Beneath the Abbey Wall (12 page)

*  *  *  

Up until breakfast next morning, Rob had been confident Don would be released. He was accustomed to his father being remote when involved in a complicated case. But the furrows on his father's forehead and the absentminded way Angus McLean backed his car out of the driveway, almost colliding with the coalman, terrifying the poor horse, made Rob reconsider. His father was not a man to panic.

Once at work, Rob finished an article on a local baker who insisted on prosecuting a child for stealing a sausage roll. He angled the story to expose the baker as the skinflint most knew him to be, without being libelous.

“This is for you, Neil.” Rob put the finished copy into the sub's tray. “I'm away out for about an hour.” He could have spoken to the moon for all the attention he got; Joanne and Neil were engrossed in a conversation about Labrador or Nova Scotia or other cold, cold places that held no interest whatsoever for Rob.

“Can I have a quick word with my father?” Rob asked the dragon cum secretary cum receptionist who guarded his father from clients who, her expression said, must have committed some unfortunate deed if they were in need of a solicitor.

“I will see if Mr. McLean is available.”

A person more icy than Artic Canada,
was how Rob always thought of the woman.

“What can I do for you?” his father asked when Rob came in and took the visitor's chair.

Rob knew not to waste his time. “Don McLeod. Is there anything I can do to help?”

Normally Angus McLean knew Rob only wanted reassurance that all was well, and his reply would be, no thank you, but thank you for asking. This time he said, “Perhaps you could help.”

The solicitor had not been enthusiastic in his son's choice of career, would have preferred that his only child attend his old university before settling into a career in the law. McLean and McLean had been his dream. However, after nearly three years at the
Gazette,
he acknowledged his son was a talented reporter, excellent at ferreting out information.

“Don McLeod lives in a close near the Old High Church,” he started.

Rob knew the place. “Opposite the stairs where Mrs. Smart was killed.”

“Quite. According to the police, the neighbors neither saw nor heard anything that night. However, Mr. McLeod's next-door neighbor is a student nurse. I haven't been able to contact her. Apparently she works shifts. I'd like to know if she has any information that might help the defense, specifically if she knew of the whereabouts of the knife.” He then went on to explain the significance of the knife, the one used to kill Mrs. Smart.

Rob felt the hair on his arms tingle when his father described the filleting knife. “Leave it with me,” he said when his father finished.

“Thank you, Rob.” Angus McLean turned back to his papers. “I must continue with this”—he tapped a document—“and I needn't tell you how essential it is we follow every lead, no matter how tenuous . . . ”

As Rob stood to leave, his father, in a voice soft with the Highland sibilants, said, “Perhaps you and McAllister could . . . you know.” He made a circular motion with his hand as though bringing an orchestra to attention.

Rob did know. He and McAllister had worked well together in the past, discovering information that the police had overlooked, or perhaps it was more a case of employing methods the police were not allowed to use.
But,
he thought as he walked back
to work,
McAllister shuts off when I ask about Don McLeod—and Mrs. Smart. But I'll do as my father suggested, I'll investigate.

*  *  *  

That evening, as McAllister was on his way to dinner with the Beauchamp Carlyle siblings, he found himself passing the home of Mrs. Smart, or Joyce Mackenzie as he now thought of her.

He looked up at the high crow-step gables, the Ballachulish slates glistening in the light of a gibbous moon; the mansion looked like an apt setting for an Edgar Allan Poe poem.

“The date on the masthead gave me a real shock, only two months to Mr. McLeod's trial,” Beech said as he and McAllister sat with a whisky by the drawing-room fire.

His sister, Rosemary, was in the kitchen finishing off dinner, glad to escape the tobacco fumes. “Tobacco destroys the taste buds,” she told her brother, often.

Twenty minutes later, she summoned them. “Dinner is ready.”

In the dining room, a long table that would sit sixteen comfortably was set at one end. A table candelabrum, as bright as a Halloween bonfire, set the numerous items of unfathomable silver serving dishes sitting polished on the sideboards aglistening.

An elderly woman came in with a tureen. Her hands trembled as she filled their bowls, but not a drop of soup was spilled. She had ignored Countess Sokolov, as she always called Rosemary, not
Mrs.
Sokolov as Rosemary requested, when told there was no need to get out the best china. So, the overelaborately decorated best china it was.

The soup was chicken, but the spices and herbs were nothing McAllister could identify. He shared his cock-a-leekie soup recipe and asked for her secrets. Rosemary Sokolov said she grew her own Asian herbs and told him her traumas of gardening in the Highland climate.

“I found Himalayan plants do best,” she said, “and I've taken advice from Mr. Bahadur next door on tending the plants.”

“Mr. Bahadur?”

“He looks after Sergeant Major Smart. He was in the Gurkha Rifles under the command of Colonel Ian Mackenzie, Joyce Mackenzie's father.”

“Ah, I see,” McAllister said, although he didn't completely.

All through dinner, good manners prevailed; the real reason behind the invitation assigned its time and place—the drawing room.

The drawing room, another large space, was at the front of the house with French doors opening onto the lawn. High stone walls hid the river, but there was always the sense that it was there, bearing the waters of Loch Ness to the sea. After serving her brother and McAllister with coffee, Rosemary settled into a deep armchair opposite the journalist. She was not looking forward to the “inquisition,” as she thought of it.

“I caught up with Jenny McPhee on Sunday.” McAllister went straight to the heart of the matter, sensing there was no need to prevaricate with the countess. “She told me about the boys taken from her by the welfare authorities and that Joyce Mackenzie and her father had helped her keep her other boys.”

“Jenny would not have told you that without a good reason,” Rosemary said. “She is a very private woman.”

