A Step So Grave

by Catriona McPherson

  ‘We diverted the rivers,’ Cherry said. She kept one hand on her overall front. ‘Maelrubha’s tears don’t flow as they did. Look, I don’t want to talk about it. Whenever I talk about it, this little one goes very still. I hate the feeling of it lying like lead instead of jabbing at me. Ask Daddy. If you really want to know.’

  ‘Answer one more question,’ I said. ‘The warnings you say Death sent? The little figure in the drawer has another one, hasn’t it?’

  Cherry flushed and rubbed her nose. ‘I’ve never been any good at lying,’ she said.

  ‘What did you do with it?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s another question,’ she said, but she was smiling. ‘We buried it with her. To be on the safe side.’ She turned and looked at Alec. ‘Are you going to give her the flowers?’ she said. ‘She loved flowers. Well, you’ve seen the house. You should go into my old room. I think Teddy’s got it this visit. There’s a painting of my wedding bouquet above the bed in there. Mummy made the bouquet, of course. And then she painted it before it wilted so I’d have the memory of it for ever. You should see it, Dandy, before you go.’

  Alec had put the stems of lilies and gladioli into the stone pot that sat in front of Lady Love’s gravestone and now he unscrewed the lid of the bottle he had brought and filled the pot with water.

  ‘There you are, Mummy,’ said Cherry. ‘Beautiful lilies for Easter.’ She turned her head to the side and spoke to Alec and me. ‘No doubt you think it’s silly sentiment for me to speak to her. Or blasphemous or something.’

  ‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘You must miss her dreadfully.’

  ‘Did you get the chance to say goodbye?’ Alec asked. ‘That last day?’

  ‘Goodbye?’ said Cherry. ‘Whatever do you mean? Of course not. She didn’t know she was going to be killed.’

  Alec raised his eyebrows and nodded furiously at me, telling me to take over. ‘But she was planning to leave,’ I said. ‘With bags packed and all the rest of it. Didn’t she say goodbye to Mallory and you?’

  Cherry shook her head. ‘It wasn’t until afterwards I found out her bags were packed,’ she said. ‘Of course, she must have planned to say goodbye. She wouldn’t just take off. But in between deciding to leave and getting away, she was murdered.’

  Alec started at the girl’s bent head in disbelief and I cannot say that I blamed him.

  ‘When did you last speak to her?’ I said.

  ‘I tried just then,’ Cherry said. ‘As soon as I found out she was leaving.’

  ‘But how did you find out she was leaving?’ Alec said.

  Cherry boggled. ‘The doll,’ she said. ‘You don’t bind a person to a place unless they’re trying to get away.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound quite so benign when you put it that way,’ I said. ‘This “white magic” of yours.’

  ‘And what do you mean you “tried”?’ Alec said.

  Cherry said, ‘She had locked her bedroom door and when I knocked she called out “Not now, my sweet” and I went away again. So I suppose you’d say it was teatime the evening before, when we all went up to rest and change before dinner, that I last actually saw her. After the cú sith in the library. We went up arm in arm – Mallory, Mummy and me – talking about …’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Ask Daddy,’ she said, as she had before. ‘If you must. My mother is dead and my father is all the more precious because of it. I don’t want to lose him or make him … Or make anything worse. But yes, if you really must ask someone, ask Daddy. About everything.’ She took a deep breath. ‘And now I need to get back to the tattie planting. I’ve missed the hard work and I’m just in time for the scones. Perfect timing.’ She patted the gravestone and turned away. ‘You should join us,’ she said. ‘It’s such a beautiful day and there’s nothing like it, as long as you don’t mind very strong tea.’

  12

  ‘No one older than five can be that innocent,’ I said. ‘Surely.’

  ‘You say innocent. I say gormless,’ said Alec. ‘What did you make of the conversation through the door?’

  ‘Impossible!’ I cried. ‘Lady Love was dead by then under a blanket of virgin snow in the middle of the knot garden. So either Cherry is lying about the whole thing, or she’s embellishing what she took to be her mother ignoring her by adding a few kind words, or …’

  ‘Someone else was in the room and shouted through the door. “Not now, my sweet” would do for just about anyone in the house except the servants, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘But,’ I said, ‘why doesn’t Cherry know that her mother was dead by noon on Valentine’s Day?’

