“Yes. I think most people do.”
“And you’re observant. You noticed his hand. Are you sure you were right about that?”
“Oh, yes, I am absolutely certain. I never forget a hand I’ve once read if it’s as unusual as Mr. Loudoun’s.”
“How was his hand unusual? You didn’t say so at the time. Just told him the usual rot.”
“Well, you can’t tell your host that he’s got a murderer’s hand.”
“What?” said Ian loudly.
“Oh, yes. I didn’t tell you because—well, palmistry is a discreditable sort of amusement and I’m not going to say I believe in it or anything like that, but it was rather horrid to look at his hand and think—that. That’s why I was so startled when you talked about letting a murderer loose. And that’s why, that first time, I just hated going to bed and leaving you to spend hours with him downstairs, especially as we thought he might be insane.”
“I see your point,” said Ian, grinning. “Look here, as soon as we’ve reported finding him, we’d better go to the hotel and wait until Laura and her boss turn up from this tour. Mrs. Bradley will tell us what to do.”
“Yes, I should think she would. Ian, has it struck you that that message could have been written by the murderer after the man was dead?”
“There was the finger, all blood. You spotted that?”
“Yes, of course I did. But if it were suicide, the dead man couldn’t have written it with his own blood if the carotid artery had been severed. We argued that. Do you think it was murder faked to look like a suicide?”
“Goodness knows. Don’t suggest that to the police. We don’t want to be witnesses at a trial.”
“They wouldn’t listen if I did suggest it. Anyway, it isn’t our business.”
“The law might say that it was.”
“The law has nothing to do with what I mean.”
“I know what you mean, and I agree. I say, Kate, Mrs. Bradley’s a doctor.”
“What about it?”
“She’s interested in murder. I think I told you. Loudoun—she was going to take on Loudoun as a patient. Why shouldn’t we give her first look at the body? It might solve a lot of our problems.”
“She may not be back to-day. They don’t know when to expect her back, they said. Besides, this dead man wasn’t her patient if he wasn’t Mr. Loudoun, was he?”
“But, Kate, if you’re right about that, she may not have attended the man—our Loudoun! She may have attended this one by mistake. That would account for a lot of things! Don’t you see?”
“What things?”
“Well, Loudoun being in Skye when we’d thought of him at Craigullich. Old Morag’s disappearance the morning we left—or even the night before. Those men in charge of Loudoun on Skye. They were probably friends of this man who’s now killed. I say, Kate, we are in the soup if it doesn’t turn out to be suicide!”
“Why?”
“Well, whose fault is it if the man has been murdered by Loudoun? Mine, for setting Loudoun free! I’m an accessory before the fact, my girl.”
“Oh, nonsense,” said Catherine calmly. “You can’t be that unless you know what you’re doing. We didn’t know he would come back here and murder someone, did we?”
“I should say I’m morally responsible.”
“Oh, don’t be so morbid, darling. And aren’t you glad we bought these new oilskins for the honeymoon?” She pulled her sou’wester further on to her head. The loch was dancing with rain.
“Damn and blast the rain,” said Ian. “I wonder how long it will last?”
“On and off, for days and days,” said his wife. “I think, I really do, that we should be morally justified in going first to the hotel to change our clothes.”
As, by the time they reached Ballachulish, the rain was coming down like a skyful of mountain cataracts, although it soon afterwards ceased, Ian fell in with this plan. Mrs. Bradley and Laura got back in the late afternoon.
Chapter Nine
★
Cruachan! (A mountain near Loch Awe)
War cry of the Campbells of Argyll, the Campbells of Breadalbane, the Campbells of Loudoun, and of the Clan MacIntyre
★
So much intrigued had Mrs. Bradley been with Laura’s account of the artist-extraordinary and his paintbrush full of water that, in spite of the danger, difficulty and sheer inconvenience experienced in essaying such a feat after the torrential rain of the earlier part of the day, she insisted upon scrambling up to the corrie in order to see what the artist and Laura had seen.
Laura accompanied her up the treacherous, slippery slopes, and indicated the exact spot upon which his folding stool had been perched.
