A Step So Grave Read online

  ‘Thank the Lord!’ said the male part, detaching himself. He turned to the girl and hissed, ‘Don’t say any more.’

  ‘We were up on the moor! We saw—’

  ‘Don’t tell them!’ This hiss was so loud I wondered if the boy had had theatrical training.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Lady Love. ‘Dandy, I’m afraid these two reprobates are my younger daughter and her husband. Cherry and Mitten. Mr and Mrs Martin Tibball.’

  ‘Tibball?’ I said.

  ‘Yes!’ Biddy Tibball exclaimed. ‘Can you imagine the joy of two old chums like Lady Love and me when our children tied the knot?’

  I could imagine the relief of two impoverished parents like Biddy and Dickie when their son landed a Dunnoch, certainly.

  ‘Cherry?’ Lady Love was saying as I dragged my mind out of the gutter, or at any rate out of the accounts book. ‘Mitten? These are our dear Don’s parents come to stay. Come to see what sort of family their son is marrying into. Thank you for all your help, darlings.’

  They did not look old enough to be married. I would have put the girl Cherry at seventeen or eighteen, although the hair ribbon that was sliding down a lock of her chestnut curls was more suited to a nine-year-old. She was dressed in a tea-gown and a mackintosh and the tops of a pair of lumpy knitted socks showed above her gumboots. Her husband, if it was really true that this pair of puppies were married to each other, wore a cricket jersey of equal vintage to his parents’ tweeds and under it a set of brown overalls, like a labourer; the collar showed above the V-neck and the legs were tucked into a pair of gumboots even muddier than his wife’s.

  ‘How d’you do,’ said Cherry. ‘Welcome to Applecross. Failure dawn Chomraich.’

  ‘Please don’t speak Gaelic in the dining room, darling,’ said Lord Ross. ‘Or if you must, please try a little harder to pronounce it properly.’ Then he made a noise as though he had swallowed a fly. ‘Your fricatives are too breathy, Cherry. You sound like a fairy.’

  Now the girl started making the rumbling noise too, and Lady Love joined in along with one or two others until it sounded as though a light aircraft were just about to take off from under the table. Biddy Tibball broke first, collapsing into giggles. Then the footman, disappearing out of the room with the empty fish plate, said, ‘Fuchsia cabin marmoset coal-cake’, which finished off the rest of them. It ended with Lord Ross wiping his eyes with his napkin.

  ‘Dandy, you must forgive our servants,’ said Lady Love when the tittering had died down. ‘I’ve told them until I’m blue in the face not to lapse into Gaelic in front of southern guests but we were all brought up together and went to Miss Alva’s school until we were ten so they take no notice of me. All he said was that we sounded like cockneys.’

  Hugh – included among the ‘southern guests’ – wore a frozen mask of offence, but all I could think was how surprised I was to learn there was a Gaelic word for ‘cockney’. Besides, there was a much more interesting conversation to be had. The elder Mrs Tibball had begun it.

  ‘What did you see up on the moor, Cherry darling?’ she was asking her daughter-in-law. ‘Don’t leave us on tenterhooks.’

  ‘I was mistaken,’ Cherry said.

  ‘What did you think you saw, Cherry?’ said Lord Ross.

  ‘Don’t tell them,’ said Mitten. ‘As your husband, whom you promised to obey – in front of most of this lot, not even a year ago, I might add – I forbid it.’

  ‘You are funny,’ said Cherry. ‘Well, Daddy, since you ask—’

  ‘Cherry!’ That was Mitten again.

  ‘I thought I saw,’ she went on, ‘to my horror, up on the moor—’

  ‘I’m not joking, Cherry,’ her husband said. ‘It’s not safe. A shock like this could—’

  ‘—with my own two blue eyes … a ghost.’

  Mitten breathed out, as though in relief. I said nothing, minding my manners, but I waited with a small smile on my lips for the chorus of snorts to begin. Not even a solo snort was forthcoming.

  ‘A morning-time ghost?’ said Lady Love. ‘So not the grey lady then?’

  ‘Not the grey lady, nor the lost child, nor the riderless horse, no,’ said Cherry. ‘It was … someone we know. Most alarming.’

  ‘Was it perhaps a marsh-gas mirage?’ said Donald. I was proud of him.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mallory. ‘If someone was cutting peats and broke into a particularly oily patch.’ I was proud of both of them.

