A Double Death on the Black Isle (5 page)

When she left, Mrs. Munro pulled the back door shut as quietly as she could.

It's ridiculous I should be hiding from my own son
, she thought as she went into the garden. There was not much available, spring being late in the Highlands. She selected lily of the valley for the matron of honor's corsage. She snipped narcissus and jonquils, filling out the bridal bouquet with ferns. Not her choice, but it was what Patricia wanted.

Patricia's wedding day, not how I pictured it, but as long as she's happy
. Mrs. Munro sighed with her whole body. It was hard for her to hold back her disappointment at Patricia's choice of husband. He was a man Mrs. and Mr. Munro hardly knew, but they had heard about him over the years.

Mrs. Munro would never have voiced her thoughts, and only her husband knew how much she loved Patricia.

After the babies were born, Mrs. Ord Mackenzie had been sent to a private hospital in Edinburgh “for her nerves” the doctor had said. The baby girl had been given to Mrs. Munro to look after. Since her own son Fraser was seven months old at the time, Mrs. Munro had suckled newborn Patricia until she was
weaned, and the girl had lived with the Munros until she was nearly three.

It was only when Mrs. Ord Mackenzie became aware of the gossip about their only child being raised in the farmhouse that she had taken Patricia to live in Achnafern Grange.

“By then the damage had been done,” Mrs. Ord Mackenzie told her daughter—often.

When Fraser Munro heard the toot of the horn and the squeak of the garden gate—one more job he hadn't done—he stirred himself from the chair to go to the window. Like the beast of prey he was, he was always alert for his mother's vulnerability.

He stood, the rush from his hangover making him swear. He watched Patricia get out of the Land Rover, hug his mother, take the basket of flowers, and put it in the back. She made a quick, neat three-point turn, and they were gone.

“Now what the hell is that all about?”

Glad of the peace with no mother to nag him, ask him why he wasn't helping his dad, give him jobs to do around the house, or tell him off for getting in her way, he fell back into the chair and dozed. He became aware of the smell of the cake. He ignored it. At first it was a slight scent of burning—he ignored it—then a full-blown blast of incinerated sugar and butter and eggs. Eventually the smoke forced him out of his chair. He opened the oven door; grabbed a tea towel; took out the cake; and chucked the cake tin, tea towel, and burnt offering into the sink. He left the smoke-filled kitchen and grabbed his coat and cap, deciding to make for the village, then, remembering he would have to walk, remembering he was furious with his father because he would not let him borrow the farm Land Rover, remembering he would have to help with the flitting this weekend, he was transfixed by a surge of rage, a sudden, blinding, red rage.

“Thon bitch.”

Yet somewhere within him, if he had had the slightest desire to examine his soul, he would have recognized that the sight of his mother and Patricia hugging was what did it. His rage was a rage of bright-green jealousy.

“Hurry up! We'll miss the bus! And the ferry!”

Annie had run ahead to the corner and was jumping up and down as she watched for the bus. Joanne, dragging Wee Jean by the wrist, was trying to run in high-heeled shoes, to carry the bags, to keep her hat from flying off.

“It's coming!” Annie shrieked. But she had the good sense to stop the bus, telling the conductor her mother was just around the corner.

With a “sorry, sorry,” Joanne scrambled onto the platform. At the station, they ran for a second bus and caught it just as it was leaving for the ferry.

When she saw the billboards outside the newsstand, she realized that she hadn't picked up a copy of the
Gazette
.

“Double blast!” she muttered.

Annie overheard, as usual. She glared at her mum. Joanne's hair had escaped; her nylons had a run; and she was pink from frustration from the early start to collect the girls from their grandparents, from the running, and from not being there with the others to see the new edition roll off the presses. Now she was frustrated at not having the newspaper to show off to Patricia, to at last show her friend that she had achieved something, was someone.

They made it to the ferry on time and walked up the car ramp. It was a short crossing, took only five minutes. In bright sunshine, with deep blue skies, the pier on the Black Isle side was
clearly visible, the whitewashed cottages along the shoreline, the bright yellow gorse on the hillside, and the sparkling waters of the firth made the setting picture-postcard perfect—a rare event.

