A Double Death on the Black Isle Read online

  “I did the same a few times,” Rob remembered. “I worked with one or other of your cousins.”

  “That’ll be right,” Jimmy said, “the Black Isle is hooching wi’ McPhees. Anyhow, why do you want to know about the Skinners?”

  “I’m mystified as to who set fire to the boat.”

  “You’re the only one who doesn’t know then,” Jimmy laughed.

  “What?”

  “It’ll cost you.” Jimmy held up an empty glass. “Make it a double this time.”

  Rob did as he was told, but shuddered at the thought of how on earth he could wangle the expenses past Mrs. Smart.

  “Slainthe,” Jimmy toasted. “Lovely drop, this.” He smacked his lips, enjoying making Rob wait. “John Skinner,” he announced, “was questioned by the polis. Now he has been charged.”

  Rob grinned. He had a story. Then he thought about it. “That makes no sense.”

  “Does it have to? The boy could have done it to spite his brother, simple as that.”

  “Aye, possibly.” Rob sipped his shandy, thinking. He didn’t notice it was flat and oversweet. “I’m certain there’s more. I went to their village. The Skinner warehouse was locked, and this is in the middle of the herring season.”

  “No, it’s no,” Jimmy told him. “It was open a couple o’ days ago. I saw it maself when I was asking around about Fraser Munro.”

  “Did you find out anything useful?”

  “That would be telling.” Jimmy enjoyed the look on Rob’s face, enjoyed teasing him. “All right. Seeing how you bought me a drop of the good stuff, I’ll tell you. Thon big shed, where the lassies box the herring, was sold to another family in the village. John Jack bought it and at a good price, so I heard.”

  “Really?” Rob couldn’t take it in. “I’ve no idea what that means.”

  “Means Skinners needed the money. Why else would they sell?”

  “Right.” Rob needed time to think about this. “How about your brothers? Is it hopeful?”

  “We’re tinkers, we need more than hopeful.”

  “You have Calum Sinclair. My father says he’s good.”

  “Aye. He seems right smart. I have a bad feeling that we’ll need him.” Jimmy paused. “You’re likely to find out soon enough, being the nosy fellow that you are. . . .”

  “What’s that?”

  “Fraser Munro didn’t die until early morning, dawn or a wee whiley after.”

  “Does that help?”

  “Maybe someone else attacked him—later on that night, or early morning.”

  “Do you have any idea who?”

  “Aye, that’s the question, isn’t it? No writing this in the Gazette,” Jimmy warned.

  “Never,” Rob assured him. Jimmy looked at Rob, looked straight into his eyes. Rob had to look away. What Rob saw, he didn’t want to see again. He took a sip of shandy to recover, but the glass was empty. “If I hear anything, I’ll let you know, Mr. McPhee.”

  Rob knew that Jimmy had said all he was going to say. It was time to leave before any more glares scared the life out of him.

  “Thank you very much, Mr. McPhee.” Rob stood. “Thanks for everything. I’ll let you know if I hear anything.” Rob knew he was gabbling. Jimmy did too.

  When he heard Rob’s motorbike roar down the road, Jimmy thought, Haven’t lost ma touch, one look is all it takes to scare the daylights out o’ them. He finished his drink, made his way across the room, giving the stare. A vacuum of silence followed him. Aye, he thought with great satisfaction, works every time.

  When Rob reached home, he ran to his room, took the cover off his portable Olivetti, a secondhand red one that he loved and cherished and wished he could use at work. He sat down to write up his notes.

  After an hour and a half of feverish typing, he thought, I wish it wasn’t Sunday, I can’t wait to get to the office.

  Once again the ace reporter scores a scoop, he congratulated himself as he rolled the sheets and the carbon paper out of the typewriter. No, he realized, it’s scoops, plural.

  FIFTEEN

  Patricia read about the charges against John Skinner in the Highland Gazette. Her first thought was, my ex-mother-in-law will be livid. Her next thought surprised her. I must help him.

