Heir Presumptive

by Henry Wade

  Not for a moment did Eustace experience any compunction, any change of feeling towards his cousin as a result of this hospitable letter. He gave David no credit for it. It was perfectly clear what had happened; the penultimate sentence showed that. Blanche, bless her heart, had been talking to David, had told him that he’d got to show a little decent feeling towards his relations; had probably twisted his tail for his damn rudeness down at Coombe. No doubt David thought a lot of Blanche, everybody did; no doubt he hadn’t liked to oppose her wishes so soon after . . . well, obviously he would do anything within reason to please her. Probably she was up at Clarge now; it would be the natural place for her to go to.

  In a way Eustace regretted that Blanche would be there when . . . he did what had got to be done. It would be pretty unpleasant, of course, and a bad shock for her, coming on top of her husband’s death. Still, it couldn’t be helped. It was an opportunity that simply couldn’t be let slip. This wasn’t any change of heart on the part of David; it was just an act of more or less obligatory politeness; once his visit was over Eustace felt that it was any odds against his being invited again; he had no delusions about that. All right, damn him; there wouldn’t be any need for a second invitation. David had made his false step; he was for it.

  Feeling truculent and excited, Eustace threw his Holt on to the sideboard and, not stopping to change into evening dress, took his hat and went round to Pearl Street. Jill was in her sitting-room, curled up on the sofa with an Edgar Wallace, the carpet beside her littered with cigarette ash. She greeted him with a lazy smile, which quickened to interest as she saw the expression on his face.

  “What’s up, darling? You look pleased with yourself.”

  She made room for him on the sofa and after kissing her eagerly, he put David’s letter into her hand with a triumphant: “What d’you think of that?” Jill read it quickly.

  “Who’s Blanche?” she asked, with the feminine knack of finding the point.

  “Cousin. Wife of the man who was drowned the other day.”

  “What’s she like?”

  Eustace laughed.

  “Lovely woman. Tall, fair, perfect figure, lots of money, ‘and one that adores me’.”

  Eustace was no student of Shakespeare but he knew his ‘Twelfth Night’.

  “Damned liar”, said Jill calmly. “How old is she?”

  “About my age”, replied Eustace untruthfully, “but what does it matter? The point is that now I can get at the chap.”

  Jill looked at him sharply.

  “You really mean to?” she asked.

  “Of course I do. I told you I was going to.”

  Jill looked at him steadily, taking a long pull at her cigarette.

  “I didn’t think you’d got the guts”, she said calmly, watching the smoke trickle from her nose.

  Eustace flushed angrily.

  “I don’t know why you should say that”, he declared. “I’ve been working out all possible ways of doing it, and I’m going to do it. The great difficulty was how to get near him; now that’s out of the way.”

  “How are you going to do it?”

  “I haven’t settled yet; it will depend on local circumstances; probably a hypnotic or one of the Vegetables.”

  “Vegetables? What do you mean?”

  “Vegetable poisons. But it will really depend on what I find out about him. If he’s taking medicine of any kind of course it may be simpler to work on that; a lot of people take hypnotics nowadays, though he’s not the sort you’d expect to.”

  Jill Paris looked at her companion with a surprise that was tinged with admiration.

  “But, darling, how do you know about all that?”

  “How do I know? Why I . . .” Eustace checked himself abruptly. He had never told Jill that he had been a doctor; never told any of his London friends. Some ridiculous idea that a purely idle life was more distinguished, more gentlemanly, may have been at the back of his mind. In any case it would be wiser now to keep quiet about it, even to Jill . . . unless he was forced to tell her.

  “Oh, I’ve been reading a book about it”, he said casually. “Damned interesting.”

  “I daresay it is, but I don’t believe you can learn anything from books. Anyhow, how could you get hold of the stuff? I should have thought an accident would be safer.” Jill picked up David’s letter and glanced at it. “What’s this about a rifle? What’s that for?”

  “Stalking. Deer-stalking. Stags, you know.”

  “I thought you hunted them with dogs.”

