In the same soothing tone, Dalziel went on, “I’m sure we’re worrying for nothing, and everything will be fine. Perhaps he met a friend, and after a few drinks, they lost track of the time.”
“You mean, they got drunk together?” If that were the case, it would ease her mind.
“It’s possible, but let’s not go into that right now. Stay in your room. I’ll fetch your maid for you.”
He reached past her and tried the door. It was unlocked. She distinctly remembered locking it when she left her room before keeping her appointment with Dr. Rankin. She supposed that she’d lost the key in the struggle. Then how had someone gotten into her room?
As soon as she stepped inside, she let out a breath. There was no mystery here. The fire in the grate had been lit and was burning brightly. There were house-maids whose first order of the day was to see that all the guests wakened to a warm room. These maids were the first to be up and doing and were on the lowest rung on the servant hierarchy.
Every morning when she wakened, there was a fire burning in the grate, but she had never given the young girl who had seen to her comfort a second thought. She made up her mind, there and then, to leave a handsome gratuity when she left for home.
Dalziel moved past her and opened the drapes. Dawn was chasing the night away. She wandered to the window and looked out. This was Deeside. How was it possible for so much beauty to conceal something dark and ugly? As she stared out of the window, a hawk suddenly dropped from the sky and snatched a pigeon from its unwary perch. Shivering, she turned away. Dalziel did not notice. He had turned aside to light the lamp.
Hugging herself, she sank onto the bed.
Dalziel came to stand over her. He spoke as though he were speaking to a child. “Don’t take on so. I blame myself for . . . well . . . getting into a panic. I’m sure everything will be fine.”
She looked up at him, saw the worry lines on his face, and decided that she should be comforting him. His whole world seemed to revolve around his job. As far as she knew, he didn’t have any friends.
She summoned a smile. “I’m sure you’re right.”
He gave her hand a quick squeeze. “Stay in your room, and I’ll fetch your maid for you.”
He was gone before she could thank him for his trouble. Dr. Rankin had not exaggerated. Nothing much got past Dalziel. He knew where to find Elsie.
She listened to the hotel stirring. It would be a long time before guests were up and traipsing downstairs for breakfast. These were the muted sounds of servants as they went about their business. Her mind droned on as she stared into space, cataloguing the sounds of dishes rattling, pots clattering, and laughs and giggles suddenly choked off. It didn’t help. Her mind kept returning to Dr. Rankin. He was supposed to meet her in the hothouse. Had he met her assailant instead?
Elsie bustled in, blinking against the sight that met her eyes. “Miss Kate!” she gasped. “What’s come over you? That nice Mr. Dalziel wouldna tell me a thing.”
Kate made an effort to rouse herself. She had no desire to become an object of belowstairs gossip, though how she could avoid it, she did not know. The gillies had seen her arrive with Hepburn, wearing his coat no less, and gillies had wives who worked at the hotel. Hepburn was counting on the discretion of the policemen who would surely come and question them, but they had wives, too. It would not be long before she was regarded as a fallen woman.
She wouldn’t care, if only Dr. Rankin turned up safe and sound.
“What happened,” she said, “was that I went out for a breath of fresh air last night and couldn’t get back into the hotel.” She left it at that. The less said at this point, the better for all concerned.
Elsie clicked her tongue. “Don’t you worry none, Miss Kate. Elsie is here, and I’ll take care of you. Let’s get these soiled things off.”
Piece by piece, Elsie removed Kate’s garments. Her hands fluttered when she came to Kate’s borrowed gown, but she didn’t shriek or moan. Magda would raise the roof with shrieks when she repossessed her gown. She never would have loaned it to Kate had their father not promised them a shopping trip to London.
It was Kate who moaned. Elsie’s unsuspecting hands had gripped her shoulders, and the wound from her assailant’s knife made her flinch.
“You’re bleeding, miss,” said her maid, all round-eyed with her bottom lip trembling. “Who did this to you?”
“It was an accident,” said Kate, putting her maid off with the first thing that came into her head. Mr. Hepburn had told her to keep her mouth shut, and that was what she intended to do.
Elsie’s lips thinned, but she kept her thoughts to herself, and before long Kate was down to bare skin and wrapped in a blanket.
“Don’t move,” Elsie told her. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Kate nodded. An awful lethargy was stealing over her, like one of those creeping Deeside mists that blot out the sun and veil the moors and mountains in silvery lace. She couldn’t see, couldn’t think, couldn’t get her bearings. Her eyelids felt heavy. She lay back against the pillows and closed her eyes.
The gillies huddled around Gavin as they decided where to begin their search.
“We can’t make a proper search of the moors,” Gavin said. “There aren’t enough of us. And for all we know, Dr. Rankin may still be in the hotel.”
The gillies nodded and shuffled their feet. Gavin turned up his coat collar against the biting-cold breeze that whistled down from the mountain peaks. This was the beginning of spring, and he was wishing that he was anywhere but here. The moors and mountains were too desolate, too treacherous for his peace of mind. It was light enough now to scan the horizon, but all he could see was a blanket of white snow. If Will was out there . . . He didn’t want to complete the thought.
The head gillie, a quiet, thoughtful man in his late forties, broke into Gavin’s thoughts. “There are no footprints to guide us. If Dr. Rankin left the building, it must have been long before the snow let up.”
“And when was that?” a cultured voice asked.
Gavin turned his head and was surprised to find Gordon Massey standing at his elbow, but not the Gordon Massey he remembered from the night before. He seemed more sure of himself, more at ease. He was, Gavin calculated, a year or two older than himself and was immaculately turned out in country tweeds. It was the cultured accent that made the deepest impression on Gavin. It denoted a privileged background and the right schools, and was as different from his parents’ Scottish brogue as silk from sacking. He remembered, then, that there was an uncle from whom Massey had inherited a publishing firm. He guessed that the uncle had paid for the nephew’s education.
