A Rhanna Mystery

by Christine Marion Fraser

  Tina emitted a great sigh and looked sad. In her concern over Fern she had made no attempt to tidy herself; her hair was straggling in sad little wisps about her ears; a lilac shawl that she was clutching round her neck looked as if it had suffered a serious disaster in a mangle; her slippers were on the wrong feet and looked as if they were walking away from one another when she moved to the window to peer outside. But her appearance was the last thing on her mind in those moments. ‘Do you know what I think, Fergus?’ she said pensively. ‘I think the lass is running away from some evil, terrible creature who is out to get her and wreak some horrible revenge on her.’

  Fergus glowered at her. He wasn’t at his best first thing in the morning and Tina – in common with many of the other islanders – had a fertile imagination, and loved nothing better than to spin a good tale of blood and gore.

  Throwing Fergus a coy, sidelong glance she went on, ‘I was also after thinking that she is no’ the snow white angel she would have us all believe. That doesn’t mean to say that she is a bad lassie by any means, but wi’ her looks she knows how to tempt the men and she is likely used to having them sniffing after her in droves. Maybe, in some way, she went too far wi’ one o’ them and he is out to get her blood. Yesterday, when she was begging us to let her go, she seemed shat scared and is maybe worried that this bloke, whoever he is, is out to murder her.’

  ‘For God’s sake, woman!’ Fergus barked. ‘Will you get out o’ this room and let me put on my breeks if that’s no’ too much to ask! We’ll talk about the girl later but first things first. Later on, if I can spare the time that is, I’ll have a look around for her.’

  Tina gazed at him with calculated sympathy. ‘Ach my, this lass has certainly got us all going. I could see by the way you were looking at her last night you had a wee liking for her. She certainly flaunted herself at you, and wi’ my experience o’ men, I know fine that even the strongest have their weak points. It was enough to tempt the flesh o’ any man, the way she stood there in her birthday suit for all the world to see . . .’

  ‘Tina!’ he roared, and that lady took herself slowly and majestically out of his sight but not before she paused briefly at the door to make her parting shot.

  ‘We haven’t heard the last o’ Miss Fern Lee. She’ll turn up again, as sure as I breathe – and wi’ you having such a soft spot for her you’ll be the first mannie she’ll make for – you mark my words.’

  Chapter Eight

  ‘My, my,’ Tina gave vent to an almighty yawn as she entered the butcher’s premises, ‘I just don’t know what’s wrong wi’ me this morning. I have been asleep on my feets ever since I got up and found myself in a strange bed that wasny my own.’

  ‘Oh, ay,’ Holy Smoke placed a heavy intonation on the two simple words, ‘a strange bed, eh? And you looking as if you hadn’t slept a wink all night.’

  Tina looked at him askance. There were times when the butcher man could rile even her and her tone was somewhat acid as she said with dignity, ‘Och, you have a terrible bad mind on you for a holy man, Mr McKnight. If you must know, I spent the night at Laigmhor. Fergus o’ the Glen asked would I stay to see to the lassie who is biding there, as he was a wee bittie worried about her. And now, after all the fuss, she just upped and went in the middle o’ the night, nary a word to anyone, and himself not too sure what should be done about it.’

  Almost before she had finished speaking she was pounced upon by the other customers in the shop.

  ‘I knew it, I knew it!’ cried Kate triumphantly. ‘There’s something fishy about that whole business. The girl just sneaked in from nowhere and now she’s disappeared in a like manner. There’s more to this than meets the eye and I for one would like to know what it is.’

  ‘Are you talking about that lass o’ McKenzie’s?’ Jim Jim was sitting in the shop. He was hard of hearing, and moulding one hairy lug into a wizened trumpet he cocked it to the main source of sound. ‘You mean she just left him? Without a word o’ thanks for his hospitality?’

  ‘Ay, if you put it like that,’ Tina agreed. Then, with a nervous glance over her shoulder, she went on to say melodramatically, ‘If you ask me, I think she’s on the run from the law. In fact . . .’ Here she paused long enough for her words to sink in before going on, ‘She might be a murderer for all we know. She was certainly in a terrible state when Fergus found her. She had blood on her clothes and . . .’ she gazed around the shop . . . ‘though some o’ it was hers the rest might have belonged to somebody else.’

