‘Why should you give up?’
‘Because I began it only to make certain that Laura was not arrested,’ replied Dame Beatrice, accompanying, or, rather, concluding, this statement with her unnerving cackle.
‘Laura?’
‘Well, yes,’ his wife admitted. ‘I was on the island more or less at the time of Bradan’s murder and my story of why I was there would have sounded pretty thin in court.’
‘And now?’
‘Since we have met the inspector, I am no longer concerned for Laura’s safety,’ said Dame Beatrice.
‘What were you doing on the island, anyway, chump?’ demanded Gavin. Laura grinned.
‘Getting wet. That is to say, I got wet and Bradan’s son – I didn’t know that’s who it was at the time, but we found out afterwards – signalled the island and a huge old man with a terrific red beard brought a boat over and dried, warmed and fed me. But when he wanted to keep me on the island for a week I thought it was time to make my get-away. It was then that I first ran into this reporter. The rest of that story you know.’
‘Nice goings-on for a respectable wife and mother! When are you going to grow up?’
‘Anyway, now you know it all, what are you going to do?’ demanded Laura, ignoring the criticism.
‘With Dame B.’s permission, I am going to use her telephone and ring up Edinburgh.’
Dame Beatrice nodded, and he went out of the room.
‘Wonder what his idea is?’ said Laura.
‘He is going to find out whether young Bradan has been arrested for murdering his father, or for some other reason,’ said Dame Beatrice. This inspired guess turned out to be correct. Gavin came back looking pleased with himself.
‘Well, dog with two tails?’ said his wife. Gavin slumped into a chair and spread his long legs over the hearth-rug.
‘What do you think?’ he asked. Laura, from the opposite side of the fireplace, kicked his ankle. ‘Oh, well,’ he said resignedly, ‘if you’re in militant mood, you’d better know all. There’s no secret about it. Young Bradan is held in custody for assaulting the police.’
‘Really? I shouldn’t have thought he had it in him,’ said Laura ‘Exactly what did he do?’
‘He appears to have gone beserk when your friend Macbeth of the flaming beard sent for the police to order him off Tannasgan, where he was not only trespassing—’
‘Who cares about trespass?’ demanded Laura, a keen supporter of Access to Mountains.
‘Wait for it – but was destroying valuable property – viz. to wit, sculpture owned by the new laird of Tannasgan, Malcolm Donalbain Macbeth.’
‘Sculpture? Not the fabulous beasts? And surely he didn’t give that pseudonym to the police? I thought it was just his little joke.’
‘Sculpture, yes. The fabulous beasts, yes. And his name really is Malcolm Donalbain Macbeth. He’s got a birth certificate to prove it. So the police from Dingwall stepped in and young Bradan went all hysterical, I gather, and ran at them, brandishing a piece of one of the beasties. It appears that he got in a whack at the law which necessitated the insertion of eight stitches. So he got pinched and is up for trial charged with inflicting grievous bodily harm on a police constable while the latter was in the execution of his duty. He may also be wanted on an even more serious charge.’
‘More serious than hitting a policeman? Why, he might have killed him with that chunk of stone,’ said Laura. ‘I’ve seen those fabulous beasts. They’re tough babies.’
‘As it happens – probably luckily for the bobby – it wasn’t a lump of stone; it was a lump of metal.’
‘Oh, dash it, not the basilisk! That was my favourite!’
‘I’ve no idea what it was called. It’s immaterial, anyway. The serious charge against Bradan was that, in his screaming hysterics, he accused Macbeth of assisting him, in Edinburgh, to push a man named Grant under a car so that the said Grant was killed.’
‘Is Macbeth arrested too, then?’
‘No. It seems that he was able to furnish the police with a complete alibi for that particular time. He was on Tannasgan, and Mrs Corrie swore to him. What is the man Corrie like, by the way?’
‘Taciturn and unhelpful,’ said Laura, ‘but, I should say, honest and loyal and all those things which old-fashioned retainers used to be, and which present-day servants on the whole are not.’
‘So you don’t think that Corrie would have had anything to do with shoving that man under the car?’
‘It doesn’t seem very likely to me, but I’ve nothing to go on except instinct.’
‘Instinct is not often at fault,’ said Gavin thoughtfully, ‘and I’d usually trust yours. Anyway, that’s all I know and I have work to do. I’ve been away too long and I have a consultation tomorrow with the Assistant Commissioner about some robberies in – er – well, about some robberies.’ He grinned into his wife’s furious face. ‘No, really, Laura,’ he added, ‘there’s nothing more I can do for you. With the end of Bradan, I think his schemes will just die a natural death. As for his murder, well, that isn’t my pigeon.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I’m afraid I must go. Apart from seeing the Assistant Commissioner, I seem to have a date with a citizen named Good Egg Symes, who guarantees – for what it is worth – to tip us off about a job that was done in the West End two nights ago. It was a smash and grab. Friend Symes was unlucky enough to receive the smash – in the form of an empty milk-bottle which a scared nightwatchman slung at him – but failed to obtain the grab.’
‘His pals welshed on him?’ enquired Laura, deeply fascinated by this unadorned and artless history.
‘Apparently his reactions to having been struck by the bottle were so positive that they had to make their getaway before the job was done. Their attitude after that was such that he came to us for protection. We shall protect the little lost sheep, of course, but I don’t give much for his chances when his pals have served their time.’
‘I am sorry that you cannot stay with us here,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Your help would have been invaluable, especially now that there is no reason, apart from what the Americans, I believe, call ornery curiosity, for me to interest myself any further in Mr Bradan’s death.’
‘You had better carry on,’ said Gavin, ‘both of you. I can’t tell you any more, but if I can get up to Scotland when we’ve hard-boiled Good Egg Symes I will most certainly do so.’
Laura and Dame Beatrice headed for the north again next day. Laura thought that they were making for Edinburgh until lunch-time, when Dame Beatrice suggested to George that the car turn off at Stamford for Ilkley and Kirkby Lonsdale instead of travelling through Harrogate to Durham.
It soon became clear to Laura that her employer was in a hurry. Instead of the leisurely journeys, both north and south, which had been indulged in so far, it was not until they arrived in Carlisle by way of Grantham and Appleby that Dame Beatrice had the car pulled up for the night stop, and it was barely five minutes past nine when they were off again on the following morning. They lunched in Glasgow and the second night was spent at Blair Atholl. On the third day they drove through the quiet town of Freagair to the shores of Loch na Gréine.
Here, to Laura’s astonishment, Dame Beatrice did nothing at first except gaze across at Tannasgan and An Tigh Mór through the field-glasses which she had brought with her. ‘Do you see anything, Sister Ann?’ she enquired, handing the glasses to Laura.
‘What am I expected to see?’ enquired Laura, obediently training the glasses on to the island.
‘No, no. You must keep an open mind.’
‘Well, I don’t see anything at all that I haven’t seen before, i.e. the boathouse and An Tigh Mór. Shall I signal the island in the usual manner?’
‘It might be a little difficult,’ Dame Beatrice pointed out. Laura lowered the glasses and became aware that the tarpaulin and its stones, the handbell it had protected and the red and green lantern had all disappeared.