Alice decides to re-hang the skeleton drawing, this time above the sideboard where she keeps the crockery. After the derision the small delicate bird skeleton sketch had caused in the courtroom it felt tainted by the memory.
Every time I need a cup or a plate, every time I look across, it will remind me I was once the best, she tells herself. Here in the glens, no one knows how valuable my talent made me, how they sought me out, asking for my help, because I was the best of the best.
Of course, when he asked, I said yes, without thinking of all the ramifications. I have to admit I was flattered. I never thought this one small favor could be so disastrous.
She hammers the picture hook in without measuring, her eye sure.
Alice notices the light darken, and seeing the purple bruise across the skyline, she knows that one of the frequent fierce cloudbursts typical of the glens is imminent. A bird is huddling on the windowsill. She opens the kitchen door to throw out a crust. But the sparrow has flown.
She steps out, gathers an armful of logs. A flash—she counts the seconds to the thunder-roll, watching as the storm moves towards the mountains. Something moving on the edge of the Forestry plantation registers in the corner of her eye. Another crash of thunder startles her. And the dog; he hates thunder.
She looks again but sees nothing. “Probably some deer,” she tells the Skye terrier. Deer hate thunder too.
The weather had been abysmal for days—sky collapsed, drained of color, no wind, no breaks in the suffocating canopy of persistent rain.
Joanne was trying to write at the kitchen table; keeping two fires burning in two rooms was too hard. In these dreich days, fetching coal and logs from the shed chilled her, making her fear in her weakened state she’d catch a cold. The kitchen was warm, but with the wood-burning stove stoked up, wash hanging from the pulley, over the backs of chairs, on an old wooden towel rack, and the girls’ school socks pegged to a length of string hung over the mantelpiece, the smell and feel of damp were thick and cloying. Everything smelled damp, she noticed, even the newspaper was warped, and there was at least four months of winter to come.
One letter and one bill and McAllister’s political magazine arrived in the mail. She’d given up waiting on the publisher, consoling herself with the thought that she’d submitted to a major British publication, not a Scottish one, and to have them accept one of her stories was an ambition too far.
The letter was from Calum Mackenzie. She unfolded a cutting from a newspaper. Classified ads. There was a note with it.
Thought you might be interested.
Yours sincerely,
Calum.
The ad read: “Auction 21st October, Inchdarroch House, auction of goods and chattels of the late Miss Alice Ramsay. Items include one Land Rover, furniture, paintings, household equipment, garden equipment, and sundry bric-a-brac.”
Joanne realized the twenty-first was this Saturday, three days away, and she knew she had to attend. Not just out of curiosity—she coveted that drawing, the one of the bird skeleton.
It had been weeks, yet still she held to the belief that she was partly to blame for Alice’s death.
When she’d said this to McAllister, he’d said, “How can you think that? You can’t blame yourself for this . . . this . . .”
“Tragedy.” She knew he was right, but she couldn’t shake the conviction that her role in Alice’s last days was not an innocent one.
Still staring at the paragraph on the typewriter, wondering where next to take her latest story—about a local postie who served the remote communities up the glens and was the community lifeline for news, both written and oral—she heard the front door open and close.
“Is my beautiful wife at home?”
She laughed. Then shivered. His voice made her want to grab him and tell him how happy she was, how very glad she was to be his wife. Instead, she said, “I’ll warm up some soup.”
“No,” he said. “You stay there. I’ll get it.”
And he did, but not before reaching down, kissing her on the top of her skull, enveloping her in a current of cold and rain and his own particular scent of wet wool, cigarettes, and a very un-Scottish cologne he bought whenever he was in Glasgow.
When they finished the soup, served with buttered brown bread and lashings of parsley, he asked, “How’s the writing?”
“Slow.” She never liked to talk about her writing, so she quickly passed over the newspaper cutting. “Calum Mackenzie sent me this. I’d like to go, so I thought I’d leave the girls with their granny and granddad Ross and drive up.”
“I’ll come with you. I’ve never been to that part of the world.”
“I’d like that.” She looked out at the steel sky, felt the damp wash pressing down on them, and said, “Let’s hope it’s not raining in Sutherland.”
Back at the Gazette, McAllister mentioned the trip to Don McLeod.
“We’re driving up to Sutherland on Saturday morning. Joanne wants to go to an auction, Alice Ramsay’s estate.”
“Take the Nuisance with you. There’s a junior golf tournament up there this Saturday, our lot versus theirs. I need better pictures than thon disasters the club secretary sends us.”
Do I have to? McAllister was about to say, then remembered this was Hector’s catchphrase.
