Chapter 24 #2
“Aye,” she said. “I saw the young man who drowned. He went down to the boat around midday and he had a bag with him. He didn’t stay long and came back having left the bag. I assumed he was preparing to leave as he had the mainsail ready to be raised.”
“You didn’t see him come back later, with the young lady then?”
“I did not. But I was preparing Dan’s dinner and I keep the curtains closed after dark.
But Callum MacLeod says he let the dog out before going to bed and saw two people, a man and a woman, walking together near the harbour.
He said they walked close together holding hands so he didn’t like to be too nosy.
He thought it might be Alasdair and Jenny, you know, Callum’s daughter and the young man who is courting her?
Anyway the girl was wearing a long cloak with a hood up, just like Jenny has.
So he went back inside and didn’t see where they were heading. ”
Melrose made a note of this. Agnes had mentioned Miss Lucy’s hooded cloak. “But you saw nobody earlier. Nobody working on that boat? Damaging the sail?”
Both MacLeods shook their heads.
“Were you in the harbour at all that day, or out at sea?” Melrose turned to the husband.
“I was out,” he said. “I left before sunrise and came back mid-afternoon.”
“And nobody was lurking around the harbour either of those times?”
“Not that I saw. But I’m fully occupied with getting the boat ready to go and then unloading the catch when we come back.”
“We? You have a mate on the boat?”
“Aye. I operate it with young Robbie from number seven down there. It takes at least a crew of two to work a fishing boat.”
He decided to change tactics. “Did you ever see this Mr Chisholm for yourselves?”
Dan looked across at his wife, then shook his head. “Not close up. But he did drive past here in a car once, so I got a glimpse of his face. He looked as if there was a bad smell under his nose. Rather haughty, if you get my meaning.”
“But you’ve never seen him at the harbour.”
“I have not. Him I would have remembered seeing.”
“We don’t get many mainlanders here,” Jinty said. “No outsiders at all much. Occasionally ramblers or climbers will come wanting a room in the summer, but they usually prefer to stay where there is a good pub and some fish and chips.”
“You didn’t hear Mr Chisholm asking any of the boatmen around here to take him across to the mainland?”
Dan looked puzzled. “And why would he want a ride on a herring boat when there is a perfectly good ferry that takes him right to his own front door?”
There didn’t seem to be much more to ask.
He thanked them for their hospitality, and he and Jock were escorted to the door.
He ducked to step over the threshold, turned to thank them again, then asked, “You’d have no idea where Flora might be hiding out?
Does anyone know where she goes when she runs away? ”
“No idea at all,” Jinty said. “No one’s ever been able to find her when she didn’t want to be found. Like a spirit she is, a wild thing. But then who could blame her, growing up with no supervision, and her mother wild and flighty herself.”
“Hush, woman,” Dan said. “It doesn’t do to speak ill of the dead.”
“Well, she was.” Jinty gave Melrose a knowing look.
“Grew up in the village here and danced with all the boys but never stayed with one. Then she gets herself a job at the big house and gave herself airs of being grander than the rest of us. Then suddenly out of the blue she announces she’s going to marry none other than that Angus.
Can you imagine that? She could have had her pick and she chooses him, who always was free with his temper and his drinking, and lives cut off from the rest of the world.
She paid for it, didn’t she. Miserable and lonely, stuck out there with no one to talk to except the baby, and then she goes and kills herself. ”
“We don’t know that it was deliberate,” Dan said, but Jinty sniffed. “You don’t stand on a cliff and fall off by accident. Of course she wanted out of that life, and I can’t say that I blame her.”
Melrose couldn’t think what else to ask and bade a polite goodbye, moving along to the rest of the row of cottages.
The occupants of these houses yielded no more information of use.
The harbour wall shielded anyone working on a boat from casual eyes.
The fishermen had gone out early, come back with their catches and gone home to a well-earned meal.
None of the men had been approached by Mr Chisholm to ferry him to the mainland, and they couldn’t think where he’d find a boat for several more miles along the coast. The consensus was that he’d be mad to try and walk that way.
None of the women had seen Flora pass by their homes.
“She had the mother’s bad blood,” one of the husbands agreed. “I don’t reckon Angus was the father of that child at all. I reckon it was a sailor from one of those boats that put in here during the Great War.”
His wife looked up from her knitting. “I’m more inclined to think it was a storm-kelpie.”
“What exactly is a storm-kelpie?” Melrose asked Jock as they drove back along the seafront.
“It’s a kind of sea-demon that inhabits the lochs and shores of these parts,” Jock said. “A shape-shifter, you know. So it could appear like a handsome young man, or a horse or whatever it chose.”
Melrose tried not to smile at the simplicity of the islanders. “Did you ever see one yourself?” he asked.
“No, but there’s plenty of folks who will swear they saw one.”
“In what shape?”
“Various. A seal who turned into a man. A horse who galloped into the sea and disappeared.” Jock shrugged.
He glanced across at Melrose, who was staring straight ahead, trying not to smile.
“You may well mock,” Jock said, “but when you live on a place like Skye, where the storms sound like banshees out of hell and the mist can come down to envelop you in minutes, you’re inclined to believe a lot of things. ”
“I’m sorry,” Melrose said. “I’ve grown up in the big city where we’re surrounded by realism. Life is hard enough with smoke that chokes your lungs and damp that gives you consumption and gangs waiting to rob you. We don’t need the supernatural to scare us.”
Jock nodded.
“I think we’ve done about all we can here for today,” Melrose said. “I don’t know about you but I could do with some food. It’s been a long time since breakfast.”
“I wouldn’t say no to that,” Jock agreed. “Do you fancy fish and chips? They do a good one at the café near your hotel.”
“Sounds good to me,” Melrose said.