Stormy Petrel

He was tall, and looked sunburned, as if he had spent time recently in a climate far from the Hebrides. Not handsome, but nice-looking in a way I had usually rather deprecated, if not despised: not the lean and craggy looks that I had always admired, but a blunt-featured face with a wide mouth, dark eyes tilted slightly down at the outer corners, and an untidy thatch of brown hair of which a couple of locks fell over a broad forehead, and were from time to time irritably brushed back. I saw that he was, in his turn, studying me. He would be seeing, I thought, an unremarkable young woman, rather too solemn, with thought-lines developing too fast between level dark brows; dark-brown hair and grey eyes; tolerable nose and mouth, and – my only real claims to beauty – a good figure and a fine, fair skin.

‘So I take it that you’re just here for a holiday, on your own, Miss Fenemore? Or do you prefer Ms?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Do you prefer Ms? If that is how one says it?’

‘It sounds just like a goose hissing. Unpronounceable – and unnecessary, unless you don’t want people to know you’re not married. Which I’m not, but I still hate it.’

‘You sound a bit fierce. I wasn’t sure. Some ladies insist.’

‘Not this one. Actually, if you could say it was short for “Mistress”, which is rather nice, and very correct in Scotland . . . I’d certainly settle for that. Or, well, “Rose” would be the easiest, wouldn’t it? Sorry, don’t tell me, I know. I’m being priggish. But I like words, and that’s a non-word if ever there was one.’

‘Well, it’s a good hobby horse.’

‘Hobby horse nothing. It’s my job. I teach English at Cambridge. Haworth College. And yes, this is just a holiday. My brother was to have come with me; he’s a doctor working in Petersfield, and he’s a dedicated bird-watcher and photographer. He was to have joined me this week, but his train met with an accident, so he’s been detained for a few days with an injured ankle. He’s coming over as soon as he can. Monday, I hope. That’s all about me. Your turn, Mr Hamilton-Parsons.’

‘Oh, well. The Parsons bit was a not very inspired lie. You saw it, didn’t you, when you got up to go upstairs? The postcard on the mantelpiece?’

‘Yes. But the point is, why?’

‘I couldn’t give my own name, till I found out what that fellow was up to. I should have thought up something better on the way over, but no one could think in that wind. It was all I could do to keep my feet.’

‘So you knew he was “up to” something? You mean you knew from the start that he had no connection with me?’

‘No, no. I did take you for a couple staying there together, and normally I would have retreated smartly and come back here again, but for what had already happened. Look, why don’t you sit down and make yourself comfortable? I’d better start at the beginning, and it’s a long story.’

I did as he suggested. He stayed on his feet by the window.

‘I’m Neil Hamilton, as I told you, and Mrs Hamilton was my great-aunt. I’m a geologist – that bit was true – and until recently I’ve been working in Sydney. Then I heard about Aunt Emily’s death. The end came rather suddenly, so I couldn’t have got back in time to see her, but I flew over as soon as I was free, to see what had to be done. There’s no one else. I was very fond of her when I was a child, and used to spend most of my holidays up here with her – my father was in the Consular Service, so my parents spent a lot of their time abroad. But latterly I’ve been here very little; in fact it must be at least fifteen years since I stayed here for any length of time . . . Yes, I had my fourteenth birthday here. Uncle Fergus gave me a gun, I remember. He still had hopes of me, but I’m afraid I never enjoyed killing things. Still don’t.’ He smiled. ‘He’d have been ashamed of me. Not the ideal Scottish laird at all.’

As he spoke, he had been wandering round the room, picking up photographs, looking at books, standing in front of the pictures; a sort of half-abstracted and apparently unemotional tour down Memory Lane. I brought him back to the matter in hand.

‘And what brought you to my cottage in the middle of the night, with that story about your tent blowing away? In fact, why a tent at all? All those lies for Ewen Mackay before you’d even met him?’

He turned back to me. ‘Yes, we come to that. They were lies, but as it happens I had met him before. Many years ago, when we were boys. If you remember, he half-recognised me. I had already recognised him, but fifteen years or so, boy to man, is a big change, and I doubt if he got it. In fact I’m sure he didn’t. We talked late that night, and he would surely have said something.’

‘I see. Or rather, I don’t, yet. Are you telling me that because you recognised him you had to put on that charade? That you had some reason to distrust him?’

He nodded. ‘As a boy he was – well, shall we just say undependable? But it wasn’t that. I had my lies ready before I ever recognised him. I’d seen him earlier that night, here at the house, behaving in a way that made me very anxious to find out what he was doing here on Moila.’

‘Here? You were here then? Everyone said the place was empty.’

‘It was. I’d just arrived, and I hadn’t been up to the village yet, or seen anyone. Still haven’t, if it comes to that.’