Coverage of local sporting events mattered to the newspaper. Intercounty games were often played in wee communities, in remote parts of the Highlands, so the editor knew the logic in taking the photographer with them. The thought of being in an enclosed space with Hector for hours, with Hector endlessly discussing lenses and camera angles and light, or lack of in this weather, bothered him. He cheered himself up with the thought that while Hector covered the tournament, he could wait in the nearest bar.
Saturday morning was still wet, but occasional breaks in the cloud cover made Joanne optimistic. “You never know, it might be nice in Sutherland.”
“Considering it’s farther north, I doubt it,” McAllister said as he parked outside Hector Bain’s house—or, rather, his granny’s house, where Hec and his wee sister still lived.
“Eeyore,” Joanne said, and stuck her tongue out at him.
“For that, you can drive.” He honked the horn for Hector, then opened the door to change seats. Joanne slid over, saying nothing, but she was relieved. McAllister could drive well enough, but she was better. He saw it as a way to get from place to place. She actually enjoyed it.
Hector came running through the rain, a duffel bag over his shoulder. He knocked on the driver’s window. “Want me to drive?”
“No!” Hec’s driving petrified Joanne. “Hector, get in. It’s pouring.”
They hadn’t covered half a mile before Hec began to blether. “I see there’s some camera stuff for sale at the auction. Maybe I’ll get a bargain.”
“Maybe,” McAllister said. He knew that all the photographer needed was the occasional “aye,” or “maybe,” or a grunt, as nothing would stop the flow. He adjusted the seat to his six feet two inches, settled back, and let the road and Hec’s words flow over and around him, much the same way as the rain was enveloping the car. And with the heater up full blast, the radio playing country dance music, and Joanne’s steady but fast driving, they were at Bonar Bridge sooner than he expected.
“So then she’ll be finished her studies, and she’ll move in with me and ma granny.”
“Will the wedding be before Christmas or next year?” Joanne asked.
“April,” Hec explained. “The light’s perfect an’ the trees just right and—”
“Hec, a wedding is more than photos.” Joanne laughed.
“Aye, there’s the church ceremony an’ all that, but . . .”
McAllister switched off again.
The farm sale would be signposted, Calum had explained when Joanne said she might not remember the turnoff.
Sure enough, there was a SALE sign. The notice was fixed to a board, which was fixed to a fence post, which was close to disintegrating back into pulp. Joanne thought to herself that if you didn’t know where to look, it would be missed. Then again, everyone in the county—and beyond—was curious about the farm, now a place with a lurid history, always to be mentioned with Isn’t that the place where . . .
Visibility was poor; little could be seen except short stretches of the road ahead as it twisted and climbed through low-lying cloud. There were no farmsteads, fences, sheep, or militant ranks of Forestry plantations in sight, just bog cotton and ferns and heather rolling across the hills like a mantle of rotting carpet.
To an outsider it was a remarkably unremarkable landscape at the best of times, Joanne was thinking, and this was definitely not the best of times.
Three miles up the tarmac road, they came to the five-bar gate leading to the property. It was open. Tracks from other vehicles making their way to the auction made the drive muddy, and Joanne knew that the ruts and puddles hid holes too deep for a saloon car. She drove slowly, carefully, wishing she had a vehicle like Alice Ramsay’s Land Rover.
Reaching the farmyard, they were surprised at the number of cars and vans and at least two tractors, one with a trailer with chickens in coops and the cockerel in a coop of his own; Alice’s chickens had already been sold.
Joanne backed into a narrow space in the line of cars along the garden wall and switched off the engine. She took a deep breath and said, “Right, let’s join the body of the Kirk.”
McAllister smiled at her use of one of Don’s favorite phrases. Glancing at her, he could see she was nervous.
She sensed his scrutiny and nodded. “I’m fine. It just all seems . . .”
“Such a waste.” He knew.
And she knew he knew and put her hand out to touch his.
Hector clambered out the back of the car, leaving his duffel bag inside but with a camera concealed under his mackintosh to keep it dry. He was delighted with the scene: locals in their Sunday-best overcoats and hats, farmers in their wellie boots and tweed jackets with nonmatching deerstalker hats, some with fishing flies embedded in the band. He loved the backdrop: tumbledown outbuildings, the new slate roof on the barn glistening black and grey and petrol green, and the old cobblestones, treacherous in rain but a photographer’s delight. “This is really atmospheric.”
Joanne opened the boot to change her shoes for wellies. McAllister adjusted his hat to an angle that Joanne considered French. They set off towards a roofed but semiderelict former barn where much of the goods had been set out.
The auctioneer had finished with the garden implements and was moving on to the furniture. His assistant called out a lot number. The bidding began for a well-loved kitchen table and a set of mismatching chairs, now looking like the relics of a bombing. Joanne half-listened as the price rose swiftly and still ended in what she considered a bargain; the wood was oak, and with a polish, the table would be handsome.