  “So they do in some places—Devonshire, f’rinstance. But in Scotland you stalk them with a rifle.”

  “He doesn’t say anything about Scotland.”

  “Yes, he does. Oh well, he says ‘the west coast’, that means Scotland. Anyhow, he says Mallaig.”

  “Never heard of it”, said Jill. “But look here, my lamb, if there’s going to be shooting with rifles, isn’t that the way to do it? Couldn’t you shoot him by mistake?”

  Eustace had never done any deer-stalking and knew remarkably little about it, but he had an idea that indiscriminate shooting, where one member of the party might get in the way of another’s bullet, was hardly in the picture. It was not like ordinary shooting, where people were scattered about all over the place. At least, he imagined it wasn’t. Still, it was worth thinking about. Presumably there were books about deer-stalking, just as there were about other sports . . . and other ways of killing people.

  “Well, anyway, let’s go and eat”, he said, pulling Jill on to her feet.

  The girl stood for a minute, holding him by the lapels of his coat, looking up into his dark, handsome face as if trying to find something she had not previously known was there. Then with a quick tug she pulled his face down to hers, kissed him passionately on the lips, and with a little laugh ran into her bedroom, where he heard her singing cheerfully as she brushed her hair.

  With unwonted restraint, Jill refused to allow Eustace to take her to an expensive restaurant. She pointed out that this trip to Scotland was going to cost money, that neither of them had any to spare, and that if it did all that was hoped of it then would be the time—and the means—for feeding gloriously whenever they wanted to. With some relief, Eustace agreed. They went to the Café Royal, had an excellent dinner, drank German beer, met several friends and finished the evening on the best of terms with themselves and the world at large.

  On the following morning Eustace spent several more hours hunting round second-hand bookshops, with very little success. Books on deer-stalking were, he found, rather rare, while second-hand copies were, if anything, more expensive than new books. Eventually he took himself off to Hatchard’s, where he found works both old and new on the subject, and finally bought a copy of Sir Hugh Fraser’s Amid the High Hills. After luncheon he retired to his armchair and was soon deeply absorbed in what was evidently a fascinating subject. So enthralled did Eustace become that he found himself actually looking forward with keen anticipation to having a stalk himself, and he had almost forgotten his real object in buying the book when a chapter entitled ‘A Stalker’s Peril’ brought it back to him with a rush. As he read the account of the accident to the Fannich stalker, Duncan, Eustace felt excitement mount in him; his heart beat fast, thumping against his side, and as he finished the chapter he threw the book down and, jumping to his feet, paced eagerly up and down the room.

  As was usual with Eustace Hendel, his excitement carried him along in a burst of such unreasoning optimism that all difficulties melted away before his triumphant approach; then, as he suddenly came up against the inevitable snag, his spirits suddenly dropped and his plan fell to pieces. So he went on for an hour or more, alternating between hope and despondency, but at the end of that time the faint structure of a workable plan had formed in his mind. It depended upon conditions which might never exist; his ignorance of deer-stalking made it impossible for him to know whether they could ever exist, but if they did. . . .

  At this point
it occurred to Eustace that he had not yet answered his cousin’s invitation, so he betook himself to his club, and on the Jermyn’s distinguished note-paper, thanked David for his invitation, which he was delighted to accept, regretted his ignorance of the art of deer-stalking and his pleasure at the prospect of initiation, looked forward to meeting Blanche, and asked for instructions as to reaching Glenellich.

  As he sealed up what he believed to be an excellent letter, friendly but not servile, Eustace congratulated himself upon his foresight in sticking to the Jermyn; it would have been deuced awkward to have to write to a fellow like David on common note-paper with a written address—and such an address. That brought to his mind a question which had not previously occurred to him; how had David known where to write to him? Obviously that settled the point, if there had ever been any doubt about it, that it had been Blanche who was at the bottom of this invitation; Eustace had given his address to Blanche and to no one else. No need for compunction, then; no qualms about abusing a hospitality that was so obviously enforced.

