The House Between Tides (3 page)

“No.” The man continued his inspection. Then: “So why go through the window? Haven't you got keys?”

“Not yet. He has them. Mr. Forbes, that is—” She dug her nails into her palm. The man clearly thought her a fool, damn him. “I'm about to go and call on him.”

But he was now looking past her, over her shoulder, back towards the strand, and she saw his expression lighten. “No need,” he said. “He's come to call on you.”

She turned to see that another vehicle, an ancient Saab, was coming up the track towards them. The driver halted below the house, perhaps not wanting to risk the low-slung vehicle on the rutted track. He slammed the car door and came towards them, followed by a black-and-white collie. “Right on cue,” said the first man, leaning back against the Land Rover, his eyes alive with amusement. “Morning, Ruairidh. Let me introduce Muirlan House's new mistress. I've just evicted her.”

His tone made her flush, but the newcomer looked at her with sharp interest and came forward. “Harriet Deveraux? I'd no idea,” he said, and held out his hand.

“Hetty,” she said, taking it.

He looked about forty, several years older than the first man, a few stone heavier and, on first showing, a damn sight nicer. “Had you written again?”

She shook her head. “A spur-of-the-moment decision.” Triggered, as it had been, by an intense desire to leave London. And Giles— “I was going to wait until June when I had more time.”

He held on to her hand a moment, then relinquished it. “I'd have met the ferry had I known. Have you somewhere to stay?”

“Yes. Just over there.” She gestured across the sand towards the cottage.

“Dùghall's place? Well, well . . .”

He lowered his bushy eyebrows to cover a glance towards the other man who, she knew, was continuing to stare at her. But he now stepped forward and put out his hand. “James Cameron.” She took it and waited for an apology. “You took a risk, you know, going in there.” He turned to put his tools back in the Land Rover and described their encounter to the newcomer with ill-concealed amusement, adding, “The place is a death trap.”

No apology, then.

Ruairidh Forbes shook his head with kindly concern. “Dear oh dear! What a welcome.”

“If something had fallen on you, it'd be your—” He now glanced at the other man and stopped midsentence. “You'll have to tell her, Ruairidh.” He shut the back of the Land Rover and leant against it again, arms folded. “Sooner or later.”

The other man looked unhappy. “Aye. I know.” And as he told her, she understood why.

“
Human
remains?” she said, when he had finished. Whatever else she had expected, it had not included this. “Who? Do you know?”

“No idea. Just bones. You see, James only found them yesterday, and we couldn't get back across until now, so I've not seen them. I'll have a quick look, then contact my colleagues on the mainland.” She nodded dumbly, thinking that when she'd learned that her key holder was a part-time police officer she hadn't expected to need his professional services.

“A tramp, perhaps?” she ventured, a derelict who'd taken shelter, or drunk himself to death. Surely no one could actually get
trapped
inside, could they? Unless— Oh God. “Was it . . . Did something fall on—?” Her mind raced towards negligence claims and lawsuits.
She'd had ownership for less than a couple of months, but what would her position be?

“The corpse was stashed under the floor-boards, so no.” James Cameron was still slouched against the Land Rover, watching her, and the significance of his words took a moment to hit her.

“
Under
the floor-boards?”

He nodded.

The policeman returned her another apologetic look. “A bad business,” he said, and gestured to the Saab. “Why don't you sit in the car, miss, while we take a look?”

She stood, staring back at him, then shook her head quickly. “No. I'll come. I'd better see—”

James Cameron straightened and produced hard hats from the back of the Land Rover, shutting Ruairidh's dog inside the vehicle, and went to unlock the heavy padlock on the front door. He stood aside as she made a more conventional entrance, then followed her in. Dazed still, she paused just inside, and in that instant she had a fleeting image of past splendour, seen through sunlit shafts of suspended dust . . . But the men were waiting for her.

James went on ahead, and Ruairidh ushered her through to the little annex where she had seen the wheelbarrow and tools. James was crouched beside them, his dark hair falling forward as he pulled aside the plastic sheet which was covering the disturbed ground.

They went and stood beside him, and looked down at pale bones lit from above, at the damaged skull lying on its side in a parody of sleep, the empty eye socket forlorn and sorrowful. Hetty felt a tightening in her chest. A heavy pall seemed to hang in the air, and it all felt unreal, and wrong. Dreadfully wrong.

“Poor devil,” the policeman said, crouching down. “A bad spot that, just above the temple.”

Only the upper part of the skeleton was visible, and James Cameron was scraping gently with a penknife at the soil and mortar
which framed the skull. “See what I meant? It looks as if the bedding material was packed around and on top of the body, and then the floor-boards were laid on top.”

The scene was almost unimaginable.

“To have been buried there, and no one knowing.” Her words fell into a pool of silence.

“Someone knew,” said Ruairidh after a moment, then he straightened, dusting his hands together. “Let's cover them up again, Jamie.”

She stepped aside to give them space, but almost immediately she heard the younger man exclaim, and she turned back to see him pointing with the tip of his knife blade at something glinting amongst the sand and rubble. Ruairidh crouched again. “Can you free it?” he asked, and they watched as James scratched the sandy soil away to reveal an oval locket strung on a gold chain. “Is it a woman, then?” The policeman's voice was grim. Clouds covered the sun, dimming the light, and Hetty looked up through the broken roof. A woman?

