‘Not necessarily. He may have read the papers.’
‘How soon did the papers spread the news?’
‘I do not know. The body was found at two in the afternoon on Wednesday last, and the local press, based on Freagair, I believe, scooped the story.’
‘Who found the body?’
‘The factotum named Corrie, whose duty it is to cycle into Freagair for the newspapers and the correspondence. The laird had a poste-restante arrangement, it appears. The man put his bicycle into the boat, rowed across, and found his employer’s body lying in a barrel which had been partly submerged in the loch and prevented from drifting by being chained to an iron ring in the jetty.’
‘Had he been drowned, then?’
‘No. The man had been stabbed with a skian dhu.’
‘Any trace of the weapon?’
‘Well, the skian-dhu was still protruding from the victim’s body.’
‘Sounds like revenge.’
‘It does, indeed.’
‘Poor old boy! He seemed to me more than a bit crazy, but I hate to think of his coming to that sort of end. Are we—er—interesting ourselves in the affair?’
‘There is no suggestion that we should do so. The police have the matter in hand.’
‘Yes, of course. When do we go back to London?’
‘There is no hurry. In fact, now that you have seen Gàradh and have made the acquaintance of Mrs Stewart, I should like to call there.’
‘That’s splendid. On the way we might look in on Mrs Grant. As she lives not so far from Tannasgan, we might be able to pick up some local gossip about the laird’s death. There are certain to be lots of rumours and perhaps some cast-iron facts which won’t reach the ears of the police.’
‘You are determined to involve us both?’
‘Well, I didn’t dislike the laird and I deeply dislike murder. What about it?’
‘I see no harm in calling upon Mrs Grant’
‘Atta-baby! What’s the matter with starting out tomorrow? As there’s no hurry, we could go by way of Glasgow and Loch Lomond and spend a night at the Inversnaid hotel.’
‘Whence you can walk to Loch Katrine and the Trossachs?’
‘Don’t suppose I shall bother. I love Inversnaid, and I’m not the only one. What about William Wordsworth, not to mention Gerard Manley Hopkins?’ said Laura.
Chapter 5
At Inversnaid
‘degged with dew, dappled with dew
Are the groins of the braes that the brook
treads through,
Wiry heathpacks; flitches of fern,
And the bead-bonny ash that sits over the burn.’
Gerard Manley Hopkins
« ^ »
APART from a rather messy pilgrimage along the shores of Loch Lomond to some rocks known as Rob Roy’s Cave, and a steep and slippery climb up steps from the hotel past the Falls of Arklet, there is no walk from the Inversnaid Hotel except by the road through Glen Arklet and past the village at the top of the mill. This walk Laura took very early in the morning. She and Dame Beatrice had left George and the Jaguar on the western side of the loch and had crossed the water in the hotel launch on the previous afternoon. They were to stay the night before making their leisurely way to the north-west.
On Laura’s left, as she climbed the winding hill, were the lower slopes of Stob-an-Fhàinne, with a house here and there well-screened by trees. On her right was the laughing, sobbing, endlessly noisy Arklet Water as it cascaded turbulently downhill to Wordsworth’s Falls to crash impressively into Loch Lomond. Bushes and bracken grew thickly on the high banks, but whenever there was a gap Laura paused to survey the leaping water. Her progress, because of this, was slow and, looking at her watch when she reached the little church, she decided that by the time she reached the reservoir of Loch Arklet it would be as well to turn back. In any case, the road to Loch Katrine was less interesting at this point.
She stood awhile by the loch, but it had been made too functional for natural beauty and was now part of the Glasgow waterworks (its size having been just about doubled for this purpose), so she turned and strolled back towards the village, through which she had passed before gaining the loch-side.
Just as she reached the post-office a man came up the hill towards her and, with a sinking of the heart, she recognised her boatman. He stepped purposefully up to her and barred her way.
‘Oh, Lord! You again?’ she said, with distaste, remembering the note she had had from him.
‘Me again. You got the letter I left at Slanleibh?’
‘Yes, I did, but I don’t keep a diary.’
‘I thought you might not, so I’ll trouble you to sign a paper I’ve drafted out.’
‘Look here,’ said Laura, ‘ever since that night you helped me cross the loch from Tannasgan you’ve been dogging my footsteps. I thought at first it was coincindence, but I know better now, and I am not prepared to sign anything for you. Furthermore, this nuisance must now cease. It’s becoming something remarkably like persecution. I don’t wish to be unkind, but I’m beginning to feel absolutely haunted.’
‘You’ll sign my paper and then I’ll leave you alone.’
‘I’ve told you I’ll sign nothing. I understand your anxiety, but it’s no business of mine.’
‘You know that the laird of Tannasgan was murdered?’
‘Yes, I heard in Edinburgh that he’d been killed by stabbing, and his body put into a barrel’
‘That’s right. And when I go to the police with my story of how you skipped at dead of night from An Tigh Mór, what sort of position will you be in? No, no! You and I must stick together. Come, now. We go surety for each other.’
‘Kindly get out of my way. I want my breakfast,’ said Laura. She pushed past him, but he clutched her arm.
‘You and I must stick together,’ he repeated. Laura swung round. She was of Amazonian strength and fitness and of a high-mettled temperament. With her free hand she caught him a vicious blow on the nose and then wrenched herself away and strode off down the hill. She glanced back when she reached the first bend, but the man was making no attempt to follow her. He was mopping up the blood which was streaming from his nose.
Laura told Dame Beatrice the story at breakfast, and added that she hoped, most sincerely, that she would see no more of the young man. She wondered whether he had walked to Loch Katrine to take the Trossachs steamer. From Callander he could take a train and thus, although probably in a very roundabout way, get back to Freagair or as far as Tigh-Osda, if he had decided to return to Tannasgan. From what he had written and from what he had said, however, she thought he was far more likely to avoid the neighbourhood of the crime and might make for Inverness or go back to Edinburgh, from where he must have followed her to Inversnaid.
Before she left the hotel again, it occurred to her to ask at the office whether a Mr Grant had booked in. She described him. The receptionist looked rather suspicious, Laura thought.
‘A gentleman such as you describe booked in last night,’ she said. ‘His motor-cycle is still here. He came across with it in the launch while you were having your dinner. He was out walking the morn and has not yet been back for his breakfast, but his name is not Grant.’
‘My mistake,’ said Laura. ‘I met him on holiday and thought I recognised him this morning. I was certainly under the impression that he told me his name was Grant’
‘His name is Campbell.’
‘Ah, my hearing is not what is was.’
‘Is it not? Och, well, maybe Campbell would sound like Grant to a Sassenach.’
Laura thought it best to ignore this insult to her Highland ancestry. She nodded in her turn and followed Dame Beatrice into the open air.