  During the next fortnight Eustace did what he could to perfect a plan that must to a great extent depend upon local circumstances beyond his control. So far as his own part in it was concerned he had no doubt of his ability, given the opportunity, to carry it into effect. A steady hand, the requisite knowledge and skill, and a certain cold-blooded determination in the face of very awkward circumstances—all these he had or could supply with such a reward in view. As to the risk, the very audacity of the plan should put it beyond suspicion.

  Every day Eustace spent an hour in a first-class shooting gallery. A steady hand is the first requisite of good marksmanship, and though Eustace’s hand was not now as steady as it had been when he was a practising surgeon it was good enough; once he had mastered the art of squeezing, instead of pulling, the trigger, he advanced to a very tolerable degree of proficiency; at least, he thought, he would not make a fool of himself in front of that superior cousin of his.

  In the matter of clothes, he took counsel of an elderly member of the Jermyn Club, who overheard him discussing the subject with George Priestley. Fortunately he still possessed a couple of shooting suits, one of them of a sufficiently nondescript greeny-yellow to be suitable for the hill; the other, definitely louder, would do for off days. He also had nailed shoes, and all he had to buy was a light mackintosh; he had no intention of getting soaked to the skin and then lying for hours in a piercing wind on the tops—if he had got so to he, he would lie dry. Other requisites, such as rifle and telescope, would have to come from David. He had no rod, and as he had never been a fisherman he did not intend to bother about that part of the invitation.

  The descriptions of climbing and crawling which he got from the books he read rather perturbed him. He was in no sort of condition and had never walked a yard if he could avoid it. He rather fancied that there was trouble ahead for him in that respect but it would have to be faced.

  In due course arrived a second letter from David, written this time from Glenellich, giving him his itinerary and telling him that, though stags were still in velvet, heads appeared to be pretty good; interesting, no doubt, but Greek to Eustace.

  On Sunday, 1st September, Eustace left King’s Cross by the 7.30 p.m. express, seen off by Jill Paris and treating himself to a first-sleeper on her advice.

  “You never know who mayn’t be on the train”, she said. “You don’t want to make a wrong impression for a start.”

  Nobody that Eustace knew was on the train, though several of the names on the typed lists displayed on windows of the first-class sleeping-cars were familiar to him from the pages of the sporting and society press; so, curiously enough, were some of those on the third-class lists, though these were of the type which appeared more often in the letterpress than on the picture pages. Too excited at first to sleep, Eustace wondered whether his extravagance was going to be worth the money, but he presently realized that the grey streak under his window blind was daylight and not moonshine, while on raising the blind he saw that the train was running through a country of grand heather-clad hills and tumbling streams. He wondered where they had got to; his watch showed a little after seven, and just as he was dropping off to sleep again the train pulled to a standstill and he heard the plaintive cry of a Highland porter: “Crrianlarrich. Crrianlarrich.” Then, in a momentary silence, the echoing cry of a bird: “Curlew. Curlew.”

  With a sudden nervous shiver Eustace pulled the blankets round him and tried to sleep again. But sleep would not come. Something in that mournful cry had touched a nerve and a wave of depression flooded over him. In the cold light of morning there came to him the full realization of what he was going to do. Murder! Brutal, cold-blooded murder of a relation and a host. There was no blinking it. And under the eyes, almost, of a woman whom he cared for and who had just been through a terrible tragedy of her own. A horrible, cruel deed, if ever there was one.

  With a shiver of repugnance Eustace buried his face in the pillow. He tried to recover the golden dreams of a rich, titled future that was to repay him for one horrible moment; to conjure up the clear, lovely face of Jill, who would be his for ever. They would not come; they were misty, unreal, meaningless. Only this horror that lay before him was real. He would have given, he felt, almost anything to be freed from this nightmare, this horrible alternative: on the one hand poverty, loss of Jill; on the other, murder!

  Across the dark flats of Rannoch, past the Black Corries of Glencoe, the train ran on.

