Death at Glamis Castle

by Robin Paige

  Holstein smiled into his mustache. Ah, yes, Hauptmann. He was a good man, reliable, resourceful, and fearless. In connection with his espionage work for Gustav Steinhauer, the former Pinkerton private detective who was now in charge of German Intelligence, Hauptmann had enjoyed a great many successes in the past several years—more than enough, certainly, to blot out any lingering embarrassment he might have felt after the disappointing failure of his weapons-smuggling scheme in Rottingdean in ’97. Holstein, who often found much fault in the work of subordinates, could find none in Hauptmann or his smuggling plan, for it had been splendidly conceived and skillfully executed, to the very end. That it had failed was due neither to negligence nor poor planning, but to the intervention of a single man.2

  Holstein stood and began to button his rusty black frock coat. As was his custom when one of his subordinates failed, he had required Hauptmann to provide him with a full written report documenting the circumstances—in this case, including a dossier of the man who had so adroitly cheated Hauptmann of success. He glanced again at the wooden cabinet, which held (among other secrets) the report Hauptmann had prepared after the operation’s unfortunate conclusion. There was no need to consult either the dossier or supporting documents to refresh his memory, for Holstein could picture its contents as he could mentally picture and recite from each document in every file in his office, a faculty that both awed and terrified his clerks.

  CHARLES, LORD SHERIDAN, BARON SOMERSWORTH

  Born 1861, second son of fifth Baron of Somersworth. Father, mother dead. No living siblings.

  Education: Eton, Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, Royal School of Engineering at Chatham. Later took degree at Oxford in preparation for diplomatic career.

  Military service: 1883-85, served with distinction in the Sudan, recommended for Victoria Cross. Refused V.C. and resigned commission, 1885.

  Occupation: Succeeded to Peerage upon death of older brother. Active Liberal in the House of Lords. Administers family estates at Somersworth and elsewhere.

  Married: 1896, to Kathyrn Ardleigh, Irish-American, writer of popular fictions under pseudonym of Beryl Bardwell. No natural children.

  Residences: Sibley House, Mayfair, London; wife’s estate (Bishop’s Keep) in East Anglia.

  Notes: Pursues interests in natural sciences, archaeology, photography, and criminal investigation, and is reported to have been involved with the Yard in setting up fingerprint files. Has close but unofficial connections with Royal Family.

  The recollection of the last line of the file gave Holstein a twinge of concern, but it was only fleeting. There was no need to worry. Lord Sheridan was a most interesting man, one whom he might like one day to meet, but in the final analysis, his lordship was nothing more than an amateur and a dilettante, one of those British aristocrats who gadded hither and thither in pursuit of his own precious interests. And lightning did not strike twice in the same place. Hauptmann would return soon with his prize, and they could decide what to do with it.

  Holstein finished buttoning his coat, put on his hat, and went to the door, locking it behind him, closing away Hauptmann’s defeat and the rest of that unpleasant affair at Rottingdean. The thought of Lord Charles Sheridan would not disturb his dinner.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Glamis Village, Forfarshire, Scotland

  She is a winsome wee thing,

  She is a handsome wee thing,

  She is a lovesome wee thing,

  This dear wee wife o’ mine.

  I never saw a fairer,

  I never loved a dearer,

  And nigh my heart I’ll wear her

  This dear sweet jewel mine.

  Traditional Scottish ballad

  Constable Oliver Graham was a usually cheerful young man, so far as any Scotsman may be deemed cheerful, for he was satisfied with his life and his work to a degree that most people of his acquaintance were not. Glamis Village and its environs—the constable’s precinct stretched almost to Kirriemuir to the north, Forfar to the east, and equal distances to the west and south—were both beautiful and peaceful, with only the occasional drunken farmer or quarrelsome neighbor or vagrant cow with which to contend.

