“Did it suffer damage, then?”
“Well,” said Laura, treading on delicate ground because she did not want to tell a direct lie, “it certainly wasn’t quite in the same condition as when I left it, and judging by the mileage figures and the—er…”
“The petrol consumption?”
“…I just wondered whether somebody—it would have to be two people, actually—used it to reach the station here so that one of them could catch a train.”
“What would be the latest time you could be sure it was safely housed at Coinneamh Lodge?”
“Well, I didn’t go to bed until well after midnight, and I should have heard it being driven away, I’m sure, or the door being slammed, or something. From what I can work out, it was taken away sometime between about two o’clock and six in the morning.”
The station-master fished out a time-table.
“You may see for yourself, mistress, that there is no train leaves this station after the one Mr. Grant catches at eight-fifteen when he travels to Inverness during the clement months of the year. The earliest morning train does not go out until nine-five.”
“Well, anyway, thank you for telling me,” said Laura. “I just thought it might be somebody who wanted to catch a train.”
“Does Mrs. Grant have no suspicion who might have helped himself to the loan of it? Coinneamh Lodge lies a long way off the road.”
“She seems to have no idea.”
“Well, well, I’m sorry you were in trouble over a hired car. That would be sorely vexing for you, yes, and expensive, too.”
“Talking of car hire,” said Laura, “I think somebody told me that there was a car here at the station. Is that so?”
“It is, indeed.”
“But the Grants took shelter in the station entrance instead of having it take Mrs. Grant home. That seems odd to me. After all, they couldn’t have known that I was coming along, could they?”
“No, no, they could not.”
“I only stopped because I had made up my mind I would have to find a bed at the hotel.”
“Yes, I see. That was a fortunate thing indeed for Mrs. Grant.”
“If you don’t mind my asking, was the station car on hire that evening?”
“My mind is not clear about that. Ian Beg may know.” He went out and returned with a thin, very shy young man whom he introduced as, “This will be Ian. He issues the tickets and does the portering and holds the train if there should be those on the road wishful to ride on it. Now, then, man Ian, put your thoughts to the wet Friday Mr. Grant’s estate car broke down and himself pushing it with his wife at the steering. Do you mind the Friday I mean?”
“I do so, Mr. Murray.”
“Well, now, was our own car away?”
“It was not, then.”
“It was not? Did Mr. Grant speak of wishing it on hire for his wife to get home?”
“He did not.”
“I suppose,” said Laura, “that, if he had driven his wife home in it, he would not have been able to get to Coinneamh Lodge and back in time for the train?”
“That would be the way of it.”
“You mean, then,” said Dame Beatrice, giving Ian a friendly leer which obviously frightened him very much, “that Mrs. Grant was absolutely dependent upon some friendly motorist coming along and offering her a lift?”
“It would be like that, yes, indeed.”
“Was it a likely thing to have happened? I should have thought that this was rather a lonely road.”
“Anybody would give anybody a lift on such a night,” said Ian.
“How many passengers do you usually expect on the evening train?” asked Laura.
“Och, it might be as many as fifteen, times it would be two.”
“Well, that doesn’t exactly sound like a London rush hour. Couldn’t you have offered to drive her home yourself? Surely, when she was in such difficulties, and had to get home to her baby to free the baby-sitter, Mr. Murray here would have looked after the train for you?”
“Ay.” Ian appeared to lose himself in thought. “Och, ay. There is something in what you say. Only, you see, our car was suffering from a defective clutch, righted on the following morning.”
Laura wanted to laugh, but knew that this reaction would deeply offend the young Highlander.
“Oh, I see,” she said. “But you told us that Mr. Grant made no enquiry about hiring the car. I quite understood when you said that he himself had no time to take her home because of missing his train, but couldn’t he have suggested that, for once, you yourself could have taken her?—before he knew that the station car was out of action, I mean.”
