[Mirabelle Bevan 08] - Highland Fling

by Sara Sheridan

  Gregory smiled. ‘Miss Bevan doesn’t know.’

  ‘No,’ Mirabelle admitted. ‘But you can never tell what might help. I found a diary in your godmother’s things when I looked there.’

  ‘You went through Nina’s things?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘What was in the diary?’ Gregory asked.

  ‘Nothing connected to her death. Some drawings. Profit calculations on the cashmere. Nothing about jewellery of any kind. No notes about an assignation in the middle of the night.’

  ‘Did you give it to the police?’

  Mirabelle shook her head. She kept her eyes on what she was doing but the drawers yielded nothing but a sheaf of receipts, Eleanor’s bottle of vodka and a few colourful sample books of tweed and cashmere. There was nothing taped underneath and no secret drawers or compartments. Mirabelle leaned against the desk, perusing the books behind her. One by one, she took them off the shelf to search for hidden papers, notes on the flyleaf. Anything. Then she ran a palm under each shelf. ‘There’s nothing here,’ she pronounced.

  From the hallway, the sound of footsteps descended. ‘Can I help you?’ Mrs Gillies peered through the door.

  ‘It’s OK,’ Gregory replied. ‘We were just curious.’

  ‘It seems disrespectful,’ Mrs Gillies sniffed.

  ‘Are you done for the night?’ Gregory ignored her objection.

  ‘Elizabeth took the mistress’s disappearance badly. She’s talking of leaving and I can’t blame her. You shouldn’t be in here.’

  ‘We’re trying to help, Mrs Gillies.’ Gregory’s tone was admirably calm.

  She sniffed again as if to dismiss the notion. ‘I’m sure the inspector wouldn’t be happy about you taking matters into your own hands. The police officers have already searched the office.’

  ‘Perhaps you’re right,’ said Tash. ‘We didn’t find anything, anyway.’

  Gillies disappeared up the stairs. Mirabelle cast her eyes around the room once more, lighting on the Patrick Heron Eleanor liked so much. On a whim, she examined the painting. ‘Bingo!’ she said as she pulled it away from the wall. ‘Look.’ Inset behind the frame, a khaki metal safe was flush against the plaster, the legend ‘Schwab Safe Company’ painted on it in gold.

  Tash sighed. ‘God,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t know where to start with that.’

  Gregory pulled a soft pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and flicked his finger against the bottom so that a cigarette jutted upwards. He pulled it out with his lips and smoothly lit it with the lighter from the desk. All Americans behaved like film stars, Mirabelle thought. It was just in them, somehow.

  ‘I have an idea,’ he said. ‘But I don’t think you’ll like it.’

  ‘Try me.’

  Gregory lowered his voice. ‘I could crack it.’

  ‘The safe?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Afterwards,’ she said, ‘can you put it back so it looks as if you were never there?’

  ‘Sure. It’s worth a try, right?’ Gregory checked his watch.

  Tash stood by the door, on guard for Mrs Gillies as much as the police. Gregory crouched down. ‘Back home it’s the Jews who are the safe crackers,’ he said. ‘Luckily my friend Maurice Klein taught me.’

  Mirabelle smiled. ‘I have a friend in Brighton who’d like you.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘She’s married to an American.’

  ‘Black guy?’

  ‘He’s a musician.’

  ‘That’s brave.’

  ‘Marrying a musician?’

  ‘A white girl marrying a black fellow.’

  ‘She’s black.’

  ‘That’s enlightened of you, Miss Bevan,’ Gregory said. ‘The more I know you, the more I like you. And your friends.’ He picked up one of Eleanor’s vodka glasses and pressed it to the door of the safe, listening as he turned the dial. He smelled of tobacco and something sweet – vanilla or orange.

  Mirabelle sank on to a chair. She wondered what she might say if they were caught and how often Gregory might have cracked a safe, and why. Gregory’s expression fixed as he concentrated on making minute movements, turning the dial back and forth. It was excruciating. After about three minutes, he pulled the lever to open the door and Mirabelle found she could breathe again. ‘There,’ he said.

