At the end of the long landing she found a door, and beyond it were the back stairs, as she had anticipated. She crept, barefoot, to the kitchen, found it deserted, as she had hoped, and groped around in the pale, thin moonlight for her clothes. They were not completely dry, but she decided that they were wearable. She carried them and her shoes up to her room. She retained the strong feeling that leave An Tigh Mór and the Island of Ghosts she must, and that forthwith. Laura, like Old Meg the gipsy, was tall as Amazon and brave as Margaret queen; nevertheless, the crazy owner, with his fixation on fabulous animals, his reputation, according to Mrs Grant, of being an implacable enemy, and his determination that Laura should extend her impromptu visit, drove her to take flight. She pulled on her damp and chilly garments, put on her soggy shoes and stuffed her stockings into a pocket. Then she hung the dressing-gown over the top of the banisters and crept downstairs again to the front door.
It was unlocked, but a light showing under the Library door proved that the man had not gone to bed, so Laura decided to try the back door. This was bolted but not locked, so, with the utmost circumspection, she set about drawing back the bolts. As though to aid her escape, the sound of bagpipes came from the front of the house. Someone was playing a lament
Laura got the door open, and, horribly uncomfortable in her damp clothing and sodden shoes, stepped out into the policies and round the side of the house. She was thankful for the moonlight. Without it she could hardly have found her way. She darted to the boathouse and there received a shock, for a man rose out of the shadows and demanded:
‘Tell me where you are going!’
‘Quick! Don’t stop me! Help me row! Doctor! No time to lose!’ said Laura. She climbed into the tub-like boat. The man hesitated. ‘Come on!’ she said fiercely. To her relief, he obeyed and they pushed out on to the loch. There was but one pair of oars and with these, using a short, stabbing sort of stroke, the man drove the clumsy boat across the water. ‘Where’s the nearest telephone?‘ asked Laura, as the boat reached the jetty and she stepped ashore while the man held on to a length of chain put there for the purpose.
‘Three miles. Maybe I should go for you,’ said the man. He pointed in the direction which Laura wanted to take; this to her relief.
‘No, no,’ she said. ‘Better get back to the house. You may be needed.’
The man gripped her arm.
‘What way would you be knowing a doctor might be needed? Tell me!’ he said, in very low but fierce and threatening tones. Laura wrenched herself away.
‘Get back to the house!’ she said. She was brave enough and self-confident enough, but the whole adventure had been bizarre in the extreme and her damp clothes were making her chilly. Suddenly the piping, which sounded clearly across the lake, increased in volume. It skirled and screamed. It rose higher and higher. It sounded as though the piper had gone mad. Then it died down again to a sobbing lament and in a few moments it ceased.
The young man, who had been listening, poised like a statue in the moonlight, relaxed his stiff body.
‘So, that’s all over,’ he said. He reached out towards Laura again, but, deeming that discretion was the better part, she eluded him and ran. He began to call something after her, but he did not attempt to give chase and before he had finished speaking she was off the quay and on the very wet road. Hoping that this would prove a shorter way back to Freagair than the scrambling walk she had taken that afternoon, she pressed on, alternatively running and walking, until she came upon the telephone that the man had mentioned. Here she hesitated, wondering whether to put through a call to the hotel, and had just decided against this, only hoping that the hotel employed a night porter so that she could gain admittance if and when she got back, when strong headlights indicated the approach of a car. It was coming up behind her. Laura stepped into the middle of the road, waved her arms and yelled. The car pulled up. It had not been going very fast on the single-track road. The driver put his head out.
‘Give me a lift as far as Freagair, please,’ said Laura. ‘I got lost.’
‘O.K.,’ said the driver. He opened the door on the nearside. ‘Hop in.’
‘I’m a bit damp,’ said Laura. ‘I got caught in that rain.’
‘This car won’t hurt. You English, like me?’
‘No, but I’ve lived most of my life in England and have lost my guid Scots tongue except when I employ it deliberately. Name of Gavin. My husband is a Detective Chief-Inspector at New Scotland Yard.’ To unknowns from whom she accepted lifts on lonely roads, Laura always offered this piece of gratuitous information as a precautionary measure, for, although she was a match for most men, she preferred to keep unpleasantness and amatory enthusiasm at bay.
‘Oh, really? My name’s Curtis. I travel for Panwick, the shrubs and flowering trees people. Just come from Baile, from the Gàradh estate. I was sent there to see whether the lady of the house, who’s got those sub-tropical gardens, has anything she wants to sell when the time’s right for transplanting.’
‘Mrs Stewart? That’s a coincidence. I was there myself a day or so ago,’ said Laura. ‘I’m glad I asked you for a lift. Isn’t she charming? And aren’t the gardens lovely?’
They talked of plants and gardens all the way to Freagair and, to Laura’s relief, the young man asked no awkward questions. She found that she did not want to mention her strange and fortuitous visit to the island of Tannasgan and the big white house.
Chapter 4
Death of a Laird
‘Safe in a ditch he bides.
With twenty trenched gashes on his head.’
Shakespeare
« ^ »
LAURA had knocked up the hotel to get in. There was no night porter. The manageress herself came down and unbarred the door.
‘I’m right glad to see you,’ she said. ‘We guessed you had lost yourself and feared you were benighted again.’ She felt Laura’s sleeve. ‘Losh, but you’re wet! Out of your things and leave them outside your bedroom door. I’ll put them in the drying cupboard and stuff your good shoes with paper. Did you dine?’
Laura thanked and reassured her, and had not been in bed five minutes when the manageress came up with a bowl of broth and a hot-water bottle.
‘Do you take cold easily?’ she asked. Laura again reassured her, supped the broth, then switched off the light and snuggled down, but not immediately to sleep. She needed very little sleep and her day had been an interesting one. She lay awake and thought it over. She had enjoyed her walk, in spite of the rain; she had enjoyed, in a different way, her visit to An Tigh Mór on Tannasgan, but she had no regrets about the cavalier fashion in which she had left the house. The laird was obviously crazy, and Laura had the normal person’s horror of being in close contact with the mentally afflicted. The strangest part of the business was her encounter with the man at the boathouse, for she could think of no reason for his having been there, apparently on duty, at that time of night
At last she slept. In the morning she received her clothes, dried and pressed, retrieved the hired car and was off by noon. She still had three days’ leave before she needed to return to Edinburgh, so she decided to leave Strathpeffer, Dingwall and Inverness out of her itinerary and return through Tigh-Osda, stopping before she got there in order to revisit Coinneamh Lodge in order to tell Mrs Grant of her encounter with the laird of An Tigh Mór.