TWENTY

Castle Mornay

In grey mist of early morning we floated over the high bridge just north of Inverness. By eight in the morning we were already far up into the Highlands, and were descending a winding road into Kilfinnoch. The Black Bonnet Inn was a stone building overlooking the loch. It was announced by a large white sign hanging from a tall post, and on the panes of the entry door were all the usual RAC, Visa and Tourist Board labels. Mr MacGregor, the proprietor, stood beneath a dark wooden beam and looked over the top of his computer as he welcomed us. He was a short man of fifty or so, brisk to the point of being brusque, energy visible in his every move.

The massively antlered stag head on the wall looked over the scene with glazed eyes as we registered.

‘Will you be wanting a boat today, gentleman?’ asked MacGregor.

‘Later, perhaps,’ said Holmes.

‘If I’m not mistaken,’ said MacGregor, ‘you be the gentleman interested in photographing the castle?’

‘I am indeed.’

‘Aye, Robby MacGregor can always tell such things!’ he cried. ‘You have the keen, observant look of an artist.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Holmes. ‘Is there no way to approach Castle Mornay by a land route?’

‘Not easily,’ said MacGregor. ‘The big American is ever on the watch. It seems a miracle how he knows whenever people approach. Some of the lads have been larking about trying to get on to the Castle premises without being seen, and they canna do it. Many’s the time they’ve tried. A game, it’s become. They need only walk on castle property a minute or two, and there appears the big American with his shotgun. Nay, the only way to obtain a land view of the Castle is to climb the backside of Ben Braigh, but a terrible climb is that. You seem very fit gentlemen, but let it be admitted you are older gentlemen. I am a plain, blunt man, I am! Robby MacGregor will tell what he sees. You could do it, you could climb Ben Braigh. Aye, for what one man can do, another can. But I would not advise it. The main road will do you no help, for it will carry you to the north of Ben Braigh where nothing of the castle will be visible. The south lake road you will find ’tis a very rough road indeed, and the dead certainty is that you will be stopped at the edge of the castle property, before you have a proper view. To see the castle from the land is a difficult task.’

‘How odd that someone should be so protective of the property,’ said Holmes.

‘Aye!’ cried MacGregor. ‘And odd it’s been these many a year. At that end of the loch so many an odd thing has occurred that many a good Scot from hereabout won’t even fish there any more. It all began when Lord Gray bought the property, and it has been getting worse by the decade! I was a lad when the old owner died, and we learnt that the property was bought by the husband of an actress. Next we knew, the Lord, her husband, was painting targets on oil barrels, floating the barrels in the loch, and firing an elephant gun at them from the parapets. The sound awoke my mother on many a morn, and disturbed her on many a Sunday afternoon, but nothing could be done. The sound was like a cannon, echoing down the lake, and the local people did not like it. But we were powerless. Lotte Linger, not her fault. We felt sorry for her. A lovely lady was Lotte, and she gave wonderful fêtes for all the town each year at the summer solstice, and we young people danced to a pipe band she had imported from Fife. But even that had a tang of the odd, sir! For young Bart behaved in a very strange manner amidst the food and festivities, and he frightened the girls, and made the boys half angry. But what could we do, being guests?’

‘How did he make you angry?’ asked Holmes, with a genial laugh. ‘For example?’

Robby MacGregor slapped the counter. ‘Why, he was ever telling us not to touch this or that, not to prowl about the castle grounds as the young always like to do, and as we had done years past, before his coming. He was a pest and a pain, and there was an anger in him that made us wonder, even as we jeered at him beneath our breaths, whether he would seek retribution. He threatened to put my little brother in the dungeon where he would never be found, and poor little Gordy MacGregor was so frightened that he never again went down to that end of the loch till he was a man grown. And in the last few years, no one goes to the end of the loch, or few. There are rumours of monster fish at that end, that follow boats as wolves follow sheep, and roar as never a fish roared. It is said that one boat was sunk by the roar of one of the monster sea trout of Loch Mornay. We’ll be soon in the league of Loch Ness, for monster tales.’

