There was a buzz of excitement, and for a moment the grim nature of the quest on which we were engaged was forgotten, as a host of eager questions was flung at him. He answered with his usual calm, but soon moved off, alone, and immediately afterwards the group broke up, and the parties vanished in various directions in the darkness to resume their search. I heard their voices as they moved away, animatedly discussing Beagle’s announcement: he had, it seemed to me, deliberately kept back his news and then used it to galvanize the weary searchers into fresh activity. My respect for him increased.
Beside me, Nicholas spoke again, angrily: ‘Now look here, Gianetta—’
Roderick broke across it: ‘Leave her alone.’
‘What the hell do you mean?’
Torches were flashing near by, and in their fitful flickering I could see Roderick’s face. It was quite white, and blazing with a kind of nervous fury. His eyes were on Nicholas, and in that light they looked black and dangerous.
‘What I said. What Janet does is nothing to do with you, and I rather fancy she prefers you to leave her alone.’
It was a nasty, snarling little scene, and it had all blown up so quickly that I stood, gaping, between the pair of them, for a good fifteen seconds before I realized what was happening. This was Marcia’s doing, blast her.
‘Stop it, you two,’ I said sharply. ‘What I do is my own affair and nobody else’s.’ I took hold of Roderick’s arm, and gave it a little shake. ‘But he’s right, Roderick. I’m no use here, and I’m going back now. So both of you leave me alone.’ I pulled my woollen gloves out of a pocket and began to drag them on over cold hands. ‘We’re all tired and edgy, so for heaven’s sake don’t let’s have a scene. I’m going to pack these thermos flasks and things, and take them straight down to the hotel, and then I’m going to bed.’
I knelt down and began to pack mugs into the basket. I hadn’t even glanced at Nicholas. He didn’t say a word, but I saw him pitch his cigarette savagely down the hillside, then he turned in silence and plunged off into the darkness after Ronald Beagle. Above me, Roderick said, hesitatingly:
‘Have you got a torch?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry about me, I know my way. Go and help the others.’ I looked up then at him uncertainly: ‘And – Roderick.’
‘Yes?’ His voice was still tight and grim.
‘Find her, won’t you?’
‘I’ll try.’ Then he, too, was gone. I packed all the débris I could find by the light of my torch, and then I sat down for a few minutes and lit another cigarette. I had just finished smoking one, but my nerves were still jumping, and the last little scene, with all its curious overtones, had upset me more than I wanted to admit.
It was quite dark now. Behind me the hill flashed with scattered torchlight, and I could hear, distorted by the gusts of wind, the occasional shouts of the searchers. In the intervals of the wind I heard the scrape of boots on rock, and, twice, away to my left, a sharp bark that I took to be the cry of a hill-fox.
I got up at last, ground out my cigarette with my heel, lifted the basket, and began to pick my way down the mountainside. I gave the gully a very wide berth, and scrambled slowly and carefully, with the aid of my torch, down through the tumbled boulders of the scree. Halfway down, I knew, I would come upon the deer-track that led, roughly but safely, to the lower spur of An’t Sròn. Away below, a flock of oyster-catchers flew up the glen from the shore, wrangling noisily among themselves. I could hear their cheery vulgar chirking echoing along the water of the loch, then falling silent. The wind blew strongly on my face, with its clear tang of sea and grass and peat. I let myself carefully down on to a muddy ledge and found that I was on the deer-track.
Going was easier now, but I still went slowly and cautiously, hampered by basket and torch, which left me no hand free in case I slipped. It must have been well over an hour after I started my journey back, before I found myself, with relief, walking on the heather of the ridge that joined Blaven with An’t Sròn.
I had been so afraid of stumbling, or of losing the deer-track, that I had come down the hillside with my eyes glued to the little circle of ground that my torch lit at my feet. But as I reached the level heather of the ridge, I became conscious of a new element in the tangy wind that blew against my face. Even when I identified this as the smell of smoke, I still walked forward unalarmed, unrealizing.
Until I lifted my eyes and saw it, a pale climbing column of smoke, no more than a hundred yards ahead.
