A Step So Grave

by Catriona McPherson

  ‘So who was it?’ I said.

  Lord Ross heaved a sigh. ‘It might have been a vixen,’ he said. ‘Except that the garden gates were closed and there are no holes burrowed under them. If you believe in unquiet souls and pilot ghosts—’

  ‘Pilot ghosts?’ said Alec. ‘The ferryman and all that, you mean?’

  ‘If you believe in them, you could say it was unearthly. It certainly sounded unearthly.’

  ‘What did Mallory do when she heard it?’ said Alec.

  Lord Ross nodded in appreciation of the question. ‘She stopped dead in her tracks,’ he said. ‘She let the barrow handles go and put her face in her hands. Of course, she didn’t know I was watching. Then she turned and disappeared round the corner of the house the way she had come. She reappeared about five minutes later, soaking wet, saying she had rushed out when she heard the scream but she had thought it was coming from the shore side and she’d been searching and calling out round there. All lies. My poor girl.’

  It was pretty damning. I am ashamed to admit that my first thought upon hearing it was that I would have my son to myself for a few years yet. He was not going to marry this murderess. My second thought was that it did not fit with the conversations I had had with Mallory in February, when she – apparently – opened her heart to me. She had been twisted up with worry that someone was going to kill her father. I remembered her pleading voice: No one has to die. Everything could be all right.

  Then, with a shudder, I seemed to hear her words again, as if played in a different key. She wished everyone would be sensible. She wished everyone would talk plainly. Otherwise, to protect her father, someone – to her infinite regret – would have to die.

  ‘Do we have your permission to speak to Mallory?’ I said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘If I were to promise not to overrule your decision to protect her, would you give it?’

  Lord Ross said nothing.

  ‘If we were to promise we’d tell no one but you what she says. On that understanding, might we talk to her with your blessing?’

  Alec was staring at me from saucer eyes: such an assurance as I was dangling before Lord Ross was directly at odds with everything Gilver and Osborne stood for. We were servants of truth. We did not take the law into our own hands. We never had. That is, we had from time to time decided not to join together two stray thoughts to make a third. And we had from time to time decided that justice had been served without the need for courts and juries. We had never, though, until that moment, assured anyone that their secrets, thus far unknown, would be safe with us. That is, I had; but not in front of Alec. And I assumed he had, but not in front of me.

  Lord Ross nodded. Then he passed a weary hand over his eyes. ‘Leave me awhile, would you please?’ he said. ‘I need to rest. And to sober up before luncheon too.’

  Alec started in on me before the library door was closed at our heels.

  ‘What on earth do you think—’

  I held up a hand to silence him. ‘Let me write it all down before I forget,’ I said, walking away. ‘You can ponder this in the meantime. What happened to the bags?’

  ‘A good question,’ said Alec. ‘I shall ponder it. And then you answer mine, would you?’

  13

  I scribbled for a minute and then screwed the point of my propelling pencil safely back into its body and sat up. I was startled to see Alec sitting on the edge of my bed, but when I looked at the little sofa I saw Bunty stretched out there on her back with her head hanging down and her paws waving.

  ‘Well?’ said Alec. ‘Since when exactly do we assure clients that we are their tame dogsbodies and they have nothing to worry about from us?’

  ‘Ross isn’t a client,’ I said. ‘We don’t need his permission to talk to Mallory.’

  ‘True,’ said Alec. ‘In that case why did you ask for it?’

  ‘To make sure he didn’t warn her off.’

  ‘You are a very different woman from the one I first met.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, choosing to take it as a compliment. ‘Shall we go and find her right now? In case her father lets something slip, after all. Or in case Cherry does. Or in case she kills someone else. Such as Donald.’

  ‘You think she did it?’ Alec said.

  ‘You don’t? After hearing that she was seen going to fetch the body with a wheelbarrow before anyone except the murderer knew it was there?’

  ‘There’s something in the book of hours that’s bothering me,’ he said by way of a reply. ‘I wouldn’t mind running through it one more time before we beard her.’

  ‘There are a great many things in it that are bothering me,’ I said. ‘Where will I start?’

  ‘Top of page one,’ said Alec. ‘Where else?’