‘Do you believe such tales, MacGregor?’

‘Nay, I believe nothing, and disbelieve nothing. But I know a Welshman hired my aluminium boat, and fished at that end of the loch, and swore a monster fish followed him, and hovered only inches below the surface, and finally came for him with a loud growl such as never a fish has made in sea or loch, with the result that his boat heaved and his Welsh wife went into the water, and when he fished her out he saw his craft was half full of Loch Mornay. He bailed for half an hour before he was able to make headway for my dock. I am reluctant to believe a Welshman, for often they are blowhards, as Shakespeare well knew. But this man was pale, and my boat was dented, and his wife was wet, and I could not do other than to believe his tale, mostly.’

‘And that was when?’

‘Last year about this time.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Have you ever known bats to fly at midday, Mr Holmes?’

‘Not as I recall.’

‘Two lads climbed Ben Braigh a month ago, and from the top they looked down at Castle Mornay with field glasses. They were surprised to see a cloud of bats suddenly issue from the east tower. They then heard gunshots, and saw bats fall into the loch. The lads could not see the shooters, and assumed they must be on the roof of the castle. I know the lads well, Ian and Tam. They are hunters, and trustworthy lads. And they said the shots must have come from a small calibre rifle, not a shotgun. The sound was not a shotgun sound.’

‘It would take a very exceptional marksman to consistently hit bats on the fly with a rifle,’ said Holmes.

‘But every shot brought down a bat,’ said MacGregor. ‘So the lads said, and so I believe.’

MacGregor answered the ringing telephone and took a reservation. Then he hung up and turned again to Holmes. ‘And the matter of the airplane is also odd.’

‘Yes?’ said Holmes.

‘Only rarely does it come, but it is here now, tied up at Castle Mornay pier, a red biplane like something they flew in the thirties, open cockpit. But it makes a strange whooshing sound that mingles with the clatter of the propeller, not like your ordinary airplane. And it can disappear in mid-flight. I once saw it crawling across the sky just over the loch, grinding along as slow as a farm tractor, and then it entered a cloud, one of those white billowy clouds, and we heard a pop, and a whooshing sound, and red rubbish began falling out of the cloud and tumbling end over end into the loch, as if the airplane had popped a strut and collapsed. But where was the rest of the machine? We saw no bodies falling. One of the lads saw a glint of light . . . but I saw nothing at all. It was gone, all but two pontoons and part of a wing that we found floating days later in the loch. But where was the rest? Yet a month later the airplane reappeared, whole and intact, and landed here again. That was just a few days past.’

‘A biplane,’ mused Holmes.

‘You’ll spot it by the castle pier . . . then what will it be, gents? Land or loch? I have a map of the area if you choose to climb Ben Braigh. But if you’ll listen to MacGregor’s advice . . .’

‘We’ll have a boat,’ said Holmes.

MacGregor slapped the counter. ‘And very wise you are,’ said he. ‘You will have nae problem to find your way for the loch is long and narrow. You need only follow the shore for three miles till it bends north, and then you will see Castle Mornay.’

‘Have you a rowboat,’ asked Holmes, ‘with oars, and an outboard motor?’

‘We do, Mr Holmes, but it is a wooden boat.’

‘Does it row pretty well?’

‘It rows very well, my lad. But slowly. And the motor is small.’

‘Then that is what we want.’

‘Excellent,’ cried MacGregor, and he pointed at a boy who was emptying wastebaskets. ‘Danny, kindly pull Old Giffey into the loch, and make the wee craft ready to sail, all shipshape and Bristol fashion. Fill the motor with petrol, bring out the oars and life preservers.’

Danny vanished with alacrity.

MacGregor looked searchingly at Holmes and me. ‘Will ye gentlemen be wanting a lunch to carry along? A fine cook we have at The Black Bonnet.’

‘We’re in a hurry,’ said Holmes.

‘I wouldna hurry too much, lad, for the fog is dense.’

‘Ten minutes?’ I said.

