Chapter 16 The Wild Girl, Chapter 6
Sir Henry gave a grunt of impatience. “Bloody waste of time. You should be out there looking for Chisholm not chatting like some woman with me.”
“I can’t proceed if I don’t have the facts, sir,” Melrose said.
“Oh, very well.” Sir Henry sighed and took a seat in the armchair across from him while MacDonald perched on an upright ladder-back chair near the window, clearly wanting to be as far away from this conversation as possible.
“Now,” Melrose said. “Should we not invite your wife to be present?”
“My wife is a delicate creature, and I don’t want to put her through more grief.
She’s already devastated with the loss of her daughter, even though I’m sure she finds it hard to forgive her for running off so inexplicably and ungratefully.
” He winced as if this admission pained him.
“And with that nobody, that lower-class Communist agitator. I’ll never understand it ever. ”
When Melrose said nothing he went on. “Maybe it was partially our fault. We sheltered her too much. We wanted to protect her, to keep her safe from the temptations of the outside world, and to find her a good husband. That’s how it had worked for my wife, and she was perfectly happy with the arrangement.
Lucy never showed any signs of being unhappy.
It’s true she didn’t take to young Chisholm to start with, but what did she know about men? She would have come to love him.”
“So your daughter had been living here, in this castle, all her life? She had not gone away to school or to a finishing school? You weren’t going to have her presented at court?”
“Absolutely not,” Sir Henry said. “Both are a total waste of money. Why educate a girl beyond the basics? We hired a decent governess for her who taught her to read, write and do arithmetic. Some geography, history and French. That’s all a young woman needs.
And as for being presented at court—why would I want to expose my daughter to a lot of young Englishmen when it was clear she had to marry a fellow Scot?
I’m proud of my Scottish blood. I can trace my ancestry back before the Vikings.
And I intend to keep that bloodline pure.
Chisholm would have been ideal for her.”
“And ideal for you, too, so I understand,” Melrose said.
“Meaning what by that?” Sir Henry glared.
“I understood that his estate on the mainland is just across from yours. Convenient for both of you, I’d imagine.”
“Damned cheek.” Sir Henry’s face flushed beet red. “Do you not think I wanted the best for my daughter?”
“I’m sure you did, sir,” MacDonald said quickly. Melrose stayed silent, telling himself to watch his mouth or he’d make the man into an enemy before they’d even started.
“So Chisholm arrived to meet your daughter, but she didn’t take to him, is that correct?” he asked.
“I’m not sure. You can never tell with young women. They are inclined to be flighty, aren’t they? I’m sure she would have liked him just fine and been prepared to go ahead with the match if that damned interloper had not shown up on our doorstep.” Melrose noted how Sir Henry had clenched his fist.
“He arrived here, claiming to be a climber and asking for advice on best routes up various mountains. I had been a keen mountaineer in my youth, so naturally I took to the boy, showed him around the Cuillin, the best climbs, and eventually invited him to stay. Big mistake! It turned out he was going around to our tenants, telling them about their so-called rights. Stirring up trouble. He was a labour agitator, that’s what he was.
More likely a Communist agitator trained by Russia, determined to ruin all the landowning families.
He didn’t understand how we have to survive here.
If beef cattle can make a profit for us, then we have to run beef.
Instead we’ve these tiny crofts, dividing my land into useless parcels and not giving me access to any decent grazing.
I was going to pay to relocate my tenants, set them up with new homes. Better homes. Indoor plumbing.”
“And he had designs on your daughter?”
“I had no idea,” Sir Henry said. “Not the least idea that that was going on behind my back. I must say they were damned good at hiding it. I say ‘they’ because I have to consider that she might have not been quite innocent in this matter. Well, I suppose I can understand it. I mean, she was an impressionable young girl. He wasn’t bad-looking, not badly spoken for a lower-class person, and he represented all that her parents hated.
But as for running off with him—who could ever have foreseen that?
A harmless little flirtation is one thing.
But running away from her family, from all that she held dear?
