A Rhanna Mystery

by Christine Marion Fraser

  Now she was like a contented kitten, curled up and cosy, though when she became aware of his cold knees at her back she murmured sleepily, ‘Is everything alright, Fergus? You’re like ice. What have you been up to?’

  ‘Nothing, go back to sleep.’ Tenderly he kissed the crisp curls at the nape of her neck. A strange sensation of insecurity seized him. He didn’t want her to leave him, her place was here with him, she had hardly left his side in all their years of marriage. The children were all grown up with lives of their own to lead, Kirsteen was the only one left to him and now even she was going away . . .

  The heat of her body beat into his; he took a deep breath and allowed himself to relax against her. In minutes they were both asleep, held fast to one another in love, warmth, and trust.

  Chapter Two

  At ten-thirty next morning Lachlan’s rickety little car drew up at Laigmhor’s door and sounded its horn. It was a very distinctive sort of horn, with a tone to it that was reminiscent of a cockerel with a sore throat.

  Laigmhor’s cockerel hated it. Every time he heard it he set himself up in direct competition to it and this morning was no exception. Lifting his beak to the heavens he let rip, his crows growing louder in volume, higher in pitch, till the entire hen-run echoed with the raucous screeching. This excited the geese and the hens a great deal and they too added their contribution in support of King Cock, cackling and gaggling at the tops of their voices.

  ‘Christ! Would you listen to that!’ Fergus scraped back his chair from the table where he had been having his mid-morning break, and going to the door he thrust his feet into his boots. ‘I’ll thraw that bloody cock’s neck if I get a hold o’ him!’

  ‘Fergie, Fergie.’ Kirsteen drew him to her and held him close. ‘It isn’t the cockerel, is it? It’s because I’m going away and you’re trying to hide your feelings in angry words.’

  Gently she kissed him and pushed a lock of dark hair back from his brow. ‘Say you’ll miss me, darling man. I know you, you don’t like to let your emotions show but I think – just this once – you ought to tell me you love me and say you can’t wait for me to get back.’

  ‘Steady on,’ he said gruffly, ‘you aren’t even away yet so how can I tell if I’ll miss you or not?’

  ‘Fergie,’ she said softly, ‘come on now. Don’t send me away without a single loving word.’

  Fergus hesitated. In truth he was feeling rather annoyed with himself for taking Kirsteen’s departure so much to heart. He hadn’t expected to feel like this but now that the moment of goodbye had come he felt that she was deserting him for some obscure relative of Phebie’s who couldn’t possibly mean anything to her.

  He glanced at Kirsteen’s face. She was biting her lip and watching him anxiously and – he had to admit it – she did look tired and in need of a break. ‘Alright,’ he conceded awkwardly, ‘I’ll miss you, isn’t that enough?’

  ‘If you’re going to behave like that . . .’

  She pulled away from him and he looked at her standing there. The passing years had not robbed her of the beauty that had so entranced him when first they had met. She was slim and smart in a blue suit that matched her eyes, her face was still finely honed, her skin had that lovely attractive glow that came from living in the dewy air of the Hebrides. She was his Kirsteen, so much a part of his life, so much a part of him . . .

  ‘Kirsteen,’ he murmured huskily and folded her to him to crush her mouth with his, ‘you know fine well I’ll miss you, every minute o’ every day. I won’t be able to settle till you get back. We belong to one another you and me, it’s been like that right from the start. I – I canny find the right words to tell you but always know – my life would be nothing without you.’

  ‘Oh, Fergie!’ The tears sprang to her eyes, and for a moment she was tempted to go outside and tell Phebie she couldn’t go with her after all.

  The car horn sounded again, the cockerel, the hens, and the geese set up a fresh cacophony of screeches, Heinz sat down and lifting his head bayed to the ceiling . . .

  ‘Go.’ Fergus pushed his wife gently towards the door. ‘Go before we have the entire countryside down about our ears – and here, take this, enjoy yourself in the shops, you deserve it.’

  He pressed a small wad of notes into her hand. She looked at it, the tears springing afresh. ‘Oh, God, I don’t want to leave you, I can’t . . .’

  Tucking her case under his arm he propelled her outside to the waiting car.

  ‘Coming down with us to say goodbye?’ Lachlan popped his head out of the window and gazed enquiringly up at Fergus.

