My Bones Will Keep

‘I have sometimes wondered whether the laird was killed on Tannasgan,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘or on the mainland.’

‘The Island of Ghosts!’ said Laura. ‘It sounds a sinister sort of name to me. Just the place to expect murder.’

‘There was once a monastry where this house stands,’ said the inspector, ‘but Norsemen from the Hebrides wrecked the place at the end of the eighth century, so I have read, and murdered the monks. That is the story and it goes on that the island has been haunted ever since.’

‘Good heavens!’ exclaimed Laura. ‘So it wasn’t Macbeth I fled from that night, but the ghosts! I knew there was something queer about this place!’ She looked over her shoulder fearfully and gasped to find a black-clothed figure standing just behind her shoulder.

‘Will I infuse the tea?’ asked Mrs Corrie.

‘Ay, Mrs Corrie,’ replied the inspector. ‘Ladies can always do with a tassie and so can I. You were saying, a while back, Dame Beatrice, that you have sometimes wondered whether Mr Bradan was killed here.’

‘I do not see how he can have been, and yet I cannot see how he could not have been. There is the skian-dhu, of course, but one cannot imagine even such an eccentric as Mr Macbeth entertaining Laura as he did, and asking her to extend her visit, if he had contemplated killing his cousin while she was in the house. Besides, unless the Corries were in collusion with Mr Macbeth and knew where the laird had been (we’ll say) incarcerated, why did Laura obtain no inkling of his presence and why did the young Mr Grant fail to obtain the interview that he wanted?’

‘Since you have interpreted the facts so far, ma’am, perhaps you know where the killing took place?’ said the inspector, smiling. Dame Beatrice shook her head.

‘I might hazard a guess,’ she said, ‘but it would be nothing more.’

‘Well, now!’

‘Tell me, first, whether the police know where it took place.’

‘We do.’

‘Then I will suppose that he was set upon in or near Inverness (since Edinburgh would have been too far away) and murdered on the wooded island where stand the carvings of the fabulous beasts.’

‘What brought you to that conclusion, I wonder? You mean that he ran into some sort of trouble in Inverness, but was actually murdered on Tannasgan?’

‘I did tell you that it was only a guess. One other thing that I know, however, is that Mr Bradan had interests in or near Edinburgh and that those interests were in shipping.’

‘How did you come to that conclusion?’

‘The fabulous beasts, Inspector.’ True to her half-given promise, she did not mention Grant’s regular visits to Inverness and Edinburgh.

‘The fabulous beasties, Dame Beatrice?’

‘Your men – no, I suppose it would have been the men from Inverness or Dingwall – must have seen them when they first searched these islands and rocks, and you appear to have seen them, too.’

‘Oh, ay, I’ve seen them, of course.’

‘Well, they must have had some significance. Not one of them, so far as I am aware, figures in Scottish legend.’

The inspector wrinkled his brow.

‘What way did you get on to shipping?’ he demanded. Dame Beatrice advanced her theories, bolstering them by describing the activities of herself and Laura. ‘So you thought maybe Mrs Gavin would be in trouble because she was in this house on the night of the murder,’ the inspector observed, when she had concluded her recital.

‘It took a little time to work out my theories,’ said Dame Beatrice blandly, ‘and we were not helped by the persistence with which the young reporter Grant dogged Mrs Gavin and waylaid her with requests for assistance in establishing his alibi. There was no doubt that he thought the murder was committed here. Once I had realised that he was in earnest about this, I began to wonder whether he was in any way responsible for the disposal of the body.’

‘You did, ma’am?’

‘Well, a mixture of the dramatic and the macabre is often a feature of the minds of his age and sex; then, he needed his scoop; then – and this, I think, Inspector, may be of the first importance – being a journalist and, as we know, an ambitious one, he may have found out something about the activities of Mr Bradan, and he may even have come here in the first place to blackmail Mr Bradan into using his influence to obtain him a post in Edinburgh. Now, do please tell us what our dear Robert Gavin has been up to when he has not been fishing for sharks or whatever it was.’

The inspector studied his shoes.

‘Well, well,’ he said. He hesitated for a few seconds. ‘Ah, well,’ he added in a tone of resignation, ‘fair’s fair, I suppose, so – you’ll not be letting a word of this go further?’

‘Well, I did mention the loss of the Saracen,’ said Dame Beatrice.

Chapter 16

The other Side of the Herring-Pond

‘For under shore the swart sands naked lay.’

George Chapman

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