A Double Death on the Black Isle

by A. D. Scott

  Mrs. Munro was so pale Joanne feared she would faint.

  “Can I get you a drink or something?” Joanne asked her.

  “That’s kind o’ you dear, I’m fine,” Mrs. Munro said. “Tired, that’s all.” But she looked as though she might faint.

  “I made a wish,” Patricia chattered on. It came true, she thought, but she didn’t tell Joanne how quickly her wish had been granted. “Then Sandy and I continued on through town. We were driving to an estate above Fort Augustus. Friends had lent us a cottage for a few days, though goodness knows what Sandy would have made of all that moorland.”

  “Well that’s that mystery solved,” Joanne said. “Mrs. Munro, are you sure you’re all right?”

  “I need to get home.” Mrs. Munro was now trembling and a dangerous shade of pale. “I need to get home,” she repeated, and now the trembles became shakes.

  “Oh Lord, what on earth is the matter?” Patricia moved over to sit beside Mrs. Munro. She put her arm around her and asked Joanne, “Will you fetch a first-aid volunteer?”

  “No,” Mrs. Munro said. “No. Take me home. Please, Patricia. Take me home.”

  “I’ll go and get your cousin, shall I?” Joanne asked. “I left Granny Ross by the coconut shy, I’m sure I can find her.”

  “I just want to go home.”

  The tear trickling down the older woman’s face scared Patricia.

  They stood. “Here, Mrs. M., lean on me.” Mrs. Munro had to reach up to link arms with Patricia. “Let’s get you back. A cup of tea will revive you.” They slowly walked towards the field of cars parked in rows as though waiting their turn for the judges and their rosettes. “Come on, it’s not far.”

  Patricia was smiling and murmuring and holding on to Mrs. Munro as though she was the mother and the older woman the child.

  “You can manage. It’s only a hundred yards. Another twenty minutes and we’ll be home and you can put your feet up. Come on. One step, two steps. Remember how you used to say that to me when I didn’t want to leave your kitchen to go back to the big house? Only a few more yards. Mr. M. will be ready for his tea. Mustn’t keep him waiting . . .”

  Joanne had been following behind, making up a slow procession of three, carrying Patricia’s handbag, her own handbag, a hamper, Mrs. Munro’s basket, and a picnic blanket. She put them in the boot of the car while Patricia settled Mrs. Munro into the front seat. She watched them drive off before it occurred to her that she and the girls were supposed to be going with Patricia to spend the night at Achnafern Grange.

  Mrs. Ross and Annie and Jean were waiting by the straw bales when Joanne returned.

  “Hello you two, you’re looking tired. Mum, you must be exhausted.”

  “It’s that hot,” Mrs. Ross replied. “Where’s Agnes? I thought we were meeting here.”

  “She was feeling faint. The heat. She . . .”

  A flash of lightning and a not-too-distant clap of thunder broke the heavy air. Mrs. Ord Mackenzie came hurrying up.

  “Where is Patricia? This thunder will spook the ponies. I need her to help me calm them and those foolish girls.”

  “Mrs. Munro was feeling unwell, so Patricia has taken her home,” Joanne explained.

  Mrs. Ord Mackenzie was not pleased. “How inconsiderate! Patricia promised to help me. Now I will have to deal with everything myself.” She glared at Joanne as though it was her fault. “They could have waited. There are plenty of first-aid people around.”

  “No, Mrs. Ord Mackenzie, they couldn’t wait. Patricia’s first concern was to Mrs. Munro.”

  Mrs. Ord Mackenzie didn’t bother to say good-bye; she strode off to take out her frustration on the juniors of the Pony Club.

  Joanne saw the look of satisfaction on her mother-in-law’s face—a “that’s telling her” look. She winked at Mrs. Ross, who smiled in return. I’m learning more than journalism from Don McLeod, Joanne thought, I can now wink with the best of them.

  Their big day out ended in shambles. It took Joanne a good while to reassure Mrs. Ross that Agnes Munro was not ill, only overcome by the heat and the day.

  And it took sixpence each, payable immediately, and the promise of a weekend in a caravan in Nairn for their summer holiday to placate Annie and Jean. Not that they were too upset at not spending the night at Achnafern Grange, the sight of Mrs. Ord Mackenzie having reminded them of the disadvantages.

