Murder at the Castle

by M. B. Shaw

  Kathy Miller was still a mystery to Iris, despite their many sittings together and burgeoning friendship, if you could call it that.

  Why was Kathy marrying Jock? Iris had been asking herself that question since the day she arrived, and she still didn’t have a satisfactory answer.

  It wasn’t just for the money, she felt sure of that, no matter what Rory’s views might be on the subject. Kathy had described their relationship in the past as something that made her feel safe. But clearly the events of the last couple of months had eroded those feelings of safety. So what was left? Love? And if so, was that love really strong enough to make it worth living here in Pitfeldy in such a toxic atmosphere and among so many people who hated or, at least, misunderstood her? Not to mention one who, apparently, wanted her dead?

  Iris was only an observer, but there were times when being in the castle made her feel like a fly caught in a web. It had been like that tonight, until Jamie had arrived and broken all the threads with his big, warm hands and his confidence and his dancing.

  He likes my socks…

  The music stopped and Iris allowed Jamie to lead her to an empty sofa. Dizzy and panting, she sank down into it gratefully.

  ‘You’re a pretty good dancer.’ He smiled at her. ‘How d’you feel?’

  ‘Good,’ said Iris. ‘I mean, my ruby slippers are killing me, but once you get going, it’s actually not as hard as it looks.’

  ‘See? What did I tell you?’

  Iris’s gaze wandered vaguely over a sea of tartan and masks and glowing skeletons. Without realising it, she’d started to lean into Jamie like a slightly drunken tree in the wind.

  ‘I guess I’m not in Kansas anymore,’ she slurred happily, smoothing out her short gingham skirt.

  ‘No indeed,’ Jamie whispered in her ear. ‘You’re in Banffshire. Which is a lot better.’

  Iris’s throat went dry. ‘Is that right?’

  ‘It is.’ Jamie’s handsome face moved dangerously close to hers. At some point his hand had found its way to her bare thigh, and when Iris looked down, her hand seemed to be lying on top of his, their fingers lazily interlaced.

  ‘Why didn’t you call me?’ she asked him, deciding to take the bull by the horns. After…’

  Leaning forward he kissed her, cutting her off mid-sentence, pressing his lips against hers with the same confident assurance he brought to everything he did. There was nothing tentative about it. But nothing rushed, either. Instead he kissed her as if it were something they did every day. Familiar. Easy.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, looking anything but as, finally, he pulled away. ‘I’ve just been wanting to do that for a really long time.’

  ‘Don’t be sorry,’ Iris croaked, smiling up at him idiotically.

  ‘Can I get you another drink?’

  ‘Yes. Please.’

  A drink was the last thing Iris needed right now. But she seemed to be swept up in a fug of happiness that made the thought of saying ‘no’ impossible. I must look like a total moon calf, she thought despairingly, gazing lustfully at Jamie as he got up and weaved his way to the bar. Or a moon sheep. Moon mutton, dressed as moon lamb. At least he was drunk too.

  A loud crash interrupted her alcohol-fuelled musings.

  The crowd parted like the Red Sea, and Iris had a clear view of Angus Brae, blind drunk and holding the stem of a broken wine glass, waving the jagged edges in front of him like a dagger.

  ‘Don’t you fucking touch me,’ he slurred. ‘I mean it!’

  On the floor at his feet, his Batman mask slashed open, lay John Donnelly, Pitfeldy School’s headmaster. He was bleeding from his cheek and looked winded, scrambling backwards away from his attacker like a frightened crab, but apparently unable to stand up.

  ‘Angus.’ The music stopped as Jock stepped forward, dark and menacing in his Dracula get-up. ‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at?’

  Reaching down, he helped the shaken Donnelly to his feet.

  ‘Are you all right, John?’

  The headmaster gave an unconvincing nod. ‘I’m fine. It was nothing. Just a… misunderstanding.’

  ‘Misunderstanding?’ Angus slurred murderously, still clutching the jagged glass.

  ‘Put that down,’ Jock commanded.

  ‘Angus, please.’ Hannah Drummond stepped forward and put a hand on his shoulder, but he barely seemed to register it, his eyes still fixed on Donnelly.

  ‘Put the glass down now!’ Jock roared.