Because the passage connecting two wide firths was narrow and the tidal race deep and fierce, the ferry set off on a forty-five-degree angle to reach the other side safely.

Halfway across, Wee Jean shrieked, jumping up and down in the prow. “Look, look, porpoises!”

The exuberant mammals danced and frolicked alongside the boat. The crew and passengers smiled at the sight of the pod. Arches of miniature rainbows flew off their skins as they leaped and corkscrewed, racing the ferry.

“It's a sign of good luck, you know,” Annie pronounced.

“It is that,” a passing crewman agreed.

For some
, thought Joanne. The dolphins cavorting in the pellucid waters of the firth reminded her of an incident a few years ago on a previous ferry crossing.

“Look,” Bill, her husband, had said to Annie—Wee Jean was too small to enter his horizon—“porpoises.”

“Actually,” Joanne had pointed out to Annie, “they are dolphins, bottle-nosed dolphins.”

“You're such a bloody know it all.” Bill had been furious, “Up here we call them porpoises.”

Joanne shivered at the memory. I don't blame him, she thought, I shouldn't have contradicted him. I only wanted Annie to know the correct name. And there was no need for him to elbow me so hard in the ribs I could hardly get my breath.

The ferry docked on the north side of the firth. There was no sign of Patricia. Joanne sighed—all that rush for nothing. The girls had run down to the foreshore and were busy trying to skim stones across the water.

“Did you see that, Mum?” Annie called. “Mine did six skips.”

Wee Jean was no good at the game, so she busied herself gathering seashells while Joanne meandered along the high-tide line.

Memories of other holidays in the Black Isle returned as she crunched her feet over the bladder wrack, popping the dried seaweed pods. With her sister Elizabeth, they had rented adjoining caravans in the village of Rosemarkie some fifteen miles away. It had been a week of sun and freezing winds and morning haar with the foghorns blasting across the firth, shaking the thin, aluminum shells of the camper, which terrified the children when they first heard it. It had been a week of walking to the Fairy Glen, of roaming beneath the cliffs searching for fossils, of picnics in the sand dunes, and of grilling fish on fires made amongst the rocks on the foreshore.

Of the rest of the Black Isle, the hidden north side, the dark forest covering the spine of the land, Joanne had only passed through, never explored. She thought this peninsula called an island was a mysterious place.
Perhaps it is the history
, Joanne thought,
perhaps it is the standing stones, the fairy wells, the castles, the ruins
.

The persistent peep of a car horn made Joanne look around. A slightly battered Land Rover pulled up, and there was Patricia, waving.

“All here, how wonderful! And all dressed up and ready to go. Jolly good.”

The girls were suddenly shy at Patricia's exuberant greetings. But the “jolly good” stuck in Annie's mind, and many times over that bizarre weekend she would whisper “jolly good” in Jean's ear, in the exact tone with the exact timing, then collapse in giggles at her own wit. Joanne, overhearing the joke, was hard-pressed not to giggle with them.

“Thank you for the gift. You really shouldn't have.”

Joanne was embarrassed by the money her friend had sent.
The envelope had been addressed to Miss Annie and Miss Jean Ross. Annie had pounced on it, read the card, and danced around, waving a postal order made out to her saying, “Look, Mum, for me. One for Jean too. All our own money.” It had taken a long argument to persuade Annie she couldn't spend it all on books and to tell Jean, no she couldn't have a new dolly.

“The girls bought new coats and hats.”

“Thank you, Aunty Patricia,” they chorused.

“Sorry about the Land Rover, but it's clean,” Patricia said as the girls piled into the back. “Mummy hates me using her car and refuses to buy me a car of my own. Probably a none-too-subtle hint that I should be off and married with a husband to provide for me.”

They drove through the countryside and villages and rattled past the Ord Mackenzie family estate, only slowing as Patricia pointed out what was left of the Italianate mansion on a hillside facing the firth. When Joanne had last seen it, there was a deserted, but nonetheless magnificent mansion dominating the farmland, woodland, and hillside. A staircase to nowhere and an unsightly scar was all that remained of the extravagant building.

“Granny Ross, my mother-in-law, is related to the gamekeeper on the estate there,” Joanne explained, “as well as being a cousin to Mrs. Munro, your housekeeper.”

