My Father Sleeps (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “Negatively speaking, very well.”

  “Meaning? I know you said just now that he refused to be hypnotized. . . .”

  “He gave verbal consent, child, and then had the impudence to give me nonsense-answers to my questions, except, as I said, at the end.”

  “But he wanted help pretty badly. He was really scared about this ghost-business, Ian said, and there is not much doubt but that he thinks that man at the country club intended to injure or kill him.”

  “Agreed. The Loudoun whom Ian and Catherine met certainly did require help, and, equally certainly, obtained it; but the Loudoun I interviewed and agreed to treat wants no interference whatever in his concerns. What do you make of that?”

  “You can’t mean they’re not the same person?”

  “Well, child, all I can tell you is that there is very little doubt that, for some reason still unknown to me, this Mr. Loudoun is now as anxious to get rid of strangers from his policies as the other one longed for company.”

  “Then there are two of them. That’s queer. And another queer thing—although probably it’s just coincidence—you remember that when he was talking to Ian about that man who tried to buy the glen, Hector Loudoun told him that the man had a gap in his top front teeth?”

  “Do you tell me . . . ?”

  “Yes. The corpse from Rannoch Moor had a gap in his top front teeth—very noticeable, too.”

  “And very convenient, you think. Well, we shall see; although, as you also point out, it may mean nothing. Well, now for Mrs. Forbes’ tale. How does it bear on what Mr. Loudoun has given us?”

  “Well, I don’t know. Anyway, here it is, for what it’s worth. The writing’s a bit wobbly, because I wrote most of it lying in the heather yesterday and to-day. I didn’t want Mrs. Forbes to think I was taking too much notice of what she said. She’s a nice soul, and I’d hate her to think I was pumping her about her early life and her employers’ affairs.”

  “Quite,” said Mrs. Bradley gravely. Whilst Laura, having finished her tea, lay sprawled by the lakeside, she seated herself with her back very upright against one of the silver birches and commenced to read Laura’s notes and comments.

  They were not to be left very long in peace, however. She had scarcely turned the page when Laura said softly, snapping a twig between her long, strong fingers:

  “Look out. Here’s Loudoun coming.”

  Mrs. Bradley folded the notes and stowed them away as the master of the house came up.

  “I didn’t know the post had been here to-day,” he said. Mrs. Bradley looked up and smiled, and then patted the ground beside her.

  “Sit down,” she said. “The post didn’t come here, but Laura brought me some stuff for which I had asked.”

  “Ah? How did you find the rest of your party?” he enquired of Laura.

  “Oh, enjoying life. You look better, yourself. They laze and eat, and eat and laze. You ought to try it,” she answered flippantly. “I say, can I bathe in your loch?”

  “It is most unlucky to do so!” Loudoun answered. “Please yourself, of course, but I have heard that people who bathed in it always got drowned.”

  “What, in the loch itself? It doesn’t look deep.”

  “Not necessarily. But that is how they died—being drowned.” He began to stroll back towards the house.

  “Was there a sinister ring about those words, or am I mistaken?” muttered Laura. Mrs. Bradley called after him:

  “Drowned? Not stabbed in the back?”

  “Stabbed in the back?” He looked round, obviously startled. “What do you mean by that? Who’s been stabbed in the back? What are you talking about?”

  “It will be in the papers to-morrow,” Laura remarked. She glanced at Mrs. Bradley, received a nod, and went on: “A man has been murdered, I think, on Rannoch Moor. A man with a gap between his teeth.”

  “Really?” He seemed elaborately unimpressed. “That should cause a sensation. So little happens up here. It’ll last us for years.”

  “Like the murder of James Stewart of the Glen,” said Laura carelessly. The effect of these words was startling. Loudoun swung round at the sound of them, his mouth awry with dismay. He gripped her arm. Then, meeting her young, sardonic eyes, he shrugged, let go, and concentrated his attention upon the little old woman beside him.

  “You shouldn’t have tried to deceive me,” Mrs. Bradley pointed out patiently. “It is easy to see that your nerves are in a very bad state. The best thing I can do is to recommend you to a friend of mine, a specialist in nervous diseases, a famous man. It will not be far to go. He lives in Edinburgh.”