The bonfire. Someone had lit the bonfire. The smoke from the damp wood towered and billowed, ghostly against the black night, but there was a flickering glare at the heart of the smoke, and I heard the crackle as a flame leapt.
I suppose I stood there, looking at it, for a full half-minute, while my slow brain registered the fact that somebody, who had not heard about the accident, had lit the celebration bonfire. Then another branch crackled, the smoke billowed up redly, and across in front of the glow moved the black figure of a man.
It was as if a shutter in my brain had clicked, and, in place of this, an older picture had flashed in front of me. A column of flame, with a man’s shadow dancing grotesquely in front of it. A blackened pyre, with the body of a murdered girl lying across it like a careful sacrifice . . .
Roberta!
It was for this that the murderer had kept Roberta.
I dropped the basket with a crash, and ran like a mad thing towards the smoking pyre. I don’t know what I hoped to do. I was acting purely by instinct. I hurled myself forward, shouting as I ran, and I had the heavy torch gripped in my hand like a hammer.
There was an answering shout from the hill behind – close behind – but I hardly heeded it. I ran on, desperately, silent now but for my sobbing, tearing breath. The fire was taking hold. The smoke belched sideways in the wind, and whirled over me in a choking cloud.
I was there. The smoke swirled round me, billowing up into the black sky. The flames snaked up with the crack of little whips, and the criss-cross of burning boughs stood out in front of them like bars.
I came to a slithering, choking halt at the very foot of the pyre, and tried to shield my eyes as I gazed upwards.
I saw the smoke fanning out under something that was laid across the top of the pile. I saw the glass of a wrist-watch gleam red in the flame. I saw a boot dangling, the nails in the sole shining like points of fire.
I flung myself at the burning pile and clawed upwards at the arm and leg.
Then a shadow loomed behind me out of the smoke. A man’s strong hands seized me and dragged me back. I whirled and struck out with the torch. He swore, and then he had me in a crippling grip. I struggled wildly, and I think I screamed. His grip crushed me. Then he tripped, and I was flung down into the wet heather, with my attacker’s heavy body bearing me down.
Dimly, I heard shouting, the thud of feet, a voice saying hoarsely: ‘Gianetta!’ Then someone dragged my assailant off me. I heard Alastair’s voice say, in stupefaction: ‘Jamesy Farlane! What goes on, in the name of God?’ as he took the young man in a vicious grip. It was Dougal Macrae who hauled me on to my feet. I was shivering and, I think, crying. He said: ‘Are ye all right, mistress?’
I clung to him, and whispered through shaking lips: ‘On the fire – Roberta – hurry.’
He put an arm round me. His big body was trembling too, and as I realized why, my pity for him gave me the strength to pull myself together. I said, more calmly: ‘Is she dead?’
Another voice spoke. I looked up hazily. There was a man standing a little way from the bonfire. It was Hartley Corrigan, and he was looking down at the thing that lay at his feet.
His voice was without expression. He said: ‘It’s not Roberta Symes. It’s Beagle. And someone has cut his throat.’
12
Camasunary IV
I slept late next morning, after a night of nightmares, and woke to a bright world. Mist still haunted the mountain tops, lying like snowdrifts in crevice and cor
rie, but the wind had dropped, and the sun was out. Blaven looked blue, and the sea sparkled.
But it was with no corresponding lift of the spirits that, at length, I went downstairs, to be met by the news that Roberta had not yet been found, and that the police had arrived. I could not eat anything, but drank coffee and stared out of the window of the empty dining-room, until Bill Persimmon, looking tired and grave, came and told me that the police would like a word with me.
As luck would have it, the officer in charge of the Macrae murder had come over from Elgol that morning, to pursue some further enquiries relating to the earlier case. So, hotter upon the heels of the new development than any murderer could have expected, came the quiet-eyed Inspector Mackenzie from Inverness, and with him an enormous red-headed young sergeant called Hector Munro. A doctor, hastily summoned in the small hours by telephone, had already examined the bodies of Marion and Beagle, and a constable had been despatched to the site of the new bonfire, to guard whatever clues might be there for the Inspector to pick up, when he should have finished his preliminary questions at the hotel.
