A Rhanna Mystery

by Christine Marion Fraser

  Whatever his faults, Hector the Boat was a likeable rascal and he undoubtedly seemed to have Dodie under his sway if the old eccentric’s new-found enthusiasm for fishing was anything to go by.

  Turning to Lachlan he puffed out his chest and said importantly, ‘I will have to go, doctor, the Queen o’ Scots is here and Hector will maybe no’ wait for me if I don’t get a move on.’

  Dodie still addressed Lachlan as ‘Doctor’, even though he had been retired for some years, and Lachlan couldn’t help smiling as the old man took to his heels with gusto, the loose sole of one enormous wellington slip-slapping noisily on the stone flags of the quayside.

  The steamer was leaving the harbour; as she sailed out into the open sea Phebie and Kirsteen soon became just dots at the rails. Lachlan stood watching till all he could see was the smoke from the funnels.

  Fiona, his daughter, came running up, a tall young woman with a lively face and neatly bobbed glossy brown hair. ‘Damn! I’ve missed it!’ she panted. ‘After saying to Mother I’d be here to see her off. Grant’s keeping an eye on Ian and I meant to be on time but at the last minute old Jessie popped in for a blether and you know what she’s like once she gets going. Her niece Barbara lives in the Midlands and has been ill for some time so Jessie is trying to get her to come to Blair Croft for a holiday.’

  Lachlan nodded, ‘Barbara McKinnon, I remember her, left the island to work in England and married a man by the name o’ Benson. There’s a whole bunch o’ bairns, I believe, and Benson flew the coop when his wife became ill, leaving the family to fend for themselves.’

  Fiona shook her head. ‘I heard all about that, from Jessie herself of course . . .’ She broke off to gaze at her father. He seemed a little forlorn, she thought, and just a tiny bit lost looking.

  ‘Come on.’ Linking her arm through his she pulled him away from the harbour and onto the road. ‘A cup of tea is what you need, and maybe a nice hot scone absolutely smothered in bramble jam. Jessie brought some of each and once Grant gets his teeth into them there won’t be anything left for anybody else. You and me will make merry first so just you relax and come with me whilst mother-cum-wife sails o’er the sea.’

  He laughed; she was light-hearted and talkative and just the boost he needed in that strange moment of loneliness he had experienced when the steamer had sailed away taking Phebie with it.

  Chapter Three

  It was quiet in the house and after only a few minutes Fergus could bear it no longer. None of the usual faces were there that morning. Donald was in bed with flu, Davie McKinnon had a septic toe and ‘couldny get his boots on’, and Bob hadn’t yet arrived, which wasn’t like him as normally he was up with the lark and immersing himself in his work. It was a busy time of the year too, the early lambs were arriving and Bob liked to be out there in the fields, striding amongst the ewes with his dog at his heels.

  Everything was strange and silent, both in and out of the house. The geese had marched down to the fields and were now grazing peaceably on the grasses, the hens were crooning contentedly in their run, and King Cock had crowed himself to a standstill and now stood balanced on one leg, thoughtfully eyeing the upturned backside of Granny Hen, the grand old lady of the hen-run who bossed the other hens unmercifully and pecked King Cock if he dared to come near her with anything other than honourable intentions.

  Fergus glanced towards the road, hoping to see a sign of Shona, or Ruth or even Tina, who had promised to look in to see, ‘Will you be needing a bittie help?’

  He had scorned the idea of all these women fussing over him and had expected the feeling to last for some considerable time after Kirsteen’s departure. Now here he was, Kirsteen just five minutes away, and already he felt bereft of human companionship.

  Get a hold o’ yourself, man, he told himself sternly, and striding over to the barn he yanked the door open and began forking cut turnips into a barrow which would later be scattered in the fields for the sheep.

  Heinz, as usual, had followed his master and now lay sprawled on the straw-covered floor, languidly scratching one ear and yawning for all he was worth. Suddenly his ears pricked forward and he scrambled to his feet, a few long lopes taking him over to the stumpy wooden steps leading up to the hayloft. Excitedly he began whimpering and yelping and gazing upwards.

