Donald and I frowned at one another.
‘Did we bring …?’ said Donald.
‘The dog!’ she cried. ‘The black dog. Is it yours?’
‘Isn’t it yours?’ I said.
The dog had put its head down and its tail was curled right under its body. A low growl rumbled through its ribcage and made the floor under my feet start to thrum. Ursus, with one single unearthly yowl, scrambled out of Cherry’s grasp, clawed his way up and over her shoulder, then ran down her back and shot across the hall and up the stairs.
‘It’s the coup she!’ Cherry cried. ‘Right in the house. The coup she!’
At her words, the dog stopped growling and, instead, put its head back and gave a long hollow howl that set every hair on my head standing on end. Then it turned and loped across the library floor towards the windows.
‘What’s it do—’ Donald had time to say before the creature took a leap at one of the lower panes and broke through with an almighty crack. It landed out on the terrace in a shower of glass and a whirl of snowflakes and then took off into the gloom, leaving behind only its paw-prints – three damp and one bloody – as the snowstorm swallowed it up.
‘What was that?’ I said, as we stood boggling at the hole in the window and the swirl of snow coming in and melting on the polished floorboards.
‘The coup she,’ said Cherry. ‘The coup do. It’s a harbinger of death. And it’s the second one today.’
I did not tell her it was the third. I did not believe in such things. I was holding on very hard to my certain knowledge that no such thing could possibly be true.
6
A hastily summoned estate carpenter boarded up the window and a muscular housekeeper swept and swept the terrace until every splinter of glass was gone. Meanwhile, Donald, Teddy, Hugh and David Spencer made off across the garden in pursuit of the cú sith, (as I shortly found out was the creature’s true name) Lachlan took to the brandy bottle and soda siphon in his business room with Dickie Tibball in close attendance, and the Dunnoch and Tibball women took to the fireside in the hall to twitter.
‘Poor thing,’ I said. ‘It must have been in a terrific fright to plunge through a closed window that way.’
The Highlanders simply shook their heads and muttered inaudibly.
‘The coup she is an even clearer sign than the Fiona hag, Dandy,’ said Lady Love. Cherry gave a little cry. ‘Yes, mow howl,’ said her mother, ‘I’m afraid we saw the Fiona hag Anna doo in the garden just a while ago. And you saw … it was Daddy, wasn’t it? Up on the high moor. Not the coal yak?’
‘Please, please, speak English,’ I said. ‘I’m getting dizzy.’
‘I said the black dog – the cú sith – is a stronger sign than the black crow – the feannag an dubh,’ Lady Love said obligingly, ‘and I want Cherry to admit she didn’t see the cailleach – the old woman – earlier. Mo ghoal means darling.’
‘It was Daddy,’ said Cherry, when the lesson was complete. ‘And yet it wasn’t.’
The housekeeper, who had now finished with her broom and shovel outside on the terrace, brought in a tray groaning with tea things. Perhaps she was also the cook. A plate piled high with some food I did not recognise dripped butter onto the tray cloth.
‘I’ve made a batch of my bannocks for you,’ the woman said, muscles rippling on her forearms as she bent to place the tray on the tea-table. She was truly Amazonian and between her ligne and her air of command I would have pegged her as a games mistress or, if a servant at all, then a governess. ‘And there’s the end of last year’s gooseberry jam I’ve been saving,’ she went on. ‘But you’ve all had a shock and you need a wee treat.’
‘Thank you,’ said Mallory. ‘Dandy, do take one, but do take a napkin too. That’s a lovely dress and Mrs McReadie believes in butter.’
Ah, I thought. This then was the distaff half of the plant-hunting gardener and barely a servant at all, bound instead by long years and close connections to the family.
‘And please stay, Mrs McReadie,’ said Lady Love, confirming my view. ‘Sam will have told you about what Cherry saw earlier.’
‘Daddy but not Daddy,’ Cherry said again. She did not take a bannock but she spooned three spoons of sugar into quite a small teacup and drank thirstily. ‘He was walking, for one thing.’
Mrs McReadie turned her head to one side and, with her black hair pulled so tightly back from her brow and her bright black eyes sparkling, looked rather horribly like the crow as she waited for Cherry to say more.
‘He was striding out like a man in his prime. Poor Daddy, but you know what I mean. It was definitely him, though, in the way that it wasn’t anybody else and it wasn’t a stranger. Do you see?’
