Malice in the Highlands (20 page)

Nigel sighed wearily. “How can I help?”

“Why don't you begin by telling me about Bob and Heather Murray.”

Nigel examined his knife with studied concentration. “She and her father stayed at the hotel for a few days when they first arrived in Kinlochy. Bob took a fancy to her right from the start, and they soon became fairly serious. At first Mr. Murray seemed pleased enough and even encouraged them. He seemed happy that Heather was making friends. But then he changed. He became increasingly reclusive, hardly ever leaving Castle Glyn. And his attitude toward Heather became what I can only describe as overprotective. At one point he even accused Bob of gold digging—those were his exact words! A ridiculous suggestion! Bob was head over heels in love with the lass, or I don't know my own son.”

“Was?”

“They called it off a few months ago. It was Heather's decision, although Bob has never said much about it. It's strange, though. The lass has a mind of her own and I can't imagine her being pressured to do anything against her will, even by her own father.” He sighed. “I don't know, perhaps the strain just proved to be too much for her.”

“Can you explain Murray's change of heart?”

He shrugged, “It's hard to say. He lost his wife some years back and took it rather hard, I understand.” He paused reflectively for a moment, his thoughts transparent. “Perhaps after retiring he had too much time on his hands. He didn't seem to mix much with the local folk, but some of them can be a bit clannish when it comes to outsiders.”

“So you don't think it was anything in particular?”

“Personal, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“I don't see how it could have been. I've tried to broach the subject with Bob but, well, you know this younger generation as well as I do, Mr. Powell. Besides, the lad's got a lot on his mind,” he ventured hopefully, as if that might explain everything.

“How did Bob take it?”

“Pretty hard, I think. As I did. I was hoping he might settle down and—but it doesn't matter now, does it?”

“Nigel, I know that Charles Murray was at the hotel on the night he was killed …” He left it hanging.

Whitely turned slowly to face Powell. He spoke quietly and deliberately. “He threatened me, Mr. Powell. He told me that if I didn't keep my son away from his daughter, he'd withdraw the hotel's fishing rights.”

“Could he have done that? Surely there's a contract of some sort?”

Whitely nodded. “The lease contains a clause that provides for the termination of the agreement at any time. With the stroke of a pen he could have destroyed everything Maggie and I've built here. You might be surprised to learn that the Salar Lodge provides us a living, but not
much more. Without the fishing I'd be finished. I pleaded with him to be reasonable, but he just laughed. I hated him then. Now it just seems pathetic.”

“Had he made similar threats before?”

Whitely shook his head.

“I don't understand, Nigel. You say Bob and Heather had stopped seeing each other months ago. Why would Murray wait until now to deliver his ultimatum?”

“I haven't a clue, Mr. Powell.”

“Did you mention the incident to Bob?”

“Like I said, I didn't want to worry him.”

“Do you recall what time it was when Murray left the hotel?”

Whitely knit his brow. “Let's see. It was just before Ruby got back from her meeting. She usually gets in around eleven, so it must have been around ten-thirty.”

“What did you do after he'd gone?”

“I waited up for Ruby and then turned in.” There was a lengthy pause. “Mr. Powell, I…” He wiped his forehead with a juice-stained hand, leaving a lurid smudge behind. “I know my Bob has got a bit of a temper, always has, but he would never hurt anyone, I know he wouldn't.” He blinked moistly.

“I'm sure you're right, Nigel,” Powell said, trying to convey a sense of reassurance he did not feel.

It was obvious, Powell reflected the next morning as he searched for a convenient vantage point overlooking the Old Bridge, that Nigel was worried sick about Bob. But whether he could actually bring himself at a conscious level to suspect his son of killing Charles Murray was another matter. The lad had at least two plausible
motives. One was obvious: to remove the obstacle standing between himself and Heather Murray, with all that implied both romantically and financially. The other possibility was more problematic. Bob may have felt the need to protect his father from ruin at the hands of Charles Murray. Only there was no evidence Bob had even been aware of Murray's threat against his father until Powell, himself, had mentioned it at the hill loch. And if young Whitely had in fact been in Aberdeen on the night in question, it should be easy enough to corroborate. The lad had supposedly been looking for a job; he must have talked to someone. Powell tried to sweep the implications of this line of inquiry from his already cluttered mind.

