Chapter 19 The Wild Girl, Chapter 9
As they talked Roland manoeuvred the estate car through the pine wood and then down the narrow track until it reached the road.
He drove rather fast, as someone who knows the road well, and Melrose had to hang on around the sharp bends.
Once on the tarmacadam he put his foot down and the vehicle sped forward.
Melrose could see Roland smirking and waiting to find out if he was scared.
He stared resolutely forward and asked, in the calmest voice possible, “So how far away is this boat being kept?”
“Not far. Only at the other end of the village,” Roland said, slowing down as they approached the line of cottages and drove along the waterfront. “It’s at the old lifeboat slip. They moved the lifeboat further down the coast. Not much use for it here. The water’s not too treacherous.”
“Except that particular night,” Melrose said.
“I don’t believe it was any worse than usual. If the boat was compromised and the man was a poor sailor it would be easy enough to capsize it, and the water temperature here is pretty frigid.”
As they drove past the cottages Melrose was aware of curtains being pulled back, curious glances. Word would be all around the place by now that he had arrived. He felt that he should question them all. Someone might have glanced out of a window on that dark night and seen something.
“Where was the boat docked when they set off?”
“In the harbour below the castle,” Roland said. “That’s where all the boats are moored here.”
“So what did you think of Stewart? Did you have much to do with him?”
“He was a pleasant enough chap to talk to,” Roland said.
“Educated. Went to Edinburgh on a scholarship. And seemed interested in the local fauna and geology. Of course we didn’t find out until later that he was really stirring up our tenants, telling them their rights and how to stand up to my father if he wanted to evict them from their land.
Damned cheek of the man—accepting our hospitality, too.
Not batting an eyelid when he sat down to dinner with us. My father was livid when he found out.”
“When did your father find out?”
“That morning. He had a good old shouting match with Stewart and told him he wanted him out of his house and off the island or it would be the worse for him.”
“Interesting,” Melrose said.
Roland looked at him sharply. “I don’t know what you are implying, but my father would never have done anything underhand like damaging a boat.
He wanted the man gone. If he got in his boat and sailed away that would have been enough.
He would not have been foolish enough to have come back again.
Here we are.” He pulled up at a shed balanced at the top of a slipway into the water.
The words “Lifeboat Station” were still visible, painted on the side of the building.
They got out. The rain had now picked up and stung Melrose’s cheeks.
Living in the city he had never realized what an impact weather had when you lived in the country.
Roland Hamilton did not seem to be in the least perturbed by it.
He was wearing a tweed jacket like his father, and Melrose reasoned that it kept out the rain as well as his Burberry.
They went around to the back of the building, bordering the road, and Roland opened the door, which had not been locked.
Inside was gloomy, with only high, narrow windows along either side.
A cold dampness hung in the air. There were shelves along the walls but the floor space was entirely empty save for one boat that lay on its side, its mainsail spread out on the floor.
It was indeed nothing more than a dinghy—twelve feet maybe?
A simple wooden craft, barely big enough for two people.
Melrose stepped forward to examine it in the shaft of light from the open door.
“Not much to see, is there?” Roland said. “Sail torn pretty badly.”
Melrose could see that. Several great horizontal slashes across it.
But not ripped to shreds. Could the boat still have functioned with that amount of damage to the sail?
Surely Stewart or Lucy would have noticed the moment it was hoisted outside the harbour.
Why hadn’t they turned back at that moment?
He knew the answer as soon as he posed the question.
Because they were both desperate to get away before they were caught.
They decided to risk it. Perhaps she had held the sail together enough for the boat to move, but when they encountered high winds mid-channel, it was ripped from her hands and tore even more because one of the ropes that controlled it had been cut through.
“I gather the rope that held the sail had also been damaged?”
“So I heard,” Roland said. He didn’t sound particularly interested.
Melrose fished around and found one. It had frayed and snapped but it was hard to tell if the cut had been deliberate. It appeared to have been in part cleanly cut through.
