‘Do you still want to put in the rest of the day here?’ her employer asked, when Laura told her that the man, Grant or Campbell, had booked in at the hotel and had spent the night under the same roof as themselves.
‘But perhaps the encounter had spoilt the place for you.’
‘No, of course not. What do you yourself feel about it?’
‘That, if you go off by yourself, I shall feel happier if you borrow a stout ashplant from the array which I noticed in the glassed-in porch.’
‘By no means a bad idea, although I’m hardly likely to meet our friend on the slopes of Ben Lomond.’
‘One never knows. You are proposing to climb, then?’
‘On second thoughts, said to be best, I believe I’d like to leave here after lunch and make for Fort William, where we’re booked for a bed tonight, so I shall give Ben Lomond a miss and take a scramble up the steps beside the falls and come back by road. But there’s no hurry for that. The weather, praise be, is fine, so we might as well take a seat out here and meditate. I always like an after-breakfast cigarette.’
It was while she was enjoying this as they sat on an uncomfortable bench provided by the hotel, that Grant-Campbell came back for a late breakfast. Either he did not notice (the seat was well below the level of the gravel forecourt of the hotel), or else he avoided looking at them, for he marched straight to the glassed-in porch and passed into the entrance hall.
Laura decided to stay where she was, in order to see what he did and where he went when he emerged. He did not keep her very long. After about thirty-five minutes he came out again and descended the rough flight of steps to board the hotel launch.
Laura earnestly hoped that they had seen the last of him, but this was not the case. He conferred for a short time with the two men who ran the launch as a ferry service, climbed the steps again, paused, and looked about him, then saw Laura. With a slightly exaggerated bow, which was intended to include Dame Beatrice, he asked whether he might share the seat with them. Laura scowled, but her employer gave the interloper an encouraging leer and moved up to give him room to sit down.
‘A pleasant prospect,’ she observed, waving a proprietory hand towards Loch Lomond. ‘Are you staying here long?’
‘I’m staying here as long as you do,’ he replied. I’m in trouble and I need this lady’s help. I don’t know why she refuses it.’
‘Possibly because she has not been told in sufficient detail why you solicit it. Should you not put all your cards on the table?’
‘Should I? Can I trust you?’
‘How do I know?’
‘Well, I can’t be worse off. I’m certain to be arrested, anyway.’
‘Even if Mrs Gavin and I are able to succour you?’
‘Oh, I don’t know! I’ve been on Mrs Gavin’s trail ever since the night I rowed her across the loch, hoping she’d consent to speak up for me when the time came. But women are flint-hearted, even when a man’s life may be at stake.’
‘But what makes you believe that Mrs Gavin can speak up for you, as you express it? Mrs Gavin, who is my personal private secretary as well as my young friend, has told me of her adventures, and nothing in her account, which, I am sure, has been of the fullest, gives me any reason to think that she can help you. What causes you to think she can?’
‘Because,’ said the young man, ‘Cù Dubh was murdered just as I was tying up the boat to set Mrs Gavin ashore, so, if there is any trouble, it will be up to her to clear me.’
Chapter 6
The Piper’s Tune
‘…of which this one
In chief he urg’d – that I should always shun
The island of the man-delighting Sun.’
George Chapman
« ^ »
‘INTERESTING,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Pray go on.’
‘I can do you the next bit myself,’ said Laura, ‘but we’d better have the revised version.’
The young man looked at her with loathing.
It’s no revised version you’ll be getting, but the authorised account,’ he protested, ‘and you can check it against your own knowledge. Now, then!’
‘My own knowledge isn’t extensive,’ said Laura, assuming a meekness she did not feel, but aware that Dame Beatrice did not want the witness antagonised beyond the point which had been reached. ‘Carry on. We’re all agog.’
‘I went to Tannasgan in answer to a letter from my uncle.’
‘Your uncle being the laird?’
‘No, no, Mrs Gavin. My uncle is the man Corrie. He wrote that there was a job going at An Tigh Mór. As I was finishing my term at the University and needed to make a little money during the vacation, this was good news, so I happened along to present myself to the laird.’
‘And got the job?’
‘I was on trial for a fortnight. If I suited it, I was to stay until the laird could get a permanent body. If not…’
‘And what were you expected to do?’ asked Dame Beatrice.
‘It doesn’t matter telling you that, for the laird is dead and, in any case, I didn’t carry out what he laid upon me and nobody can pretend that I did. My job was to sabotage, in any way that presented itself, the hydro-electrical scheme near Tigh-Osda.’
‘Did your uncle know the nature of this assignment?’
‘No, no. He was as horrified as I was, when I told him what I was expected to do. However, we were agreed that the laird was mad to think of such a thing, and that there would be nothing I could do about it.’
‘The laird was mad all right,’ said Laura, ‘but, as I believe I told you on Skye, I rather liked him.’
‘It’s as well that somebody did, then, for he was very short of friends, I’m thinking.’
‘How long had you been on Tannasgan when Mrs Gavin called there?’ asked Dame Beatrice. ‘She does not seem to have seen you until you met at the boathouse that night.’
‘A matter of two days, so, you see, apart from all else, I wouldn’t have known the laird well enough to want to murder him,’ the young man replied, ignoring the implication contained in her last remark.
‘That’s as may be,’ said Laura. ‘I’ve known myself to be in people’s company no more than half an hour and I’d find myself wanting to murder them.’
‘Ay, but that’s only in a manner of speaking. You’ve never translated the wish into action. Now the laird surely has been murdered, and…’
‘And you knew he was going to be. You’ve let that much out, haven’t you? You told us that the laird was murdered just as you were tying up the boat to set me ashore. How did you know what was happening?’
‘It was, first, the unearthly wailing and screaming on the pipes, and then the silence. The noise clearly told of the stabbing and the silence must have shown that he was dead.’
‘All this sounds as though you may have been an accessory before the fact. You knew he was going to be murdered?’
‘I did not, then. It was after I had the news of his death that I put two and two together.’ Young Grant sounded desperate.
‘What were you doing down at the boathouse when Mrs Gavin was leaving the house?’ asked Dame Beatrice.
‘I was having a quiet smoke and I was wondering, to tell the truth, how I could keep my position and take the laird’s wages without attempting to do the job I was to be paid for. Maybe it doesn’t sound over honest, but I comforted myself with the thought that I could always lend my Uncle Corrie a hand about the place and so earn my money that way.’
‘Who killed your employer? Do you know?’
‘I could not hazard a guess. According to my uncle, there were plenty who did not like him, and it did not take me two days to find out the reason. He was a stubborn, self-opinionated, selfish old stot.’