Call of Glengarron (7 page)

If somebody else was taking over responsibility, then it was none too soon. It was no good leaving everything to me. I’d only be at the castle for a few more days at most.

Downstairs, in the small dining room that was used for meals by the family, I found Jamie sitting at the table between Craig and Fiona. It was immediately obvious that I had walked into the middle of an atmosphere.

I soon discovered what it was all about. Fiona had been invited by one of last night’s guests to drive over for coffee this morning. She had managed to persuade Craig to take her, and then suggested that Jamie went with them.

Jamie didn’t like the idea at all. He wanted to stay with me, and was saying so, loudly.

It was a case of being cruel to be kind. “I’m going for a walk this morning,” I announced brightly.

Jamie would like nothing better than a walk with me, it seemed.

“But I shall be going much too far for you. I want to do some exploring of the countryside.” I smiled at him appeasingly. “Maybe I’ll take you another time.”

Jamie looked tearful, but he knew by now when I was going to be firm.

Though I hadn’t imagined this little scene would make Fiona any more fond of me, I wasn’t prepared for the viciousness she aimed regarding her across the table. I almost flinched. Almost, not quite. I managed to sit there coolly.

Having said I’d take a walk, I had to go ahead and do it. I didn’t care a damn what the others might have thought, but I’d feel mean cheating Jamie.

After breakfast I ran upstairs and changed quickly into stretch slacks and my suede jacket. Soon I was walking briskly over the causeway. At the highway I hesitated, uncertain which direction to take. Both looked equally enticing, so acting upon whim I turned left.

The road ran twisting through the glen alongside a chattering stream that fed Loch Ghorm. After about half a mile I came across a good track which struck away to my left, a scratch on the pine-covered hillside.

I was climbing steadily all the time now. At first trees hemmed me in, but then I reached a point where the hill rose more steeply and the track cut into the rock itself. On my left I could see clear over the pine tips.

It was a magnificent morning. The sun came filtering through a ceiling of white cloud. The air was still and soft, the whisper of haze drawing a silky lilac gauze across the landscape. Twice the track bridged mountain brooks which rippled their cheerful way down to the loch.

At this height I looked down upon a great expanse of water. From Glengarron Castle perched upon its rocky promontory, Loch Ghorm stretched away for miles, fading out of sight under bare wall of mountain that guarded its far end—Ben Liath Mhor.

In all the wide landscape the castle was the only sign of habitation—the only sign of human life at all. Apart from a chuckling from the nearest brook and the song of a lark from high above, I was in the midst of a great silence.

The track ahead went on climbing, curving steadily around the hillside. I guessed that from nearer the top the view would be even more breathtaking, and I had plenty of time. I walked on for another ten minutes or so, and then decided to rest for a bit. A rock at the side of the track offered a handy ledge for me to sit and enjoy the magnificent panorama.

Faintly I could hear the sound of a car engine. It was difficult to tell which direction it was coming from, because among the hills sound echoed and reechoed uncannily. I cursed the unknown driver for breaking the wonderful peace of the morning, and waited impatiently for the noise to fade away into the distance.

But instead it grew louder, and suddenly I saw an open jeep rounding the bend in the track, coming down the hill. When it reached me, it stopped, and the driver leaned out.

“Good morning, Miss Calvert.”

I was surprised to hear him use my name, until I recognized him as one of the party guests. I flushed—I’d thought at first he must be one of the foresters.

He was grinning at me. “Don’t worry, I won’t have you arrested—not this time.”

“Arrested ... ?” I didn’t follow.

“Oh please ... I was only kidding. I meant for trespass.”

“But isn’t this all part of the McKinross estate?”

“No. Craig’s land ends at the brook. Up from there, it’s mine.”

“Oh dear I... I’m awfully sorry.”

“Come now. It was just my feeble attempt at a joke. Can I give you a lift down to the road?”

As he spoke he climbed out of the jeep. He had to unwrap his legs carefully, and when he stood up I saw he was an unusually tall man.

Jamie had said the man he called Uncle Lambert was very tall!