He sat down on a grassy knoll and took in the view. Below and slightly upstream of his position was the graceful stone arch of the Old Bridge. Immediately downstream of the bridge he could just make out Pinky's rock, as he now thought of it. Sunlight sparkled off the riffles separating the curving blue pools of the Spey, and across the river, set amidst its green lawns like a golden crown in a baize-lined case, was Castle Glyn. Powell found himself thinking about Heather Murray again.

He shook his head irritably and began to work through the thing once more. What bothered him most was the attempt on Pinky's life. He felt—irrationally, he knew— that somehow he should have been able to forestall events. But the more he thought about it, the less sense it all made. Even if Sanders had succeeded in preventing the fishing rod from coming to light, it had been a tremendous risk to take, with nothing really to gain. Ironically, the attempt on Pinky's life had turned out to
be the very thing that had implicated the Canadian, which could hardly have been the point. Or could it?

Powell's mind began to race wildly. Could someone have tried to kill Pinky simply to lay a false scent, to point the finger at Sanders? It seemed preposterous. Which raised another, even more unsettling possibility. What if the two crimes were not related in the way that he had assumed? Or not related at all?

Powell had always accepted as an article of faith that the detection of crime was essentially a rational process and that, given enough time and dogged persistence, even the most intractable puzzles could eventually be untangled. The problem arose with random or fortuitous crimes of the night stalker variety, when the killer had no particular relationship with the victim. For a whimsical moment he imagined that a crazed anti-blood-sport fanatic was running amok on the Spey, preying on unsuspecting fisherman to avenge the coldblooded murder of countless thousands of salmon over the years.

He was jarred back to reality by a dissonant droning, which had begun to reverberate amongst the hills. It took him a second to recognize the racket for what it was.

“Bagpipes! Bloody hell!” he said aloud.

The wailing cacophony sounded a harsh, albeit strangely familiar, note amidst the hitherto vast silence. Powell recalled the English canard that the Scots’ long history of suicidal charges on the battlefield could be ascribed solely to a frenzied desire to escape the skirling pipes. Then he suddenly remembered where he had heard the sound before—yesterday morning, just before he'd been dragged half drowned from the river by McInnes. At the time it had seemed in his sodden and desperate state like
a hallucination. But now he recalled Ogden's account of a similar experience, which hadn't until that moment seemed important.

His eyes scanned the scrubby hillside, which dropped in steep, broken slabs to the river, but he could see nothing out of the ordinary. He scrambled to his feet and set off down a well-tramped deer path toward the only piece of cover that seemed sufficient to conceal a piper, kilt, and a set of bagpipes: a rocky prominence rising a couple of hundred yards away like a gray sail above a blue-green sea of juniper. But before he got very far the piping stopped as suddenly as it had begun. Feeling exposed, he picked up the pace. When he was within a hundred feet of his objective, which at close view turned out to be a steep pile of blocky rubble, he slowed and covered the intervening ground as stealthily as he could. Except for the rustling of his own passage, there was not a sound. Perhaps he'd been mistaken about the source; he knew from his climbing days that the hills could be deceiving.

He crept round the base of the rock. Nothing. He paused to consider the situation. A trickle of fine gravel whispered somewhere above him.

Before he could react, he was startled by a rough voice, “Say your prayers, laddie.”

He looked up slowly, heart pounding, into the mindless, binocular gape of a twelve-bore shotgun.

CHAPTER 15

“Mr. Powell, sir! W-what are you doing here?” George Stuart, dressed in full Highland regalia, lowered his gun, instinctively breaking open the action.

“I could ask you the same question,” Powell snapped, struggling mightily to regain his dignity.

“Well, sir,” Stuart said awkwardly, loosening his collar with a thick finger, “I just came up here to play a little, er, tune.” He gestured at the bagpipes lying in a heap like some supine tartan sheep, legs erect, on the ledge beside him.

“Come down from there, George,” Powell ordered. “Quite frankly, the view from here leaves a lot to be desired.”

The Scot flushed pinkly. He handed down the gun, smoothed his kilt, and climbed demurely down.

“Now then, what's this all about?” Powell asked sternly.