  Inside, there was a large, old-fashioned accounts book. Mirabelle opened it. The pages were lined, predictably, with figures – they seemed to refer to the distillery and the cashmere mill and the tweed collective. Stuck in the back, between thick endpapers, she found a tiny stack of letters tied with a thin, turquoise ribbon. Mirabelle took these out. ‘Go on,’ said Gregory.

  Almost unwillingly she tugged the ribbon. The letters were from Eleanor to Bruce at the time they first met. It seemed they had written to each other often when she was still in London and he had gone up north. ‘Looks like Mr Robertson is a romantic,’ Gregory commented.

  ‘I’m not sure we should read these,’ Mirabelle replied.

  Gregory raised his hands. ‘Put them back if you want.’

  Tash peered as Mirabelle laid the letters in order. There were perhaps a dozen. Gingerly, she lifted the first. Eleanor’s handwriting seemed confident, the words well spaced on the page and the ink thick where she had pressed on the paper. ‘Dear Bruce,’ it started, ‘I visited the National Portrait Gallery today as you suggested.’ Mirabelle read the missive quickly and then refolded the page. She moved to the next, where Eleanor had visited the public gallery in Parliament and vowed she had been so transfixed by the surroundings that she had found it difficult to focus on what was being said. She must have managed, though – she reported Nye Bevan’s words in some detail and then chastised Bruce for supporting the Liberals rather than the Labour Party, who, after all, had instituted the National Health Service. The couple had, it seemed, debated politics early in their relationship. By the third letter, Eleanor had visited Scotland and thanked Bruce for a lovely weekend. She casually called him ‘darling’, as if this was now normal.

  ‘Anything?’ Gregory asked.

  Mirabelle shook her head, turning over the next paper, which was encased in a pale blue envelope upon which Eleanor had written her return address. ‘Eleanor McCrory. 15 Dean Street. Soho.’ Mirabelle knew Dean Street. Just off Oxford Street, it comprised a stretch of small Georgian brick-and-stucco townhouses and shops, one or two of which had been bombed during the Blitz. She tried to imagine number 15 but couldn’t place it. It would have been an exciting place to stay, she thought, for a young American girl – close to the theatre district with lots of coffee houses and bars nearby. A far cry from The Ritz. ‘It’s hopeless,’ she said.

  ‘They always say “follow the money” but I can’t see any money to follow,’ Gregory replied. ‘I mean, these folks have got money but it’s weird, it just doesn’t seem relevant. Is it a British thing? Money just not sticking?’

  Carefully Mirabelle stacked the letters back in order and tied them with the ribbon, placing them where she’d found them at the back of the accounts book. ‘At least we tried,’ she said.

  ‘Done?’ Gregory checked.

  ‘It was a good idea. But yes. Done.’

  Gregory replaced everything and closed the door.

  ‘I can’t wait to leave here,’ Tash sighed. Mirabelle realised suddenly, once Tash and Gregory had gone, it would just be her and McGregor with the Robertsons, which, she thought guiltily, would seem a relief. Just the family. If only they could get Eleanor back. ‘There are too many whys,’ Tash continued. ‘I mean, I guess we’ll never know why Nina came up to the house the night she died.’ She sounded sad. ‘Or what really happened to Susan. It’s such a tangle.’

  ‘Oh, we do know,’ Mirabelle said, suddenly passionate. ‘We must by now. That’s the frustrating thing.’

  In another hour most of the men had returned. The dogs had picked up a trail and the handlers were continuing with them, but the decision had been made for the bulk of offic
ers to turn back. The house, it seemed, was the centre of everything. In Gillies’s absence, Gregory brewed huge pots of tea in the kitchen and cut rounds of chicken sandwiches, which were doled out on wooden trays. A line of three braziers was lit to help the men on guard stave off the cold.

  ‘We searched down to the village,’ Bruce said sadly. ‘The outhouses. Farm buildings. Steadings. Even outdoor privies. There’s no sign of her. My poor darling,’ he stumbled over these last words as his voice broke and McGregor laid his hand on his cousin’s shoulder.

  ‘Did the dogs find anything?’ Mirabelle asked.

  ‘They lost the scent but the handlers thought they might pick it up again. It’s often better at night, the chap said, but there’s an area of rock she passed over that has made it more tricky,’ McGregor said.

  ‘So she was definitely out there? She left?’

