My Father Sleeps (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  The fact remained, however, that she had steeped two families in murder and horrid mystery, and Mrs. Bradley was anxious to know more of her.

  It was odd, too, that in both generations of these thieves and murderers, two Loudoun brothers had been involved. The case had the over-peopled aspect of a minor Elizabethan play.

  As she returned to Ballachulish she found that Janet Forbes’ fantastic theories had bolstered and buttressed her own new and startling idea. She shied away from this idea at first; it was melodramatic, and she distrusted melodrama although she knew it was sometimes true to life. She returned to it again, however, because, if it could be proved to be a fact, all the unaccountable aspects of the case would shake down to the level of their proper proportions and significance, and then both murders could be seen in the perspective of commonsense and logic.

  To test this new idea—more from the point of view of getting it out of her head than for other reason—it was essential that she should encounter Laura’s bagman. Her immediate problem was to find out how to get in touch with him.

  She knew that it would not be of any use to advertise. He knew far too much about the dead man on Rannoch Moor to be willing to come forward to be questioned. If he had not gone to the police with his special knowledge, it was most unlikely that he would come to her. If he were to be met with, it must be an unofficial and an apparently casual meeting. She set her wits to work to see how it could be accomplished.

  There remained the problem of the reason—although commonsense still told her that this could be only the minor one of distracting the attention of herself and her party from the business in hand—for the kidnapping of her nephew Brian on Skye, and the other problem of whom Janet Forbes could have meant by ‘another with them.’

  At the hotel she found Ian and Laura, who had just left the Kerisaig at moorings. They demanded news. She had none. They asked for orders. She suggested that Ian should accompany her to Craigullich, now in possession of the police, to find out whether anything more had come out with reference to the Loudouns.

  Laura, who presented herself as a participator in this excursion, was bidden to find the bagman, and, when she had contrived to do this, to telegraph at once to Ballachulish.

  This kind of mission was not only within Laura’s scope but much to her liking. Catherine volunteered to accompany her. Deborah, who would also have enjoyed the excursion, decided that someone ought to remain at the hotel in case news of Brian came from Skye and in case Laura’s quest proved almost immediately fruitful. Mrs. Bradley vetoed her staying, however. She had acquainted the management with the circumstances, and felt sure that they could be trusted to do all that would be required in the event of Brian’s turning up or news of him being received whilst his friends were out of the hotel.

  “In any case,” she said to Deborah, “you can’t sit night and day at the telephone, child. It isn’t necessary. I have no very great anxiety for Brian. He is an intelligent boy, and has probably slipped through their fingers long before this. If he has, he will go back to the MacDonalds, and they will send word at once. Go with the others, and enjoy yourself.”

  Deborah, who still suffered (a legacy from her brief but crowded time as a schoolmistress and training college lecturer) from an over-developed sense of responsibility, could not undertake to feel any enjoyment whatever until the young boy was found and was known to be safe and unhurt, but she felt the need for a change, and went with the others obediently.

  Jonathan, alone in Portree, had remained in touch with the police for the whole of the morning, and then received word that he was wanted at once by the MacDonalds. There was no reason given for this appeal, so, worried and not too hopeful, he drove back through Kensaley to Uig and discovered that Brian had managed to work his way out of the clutches of the kidnappers. He had been put to bed at once by Mrs. MacDonald, and had made no objection to this, as he was tired out and needed nothing so much as some sleep.

  “He is after eating his breakfast and his dinner in one,” said Mrs. MacDonald proudly, “and he is lying down the now. My sorrow!—but he was the hungry one, that one! And the weary! But I was not to be telling any of you that he was safe; not that at all, indeed! It was to be kept a great secret, yes, and himself to be telling you all about it when he would! Well, well! Laddies are all fey! Come you and see the sleep of him, so pretty it is! I am minding on Dougal when he was three years old!”

  So Jonathan seated himself on a hard chair near the bed, and waited for his cousin to wake. Meanwhile Mrs. MacDonald had washed and dried his clothes and was making them look like new with her pressing and ironing.

  Brian woke up at seven in the evening, became full of plans at once, and demanded to be told why they had not roused him sooner.

  “Sooner is it?” asked Mrs. MacDonald. “Well, well! And you to be lying for all the world—my sorrow!—as though you were dead and in heaven!”

  “Yes, but they may have escaped us!” Brian exclaimed. “I must have Mr. MacDonald and you, Jon, to tackle the fellows, and the police as well, if you like, but let’s be quick.”

  “This is a family matter,” said Jonathan smiling. “I haven’t had a decent scrap in years. Do they carry guns?”

  “I didn’t see any. I shouldn’t think they’d dare, but you never know. They’re gaol-birds, both of them, and they’re expecting a third chap to join them. The one, I suppose, who didn’t show up when they stole my clothes and we got them back, up on the hills.”

  “Where do I find these fellows?”

  “You’re to let me come, too.”

  “You’ve done your share. Where are they?”

  “I shan’t tell you unless you take me with you.”

  “All right, then. Let’s go and find MacDonald, and see if he’ll go along as well.”

  “Not to hold me while you do the fighting.”

