Beneath the Abbey Wall

by A. D. Scott

  “I caught up with Jenny McPhee on Sunday.” McAllister went straight to the heart of the matter, sensing there was no need to prevaricate with the countess. “She told me about the boys taken from her by the welfare authorities and that Joyce Mackenzie and her father had helped her keep her other boys.”

  “Jenny would not have told you that without a good reason,” Rosemary said. “She is a very private woman.”

  McAllister waited for her to elaborate. She said nothing. How the matter of stolen Traveler children was connected with the murder intrigued him, but Rosemary was as opaque as Jenny when it came to explanations.

  “I am doing all I can to free Don McLeod,” McAllister said, “and to find who killed Mrs. Smart. To do so, I have to ask questions that might not seem relevant.”

  “I prefer to call her Joyce Mackenzie,” Beech interrupted. “Joyce was proud of her name, proud of who her people were. And the sergeant major was never much of a husband.”

  “That is not our business, Mortimer.”

  Beech smiled, used to being chided by his elder sister. He looked at her—how she sat, her swanlike neck, her straight posture, her hands clasped on her lap, the impossibly correct portrait of a gentlewoman—knowing this appearance disguised a woman of steel. He thought of his sister as a warrior woman.

  “Old Colonel Ian Mackenzie, Joyce’s father, indeed most of the people of the Northwest, have a good relationship with the Traveling people.” Beech continued the story, knowing his sister’s reticence but also keenly aware that they must provide any information that might help Don McLeod. “Remote communities rely on them for news of neighbors, they buy their goods, use their labor; tinkers are good seasonal laborers and are excellent tinsmiths and can repair most things. Also, Jenny McPhee’s first husband, a Stewart from Sutherland, had been in Mackenzie’s regiment in World War One and was killed in France.”

  Rosemary took up the story. “Colonel Mackenzie came back to the estate in Assynt for a visit before being posted to India. Joyce was there and she, with her father’s agreement, made crofthouses emptied by the Clearances available as winter quarters for Traveling families. They weren’t much, apparently, four walls and a heather-thatched roof, but shelter nonetheless.”

  She was looking out into the night-dark sky but all she could see was their reflections in the window. “I knew Joyce Mackenzie when we were girls; our families were friends. I did not meet her again until I returned to Scotland in the mid-thirties and she was living alone in the house next door. We resumed our friendship. Joyce told me of local-authority welfare officers removing children from tinker families and putting them in institutions. Some were adopted, others sent to the colonies, others . . . ” Shaking her head, she gave a slight shudder as though a sudden draft had crossed over her shoulders.

  “‘For their own good.’” Beech quoted the expression governments, colonialists, conquerors used to justify their actions. “As though their lives locked up in those appalling places were an improvement on life on the road.”

  “With the Mackenzie estate giving them winter quarters, the children went to school. Keith McPhee, Jenny’s eldest, did so well, he was the first Traveler known to go on to university. Most of the children receive a basic education as they are only in school for the winter, but it all helps.” Rosemary Beauchamp Carlyle had spent most of her life helping others gain an education. It mattered to her.

  “I have heard that tinkers are accused of stealing children,” McAllister commented.

  “Quite the opposite.” Rosemary was firm in her reply. “Many an unwanted Highland or Island child has been taken in by them.”

  “Were you yourself involved in helping the Traveling families?” McAllister asked the siblings.

  “No,” Rosemary replied. “Over the years, Joyce told me about growing up as an only child on a remote estate in Sutherland. Her mother died when she was four, so no wonder she welcomed the company of the Traveler children.”

  “I know of some of the pipers,” Beech said. “There are one or two first-class musicians amongst them and they keep alive the old tunes—and compose new ones. There is nothing I love better than taking to the road in my old jalopy and sitting by a campfire hearing the bagpipes played by a master like Sandy Stewart.”

  Since McAllister knew the “jalopy” in question was a Bentley, he thought it must be an incongruous sight to see it parked at a tinker camp. He moved on to his next query.

