A Double Death on the Black Isle Read online

  The meeting later in the morning to pull together the story of the firebombing was productive. Joanne had written five hundred words from the point of view of the firemen. She also had a brief account from a neighbor who had been waiting in her car to cross the canal when the fire broke out.

  “Good lively stuff, Joanne,” Don commented as he took his wee red pencil to the more extravagant quotes.

  Don read through Rob’s report on the comments from the police. “The usual ‘Saw nothing, heard nothing, know nothing,’” Don called it. “The procurator fiscal’s office would only say ‘The accident inquiry is in progress,’” Don added, “so not much there.”

  “No, but this story is looking good. It has legs.” McAllister was happy. “One, we have a great picture,” he started, counting off the points with his fingers.

  “Don’t tell Hec that, or we’ll never hear the end of it.” Rob was still smarting at Hec being made a full-time member of the team.

  “Two, this is a good description of the fire, Joanne—colorful but succinct.” McAllister went on, “I like the interview you did with the firemen—you got the balance between the facts and the human interest just right; your interview with the witness who saw it all from the beginning is sharp and newsworthy.”

  “I had trouble getting off the phone, the woman blethered so much.” Joanne smiled and blushed at the praise.

  “Three, the whole mystery as to why the boat was making its way to the west coast rather than home. Graham Nicolson, our stringer in Fort William, will investigate. That should give us something for the next edition.”

  “I think this story will run for at least a couple more editions,” Rob interrupted. “The police are completely baffled as to why anyone would firebomb a fishing boat. They have no suspects, no clues.”

  “ ‘Police Baffled.’” Don was delighted. “A favorite headline of we hacks in the newspaper trade.”

  McAllister rolled his eyes and held up his hand again. “Finally, Beech has heard rumors of a family feud involving the owner of the boat.”

  “I like it,” Don agreed. “Family feuds—great copy. But keep that for the next edition.”

  “All right, let’s put this together, we only have five hours.” McAllister paused, “Joanne, everyone, thanks—good work.”

  Mondays, news meeting; Tuesdays, two days to finish the paper—the routine was busy, but steady busy. Now it was Wednesday, and Wednesdays were for panic, a noisy late afternoon panic, but controlled like the panic of sailing—quiet stretches, then a burst of weather to keep everyone on their toes.

  This Wednesday, with the deadline for the new Gazette looming, tension came early to the reporters’ room. It had an almost visible presence. The dust motes, in a beam through the north-facing window, seemed thicker than usual. The low, churning, industrial noises of the presses in the bowels of the building had started earlier than usual. Even the typewriters seemed heavier.

  Joanne and Rob were attempting to type in quick time instead of waltz time, so the machines jammed more often, the paper disappearing into the jaws of the monsters. A carriage stuck. A ribbon unwound. Sometimes this happened at the same time. Joanne spoke sternly to the Underwood with ladylike expletives. Rob thumped his.

  Don moved up and down the three flights of stairs to the presses more briskly. McAllister popped in more often, asking more questions.

  Five o’clock, the tempo accelerated to real time. Don was to and from the reporters and the typesetters, bringing copy, waiting at the stone, signing off on pages. McAllister, his jobs done, was hovering around like an expectant father outside the maternity ward, getting in everyone’s way.

  At six o’clock, Don returned with some finished pages.

  “They look good, no, they’re great,” pronounced McAllister.

  Rob and Joanne leaned back from their machines, their part of the process finished at last. Simultaneously they stretched their arms out, glanced at each other, and grinned.

  Rob looked around the room. “Station Hotel?” he asked. It was the only safe place to take Joanne; her reputation would be seriously besmirched should she be seen in a public bar.

  “You two go,” McAllister said. “Don and I still have a lot to do.”

  “Sorry Rob, I need an early night.” Joanne regretted her promise to Patricia; she would have loved to stay with the others. “I’m off to the Black Isle for Easter and have to catch an early ferry tomorrow morning.”

  Rob decided to stay on at the Gazette office. The excitement of waiting for the first pages was infectious.