  ‘Be quiet, boy!’ snapped Fergus irritably, in no mood for Heinz and his games.

  But the dog ignored the order. Whining and barking he clambered up into the hayloft to disappear from view, the sounds from his lungs growing in volume till with a sigh Fergus abandoned his task and strode over to see what all the fuss was about.

  Heinz appeared, looking down from his lofty perch, bits of grassy debris adhering to his fur, his eyes big and bright in his lolling-tongued face.

  ‘Get out o’ there, lad!’ Fergus scrambled up and made to grab the dog by the scruff of the neck, but Heinz neatly evaded the movement and bobbed out of sight once more, his short yelps and barks becoming more muffled as he burrowed his way through the loose hay.

  ‘I’ll kill you for this, you bugger!’ roared Fergus as he went after the dog. He didn’t have to go very far. Heinz was waiting for him, standing on top of a pile of sacks like the king of the jungle. Before his master could pour any more vitriol into his ears he turned his head to look over his shoulder in a dignified gesture that very effectively conveyed all that he was feeling.

  Fergus looked over the dog’s head. The sight that met his eyes took his breath away. A young girl in her early twenties lay sprawled in the hay. Her eyes were closed, she was dirty, ragged and unkempt; her hair was a mass of matted black ringlets, her skin pale and translucent in the rays of sunshine streaming in through the skylight. A large purple bruise on the side of her forehead stood out from the surrounding smooth skin like a medallion, and her legs and feet were scratched and bleeding through the rips in her stockings.

  Fergus stared, ‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ he swore softly, ‘where in God’s name did she spring from!’

  Then he remembered last night, the darkness, the shadows, the feeling of foreboding that had seized him, the sensing that something or someone was out there, watching, waiting, before creeping furtively towards the house. It must have been her, this slip of a girl, seeking shelter from the night and the cold. But why was she out there in the first place? And who was she?

  He asked himself these questions even as he fell on his knees beside her and applied his fingers to her neck to feel for a pulse. It was there alright, beating faintly but steadily. She was icy cold to the touch and with a sense of urgency he rose to his feet and hurried out of the barn to the house.

  For once Heinz didn’t follow but lay where he was, his soft muzzle on the girl’s chest, his large, moist, mournful eyes holding an expression of anxiety beneath the furrowed canopy of his brows.

  Seizing one of Kirsteen’s own coats from the hall-stand Fergus ran back with it to the barn and in minutes he was tucking the heavy woollen tweed folds round the girl’s body. He sat back on his knees, staring at her, nonplussed as he wondered what to do next. Having lost one of his arms in an accident many years ago he knew he wouldn’t be able to lift her on his own, except perhaps to throw her over his shoulders – not a very good idea bearing in mind that she might have other injuries he didn’t know about.

  He felt uneasy. Where the hell was Bob? He should be here! Unless of course he was at last past it and hadn’t bothered to get out of his bed this morning. But no! Bob would never behave like that. He was a diligent worker and scorned idleness of any sort, especially in what he described as ‘these soft young buggers you get mooching around nowadays!’ No, no, Bob would have a good excuse for not being here, he’d better, or else! Fergus knitted his brows and scowled. Then he remembered Lachlan. He ought to be coming back from the harbour about now. He was a doctor, he would know what to do.

  With a sigh of relief Fergus gladly vacated the barn and with Heinz once more at his heels he walked swiftly to the end of the
farm track to await the approach of Lachlan in his little car.

  Lachlan was feeling more cheerful as he drove slowly away from the smart new bungalow into which Fiona and her husband, Grant McKenzie, had recently moved. One of three, nestling into the lower slopes of Sgurr nan Ruadh close to Murdy McKinnon’s tiny cottage, it was neat and bright and, along with its equivalents, regarded as a ‘featureless box wi’ funny wee chimneys’ by Rhanna’s older and more traditional inhabitants.

  ‘I wouldny live in one if you paid me,’ had sniffed old Annack Gow disapprovingly. ‘You can hear yourself clattering about in them as if you were wearing clogs. They don’t smell like real houses and forbye all that there are no wee corners to hide in.’

