Waterfall Glen (11 page)

“You’re right, Mr. Cunningham, they’re likeable souls,” Kate said. She was about to get up to leave but the lawyer stopped her, saying, “There’s one more thing. I almost forgot, because it’s literally a peripheral matter.”

Kate settled back in her seat.

“It concerns the ruins of a small cottage on the estate.”

“Jamie’s Cottage?” Kate had intended asking him about the derelict cottage and its new owner, but the matter had slipped her mind after hearing just how dire the estate’s financial position was.

“Yes, Jamie’s Cottage. I take it Finlay’s mentioned it to you?”

“Briefly.”

“And you’ll have seen Jamie’s portrait and know why it’s turned to face the wall?”

Kate nodded.

“Well, being the youngest son, instead of inheriting the estate he was just given the cottage to live in, and the right to collect a little rent in kind from some of the clansmen.

“After his flight from Culloden and fall from grace
his wife and son left the glen. I suppose she didn’t want her child to be brought up in a place where he’d hear his father’s name being blackened. They never returned, and that line of the family was conveniently forgotten …

“At least until a little while ago. In his later years Colin Chisholm got interested in genealogy, possibly so he could find out if he had anyone to leave the estate to. He bought a computer and seems to have got quite clued-up about using it. He even set up a little business on the Internet, tracing Scottish family trees. He wasn’t making more than pocket money, but it probably helped him feel he was doing something productive with his time.

“As well as tracing your line, which is how we knew roughly where to look for you, he traced Jamie Chisholm’s. Colin never found any trace of Jamie himself—what happened to him is a complete mystery—but he managed to trace the black sheep’s issue down the years. Almost without exception Jamie’s male descendants seem to have served in the army. Maybe they felt they had a point to prove when it came to courage, or maybe they were never told about Jamie, and the army connection is just a coincidence.

“Whatever, just before Colin Chisholm died he traced the sole surviving member of Jamie’s branch of the family, and called me to put a codicil in the will regarding the cottage.”

“Why would he want to do that?” Kate asked. “I’m not asking because I resent it,” she added quickly. “I’m just curious, since this Jamie seems to still be held in contempt two and a half centuries after Culloden.”

“I can only guess about that, but perhaps there’s a clue in what Jamie’s living descendant does, or did: his name’s Cameron Fraser and he saw active service in the Balkans with The Black Watch—that’s a Highland regiment. At a guess, something about that might have struck a chord with Colin Chisholm, a man who was so badly wounded in the service of his country.

“Also, it’s been my experience that when people get to the age Mr. Chisholm had reached, their mind often turns to unfinished business. He maybe saw Jamie’s Cottage as just that. Whatever Jamie’s disgrace, the cottage had still belonged to his wife and child—and so, by extension, Colin Chisholm maybe felt it rightfully belonged to Jamie’s heirs.”

“Do you know anything about this Cameron Fraser?” Kate asked.

Archibald Cunningham hesitated, as if considering a delicate matter, then said, “All I know is that he recently left the army under something of a cloud.”

“What sort of a cloud?”

“The kind that doesn’t have a silver lining, I would venture to suggest.”

“What makes you say that?”

“He resigned his commission just before his term of enlistment was up.”

“So?”

“That’s a most peculiar thing to do, given that his pension benefits would be determined by the rank he held on
leaving. He could have left as a lieutenant; instead he left as a private.”

“That does seem strange. Why would someone do that?”

“All I can imagine is that it was either a matter of conscience or of necessity. It’s as if he felt the army had done something so dishonorable that he had to register a protest, or he’d done something so dishonorable the army insisted he do the honorable thing.”

“Did he fall or was he pushed, in other words.”

“Yes, quite.”

Archibald Cunningham’s phone rang. “Excuse me,” he said to Kate. He picked up the phone, listened for a few moments, then glanced at his watch and said, “Thanks, dear. I’ll be with him in a minute.”

