A Double Death on the Black Isle Read online

  An older policeman from Muir of Ord knew the McPhees well, had known Jenny since childhood, and had nothing against them. He gave Jenny a private nod of apology for the detective sergeant’s manners and said, “Geordie, William, you need to come wi’ me.”

  “Handcuff them.” DS Wilkie ordered.

  The older policeman shrugged. He knew it was unnecessary, but also knew better than to argue. He clicked the locks on the boys’ wrists and for the first time, they were scared.

  “I’ll be down to the police station to see you the morrow,” Jimmy told them. “And mind what I told you.”

  The boys left, a policeman apiece, and Jimmy poured himself and his mother a hefty dram.

  “I hope to hell they remember to hold their tongues.” But Jimmy and his mother knew they both suffered from verbal diarrhea. “I’ll have the solicitor see them in the morning. Maybe a night in the cells will get it into their thick heads how serious this is.”

  “They think it’s only an assault charge. Even that is no right. Thon sergeant would like a real go at a McPhee. So would many o’ the rest o’ them.” Jenny knew the man as a vindictive, prejudiced outsider with no idea how the farms would suffer without the tinkers to help work the land. “Somebody gave the Munro lad a right good kicking, so I heard, and left him at the Devil’s Den, bleeding, they say.”

  “Aye. And who better to blame than some tinker boys who’d already had a run in wi’ him.”

  “We’ll know more the morn. You have the solicitor lined up?”

  “Aye. I has a talk wi’ him,” Jimmy replied. “When I gave him ma name, he knew who we are, and he doesn’t seem to have prejudices about us. I liked him.”

  Jenny McPhee immediately felt better. This was high praise indeed from Jimmy and she knew his judgment was uncannily accurate.

  If Jimmy likes this solicitor fellow, she thought, he must be good.

  ELEVEN

  Joanne knew she had to attend the funerals. No matter that her ribs hurt, it hurt to sit, the bump on her head throbbed, she had to be there to—in the Scottish parlance—“keep up appearances.” After two days, the physical pain was easing. The shame less so.

  She went to the Black Isle with her mother- and father-in-law. Children did not attend funerals, so the girls were with Chiara Kowalski.

  “Are you all right?” Chiara had asked when Joanne brought Annie and Wee Jean to her house.

  “I’m fine,” Joanne replied. “I didn’t sleep all that well last night, that’s all.”

  Annie looked at her mother and Chiara would have said it was a look of contempt if it had come from an adult.

  The day had two seasons, winter and spring. The Munro funeral took place in a subarctic squall of driving rain alternating with sleet. The Ord Mackenzie funeral, as everybody called it, was favored with crisp spring sunshine.

  Patricia was sitting with the Munros as Joanne and her in-laws went into the gloom of the parish church. Granny Ross went to join her cousin, Mrs. Munro. She moved along the pew and the two women, sitting shoulder to shoulder, looked more like identical twins than cousins. Even their hats—dark, funereal felt bowls—matched.

  The minister said the right things over the coffin of a boy he once knew, but a man who was a stranger. Mrs. Munro sobbed. Her husband stayed silent. Amongst the rest of the mourners, there was a restlessness, an absence of emotion other than pity for Mr. and Mrs. Munro.

  The overriding feeling that day was curiosity and a barely suppressed thrill that an event as exciting as this had happened in their small community.

  As they filed out of the church and walked to the grave, Mrs. Ross looked around counting the mourners. At least a hundred, she thought. She was pleased. It showed the Munros’ standing in the community.

  The funeral tea was well attended, and uncomfortable. In a land of the taciturn, the conversations were even more brief than usual. The visits to the farmhouse were perfunctory. Duty was done, but there were few takers for the ample supply of tea and whisky and ham sandwiches laid out in the front parlor.

  Out the back, in the yard near the steadings, the male mourners discussed the arrest of the tinkers with little enthusiasm. Yes, the tinker boys had hit him, maybe it led to his death, but Fraser himself, hadn’t he been the one to start the fight? It didn’t seem right.