Mrs. Bradley derived little satisfaction and little added knowledge from her exploit. If the artist had been on watch, he could only have been watching the road, and not very much of that. They slithered down again and concluded their journey to Ballachulish, arriving at four o’clock, in time, as Laura gladly remarked, for tea.
It was not only tea that awaited them, but also Ian and Catherine, full of nervous excitement, news, comment, questions, and fears. Mrs. Bradley listened to everything, and answered the questions. She then expressed her determination to go at once in the car to Craigullich to see what there was to be seen.
“What, before tea?” asked Laura, in blank dismay.
“I don’t want you, in any case,” said Mrs. Bradley. “I can manage to drive the car.”
“You’re not going there without me,” said Laura sturdily, “and I’m sorry I spoke. I can have tea when I come back.”
“Nonsense, child. Stay here and have your tea and talk to your brother.”
“No, to Kate,” said Ian. He got up, looking tall and extremely lazy. “I’ll drive the car, Mrs. Bradley. You can have no objection to that.”
“No objection at all,” said Mrs. Bradley, looking at the set of his jaw. “It is very kind of you, my dear.”
So the two went off together. Laura grinned at Catherine, and then ordered tea.
“Well,” she observed, “that’s that. I suppose the police will have moved the corpse by now, so there’s not much point in trailing over there. I like to see Ian act the all-protecting male. In the present case it’s beautifully idiotic.”
“Why?” demanded Catherine, up in arms on behalf of her spouse, whose chivalry she secretly admired.
“Mrs. Croc. could protect two like him,” said his sister carelessly. “She could make an iron bar squeal by gripping it, and she can throw knives like people in a circus, and fire a revolver from her skirt pocket.”
“You must have a lovely job,” said Catherine with gentle irony. Laura grinned, and looked suddenly like her brother.
“It suits me, anyway,” she said. Their eyes met. They laughed. In the car, already miles down the road towards Appin, Ian and Mrs. Bradley were talking.
“I knew you anticipated dirty work,” said he, “when you wouldn’t have Laura with you. She’ll be bitterly disappointed when she hears there’s been a scrap. Whom do you expect, by the way? The real Hector Loudoun, or the friends of the dead man?”
“We turn off here, I think,” said she. “And the question still remains—who is the real Hector Loudoun?”
Ian swung the car sideways into the mouth of the tiny glen that held Craigullich and its sinister little loch. They left the car near the house—as near the house as they could get it—and walked to the door. There was, to Ian, a vast difference between this approach to Craigullich and the one he had made in company with Catherine some few hours previously. Then the atmosphere had been eerie; now it was merely dangerous. He put a large hand on Mrs. Bradley’s deceptively stick-like arm. She nodded. They crept to the threshold like criminals bent on mischief.
The criminals, however, were already within the walls. As they approached, the interlopers could hear the sounds of hammering and tapping, of smashing, rending, and search. They crept away, and went round to the side of t
he house.
“What’s in the wind?” asked Ian. It seemed safe enough to speak, in view of the sounds inside the building, but he kept his voice very low. “Who’s looking for what? And why? Do you think it’s the police?”
For no very good reason, Mrs. Bradley did not think it was the police. She shook her head.
“They’re downstairs,” said Ian. “I’ll descend on them from above. I ought to get a pretty good idea of who they are, if I can get to the bend in the stairs.”
He put his foot in the middle of a thick stem of ivy and climbed to a first-floor window. He had seen that it was open at the top. He disappeared from Mrs. Bradley’s view.
She adopted other tactics. Secure in the knowledge that if it were the two men from Skye who were in the house they would not know who she was, she opened the door at the side of the house and walked in. Although it was not more than five o’clock, great clouds had blown over the mountains and the afternoon was overcast and dark. As she reached the dining-room door there was a vivid flash followed by the mutter of the thunder. At the same instant that the thunder died away, through the gloomy house there sounded a sibilant voice.
