Rum Affair (23 page)

There was a movement to the door, but Hennessy, behind us, took his time. “What about Madame Rossi?” he said railingly. “Isn’t she going with you? You didn’t get shot up as I did escorting her to a heavy date with somebody else. How naïve can you get?” He had just enough self-conceit to keep his voice down. “You watch it, boy. You get the old carcass damaged and bang, you can’t see her for dust.”

He was drunk, of course. By now, thank heaven, we were all almost out of the door. “And you know what you pay for the privilege?” Hell’s bells, he was going on. I stopped, to let him catch up. “You know what I paid this little singing bird for the privilege of having my ear half shot off?”

Jealousy is always difficult to handle. Sober, he would realise he was killing any chance of kindness from me in the future. Drunk, he was going to make me look venal instead of practical, in Kenneth Holmes’ eyes.

Which is why, at that moment, I tripped Hennessy up just a little, so that he banged his ear against the Chief Warden’s doorpost. Then, as he stopped with a squeal, I said very quietly: “When I have an understanding, I do not go back on it.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Kenneth and Johnson, I saw, were now walking on. Rupert was indoors, talking still. Hand to ear, Hennessy said, his eyes watering: “And what about the great Dr Holmes?”

“He doesn’t need me any more.” I was not forlorn: I said it as a matter of fact. I think perhaps up to then all Stanley Hennessy’s women had been of the weeping variety. He hesitated, and then, turning, lifted my manicured hand to his lips and kissed it. “Do we start then afresh, Tina?”

He talked sometimes like a poor television serial. Outside his business he had trouble, I guessed, in aligning his ego and id: It does not greatly matter, when you have baguette diamonds to give.

I slipped my hand inside his and drew him along the rhododendron path to the Big House. “We start afresh.”

But it was still the same damned old problem: how to get rid of Hennessy and Kenneth and Johnson, and find Michael Twiss. For, thinking over all I knew of Michael, if he really wanted to harm Kenneth or me, it would take a great deal to stop him. And of all of us, I thought I was best fitted to try.

The broad avenue striking inland through the trees from the Warden’s house to the parkland surrounding Kinloch Castle does not take long to walk. There is a bridge to cross, over the river which generates the Castle’s own private electricity; and then, across billiard-green lawns, one sees the red sandstone arcades and the castellated tower of the Big House itself, equipped, furnished and wholly deserted: frozen at the height of its effectiveness, when a man desiring to relax, and his wife and friends with him, bought an empty island and stocked it with beasts and built on it a modest palace like Blenheim, in which to live for a month yearly, killing trout and red deer.

The scientists’ wing, formerly occupied by Kenneth, had been empty since his departure, and the caretaker was on holiday. Within, statuesque in the growing darkness, was the intact sepulchre of an Edwardian dream. And in that dream, somewhere, along with the others – the respectful, pattering footsteps of Bob and Nancy Buchanan; the derisive, ill-kept sneakers of Ogden – was a figure that did not walk at all, but stood silently waiting. Michael was there. Michael was there, and had chosen his place.

The caretaker’s entrance was on the north side. Opening it with the Warden’s key, Johnson stood aside while Kenneth, Hennessy and I filed in. Rupert had not yet appeared. As I entered, Hennessy’s grasp on my arm, I saw the small, puzzled glance Kenneth gave me, and passing, without looking, I brushed Kenneth’s hand. His fingers moved in recognition, then dropped as we walked on inside.

After the misty brightness outside, we were now lost in shadows. Footsteps echoing, we walked in silence through servants’ quarters, along high-ceilinged corridors, their walls lined by bells rung long ago, when service was what it should be. There were signs of occasional life; a big kitchen stacked with chairs had been made into a cinema; there were ashes in the grate of a small sitting room, tidily furnished, and a few toys.

Doors opened and shut. Johnson spoke very little, and the rest of us not at all. In a sudden warren of small rooms opening off to one side there was a glimpse of impressive period earthenware in a blue and white pattern: what would
Seawolf
choose for tribute from here? Then the public apartments appeared.

Walking through in the half-dark, linked to Hennessy, I was listening in the quiet above the thud of my heart. My nerves taut, I was listening for the first sign: the stir of a curtain, the creak of a floorboard below the thick carpet, a shot, even, which would finish this cold, nasty silence.