‘How did you get here?’

‘I have a boat. Hired. Aunt Emily sold the one that was here; she had no use for it latterly. I came across from Oban – made a run for it, with the weather worsening all the time, but got here safely and made straight for our bay. Put the boat into the boathouse and made the doors fast, then came up to the house. I’d been to see my great-aunt’s solicitors in Glasgow and they gave me the keys. I’d bought all I needed in Oban, so I just came up here and got myself settled in. It was pretty late and I was tired, so I found my old room and went straight to bed. It was well after midnight, getting on for one o’clock, when I went to open the bedroom window, and saw someone coming up through the garden from the bay.’

He stopped prowling at last, and dropped into one of the easy chairs facing me.

‘Of course at first I just thought it was someone from a boat that had been driven in by the weather. You remember that night was pretty dark, so I couldn’t have seen if there was a boat tied up at the jetty. The chap had a torch. Coming to ask for shelter, I thought, though why he couldn’t sleep in his boat . . . As I said, it’s quiet down there in the channel, even in a storm. That made me wonder what he wanted, so I stood and watched. He got as far as the lawn, just out there, and then he stopped and stood, seemingly just staring at the house. That seemed odd, too, in all that rain. Anyway, I came downstairs. The front door was still locked and bolted – I’d only used the back one since I’d got here – and the keys were out the back, so I came in here to open these french windows. I didn’t put any lights on, and when I got into this room I was thankful I hadn’t. I found him trying the window.’

‘Well,’ I said reasonably, ‘in that storm, and if he thought the house was empty –’

‘I know. I thought so, too. But he didn’t just try the handle. He had some kind of tool, and he was trying to lever the window open. I stood there like a fool, watching him. Somehow one isn’t prepared for that kind of situation . . . Then I thought, well, I’ll have to tackle him somehow, so the best way, rain or no rain, was to go out the back way and take him from behind.’

‘He had a gun,’ I said.

That startled him. ‘Had he indeed?’

‘I think so. But go on, please!’

‘I’m not exactly a man of action – that kind of action. Who is, except in television series? There used to be guns in the house, of course, but it never occurred to me to look if they were still there. But I must have felt the need for some support, because I found I’d grabbed hold of one of my hammers – a geologist is always armed with a hammer – and when I got through to the back of the house he was there already, at the kitchen window.’

‘Good heavens! So?’

‘I’m not quite sure what might have happened then, but for some reason he gave up. He could have forced the window in time, anyone could, but he seemed suddenly to think better of it. One moment he was there on the sill, and then suddenly he was gone. I ran upstairs to see what I could, and there he was, torch and all, running down the garden and then dodging his way up to the cliff path, and fast, as if he knew exactly where he was going. Of course I knew the path led to the Camus na Dobhrain, and the lawyers had told me that the cottage was let to a girl, so I wondered why he was headed there. I mean, there was nowhere else he could have been going. So I decided to follow along and see what was going on.’

‘But you had a duffel bag . . . Was that just scenepainting to go with your story about the tent?’

‘More or less. I have got a tent here, as it happens, because I want to work on Eilean na Roin – that’s Seal Island, where the broch is – and the tides are awkward, so I need a base there. I took the tent across next morning.’

‘I know. I saw it. But surely you weren’t really here as a student? If you’d met Ewen Mackay then—’

‘He’d have recognised me now, of course. Yes, that was a lie, too. Not the igneous intrusion – that’s there all right; a colleague of mine told me about it – and I did intend to work there while I was here in Moila. Something to do while the estate business is being settled.’

‘And did you bring the hammer, too, when you came chasing over to my cottage?’

‘Er – I hardly remember. I don’t suppose I did. And then, of course, when he opened the door to me, I recognised him. And since he obviously hadn’t recognised me, I didn’t want to connect myself with the house, until I’d found out what his game was.’

‘And mine?’

‘Well, yes. And yours.’

I smiled. ‘Fair enough. But whatever your motives for coming over, I’m glad you did. If he was really up to no good the situation might have turned awkward – though as it happens he was perfectly civil, and I wasn’t nervous.’

‘I could see that. And that made me wonder if you were in it, too, and he’d had a rendezvous at the cottage. I found out next morning that his boat was in Halfway House, but when I first saw him I had no idea he was a Moila man, and it didn’t occur to me that he would know the mooring there. I just assumed he was making for Otters’ Bay.’ A pause, while he seemed to be studying the pattern of the carpet. Then he looked up at me. ‘What reason did he give you for coming all the way over to Otters’ Bay when he could perfectly well have slept in his boat?’

‘Oh, that the cottage had been his home, and he said – or pretended – that he didn’t know his people had moved away. I’m sure it was true that he didn’t know the place was let to me.’