“He could not. He would be knowing that not for anyone would I enter the policies of Coinneamh.”
“Why not, then, Mr. Beg?”
“It is clear to me that you have not the Gaelic,” said Ian, shaking his head. The station-master rose and, courteous to the last, showed out Dame Beatrice and Laura.
“Well,” said Dame Beatrice, when they were in her car and clear of the station, “I am stunned by the way in which you dominated that interview. I offer congratulations, and rejoice that the mantle of Elijah should have fallen upon Elisha to such excellent effect.”
Laura grinned.
“We’ve found out what we wanted to know, anyway,” she said, “so a truce to the leg-pulling. We know Grant went by train that night, but, if that lad Ian is right, we can’t be at all sure that it was Mrs. Grant who borrowed my car that early morning. And yet who else could it have been, and what about that crack of my not knowing the Gaelic? I do know what Coinneamh means. It means Meeting.”
“Does it, indeed?” said Dame Beatrice. “Well, now for the Grants, for, as Mr. Peachum indicates in The Beggar’s Opera, matters must not be left where they are.”
As it happened, both Mr. and Mrs. Grant were at home. So was the baby. The first sounds which greeted the visitors were those of a screaming child.
“Temper,” said Laura, pounding vigorously upon the door.
“Teething, perhaps?” suggested Dame Beatrice, whose children were a good many years older than Laura’s little son. The door was opened quietly, and yet dramatically, by a girl of about seventeen.
“Yes, please you?” she said. Dame Beatrice enquired for Mrs. Grant and was informed that she and her husband were both at home. As this exchange was taking place, Mrs. Grant came into the hall. She greeted Laura first and then looked a little doubtfully at Dame Beatrice before she led them into the dining-room. Grant stood up and said:
“I take it you’re interested in the papers.”
“To some extent,” Dame Beatrice replied. “At the moment I am much more interested in Newhaven.”
She allowed this name to sink in, but it was evident from his demeanour that it had touched no chord in Grant.
“Newhaven?” he said at last. “And what will Newhaven have to do with it?”
“Well, that is just what I’d like to know,” said Dame Beatrice briskly. “Come, now, Mr. Grant! Admit that your story of the kidnapping was a fake.”
Grant glanced at his wife and then grinned.
“A fake?” he said. “Well, well, perhaps the less said about that the better. I was hard pressed. You see, there are a number of people who think I may have killed the laird. Maybe you are one of them.”
“One of many?”
“Ay. You remember reading about the loss of a ship called the Saracen?”
“Do you not mean the Salamander?”
Grant looked startled.
“I see that you know it all,” he said. Dame Beatrice, pleased at the result of a shot in the dark, shook her head.
“Oh, no, Mr. Grant, I do not. I wish I did,” she said. “Why did she blow up?”
“I dinna ken. Christie, some tea for the ladies.”
“You don’t know?” said Dame Beatrice, as Mrs. Grant went out of the room. Mr. Grant’s face darkened.
“It was listed as "an unfortunate incident" in ou
r official files, but it was sabotage,” he said. “I have no doubt about that. My only brother was lost when the Salamander or, when she was in Scottish waters, the Saracen, blew up.”
“If you know it was sabotage, you must have some idea of who was responsible.”
“An idea is not a proof, Dame Beatrice.”
Dame Beatrice wagged her head in acceptance of this view.
“Very true,” she agreed, “so I will not press for your opinion.”
“Oh, you are welcome to my opinion. I think Bradan arranged it all.”
“Why should you think that?”
“He believed we had an informer aboard that ship. You see, our trade would not bear too close an inspection.”
“Really?”
“I shall say no more about that.”
“I cannot blame you. The cargoes which came back to this country…”
“Were innocent enough. Ah, here comes Christie with the tea.”
“I soon found out that you were not employed on the hydro-electrical project,” said Dame Beatrice conversationally. Grant laughed.