She and McAllister looked around at the crowd, some of whom were bidders and some of whom were just plain curious. The very ordinariness of the crowd struck her. Yet some of these people condemned Alice as a witch. Joanne shivered at the thought. Then, looking at the individuals in the crowd, seeing the ruddy-cheeked Highland farmers, the women out for an enjoyable morning’s entertainment, she was more charitable. Don’t be so judgmental, she lectured herself. Gossip can’t kill.
The roof on the barn was obviously new, the concrete floor clean. She found herself gazing at the wooden beams, fancying she could smell the wood. The thought came like a poisoned dart. She hanged herself from one of these beams. Panic flashed from her stomach to her throat. She dug her fingernails into her palm. Remembering her doctor’s advice, she took a conscious breath and swallowed.
The realization that panic tasted of bile distracted her. She needed tea. Or water. There was no one she recognized to ask, and she certainly wasn’t about to ask McAllister. Then, from across the room, standing between two wardrobes and a sideboard, she caught Calum Mackenzie waving at them. She waved back.
He gestured to an open space near the kitchen equipment, then pointed with his forefinger to the pictures stacked on the dresser. She nodded and began to edge towards him. “Excuse me. Sorry.”
McAllister followed. The crowd parted to let them through, though not without some curious looks and some muttering. Strangers this far up the glen were unusual.
A wee round woman was sticking to Calum like a limpet mine. Joanne recognized his mother from their brief encounter at the garage. When Calum was in conversation with friends, acquaintances, and professional contacts, his mother had the good sense to say little, but she would watch the speaker, follow Calum’s replies with an “aye” or “that’s right” or, most frequently, a smile and a chuckle that said, That’s ma boy, isn’t he grand? It wasn’t that Calum didn’t notice, just that he accepted that she was his mother and this was how she was.
A pretty young woman—too healthy and capable-looking to be called beautiful—a few inches taller than Calum, also caught the wave. Joanne smiled back. With a flutter of a raised hand, Elaine introduced herself as Calum’s fiancée.
“How are you, Joanne?” Calum asked when at last she made it over to them.
“Where’s your manners, Calum?” his mother hissed. “It’s Mrs. Ross to you.”
“Actually, it’s Mrs. McAllister.” Joanne smiled. “But as Calum is a friend, I told him to call me Joanne.”
To Mrs. Mackenzie the idea of friendship between a man and a woman of differing ages and differing social status was outside of her understanding. Therefore somehow wrong. She said nothing, but Elaine, who’d overheard the exchange, knew that later much would be made of Joanne Ross McAllister.
“Elaine.” Calum’s fiancée formally introduced herself. “Calum’s told me a lot about you.”
“And you. He’s really proud of you,” Joanne said. “This is McAllister.”
“Your husband?” Mrs. Mackenzie asked. She looked up at him. Seeing no indication of status, she was about to dismiss him. Then she remembered he was the editor of a newspaper. “I’m Calum’s mother,” she said. “My Calum’s done right well for himself. When he was at school, he passed all his exams wi’ top marks. An’ one o’ his essays was printed in the paper an’ him only fifteen. Then he was champion o’ the junior golf team. That’s before he was made chief reporter and—”
“Next lot, number ninety-seven, cameras and equipment,” the auctioneer announced.
Hector pulled at the editor’s sleeve as if he were a wee boy trying to get the attention of his granddad. “Will you bid for me? I’m scared I’ll mess it up.”
Thanks, Hec, for saving me from that woman, McAllister was thinking.
Calum spoke up. “I’ll bid. None o’ the locals will go against me. What’s your limit?”
“Who’ll offer me five pounds?” the auctioneer asked.
“Five pounds is fine,” Hec said.
“Wait,” Calum told him.
“Come on, ladies and gentlemen. An excellent wee camera, German-made. And lots of equipment, extra lenses. Three pounds? No? Who’ll start me at one pound?”
“Ten shillings!” Calum shouted.
“Come on, the bag’s worth more than that.” Still no reply. And the sound of rain on car roofs drumming a tattoo made the auctioneer want to finish before the pubs closed. “Ten shillings. Sold to Calum. Now, this nice mirror, antique, looks like . . . five shillings?”
“Ten shillings?” Hector’s eyes were popping.
“Wheesht,” Joanne told him. But she could see him trembling and the raindrops coming off his mackintosh like a dog shaking off the rain. “Maybe you should bid for me too, Calum.”
“What do you want?”
“The drawing of the bird skeleton, the one in the plain wood frame.”
“The one used in evidence in court?”
“Was it?”
“Nasty old thing, thon,” Mrs. Mackenzie muttered. Calum nudged her with his elbow. “But there’s no accounting for taste,” she added.