  Besides this, Oliver Graham had been born and lived all of his twenty-three years in this place, and he knew every man and his land and all his beasts, every woman and all her children (or as many as could reasonably be known, given the evident fertility of those in his district), and every bend and turn of the footpaths and the roads, which he patrolled regularly on his bicycle. He possessed the confidence of his superior (Chief Superintendent Douglas McNaughton, who was headquartered in Forfar), the respect of the citizens of the district, and a cozy cottage with a sound thatch, inherited from his father and mother, who were old and lived for their comfort with his sister in Dundee.

  Indeed, it was no wonder that Oliver Graham’s heart was warmed with a genial proprietary glow when he thought of his precinct and all it meant to him. Given the many successes he had achieved at a relatively young age, the constable might perhaps be pardoned for the smugness with which he contemplated the satisfactions of his work and his life.

  However, Oliver Graham did not have quite all that he desired, and in one vital area felt himself to be sadly deficient. The constable was in want of a wife, a lack which he had only recently begun to feel strongly and which he hoped to remedy as soon as might be. He had fastened his expectations and hopes upon a young woman whom he had known from childhood, with whom he had played in the streets of Glamis Village and in the woods and fields around the great castle. Indeed, Oliver Graham and Flora MacDonald had in their youth been childhood sweethearts, trading innocent kisses and love-tokens in the shadows of the tall pines, hiding love notes under a rock near St. Fergus Well.

  Unfortunately, occupied as he was in establishing himself in his career, Oliver had not had the time in the past two years to pay the proper attention to Flora. Now that he felt comfortable in his position and was sure that he could earn enough to support a growing family, however, he was ready to resume their loving friendship, to make her, in short, his wife.

  But while Oliver was furthering his professional ambitions and making a name for himself in the district, Flora had herself grown and changed, from girl-child to young woman. She worked with her mother at the castle, as housemaid and attendant to an invalid resident there, some friend of the Strathmore family. And Oliver now saw, to his great delight, that his Flora had become more winsome and lovesome than ever, with her soft brown hair and steady gray eyes, her skin of roses and cream, her buxom figure. He was more than ready to offer himself, heart and soul and body, to this dear, sweet creature, whom he now admitted had never lost her place in his heart.

  Flora, however, did not seem quite so ready to accept as Oliver was to offer. She had rejected his first proposal some weeks ago, but so gently and sweetly that his hopes were not in the least discouraged. After all, it was scarcely immodest of him to believe that Flora MacDonald could find no better husband in all Glamis (in all the Strathmore Vale, come to that), no finer a man in appearance and health nor richer in both present possession and future prospect. And for her part, sweet, shy Flora was not likely to stray far from the village, nor entertain the attentions of a stranger from another district. No, his sweetheart might put him off and protest that she was not ready to marry, but he was confident that she would come round in the course of events—the sooner, of course, the better—and agree to be his dear wife.

  However, something terrible had recently happened, something that was likely to affect his relations with Flora, and it was for this reason that Constable Graham’s customarily self-satisfied countenance had turned dark and forbidding. Flora had suffered a grave harm a few days ago, and it was the constable’s responsibility to see that the perpetrator was brought to justice as quickly as possible. Her mother, Hilda MacDonald, had been viciously murdered—her throat slit from ear to ear, a quick and ugly death—and poor Flora herself had discovered the body
on the path between Glamis Castle and the village, early on Monday morning. It was now Wednesday evening, the inquest was scheduled for the following day, and Constable Graham had not yet discovered the murderer, nor uncovered even a single clue to his identity. It was a failure he felt keenly, both professionally and personally. He had failed not only his duty, but Flora as well—Flora, who trusted him to bring her mother’s killer to justice; Flora, who would soon, pray God, consent to be his wife.