  Momentarily shocked, Angus released the glass, which shattered loudly into a million pieces on the stone floor.

  ‘Take him home.’ Jock spoke to Hannah more kindly than he had to Angus, but there was an urgency behind his words that left no doubt this was an order, not a suggestion.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured, leading a bewildered-looking Angus away. ‘He’s drunk.’

  Kathy, who’d been in the library and had missed most of the drama, reappeared at Jock’s side just as conversation resumed and the band started playing again.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked, seeing the broken glass and the local headmaster with a bloodstained handkerchief pressed to his cheek. ‘Does he need a doctor?’

  ‘No, no. I’m fine.’ Donnelly approached his hostess, doing his best to put her at ease. ‘I’ll clean this up at home. It’s only a scratch.’

  ‘Are you sure? It looks quite deep to me.’

  ‘Honestly. I’ll be fine.’

  ‘I’ll see you out,’ said Jock.

  But the headmaster held up his hand insistently. ‘There’s no need, baron. Go and dance with your lovely wife-to-be. I’m perfectly all right, I assure you.’

  ‘What happened?’ Kathy asked Jock after he’d gone, scurrying away before anyone could stop him. Taking Donnelly’s advice, Jock led her onto the dance floor.

  ‘Bloody Angus,’ he muttered. ‘Glassed the poor man in the face.’

  Kathy looked suitably horrified. ‘Angus? Surely not. Why?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ said Jock.

  ‘But Angus is always so calm.’

  ‘Not always,’ Jock observed grimly. ‘I mean, I love the boy, but he’s got a temper on him, like his father. Especially when he’s been drinking.’

  Bringing his hand down to the small of Kathy’s back, he pulled her closer.

  ‘Let’s not talk about it anymore,’ he whispered soothingly in her ear. ‘I won’t have some silly bar brawl ruin your wonderful party.’

  ‘It won’t,’ said Kathy. ‘Don’t worry.’

  If she could put the thought of being ‘sliced open like a pumpkin’ out of her mind, she could certainly rise above a flash of the gillie’s temper.

  * * *

  Back on the sofa, Iris watched the whole scene play out, fascinated.

  What was going on with John Donnelly? First, he’d almost come to blows with Angus at the fair. Then there’d been the fracas at Maria’s, that was definitely something personal, no matter what Jamie said. And now this.

  True, Angus was three sheets to the wind, but Iris felt sure that whisky alone wouldn’t be enough to turn the kind and mild-mannered gillie into a glass-wielding maniac. No, there was bad blood between Brae and Donnelly all right. More than that, when Jock stepped in to break it up, Iris had got the distinct impression that he knew what the fight was about. And that he wanted Angus out of there before anything stupid was said.

  She was itching to talk to Jamie about it, but he seemed to have vanished during the commotion, heading off to the bar but failing to return with her drink. Perhaps that was just as well, Iris realised, as she scanned the room looking for him and noticed that everything seemed to be swirling around and people’s faces were oscillating in and out of focus, like visions in a heat haze.

  Suddenly desperate for the loo, she got up and made her way towards the downstairs bathroom. Mercifully, there was no queue, and she was soon alone in a quiet dark stall, a good place for thinking.

  The first thing she thought, slightly to
her own surprise, was that she wished Stuart Haley had been here tonight. He’d have stayed sober, and would have been able to see things clearly, much more clearly than Iris could. Because even in her semi-sozzled state, she couldn’t shake the feeling that important things had happened at the castle during tonight’s Halloween party.

  Despite the fancy dress, certain people’s masks were slipping. It was all happening right in front of her and yet, maddeningly, Iris couldn’t yet see it.

  First there was Rory MacKinnon, and the bizarre overture he’d made towards Iris earlier. He’d hinted that he knew things, things that would make Kathy leave his father if she ‘had any sense’. But then he’d suddenly clammed up when he’d spotted Mrs Gregory arguing with his sister Emma.

  Was that argument significant? Iris wondered now.

  She hadn’t seen Emma since. But Mrs Gregory had followed Kathy upstairs later, interrupting her and Iris just as they were dissecting the latest anonymous note.

  That’s twice tonight Eileen Gregory’s shut somebody up when they were trying to confide in me, thought Iris. It was probably a coincidence. After all, the housekeeper couldn’t have known that Kathy would be showing Iris a piece of hate mail when she walked in. Could she?