Lady Love nodded calmly. She looked up at her cook and gave a smile. ‘What do you say to that, Mrs McReadie?’
‘’Tis the way,’ Mrs McReadie said. ‘’Tis good news usually. When we pass over we are whole again. No longer halt and lame.’
‘I always wonder about that,’ said Cherry. ‘If I were to die—’
‘Hush, hush,’ said her mother.
‘No, but if I were to die in childbirth or something,’ Cherry went on. ‘At thirty, say. And say Mitten lived until he was an old man of eighty. When we met again in heaven, wouldn’t it be odd? Would I age? Or would he be thirty again too?’
‘And what about the baby?’ said Mallory. ‘Would it grow up in heaven, or would you be looking after a tiny baby for all eternity. With no nanny.’
‘Oh I think all nannies go to heaven, don’t you?’ I said. Mallory grinned at me and, not for the first time since we had arrived, I felt a little pang that this girl – if I could help it – was not to be my daughter-in-law. I liked her.
‘So what shall we do?’ said Lady Love.
‘I’ll get busy,’ said Mrs McReadie. ‘You should all get yourselves along to the church and I’ll have them ready before you’re back. Will you speak to his lordship or will I, my lady? He won’t like it.’
‘He’ll take it better from you.’ Lady Love turned to me to explain. ‘You wouldn’t mind wearing a little bit of wool twisted round your neck until the sun comes up, Dandy, would you?’
‘What?’ I said.
‘Just a little braid of coloured wool my good Mrs McReadie’s going to plait. One for each of us. One of our old customs here.’
‘It can’t hurt, I suppose,’ I said.
‘Exactly,’ said Lady Love. ‘Make one for Ursus too, won’t you?’
Mrs McReadie frowned at that. ‘Lairdie was saying you counted the cat at the lunch table,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t count the cat. It was only twelve. Unless …’ She turned to Cherry and fixed her with another bird-like look. ‘Why are you thinking about childbirth, Miss Cherry?’
Cherry was in mid-sip of her sweet tea and she spluttered a bit. ‘Mrs McReadie, really!’
‘Oh Cherry,’ said her mother. ‘Are you, mo ghoal?’
Mallory leapt up and went over to squeeze her sister hard. ‘Am I to be an aunt?’ she said. ‘Remember my plan for what a marvellous maiden aunt I’d be? With a walking stick and an ear trumpet and changing my will a lot to keep all your children on their toes!’
‘I was waiting until after your birthday, Mummy,’ Cherry said. ‘I didn’t want to steal your thunder.’
‘But I can’t think of a nicer birthday present,’ said Lady Love. ‘I am going to be a grandmother at fifty. Wait until I tell—’ Her face fell as she remembered. ‘Yes, we will all wear the wool, Mrs McReadie. Cherry can wear two. Ursus will be livid – he’s never had a collar on – but he will have to lump it. And we’ll all go to church and pray hard. I refuse to be widowed on the eve of my birthday. I simply refuse.’
At that, Mrs McReadie took herself off to go about her mysterious business and before the ladies were done billing and cooing about babies, the men were back, bursting in at the front door with snowcaps on their heads and wet feet, full of news.
‘Dratted thing scaled the wall b
y the peach houses,’ Donald said.
‘Surely not,’ I said, for it sounded fantastical.
‘Thirty-foot wall,’ Hugh said. He was limping.
‘It didn’t bite you, did it?’ I asked him.
‘If I’d got close enough to be bitten, we might have caught it,’ Hugh said. ‘No, I tripped over a roller in the dark.’
‘It’s a raker, not a roller,’ said Lady Love. ‘I’ve told Sam not to leave it lying out.’
‘I wish he had listened,’ said David Spencer. ‘The beast probably climbed it to get a head start on the wall. It left a smear of blood round about there.’
‘It’s really gone, though?’ said Cherry.
‘I never even saw it,’ said Teddy disconsolately. ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles and I missed it completely.’
‘It was a perfectly nice dog,’ I said. ‘I fondled its ears and it wagged its tail.’
‘Although, Dandy,’ said Hugh, ‘you never think a dog is anything but an angel. Nice dogs don’t leap through glass for no reason.’
‘It got upset at raised voices and the cat was the last straw,’ I said. ‘But Baskervilles didn’t come into it, Teddy, I assure you.’