  I rapped at Hugh’s dressing-room door and when only silence came in answer I went in. I opened the gun bag with my own little key, opened my writing case with another and withdrew back into my bedroom with the notebook I had selected for the purpose. I cracked its spine and bent the board back.

  ‘Five o’clock, Wednesday, 13th February,’ I read. ‘Tea by the hall fire. All present. Dispersal of party at quarter past five. This is the last sighting of Lavinia by any of the Gilvers. Twenty past five, Mallory to Dandy’s room to speak of worries that someone might die. Hugh in dressing room. Half past five, Mrs McReadie to Dandy’s room, with woollen necklets. Question!’

  ‘Was the corpse of Lady Love wearing one when she was found?’ Alec said.

  ‘Quarter to seven,’ I resumed. ‘Dandy and Hugh downstairs to gather for expedition to church. Question!’

  ‘Who cancelled church?’

  ‘Seven o’clock. Dinner. All present – except for Lady Love, who was dining off a tray.’

  ‘Says who?’

  ‘Mallory.’

  ‘So she might already have been dead, if we only have her murderer’s word that she wasn’t.’

  ‘But Mallory suggested an oat pillow and it was the footman who reported that Lady Love was not to be disturbed. You think …’ I riffled forwards in the book, ‘… Lairdie’s lying about the pillow and Mrs McReadie’s lying about the breakfast in bed and Cherry’s lying about hearing her mother’s voice the next morning, all because they think Mallory is guilty and they want to protect her? A sister, I can just about see. But why would a cook and a footman?’

  Alec screwed his face up tight and searched for an elusive thought. I waited. He made a creaking noise through his strained throat, as though he were literally physically stretching to try to reach something. Then, just as his brow smoothed and his face cleared, a shout came from through the connecting door.

  ‘Who’s done this?’ Hugh sounded halfway between rage and panic. ‘Who’s done this?’ He battered open the door to my room and stood framed in the doorway, his eyes wild. ‘You’re safe, Dandy! Where are the boys?’

  ‘Why?’ I said.

  ‘Someone has broken into my gun bag and made off with – Well, let me check what’s gone.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ I said, rising and hurrying after him. ‘Nothing’s gone. No one broke in, Hugh. It was me. I put something in there for safe keeping and I’m just having a look at it. I should have closed the bag again, though. I do apologise.’

  ‘You put something in my gun bag?’ said Hugh. ‘What?’

  ‘Just a notebook.’

  ‘Why such precautions then?’ said Hugh.

  ‘Because it’s full of incendiary libel about our hosts,’ I replied.

  ‘You should keep it about your own person in that case,’ Hugh said huffily.

  I turned to Alec. ‘That reminds me … why take a garden journal from a place if you’re leaving?’

  ‘Or why, if someone was faking her departure, would that person bother to do the same?’ said Alec.

  ‘Were the bags properly packed?’ Hugh said. ‘Or were they just stuffed with the nearest things to hand to get the weight right?’

  ‘That is an excellent question that no one has ans
wered,’ I said.

  ‘Well, now I’ve helped you by stating it clearly,’ said Hugh. ‘Please don’t leave my gun bag open, Dandy. In fact, I think I shall go and find Ross, get my guns put away properly downstairs. Keep things tidy.’

  He did not so much leave as sweep out. I turned to Alec. ‘What are the chances you still remember the elusive thought you just managed to pin down?’

  Alec sighed in reply, which told me everything.

  A little light sleuthing below stairs – to wit, putting my head round the kitchen door and asking Mrs McReadie – earned us the information that Mallory was on a mercy mission along at the grocer’s shop cum post office and we would be doing the cook a kindness if we went along there and dragged her back in time for luncheon. Since Alec wanted some baccy – this case was already shaping up to be a drain on his pouch – thither we went.

  It was a charming route for a walk on a fresh spring morning, especially when compared with hauling ourselves up a steep stony path with a graveyard at its end. The tide was coming in with rippling little rushes and, behind the row of cottages that made up the village, lines of washing were cracking like whips in the breeze.

