Wildfire at Midnight (6 page)

"You must have been a very lonely little boy."

"Perhaps I was. I don't remember. I don't think I feel lonely." He grinned again. "That is, until an uncle died, and left us a lot of money, and my father made me pot shoes on and go to a public school to learn manners.

"That was bad luck."

:f

"I hated it, of course. Particularly the shoes

"And now you spend your time climbing?"

"Pretty well. I travel a bit—but 1 always seem to end up here, at. any rate in May and June. They're the best months in the West, although" -he flung a quick glance over his shoulder—"1 think our friend Beagle was right about the weather. We'll have rain tomorrow, for certain, and once the Cuillin get a good grip on a rainstorm, they're very reluctant to let it go.'"

"Oh dear," I said, "and I was wanting to walk. I begin to see why people take up fishing here. It must be sheer self-defense."

"Very possibly. Watch your step, now. It's tricky going in this light."

We had reached the foot of the little hill called An't Sron, and began to climb the rough heathery slope. A cock grouse rose with a clap from somewhere near at hand, and planed down towards the river, chakking indignantly. The light had faded perceptibly. Like an enormous storm cloud above the valley Blaven loomed, and behind his massive edge hung, now, the ghost of a white moon past the full.

Roderick Grant paused for a moment in his stride, and looked thoughtfully up at the wicked ridges shouldering the sky.

"I wonder if those two fool women will really go up there tomorrow?" "Is it a bad climb?"

"Not if you know which way to go. Straight up the south ridge it's only a scramble. But there are nasty places even there."

"Miss Bradford said she knew her way about," I said.

A smile touched his mouth. "She did, didn't she? Well, we can't do much about it."

"I suppose not." We were more than halfway up the little hill. The going was getting steeper and rougher.

"Mr. Grant," I said, a little breathlessly.

"Yes?"

I hesitated, then said flatly: "What did Miss Bradford mean about a hoodoo on Blaven? What's wrong with it?"

He stopped and glanced down at me. He looked surprised, almost blank. "Wrong with it?" He repeated the phrase half mechanically.

"Yes. Why does everyone shy off it like that? I'm sure they do. I can't be mistaken. And if it comes to that, what's wrong with the people in the hotel? Because there's something, and if you haven't noticed it—"

"You don't know?"

"Of course I don't know!" I said, almost irritably. "I've only just arrived. But even to me the setup seems uncomfortably like the opening of a bad problem play."

"You're not far astray at that," said Roderick Grant. "Only we're halfway through the play, and it looks as if the problem isn't going to be solved at ail." He paused, and looked gravely down at me in the gathering dusk. "It's a nasty problem, too," he said. "The nastiest of all, in fact. There's been murder done."

I took a jerky little breath. "Murder?"

He nodded. His blue eyes, in that light, were dark under lowered brows. "Two and a half weeks ago it happened, on the thirteenth of May. It was a local girl, and she was murdered on Blaven."

"I—see." Half unbelievingly I lifted my eyes to the great mass ahead. Then I shivered and moved forward. "Let's get to the top of this hill," I said, "and then, if you don't mind, I think you'd better tell me about it."

We sat on a slab of rock, and lit cigarettes. Away below us, cradled in its purple hollow, Loch na Creitheach gleamed with a hard bright light like polished silver. Two ducks flew across it, not a foot above their own reflections.

"Who was the girl?" I asked. "And who did it?" He answered the latter question first. "We still don't know who did it. That's what I meant when I said it was a nasty problem. The police—" He frowned down at the cigarette in his fingers, then said: "I'd better start at the beginning, hadn't I?"

"Please do."

"The girl's name was Heather Macrae. Her father's a crofter, who does some ghillying for the hotel folks in summertime. You'll probably meet him. His croft's three or four miles up the Strath na Creitheach, the river that flows into the far end of this loch. . .. Well, it seems Heather Macrae was 'keeping company' with a lad from the village, one Jamesy Farlane, and so, when she took to staying out a bit later in the long spring evenings, her folk didn't worry about it. They thought they knew who she was with."

"And it wasn't Jamesy after all?"

"Jamesy says not. He says it very loud and clear. But then, of course," said Roderick Grant, "he would."

"And if it wasn't Jamesy, who could it have been?"