  ‘That’s what I said!’ Ranald looked stunned. ‘I wrote it all down when Totie suggested having that competition to guess who was the stranger. It’s in the box!’ In his excitement his voice was rising. ‘And seeing as how I’m right I’ll just go along to the post office this very minute and collect my winnings.’

  ‘You’ll do nothing o’ the sort, Ranald McTavish,’ Kate told him scathingly. ‘Until we know for sure why the lass came here, the money stays where it is and that’s final.’

  Holy Smoke, not at all pleased at the interruption to business, deftly wrapped a pound of his best pork sausages in a scrap of grease-proof paper and handed the package to Kate with a flourish. Kate took the sausages and glowered at them. At least three of them had escaped their meagre covering and with a snort she pointed out this fact to the butcher.

  ‘Ach, come on now, Kate,’ he said in his high-pitched, whining voice. ‘Surely it is the meat and no’ the paper that counts. You have to admit you would never get links as good as mine anywhere else in the land.’

  Kate sniffed disdainfully. ‘Ach, you’re nothing but a mean bodach and a blether to boot, Sandy McKnight! How would I know about shops in other lands? I have lived on this island most o’ my life and have been forced to buy my meat where I could get it.’

  ‘Forced! Forced!’ Holy Smoke almost choked on the peppermint he was sucking to mask the tobacco on his breath. ‘And here’s me, working my fingers to the bone in an honest attempt to provide this island with the best possible produce there is.’

  Bob, coming in at that moment, prevented a serious clash of personalities as both Kate and the butcher had been at loggerheads since the day they had met.

  ‘A quarter pound o’ wee beefies,’ Bob requested, taking out his money to count it carefully as he spoke.

  ‘A quarter pound?’ Holy Smoke repeated with a frown on his mournful features. ‘You surely must be mistaken, Bob. An amount like that wouldny decently feed a hungry mouse, far less a man o’ your stature.’

  ‘A quarter pound,’ insisted Bob with dignity, ‘and it is not for me, it is for Grace Donaldson’s cat.’

  ‘Her cat!’ Holy Smoke was taken aback. His moustache drooped, and his eyes bulged. ‘I don’t make mince for cats! I only make the best for human consumption and it is an insult to suggest otherwise. How about a nice bit offal? I have plenty o’ that and it’s what folks usually buy for their animals.’

  ‘Wee beefies,’ Bob repeated with a dangerous glint in his blue eyes. ‘And, if you don’t mind, I’m in a hurry, and have no intention o’ standing here arguing wi’ you, Mr McKnight.’

  Grumbling under his breath the butcher went to work the mincer, leaving Kate to smile at Bob and say curiously, ‘I believe congratulations are in order, Bob. I am after hearing that you and Grace are going to wed yourselves to one another at last.’

  ‘Ay, that would be correct,’ Bob agreed with a guarded expression on his face. He had never been one for what he called ‘shop talk’ since, in his opinion, they were places where rumour was born and idle tongues ‘ran away wi’ themselves’.

  ‘Ach, my,’ Kate’s eyes grew misty, ‘when I think o’ my poor old Joe, himself and Grace that happy in their own wee hoosie by the harbour. She is a good sowel, that she is, and made his last years tick sweetly for him. She will do the same wi’ you, Bob, for she is a woman just born to keep house for a man. I myself wouldny dream o’ taking on another husband after Tam. One o’ him is enough for any woman in
any one lifetime, though I wouldny change him even if I could. Mind you, I would never tell him that, his head’s as big as a football as it is.’

  ‘Well, I myself would not say no to another Matthew in my life.’ Tina, who had been carefully examining the strings of black puddings hanging in the window, spoke up. ‘He and me were just made for one another and while we had our differences we aye respected each other’s opinions.’ She gave vent to a lofty sigh. ‘If I could have another exactly like him it would be beautiful just, but I know I will never meet his like again. There was only one Matthew as far as I am concerned and now he is dead there is no’ another could take his place.’

  At that point Holy Smoke served Bob with his ‘wee beefies’, a meagre amount of money was exchanged, and the old shepherd departed the shop with dignity.

  ‘Why can he no’ ask for minced beef like everyone else?’ grumbled the butcher. ‘Him and his wee beefies indeed!’