“An expensive piece.” James turned the locket over and rubbed his thumb across a scrolling pattern of initials. “What is it? BJS, SJB? Can't tell when they're all on top of each other. Do I open it?” He looked across at the other man, who hesitated a moment and then nodded. He slid the blade between the two halves of the locket.

Inside lay a curl of hair, and underneath it, a feather. Nothing else. No further inscription, no picture, just a lock of hair tied with thin twine and the feather, reduced to little more than a few spines and dust.

1910, Beatrice

Beatrice stood on a little headland and saw the house at last, lit by strong sunlight. Fine-weather clouds cast fleeting shadows over the wet sand as they sped across the sky, drawing her on towards the island. But a moment later a darker one skidded over the sun, plunging the house into shade, and she looked around her thinking of Theo's paintings, which had, after all, only hinted at the extraordinary quality of the light. Intense and ever-changing.

A sharp breeze reminded her that the year was still young and untried, and it carried a sour tang from the seaweed piled up on the high-tide mark. A bird circled her, emitting an urgent, piping cry as she stood there, the wind tugging at her skirt, lifting the brim of her hat. She spent a moment tying the ribbons more tightly, and when she looked up the cloud had passed and the house was once again flooded with light. A faint heat haze shimmered off the sand, blurring the shoreline ahead.

The scene held her transfixed until she heard her name called, and she turned to see her husband beckoning. She had left him overseeing the transfer of their trunks to a waiting farm cart, cautioning care with his painting materials, and had picked her way down to the shoreline. He watched her as she returned to him, searching her face as he assisted her onto the trap, before springing up beside her, taking the reins, and guiding the horse down onto the sand. “Edinburgh's in another world,” she said, and he smiled at her.

Just two days ago she had sat at the window of their private compartment, engrossed, watched indulgently by Theo as the train steamed out of Waverley Station, leaving Edinburgh behind them. This journey might be nothing to someone as well-travelled as he, but Beatrice had rarely left the city, and the sky-hued flush of bluebells on woodland floors and the gorse aflame on the fells had filled her with delight.

But nothing in her experience had prepared her for the rugged grandeur of the Highlands, for the great procession of mountains sweeping down to tongues of glittering water which spread wider as the train headed west to become the ocean itself. Nor had the small ferry across the narrow strait to Skye prepared her for the sea crossing to the islands. “It'll be rough,” Theo had warned, “and I expect you'll be sick.” But he had been wrong, and she had remained on the oil-stained deck throughout, warm in her travelling coat, untroubled by the noise and smoke from the mail boat's engines, captivated by the blue-grey sea and the islands spread about her.

“Theo, I had no idea—” she had breathed, catching at her escaping hair.

He had stood beside her, a tall, well-made man, his hands grasping the rails, the wind blowing his hair across his brow, eyes narrowing to follow a line of gannets heading out to sea, shedding his city veneer before her eyes. But what was he thinking, she had wondered, this two-month husband of hers. One could never be quite certain, his face hid his emotions too well. A moment later he had turned back to her, his eyes warming a private smile as he bent to kiss her.

As the trap crossed the sand on this final stretch of the journey, she resumed her study of him. He was a handsome man, without a doubt, but so far she had known him only as a creature of the Edinburgh drawing rooms and galleries where they had met, and where he was an established figure, confident of the position which
his money, intellect, and talent had earned him. But here, out of context, she found he was a stranger again.

He had been animated as he prepared for their departure, and purposeful, ensuring she packed suitable clothing and footwear, breaking off to explain to her the workings of the camera he had bought. “But you will paint too?” she had asked, and he had answered with a curious fervour that he certainly hoped he would. And there had been an energy, an eagerness in him on the journey as he had overseen the porters dealing with their trunks at the railway stations, and he had been impatient at the late departure of the mail boat. But as they approached the long line of islands, he had fallen silent, and she had sensed him detaching himself from her.

“It has an almost Aegean quality on days like this,” he said suddenly, his expression lightening. “But wait until the westerlies strike up. Then you'll change your tune.” She dismissed the westerlies with an airy wave and slipped her hand under his arm, drawing close, and he smiled down at her again. And now, with their destination in sight, she sensed excitement growing in him, and she stretched her eyes across the strand to Muirlan Island, on the edge of the world.

This was how he had described it to her. “And beyond there be dragons!” he had said, his eyes glinting in the way she had grown to love. It was his refuge, he had said, a place of wild beauty, a special place, with endless stretches of bone-white sand, vast skies, and the sea—an ever-changing palette.

Then he had returned to practicalities. Although the house was large by local standards, they would not be living in grand style. “Perhaps you'll find it primitive.” He did not retain a large staff; she must make do with local girls recruited for the summer from amongst the tenants, who would be overseen by Mrs. Henderson, the housekeeper. “There's no Mr. Henderson, by the way. Never has been, so don't ask.” She looked blank. “There's a daughter, you
see.” The estate and the tenants, he continued, were managed by the factor, John Forbes, who farmed the estate on Theo's behalf. “A very competent fellow. His father came as factor from Paisley with my father, but John's an islander to his marrow. We were boys together.” The factor was assisted by a grown son, and a daughter who kept house for them, his wife having died many years ago. Another son was in Canada. “They've been more or less running the place for years.” And he had frowned suddenly—his Edinburgh face. “They'll have to adjust, and there hasn't been a mistress in the place since my stepmother fled the island.”