"Jamesy says he and Heather had a quarrel—yes, he admits it quite openly. He says she'd begun to avoid him, and when finally he tackled her with it, she flared up and said she was going with a better chap than he was. A gentleman, Jamesy says she told him." He glanced at me. "A gentleman from the hotel."

"Oh no!" 1 said.

"I'm afraid so."

"But—that doesn't mean the man from the hotel was necessarily—•'"

"The murderer? I suppose not, but there's a strong probability—if, that is, he existed at all. We only have Jamesy Farlane's word for that. What we do know is that Heather Macrae went out on the evening of May the thirteenth to meet a man. She told her parents that she 'had a date.' "

"And—on Blaven, you said?"

His voice was somber. "This bit isn't nice, but I'd better tell you. At about midnight that night, some men who were out late on Loch Scavaig—I suspect they were poaching sea trout—saw what looked like a great blaze of fire halfway up Blaven. They were mystified, but of course not alarmed. It's bare rock, so they weren't afraid of its spreading. They went on with their job, whatever it was, and kept an eye on the fire. One of them had a look through some night glasses, and said it was a column of flame, like a big bonfire, but that its base was out of sight behind a rocky bluff."

He paused. "Well, they got more and more puzzled. Who on earth would light a bonfire away up there, and what on earth could he be burning there anyway? Whether they were being wise after the event, or not, I don't know, but one of them, Rhodri MacDowell, says that gradually, watching that leaping column of fire where no fire ought to be, they grew first of all uneasy, then alarmed, then downright frightened. And when the chap with the glasses reported seeing a dark figure moving in front of the flames, they decided to investigate."

He frowned down at the shining loch. "By the time they got to it, of course, the fire was out, and it was only the remains of the smoke licking up the rock face that guided them. They found a widish ledge—easy enough to get to —with the remains of charred driftwood and birch and heather blackened and scattered, deliberately it seemed, all over the rock. Lying in the middle of the blackened patch was Heather's body, flat on its back." He drew sharply on his cigarette, and his voice was flat and colorless. "She was not very much burned. She had been dead when he put her there. Ashes had been scattered over her, and her throat was cut." "Oh, dear God," I said.

"She was," said Roderick, in that flat, impersonal voice, "fully clothed, and she was lying quietly, with her hands crossed on her breast. The oddest thing was, though, that she was barefooted, and all her jewelry had been taken off."

"Jewelry?" I said, astounded. "But good heavens—" "Oh no, not stolen," he said quickly. "She hadn't anything worth stealing, poor child, let alone worth getting herself murdered for. It was all there, in a little pile in the corner of the ledge: her shoes, a leather belt, and all the ornaments she'd been wearing—a ring, a cheap bracelet and brooch, earrings—even a couple of hair clips. Odd, don't you think?"

But I wasn't thinking about its oddness. I said savagely: "The poor kid had certainly put on all her finery for him, hadn't she?"

He shot me a look. "It's quite particularly unpleasant, isn't it?"

"It certainly is." I looked up and along the towering curve of Blaven's south ridge. "And the police: do they favor Jamesy, or the gentleman from the hotel?"

He shrugged, and ground his cigarette out on the rock. "God knows. They've been coming and going ever since that day, putting us all through it—very quietly and unobtrusively, but nevertheless thoroughly. But you see why nerves are a little bit on edge?"

"I see," I said grimly. "I must say it seems a little strange that Major Persimmon didn't warn new guests of what was going on. They might even have preferred not to come."

"Quite," said Roderick Grant. "But his line is, obviously, that Jamesy's talking nonsense to protect himself, and that it's nothing to do with the hotel. The heavy questioning is all over, and the police are in any case being very quiet about it all. You can hardly expect Bill—Major Persimmon—to ruin his season, and possibly his hotel, can you?"

"I suppose not." I squashed out my cigarette, and rose. He got up too, and stood looking down at me.

"I hope this hasn't upset you too much," he said, a little awkwardly.

"If it has," I said, "it can hardly matter, can it? It's that poor child, going up to her death on die mountain, all decked out in her best, ..." I bit my lip, and kicked at a tuft of heather, then raised my head and looked straight at him. "Just tell me," I said, "precisely which 'gentlemen' were in this hotel on May the thirteenth?"

The blue eyes met mine levelly. "All those," he said expressionlessly, "who are here now, with the exception of Miss Maling's chauffeur."

"And which of you," I said doggedly, feeling unhappy and absurd at the same time, "has an alibi?"