‘MacGregor will never say no to any man’s challenge!’ he cried, and then he shouted, ‘Margie!’ – and he hurried out the door with one hand over his head as if hailing the invisible cook.

In our room Holmes and I changed into sweaters, jeans, Wellingtons. I put on my Barbour oiled hat, he his Greek fisherman’s cap. We slipped into our all-weather jackets and not long afterwards found ourselves stepping down into Old Giffey with our lunch bags in hand.

The lapstrake rowboat was fourteen feet long, a solid old craft that appeared to have been built before the last world war. Oars thunked as I laid them in the bottom. Only the orange life preservers seemed bright in all the grey world, for everything else was muted in mist, and drained of colour. Even the outline of the boat seemed, at some moments, to merge with the water and vanish.

‘It is a bit foggy, Holmes.’

‘We must start,’ he said.

MacGregor came out and stood on the dock with his hands on his hips, and looked down at us doubtfully. ‘Best stay to the shoreline, lads – or ye’ll be going in circles.’

Holmes cast us off, the dock drifted away. I pulled the cord. The ten-horse motor began to purr and burble. With a little tilt we turned and were on our way out into Loch Mornay. I steered leftward along the shoreline. Nothing existed but ourselves and the boat; all the world had vanished. When steering blind, a person can grow anxious after only a few seconds. I wondered whether the boat was going straight or turning ever so slightly. I slowed the engine. From time to time I could glimpse the shore through a rift in the mist. We were travelling very slowly, of necessity, perhaps six miles an hour. I thought that a half hour ought to bring us to the bend in the loch. When a half hour had passed I cut the engine: total silence swept in, and the whopple of the waves on the bottom of the boat was the loudest sound we heard.

‘Do you have the directions for entering the castle?’ he asked.

‘Right in my pocket, Holmes. But I have them in memory. They are not complicated. From the pier we go straight towards the castle wall. Marianne said that the door to the basement is the only entrance facing the lake, and seldom used. It is below ground level, down a flight of stone steps. In the old days the door was always kept unlocked. But there is a trick to turning the handle. People who don’t know the trick will assume the door must be locked even when it isn’t.’

‘What is the trick?’

‘I don’t know the trick,’ I said.

‘We will have to manage,’ he said. ‘I think the fog is lifting.’

I could see the near shore now. ‘That way should be the castle, directly ahead,’ I said, pointing to the right where mist and fog wreathed and turned over the grey flat water. We saw nothing in that direction but the sun, high up, a pale silvery disk.

‘Let’s use the motor a while longer, Wilson,’ he said. ‘This fog is a gift.’

I pulled the cord and the little craft pressed ahead, sturdily, through the resistant grey water of the loch. In the blinking of an eye the castle appeared, though it was barely visible at first, like a very faint etching. I cut the motor. Holmes grabbed the oars and began to row. We heard no sound but the creak of the oarlocks, and the dripping of water off the oar blades between strokes, and the warble of the water round the hull. I sat in the stern and watched as Holmes bent to his task. The castle bobbed gently above his right shoulder. I couldn’t tell whether the castle was a long way off, or nearly upon us. The scene was hallucinatory.

Then I saw a dragonfly. It kept pace with us precisely.

Holmes was straining at his task, didn’t notice the little creature.

But there it was, magically hovering off our starboard side. It faced us and flew sideways. I pointed. Holmes stopped rowing. The dragonfly maintained its position relative to us, as if it were invisibly fastened to the boat.

‘Give me the oar, Holmes.’

He shipped the right oar, pulled it out of its oarlock, handed it across. ‘Don’t tip the boat,’ he warned.

I took a swing at the creature but it darted away and hovered just out of reach, a little further from the boat and a little higher up.

‘Could that be natural?’ I said.

‘No,’ said Holmes, quietly. ‘We are discovered. No need to row now.’

As I turned to pull the starter rope on the outboard motor I was distracted by a flicker of black amidst the grey air. I thought it a trick of the fog. Then I saw it again, and I could not deny to myself that something was circling the boat high up, darting through folds of mist and appearing, veering, reappearing, making large circles round us in swift and wobbly flight.