  It was the report from the boatyard that really set Patricia thinking. She had not considered her late husband’s financial affairs because she knew little about them—only that he was desperate for money and had even suggested they sell one of Achnafern’s fields to raise cash.

  The new boat was partly paid for; that was what the Gazette article stated. So was she, as Sandy’s widow, part-owner of a boat or owner of half a boat? And the wages owed to the crew of the boat that was destroyed? The Gazette had quoted them as saying they were hoping she would pay them. Was she obligated? Was she liable for Sandy’s debts?

  One problem at a time, Patricia told herself. First the fatal accident inquiry into Sandy’s death—let’s get that out of the way, then I can find out my legal position.

  That the death of Sandy Skinner would be declared an accident, she had no doubt.

  Next morning Patricia met Allie Munro earlier than usual, seven o’clock instead of eight. The court hearing was scheduled for ten.

  Five weeks had passed since Allie Munro lost his son and Sandy Skinner had his accident. Time passing hadn’t made it easier for Allie. It was the sense of a deep, abiding sadness that Patricia noticed. She felt it emanating from his voice, his face, the way he moved, the way his finger was less precise when pointing at the map of the farm as they discussed farm business; she was in the presence of a man who had aged ten years in five weeks.

  Farm business dealt with, Patricia went to the kitchen to fetch the car keys. When she had asked her mother for the car, she had had to put up with the usual rigmarole. “No Mummy, I do not want a lift. No, I will not take the bus into town. No, I am not driving the Land Rover, not in my condition.” Her final point—think how it would look if anyone in town saw her, especially on the day of the hearing into her husband’s death—won the argument.

  Mrs. Munro was scrubbing vegetables when Patricia came in, “I’ve time for a quick cup of tea before I leave,” she said, putting the kettle on the hob. “How are you, Mrs. M?”

  “As well as can be expected, lass.”

  Patricia went over and gave her a hug. She was surprised by the way the older woman clung to her. She stepped back, looked at the crumpled face, the pink eyes, the hair without its usual immaculate side parting showing a pink line of scalp. “You look all in.”

  “I canny sleep.”

  “I can understand that.” Patricia, by contrast, looked bonnie and blooming in her grief.

  “You look well, lass.”

  “Thanks to this little fellow.” She laughed, patting her stomach.

  Patricia insisted on making, then pouring the tea. They sat at the table as they always did, side by side, close.

  “Mr. M seems a bit out of sorts.”

  “Aye, it’s hit him hard, all this.” Mrs. Munro shook her head. Her eyes filled with tears. One slowly rolled from the faded blue of her right eye, dropping audibly into her tea.

  “Salt and sugar together. I hope the tea tastes all right,” Patricia joked.

  “You always do me good, lass. Everyone, the neighbors, the wifie in the shop, or her in the post office, they don’t know how to treat me. It’s like I have a disease.”

  “I know. Me too. And as for the bump, people don’t know where to look. They generally fix their eyes on a point halfway to Tain.”

  They smiled, a brief and healing respite from grief.

  “I’ll start a bit o’ knitting. I could do with something to take my mind off things. A shawl, I think.”

  “I’d love that. I’ll get some wool for myself and a simple pattern. You know me, a plain purl girl.”

  “You were always too busy outdoors to knit,” Mrs. Munro fondly remembered. “Get white Shetland two-ply for me, ten ounces.”

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bsp; When Mrs. Munro heard the car pull away, she went back to Patricia’s remark. There was something worrying Allie. She felt him sigh in the night, she heard him get up and go out into the dark to smoke a pipe, she saw his face line and crinkle a little more each day. No longer could she tell herself this was only to be expected—it was more than grief that was troubling him.

  She went to the pantry to fetch the meat for a shepherd’s pie. As she worked, her mind wandered.

  What were those funny wee brass monkeys Patricia had had since she was a child? Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil?

  I’m just like them. If there is something bad going on, I don’t want to see nor hear. Her eyes filled with tears. She hated this need to cry, she’d never been a crying sort before now. Given time, it will be all fine, she told herself, not really believing it. Talk to Allie, ask him what’s wrong. “A trouble shared was a trouble halved,” her granny used to say. Aye, and there’s plenty of troubles on this farm.

