, beyond conjecture. In fact, nothing ties up.’

‘I’d better tell you about the Edinburgh murder,’ said Laura.

‘But, my dear girl, one doesn’t murder people in Edinburgh nowadays,’ said Gavin, looking incredulous. ‘It’s no longer done, particularly since the introduction of the Festival.’

‘Oh, no?’ said Laura. ‘Well, big boy, listen to this.’ She gave him a vivid but not an exaggerated account of the street death she had witnessed. ‘Mrs Croc. was not impressed at first,’ she concluded, ‘but now I think she believes that what I said was true. It’s been confirmed, you see, by an impartial and independent witness.’ She went on to tell of their various encounters with the young reporter Grant. Gavin listened without interrupting her until she concluded with the words: ‘So you see.’

‘Um – yes,’ he said. ‘I do see. Pity he doesn’t know, or won’t give, the name of this chap he says he recognised. The fact that he says the chap was in Bradan’s employment doesn’t help much, as you point out. Got any theories, Dame B.?’

‘Well, I have formed some during the investigation (which, now, properly, I should give up), but there is no proof.’

‘Why should you give up?’

‘Because I began it only to make certain that Laura was not arrested,’ replied Dame Beatrice, accompanying, or, rather, concluding, this statement with her unnerving cackle.

‘Laura?’

‘Well, yes,’ his wife admitted. ‘I was on the island more or less at the time of Bradan’s murder and my story of why I was there would have sounded pretty thin in court.’

‘And now?’

‘Since we have met the inspector, I am no longer concerned for Laura’s safety,’ said Dame Beatrice.

‘What were you doing on the island, anyway, chump?’ demanded Gavin. Laura grinned.

‘Getting wet. That is to say, I got wet and Bradan’s son – I didn’t know that’s who it was at the time, but we found out afterwards – signalled the island and a huge old man with a terrific red beard brought a boat over and dried, warmed and fed me. But when he wanted to keep me on the island for a week I thought it was time to make my get-away. It was then that I first ran into this reporter. The rest of that story you know.’

‘Nice goings-on for a respectable wife and mother! When are you going to grow up?’

‘Anyway, now you know it all, what are you going to do?’ demanded Laura, ignoring the criticism.

‘With Dame B.’s permission, I am going to use her telephone and ring up Edinburgh.’

Dame Beatrice nodded, and he went out of the room.

‘Wonder what his idea is?’ said Laura.

‘He is going to find out whether young Bradan has been arrested for murdering his father, or for some other reason,’ said Dame Beatrice. This inspired guess turned out to be correct. Gavin came back looking pleased with himself.

‘Well, dog with two tails?’ said his wife. Gavin slumped into a chair and spread his long legs over the hearth-rug.

‘What do you think?’ he asked. Laura, from the opposite side of the fireplace, kicked his ankle. ‘Oh, well,’ he said resignedly, ‘if you’re in militant mood, you’d better know all. There’s no secret about it. Young Bradan is held in custody for assaulting the police.’

‘Really? I shouldn’t have thought he had it in him,’ said Laura ‘Exactly what did he do?’

‘He appears to have gone beserk when your friend Macbeth of the flaming beard sent for the police to order him off Tannasgan, where he was not only trespassing—’

‘Who cares about trespass?’ demanded Laura, a keen supporter of Access to Mountains.

‘Wait for it – but was destroying valuable property – viz. to wit, sculpture owned by the new laird of Tannasgan, Malcolm Donalbain Macbeth.’

‘Sculpture? Not the fabulous beasts? And surely he didn’t give that pseudonym to the police? I thought it was just his little joke.’

‘Sculpture, yes. The fabulous beasts, yes. And his name really is Malcolm Donalbain Macbeth. He’s got a birth certificate to prove it. So the police from Dingwall stepped in and young Bradan went all hysterical, I gather, and ran at them, brandishing a piece of one of the beasties. It appears that he got in a whack at the law which necessitated the insertion of eight stitches. So he got pinched and is up for trial charged with inflicting grievous bodily harm on a police constable while the latter was in the execution of his duty. He may also be wanted on an even more serious charge.’

‘More serious than hitting a policeman? Why, he might have killed him with that chunk of stone,’ said Laura. ‘I’ve seen those fabulous beasts. They’re tough babies.’

‘As it happens – probably luckily for the bobby – it wasn’t a lump of stone; it was a lump of metal.’

