My Bones Will Keep

‘All the time?’

‘Ay, all the time. I never listen ahint doors, mind ye, but the old laird and the present laird hae muckle big voices, and for two days they had been talking about Tannasgan and the loch and An Tigh Mor.’

‘And the young man? Young Mr Bradan?’

‘That one had left Tannasgan lang syne. His father turned him out. Oh, it was an ill business, that, to disinherit and send awa’ his only son.’

‘Turned him out, you say. How had he offended his father?’ asked Dame Beatrice.

‘I dinna altogether ken. I think there were debts.’

‘Oh, he was that kind of young man.’

‘Then there was a lassie. I dinna ken the rights and wrongs of that, either, but when I was about to take in the dishes I heard the old laird say something about making a bed and lying on it, and the young man pleading that without siller he couldna marry on the lassie and make an honest woman of her.’

‘But the old man didn’t fall for that,’ said Laura.

‘He did not, indeed. When I went in to clear the table they were still at it and, when I got outside the door again, the old laird told him to get out and tramp the Edinburgh gutters with his fancy woman. It was all they were fit for, to sing in the street for bawbees.’

‘Very Victorian. And has the young one ever been back?’ asked Laura, interested in this hoary, classical, vintage tale.

‘Ay, he’s been back, but since his father’s time, you ken. And he’s been sent off again with a flea in his ear. The police was sent for and took him awa’ with them. Ay, and such a carrying-on as he made! You never heard the like. Accusing here, accusing there! He even spoke against my man. Ay, but for the police my man would have dinged him in the neb.’

‘Very proper,’ said Laura. Taking this as a sign of dismissal, Mrs Corrie went back to her domain and Laura took Dame Beatrice into the dining-room. ‘Why wouldn’t you let me tell her that I’d seen the Edinburgh murder and that it did not take place on the twenty-third?’ she asked, in a low voice, when she had shut the door and had moved away from it to the window.

‘Witnesses to a murder are not invulnerable, and neither are people with inconveniently accurate memories. Mrs Corrie herself would not hurt you, but we cannot be certain that she would not talk. Apart from anyone else, she would mention the matter to her husband, you may be sure.’

‘Oh, well – Hullo! here comes Macbeth, and from the Island of Strange Beasts, by the look of it. Corrie is just tying up the boat, so now the fun begins.’

Chapter 20

Tannasgan Changes Hands

What a haste looks through his eyes!

So should he look

That seems to speak things strange.’

Shakespeare

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MACBETH stalked up to the house. He was wearing a faded kilt in what Laura, as he approached, managed to identify as the Wemyss tartan. She was interested.

‘The Wemyss family, according to Thomas Innes of Learney,’ she explained to Dame Beatrice, ‘is descended from a third son of Macduff, twelfth-century Earl of Fife. For a Macbeth to identify himself with a Macduff is interesting, don’t you think? – although probably accidental, in this case.’

‘I call it fascinating,’ replied Dame Beatrice, her eyes not on Macbeth’s kilt, however, but upon his sweating bare chest and, alternatively, on his extremely muddy brogues. ‘I wonder what is the symbolic value of this latest excursion into history and literature, then?’

‘Maybe none. He may have bought it second-hand. He never gives the impression of having any money.’

Macbeth clumped into the hall, followed by Corrie. There came a thunderous knock on the dining-room door and both men marched in.

‘Well,’ said Dame Beatrice, before anyone else could speak, ‘you will catch cold in here, Mr Macbeth. Will you not go and get a good rub down with a rough towel and put a shirt on? You are perspiring very freely.’

‘Ay, you shouldna be in the company of ladies. I tellt ye so,’ said Corrie. ‘Awa’ and freshen.’

Crestfallen, Macbeth bowed to the said ladies and departed, followed by his henchman.

‘What was the point?’ asked Laura, amused by the proceedings.

‘The poor man was too hot, both physically and mentally, for his company to be desirable or even tolerable, child. Now he will have time to cool off, in both senses, and we shall be able to converse reasonably with him.’

She was right. In about ten minutes’ time a clean, dry, completely clad Macbeth returned to them. His demeanour, so far as could be said of that of such a bristling, red-bearded giant, was still chastened. He apologised, adding:

‘I’ve done hard, dirty work without the reward I expected.’

‘I am sorry to hear that,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘I do hope our visit has not inconvenienced you.’