  ‘This was no cloud of gas,’ said Cherry firmly. ‘It looked exactly like a person we know, clear as day, striding out across the moor, fit as a fiddle and large as life.’

  ‘A person we know who is dead?’ said Biddy Tibball. ‘Who?’

  ‘No,’ Cherry began, then she clapped her hands to her mouth and moaned.

  ‘Now do you see?’ Mitten asked her.

  ‘Oh no!’ said Cherry.

  ‘Please don’t say any more,’ Mitten said. ‘The shock of it could cause all sorts of collapse. Think for a minute. Do you want to be responsible for a heart attack?’

  ‘A harbinger,’ said Lady Love. ‘Which one, though? The coup she?’

  ‘No, Mother,’ said Cherry.

  ‘The what?’ I asked.

  ‘The coal yak?’ said Lady Love.

  ‘A yak?’ I said.

  ‘No indeed,’ said Cherry. She turned to me with the perfect social smile of a nicely brought-up girl chit-chatting to a stranger. ‘They are bringers of death,’ she said, spoiling the effect rather. Then her face clouded. ‘We merely saw – or thought we saw – someone we know, someone we love – looking rather different and so we thought it was a spirit. We rushed back here to check and we were immensely relieved to see everyone alive and well. I’m so stupid! It didn’t occur to me that what I saw was so much worse than a ghost.’

  ‘What are you saying, Cherry?’ said her father. He leaned forward in his wheeled chair, making the basketwork sides creak. ‘Do you mean it was one of us? You saw someone at this table? His voice was stern enough to make the large cat pause in its demolition of its piece of salmon and turn yellow eyes on its master.

  Cherry Tibball lowered her eyes and spoke in a small voice. ‘Don’t ask me, Daddy. It was a mistake, wasn’t it? Everyone is fine. And here comes Lairdie with the lamb.’

  ‘Lairdie with the lamb’ sounded like another harbinger, along with the coal yak, but the dining-room door opened just then and the Gaelic-spouting footman backed in, turning to reveal an enormous platter, upon which about half a yearling sheep was shining and steaming.

  He cocked a look at the silent party around the table and let off another stream of gulps and rasps in his native tongue.

  ‘Miss Cherry has seen a vision up on the moor, Lairdie,’ said Lady Love. ‘A death is foretold. Let the servants know.’

  She made it sound as if she was issuing a bad-weather warning to a chauffeur to make sure he fastened the window flaps on a motorcar. Hugh was shaking his head in rueful wonder.

  ‘Neigh neat furt,’ said Lairdie, widening his eyes and glaring at the cat crouched on the high stool at Lord Ross’s side. I took it to be more Gaelic at first until Lady Love piped up.

  ‘What on earth do you mean “no need for it”?’ she said. ‘No need for a harbinger?’

  ‘Reckless,’ Lairdie said. He slid the lamb onto the table and passed Lord Ross the carving knife, then left the room.

  ‘And what does he mean by “reckless”?’ said Lady Love.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Biddy Tibball after he was gone. ‘Look, LL. Look around.’

  Lady Love let her gaze pass around the table, nodding at each place. She was counting. I counted along with her. Donald, Teddy, Hugh and I were four. Lord and Lady Ross were five and six. The three Tibballs brought the figure to nine, David Spencer made a round ten and the two Dunnoch daughters took us to a dozen. Eventually, Lady Love’s eyes settled on the cat.

  ‘Not Ursus!’ said Lord Ross, putting out one of his scarred fists and stroking the creature’s back. �
�Cats don’t count, do they?’

  ‘He’s in his own seat and he’s eating the same food,’ said Lady Love. ‘I think Lairdie is right. There are thirteen of us. Cherry, darling, this is too grave to be trifled with. What – Whom – did you see, walking on the moor?’

  ‘I can’t tell you,’ said Cherry. ‘I can’t say who it was. My heart will break from the grief of it!’

  She put her hands against the table and shoved her chair back, but her mother and her husband each shot out a hand and clamped her by both arms.

  ‘Don’t,’ said Biddy. ‘Just in case, Cherry. Just in case the cat counts. Don’t do it, darling, please.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Biddy,’ said Cherry. ‘It wasn’t me!’

