My Bones Will Keep

Chapter 21

Treasure Island

‘Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest –

Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!

Drink and the devil had done for the

rest—

Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!’

Robert Louis Stevenson

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LAURA had elected to sleep in the room which had been apportioned to her the first time she had visited An Tigh Mór. She woke at dawn, stared around her for a minute or two, then got up and decided to swim in the loch.

The water was cold, but not unbearably so. She enjoyed her bathe and was on the point of swimming back to the boathouse from which, having no idea of the depth of the water for diving, she had elected to push off, when it occurred to her that she had a priceless opportunity to land on the islet of Haugr and explore it on her own.

It was easy enough to get ashore. The water lapping the island was shallow and the mud was not treacherous. She waded on to the bank and was aware, immediately, that shoes would have been an asset. However, Laura was not deterred by disadvantages. She took the path which she and Dame Beatrice had followed on the only occasion when they had visited Haugr, and soon found herself among the fabulous animals.

Here there was no doubt about the destruction which had been done. The bronze basilisk had been uprooted and all that was left of him was a collection of sections of metal, one of them surmounted by his crowned serpentine head.

The werewolf had been thrown on to his side, but the enormous gryphon had been left alone. It seemed as though the excavator had boggled at the idea of attempting to uproot him. The salamander, however, had suffered. His large head, spangled with yellow paint in the form of diamonds, lay at an angle to his lizard’s body where the stonework had cracked.

Laura, chilly in her wet swim-suit, studied the ruins with concern. Macbeth and young Bradan, between them, had left a sorry mess. Conscious of hunger and cold, Laura left the island and swam back to the boathouse. When she re-entered An Tigh Mór it was to find a warm smoulder of peats in the dining-room and Mrs Corrie polishing the fine old sideboard.

‘Well!’ exclaimed Mrs Corrie, as Laura approached the fire, wrapped in the towel she had taken down to the boathouse. ‘A water-kelpie he called you, and a waterkelpie ye are! Get you into your claes before you catch your death!’

Laura laughed, warmed herself by the fire and then went upstairs to dress. She met Dame Beatrice on the landing.

‘Been for a swim,’ said Laura. ‘Either Macbeth or young Bradan has committed mayhem on the fabulous beasts. You ought to see the carnage!’

‘I intend to do so immediately after breakfast, child. I wonder whether the menu includes kippers?’

‘It’s haddocks’ eyes you search for among the heather bright, isn’t it?’

‘That may well be. Incidentally, I believe I have worked them into waistcoat buttons in the silent night.’

‘You have? Whoopee, Mrs Croc. dear. Tell me all.’

‘You shall know what there is to be known when we have digested our breakfasts.’

Laura was still young enough in heart to respond to this promise. As it happened, there were kippers for breakfast, brought in, said Mrs Corrie, from Aberdeen via Inverness and Tigh-Osda. As soon as breakfast was over, Laura and Dame Beatrice went down to the boathouse with George and Corrie and were rowed over to Haugr.

‘Now,’ said Laura, when they had landed on the wooded island, ‘I’ve almost forgotten my breakfast, so you’d better redeem your promise.’

‘We are going treasure-hunting, child. There may have been other reasons for the destruction of the statuary, but young Bradan did not come here merely to destroy. He knew – or believed, at any rate – that most of his father’s ill-gotten gains were hereabouts.’

‘Ay,’ said Corrie, ‘there was no a muckle heap of siller at the bank. I ken that verra well, for when the old laird wanted for money, I was despatched tae Inverness wi’ a cheque to cash, and mair than aince we were overdrawn there and the laird would go himself to set matters right. Ay, there maun be a hidey-hole hereabouts, as ye say, mistress, but the laird keepit verra close and helpit himself when naebody but the guidwife was on Tannasgan wi’ him, and well he kenned that she would never set foot on Haugr.’

Laura took the lead, Dame Beatrice was immediately behind her and George brought up the rear so that he could keep an eye on Corrie (his own idea, much appreciated by Dame Beatrice.) She made no reference to it, but thought it both touching and amusing. In this order the party traversed the little path until they came to the maze and, in the centre of it, the smashed and broken statuary.

