In the morning Monk walked the mile or so along the pale beach and up the hill to find Mary Farraline’s croft, which was apparently rented by a man named Arkwright. He was well known in the village—but not, from the intonation of voice, with much love. That could be because, to judge from his name, he was not a Highlander, and probably not even a Scot—although Monk had personally met
with only the greatest courtesy, in spite of his very English voice.
He had arrived in the dark, but the morning was brilliant again, as clear as the day before. It was not a long walk, barely a mile at the outside, and at the crown of the ridge was an avenue of sycamore and ash trees lining the road. To the left was a large stone barn or byre of some sort, and to the right a smaller house which he presumed was Mary Farraline’s croft. He could see over the rooftops the chimneys of a larger building, a manor house possibly, but that could not be what he was seeking.
He must compose his thoughts to what he would say. He stopped under the trees and turned back the way he had come … and caught his breath. The sea stretched out below him in a silver-blue satin sheet; in the distance lay the mountains of Sutherland, the farthest peaks mounded with snow. To the west a sandbar gleamed pale in the sunlight, and beyond it was blue water stretching inland towards blue hills fading into purple on the horizon, a hundred miles or more. The sky was almost without a blemish and a skein of wild geese threaded its way slowly overhead, calling their way south.
He turned slowly, watching their passage and pondering the miracle of it, as they disappeared. He saw the sea to the south as well, silver-white in the mounting sun, and the outline of a lone castle dark against it.
In another mood he might have been angry at the ugliness which brought him here. Today he could only feel a weight of sadness.
He finished the last few yards of his journey and knocked on the door.
“Aye?” The man who came to answer him was short and stocky, with a smooth face which in no way masked his resentment of strangers.
“Mr. Arkwright?” Monk inquired.
“Aye, that’s me. Who are you, and what do you want here?” His voice was English, but it took Monk a moment
to discern the intonation. It was mixed, softened by the Highland.
“I’ve come from Edinburgh—” Monk began.
“You’re no Scot,” Arkwright said darkly, backing away a step.
“Neither are you,” Monk countered. “I said I came from Edinburgh, not that I was born there.”
“What of it. I don’t care where you’re from.”
Yorkshire! That was the cadence in his voice, the nature of the vowels. And Baird McIvor had come originally from Yorkshire. Coincidence?
The lie sprang instantly to Monk’s lips.
“I am Mrs. Mary Farraline’s solicitor. I have come to see to her affairs. I don’t know if you were informed of her recent death?”
“Never heard of her,” Arkwright said intently, but there was a shadow in his eyes. He was lying too.
“Which is odd,” Monk said with a smile, not of friendliness but of satisfaction. “Because you are living in her house.”
Arkwright paled, but his face set hard. There were the shadows of a hundred other bitter struggles in him. He knew how to fight and Monk guessed he was not particular as to his weapons. There was something dangerous in the man. He found himself measuring his response. What was this alien man doing in this huge, wild, clean place?
Arkwright was staring at Monk.
“I don’t know whose name is on the deeds, but I rent it from a man called McIvor, and that is none of your affair, Mr. Crow.”
Monk had not introduced himself, but he knew the cant name for a solicitor.
Monk raised his eyebrows skeptically. “You pay rent to Mr. McIvor?”
“Yeah. That’s right.” There was belligerence in Arkwright, and still a thread of uncertainty.
“How?” Monk pressed, still standing well back.
“What you mean, how? Money, o’ course. What you trunk, potatoes?”
“What do you do, ride over to Inverness and put a purse on the night train to Edinburgh? Weekly? Monthly? It must take you a couple of days.”
Arkwright was caught out, and the realization of it blazed in his eyes. For a second he seemed about to swing a fist at Monk, then he looked at Monk’s balance, and the leanness of his body, and decided against it.
“None of your business,” he growled. “I answer to Mr. McIvor, not you. Anyway, you got no proof who you are, or that Mary Whatsisname is dead.” A momentary gleam of triumph lit his eyes. “You could be anybody.”
“I could,” Monk agreed. “I could be the police.”
“Rozzers?” But his face paled. “What for? I keep a farm. Isn’t nothing illegal in that. You ain’t a rozzer, you’re just a nosy bastard who don’t know what’s good for him!”
