My Bones Will Keep

cares for it much, we shall compromise with – let us see what we are eating and then I’ll order.’

Laura asked how the Conference had gone and was told that Dame Beatrice was glad that it was over. Dame Beatrice then demanded a complete account of Laura’s holiday and Laura described her rescue of Mrs Grant, whose car had broken down at Tigh-Osda, her walk from Freagair in the pelting rain and her reception by the laird of Tannasgan.

‘The laird of Tannasgan?’ Dame Beatrice repeated. ‘Do you know the name of his house?’

‘Yes, of course. It’s called An Tigh Mor, which simply means The Big House.’

‘And you were to have spent last Tuesday night there?’

‘Well, that was the idea.’

‘But you slipped away by moonlight?’

‘A moonlight flit describes it. But what,’ asked Laura, ‘is all this?’

‘All this is to explain my immeasurable relief at hearing that you did not spend the night there.’

‘The laird suggested that I should stay a week! As he was obviously crazy, I decided that it would save argument if I skipped. But I still can’t account for your eager interest in my ungrateful, uncivil act.’

‘Simply that on Wednesday afternoon the laird was found foully and treacherously murdered.’

‘Good heavens above! My guardian angel must have been working overtime!’

‘Indeed, yes. Have you not been reading the newspapers?’

‘Nary a single column.’

‘Nor heard any discussion in hotel lounges?’

‘No, I certainly haven’t, but there’s a bit more I can tell you about my doings which may interest you.’

She described her trip to Skye and her subsequent encounters with the man whom she had met in the laird’s boathouse and who had rowed her across the loch, and her glimpse of the man who had sent her across to Tannasgan. She finished by telling Dame Beatrice of the mysterious note left for her at Slanleibh.

‘Not, perhaps, so very mysterious now,’ Dame Beatrice suggested.

‘You mean he hopes I’ll give him an alibi for the time of the murder? But that means he knew the laird had been murdered, and that looks like guilty knowledge, doesn’t it?’

‘Not necessarily. He may have read the papers.’

‘How soon did the papers spread the news?’

‘I do not know. The body was found at two in the afternoon on Wednesday last, and the local press, based on Freagair, I believe, scooped the story.’

‘Who found the body?’

‘The factotum named Corrie, whose duty it is to cycle into Freagair for the newspapers and the correspondence. The laird had a poste-restante arrangement, it appears. The man put his bicycle into the boat, rowed across, and found his employer’s body lying in a barrel which had been partly submerged in the loch and prevented from drifting by being chained to an iron ring in the jetty.’

‘Had he been drowned, then?’

‘No. The man had been stabbed with a skian dhu.’

‘Any trace of the weapon?’

‘Well, the skian-dhu was still protruding from the victim’s body.’

‘Sounds like revenge.’

‘It does, indeed.’

‘Poor old boy! He seemed to me more than a bit crazy, but I hate to think of his coming to that sort of end. Are we—er—interesting ourselves in the affair?’

‘There is no suggestion that we should do so. The police have the matter in hand.’

‘Yes, of course. When do we go back to London?’

‘There is no hurry. In fact, now that you have seen Garadh and have made the acquaintance of Mrs Stewart, I should like to call there.’

‘That’s splendid. On the way we might look in on Mrs Grant. As she lives not so far from Tannasgan, we might be able to pick up some local gossip about the laird’s death. There are certain to be lots of rumours and perhaps some cast-iron facts which won’t reach the ears of the police.’

‘You are determined to involve us both?’

‘Well, I didn’t dislike the laird and I deeply dislike murder. What about it?’

‘I see no harm in calling upon Mrs Grant’

‘Atta-baby! What’s the matter with starting out tomorrow? As there’s no hurry, we could go by way of Glasgow and Loch Lomond and spend a night at the Inversnaid hotel.’

‘Whence you can walk to Loch Katrine and the Trossachs?’

‘Don’t suppose I shall bother. I love Inversnaid, and I’m not the only one. What about William Wordsworth, not to mention Gerard Manley Hopkins?’ said Laura.