The two men carried respectively a spade and a garden fork, and, when they reached their objective, a parcel borne by Laura, who had insisted upon relieving Dame Beatrice of it, was found to contain a large hammer.

‘Bags I,’ said Laura, swinging it up and down. ‘What do we do first – slam out or dig?’

‘Both, I hope,’ her employer replied. ‘The stonework has been so badly damaged already that I feel we may be forgiven for adding to the destruction. The basilisk may be left until the last, for it seems clear that the money is not in his possession. George and Corrie must work in partnership with one another and carefully dig up the centre of the maze, by which I mean all the earth except that on which the statues have been standing, for they would appear to be too heavy for one man to have moved when he wanted to uncover his cache. You, my dear Laura, may do what you will with your hammer. When you are tired, you may hand it over to me.’

The Amazonian Laura grunted. She did not tire easily. The three then went to work. The ground in the centre of the maze had been well trampled and digging was not easy. Soon each man removed his coat and was perspiring freely. Laura swung her hammer with zeal tempered by discretion, for it was her firm, although unspoken, opinion that some, at any rate, of Bradan’s treasure might be in the form of precious stones, a kind of wealth which had worldwide currency.

A couple of hours passed. The men had dug up most of the centre of the maze to a depth of a couple of spits. First Corrie had broken up the soil with his fork, to be followed by George prospecting with the spade. Every half-hour they had exchanged tools, as the work with the fork was considerably more exhausting than that performed with the spade. Laura had broken up the werewolf and was attacking the gryphon when an overcast sky, which had been threatening rain for the past hour, discharged a true West Highland deluge. Hastily the men retrieved their coats and Dame Beatrice, rising from the remains of the salamander (which had suffered destruction, she supposed, when the ship he represented had blown up) announced firmly that work was over until the rain ceased. So the party hastened back to the boat and made across the lake for Tannasgan and An Tigh Mór.

‘Well,’ said Laura, damp-haired and wearing a change of clothing, ‘that’s put paid to that for the rest of the day, I suppose. Wonder what’s for lunch? The usual mutton, I expect.’ She was at the window watching the rain sweeping over the loch. ‘I love my native land, but I do think it could do with a little less rain.’

‘It may clear up this afternoon,’ said Dame Beatrice. She mended the fire with more peats. ‘In any case, I am beginning to wonder…’

‘Whether your hunch has gone wrong? Oh, I don’t know. There’s still quite a bit of digging to be done, and I’ve hardly touched the gryphon yet. I had a feeling that the stuff would be in the werewolf’s tummy. That’s why I tackled him first. Do you think the police have got hold of the right man? You know, I still don’t believe Corrie had told us the whole truth about that night.’

‘I think he has told it as far as he knows it. What he has said now checks pretty well with what we already know. If the rain eases off a little this afternoon, I propose to drive in to Tigh-Osda and have another talk with the lad Ian.’

‘If it eases off, I’m going to have another go with my hammer, then. I don’t mind confessing, childish though it may seem, that treasure-hunt fever is on me.’

‘Tak’ tent!’ said Mrs Corrie, coming in to lay the table. ‘Ye’re blethering, lassie!’

Laura grinned and Dame Beatrice said:

‘The treasure can wait. It won’t run away. Besides, I should like you to be with me when I talk to Ian. I may need a translator if he becomes excited and decides to address me in Gaelic.’

Laura began to look mulish. She saw through this flimsy reason for not leaving her behind on Tannasgan with nobody but the Corries in the house.

‘You won’t need me. The station-master can translate for you,’ she said.

‘Ah, but I don’t choose that he should,’ said Dame Beatrice implacably. Laura laughed.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘You win. But’ – she lowered her voice, for the door into the hall was ajar to facilitate Mrs Corrie’s re-entry with the soup – ‘don’t you think the C’s may get up to something while we’re away?’

‘I don’t think it matters if they do, child. As the discovery of the hoard cannot possibly benefit either you or me in any way, it does not really matter who discovers it.’

‘It does to me. I’m simply longing to find it. All my life I’ve wanted to find treasure or some cave paintings or something, and now you don’t care if the cup is dashed from my lips.’

Mrs Corrie carried in a steaming tureen, said, ‘Saumon tae follow,’ and marched out again.