“I’m afraid I’ve got to confess that I can’t remember your name,” I said. “There were so many new people to meet last night.”

“As a matter of fact I don’t think we were formally introduced. I’m Lambert Nairn.”

Even though I’d really been expecting it, the name hit me hard.
Lambert
Nairn! I shivered, and I was grateful to be sitting down.

Again he made a gesture of invitation. “As I said—can I give you a lift?”

I hadn’t intended returning to the castle yet awhile. But here was a chance of discovering the facts about his visit to Margo—a chance I might not get again.

I stood up. “Thank you, Mr. Nairn. That would be very welcome.”

With a little display of gallantry, just a shade too much business with his hands, he helped me get aboard. The jeep began to bump its way down the track.

Lambert Nairn had to concentrate on holding the steering, and I was able to study his profile without him noticing. Even aside from his height he was a striking man. I guessed he was in his early thirties—no more. Yet there was a gauntness about him, a thinness of body on a wide framework. His face was curiously pallid for a man leading an outdoor life.

Though I’d been some time walking up here, the return by jeep would only take a few minutes. I couldn’t afford to waste time in silent observation. I had to get to the point, and quickly.

“Mr. Nairn,” I began before I’d really worked out my best approach. “Jamie seemed to think he knew you.”

“Oh yes... ?” The words were casual, but I sensed a tightening of his hands on the wheel.

“It’s true, then?”

I felt him picking his words carefully. “It’s true that I know Jamie, yes.”

“That means you must have met him in London. He would never be able to remember people he met up here when he was just a baby.”

There was a long pause. At last Nairn said slowly, “Yes, I did meet Jamie in London.”

“So you knew my cousin then—Margo McKinross?”

He pretended to be very preoccupied with negotiating the jeep over a particularly difficult and muddy patch. He was silent for so long this time that I wondered if he was going to answer my question at all.

I prompted him.
“Did
you know my cousin, Mr. Nairn?”

“Yes,” he admitted reluctantly. “I knew Margo. I first met her in Edinburgh when Craig and I were both at the university.”

So he was more than a neighbor of Craig’s—he was a friend. My theories about him acting as a go-between began to have more substance.

I decided to take a plunge. “Why were you with Margo the night she … died?”

His reaction astonished me. He braked hard, stopping the jeep with such a jolt that I was nearly flung through the windshield.

“Now look here,” he began fiercely. “I had nothing to do with her death. You can’t blame
me
for that.”

I had an odd, unfitting sense of victory. Somehow I felt I had taken a small but vital step toward discovering the true cause of Marge’s death. Very soon now I might learn the real reason for her desperate act of suicide.

But if I thought I was making progress toward understanding, Nairn’s next words opened up a gaping hole of terror.

“It wasn’t me who killed her.”

Everything in my vision blurred except for Lambert Nairn’s face. The mountains, the loch below us, the track ahead—it was all a misty backcloth. The man’s features stood out sharply distinct, white and tense.

“But... but Margo took her own life,” I faltered.

“So the police think. I only hope they are  right.”

I managed to collect myself enough to ask with relative calm, “Why should you even suspect that he might not be right?”

“I didn’t say I
suspected....
” Nairn was being evasive, running away from the implications of his own words. “But ... well, living the sort of life she led ...”

I blazed at him. “The sort of life she led? Just what is it you’re suggesting?”

“Come now.” His eyes were incredulous, almost ironical. “Pretending you don’t know what I mean.”

“But I
don’t
know. Margo was a model, and what’s wrong with that?”

“There’s nothing wrong with it.” He hesitated, and took out a packet of cigarettes. But I suppose he thought the moment was inappropriate, because he put them away again without lighting one. “Margo was a girl who needed admiration.”

“Don’t all women?” I cut in sharply defensive. “And men too, for that matter.”

“But with Margo it was much more than that—almost a disease really. Modeling suited her ideally, because she always had plenty of men at her feet. She gloried in it.”

I digested what he’d said. I didn’t want to believe it, but looking back, I had to admit that the picture fitted Margo. To a degree it fitted her.

