‘Ay, those that are on the small, wooded inch with the maze, and which Dame Beatrice believes are symbolic.’
‘Yes. I thought he might be interested. I wrote him a short ledgend connected with each one.’
‘You did, so? Well, the wee laddie, it seems, was so pleased with the drawings and the old tales that he must send the letter to his daddy, with strict instructions that it was to be returned. Well, your good man has an alert mind and a seeing eye, and he was intrigued to notice that running between a Florida creek, where the fishing party was in camp, and, apparently, somewhere in the West Indies, were three tramp ships named, respectively, Basilisk, Werewolf and Gryphon.’
Laura looked at Dame Beatrice and raised her eyebrows.
‘I suppose Detective Chief-Inspector Gavin was struck by the coincidence,’ said Dame Beatrice non-committally.
‘You may say that, ma’am, especially as he had had the Scotsman and the London papers flown out to him so that he could keep in touch with events at home. There was a wee paragraph copied from the Freagair Reporter and Advertiser which bore out what Mrs Gavin had written to her laddie and which gave the locality of the inch on which she seen the models of the fabulous beasties.’
‘Young Grant’s report to his local paper, of course,’ said Laura.
‘Well, Detective Chief-Inspector Gavin is a very canny man and the coincidence of the names seemed to him so striking that he sent word to London and suggested that Scotland Yard might like to contact the Customs and Excise people, or possibly Lloyds, and find out a little more about these sonsie wee craft. It did not take long to discover that no boats under these names were registered with Lloyds.’
‘No, but these are,’ said Dame Beatrice delving into the pocket of her skirt and producing a small black notebook. ‘Of course, it may be fortuitous that the first two letters in each name correspond with the first two letters in the names of the boats in question, but there is another coincidence which, I think, may be worth nothing. Did our dear Robert obtain any impression of the tonnage of the boats he mentions?’
‘He did. He points out that he is only estimating the tonnage, but it seems that he is well acquainted with boats of all kinds…’
‘The Clyde,’ explained Laura. ‘He spent a lot of his boyhood at Dumbarton and Greenock.’
‘Aha. Well, before you show me your list, mistress, I’ll quote you what Mr Gavin has to tell. Here it is: Basilisk, about nine thousand tons, diesel driven, type made on the Clyde in about 1938. Werewolf, about the same size, steamship. Probably built a little earlier – say in the early 1930s. Gryphon, motor-ship, modern, about four thousand five hundred tons. All ships appear to be well-found. Captains and crew drink together but are unsociable with other people ashore. Suggest may be engaged in illicit liquor trade or gun-running. (Always chance of revolutions in these latitudes).
‘Hm!’ said Laura. Again she glanced at Dame Beatrice. ‘Did your man at Lloyds give any more help?’ she asked her.
‘I think so. Will you give us your conclusions first, Inspector?’
‘No, no, ladies first, Dame Beatrice.’
‘Well, from the list supplied to me, I have formed the theory that when these ships are in British waters they may be called by rather different names. I have a footnote here which my friend provided in answer to a question I particularly asked.’
‘And that would have been?’
‘What had happened to a ship, probably based on Leith, whose name began with the letters SA. Well, as it happened, my informant at Lloyds was able to inform me that a ship based on Leith, whose lawful trade appears to have been that of a collier, blew up and burnt out in the Gulf of Mexico two years ago. She was called the Saracen. She blew up, with all hands, and the cause of the explosion was unknown.’
‘What was the amount of the insurance?’
‘That I did not ask, but as my informant did not mention the matter, I take it that the insurance was adequate and the premiums not abnormally high, and that the underwriters had no proof or even suspicion of sabotage.’
‘Sabotage,’ said the inspector thoughtfully. ‘What gared you think of sabotage, ma’am?’
‘Simply that I cannot see why a cargo of coal, destined, it appeared, for Montevideo, should blow up at all. A fire, of itself, I could understand, but an explosion in such a ship sounds rather unlikely. Of course, I am biased by the fact that I believe these murders to be connected in some way with these ships which camouflage their names as soon as they are on the high seas. Then,’ she added thoughtfully, ‘we must get rid of that skian-dhu.’
‘That what?’ cried Laura. ‘But that and the barrel of rum are the most picturesque touches in the whole thing!’
‘We must get rid of the skian-dhu,’ her employer repeated. ‘It is a red herring so far as I can see.’
‘Now how on earth do you know that, ma’am?’ demanded the inspector. ‘I ken well that you’re a distinguished member of the medical profession, but you did not even see the body, let alone perform a postmortem on it! We’ve been keeping very quiet about the other injury, but there’s no doubt whatever that we believe the knife-wound was the death wound, ay, and the murderer must go on thinking so, too. But what way…?’
‘Well, I confess that, in the beginning, I was as much in the dark as the rest of the public. It was something Laura said which made me think that the stabbing might be a gesture on the part of somebody who wanted the murder to appear an even more dramatic business than it was.’
‘Good Lord! That young ass Grant!’ said Laura. ‘But what pearl of great price fell from my lips to put you wise about the knife-wound?’
‘When it was known that it was an empty cask of rum in which the body was found. Do you not remember asking…’
‘Whisky! Of course!’
‘And, of course, if the skian-dhu had any place in the matter, it ought to have been connected with whisky. Rum goes…’
‘With a cutlass and not with a skian-dhu,’ said Laura, slapping her hand on the arm of the chair. ‘Well, Inspector, what do you say about that?’
The inspector’s smile replied to her, but he spoke as well.
‘About that, Mrs Gavin, all that I can say has been said already. “There’s a chiel amang us taking notes.” I congratulate you on your logic and your powers of deduction, ma’am,’ he added gallantly, addressing Dame Beatrice. ‘Of course, whatever activities are going on in the West Indies, South America or Mexico (or anywhere else, for that matter), is not our business at present. No, no. But what is our business is murder.’
‘Well, you’ve got two murders on your hands, then,’ said Laura. ‘There’s the man who was pushed under a car in Edinburgh and now the laird of Tannasgan.’
‘I doubt whether the incident in Edinburgh was intended to result in death,’ said the inspector. ‘You couldna guarantee that the man would be killed. I am inclined to look upon it as a disciplinary action. It was intended to frighten and maybe punish somebody who was threatening to sell out to the police. I must look up the files. They may well cast a good deal of light.’
Laura and Dame Beatrice were about to take their leave when there came across the water the loud sound of a bell.
‘Somebody coming,’ said the inspector. He glanced out of the window. ‘Now, why ding the bell? Corrie is there with the wee boat. Ah, it is Mr Macbeth. It might be as well if you were not in evidence, ladies. Gin you would just efface yourselves, maybe…’
Dame Beatrice and Laura effaced themselves, the former at the bend of the stairs and the latter in the kitchen, and both heard the front door flung open. Macbeth’s voice cried violently: