Cold, Lone and Still

‘How do you mean? You said you fell over a corpse and there was a corpse.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘one corpse, no stone walls, apparently. The police found the corpse on the moor, the papers say. They don’t mention a building.’

‘Plenty of rocks about. You mistook some outcrop or other for a stone wall. Easy mistake to make in a thick mist after you’d bashed your head. Possibly, though, the police want to keep the actual location secret. Have you shown Hera the newspapers?’

‘Not yet. I’m seeing her tonight.’

‘Well,’ said Sandy, giving me a very straight glance, ‘take the strong, manly course and rub her disbelieving little nose in the reports. She’s been more than a bit uppish about you and that corpse, you know.’

‘You mean she said more to you than she has to me?’

‘More than likely. She’s had me on the phone a couple of times and rather spread herself. Seems to think you’re the kind of sensitive plant that dreams dreams and sees visions. These newspapers ought to provide her with a healthier outlook.’

‘But what about the archway and the window where we climbed in? Apparently they don’t exist. All the papers say is that the police found the body on Rannoch Moor. I’ve told you that already.’

‘And I’ve reminded you of that knock on the head. That and the mist confused you, that’s all.’

‘I swear there was a dark passage.’

‘Forget it. It’s all over and done with now.’

But I could not forget it, for it brought back memories of an experience I had had in my childhood and had pushed to the back of my mind because it frightened me. I was eight years old at the time and I told my father that burglars had killed our dog and broken in. It happened two days later. Now, after twenty years, it all came back to me, and a very uncomfortable memory it was!

I began to regret that I had kept back from Dame Beatrice a full account of what had happened at Crianlarich. However, it seemed rather late in the day to worry about that, particularly as the body had not been that of Carbridge. I could not face the prospect of going back to the Stone House and confessing that I had not told the whole truth about my murderous attack on Carbridge. In the end, I consulted Sandy.

‘It can’t make any difference, can it?’ I said.

‘I shouldn’t think so. She probably guessed you were hiding something, anyway. She said you didn’t need psychiatry, didn’t she?’

‘Yes, but that was because I hadn’t been “seeing things”. There was a corpse and the chap had been murdered.’

‘But you thought it was Carbridge. That sounds to me like the promptings of a guilty conscience.’

‘I only had an electric torch and that passage was as black as Erebus.’

‘All the same, it was a strange mistake for you to make. It seems you must have some kind of fixation regarding the chap.’

‘I find him excessively irritating, that’s all.’

‘So irritating that you wish he were dead?’

‘No, of course not. Once I’d got over the first shock when he walked into the hostel at Fort William, I was enormously pleased and relieved to know that he was safe and well, particularly as it was obvious he bore me no malice whatever.’

‘These “bear no malice” blokes are a funny bunch. I suppose most of them profess and call themselves Christians, but, you know, Comrie, nobody really forgives a person who has made him look a nithing.’

‘A what?’

‘A nithing. It’s an Anglo-Saxon word, I think, meaning a thing of no account, a No Thing, a coward, somebody who can be disregarded, a fellow who cuts no ice. Nobody ever sees himself thus. Men resent anything and everything which questions their virility, their attraction for the opposite sex, their physical courage and their sense of humour, particularly the last-named. You’ve made an enemy and I wouldn’t despise him if I were you. He’ll get back at you some day.’

‘You make my flesh creep,’ I said. He laughed, but I knew he spoke seriously. Besides, there was something in what he said. I had expressed my opinion of Carbridge in Crianlarich and yet he had the insolence to come back at me again at Fort William with his ‘fair one’ greeting to Hera. It had been a challenge and I had not known how to meet it. Carbridge had called my bluff and got away with it. The strange thing was that I no longer cared. I wondered whether this meant that I had cooled off towards Hera, or whether the relief of knowing that the silly fellow was alive was so great that, like some tremendous tide, it had washed all my animosity away.

7: A Reunion

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To say that I was surprised when Hera and I received the invitation is to put it more than mildly. That we accepted it seems, with hindsight, to have been the mistake of a lifetime. It came three weeks before the late August Bank Holiday and was for a reunion of those of us who had met on The Way, to be held the Saturday in that weekend. Had it come from Carbridge or Todd, I feel sure we would have turned it down, but it came from the students and was signed by all four of them, Lucius Trickett, Coral Platt, Freddie Brown and Patsy Carlow.

‘We must go,’ said Hera decisively. Although she had mellowed considerably towards me after she had read the Scottish newspapers, she still vigorously asserted herself.

‘We shall be bored rigid,’ I said.