by Mary Stewart
‘Why,’ said Roberta, ‘Mr. Beagle’s going. Are you really going up Sgurr nan Gillean in this, Mr. Beagle?’
‘I think it’ll clear,’ said Beagle. ‘I’m going over there anyway, and if it clears in an hour or so, as I think it will, I’ll be ready.’ He waved vaguely to all of us, and went out into the rain.
‘Well,’ I said to Roberta, ‘both the oracles have spoken, so I hope you do get your climb.’
‘Are you going out too?’
‘My dear, I haven’t even had my breakfast yet! And if I don’t hurry I doubt if I’ll get any!’
But as I was halfway across the hall towards the dining-room I was stopped by Major Persimmon’s voice calling me from the office grille. I went over. The tall, thickset countryman was still there, bending over a tray of casts, his big fingers moving them delicately.
Bill Persimmon leaned forward across the counter.
‘I believe you said you wanted to hire a rod, Mrs. – er, Miss Brooke, and fish a bit?’
‘Yes, I do, but I’m not quite sure when. I think I might wait a day or so, and have a look round first.’
‘Just as you like, of course, only—’ He glanced at the other man. ‘If you’d really like to be shown some fishing, you might care to fix it up in advance with Dougal Macrae here. He’d be glad to go with you, I know.’
The big man looked up. He had a square, brown face, deeply lined, and smallish blue eyes that looked as if, normally, they were good tempered. Just now, they held no expression at all.
He said, in the wonderfully soft voice of the Island men: ‘I should be glad to show the lady how to take a fish.’
‘That’s very good of you,’ I said. ‘Perhaps – shall we say Wednesday?’
‘Wednesday iss a free day.’ Dougal Macrae nodded his big head. ‘Yess, indeed.’
‘Thank you very much,’ I said.
‘Where shall I put you down for?’ asked Major Persimmon.
Dougal Macrae said: ‘The Camasunary river, please; the upper beat. If we cannot take a fish out of there it will be a bad day indeed.’
He straightened up, and picked up a well-brushed and formidable bowler hat from the office counter. ‘And now I must be on my way, or I shall be late at the kirk. Good day to you, mistress. Good day, Major Persimmon.’
And he went out into the grey morning. I found myself looking after him. It had been only the most trivial of conversations, but it was my first acquaintance with the beautifully simple courtesy of the Highlander, the natural but almost royally formal bearing of the crofter who has lived all his life in the Islands. I was very much impressed with this quiet man. Dougal Macrae. Heather Macrae’s father . . .
I nodded to Major Persimmon, and went to get my belated breakfast.
I had been (rather foolishly, I suppose) dreading my next meeting with Marcia, so I was glad that she was not in the dining-room. Indeed, before I had poured out my first cup of coffee, I saw a big cream-coloured car come slowly past the window, and slide to a halt outside the porch door. Almost immediately Marcia, looking enchanting and very urban in royal blue, hurried out of the hotel and was ushered into the front of the car by a handsome boy in uniform, who tucked rugs round her with solicitous care. Still in expensive and effortless silence, the car moved off.
I drank coffee, wishing I had a morning paper, so that I could pretend I hadn’t noticed Nicholas who, apart from Hubert Hay, was the only other occupant of the dining-room.
But it was after all the latter who in a short while rose and came over to my table.
He walked with an odd, tittupping little step that made me think again of Marcia’s bouncy rubber balls, or of a self-confident robin. This latter impression was heightened by the rounded expanse of scarlet pullover which enlivened his already gay green tweeds. His face was round, too, with a small pernickety mouth, and pale eyes set in a multitude of radiating wrinkles. He had neat little hands, and wore a big gold ring set with a black stone.
He smiled at me, showing a flash of gold in his mouth.
‘Miss – er – Brooke? My name is Hay.’
‘How do you do?’ I murmured politely.
‘I hope you don’t mind me coming over to speak, Miss Brooke, but the fact is’ – he hesitated, and looked at me a little shyly – ‘the fact is, I wanted to ask a favour.’
‘Of course.’ I wondered what on earth was coming next.
‘You see,’ he went on, still with that bashful expression that sat comically upon his round face, ‘you see, I’m footloose.’
