08 - The Highland Fling Murders (11 page)

“All set?” Mort asked when I joined him and the others in front of the castle.

“Yup. I have my walking shoes on, and my umbrella in my bag. Just in case.”

“Have fun!”

We looked up at a window where George Sutherland stood, waving.
“Don’t tyne the road,”
he yelled.

“What’s that?” Mort shouted.

“Don’t lose your way.”

“Can’t hardly do that,” Mort replied. “You can see this castle from everywhere.”

With that, we were off.

I ended up leading the pack, and decided to take a different route than I’d chosen during my first foray into Wick. It was a good choice; we were surrounded at every turn by natural beauty, walking at one point through a waist-high field of heather, looking down sheer black cliffs to the sea, waves crashing, hundreds of birds nesting in crevices or soaring into the sky that was, at once, menacing black and cobalt blue.

“Look over there,” Roberta Walters, our resident bird-watching aficionado, said, training a small pair of binoculars at a small plateau atop a huge rock jutting up from the water. “A redthroated diver.” She handed the binoculars to her husband, who confirmed the sighting while Roberta made a note in a bird book in which she listed every bird she’d ever seen.

We continued in the direction of town, looking back on occasion at Sutherland Castle, growing smaller as we distanced ourselves from it. But no matter how its visual dimensions decreased, its domination of the horizon continued to impress.

A golf course sat unused. Golf originated in Scotland, and the Scots’s love of the game is legendary. But from the looks of this course, golf wasn’t a popular sport with the citizens of Wick, or its surrounding villages and towns.

“Look at that,” Mort said, pointing to something in the distance. “Looks like an oil rig.”

“ ‘Course it is,” Seth said. “Didn’t you read your guidebook, Mort? There’s oil all up and down Scotland’s coast, includin’ right there offshore from Wick.”

Mort was offended at Seth’s tone; they often slipped into such minor arguments that never progressed very far because of their long and deep friendship. Usually, I find their spats to be humorous. But on this day, I didn’t want one to intrude into our pleasant excursion, and expressed my feelings.

“Just pointing out the obvious,” Seth said.

“No need to put me down,” said Mort, “just ‘cause I missed the part about oil in the book.”

“How can you miss it?” Seth said. “Everybody knows Scotland got rich ‘cause a’ oil.”

“Doesn’t look too rich to me around these parts,” Mort countered.

“And it doesn’t matter,” I said, summoning steel into my tone. “Stop it!”

Seth and Mort looked sheepishly at me. Mort grinned. Seth shrugged. And we continued walking until reaching the beginning of Bridge Street.

“How about stopping in that shop,” suggested Susan Shevlin. Its sign said it specialized in kilts and bagpipes. She’d been making notes ever since we left the castle. One thing is certain—Susan Shevlin is a hard-working travel agent, and her clients benefit from her conscientious approach whenever she travels.

The shop’s inside was musty and dimly lighted. Behind the counter stood an older man with unruly white hair, red cheeks, and eyes sunk deep into his face. He was doing something with a bagpipe when we entered, looked up, nodded, and went back to his chore. We browsed kilt outfits on manikins that looked to have been crafted in another era. The clothing draped on them was dusty, like the shop owner.

“Why don’t you buy one, Seth?” Roberta Walters suggested, laughing. “You have great legs.”

“That might be true,” he said, “but I’m not one to go around showin’ them off.”

“I don’t think you have such great legs,” Mort said, still stung by Seth’s earlier comment about not knowing of Scotland’s oil industry.

“How would you know?”

“Boys,” I said.

“Sorry,” they muttered.

I went to the counter, where the owner continued to do his work. “Excuse me,” I said.

Another glance up, his hands still working.

“Fixing a bagpipe?” I asked.

“Do they break often?”

“No.”

“What happened with the one you’re fixing?”

“Tenor drone. Cracked. Hole in the windbag.”

“Oh. Is it hard to play a bagpipe?”

“Ay
.”

“I’ve always wanted to try.”

He stopped working and stood, placing large, gnarled, liver-spotted hands on the countertop. “You’d like to play the pipes?”