  ‘They think so. If they can pick up her trail again, they thought they stood a decent chance.’

  ‘So either she left alone or someone took her.’

  Bruce’s eyes were edged with pink. ‘Someone took her,’ he said. ‘My wife wouldn’t just walk out.’

  ‘Right now, the main thing is to find Eleanor,’ McGregor’s tone was firm. ‘The longer it runs, the more likelihood—’

  ‘I know,’ Mirabelle cut him off. ‘I know.’

  About one in the morning, Tash retired to bed. Gregory was going to sleep in Niko’s old room and he held the door of the drawing room for her, to escort her up. ‘Thanks,’ the girl smiled.

  ‘You don’t have to thank me,’ he said.

  ‘I do,’ she insisted. ‘I don’t want to be like Nina, taking you for granted. When we get back to the US, things are going to be different, Gregory.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Mirabelle asked.

  Tash hesitated. ‘Nina wasn’t a good person. You know that, right? I mean, I loved her but she was awful. Her politics, and she was such a snob. That’s why it’s so hard, you see. I miss her but she behaved terribly. Every morning I cry when I remember she’s dead and that makes me feel worse because she was so awful. I mean, Gregory, do you remember that time it was snowing and she sent you to the Lower East Side to pick up her order from the tailor? There was a blizzard and the whole city was at a standstill. You could have died of hypothermia.’

  ‘But I didn’t,’ Gregory said.

  ‘And there was the time she caused that rumpus outside the Stork Club and just got into a cab and left you? Those guys broke your nose.’

  ‘That’s my job, Miss Natasha. To take the heat. I took it for Nina and I’ll take it for you, if you want me to stay on.’

  ‘I don’t know what I would do without you.’ Tash leaned against the door frame and pulled a handkerchief from her pocket. ‘This whole thing has been a nightmare.’

  After they went up, Mirabelle wondered if Nina had chosen Gregory’s name. Maybe Wilbur hadn’t seemed macho enough for her so she’d given him a new one. America was mired in its history of slavery, still. Vesta told stories about Detroit where Charlie had grown up. People had separate buses, different entrances – Britain might have its class system but there was no apartheid, at least.

  In the drawing room, Bruce lingered until half past the hour when he fell asleep on the sofa, snoring as he keeled over and then waking guiltily. ‘You should go up,’ McGregor said. ‘It isn’t doing anybody any good for you to sleep down here. If they find her, she’ll need you rested, old man.’ Bruce was unwilling but McGregor was right and eventually he bid them goodnight. Outside, the men huddled around the braziers, taking it in turns to sleep in the vans. Mirabelle and McGregor were left alone in front of the fire.

  ‘I don’t want to go to bed,’ Mirabelle admitted as she drew the curtains.

  McGregor hugged her. ‘Me neither,’ he said. ‘We’re the watch, aren’t we? The last ones. It would feel like giving up on her.’

  They pulled cushions off the chairs and made themselves comfortable on the floor. McGregor put up the fireguard. Lying in the dark, Mirabelle couldn’t say how long she dozed, but when she woke McGregor was asleep. Her mind kept returning to Eleanor’s office. To the moment when Eleanor had said she was going for a bath. To Tash saying her godmother had never been a victim before. To Susan MacLeod’s room, which now contained Elizabeth’s sewing box. It always seemed strange to her when someone died and their place was taken. There was something in that, she thought, but the details were making her head spin.

  Then, through a chink in the curtains, there was a sudden flash of light. A police van pulled up at the paddock and the man guarding the door moved towards it. As the van door opened, Mirabelle got up and squinted through the velvet folds of the curtain. It was dark, but … she thought the silhouette looked like … no, it couldn’t be.

  She moved smoothly to the hall, watching her hands as she opened the front door, as if she was in a dream where the two worlds she inhabited had come together like a surrealist painting. The air was damp with a fine mist of rain and her bare feet were freezing as she stepped across the portico and on to the gravel. ‘Eddie!’ she said.

  Eddie Brandon stood beside the paddock, immaculately turned out in a four-button jacket with generous shoulders and a mean waist, a lapelled waistcoat and a pair of high-cut trousers. He hadn’t changed, she thought. He was still the kind of man who ate well, drank a lot and never had a hair out of place. If anything, his looks had improved as he aged. He had a few grey hairs these days. They suited him. ‘Good lord,’ he said. ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘I slept on the floor,’ Mirabelle replied.