  I was now staring at Hugh in a paroxysm of embarrassment and irritation. I had expected Highlanders perhaps to be a little more romantic than I had been used to in my Northamptonshire childhood, but I had never seen anything like this in all my days. Not even a few years ago on a case in Fife, when I had met some women who felt themselves to be true witches, had I ever witnessed such a carry-on.

  ‘Is that us at a stalemate, then?’ said Mallory. I noticed Hugh give a nod of approval. She did not believe in ghosts and she played chess. Despite her peculiar family, those were two marks in her favour. ‘Do we just sit here until one of us dies of old age?’ Hugh stopped nodding. He does not care for impertinence in the young. I, on the other hand, liked the girl more and more. I glanced at Donald, hoping to see a look of devotion, or even appreciation, upon his face, but Donald was gazing at Lady Love again, God rot him.

  ‘We could count to three and all stand up together,’ said Teddy. ‘After pudding, I mean. Would that work?’

  ‘You are all very kind,’ said Lord Ross. He lifted the cat into his lap, earning a low growl for separating the creature from the last shreds of salmon. ‘But a harbinger cannot be outwitted. Besides, I’ve rather lost my appetite, truth be told, even if this is to be my last meal.’

  A small sorrowful noise escaped Cherry’s lips.

  Lord Ross put his hands down to the wheels on his chair and propelled himself back from the table. ‘You are a sweet child, Cherry my darling, but we all know there’s only one of us you’d be surprised to see striding out across the moors, fit as a fiddle.’

  ‘Oh Daddy,’ his daughter said, with another small sob, as he wheeled himself slowly away.

  I shared a look with Hugh, unable to say which idea was most troubling: that the Rosses believed in the old superstition of thirteen at table; that the Rosses believed in visions and harbingers; or that mysterious strangers were wont to stride about the moors rattling everyone.

  4

  The rest of luncheon passed more sedately than one would imagine possible after such torrid exchanges. David Spencer discovered army connections in common with Hugh, Lady Love and Mallory began a long discussion on the subject of wedding flowers and Donald and Teddy ate steadily, looking neither to right nor left, leaving the Tibballs to me. I discovered that the youngsters, Cherry and Mitten, had a flat in one wing of the house and the elders, Dickie and Biddy, lived in a cottage on the estate.

  ‘Oh, I adore our little hovel!’ said Biddy with excruciating good humour. ‘It’s so easy to run! I flit round with a feather duster in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other and I can be over here with LL’s correspondence before the sun is up.’

  ‘It sounds idyllic,’ I offered.

  ‘A walk across the heather with my beloved at dawn and at dusk?’ said Biddy. ‘Even as a girl I never dreamed of anything so delightful.’

  ‘And how long have you been here?’ I said.

  ‘I, all my life,’ said Biddy. ‘My father’s estate – Rue No Fern – was just round the headland to the next promontory. LL and I shared a piano master and had our coming-out dresses run up by the same little woman in Plockton. Do you remember— Oh, she’s not listening. Dickie was a slave to his father’s bank in London, pinstripe trousers and a rolled umbrella: can you imagine? Until a few years ago when we escaped.’

  ‘How lovely,’ I murmured.

  I decoded it before passing it all along to Hugh afterwards. We were taking a turn on the west terrace, making the most of the hour and a half of watery sunshine before the afternoon gave up completely. This far north the February days were still depressingly short. ‘The wife’s family lost its estates and the husband’s family lost its bank. They lodge in a cottage and live off scraps. Poor things.’

  ‘I wonder how they’re set for the future,’ said Hugh. ‘Donald doesn’t have the faintest idea whether this place is entailed on a male heir somewhere. If not, and if Mallory comes down to us with a good wedge—’

  ‘Hugh, really! A “wedge”?’

  ‘… leaving this place free and clear to Martin and Cherry, then his parents have nothing to trouble them, even once old Ross drops off his perch and doesn’t need a nurse any more.’

  ‘Assuming Lady Love shifts into a dower house,’ I said. ‘And she might not. If there’s no entail.’

  ‘Oh, I think she’ll be long gone before that,’ said Hugh.

  ‘How can you possibly know such a thing?’ I said. ‘We’ve only been here five minutes.’

  Hugh took me by the elbow and hurried me round the side of the house to where the broad sweep of the bay was laid out before us. I shivered as he pointed to the north, where great grey lumps of hills rose up above the shore.

  ‘Behold, the clachan,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t be so tiresome,’ I retorted. ‘What on earth is a clachan? What am I supposed to be looking at?’