‘Oh, dash it, not the basilisk! That was my favourite!’

‘I’ve no idea what it was called. It’s immaterial, anyway. The serious charge against Bradan was that, in his screaming hysterics, he accused Macbeth of assisting him, in Edinburgh, to push a man named Grant under a car so that the said Grant was killed.’

‘Is Macbeth arrested too, then?’

‘No. It seems that he was able to furnish the police with a complete alibi for that particular time. He was on Tannasgan, and Mrs Corrie swore to him. What is the man Corrie like, by the way?’

‘Taciturn and unhelpful,’ said Laura, ‘but, I should say, honest and loyal and all those things which old-fashioned retainers used to be, and which present-day servants on the whole are not.’

‘So you don’t think that Corrie would have had anything to do with shoving that man under the car?’

‘It doesn’t seem very likely to me, but I’ve nothing to go on except instinct.’

‘Instinct is not often at fault,’ said Gavin thoughtfully, ‘and I’d usually trust yours. Anyway, that’s all I know and I have work to do. I’ve been away too long and I have a consultation tomorrow with the Assistant Commissioner about some robberies in – er – well, about some robberies.’ He grinned into his wife’s furious face. ‘No, really, Laura,’ he added, ‘there’s nothing more I can do for you. With the end of Bradan, I think his schemes will just die a natural death. As for his murder, well, that isn’t my pigeon.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I’m afraid I must go. Apart from seeing the Assistant Commissioner, I seem to have a date with a citizen named Good Egg Symes, who guarantees – for what it is worth – to tip us off about a job that was done in the West End two nights ago. It was a smash and grab. Friend Symes was unlucky enough to receive the smash – in the form of an empty milk-bottle which a scared nightwatchman slung at him – but failed to obtain the grab.’

‘His pals welshed on him?’ enquired Laura, deeply fascinated by this unadorned and artless history.

‘Apparently his reactions to having been struck by the bottle were so positive that they had to make their getaway before the job was done. Their attitude after that was such that he came to us for protection. We shall protect the little lost sheep, of course, but I don’t give much for his chances when his pals have served their time.’

‘I am sorry that you cannot stay with us here,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Your help would have been invaluable, especially now that there is no reason, apart from what the Americans, I believe, call ornery curiosity, for me to interest myself any further in Mr Bradan’s death.’

‘You had better carry on,’ said Gavin, ‘both of you. I can’t tell you any more, but if I can get up to Scotland when we’ve hard-boiled Good Egg Symes I will most certainly do so.’

Laura and Dame Beatrice headed for the north again next day. Laura thought that they were making for Edinburgh until lunch-time, when Dame Beatrice suggested to George that the car turn off at Stamford for Ilkley and Kirkby Lonsdale instead of travelling through Harrogate to Durham.

It soon became clear to Laura that her employer was in a hurry. Instead of the leisurely journeys, both north and south, which had been indulged in so far, it was not until they arrived in Carlisle by way of Grantham and Appleby that Dame Beatrice had the car pulled up for the night stop, and it was barely five minutes past nine when they were off again on the following morning. They lunched in Glasgow and the second night was spent at Blair Atholl. On the third day they drove through the quiet town of Freagair to the shores of Loch na Gréine.

Here, to Laura’s astonishment, Dame Beatrice did nothing at first except gaze across at Tannasgan and An Tigh Mór through the field-glasses which she had brought with her. ‘Do you see anything, Sister Ann?’ she enquired, handing the glasses to Laura.

‘What am I expected to see?’ enquired Laura, obediently training the glasses on to the island.

‘No, no. You must keep an open mind.’

‘Well, I don’t see anything at all that I haven’t seen before, i.e. the boathouse and An Tigh Mór. Shall I signal the island in the usual manner?’

‘It might be a little difficult,’ Dame Beatrice pointed out. Laura lowered the glasses and became aware that the tarpaulin and its stones, the handbell it had protected and the red and green lantern had all disappeared.

‘So old Macbeth has been arrested,’ said Laura.

‘At any rate, someone is still at An Tigh Mór, for there is smoke arising from the house.’

‘Well, anyway, how do we get across now that the bell and the lantern have gone? Do you want me to yodel or something?’

Dame Beatrice gazed at her in admiration.

‘What an excellent idea,’ she said. ‘Yodel, by all means. I had no idea that you could, and that is no reflection upon your not inconsiderable gifts.’

