‘Complete with droit de seigneur, from what one hears,’ said his daughter.
‘Wouldn’t say that. Liked the girls, though. Never married. Well, with his money . . .’
Pru sniffed. ‘He managed to get sued for breach of promise, which I didn’t think happened any more.’
‘Years ago,’ said the general. ‘His own fault. Shouldn’t have mentioned marriage in the first place. Shouldn’t have kissed her in the second place.’ The general paused and looked around. There was an unholy gleam in his eye. ‘Should have stuck to the first place,’ he added.
That was when Keith realised that the general was not quite the innocent old fool that he pretended to be.
There was a moment of shocked silence.
The general wandered to the open window. He mounted his gun, drew bead on a passing sparrow and blew it to shreds.
Chapter Five
General Springburn did not carry his gun that day. He seemed to feel naked without it, but the entire company was united against him. Even Mr Enterkin seemed to realise that he had just witnessed a startling exhibition of carelessness with a gun. As for Pru, this fresh reminder of her sire’s irresponsibility made her adamant, and she hammered home her embargo by suggesting that perhaps they should call round and see whether any of the village shops had a white macintosh on offer. Or perhaps, in view of the weather, an umpire’s white coat?
The three men followed her out quietly.
‘Where now?’ the general asked. He sounded, for him, subdued.
Enterkin looked at his watch. ‘We’re not expected at Whinkirk House until tomorrow. If the gamekeeper’s handy – Colin Winter, isn’t it? – we might just see him.’
‘Going that way. Take you there.’
Pru’s twin girls led the way with their mother in attendance. The men dropped back as far as they dared. Brutus stayed close to heel of his own volition as the general’s two fat cockers romped around him, and he thought superior thoughts about them.
The general had been brooding. ‘Always had permission from individual farmers,’ he said. ‘Must white coat start now? Or could I wear something else over it?’
Mr Enterkin was prepared to compromise, but he intercepted a glare from Keith – the one person present who appreciated the mortal nature of the general’s sin – and stood firm. The general walked on in a silence broken only by occasional murmurs of “White coat!” or “Little coloured bubbles!”
Keith took pity on him at last. ‘Think of the shooting parties you can give,’ he suggested. ‘You don’t have to shoot when you’re the host, so you can wear what you like. Plan your invitations properly and you’ll be sure of an invitation for every other Saturday in the season.’
‘True,’ the general said, brightening.
‘That may have been what Raymond Grass had in mind. He could be very subtle,’ Mr Enterkin pointed out. ‘Perhaps this was his way of providing you with plenty of shooting, but not around here.’
The general seemed to hesitate over whether or not to take offence at the clumsy words but to decide against it. He might not like the conditions, but he could hardly cavil at the legacies.
They had left the village by a way that had started as a lane but was no longer pretending to be more than a track between fields. Now that they had emerged from the canopy of trees, Keith at last got a view of the estate, and he was impressed. It was farmed, and farmed well; but for at least a generation there had been a landlord who had not been driven by economic pressures to sacrifice the countryside on the altar of “prairie farming”. Hedges rather than fences separated the fields. Long strips of woodland had been preserved, hedged against cattle, thinned for daylight and heavily undergrown. Every odd corner of the fields which might otherwise have been wasted was planted with cover. Keith got the impression of an estate managed as a balance of the interests of farming, shooting and wildlife. A cock pheasant strutted across the track, paying them little attention in the knowledge that he was safe at that season; but a pair of woodpigeon swerved as the general lifted his stick. The season for bird-song was almost past, but Keith was aware of more song-birds than he had seen at any one time since his boyhood.
The general sidled up against Keith, almost pushing him off the path. ‘Nobody’s going to make you wear a white coat around here?’ he suggested, in a muted roar.
‘I don’t suppose so,’ Keith said. ‘But I haven’t brought a gun.’
‘Lend you a gun. Not long enough in neck and arms for any of mine. Wife had a sixteen-bore Sarasqueta, should fit you. Just ’til you get your own gun through. Call in tomorrow.’
Keith thanked him, while wondering what came next.