McAllister waited for her to elaborate. She said nothing. How the matter of stolen Traveler children was connected with the murder intrigued him, but Rosemary was as opaque as Jenny when it came to explanations.

“I am doing all I can to free Don McLeod,” McAllister said, “and to find who killed Mrs. Smart. To do so, I have to ask questions that might not seem relevant.”

“I prefer to call her Joyce Mackenzie,” Beech interrupted.
“Joyce was proud of her name, proud of who her people were. And the sergeant major was never much of a husband.”

“That is not our business, Mortimer.”

Beech smiled, used to being chided by his elder sister. He looked at her—how she sat, her swanlike neck, her straight posture, her hands clasped on her lap, the impossibly correct portrait of a gentlewoman—knowing this appearance disguised a woman of steel. He thought of his sister as a warrior woman.

“Old Colonel Ian Mackenzie, Joyce's father, indeed most of the people of the Northwest, have a good relationship with the Traveling people.” Beech continued the story, knowing his sister's reticence but also keenly aware that they must provide any information that might help Don McLeod. “Remote communities rely on them for news of neighbors, they buy their goods, use their labor; tinkers are good seasonal laborers and are excellent tinsmiths and can repair most things. Also, Jenny McPhee's first husband, a Stewart from Sutherland, had been in Mackenzie's regiment in World War One and was killed in France.”

Rosemary took up the story. “Colonel Mackenzie came back to the estate in Assynt for a visit before being posted to India. Joyce was there and she, with her father's agreement, made crofthouses emptied by the Clearances available as winter quarters for Traveling families. They weren't much, apparently, four walls and a heather-thatched roof, but shelter nonetheless.”

She was looking out into the night-dark sky but all she could see was their reflections in the window. “I knew Joyce Mackenzie when we were girls; our families were friends. I did not meet her again until I returned to Scotland in the mid-thirties and she was living alone in the house next door. We resumed our friendship. Joyce told me of local-authority welfare officers removing children from tinker families and putting them in institutions.
Some were adopted, others sent to the colonies, others . . . ” Shaking her head, she gave a slight shudder as though a sudden draft had crossed over her shoulders.

“‘For their own good.'”
Beech quoted the expression governments, colonialists, conquerors used to justify their actions. “As though their lives locked up in those appalling places were an improvement on life on the road.”

“With the Mackenzie estate giving them winter quarters, the children went to school. Keith McPhee, Jenny's eldest, did so well, he was the first Traveler known to go on to university. Most of the children receive a basic education as they are only in school for the winter, but it all helps.” Rosemary Beauchamp Carlyle had spent most of her life helping others gain an education. It mattered to her.

“I have heard that tinkers are accused of stealing children,” McAllister commented.

“Quite the opposite.” Rosemary was firm in her reply. “Many an unwanted Highland or Island child has been taken in by them.”

“Were you yourself involved in helping the Traveling families?” McAllister asked the siblings.

“No,” Rosemary replied. “Over the years, Joyce told me about growing up as an only child on a remote estate in Sutherland. Her mother died when she was four, so no wonder she welcomed the company of the Traveler children.”

“I know of some of the pipers,” Beech said. “There are one or two first-class musicians amongst them and they keep alive the old tunes—and compose new ones. There is nothing I love better than taking to the road in my old jalopy and sitting by a campfire hearing the bagpipes played by a master like Sandy Stewart.”

Since McAllister knew the “jalopy” in question was a Bentley,
he thought it must be an incongruous sight to see it parked at a tinker camp. He moved on to his next query.

“I was wondering if maybe his man, the Nepali Gurkha, could Sergeant Major Smart have persuaded him . . . paid him to kill . . . ”

“Never.” Rosemary was firm. “Never. The Gurkha regimental motto is ‘Better to die than be a coward,' and what is more cowardly than stabbing a defenseless woman. No, Bahadur is a good person. Colonel Mackenzie asked him to look after the sergeant major, but really it was to protect Joyce. The man has given up his homeland to help her. And . . . and this is only speculation on my part, I wouldn't be surprised if he returns to Nepal as soon as the will is executed.”

“The police might want him here for the trial,” McAllister pointed out. “Do you think I could to talk to him? I'm floundering here, desperate to find anything that might help Don.”

Beech and his sister looked at each other. “I will ask,” she said. “Now if you will excuse me . . . ”

McAllister and Beech stood.

“Thank you for dinner,” McAllister said.

“I'm sorry we can't help you more,” she replied and walked from the room as though her feet were treading air.

He turned to Beech to thank him and said, “I will keep searching. There has to be a reason for someone to commit murder.”

The evening's conversation had had an edge to it. McAllister had a sure and certain feeling that the Beauchamp Carlyle siblings knew much more but had not decided what, if anything, they would divulge.

“Leave it with me,” Beech said as they shook hands. “I'll talk with my sister. Sometimes promises have to be broken.”

McAllister was glad of the walk home. Leaving behind the
sheen of the river and the quiet sound of fast-running water, a sound just a note above silence, he tried to organize his thoughts. All he could think of were the questions not asked; not asked not because he was too polite; unasked because the questions were insensitive in such a setting as the Beauchamp Carlyle drawing room.

So he asked himself.

Did the brother and sister know about Joyce Mackenzie's relationship with Don? Did they know of the Sunday-evening trysts?
No knowing the answer to that
. Did they know why she was buried in such haste?
I should have asked
. He resolved to ask Beech when they were alone.

As he reached his garden gate, one other thought came to him.
Did Rosemary or her brother know that Don McLeod and Joyce Mackenzie knew each other before she set off for India?

After he switched off his bedside light, the final thought that would accompany him in his dreams came.

Is Bahadur a first or surname in the Gurkha tradition? Or is it a title? And what does Mr. Bahadur know?
In that moment between awake and asleep, McAllister convinced himself that the man knew a lot.