This information was relayed to me hastily by Bill Persimmon, as he led me to a little sitting-room beside the residents’ lounge, where the Inspector had his temporary headquarters.
Absurdly enough, I was nervous, and was in no way reassured when the Inspector turned out to be a kind-looking middle-aged man with greying hair and deeply-set grey eyes, their corners crinkled as if he laughed a good deal. He got up when I entered, and we shook hands formally. I sat down in the chair he indicated, so that we faced each other across a small table. At his elbow the enormous red-headed sergeant, solemnly waiting with a note-book, dwarfed the table, his own spindly chair, and, indeed, the whole room.
‘Well now, Miss Brooke . . .’ the Inspector glanced down at a pile of papers in front of him, as if he were vague about my identity, and had to reassure himself: ‘I understand that you only arrived here on Saturday afternoon?’
‘Yes, Inspector.’
‘And, before you came here, had you heard anything about the murder of Heather Macrae?’
I was surprised, and showed it. ‘Why – no.’
‘Not even read about it in the papers?’
‘Not that I recollect.’
‘Ah . . .’ he was still looking down at the table, talking casually. ‘And who told you about it?’
I said carefully, wondering what he was getting at: ‘I gathered, from hints that various people let drop, that something awful had happened, so I asked Mr. Grant about it, and he told me.’
‘That would be Mr. Roderick Grant?’ He flicked over a couple of papers, and the sergeant made a note.
‘Yes. And then Mr. Hay talked of it again next day.’ I added politely, to the sergeant: ‘Mr. Hubert Hay. Footloose.’
‘Quite so.’ The Inspector’s eyes crinkled momentarily at the corners. ‘Well, we’ll let that go for the moment. I understand that it was you who found Mr. Beagle’s body on the bonfire last night?’
‘Yes. At least, I was first on the scene. I don’t know who pulled him off the bonfire.’
The Inspector looked straight at me for the first time, and I saw that his eyes were quite impersonal, remote even, and very cold. The effect, in his homely pleasant face, was disconcerting and a little frightening. He said: ‘When was it that you first noticed that the fire had been lit?’
‘Not until I was quite close to it – do you know the hill, Inspector Mackenzie?’
‘I’ve been on it a good bit in the past three weeks.’
‘Of course. How stupid of me.’
He smiled suddenly. ‘And Hecky and I have a map. Now, Miss Brooke, just tell me in your own words what happened on your way down from the hill.’
So I told him. He listened quietly, his grey eyes placidly enquiring. At his elbow the red-headed sergeant – equally placid – made notes in a competent shorthand.
‘. . . And then I saw a shadow, like a man, near the bonfire.’
‘Only one?’
‘Yes.’
‘I take it that you didn’t recognize him?’
‘No.’
‘Was he carrying or hauling a body then?’
‘Oh no. He was just moving about on the fringe of the smoke – it was billowing here and there, you know, in the wind. I remembered the – the other murder, and I thought it was Roberta being murdered this time—’
‘Roberta?’
‘Roberta Symes, the girl who’s missing. Inspector, oughtn’t we all to be out looking—’
He said quietly: ‘There are men out now on the hill. Go on.’
‘That’s all there is. I just ran towards the bonfire. I don’t know what I imagined I could do. I saw there was something – a body – on top of it, and then just as I tried to get to the body before the fire did, the murderer attacked me.’
‘In actual fact,’ said the Inspector calmly, ‘it was James Farlane who attacked you.’
I stared at him. ‘I know that. Surely—?’
He interrupted me. ‘Now. Let’s get this picture right. You realize no doubt that Mr. Beagle cannot have been killed very long before you found him. You met or passed nobody at all on your way down to An’t Sròn?’
‘No one.’
‘Did you hear anything? Any footsteps, or—?’
‘Nothing. I could hear the men shouting occasionally away above on the scree, but nothing else. When I saw the bonfire and screamed, someone shouted quite close behind me, but I hadn’t heard him till then. The wind was strongish, you see, and—’
‘Quite so.’ Once more he appeared to contemplate the table in front of him. ‘You last saw Mr. Beagle alive when the group broke up for the final search last night?’