  “I was wondering if maybe his man, the Nepali Gurkha, could Sergeant Major Smart have persuaded him . . . paid him to kill . . . ”

  “Never.” Rosemary was firm. “Never. The Gurkha regimental motto is ‘Better to die than be a coward,’ and what is more cowardly than stabbing a defenseless woman. No, Bahadur is a good person. Colonel Mackenzie asked him to look after the sergeant major, but really it was to protect Joyce. The man has given up his homeland to help her. And . . . and this is only speculation on my part, I wouldn’t be surprised if he returns to Nepal as soon as the will is executed.”

  “The police might want him here for the trial,” McAllister pointed out. “Do you think I could to talk to him? I’m floundering here, desperate to find anything that might help Don.”

  Beech and his sister looked at each other. “I will ask,” she said. “Now if you will excuse me . . . ”

  McAllister and Beech stood.

  “Thank you for dinner,” McAllister said.

  “I’m sorry we can’t help you more,” she replied and walked from the room as though her feet were treading air.

  He turned to Beech to thank him and said, “I will keep searching. There has to be a reason for someone to commit murder.”

  The evening’s conversation had had an edge to it. McAllister had a sure and certain feeling that the Beauchamp Carlyle siblings knew much more but had not decided what, if anything, they would divulge.

  “Leave it with me,” Beech said as they shook hands. “I’ll talk with my sister. Sometimes promises have to be broken.”

  McAllister was glad of the walk home. Leaving behind the sheen of the river and the quiet sound of fast-running water, a sound just a note above silence, he tried to organize his thoughts. All he could think of were the questions not asked; not asked not because he was too polite; unasked because the questions were insensitive in such a setting as the Beauchamp Carlyle drawing room.

  So he asked himself.

  Did the brother and sister know about Joyce Mackenzie’s relationship with Don? Did they know of the Sunday-evening trysts? No knowing the answer to that. Did they know why she was buried in such haste? I should have asked. He resolved to ask Beech when they were alone.

  As he reached his garden gate, one other thought came to him. Did Rosemary or her brother know that Don McLeod and Joyce Mackenzie knew each other before she set off for India?

  After he switched off his bedside light, the final thought that would accompany him in his dreams came.

  Is Bahadur a first or surname in the Gurkha tradition? Or is it a title? And what does Mr. Bahadur know? In that moment between awake and asleep, McAllister convinced himself that the man knew a lot.

  CHAPTER 8

  Late on Friday morning Rob finally managed to talk to McAllister. He caught the editor coming up the stairs, a sheaf of what looked like accounts in his hand, and the look of a man about to read his own death warrant. “Can it wait?” he asked Rob.

  Rob saw the state of McAllister’s hair—it needed washing and cutting, he saw his shirt was unironed, his shoes shabby, and replied, “No, it can’t wait.”

  McAllister sighed. “Right then, my office.”

  “Why don’t I come round to your place later? I’ll bring some pies, and we can have your famous soup.”

  “I haven’t had time to make any.”

  “In that case, I’ll bring the supper, you supply the tea.” Before McAllister could object, Rob left and drove straight home to see what the housekeeper had left in their larder.

  Two hours later
, his mother’s picnic basket balanced on the petrol tank of the motorbike, Rob drove across town to McAllister’s house. He rang the bell, then let himself in, shouting, “Supper’s up.”

  “In the kitchen.”

  Rob could smell the pine logs burning in the kitchen range as he walked down the unlit hall. McAllister pushed away the chaos of reports and accounts covering the kitchen table. He had stacked them into piles: dealt with, read, and undecipherable—by far the biggest pile. He gestured to them, saying, “My admiration for Mrs. Smart grows by the day.”

  Rob said nothing, but the thought hurt. He put the basket down, found the gadget to light the gas oven, put the steak and kidney pie in to reheat, and started to lay the table with the ease of a waiter in a high-class hotel.

  McAllister watched, and only when Rob produced a bottle of wine did he find the energy to get to his feet and fetch glasses from the sideboard. It took a good half hour for them to eat, drink, clear the table, and get down to the point of Rob’s visit.