“I know. Mrs. Munro keeps me up-to-date with the family goings-on.”

Does she now?
Joanne thought and was not comfortable with the information.

At the next village, they turned off and parked in the precinct next to the red sandstone ruins of the cathedral. Surrounded by thick walls and copper beeches, horse chestnuts with sticky swollen buds, and oaks as yet bare of leaves, the substantial remains of the cathedral were a striking sight.

Patricia was looking around, searching. The children, picking up on her anxiety, followed her gaze, puzzled as to what they should be looking for. Joanne made towards the wicket gate set in a lichen-covered archway.

“There's Mrs. Munro.” Patricia waved. “She's waiting for us. Yoo-hoo.”

Joanne watched in bemusement as her friend took a wicker basket from Mrs. Munro, then stooped to pin small corsages onto the children's coats.

“And, ta-ra, this one for my matron of honor.”

“Matron of honor?” Flabbergasted would be too mild a word to describe Joanne's face.

Patricia beamed. “Yes, my wedding. Here and now.” She pointed to the building on the other side of the cathedral precinct, the registry office. “I'm to be married in, let's see, twenty minutes. Now you know why I wanted you to dress up.”

“But I didn't even know you were engaged.”

“Skipped that bit. Bun in the oven.” Patricia patted her stomach and giggled, from nerves or bravado Joanne couldn't say. She was desperate to know more, but was aware of Annie avidly hanging on to every word.

“Why don't you go with Mrs. Munro to see the cathedral?” Joanne shooed her daughter off. She watched Annie join the housekeeper, who was already hovering over Jean like a broody hen, her nervousness at being here, deceiving her employers, momentarily distracted by the running, jumping children.

Even though Patricia had insisted on her being at the wedding, Mrs. Munro would do anything to avoid the fury of Patricia's mother, Mrs. Janet Ord Mackenzie.

“There will be trouble,” she sighed to herself, never anticipating how great the trouble would turn out to be.

“I want an explanation, Patricia Ord Mackenzie. Now.” But
Joanne couldn't help smiling. This was so typical of her friend, announcing an intrigue or a plan or an escapade at the very last minute, making it impossible for Joanne to refuse to join in.

“You're the only one I could count on,” came the shrugged apology. “After all, the same thing happened to you.”

Joanne winced at the tactless honesty of the remark.

“I've known Sandy for forever. Well, at least five years.” Patricia lit a cigarette before plowing on. “These things happen. He's a local. I met him on the farm. A handsome devil, that's what I first noticed . . . along with many other local lasses no doubt. . . .” Patricia laughed. “Then we started seeing each other . . . you know how it is . . . but it had to be secret because . . .” Patricia hesitated. She couldn't remember why it had to be secret; she was not ashamed of her romance with a working-class man. “When I became pregnant, Sandy was really pleased. He proposed, I accepted, and here we are.” She threw away her cigarette and searched in her bag for a lipstick.

“I see.” Joanne didn't really, but was stuck for something to say. “Do your parents know?” was all she could think to ask.

“Absolutely not. I'd be packed off to a nunnery or whatever one does in these circumstances. No, best get it over with and present them with a fait accompli. She can rant and cry all she wants, but if it's a boy, and I'm certain it will be, Mummy will forgive me anything.”

“I can't see your mother crying,” Joanne commented, recollecting her own nightmare. Their mothers were both of the same school of steely resolve.

“No,” Patricia agreed. “Tears would turn to ice as they left her eyes.” She looked at Joanne and the pink flush of vulnerability, or was it pregnancy hormones, softened Patricia's face. “I'm sorry to deceive you. It's going to be hard, so I need your support. And I want you at my wedding.”

Joanne leaned forward, wrapping her arms around her friend in reply. Patricia held on tight, a slight sob of relief escaping through all the held-in emotion.

Over Patricia's shoulder, Joanne saw a vaguely familiar figure stepping out of a car. In his buttonhole was a red carnation—for a wedding, presumably. His companions, on either side of him, wore white carnations, identifying them as part of the wedding party. They came towards the women, shuffling slightly, as though their shiny suits,
hired
, Joanne thought, were scratching them. But perhaps they were just embarrassed.