One of the gillies scratched his chin. “It must have stopped snowing two or three hours ago. Something wakened me. A dog howling, I think, and I went outside to see what was amiss. It was still dark, but it wasn’t snowing then.”
“Maybe it was a banshee, Jock,” said another.
The gillies laughed.
Jock looked sheepish. “Aye, ye may laugh, but the good book warns us about spirits, don’t it? I believe the good book afore I believe you.”
No one could argue with that.
Gavin said, “All the same, we can’t roust guests from their beds to search their rooms. We don’t want to alarm them for no good reason.”
“Then what do you suggest?” asked Massey.
“Dogs,” said Gavin. “I know Henry keeps a few hounds for his own pleasure. Let’s see how well they can track. Where is the kennel?”
Before he had stopped speaking, Macduff came tearing around the corner of the building, barking furiously. Gavin started forward to meet him. Having alerted his master, Macduff turned around and retraced the path he had taken. He did not go far, only to a picnic bench not twenty yards away from the hothouse. There was a drift of snow piled against one side. Here, Macduff hunkered down and began to whine. An awful feeling of doom settled in the pit of Gavin’s stomach.
He went down on his knees and began to scrape the snow to the side. Massey helped him. Though the gillies were huddled around them, no one spoke, no one whispered to his neighbor. Only their breathing broke the silence.
Inch by inch, they uncovered Will Rankin’s body. They uncovered something else. Close to Rankin’s hand was an empty whiskey bottle.
Massey got to his feet. “It looks as though he had too much to drink, then staggered out here and went to sleep.”
Gavin had other ideas that he kept to himself. Still on his knees, he was studying his friend’s face. There was a scrape on Will’s forehead, as though he’d fallen forward and banged his head. There was no blood on his garments. His expression was peaceful. His clothes stank of whiskey.
“Shall we dig him out, sir?” asked the head gillie.
“No.” Gavin got up. “This is a matter for the police. The body can’t be moved until they have seen it.”
“But Ballater is cut off,” Massey pointed out.
“I’ll go,” said the gillie named Jock. “I know my way around these hills. I’ll bring the police.”
Dalziel pushed out of the hothouse at that moment and joined the group around Rankin’s body. When he saw what they had uncovered, he gave a choked cry and turned away.
“See to him,” Gavin told Massey.
Massey nodded and went after Dalziel.
He had other instructions for the gillies—a tarpaulin to cover the body and two men on guard at all times. His words faltered and faded away as he stared at his friend’s inert form. It seemed inconceivable to him that they would never fish for salmon in the Dee again or chat, man-to-man, over a glass of whiskey as the sun set. He swallowed and was reaching for the empty bottle when a hand closed around his shoulder, startling him back to the present.
“What ails you, sir?”
It took a moment for Gavin’s eyes to focus. The head gillie hovered over him, his brow knit in puzzlement.
Gavin looked around him. The sun was up. There were no clouds. It looked as though it would be a fine day.
He got to his feet. “Don’t let anyone touch anything,” he said. “Come, Macduff. You deserve your breakfast this morning, and if anyone tries to ban you from the hotel, they’ll have to deal with me.”
The gillies watched him go in silence. One removed his cap and scratched his head. “He talks to his dog,” he said.
“Aye,” said the head gillie. “There’s nothing untoward in that. Now, if his dog were to answer him, I, for one, would eat my cap.”
There was a moment of silence, then all the gillies began to laugh. Suddenly remembering where they were and that a man had died tragically, they set to work.
The voice came to her like a soft breeze blowing in her ear. There were no words to begin with, only a sense of his presence.
He’s dead, isn’t he?
Those were her words.
Shh . . .
the wind said.
Trust me
.
The tension that gripped every aching muscle relaxed its hold on her one degree at a time.
The wind became a roar, and she felt herself spinning. She wasn’t alarmed. She trusted the voice and knew that no harm would come to her when he was with her.
She saw a waterfall and salmon trying to leap over the rocks to the spawning grounds above. The beauty of the scene was breathtaking.
Where are we?
she asked wonderingly.
Feughside
.
She narrowed her eyes against the glare of the sun. Then she saw him, a much younger Dr. Rankin, waving at someone on the other side of the river, a woman.
Maddie,
he called out.
The woman’s face filled with joy. She held out her arms to him, and the doctor stepped lightly onto the stepping-stones that would take him to the other side.
It was only a dream.
At that one doubtful thought, the peace and harmony that wrapped around her began to disintegrate. She was doing it again, daydreaming, conjuring up her imaginary friend, as though anything he said could alter reality.
She heard something, the tread of a step, a door opening and closing. When she opened her eyes, her maid was kneeling over her.
“Oh, miss,” Elsie said, blowing out a long breath, “I thought you had fainted.
Kate’s eyes darted around the room. There was no one else there, no hint of another presence. “I was dreaming,” she said. “Yes, that’s all it was, a dream.” She looked up at Elsie. “I thought that someone was here with me.”
“Oh, that would be Mr. Hepburn. He left not a moment ago when he saw that you were asleep.” The maid busied herself with a basin of water and odds and ends that she’d brought in on a tray. “I’m to tell him when you’re up and dressed. He wants to speak to you.”
Gavin Hepburn. She hoped she hadn’t said anything out loud.
“Here, Miss Kate, hold this towel.”
The sudden deluge of soapy water on the afflicted part of Kate’s shoulder had her wheezing and gasping for air. “That hurt!” she groaned when she could find her breath.