“Yes. I mean, I’ve always enjoyed hearing them played and—well, I wonder if I have the breath to do it.”

“Most people do. Care to try?”

I looked at the others, who were debating the way items of clothing went with each other on one of the manikins. Would I look foolish attempting to coax something resembling music from an unwieldy set of bagpipes? It occurred to me as I pondered this that I seldom not try something because of how I might look to others. The truth was that every time I saw the bagpipes being played, I harbored a secret little passion to try them.

“Yes,” I said. “I’d love to try.”

He motioned for me to join him behind the counter. Others noticed, and were soon bunched across the counter from where I stood with the owner.

“What are you about to do, Mrs. F.?” Mort Metzger asked.

“Seems plain to me she’s about to play the bagpipes,” said Seth Hazlitt.

“I know that,” Mort said.

“Do you know how to play them?” Pete Walters asked.

“No. But I’m about to learn.” I extended my hand to the shop owner and said, “I’m Jessica Fletcher. These are my friends. We’re from America, guests of Inspector George Sutherland at Sutherland Castle.”

“Are you, now? You had a bit of bad news, didn’t you?”

“Ms. Daisy Wemyss’s murder? Yes, bad news indeed.”

“There’s evil forces about.”

“An evil individual. That’s for certain.”

“More than that.”

“Could you explain what you mean?”

“I thought you wanted to learn to play the pipes.”

“Oh, I do. Sorry to have gotten sidetracked.”

“Daisy was only a bit lassie.”

“Bit? Oh, a young woman. Yes she was.”

“Well,
it’s aa by nou.”

“Pardon?”

“It’s over and done with. But it’s not the end of it.”

“Show me how to play the bagpipes.”

Focusing on the instrument caused him to become more talkative. He turned to the group and asked, “What did Nero play while Rome burned?”

Seth quickly answered: “The fiddle.”

“Wrong,” said the shop owner. “He played the bagpipe. Came from India first. Romans took it all over Europe. French liked it, too, played dance music on it This is a Highland pipe. Biggest there is. Has a melodic range of a ninth.”

“I knew that,” said Mort.

“The hell you did,” Seth said.

“Sure I did,” Mort said. “Everybody knows Nero played the bagpipes while the city burned.”

“Could I hold it?” I asked, indicating the instrument—and wanting to interrupt what was about to become another spat.

He handed me the bagpipes; I was surprised at how heavy they were.

“What do I do now?” I asked.

He positioned it in my arms, placing the windbag beneath my arm. “Quite simple, ma’am. You blow into this blowpipe and fill up the bag. Then you squeeze the bag with your arm against your body, only you have to keep blowing to keep the bag full. You play the melody chanter—that’s the melody pipe—by using your fingers on the eight holes.”

“Like this?”

I blew into the windpipe, and pressed the bag against my body. Nothing. I kept blowing and squeezing until suddenly an eerie drone erupted from one of the reeds at the end of a tube. I stopped blowing and looked at my friends, a smile crossing my face. “Pretty good, huh?”

They applauded.

The shop owner encouraged me to continue. After a few more tries, I was actually able to create the characteristic droning sound of bagpipes, and to play what sounded to me like a wonderful melody over it. More applause. Even the shop owner patted his hands together.

“Well,” I said, handing the instrument to him, “that was an experience. Fun.”

“Would you be interested in buying it?” he asked.

“The bagpipes?”

“Well, I don’t know. I mean—buy a set of bagpipes? The last thing on my very long shopping list. Buy them? How much?”

He frowned, mumbled to himself, drumming the fingers of his right hand on the back of his left. “It’s an old set a’ pipes, ma‘am, but in good repair. I’ve fixed ’em good. Like new.”

“I’m sure you have.”

Fifteen minutes later, I emerged from the shop carrying the bagpipes wrapped in a sheet provided by the shop owner.

“You can’t walk around carryin’ that,” Seth said.

“You’re right,” I said.

I went back inside the shop and left the pipes with the owner, who sternly warned me that he dosed promptly at four. I assured him I’d return well before that. I also asked him if he knew a fisherman named Evan Lochbuie.

“Ay. But why would a cultured woman like you want to talk to a dug like that?”

