Call of Glengarron

by Nancy Buckingham

  I could well understand Isabel Lennox’s need to get away. After what had happened, life at Glengarron would be unbearable for her.

  Whether or not Craig had told her the whole story, I didn’t know. I guessed he would have spared his aunt as much as he could, but there was a lot she had to be told. And as it turned out there was also a lot that she in turn was able to tell Craig.

  He came to me later in the small sitting room, where I was trying to while away the evening hours. Limping heavily across the room, he flopped into a chair facing me. I thought he looked desperately tired, with a sort of grayness about his face.

  “You’d better hear it all, Lucy,” he said in a low voice. “And then we can put it behind us.”

  Craig began right at the beginning, careful to leave nothing out. Alistair Lennox, it seemed, had never been the comfortably-off Glasgow exporter everyone had supposed. Neglecting the business his father had left him, he’d spent wildly, sinking deep into debt. He had owed a great deal of money to his brother-in-law.

  “My father’s death must have come as a godsend to him,” Craig said, speaking in a cold clipped tone. “He certainly seized his chance with both hands. In fact, it was so damned convenient that I can’t help suspecting ...”

  “You mean—that was murder, too?”

  Craig made a little gesture of anger and futility.

  “I wish I could be sure it wasn’t. But there was something my aunt said that made me wonder. I don’t think she intended to mention it, and I got the feeling that she herself had all along been afraid to believe it. Anyway, what she let slip suggested that when Uncle Alistair was leading the rescue operation, he may have deliberately left my father lying injured in the snow, and only ‘discovered’ him when it was too late.”

  “Oh no ... !”

  I could appreciate Craig’s bitterness. For years he had felt nothing but grateful admiration for his aunt’s husband. And now Craig knew that Lennox’s motives in taking over the running of Glengarron had not been noble at all, but quite the reverse. Whether he’d actually had a direct hand in the death of Craig’s father we should never know, but I could well imagine it. The man’s cunning mind worked in such a way. I remembered him planning to extract the maximum advantage for himself out of my death. He had boasted about it to me.

  “I shall be not only believed, but honored too, for my heroic efforts.”

  Craig was fiddling with his watch strap. “I feel desperately sorry for Aunt Isabel,” he murmured. “All these years she’s had to stand by and watch him dragging Glengarron down just as he ruined his own business.”

  “But couldn’t she have stopped him?”

  Craig glanced across at me with a faint, rueful smile. “She loved her husband—and he was very much the stronger personality. What could she have done?”

  At that moment I found it difficult to see anything beyond the wrong done to Craig. “All the same ...”

  “I don’t blame Aunt Isabel,” Craig said quietly. “She could still have a home here if she wanted. But I think she’s wise to get right away.” He explained that his aunt was returning to Glasgow. She planned to settle there among old friends, and try to make a new life for herself.

  “And Fiona?” I asked.

  “She’ll have to do what her mother wishes, for a change. There’s a new sort of determination about Aunt Isabel now, and that’s a very good thing. Fiona needs firm handling. She’s been far too spoiled in the past.” Craig was studying his watch strap again, as if it intrigued him. “Fiona was encouraged by her father to believe she would marry me one day. He could usually get her to do whatever he wanted, and for Fiona to be mistress of Glengarron would certainly have clinched his position.”

  “But instead you married Margo?”

  “Yes.” He sighed heavily. “Poor Margo ... ”

  “You’re very generous, Craig,” I said softly. “You find it easy to forgive.”

  “Whatever Margo was—however badly she behaved, she didn’t deserve to die.”

  I nodded mutely. Margo had died because she was so ambitious, because she’d wanted to queen it at Glengarron as the Laird’s wife. And since this represented a threat to Lennox’s own greedy ambitions, she’d had to be removed. A planned murder, a calculated, cold-blooded killing.

  “Why weren’t there any questions asked about your uncle being in London that night? Surely somebody must have thought it odd ... ?”

  Craig shook his head. “It was easy for him. I gather he was always disappearing on so-called fishing trips. In actual fact, he’d go off for a few days of wild dissipation. His behavior was notorious. But for Aunt Isabel’s sake his friends backed up the polite fiction that he was away to his fishing.”