  Joanne and her family stayed under the canopy, sitting on the dry bales, watching the spectacle. The gaps between lightning flashes grew shorter, the thunder grew nearer, the rain started, a few drops then a downpour. The sounds of lowing and bleating and the cry of a terrified pony could be heard through the drumming of rain on canvas.

  A particularly loud thunderclap boomed overhead. The sounds of distressed cattle and men shouting came from the enclosure where the prizewinning bulls were.

  Everywhere people were running towards cars and vans and buses, yet the fairground loudspeakers kept churning out songs and the hurdy-gurdy noise of the merry-go-round did not cease.

  Joanne turned to her mother-in-law. “What should we do?”

  “We’ll wait,” Mrs. Ross replied. “It might clear. Then maybe we can get a lift with Granddad Ross and his friends on the British Legion bus.” But she didn’t sound hopeful. It would take more than thunder and lightning to shift the old soldiers from the beer tent.

  Twenty minutes passed, the rain let up a little. Joanne and Mrs. Ross were despairing of a lift back to town when McAllister appeared behind them.

  “Afternoon, ladies.” He lifted his hat. “You look like camp followers after the battle of Borodin.”

  “McAllister, you really talk nonsense sometimes,” Joanne told him. Ignoring the look from her mother-in-law, she added, “If you have your car here, you can take us home before we get completely droochit.”

  “I’m hungry,” Annie grinned. “All I’ve eaten all day is candy-floss and ice cream.”

  “Me too. An’ I feel sick,” Wee Jean said. She looked shyly through her thick fringe of hair and, with pink-rimmed-candy-floss lips, she smiled and asked McAllister, “Are you my Mum’s fancy man?”

  Joanne stared at her mother-in-law, who had the grace to look away. Annie sniggered. McAllister didn’t bat an eyelid.

  “I work with your mother,” he told her, “and she is my friend.”

  “Can I be your friend too?” the child asked.

  “You can that,” he replied, but his smile was for Joanne. “Follow me, ladies, my car is over there. I will give you a lift home,” he said, bending towards Wee Jean, “but promise to tell me if you are going to be sick so we can stop.”

  “Promise,” the little girl said and took his hand to walk to the field of cars.

  On the bends on the stretch of the road along the firth, the little girl went a pale shade of green and Joanne worried that the child might break her promise. But they made it back home safely.

  Friends, Joanne thought as they neared the town, I like that.

  Friends, McAllister was thinking all along the drive back, I suppose I will have to settle for that.

  Mrs. Munro did not say a word on the way home from the Black Isle Show. Patricia helped her into the farmhouse kitchen, where Allie Munro was dozing in his chair, the wireless on, unheard.

  “Mother, are you all right?” he jumped up when they came in.

  “It’s the heat, Mr. M.,” Patricia explained, “thank goodness the rain is here.”

  Mrs. Munro wouldn’t sit down. Not till she had told her husband. She grabbed his sleeve.

  “Patricia wasn’t in the Land Rover, she was in her mother’s car.” Her voice was rasping as though her throat hurt. “It wisney her.”

  Mr. Munro was staring at his wife as though she was speaking in tongues, so she said it again.

  “Patricia wasn’t driving the Land Rover on May Day morn when our Fraser . . .”

  “I’ll make the tea.” Patricia fussed around with kettle and water and teapot. “Do you ne
ed an aspirin, Mrs. M.?” she asked as she reached for the teacups.

  “I canny take it in.” Mr. Munro stood staring at his wife, who had sunk down into her armchair, her eyes so large and shining she looked consumptive.

  “Patricia says Ronnie wi’ the milk lorry saw them,” Mrs. Munro said. “I knew it couldney be her.” This time Mrs. Munro really did cry—big sobbing shuddering tears.

  Patricia sensed the electricity between Mr. and Mrs. Munro and was sacred and nearly to tears herself. She took Mrs. Munro’s hand and asked, “What’s wrong? I don’t understand.”

  To Patricia, Allie Munro always seemed a slow man. Slow to move and slow to anger. But she knew that was a mistaken impression. “Unhurried” was a better word to describe him.

  “Pour that tea, lass,” he told Patricia. “We have some talking to do.”