He hung up and said to Kate, “My four o’clock client’s here. Probably just as well—we were holding a bit of a board of inquiry into Mr. Cameron Fraser, which was rather naughty of us given that the man’s not even here to defend himself.” He pulled back his chair and got to his feet.

Kate did likewise.

“So, I’ll see you at ten to five in the bar of the Caledonian Thistle, then?” Archibald Cunningham asked.

Kate nodded and shook his hand.

“I’m sorry I didn’t have better news, but the day might yet have a happy ending.”

Kate tried to force a smile but didn’t come close to pulling it off.

A few minutes later she was settling down on a bar
stool beside Finlay in The Piper’s Arms, the bar she’d arranged to meet him in.

“It’s a sare fecht to be surrounded by that…” Finlay said, looking at all the bottles of Scotch behind the bar, “… and reduced to drinking this,” he said, holding up a glass of fresh orange.

“I’m sorry, Finlay, but I don’t even trust myself to drive on the roads back home, let alone over here.”

Finlay sighed, looked into his drink and said, “So here isn’t going to be home, then, I take it?”

“I wish with all my heart that it could be, Finlay, believe me.”

“But…”

“From what Mr. Cunningham told me, it doesn’t look like I can afford to keep Glen Cranoch, however much I want to.”

“I understand.”

“I hope this doesn’t seem like I’m rubbing salt into a wound, Finlay, but I’m having dinner with someone who wants to buy the estate.”

“That’ll be the English ‘gentleman’ I saw snooping around the other day, I take it.”

“Yes, I think so. Anyway, I wonder if you’d mind hanging on to give me a lift back to the glen afterwards.” She reached into her handbag and brought out her purse. “I’d like to buy you a meal while you wait,” she said, offering him a £20 note.

“It’s all right, Lady Kate, I’ll wait without the money.”

“Please,” she said, feeling like she was trying to salve her conscience in some small way, and that perhaps Finlay didn’t want to let her.

Finlay’s next words, and the way he spoke them, told Kate she’d been right. “Thank you, but that’s quite all right, Lady Kate,” the ghillie said. “Miss Weir has a meal waiting for us back at Greystane, and I’m sure it’ll be far nicer than anything I could be buying with £20 in any fancy restaurant.

“Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll call and let her know we’ll be late and that only one of us will be eating.” With that he got up and walked over to the payphone at the far end of the bar.

Kate watched him as he stood with his back to her. He rummaged in the pockets of his tweed jacket for change, then just stood there for a moment, leaning against the phone, and she thought his shoulders slumped ever so slightly. Finally he put a coin in the box, punched in a number and, moments later, started talking into the headset.

He talked for two or three minutes, and Kate guessed that he was informing Miss Weir of much more than just their late return.

Finlay went to the toilet after hanging up, and was gone for so long that Kate was starting to get concerned.

When at last he came back, she said, “Finlay, are you all right?”

“Aye, I’m fine,” he told her. “I’m just feeling I owe you an apology, Lady Kate. I was terribly, terribly short with
you and I’d no right to be. It’s just been a difficult time for myself and Miss Weir, what with the uncertainty of it all. We’d been prepared for the worst, but then we finally met you and saw what you were like and how much you seemed to like Greystane and Glen Cranoch—”

“I do, Finlay, and not just Greystane and Glen Cranoch, but you and Miss Weir. If there was any way …”

She was about to tell him that in any case nothing had been decided yet, but stopped because she knew that, whatever she felt in her heart, the decision had effectively been made.

K
ATE ARRIVED AT
T
HE
C
ALEDONIAN
T
HISTLE AT QUARTER
to five. There was no sign of Archibald Cunningham, so she ordered a sloe gin to calm her nerves while she waited. Before she could get her purse out to pay for the drink a man of about her own age walked up to the bar, held out a £5 note, and said to the barman, “I’ll get that.”

“It’s all right, thank you,” Kate told him, uncomfortable at the idea of accepting a drink from a man who hadn’t even introduced himself.