“Is he a dog?”

“The worst kind. Gives
dugs
a bad name to mention him in the same breath.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“He’s
daft.
A raving maniac, that’s what he is.”

“But I can find him at the dock?”

“Ay.
But you do it at your peril.”

“I’ll take your warning seriously. Thank you.”

“I can’t believe you bought bagpipes,” Jim Shevlin said when I joined them on the street.

“Should be fun to learn,” I said.

“Maybe it’s to impress your handsome Scottish inspector,” Maureen Metzger said, giggling.

“Could be,” Susan Shevlin added. “He can teach you how to play it.”

“You may be my friends,” I said pleasantly, “but you are incorrigible gossips. You should write soap operas.”

“He obviously is smitten with you, Jess,” Susan said. “You can see it every time he looks at you.”

“We’re good friends,” I said. “Nothing more.” His words the previous night as we stood outside the castle ran through my mind, as they had a dozen times since getting up that morning.

“Where to next?” Seth asked.

“Let’s just stroll,” I said.

“Where did you find Daisy’s body?” Jim Shevlin asked.

“Up there.” I pointed to the other end of Bridge Street. “But you don’t want to see that. Hardly a tourist attraction.”

“I want to see it,” said Mort Metzger. “There’s been a crime committed on my watch.”

“
On your
watch
?” We said it in unison.

“Absolutely,” he said. “I may be on vacation, but I still have an obligation as a law enforcement officer to protect you as my friends and fellow citizens, no matter where we are in the world.”

We looked at each other and suppressed smiles. We all love Mort Metzger, Cabot Cove’s sheriff for many years, and a dear friend to all. He does tend to overstep his authority and responsibility at times, which only makes him even more lovable.

“Take us there, Jess?” Cabot Cove’s new mayor, Jim Shevlin, said.

“If you insist.”

We paused in front of the office building and read the plaque placed there by the Wick Historical Society: “
Site of the murder of Evelyn Gowdie
,
Feb. 11, 1976, descendant of famed Scottish witch, Isabell Gowdie.”

“Seems like a silly thing to commemorate.” Tim Shevlin said.

“Witches seem to be popular here,” Roberta Walters said.

“This where you found the body, Jess?” Mort asked.

“In back.”

We walked down the dirt driveway to the litter-strewn yard behind the building. Wick’s constable, Horace McKay, was standing where Daisy Wemyss’s body had been. He wore wading boots, and held his very long fishing rod. A net hung from a ring on the back of his fishing vest. A creel was on the ground, at his feet.

“Good morning, Constable McKay,” I said.

He nodded, but said nothing.

“I’m Jessica Fletcher. You might remember I discovered Ms. Wemyss’s body.”

“Ay. 1 remember.”

“These are my friends. We’re all staying at Sutherland Castle.”

“Ay.
I know that.”

Silence.

“Well,” I said, “I just wanted to show my friends where I discovered Ms. Wemyss’s body. Going fishing, Constable?”

“Good luck.”

I led the group back to the street.

“Talkative chap, ain’t he?” Mort Metzger said.

“Number’n
a
hake,”
Seth Hazlitt offered, invoking a Maine expression.

“Oh, no,” I said. “He’s not stupid, Seth. Just not a man with a lot to say.”

We looked back up the dirt driveway to where Constable McKay stood watching us.

“Wouldn’t want to cross that man,” Seth Hazlitt said.

“And there’s no need to,” I said.

“Anyone feel like lunch?” Mort asked. “I’m mighty hungry.”

There was a consensus that lunch was in order. I was the only one to demur.

“Sure
^?
” Seth asked me. “That pub over there looks promising.”

“Not hungry,” I said. “Besides, I have someone I have to look up.”

“That so? Who might that be?”

“A man named Lochbuie. Evan Lochbuie.”

“What’s he to you, Jessica?”

“Nothing. The producer, Peterman, told me Mr. Lochbuie knows all about witchcraft in Wick. Maybe I’ll learn something from him to use in a book.”

Seth looked at me skeptically. “Sure that’s all on your mind, Jess?”

I smiled. “Enjoy lunch, Seth. I’ll join you at the pub in less than an hour.”