  “I was talking with my father . . . ” Rob started.

  McAllister lit a cigarette.

  “He didn’t say, but I get the feeling he hasn’t found much to help with Don’s defense.”

  “That makes two of us,” McAllister said.

  “So what I was thinking was this . . . ” When he became intrigued by a story, Rob was never put off by anyone or anything—not McAllister, his father, nor his obsession with who was in the 1957 Top 20 music charts, nor his motorbike, not even the disintegration of his long-distance relationship with a girlfriend in Glasgow—got in the way of his pursuit of a scoop.

  “. . . I’ll start by talking to the people who live in his court and the neighbors along that part of Church Street.” Rob spoke as though McAllister was the subordinate, not him.

  “The police have already . . . ”

  Rob ignored this. “Then I’ll talk to the man who found the . . . Mrs. Smart.”

  “He works in the railways.”

  “Aye, I know. And, as I’m the only one who can get sense out of him, I’ll talk to Hector.”

  “Hector?”

  “He knew that Mrs. Smart and Don were . . . seeing each other.” It was the only phrase Rob could think of; “having an affair,” “courting,” “lovers” seemed inappropriate terms for people of their age.

  “Hector did?”

  “Aye. What’s more, his granny knows more about Don McLeod than anyone—though getting information out of her might be hard.”

  “You can always remind her that Don is about to be locked up with perverts and murderers for the rest of his natural life.”

  Rob was shocked by the callousness of McAllister’s statement. He reached for the wine bottle but found it was empty.

  “McAllister, despair is not going to help. We have to do what you taught me, what we’ve done in the past—with spectacular results, I might add—we will investigate. We can ask questions without scaring people.” Or at least I can, he thought. “We can take shortcuts if we have to.” None immediately come to mind, but bending the law might be necessary to clear Don’s name. “So, what have you discovered so far?”

  It took a moment for McAllister to consider where to start. Then habit kicked in. He reached for a blank sheet of paper, picked up the pencil he had been marking the accounts with, and wrote the heading, INTERVIEW. Underneath he wrote: neighbors, man who found body, Hector, Granny Bain.

  There he stopped. “The will puzzled me . . . ” he started.

  “The will?” Rob had been waiting for this; he knew he would find out the contents sooner or later.

  McAllister had forgotten or not realized that Rob knew only of Mrs. Smart’s bequest to the Highland Gazette.

  “Perhaps it is better if you don’t let your father know I told you, but . . . ” McAllister explained to Rob the bequest to Jenny, the bequest to Don, the leaving of the mansion in town to Sergeant Major Smart. He told Rob of Jenny’s unhappiness at being left the inheritance, of the sergeant major’s vow to fight the will, the Mackenzie family’s sheltering the Traveling people, and Jenny’s advice to start at the beginning. But he did not mention the stolen boys; that was Jenny McPhee’s business.

  Rob was fascinated by the whole saga, and when McAllister ended he commented, “Good luck to the sergeant major taking on my father in a legal stouch.” He stretched out his legs, sighed, and said, “We’ll need a load of luck, too. Mrs. Smart’s will is certainly . . . provocative.” It was the only word he could think of to describe such a strange list of bequests. “Though I can see Jenny McPhee in Mrs. Smart’s pearl necklace, I can’t see Don McLeod as the laird of an estate in Assynt.” McAllister could almost see Rob’s brain ticking in double time. “Start at the beginning, Jenny said. What beginning?”

  “I’m not sure. Mrs. Smart was a Mackenzie . . . ”

  “A well-known and well-liked family in Sutherland,” Rob supplied.

  McAllister had forgotten that for all his youth and obsession with the new era, Rob McLean was essentially a product of traditional Highland gentry, related to half the other gentry of the north.

  “Joyce Mackenzie met Don in a convalescent home for those wounded in the Great War,” McAllister started.

  “Really?”