“I’m no sailor,” he said. “Do you know much about boats?”
“Not that much,” Roland said. “I have sailed, but it’s not an interest of mine.
I’m more into the proverbial huntin’, shootin’ and fishin’ that we gentry are supposed to like.
And frankly I am looking forward to moving to the city and becoming a lawyer, only please don’t tell my father because he assumes I’ll take over the estate one day.
Which perhaps I will when I’ve made my pile, married well and produced the son and heir.
But now that Lucy is gone, I’ll probably have to stick around for my mother’s sake.
Have you talked to her? She’s absolutely devastated, as you can imagine.
She adored Lucy. We all did. I can’t tell you how terrible I feel. ”
Melrose nodded at this sudden opening up. Roland was little more than a boy, and he had just lost a beloved sister. He felt more kindly towards him.
He felt duty bound to examine the rest of the boat but saw nothing suspicious, at least to his untrained eye.
“I don’t see what else we could do here,” he said. “Why don’t we go and try to locate Flora.”
Roland gave him an amused glance. “Only if you’re willing and equipped to go tramping over the hills in the rain,” he said.
“Or even climbing halfway up the Cuillin. That girl can go up a rock face like a lizard. When the locals say there’s something not quite natural about her, I have to agree, although if you talk to her now she sounds like any refined young Scottish girl.
She’s certainly learned to copy my sister in how to behave in polite society.
She could probably make a good match for herself if she wishes.
” He paused, thinking. “I’ve no idea what will become of her now. ”
They came out into stinging, horizontal rain.
“Beastly day,” Roland said. “Are you sure you want to do this? I could drive you back to your hotel.”
“Thanks, but I feel I should press on as quickly as possible. Your parents and my boss expect me to be working hard, trying to get to the bottom of this.”
“Come now, man,” Roland said. “Surely there is nothing hard to unravel. Chisholm learned they were eloping, fell into a fit of rage, slashed the sail, cut the sheet, and when they drowned he realized he could be found guilty of murder and managed to get away. Have your people send messages to be on the lookout for him at all the ports, although it’s probably too late. ”
“You don’t think his family could be hiding him then?”
“I didn’t say that. Quite possibly they are. But since the Chisholm place is about as impenetrable as ours and their lands are a few hundred acres of mountainside I’d say good luck in finding him.”
A feeling of despair engulfed Melrose as he climbed back into the car.
His first solo case and he was doomed to fail.
The books would be closed without any arrest and sentencing.
And he found himself wondering whether someone in the Glasgow force was unhappy with his rapid promotion and wanted to make sure he failed.
They drove off, the tires sending up a sheet of spray.
The last houses of the village were left behind, and the road swerved up the next hillside, cresting at last with what would have been a sweeping view of the land beyond, except it was all hidden in dark grey mist. Any mountains had ceased to exist. The shoreline lay there as an indistinct line through the rain.
The road had turned into an unpaved track and they slithered through mud as they came down the hill.
“Where does this lead?” Melrose asked.
“Not anywhere much,” Roland said. “This part of the shore is scarcely populated, apart from our crofters.”
“And Flora’s father? He’s one of your crofters?”
“He’s a fisherman and a law unto himself.
He is beholden to nobody. You’ll see his cottage ahead of you as we come around this bend.
” As he spoke he swung the wheel, and Melrose had a view down a steep drop to the shoreline.
A stream tumbled down the hillside onto the rocks in a small waterfall.
One solitary cottage perched amongst the rocks.
An outcropping provided a tiny natural harbour, and a boat bobbed at anchor there.
So it seemed that the fisherman was at home.
A few minutes later they came to a halt in a front yard littered with lobster pots, bits of timber, the skeleton of a rowing boat, old tins, tubs and fish crates.
“Watch what you say,” Roland said. “He’s not the easiest of men, not the best of tempers, and he owns a shotgun.”
With those cheerful words he got out of the estate car.