“I’ll bid for it,” McAllister said.
They waited as a few more items were presented—an Edwardian water jug and bowl, brass fire tongs and dustpan set, a half tea set. “Royal Doulton,” the auctioneer said, but still couldn’t raise more than five shillings. “Sold to Nurse Ogilvie,” he announced.
A prosecution witness at Alice’s trial, Joanne was thinking. She watched as the nurse made her way to the bookkeeper to pay for the china. With her was a young man, tall and very thin, his skin white in a redhead way. She sensed a nervousness about him, reminding her of a highly strung greyhound, one that had been overraced and was now on its last legs. Then, as though sensing someone was watching, he turned around, scanned the crowds, and seeing Joanne, one of the few strangers at the gathering, he paused.
She could feel him trying to place her. And almost smiled as if to say friend. Then he was gone.
Next came a set of tools—hammers, a hand saw, a bow saw, various screwdrivers and pliers, all in a nice folding wooden box with compartments of various size. The auctioneer expected brisk bidding, as they were all of superior quality. Three competing bidders dropped out when they saw who was determined to have them.
“Twa pund an’ five shillings? Do I hear ten? No? Sold to Mr. Novak.” Bang went the hammer.
Calum leaned closer to Joanne. “Mr. Novak, it was him who had helped Miss Ramsay renovate the house.”
Mrs. Mackenzie heard her son even though he had spoken quietly to Joanne. “Another one o’ they foreigners,” she commented loudly. “And, so I heard, she and him spoke German thegether.”
“Mum.” Calum was smiling when he chastised her. She took no offense. Or notice.
“Next, this wee drawing—some o’ you will recognize it.” The auctioneer’s assistant was holding it high. A murmur ran around the steading. “Nice frame, though no so sure about the picture.” That raised a laugh. “Five pounds? No? Three? One pound?”
A local antique dealer nodded.
“One pound thirty shillings?”
Now McAllister joined in.
“Two pounds?”
Another figure, male, standing in the gloom of the far corner, raised a hand.
The auctioneer continued. “Three pounds?”
McAllister.
“Four pounds?”
The stranger.
“Five?”
McAllister.
Joanne was staring at the other bidder. There was something about him. “Calum, do you know that man? The other bidder?”
Calum stared, then whispered, “Aye, it’s Dougald Forsythe, the man from the Art College. But why would he be here?”
McAllister didn’t hear. Thank goodness, Joanne thought. She was uncertain how her husband would react but knew it would be on the high end of the wrath scale.
The bidding had reached twenty pounds in about fifty seconds. Then forty pounds. There had been a buzz of conversation amongst the onlookers and not a few comments on the reappearance of the art critic, but when the bidding reached fifty pounds and kept climbing, the intakes of breath over every ten-pound rise in the bidding was as clear as the hissing from a flock of geese.
At eighty pounds, Joanne said, “Stop, McAllister, I don’t want it that badly.” But her husband was dogged when he wanted something. He had his hands in his pockets, she knew his fists would be clenched, and his voice had dropped to almost a growl. She knew when that happened to let him be.
At one hundred pounds, he dropped out.
“At one hundred and ten pounds, to the gentleman in the far corner . . .” The auctioneer looked at McAllister, who shook his head. “Going once, twice, sold.”
A huge upswell of voices greeted the price. Even the auctioneer had to pause to recover his breath. He took out a large spotted hankie, wiped his forehead, and nodded at the equally astonished spectators. This was a tale he and they would be telling for a long time to come. One hundred and ten pounds for a scribble o’ a deed bird that they ca’ art—that would be the least of the comments. Already one wag had called out, “Aa’ daft them southerners.”
“Psst, Hec.” Joanne bent over to whisper to him, right in his ear, as she sensed Mrs. Mackenzie’s interest. “Get a photo of the man who won the bid. But don’t let him, or McAllister, know what you’re doing.”
“I won’t.”
When it came to his profession, she trusted him absolutely and knew from past experience that once Hector was decided, he was as obstinate as her husband.
“What is it about that drawing?” Elaine asked, stunned by the price.
“Absolute nonsense, if you ask me,” Mrs. Mackenzie replied.
Elaine had put herself deliberately between Calum’s mother and Joanne and had addressed the question to McAllister.
He shrugged. “No idea.” Then he went out to stand under the barn eaves, light a cigarette, and ponder on the same question.
“Lot one hundred and seven, some oil paintings and three watercolors o’ the glens, nicely framed.” They were being sold as a job lot, as the auctioneer had earlier decided they were too hideous to fetch a decent price. The antique dealer joined in at five pounds, and Joanne put up her hand.
“Seven pounds I’m bid on my right. Sir?” the auctioneer asked the dealer. He shook his head. “Seven pounds to the lady.” The hammer fell.