  ‘“Clachan” is the old Gaelic word for a village,’ said Hugh, ‘as I have told you many times, but you never listened. That church over there is the Clachan church and the house I’m pointing out to you is the Clachan manse, although no doubt they’ll have the minister in some cottage somewhere. Like Mr Arnethy at Dunkeld.’

  ‘Oh Lord, Hugh, not Mr Arnethy at Dunkeld. Please!’

  Hugh and Mr Arnethy had plotted and grumbled away for many an evening, but the Presbytery ignored them roundly and the manse was sold to a businessman from Perth whose daughters’ ponies had broken out of their field and eaten all the leaves off a new ash planting in our lower copse.

  ‘Mrs Arnethy,’ I added, ‘is probably delighted to have a neat little villa to run instead of that sprawling beast of a house, with ice on the inside of the windows and all the servants three flights away from the drawing room. She’s probably jumping for joy to be done with the place.’

  ‘There’s not even a spare room for guests,’ said Hugh.

  ‘I daresay Mrs Arnethy is jumping even higher for more joy that she no longer has a houseful of African missionaries on rotation. What on earth would one feed them?’

  ‘Cassava,’ said Hugh, who had never in his life heard a rhetorical question he did not answer. ‘Returning to the point: look at the front door, Dandy. There’s a ramp.’

  I squinted at the distant frontage of the Clachan manse. It was a pretty white-painted house, almost a miniature version of Applecross House in a way, except that humble sheds to its either side took the place of the sweeping wings here. There was indeed a new-looking wooden ramp beside the steps.

  ‘I see it,’ I said. ‘Now, since it’s freezing cold and about to rain again any minute, might we go in?’

  ‘Snow,’ said a voice from behind us. It was Biddy Tibball. I cast my mind back over the last few minutes’ conversation and decided that, while she might think us feeble-minded to be arguing about African food and the Abernethys, she probably had not heard a word on the Dunnochs. ‘I wouldn’t venture up onto the hills, but if it’s a turn round the bay you’re after, you’ll be fine. The road is paved for Lach’s chair to run on, you see.’

  ‘Yes, I do see,’ said Hugh. And indeed the road that followed the shoreline around from the little stretch of cottages that made the modern village to this ancient ‘clachan’ at the other end of the bay was a smooth metalled surface, very
different from the ragged stretches of rocks and potholes we had seen while journeying to Plockton yesterday. ‘As I see the provision made for him to enter the house over there.’

  ‘The old manse,’ said Biddy, causing Hugh a small triumph.

  ‘Are Lord and Lady Ross planning to move?’ I asked.

  ‘When Mallory is married and no longer needs a home here, Lach and LL are going to retire from their duties as laird and lady.’

  ‘It’s onerous enough running an estate when one is in rude health,’ said Hugh. I was not sure I agreed with this well-worn sentiment, for although his factor and steward put in long hours, Hugh spends a great deal of time standing in the river communing with his salmon, striding about nodding at the gamekeeper’s handiwork and sitting in his library with a heap of dogs. I said nothing.

  ‘Oh, don’t we know it!’ said Biddy. I noticed that we seemed to have begun walking the shore road without anyone making the decision. ‘Cherry and Mitten wouldn’t know where to begin! Lucky they have his father and me to help. And lucky we’ll be free to offer it. LL won’t need a secretary once she gives up the estate and of course Lach won’t be needing a nurse any—’ She bit off her words and bent her head.

  We walked a few yards in silence, before she piped up again. ‘Because of all the wonderful work LL has done on the house, you know. That ramp is only the beginning. Rails and rings abound. He’ll be quite independent. And there’s a lift!’

  Ah, I thought. Not because a harbinger of doom had foretold his imminent death, then?

  Hugh might ordinarily have been enthused by the thought of a lift, for he loves any kind of engineering feat, from canal locks to cattle crushes, but he was sunk in contemplation of what it might mean for Mallory’s portion that her sister was to be given all the estate as a playground. It was up to me to keep the conversation going.

  ‘I assume you’ve known Mallory all her life,’ I said. ‘I’m very much looking forward to getting acquainted with her. Donald’s estate abuts ours.’

  ‘I remember when she was a tiny little thing. She had the dimpliest knees of any child I’ve ever known. We used to count them. She had five dimples on one and six on the other. It was quite remarkable.’