empowered to purchase. An invoice note is necessary for each item, if you please. They will arrive two hours from now.”
Michelle was aghast as I rang off. “You said you were somebody else!”
“So?”
“And you told Elaine’s gathering we’d only have cheap antiques. You’ve just ordered three dozen that could cost thousands. Don’t deny it!”
“All right,” I concurred amiably. “Got money for grub? Driving always makes me peckish.”
“But you’ve not long had breakfast—”
“Stop arguing, woman, and read me that list. Incidentally,” I said as we boarded the motor, “do the mean buggers ever let you visit Joseph?”
That shut her. She took a long time to speak. “What’s going on, Ian?” she said.
“How the hell do I know?” I grumbled. I hate being famished on a journey.
“No,” Michelle finally answered, listlessly letting the wind buffet her hair as we lammed off northwest. “I’ve asked. And Duncan tried to go on strike once. Hopeless.”
“The rotten sods. That’d annoy me, if he were my son.”
“There’s nothing we can do. Not after he’d betrayed Tachnadray.”
The immense bonnet nudged the winding slope, with me trying to hold her below thirty miles per hour. “Look, Michelle. Betrayal’s too big a word. You betray countries and kings, not a bloody house with a few aging retainers. Your Joseph tried to make a few quid on the side by selling Tachnadray’s last antique bureau. It isn’t the end of the world. I don’t know anybody who hasn’t had a go.” Feeling my way still, but not doing too badly. “Never mind, love. We’ll see what we can do for Joseph, eh?”
Her eyes filled. She looked away and rummaged for a hankie in her handbag. What on earth do women keep in them? It took a fortnight before she was sniveling right.
“There’s no way out, Ian. We just had to protect Joseph after the incident. Robert saved him from being caught.”
“Check your list,” I said with a cheery smile. “Take your mind off things.”
Thurso’s a lovely old place. Ferries from the north wend to the islands. Its size and bustle surprised me; North Sea oil, I suppose, or innate vigor. Folk might say it’s not up to much, but for me Thurso will always get a medal. It was there that the whole thing fell into place.
Mr. McDuff was pleasantly young, very impressed by our motor. I’d parked it outside in full view, surreptitiously asking Michelle who I was supposed to be.
“You told him Barnthwaite.” She sat, clearly having none of it. I yanked her out, maintaining a charming smile and gripping her arm bloodless.
“Smile, love,” I said through my smile. “You’re Mrs. MacHenry until I say otherwise, or it’s jail for the pair of us.”
I introduced myself to Mr. McDuff while Mrs. MacHenry made her selections. We were told that a separate invoice would have to be signed for every order. I sighed, said Mr.
Sinclair the butler was a stickler for inventories.
It was after we’d loaded up that light dawned. The stores lad carried out the victuals, groceries, wines, and whatnot, while Michelle and I went to sign. Mr. McDuff had the invoices all ready and offered me them. I frowned.
“No, sir,” I corrected. “I’m never empowered to sign. The laird’s housekeeper does it, Mrs. MacHenry.”
He ahemmed, hating being caught out in protocol. He’d rather have died. “Of course,”
he exclaimed, passing her the pen.
Now, one of the most surprising facts of life is that women make bad crooks. Which, when you think about it, is really weird. I mean, they’re born deceivers. Right from birth they’re talented fibbers and conwomen. And their entire lives are a testimony to pretence. Yet how often do you hear of a really dazzling robbery executed by a bird?
No. Birds go for the drip-feed: a zillion minor transgressions, debts created wholesale because trillions of housewives skillfully delay paying today’s electricity bill. Individually, nothing. Totaled, a genuine migraine for Lloyds of London. It explains a lot about the structure of society. Which is the reason I’d warned Michelle every second breath that she wasn’t to forget her true identity, Mrs. MacHenry. And even as she took the manager’s pen to sign I watched her, heart beating in case she absently signed
“Michelle McGunn.” That was how I saw her face when I mentioned the laird. For that fleeting moment, she suffered anguish. But it all passed smoothly, and we left for Tarrant’s.
This was a mine of stuff. Brass, woods, sheet metals, resins, glues, studs, tools.
Aladdin’s cave. I’d had the forethought to ask Mr. McDuff’s opinion of ship-chandlers in Thurso. A phone call from Mr. Tarrant to McDuff established our credibility, which sadly nowadays means mere credit-worthiness. Sign of the times, that the word “trust worthy” now relates only to money.
“The laird doesn’t hold with plastic cards,” I told Mr. Tarrant. “He settles in money, though it’d make it so much simpler for us, wouldn’t it, Mrs. MacHenry? He won’t listen.”
“True,” Michelle sighed. By then, to my relief, she’d stopped that awful inner weeping which started at McDuff’s stores when I’d called her the laird’s.
We got a ton of invaluable materials, promised to call in four days for more stuff, and departed. Luckily Michelle had enough money for us to buy pastries from the market. I pulled in southeast on the A882 for us to nosh.