  They gathered round the kitchen table to talk. They took their time. Mrs. Munro cried. Patricia cried. Allie Munro sat with his big hands clasped on the table listening, talking when he needed to, watching his women slowly unwind as comprehension dawned. Then it was his turn to make tea, a tea so strong that Mrs. Munro hardly noticed the whisky in it.

  “I heard the Land Rover, early,” Allie started. “I was along the road a wee bit, opposite the woods, above the Devil’s Den. I heard shouting. And swearing. I ran. The Land Rover had taken off down the road by the time I reached Fraser. He was in the ditch. He died.” He did not tell them it had taken some minutes for him to die. “I found your father’s shooting stick. It had blood on it. I took it and I hid it. Then I went for the doctor, but I knew it was too late.”

  “My mother.” Patricia was too shocked to speak in more than a whisper.

  “We don’t know that. Maybe . . .” Mrs. Munro’s voice faded when she found Allie and Patricia looking at her.

  “You thought it was me driving the Land Rover,” Patricia spoke rapidly. “You thought I’d . . .” She stopped, stared, unable to take in the revelation. There was absolute silence between the three of them until she put her hands to her face to hide her despair.

  “Lass, I’m right sorry.” Allie Munro was more than sorry. He was ashamed. But he did not have the words to say this, not yet.

  “That is why you confessed? Because you thought I had . . .”

  He nodded. “Not that I blamed you . . . never. Fraser was . . .” He did not have the words to continue but they all knew what Fraser was.

  “We took Mummy’s car without asking,” Patricia started her side of the story. She needed to speak, to try to make sense of the tragedy. “Goodness knows how Sandy talked me into it, but at that point I was more afraid of his temper than I was of my mother. He didn’t know it, but I left her a note saying we would be away for a few days and I had borrowed the car.”

  Mrs. Munro was listening and rocking lightly, one hand clasped around the other as though in prayer.

  “We went to the Clootie Well like I told you.” Patricia was calm when describing the predawn escape, trying not to remember how helpless she felt with Sandy harassing her on one side and the thought of her mother’s fury on the other. “We drove along the firth—it was too early for the ferry, then through town, and took the road to Dores. I was feeling horrible. We had to stop twice for me to be sick and stop again in Dores. When we reached the bridge over the burn that becomes the Falls of Foyers, I told Sandy I couldn’t continue another minute. He was furious. He went to look at the falls . . .”

  “You don’t have to explain dear,” Mrs. Munro said. “We know.”

  “Yes,” Patricia said, “but what you don’t know is, when Sandy didn’t return, I called Mummy from a phone box in Foyers.”

  Mr. Munro sat helpless, hoping Patricia wasn’t going to cry again—he never knew what to do with a crying woman.

  Mrs. Munro interrupted, “We’re all exhausted. Tell us in the morning.”

  “No, Mrs. M., I want to tell you now.” She took a deep breath, let it out loudly and long, then continued.

  “Mummy must have driven like a fury. She reached me in an hour and a bit—lucky with the ferry I suppose. I had called her because . . . I couldn’t think what else to do. I know how strong she is. How good she is with officials and . . . I thought she would help organize a search, the police, the rescue people . . .”

  Patricia shuddered. Mrs. Munro waited. Allie Munro looked away, not able to bear what was to come—for he knew, or guessed, or at least had an idea what Mrs. Ord Mackenzie didn’t do.

  “She was so angry, I have never seen her so angry. She screamed at me for taking her car. I told her about Sandy, how he had disappeared, how I couldn’t find him. I told her I went down the path a little, I said he wasn’t there. I said, ‘I can’t find him anywhere. It’s been over an hour and a half,’ I said, ‘and he’s not back.’ I said, ‘maybe he’s had an accident.’ I wanted to get the police, I asked her to do something. I asked her to look for him. I was upset, I was crying, I couldn’t even be sick properly, I was retching and my mouth tasted horrible, I had these terrible hiccups, I needed to change my dress because I had been sick down the front, and all she said was, when I told her I couldn’t find Sandy, all she said was, ‘Good riddance.’”

  And Patricia continued, the words spewing out of her like the bitter bile of morning sickness—no stopping them even if she tried.

