by Alan Hunter
‘Well, I think it’s daft,’ Brenda said. ‘But I don’t mind picnicking there alone with you.’
‘We’ll get that out of it at all events,’ Gently smiled. ‘And one can do worse than Knockie Forest.’
They arrived at the junction of the Skilling Road. Geoffrey slowed, waved and turned off. The Minx pressed on at an easy-breathed sixty along the route they had followed the day before. They were finding more traffic today, probably excursionists from Glasgow, Edinburgh, Stirling, Perth, but Gently weaved by it confidently and slid the long miles swiftly away. The Minx was kin to the Sceptre and came familiarly to his hand. It went sure-footed into bends and pulled strongly on the steep gradients.
By ten they reached Torlinnhead and the turn to the track over the tops. In his wisdom, Gently engaged first for the initial scramble, and the Minx clambered up it uncomplaining. In sight of the farm he halted briefly to reconnoitre from a bank, but the sheep were visible on a distant pasture and the farmhouse apparently deserted. They went by it. Nobody stared. The Minx chuntered sturdily on its way. Within half an hour they were over the tops and approaching the spot where the Sceptre had been bogged.
‘Now we just make the car invisible,’ Brenda said. ‘That shouldn’t trouble the trained brain.’
‘If McGuigan can do it at Tudlem,’ Gently chuckled ‘we should be able to do it at Knockie. See over there.’
He pointed to some boulders that stood in a group to the left of the track. A declivity resembling the dry bed of a stream made a line towards and behind them. Gently stopped and got out to explore. The ground was rough but free from gullies. He returned to the Minx, drove it cautiously to the declivity, turned it, backed it behind the boulders. Then he checked the effectiveness of the concealment from the track. Nothing showed. The Minx was swallowed up in the scattered vastness of the tops.
‘And now we just sit here,’ Brenda said. ‘Making non-noises like policemen.’
‘Not exactly,’ Gently grinned. ‘Because McGuigan may leave by the other way. I don’t think he will. Mary Dunglass used the track when she wanted to get here unobserved, and I imagine it’s McGuigan’s quiet way out. But we can’t rely on that.’
‘Then I take it we’re going to play boy-soldiers.’
‘Something of that sort,’ Gently said. ‘I’d say Dugald had a hideaway on the brow of the ridge there. We probably shan’t do better than follow his example.’
He collected the picnic from the boot, Brenda carried the glasses, and they made their way through the boulders and heather. The ridge slanted upwards for a short distance then levelled off in flats and hollows. It was a perfect spot for observation. The track ran immediately below it. Beyond was the vista of the top of the glen with the Lodge a miniature among its trees. In the other direction the tops and the track spread into a distance of sun-hazed peaks, and by lying in a hollow one could watch all this without being in view from any part of it.
Gently picked his hollow, took the glasses, sprawled on his elbows and surveyed the Lodge.
‘We’ve timed it nicely,’ he said. ‘Blayne is still there. That’s a police Super Snipe in the courtyard.’
‘Any chocolate soldiers around?’
‘There’s someone by the stream with a rod or a net.’
‘Probably the boy-soldier after trout,’ Brenda said, slumping down happily. ‘That’s Menace No. 1 taken care of. We can relax, go loose.’
‘Not so loose,’ Gently said, ‘that we can’t jump into action fast if need be.’
‘Nuts,’ Brenda said. ‘This is a game, remember? You’re only in it for the kicks.’
She spread herself lazily on the scant heather, closed her eyes, basked. The sun bored down from a Wedgwood sky. A faint, aromatic breeze sissed through the heather. Other than this sound the tops were silent with a massive, sidereal silence, so that one might have been suspended in space and insensibly travelling among the stars. There were no birds, apparently no animals, not even a bee or a scampering ant. Just the breeze and the kissing sun and the still pressure of rock and heather.