He was silent for a while, frowning at the prospect, from the window, of the neglected garden. ‘Well, I still can’t imagine what his game is, and I can’t say that I like it.’

‘When the pair of you went off to find your tent, what happened?’

‘Nothing much. We made a token search for it on the way back to the bay, but then he went straight to his boat, and it’s gone, and I’ve no idea where to. No sign of him anywhere near you since then?’

‘None. So what happens now?’

‘Nothing, let’s hope. I honestly don’t see what’s to be done except wait and keep our eyes open. Nothing’s happened to justify reporting to the police. The man did nothing, after all, except shoot a line to you, and if it’s a crime to wander round an empty house on a wild night, trying the windows, well . . .’

‘I take your point. Nobody’s going to listen. Just one other detail; the key of my cottage. I don’t believe he’s been carrying a huge old-fashioned thing like that around ever since he left. I see there’s a place on your key-rack by the back door for the cottage key, and it’s missing. Unless you took it—?’ He shook his head. ‘Then if Ewen Mackay took it, that wasn’t his first visit to this house. He’d been here before, and—’

‘—And left the french windows open so that he could get in again! You’re right! I did find the window open, and locked it myself because of the way it was rattling in the wind. I thought nothing of it, just that whoever closed the house up had overlooked it. So that could be it. He came back, and when he found the place locked up again, he got a scare, or he just decided to play it safe, and made off.’

‘He did tell me he’d been to the house,’ I said. ‘He made out that he’d gone to take a nostalgic look at it, and of course he never said he’d tried to get in, or that he’d been before . . . I must say I thought at the time that it was a pretty rough night to choose for a sentimental journey . . . He did throw out a hint—’ I stopped.

‘Yes? About what?’

‘No. It was – well, personal. Nothing to do with this.’

‘Till we know what ‘this’ is,’ he said reasonably, ‘everything may be to do with it.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘So go on, please. What did he hint at?’

‘Honestly I doubt if it matters, and I don’t want . . . Oh, all right. He hinted that he might actually be connected with your family. At least that’s what I thought he was trying to convey.’

To my relief, he laughed. ‘That figures. Great-Uncle Fergus’s love-child, adopted, presumably for a consideration, by the gardener? Don’t worry, I’ve heard that one before. And a few others even wilder. He lived in a fantasy world of his own, even as a small boy. He used to lie for no reason at all, as if he enjoyed it. I was only a couple of years older myself, but I knew enough never to believe a word he said. Did he shoot any more lines to you? Tell you where he’s been since he left Moila?’

‘Only that he’d been abroad. I gathered that he’d been around in some pretty exciting – oh, do you mean he might have made that up, too? He didn’t actually sail round the Horn?’

‘I’ll believe that when I’ve seen the boat’s log,’ said Neil drily, ‘and only then after it’s been checked by an expert. And talking of checking, I’d better have a look through the house to see if anything’s missing. The lawyers gave me an inventory. Blast. I had hoped to take my time over sorting out the house contents, but I’d better take a look straight away – at any rate for the movable stuff. Tell me, how sure were you that he had a gun?’

‘Not sure at all. It was just the way his hand flew to his pocket when you hammered at the door.’

‘Hm. Then let’s hope that was window-dressing, too. Well . . .’ He set his hands to the chair arms, as if about to rise. ‘He’s gone, so perhaps that’s the end of the mystery. When did you say your brother was coming?’

‘Monday, I hope.’

‘Then all we can do is keep our eyes open for the next couple of days, and you see that your doors are locked and bolted at night.’

‘I certainly will. And you?’

‘As you saw, I’ve got my tent set up now on the island. I’ll work there, and I’ll come back and sleep in the house. If Ewen does come back, he’ll see the tent, and if he thinks that “Parsons” is safely out of the way, then whatever his interest is in the house, he’ll no doubt show it. And I’ll be here to tackle him, hammer and all.’

‘And I?’

‘Stay safe at Otters’ Bay, and wait for your brother. Forget all this,’ he said, with decision.

‘I could try,’ I said.

He got to his feet then, and I followed suit. The sun, slanting in through the window, showed up the faded shabbiness of the room, but outside the treetops were golden and the bees were loud in the roses. The scents of the garden, blowing in through the open window, had removed the last trace of stuffiness from the room. It smelt fresh and warm. He moved to open the door to the hall.

‘So before I see you safely home, would you like a cup of tea?’

‘I’d love it. But there’s not the slightest need for you to see me home.’

‘Probably not. But I’m going to,’ he said cheerfully. His spirits seemed suddenly to have cleared. The sun, perhaps. ‘This way, then, Mistress Fenemore. But I forgot, you’ve already explored my kitchen, haven’t you? After you.’