being very good, not talking about defining their position and not saying were they actually going to get a divorce because it wasn’t easy for her being sort of half-married and half-unmarried and what chance did she have of meeting someone else well no one in particular but one did meet people, and all that. She seemed content to enjoy the current domestic idyll and not think about the future. A line from one of Hood’s letters came into his mind. ‘My domestic habits are very domestic indeed; like Charity I begin at home, and end there; so Faith and Hope must call upon me, if they wish to meet.’
But he did not feel relaxed. He did not mind lines of Hood flashing into his head; that was natural; it always happened after a show; but there were other thoughts that came unbidden and were less welcome. He closed his eyes and all he could see were the writhing coils of the fat grey earthworms he had dug for bait that morning. That was not good; it made him think of worms and epitaphs. What would Martin Warburton’s epitaph be? He opened his eyes.
The fish seemed to have stopped biting. Earlier in the day he had a good tug on his borrowed tackle and with excitement reeled in a brown trout all of five inches long. Since his most recent experience had been of coarse fishing, he had forgotten how vigorous even tiny trout were. But since then they had stopped biting. Perhaps it was the weather. Or he was fishing in the wrong place.
Even with the rain distorting its surface, the pool where he was did not look deep enough to contain anything very large. But there were supposed to be salmon there. So said Mr Pilch from Coventry who came up to Clachenmore every summer with the family and who liked to pontificate in the lounge after dinner. ‘Oh yes, you want to ask Tam the gamekeeper about that. Actually, he’s not only the game-keeper, he’s also the local poacher. Only been working on the estate for about five years, but he knows every pool of that burn. Good Lord, I’ve seen some monster salmon he’s caught. They put them in the hotel deep-freeze. Mind you…’ Here he had paused to attend to his pipe, an aluminium and plastic device that looked like an important but inexplicable electronic component. He had unscrewed something and squeezed a spongeful of nicotine into the coal-bucket. ‘Mind you, what you mustn’t do is ask how Tam catches the fish. Oh no, I believe there are rules in fishing circles. But, you know, he goes through the water in these waders stalking them, and he can tell the pools they’re in-don’t know how he does it, mind-and he’s got these snares and things, and his ripper. It’s a sort of cord with a lot of treble hooks on. Well, he whips them out of the water on to the bank and then gets the Priest out-you know why it’s called the Priest? It gives the fish their last rites. Vicious little device it is, short stick with a weighted end. Anyway, down this comes on the fish’s head and that’s another for the deep freeze. Highly illegal, but highly delicious, eh?’
However the salmon were playing hard to get. So were the trout. So, come to that, were any fresh water shrimps that might be around. Obviously the recommended bunch of worms on a large hook ledgered to the bottom was an insufficient inducement. Charles turned to Frances, and put on his schoolboy party-piece voice. ‘A recitation-The Angler’s Farewell by Thomas Hood.
“Not a trout there be in the place,
Not a Grayling or Rud worth the mention,
And although at my hook
With attention I look
I can ne’er see my hook with a Tench on!”’
Frances clapped and he bowed smugly. ‘Ithangyoulthangyou, and for my next trick, I was thinking of going for a walk to work off some of Mrs Parker’s enormous breakfast in anticipation of her no doubt enormous lunch. Do you want to come?’
‘I’m nearly at the end of this book actually and I’m quite cosy.’ She looked cosy, tarpaulined in P.V.C. mac and sou’wester, crouched like a garden gnome at the foot of the tree.
‘O.K. What are you reading?’
‘Your Mary, Queen of Scots.’
‘Oh Lord. That’s not my book. I should have given it back. Borrowed it from someone in Edinburgh. Ha, that reminds me of Anatole France.’
‘Hm?’
‘“Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are those that other people have lent me.” A quote.’
‘I didn’t know you were given to gratuitous quotation.’
‘The bloke who lent me the book would have appreciated it.’
Some Victorian spirit of Nile-source-searching prompted him to go upstream towards the spring that fed the little burn. Any hopes of finding the source before lunch were soon dashed by the stream’s unwillingness to get any narrower and the steepness of the gradient down which it came. Centuries of roaring water had driven a deep cleft into the rock. Tumbled boulders enclosed dark brown pools, fed from above by broad creamy torrents or silver threads of water.
The banks were muddy and the rocks he had to climb over shone treacherously. More than once he had to reach out and grasp at tussocks of grass to stop himself from slipping.
At last he came to a part of the burn that seemed quieter than the rest. There was still the rush of water, but it was muffled by trees arching and joining overhead, which spread a green light on the scene. Here were three symmetrical round pools, neatly stepped like soup plates up a waiter’s arm.
He identified the place from Mr Pilch’s descriptions in the lounge after dinner. ‘Some of the pools up there are incredibly deep, just worn down into the solid rock by constant water pressure. Makes you wonder whether we take sufficient notice of the potential of hydro-jet drilling, eh? Mind you, it takes a few centuries. Still, some of those pools are supposed to be twenty feet deep. Tam claims to have caught salmon up there, though I can’t for the life of me imagine how they get that high. Maybe by doing those remarkable leaps you see on the tourist posters, eh?’
But Charles did not want to think about Pilch. The enclosing trees and the muffled rush of water made the place like a fairy cave. It was magical and, in a strange way, calming. Puffed by the climb, he squatted on his heels at the foot of a tree, and started to face the thoughts which regrettably showed no signs of going away.
He knew why he was restless. It was because the explanations he had formed for recent events in Edinburgh were incomplete. Now Martin Warburton was dead, that situation looked permanent. The frustration was like getting within four answers of a completed crossword and knowing from the clues that he had no hope of filling the gaps. He could put down any combination of letters that sounded reasonable, but he would not have the satisfaction of knowing he was right. And with this particular crossword, there would not be a correct solution published in the following morning’s paper.
It was partly his own fault for wanting a clear-cut answer rather than the frayed ends of reality. A basic misconception, like his idea that the police were way behind on the case.
But he could not get away from the fact that the tie-up of Martin’s motivations which he and the Laird had worked out was unsatisfactory. There were too many loose ends, stray facts that he had found out and still required explanations. Though the main outline was right, there were details of Martin’s obsessive behaviour that were not clear.
He worked backwards. Martin’s suicide demonstrated that, at least in his own mind, the boy was guilty of something. The discovery of the Nicholson Street bomb factory made it reasonable to suppose that one of the causes of his guilt was the device planted in Charles’ holdall.
But what evidence was there that he was also responsible for killing Willy? Certainly in retrospect it looked likely. Martin had actually wielded the murder weapon and Rizzio was an obvious first victim in his macabre game of historical reconstruction. But if the murder was carefully planned, the actual execution was a bit random. Assuming Martin had switched the real knife for the treated one, he still had no guarantee that he would be given that one for the photo call. Willy might have been killed by another unsuspecting actor, but would that have given Martin the requisite thrill? Charles felt ignorant of how accurate a psychopath’s reconstruction of events has to be for him to commit a murder; it is not a well-documented subject.
But at least he had faced the fact that he wanted to tie up the loose ends. Just for his own satisfaction. After lunch he would be organised like James Milne, sit down with a sheet of paper and make a note of all the outstanding questions of the case. Feeling happier for the decision, he set off down the hill to the hotel.
‘Three days ago, you know, I wouldn’t have believed it possible to eat one of Mrs Parker’s lunches within gastronomic memory of Mrs Parker’s breakfast, and certainly not with the prospect of Mrs Parker’s dinner looming deliciously like an enemy missile on the horizon.’