“You did that! Ay, it was not a very effective smoke-screen that I put up there.” He handed over the cups of tea as his wife poured them out. “But I dinna fash myself about that, as some people say.”
“Of course not. Well, it is very kind of you to have us here and give us tea when our object—I will not mince matters—is to find out, if we can, whether one or both of you slaughtered the laird of Tannasgan.”
Laura gasped at hearing this frank statement, but Grant laughed again and turned to his wife.
“Did you hear that, Christie? What will folk think of next?”
“We have found out why you were stranded at Tigh-Òsda station,” Dame Beatrice went on. “The station-master’s car was out of action owing to a faulty clutch.”
“Even if it had not been out of action it would have been of no use to us,” said Grant. “Nobody at the station would have been willing to leave his work to drive Christie home, and I could not have done it myself for fear of missing my train.”
“How long had you been at the station when I turned up?” asked Laura. Grant considered the question.
“About a quarter of an hour, I would say,” he replied.
“Ah,” said Dame Beatrice. “By the way, who did kill Mr. Bradan?”
Grant put down his cup.
“I have told you that my brother went down with the Saracen.”
“You have, yes.”
“If I had killed Cù Dubh, that would have been my reason.”
“But you didn’t kill him?”
“I did not. Consider the facts. Here am I, an honest poor man, the Dear knows, tied in partnership with a scoundrel. Oh, ay, Bradan was a rascal all right. Now he’s dead—murdered. But, mistress, he was my bread and butter, ay, and my cake, too. What way would I wish to lose all that? Forbye, I’ll tell you this: what we were doing was against the law. So much I am well prepared to admit. What I am not prepared to admit is that it was sinful.”
“You do not think of gun-running as being sinful?”
“Woman, if they hadna got the stuff from us, they would only have bought it elsewhere!”
“Sophistry!”
Grant grinned again. He might be a villain, thought Laura, but he was a likeable one.
“Maybe,” he said. “But the gun-running was a bit of an afterthought. It was the moonshine trade that brought in the dollars first of all.”
“Rum?”
“Ay, rum. There was nothing difficult about it. We took out coal, potatoes, pig-iron—that kind of innocent stuff—and we sold it. We had regular customers out there, and it was a good business. Bradan, to give the man his due, had a good head on his shoulders. Then all we had to do was to buy rum in the islands and work it to the ‘dry’ places, pick up a cargo of sugar and cotton, and land it in a perfectly legitimate way at Leith (or maybe Newhaven) and that’s all there was to it.”
“Interesting. And the Salamander, of course, was not engaged in the innocent pursuit of rum-running.”
“You ken very well that she was not.”
“Now, Mr. Grant, you have been comparatively frank with us, and I realise that this is a story which you can hardly tell to the police.”
“And you?”
Dame Beatrice indicated her cup of tea.
“It is not for me to cast—what is the rest of it, Laura?”
Laura, who had been studying the tea-leaves in the bottom of her cup before relinquishing it to Mrs. Grant, looked up.
“I prefer not to call the police swine, Dame B.,” she said, with affected seriousness.
“No, no. I was not thinking of asking you to do so. We cannot think of pigs and our dear Robert at the same time,” responded Dame Beatrice in a similar tone.
“Casting bread upon the waters doesn’t fit.”
“You know, you’re not trying,” said Dame Beatrice, giving a harsh cackle which had the curious effect of quietening the baby in the next room.
“Casting nasturtiums? Care to the winds? A clout before May is out? The runes? The lie in someone’s teeth?”
“Dear, dear! I had no idea that I should provoke all this! Anyhow, Mr. Grant, I shall not betray you to the police under any circumstances except one.”
“Well, I didna murder Bradan,” said Grant.
“And the kidnapping story?”
“I willna talk about that. It was all in the course of business. I had to make contacts. It had naething at all to do with Bradan’s death except that I had to shoulder some of his work.”
“But this would have been before his death, would it not?”