  From the back seat another head hove into view, one that belonged to Elspeth Morrison, Slochmhor’s housekeeper. A grouse feather was sticking up out of her hat, and an unusual little flush burned high up on her cheekbones.

  Elspeth had a very important mission on her mind that day. She was going down to the harbour to meet Captain Isaac McIntosh coming off the ferry. He had been to the island of Hanaay to spend a very belated New Year with his sister Nellie and Elspeth had missed him more than she could have thought possible. He and she were soon to be married and even now she could hardly believe that he actually wanted her for his wife, a widow woman of advanced years whose bitter tongue and sarcastic remarks were legendary on the island. But ever since Mac had come to lodge with her they had gotten to know one another very well indeed, much to the astonishment and curiosity of the entire island.

  They had spent a marvellous Christmas together in Oban, shopping, sightseeing, exploring, walking hand in hand wherever they went, laughing, talking, or just being comfortably silent with one another. Elspeth had never known anything like it; the world for her had opened up and she had expanded with it. Mac’s warmth, his frankness, his joy of living, transferred itself to her and she blossomed as she had never done in her life before.

  Her marriage to her drunken sea-going husband, Hector, had been a farce. They had spent their time arguing and bawling at one another, and when he had died she had thought she would spend the rest of her life alone and lonely. Now there was Mac, and Elspeth had never been happier. She was well aware that the tongues were red hot with speculation and gossip, but she ignored it all and held her head high.

  Fergus had scant patience with Elspeth, she had always irritated him with her knowing looks and her malicious innuendos, but worse than that was her air of smugness whenever anybody was in trouble and Fergus had no desire to share the back seat of Lachlan’s old motor car with her.

  ‘Thanks, man, but we’ve already said our goodbyes,’ he hastened to say, a muscle working in his jaw when Elspeth stuck her sharp nose haughtily in the air.

  Kirsteen squeezed his hand. ‘I’ll probably only stay in Glasgow for a week. I wish you would get the phone in, Fergie, everyone else has one.’ She sounded wistful. ‘I would have felt better, talking to you every night. You could maybe call me from Slochmhor or Mo Dhachaidh, but in any case I’ll write. There’s a steak pie in the larder for your dinner and a pan o’ soup in the –’

  Despite himself he laughed. ‘Woman! Be gone wi’ you! I’m not helpless and I won’t fade away. Shona, Ruth, and Tina between them will see to that.’

  The car door banged, her neat little head bobbed at a window, her face gazed out at him, her hand came up, and then she was gone from him in a cloud of exhaust fumes.

  He stood watching the vehicle receding down the farm track and took a deep, rather shaky breath. The raw air flooded his lungs. The mist of the previous night having completely dispersed, it was a cold but beautiful morning; the slopes of Sgurr nan Ruadh were red with bracken, a cap of snow gleamed on its peak, and away in the distance the Sound of Rhanna was a dark blue ribbon against the paler blue of the sky.

  Heinz gazed up at him. ‘It’s only you and me now, lad,’ Fergus said quietly, and turning on his heel he walked back slowly to the empty house.

  The harbour was quiet that morning, with only a handful of locals standing about watching the approach of
the steamer. By coincidence or design, Behag Beag, the Ex-Postmistress of Portcull, as she had entitled herself, was there beside Kate McKinnon, muffled to the eyebrows in scarves, a large black astrakhan hat pulled well down over her long ears, the collar of a moth-eaten fur coat enclosing the scraggy layers of her neck.

  ‘It was my mother’s coat,’ she had told Mollie McDonald when first she had appeared in the garment. ‘My father gave it to her on their second wedding anniversary and of course I came heir to it when she died . . .’

  At this point her voice wavered a little but she certainly wasn’t going to tell Mollie that her father had got the coat from a tink at the door in exchange for two shillings and a bag of meal. Her mother had never worn the coat, saying that it might have been stolen for all they knew, and what good was a fur coat anyway on an island where the womenfolk only ever went to kirk dressed in black and the only fur coats they had ever seen were attached to the sheepdogs. So the garment had been shoved to the back of a wardrobe, forgotten and neglected, till the recent cold snap had encouraged Behag to resurrect it.