  The constable strode around the corner, past John Buchanan’s tobacconist shop, and into the pub room of the Glamis Inn, a gray-stone two-story building with a green-slate roof and chimneys at either end. As usual, the low-ceilinged, smoky room was crowded with village men enjoying a pint and a pipe and discussing the events of the day with their friends, while a generous fire blazed on the brick hearth. The loud buzz of voices that filled the air was silenced when the constable entered, however, and he felt the bitter stab of pitying looks, like poisoned darts digging under his skin. Everyone in the room, including Herman Memsdorff, Flora’s cousin, knew he had failed so far to discover the identity of Hilda MacDonald’s killer—the first and most significant failure in the two years he had served as their constable—and all felt sorry for him.

  Oliver glanced at Memsdorff, to whom he planned to talk. But the man, who came frequently from Edinburgh to visit his aunt and cousin, was engaged in close conversation with Douglas Hamilton, the assistant gamekeeper up at the castle. Hamilton was a cocky, hot-headed little fellow who smoked stinking cigars and was always bragging about his exploits, and the constable had no use for him. Anyway, conversation with Memsdorff could wait until Oliver had fortified himself with a pint in hand.

  He pushed his way to the pub’s bar, its smoky mirror decorated with two large framed photographs: Queen Victoria’s on one side, hung with dusty crape, King Edward’s on the other. The difference between the two was evident to any viewer. The Queen wore the gloomy face and mourning she had put on at her husband’s death some four decades earlier, while a smiling King Edward was pictured with his last-year’s Derby winner, Diamond Jubilee. Behind the bar, Thomas Collpit gave him a sympathetic nod. “The usu’l, Oliver?”

  “Aye,” Oliver replied gruffly.

  Dr. Ogilvy was standing at the bar, surveying the room through his narrow, gold-rimmed glasses. “Good evenin’, Oliver,” he said in a genial voice. “Wha hae ye found, m’lad?”

  Oliver took the pint that the dour Mrs. Collpit pulled for him from a wooden keg. “I’ve nothing for ye, I’m sorry tae say,” he growled. “Ye shall hae t’ render an open verdict.”

  The doctor, a short, stout little man with a round face, bald head, and gold-rimmed glasses, was also the district’s coroner, and would preside tomorrow at the inquest into Hilda MacDonald’s murder. Oliver had wanted badly to present the killer to the coroner’s jury, but although he had pursued his investigation vigorously—interviewing those who discovered the body, going from house to house in the village, questioning the gypsies camped at Roundyhill (who had of course been his first suspects)—he had come up with nothing. There were no witnesses, no weapon, no evidence, no clues, not even a motive for the especially vicious killing. He would have to report to Chief Superintendent McNaughton, with great regret and not a little chagrin, that there was nothing to report.

  “Run against a stone wall, hae ye, now?” the doctor inquired gently. He pursed his lips. “Well, I dinna wonder ye ha’n’t turned up the villain yet, Oliver. It takes a long spoon tae sup wi’ such a de’il as killed our Hilda. How’s Flora?” he added sympathetically, for he knew the constable’s feelings. There was little about Glamis Village that Dr. Henry Ogilvy did not know, Oliver supposed, privvy as he was to all of the secrets in the neighborhood: the secret births, the secret marriages, the secret dreams and fears and hates. This intimacy made him a perfect coroner, for he knew very well when someone was tempted to testify falsely.

  “Canna say, as to Flora,” Oliver replied, glum. “Ha’n’t seen her this day. She’s nowt tae hame, for I called there just now. S’pose she’s workin’ late at the castle.” To tell the truth, he suspected that Flora was deliberately keeping herself out of his way, for he had perhaps been a bit overzealous in pressing his romantic intentions upon her on the Sunday evening before her mother’s body was discovered. And now—

  There was a stir at the door, and Oliver turned to see a stranger enter the crowded room, an elderly, gray-haired gentleman dressed in clothing suited to tramping the countryside: thick woolen jacket and gray knickers, stout leather boots, a brown felt hat with the brim pulled over his forehead, a canvas pack on his back, a fiddle case strung over his shoulder, and a stout oak walking stick in his hand.