  “You are giving me up, then?” He looked relieved. “I thought you would.”

  “Oh, yes,” she answered carelessly. “Without perfect mutual confidence between pyschiatrist and patient, there can be no permanent cure of an aberration as serious as your own.”

  He shrugged again, laughed, and walked quickly into the house. Mrs. Bradley resumed her reading of Laura’s notes, but had not got far before the girl remarked thoughtfully:

  “Why should James Stewart have given him quite such a jolt?”

  “I don’t know,” said Mrs. Bradley, resuming her reading.

  The story that Janet Forbes had told Laura amounted to this:

  Craigullich was built on the site of another house burned down by Cumberland’s soldiers helped by members of the Clan Campbell. The old house had belonged to the MacDonalds, but permission was obtained for a new house to be put up by the Alan Campbell who had burned down the previous one. This new house had been laid under a curse by the only surviving member of the family of the original owners, an old woman called Morag MacDonald who was subsequently drowned as a witch by order of the same Alan Campbell. Her prophecy that the house would never prosper was borne out, so far as local belief went, when the house was struck by lightning in the year 1818, to remain a blackened ruin until it was sold in 1854 to a certain Donald Stewart (afterwards called ‘of Craigullich’), who rebuilt it and lived in it, and left it to his descendants.

  There was a further prophecy that no good would come to the house if any of the Campbell clan ever set foot across the threshold and never a Campbell had (according to Janet Forbes) until the black day near the end of the war of 1914–1918 when Malcolm Stewart, a man of thirty-eight, father of a lovely little boy only three years of age at the time, came back unexpectedly on leave and found a brother officer, David Loudoun, in the house. He had killed him.

  There were no extenuating circumstances that could be proved, although there was local rumour of a duel. There was no evidence to show that the man was his wife’s lover or that he even supposed that he was. The wife was not in the house at the time of the murder. The defendant was found guilty and was hanged in November, 1918, less than a fortnight after the end of the war. His son was then not four years of age. Only a year later his widow married Roderick Loudoun, elder brother of the murdered man. Tongues wagged. It was said that Stewart had shot the wrong brother, and the neighbourhood became so uncomfortable that Rory Loudoun took his wife abroad, leaving young Stewart, a delicate, nervous child, with a governess until he was ten. Then the boy went to school near London, spending his holidays with an aunt. The parents did not return to England or Scotland, but remained abroad, and Lorna Stewart (then Lorna Loudoun) died. Loudoun returned once, after her death, to Craigullich, but afterwards emigrated. The boy inherited Craigullich. There had been rumours of a boy born to Lorna whilst her first husband, Stewart, had been in Mesopotamia, a boy who could not have been Stewart’s child. But nothing was known definitely, and the illegitimate child had never been seen at Craigullich. Lorna, however, had spent a year in England during her husband’s absence.

  “And now,” said Laura, observing that Mrs. Bradley had finished reading, “what are we going to do about it? One queer thing is the name. Why bring Menzies into it if the name is really Stewart? And if we’re right, and there are two Loudouns, where does the second one come in? And, o
n another tack, what has happened to little Stewart, the owner of Craigullich? Is Ian’s Mr. Loudoun really Stewart? And, if so, is our Mr. Loudoun the illegitimate son of Lorna Stewart—or her legitimate son after she married Rory Loudoun? Or what? Oh, and Janet says she doesn’t know of any old woman called Morag at Craigullich, unless I mean mad Morag from the clachan, who was ‘led astray’ as a young woman and never got over it. She blames Rory Loudoun for that, too.”

  Chapter Five

  ★

  Black-Willow Hill.

  Cnoc Eolachain.

  War cry of the Colquhouns

  ★

  “By the way,” added Laura, as they drove back in the hired car, “I met a mad artist to-day. I’m sure he must have been mad because he did not seem to know that all the muck I talked about his painting was so much gibberish. Besides, it wasn’t his painting he was doing.”

  “It wasn’t his painting, child? How do you mean? And where was this?”

  “In Glencoe, along the old road, after I’d passed Loch Treochatan. He was up on a ledge at the slope of a corrie.”

  “And what was that about his painting?”