Somewhere in the house Ogden was wandering, and the Buchanans, talking naturally, flashing their torches on some particular treasure. The lighting fuse board had failed us, said Johnson, but the power was intact. Here, with the tall windows giving on to the misty twilight outside, there was light enough still to see the mighty shapes of the dining room, the massive fireplace, the alcove cupboards for glasses and napery. Round the shining table, the chairs were almost too heavy to move. They came, Kenneth said, from the owner’s steam yacht, the
Rhouma,
which had brought back most of the V. & A. standard bric-a-brac lying around us. Then we walked through an imposing arched doorway and into the main hall, which was two storeys high.

This, too, seemed empty. Saffron-coloured light fell, on our left, from a double row of Gothic oriel windows filling one entire wall, their glass stained with acorns and flowers. This wall gave on to the central lawns at the front, and contained the front door.

Glancing up, I saw, too, that a gallery ran, high above us, round the other three sides of the room; but I could see no one there. Kenneth, stepping carefully among the little mother-of-pearl tables, bent to straighten a leopardskin, laid on the parquet. There was a fine lionskin rug before the big, empty fireplace and the half-panelled walls were lined above with ruby velvet brocade. Gazing at the twin porcelain vases, each nine feet high, which the
Rhouma
had brought back from the Orient, at the heavy silk brocade curtains and the cut velvet sofas with their trellised fringes and bobbles, I thought of the deer grazing outside, and the volcanic black peaks, and the row of red oil drums, filled with used tins of lager and baby custard and floor wax and dog food: All the bright coloured symbols of modern family living, down on the bleak pier.

For eleven months of the year the Castle had been accustomed to solitude. Did it appreciate, I wondered, Kenneth’s abstracted footsteps, running up and down to his lab as he worried about Peter’s blackmailing letters? The
Rhouma,
sailing stiffly on her corrugated blue seas, would have felt such sordid matters beneath her.

Kenneth moved through the hall and into the dark corridor beyond. I turned to follow him. On my right, someone screamed.

I saw Kenneth and Johnson both jump round; but Hennessy was quicker. Hennessy had vanished already into the black archway on our right, where the scream had modulated into a whisper and then into another, recognisable sound which was half a bright, social cough.

Nancy Buchanan’s voice, pitched a full tone higher than usual, said: “Mr Hennessy! Wasn’t it silly of me! It’s such an eerie place, don’t you think? Have you been here before? I thought I was being hugged by a bear!”

“You were,” said Hennessy’s voice shortly. He had nothing in common with
Binkie,
and held both the Buchanans jointly responsible, I had no doubt, for the accident to his ear. His immediate reaction on South Rona, Rupert had told me, had been to require the Navy to jail both Buchanans at once.

Now, I saw as I flew round the corner, he had dropped Nancy like a sticky sweet paper and struck a match to reveal, looming over some cabinets, the life-sized stuffed figure of a brown bear, with Nancy’s round, knitted cap depending from one set of claws. “Free gift week,” said Johnson. “Are you all right, Mrs Buchanan?”

“Yes! Yes. Oh, is that you, Madame Rossi? What a queer place, isn’t it? There’s a ballroom. Isn’t the parquet lovely? Fancy bringing all these things here! Bob’s upstairs looking at the hummingbirds: there’s cases of them: Bob had an uncle that went to Jamaica. Wasn’t that silly of me!” Hennessy, seeing Nancy beside me, had walked on, after Kenneth and Johnson. I followed, with Nancy between, still chattering with her small cough intermittent.

She was embarrassed, of course, over South Rona.

I listened, thinking, waiting for her to make up her mind. Hennessy wouldn’t bother me now she was here. But how did I now get away from Nancy? For upstairs, surely upstairs, Michael was waiting.

In the ballroom, she began. “All yellow brocade, walls matching the curtains; think of the price! I wonder what he made his money on. I wonder if his wife chose it, or if they called in a decorator. Minstrels’ gallery, see? And a wee hidden hatch in the panelling for serving their drinks . . .” She opened the hatch, proprietarily, and flinched as the cold eyes of Hennessy looked back at her from the other side. “Oh . . . Hallo. That’s the pantry. Going to serve us a glass of champagne, Mr Hennessy?” As he stared at her without replying, she gave her small, nervous laugh and led the way to the Napoleon room.