‘Gunsmith, eh?’
Keith agreed.
‘If I go through with firing salute over grave, like to load that damned Roman Candle for me? Eh?’
Keith said that he would do so, at the same time vowing to himself that, if he should happen to be present at the service, he would remain as far from the general as was possible. He and the general saw eye to eye on the subject of that particular weapon.
In the distance, a small field was occupied by several horses. ‘Are those the horses mentioned in the will?’ Enterkin asked.
‘They would be,’ the general said. ‘Grass loved horses. Had to speak to him about it.’ And the general glared at them, daring them to acknowledge that a joke had been made.
*
While Pru supervised the play of the general’s dogs and grandchildren, the others went to find Colin Winter. He occupied an old but lavishly modernised cottage (for Mr Grass had been a model landlord and employer), approached through a garden of mixed shrubs and vegetables. Mrs Winter sent them out to the back, where they found Winter at his rearing pens, feeding a couple of hundred pheasant poults. Keith, who had expected a larger scale of rearing on a rich man’s estate, was impressed. It was his belief that a gamekeeper should not be a poultry-farmer.
Colin Winter was in his forties, brown-skinned and grey-haired. His face showed no expression. His voice held more than a trace of his Aberdeenshire origins. When he was excited, his eyes twinkled or flashed, his hair seemed to bristle and his tongue went right back to his ancestors. He seemed in no hurry to ingratiate himself with his visitors but, with minimal courtesy, offered them a seat on an old bench while himself remaining standing with the ease of a man who spends all of his life on foot.
Brutus lay down with his nose against the wire of a pen. This was a new scent to him, totally and utterly strange, yet it called to something deep inside him.
The general performed the introductions. Winter nodded dourly, but then a flicker of expression crossed his square face. ‘Calder?’ he said reflectively. Keith brightened – he was not averse to recognition by the shooting fraternity. ‘The wildlife photographer?’
Keith deflated. ‘My wife,’ he said.
‘Aye? Man, yon lassie can fairly catch the very soul of a creature,’ Winter said. ‘I’ve a calendar of her work from the folk that supply the pheasant-feed. Just grand! You’re a shooting man yoursel’?’
Mr Enterkin suppressed a smile. ‘Mr Calder’s a gunsmith as well as a shooting man. He’s here to advise me about the shooting.’
‘Indeed?’ Winter looked at Keith and hesitated. ‘Then maybe we’d better let him have a go at the pigeons while he’s here.’
The general looked disgruntled at this theft of his thunder.
‘I’d be very pleased,’ Keith said.
Winter looked at Mr Enterkin. ‘And yoursel’?’ he asked.
Enterkin shook his head. ‘I don’t shoot,’ he said. ‘Not that I’ve anything against the practice. I have never understood why the Almighty should have endowed the same creatures with incontinent habits and the gift of flight.’
Keith hurried to change the subject before Mr Enterkin got onto the subject of the dawn chorus, of which he profoundly disapproved. ‘Sad about Mr Grass’s death,’ he said.
‘It was that,’ said Winter.
That did it.
‘Aye. M’hm. I just canna’ understand it even yet. Spoke gey sharp to me once, just for stepping o’er a low fence. My gun was open, but wisna’ empty. But then, he was gey canny, his-sel’.’
Keith remembered Sir Peter’s words. ‘People do set themselves a lower standard when they’re alone.’
Winter bristled. ‘Nae him. I found him, ye ken. Gey early in the day. I was just setting oot to go round my traps. He’d been lying there through the night. There’d been a frost for days so that the ground was showing nae marks; but you could almost see how he’d lost his balance and dropped the gun.’
‘You think that’s what happened?’
‘I’ve aye had ma doots. He just wasna’ the man to dae that, nae matter fit the police mak’ oot.’
‘Even if he was in a hurry?’ Enterkin asked.
‘Fit way would he be in ony brattle?’
‘If he’d spotted a poacher?’ Keith suggested.