‘Raised voices?’ said Lady Love mildly and I felt myself flushing. Donald concentrated hard on untying his soaked boots. He took a folded newspaper from a small table and, after checking the date on its front page, began screwing up its pages and stuffing them into the toes. Mallory watched him for a while and then turned and gave me a questioning glance.
Oh Lord, I thought. She’s good-natured and she’s clever. If only things were more straightforward I would be cock-a-hoop.
We all dispersed to our rooms to rest, with Lady Love telling us that the gong would summon us to the hall again when the car was ready to take us to the church. I looked uncertainly out of my bedroom window and wondered if the motorcar tyres would be equal to the snow that was piling up in treacherous mounds as the onshore breeze swept it against the wall at the side of the lane.
‘That’s where a metalled road is a problem,’ said Hugh, standing at my side. ‘A good ash track gives a bit of purchase.’
I said nothing. Hugh would love to metal the roads at Gilverton but the lowest road-maker’s estimate had made him open his eyes so wide his spectacles fell off into his porridge as he read his letters one morning. He was waiting for the Corporation to pave the road that passes us by, hoping to catch the men and offer them a little something to take a detour through Gilverton on their way.
‘I had the most startling conversation with the ladies while you were scampering round the garden,’ I said, subsiding onto my dressing stool. ‘The cook is busy making some kind of charm out of wool for us all to wear. So Lord Ross won’t die. Can you believe it, in this day and age?’
‘A knotted wool necklet,’ said Hugh. ‘Yes. I’ve seen them on farm animals when there’s foot-and-mouth. I’ve seen one on a horse for the staggers.’
‘Well, you’re going to see one on a cat tonight,’ I said. ‘Shall you wear yours?’
‘It would be rather churlish to refuse, don’t you think?’ said Hugh. ‘No worse than touching wood or throwing salt, after all.’
We both turned as a knock sounded at the door. I called out to whoever it was to enter and Mallory came in.
‘Ah well,’ said Hugh, patting me on the shoulder in an affectionate way. ‘I shall see you later, Dandy. Bang on the door if you don’t hear me moving.’ And he took himself off to his dressing room, leaving the girl to me.
‘Sorry to beard you,’ she said, coming in and sitting on the end of the chaise by the fireplace. ‘But I did just want to catch you alone. I can’t even imagine what you must think of us all.’
‘Not you, dear,’ I said. It would have been more diplomatic to pretend that I did not understand her.
‘You are kind,’ she said. ‘Donald told me you were kind. And he told me too about your … would you say it’s a job? Gilver and Osborne? I hadn’t heard of it, I’m ashamed to say. We’re so cut off up here. We were worse before the bee yellow oak banana, of course.’
I held up a hand to stop her. I was learning that whenever someone appeared to lapse into utter gibberish, it was probably Gaelic. ‘Bee yellow oak banana?’ I asked.
Mallory blinked and then threw back her head and went into paroxysms of laughter. When she had wiped her eyes and cleared her throat she explained, speaking the words much more slowly. ‘The bealach na bà is the new road up from Lochcarron. It’s not passable in winter but it’s made a big difference overall. Still, we don’t bother with newspapers much, because they’re so out of date by the time they come off the coal boat. Especially now with the BBC signal so much better …’
‘We haven’t been mentioned on the news bulletins!’ I said, horrified by the very idea.
‘But,’ Mallory said, ‘you are detectives? You and Mr Osborne. I was hoping he’d be here, actually. Might he come up for the engagement party in spring? And the wedding? I’ll invite him and you twist his arm. But meantime, is it infra dig to talk to you without him?’
‘Mallory, my dear,’ I said, uncrossing my legs and sitting up as straight as Nanny always told me to, ‘do you have a matter you need to put before Gilver and Osborne?’
‘I hope not,’ she said. ‘I fear so. I was hoping you’d listen on spec, as it were, and then we’ll see.’
‘Tell all,’ I said. ‘I’m very happy to help.’ Quietly to myself, though, I was wondering if I had got to the bottom of the engagement, such a bloodless kind of engagement from what I had seen. Had this young woman accepted Donald just to get a free crack at his detective mother?
