Chapter 25
Emma realized that she had read several chapters without taking notes.
The story had picked up in tempo. She was enjoying the interactions with Jock and the local inhabitants.
It all felt delightfully foreign to her.
She opened her notebook and started to jot down random thoughts.
Chisholm had left in a hurry and hadn’t taken all his things.
Lucy had also left in a hurry, but with a different motive.
It all seemed rather clear. Chisholm had overheard Lucy and Stewart planning to leave and slipped down to the harbour to make sure they didn’t make it to the other side.
Then he had grabbed a few items and made off.
Maybe he had found a car to take him across to the other side of the island where he could hire a boat to take him to the mainland.
But then there was Flora, also missing. Was it possible that Emma had got it wrong, and it was Flora who overheard Lucy planning to leave and decided she couldn’t bear to be left behind?
She would have the facility to go down to the harbour unnoticed.
She was good at it. Perhaps she had only meant to stop Lucy and Stewart from leaving, by making the sail inoperable, but when they drowned she felt remorse and went to hide out in the hills.
Or was terrified she’d be blamed. But that didn’t explain why Chisholm had also slipped away.
Good. Emma nodded with satisfaction. Now we have a good puzzle.
She was keen to see where it was going next.
She glanced up at the clock on the mantelpiece.
A little more time to read before dinner.
Would Iris be present? she wondered. Emma considered what she should say to her.
Had she really made up her mind that she’d finish writing the book?
She looked back at the unread pages sitting on the sofa beside her.
She supposed it depended on how much further in the story Iris had progressed.
Because if Emma had to take it on now, she had no idea where Iris could be going with it.
With a small sigh she picked up the next chapter:
The Wild Girl, Chapter 15
After a satisfying meal, at which he turned down the suggestion of a wee dram of whisky, Melrose asked Jock if he could be available that afternoon.
Jock had to meet an elderly lady at the ferry and take her to her daughter’s house, but after that he could drive Melrose again.
So Melrose took the opportunity to make notes, then telephoned MacDonald at Portree, saying that he wished to question the governess and to visit the Chisholm estate.
Could MacDonald arrange for a police vehicle to drive him around the next day?
“What’s wrong with Young Jock?” MacDonald asked.
Melrose chuckled. “He won’t take his motor car on the ferry. Afraid it will fall off, or something. He’s proud to own a new cab.”
MacDonald chuckled, too. “Very well. I’ll see what I can do. What time?”
“Oh, right after breakfast, I think. Shall we say ten?”
“How are you getting along?” MacDonald asked. “Found anything that we didn’t know?”
“Not really,” Melrose said. “I understand that Chisholm was a chap who thought a lot of himself. He could well have been furious if he knew that the girl he was supposed to marry was running off with someone else. So far I haven’t found anyone who saw him making a getaway, but there is so much ground left to cover. ”
“And what about the Wild Girl?” MacDonald asked. “Has she turned up yet?”
“She has not.”
“Do we know why she didn’t return to the castle after she took her father the soup?”
“She never took him the soup in the first place,” Melrose said.
“That’s the strange part. Why did she vanish the day before any of this blew up?
Being a creature of nature did she sense that all was not well?
I’d dearly like to locate her if I can. I’m having Jock drive me around the various crofts in the hills this afternoon, to see if any of them have seen her. ”
“Good luck with that. I’m told she could be away for weeks if she felt like it.
Not so easy now, with the fancy dresses they made her wear at the castle.
I heard she’d become a fashionable lady.
They said they couldn’t even tell her apart in her manners from Miss Lucy.
She’d become a proper little aristocrat. They went around like sisters.”
“So perhaps she’s in mourning for a lost friend,” Melrose said.
“Or perhaps she didn’t want her dear friend to leave without her and decided to stop it,” MacDonald said.
“That did cross my mind as well.”
“You’ll never be able to prove that,” MacDonald said, “unless she decides to confess. If that girl wanted to move without being seen, then nobody would have seen her.”
“And if Flora was the culprit, that wouldn’t explain why Chisholm decided to vanish, too. Unless they went off together.”
“Highly unlikely,” MacDonald said. “If anyone was proud of his lineage it was he. He’d never go off with the brat of a fisherman and a trollop.”