  ‘Isn’t it odd that they’ve got clothes out to dry on Good Friday?’ said Alec. ‘And that they’re working in the potato fields. I thought these Highlanders were holier than holy?’

  ‘On Sundays,’ I said. ‘Marking Fridays – this of all Fridays – is rather popish for their tastes. Note that the grocer’s shop is open, for instance, for whatever Mallory is doing there as well as for bags of sugar and packets of tea.’

  The grocer’s shop was easy to pick out of the row: it had a pair of battered advertising signs affixed to its front wall and a bench under one of its windows, where a trio of crofter men too ancient to be part of the potato planting were sitting in calm contemplation of our approach.

  ‘Mad in varr,’ one of them appeared to say to us as we drew near.

  ‘Good morning,’ I replied, taking a wild guess. Then I clutched Alec’s arm as an unearthly howl arose from inside the dark interior. It sounded as though someone was being murdered, and the recent tale of the scream from the garden on Valentine’s Day was too fresh in my mind to allow for any sanguinity.

  On the other hand, the three ancient men rocked with gentle laughter on hearing it, their mouths wide around a few yellow teeth.

  ‘Let’s go in,’ I said. ‘I’d rather know than wonder.’

  ‘Be all nut leave,’ said another of the old men to our backs. I was going to have to try to get to grips with a little Gaelic, if only to spare myself the bewilderment.

  Inside, the shop was pungent with the smell of village grocers’ shops throughout the land, perhaps even the world over: paraffin and tallow candles were the base notes, carbolic soap and lye gave a sharp top note, camphor lent some depth to it all and there was a light whiff of fresh newspaper ink, like a garnish. It was dark in here, but by squinting I could see a woman of solid construction, her hair scraped back as tightly as her shawl was tucked in, standing behind the counter, with both fists balled on its surface and her eyes squeezed shut.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I said. But as another long yodelling howl of agony broke out from somewhere unseen, I realised she was not its source.

  ‘What can I do you for?’ she said.

  ‘We’re here to see Miss Dunnoch,’ I said. ‘Is that her? Is she all right?’

  ‘She’s a saint,’ said the woman. ‘Away by if you can bear to.’ She waved a hand and then put a knuckle to her mouth as a third wave of howling broke out, emanating, I now realised, from a back room beyond a curtained doorway. With a glance at Alec, I stepped behind the counter and drew the curtain aside.

  I do not know what I had been expecting: perhaps a village girl in the throes of childbirth, although the old men’s laughter suggested otherwise. Perhaps a feeble-minded individual caged or chained and Mallory here to let his usual keeper go out for some fresh air. What I saw was neither so dramatic as the one not so heart-rending as the other. Lairdie, the footman from Applecross House, was sitting on a kitchen chair in the middle of a comfortable living room. Mallory Dunnoch stood behind it with Lairdie’s head held in a firm grip, while a man in a white apron over his tweeds applied a pair of pliers to the deep recesses of Lairdie’s wide-open mouth. There was a white-cloth-covered trestle table set up just to one side and on it was a row of gleaming instruments, including even bigger pliers as well as rolls of cotton wool and stoppered bottles of coloured liquid.

  ‘Aaaaaa-AA-aaaoowwww,’ Lairdie howled, his eyes rolling and his limbs thrashing.

  ‘Nearly done,’ said the dentist, with terrible bonhomie. He leaned into the job and the muscles of his forearms rippled.

  ‘Be brave, Lairdie,’ said Mallory. ‘It’ll all be over soon.’

  Alec and I watched, wincing, as the dentist almost pulled himself off his feet with the effort he was applying. Then there was an almighty crack and the man stood back, his arm raised high in triumph and a grisly trophy held in his pliers.

  Mallory let go of Lairdie’s head and grabbed a swab from the instrument table, stuffing it into the wound before the bleeding could start. Lairdie’s outpouring of agony was muffled by it but no less heartfelt.

  ‘Will it need a stitch, Mr Craven?’ Mallory said. ‘It’s bleeding like billy-o.’

  ‘Och, just bite down, lad,’ said the dentist. He was far more interested in the tooth than the patient. He turned it this way and that and admired it. ‘I knew the root would be deep,’ he said. ‘I remember the last one. But this is a magnificent beast. I shall put this in a bottle of alcohol on a shelf in my surgery.’

