t last it was our prearranged time to meet with the instigator of this investigation, Mrs Isla McLaren. Why Holmes kept her for last, I could not fathom. With help from Mungo, we managed to locate her rooms in the South Tower. t last it was our prearranged time to meet with the instigator of this investigation, Mrs Isla McLaren. Why Holmes kept her for last, I could not fathom. With help from Mungo, we managed to locate her rooms in the South Tower.
Her warm and welcoming salon was appointed in warm reds with blue and gold accents, crowded by tall bookcases filled with gold tipped volumes, and accented with silk flowers in profusion. But it was books which dominated the suite, resting on most every surface, including the small table next to the lady.
Mrs McLaren the younger now regarded us calmly from a deep blue velvet armchair. The fire cast copper highlights in her hair and the light glinted off her gold spectacles, making it difficult to read her expression. She was truly a beautiful woman despite her studious exterior.
‘The McLarens’ fortunes, as you have noted, Mr Holmes, are on the rise. Despite Charles’s shortcomings – and they are numerous – we have made inroads in the London market and a Royal Warrant seems within reach. And yet I fear for our future.’
‘Why is that, Mrs McLaren?’ asked Holmes, seating himself in a chair opposite hers.
‘The family has an unfortunate reputation, one which has cast a darkness over the name, and one which we struggle to overcome.’
‘There are indeed unusual features,’ said Holmes, flashing me a look of subtle amusement. His humour could at times be said to be inappropriate.
‘It is hardly a laughing matter, sir. There is what one might call an aura of tragedy. First the disappearance of baby Anne, when the brothers were quite small. A mystery that was sadly never solved. Then, later, the death of his wife, the Lady Elizabeth, followed more recently by Donal’s unfortunate death at Khartoum, which sent the laird into a prolonged melancholy.’
‘Of course, there is also Lady Elizabeth’s ghost,’ I supplied.
‘And Donal’s.’ added Isla McLaren.
‘Ah, I have not yet heard of that one,’ Holmes drawled. His scorn for belief in the supernatural was in clear view.
‘Donal’s ghost was reportedly seen in and around the distillery.’
‘His ghost, you say?’ said Holmes with a smile.
‘Yes. An angry one, reportedly. And with a death attributed to it in the distillery, an asphyxiation by carbon dioxide.’
‘Why attribute this to a ghost? It is a very real danger,’ said Holmes.
‘The dead man had worked there daily for eighteen years. It was a mistake he would not have made. And the ghost had apparently been seen the night before in that very room.’
Holmes shrugged.
‘Consequently,’ Mrs McLaren continued, ‘several of the older distillery men, all of them believers, deserted the company for other distilleries, one to Glenmorangie, one to Oban, and two as far as Islay. This was quite a loss as they had been with the family for many years, in one case for generations. And of course they took their expertise with them.’
‘How did the family respond to this experienced man’s accident?’ asked Holmes.
Mrs McLaren shrugged. ‘Well, following the death, the sightings of Donal’s ghost stopped, the laird thereafter refused to discuss it. What you may find interesting is that none of the more recently hired war veterans abandoned their jobs, Mr Holmes. The new hires are a rough lot.’
‘Indeed. So they were already in place. I am curious, how did your foreman, Cameron Coupe, take to their arrival?’
‘Apparently he welcomed them, Mr Holmes. Cheap labour, if I may be so callous.’
Holmes sighed, and rose from his chair. He began to pace. ‘The laird thinks contact between these men and Fiona was impossible due to various precautions. Would you concur?’
‘I would. The laird has turned the castle into a fortress at night. At the distillery, the employee quarters are similarly secured. In my estimation this has been effective.’
‘So it appears,’ conceded Holmes.
Mrs McLaren kept her eyes fixed upon the detective as he moved about the room. ‘I would have been more circumspect had I been given the selection of these men,’ said she.
‘Interesting. How so?’ murmured Holmes from across the room, where he now stood admiring one of the bookshelves.
‘You have toured the distillery, need you ask? A number of them are disturbed, impaired in such a way as to make them possibly unreliable.’
‘Dangerous?’
‘Many of the older employees have now left us as a result. The idea was promising, the execution less so.’
‘The mental state of veterans is not always obvious, Mrs McLaren,’ I offered. ‘For example, I was much depressed upon my own return from war.’
Holmes glanced at me with approbation. He changed the subject abruptly.
‘What of Lady McLaren, the laird’s wife? You mentioned her story was part of the family’s dark reputation.’
‘Yes. Lady Elizabeth’s death was never fully explained, and this earlier tragedy has cast further shadow upon us.’
He moved from one bookcase to another and asked, rather casually, over his shoulder, ‘I know that the woman froze outside the castle and no one heard her cries for help. Do relate the particulars.’