  On the ferry crossing to town, Patricia leaned on the railing. There was a chilly edge to the wind. She watched the white horses race across the water, towards the mouth of the Beauly River in the far distance. She watched three fishing boats working the firth, May and June being the herring season. She looked up at the forested crag of Craig Phadric and below she saw the whitewashed lock keeper’s cottage, with the stumpy white lighthouse jutting out into the water, marking the beginning of the Caledonian Canal.

  This is where it all came to grief, Patricia thought, the sinking of the boat. No, not true—married life with Sandy Skinner would have come to grief sooner or later.

  Patricia parked beneath the castle rampart. She checked her lipstick in the rearview mirror, she patted her hair into place. She got out, locked the car, put on her camel-hair coat and headscarf, hooked her handbag over her arm. I look as good as Queen Elizabeth on a trip to the shops in Balmoral, Patricia thought. We’re the same age, but I’m sure she didn’t have such problems with her husband—or her mother.

  She climbed the steps to Castle Wynd. Five minutes to spare, before she was needed as the star witness in the inquiry into the death of Alexander Skinner.

  A stranger watching her or a friend looking at her—even Mrs. Munro—could never see how sick she felt. The death of her husband was an escape from certain disaster, but he was the father of her child, a man she had once been passionate about.

  The inquiry took an hour and a half, not the whole morning as Joanne had expected. She was covering the hearing for the Gazette. Not her idea, but McAllister had told her to go, and she was aware Rob was contributing much more column space than her. The boatyard story, John Skinner’s arrest—Rob discovers stories—he is a real journalist. I cover events already in progress.

  With her confidence suitably low, Joanne took her seat on the bench in the Sheriff’s Court.

  The proceedings opened. WPC Ann McPherson gave the account for the police. The medical report was read out. The sheriff noted that the blood-alcohol level was unusually high for so early in the morning.

  “Mrs. Patricia Skinner.”

  When her name was announced, Patricia felt a flash of annoyance. She hated being a Skinner and would change that as soon as respectable.

  “Please excuse me if I feel faint,” Patricia smiled around the court. “It is all very distressing, and I am in a delicate condition.”

  How does she do that? Joanne thought, make all these men melt like that?

  “Of course. We will be as brief as possible,” the procurator fiscal told her. Then he led her through that morning’s events.

  “We left home early, before dawn. It was the first day of May, so we went to the Clootie Well. Silly I know, but I love the old traditions.” Again that sweet smile. “We intended to drive to Fort Augustus the long way round.

  “After we left the town, I had a bout of horrid morning sickness, so we stopped at the Dores Inn.” Patricia told the story well. There were no interruptions, no questions. “After a cup of tea I felt better, so we drove on, but we had to stop again as I was sick.”

  “Sandy came from a village a mere thirty miles or so from some of the most beautiful places in Scotland and had never visited them,” she told the court, as though this was a fault, an idiosyncrasy, forgetting that most people did not have a car, could not travel on a whim to see scenery.

  “We stopped near the track to the Falls of Foyers. I said I’d sit in the car until I felt better. Sandy said he’d go down to see the Lower Falls.” She took a sip of water from a glass the clerk of the court handed to her. “I waited nearly an hour, then I began to worry.”

  She didn’t mention his last words to her, “You stupid cow.” He had yelled when she leaned out to be sick. She would never tell anyone she was crying.

  “I went down the track to find him, but it was so slippery, and there is a drop on one side of the track. I was scared, so I turned back. I called out many times, but the noise of the water was really loud.”

  Patricia paused, looking down at her hands. The procurator paused, waited.

  “Would you like a break?” he asked.

  “No, thank you. I’d like to finish.”

  “So you went for help?”

  “Yes. I drove back to the inn. The landlady and her husband were most helpful. They said they would try to find Sandy. I waited, I fell asleep for a while, then . . . I’m sorry.”