“Eight pounds.” A voice came from the back.
“Too late,” said the auctioneer.
Joanne was pleased. She at least wanted a reminder of that afternoon.
“They’re nice, those pictures.” Elaine smiled at her.
“I couldn’t bear them being thrown out, seen as only worth the price of the frames.”
“Next lot. Writing box, pens, and inkwell.”
McAllister bid and won.
Joanne said, “No more; we haven’t room in the car boot.” She then turned to Calum. “Maybe you could introduce us to Mr. Forsythe. And I’d like to meet Nurse Ogilvie.”
“What would you be wanting to meet her for?” Mrs. Mackenzie asked.
Calum frowned. “This is work, Mum.”
“I’ll introduce myself to Mr. Forsythe.” McAllister had come back and immediately wanted to escape again. “And I’ll pay for the pictures. Coming, Calum?”
Elaine jumped down from the bench where she had been sitting with Joanne. “Come on, Joanne, let’s get out of here. This place gives me the creeps.”
Naturally, Mrs. Mackenzie had to say what Elaine and Calum and most of the crowd knew but would not say, not to a stranger. “I heard it was on thon beam over there, right above Mr. Duncan the auctioneer’s head, that she hanged herself.”
Joanne had had to look up the word “schadenfreude” when she first came across it in a book. Confronting an example here, in real life, made her shiver.
“Come on.” Elaine tucked her arm through Joanne’s. “You and me can check the farmhouse kitchen for the nurse. There’s tea and biscuits set up over there.”
With everyone deserting her, Mrs. Mackenzie looked lost. Poor soul, Joanne thought. She’s no idea how she comes across. But as she followed Mrs. Mackenzie’s stare and saw the woman’s look of malice fixed on the back of Elaine, her future daughter-in-law, making her way through the crowd, Joanne’s sympathy vanished. Oh dear, there’s trouble brewing there.
Joanne and Elaine dashed across the yard to the back door leading into the kitchen. The stove had been lit, and a tea urn and pink fishy-smelling paste sandwiches were there for people to help themselves. It reminded Joanne of an after-funeral spread. And depressed her just as much.
Elaine said, “Thanks. You handled the old witch well.”
Joanne had no doubt to whom she was referring. “Divide and conquer.” She smiled at Elaine, seeing a pleasant young woman. She has gumption; she’ll make Calum a good wife, as long as she can cope with a mother-in-law who will never let her son have his own life. As she was thinking this, she was scanning the empty hooks where the paintings had hung. And the room itself, empty except for a trestle table where the kitchen table and chairs had been, was just that, a small farmhouse kitchen, practical but with no charm. And no life.
An immense sense of loss overcame her. “Sorry, Elaine, I have to sit. It was a long drive up, especially in this weather.” Joanne took a chair at the table.
“You just need a cup of tea,” Elaine told her.
Again Joanne was reminded of the universal—at least in Scotland—remedy for trouble, a nice cup of tea. She sighed. The only time she had been here in this glen, in this room, it had enchanted her; it had given her an immediate sense of home, of refuge. It had been warm, not just in temperature but in the love put into a collection of bric-a-brac and furniture and rugs and pictures. All the objects, old, new, and found, made the house a home. It was a place where you could dream, find inspiration, she thought.
Now, with no rag rugs, their color breaking up the grey of the stone floor, the boot marks and mud offended Joanne. Alice would never allow that, she was thinking, when she noticed the dog. Standing alone but not lonely, not wet, clean and brushed and obviously well cared for, the Skye terrier was observing the many visitors, not at all what he was accustomed to in the home of Miss Alice Ramsay.
“Hello,” she called to him. “Come here, boy.”
He did. He stood looking up at her. She saw the collar, blue for a boy. She tickled him behind the ears.
“So you’ve met Rover,” a voice behind her said.
Joanne turned and looked into lovely warm brown eyes and a lovely smile in a pale face.
“I call him Rover because he is always wandering.”
“I thought he was Miss Ramsay’s dog.”
“Oh, no, he lives with me. But she did take him in one time. Not that I had ever been up here before now, so goodness only knows how he found his way.” The woman took the seat beside her. “I’m Janet Ogilvie, but everyone calls me Nurse.”
“Joanne Ross. Sorry, McAllister. Och.” She was shaking her head at still not being certain of her own name. “Just call me Joanne.”
Nurse Ogilvie smiled back. “Yes, Mrs. Mackenzie filled me in on the confusion over your name.”
“I bet she did.” Elaine was there with tea and a plate of scones for herself and Joanne. “Can I get you tea, Nurse Ogilvie?”
“Thank you, dear, that would be lovely. Nice girl, that,” she said as Elaine left. “Now, you wanted to talk to me?”