  ‘Ach, Bob is just an old-fashioned mannie,’ said Tina indulgently. ‘He has the old way o’ talkin’ and does no harm to anyone.’

  ‘Ay, and wi’ him being a lonely bachelor man he is a bittie out o’ touch wi’ the modern ways,’ supplemented Kate. ‘He has lived alone wi’ himself for far too long but that will be changing now that Grace has had her way wi’ him.’

  ‘It’s no’ decent,’ intoned Behag primly, entering the shop at that moment and immediately adding her contribution to the conversation. ‘All these elderly folk wedding themselves to one another. That Grace should be ashamed o’ herself, old Joe hardly cold in his grave and herself goggling away at Bob in a manner befitting a schoolgirl, and her a widow woman twice over.’ Behag shook her palsied head and tucked a strand of wispy hair back into the confines of her headscarf. ‘I canny understand it myself,’ she went on with pursed lips, ‘the attraction that ordinary wee body has over the menfolk o’ the place. There was a time when she had three o’ them after her at once, Joe, Bob, and Captain Mac . . .’ At mention of the latter Behag sucked in her lips. ‘Well, at least he is off her list, and that I canny rightly understand either. That Elspeth, at her age! Hooking an old sea dog like Isaac McIntosh! She’ll be hard put to know what to do wi’ him once she has the ring on her finger.’

  Kate treated Behag to a deceptively charming smile. ‘Ay, ay, Behag, it is indeed a thought. Elspeth and Mac on their wedding night, playing hide and seek under the covers and neither o’ them too sure what it is they are looking for.’

  ‘I wouldny put too much sillar on that,’ Jim Jim piped up. ‘Don’t be forgetting, Elspeth was married to Hector Morrison, a hard-bitten seaman if ever there was one. He lived rough and he died the same and Elspeth has been a lonely woman all these years.’ He grinned reflectively. ‘You know, I mind her when she was just young. You wouldny think it to look at her now but she was a hot piece and no mistake. She raised the dust in many’s a hayloft, if I’m mindin’ right, and I myself escaped her by the skin o’ my breeks on more than one occasion.’ From the corner of his eye he spotted his wife Isabel hoving into view and hastily he composed his features into those of a man entirely innocent of the ways of the world.

  ‘Are you ready to come home yet?’ Isabel asked. ‘I’ve been run off my feets all morning looking to see where you were.’

  ‘Ay, ay, as ready as I’ll ever be.’ He rose creakily to his feet and leaning heavily on his stick he hobbled away out of the shop.

  ‘Are you no buying anything today, mistress?’ Holy Smoke enquired rather peevishly of Isabel. ‘I have some lovely pork sausages, freshly made and just burstin’ wi’ goodness.’

  ‘Ay well, let them burst,’ Isabel returned firmly. ‘I’ll buy them when I want them and no’ before.’

  Holy Smoke blew down his nostrils in disgust. ‘You would think my sausages were poisoned, the way some people behave.’

  Isabel disdained to answer and leaving the shop she crooked her arm to her husband and led him slowly along the road.

  ‘Ach, poor Jim Jim,’ sighed Kate solicitously, ‘he is getting worse wi’ the rheumies and could be doing wi’ one o’ they electric chairs to get around in. Our Nancy was after telling me she heard tell o’ a body who got one and is never off the top o’ the road wi’ it.’

  Tina banged a black pudding and a jar of liver pâté down on the counter. ‘I’ll be taking these, Mr McKnight . . .’ She glanced at the clock on the wall and gave a mild cluck. ‘Will you look at the time! I’m all behind wi’ myself today. I should have been over at the Manse seeing to the minister but Grannie Ann and Granda John will be waiting for their dinner so I’ll have to look to them first.’ She glanced doubtfully at the black pudding. ‘I wonder, will Granda John be able to digest a heavy thing like that? It gave him heartburn the last time and I said I would never get it again but och, I’m fair rushed and canny think what else to give him.’

  ‘How about some nice pork links then?’ Holy Smoke said in his best shop manner. ‘As fresh as the morning dew and just the thing for old John to get his teeths into.’

  Tina wrinkled her nose. ‘He hasn’t got any, that’s why he is so prone to the heartburn, besides, I’m no’ in the mood for pork links myself today.’

  ‘You’re no’ in the mood! I thought you said you were buying the stuff for the old folks?’