  Eight thirty—another hour, maybe less, and the first edition of the new Highland Gazette, Easter 1957, would be printed. This is history, McAllister realized, the first real change in a hundred years.

  The abiding fear of an editor of a small-town newspaper was to print an article, a headline, destined to become one of the notorious legends of newspaper lore, one of the stories relayed to journalism cadets in every newspaper in the country. He remembered one apocryphal story. An Aberdeen paper, the day the Second World War was declared, ran a front page devoted to the local Agricultural show—“Local Man Wins Prize for Biggest Turnip,” or did they say neap? He wasn’t quite sure.

  Eight o’clock came, and he couldn’t wait any longer. Walking downstairs, he cheered immensely. This was the sound and the smell of a newspaper. Normally Don, the father of the chapel, and the comps would chase everyone, even the editor, out of the hallowed ground of the stone.

  But tonight was different. The comps and printers nodded silently as McAllister joined them, understanding his need to be there. The noise from the press, the clanking, the whirring, the steady industrial hum, filled the basement. The very walls, carved from solid stone, seemed to vibrate.

  Rob joined them, hovering by the big machine, mesmerized by the cogs and flywheels and conveyor belts all awhirl, clanking out copies of the broadsheet pages before they went shooting off to be sorted and folded into a tabloid format, then shunted to a man who would stack them and tie them into neat bundles of newspaper.

  Forty-five minutes later, the first copies rolled off the press. Don had already reviewed individual pages, but this was the first neatly folded copy of the newspaper, ink fresh and barely dry. A printer lifted one from the growing pile and ceremonially handed it to McAllister. McAllister grinned. They shook hands.

  Don grinned as his copy was handed to him. Rob waved from across the shop floor and came to join them. There were more handshakes, a slap or two on various backs, the father of the chapel and the printers joined in, grinning, before turning back to nurse the fickle machines.

  Rob left. The roar of his motorbike echoed through the empty streets as he sped home to share the new Highland Gazette with his parents. He debated whether to take a copy to Joanne, but decided it was not the done thing to arrive late at night on a quiet suburban street at the house of a woman who had walked out on her marriage.

  McAllister took two more copies, one to dissect, one as a souvenir. Don joined him on the steps of the Gazette building. They looked at each other.

  “It’s a start,” came McAllister’s verdict.

  “Aye.”

  And the two men, who from a distance resembled a reverse Laurel and Hardy—the skinny one tall, the fat one short—strode off in opposite directions into the dark of the town, both trying vainly to keep a grin of satisfaction from breaking out, frequently.

  THREE

  The Black Isle, a peninsula surrounded on three sides by the Cromarty, the Moray, and the Beauly firths, was an island of the mind rather than geography. Picturesque in parts, forbidding in places, it was quite unlike the surrounding glens of heather and lochs. Hilly country, less than twenty miles in length and eight miles across at its widest, a high ridge of forest ran through the middle, the farmland on either side broken by shallow fissures made by healthy burns. The abundant woodland had more oaks and beech and birch than the usually coniferous Highland forests. There were sacred wells, prehistoric
standing stones, a castle or two, the remains of Iron Age settlements, and a history teeming with stories and characters.

  Each village had a different character, the inland ones insular and isolated, the fishing villages insular, packed with working boats, pleasure craft not encouraged. The cliffs on the south side were studded with fossils and caves and were the haunt of summer birds. The northern shoreline—stony, seaweed strewn, was overshadowed by the upside-down pudding shape of Ben Wyvis. And Wyvis made the weather sun-snow-rain-wind-four-seasons-in-a-day weather.

  Like a series of nesting Russian dolls, each village and farm kept to itself, aware of neighbors, but not particularly hospitable to those a few miles over the hill.

  The name Achnafern came from the Gaelic words for farmland and woodland. Achnafern Farm looked prosperous, and it was. Surrounded by arable fields and pasture, a neat row of four, single-story stone farm cottages stood facing a large cobbled square with byres and barns and milking sheds completing the other sides. A little way off, nestled in the lee of the woods, looking towards distant hills that still showed a deep mantle of snow, stood a substantial, two-story farmhouse, also built of stone.