‘Terrible as an army with banners,’ said Dame Beatrice absently, going to the head of the table.

‘I say!’ said Laura, dismayed. ‘you don’t really think that, do you?’

‘Think what, child?’

‘That Mrs Corrie is mixed up in any funny business.’

‘I think she knows one thing that Corrie does not know. Sit down.’ Dame Beatrice removed the lid from the tureen. ‘I always look upon Scotch broth as a meal in itself,’ she added.

‘Well,’ said Laura, abandoning an abortive argument, ‘I suppose, in poor homes, it had to be. It’s what they call, in England, filling, nourishing and cheap. Anyway, in my opinion, it had Irish stew licked to a frazzle. Serve me a good deep plateful, please. My demolition job has made me hungry.’

When lunch was over, the rain was still coming down and a grey mist had settled on the loch. Laura stood at the window and stared moodily out at the weather. By three o’clock, however, there was a primose-coloured promise in the sky, and by half-past three it had stopped raining and Dame Beatrice announced her intention of repairing forthwith to Tigh-Osda. Corrie was summoned to row the boat back and forth, George warned that the car was required and at four o’clock precisely the car moved off from the loch-side and headed for the west.

From every hillside narrow waterfalls cascaded on to the road and were received by deep drains. Heavy cloud hung over the mountains, obliterating all the peaks and giving the impression of an improbable stage-set seen from the back of the gallery. Except for the sound of the waterfalls and the almost undetectable sound of the car, an eerie silence brooded everywhere. Laura, gazing out of the window and sometimes through the windscreen behind George’s solid, broad-shouldered back, wondered whether, or to what extent, the mystery of two violent deaths was about to be cleared up. Dame Beatrice was thinking about the lion and the unicorn, who were fighting for the crown. She had remembered that the royal arms had been introduced into England by that oddity King James I on the strength of his believing the rhyme to be a Scottish story, a strangely patriotic gesture for the son of the half-English Lord Darnley and the half-French Mary, Queen of Scots.

As they passed the private trackway which led to Coinneamh Lodge, Laura remarked:

‘I suppose we shall never know why she borrowed my car that night I stayed there.’

‘I do not despair of finding that out, child,’ responded Dame Beatrice. George drew in at a passing-place to give an estate wagon a clear road.

‘The Grants,’ said Laura, on whose right-hand side the estate wagon had passed them. ‘Wonder where they’re going?’

‘It is Friday,’ said Dame Beatrice.

‘Yes, but we understood that he always goes to Inverness by train and that she never goes with him.’

‘Aliud alia dicunt, puella.’

‘They jolly well do say different things! One trouble about this case is that no two people concerned in it seem to speak the same language.’

No other traffic was encountered on the road, and the car drew up sedately outside Tigh-Osda station. Ian was available, since no train was expected for some time, and he greeted the visitors shyly.

‘The same old story,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘We are still concerned with the death of Mr Bradan of Tannasgan. Now you will remember that he had ordered your station-master’s car and that you drove him to the shores of Loch na Gréine.’

‘Marbhphaisg air a’ bhrùid mhi-thaingeil!’ muttered Ian. Laura was delighted.

‘Curse the ungrateful brute!’ she translated. ‘Lesson number eight in Gaelic Without Groans.’

‘Indeed?’ said Dame Beatrice, uncertain whether Laura was jesting.

‘By John Mackechnie, M.A.,’ added Laura, supplying the necessary footnote. ‘Didn’t Cù Dubh pay you, then, Ian?’

‘He paid for the car, but nothing for me.’

‘Mingy hound!’

‘Not hound, please you! Hound is a good word in the Gaelic,’ said Ian, with a nervous giggle.

‘Oh, Lord, so it is! Come to me, sons of hounds, and I will give you flesh! How does it go?’

‘It is the slogan of Cameron of Lochiel, Mrs Gavin, and it goes: Chalanna nan con thigibh a’s gheibh sibhfeòil!’

‘Jolly good. But we’re holding up Dame Beatrice.’

‘You believed, with Corrie, Mr Bradan’s man, that Mr Bradan was very drunk that night, did you not?’ she asked.

‘I did. He had a great smell of spirits on him and he could not stand on his feet.’