  Alec thought a while as we skirted the house towards the front door, then stopped, raised his hands and clapped them down at his sides again. ‘Let’s do what she kept suggesting,’ he said. ‘Let’s ask “Daddy”.’

  ‘Do you think she said that because she knows, deep down, who’s most likely to kill a woman before she can flee her marriage … perhaps “Ask Daddy” was Cherry sending as clear a message as she could bear to.’

  ‘I think so,’ Alec said. ‘She almost said it straight out. Her mother is dead and nothing will bring her back, so why betray her one remaining parent?’

  ‘Good grief,’ I said. ‘I didn’t hear her words that way, but I see what you mean.’

  ‘Because it seems to me that there’s only one character left to cast in this macabre Highland death scene. There are the harbingers. The dog and the crow. There’s the victim herself. But if the vision out on the moor was Lord Ross, that makes him …’

  ‘The murderer.’

  ‘Something is certainly rotten here,’ Alec said. He sniffed as he spoke, even though the air was sweet with apple blossom and fresh spring grass and piquant with the salt tang of the sea. ‘They do say anything that rots rots from the head down, don’t they?’

  ‘How to manage it, though,’ I said. ‘A pair of houseguests buttonholing the host and pretty much asking him if he murdered his wife and got away with it? Bad form, wouldn’t you say? I half-wish I hadn’t forbidden Hugh meddling.’

  ‘Perhaps he disobeyed you,’ Alec said, pointing at where a paved path came twisting down the hill to meet the ash path we were on. Hugh was trundling Lord Ross’s wheeled chair at a lively clip, his mouth set in a grim line. Ross himself was hanging on to the arms of the chair by hooked elbows, bouncing stiffly at every bump. His expression, too, was far from sunny.

  ‘I think you’re right,’ I said. ‘No discussion of bogged-down saplings can have put those looks on their faces. Hugh! Hu-ugh!’ I waved and hallooed him. My husband of over twenty years looked back at me as though I were a card sharp. His disgust was palpable. Whatever had gone awry between Ross and him, it was clearly to be laid at my door. At a guess, I would have said Lord Ross had betrayed his guilt in the matter of his wife’s death and Hugh blamed me for dragging him here to find out about it. I looked forward to scoffing at him for his fastidiousness later when we were alone. For the moment, I just set my jaw as firmly as his and ploughed on towards the junction of the paved planation path and the crow road a few yards further down.

  ‘Why not drop me off here?’ Ross said, through gritted teeth, when we converged a moment later. ‘I’m sure Osborne will oblige until we’re down on the flat.’

  Hugh let go of the chair handles, grabbed Bunty’s lead and took off without another word. The three of us watched his departing back in silence until, realising that the chair was still moving – was, in fact, gathering pace – Alec lunged forward, grabbed it and brought it to a halt.

  ‘I feel,’ I said, tentatively, ‘that is, I think … I mean, it looks as though perhaps we should talk.’

  Lord Ross started trembling. His shoulders shook and his breath came in gasps. It was disconcerting, but it looked more like some kind of seizure than the onset of murderous rage and there were two of us, even if he were about to go on the rampage. I walked round to the front of the chair and looked down at him. He was laughing.

 
; ‘I’m sorry!’ he said, wiping his eyes. ‘Oh, do forgive me for shocking you. I’m not laughing at Hugh or at my darling girl or my poor dead wife or any of the mess. I’m laughing at you, Dandy.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Oh well then.’

  ‘Perhaps we should talk!’ he said, whimpering as his breath gave out and then collapsing into another round of helpless giggles. Alec was smiling too now and a snort escaped him. At length, Lord Ross recovered himself. He took a handkerchief out of some remote pocket in his waistcoat or cardigan, and blew his nose with a final-sounding trumpet. ‘I need a whisky,’ he said. ‘If you would wheel me through the apple crosses and in at the terrace door, young man. It’s the quickest, but I don’t trust meself on the gravel without me stick.’

  We made a little desultory chat as we went; about the beauty of the blossom and the dedication of McReadie. I touched on the marvel of Cherry planting potatoes but, detecting a slight chill, I swerved away again and back to the early blooming of the bluebells and the glory of the hothouses. That got us up the ramp onto the east terrace and in at the library door.