  “Aye, weel, I always thought he had it coming to him,” one of the bolder of the mourners said.

  “Haud yer wheesht,” Old Archie told him.

  “I heard they’ve arrested two o’ the McPhees,” a neighbor said to Archie. “Always trouble that lot.” The man’s self-important nod made the old farmhand furious.

  “We’re here to bury the dead,” he said in a voice audible to everyone. “No to gossip like auld fishwives.”

  The morning’s harsh weather a distant memory, the Ord Mackenzie funeral was conducted in bright sunshine. There was an almost celebratory atmosphere as old friends met, onlookers stared, and Patricia was center stage, elegant in the role of grieving widow.

  The pews of the church were packed, with all the major county families represented. Even the lord lieutenant was there. The mourners were attentive to the minister, but more attentive to the widow.

  Curious glances at the deceased’s few friends were discreet. None of his family had attended. The walk following the coffin to the Ord Mackenzie family plot was solemn but impatient. Most of the crowd couldn’t wait to get back to the house for the funeral feast and a good gossip.

  “Very grand for a fisherman’s funeral,” said one of the onlookers.

  “Where are his family?” asked another.

  Burial duly accomplished, the party returned to Achnafern Grange. No one would pass up the opportunity to drink the laird’s whisky.

  Joanne had just come from the kitchen, where at least she could have a cup of tea. The idea of drinking in daytime astonished her. It shouldn’t, she thought, this is Scotland after all.

  She was thinking how horrible both funerals were for the same reason—very few people seemed to care.

  Patricia had been the perfect, dignified widow during the burial. Now, as Joanne watched her across the room, playing the gracious hostess, moving from person to person, pausing to thank them for attending, touching an arm, bending her head to accept condolences, Joanne was struck by the thought that an accident had solved Patricia’s marriage problems, and why couldn’t she be so lucky?

  “How are you doing?”

  Rob had come up from behind.

  She jumped, spilling tea into the saucer. “I’m fine. I hate funerals, that’s all.” She couldn’t look at him, scared he would read her thoughts. Rob had no time for her husband, Bill, and would probably have agreed with her.

  “I see you’ve managed to find tea.” He gestured to her cup and saucer. “Good idea.”

  “It’s an exhausting business, death.”

  “For some.” They both looked around at the throng.

  “Lucky the funerals went ahead,” Rob replied. “It was a bit touch and go. The police had to give permission for the bodies to be released. It seems Sandy Skinner’s case is a straightforward accident.”

  Joanne glanced at him, and his face was as open as ever. But he can hide his thoughts much better than me.

  “Fraser Munro’s case is more complicated,” he continued. “The procurator had to decide if the fight contributed to his death. The police think it did. That’s why they’ve charged the two McPhee lads with involuntary manslaughter.”

  “Poor Jenny McPhee. Poor mothers. Losing a child is not natural.”

  “I know. It’s a bad business all round.” He paused. “Joanne, I want to say how sorry I am. If I’d known you were in danger the other night, I wouldn’t have left. . . .”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her body was statue-still, but her eyes were burning into his, willing him to look away. He did.

  “Sorry,” Rob muttered. “None of my business.”

  “We will be on the McPhee bro
thers story together.”

  Rob was glad she changed the subject. “I know. I hope there’s no . . . how did McAllister put it, ‘conflict of interest’ for you.”

  “I’ll have conflict with my mother-in-law if I upset the Munro family. And I’m still in the bad books with Patricia over the Gazette headlines.”

  “Neither you nor Patricia had much luck in husbands.”

  “Thanks for pointing that out, Rob.”

  “Oh heck, I’ve done it again.”

  “Yes you have. I didn’t need reminding, today of all days.” Joanne walked to the kitchen, her back straight, her neck stiff, disguising the pain in her thigh and in her stomach, knowing he was right.

  Rob sighed. Joanne was his friend. You should be able to say anything to friends, he thought. He looked at his watch. Another fifteen minutes, that will look respectable, then I can skedaddle before I offend someone else.

