‘Tak’ tent!’ said Mrs Corrie, coming in to lay the table. ‘Ye’re blethering, lassie!’
Laura grinned and Dame Beatrice said:
‘The treasure can wait. It won’t run away. Besides, I should like you to be with me when I talk to Ian. I may need a translator if he becomes excited and decides to address me in Gaelic.’
Laura began to look mulish. She saw through this flimsy reason for not leaving her behind on Tannasgan with nobody but the Corries in the house.
‘You won’t need me. The station-master can translate for you,’ she said.
‘Ah, but I don’t choose that he should,’ said Dame Beatrice implacably. Laura laughed.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘You win. But’ – she lowered her voice, for the door into the hall was ajar to facilitate Mrs Corrie’s re-entry with the soup – ‘don’t you think the C’s may get up to something while we’re away?’
‘I don’t think it matters if they do, child. As the discovery of the hoard cannot possibly benefit either you or me in any way, it does not really matter who discovers it.’
‘It does to me. I’m simply longing to find it. All my life I’ve wanted to find treasure or some cave paintings or something, and now you don’t care if the cup is dashed from my lips.’
Mrs Corrie carried in a steaming tureen, said, ‘Saumon tae follow,’ and marched out again.
‘Terrible as an army with banners,’ said Dame Beatrice absently, going to the head of the table.
‘I say!’ said Laura, dismayed. ‘you don’t really think that, do you?’
‘Think what, child?’
‘That Mrs Corrie is mixed up in any funny business.’
‘I think she knows one thing that Corrie does
‘Well,’ said Laura, abandoning an abortive argument, ‘I suppose, in poor homes, it had to be. It’s what they call, in England, filling, nourishing and cheap. Anyway, in my opinion, it had Irish stew licked to a frazzle. Serve me a good deep plateful, please. My demolition job has made me hungry.’
When lunch was over, the rain was still coming down and a grey mist had settled on the loch. Laura stood at the window and stared moodily out at the weather. By three o’clock, however, there was a primose-coloured promise in the sky, and by half-past three it had stopped raining and Dame Beatrice announced her intention of repairing forthwith to Tigh-Osda. Corrie was summoned to row the boat back and forth, George warned that the car was required and at four o’clock precisely the car moved off from the loch-side and headed for the west.
From every hillside narrow waterfalls cascaded on to the road and were received by deep drains. Heavy cloud hung over the mountains, obliterating all the peaks and giving the impression of an improbable stage-set seen from the back of the gallery. Except for the sound of the waterfalls and the almost undetectable sound of the car, an eerie silence brooded everywhere. Laura, gazing out of the window and sometimes through the windscreen behind George’s solid, broad-shouldered back, wondered whether, or to what extent, the mystery of two violent deaths was about to be cleared up. Dame Beatrice was thinking about the lion and the unicorn, who were fighting for the crown. She had remembered that the royal arms had been introduced into England by that oddity King James I on the strength of his believing the rhyme to be a Scottish story, a strangely patriotic gesture for the son of the half- English Lord Darnley and the half-French Mary, Queen of Scots.
As they passed the private trackway which led to Coinneamh Lodge, Laura remarked:
‘I suppose we shall never know why she borrowed my car that night I stayed there.’
‘I do not despair of finding that out, child,’ responded Dame Beatrice. George drew in at a passing-place to give an estate wagon a clear road.
‘The Grants,’ said Laura, on whose right-hand side the estate wagon had passed them. ‘Wonder where
‘It is Friday,’ said Dame Beatrice.
‘Yes, but we understood that he always goes to Inverness by train and that she never goes with him.’
‘
‘They jolly well
No other traffic was encountered on the road, and the car drew up sedately outside Tigh-Osda station. Ian was available, since no train was expected for some time, and he greeted the visitors shyly.
‘The same old story,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘We are still concerned with the death of Mr Bradan of Tannasgan. Now you will remember that he had ordered your station-master’s car and that you drove him to the shores of Loch na Greine.’
‘
‘Curse the ungrateful brute!’ she translated. ‘Lesson number eight in
‘Indeed?’ said Dame Beatrice, uncertain whether Laura was jesting.
‘By John Mackechnie, M.A.,’ added Laura, supplying the necessary footnote. ‘Didn’t Cu Dubh pay you, then, Ian?’
‘He paid for the car, but nothing for me.’
‘Mingy hound!’
‘Not hound, please you! Hound is a good word in the Gaelic,’ said Ian, with a nervous giggle.
‘Oh, Lord, so it is! Come to me, sons of hounds, and I will give you flesh! How does it go?’