  Iris still had the note stuffed in the pocket of her gingham dress. Reaching her hand down she touched it now, running her fingers over the envelope’s crisp edges. She would show it to Haley first thing tomorrow. Rightly or wrongly, the language of this last note troubled Iris more deeply than the others. ‘Slice’ was not a comforting word. There was an element of sadistic pleasure to it that sounded alarm bells, at least in Iris’s swirling, uncertain mind.

  And then, last but not least, there’d been Angus Brae’s apparently unprovoked attack on John Donnelly. Was the gillie’s beef with the headmaster a private matter? Some secret resentment from the past, from Angus’s childhood, perhaps? And was any of this connected to the bodies in the bothy, as Kathy’s threatening note writer had implied?

  Whatever the truth, Iris sensed dark forces lurking in the depths of the castle on this supposedly haunted night.

  Lots of questions, no answers, thought Iris, emerging from the stall and washing her hands before straightening her hair and wiping off her smudged mascara as best she could in the bathroom mirror. Jamie had kissed off all of her lipstick. Her thoughts returned to him and the giddy feeling of his lips on hers and his warm hand on her thigh.

  Heading back towards the sofa where she’d last seen him, she looked to her left and noticed Kathy, backed up against the wall in one of the small, private alcoves near the kitchen. Someone was talking to her, a man, leaning in close, but Iris could only see half of his back view. Hanging back, pressing herself into the shadows of the downstairs corridor as best she could, she strained to make out the male figure. Then suddenly he moved.

  It was Rory.

  He had one arm out with his hand pressed against the wall, boxing Kathy in. The body language could have been threatening, or intimate, it was impossible to tell from where Iris was standing. In any event, the encounter was over in a few seconds when Rory suddenly turned and walked away, running both hands through his hair in apparent exasperation. Kathy stayed where she was, visibly upset.

  Iris began to walk towards her but stopped and doubled back when she saw Jock approach, resuming her hiding place in the shadows.

  ‘What was that about with Rory?’ Jock demanded, loudly enough for Iris to hear.

  Kathy quivered and said something in reply, but it was too quiet for Iris.

  ‘Like hell it was nothing,’ Jock boomed. ‘He’s obviously upset you. I’ll kill him, I swear to God. What did he say?’

  ‘Nothing! He said nothing,’ Kathy yelled back, meeting his anger with anger. ‘I told you. Why don’t you ever listen to me?’

  Jock looked wounded.

  ‘He congratulated me on the party. That’s all,’ Kathy insisted. ‘I’m upset, but it has nothing to do with Rory.’

  They continued talking, but their voices faded out as they turned away, eventually making up and walking back towards the ballroom together.

  Iris never got to hear the rest of the lie Kathy was telling. But she knew it was a lie. Because if what Iris had just witnessed was Rory MacKinnon ‘congratulating’ Kathy on her hostess skills, then Iris was a monkey’s uncle.

  ‘Where did you disappear to?’ demanded Jamie, pouncing on Iris as soon as she returned to the party.

  ‘Nowhere. Anyway, you disappeared first,’ Iris countered, not wanting to say ‘the loo’ for some reason. ‘What happened to my drink?’

  ‘Oh, yeah.’ He frowned. ‘Sorry about that. I forgot. D’you still want one?’

  ‘Not really,’ said Iris, her chocolate-brown eyes locked onto his grey ones. She thought fleetingly about filling him in on Angus’s fight with John Donnelly, or asking his opinion about the encounter she’d just witnessed between Kathy and Jock’s son. But as he bent down and kissed her again, she changed her mind.

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ said Jamie, his fingers now coiled deeply in her hair.

  Iris nodded.

  This time there would be no misreading of signals. Iris and Jamie understood one another perfectly.

  Chapter Sixteen

  It wasn’t until a few days after the Halloween party that Iris found herself up at the castle again, this time gingerly picking her way along the frosted path to Angus Brae’s cottage. It was November now, and properly wintry, and Iris was enjoying the childish game of watching her breath puff out in front of her like dragon’s smoke. The reek of a bonfire somewhere up in the woods hung in the still, cold air, mixing with the mulchy tang of rotten leaves underfoot. After a month of near-constant rain, the ground had become a slick swamp of peaty slime, but the drop in temperatures over the last few nights had frozen it solid. Firm ridges of mud cracked under Iris’s boots as she walked, their tips snapping like twigs beneath her weight. But the change in weather felt good, crisp. A fresh start.