  A half-mile away, Achnafern Grange, an elegant Georgian manor house—multi-windowed, three-storied plus attics for the servants, home to generations of the same family—reigned over most of what it surveyed.

  Allie Munro was born in one of the farm cottages to a family who had been on the estate for generations. He was now foreman, as had been his father before him. His grandfather had been head plowman in charge of the teams of horses. Now Allie; his wife, Agnes; and their sons Fraser and Alistair lived in the big farmhouse.

  Even though it was a tied tenure, the house gave him a distinct feeling of pride. Not that he would ever let anyone know this. For all the inconvenience, the drafty hallways and the five bedrooms and a study used as the farm office, it was the status of the place that mattered. Now that was all about to vanish.

  Agnes Munro had hung out the washing, had tidied up the breakfast, had finished making broth, and was now baking a cake and trying to keep herself fresh and tidy before the big event. Her son Fraser, sprawled in the chair, feet up on the hearth rail, doing nothing but getting in her road, was ignoring her.

  “Now don’t be making arrangements over Easter,” Mrs. Munro was doing her best to keep her annoyance with her eldest son out of her voice. “I need you to help me clear out the house. We’ve too much stuff, and it’s a wee cottage we’re flitting to.”

  “She’s a right cheek thon madam, ordering us out of the house we’ve been in for years.”

  “Don’t go talking of your betters like that.”

  “Ma, Patricia’s no better than you or me.”

  “She’s the laird’s daughter.”

  “She’s a stuck-up tart.”

  At that his mother exploded.

  “I’ll no have yer smutty talk in my kitchen. You know nothing. You come back here after ten years, and you’re none the wiser for your time away. She’s a good lass thon. And as for stuck-up, who’s the one who helps me out? Patricia. Who takes me to tea when we go to town? Patricia. And to the Black Isle Show every year? Patricia. She buys my eggs every week and pays fair. She’s right generous at Christmas, and never forgets my birthday. Unlike some!”

  Fraser Munro had the grace to look shamefaced, but an apology was not in his character. “It’s still no right. She canny just up and tell us we have to leave.”

  “It’s the estate’s house, and well you know it. And I’m warning you one last time . . . it’s none of your business.” Mrs. Munro did not want to talk about the move. It upset her.

  She bustled around the Rayburn, banging pots, piling more wood into the fire, making an already hot kitchen almost unbearable. “We have a perfectly nice wee house to move into—much less work for me. You’ll be off back to the regiment soon enough, so with only your brother at home there’ll be plenty of room in the cottage for the three of us.”

  She didn’t catch his look. He had yet to tell them, but the army had had enough of Fraser Munro’s insubordination, his drunken sprees, and his fighting—this from a Highland regiment notorious for fighters.

  The clock in the hallway struck the half hour. Agnes Munro started to panic. She hadn’t picked the flowers.

  “The cake will be ready in three quarters of an hour,” she told him. “Mind and take it out the oven.” She had her doubts this would happen. “I’ll set the alarm clock to remind you.”

  “For heaven’s sake, Ma, I’m no that useless.”

  She didn’t say what was on the tip of her tongue, but hurried upstairs, threw off her apron, dabbed some powder on her nose, smudged on a dab of lipstick, smacked her lips, put on the single strand of river pearls Allie had bought her for their silver wedding anniversary, put on her best coat, then, on top of the new home perm, she perched her best Sunday hat, hoping it would stay put because it was often windy down by the old cathedral.

  When she left, Mrs. Munro pulled the back door shut as quietly as she could.

  It’s ridiculous I should be hiding from my own son, she thought as she went into the garden. There was not much available, spring being late in the Highlands. She selected lily of the valley for the matron of honor’s corsage. She snipped narcissus and jonquils, filling out the bridal bouquet with ferns. Not her choice, but it was what Patricia wanted.

  Patricia’s wedding day, not how I pictured it, but as long as she’s happy. Mrs. Munro sighed with her whole body. It was hard for her to hold back her disappointment at Patricia’s choice of husband. He was a man Mrs. and Mr. Munro hardly knew, but they had heard about him over the years.