  ‘Of course, the moths have been at it,’ she had explained glibly to Mollie, ‘even though it’s been well wrapped in camphor paper. But it’s fine and warm for all that and I was never a body to bend to all that fashion nonsense.’

  Mollie had eyed the coat and privately thought that it would have been best left to the tender mercies of the moths, but she was a kindly soul and said nothing, not even when Behag eyed her own sensible tweed coat and said loftily, ‘You could be doing wi’ a change yourself, Mollie, ’tis all very well to be wearing the same things year in and year out but as my own mother said to me, “If you leave poverty indoors and take pride with you the two will never go hand in hand in this family.”

  Behag had never fully understood what her mother’s adage had meant, she still didn’t understand, but it sounded good anyway and Mollie McDonald had certainly seemed impressed if her red face and astonished expression had been anything to go by.

  Whatever Behag thought about pride, she certainly displayed very little of it when it came to nosing into other folks’ activities. She was incensed with curiosity about Elspeth and Captain Mac and made use of every opportunity to poke and pry into their lives. Ever since the start of their ‘affair’, as she put it, instilling every sort of meaning into the word, she had made it her business to follow their every move. She had known full well that Mac was coming off the boat that morning and had contrived to be at the harbour in order to witness ‘the reunion’ at close quarters.

  Now, the steamer had tied up, the passengers were disembarking, and Captain Mac was one of the first to come down the gangway. He made straight for Elspeth, his white hair tousled by the sea breezes, his big jolly nose glowing brighter than ever from the drams he had consumed with Tam McKinnon in the saloon bar. He and Elspeth greeted one another with restraint, conscious as they were of several pairs of eyes upon them.

  ‘Behag’s here,’ Elspeth hissed into one of Mac’s hairy lugs, ‘’specially to see us. You’re surely no’ going to let her down, Mac, she came for more than just a view o’ the sea – and on such a cold morning too.’

  Mac cottoned on quickly to her meaning – both of them took an absolute delight in tormenting the Ex-Postmistress of Portcull – and without ado he folded Elspeth into his big hearty embrace and kissed her soundly on the mouth, to be amply rewarded by an expression of sheer shock on Behag’s face.

  ‘Did you see that?’ she gasped to Kate as Elspeth and Captain Mac went off arm in arm, choking back their laughter. ‘Kissing and slavering for the whole world to see. It’s bad enough for young folks to be doing that sort o’ thing in public but at their time o’ life – it’s a disgrace!’

  Kate looked thoughtfully in the direction of the receding pair. She was lost in her own train of thought and didn’t pay much attention to Behag’s comments. ‘What good will the likes o’ Elspeth be to a lusty great chiel like Isaac McIntosh?’ she pondered with a devilish glint in her eyes. ‘She’s that scraggy and he’s that big he would maybe break her in two if he climbed on top o’ her.’

  Behag’s lips folded and she said coldly, ‘There is no need to put it that plainly, Kate McKinnon, besides, they will surely no’ be indulging in anything o’ that nature at their age.’

  Kate’s eyes gleamed, she liked nothing better than to tease Behag. ‘My, my, Behag, ’tis well seeing you are a spinster woman wi’ naught in your head but pride and prudity. People do it at any age, the older the fiddle the better the tune! I myself have enjoyed it more as I got older. Tam used to just shake his breeks at me for another bairn to be on the way . . .’ She grinned widely at the look of disgust on Behag’s face. ‘And talking o’ the man, here he is now, all frisky and eager and maybe thinkin’ o’ taking me to bed for the rest o’ the morning.’

  As Tam approached, Behag flounced away in highest dudgeon, leaving Kate skirling with laughter as she took her husband’s arm and marched him away homewards.

  Lachlan was helping Phebie and Kirsteen to get their luggage out of the car, smiling a little when he felt the weight of his wife’s case. ‘Are you sure you’re going to Aunt Minnie’s?’ he enquired, his brown eyes twinkling. ‘Or have you and Kirsteen maybe cooked up something a bit more exotic between you? A cruise, for instance? Or a few weeks in the Bahamas while the rest o’ us sneeze and sniffle and shiver our way through a freezing Scottish spring?’

  ‘Chance would be a fine thing!’ she replied with a giggle. ‘If Aunt Minnie could bear to part wi’ some o’ her money, a cruise would be just the job, but she’s aye been too mean for her own or anyone else’s good!’ Her plump face grew serious and grabbing his hand she said urgently, ‘Oh, Lachy, are you sure you’re going to manage without me? I don’t like leaving you on your own like this.’

