they had nobody to send. We tried the hotel at Crioch, but they said they had no facilities to deal with mechanical faults.’
Laura started the engine.
‘You’ll have to guide me,’ she said.
‘Well, it’s the straight road towards Freagair and then we have a private lane and a bridge, turning off to the right and crossing a wee burn. I’ll give you plenty of warning.’
So Laura found herself again upon the way to Freagair, driving in sheets of dark-grey rain on a single-track road with leviathan, dirty, green hills on her left and a broken-fenced morass on her right. The man had minimised the distance. It was nearer twelve miles than ten before she turned off. A gate had to be opened before the car could proceed bumpily forward on to the so-called drive – actually a causeway across a marsh—and this led to a rickety bridge. The ‘wee burn’ was a good thirty feet wide at this point, and Laura, driving over the narrow bridge with extreme caution in the pelting rain, half-expected the car to go through the rotten planking into the stream below. However, they crawled safely over and then had to negotiate a level crossing of the branch railway-line before they arrived at the house.
This was of fair size but appeared to be servantless except for the baby-sitter, and the woman used her own front-door key to let herself in. The fact of a front door key in itself surprised Laura, who was accustomed to having her own Highland relatives keep open house to the extent of never locking up anything. An open-fronted shed formed the garage, it seemed, so Laura, left alone, drove into it, her headlights showing her the way. She switched off and went to the front door. Then she remembered that the babysitter would have to walk home in the teeming rain unless she was given a lift. Laura groaned.
‘Come in!’ called the woman. ‘Kirsty is just leaving.’ She switched on the light and in the hall Laura saw a tallish, round-faced girl wearing a raincoat, a head-scarf and gum-boots.
‘I’d better drive you home,’ said Laura. ‘Come on.’
‘No, no,’ said the girl. ‘It is pleasant with me to walk in the rain.’ Without another word she passed Laura and stepped sturdily out into the elements.
‘Let Kirsty be,’ said the woman. ‘She’s independent and she’ll take no harm. Come ben.’ She led the way into a room where there was a pleasant fire burning in the hearth. ‘Take off your things and draw up to the fire. The bairn’s sleeping fine, and she’s no trouble once she’s off. Have you any luggage in the car? I’ll go out and get it when we’ve supped.’
Laura’s hostess was named Grant. After the meal the two women settled down by the fire, Mrs Grant observing that the washing-up could wait until the morning.
‘I’m without any help in the house, as you see, Mrs Gavin,’ she said, ‘and the Dear knows I could do with it.’
‘I suppose the local girls all move away to the towns,’ said Laura
‘Och, it’s not only that. It’s the curse that’s been put upon this house.’
‘The curse?’
‘I call it that. It’s that wicked old wretch who lives on Tannasgan—or so I believe. He is harmful to this house.’
‘Really?’ said Laura, not attempting to divulge that she had already heard of the laird of Tannasgan. Mrs Grant, certain of a listener, continued:
‘That old man is the devil himself. He can make anybody who is as simple as some of the folk in these parts believe anything he chooses to tell them. I cannot pin it down to him, and, if I could, I don’t know what I would do about it, because he’s so wicked and because he has influence. It goes ill with anybody who crosses him.’
‘But why should he wish to do you harm?’
‘Well, there are two reasons. It was dead against his wishes that the hydro-electric plant was established way back the other side of Tigh-Osda – you’ll have noticed the hydro-electric plant when you were after passing the loch of Coig Eich? – it’s a big ugly thing on the left of you along that road.’
‘Yes, I didn’t miss it, I must say!’
‘Och, well, you see, my man has a very good job there, so the old devil has his knife into him.’
‘But aren’t other men working there?’
‘Och, ay, but they’re away to Crioch or maybe Freagair and he has no hold over them. Besides, there’s the second reason I mentioned. You see, he once made me an offer of marriage, but I was already promised to my man, and, in any case, I would have been terrified to have married on such an old warlock. So we’re both in his bad books.’
‘And too obstinate to move away from his neighbourhood?’
‘You may say that. This house is my own, willed to me by my grandfather, who had it before me. What way would I let myself be driven off from what is mine?’
‘Quite, But isn’t it an awful bore to be without servants in a house of this size?’
‘Och, my man gives me a hand with the rough. He’s kind. And Kirsty will sit in when we both go out, although she takes good care to speir at me whether it will be both of us out before she’ll agree to come ben the house.’
‘Well, I’ll do the washing-up before I go to bed,’ said Laura, getting up. The conversation embarrassed her. There was something unreal about it.
‘You’ll do nothing of the kind! No guest of mine does a hand’s turn here. I would be mortified to my death!’ exclaimed Mrs Grant.
‘What kind of a place is Tannasgan?’ Laura asked.
‘It is an island in Loch na Greine, and Cu Dubh, as the people call him, lives in the Big House,