Winter hesitated and then, surprisingly, half-smiled before shaking his head. ‘He was hurried most o’ his working life. But when he was here and awa’ fae it a’, it was his time to relax. He’d just tak’ a gun and go for what he called a “footle-about”. Whiles, he’d just come doon here for a wee crack.’ Winter sighed. ‘It was efter the end of the season, so he’d just be efter a rabbit or a pigeon. There was plenty of baith about, but his game-bag was empty. His heid was an awfu’ mess. Ye ken they had a job to mak’ out if it was himsel’ or not. I did wonder, for a while, if it wasna’ ane o’ his jokes that went wrong. But no. I’ll not believe that. Not wi’ a corpus.’
Mr Enterkin broke an awkward silence. ‘I have to see a Joe Merson in one of the cottages,’ he said. ‘Where would that be?’
Winter’s face hardened. He jerked his head. ‘About a quarter-mile down towards the loch. I dinna’ ken why the master ever let him bide, the bugger of a poacher that he is. But Mr Grass seemed to like the old rogue. Anyway, he’s not been seen here since February. Off to the mountains poaching stags, likely, he’s done that afore and been nabbed at it.’
Keith and Mr Enterkin caught each other’s eye. ‘He’s been gone since about the time Mr Grass died?’ Keith said.
‘Aye. Just about. He was here a few days after – I’m certain sure, because I’d been down to the station to sign my statement and I saw Joe Merson in the village. Then at gloamin’, the same nicht, I heard shots from down by the loch. You’ll ken how the sound can carry in a frost. I went out, but I saw naebody; and in the mornin’ there’d been a touch of snow. Any marks were away. I’ve not seen him since, or heard him either; and I don’t want to, except that I could be doing with a fresh bag of shot. He’s the only man can pour good shot around here, and it’s cheaper than you can get in the shops. If he’d stick to that and a little ferreting and leave my pheasants alone, I could thole him.’
‘That’s a bit of a coincidence, isn’t it?’ Keith asked.
‘Aye, it is. It made me think, but I’ve thocht and thocht, wondering whether the two of them hadna’ gone off on some ploy together. I canna’ believe it, though they were thick as thieves, those two. You’d hardly credit it, a millionaire and a scruffy old tink. But Joe used to help Mr Grass with some of his wee jokes at times. He loaded some funny cartridges, to put among the general’s.’
‘He did, did he?’ General Springburn said ominously.
‘Aye.’ Clearly, any revenge that the general might care to exact would be all right with Winter.
This reminder of the “little coloured bubbles” had unsettled the general. He climbed stiffly to his feet. ‘Leave you to it,’ he suggested.
‘You may well stay,’ Enterkin said. ‘You too, Keith. It’s the future of the estate that I want to discuss.’
The general subsided with an audible creak. Winter’s face froze again. Keith thought that the man was well named.
Enterkin paused to gather up his words. He half-turned on the bench so that all three men were within the radius of his attention. ‘One of Mr Grass’s regrets,’ he said, ‘was a rift that exists between shooting men and naturalists. He felt that a great opportunity for understanding and collaboration was being lost.’
‘That’s true enough,’ the general said. ‘Most responsible shooting men are naturalists at heart, but there’s a new breed of birdwatcher comes out from the cities at weekends with a pair of binoculars and a book of birds.’
‘Aye,’ Winter said, ‘and thinkin’ that he’d be doing the pretty birdies a favour if he could ban the shooting altogether.’
Mr Enterkin raised his eyebrows. ‘And he wouldn’t?’ he asked incautiously.
The other three gasped at this heresy.
‘Of course not,’ Keith said. ‘The shooting man has more incentive for positive action than anybody else. He needs a rich wildlife scene.’
‘He attends to the habitat,’ Winter said, ‘and feeds the woods when the feeding’s scarce.’
‘And keeps the predators in check,’ said the general.
‘And poachers,’ Keith said. ‘Try to understand. The ecology of this country descends from a thousand years of the interaction between farming and hunting. Some species may have been hunted out, but very few. Far more have died out because their habitat changed. Others have been imported for their sporting potential, and survive because they suit the new conditions and because they are cossetted. That cossetting – the feeding, the preserving of cover – spins off into the rest of wildlife. A lot of responsible naturalists know that, but this new breed, they have a dreamy vision of going back to an idyllic balance of nature –’
‘Wi’ sabre-toothed tigers and hairy elephants,’ Winter put in contemptuously.