“They hanged me, they hanged me, my son. Where now is Duror in Appin? Where stands the cairn that was raised for me? Where rest my bones? I died like a dog, and who will speak the word to save me? Who guards the secret, my son? Your father sleeps. You must wake him. Wake him, wake him, my son.”
Mrs. Bradley was imaginative in a sense, but not superstitious or nervous. She listened carefully. The voice did not go on. It had done its part. With the speed of overmastering terror, the iconoclasts in the dining-room left their work and tore out into the grounds.
“Interesting,” said Mrs. Bradley. Ian, who had come downstairs, did not understand this comment.
“How?” said he.
“Well,” she answered, “it looks as though his myrmidons did not follow the mind of Hector.”
“Yes, I see. These men did not know anything about the ghost.”
“Exactly, child.”
“And, if not, why not?”
“Quite.”
“In other words, it looks as though . . .”
“As though what?”
“As though the ghost might be a real one.”
Mrs. Bradley shook her head.
“I should be sorry to think that,” she said. “I am like the historian who preferred the facts to fit his theories.”
“I don’t believe that. Anyway, what do we do next? Those were the chaps in charge of Loudoun at Uig.”
“I think the next part of the problem can be settled at Uig, child. Meanwhile, I should like to see the body.”
“But those men are here. Do you mean they’ll go back to Uig? They know that I know where they live, you know.”
“It is unlikely that a small croft is their only base.”
“That’s true. But, from what Catherine and I could make out, they’ll need some tackling. If you go, don’t take Laura, please. Let’s leave her here with Kate. We could do with your nephew, too. Do you think he’d come?”
“I don’t need either of you, and I certainly shouldn’t lead your sister into danger.” She walked across the hall.
“No, no, of course not. I know that. But, all the same, I’ve met those men. You haven’t. And where’s the body?”
“I have met them in spirit,” said Mrs. Bradley, surveying the drawing-room keenly, “and I did see the back of them as they fled. The police, it seems, have moved the body. I expected to find them in possession of the house.”
The police chose this moment to arrive. Time, in the Western Highlands, is of little consequence, and the officers had seen no particular reason for hastening to Craigullich. Mrs. Bradley looked out of the drawing-room window, and saw them approaching the house.
“Here’s a pretty how-do-you-do,” she said. “The police, and no body for them to find. They will think they’ve been hoaxed, I’m afraid. Do we stand our ground, do you think, or shall we follow the example of our friends, and exercise an undignified strategic withdrawal?”
“It’s beginning to rain,” said Ian.
“An apt observation. If the police are not to be trifled with, neither is the weather. We will stand our ground, then, and combine dignity with comfort—although I suspect that we shall be made to feel less comfortable later on.”
The police, however, were charming—charming but deeply perplexed. They did not doubt that there had been a body; they did not think that Mrs. Bradley (whose name, to Ian’s secret astonishment, they recognized) had spirited the body away; but they thought that the body ought to be produced, and would make it their business to trace it; they had not the slightest intention of causing anybody any inconvenience, but suggested that, if no objection was raised to their doing so, they should take a look over the house.
Mrs. Bradley referred to the two men who had been in the house when she and Ian had arrived, and Ian described them. He told of his adventures on Skye and how he and his wife had come to the conclusion that the men had been holding the first Hector Loudoun, against his will, a prisoner. The sergeant said wistfully that that was a serious offence, and made a long and elaborate note about it. He then asked, almost shyly, where Mrs. Bradley would be staying, supposing that he needed to get in touch with her. She mentioned the Ballachulish hotel, and Ian, asked the same question, gave the same address, but added that he was thinking of being on his boat, whose name and home port he gave.
The sergeant, who seemed worried at being obliged to ask them any questions at all, accompanied them to the door. He then remarked that it might turn out wet after all, and watched them, as, in the now drenching rain, they splashed across the grounds to their car.
“That’s a very astute man,” said Mrs. Bradley. “He misses nothing.”
Ian, who had also formed this impression of his fellow-countryman but had not imagined that anyone not of Highland blood would have come to the same conclusion, looked at her with respect. The police had been summoned from Oban.