‘I – are you allowed to ask leading questions, Inspector?’
He grinned. ‘I’ve already heard the answer to this one a dozen times. I’m saving time. Did you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you see which way he went?’
‘Downhill.’
‘Alone?’
‘Yes.’
‘Sure?’
I regarded him levelly. ‘Quite.’
‘I see. Now let’s get back to the bonfire, shall we? You ran towards it, and screamed. Did you recognize the shout that answered you – from close behind you, I think you said?’
‘No, I didn’t. But I assumed it was Alastair – Mr. Braine – because it was he who pulled Jamesy Farlane off me. He must have got there pretty quickly. Dougal Macrae was there too.’
‘Mr. Alastair Braine, then, was first on the scene – and very prompt.’ His voice was contemplative and pleasant. I felt my muscles tightening. ‘Who else was there?’
‘Mr. Corrigan. He was standing by the bonfire. He – he must have pulled the body off.’ I swallowed, and added quickly: ‘He and Alastair probably came down together.’
‘No,’ said the Inspector gently to the table top. ‘Both gentlemen tell me they arrived independently . . .’ His grey eyes lifted to mine, suddenly hard and bright. ‘Who else was there?’
‘Why – nobody.’
‘Jamesy Farlane and Dougal Macrae; Mr. Braine and Mr. Corrigan, all there within seconds of your scream. Who else?’
I looked at him. ‘That was all: I saw nobody else.’
The grey eyes regarded me, then dropped. ‘Just so,’ said the Inspector vaguely, but I had the most uncomfortable impression of some conclusion reached in the last five minutes which was anything but vague. He shuffled a few papers in a desultory way, and said, without looking at me: ‘You booked your room a week ago?’
‘I – yes.’
‘After the murder of Heather Macrae.’
‘I suppose so. I didn’t know—’
‘Quite. Sergeant Munro has your statement to that effect . . . You booked your room, Miss Brooke, in the name of Drury, Mrs. Nicholas Drury.’
It was absurd that he should be treating me as if I were a hostile witness, absurd that I should sit there with jumpi
ng nerves and tight-clasped hands just because his manner was no longer friendly.
I said, sounding both guilty and defiant: ‘That is my name.’
‘Then why did you change it to Brooke as soon as you got here? And why have you and your husband been at some pains to ignore one another’s presence?’
‘He’s – not my husband.’ I found myself hurrying to explain. ‘We were divorced four years ago. I didn’t know he was here. When I saw him the first evening I was horribly embarrassed, and I changed to my maiden name to avoid questions.’
‘I – see.’ Then, suddenly, he smiled. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve distressed you, Miss Brooke. And you’ve been very helpful – very helpful indeed.’
But this, oddly enough, was far from reassuring me. I said sharply: ‘But why does all this matter? Surely it’s all settled? You’ve got the murderer, and—’
His brows shot up. ‘Got the murderer?’
‘Jamesy Farlane!’ I cried. ‘Jamesy Farlane! Who else could it be? He was at the bonfire, and he attacked me there. What more do you want?’
‘A bit more,’ said Inspector Mackenzie, with a little smile. ‘Farlane’s story is that he was going back from the hotel after bringing the stretcher in. He was at the foot of An’t Sròn when he saw the bonfire go up. He went up the hill as fast as he could, and was nearly at the top when he heard you scream, and then you came running and, he says, flung yourself at the bonfire. He thought you were going to be burned, and he jumped in and hauled you off. You hit at him, and in the ensuing struggle you both fell down the heather-slope. . . . Is that right, Hecky?’
‘That’s right, sir.’ Hector Munro nodded his red head.
‘You see?’ said Inspector Mackenzie to me.
‘It might even be true,’ I said.
He grinned. ‘So it might. Especially as Dougal Macrae was with him at the time . . .’
There was a sharp little silence. Then he rose and began to gather up his papers. I stood up.
‘If I may,’ he said, ‘I’ll see you again later, but just at present I’d better get up on to An’t Sròn.’ He held the door for me with punctilious courtesy. ‘You’ll be about all day, I take it?’