  Her contemporaries knew what she meant. The houses they had lived in as children had been full of little corners, both in and out of the house; character had been built into every stone, and they had smelled of peat smoke and salt herring, not to mention all the other smells associated with self-sufficiency. Families had all lived under the one roof, grandparents, parents, children, looking after one another, sharing and caring, comforting each other in times of trouble, just being there in the home together in the long, dark nights of winter.

  Things were different nowadays. Families no longer remained together, the children going their separate ways as soon as they were old enough, into houses of their own where they could live their own lives away from the watchful eyes of parents and grandparents.

  Self-suffiency wasn’t as important as it had once been. The steamers brought regular supplies to the islands and it was easy to take a trip over the water to the mainland shops. Mail order catalogues were part and parcel of everyday life and only a few of the womenfolk spun yarn into cloth, and then it was mainly to sell to the tourists.

  There was no doubt about it, everything was easier all round, yet no matter how comfortable they might be, the hankerings for a past way of life remained with the old ones who liked nothing better than to gather together and reminisce about their youth, even though there were few among them who would honestly have wanted to return to a way of life that had often been hard.

  Their lifestyle now was somewhere comfortably in between the past and the present. As long as they could get together with their cronies for a good gossip and a ‘cosy wee cuppy’ the world wasn’t such a bad place to live in and though their offspring might not be under the same roof as them they were reassuringly close at hand if they were needed.

  Houses in general retained the look of ‘real houses’, with proper chimneys, good thick walls, and roofs that were slated, pitched or corrugated, according to taste and finance. Peat smoke still spiralled from the chimneys to add its distinctive bouquet to the air and make town-bred visitors pause and wonder at the strange, evocative smell.

  Television had not yet arrived on Rhanna. People had to make their own entertainment, as they had done for centuries, and the ceilidh still survived, with people visiting one another’s houses for evenings of story and song.

  But times were changing, there was no doubt of that. New buildings were gradually going up; a small council estate was presently being built near the village, and there was talk of a public convenience being erected at the harbour – ‘the sooner the better’ according to Ranald, who was heartily sick of people ‘peeing up against his boatshed and rotting the wood’. The Portcull Hotel had recently had an extension added, the present owner, Duncan ‘Bull Bull’ McManus, declaring he had been ‘bursting at the seams for the last few summers’, which Todd the Shod had attributed to his trousers rather than to the proportions of his hotel.

  These modest innovations didn’t unduly spoil the appearance of the village nor made that much difference to the general way of life. The menfolk were glad of the extra work, the young folk enjoyed the extra activity, while the womenfolk attributed the changes to ‘moving with the times’ and hoped optimistically that a grammar school might one day be included in the curriculum so that their children wouldn’t have to travel to the mainland in order to further their education.

  It wasn’t easy however to persuade some members of the older generation that everything was for the best and that the new houses would soon melt into the background and never be noticed.

  ‘Rubbish!’ maintained old Annack Gow, who was ninety and had been born in a blackhouse into which she often moved during the winter months because she claimed it was cosier than the ‘modern hoosie’. ‘They will aye be noticed for they are no more than pieces o’ flotsam wi’ bits o’ cement and spit holding them together. A puff o’ wind will blow them down in no time!’

  ‘Ay, you’re right there, Annack,’ agreed Jessie McKinnon, a fiercely independent spinster woman of seventy with a fresh rosy skin and a big hooked nose, who lived full time in a cottage with a thatched roof which was always needing to be repaired and was a ‘damt nuisance’ though her pride wouldn’t allow her to admit the fact. ‘I wouldn’t part wi’ my house for all o’ they new ones put together. My walls are so thick a gale can be blowing outside and I am never the wiser.’

  ‘Except when your roof blows off, Jessie,’ interposed Tam McKinnon, who had lost count of the repairs he had made to the thatch of Blair Croft. ‘But you’re right enough in what you say,’ he added quickly because Jessie’s defence of her property could be formidable. ‘They’ll never build houses like yours again. The young ones will never know the joy o’ these wee secret rooms that were built to hide the whisky stills from the customs mannie.’ His eyes had gleamed, and he went into a muse as he remembered the day he had found an old pot still in Annack’s byre, which he and his cronies had resurrected in order to brew a few casks of the bonny malt which had tasted all the better for being illegal.