Gently lowered the glasses and lit his pipe. There was no telling how long Blayne had been at the Lodge. It was on the cards he’d first visited Mary Dunglass and was only now beginning his session with McGuigan. And somehow Gently’s hunch, which had seemed so probable when he was developing it to Geoffrey, up here began to seem less likely, wore more the aspect of chairborne theorizing. Blayne was not playing a game. Though he might not arrest McGuigan, he had grounds for pulling him in and making him sweat: for keeping him for hours in some sordid little room and playing all the interrogator’s tricks on him. Then again, McGuigan, if left at liberty, might only fly straight to a lawyer or Mary Dunglass. It might be some little time before he pulled himself together and took independent action – if he ever did. No: Gently’s hunch was full of loopholes through which the breeze of the tops blew gaily. Better face it. He was playing a long one. As Brenda said, it was for the kicks.
‘You’re thinking,’ Brenda said, her eyes shut. ‘I can feel you thinking. Don’t do it.’
‘Perhaps I’m thinking about you,’ Gently smiled.
‘No you’re not,’ Brenda said. ‘I’d feel that too.’
‘Well, I’m thinking about you now,’ Gently said.
‘That’s better,’ Brenda said. ‘Keep doing that. I’m what’s important up here, George Gently, not what’s o’clock with the hairy lairdies.’
‘Do you ever get sunburned?’ Gently asked.
‘Ugh,’ Brenda said. ‘To hell with sunburn. Put that pipe away and stop making noises. Just fill in time like an irrational being.’
Blayne departed at half-past twelve, not taking McGuigan along with him. Gently watched the lanky Inspector and the solid Purdy stand talking some moments before getting in their car. Nothing else of note had happened down at the Lodge. Somebody had washed the Land Rover in the courtyard. Dugald, if it was he, had returned from his fishing; that was the sum total of activity.
‘And now they’ll have lunch,’ Brenda said. ‘Jamie won’t miss that for a dozen Blaynes. So we’ll just leave them to get on with their venison while we tackle Bridget’s sandwiches.’
She spread a picnic cloth, and they ate, Gently with his eye continually on the house. But his hunch seemed to be growing particularly faint over that domestic little meal. The stake-out accompanied by a picnic was fast becoming a simple picnic, and the green Minx lurking behind the boulders was assuming a faintly mocking air.
Blayne had been, Blayne had gone, but no rabbit was bolting out of Glen Knockie . . .
‘We’ll give him till three,’ Gently said glumly, draining the last of the Thermos tea.
‘I don’t mind, really,’ Brenda said. ‘I’m getting a rest in. I like it here.’
‘But it’s boring, staying in one spot, however spectacular the scenery. And we’re on holiday or something. And I’m just making an ass of myself.’
Brenda hitched up on one elbow. ‘George,’ she said, ‘you’re an old idiot. Being here makes perfect sense, and we’re jolly well stopping here till Jamie shows.’
‘We could wait all day.’
‘So we’ll wait. It’s what I expected when I came along.’
‘I may have misjudged McGuigan . . .’
‘Then that makes two of us. Just you get back to watching the house.’
Gently shrugged and did as she bid him, and Brenda repacked the picnic. It was barely done when he gave an exclamation and motioned to Brenda to slide up beside him.
‘Who is it – Jamie?’
‘Yes. He’s just gone across to the coach-house.’
‘Now who’s making an ass of himself!’
‘It doesn’t mean to say he’s fetching his car.’
But McGuigan was fetching his car. They saw the blue Cortina slide out of the coach-house, vanish into the trees, re-appear, stop at the gate across the track.
‘Come on!’ Gently exclaimed, grabbing the picnic basket. ‘We’ve g
ot to get out of here ahead of him.’
‘Ahead of him? Why?’
‘Because if we follow him we’ll probably lose him at the other end.’
Till that moment he hadn’t seen it, but now he saw it very plainly. On that bare track they would need to lag perhaps half a mile behind their quarry. There could be no closing up till they were well past the farm, and the difficult descent at the end would delay them till McGuigan was clear away. At Torlinnhead, he had the choice of turning east or west.
‘Get in quick!’
Gently jammed down the pedal and the Minx started first bang. He sent it pitching across the rough top and thudding down on to the track. He drove recklessly. The Minx had a rugged suspension and didn’t flinch. It pounded along at a flickering forty and sailed through the potholes without bottoming. In his mirror he watched the track ribboning away to its vanishing point by the ridge, then swing across and vanish behind the sudden lift of an out-crop.
‘Was there any sign of him?’
‘No,’ Brenda said. ‘Take it easy. This isn’t Brands Hatch.’