‘It’s about Applecross,’ she said. ‘The estate, I mean. Or rather, it’s about my mother. And my father. It’s not really about Cherry and Mitten. It’s more about Biddy and Dickie. It’s about that ghost, you see. And the feannag and the cú sith. Oh, I wish everyone would just talk to one another! Have you ever read Cyrano de Bergerac, Dandy?’
I had been trying to follow each little dart of speech as she pecked and ducked back again and the last change of subject unseated me. I thought it was yet more Gaelic until my brain caught up with my ears. ‘No,’ I told her.
‘Or The Mill on The Floss,’ she added. ‘Or just about any Hardy. All those sad tales that would have come out quite differently if people would only just talk to one another instead of sitting with their lips buttoned and their hearts breaking.’
‘I quite agree,’ I said. ‘I’m glad to hear you being so sensible. There’s something I want to broach with you, along the same lines. But let’s discuss your business first, shall we?’
She looked intrigued, as how could she not, but she shook her head and pressed on. ‘No one has to die,’ she said. ‘Everything could be all right. We could all just be very sensible and level-headed about it, instead of this … this … nonsense!’
She appeared to think she had said enough to put me in the picture. She was certainly waiting for me to weigh in, an expectant look upon her pretty face. There was only one subject I could think of that would fit the bill.
‘Are you talking about dissolving something?’ I said, carefully. ‘About scandalising society a little instead of a lot? Toughing it out? Facing them down?’
‘Yes!’ she said, sitting back with a great rush of relief. ‘Exactly. Oh, I am glad you understand.’
‘I shall be your ally,’ I said. ‘Unlikely as that might seem. A divorce is much worse than a broken engagement.’
‘But far preferable to a murder,’ she said, nodding. I felt my face, which had relaxed into a smile, freeze again. ‘Cherry is so suggestible, you see. Heaven knows what she really saw out on the moor. But someone sent that terrible crow into the garden. And someone definitely brought that dog into the library.’
‘Mallory,’ I said. My voice had dried to a croak worthy of the feannag itself. ‘Are you telling me you think someone is planning a murder?’
‘What did you think I was telli
ng you?’
I was so shocked that I blurted it out. ‘I thought you wanted to break your engagement.’
‘What?’ she cried. ‘Why?’ Her eyes had filled with instant tears. ‘What has he said to you?’
‘Nothing! Nothing at all,’ I assured her, kicking myself. I took a deep breath. ‘But his father and I both have serious reservations.’ I heard a floorboard creak just on the other side of Hugh’s dressing-room door. He had been listening to this conversation he did not have the stomach to join and he had just run away at hearing himself mentioned.
‘About me?’ Mallory said. One of the tears trembled on her lower lashes and splashed down onto her cheek. ‘Is it my age? Or, what has Daddy said about a settlement? Is it my dowry?’
‘It’s the fact,’ I said, hardening my heart and reminding myself that she did not care for romantic novels, that she preferred cold reality laid out at everyone’s feet while they squirmed, ‘that we think he is unhealthily infatuated with your mother.’
She had taken a breath to say more but it stilled in her breast and she sat with her mouth open. Then, to my astonishment, she laughed. ‘Oh that!’ she said. ‘Well, yes of course. Everyone is in love with my mother. Daddy, still.’ Her face clouded briefly, but she went on. ‘Dickie and Mitten, to be sure. And then there’s David Spencer. He has been in love with my mother for decades. Sam McReadie adores her. And every crofter on the estate would walk over coals for her. I’d be worried about Donald if he hadn’t lost his heart. I’d think him a cold fish indeed if he wasn’t mesmerised by Lady Love.’
‘I see, I see,’ I said. ‘And so, setting that aside and returning to what you were saying. You think someone who loves your mother is planning to kill your father … to clear the way?’
Mallory stared at me for a long while before she answered. ‘Not necessarily that,’ she said. ‘And my mother has plans of her own besides. But something. Still, we don’t have to sit in silence waiting, do we? It can’t be true that Cherry and Mitten saw my father’s ghost. And so I want you to interview them – interrogate them if it comes to that – and find out what they really did see. I don’t like the idea that someone is acting like a kind of horrid puppet-master, setting those harbingers to pop up. And even if that person doesn’t follow through on the threats, I don’t like the way everyone is now expecting Daddy to die. It feels dangerous. It feels like the kind of thing that might plant an idea in the wrong mind and then it will come true. Please Dandy, can you stop it coming true?’
A Step So Grave Page 6