  It was just as well that Lairdie’s mouth was full of cotton wool swabs because I did not want to understand the volley of one-syllable words he aimed at the dentist’s back. Mallory understood them. She flushed and shot a glance at Alec and me even as she tried to suppress her giggles.

  ‘And which one of you is next?’ the dentist said, finally putting down his pliers and rubbing his hands with anticipation at what adventures Alec and I might offer up for him.

  ‘Sorry to disappoint you,’ Alec said. ‘We’re here to see Mallory.’

  ‘And offer Lairdie an arm on his walk home,’ I added. Lairdie scowled at me. He had recovered himself somewhat. He was a man again, not the boy who had howled and let Mallory cradle his head, and he set off ahead of us alone.

  ‘Are there any more outside?’ the dentist asked, craning for a look.

  ‘There are three elderly men on the bench,’ Alec said doubtfully. ‘But …’

  ‘Ocht, them!’ the dentist said. ‘They’ve not got a mouthful of teeth amongst them. They’re just sitting, not queueing. Well, Miss Dunnoch, it looks like that’s it for another visit.’

  Lairdie had finally staunched the flow of blood from his gum. He sat forward and spat out a gob of bright, soaked cotton wool and looked at the dentist with disgust. ‘It’s well seeing you charge up front,’ he said. ‘For you’d have to set the dogs on me to get your money now.’

  ‘You’re welcome,’ said the dentist. ‘A wee rub of …’ He looked at the curtain separating us from the shop ‘… of whisky on it now, a good swish out after eating and before you go to bed, and tomorrow will see you right as rain. Chew on the other side for a day or two though, mind.’

  ‘Oh, I think I might just remember that!’ Lairdie said.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Mallory, ‘there’ll be plenty of suitable liquids for you to gargle with at the house this weekend.’

  ‘I’m not listening,’ came the shopkeeper’s voice. ‘I’m not hearing a word about strong drink flowing. And at Easter-time too.’

  ‘I was hoping you’d stop in at the party, Mrs Marshall,’ Mallory called back through. ‘We’re hoping everyone will come and have a wee dance and a bite. It would mean a lot to me after how dreadful things have been lately.’ She walked through to the front shop as she spoke and I followed her. There was no mistaking the l
ook of exasperated affection the little round woman bestowed upon the girl. This was a friendship of years. Mallory had no doubt been toddling along to this shop with a penny in her hand to buy a twist of barley sugar since before she could reach the counter. I wondered again about her willingness to leave this place to her sister and come down to dour, dull Perthshire where the shopkeepers sniffed their disdain for one and all, no matter how many years of daily meetings were racked up.

  ‘Are you walking back along to the house?’ I asked.

  ‘I am,’ Mallory said. ‘I’m ravenous for my luncheon. A morning being screamed at by croft hands and bitten by frightened children has worked my appetite up beautifully.’

  We stepped outside again and she put her hands up and ran them through her hair, drinking in the sparkling sunshine. One of the three old men rattled off a stream of Gaelic, making the other two laugh.

  Mallory chortled too and rattled off a good string back at him. Then she grinned at me and set off along the road. She was evidently hatless and coatless on this outing.

  Alec fell into step with us but was no help at all. He busied himself with his pipe in a way I have come to know and left it to me to start the interview.

  ‘It’s nice to see you in such good spirits,’ I said.

  ‘I’ve been nagged and cajoled into good spirits by Miss Grant,’ said Mallory. ‘She has swept in and taken over. She’s a marvel, isn’t she?’

  ‘Grant?’ I said. I had half-forgotten she was there, if the truth were known. I had not seen hide nor hair of her since before breakfast.

  ‘She has taken charge of my party dress, my wedding dress, my bridesmaid’s dresses and my trousseau,’ she said. ‘And one of the first things she scolded me about was frowning and turning my mouth down. It ages one, apparently. She told me she knows someone, not yet fifty, who frowns while reading and has given herself a deep— Oh!’ Mallory looked at a spot between my eyebrows and stopped speaking.