  Chapter Eight

  Glenellich

  BREAKFAST and a burst of sunshine through the morning mist brought Eustace to a more normal frame of mind. He remained oppressed by the horrible cloud which hung over the immediate future, but he determined to go on at least until he had made a preliminary survey of what his plan entailed. Up to the very last moment it would not be too late to turn back—that was one of the beauties of the plan.

  As the train ran westward from Fort William Eustace came more and more under the influence of the beauty which lay on each side of him. The serene waters of Loch Eil, the sloping hills which guarded Cona Glen, the sweeping corries which sheltered the Cameron deer, the thin silver streak of Loch Shiel, each more lovely than the last; then, bursting suddenly on the view, the wide expanse of the sea, the great Atlantic Ocean itself, calm now but capable of lashing itself at short notice into a seething whirlpool of angry waves as it hurled itself past the isles and beat up the narrow Sound of Sleat; calm now, cradling flat-topped Eigg, superbly profiled Rhum; and last, as the train swung north towards Mallaig, there came to Eustace his first view of Skye, the grim pinnacles of the Black Cuillins, one of the glories of the world.

  Sobered, almost cleansed, by this feast of beauty, Eustace Hendel sat still and silent even after the train had pulled up in the little terminus at Mallaig. He felt small and insignificant, his affairs unimportant, trivial. A porter opened the door of his carriage and he stumbled out, cramped after so much sitting. The platform was a bustle of activity, the centre of interest being a ‘family coach’ which had been picked up at Crianlarich, bringing a party of tall men and fair women from Wales. The porter shambled off towards the van and a red-haired young giant in a blue jersey greeted Eustace.

  “Will it be Misterr Hendel?” he asked, his voice rising on the name.

  “Yes. Are you . . . are you from . . . ?”

  Eustace was relieved of his mackintosh and handbag.

  “Jock will be bringing your trunk down to the launch. If Mr. Hendel will come this way.”

  Obediently Eustace followed his guide, feeling helpless in a strange, almost a foreign, land. The little port was seething with life, as it did only twice or thrice in a week; the herring fleet was making ready for sea. At the end of the week it would return and the bustle be even greater; occasionally a storm would drive it to harbour in mid-week; at all other times the little town slept, baked in rare sunshine, drenched in driving rain, or wrapt in thick swathes of mist. Now the sun shone
, strong men rolled slowly to and fro in great thigh-boots, buxom girls carried gear and kit-bags, gulls wheeled screeching overhead. In the tiny harbour, tucked up against a flight of wooden steps, lay an open launch, about thirty feet long, white and graceful, a red ensign hanging limp from its staff in the stern.

  Glenellich, on the mainland, is approachable only by sea; so much David had told in his second letter. No road, no beaten path even, approaches it from inland and that, in these days of hikers and youth hostels, is one of the forest’s greatest assets. There are moments when this isolation has its drawbacks, periods—sometimes weeks on end—when the raging seas make it impossible for any small boat to live in them, any larger boat to approach the shore. At those times the few, scattered habitations of Glenellich and kindred places are cut off from doctor, mail, and all but their own growing and stored necessities of life. Not that that worried the natives; they had their ministers or priests, their local midwives; their wants were simple, their hardihood inexhaustible. But to the visitors from England or America who occupied the shooting, fishing, or stalking lodges for a few weeks or months, such times might mean real discomfort and distress.

  But all this Eustace was not to know. The sea now was calm, the launch rode on it like a floating gull, the sun shone, the young boatman was strong and capable; life, but for that dark cloud, would have appeared very easy and pleasant.

  “Nice launch”, he said, uncertain of the degree of sociability expected under the circumstances.

  “Aye, she is that”, replied the boatman, laying a hand affectionately on the engine-cover. “She’ll take in a bit of water in a sea, though.”

  The porter appeared on the quay above them and handed down Eustace’s trunk as if it had been an attaché case.

  “Ye’ll mind the bit cording for Mrs. Mackie, Donald”, he said, acknowledging Eustace’s shilling with a jerk of the hand.