  “In the early twenties, Don started work at the Gazette, and Joyce Mackenzie, as she was, went to India, where she married Archibald Smart.” McAllister was writing down a timeline as he spoke. “In the early thirties she returned to the Highlands—alone. Her father dies, in India, shortly after her return, so Beech told me, and Mrs. Smart, as she then was, inherited the estate and the town house.”

  “And probably a pretty penny in the bank,” Rob added.

  “Mrs. Smart started working at the Gazette in 1937 . . . ”

  “Most unusual for someone of her social status—especially as there was no financial need,” Rob commented.

  “Archibald Smart was invalided out of the army in . . . Actually, I’ll have to check that,” McAllister said. “Rosemary Beauchamp Carlyle, Countess Sokolov, or Mrs. Sokolov, as she prefers to be called, was a neighbor and friend of Mrs. Smart. She had also returned from overseas, Shanghai, in 1936, and it seems she is the only person to have a close relationship with Mrs. Smart.”

  “Apart from Don.”

  “Aye. Apart from Don.”

  “Start at the beginning . . . ” Rob considered the conundrum. “You know, for us Highlanders the beginning is always, ‘Who are your people?’” Rob said this in perfect imitation of a Gaelic speaker speaking English. “So maybe Jenny meant it literally. Start with the births, deaths, marriages, who inherited what—isn’t that the classic stuff of disputed wills and murders?”

  McAllister had his elbow on the table and was rubbing his thick back hair with his hand, staring and not seeing.

  Rob saw the weariness. “We’ll talk again when we find out more.” He stood, took his jacket off the back of the chair, zipped it up, saying, “McAllister, Neil is doing a great job, and Joanne; even Hector is helping, although I’m having to correct his English. We’re using more pictures, and Beech is a handy proofreader—so leave the work to us. You concentrate on getting Don out of prison.” And spending the rest of his natural life locked up was what he didn’t need to say. “I’ll see myself out.”

  Hearing the roar of the bike fade into the night, McAllister reached once more towards a stack of accounts awaiting his scrutiny, then pushed it back to join the chaos. “Not tonight,” he muttered, and without washing up, he walked upstairs to bed and nightmares.

  * * *

  It took only one phone call but a long wait for Rob to talk to the man who had discovered Mrs. Smart’s body. Someone had to go down to the railway marshaling yards to pass on the message, outside calls being forbidden to workers, but the man returned the call.

  “I can meet you tomorrow, I work a half day on Saturday. One o’clock? The café at the bus station?” Mr. Kenneth Grant asked.

  “Aye, that’ll be grand
.” Rob echoed the man’s accent, lapsing into the Highland way of expressing himself. This was a part of Scotland where the dialect was light, it was more a way of speaking English as though directly translated from the Gaelic; the circuitous roundabout way of the sentences had a good-mannered graciousness; “Would you be having a cup of tea?”

  “No, I didn’t see anyone,” Mr. Grant told Rob when they met.

  “No, I never heard anything,” was his answer to the next question.

  “No, I’d never seen her there before that night.”

  “No, I wouldn’t know her from Adam. Or Eve.”

  “No. And how would I know what she was doing there?”

  Rob was stumped for another question, but there was something—a hesitation, a glance into the distance, the way the man shifted in his seat—that had made Rob certain there was something.

  “Sorry to keep pestering you”—Rob gave one of his “I’m just a young lad doing his job” looks—“but Mrs. Smart was one of us, and everyone at the Gazette is pretty shaken up.”

  “I can see that.” Mr. Grant lit a cigarette but said no more.

  When Rob spoke, it was not to Mr. Grant directly, more in the way of an observation. “You know, sometimes when I think things over, I don’t get it. But when I’m driving my motorbike or dropping off to sleep, I remember some little thing, something that I’m not even sure I really saw . . . ”

  “Aye. I ken what you mean.” They did not look at each other, just sipped their cold tea. “Sometimes, in the railway yards, ’specially when you’re on the night shift, the light plays tricks, bouncing off wet rails, or a red lantern winking in the wind between carriages, stuff like that . . . ”

  “I can imagine.”

  “You know thon steps?”

  “Aye.” There was no need for Rob to ask “which steps?”