Choosing a life of poverty and disgrace?
I’ll never understand that. Never.” He brought his fist crashing down on the arm of his chair.
Melrose got a clear glimpse of why a daughter would want to run away from such a household.
“So when was the first moment you realized your daughter was gone?” Melrose asked.
“Around lunchtime the next day. Her maid reported that Lucy’s bed had not been slept in.”
“Was the castle door not kept locked at night?” Melrose asked. “You don’t have any servants on guard?”
Sir Henry gave a derisive chuckle. “My good man, what reason would we have for locking doors here? The Viking raids, for which this castle was built, are long gone. The people who live around us are all our tenants. They owe their livelihood to us. Besides, crime on this island is limited to the occasional sheep stealing, wouldn’t you agree, Inspector MacDonald? ”
“Oh definitely, Sir Henry,” MacDonald said.
“If it’s not sheep stealing, it’s getting into a fight after too much whisky.
But I’d say that robbery, burglary, are almost unheard of here.
For one thing we know our neighbours. For another where would you run to when you live on an island and the only way off is the ferry where you’d be recognized? ”
“And yet Mr Chisholm apparently managed to get away quite easily, and the young couple would have managed to elope had it not been for disaster befalling their boat,” Melrose said.
“That’s true enough. As for Chisholm, he may have stolen or borrowed a boat to take him to the mainland.
He may have paid one of our fishermen enough to buy his silence.
They have a difficult winter ahead of them.
When there are weeks of storms they can’t go out and fish.
Money would certainly be tempting, and Chisholm had plenty of it.
” He paused, grimacing. “My daughter would have wanted for nothing. She would have lived in luxury all her days. What on earth drove her to this reckless decision?”
Melrose waited until Sir Henry had finished his outburst. “So to get back to the night she disappeared. It was only the next day that the maid found her bed had not been slept in?”
“That is correct,” Sir Henry said. “We take our breakfast when we feel like it and do not always cross paths in the breakfast room. Lucy was of delicate constitution and sometimes would only have a sliver of toast and marmalade in the mornings, or even have her maid bring her a cup of tea to her bedroom. So the fact that nobody had seen her that morning was not unusual.”
“And when did you notice that Chisholm was missing?”
“I gather he told one of the servants that he wasn’t feeling well the evening before and would not be joining us for dinner.
We had housed him in one of the cottages, not the main house, you understand.
It would not have been proper to be under the same roof as my daughter before they were engaged.
But the servants took good care to see he wanted for nothing, and he took his meals with us.
So it was only after we found Lucy missing that the servants said they hadn’t seen Mr Chisholm all morning, and we found his bed had not been slept in either.
Naturally we leapt to the conclusion that he had fled in a hurry.
Most of his clothes were still hanging in the wardrobe. ”
Melrose looked across at MacDonald. “You said that your men had checked the ferries and he had not been seen aboard?”
“That is correct,” MacDonald said. “I suppose it’s possible he might have gone down to the Mallaig ferry, where he would not have been recognized so easily, but that would indeed be a long walk during a dark night. And as yet, he has not been spotted on the mainland either.”
“I expect we’ll find that the blaggard got someone to take him to another island and from there across to Ireland.” Sir Henry’s face was an angry red. “That’s what I would do if I was trying to flee. I presume you’ve been in touch with the Irish police?”
“It’s never easy dealing with the Irish, sir,” MacDonald said.
“Damned Irish. We should never have let them have their independence. Too weak by half.”
Melrose thought it wise not to point out that the part of Ireland where Chisholm would have landed would have been in Northern Ireland and therefore still part of Britain.
He felt they were getting off track. He was here to do an investigation on the island.
He had no way of chasing after a fugitive who might be abroad by now.
He paused, thinking through what he had already been told.
He cleared his throat. “I understand there was another person who might have been involved. This so-called Wild Girl? Was I not told that she was living with you these days?”