  I remembered the veiled amusement around the dinner table when Alistair Lennox had announced to the guests that he had himself caught the salmon they were eating. But nobody at that table could possibly have imagined what their host had really been doing on one of his “fishing trips”.

  I had been wondering how I could ever apologize to Craig for having suspected him of being responsible for Margo’s death, and of trying to kill me. How could any woman possibly apologize to a man for such an enormity? But somehow it didn’t seem to matter any more. It was as if Craig and I were beyond the need for explanations.

  One of the things he said that evening made my heart begin to pound.

  “You just can’t imagine how I felt, Lucy, when I saw you driving off with Uncle Alistair in that jeep. I realised then that he must … and there wasn’t a thing I could do to save you.”

  Mercifully Angus MacRae had turned up just a few minutes later. Having made his peace with his fretting wife, he’d felt too uneasy to stay at home, and had insisted on setting out again to help in the search for Jamie and me. He’d borrowed a van from a neighbor, the local plumber, and had immediately driven back to the crossroads.

  “And was I glad to see him,” Craig exclaimed. “We just charged after you flat out, praying we’d be in time....”

  I shut my eyes, flinching away from an echo of terror. I still couldn’t let my imagination dwell on what might have happened if Angus MacRae and Craig had not turned up when they did.

  Craig still had some urgent telephoning to do that evening. I decided to make an early night of it.

  With the new day I became aware of a change in the atmosphere at Glengarron. It no longer seemed to me a grim and sinister place. Instead I found a strange new peace about the quiet here, as if the castle in its ancient wisdom had shrugged off recent horrors as mere incidents in time.

  Craig’s ankle was improving fast, and after lunch we took a short stroll along the causeway. It was a glorious afternoon, warm, with hardly any breeze, and the sky a deep cloudless blue. Loch Ghorm glittered a million pinpoints of sunlight, and at its far end Ben Liath Mohr towered benignly.

  Sitting on the low parapet, Craig and I watched Jamie idly as he chuffed backward and forward. Occasionally he hooted a penetrating imitation of a train whistle.

  Craig picked with his fingers at the crumbling stone wall. “The whole estate is in a hell of a mess, Lucy,” he said gravely,

  I waited. I could think of nothing to say.

  “My uncle totally ignored the fact that ownership of a big estate carries responsibilities as well as privilege. He was spending every penny he could lay his hands on, without a thought of the future. I’ve been discovering more signs of neglect every day.”

  “You’ll be able to get it back to rights eventually, won’t you?”

  He frowned. “It’ll never again be what it was—but perhaps that’s not a bad thing. The days of the big landowners are passing. I’ve got plenty of new ideas....”

  “Yes, Craig?”

  “The estate could be a research and training establishment. There’s a great deal still to be learned about forestry, and so many underdeveloped countries are crying out for the know-how....”

  The weariness of the last couple of days had gone. Craig’s eye
s were shining with enthusiasm. “My father was planning something on those lines. We could turn the place into a forestry center, using part of the castle itself as the college

  Craig’s hand moved along the parapet until it covered mine. “It would have to be you and me together, Lucy. Nothing would be worthwhile without you any more.”

  My eyes were suddenly misted with tears, so I could scarcely see him. But I felt the fingers over mine tighten.

  “You’ve got to stay for always now, darling.”

  It was Jamie who checked me from sobbing out my joy on Craig’s shoulder. The imaginary locomotive drew to a solemn halt beside us, steam hissing loudly.

  “I didn’t like that game we played, Lucy.”

  My voice was unsteady as I asked him, “What game, Jamie?”

  “That one about running away and hiding from Daddy. I didn’t like it.”

  He prepared to start off again, elbows bent, arms ready to act as pistons. “Don’t let’s play that game any more.”

  I smiled at him, and realized that my hand had turned under Craig’s, answering his pressure.

  “No, darling,” I said firmly. “We won’t ever try to run away from your daddy again.”

  Copyright © 1968 by Nancy Buckingham

  Originally published by Ace

  Electronically published in 2013 by Belgrave House

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  No portion of this book may be reprinted in whole or in part, by printing, faxing, E-mail, copying electronically or by any other means without permission of the publisher. For more information, contact Belgrave House, 190 Belgrave Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94117-4228

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  This is a work of fiction. All names in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to any person living or dead is coincidental.