  “Oh, well, you’d better tell the police and have done with it, perhaps.”

  “Don’t be a fool. We don’t want to get it all mixed up, and go and ruin the holiday by having to give evidence or something. Play square, and I’ll tell you everything I know.”

  “All right, then, you young devil.”

  “I left them by the loch at the foot of the Storr Rock. I’m sure they hadn’t gone when I left, although they may be far enough now. I wish we had that fellow Menzies, Laura’s brother. I’ll bet he’d be useful in a scrap. I don’t want Mr. MacDonald to get in trouble. Can’t you and I go alone?”

  “We might tackle two, but suppose they’ve been joined by their leader?”

  “Oh, yes, they did say something of the sort. All right, then. Ask him to come.”

  “Not until the morning,” said Jonathan.

  But Mr. MacDonald had forestalled them. He had called out his friends as to a war and, as soon as it was light, Jonathan found himself at the head of a little posse of the younger men of the clachan just south of Uig, the crofters among whom they were staying, among them being Malcolm MacIver and a couple of brothers named MacNeill, and a crofter called Flanagan, whose family had been settled near Uig Bay for three or four generations and had come originally from Ireland.

  “But they’ll just scare the fellows off, and we’ll never get them!” said Brian in great dismay. So, this being explained to the crofters, a carload, consisting of Jonathan, who drove, Brian, young MacIver, and the two MacNeills, drove off in advance of the others, after giving them the closest directions.

  By the time they got to the Storr Rock, however, which they reached from the shores of Loch Leathan, there was no sign of the men at the spot where Brian had left them. The tracks of their car, however, were plain to see. Jonathan left his own car, with young MacIver to guard it and watch the road, as near to the Rock as he could, which was between the Old Man of Storr and Bearnarig Bay, and the four who were left began to track the car-marks left by the men.

  They soon discovered the car, but still found no sign of the men. It was clear that, although in hiding, they still await
ed their leader, and Jonathan felt that very much would be gained if they knew definitely, instead of only surmising, that this leader was the nervous ‘first’ Loudoun, who once had been the men’s prisoner.

  The top of the Storr was a table covered with grass. It had taken some time to cover the ground and climb the steep rock to its summits, so all four lay out in the sun and looked at the view, and passed round Jonathan’s binoculars to see whether, anywhere at hand, they could see the men for whom they sought.

  But nothing was to be seen but sea and sky, the mountains north and south, the long island of Raasy to the east with the smaller island of Rona, and over to the west the sea again, running deeply into the land in Loch Snizort’s narrow fiords with Kensaleyre and Carbost tucked in at their ends like Norwegian sea and mountain villages or the romantic survival of Kotor in Dalmatia.

  “This is a mug’s game.” said Jonathan, at the end of an hour. “I vote we make straight for Portree, and get back to the others.”

  Brian was deeply disappointed, but could find no argument against what his cousin proposed. They began the downward scramble as though they were stalking game, and kept their eyes open and paused very often to listen. Nothing untoward was seen or heard, and they reached the coast road and the car to find that MacIver had nothing to report.

  Then the luck changed. They had run the car northwards past the Storr Rock, and on towards Culnaknock, and had got on to level ground (for they had decided to return by the longer route to Uig in case the men should choose to go back to Uig by the road across the hills from Staffin and Stenscholl), when Brian, who had the hawk-eyes common to boyhood, suddenly called out and pointed. There in the distance could then be distinguished two figures. The car soon caught them up.

  “It’s them all right,” said Jonathan, with emphasis. He stopped the car just in front of the men, and he and MacIver got out. Brian leapt out behind them, anxious to join in the fun. The men began to run back by the way they had come, but Jonathan’s long legs and MacIver’s iron stride soon overtook them.

  The fight was short and dirty. The men knew all the tricks of dockside and back street fighting, but Jonathan had lived among sailors and had spent five years in Cairo and the Levant, so that knives were a commonplace to him, to be dealt with immediately and effectually; a kick which began on a pivoted foot and ended against the side of an adversary’s jaw was a useful and purposeful argument.

  MacIver fought like a terrier fighting a rat. He was a stocky man, like many men from the West Highlands and the Hebrides, and, although he came from Skye, his ancestry was far more Scottish than Norse. He ended by almost biting the ear off his opponent, who had tackled him with a safety-razor blade. MacIver had never lived in a Glasgow slum, but he had met Glaswegians on holiday in Skye, and had learnt from them more than how to drive a car. He was angry with the man for having attempted to slash open his face, and went for him with a ferocity which surprised and alarmed the fellow.

  “And now,” said Jonathan, when the two MacNeills had assisted in tying the men up and hustling them into the car, where, because of their bonds, they sat like two waxwork figures, the one very gory from his mauled and bleeding ear, the other very seriously bruised and not yet fully conscious, “where’s your pal?”

  The men looked piteously at him; then one of them swore, but more in disgust than anger.

  “I wish we knew,” he said. “He ought to have met us way back by that mountain ridge, near the water, but he’s never shown up all night, and we’re about through. I say, chum, don’t hand us to the busies. We never intended any harm. As for the kid, we never touched him. He’s a gentleman, and he’ll bear witness.”