‘Mr Holmes, please sit down.’ He seemed to ignore her and continued looking at the books, his back to her. She shrugged and briefly recounted the story of Lady McLaren’s death by freezing, exactly as told to us by the groundsman and the laird.
‘No one heard her attempts to re-enter the castle?’ persisted Holmes.
‘The bell malfunctioned.’
‘It was examined?’
‘Yes, Mr Holmes. There was a defect. The incident was ruled an accident. This was before I came to Braedern in any case. And since her death, her ghost is said to roam the hall near your rooms.’
‘Why there, particularly?’ Holmes now stood before a third bookcase, deliberately reading some of the spines.
Here Isla McLaren’s faced darkened. ‘I wager you have been told already, Mr Holmes. Stop, please. What is it that you find so interesting about my bookshelves?’
‘Your books. Continue, please.’
‘Holmes, really!’ I exclaimed.
Mrs McLaren shrugged and gave up for the moment. ‘You recall, Mr Holmes, that I am not a believer in ghosts. But this one story is hard to explain, among the many which I can easily discredit. That wing previously housed the nursery. And it was from there that the laird and lady’s baby daughter disappeared one night.’
‘Ah yes, we heard something of this,’ I said.
Holmes continued his inventory of her books.
‘When did this occur?’
‘Some thirty years past.’
‘Tell us what you know, please.’
‘It is little spoken of. But from what I have discovered, Donal was six, Charles four, the daughter Anne was nearly three, and Alistair but an infant. One night, while the nurse slept, Anne simply disappeared. There was no evidence of a break-in, no struggle, and no one heard a thing. She simply vanished.’
‘From her bed?’
‘Apparently so.’
‘The nurse slept where?’
‘In an adjoining room. The other children were asleep when the nurse came to check on her at 2 a.m. and discovered the child missing.
Holmes turned from the bookcase to look at the lady. ‘A kidnapping, perhaps? Was a ransom demanded?’
‘None, and there was no explanation.’
‘What kind of abduction could it be with no ransom?’ I wondered aloud.
‘One gone wrong. The child may have died. The kidnappers fallen out. Or it was a theft, pure and simple of a child for someone who wanted her,’ suggested Holmes.
Mrs McLaren nodded. ‘The poor Lady McLaren, who believed fervently in ghosts, was never the same afterwards, and lingered in the area frequently – in life, and some say she continued to do so after her own death.’
Holmes turned and now faced a smaller bookcase near her bedchamber. He began to peruse the books quickly, in a curious manner as though mentally cataloguing them at great speed. His thin fingers danced across the spines.
‘All right, Mr Holmes, I have had enough.’ She removed her spectacles and rubbed her eyes, clearly fatigued, though from the questions or Holmes’s antics I could not determine.
He glanced up at her with a distracted smile, did a strange double take at her, then abruptly turned back to his inventory.
‘Mr Holmes,’ she repeated, with more firmness. ‘I think of books as a window to a person’s private self. The soul, perhaps. I have asked you twice to desist studying mine. Your actions are an intrusion.’
He seemed not to hear, and pulled a volume from the shelf. ‘You have excellent taste. Ah! Goethe, in the original German. A fine evening’s entertainment.’ He opened the volume and thumbed the pages. ‘But the title page has been torn out! Where did you acquire this?’
Isla replaced her spectacles. ‘Why does it interest you? At a used bookseller, of course. Mr Holmes, you are transgressing. It is as if you went into my boudoir, opened the drawers there, and began rifling my undergarments.’
Holmes looked up in utter surprise at this. I felt my own face flush violently.
To his credit, Holmes closed the book and gently replaced it on the shelf. The lady approached, took the book back out again, and refiled it in its proper place an inch or two to the right.
He stepped back from her.
‘You are not establishing rapport with your suspect, Mr Holmes,’ she admonished. ‘Although I would have preferred you consider me an ally. If you would kindly take a seat we shall continue. If not, I must ask you to leave.’
Holmes shrugged but duly sat and resumed our conversation, taking a pose so relaxed as to seem insolent. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Let us return to the nursery which was in the East Wing. When was it modernised? Particularly the plumbing?’
Isla McLaren resumed her seat across from us.
‘Shortly after the child’s disappearance, the laird moved the other three children elsewhere, and much later, after Elizabeth’s death, he finished the plumbing, and created the guest wing in which you now reside. And yet the Lady’s ghost is said to remain. She is particularly vivid at night.’
‘Yes, none of the servants will enter then, except Mungo, who is terrified.’
‘They say she is an angry ghost, wanting to find her daughter, wanting to be “let in” – although whether to the house, or to the secret of Anne’s disappearance is not clear. I will admit, this particular ghost gives even me pause.’
‘Why? Have you seen it?’
‘What does it matter? I am not a believer, Mr Holmes.’