Stuart stood to attention. “Well, sir, when the laird has died it is customary amongst the Stuarts to sound the family lament every morning at sunrise for not less than twenty-one days.”

Powell raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Charles Murray wasn't exactly chief of the clan, George.”

“Nevertheless, sir,” Stuart said with great dignity, “I feel it's my duty. I spent many a good year in the employ of the estate.”

“That doesn't explain the gun.”

“Well, sir, what wi’ reports of poachers about and after what happened to Mr. Warburton, a man canna be too careful.”

“That's what the police are for, George.”

Stuart looked like a chastened puppy. “I'm truly sorry, Mr. Powell.” Then he brightened and reached into his jacket. “Here, this'll fix you up proper.” He handed Powell an engraved sterling flask. “It's a private bottling of Glen Callum, put up in Edinburgh. My brother-in-law knows the merchant.”

A few minutes later things were looking considerably brighter. Powell questioned Stuart closely and confirmed that the Salar Lodge's bartender had in fact been performing the Stuart lament from the same rocky prominence every morning since the discovery of Murray's body. He normally piped at dawn when most self-respecting fishermen were still abed, which no doubt explained why he hadn't been reported more frequently. But on a few occasions, including the previous morning, he'd been a little late getting started. Powell looked around. The rocks commanded a clear view of the bridge and its various approaches: the road to Kinlochy, the river path, and, on the far bank, the road to Dulnay Bridge and the steep track descending to the river from Castle Glyn. It occurred to him that George might well
have noticed some interesting comings and goings during his daily sojourn.

At first Stuart seemed slightly puzzled by Powell's question. Powell explained patiently, “We're investigating a murder and an attempted murder. The thing is, we're interested in anything out of the ordinary, anything at all that might suggest a line of inquiry.”

Stuart scratched his stubbly chin. “I'm sorry, Mr. Powell.” He adjusted his spectacles. “These old peepers aren't what they used to be.”

“What about yesterday morning?” said Powell, hope fading fast.

“Well, there did seem to be a wee commotion down at the Old Bridge—swarming around like ants they was— but I couldna make it oot.”

Powell sighed. “Tell me, George, what do you think about this business? About Mr. Murray, I mean.”

“Well, sir, I didna know him that well. I spoke wi’ him a few times when he and Miss Murray was staying at the hotel, mostly about sport, ye ken.”

“How did he strike you?”

“He seemed a pleasant enough sort. And it's to his credit he kept auld Ross on.”

“What do you mean?”

“Donald Ross has been plowterin’ aboot Castle Glyn for longer than I can remember. You might say he just comes wi’ the house. Mr. Murray could have let him go, but according to Miss Morrow, the housemaid, he didna have the heart.”

“What about Miss Murray?”

George shrugged. “Much like her father, I'd say.”

“Oh, really?” Powell was mildly surprised.

“Aye, reserved, like.’

“I've heard that young Mr. Whitely had been courting Miss Murray. Is that true?”

“It's no’ a secret.”

“I understand that Mr. Murray was none too pleased about it.”

“I wouldna know about that, Mr. Powell.”

“I've also heard they stopped seeing each other some time ago.”

“Aye, that's true, I believe.”

“Do you have any idea why they broke it off?”

Stuart shrugged unconvincingly.

Powell sighed, exasperated. “Look, George, I can ask for an official statement, if you'd prefer. But I need to know the truth; the lives of innocent people may depend upon it.” Melodramatic, but effective, judging by Stuart's reaction.

“Well, to tell the truth, Mr. Powell, they used to argy-bargy like cats and dogs. Terrible spats they had. I overheard them once when I was cleaning up behind the bar and another time in the hotel car park.” He shifted on his feet uncomfortably. “Then they'd kiss and make up, sweet as you please and other sich foolishness,” he added reprovingly.

“Do you know what Nigel thought about it?”

“He never confided in me, of course. But I got the impression it upset him, especially when they finally went their separate ways.”

“What about Ruby?”

“She took it pretty hard. But then she's always treated young Mr. Whitely like the son she never had.” Stuart snorted and spat. “I know it's not my place to say so, Mr.
Powell, but as far as I'm concerned, that laddie's a right scunner.”