  “You bagged my clothes,” cried Brian, with whom this was a very sore point.

  “What’s your boss’s name?” asked Jonathan.

  “Loudoun.”

  “What’s he like to look at?”

  “Average-looking fellow.” Beyond this they seemed unable to go.

  “And did he commit a murder at Craigullich?”

  “Not so far as I know. Why should he have?”

  “What did you fellows want at the house?”

  “A plan of something. That’s all he told us. We never found it, though. That place is haunted.”

  “Why did he have his brother’s body taken to the corrie on Beinn Cruachan?”

  “I don’t know anything of that. I don’t know as ever I heard he had a brother. I don’t know . . .”

  “Oh, yes, you do! You were seen there, on Beinn Cruachan. Drive on, Alan. I’ll keep an eye on these beauties. They’ll come across with what they know before I’ve done with them.”

  But no amount of unofficial Third Degree seemed able to persuade the men that their knowledge was more extensive than they had already disclosed. Apparently they did know of the murder, and were afraid.

  Chapter Thirteen

  ★

  Cairn of Remembrance!

  Carn na cuimhne!

  War cry of the Farquharsons

  ★

  The police, as Mrs. Bradley had surmised, were still in possession of Craigullich. She gathered that they did not like it there. It was obvious that they not only had heard of the hauntings but were prepared to swear to them.

  “There comes a limping, thin fellow and is after telling us that a voice will be speaking in the small hours of the night, and that we should be listening for him,” said Donald Cameron simply. “He is after telling us that the voice will be speaking of strange things and dark things, and that them that are after hearing it will be drowned. I am not knowing that I wish to hear the voice and be drowned after. Well, well, I am not remaining in the room to be hearing it, no, indeed I am not, so I am telling you.”

  “Where do you sleep, then?” Mrs. Bradley enquired.

  “Sleep is it, indeed? You would be surprised. I do not sleep at all. It is James and Euan and Colenso who are all sleeping.”

  His cousins and brother denied this, but added that they, too, did not care to sleep in the dining-room of the house because of the warning they had had.

  “The man who warned you is very likely the murderer of Mr. Loudoun,” said Mrs. Bradley. “You’ve let him get away from you very easily. Which way did he go from here?”

  “North, towards Ballachulish. I was seeing him go up the road as though he might make for the Duror inn,” said James.

  “I’d like to see the dining-room. I hope he hasn’t been playing any more tricks,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Have you the key of the door?”

  “For why should you be needing the key? The door is open,” said James. He opened it for her, and then stepped back. Where the portrait and then the hunting badge had hung above the mantelpiece hung a very fair copy of the 1732 portrait of Prince Charles Edward Stewart.

  “Good heavens!” said Mrs. Bradley. “Now what on earth does that mean? And what are those words on the door?”

  Ian, who was escorting her, was the person to answer this question. His knowledge of the Gaelic was limited, but it was not difficult to read the triumphant scrawl across the cream-coloured paint on the door (which they saw as they turned to come out again).

  Mic-an-oighre ran the script; and under that: Britheamh. Under that again, the top line was repeated, Mic-an-oighre, and then, beneath that, in larger, more ill-formed letters: Frangag.

  “Queer stuff,” said Ian. “Who do you suppose wrote that?”

  “I might be able to guess if you would kindly translate it.”

  “Oh, yes. I’m sorry. Of course. Well, it’s all stuff taken from Scottish names and things. You can find it in the index of any book about the clans, I think. Mic-an-oighre means Son of the Heir. Britheamh means Judge. Then you get Son of the Heir repeated, so I suppose the writer thought it rather important, followed on the fourth line by Frangag, which means Free.

  “It sounds to me a cry from the heart,” said Mrs. Bradley. “I deduce our Mr. Loudoun wrote it, but not for us to find. And yet . . .” She shook her head
. “No. That won’t do.”

  “What about the policemen? They speak Gaelic.”

  “If I recognized the description given us of the limping, thin fellow who warned the policemen of the ghost-voice, that was Loudoun also. I think he knew them well enough to believe that they would not go in. Did he find out, by the way, that you speak Gaelic?”

  “But I don’t speak it really, you know. I know some odd spots of it, that’s all. But even that did not come out.”

  “Well, he would deduce that I shouldn’t know the language, therefore we must assume that the message was not for us. I believe we would do very well to return to Skye, unless there is news at the hotel. I will just instruct the policemen to arrest all the people who call, unless they can vouch for their honesty. What do you say?”

  “Nothing. I just admire.” He grinned, and dodged aside to avoid a sharp prod in the ribs. “I wonder how Laura’s getting on?”

  “She probably isn’t. I wish now that I could recall her. Perhaps they will come back to-night. To-morrow may be too late for a share in the fun.”

  “Are things really hotting up, then?”

  “I think they are at boiling point, child.”

  There was no news at the hotel, and Mrs. Bradley was doubtful at first whether to return to Skye or whether to try to track down Laura and Deborah in their quest of the bagman. She did not discuss the point with Ian, but left him to refuel and reprovision the Kerisaig in which they were to travel if they went back to Uig.