“Ah well. Back to work,” Melrose said. “Talk about looking for a needle in a haystack!”
“We do have a dog on the island who is good at tracing lost climbers,” MacDonald said. “If he could be any use, I’ll send him down to you.”
“Yes, I suppose that might show us at least which direction Chisholm took when he left the castle. Not that that would say much.”
“Let me ask you this,” MacDonald said. “What is your impression of Young Jock? I know he’s newly married with a baby on the way. And he’s purchased a new taxi. Probably needs money right now. Do you think he could be bribed to drive someone like Chisholm to the ferry and to keep quiet about it?”
Melrose paused, considering. “I don’t know him well enough yet,” he said. “He seems like a decent sort of bloke. But if someone offered him enough money . . . who can say? We all have the point at which we can be bought, don’t we?”
“Do you?”
“I haven’t reached it yet,” Melrose said. “I suppose I’m not far enough up the ranks of the Glasgow Police to make it worth being bribed. But we do hear rumours of the ones at the top with their palms open and willing to look away when necessary.”
“It’s nae like that here, I can tell you,” MacDonald said, “but of course there aren’t the criminals on Skye, not folks with the kind of money to make it worth our while to look away.” He laughed heartily at his own joke.
Melrose was glad to hang up. He had never really taken to MacDonald, although he had to admit the man had gone out of his way to be friendly.
But then he found himself thinking about their conversation.
If Chisholm, or even Sir Henry, had offered MacDonald enough money to keep the interloper from Glasgow from finding out the truth, would he have taken it?
Jock returned at three thirty and they spent the rest of the daylight hours driving around the crofts on the hillsides, going as far as the other side of the island and checking out other small hamlets along the way.
The thought that had struck Melrose when he had arrived on the ferry occurred to him again: there were very few people on this island.
Each of the crofts was a smallholding with a few animals, maybe a Highland cow or two, some vegetables, dying at this time of year, and a peat stack, cut from peat beds higher up the mountain.
The journey was not an easy one: the narrow road switchbacked over hills, making Melrose close his eyes on occasion as nausea crept in.
Each crofter they visited invited them in for a strupak, and they had to chat politely while tea and some kind of bread or cake was served.
Most of the crofters knew Flora, but none had seen her recently.
“Let’s go back,” Melrose said as a narrow band of red sunlight hung beneath thickening clouds. “I don’t think we’re going to learn any more, and if I have to eat another oatcake I’ll burst.”
As they headed back from the western shore they passed over the foothills of the Cuillin, now close and etched against the fading light.
For the first time Melrose was aware of the power and danger of the mountains, the steep and craggy cliffs.
They might not be the Alps but they were mountains to be taken seriously. He was glad he was not a climber.
The last of the daylight faded as they came down the hill towards Kyleakin.
The water in the strait was smooth as glass.
A crossing ferry cast lights on the water.
It was a charming sight. What if I lived somewhere like this?
he found himself wondering. Married a good woman, settled down, did police work that involved locating lost sheep?
But then he remembered that he did not speak Gaelic.
And from the sounds he had heard, he was not likely to pick it up!
He ate a good dinner of shepherd’s pie and peas, followed by a steamed pudding and custard and a pint of local ale, then he went to bed and slept soundly.
The next morning he walked down to the ferry and enjoyed the crossing to Kyle of Lochalsh on a fine day and smooth sea. As they sailed he asked the ferrymen whether they might have noticed Chisholm crossing from the island. This was met with shaken heads.
“He’s a tall chap, isn’t he?” one said. “And he has a sort of look about him. I’d have remembered him.”
At the police station he met Constable MacLean, who announced that he had been assigned to the murder investigation. He seemed to think this was a perk and was quite deferential to Melrose, who found this amusing. He was used to being near the bottom rung of the ladder.
The police vehicle was a well-worn Morris Minor, and it smelled as if the last occupant had been eating his fish and chips in it.
They drove first to the governess’s residence.
Melrose had forgotten that her father was the local schoolmaster and was surprised when they pulled up at the school.
Children’s voices floated out from a classroom, repeating the four times table.