  “It was a finished painting—in oils. His paint was water-colour, and he wasn’t using it, anyway. He was only dabbing water on the picture. I got away from him as soon as I could. I don’t mind risking a rough and tumble with the average person if they’re bent on making themselves a nuisance, but I do draw the line at madmen. I gave him my cigarettes and matches and beat it with what graceful speed I might. I hope he won’t use the matches to fire the heather or something.”

  “You seem to be having all the adventures,” said Mrs. Bradley mildly. “How would you like to go to the Inverness Conference and read them my paper on the Psychology of the Re-Orientation of Paranoiacs?”

  “Not at all,” said Laura grimacing. “Is it an order?”

  “If you like. Somebody had better read it, and you would have a startling effect on a learned gathering, I fancy. It gives me pleasure to think of it.”

  “Yes, it might be a rag,” Laura grudgingly agreed. “But, look here, if I do go . . .”

  “You shan’t miss any of the excitement here,” said Mrs. Bradley. “You shall go with me every step of the way. It will only mean two days away from Ballachulish, unless you like to stay away longer.”

  “They’ll be the days when everything will happen,” said Laura, a trifle despondently.

  “I think everything has happened,” Mrs. Bradley observed. But in this she happened to be wrong.

  “Which day do you want me to go?” Laura presently enquired.

  “I don’t know yet. I’ll wire from Ballachulish to-morrow and find out from the secretary. If he leaves it to me, we’ll say Wednesday, unless you’ve any particular objection.”

  “It doesn’t matter to me when it is, as long as I get it over soon. I shall be as nervous as a cat until I’m through with it. You’ll have to go over the stuff with me, and show me how to bring out the points you want to make, and how to pronounce the scientific terms. How old Kitty and Alice would laugh!” She laughed herself, a great deal more cheerfully. “What do you really make of Loudoun?” she enquired. “And do you think the corpse on Rannoch Moor could be Mr. Ure, and that Loudoun murdered him?—our Loudoun, I mean. Is that why one has disappeared, and this one has taken his place?”

  “I am not clairvoyant, child.”

  “Well, what’s the next step, anyway?”

  “I see Ballachulish ferry before us. Our interests for the moment lie upon Rannoch Moor, but we cannot go there until to-morrow. Drive straight to the hotel. To-morrow we will take Jonathan with us to the place where the body was found.”

  “If we can locate it. You haven’t seen Rannoch Moor, have you?”

  From Ballachulish they took the new road through Glencoe, but not until Monday. It was not considered in keeping with local feeling to hire a car on the Sabbath. The new road, sombre but bold, shortened the distance through the frowning, majestic glen by having been cut through the rocks of the hillside and over the boulder-strewn fastnesses.

  The road, when Kingshouse was reached, did not cross the moor. The blank, unfriendly scenery was darkly terrifying. Heather, bracken, and blackish bogs alternated with one another and with stretches of bright-green moss and peat-brown tarns. Sheep-tracks led in various directions through the heather, and at a short distance along the track they followed was the shepherd’s hut.

  Laura stopped the car and remained in it, whilst Mrs. Bradley and Jonathan got out and went up to the hut. It was empty, and the door stood open. Within were the embers of a peat-fire still smoking and smouldering, and covered with fine white ash. Jonathan stirred the sods with his feet. Mrs. Bradley switched on her powerful electric torch and had a look at the floor. Then she went outside the hut and called to Laura:

  “Let Jonathan sit in the car. He can toot the horn to guide us back to it if we happen to get lost on the moor. You come with me. Your eyes are younger than mine. A pity you’re not a girl guide. You would be more accustomed to tracking. Come along, and we’ll try to find out exactly where the body was discovered. Now we can assume, I think, that the bearers followed a sheep track. . . .”

  “Yes. It was this one,” said Laura. She led the way to the right. “I saw them come along here. . . .”

  It was easy enough, as it happened, to hit upon the place. The bracken was heavily trampled, as though by the boots of a posse of the local constabulary, and this gave the most definite indication that the right spot had been reached. More careful and detailed searching revealed the possible presence of bloodstains on the surrounding bracken. Mrs. Bradley collected fronds and bore them tenderly back to the car. Having secreted them in a vasculum, she returned to Laura, who was on her stomach on the bracken trying to measure footprints.