“I did, but . . .”
“But not now,” Nurse Ogilvie finished for her, looking towards the doorway.
Mrs. Mackenzie had just bustled in like a hen in search of a lost chick. “Have you seen Calum?” she asked.
“He’s in the storage place out the back,” Elaine told her.
“He’s—” Nurse Ogilvie looked up at Elaine. “Thank you for the tea, dear.”
“I know, I know, he’s in the other room,” Elaine whispered. “I couldn’t help myself.”
“Listen, we’re supposed to be off to a golf match this afternoon, so how about we all get a sandwich at the hotel?” Joanne asked Elaine. “Then we can talk.”
“Better still, Calum can sign us in at the golf clubhouse. His mother won’t follow us there. She thinks she’s so important that she shouldn’t have to pay the annual fees.”
“I’ll round up my husband, then. And Hector the photographer. If we squash up, we can go in our car.”
Arrangement agreed, Joanne turned back to Nurse Ogilvie. “Do you mind if I ask you a bit about Miss Ramsay?”
“Not at all.”
“She visited the residents in the hospital?”
“Aye, but we’re not strictly a hospital, we’re an old people’s home. Alice would visit the residents, mainly the ones who have nobody or are a bit doolally. She would sit with them in the common room, listen to their stories, sometimes sketching them—though I don’t know why, because there are none o’ them any oil painting.”
“And Miss Ramsay made them herbal tea?”
“Miss Ramsay would make them ordinary tea, herbal tea, cocoa, sometimes Horlicks. She baked Victoria sponge cakes for the residents—seeds and fruitcakes are no good with their false teeth.”
“So is that how the rumors started? Of her poisoning people?”
“Oh, no! Whoever gave you that idea? No, the poor lassie, or at least her man, they made the accusations. To be fair, she’d lost a baby, her third miscarriage—although no one knew that at the time—and she was right depressed. But the husband, he’s . . . well, a bit o’ a bully, so I heard.” She’d heard more than that but, unlike some, wouldn’t repeat it.
Joanne could see Nurse Ogilvie was flustered and was trembling when she put down her teacup. Whether it was from passion or anger or perhaps grief, Joanne couldn’t yet distinguish, and she was loath to ask the next question but went ahead. “And Mrs. Mackenzie, didn’t she say Miss Ramsay had poisoned the woman?”
“Mrs. Mackenzie—you mustn’t pay any heed to her havering. A woman in her situation, I’m surprised she . . . people in glass houses and all that.” The way the nurse spoke almost made Joanne laugh. Nurse Ogilvie would have been more charitable to the cannibal Lizzie Borden. “Who told you about Mrs. Mackenzie saying that?”
“I can’t remember where I heard it.” Joanne was fibbing; she had heard it from Mrs. Galloway, the landlady at the hotel, who’d been furious at the gossipmongering from Mrs. Mackenzie and her clique.
Elaine came back. “Sorry I took so long. More tea, Joanne? Nurse Ogilvie?”
“Is that the time?” Nurse Ogilvie was consulting the upside-down brooch-watch she habitually wore even when not in uniform. “Thank you, Mrs. Ross, you’ve reminded me I need to be back for the residents’ afternoon tea. We’re short-staffed with Elaine on her day off and Miss Ramsay now gone.” At the door she paused, looking around the kitchen, perhaps sensing, as Joanne had, that the house was only walls and a roof without the presence of Alice Ramsay.
More people cared than you will ever realize, Alice, Joanne thought.
“Ready?” McAllister appeared.
“I’m coming with you to show you the way,” Elaine said.
“Good,” McAllister replied. He was also thinking she could protect him from Hector.
Joanne asked her husband when they reached the car, “Do you have the paintings?”
“In the boot. Mind you, one of the antique dealers was keen to buy them off me. Offered me double what we’d paid.”
“You didn’t?”
“Too scared of my wife to sell, I told him.”
Joanne poked him in the ribs. “Quite right.”
They drove to the golf clubhouse, where Calum Mackenzie—miraculously without his mother—was waiting in the foyer to sign them in.
McAllister went with Calum to the bar to order. At the opposite end of the long curved counter, he spotted Dougald Forsythe. The editor knew it was not advisable for him to go anywhere near the man and had to turn away before he did something he knew he should regret but wouldn’t—like punch the man’s lights out.
Apart from being trounced by the art critic at the auction, the pain the newspaper article had caused Alice and Joanne were still sore subjects in the McAllister household. That revealing the life and locality of Miss Ramsay might have contributed to her death McAllister was uncertain, though his wife was not. But he had no doubts about Forsythe’s unprofessional, self-serving attitude.
“Keep me away from that man,” he muttered to himself.