“Flora, you mean? Yes, they did call her the Wild Girl down there in the village. The poor child was left to fend for herself while her father was out at sea. My wife and I talked about it for some time. We felt so badly for her, running barefoot through the countryside like that. It wasn’t natural.
And when she started to grow into a young woman and we saw the young men in the village eyeing her, my wife finally decided we had to act.
The girl was quite unschooled, innocent, unaware of the world.
She’d be an easy target for any young man with bad designs on her.
So we persuaded her to come and live with us.
We did it with good intentions. Whether that was wise or not, I can’t say. ”
“What do you mean by that, sir?” Melrose asked.
“I suppose I’m asking myself whether Flora turned out to be a bad influence in any way.
Whether she might have put the idea into Lucy’s head to run off with a man.
I’m sure it would never have occurred to my daughter before that girl came here.
” He paused again, staring out of the window, lost in thought.
“So your daughter became friendly with her?”
He nodded. “As it happened Lucy took to her instantly. I suppose she had been lacking in female friendship. Her brother was off at university. She had a governess but was getting too old for lessons, so a companion was what she craved. The girls became bosom friends. Inseparable. Flora slept in the small maid’s room adjacent to Lucy’s suite. ”
“You say the girls were close. Did Lucy not confide in her what she planned to do? Did she not notice Lucy slipping away in the night?”
“That’s just the problem,” Sir Henry said.
“Flora is gone and she wasn’t here when Lucy ran away.
A day earlier she had heard that her father was poorly—caught a chill out at sea—and said she had to go and visit him.
So off she went with some broth from the kitchen.
She does tend to come and go, when the mood takes her.
She has to be out running through the heather or climbing over the rocks like a wild creature.
That’s why she’s called the Wild Girl, and I don’t think we’ve ever fully tamed her.
My wife worries about her—that she’ll come to some kind of bad end.
Her mother wasn’t exactly a saint. For all we know she could be meeting men, doing what comes naturally to her.
Believe me, we’ve had many a heated discussion on what happens next. ”
“Meaning when Lucy got married and moved away?” Melrose asked.
“Precisely.” Sir Henry thumped the arm of his chair again.
“Do we still look after her when Lucy goes? What would become of her? Ideally she would have moved with Lucy to the mainland and lived as her companion, but she wouldn’t abandon her father—although the man does not deserve her devotion.
He hardly paid her a scrap of attention all the while she was growing up.
When he wasn’t out fishing, he was at the pub, staggering home late and full of whisky.
Flora would help him off with his shoes and put him to bed when she was a tiny scrap of a girl. ”
“So she is currently down with her father in his cottage?” Melrose asked.
“That’s right. She went a couple of days ago.”
“Have the police talked to her yet?” Melrose looked across at MacDonald.
“We have not,” MacDonald said. “When one of my men went to the cottage nobody was there. The father was out at sea apparently, and the girl . . . well, there was no sign of her. Maybe she saw the police car coming and went to hide. She has a deep distrust of the law, like most people around here.”
“So we will need to find her and talk to her as soon as possible,” Melrose said. “She would be the one person who Lucy would have confided in.”
“If she confided in anyone,” Sir Henry said. “My daughter has always kept her feelings to herself. And she probably paid for this with her life.”
“Do you have any reason to believe that Flora was in league with Chisholm then? You called her a wild creature earlier.”
Sir Henry hesitated, frowning. “No, I suppose I was overwrought. I had not noticed Chisholm paying any attention to her. In fact, given his nature I cannot believe he’d have any interest in someone who is clearly his social inferior. She was Lucy’s companion. Not worth a second glance.”
“Do you happen to have any photographs of the people involved?” Melrose asked. “It would be helpful if I knew who I was looking for.”
“I suppose so.” Sir Henry got up and left the room. Melrose and MacDonald glanced at each other.
“I don’t know how you’ll ever get to the bottom of this,” MacDonald said. “Rather you than me, my friend. As soon as we’ve finished up here, I’ll be back to Portree and then it’s all up to you.”
He looked rather smug.