Grant gave her a very odd look.
“Maybe it would,” he said. “We had reasons, and that’s all I’m prepared to say.”
“I see. Mr. Grant, I ask for no names, but do you know who killed Mr. Bradan?”
“I wish him well, whoever he was, although he’s cost me my cake, if not some of my bread and butter.”
“That is not an answer, you know,” said Dame Beatrice gently. Grant passed his cup to his wife for more tea.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Meaning of Coinneamh
“Up jumps old Peter, and, heaving the regelashuns away, yells, "Damn all the nonsense! Heave the body overboard."”
Harry Lander
* * *
“Meeting,” said Dame Beatrice, referring to the English rendering of Coinneamh. “If so, I wonder why Mrs. Grant was willing to put you up for the night? I wonder how she ever contrived to persuade a baby-sitter to stay in the house? I wonder how much Mr. Macbeth knows about the Grants, and how much of that knowledge he has never disclosed?”
“Golly!” said Laura. “What hare has poor Ian at the station started now?”
“In what sense, dear child?”
“This Coinneamh gag. Are we talking of witchcraft, do you think?”
“Of one kind of witchcraft, no doubt. We now know that we are talking of the kind of witchcraft which (to coin a phrase and alter it just a little) has been running guns and butter in the same ships.”
“As for Mrs. Grant putting me up for the night, I am pretty sure that she may have wanted the use of a car in the early hours of the morning and saw how she could get it. But I may be wronging her hopelessly about that. Anyway, where do we go from here?”
“Oh, back to Tannasgan.”
“To confront Macbeth with our new knowledge, such as it is?”
“To invite his co-operation, as I see it.”
“Some hopes, if you ask me! I shouldn’t think he’d ever given anybody any co-operation in his life!”
“We shall get it, provided that he has returned safely from Dingwall. I shall challenge him, and I am fairly certain that he will pick up the gage.”
“Don’t forget to be quick on the draw with that lethal little gat of yours, then,” said Laura. “Sheriff,” she added unnecessarily.
Dame Beatrice cackled and her car dr
ew in to one of the passing-places to let through a car coming from the opposite direction.
“That was our friend Macbeth,” she said. “Did you see him?”
“Good Lord! We ought to follow him up,” said Laura, “but I don’t see how George can turn on a road as narrow as this.”
“There is no need for us to follow him,” said Dame Beatrice. “It will be much better to meet him on his own ground. We will await him at An Tigh Mór.”
Arrived on the shores of Loch na Gréine, the car drew in on to the grass verge and Laura got out. Macbeth, it seemed, had rowed himself ashore, for the boat was tied up to the jetty. George opened the car door for Dame Beatrice and then led the way to the boat, handed in his employer, waited for both women to seat themselves, and then untied the boat and pushed off from the jetty.
“Wonder whether the Corries are still in possession?” said Laura, when they reached the boathouse. “Oh, well, we shall soon know.”
“Do you wish me to accompany you to the house, madam?” asked George. Dame Beatrice patted the pocket of her skirt.
“Not this time, George, thank you,” she replied. “I think you had better stay here in case the owner of the house comes back and needs the boat. If you hear the sound of a shot, you may come to our rescue.”
“Very good, madam.” He watched them as they walked towards the house, for the boathouse had wooden planking on three sides and the door was at the back and had been left open. Laura went up to the mansion and hammered on the door. It was opened by a police-sergeant.
“Well, I’m blessed!” said Laura, her marriage to Detective Chief-Inspector Robert Gavin having freed her from the average citizen’s awe of the police. “I thought you lot had finished here a couple of weeks ago!”
“Gin ye’ll step inside, ladies, the Inspector would be glad of the favour of a word wi’ ye. We spied ye from the window,” said the policeman, holding the door wide open and standing aside. “He’ll be in the dining-room. That is the door, on the right there.”
My Bones Will Keep (Mrs. Bradley) Page 14