‘It’s a bat,’ said Holmes, and he grabbed an oar.

I had been about to pull the starter rope, but now desisted.

The bat darted madly in a wide circle, made a dive towards Holmes, and Holmes swung the oar. Miraculously, he smacked the creature, and its wing looked broken as it hit the grey water. It lay wobbling on a wave, then exploded: the rowboat lifted on that side, and bucked as the surge of water passed under us. Holmes was almost thrown out. He fell backwards on to the prow seat.

‘You all right?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

I pulled the starter and the boat thrust ahead. I revved it to top speed and made for the pier. The fog was lifting quickly, the world becoming visible. It was as if an artist had, until now, been lightly sketching outlines of the scene before us in grey pencil, but suddenly had begun to fill it all in to make a solid world. I saw another bat flickering overhead, but as we neared the pier it vanished. Mist shifted and I saw a red biplane tied by the right side of the pier, sleek and sporty. I steered to the left, switched off the motor. Holmes already had the landing rope in his hand.

As we glided in there was not a sound to be heard but the lapping of water. Nor a soul to be seen. We gathered our gear, climbed up the ladder, hurried across the grass towards the looming grey building. We ran half crouched, as if we imagined someone would be shooting at us, and for a moment my unfortunate tour of duty as a reporter in the Afghan war flashed through my mind.

Castle Mornay was a square stone edifice with a graceful round tower on the right. A massive square tower on the left rose out of the building proper, and it had crenellations around the top. Very medieval and picturesque was Castle Mornay. The side we were approaching was a three-storey high wall pierced at the second storey by arched windows. The graceful round tower, slender and tapering towards the top, was pierced by only one arched window very high up. The massive square tower rose perhaps five stories and had two windows, one above the other. I noticed a satellite dish mounted incongruously on the side of the square tower.

Holmes made straight for the sunken staircase, which we found just where Marianne had described. I followed Holmes down the worn stone steps to a dark and weather-beaten door. He struggled with the handle for a moment . . . then opened the door. ‘Easy enough,’ he said over his shoulder.

We stepped down into cold darkness. Holmes closed the door and we flicked on our pocket torches. We were in a low-ceilinged space punctuated by thick square pillars. The pillars evidently held up not only the ceiling above us but the entire castle. We walked down a slope into a deeper vault, then round to the right. I saw nothing but little rubbles of round stone here and there, and a number of bundles of electrical cable running along the floor and up certain columns, vanishing into gloom. Underfoot was sometimes hard earth and sometimes slabs of stone. We were looking for a stairway of stone which led up, according to Marianne, into a storage room.

‘Liebesträume,’ said Holmes. ‘Liszt.’

I could hear it now, faintly. The sound of someone playing Liszt’s Liebesträume on the piano. I was tremendously relieved, felt a rush of joy. ‘She must be all right!’ I whispered. ‘Thank God.’

‘Look there,’ whispered Holmes, motioning with his torch beam towards a grate in the ceiling above.

The rubble floor beneath our feet slanted upward towards the square grate, through which faint light and music seeped into our gloomy crypt. We crouched and made our way upward. Holmes attempted to lift the grate. I lent a hand, and we managed to move it. The clunking scrape as we slid it aside was, I hoped, masked by the second section of Liebesträume as it poured forth from the piano in glorious cascades of sound.

I poked my head up through the hole.

I appeared to be in the corner of a great room of red sandstone.

I could see the end of a grand piano protruding beyond a stone pillar. The pillar blocked my view of the pianist. High up in one wall was a stained glass window. A regally patterned carpet covered the centre of the room. On the carpet sat the piano and the single easy chair that I could see. I squeezed through and crawled out on to the sandstone floor, got to my feet. Then I leant and gave Holmes a hand. The room appeared to be empty except for the person at the piano. We moved cautiously towards the pillar as Liebesträume ended with lovingly touched chords, just the sort of expressive interpretation one would expect from an exquisitely sensitive woman.

Full of joy and anticipation, I stepped around the pillar.