“Margo was a very beautiful woman,” I said at last. “It’s natural enough. Well, I mean, wanting admiration isn’t ...”

He put in quietly, “Men don’t dance that sort of attention for nothing.”

His meaning should have been obvious to any adult person, but I was so shaken up by this conversation that I simply didn’t get the drift.

“I can hardly put it any plainer,” he murmured. Then, in a sickening rush, I did understand.   “You’ve got it all wrong,” I cried. “She wasn’t like that at all.”

Again the irony was in his eyes. “You don’t think so? Surely I ought to know.”

“Do you mean you were ... ?”

“I was never fool enough to imagine that I was the only one. No—Margo liked to distribute her favors.”

“Why are you saying these things? Trying to make me believe that Margo was ... was promiscuous?”

“I’m simply trying to make you understand the truth about that cousin of yours.” He swung around to face me, suddenly earnest, dropping the act of sardonic amusement. “The point is this, Miss Calvert. You’ve discovered that I knew your cousin. All right then, but I can’t have my wife finding out about it. I want to make you see that if you insist on talking about my knowing Margo, you’re going to uncover a helluva lot of mud. And it won’t do you the slightest bit of good.”

I believed him then. I believed he
thought
he was telling me the truth. And for the first time I began to wonder seriously if he wasn’t partly right. Mike had always implied the same thing.

Of course, Lambert Nairn was exaggerating wildly. But it might have been that the break-up of her marriage had so shaken Margo’s self-confidence that she had been driven to look for admiration wherever she could find it.

Nairn had said:
“Men don’t dance that sort of attention for nothing.”

It could be that poor Margo had sometimes got more than she bargained for. Men being what they were, had she found herself getting ever more deeply entangled?

Could this be the real reason for her suicide? I had to know what happened that night Margo had died.

As soon as I started questioning him again, Lambert Nairn switched back to an aggressively defensive attitude. “I told you, her death was nothing at all to do with me.”

“What time did you leave her?”

His answer was very pat. “About nine-thirty. We’d been out to dinner, and went back to her flat. But I only stayed a few minutes.”

I looked him square in the eye. “That hardly lines up with what you’ve been saying. You more than hinted you were her lover.”

“I had to go early,” he said uneasily. “Something cropped up.”

“What cropped up?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“This is fantastic. You know perfectly well that the police should have been told you were with Margo that evening.” I went on talking right through Nairn’s indignant protest. “Yes, I know why you kept quiet—or at least I think I know why. But if you’re asking me to keep quiet too, I must be satisfied that it’s the right thing to do.”

He was getting very agitated. “I dropped in on Margo out of the blue at around five o’clock. She’d just got in herself after bringing Jamie back from nursery school.”

“You gave Jamie a cowboy hat, didn’t you?”

He stared. “How do you know that?”

“Never mind how I know. As soon as I got home from work that evening, Margo phoned, asking if Jamie could stay the night with me.”

Lambert Nairn nodded. “Yes, I was there when she phoned you, and then I drove them to your flat.”

“I see. And then?”

“Then we went on to a bar, and afterward to dinner.”

With a jab of pain I recalled Margo telling me that her agent wanted her to meet a client. An exciting advertising campaign for a new shampoo was being planned, using Margo as the model. The discussions might go on very late, she’d explained.

I said in a flat voice, “You took her to the Albatross.”

“Who’s been talking to you?” Nairn demanded. “You seem to know it all.”

“Sheer chance. A friend of a friend of mine saw you both at the restaurant, that’s all.”

He went whiter than ever. “Will they talk? I don’t want this coming out.”

“Oh, it’s all right. They didn’t know who you were. I was merely told that Margo had been dining there with a man.”

“Thank God for that.” Nairn looked very relieved. “Well, after dinner I took her back to the flat, and I left at around nine-thirty.”

I shook my head. “You are being evasive, Mr. Nairn. You said something cropped up to make you leave early. I want to know what that something was. It might well have a bearing on her death.”

He looked away from me, stroking the outer rim of the steering wheel with an apparently idle finger. “I had to get out of Margo’s flat because somebody else was coming.”