  “Hankie time,” Joanne muttered. Sure enough, both Patricia and a lady on the visitors’ bench pulled out handkerchiefs.

  There was only one point that Patricia faced any pressure over.

  “The Falls are immediately outside of the village of Foyers. Why did you drive all the way back to Dores, almost twenty miles away, to report your husband missing?”

  Patricia looked directly at the sheriff as she answered.

  “I ask myself that constantly. I have no idea why. Perhaps it was because I was feeling so wretched. Perhaps I wanted the comfort of a place I knew, where I could take a room.”

  There is a hotel in Foyers, Joanne remembered. But no one commented.

  “Perhaps it was because Sandy was cross. . . .”

  “You’d quarreled?” the fiscal asked.

  “Not at all. It was the smell of sick that Sandy hated.”

  There goes the hankie again, Joanne thought.

  “I have no explanation. I deeply regret my panic. I should have gone straight into Foyers . . . perhaps he could have been saved.” Patricia looked into her lap. This time she tried no theatrics with the hankie, letting the tears run silently.

  The sheriff had three daughters; he could never cope with tears—not a good quality for a man in his position. He looked over to the fiscal, who said he had no more questions, and proceeded to sum up the case.

  The sheriff listened to the recommendations. He concurred. The finding was accidental death by drowning. Recommendations—the construction of a guardrail at the viewing point above the falls.

  The hearing into the death of Alexander Skinner was over.

  Joanne met Patricia on the steps outside the Sheriff’s Court.

  “How are you?” she asked.

  “I couldn’t bear thinking about that day,” Patricia answered. “It was horrible.”

  “Patricia, I’m sorry, I have to ask, can I have a comment for the Gazette?”

  “You must know how I’m feeling.” Patricia looked at Joanne with an expression too hard to read.

  I don’t, Joanne thought, and I seldom know what you are thinking. That is the problem.

  “Just say I am still in shock, but relieved the hearing is over.” Patricia had another of her sudden switches of mood. “Let’s meet in Arnotts for lunch, twelve-thirty? I’ll have recovered by then. My treat. Bye-bye.”

  She was off down the wynd, picking her way carefully over the cobblestones, certain the reply to the invitation was “yes.”

  Joanne was left feeling like a fish—hooked, landed, and floundering on dry land. She didn’t know what to thi
nk—or write. The facts, Don always advised, the bare, simple facts. But a life was gone. The sheriff’s recommendation that a guardrail be erected didn’t seem much of a memorial for a life. No, she corrected herself, he will be remembered. Sandy Skinner left behind a baby, a boat, and a story, which, given time, will become part of local folklore.

  “Sit down. Let me get tea. Or would you prefer coffee?” Angus McLean asked.

  “Coffee?” Patricia was surprised at her solicitor’s modern tastes.

  “I send out for it from the café where Rob spends half his life.” He smiled at her. He had known her since childhood and was one of the few not intimidated by her mother. Patricia always appreciated that.

  “Thank you, I’d better not. This is a brief visit, as I have rather a lot to do today.”

  Angus waited.

  “The verdict was accidental death.”

  “I see.”

  “Thank you for offering to be there. But as I said, there was no need.” She gave him her full regal one hundred watt ingratiating smile.

  Again he waited.

  “I also wanted to apologize for being difficult over the Gazette; I had no right to take out my hurt and frustration on you. All this business of Sandy, Fraser Munro, and everything else, has been a great strain. I now see they were only doing what a local newspaper is supposed to do, report the news.”

  “Think nothing of it. Forgotten already.” He found the apologies rather fulsome and suspected a tinge of insincerity.

  “I’m here to ask about my legal position now Sandy is . . . gone.”

  Looking at her, knowing she had come straight from the Sheriff’s Court, Angus McLean noted how businesslike she appeared.

  “Your late husband left no will as far as you know?” Angus said.

  “No, there was no will. My concern is his debts. According to the Gazette, the amount owing to the boatbuilder is substantial. Am I responsible? Could the boat be sold? Can I recover part of the original payment?”