  ‘I’ve had enough of flowers, if I’m honest,’ said Lord Ross, as he lifted himself out of his contraption and, with a couple of tottering steps, let himself drop into his armchair. The cat, Ursus, rose from a window seat, stretched and padded over to take up his lap. ‘The upstairs here looks like a Balinese brothel, for one thing. Just a splash of soda in it, Osborne, if you wouldn’t mind obliging?’

  Alec made an enormous whisky for the old man, took a tiny one for himself, poured a small sherry for me and then settled down as alert as a pointer at the first drive. I hoped I looked a little less eager for whatever juicy meat was coming, but inside I was aquiver.

  ‘I have shocked Hugh with worse than laughter, I’m afraid,’ Ross said. ‘I have shocked him to the core. He very much wanted to break up Mallory and Donald, but he didn’t want it to be mutual. I don’t want the marriage to go ahead any more than he does. Than you do.’

  I took a sip of my drink to cover my attempts at bringing my face back under conscious control. ‘Why, might I ask?’

  ‘It’s not the boy,’ Lord Ross said. ‘Donald is a fine chap. But weddings, you see, attract attention. Press attention. And I don’t want society, the world, the newspaper-reading public – call it what you will – to read that Mallory has married a chap so much her junior and scuttled off to Perthshire. They would take it as an admission of guilt. It would invite more shame and scandal. And we’re drowning in that already.’

  ‘You – you know that?’ I said.

  Lord Ross closed his eyes and shook his head, laughing softly. ‘I’d have to be a cretin not to know it,’ he said. ‘No one believes in this “tramp”. Good grief. Do you?’

  ‘But do you mean you actually suspect Mallory?’ I said. ‘You suspect Mallory, specifically, of killing your wife? Her mother?’

  ‘What else could make me give my dear wife that hasty, furtive funeral?’ Ross said, speaking savagely. ‘What else would make me go along with this travesty of justice but my child? And make no mistake; I’m outraged by it even as I court it. The stupid inspector and those craven pups on the county council. For the upkeep of a road? For a bally pier and a village hall? Even for the promise of a new school building so the little ones can live at home until they are twelve. That’s all very touching, I’ll grant you. But none of that – or even if we had promised to build a hospital and a library and a … and a … an opera house! Things like that shouldn’t be enough to have them winking at murder and letting us off with it. Should they?’

  Since he appeared really to be asking, I answered. ‘No, of course not. And speaking of “your child”, I think you should know that your other child believes you’re saving your own neck. At least, we got that impression, didn’t we Alec? Cherry thinks it was you, Lachlan. You should tell her it wasn’t and set her mind at rest.’

  To my surprise, he was shaking his head. ‘No, thank you,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to draw her suspicion towards her sister. If Cherry thinks I did it, we can leave that sleeping dog alone.’

  Alec was watching the old man closely and steeling himself to speak. I sat back and let him. ‘You’re not forgetting,’ Alec began, ‘in all of this, what Dandy and I do for a living. Are you?’

  ‘The detective agency?’ Lord Ross said. ‘Not at all. I couldn’t think of anything that would make us look more innocent than inviting detectives back to the house.’

  ‘What makes you think Mallory did it?’ I said. ‘I ask because the fact of having two detectives in your house is not only useful for thumbing your nose at the gossips. We could actually detect.’ Lord Ross had been holding his whisky glass up to the light, admiring the glints of amber and gold through the crystal, but now he put it down on one of his knees and cocked his head at me. ‘We could find out if she did,’ I went on. ‘And if she didn’t, then you wouldn’t have to go along with this tale any more. You could … do whatever it is you want to do to avenge your wife’s murder.’

  ‘Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war,’ said Lord Ross. ‘I want to breathe fire and brimstone and bring calumny down on the head of whoever took my Lady Love away from me. Unless it was Mallory.’

  ‘Lay the evidence before us then,’ I said.

  ‘Motive,’ said Lord Ross. ‘Mallory has waited so many years for the right young man to come along. And then, when he did, Lady Love cast her spell and bewitched him.’

  ‘If that’s all it is,’ I said, ‘you can put it out of your mind completely. Mallory spoke to me about it on the evening before your wife’s birthday. She was laughing about it. Well, smiling about it. She didn’t mind. She hinted that she’d have been concerned about any red-blooded male who didn’t fall a little in love with her mother.’