‘– but, in fact, if the economic pressure from shooting stopped, the habitat would suffer as the farmers started cropping the marginal corners of the land. Feeding would stop. So would the harvesting of surplus wildlife. A hell of a lot would starve to death in a bad winter. But they don’t want to know about that.’
‘The pheasant would virtually die out in a few years,’ the general said.
‘The partridge might last a bittie longer,’ Winter said. ‘But the crows’d begin to dominate the landscape, an’ the songbird’d tak’ a beating. D’ye ken, I’ve seen a magpie tak’ eight fledglings in a day, from other birds’ nests, to feed its own. He took nothing the next day, because I shot the bugger. But who’d dae that if the land wasna’ keepered?’ He glared at Mr Enterkin.
‘I only asked,’ the solicitor said plaintively. ‘There’s no need to read me a lecture.’
‘There’s every need,’ Keith said. ‘Pigeon and rabbit would have to be poisoned, or subjected to germ-warfare. Do you think they’d like that?’
‘All right,’ Mr Enterkin said. ‘You’ve put your viewpoint across. I’ll decide in my own good time whether I accept it, without you raving at me like a bunch of fanatics.’ He got out his notes and hid his face in them. ‘Mr Grass’s will provides for the future upkeep of the estate, which will be used as a training centre in ecology. It will be run by a trust on which all wildlife interests will be represented, the primary aim of the trust being projects of wildlife conservation, including research, anywhere in the country. Generous funds can be available, and special provision has been made for the services of scientific bodies.’
Mr Enterkin paused, and the others exchanged a dull glance. ‘That’s all gey fine,’ Winter said gloomily. ‘Grand for some. But it’ll be the end of this estate as I’ve known it.’
‘Perhaps,’ Mr Enterkin said. ‘I wouldn’t know. The funds are to be made available in proportion to the revenue obtained for the shooting.’
There was another brief silence. Again it was Winter, whose thought-processes were surprisingly swift, who spoke first. ‘Is anything said about the number of birds to be released?’
‘Never to be more than five hundred in any one year.’
Keith gave a little whistle of apprecia
tion. ‘Clever!’ he said.
Pleasure and relief were detectable on Winter’s solid features, but it was not in him to express them. ‘I’ll be needing more money,’ he said.
Enterkin looked at him coldly. ‘An increase in salary is specified, plus lecturer’s fees. Your two sons can remain as your assistants if you so wish.’
Winter shook his head impatiently. ‘I mean danger money,’ he said. ‘Unless we’re sonsie enough to find a real good syndicate, it’ll mean letting the shooting by the day. An undisciplined rabble o’ Continentals and Yanks wi’ repeating magnums. Och, I seen it a’ before. By the time the birds are o’er their heids, they’ve wandered a’roads. An’ it’s suits of armour we’ll need for the beaters.’
‘You’re right,’ the general said. Winter’s eyebrows shot up. The general began to glare.
‘I think,’ Enterkin said hastily, ‘that we’ve covered enough ground for the moment. The details can await another occasion. We’d better be getting back to the inn.’ He and Keith excused themselves and set off, leaving behind the mutter and grumble of guerilla warfare.
‘We’re not far from the house,’ Keith said. ‘Couldn’t we just go round that way and take a preliminary look at the guns?’
‘My feet tell me that I’ve walked enough for today.’
‘It’s doing you good.’
‘When I want to be done good,’ Mr Enterkin said, ‘I’ll ask. Not very loudly, but ask I will.’ He loosened his collar and mopped his face. ‘The staff aren’t expecting us until tomorrow, so let’s not throw them into a tizzy.’
‘I’d have liked to make a start on the guns.’
‘You’ve made a start on the estate, so be thankful. Do you really think,’ Enterkin asked anxiously, ‘that this trust’s a good idea?’
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