  ‘Well, you shouldn’t be out here.’ Eddie kissed her on the cheek and led her back inside. ‘I wasn’t referring to the disarray in your …’ He gestured to indicate her outfit, then he picked up her hand and cast an eye over her engagement ring. ‘I meant this,’ he said. ‘It’s lovely. To whom do I direct my congratulations?’

  ‘He’s in the drawing room.’ Mirabelle thought how strange it was – the immediate intimacy of old friends. ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked.

  ‘I haven’t seen you in a while,’ Eddie continued, as they wandered into the hall. ‘It was in Paris, I recall. That must be four years ago. When that English policeman took a bullet for you.’

  ‘He’s Scottish.’ She indicated the drawing room.

  ‘Ah. It is he, is it? He took his time proposing.’

  ‘Sir …’ one of the policemen who had been guarding the house tried to cut in.

  Eddie stopped him dead. ‘I’d get hold of the ranking officer on site if I were you,’ he instructed. ‘I’ll be taking over.’ The man looked worried. ‘Well, go on. I’ll need to speak to him.’ Eddie never brooked any argument. He turned back to Mirabelle. ‘I have been trying to telephone you since the information came through. In the end I thought, hell, I’ll just go up there.’

  ‘We took the telephone off the hook. The press kept ringing.’

  Eddie cast her a glance that made it clear this was not acceptable. ‘Well, I’m here now,’ he said, and pushed open the drawing-room door.

  Alan raised his head sleepily. Eddie snapped on the lights.

  ‘Congratulations, old man,’ he held out his hand and peered at McGregor. ‘Mirabelle is a catch. You’ll never be bored, that I can promise you.’

  ‘Alan, this is Eddie Brandon,’ Mirabelle said as Alan got to his feet. Strange, she thought, this was closest she had to her own family, Vesta aside.

  ‘Have they found her?’ McGregor asked.

  Eddie shook his head. ‘They found this, though,’ he said, and pulled a thin diamond strip from his pocket. ‘About two hours ago. I stopped at Inverness police station before coming here. So many ruins on the way – the clearances, I suppose.’

  Mirabelle took the sparkling strip from Eddie’s hand. ‘This is Eleanor’s evening watch,’ she said. ‘Where did they find it?’

  ‘To the west of here. It’s definitely hers?’

  ‘Yes … But …’


  ‘What?’ Eddie pressed.

  Mirabelle couldn’t quite put her finger on it. ‘Oh nothing.’ The men’s eyes met in a kind of frustrated understanding. Extracting information from Mirabelle could be tricky.

  ‘What a lovely house,’ Eddie commented as he looked around. ‘Whoever decorated the place has a great sense of colour.’

  McGregor straightened his clothes. ‘I’m sorry – I feel as if I’ve missed something? How do you two know each other?’

  Eddie caught Mirabelle’s eye. Her palms were sweating. She laid her hand on the marble tabletop. ‘Lord,’ Eddie said, ‘she hasn’t told you anything. That doesn’t surprise me. Well done, old girl.’ He clearly wasn’t about to explain things to somebody else’s fiancé. Instead he sat down on a comfortable chair. ‘Let’s get on, shall we? Debrief me, Belle. What do you know?’

  Chapter 16

  The only evil is ignorance

  Mirabelle paused, collecting her thoughts. ‘Long story, short,’ she started. ‘There have been two deaths. Three if you count animals.’ Eddie raised an eyebrow. ‘First, Nina Orlova was killed by strangling. The day after, the maid, Susan MacLeod, was killed – a more professional hit. Her neck was broken and her body dumped in a field. A Russian pistol was retrieved at the scene and a woman saw a stranger in the area – a man.’

  ‘The naval jacket,’ Eddie said.

  Mirabelle nodded. ‘Then yesterday the owner’s dog was poisoned, though the poison was definitely intended for Eleanor Robertson, now missing, who is Bruce’s wife, the lady of the house. (She, as I understand it, chose all the furnishings on this floor.) Eleanor is American. She disappeared late this afternoon. I don’t know if she has been kidnapped or …’