  He wandered out to the front lawn, hoping to avoid anyone he knew. A rowdy discussion from a group of men who looked like a committee of the Black Isle Show Society, made Rob turn abruptly to his right. There he was confronted with another group, this time local lads from the estate. He tried to walk back into the house, hoping to find Beech.

  The last Rob saw of him, Beech was standing with Mrs. Janet Ord Mackenzie, accepting on her behalf the murmurings of condolence that were bouncing back off the glacial wall she had erected around herself.

  Mortimer Beauchamp Carlyle knew how much Achnafern Grange and the estate meant to Mrs. Ord Mackenzie. He knew that she saw herself as the chatelaine of all she surveyed. He suspected that she believed it her birthright as unequivocally as Henry VIII or any Louis of France believed in the divine right of kings. No wonder she hated Sandy Skinner.

  Beech remembered her as plain Janet Ord. Her family was established in the northeast of Scotland for centuries. Even so, the double surname she took upon herself after the marriage, to preserve the family name she said, that was still seen as rather outré amongst the county set.

  “Anything I can do to help? No? Jolly good,” Mr. Ord Mackenzie broke into Beech’s reverie.

  He’s become a caricature of himself, like a character out of a P. G. Wodehouse novel, Beech thought as he watched Patricia’s father settle back down to his gathering of aging worthies and cronies from his former regiment. Beech wished his sister were here so he could share the observation. From the raised voices, Beech gathered that the new prime minister was the topic of conversation. One of their number either knew him or had been at school with him or had cousins with neighboring estates.

  He saw Rob coming towards him and hoped he was coming to the rescue, but someone else got to Rob first.

  “Rob McLean, right?”

  A slightly rumpled, slightly drunk man, who looked like an aging student with his untrimmed beard, greeted Rob.

  “Yes,” Rob replied. “Sorry, I don’t think we’ve met.” Just as I was about to escape, he thought.

  “No, but I read the Gazette, and I heard you work there.” He held out a hand. “Neil Duff. Call me Neil. I’m the local vet and know the Ord Mackenzies through the farm.”

  They shook hands.

  “Terrible, all this.” Neil Duff gestured vaguely around. “Not that I ever met either of the deceased, but you know how it is, you hear things.”

  “Really?” This is good, Rob thought, the local vet who goes to every farm in the district and he likes a dram and a gossip.

  “Poor Patricia. Not having much luck, is she?” Neil Duff continued. “Her husband of only a few weeks, and Fraser Munro, both gone. Mind you I heard Fraser never got on with Patricia, even as children. Jealous I’d say. Allie Munro is always singing her praises, telling everyone how well she runs the farm. Better than many a man, he says.”

  “I don’t know anything about farms, but it all looks very prosperous,” Rob said.

  “Oh it is.”

  “The two deaths must be the talk of the community.” Rob knew how to encourage a conversation.

  “Talk of the Highlands.” The vet looked at his empty whisky tumbler. “Pity I can’t risk any more of the laird’s best whisky, but I must be off.”

  “Could I ask you something in confidence,” Rob said. “Not for publication, just as a friend of Patricia’s. . . .”

  “I’m not promising I’ll answer. . . .”

  “No, I understand,” Rob said, “but I’ve known Patricia since childhood, and it really puzzles me how she got caught up with Sandy Skinner. I would have thought they”—he gestured to the group of farmers—“were more her type.”

  “There’s many a man on the Black Isle would have married Patricia and are asking themselves the same question.” Neil Duff spoke in the slow, careful voice of someone trying to convince himself he was sober enough to drive. “I have no idea why she would socialize with a local fisherman.”

  Very polite way of putting it, Rob thought.

  “Maybe she just wanted to spite her mother,” Neil Duff continued. He stopped, flustered. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.” He held out a hand. “Good to meet you. Perhaps we’ll bump into each other again.”

  “Well, well, well,” Rob muttered as the vet left, “Patricia as femme fatale; who’d have thought it? Doesn’t answer my question though.”

  Rob too had had enough of funerals. He fetched his bike, wheeled it around the side of the house, hoping no one would notice his early escape.