‘You’re what?’ I said, startled.
‘Footloose.’
‘That’s what I thought you said. But—’
‘It’s my nom de ploom,’ he said. ‘I’m a writer.’ The scarlet pullover broadened perceptibly. ‘Footloose.’
‘Oh, I see! A writer – but how very clever of you, Mr. Hay. Er, novels, is it?’
‘Travel books, Miss Brooke, travel books. I bring beauty to you at the fireside – that’s what we put on the covers, you know. “To you in your armchair I bring the glories of the English countryside.” And,’ he added fairly, ‘the Scotch. That’s why I’m here.’
‘I see. Collecting material?’
‘Takin’ walks,’ said Hubert Hay simply. ‘I go on walks, and write about them, with maps. Then I mark them A, B, or C, according as to how difficult they are, and give them one, two, or three stars according as to if they’re pretty.’
‘How – very original,’ I said lamely, conscious of Nicholas sitting well within hearing. ‘It must take a lot of time.’
‘It’s dead easy,’ said Hubert Hay frankly, ‘that is, if you can write like I can. I’ve always had the knack, somehow. And it pays all right.’
‘I shall look out for your books,’ I promised, and he beamed down at me.
‘I’ll send you one, I will indeed. The last one was called Sauntering in Somerset. You’d like it. And they’re not books really, in a manner of speaking – they’re paperbacks. I think the best I ever did was Wandering through Wales. I’ll send you that too.’
‘Thank you very much.’
I noticed then that he was holding an old Tatler and a Country Life in his hand. He put the two magazines down on the table and tapped them with a forefinger.
‘I saw your photo in these,’ he said. ‘It is you, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
He leafed through Country Life until he found the picture. It was me, all right, a David Gallien photograph in tweeds, with a brace of lovely Irish setters stealing the picture. Hubert Hay looked at me, all at once shy again.
‘I take photos for my books,’ he said hesitantly.
I waited, feeling rather helpless. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Nicholas stand up, and begin leisurely to feel in his pockets for tobacco. Hubert Hay said, with a rush: ‘When these geology chaps take a picture of a rock, they put a hammer in to show you the scale. I thought if I took a picture of the Coolins I’d like to – to put a lady in, so that you could tell how big the hills were, and how far away.’
Nicholas was grinning. I sensed rather than saw it. Hubert Hay looked at me across David Gallien’s beautifully composed advertisement, and said, wistfully: ‘And you do photograph nice, you do really.’
Nicholas said casually: ‘You’d better find out what she charges. I believe it comes pretty high.’
Hubert Hay looked at him, and then back at me, in a kind of naïve bewilderment. ‘I – shouldn’t I have—?’
He looked so confused, so uncharacteristically ready to be deflated, that I forgot my own embarrassment, and Hugo Montefior’s probable apoplexy. I looked furiously at Nicholas. ‘Mr. Drury was joking,’ I said swiftly. ‘Of course you may take a picture of me if you want to, Mr. Hay. I’d love to be in your book. When shall we do it?’
He flushed with pleasure, and the scarlet pullover expanded again to its original robin-roundness. ‘That’s very kind of you, I’m sure, very kind indeed. I’m honoured, I am really. If it clears up, how a
bout this afternoon, on Sgurr na Stri, with the Coolins behind?’
‘Fine,’ I said firmly.
‘Bill Persimmon has a spaniel.’ Nicholas’ voice was bland.
‘Has he?’ Hubert Hay took that one happily at its face value. ‘Maybe that’s a good idea, too. I’ll go and ask him if we can borrow it.’
He trotted gaily off. Nicholas stood looking down at me, still with that expression of sardonic amusement that I hated. ‘What’s Hugo going to say when he sees you starring in Staggering through Skye, or whatever this masterpiece is going to be called?’
‘He won’t see it,’ I said tartly, as I rose. ‘The only travelling Hugo’s interested in is Air France to Paris and back.’
I started after Hubert Hay, but Nicholas moved, barring my way to the door.
‘I want to talk to you, Gianetta.’
I regarded him coldly. ‘I can’t think that we have much to say to one another.’
‘I still want to talk to you.’
‘What about?’
‘About us.’