  Limping badly, the old gentleman made his way to the bar and ordered a whiskey and water. “But dinna drown the miller,” he cautioned, and Thomas Collpits, with a ready laugh, splashed no more than a drop of water in the glass he pushed across the rough plank.

  The men in the room visibly relaxed, for here was no stranger but a venerable fellow Scotsman, although perhaps an eccentric one, out on holiday. The constable, however, leaned forward, feeling it his duty to know the identity of every man in his district, particularly now, with a murder investigation under way.

  “Good evenin’, sir,” he said. He frowned, showing his suspicions. “And where’boots be ye frae, may I ask?”

  “Glasgow,” the man said in broad Scots. “I’m called Alan Donovan. I coom i’ search o’ ballads and auld stories, for a collection I hae i’ the makin’.”

  The constable was about to inquire of Alan Donovan where in the district he was staying, but his question was forestalled.

  “If ye know an auld ballad I dinna know aboot, I’d be pleased t’ write it doon,” the elderly gentleman said to the room at large. And then, in a tuneful baritone, his pale blue eyes dancing merrily, he broke into the first verse of “The Bonny Earl of Murray”:

  Ye Highlands and ye Lawlands,

  Oh where hae ye been?

  They hae slain the Earl of Murray,

  And layd him on the green.

  “Ah, yes,” said a dark-haired, slender man, turning from his conversation with the butcher. Robert Heriot was the village schoolmaster, and the resident expert on the ballads of Strathmore Vale, on the whole history of Scotland, for that matter. Heriot struck a pose and offered up the second verse:

  He was a braw gallant,

  And he rid at the ring;

  And the bonnie Earl of Murray,

  Oh he might hae been a king!

  “Ye do say so, do ye? Might hae been a king?” The old man smiled genially. Unstrapping his fiddle case and tucking the instrument under his chin, he answered with a third verse:

  He was a braw gallant,

  And he playd at the glove;

  And the bonnie Earl of Murray,

  Oh he was the Queen’s love!

  The air was filled with the plaintive cry of the fiddle as the two men traded the interminable verses of “The Earl of Murray.” Then the village butcher, fat Henry Arrat, whistled the refrain of “Broomfield Hill,” and the three of them took up that ballad, in harmony. That finished at last, the rest of the room joined in on “The Shepherd’s Dochter.” The villagers were accustomed to singing hymns at St. Fergus Kirk on Sunday, but they did not often have the privilege of raising their voices to the old ballads, and especially with the accompaniment of such an accomplished fiddler. They laid into the familiar music with grateful hearts and a fervor fueled by yet another round of pints, generously contributed by the ballad collector.

  As the men sang, Oliver turned his attention to the crowd, thinking again of the terrible crime that someone—one of them?—had committed this week. Some of the men worked at the castle, or on the castle farms and fields; others plied their trades or vocation in the village, such as the baker, Alex Ross, and Peter Chasehope, the joiner, and the Reverend Cecil Calderwood, the convivial vicar, who enjoyed his pint of ale just like the rest.
The station clerk was there, too, and with him one of the signalmen, laughing together with the young clerk at the Royal Bank of Scotland.

  Oliver frowned. It was impossible to see any of these men as the man he sought, for they were almost all very well-known to him, and to Hilda, who was held in high regard throughout the village. Theirs was a close-knit, interrelated, and self-sufficient community, in which each man and woman depended on the work and the trade of the others. They worshipped together, attended school together, and danced at each other’s weddings, mourned at each other’s funerals. The constable could not imagine that any of these men could have killed her.

  He did, however, have one suspect in mind. He leaned close to the doctor, lowering his voice so that he could be heard under the by-now raucous singing.

  “Hilda once told me that her job at the castle, and Flora’s too, was tae take care o’ some invalid gentleman who lives in retirement there. Lord Osborne, his name is. Ye havena heard awt o’ him?”