wedding photograph. Damn, this iss not helping. I wish I could see the place.”
“There’ll be a policeman on duty outside the place. Couldn’t you just go over and chat to him and ask him if you could have a look around?”
“I could try. That’s if the roads are passable in the morning.”
“Will you be able to get home tonight?”
Hamish went to the window and looked out. In the hotel’s floodlights, he could see white sheets of snow savagely tearing across the courtyard below.
“Might have to stay the night,” he said slowly.
She looked at him. Their eyes locked. The air was suddenly charged with sexual tension. He took a half step towards her and then the door swung open and Mr. Johnson came in. “Weather’s terrible, Hamish,” he said. “I’ve arranged a wee room for you down by the office so you can stay the night. In fact, if you’ve finished here, I’ll take you down.”
“I don’t know,” said Hamish reluctantly. He looked hopefully at Sarah, but she was already switching off the computer. That air of sexual excitement had gone, not even a frisson.
“As a matter of fact, I am pretty tired,” she said. “I’ll see you in the morning, Hamish.”
“Story of my life,” muttered Hamish as he followed the manager downstairs.
“What?” asked Mr. Johnson.
“Nothing,” said Hamish crossly. “Nothing at all.”
¦
He awoke in the morning to white stillness. The room allocated to him was one of the ones given to hotel servants. It contained the narrow bed on which he was lying, a wardrobe, chair and nothing else, not even a handbasin.
He got up and went to the window. The room was on the ground floor. He looked out at a wall of white. That was all he could see. A huge drift was blocking the view.
He took his underwear off the radiator – he had washed it and put it there to dry – and then wrapped the bedcover around his nakedness, went along to the narrow bathroom used by the staff, and took a shower. By the time he was fully dressed, he could hear the scrape of shovels outside the hotel in the courtyard and the roar of tractors as the outdoor staff began to dig paths around the hotel to free the snowbound cars.
There was a smell of frying bacon. He went through to the dining room where he found Sarah eating toast and marmalade. He felt suddenly shy of her, but she smiled at him in a friendly way and said, “How are we to get anywhere today?”
“We, Sherlock?” he asked, sitting down opposite her.
“I thought that if perhaps we went to Gilchrist’s house, two of us could charm our way past the policeman on duty, but I don’t see how we are going to be able to move.”
He looked out the long dining room windows. “It’s stopped snowing, and they’re better up here than they are in the cities at getting the roads cleared. As long as the snow stays off, we might be able to move. After breakfast, I’ll get my snowshoes on and go back to the police station and collect the Land Rover.”
“And you’ll take me with you?”
“Against police regulations, but I could always explain that I found you stranded and gave you a lift. I wonder if I could ask you a favour?”
“Go on.”
“Could you get back into that computer and see if there’s any reference to Gilchrist’s bank accounts?”
“I could, but I can tell you now, there was no reference to his finances.”
Hamish banged the table in frustration. “It’s aye the same,” he complained. “I cannae get the full picture because I’m nothing more than the village bobby.”
“You could change that.”
“Och, it would mean living in Strathbane and I couldnae bear that.”
Hamish relapsed into a moody silence.
The waitress came up to them. “More coffee?”
They both refused. Then she said, “Oh, Mr. Macbeth, Mr. Angus Macdonald was on the phone. He says not to forget the salmon.”
“How did he know I was here?”
“Mr. Macdonald always knows.”
“Who’s Mr. Macdonald?” asked Sarah.
“He’s the local seer. He claims to have the second sight.”
“And does he?”
“I think he’s a verra clever old gossip.”
“So what’s this about a salmon?”
“He wanted a river salmon, but chust look at the weather. I bought him one in the fishmongers in Braikie and the auld beast sussed out it wass a farm salmon and threatens me with all sorts of bad luck unless I get him the right one.”
Sarah looked at him curiously. “How did he know it was a farm salmon?”
“He waved his damn crystal ower it, but I think one o’ his gossips phoned him from Braikie.”
Sarah looked out at the white wilderness outside. “You certainly won’t be able to catch anything in this weather.”
“Well, let me get my snowshoes and see if I can make it back to the police station.”
When Hamish emerged from the hotel, a couple of tractors with snowploughs attached had cleared the hotel forecourt and even the narrow road outside had already been ploughed and salted. The sky above was steel grey but no snow fell. He trudged down into Lochdubh through the frozen landscape. Everything was still, everything was quiet. No bird sang. Not even a buzzard sailed up to the cold sky. The tops of the twin mountains above Lochdubh were hidden in mist. Fortunately, there was no wind to whip up the snow into another land-blown blizzard.
He checked his sheep and put out their winter fodder. Then he got out a snow shovel and cleared the short drive at the side of the police station so that he could get the Land Rover out.
He then made a thermos of coffee with plenty of milk and sugar, placed it in the Land Rover and drove up to the Tommel Castle Hotel.
He was glad to have Sarah’s company.
“I hope the road’s clear all the way to Braikie,” he said. They were driving along beside the sea as the one- track road twisted and curved. Sarah looked out in amazement at the fury of the green-grey Atlantic. Waves as huge as houses pounded the rocky beach.
“Stop for a moment,” she urged.
She looked out of the window in awe at the stormy sea.
“It’s all so still on land,” she marvelled, “and yet the sea is so…furious.”
“All the way from America,” said Hamish.
“Is it always so rough?”
“No, sometimes in the summer it’s like glass. But it’s a treacherous climate up here.”
He let in the clutch and moved off slowly. It was so bitterly cold that despite the salt on the road, he could feel ice under the wheels.
“Where did Gilchrist live?” asked Sarah.
“This end of the town – Culloden Road. Here we are.” The Land Rover rolled to a stop after he had made a right turn. “And here we stay.” The road was blocked by drifts. “You’d best stay here, Sarah, while I make my way to the house on foot.”
“I’ll be all right. The snow is so cold and powdery, I won’t get wet.”
They climbed down. Hamish went ahead, forging a way through the drifts. There was no one on duty outside Gilchrist’s house. He correctly guessed that the roads around Strathbane would still be blocked. The further one got from the towns, the better the road-clearing services. It was a Victorian villa of the kind that line so many of the roads in Scotland’s towns. After Queen Victoria made the Highlands fashionable, even the lowliest tried to emulate her and so all these villas with grand names like Mount Pleasant, The Pines, The Firs and The Laurels had sprung up. Gilchrist’s house was called Culloden House, no doubt allowing anyone who had not seen the villa but only the address on his stationery to envisage a country mansion.