  ‘Och ay, I am right enough, but I’ll be having a bite along wi’ them and these links o’ yours don’t always agree wi’ me. As I said, Granda John canny abide anything as tough as a sausage wearing a skin and Grannie Ann just sucks the meat out and leaves an awful mess on her plate.’

  ‘This island!’ Holy Smoke said despairingly. ‘Half its teeths are missing or shoved to the back o’ a drawer somewhere, and the other half is waiting for the dentist mannie to come and perform a miracle!’

  Holy Smoke checked himself. It would never do to lose his temper with a customer, he needed all the business he could get on an island where trade depended on the locals for the greater part of the year.

  Kate and Tina left the shop together, avidly discussing the latest mystery surrounding ‘Fergus McKenzie’s young woman’.

  Behag followed fast on their heels. She had no intention of being left alone in the shop with the butcher man. She neither liked nor trusted him and it had always puzzled her how he tried so hard to ingratiate himself with her when she made no effort to hide her feelings from him.

  ‘Miss Beag!’ Holy Smoke’s voice followed her out of the shop in no uncertain manner. ‘You haven’t bought anything yet! Also, I was wondering – would you like to come over to my house some night for a dram and a game o’ cards?’

  Behag stopped dead in her tracks, her heartbeat quickening, a flush spreading over her wizened countenance. A dram and a game of cards indeed! And him the so-called holy man who looked down his nose at the village men for their sinful liaisons with the bottle. The – the hypocrite! Just what did he take her for! She, Behag Beag, who never touched a drop and denounced card games as ‘gambolling wi’ the very de’il himself’. But worst of all! In the man’s own home! Alone with him! Nobody else there, only him – and her . . .

  Behag shivered, she trembled. Pulling herself together she sprachled away down the road as fast as her spindly legs would carry her, straight to her very own medicine cabinet to withdraw an innocuous-looking brown cough bottle. Holding it to her lips she gulped deeply of its contents and then she sat back in her chair to stare at the wall and take a few deep breaths. Without a twinge of conscience she told herself that this was different, this was the uisge beatha, an entirely medicinal brew, the very water of life itself. The Lord Himself would surely not have denied her the healing draught in those fraught moments of her life.

  She was vindicated, she was saved! Her palsied head bobbed on her thin shoulders, seeming to agree of its own accord with her puritanical thoughts. With dignity Behag arose from her seat. Replacing the cough bottle very carefully back in the medicine cabinet she clicked the door shut and went to boil an egg for her lunch. She felt good
and safe inside of herself, and she was glowing, there was no doubt about that; a gentle kind of glow filled with satisfaction.

  Going to a drawer she withdrew her mail order catalogue and placed it on the table beside her plate. She would browse through the pages while she was having her lunch. Her medicine cupboard needed stocking up and the catalogue was a good way of getting life’s little essentials without anybody knowing too much about her methods for getting them. Erchy the Post was the one drawback. When he brought her mail he always had a mite too much to say about the weight of her parcels. That glint in his eye, the knowing smirk on his face, no doubt wishing he had x-ray vision so that he could poke and pry into the private side of her life. It was a quirk of Erchy’s nature which had always been a thorn in Behag’s side. When he delivered her letters he was often able to tell her who they were from and where they had come from, simply because he made it his business to examine postmarks and study handwriting.

  Behag buried her spoon into her boiled egg and snorted. A terrible thing just, to be inquisitive to the point of indecency! Everybody had a right to their privacy – everyone – even the very animals themselves liked to curl up in their own little corner in order to escape the world for a while.

  Behag crunched into her toast and flipped through the pages of her catalogue with the utmost enjoyment, lingering over the displays of vests and knickers. She could be doing with some of those, the thermal ones with the nice long legs. No one, with the exception of the owner, knew what went on under a long skirt, not if a body had always kept herself decent and private – as she had – all her life! Of course, when she was younger, those scallywags of the island had been forever trying to make her do physical things, but she had been blessed with the strength to resist – except . . . maybe once or twice . . . nothing much of course . . .

  Behag fell to daydreaming as she remembered little incidents, pleasurable sensations; perhaps if she hadn’t been so adamant . . . She gave herself a mental shake. How could she? How could she even begin to think she might have wanted the likes of that – from a man! They were all the same when it came to the bit.