“Would it interest you, or surprise you, to know that McIvor never passed on all this money that you sent to him on the train?” Monk asked sarcastically.
Arkwright tried to leer, but there was no laughter behind it, only a strange gleam of anxiety.
“Well, that’s his problem, isn’t it?”
In that moment Monk knew that Baird McIvor could not betray Arkwright, and Arkwright was totally sure of it. But equally, if Baird lost his power of authority for the croft, Arkwright would lose it too. Blackmail. That was the only conceivable answer. Why? Over what? How would this man ever come to know an apparent gentleman like Baird McIvor? Arkwright was at best bordering on criminal, at worst a fully fledged professional.
Monk shrugged with deliberate casualness and made as if to turn away.
“McIvor’ll tell me all about it,” he said smugly. “He’ll grass you.”
“No ’e won’t!” Arkwright said victoriously. “’E daren’t, or ’e’ll shop ’imself.”
“Rubbish! Who’d believe you against him? He’ll grass you all right. To account for the money.”
“Anyone as can read’ll believe me,” Arkwright sneered. “It’s all writ. An’ ’e’s still got the marks o’ a cockchafer on ’is backside.”
Prison. So that was the answer. Baird McIvor had served a term in jail somewhere. Possibly Arkwright knew about it because he had been there too. Perhaps they had trodden side by side on the “cockchafer,” that dreaded machine more properly called a treadmill, where inmates were imprisoned for a quarter of an hour at a time, treading down a wheel of twenty-four steps attached to a long axle and an ingenious arrangement of weather vanes so they always turned at exactly the right speed to cause the most breathlessness, suffocation and exhaustion. The cant name arose because of the agony caused by the leather harness constantly rubbing on the tender flesh.
But had Mary Farraline known all this? Had he killed her to keep that dreadful secret, as he had paid Arkwright with a rent-free croft to keep his? It seemed so obvious it was hard to deny.
Why should it pain Monk? Because he wanted it to be Kenneth? That was absurd.
And yet somehow the shining bay did not seem so warm when he turned to leave, and walked down the gentle slope between the hedges towards the smithy and his horse, to ride long and hard back to Inverness.
He had crossed Cromarty and the Black Isle and was on the ferry across the Beauty, his back aching, pain shooting through his shoulders as he pulled furiously on the oars. He was determined to vent his anger on something, despite the ferryman’s smile and his offer to do it all himself. Suddenly, without any warning at all, he remembered the time in his childhood that the first memory had brought back with such pain. He knew what the other emotion was, the one that hovered on the edges, dark and unrecognized. It was guilt. Guilt because they were returning from a lifeboat
rescue, and he had been afraid. He had been so bitterly afraid of the yawning gulf of water that had opened up between the lifeboat and the doomed ship that he had frozen in terror, missing the thrown rope and too late seeing it coil and slither back off the deck, into the water. They had thrown it again, of course, but the few precious seconds had been lost, and with it the chance of a man’s life.
The sweat broke out on his skin here in the present as he bent his back and dug the oar savagely into the bright water of the Beauly Firth. All he could see in his mind’s eye was the gaping chasm of water between the boat sides all those years ago. He could taste the shame as if it were minutes past and feel the tears of humiliation prickle in his eyes.
Why did he remember that? There must have been dozens of happy memories, times he had shared with his family; there must have been successes, achievements. What was it in him that chose this to bring back so vividly? Was there more to it, something else, uglier, that he still did not recall?
Or was it that his pride could not accept failure of any sort, and he clung to the old wound because it still rankled, souring everything else? Was he really so self-obsessed?
“A wee bit dour today,” the ferryman observed. “Did ye no find what you wanted up at the port?”
“Yes … yes, I found it,” Monk replied, heaving on the oars. “It was what I expected.”
“Then it’s no to your taste, to judge from the dreich look on your face.”
“No … it’s not.”
The ferryman nodded and kept his silence.
They reached the far side. Monk climbed out stiffly, paid him, and took his leave. His whole body ached abominably. Served him right for his pride. He should have let the ferryman row.