"None of us that I know of." Nothing in his voice betrayed any awareness of the change of pronoun which all at once gave the story a horrible immediacy. "Two of those boys camping by the river swear they were together; the third, no. Colonel Cowdray-Simpson and Bill Persimmon are vouched for by their wives, but that counts for very little, of course. Corrigan and Braine were out fishing on Loch an Athain."

"At midnight!"

"Quite a lot of people do. It's never really dark at this time of the year."

"Then they were together?"

"No. They separated to different beats some time after eleven, and went back to the hotel in their own time. Mrs. Corrigan says her husband got in well before midnight."

There was an odd note in his voice, and I took him up sharply. "You don't believe her?"

"I didn't say that. I only think it was pretty good going to get back to Camasunary by midnight. Loch an Athain's another mile beyond the end of Creitheach, and the going's heavy."

"Did he let himself into the hotel?"

"It's open all night."

"How nice," I said. "And Mr. Hay?"

"In bed. A very difficult alibi to break."

"Or prove."

"As you say. Mine happens to be the same."

"I—I'm sorry," I said, feeling suddenly helpless. "This is—fantastic, isn't it? I can't believe . .. and anyway, I've no earthly business to be questioning you as if you were Suspect Number One. I really am sorry."

He grinned. "That's all right. And it is your business, after all, if you're going to stay here. You've got to judge whom, if anyone, you feel safe with."

I put a hand to my cheek. "Oh Lord," I said, "I sup-post so. I—I hadn't thought of that."

He spoke quickly, with contrition. "And I'm a fool to have mentioned it before we got back to lights and company.. . . Come along." He took my arm and turned quickly, helping me over the boulder-strewn turf.

"We'll get back to the hotel. After all, for all you know, I might be Suspect Number One. This way; there's a path along the top of the ridge. We'll follow it along the hill a bit before we go down."

I went with him, disconcerted to find that my heart was pumping violently. The night had grown perceptibly darker. We had our backs to the lucent west, and before us the ghost moon swam in a deepening sky, where the mass of Blaven stooped like Faustus's mountain, ready to fall on us.

And its menacing shape was repeated, oddly, in a shadow that loomed in front of us, right in our path.. . a tall pile of something, heaped on the heather as if to mark the crest of the hill. Roderick Grant guided me past it without a look, but I glanced back at it uncertainly.

"What's that? A cairn?"

He flicked a casual look over his shoulder. "That? No. It's a bonfire."

I stopped dead, and his hand fell from my arm. He turned in surprise. I noticed all at once how still the glen was, how still and lonely. The lights of the hotel seemed a very long way off.

I said: "A—a bonfire?" and my voice came out in a sort of croak.

He was staring at me. "Yes. What's up?" Then his voice changed. "Oh my God, I've done it again, haven't I? I never thought—I didn't mean to scare you. I'm a fool...." He took two strides back towards me, and his hands were on my shoulders. "Miss—Janet"—I doubt if either of us really noticed his use of my name—"don't be frightened. It's only the local Coronation celebration. They've been collecting stuff for the bonfire for weeks! It's nothing more sinister than that!" He shook me gently. "And I promise you I'm not a murderer either!"

"I never thought you were," I said shakily. "It's I who'm the fool. Fm sorry.*'

His hands dropped to his sides, and I saw him smiling down in the dusk. "Then let's get back to the hotel, shall we?" he said.

We turned towards the lights of Camasunary.

After all, it was not so very late. The hotel was bright and warm and safe, and one or two people were still about. Through the lounge door I could see Hartley Corrigan and Alastair sitting over a last drink, and, nearby, Ronald Beagle placidly reading.

And the idea that any of the men that I had met could be guilty of a crime at once so revolting and so bizarre was fantastic enough to border on lunacy. It was on a slightly shamefaced note that I said good night to Roderick Grant, and went up to my room.

The head of the staircase opened on the central point of the main upper corridor, which was like a large E, its three branches all ending in windows facing east, over the front of the hotel. My room lay in the far southeastern corner, at the end of the lower arm of the E. The bathroom next to me was, I found, occupied, so, wrapping my white velvet housecoat round me, I set out in search of another, which I found eventually at the far end of the main corridor. I took a long time over my bath, and by the time I had finished the hotel seemed to have settled into silence for the night. I let myself quietly out of the bathroom, and padded back along the now darkened corridor.