Calum overheard. “Aye, I will.” Who signed him in? Calum was thinking.
Ten minutes or so later, Calum watched an obviously inebriated Forsythe weave his way through the tables.
“Sorry, really sorry,” he said when he bumped a table, rattling the drinks.
McAllister had his back to the room and was contemplating the vista of a sea more white than grey, gorse bushes bent landwards by ceaseless weather, and huddled competitors waiting their turn to tee off only to have the balls return in their direction in the fierce wind.
Calum contemplated waylaying the art critic, but as the man was six feet tall and drunk, he hesitated.
Too late. Forsythe was standing there, swaying slightly from his heels to the balls of his feet. Calum longed to check if the southerner was wearing the infamous patent-leather shoes, but he daren’t duck beneath the table.
“Mrs. Ross, isn’t it? Joanne—you don’t mind if I call you Joanne?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Mad at me for outbidding your husband for the drawing?” He had turned the straight-backed chair around and sat. Joanne thought the pose ridiculous. In other circumstances, she would have laughed, but she was aware of her husband’s anger and afraid of a scene in a crowded room in a distant county in an incident that might attract the police. And be reported in the local newspaper.
“Who invited you?” McAllister snapped.
“Wheesht.” Joanne put a hand on McAllister’s sleeve. “Mr. Forsythe, I wanted that drawing as a reminder of a lovely lady and a true artist,” she said. “You betrayed her. You don’t deserve to have her work.” She straightened her neck and glared at him, waiting for him to deny the accusation.
“I never meant to harm her.”
“But you did. As my husband indicated, you are not welcome.”
“All I wanted was a reminder of a talented but sadly unacknowledged Scottish female artist,” he countered.
Joanne waved her hand, swatting him away as though he were a fly on a sandwich. “We bought some of her other works, so no problem.” She was angry, yes. And upset. But seeing him now, she thought him ridiculous. His sitting on a reversed chair, his ruby-red cravat, his overlong hair, brought to mind one of McAllister’s words, said in a strong Glasgow accent: “poser.”
Caricature of an artist was Joanne’s kinder assessment.
Different, Elaine was thinking.
He’s a right character. Dougald Forsythe dumbfounded Calum.
Now is not the time or place to give him a good hiding, McAllister was telling himself. But his hands were shaking in the effort to keep them under the table.
Hector had no opinion of the man but had taken plenty of pictures, as requested. All Hec could think about were the canvas and leather bag—a poacher’s bag, he thought—and the camera and equipment, still marveling that such a precious camera and lenses were now his.
“Well, nice meeting you,” Forsythe said. His long face and his downward-turning eyes showed a weariness that almost made Joanne relent. His red-veined nose indicated years of drinking. In Joanne’s opinion and experience, drink was never an excuse for bad behavior.
“I can’t say the same, Mr. Forsythe,” she told him. “You betrayed me. Most of all, you betrayed Alice. I hope you can live with that.”
He took a step backwards, her words landing as squarely and as painfully as any punch.
No one at their table or the neighboring tables saw him leave—they were too busy admiring Joanne.
“Jings!” Hector’s eyes were round and bright, his grin almost reaching his ears. “You terrified me as much as him.”
McAllister’s shoulders were shaking in his attempt not to laugh long and loud. “That’s him told.”
Elaine and Calum were looking at each other, smiling. “Good for you,” Elaine said.
“Ever since the trial, I’ve wanted to pay back that man,” Calum added. “He made us out to be an ignorant bunch of teuchters.”
Joanne said, “If I wasn’t driving, I’d have a port to celebrate. Instead, I’ll have a shandy.”
Hector went to talk to the tournament organizers and take pictures of the returning golfers; no way would he risk his cameras in the salt-laden air. The talk returned to a discussion of the auction and the ridiculous amount Forsythe had paid for the picture. McAllister joked it might be an unknown masterpiece.
“I was sure it was Alice’s work,” Joanne said. “At least, that was the impression I got when I saw it in her kitchen.”
As they waited for Hec to return, the conversation slowed into more personal exchanges between the couples. In the far corner, next to the picture windows overlooking the first tee, McAllister noticed the man with whom he’d had an encounter in Alice Ramsay’s farmyard. He was sitting with two gentlemen. Locals, McAllister decided, though he wouldn’t have been able to say why.
McAllister had been carrying a box of books he’d purchased as a job lot after hearing they were to be thrown out. Reaching the car, keys in hand, he had been fumbling to open the boot quickly to avoid the rain.
The driver of the car next to him started the engine and began to move out, almost running over his boxes—and his feet.
