My Bones Will Keep

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 Garadh 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 Mor 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 Mor.

Mrs Grant was more than interested. She fed Laura on oat-cake and heather honey while they talked, and plied her with questions about the laird. At last she said:

‘You have me puzzled. You say he made no trouble about taking you over in his boat? That he made you welcome? That you ate with him? That he wanted you to stay there a week? That he was red-haired and red- bearded and talked havers about creatures unknown to natural science?’

‘That’s so. He may be harmless, but he’s rather more than a crank, and I have a superstitious horror of insanity, although I work for a psychiatrist, so I made my getaway, as I told you. It was horribly rude of me, of course, but I had thanked him for his hospitality before I went up to bed, and I shall write to him this evening from the hotel.’

‘I cannot make it out. If that was wicked old Bradan – did I tell you I call him Cu Dubh?—Black Dog—he’s a changed man. And if he’s grown a beard it’s the first time. And as for a kind heart – losh!’

‘He may be more of a humanitarian than you thought. I was in a pretty fine pickle, you know – soaked to the skin and with no idea of where I could find shelter for the night, and miles from my hotel, and the dark coming on.’

‘The Bradan I know would laugh to see a body in such a situation as that. No, no. There’s something here I do not understand’