I raised my eyebrows. ‘There isn’t any “us”, Nicholas. Remember? We’re not bracketed together any more. There’s a separate you and a separate me, and nothing to join us together. Not even a name.’
His mouth tightened. ‘I’m very well aware of that.’
I said, before I realized what I was saying: ‘Was that you with Marcia Maling last night?’
His eyes flickered, and then went blank. He said: ‘Yes.’
I walked past him and out of the room.
The oracles had been right. By eleven o’clock the rain had cleared, and the clouds began to lift with startling rapidity. I saw Marion Bradford and Roberta set off up the valley about half an hour later, and, not long afterwards, Nicholas went out along the track towards Strathaird.
Shortly before noon, the sun struggled out, and, in a moment, it seemed, the sky was clear and blue, and the mist was melting from the mountain tops like snow. Sedge and heather glittered with a mass of jewels, and the frail gossamers sagged between the heather-tips weighted with a Titania’s ransom of diamonds.
Hubert Hay and I set out with Bill Persimmon’s spaniel soon after lunch. We went down through the little birch grove to the stepping-stones which spanned the Camasunary river. The birches were old and lichened, but they moved lightly in the wind, censing the bright air with rain-drops, an intermittent sun-shower that we had to dodge as we took a short cut through the grove towards the river, picking our way over the wet bilberry leaves and mosses and the scattered chunks of fungus that had fallen from the trees.
We crossed the river by the stepping-stones, and, after an hour or so of steep but not-too-difficult walking, reached the crest of Sgurr na Stri. Hubert Hay, for all his rotundity, was light on his feet, and proved, a little to my surprise, to be an entertaining companion. His knowledge and love of the countryside was not as superficial as our conversation had led me to expect; he talked knowingly of birds and deer and hill-foxes, and knew, it appeared, a good deal about plants. He babbled on as he chose his ‘picture’ and set his camera, and though he talked incessantly in clichés, I could sense that his satisfaction in what he called ‘the great outdoors’ was deep and genuine. His resemblance to a cocky little robin became every minute more remarkable, but the quality that Marcia had called ‘sorbo’ was, I discovered, due to an irrepressible gaiety, a delighted curiosity about everything, rather than to self-satisfaction. He was, in fact, a rather attractive little man.
We took three photographs. From the top of Sgurr na Stri you can see the whole range of the Black Cuillin, the forbidding arc that sweeps from Garsven in the south to Sgurr nan Gillean in the north, with Loch Coruisk, black as an inkwell, cupped in the roots of the mountains. I posed with the spaniel, an aristocratic but witless beast, against mountain, sky, and loch in turn, while Hubert Hay fussed with his camera and darted from one point to another with little cries of polite satisfaction.
When at length he had finished we sat down together on a rock, and lit cigarettes. He seemed to have something on his mind, and smoked jerkily for a bit. Then he said:
‘Miss Brooke, do you – d’you mind me saying something to you?’
‘Of course not. What is it?’
‘You’re here alone, aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
His round face was worried as he looked at me earnestly. ‘Don’t go out by yourself with anyone, Miss Brooke. You’re all right with me here today, of course, but you weren’t to know that.’ His rather absurd voice was somehow scarifying in its vehemence. ‘But don’t go with anyone else. It’s not safe.’
I said nothing for a moment. I realized that I had, actually, since breakfast that morning, forgotten the sort of danger that was walking these hills.
‘You don’t mind me saying?’ asked Hubert Hay anxiously.
‘Of course not. You’re perfectly right. I promise you I’ll be careful.’ There was a certain irony about the admonition, repeating as it did Roderick Grant’s warning of the night before. Could I, then, eliminate two of the suspects among the ‘gentlemen from the hotel’, or were these warnings some subtle kind of double bluff? If I went on going for walks with the ‘gentlemen’, no doubt I should find out soon enough. I shivered a little, and pulled the dog’s ears. ‘It’s not a very pleasant thought, is it?’
His face flushed dark red. ‘It’s damnable! I – I beg your pardon, I’m sure. But that’s the only word I can think of. Miss Brooke’ – he turned to me with a queer, almost violent gesture – ‘that girl, Heather Macrae – she was only eighteen!’