  ‘She always was a sweet child,’ said Lord Ross. ‘But motive’s not all. Not by a long chalk. You know the tale of apparent flight, don’t you? That Lady Love was supposed to be leaving me?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Mallory told me. Oh! Mallory told me.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Lord Ross. ‘And then the tale became that she had left me. Packed her bags and gone.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said again. ‘That was why we left. Hugh came to my room and told me that she had gone and we had better make ourselves scarce to let you all lick your wounds in private. You yourself told me about her packed bags, if you remember. From up on the landing.’

  Lord Ross nodded. ‘The thing is, I think Mallory packed them.’

  ‘She told you that?’ said Alec. ‘Or was she seen?’

  ‘No, but you see the thing is, she knew what was in them. Afterwards, days later – when we were talking about a funeral – the question came up of what LL was going to be dressed in, for her burial. And Cherry suggested this one frock that my wife was always very fond of. She looked like an angel in it. Mallory agreed and said it was such a shame and it would have been perfect but that her mother had packed it when she was preparing to leave.’

  ‘I think I’m a bit less swayed by that single fact than you are, Lord Ross,’ I said. ‘I concede that it’s odd but it’s far from conclusive.’

  ‘I’m working up to the truly damning stuff,’ he said. He looked down at his glass.

  ‘Another snifter, perhaps?’ Alec said. ‘To get you through it?’

  Ross nodded. Once his glass was charged once more, and he had soothed himself with a stiff swig and a stroke of his cat, he went on. ‘When we found her … When we found my wife’s body, that dreadful, dreadful day. It was just after dark. Raining like the opening day of a second flood and black as pitch out there. I was in here with Dickie and Biddy. Cherry had cried herself to sleep. And all of a sudden there was a piercing scream. It was impossible to tell where it came from, except that it was outside somewhere. Have you ever witnessed a pig-killing? I suppose not. But that’s the only sound I’ve ever heard that came close to this.

  ‘Biddy and Dickie leapt to their feet, dashed out of the Frenc
h window there and belted round into the garden to see what the trouble was. I was left behind. I was so exhausted by then I couldn’t have hauled myself out of this thing if the house was on fire. I’ve never felt more useless. So I did the only thing I could. I opened the curtains and put the lights out. Then at least I could see what was going on.’

  ‘You can’t see the middle of the criss-crosses from here, can you?’ Alec said. He got to his feet and went to check, leaning in close to the glass and squinting out. ‘I can’t see a thing and it’s broad daylight.’

  ‘And what I saw,’ Lord Ross went on, as if Alec had not spoken, ‘was Mallory coming along the terrace from the front of the house, wheeling an empty barrow.’

  He looked at me and then at Alec to see how that item of news had struck us and then he began talking again. ‘She was taking it round to put her mother’s body in it and dispose of it, you see. Having killed her.’

  ‘And what was the noise?’ I said. ‘The piglike screaming?’

  ‘At first, I thought it was the sound of my darling wife’s death throes,’ said Lord Ross. ‘That’s what I thought that night. One would. There was a scream and then a body. But the next day the police told me she had been dead for hours. Hours on end.’

  ‘And why do you suppose Mallory – if she were guilty – would have left her mother’s body there for those “hours on end” before she brought the barrow to move her?’

  ‘As I said,’ said Lord Ross. ‘It had just got dark. She had to wait for cover of darkness. There are windows all over the back of the house and besides that, there’s McReadie. No day is too foul for McReadie to suddenly decide he needs to do something out there. While the snow lay, all was well. No one would dare set foot upon it. But when it started to rain it was a race to see what happened first, the snow melting or the sun going down. In the end, she almost made it.’

  ‘And might have, but for the scream,’ said Alec, ‘which alerted everyone. Who was it?’

  ‘None of us,’ said Lord Ross. ‘Biddy, Dickie and I were in here. McReadie, Mrs McReadie, Lairdie and Mackie were in the kitchens together. Mallory was at the front of the house, as I said. Cherry was upstairs in her room. She came dashing down a moment later. David Spencer was along at the post, sending telegrams. He found out when he heard the police whistle and saw Constable Petrie pedalling along here like a bat out of hell. He ran all the way back.’