‘Do you mean it? Then here goes,’ said Laura. The ensuing sounds cleft the air and, it was soon obvious, reached the other side of the loch. A man came hurrying down to the boathouse. It was Corrie. ‘It’s not Macbeth anyway,’ said Laura, ‘so it looks as though he isn’t here.’

‘We must wait and see,’ said Dame Beatrice.

Corrie pushed off from the island and rowed across to them.

‘What would ye?’ he enquired, when he had tied up the boat and approached them.

‘Speech with the laird,’ said Dame Beatrice, eyeing him in a way he did not like.

‘The laird? Ye’ll be fortunate. I dinna ken the whereabouts of the laird.’

‘What about Treasure Island?’

‘I dinna ken what ye’re speiring about.’

‘No?’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘But I think you do, you know. Tell me, once and for all, what is the meaning of those fabulous animals on the wooded island?’

‘Fabulous animals? What kind of fabulous animals?’

‘I suppose you were not the other man concerned in the Edinburgh murder?’

This question seemed to shake Corrie.

‘What would that have been?’ he asked feebly. Dame Beatrice pressed home what seemed to be an advantage.

‘There are two independent witnesses of what you did, you and Grant of Coinneamh,’ she said. ‘The two of you pushed a man under a fast car. The man stood no chance of surviving. What have you to say about that?’

Corrie looked dumbfounded.

‘But I have naething to say about it. I didna do it. I had nae part in it,’ he said.

‘All the same, you knew about it,’ said Dame Beatrice, implacably. ‘You overheard something.’

‘I did, yes,’ Corrie looked even more unhappy. ‘But the old laird said that I should keep quiet.’

‘The old laird is dead. What have you to tell us?’

‘That there are things you’d never guess.’

‘Really? There you are wrong, you know. I think that by this time we have guessed nearly everything. Why was the bronze or brass delineation of the basilisk the most important piece of sculpture on the wooded island over there? Moreover, what is the significance of the maze?’

Corrie shook his head.

‘I dinna ken.’

‘About the metal serpent, or the maze?’

‘I hae nae knowledge of either. Will it please you to step into the boat?’

It will.’

He handed them in with aloof, punctilious courtesy and sat at the oars. His choppy, almost vicious, strokes soon carried them across the water.

‘Ye’ll be for the house?’ he asked doubtfully.

‘We are for speaking with Mr Macbeth.’

Dame Beatrice replied. Corrie shook his head again.

‘He’s no here.’

‘You mean he is on the other island?’

Corrie stuck out an obstinate underlip.

‘Gin ye’ll wait in the house, maybe he’ll come to you,’ he said.

‘You go and fetch him,’ said Laura. ‘I think we’d better wait here.’

‘No, no,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Let it be the house. Never mind, Mr Corrie. We have been here before. We can find our own way.’

‘Eh, well,’ said Corrie. ‘The door’s open.’ He repeated the words and added to them. ‘The door’s open and syne the spider will be walking in on ye.’ For the first time since Laura had known him, he chuckled, a gnome-like, ghoulish sound.

‘A bit of a sinister character, our friend, wouldn’t you say?’ suggested Laura when, having left Corrie at the boathouse, they were walking up to the house. ‘You don’t really think he was one of the men who pushed that man under the car in Edinburgh, do you?’

‘Reporter Grant’s insistence that the other man was employed by Mr Bradan makes me feel that we cannot dismiss him from our minds.’

‘And you believe that the other man was Grant of Coinneamh?’

‘I think it is likely. I cannot put it more strongly than that. It may have been Bradan himself.’

‘But Grant told us…’

‘I know. We are not bound necessarily to believe him. Well, Corrie has spoken sooth. The door is open.’

They stood in the passage while Laura shouted to find out whether anybody was at home. From the door which led to the kitchen Mrs Corrie appeared. She was wiping her hands on her apron and, clean though it was, it appeared to be no whiter than her face.

‘Save and presairve us!’ she cried. ‘Are ye in the flesh?’

‘If you’re asking whether we’re ghosts, I can tell you that we most certainly are not,’ retorted Laura. ‘May we come in?’

Mrs Corrie’s colour began to come back, but she still wiped nervous hands down her apron.

‘Ay, certainly. Come ben,’ she said. ‘But, gin ye’re for calling on the laird, ye’ve chosen a gey ill time, for he’s abroad the day.’

‘Yes, but he’s expected back,’ said Laura. ‘We know well enough where he is.’

