My Bones Will Keep

somebody who wanted to catch a train.’

‘Does Mrs Grant have no suspicion who might have helped himself to the loan of it? Coinneamh Lodge lies a long way off the road.’

‘She seems to have no idea.’

‘Well, well, I’m sorry you were in trouble over a hired car. That would be sorely vexing for you, yes, and expensive, too.’

‘Talking of car hire,’ said Laura, ‘I think somebody told me that there was a car here at the station. Is that so?’

‘It is, indeed.’

‘But the Grants took shelter in the station entrance instead of having it take Mrs Grant home. That seems odd to me. After all, they couldn’t have known that I was coming along, could they?’

‘No, no, they could not.’

‘I only stopped because I had made up my mind I would have to find a bed at the hotel.’

‘Yes, I see. That was a fortunate thing indeed for Mrs Grant.’

‘If you don’t mind my asking, was the station car on hire that evening?’

‘My mind is not clear about that. Ian Beg may know.’ He went out and returned with a thin, very shy young man whom he introduced as, ‘This will be Ian. He issues the tickets and does the portering and holds the train if there should be those on the road wishful to ride on it. Now, then, man Ian, put your thoughts to the wet Friday Mr Grant’s estate car broke down and himself pushing it with his wife at the steering. Do you mind the Friday I mean?’

‘I do so, Mr Murray.’

‘Well, now, was our own car away?’

‘It was not, then.’

‘It was not? Did Mr Grant speak of wishing it on hire for his wife to get home?’

‘He did not.’

‘I suppose,’ said Laura, ‘that, if he had driven his wife home in it, he would not have been able to get to Coinneamh Lodge and back in time for the train?’

‘That would be the way of it.’

‘You mean, then,’ said Dame Beatrice, giving Ian a friendly leer which obviously frightened him very much, ‘that Mrs Grant was absolutely dependent upon some friendly motorist coming along and offering her a lift?’

‘It would be like that, yes, indeed.’

‘Was it a likely thing to have happened? I should have thought that this was rather a lonely road.’

‘Anybody would give anybody a lift on such a night,’ said Ian.

‘How many passengers do you usually expect on the evening train?’ asked Laura.

‘Och, it might be as many as fifteen, times it would be two.’

‘Well, that doesn’t exactly sound like a London rush hour. Couldn’t you have offered to drive her home yourself? Surely, when she was in such difficulties, and had to get home to her baby to free the baby-sitter, Mr Murray here would have looked after the train for you?’

‘Ay,’ Ian appeared to lose himself in thought. ‘Och, ay. There is something in what you say. Only, you see, our car was suffering from a defective clutch, righted on the following morning.’

Laura wanted to laugh, but knew that this reaction would deeply offend the young Highlander.

‘Oh, I see,’ she said. ‘But you told us that Mr Grant made no enquiry about hiring the car. I quite understand when you said that he himself had no time to take her home because of missing his train, but couldn’t he have suggested that, for once, you yourself could have taken her? – before he knew that the station car was out of action, I mean.’

‘He could not. He would be knowing that not for anyone would I enter the policies of Coinneamh.’

‘Why not, then, Mr Beg?’

‘It is clear to me that you have not the Gaelic,’ said Ian, shaking his head. The station-master rose and, courteous to the last, showed out Dame Beatrice and Laura.

‘Well,’ said Dame Beatrice, when they were in her car and clear of the station, ‘I am stunned by the way in which you dominated that interview. I offer congratulations, and rejoice that the mantle of Elijah should have fallen upon Elisha to such excellent effect.’

Laura grinned.

‘We’ve found out what we wanted to know, anyway,’ she said, ‘so a truce to the leg-pulling. We know Grant went by train that night, but, if that lad Ian is right, we can’t be at all sure that it was Mrs Grant who borrowed my car that early morning. And yet who else could it have been, and what about the crack of my not knowing the Gaelic? I do know what Coinneamh means. It means Meeting.’

‘Does it, indeed?’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Well, now for the Grants, for, as Mr Peacham indicates in The Beggar’s Opera, matters must not be left where they are.’

As it happened, both Mr and Mrs Grant were at home. So was the baby. The first sounds which greeted the visitors were those of a screaming child.

‘Temper,’ said Laura, pounding vigorously upon the door.