However, the barman had already turned away with the money in his hand.

The man who’d bought the drink was more than a head taller than Kate. He strained the seams of his charcoal grey suit at chest and shoulder, and the collar of his white shirt. He had a thick head of coal-black hair and eyes that were almost as dark. His face was heavy featured, and there was a deep dimple in his ample jaw.

It was a description that Kate might have found appealing if she’d been reading it in a book, yet she didn’t
find the man standing next to her attractive in the slightest. She liked self-assurance in a man, but loathed over-confidence of the kind she saw in this man’s expression and sensed in his body language. “Thank you, but I don’t accept drinks from strangers,” she told him, making no move to reach for the cocktail.

Other men might have called it quits and walked away with an attempt at a couldn’t-care-less shrug of the shoulders, or mumbled an embarrassed apology. But this man smiled and said, “Tony Carling, pleased to meet you. Now we’re not strangers, so you can accept the drink.”

His accent was English, and Kate decided she didn’t like it. She wasn’t sure what to do, but just then the cavalry arrived, albeit in a form as unlike John Wayne as possible—the portly figure of Archibald Cunningham. “I hope you’ve not been waiting long,” the lawyer said to Kate. His smile died away when he sensed the tension between Kate and the big man next to her.

Kate shook her head. “Nice to see you,” she said pointedly. Then she turned from Archibald Cunningham to Tony Carling and said, “I’m sorry, I have an appointment.”

The solicitor took his cue and called across to the barman, “Charlie, I have a table booked for five o’clock.”

“Ah, yes, Mr. Cunningham. Table six should be ready for you now, if you want to be going through.”

“Excuse us,” Archie said firmly but politely to Tony Carling. Putting an arm around Kate’s shoulders in fatherly fashion he guided her towards a dimly-lit room
dominated by a log-burning fire.

Kate’s relief was short-lived. She had the feeling they were being followed, and looked back to see the big man walking just a few paces behind her.

Archibald Cunningham turned to see what was wrong. He stiffened, and Kate sensed that physical confrontations weren’t his strongest suit. She guessed that not many people would relish a confrontation with Tony Carling—and that Carling knew it, and enjoyed moments such as this. “I’ve told you we have an appointment,” Kate said, making no effort to hide her irritation.

“Yes,” the man said, “but if you’re the Cunningham party, then your appointment is with me.”

Turning from Kate to Archibald Campbell, the big Englishman reached out a hand and said, “Tony Carling, Yeoman Holdings.”

Archibald Cunningham smiled with barely disguised relief as he shook the outstretched hand. “Archie Cunningham, agent for Lady Kate Brodie,” he said, indicating Kate with his free hand.

“A pleasant surprise in every way,” Carling said, looking at Kate.

“Come on through, man,” Archie said to Carling.

They’d no sooner sat down at the fire—Kate barely had time to take off her Burberry raincoat and scarf—when a waiter came over with three menus and said, “Can I get you something to drink?”

Before Kate or Archie could reply, Tony Carling said,
“A sloe gin for the lady, a Bacardi and Coke with ice for myself, and the usual for Mr. Cunningham.”

Archie looked taken aback.

Carling smiled. “The barman knew you by name, so I’m guessing the waiters know you, too.”

The tone of Carling’s voice and the smug expression on his face did nothing to change Kate’s opinion that he had considerably more than his share of confidence.

“I don’t know if you’d prefer to eat first and talk business after, or the other way around,” Archie said, addressing both Kate and Carling.

Before Carling could say anything, Kate said, “I’d like to get straight down to business.”

“Fair enough,” Carling said. “I’m chairman and chief exec of Yeoman, and as such I have full financial authority to act as I see fit on the firm’s behalf. To all intents and purposes I am the firm. The reason I’ve asked for this meeting is that Yeoman would like to make an offer—a very generous offer—for the Cranock Estate.”