He arrived back in Edinburgh tired and without any feeling of satisfaction in his discovery. He chose to walk, in
spite of the gusty wind blowing in his face and the touch of sleet now and again out of a gray sky. He strode across the Waverley Bridge, right down Market Street, up Bank Street and over the George IV Bridge and right into the Grassmarket. He ended outside Hester’s lodgings without having given a thought to why he chose there instead of Ainslie Place. Perhaps in some way he decided she deserved to learn the truth before the Farralines, or to be present when they were told it. He did not even consider the cruelty of it. She had liked Baird, or at least he had formed that impression.
He was already at her door before he realized he simply wanted to share his own disillusion, not with anyone, although there was no one else, but specifically with her. The knowledge froze his hand in the air.
But she had heard his footsteps on the uncarpeted passage and opened the door, her face filled with expectancy, and an element of fear. She saw his own disillusion in his eyes before he spoke.
“It was Baird….” It was almost a question, not quite. She held the door for him to go in.
He accepted without the impropriety of it crossing his mind. The thought never occurred to him.
“Yes. He was in prison. Arkwright, the man on the croft, knew it; in fact, I imagine the bastard served with him.” He sat down on the bed, leaving the one chair for her. “I expect McIvor let him use the croft to keep him silent, and when Mary found out, he killed her for the same reason. He could hardly have the Farralines, and all Edinburgh, know he was an old lag.”
She looked at him gravely, almost expressionlessly, for several seconds. He wanted to see some reaction in her, a reflection of his own hurt, and he was about to speak, but he did not know what to say. For once he did not want to quarrel with her. He wanted closeness, an end to unhappy surprises.
“Poor Baird,” she said with a little shiver.
He was about to ridicule her sentiment, then he remembered with a jolt that she had tasted prison herself, bitterly and very recently. His remark died unspoken.
“Eilish is going to be destroyed,” she said quietly, but still there seemed a lack of real horror in her.
“Yes,” he agreed vehemently. “Yes she is.”
Hester frowned. “Are you really sure it was Baird? Just because he was in prison doesn’t necessarily mean he killed Mary. Don’t you think it is possible, if this Arkwright creature was blackmailing him, that he might have told Mary, and she helped him by letting him use the croft that way?”
“Come on, Hester,” he said wearily. “You’re clutching at straws. Why should she? He’d misled them all, lied to them about his past. Why should she do what was virtually paying blackmail for him? She may have been a good woman, but that calls for a saint.”
“No it doesn’t,” she contradicted him.
“I
knew Mary, you didn’t.”
“You met her on one train journey!”
“I knew her! She liked Baird. She told me that herself.”
“She didn’t know he was an old lag.”
“We don’t know what he did.” She leaned forward, demanding he listen. “He may have told her, and she still liked him. We knew about a time when he was very upset and went off by himself. Maybe this was when Arkwright turned up. Then he told Mary about it, and she helped him, and he was all right. It’s quite possible.”
“Then who killed Mary?”
Her face closed over. “I don’t know. Kenneth?”
“And Baird playing with the chemicals?” he added.
A look of scorn filled her face. “Don’t be so naive. No one else saw that but Quinlan, and he’s green with jealousy. He’d lie about Baird as quick as look at you.”
“And hang him for a crime he didn’t commit?”
“Of course. Why not?”
He looked at her and saw certainty in her eyes. He wondered
if she ever doubted herself, as he did. But then she knew her past, knew not only what she thought and felt now, but what she had always thought, and done. There was no secret room in her life, no dark passages and locked doors in the mind.
“It’s monstrous,” he said quietly.
She searched his face. “It is to you and me.” Her voice was soft. “But to him, Baird has stolen what should be his. Not his wife—but his wife’s love, her respect, her admiration. He can’t accuse him of that, he can’t punish him for it. Perhaps he feels that is monstrous too.”
“That …” he began, and then stopped.
She was smiling, not with anything like laughter, but a wry, hurting perception.
“We had better go and tell them what you found out.”
Reluctantly he rose to his feet. There was no alternative.
They stood in the withdrawing room in Ainslie Place. Everyone was present. Even Alastair had contrived not to be in court or his offices. And presumably the printing was running itself, at least for the day.