“I noticed,” he said, as, with the car flinging up mud, grass, and bits of heather and rattling small sharp stones underneath its mudguards like boys rattling sticks along a fence, they drove off past the loch and through the glen, “then you did not mention the ghost.”
Mrs. Bradley cackled.
“The ghost is far enough now,” she reflected aloud.
“You think it was Loudoun? The first Loudoun? Our Loudoun, I mean.”
She cackled again, but did not answer the question.
“When shall we go to Skye?” he asked, as they swung out on to the highroad and headed for Ballachulish ferry.
“At once, child. We mustn’t lose time.”
A surprise awaited them at the hotel. Deborah, Jonathan, and the boy Brian, tired of the rain, which had fallen in torrents even as far inland as they had penetrated, had returned to Ballachulish so that, as Deborah observed, the whole party could be wet and depressed together.
“Depressed? Nonsense!” said her husband. “To see the West Highlands you must see them in pouring rain. This scenery was made for rain. Look at it, you little philistine! Look at that for colour!”
Deborah looked out of the window. The sea-loch was the colour of slate except where the wind whipped it white. The green and wine and yellow of its banks swam all in puddled mist like a rainbow flattened and diffused.
“Laura and I are going to Skye,” she remarked, with her back to her husband.
“The rain will be worse there,” said he; but Ian said quickly and loudly:
“Laura isn’t going to Skye.”
“Oh, yes, she is,” said his sister. “She is going to Skye as soon as she’s had her breakfast to-morrow morning.”
“You and your food!” said Brian. “Am I to go to Skye? I’m not very keen at the moment. I was going fishing to-morrow.”
“That’s quite all right,” said Mrs. Bradley, giving him a reptilian, affectionate smile. “You shall go fish
ing to-morrow. You can stay here until we come back, if you like, and Deborah, Laura, and Catherine will stay too.”
“Not Laura,” said her secretary firmly. “I am going to Skye if I swim. Nobody need argue,” she added, fixing her eyes on her brother.
“You’re crazy,” he said gloomily; but offered no further opposition, knowing it to be useless. The evening, being overcast, soon darkened. Mrs. Bradley, discussing the point with Ian, came to the conclusion that, unless the men had a car, they were not very likely to cross to Skye that night, as the weather was bad for boats which went from Loch Linnhe and the Sound of Mull round Ardnamurchan Point and north past Eigg Island. In a car the journey could be made from Ballachulish up to Fort William and from Fort William out to Mallaig where there was a ferry to Ardvasar across the Sound of Sleat. Even so, it was a secondary road to Mallaig. It ran along the shores of Loch Eil through Glenfinnan and beside the small Loch Eilt, and, especially in such appalling weather, Mrs. Bradley did not think the men would make the journey that night, either by road or water. There was the faint possibility that they might have travelled by train, but to do that they would have needed to get first to Fort William. The railway then followed the road-route through Glenfinnan.
In any case, even if the men returned to Skye, there seemed to be no desperate need of haste on the part of their pursuers.
“Bed,” said Mrs. Bradley, “and early, I suggest. Then the four of us will go off first thing in the morning.”
This plan, simple and sensible, did not mature as early as she had hoped. Late that night a police message came to the hotel. The body—or, as the message more cautiously and conservatively ran—a body had been found, and it would be convenient to have it identified as soon as might be. Mrs. Bradley and her party could, it was understood, be of some assistance. Would the persons concerned be good enough to meet the police at Oban on the morning of Monday as might be convenient for them? The police would be greatly obliged.
The Sabbath, it seemed, was no day for viewing bodies or otherwise assisting the police. On the other hand, so gentle and courteous a request could not be cavilled at. Early on Monday Mrs. Bradley, Laura, Catherine, and Ian went by car south through Portnacroish and Appin and across Loch Etive to Oban. The sergeant, reinforced this time by an inspector and two policemen, all four having the surname of Cameron and being named respectively Euan, Colenso, Andrew, and James, met them and took them in to view the body.
My Father Sleeps (Mrs. Bradley) Page 12