  ‘I won’t be on my own. The place will be jumping wi’ visitors all anxious to see how I’m coping. I have no doubt that Fiona will pop in to make sure I am not dying o’ starvation, no’ to mention Shona, and Tina and any number o’ women fussing over me and spoiling me. And don’t forget, there’s always our Elspeth, all tight-lipped and serious and telling me that no self-respecting wife would ever go off and leave a poor hapless cratur’ like me to fend for myself.’

  Phebie laughed. ‘I know, she’s been giving me some poisonous looks lately but she’s much too taken up wi’ Mac these days to really bother her head about anything else.’ Her eyes searched the harbour. ‘Fiona isn’t here, after saying she would be. Grant has a few days off at the moment so maybe she’s too taken up with that to bother about her poor old mother. I hope she’ll remember to look in on you.’

  ‘Och, Phebie! Of course she’ll remember! Stop fretting, I’ll be fine, and I can always go to Laigmhor and drown my sorrows with Fergus over a game o’ cards.’

  Grabbing her to him he kissed her and slapped her on her well rounded bottom to send her on her way before giving Kirsteen a farewell kiss on the cheek. He stood watching as they boarded the boat and waved at them when they appeared at the rails.

  ‘Tha Breeah!’ Dodie came galloping up, shouting out his customary Gaelic greeting for ‘It’s a fine day’ in his mournful voice. No matter the weather, Dodie always said the same thing, though on this sparkling blue March morning, with the sunlight silvering the sea and the wavelets lapping the long stretches of dazzling white sands, his words were perfectly justified.

  As usual his clothes were pitifully inadequate to keep out the biting cold; his hands were blue, a large drip adhered precariously to the end of his nose and the tips of his ears were purple, yet despite all these obvious discomforts there was a spark of excitement in his dreamy grey-green eyes as he went on in a rush, ‘I am waiting for Hector the Boat to see will he maybe take me out fishing wi’ him.’

  Dodie had always been a creature of the land, never of the sea. He was scared of everything pertaining to it, both real and imagined. Canty Tam had filled his head with tales of Green Water Witches, who
se main aim in life was to lure unwary fishermen to their death beneath the waves. Then there were the Uisge Hags to contend with, dreadfully wicked beings who could change from ugly crones into beautiful mermaids for the sole purpose of capturing fishermen in their evil clutches and transporting them for their own use to the very depths of the ocean.

  With all this in mind Dodie normally avoided contact with the sea, but Hector the Boat had recently pulled a muscle in his shoulder and was looking for an extra pair of cheap hands to help him haul in his lobster pots. Being possessed of a persuasive tongue he had somehow convinced Dodie that all the tales he had ever heard about sea monsters had been born of myth and legend, and that even if they did exist, it was only deep sea fishermen who ran the risk of close encounters.

  ‘I thought you didn’t like boats or the sea, Dodie,’ said Lachlan with a frown. ‘What’s changed your mind now?’

  For answer Dodie rubbed his stomach and rolled his eyes heavenward. ‘Lobsters, fresh out the sea. Hector said if I helped him wi’ his pots he would give me a whole one all to myself. Nothing finer wi’ a boiled tattie and a bit turnip.’

  Lachlan looked grim, ‘And that’s your payment for helping him? One lobster?’

  Dodie nodded in a distracted fashion as he searched the harbour for a sign of Hector. A small boat puttered into the bay and tied up alongside the old jetty. Hector’s woollen-clad head came bobbing up the slimy stone steps. Cupping his hands to his mouth he yelled, ‘Come along now, Dodie, the Queen o’ Scots is ready and waiting for us!’

  Hector had thought it a fine joke to name his tiny vessel in such a grand fashion, and even if it hadn’t brought him much in the way of reflected glory, it had certainly caused a small sensation among the fisher-folk of Rhanna when he had christened it with a bottle of beer and had launched it amid much swaggering and boasting.

  ‘Hector might no’ be the full shilling,’ old Jessie McKinnon had said at the time, voicing the general consensus of opinion, ‘but he’s all there just the same. The man would rob his grannie o’ eggs and sell them back to her for a profit without batting an eye.’