with certainty. I've got a feeling too that by the time we leave, Superintendent Higgins's first big investigation is going to be sorted, one way or another.
With just a wee bit of help from your old man!'
Alex laughed. 'Poor woman! Delegation's my dad's real weak point, isn't it?'
`Come on, he tries! But thank heaven you're right, because this one's beyond even Alison, good copper that she is. I'm standing on the sidelines, but I can see Bob's mind at work. God, I can almost hear it! Over the next twelve hours or so there are going to be one or two explosions, I reckon.'
`Could be one a lot sooner than that,' Alex murmured, pressing herself against him, even harder than before. They kissed again, and emerged gasping once more. This time an awkward silence hung between them, until Andy broke it. `How would you feel about, waiting… till we get away?'
`Very, very itchy!' She grinned. 'But I know what you mean. If we set about each other now, we'd wake the dead.'
`Maybe not them, love, but the household at least. And I don't know if Bob's ready for that!'
Sixty-five
Bracklands was a bustle of activity as Skinner and Martin entered the great hall, for the second time that morning, just after 8.30 a.m. On this occasion, Mr Burton was dressed in his customary dark suit as he held the door open.
`Good morning gentlemen,' he said. 'You wish to see Lord Kinture, I take it.'
`That's right,' said Skinner, 'but we'd like to see him alone, away from the guests.'
`Very well. In that case, please follow me to the library.' He led the way out of the hall, through a door to the left, which opened into a high, wide chamber which seemed to extend to half the length of the great house. 'This is the music room, gentlemen. The library is beyond it.' Their footsteps echoed as they walked across the polished wooden floor. Skinner had counted off eighty paces before they reached the double doors towards which they strode.
The library was more modest in its scale, but was still an impressive room, with high-tiered shelves, lined with leather volumes, and with windows on three sides, offering views to the front, right and rear of Bracklands. 'If you wait here, gentlemen, I shall advise Lord Kinture.'
He withdrew, leaving the double doors slightly ajar. More than five minutes later they swung open, and Hector, Marquis of Kinture, wheeled himself into the chamber, the plumes of white hair flying back like wings from his temples, and an irascible gleam in his eye.
`What's all this, Skinner? Big day today, y' know. Haven't got time for nonsense, so this better be important.'
Skinner leaned against the mahogany desk which was positioned in front of the central window, and looked down at the nobleman. Something in his eye made Lord Kinture's attitude change, slightly but subtly. In an instant his belligerence disappeared.
Oh, it's important all right, My Lord. We've come to talk to you about six murders, an attempted murder, piracy, high treason; you name it, we've come up against it in this investigation. Before I'm finished I might even throw in wasting police time, but we'll see about that later.' He pushed himself off the desk and walked across to the window which looked out on to the gardens at the rear of the house. He glanced back over his shoulder.
'Have all your guests turned out for breakfast this morning?'
Kinture looked puzzled. 'All but Morton, he didn't come down. But he's a funny bugger, and rather persona non grata around here just now, so I left him to get on with it.'
`Mmm,' said Skinner turning once more to face the wheelchair. 'Except he isn't getting on with anything any more. He's dead.' Kinture reeled back from his words.
Dead!'
`Remember that fire you reported last night. The one you assumed that vandals had lit? That was him. Someone lured Morton to a meeting last night, on top of Witches' Hill, overpowered him, handcuffed him to a tree, piled wood around him, and set it on fire. The poor bastard was immolated. We identified him from dental records half an hour ago. Another burning, a fourth murder on that old hill, four centuries after the first three.'
Kinture sagged in his chair, as white as a sheet.
The thing that surprises me was your notion that the fire was a simple piece of vandalism.
Especially after that bloody stupid note to the Scotsman last Monday morning. Didn't you realise what it had started, when Masur was murdered? But then you didn't know that there was a second note, did you? We kept that quiet, just as we're keeping Morton's death quiet until this bloody event of yours is over.
`That half-arsed note gave someone a great idea. 'By the blade, said Agnes', indeed! It gave someone with an imagination a great idea to keep the police completely off balance, while some scores were settled.
`Did you send that note, Hector? Wasn't this event giving your new club enough world-wide publicity? Did you decide to use Michael White's murder to your own advantage by building a little mystique around it? That was all it was, wasn't it? A wheeze to bring in a few extra bookings from the ghouls, the cranks and the curious. I'll bet it's worked too. I'll bet the bookings have been flooding in to young Mr Bennett ever since Monday.
`Haven't they!' The sharp anger in his voice startled even Martin.
`Who delivered the note for you? Susan?'
`No!' said Kinture vehemently. 'You're wrong, Skinner. I didn't send the letter. My mother did.'
Skinner was rarely taken completely by surprise. 'Your mother!' `Yes. I knew at once that she had done it, and she admitted it.'
`But why?'
`Ma is a traditionalist. She wants everything to be as it always was. She hated the concept of Witches' Hill from the outset, the idea of people sporting themselves on the family estate.
When I told her about poor Mickey's murder, she actually smiled. Burton delivered the note for her.'
`Mr Burton, eh,' said Skinner. 'That's loyalty for you, running the risk of getting himself charged with bearing false witness, wasting our time, and anything else that I might decide to throw at him, and at the old Dowager for that matter.
`The only thing is, they'd probably get off. You see, they didn't waste our time. The letter set us off on what turned out to be a completely different investigation into another series of crimes, just as heinous as anything we've seen here this week.
I won't bore you with how we did it, but we uncovered the whole story of the Witch's Curse; we found Lisa Soutar, who carries it today; we found the King's Bible which your ancestor gave to Matilda Tod in 1598, as her reward for her complicity in the murder of her awkward sister.'
Kinture sat, head still bowed, but Martin stared at Skinner in complete astonishment. 'Yes, Andy. It's a hell of a story, but Henry Wills and Maggie Rose have taken us to the truth of it after all this time.
`You see, four centuries ago, to this very year, James Carr, an ancestor of the noble lord here, and heir to what was then an earldom, exercised a slightly premature droit de seigneur upon the body of one Agnes Tod, a well-brought-up, educated young woman who was the daughter of Walter Tod, his father's factor. I expect that the young lady was flattered. Perhaps she even had ambitions of becoming a countess.
`What she did become was an unmarried mother, of a girl child. No offer of marriage seems to have been forthcoming from the Honourable, or rather the dishonourable James. So Agnes, not with its father, but with the two women who had attended the birth, Christian Dunn and Mary Lewis, a midwife and a maid, took her child to the minister in Longniddry, and had her baptised, in her father's name, and entered into the parish records. In other words, she had her legitimised and made into a person, a Carr, and if not a threat, at least a public mbarrassment.
`Maybe Agnes still had hopes, but if she had, they were dashed. The very next year, James Carr married a French woman of birth as noble as his own, and a Catholic to boot. Imagine, a Catholic in the heart of reforming Scotland. Imagine too, here is James, with a new wife, and yet with a spurned mistress and her child, bearing his name, the two of them living in his own village on his own estate.
`But the story goes on, and grows even darker. A few months after the marriage the old Earl dies, and James
