‘Look, if she’s got any doubts in her mind, the best thing is to set them at rest as soon as you can.’
‘I don’t know any psychiatrists.’
‘That is where I have the advantage of you. I know the best one in the country. She isn’t a quack; she won’t feed you a lot of hot air all ballooned up in the jargon some of these people use, and she’s fully qualified in medicine as well as in psychiatry.’
‘She?’
‘Dame Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley. You’ll like her. I’ll ring up and make the appointment, if you like. She only takes cases which interest her, and I think she’ll fall for yours. Besides, we’ve got her granddaughter on our list.’
‘We have?’
‘Sally Lestrange, the occasional novelist and a ghostwriter for the non-literary bods who have a life story to tell. Dame Beatrice will sort you out.’
‘Why should you think so? You’re as bad as Hera. You both think I’m bats just because I identified a dead body wrongly.’
‘I don’t think that’s the whole story, Comrie, old chap. Hera doesn’t think so, either. Tell me, are you suffering from some sort of frustration?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘You’ve slept with Hera more than once. She told me so. She says she thinks she was too hard on you when she wouldn’t let you book a double room at the hotels in Scotland. She said it was expecting too much of a hot-blooded he-man—’
‘The last thing I am, and the last thing she thinks about me. Good Lord, I can exercise self-restraint when I’ve got to! It was all part of her plan. It was the whole object of the holiday. What do you think I am? — the lineal descendant of thousands of ever-copulating rabbits?’
‘I’m only telling you what Hera said about the strain she put upon you during that holiday. As you suspected, she has already told me the whole story. It’s not as though she saw that dead body —’
‘Only because I took care she didn’t. One doesn’t introduce sensitive girls to itinerant corpses.’
‘She also says she can’t remember any castle.’
‘There wasn’t any bloody castle! She’s the one who needs a psychiatrist, not I. Anyway, it was a fort. I suppose she doesn’t remember the mist and our losing our way in it.’
‘Oh, yes, she admits to the mist. She said that, because of it, and because you tried to take a short cut, you both wandered off your route, but she says you had hit your head pretty badly and that most of your story is sheer fantasy. She’s very worried about you.’
‘Perhaps she’d like to break the engagement,’ I said. ‘I felt there was a hint of it in the air.’
‘I think she might consider that course very seriously. What about you?’
I thought of a freckled child I had held in my arms, and did not answer.
I knew Dame Beatrice’s name, of course, in the way one knows the name of most celebrities, but I had never thought that one day I should be asking for a consultation. An assured voice answered the telephone.
‘Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley?’ I asked hopefully, for the voice inspired confidence.
‘Who is speaking?’ I gave my name and asked whether Dame Beatrice would see me. I was asked my business.
‘I’d like to become a patient,’ I said.
‘She takes very few cases nowadays. What’s the trouble? You can tell me. I’m her secretary.’
‘I’ve recently come back from walking some of the West Highland Way, and I’ve had a very disturbing experience.’
‘All right. Hold the line.’ I waited, but not for long. When she contacted me again, she said, ‘What kind of experience?’
‘I stumbled over the dead body of a man I thought I knew. This was somewhere on Rannoch Moor, but he turned up hale and hearty at Fort William.’
‘Sounds promising. Well, I’ve been told to use my own discretion, so I think you had better come along. Thursday, as near eleven in the morning as you can manage, would be the most suitable time and day.’
I say I knew Dame Beatrice’s name, but I was not prepared for her appearance and still less was I prepared for her beautiful voice. She would have become, I thought, a singer of great repute had she chosen the concert hall instead of medicine and psychiatry. In appearance she was small and thin, dressed like a macaw, and had brilliant black eyes. She would never have ‘made it’ in opera. I cannot think of any role she could fill.
‘Now,’ she said, when the tall secretary had left us, ‘there is plenty of time before lunch. Do you care to walk round the garden and look at the stables, or shall we “get down to the nitty-gritty”, as I believe you modern young people express it?’
‘I’m feeling a bit embarrassed and very nervous,’ I said.
‘Very useful and, of course, quite natural. Sit down again.’
‘Not a couch?’ I asked, feeling rather like a man jesting with the dentist or on the morning of his execution.
‘We shall see. State your case.’
I do not know whether it was the eyes, the pursed-up little mouth or the beautiful voice which convinced me from the very outset of the interview that my mind was going to be set at rest, but so it proved. She told me to take my time and that is what I did. When she heard all that I could tell her, she said, ‘A pity you and your fiancée do not read the Scottish newspapers. Have no fear for your reason, my dear Mr Melrose. You did find a corpse. The only thing is that you did not manage to identify it correctly.’
‘There was a dead man in those ruins?’
‘Of course there was a dead man.’ I thought she looked at me in an appraising way. ‘Ring the bell twice.’
I did this and it was answered by the secretary. I suppose she had been briefed beforehand, for she was carrying some newspapers which, without being instructed to do so, she handed to me as I resumed my seat opposite Dame Beatrice. It occurred to me that Sandy had been on the telephone before I arrived.
‘Another heart is set at rest, I opine,’ said the secretary.
‘Mr Melrose is fortunate that you read your country’s press, Laura,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Again take your time, Mr Melrose. You will find those journalistic outpourings both heartening and of interest.’
I read avidly. The body had been identified as that of an ex-convict called McConachie, and the conclusion seemed to be that he had been tracked down, after an attempted strangulation, and stabbed to death by one of his acquaintances whom he had double-crossed when it came to the division of the spoils. The police had received a tip-off (not from Hera, I hoped), had visited the area and had found the body. Identification was no problem. The man’s photograph and fingerprints were on record and the police were in no doubt as to his identity and that of the murderer.
My relief, intense though it was, was accompanied by a sense of anti-climax. Was it for this sordid and uninspiring solution that I had sacrificed sleep and my peace of mind, had almost quarrelled with Hera and wrecked any pleasure I might have had in recollecting my holiday? Thoughts of the holiday, however, emboldened me, over lunch, to put a question to Dame Beatrice.
‘I told you what was the object of the exercise,’ I said. ‘Why Hera and I took the holiday?’
‘To test whether you and your fiancée were sufficiently compatible in temperament to risk taking one another in marriage, I think you said.’
‘Yes. Well, if I may ask such a question, what do you think, now that you’ve heard the whole story?’
‘Ask Laura. She can usually read my mind.’
‘Some chicken, some neck!’ said Laura obscurely, but I knew what she meant. I, too, found Dame Beatrice formidable. ‘All right, then.’ Laura said. ‘If it were up to me, I’m bound to say I think you’re batting on a sticky wicket. Your young woman wears the trousers at present. That’s all right during the period of wooing, but I’m not sure it would work in married life. You would find yourself the toad under the harrow.’