  There were none that Mrs. Bradley could see, but, with the amount of bog and soft peaty soil which lay round and about on the moor, she thought it might be possible to discover from which direction both victim and murderer had come, and in which direction the murderer had disappeared.

  But for the theory that the murdered man might be Hector Loudoun’s sinister acquaintance Mr. Ure, she would not have meddled in the business, especially as she had no official standing, but since Loudoun’s affairs seemed to be connected in some way with Ure, it was a reasonable surmise that the death of Ure might have some interest for anyone interested in Loudoun. At any rate, it was difficult to infer that harm could come of trying to solve a problem of time, place, and direction. Time remained an unknown factor until the doctors’ reports were made public; place was fairly well established, and direction might possibly be determined by the use of a mixture of reconstructive reasoning, imagination, and observation.

  Employing these faculties as best they might, Mrs. Bradley and Laura searched diligently and thought hard, and, by the frequent comparison of ideas, established, at the most, an unsatisfactory and far from helpful hypothesis that the murderer might have crossed the moor on foot, but was just as likely to have been in a car or even on horseback.

  “It’s no good,” said Laura despairingly, at the end of an hour and a quarter of fruitless guesswork, “he might have come from anywhere and gone off anywhere else. I vote we give this up and wait for the newspaper report.”

  She returned to the car, sat down discouraged upon the running-board and lit a cigarette.

  “Tired?” asked Jonathan sympathetically. “I could have told you it wasn’t much good. You couldn’t hope to track anything less noticeable than an elephant over ground like this, and even an elephant could only leave a trail if he took the trouble to tread in all the bogs. It isn’t like Aunt Adela to waste her time. Is it just her way of getting some fresh air, do you think, or is she really working out something else all the time she’s here?”

  Laura did not know the answer to this question.

  “Sherlock Holmes could have found the right footprints,” she remarked dispiritedly. M
rs. Bradley was not gifted according to the Holmes standards of observation and deduction. She was not, either, sorry to be rid, for a short time, of her youthful Watson. The business of following a trail across Rannoch Moor she rightly believed to be the business of the police. Her search had another end in view, and one which she was not anxious, at present, to communicate to her assistant. It had struck her that something interesting and important would be decided if it could be shown how long the two men had been in company with one another before the actual moment of the murder. It was not feasible to suppose that an exact meeting-place could have been agreed upon in view of the nature and extent of the moor, and therefore she deduced that the murderer and his victim must have met somewhere else, the one with his intention cloaked by the disguise of friendliness and the other unsuspecting and deceived, or else that the meeting had been the result of the purest chance.

  If the men had come together, the police should be able, by making public a description of the murdered man, to discover whether the two had come from the direction of Kingshouse or from Rannoch Station, and, from this information, with any luck, to track them to their original starting point. If the men had met by accident—a remote and unlikely contingency unless the motive of the murder had been robbery—the murderer might never be discovered unless there was sufficient circumstantial evidence to justify the arrest of someone who was known to have borne the murdered man a grudge. It was unlikely in the extreme that any witness had seen them together upon the lonely wastes of the moor.

  She proceeded, therefore, upon the assumption that the two men had driven, ridden or walked in one another’s company across the moor, and it remained to discover whether there was any reason for the choice of the particular spot on which the body had been found.

  She returned to it and studied it again. The most interesting immediate conclusion to which she had come was emphasised by this second inspection. It seemed clear that, whatever the motive of the murderer had been in so deciding, his intention had been that the body should be discovered as soon as possible. The trampled, bruised, and broken bracken fronds among which the body had lain were less than a yard from the broadest sheep-track leading to the shepherd’s hut. There was no doubt that, in selecting this spot, the murderer had accepted some risk of being discovered by the shepherd, even in the very act of the killing, and Mrs. Bradley pondered this point for some time, but decided that the risk was probably negligible, as that part of the moor was comparatively open, and he would have known when the shepherd was approaching. She returned to the car and asked Laura to drive her straight back to Craigullich. It could be, she had decided, that the death of Ure (if Ure it proved to be) might have been intended to reassure the nerve-ridden Loudoun, wherever he might be. If this were so, then the discovery of the body before it had reached a stage of decay so advanced as to make identification slow, difficult or uncertain, was essential to the murderer’s plan.