It was empty. A bust of the great man stared down on us as Nancy flopped into a seat below the hero of Kinloch Castle and burst into tears.

The aunties did that, sometimes, if they had ordered too much from the catalogue, and were afraid of telling their man. I put my arm round her shoulders. It was, of course, lack of sleep and reaction. She had wanted to have a wee rest before coming on shore, but Bob had said that the weather might change, and if she wanted to see Kinloch Castle, she had better come now. She had come, in the same way that she went to South Rona. Bob was hot for CND – it was only logical, when you thought of it, and she wouldn’t let Bob down. He was a wee bit too inclined as it was to underrate the opposite sex. Nothing personal, I should understand, or ill-natured: just the way he was brought up. His mother did everything for his father, from the day they were wed. But last night! It was far worse than she had expected. Running through the night like a criminal; and the beastly banner so heavy. And spelled wrong, into the bargain. When they’d unfolded it, Bob’d just about died.

The guards had nearly caught them beforehand, but of course Johnson had helped. “He’s a lovely man,” said Nancy with feeling, and sent a sidelong glance over to me. I winced, but she didn’t notice, absorbed in telling her tale.

So the Buchanans ran, and hid, and carried out their laborious plan, and nobody stopped them. And then, when they slipped away from the mast, the statement of belief, the act of defiance completed, a young captain had come forward deferentially to where they lay camouflaged in the heather, and had asked if they’d care for some cocoa.

That was all. They’d been treated like kids – and it hurt. That they had acted like kids didn’t occur to them.

In this case I needed to do very little, beyond lending Nancy a handkerchief, as hers was all over paraffin. She wanted to feel understood, and I understood her. I told her she did what she set out to do, and it was over; and she must concentrate now on supporting Bob, who was probably feeling the same. She had not thought of that. She was as feudal in her way as her mother-in-law. She said doubtfully: “D’ye think so? He hasn’t said. But mind you, I hung up a cup the other way in the row, and he came out with a right nasty remark. It’ll be working in him. You’re right.”

She got up, her leathery face shining with recent tears and present admiration, in the light reflected from Napoleon’s tall brow. “It’s being cosmopolitan that gives you the insight. We were going to Jersey ourselves for our holidays, a couple of years back, and then the Baby Blake seeped in its sea valve during the Tobermory races, and it all came to nothing again. Thanks.” She bent, and amazingly planted a prune-like kiss on my cheek. “You’re a good friend,” she said. Then she’d gone.

I rose, too, from the chair arm where I was perched, below the row of prints depicting the Emperor at Austerlitz, Jena, Friedland and Wagram. What about Falkirk was so non-cosmopolitan, when Barra could produce a Rupert Glasscock to order? Duncan’s Peggy, who had never left Castlebay, lacked neither polish nor insight. How was that? By the same token, it did not suit Rupert to be applauded in Falkirk. He went for admiration to Duncan’s Peggy, who mostly withheld it. It occurred to me that I was beginning to understand Johnson, too.

I was alone. I went out, and quickly and quietly continued through the rooms in that wing, looking for Michael.

It was not a house for the weak-nerved. In the drawing room, all was glazed chintz and tapestry and slim, painted French furniture, but outside in the hall something glimmered in the half-dark: the carcass of a white rabbit, stuffed at the feet of a golden eagle, claws spread, yellow eyes staring at me in the gloom. There, beyond other glass cases, an armed Siamese suddenly faced me: he guarded a doorway, with his carved wooden twin opposite. I opened the door, and it swung shut behind me.

Books, from floor to ceiling: the library. A desk, furnished with leather books and bridge boxes, all stamped with the name of the house. A framed photograph of the steam yacht, the
Rhouma,
which I lifted to look at. Cold in my hands, the glass lit suddenly, scarlet as coal. As I dropped it, I heard the thing smash. And behind me, a voice said chidingly: “
Be careful.
”

I spun around.

Outside Kinloch Castle, the trees were quite black. They filled with darkness the tall study windows, and the windowed roundel of the small alcove-turret behind me. It was from the alcove that the voice spoke. And as it spoke, the alcove filled with red light, that light I had just seen, reflected, in the glass of the
Rhouma’s
dark picture. The glare came sliding over the room, from a pair of eyes set between a vast spread of bronze wings. Eight feet high, alone in the alcove, a bronze eagle reared over me, snarling; and by his great claws apes twisted and writhed.