I said nothing.
‘It was her birthday.’ His funny high little voice held a note almost of savagery. ‘Her eighteenth birthday.’ He took a pull at his cigarette, and then spoke more calmly: ‘I feel it a bit, Miss Brooke. You see, I knew her.’
‘You knew her? Well?’
‘Oh dear no. Only to speak to, as you might say. I’d stopped at the croft a couple of times, when I was out walking, and she’d made me a pot of tea. She was a pretty girl, gay and a bit cheeky, and kind of full of life. There wasn’t a bit of badness in her. Nothing to ask for – what she got.’
‘You didn’t get any hint as to who she was going with?’ It was a silly question, of course, as the police would have gone over the ground with meticulous thoroughness, but he answered without impatience: ‘No, none at all.’
But his voice had altered subtly, so that I glanced at him. ‘You got something?’
‘A very little hint,’ he said carefully. ‘I told her that I was writing a book, of course, and she was interested: people usually are . . . She said that quite a lot of folks came around the crofts, one way and another, asking questions about local customs and superstitions and the like. I asked her if she had any special superstitions – just joking-like – and she said no, of course not, she was a modern girl. Then I said wasn’t there any magic still going on in the Islands like there used to be, and’ – he turned pale round eyes on me – ‘she shut up like an oyster, and pretty near hustled me out of the kitchen.’
‘Magic?’ I said. ‘But that’s absurd!’
He nodded. ‘I know. But, you know, I can’t help having a feeling about this murder. It must have been all planned, you see. The stuff he’d used for the bonfire must have been taken up there, bit by bit, quite deliberately. There was heather and peat and branches of birchwood, and a big chunk of oak hardly charred, and a lot of that dry fungus – agaric – that you get on birch trees.’
I made an exclamation, but he hadn’t heard me. ‘Then, when he is ready, he gets the girl up there . . . Just think a minute, if you’ll excuse me bringing it up again . . . the fire, and the shoes and things in a neat pile, all tidy, and the girl laid out with her throat cut and her hands crossed, and ashes on her face . . . Why, it’s like a – a sacrifice!’
The last word came out with a jerk. I was on my feet, staring down at him, with my spine prickling.
‘But that’s crazy
!’
The pale, troubled eyes glanced up. ‘That’s just it, isn’t it? Whoever did it must be just plain crazy. And he looks and acts just as sane as you or me . . . except sometimes.’ He got to his feet and regarded me solemnly. ‘So I wouldn’t go for walks with anybody, if I was you.’
‘I won’t,’ I said fervently. ‘In fact, I’m beginning to think that I might go back to London, after all.’
‘It wouldn’t be a bad idea, at that,’ said he, picking up his camera, and turning to follow me down the hill.
8
Camasunary III
I was still wondering if it wouldn’t, after all, be wisest to ditch my plans and leave the hotel, when something happened that made me decide, at any rate for the time being, that I must stay.
It was in the lounge, after dinner, that the first stirrings of a new uneasiness began to make themselves plain. Alastair Braine, carrying coffee cups, paused in the middle of the room and said, on a slight note of surprise: ‘Hullo, aren’t the climbers back yet?’
‘They weren’t at dinner,’ said Alma Corrigan.
Colonel Cowdray-Simpson said: ‘Good God, neither they were. I hope there’s nothing amiss.’
‘That fool woman!’ said Mrs. Cowdray-Simpson, roundly. ‘She shouldn’t have gone up on a day like this.’
Alastair said reassuringly: ‘I shouldn’t worry. They’ve probably only gone a little further than they meant to, and after all, it’s still light.’
Nicholas looked up from a letter he was writing. ‘The weather was clearing nicely when they went, and there’s been no mist on Blaven this afternoon. They’ll be all right.’
‘If only,’ said Marcia Maling, ‘if only that awful woman hasn’t gone and done something silly, just to impress! That poor child Roberta—’
Roderick Grant said quietly: ‘Miss Bradford is actually a very accomplished climber. She wouldn’t take any risks with a beginner. And Drury is quite right about the weather. After all, Ronald Beagle went up Sgurr nan Gillean, and he certainly wouldn’t have gone if it hadn’t been all right.’