‘Did you see anybody help him out of the train?’

‘I did. It was a young Englishman, works at the hydro-electric plant further up the dalr. He helped him on to the platform and I went to help and so did Mr Corrie. The Englishman said, “I’m afraid this bloke’s pickled.” That will be an English idiom, no doubt.’

‘That’s right. The English will say a man is a drunk, but not, if they can help it, that he is drunk.’

‘Fancy that, now. The study of language, and the circumlocutions of the same, make very interesting thinking.’

‘So when you first saw Mr Bradan being helped out of the train, you thought he was ill,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘However, you accepted the theory that he was drunk because of what the young Englishman said and because of the strong smell of spirits.’

‘Spilt over him, I expect,’ said Laura. ‘It’s been done before to lend verisimilitude, etc. Quite a well-established gag.’

‘I believe you crossed over in the boat with Corrie,’ said Dame Beatrice to Ian.

‘It was a case of necessity. Mr Corrie would never have managed him alone, small, wee man though he was.’

‘The laird?’

‘Yes, yes, the laird.’

‘That is the first I have heard about his size. Was he thin as well as short?’

‘He was as thin as a caolbhain.’

‘Lead pencil,’ murmured Laura. ‘Lesson number fifteen.’

‘So, in your opinion, the person who murdered him could quite easily have placed his body in the barrel where it was found?’

‘Very easily, och, yes. But when he was alive and, as we thought, having taken spirits, it was a different matter.’

‘Did Mr Bradan say anything during the journey home?’

‘He would moan, “My head! My head!” But much to drink will always go to a man’s head, as they say.’

‘Very true. Did you actually go into the house?’

‘No. I would not like to go into a big, fine house such as that. There was, also, Mr Corrie’s wife to help, and Mr Macbeth, the new laird, so I parted from them at the door.’

‘Did you see a young man sitting in the boathouse?’

‘No, indeed. There was nobody there.’

‘Well, what next?’ asked Laura, when Ian had received a gratuity and they were about to return to the car. ‘Evidence from the young Englishman?’

‘You have hit it.’

‘We don’t know his name.’

‘There cannot be many young Englishmen there, I take it except for Curtis, of course.’

‘I shouldn’t think there are, and, by the look of things, I should say that work is about finished for the day.’ She referred to the fact that cars and pedestrians had begun to appear on the narrow road. ‘We’d better wait here and get Ian to identify our bird for us.’

‘Let us hope he always travels by train, then. Otherwise we shall miss him.’

They were fortunate. In the booking-hall doorway which led on to the platform, Ian readily identified a young fellow whose dark suit and carefully-rolled umbrella seemed to speak of London and a white-collar job.

‘Good heavens!’ said the young man, when Ian had introduced Dame Beatrice. ‘Do you mean that he was the fellow who was croaked and put in a barrel? We merely thought he was tight. The chap who bundled him into my compartment said he was.’

A description of the ‘chap’ followed, at the urgent request of Dame Beatrice.

‘Well?’ she said to Laura, as they walked back to the car.

‘An eye-witness’s description of young Bradan.’

‘I thought it might be. Now I really am in a quandary.’

‘As how?’

‘Well, it’s obvious that young Bradan may have hit his father on the head with intent to kill him, but it doesn’t seem possible that it actually did kill him.’

‘Oh, Lord!’ exclaimed Laura. ‘No wonder young Grant chased me for that alibi after he’d read the papers! You mean…’

‘That the coup de grace was not delivered by young Bradan. The medical evidence was perfectly clear. It was the skian-dhu which killed Cù Dubh.’

‘But young Grant had no motive!’

‘He thought that Cù Dubh was already dead, and that the skian-dhu and the barrel would provide a nation-wide sensation. And I have no doubt whatever of his absolute horror when he found out what he had done. I have very little doubt, either, mind you, that Mr Bradan eventually would have died of the injury to his head, but that we must check.’

‘And tonight? If it were bright moonlight we could go back and tackle the fabulous beasts again.’

‘No, child, not even by moonlight. We have to find the lion and the unicorn, and I believe I know where to look for them. Where a man’s heart is, you know.’

