‘Please do not!’
‘I am not teasing. You claimed that Cù Dubh, as Mr Bradan was sometimes called, died just as you were tying up the boat to set Mrs Gavin ashore. That was, or was not, true?’
‘It was not true. That is, it may have been, but I just don’t know.’
‘I suppose it was because of the skian-dhu that you were anxious to persuade Mrs Gavin to give you an alibi. We know a considerable amount about that visit of yours to Tannasgan. That, I may tell you, is a warning.’
‘Spare me! I’ve promised to tell the whole truth.’
‘And I am prepared to help you to do so,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘We must clear away the mist.’
‘By which token, it’s stopped raining,’ said Laura. ‘And what about all that phoney stuff you told us about Corrie being your uncle and getting you a job as saboteur at the hydro-electric works near Tigh-Osda?’
Young Grant laughed uncomfortably.
‘I didna really think you’d swallow that,’ he said. ‘Anyhow, it was put right afterwards, when you found out what my real job was.’
‘No thanks to you that we did,’ said Laura sternly. ‘You seem to have acted as a liar and a fool all the way through.’
‘I was able to back up your story about the man who was murdered in Edinburgh by being pushed under a car, though, was I not?’
‘Pity you don’t know who he was.’
‘But I do know. It was Dorg.’
‘Really?’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘I saw the report in the Edinburgh papers. It was not given much prominence and I should not have been particularly interested except for Mrs Gavin’s insistence that it was murder. The name of the dead man was given’ – she flipped back another two or three pages – ‘as Grant. Quite a coincidence, I feel.’
‘It was Dorg,’ insisted Grant, ‘and one of his murderers was employed by Cù Dubh, as I told you.’
‘That sounds as though Dorg was one of Bradan’s men, then,’ said Laura. ‘I wonder who named him as Grant?’
‘He might have had papers on him in that name.’
‘If he was mixed up in something shady, that’s quite likely, I suppose. Do you think he was killed because he had been seen talking to you and perhaps giving away secrets?’
‘I do not. If that had been the case, they would not have waited until now to shoot at me. Oh, no! I am certain in my own mind that Macbeth was behind that gun.’
‘I suppose the shot was intended for you? You don’t think it may have been some misguided sportsman potting at something on the other side of the road?’
Young Grant shook his head.
‘I do not.’
‘Well, you have one good friend in the world, at any rate,’ said Dame Beatrice briskly. ‘Do you remember Mr Curtis, a travelling salesman for a firm of horticulturalists?’
‘Curtis? Oh, yes. An English laddie. I ken him very well. Many’s the crack we’ve had together when he was travelling through Crioch to Gàradh. So he spoke up for me, did he?’
‘He indicated that you were harmless. Let us come now to the story you told us at Gàradh. First, what about your determination to blackmail Mr Bradan?’
‘That bit was true enough, but I badly needed my story.’
‘And your assertion that you made the long journey between Edinburgh and Loch na Gréine on various evenings?’
‘Well, there, I admit I did telescope the time a little, but otherwise what I said was true enough. The evening after I had seen Dorg murdered in Edinburgh I motorcycled to Inverness and spent the night there, before going on to Loch na Gréine to tackle Bradan.’
‘One moment! On the Friday afternoon when that Edinburgh murder took place, my Conference had not begun. What, then, were you doing in Edinburgh?’
‘Well, as I told you, I wanted to interview some of the notables in their hotels before the Conference started.’
‘I see. Now, just let me check some other facts against these things that you are telling me. This death in Edinburgh took place on a Friday, as I have said. Mrs Gavin and I left my home in Hampshire on the previous Wednesday and made a leisurely progress northward. On the Saturday we went sightseeing in Edinburgh, then we spent a quiet Sunday, and the Conference opened at ten o’clock on the Monday morning.’
‘Yes, I reported the opening. I can show you my piece in the Advertiser. I posted it off immediately after lunch.’
‘I see. But, before you reported the opening of the Conference, you had been to Tannasgan. Is that right?’
‘Oh, well – no. Not before I reported the opening.’
‘Please take your time, but you did say that on the evening following that on which you had seen Dorg murdered you motorcycled to Inverness, did you not?’
Grant flushed and scowled.
‘Very well,’ he said, the scowl changing suddenly to a smile. ‘Maybe I’m mixing up the days. What day would it be when I first met Mrs Gavin on Tannasgan?’
Laura glanced at Dame Beatrice and received a nod.
‘Let’s see,’ she said. ‘Pitlochry on the Monday, Kingussie on the Tuesday, Inverness on the Wednesday, Freagair on the Thursday. Then on the Friday I motored over to Gàradh to visit Mrs Stewart and stayed the night at Coinneamh Lodge. I drove back to Freagair on the Saturday morning and went to Tannasgan the same afternoon, then got back to Freagair late at night after you’d rowed me ashore and we heard the piping.’
‘So we need an account of your adventures on that Saturday and the preceding Friday,’ said Dame Beatrice to Grant. “Pray relate to us what happened after you left Inverness. Can you now recollect which day that would have been?’
‘Yes, I can work it out, I think. I took two days – well, one evening and part of the next day – to get to Loch na Gréine and I spent the rest of that day and all the next day on Tannasgan, waiting for Cù Dubh to come home. That means I got to Inverness on the Thursday after I’d written up my report on that session of the Conference. So I must have arrived off Tannasgan on the Friday afternoon, camped out – Mrs Corrie gave me my bread, the good woman – here and there, out of sight of old Macbeth, spent Friday night in the boathouse and – and was in hiding there on Saturday night when Mrs Gavin decided to go back to Freagair.’
‘And at what point did you see the dead laird?’
‘He was brought back on the Saturday.’
‘Who brought him?’
‘Who but Corrie?’
‘Really? Corrie brought his body across to Tannasgan?’
‘He did that. You can ask him if you don’t believe me.’
‘We have heard Corrie’s story.’
‘You mean he didn’t mention the dead man?’
‘He told us that Mr Bradan was alive after Mrs Gavin arrived on Tannasgan.’
‘Then he was lying. I tell you it was a dead man Corrie ferried over the water.’
‘Come, come!’ protested Dame Beatrice, giving him a rather unkindly leer. ‘Corrie waited with the boat and Mr Bradan turned up at the jetty in the station-master’s car. That is his story and I am bound to point out that it is a considerably more sensible one than your own.’
‘Have it your own way,’ said the young man sulkily.
‘But I don’t want to. His is the more sensible, but yours is by far the more sensational. Why not tell us the rest of it?’
‘There is nothing more to tell.’
‘When did you produce your skian-dhu?’
‘I really forget.’
‘And what were you doing with one, anyway.’
‘I was wearing the philibeg!’
‘Not when I saw you in the boathouse,’ said Laura austerely. ‘You weren’t wearing a kilt then.’
‘Was I not?’
‘You know you weren’t. Why on earth don’t you come clean and stop wasting our time?’
‘Because I don’t trust you,’ said Grant wildly. ‘I don’t trust either of you. You’ll get me tried for murder if you can. But you’ve the inspector to reckon with. Do not forget that he kens very well when and where Bradan was murdered and I am telling you that it was a dead man who was brought to Tannasgan that night.’