‘Then ye ken mair aboot him than I,’ said Mrs Corrie, with something of her old spirit. Laura laughed, but Dame Beatrice said seriously:

‘Mrs Corrie, the Edinburgh police have been making enquiries into the death (supposed, at the time, to be accidental) of a man who was killed by a car. I believe they have questioned you about it.’

‘They speired at me was the laird ben the house that day.’

‘Exactly. You told them that he was.’

‘It was the truth. All day, from sun-up to sun-down. He was here, and he had an Inverness gentleman with him and Corrie and I were called in to put our names to a paper.’

‘Corrie and you? Both of you?’

‘I dinna ken, Mrs Gavin, what way you would be surprised at that. Mind you, I’m no very sure, but I thought – ay, and Corrie thought – that the paper was maybe the laird’s will.’

‘At what time did you sign it?’ asked Dame Beatrice.

‘What time? Well, now, the tea – I infused the tea at four o’clock instead of five, because the gentleman wanted to get the Inverness train at Freagair – the tea was cleared at a quarter to five and before I could turn round and wash up the things I was brought back into the room and Corrie was called from splitting kindling wood beyond the hen-house, and we both signed the paper.’

‘At soon after a quarter to five?’

‘At very soon after a quarter to five. It wouldna have been five minutes after I carried out the trays.’

‘I see. Thank you, Mrs Corrie,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Oh, one more question: do you happen to remember what day of the week it was?’

‘The police asked me the date, and I remembered that it was the twenty-third.’

‘Which day of the week was it?’ asked Laura, reinforcing Dame Beatrice’s question. ‘Don’t you remember that?’

‘It wasna the Sabbath, anyway. Folk up here dinna do business on the Sabbath.’

‘So you remember that it was the twenty-third, but not which day it was.’

‘For the best of reasons. I mind it was the twenty-third because that was the date on the bottom of the paper.’

Laura laughed. Then she said, ‘It might interest you to know—’ she began.

‘Or, rather, to tell us,’ broke in Dame Beatrice, ‘whether the present laird, Mr Macbeth, was on Tannasgan at the time.’

‘Him? Oh, ay, he was here.’

‘All the time?’

‘Ay, all the time. I never listen ahint doors, mind ye, but the old laird and the present laird hae muckle big voices, and for two days they had been talking about Tannasgan and the loch and An Tigh Mór.’

‘And the young man? Young Mr Bradan?’

‘That one had left Tannasgan lang syne. His father turned him out. Oh, it was an ill business, that, to disinherit and send awa’ his only son.’

‘Turned him out, you say. How had he offended his father?’ asked Dame Beatrice.

‘I dinna altogether ken. I think there were debts.’

‘Oh, he was that kind of young man.’

‘Then there was a lassie. I dinna ken the rights and wrongs of that, either, but when I was about to take in the dishes I heard the old laird say something about making a bed and lying on it, and the young man pleading that without siller he couldna marry on the lassie and make an honest woman of her.’

‘But the old man didn’t fall for that,’ said Laura.

‘He did not, indeed. When I went in to clear the table they were still at it and, when I got outside the door again, the old laird told him to get out and tramp the Edinburgh gutters with his fancy woman. It was all they were fit for, to sing in the street for bawbees.’

‘Very Victorian. And has the young one ever been back?’ asked Laura, interested in this hoary, classical, vintage tale.

‘Ay, he’s been back, but since his father’s time, you ken. And he’s been sent off again with a flea in his ear. The police was sent for and took him awa’ with them. Ay, and such a carrying-on as he made! You never heard the like. Accusing here, accusing there! He even spoke against my man. Ay, but for the police my man would have dinged him in the neb.’

‘Very proper,’ said Laura. Taking this as a sign of dismissal, Mrs Corrie went back to her domain and Laura took Dame Beatrice into the dining-room. ‘Why wouldn’t you let me tell her that I’d seen the Edinburgh murder and that it did not take place on the twenty-third?’ she asked, in a low voice, when she had shut the door and had moved away from it to the window.

‘Witnesses to a murder are not invulnerable, and neither are people with inconveniently accurate memories. Mrs Corrie herself would not hurt you, but we cannot be certain that she would not talk. Apart from anyone else, she would mention the matter to her husband, you may be sure.’

‘Oh, well – Hullo! here comes Macbeth, and from the Island of Strange Beasts, by the look of it. Corrie is just tying up the boat, so now the fun begins.’