‘He may have been bluffing.’
‘Like why would he do that?’
‘Somebody may have caught a flash from the glasses.’
‘Oh, for Heaven’s sake,’ Brenda said. ‘What reason would he have to think we were watching him?’
‘Not us – Blayne’s men,’ Gently said. ‘If I’d been Blayne I’d have had some up here.’
He drove the next straight stretch uncomfortably fast then halted the car in the dip beyond. He jumped out, ran back, stood peering from behind a rock. Then he dashed back to the car. He was grinning.
‘Right – we’ve hooked him,’ he said. ‘He’s coming along nice and quietly. I don’t think he suspects a thing.’
‘Of course, he may have bluffed you after all,’ Brenda said spitefully. ‘You don’t know it’s McGuigan driving the Cortina.’
‘Actually, I do love you,’ Gently grinned.
‘Ah,’ Brenda said. ‘Well, I could be wrong.’
Gently dropped the speed, but still pressed on at a rate he judged was faster than McGuigan’s. The Minx grumbled along sturdily, obviously at home in this sort of country. They passed the farm again without apparently attracting attention, moaned and slithered down the descent, came to the barn at the bottom. Here Gently twisted and dug with the Minx and at last screwed it backwards into the barn. The barn was dark. Unless McGuigan were specially watching for it he would scarcely notice a car in there.
‘It seems terribly mean,’ Brenda mused. ‘The poor angel just doesn’t have a chance. He comes blithely along, all innocence, never dreaming he’s being played cat-and-mouse with. Don’t you ever feel it’s unsporting, George?’
‘It doesn’t happen to be a sport,’ Gently said. ‘And McGuigan’s innocence is far from proven. Otherwise we wouldn’t be here.’
‘Still, I feel mean,’ Brenda said. ‘I feel we ought to give McGuigan a toot. Just to show there’s no ill-feeling.’
‘Hush,’ Gently said. ‘Here he comes.’
The blue Cortina buzzed cautiously by them, and the last doubt was answered: McGuigan was driving it. His beard and straight arms swept past at a few yards distance. Gently listened, heard the engine dull as McGuigan paused at the junction; then he started the Minx and rolled out of the barn and purred quietly after the Cortina.
The Cortina had turned right.
‘Not to Strathtudlem,’ Gently muttered.
‘It’s the Logie road,’ Brenda said. ‘What can he be wanting down there?’
‘It connects with the A9,’ Gently said. ‘Inverness and points north.’
‘What’s at Inverness?’
Gently shrugged, settled the Minx at a comfortable distance behind the Cortina.
McGuigan was driving at a modest fifty, which suggested he hadn’t spotted his tail. It also suggested to Gently that McGuigan’s trip would probably be a short one. A hundred, two hundred miles and McGuigan would have been flogging his steed. The GT was built to travel fast and McGuigan had shown he liked it that way. Yet short or long, a trip on this road was leading them further away from the Strathtudlem area. Could it just be that McGuigan really was wise to them, had some reason for drawing them off on a goose-hunt?
They drove three miles, came to a left-hand junction with signpost beside it. McGuigan’s winker went and he ducked down off the main road. The signpost said: GLENNY ½, and the road it indicated was narrow but beautifully surfaced and maintained. It snaked through a stand of very tall oaks beyond and above which rose shaggy braes.
‘Map,’ Gently said, making the turn.
Brenda hastily unfolded the map.
‘It’s a cul-de-sac,’ she said. ‘Quite short. Leads to a big house – McClune Castle.’
‘A castle,’ Gently said, easing. ‘That’ll be the one you can see from the track. It’s quite a place. I wonder who lives there.’
‘We’re sure to find out,’ Brenda groaned. ‘And the wrong way.’
The road made two sweeping turns and arrived suddenly at a big arched gateway. Beyond the gateway, across wide lawns, rose the turreted splendour of a castellated house. The blue Cortina was driving straight towards it. They watched it park in front of the portico. McGuigan got out, ran up the steps and passed straight through the doors, which stood open. Nobody questioned his going in. Nobody stirred about the grounds.
CHAPTER TEN
Though right be aft put down by strength,
As mony a day we saw that,
The true and leilfu’ cause at length
Shall bear the grie for a’ that.