  ‘Here!’ Jessie had barked, bringing Tam sharply out of his reverie, ‘I hope you’re no’ suggesting that I have a whisky still in my house. All that died out wi’ my father, may the Lord rest him, the rascal! In his day he was that busy making whisky he just let the croft fall down about his lugs and the only time he ever stopped was when he dropped. My mother – the Lord rest her too – couldn’t wait to have the wee room sealed up and that way it has remained to this very day, as sure as God’s my judge!’

  Jessie, her old eyes growing misty, was getting carried away with self-righteousness, and shaking his head sorrowfully Tam had muttered a hasty, ‘Ay, right enough now,’ and gone smartly about his business.

  Fiona McKenzie didn’t give two figs about these opinions. She was young, she was modern, she was delighted with her new house and extremely proud of it. Fiona’s home was Spic and Span with capital letters. She never left anything on a chair and if anyone else did it was whipped away in double quick time and deposited in its ‘proper place’ and woe betide the sinner who dared to leave any kitchen requisite on her ‘best furniture’.

  Lachlan enjoyed going there to play with his grandson on the shining floors, though he was always glad to return to the homely atmosphere of Slochmhor where spiders could spin their webs without them being too noticeable and it didn’t seem to matter very much if a few books and newspapers were left on a chair or a cup on a sideboard.

  But he had to admit, Fiona had a soft spot for spiders; from childhood she had been interested in all forms of animal life and had gone on to become a marine biologist. Nowadays she was more inclined to enjoy being a wife and a mother and Lachlan teased her about it, telling her she was becoming soft, to which she just laughed as they both knew full well she would never fully lose the tomboyish streak that had always been in her.

  Lachlan looked around him with appreciation as he drove along the Glen Fallan road. Although he had lived on Rhanna for more years than he cared to remember he never ceased to be impressed by its wild beauty and lofty grandeur. On one side of him the Muir of Rhanna stretched away like a vast umber mattress; on the other, the patchwork fields of Laigmhor rose gently up to meet the russet foothills of Ben Machrie. In front of him the great bens sheared up, purple and blue, towering into
the azure sky, enfolding gossamer trails of vapour into their lofty bosoms so that the conies were veiled and secretive looking.

  The hill burns were glinting in the sunshine, grey fangs of wet rock ‘slavered and spat into the ravines’, as described by Tam when he was waxing lyrical after a dram too many in the Portcull Hotel. Little white blobs that were new lambs dotted the lower fields; on the roadside verges the daffodils were opening their yellow trumpets to the sun; hazel catkins hung suspended above the peaty brown water of the river; the dark green leaves of bluebells spiked the mossy earth and clumps of primroses peeped shyly through their winter covering of dead leaves.

  Rhanna was a good place to be on a day like this, Lachlan decided as he eased Banger McCoy round a pothole. It was Fiona who had given the car its title, saying the noisy emissions from the exhaust pipe reminded her of an Irish aquaintance of hers who had almost exploded after dining recklessly on beer and baked beans.

  As Banger McCoy progressed slowly homewards Lachlan deliberately eased his foot off the accelerator till the car was just crawling at a snail’s pace. The further he drove the more he was becoming aware of what it would be like at Slochmhor without Phebie’s cheerful presence. How quiet the house would be without her, how empty the rooms. He had always told her laughingly that a month or two on his own wouldn’t go amiss, as then he could really get on with the book he was writing about his experiences as an island G.P.

  He had started the book on his retiral in 1965. The islanders had given him a little portable typewriter to ‘send him on his way’ and he had positively bristled with enthusiasm at the idea of getting all his accumulated notes down on paper at last. But thinking and doing had proved to be two very different entities. His wastepaper bins had overflown with all his discarded efforts and there had been more little bonfires than usual in the back garden.