‘Marbhphaisg air a’ bhrùid mhi-thaingeil!’ muttered Ian. Laura was delighted.
‘Curse the ungrateful brute!’ she translated. ‘Lesson number eight in Gaelic Without Groans.’
‘Indeed?’ said Dame Beatrice, uncertain whether Laura was jesting.
‘By John Mackechnie, M.A.,’ added Laura, supplying the necessary footnote. ‘Didn’t Cù Dubh pay you, then, Ian?’
‘He paid for the car, but nothing for me.’
‘Mingy hound!’
‘Not hound, please you! Hound is a good word in the Gaelic,’ said Ian, with a nervous giggle.
‘Oh, Lord, so it is! Come to me, sons of hounds, and I will give you flesh! How does it go?’
‘It is the slogan of Cameron of Lochiel, Mrs Gavin, and it goes: Chalanna nan con thigibh a’s gheibh sibhfeòil!’
‘Jolly good. But we’re holding up Dame Beatrice.’
‘You believed, with Corrie, Mr Bradan’s man, that Mr Bradan was very drunk that night, did you not?’ she asked.
‘I did. He had a great smell of spirits on him and he could not stand on his feet.’
‘Did you see anybody help him out of the train?’
‘I did. It was a young Englishman, works at the hydro-electric plant further up the dalr. He helped him on to the platform and I went to help and so did Mr Corrie. The Englishman said, “I’m afraid this bloke’s pickled.” That will be an English idiom, no doubt.’
‘That’s right. The English will say a man is a drunk, but not, if they can help it, that he is drunk.’
‘Fancy that, now. The study of language, and the circumlocutions of the same, make very interesting thinking.’
‘So when you first saw Mr Bradan being helped out of the train, you thought he was ill,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘However, you accepted the theory that he was drunk because of what the young Englishman said and because of the strong smell of spirits.’
‘Spilt over him, I expect,’ said Laura. ‘It’s been done before to lend verisimilitude, etc. Quite a well-established gag.’
‘I believe you crossed over in the boat with Corrie,’ said Dame Beatrice to Ian.
‘It was a case of necessity. Mr Corrie would never have managed him alone, small, wee man though he was.’
‘The laird?’
‘Yes, yes, the laird.’
‘That is the first I have heard about his size. Was he thin as well as short?’
‘He was as thin as a caolbhain.’
‘Lead pencil,’ murmured Laura. ‘Lesson number fifteen.’
‘So, in your opinion, the person who murdered him could quite easily have placed his body in the barrel where it was found?’
‘Very easily, och, yes. But when he was alive and, as we thought, having taken spirits, it was a different matter.’
‘Did Mr Bradan say anything during the journey home?’
‘He would moan, “My head! My head!” But much to drink will always go to a man’s head, as they say.’
‘Very true. Did you actually go into the house?’
‘No. I would not like to go into a big, fine house such as that. There was, also, Mr Corrie’s wife to help, and Mr Macbeth, the new laird, so I parted from them at the door.’
‘Did you see a young man sitting in the boathouse?’
‘No, indeed. There was nobody there.’
‘Well, what next?’ asked Laura, when Ian had received a gratuity and they were about to return to the car. ‘Evidence from the young Englishman?’
‘You have hit it.’
‘We don’t know his name.’
‘There cannot be many young Englishmen there, I take it except for Curtis, of course.’
‘I shouldn’t think there are, and, by the look of things, I should say that work is about finished for the day.’ She referred to the fact that cars and pedestrians had begun to appear on the narrow road. ‘We’d better wait here and get Ian to identify our bird for us.’
‘Let us hope he always travels by train, then. Otherwise we shall miss him.’
They were fortunate. In the booking-hall doorway which led on to the platform, Ian readily identified a young fellow whose dark suit and carefully-rolled umbrella seemed to speak of London and a white-collar job.
‘Good heavens!’ said the young man, when Ian had introduced Dame Beatrice. ‘Do you mean that he was the fellow who was croaked and put in a barrel? We merely thought he was tight. The chap who bundled him into my compartment said he was.’
A description of the ‘chap’ followed, at the urgent request of Dame Beatrice.
‘Well?’ she said to Laura, as they walked back to the car.
‘An eye-witness’s description of young Bradan.’
‘I thought it might be. Now I really am in a quandary.’
‘As how?’
‘Well, it’s obvious that young Bradan may have hit his father on the head with intent to kill him, but it doesn’t seem possible that it actually did kill him.’
‘Oh, Lord!’ exclaimed Laura. ‘No wonder young Grant chased me for that alibi after he’d read the papers! You mean…’
‘That the coup de grace was not delivered by young Bradan. The medical evidence was perfectly clear. It was the skian-dhu which killed Cù Dubh.’
‘But young Grant had no motive!’
‘He thought that Cù Dubh was already dead, and that the skian-dhu and the barrel would provide a nation-wide sensation. And I have no doubt whatever of his absolute horror when he found out what he had done. I have very little doubt, either, mind you, that Mr Bradan eventually would have died of the injury to his head, but that we must check.’
‘And tonight? If it were bright moonlight we could go back and tackle the fabulous beasts again.’
‘No, child, not even by moonlight. We have to find the lion and the unicorn, and I believe I know where to look for them. Where a man’s heart is, you know.’
‘The cellar!’ exclaimed Laura. ‘He was badly hurt, but he did manage to crawl into the cellar! He’d shifted the treasure from Haugr when he knew his son was stealing it! I can’t wait to get back to An Tigh Mór.’
It did not take them long to do this. The cars and the pedestrians from the hydroelectric plant were gone by the time they took the road for Tannasgan. Laura wondered whether they would pass the Grants’ station-wagon again, and she looked out for it, but there was nothing on the road except a solitary small ambulance which seemed in no hurry and from which a cheery greeting was waved as they passed it.
Tannasgan looked deserted. It seemed so, too, for Laura jangled the handbell and turned the lantern in vain.
‘Goodness! What’s happened to Corrie?’ she demanded. The answer came from just behind her.
‘I am saying that Corrie was away to Freagair.’
Laura swung round, but it was not young Bradan (as, from the Gaelic construction of the sentence, she had half-expected) but young Grant. He smiled at her. Laura, who now knew him to have been, however unintentionally, the actual killer of Cù Dubh, looked as astounded as she felt.
‘What on earth are you doing here?’ she demanded. ‘And if Corrie is in Freagair, why isn’t the boat tied up on this side?’
‘Mrs Corrie rowed it back to the boathouse,’ said Grant, in his ordinary tones. He put two fingers to his mouth and split the air with a screeching, piercing, almost ferocious whistle. This had an effect, for, a minute later, Mrs Corrie was at the boathouse and was untying the heavy, clumsy boat. As Grant helped her to hold it against the side of the small quay, while she tied up, she said to him:
‘I am not having ye set foot again on Tannasgan.’
‘Why not, then?’
‘Because ye did enough mischief the last time ye were here.’