‘So much of your reporting is second hand, Mrs McLaren. “It is said”, “I am told”, and so on. I would like to hear something you have witnessed yourself, first hand. And so I ask you again, did you see the reported ghost in the East Wing? Or any others? As Shakespeare wrote “in the night, imagining some fear, how easy is a bush supposed a bear”.’
‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream, of course. But comes the reply, “But all the story of the night told over, and all their minds transfigured so together.” I played Hippolyta in a school production, Mr Holmes. Enough people have seen this ghost in the East Tower that attention must be paid. I myself did see a figure once, in the East Wing. But that is all. However, as I was about to relate, it is the idea of this “ghost” that gives me pause.’
‘Why?’
‘Let us assume, even though it has been seen by others, that it is an illusion. I can imagine no real advantage that such a devised haunting might confer, no motive for anyone to create or perpetuate such a myth. It is merely sad, and inconvenient. To the others, I can well ascribe some earthly motive. For example, I once caught Fiona impersonating a ghost, which I presume was to frighten Catherine from her husband’s room. Fiona thought it a fine joke.’
‘Fiona, you say. What about her friend, Gillian? No? Then you believe the ghosts of Braedern to be concoctions by someone with an interest in frightening others.’
‘Did you not begin with such a theory yourself?’
Holmes did not reply directly. Instead he paused, taking in her apartment from his chair. ‘But who is kept in line other than Catherine by such a device? Neither the laird nor either of his sons claim to believe in ghosts, Mrs McLaren.’
‘True. And yet, you have noticed the rosemary everywhere.’
‘But not here,’ I remarked with a smile which she returned.
‘They could all do with a dose of rational thinking,’ said Mrs McLaren. ‘Even the ones who present themselves as cool heads.’
‘All of them, Mrs McLaren?’
She paused at this question. ‘Judge for yourself, Mr Holmes. But often the man who thinks himself a paragon of logic is the most irrational and emotional of them all.’ She held my friend’s eyes.
‘You speak of Alistair?’ asked Holmes.
‘Whom did you think?’ she asked, with a sudden flash of anger. ‘Good day, gentlemen.’
She stood, in a gesture of dismissal. Holmes and I arose and moved to the door. He turned to go, then paused, as if he had suddenly remembered something. Pulling a small shiny object from his pocket, he held up the earring that he had found in the laird’s bedroom.
‘Yours?’ he asked.
‘What?’ Mrs McLaren approached, squinting for a closer look. ‘Certainly not,’ said she. ‘Where did you find it?’
‘Whose, then?’
‘Tell me first where you found it.’
She stared at Holmes but he refused to answer. She turned to me with a smile, and with two strides, walked to where I was standing and boldly took me by the shoulders. She looked deeply into my eyes. I do not consider myself a cowardly man, but will admit I felt the sudden urge to run.
‘Dr Watson will tell me, will you not? Was it when you were interviewing Charles? Cameron Coupe? The laird? Alistair? Ah yes, your eyes tell me what I need to know. Thank you, Dr Watson.’ She turned to Holmes. ‘So, it was in the laird’s room. Strange!’
Sherlock Holmes exhaled in frustration. ‘I will not deny it. Now pray return the favour. Do you know to whom this earring belongs?’
‘You did me no favour. And no, I do not know.’
Holmes held her gaze for a moment. ‘But you have a theory which you will not divulge. Others beside yourself can read the truth in pupil dilation and changes in breathing, Mrs McLaren.’
I can only presume that is what she had just done with me.
‘The earring is not mine, nor do I know whose it is. That is the truth, and that is all you will get. Quid pro quo. Good evening, gentlemen.’
I turned to go but Holmes turned back. ‘Lying by omission is as shameful and dishonourable as lying outright. Perhaps more so.’
‘Really?’ she asked. This seemed to resonate with her deeply. Something in her demeanour changed. ‘Perhaps I do this to protect you.’
‘If you think Dr Watson and I are in need of your protection, madam, you are sadly deluded,’ said Holmes. ‘Good day.’ Holmes strode out of the room with a level of anger that surprised me.
Just past the threshold I lingered with a nod to Mrs McLaren. ‘Good day,’ I said. ‘Please forgive the—’
She slammed the door behind me.
When we were at last out of earshot, I put voice to my thoughts. ‘Holmes, what happened just now with Mrs McLaren? Perhaps she is withholding information, but I doubt she is a liar.’
‘It is the same thing, Watson. There is something going on behind the scenes here. Something we cannot yet see … and Mrs Isla McLaren knows something. Her reasons for withholding are not clear to me, but I have sensed they were there from the moment we met.’
‘What was so interesting on her bookshelves?’
‘As she said, books are the “window to the soul”.’
‘I doubt you are interested in her soul, Holmes. That lady has a most peculiar effect upon you.’
‘Enough, Watson. You are rendered useless in the face of beauty.’
‘Then at least you admit she is beautiful.’
‘Come, let us step outside for a cigarette.’