  “Mummy asked me for the car keys. I couldn’t find them. I remembered they were in the car, in the ignition. She threw the Land Rover keys at me. She drove off, leaving me. I was alone. I . . .”

  Patricia let loose decades of tears. Not tears for her late husband, not tears for Fraser, nor the Munros—they were tears of frustration and anger at herself. At almost thirty years of age, Patricia had hoped that for once, seeing her daughter’s anguish, her mother would help her only child face an appalling situation.

  “I should have known my mother would never help me.” She said this more to herself than to Agnes and Allie Munro.

  But Allie Munro heard her. Heard her despair. He took the words and he stored them for later consideration. He would let the words simmer and act on them or not, but he would never forget the pain in that simple phrase. . . . “I should have known. . . .”

  “Sleep,” Allie Munro declared. “We all need sleep.” He stood. “Patricia, you stay here tonight. Mother, you see to Patricia.” He had spoken and the women obeyed. “In the morning we’ll know what to do.”

  When alone in the kitchen he reached for the bottle, poured a dram potent enough to calm his deep white anger.

  “That woman . . .” he toasted, “damn her to Hell.”

  Patricia was calmed by being told what to do, decisions being beyond her for now. Mrs. Munro clucked around, checking the bed was aired, the linen fresh. She insisted Patricia have a hot-water bottle, “Just to cuddle,” she said, and she tucked Patricia in, just as she had tucked her in when she was a child.

  “Nightie-night,” Mrs. M. said as she leaned over and smoothed Patricia’s hair.

  “Nightie-night.”

  Then they both went, “Nightie-night, sleep tight, don’t let the bugs bite, mind you cover up your nose, and don’t leg the midgies get at your toes.”

  And they both went to bed and to sleep, both with a sense of hope, a sense that, although there were more storms to come, the air was clearing as surely as the air had cleared after the thunderstorm.

  On waking, Joanne had that sense of Sunday that had been with her her entire life. How, she could never explain, but the second she awoke her inner radar always sensed Sunday mornings as different. “Hallowed” her father would have said. It wasn’t the absence of the milk cart, the coal man, or any other of the horse-drawn drays that clopped the streets in the early hours; she had no need of church bells—it was as though the hand of God rearranged the molecules in the air so no one could ignore the imperative of church or kirk or chapel or meetinghouse.

  This particular Sunday was also one of the annual hangover Sundays—the day after the Black Isle Sh
ow.

  Joanne’s first thought was, What is the weather up to? Her second was McAllister. A friend. Good friends? Maybe. A special friend? In time perhaps. She smiled to herself, the smile of someone with a secret, and went to put the kettle on for tea. It was only then she remembered Mrs. Munro and Patricia Ord Mackenzie.

  What had happened yesterday at the show?

  We were all tired, she decided. Nothing more. I’ll phone from the Ross house before we go to church.

  Tea brewed, she poured herself a mug and went back to bed for those precious five minutes or so that she had to herself before one or both of her girls woke and climbed in beside her and were loving, lovely children for ten, perhaps fifteen minutes before the bickering started. The ritual of another Scottish Sabbath in the household of Joanne Ross had begun, and it surprised her to know she was happy.

  “Hello Mum, hello Dad, ready for church?”

  “You’re bright and early,” Granddad Ross replied.

  “May I use your phone to call Patricia? I want to be sure she and Mrs. Munro got home safely.”

  “No need,” her mother-in-law said, “I phoned Agnes half an hour ago and they’re fine.”

  “Good.” Joanne looked at her mother-in-law, took in the set expression that meant “no more will be said for now” and knew there was no point in asking, she might as well save her breath to cool her porridge.

  The Ross family, minus Bill Ross, walked in procession along St. Valerie Avenue towards the church. The bell, a new-fangled electric chime that Granddad Ross hated, had not yet begun to toll—they were early and they walked slowly. The girls ran ahead, skipped back, stopped to argue about nothing, ran on again, covering twice the distance of the mile or so to their destination.

  They were halfway there, Granddad was lagging behind, talking to a neighbor, when Joanne sensed the change in her mother-in-law. It may have been her steps, more purposeful than of late, it may have been the way she held her head, but she was different.

  Joanne was only making passing conversation, but as soon as she spoke, she knew. “I’m glad Mrs. Munro is feeling better. She looked terrible yesterday.”