  Mrs. Munro would never have voiced her thoughts, and only her husband knew how much she loved Patricia.

  After the babies were born, Mrs. Ord Mackenzie had been sent to a private hospital in Edinburgh “for her nerves” the doctor had said. The baby girl had been given to Mrs. Munro to look after. Since her own son Fraser was seven months old at the time, Mrs. Munro had suckled newborn Patricia until she was weaned, and the girl had lived with the Munros until she was nearly three.

  It was only when Mrs. Ord Mackenzie became aware of the gossip about their only child being raised in the farmhouse that she had taken Patricia to live in Achnafern Grange.

  “By then the damage had been done,” Mrs. Ord Mackenzie told her daughter—often.

  When Fraser Munro heard the toot of the horn and the squeak of the garden gate—one more job he hadn’t done—he stirred himself from the chair to go to the window. Like the beast of prey he was, he was always alert for his mother’s vulnerability.

  He stood, the rush from his hangover making him swear. He watched Patricia get out of the Land Rover, hug his mother, take the basket of flowers, and put it in the back. She made a quick, neat three-point turn, and they were gone.

  “Now what the hell is that all about?”

  Glad of the peace with no mother to nag him, ask him why he wasn’t helping his dad, give him jobs to do around the house, or tell him off for getting in her way, he fell back into the chair and dozed. He became aware of the smell of the cake. He ignored it. At first it was a slight scent of burning—he ignored it—then a full-blown blast of incinerated sugar and butter and eggs. Eventually the smoke forced him out of his chair. He opened the oven door; grabbed a tea towel; took out the cake; and chucked the cake tin, tea towel, and burnt offering into the sink. He left the smoke-filled kitchen and grabbed his coat and cap, deciding to make for the village, then, remembering he would have to walk, remembering he was furious with his father because he would not let him borrow the farm Land Rover, remembering he would have to help with the flitting this weekend, he was transfixed by a surge of rage, a sudden, blinding, red rage.

  “Thon bitch.”

  Yet somewhere within him, if he had had the slightest desire to examine his soul, he would have recognized that the sight of his mother and Patricia hugging was what did it. His rage was a rage of b
right-green jealousy.

  “Hurry up! We’ll miss the bus! And the ferry!”

  Annie had run ahead to the corner and was jumping up and down as she watched for the bus. Joanne, dragging Wee Jean by the wrist, was trying to run in high-heeled shoes, to carry the bags, to keep her hat from flying off.

  “It’s coming!” Annie shrieked. But she had the good sense to stop the bus, telling the conductor her mother was just around the corner.

  With a “sorry, sorry,” Joanne scrambled onto the platform. At the station, they ran for a second bus and caught it just as it was leaving for the ferry.

  When she saw the billboards outside the newsstand, she realized that she hadn’t picked up a copy of the Gazette.

  “Double blast!” she muttered.

  Annie overheard, as usual. She glared at her mum. Joanne’s hair had escaped; her nylons had a run; and she was pink from frustration from the early start to collect the girls from their grandparents, from the running, and from not being there with the others to see the new edition roll off the presses. Now she was frustrated at not having the newspaper to show off to Patricia, to at last show her friend that she had achieved something, was someone.

  They made it to the ferry on time and walked up the car ramp. It was a short crossing, took only five minutes. In bright sunshine, with deep blue skies, the pier on the Black Isle side was clearly visible, the whitewashed cottages along the shoreline, the bright yellow gorse on the hillside, and the sparkling waters of the firth made the setting picture-postcard perfect—a rare event.

  Because the passage connecting two wide firths was narrow and the tidal race deep and fierce, the ferry set off on a forty-five-degree angle to reach the other side safely.

  Halfway across, Wee Jean shrieked, jumping up and down in the prow. “Look, look, porpoises!”

  The exuberant mammals danced and frolicked alongside the boat. The crew and passengers smiled at the sight of the pod. Arches of miniature rainbows flew off their skins as they leaped and corkscrewed, racing the ferry.