“Hey, watch it!” he’d called out to the driver. But there was no slowing down, no acknowledgment, and the car continued on into the yard and down the track to town. McAllister had seen that the driver was in a chauffeur’s uniform, with a cap placed on the passenger seat. The passenger, sitting in the backseat, was as unmoved and uninterested as a shop-window dummy. This was the man now seated at the far corner of the bar. Even though he was in the company of two men who, from the way other customers addressed them, were frequent visitors of the club, the man from the car remained still and silent. Watchful.
“My round.” McAllister stood. “Calum, will you help me carry them over?” As they waited on the order, he asked, “Do you know those gentlemen over there?” He nodded towards a corner.
“Oh, aye, the big man is the chief constable, the old man is the sheriff, and the other man, I’ve never seen him before.” Calum looked carefully in the mirror to avoid turning around. “But he looks English.”
McAllister had to smile at that; any person with pale skin, a perfect suit, and a perfect haircut, perhaps even a manicure, had to be English to a young man who’d never been anywhere.
To McAllister, the man looked official. What sort of official he could only speculate, but from a branch of some government office was his supposition. Or perhaps a relative of Miss Ramsay’s? He remembered Joanne saying she thought Alice was wellborn.
Three rounds of drinks and sandwiches later, Hector returned. “Calum, I need your help wi’ names o’ the competitors. Everyone’s a Mackay or a Mackenzie up here.” He wanted to rope Calum into writing down the players’ names, the scores, and a brief commentary that Hector would pass off as his own work, as he had no time for golf.
“Oh. Right. Aye.” Calum wanted to stay; to be in the company of Mr. John McAllister, famous journalist, was an honor. And an opportunity—or so Elaine had told him.
“Hec, take a couple of interior shots,” McAllister instructed. “And”—he dropped his voice so Hector had to stand closer to hear—“get me a shot of the trophy board at the end of the room and those men sitting under it. But discreetly.”
“Hector” and “discreet” only belonged in the same sentence when applied to his photography. His art, as Hec preferred to call it.
It was midafternoon before they were ready to leave, and McAllister was not looking forward to the long drive ahead. As they walked towards the car, the clouds parted. A rainbow appeared. And in the near distance, the beach and the dunes lightened up to golden and green moving strips of color, stretching southwards to the mudflats of the mile-wide firth.
Standing atop the dune bordering the car park, surveying the empty seascape, Joanne took a deep breath, filling her lungs with the chill, ozone-laden air. Letting it out in a long, slow, deliberate stream, she exhaled the melancholy of the auction. She tried to banish thoughts of a desolate Alice Ramsay. And to dismiss the encounter with the preening peacock that was Dougald Forsythe.
In the cocoon of the car, lulled by the sound of tires on tarmac and wind rushing by, Joanne dozed, and Hector slept deeply, stretched out on the backseat with his head resting on a camera bag. She knew only the apocalypse would wake him.
She jerked to full consciousness as McAllister braked. Then cursed.
“Watch out, you bloody idiot!”
A black saloon car, driving fast, surged around them on a blind bend, before disappearing towards Dingwall. McAllister was certain it was the car he’d had the encounter with in the farmyard. But he said nothing. I took your plate number, he thought, and I will find you and report you for dangerous driving.
Joanne said, “The train south runs about now. Let’s hope he’s held up at the level crossing.”
McAllister smiled. “That’s another thing I love about you—you know all these wee bits of information.”
“Aye,” she agreed. “I don’t know a lot about anything, but I know an awful lot about nothing.”
“You’re too unkind to yourself.” He said it lightly, but it hurt him nonetheless to hear her talk like this.
“What gets me is what on earth made Alice do it?”
The swift shift in subject he was used to from his wife, but he wished it wasn’t this particular subject. And he knew she was not asking him for an answer, just thinking aloud.
“She had everything she wanted,” she continued, picturing the house, the kitchen, the garden, as it was before the auction. “A home. A beautiful garden. From what Nurse Ogilvie told me, she had friends. So why?”
“I think everyone wonders that when a person takes their own life.” McAllister spoke quietly. “And we know nothing of Miss Ramsay’s past.”
“You’re right. Why would you come back here when you could be living somewhere in southern Europe in sunshine?”
“With wine and song and art galleries,” he added.
“There is something about these mountains, these glens,” Joanne began, “this empty landscape. It gets into your heart, your veins. It mesmerizes you. Perhaps Alice was seduced by the landscape.”
“She either forgot or had never spent a nine-month winter up here,” he joked. Then, more somberly he added, “When it comes to the dead, there are always questions and seldom answers.”
Knowing that this was an eternal struggle for her husband, with his younger brother having taken his own life, she said no more. She was about to say, I’m so sorry, but knew he was trying to heal her of her constant need to apologize. Sorry is such an inadequate and overused word, he’d told her. Instead, she reached over and squeezed his hand. She was right. The touch of her skin expressed more than could ever be said.