‘A New Song To An Old Tune’, Sir Walter Scott
MCCLUNE CASTLE WAS no lightweight. It had been conceived in the grandest style of Baronial Scottish, with massive pepperpot towers, groves of pointed windows and an irregular forest of perching turrets. It was also very meticulously maintained. The windows glinted, the lawns was precisely cut and edged, the sweep of blue granite chippings were raked and weedless and the ornate gates were newly leathered. Besides McGuigan’s Cortina, there stood on the sweep a glittering maroon Silver Shadow.
‘Ah, money,’ Brenda breathed. ‘And I thought they were so hard up in Scotland.’
‘Money and consequence,’ Gently said. ‘But what has McGuigan to do with either?’
‘Well, he was pretty familiar with it,’ Brenda said. ‘The way he drifted up there and sailed in. Perhaps he’s a cousin thirty-six times removed. Or flogs his venison to Lord Muck.’
Gently shook his head, staring, running his eye all round the castle. Tradesmen and thirty-sixth cousins would scarcely bowl in there unannounced. Who was this McGuigan had run to when he felt the law beginning to lean on him – if that was the reason he had come here? Who would he know as well as that . . . ?
‘So what now?’ Brenda asked. ‘The nearest phone-box, and ring Blayne?’
‘Not so quick,’ Gently said. ‘I’d like to know what’s going on there.’
‘Marvellous. Do we breeze in like Jamie?’
‘It might be worth trying,’ Gently grinned. ‘But I’d like to make it inconspicuous. And the trees do come in close at the side of the house.’
‘Yes, we could climb them,’ Brenda said. ‘Then come in swinging, Tarzan-fashion. Only first we have to reach them.’
‘So,’ Gently said. ‘We’d better see where the road here takes us.’
He set the Minx rolling again, past the gates, into more trees. Beyond the gates it was less well surfaced and seemed likely to degenerate into a track. But it continued in a respectable way, bearing always to the right, till it had apparently circumnavigated that side of the grounds and they arrived at a less splendid pair of gates.
‘The tradesman’s entrance,’ Brenda said. ‘We could pretend to be insurance salesmen.’
‘Tchk,’ Gently said. ‘Not on the Sabbath. And there be dragons that way in any case.’
He indicated a lodge-house and a terrace of
half a dozen neat cottages. Smoke was climbing from one or two of the chimney and a mongrel dog squatted with a bone in the driveway. As they paused, watching, a small girl came trotting from the cottages to stare back at them. She wore a knitted jersey that reached half-way down her hips, a radiant smile, and nothing else.
‘That’s the way to bring them up,’ Brenda said. ‘Plenty of fresh air and Andrew Carnegie. Do you think she could tell us who the Super-Laird is?’
‘Probably,’ Gently said. ‘But we won’t trouble her.’
‘Ah,’ Brenda sighed. ‘If Mary Quant could see this lassie. She’d surely sweep the board at Melbourne.’
Gently drove on. The road now no longer made any pretension to a surface, and they were bumbling again over naked rock with rashes of chippings and black mud. They were climbing, too, wriggling their way up into the moist, still trees; but still, by Gently’s computation, describing a circle about the castle. Then the track ended. It had brought them to a small, stone, Gothic pavilion. The pavilion stood in a clearing. It faced directly down at the castle.
Gently parked the Minx and they got out. He levelled the glasses at the castle. On this side the curtain wall between the towers was pierced by a range of sash windows. An ornate fountain on the lawn was sending up a triple rainbow spray and behind the fountain tall french doors stood folded back above shallow steps.
‘Very pretty,’ Brenda said. ‘But I don’t see it gets us anywhere.’
‘Take these,’ Gently said, handing her the glasses. ‘Concentrate on what you can see through the doors.’
Brenda looked.
‘Aha – Jamie! He’s got his beard up at another gentleman.’
‘Gesturing, waving his arms, isn’t he?’
‘Doing just that,’ Brenda agreed.
‘Appealing to the other gentleman,’ Gently said. ‘Arguing, wanting him to do something. Now I wonder what it could be – and why the other gentleman is in a position to do it.’
Brenda lowered the glasses, stared at him.
‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ she said. ‘What are you thinking?’