  Had it really been three days since Iris’s night of passion with Jamie? The sex had been fantastic, a glorious, if drunken, release, and they’d parted affectionately the next morning. But Iris was nonetheless firmly filing it under ‘one-offs’. As lovely as he was, Jamie was much too young for her and their lives were 100 per cent incompatible. His entire world was here in Pitfeldy. Whereas, with a bit of luck, Iris hoped to have finished Kathy’s portrait within a month and to be back in London by Christmas – New Year at the very latest. Of course, she’d been invited to the wedding, which was still officially taking place on New Year’s Eve, and for which preparations were continuing full steam ahead. Privately, Iris couldn’t help but wonder whether Kathy and Jock would make it to the altar. Or whether truths would emerge from beneath the bothy that would make that impossible. Time would tell.

  In the meantime, Iris had decided to do everything she could to help Stuart Haley and to try to make progress identifying the Girls in the Wood. Hence this morning’s visit to Angus. Haley’s hope was that the young gillie might be more forthcoming and less guarded talking to Iris than he would answering questions for the police. Iris was also dying to know what had gone on between Angus and his old headmaster, and how their quarrel fitted into the other mysteries hanging like dark clouds over the Pitfeldy estate. Not just the bodies, but the real story behind Alice MacKinnon and Angus’s mother Linda Brae running off to Shetland all those years ago, never to return.

  ‘Oh, hello.’

  Angus’s girlfriend, Hannah, opened the door, smiling broadly at Iris.

  ‘You’re the painter, aren’t you?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Iris.

  ‘Angus has left for work already, I’m afraid, but do come in. I’ve got the coffee on.’

  In thick cotton pyjamas, a fleece dressing gown and Ugg boots, and with her messy hair scraped up in a bun, Hannah looked the picture of cosy domesticity. She was pretty, Iris thought, in a freckled, no make-up, girl-next-door type way. But more
than that she seemed happy, radiating the sort of contentment that only the young and in love possessed.

  ‘I should be at work too,’ Hannah confided, handing Iris a steaming mug of Colombian dark roast. ‘But I’m skiving today. I couldn’t face it. Isn’t that awful?’

  ‘Where do you work?’ asked Iris, wrapping her frozen fingers around the mug for warmth.

  ‘Pitfeldy library,’ said Hannah. ‘Very high-powered,’ she added with a laugh. ‘Did you want to see Angus about something specific?’

  ‘Oh no, not really,’ Iris fudged. She explained in very vague terms that she was still curious about the bones they’d found up in the woods, and had been hoping to pick Angus’s brains on one or two things.

  ‘I’m curious too,’ said Hannah, dipping a Hobnob into her own coffee before taking a large, satisfying bite. ‘It’s just so sad and awful to think of someone being buried up there, all alone.’

  ‘Two people,’ Iris reminded her.

  ‘Right. Which is even more weird, don’t you think?’ said Hannah. ‘That there could be two people whom nobody missed, or reported missing?’

  ‘I suspect it happens more than you might think,’ said Iris, ‘once people drop off the edge of society. Maybe because of drugs, or mental illness, or perhaps if they were here illegally.’

  ‘I suppose you’re right,’ said Hannah. ‘I had wondered about that. But to be honest, I’m not sure how much you’ll get out of Angus,’ she added thoughtfully.

  ‘Oh?’ Iris cocked her head curiously to one side.

  ‘Seeing the bones come out of the ground that day – that skull – after you and Kathy called him to come and pick you up? I think it really affected him.’

  ‘It affected all of us,’ said Iris, understandingly.

  ‘Yes, but Angus is unusually sensitive,’ said Hannah. ‘He feels things so deeply. For example, a few weeks ago, I asked him whether he thought maybe the women had been prostitutes. Just because, you know, like you said, they must have fallen out of normal society somehow, for no one to claim them.’

  ‘Right.’ Iris nodded, waiting for her to go on.