‘I’ve no particular wish to be top dog,’ I said, feeling nettled by her summing-up.
‘No, but marriage should be an equal partnership. Why wouldn’t you let her see the body?’
‘Oh, dash it all! One doesn’t deliberately give a girl a shock of that kind!’
‘The shock might have been less for her than it was for you,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Tell me — had you anything personal against this man whose corpse you thought it was?’
‘He irritated me, just as he irritated everyone else. There was another chap whom I was also anxious to keep my eye on, this fellow named Todd. I mentioned him when I was telling you about the holiday.’
‘Yes, but you never thought it was Todd’s body you found?’
‘No. I was certain I’d found Carbridge, but, of course, I didn’t exactly linger beside the corpse. All I wanted was to get Hera away from the place as soon as ever I could. I just grabbed her and dragged her out, although it was raining buckets when we got on to the moor.’
‘Yes, what about this place? Do you retain a vivid picture of it? These ruins, do you recall them clearly?’
‘Well, no, I wouldn’t call it a vivid picture. I had hit my head rather hard, if you see what I mean. The ruins seemed as full of mist as the moor outside. My recollection of them is hazy.’
‘But you remember coming to a wall, ducking under an archway and climbing into the ruins through an embrasure?’
‘Well, it seems a bit nebulous now, but, yes, I’m sure I remember all that. Well, no, perhaps I dreamt that part of it. I’m sure Hera believes I dreamt the whole thing, including finding the body.’
‘Not surprising,’ said Laura, ‘when the same body turned up hale and hearty at Fort William. Enough to cause any right-minded girl to have doubts. Still, you’ll be able to reassure her now. Keep the papers and show them to her. They ought to convince her that at least there was a corpse and that you found it.’
‘I wish I could convince her that there was a building, too. She seems to doubt the whole story. The only bit she really agrees with is that we lost our way in the mist.’
‘Yes,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘What about the dark passage?’
‘I’m sure about that,’ I replied.
The two women looked at one another. Then Dame Beatrice said, ‘There is something you are keeping to yourself. Had you not better tell me what it is?’
‘No, there’s nothing,’ I said. I could feel her brilliant eyes probing my brain. ‘Unless you mean the row I had with Todd at Crianlarich, but it was only a verbal exchange. Fisticuffs did not come into it.’
‘It was not Mr Todd’s body you mistook, you see. Interesting, but are you sure about that?’ I said I was perfectly certain, so she said, ‘Well, Mr Melrose, I do not think you need psychiatry, but we shall see how matters develop. We must wait upon events.’
‘I hope there won’t be any, so far as this business is concerned,’ I said. ‘Thank you very much for the papers.’
‘Sit down again,’ said Dame Beatrice, for I had risen to go. ‘Tell me more about this set-to you had with Mr Todd.’
‘Oh, it was nothing,’ I said. ‘As a matter of fact, he apologised.’
‘For what?’
‘For trying to persuade Hera to opt out of the youth hostel and go to the hotel for the night, so I tackled him and sorted him out. “Honestly, I had no idea she was engaged to you,” he said. “When I met you two at the airport hotel, I just thought it was a holiday pick-up and that you’d got together because you found you were both going to walk The Way. After all, she doesn’t wear a keep-off-the-grass ring, does she?” I told him the engagement hadn’t been announced, but that there was a ring in her possession. He apologised again and said he hoped no hard feelings. It was a genuine misunderstanding, he said. Well, that was the end of it because, of course, we didn’t run into him again until we got to Fort William.’
I showed Sandy the newspapers and I got to our office next day.
‘So the visit was a good idea,’ he said.
‘Yes and no.’
‘How do you mean? You said you fell over a corpse and there was a corpse.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘one corpse, no stone walls, apparently. The police found the corpse on the moor, the papers say. They don’t mention a building.’
‘Plenty of rocks about. You mistook some outcrop or other for a stone wall. Easy mistake to make in a thick mist after you’d bashed your head. Possibly, though, the police want to keep the actual location secret. Have you shown Hera the newspapers?’
‘Not yet. I’m seeing her tonight.’
‘Well,’ said Sandy, giving me a very straight glance, ‘take the strong, manly course and rub her disbelieving little nose in the reports. She’s been more than a bit uppish about you and that corpse, you know.’
‘You mean she said more to you than she has to me?’
‘More than likely. She’s had me on the phone a couple of times and rather spread herself. Seems to think you’re the kind of sensitive plant that dreams dreams and sees visions. These newspapers ought to provide her with a healthier outlook.’
‘But what about the archway and the window where we climbed in? Apparently they don’t exist. All the papers say is that the police found the body on Rannoch Moor. I’ve told you that already.’
‘And I’ve reminded you of that knock on the head. That and the mist confused you, that’s all.’
‘I swear there was a dark passage.’
‘Forget it. It’s all over and done with now.’
But I could not forget it, for it brought back memories of an experience I had had in my childhood and had pushed to the back of my mind because it frightened me. I was eight years old at the time and I told my father that burglars had killed our dog and broken in. It happened two days later. Now, after twenty years, it all came back to me, and a very uncomfortable memory it was!
I began to regret that I had kept back from Dame Beatrice a full account of what had happened at Crianlarich. However, it seemed rather late in the day to worry about that, particularly as the body had not been that of Carbridge. I could not face the prospect of going back to the Stone House and confessing that I had not told the whole truth about my murderous attack on Carbridge. In the end, I consulted Sandy.
‘It can’t make any difference, can it?’ I said.
‘I shouldn’t think so. She probably guessed you were hiding something, anyway. She said you didn’t need psychiatry, didn’t she?’
‘Yes, but that was because I hadn’t been “seeing things”. There was a corpse and the chap had been murdered.’
‘But you thought it was Carbridge. That sounds to me like the promptings of a guilty conscience.’
‘I only had an electric torch and that passage was as black as Erebus.’
‘All the same, it was a strange mistake for you to make. It seems you must have some kind of fixation regarding the chap.’
‘I find him excessively irritating, that’s all.’
‘So irritating that you wish he were dead?’
‘No, of course not. Once I’d got over the first shock when he walked into the hostel at Fort William, I was enormously pleased and relieved to know that he was safe and well, particularly as it was obvious he bore me no malice whatever.’
‘These “bear no malice” blokes are a funny bunch. I suppose most of them profess and call themselves Christians, but, you know, Comrie, nobody really forgives a person who has made him look a nithing.’
‘A what?’
‘A nithing. It’s an Anglo-Saxon word, I think, meaning a thing of no account, a No Thing, a coward, somebody who can be disregarded, a fellow who cuts no ice. Nobody ever sees himself thus. Men resent anything and everything which questions their virility, their attraction for the opposite sex, their physical courage and their sense of humour, particularly the last-named. You’ve made an enemy and I wouldn’t despise him if I were you. He’ll get back at you some day.’