  From the top of the driveway to Achnafern Grange, the dip in the landscape where the small fishing village snuggled was distinct. Rob realized Patricia would be able to see Sandy Skinner’s home if she looked out from the attics.

  He paused, considering the idea, shrugged, and thought, Might as well have a poke around while I’m here.

  Rob had the good sense to check in the village telephone box for a phone book and find the Skinner family’s address.

  No use phoning, he thought, they will only hang up.

  Rob immediately recognized the man who opened the door at the Skinners’—the same narrow head, narrow eyes, in the weathered skin of a fisherman. Stating his business on the doorstep, which opened onto a street of similar cottages leading to the harbor, Rob felt an emissary of the Devil would have had a friendlier reception.

  “We’ve nothing to say.”

  “Yes but . . .” the door was firmly shut in his face. Rob knocked once more, waited, then gave up. He had left his bike in the local inn’s car park. As he walked back, he noted the fishing boats at anchor and admired their shipshape condition. Being twelve o’clock midday, the bar was open. There were few customers. No one would talk to him. He left.

  Walking towards the village shop and post office, where he thought he might try his charms on some middle-aged female, he felt he was being followed. He turned. There was a black-and-white collie pulling a small man by a bit of string.

  “A bad lot was Sandy Skinner,” the man said to the dog.

  Rob slowed down, waiting for the man to catch up, but the dog kept his distance. Rob walked back to the harbor. They followed. He took shelter behind the seawall and waited. His pursuers walked past, stopped a few yards farther up, and continued their conversation.

  “I don’t blame them. I’d have done the same.” The dog looked up at his companion. “Aye, you’re right,” the man agreed. “It was a shame. She was a right bonnie boat.”

  “Do you know who threw the bottle of petrol?” Rob asked, confident they were talking about the same thing.

  “Now that would be telling.” With a lopsided grin and a furtive look about him, the man whom Rob had taken for seventy was, on closer inspection, nearer forty.

  “Do you know who did it?” Rob asked the dog.

  “Families falling out, nothing sae vicious.”

  Rob gave a start. For a second he thought the reply came from the dog and, in this village, he wouldn’t have been surprised if the dog had replied. But before he had time to ask more, the dog and his man scuttled round the corner. He we
nt after them. They had vanished, leaving him with the strange sensation that he had imagined the whole encounter.

  “Nothing would surprise me in this place,” he muttered.

  The smell from the large stone building made him notice it. The small windows were high set, a flagstone path led to double doors wide enough to allow a cart and horse or something industrial to pass through. Above the lintel, whitewashed lettering, well faded but clear, read, “A. SKINNER & SONS.”

  “Sons,” plural, Rob noticed. He checked the doors. A shiny new padlock joined a rusty chain strung twice between iron door handles. The smell of fish was strong but not unpleasant. Rob knew that the boats in the harbor were herring smacks and that the families made a good livelihood from fishing the famous Kessock herring.

  Maybe this warehouse was the place where the herring girls—the “silver girls,” Rob had heard them called—cured and packed the fish. Whatever it had once been, it was a substantial building.

  So Sandy Skinner and his family were fishermen and a family of substance, Rob thought. Interesting. He turned to walk away, then stopped. There is something wrong with this picture, he thought. It’s Saturday, it’s May, herring season, but this warehouse or fish processing shed is shut, padlocked, deserted. More than interesting, Rob said to himself, but what on earth does it mean?

  By the time Rob reached the shop it too was shut, Saturday being a half-closing day. It didn’t discourage Rob, he knew in his bones he was on to a good story.

  TWELVE

  On Monday morning after the funerals, Patricia was feeling an after-party sense of letdown.

  Mrs. Munro was not so much feeling loss—more lost. When she tasted the soup, she was shocked to discover she had left out the salt.

  “Leave it,” Patricia had told her. “Go home and rest.”

  “Thanks, lass, I will,” Mrs. Munro said. “I’m that tired, I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

  “Shoo.” Patricia hugged her and sent her home.