‘The cellar!’ exclaimed Laura. ‘He was badly hurt, but he did manage to crawl into the cellar! He’d shifted the treasure from Haugr when he knew his son was stealing it! I can’t wait to get back to An Tigh Mór.’

It did not take them long to do this. The cars and the pedestrians from the hydroelectric plant were gone by the time they took the road for Tannasgan. Laura wondered whether they would pass the Grants’ station-wagon again, and she looked out for it, but there was nothing on the road except a solitary small ambulance which seemed in no hurry and from which a cheery greeting was waved as they passed it.

Tannasgan looked deserted. It seemed so, too, for Laura jangled the handbell and turned the lantern in vain.

‘Goodness! What’s happened to Corrie?’ she demanded. The answer came from just behind her.

‘I am saying that Corrie was away to Freagair.’

Laura swung round, but it was not young Bradan (as, from the Gaelic construction of the sentence, she had half-expected) but young Grant. He smiled at her. Laura, who now knew him to have been, however unintentionally, the actual killer of Cù Dubh, looked as astounded as she felt.

‘What on earth are you doing here?’ she demanded. ‘And if Corrie is in Freagair, why isn’t the boat tied up on this side?’

‘Mrs Corrie rowed it back to the boathouse,’ said Grant, in his ordinary tones. He put two fingers to his mouth and split the air with a screeching, piercing, almost ferocious whistle. This had an effect, for, a minute later, Mrs Corrie was at the boathouse and was untying the heavy, clumsy boat. As Grant helped her to hold it against the side of the small quay, while she tied up, she said to him:

‘I am not having ye set foot again on Tannasgan.’

‘Why not, then?’

‘Because ye did enough mischief the last time ye were here.’

‘Oh, come, now, Maggie, you must make some allowance for the Press. It was only a story I was after.’

‘Ay, and ye got one, too! How dared ye stab the old laird and gie him his death-blaw?’

‘What?’ said Grant, in a kind of strangled yelp. ‘What are you saying, you old…?’

‘I’m no an old what you said the now, and my name’s not Maggie. I say I ken verra well how Mr Bradan came by his death. I haena told any other body, but gin ye dinna tak’ yoursel’ awa’ from here and let me never set een on ye mair, I will go to the police and swear to them on my aith that ye murdered the old laird.’

Grant was unable to speak, but Laura said:

‘You’ve bought it, chum. So my word wouldn’t have helped you, even if I had been able to give it, you see.’

Grant turned and ran. The three women gazed after him until they lost him at the bend in the road. George joined them on the quayside.

‘Well,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘you have saved me from a most unwelcome duty, Mrs Corrie. I thought I should have been obliged to present the same home truth to young Mr Grant as you have done.’

‘Are ye for the boatie?’ Mrs Corrie demanded.

Her passengers stepped in and George relieved her of the oars.

‘Had Corrie any particular reason for visiting Freagair?’ Dame Beatrice enquired. ‘He said nothing about it before we left this afternoon.’

‘He was needing a pick-axe and he kens a man in Freagair will no be sweer to gie him the loan of one. My man was fair fashed tae be howking over at Haugr wi’ a fork and shovel the morn.’

‘Oh, I see. He thought that a pick-axe would do the work more quickly and easily, and, if we were going on with that same work, there is no doubt that he would be right.’

‘Ye’ll no be howking over there the morn’s morn, then?’

‘No, the digging I intended is all done.’ No more was said until they had tied up the boat and were at the front door of An Tigh Mór. Then Dame Beatrice added as though there had been no break in the conversation, ‘I suppose there is a key to the cellar?’

‘And what would ye be wanting wi’ the cellar?’ asked Mrs Corrie, preparing to make her way to her own regions at the back of the house. ‘There’s naething of interest in the cellar but a dozen bottles, maybe, of whisky.’

‘I should like the key of the cellar, all the same.’

‘It will be in the door, then. That is where my man left it when he took all the old laird’s siller and hid it where nane o’ ye will find it.’

‘When was this?’

‘Just after ye left for Tigh-Osda. Oh, ye need not think we were stealing it. It’s a’ there for them it’s meant for.’

‘And who might they be?’

‘The Grants of Coinneamh Lodge, maist like. It’s common talk that Mistress Grant was closer to the old laird than some others.’