A Double Death on the Black Isle (16 page)

It took two days for the police to call. Minutes after the results of the postmortem arrived, Detective Sergeant Wilkie took great pleasure in announcing the news to all in the station.

“We'll be needing extra men to go to thon tinker's camp and arrest the McPhee boys.”

Jenny McPhee was matriarch of her branch of the Travelers of Scotland—“tinkers,” “tinks,” and “dirty tinks” to many of the locals and to the police. Now in her fifties, Jenny McPhee was witnessing the passing of her way of life and the loss of her language—the Travelers dialect of Gaelic.

She was still a handsome woman after seven children and a hard life on the road, living in horse-drawn wagons. Formidable some might say, scary was how others described her. Hard work at berry picking in early summer, lifting of the tatties in the autumn, selling lucky white heather and clothes-pegs door-to-door, often to insults and curses from the householder, had not left its mark on her. And amongst the Traveling people, her singing and her repertoire were legendary.

Her second son, Jimmy, might be a former boxing champion, and a hard man, but his mother could still put the fear of God in him.

Jimmy McPhee had brought the news of Fraser Munro's death. Jenny had immediately sent him to fetch the boys involved and spread the word amongst the clan that they needed
information. Now three of her seven sons were in the room, and a family conference was taking place in the largest of five benders—large shelters constructed from bent saplings and covered with canvas and turf.

Erected on the banks of a swift river, in a pass between heather and birch-covered hills, the encampment was on a traditional resting spot for cattle-drovers and tinkers. There was a plentiful supply of young birch to construct the frames of the benders, river stones to make a fireplace, running water and narrow meadows for grazing the herd of horses and ponies—the campsite was as practical as it was beautiful.

The boys were not like their brother Jimmy. Their inheritance was that black-haired, blue-eyed, clear-skinned Celtic gene common throughout Scotland and Ireland. Fine specimens both.

Jimmy had twelve years on one brother and fourteen on the other. His wiry body was leaning over them as they sat sprawled in the velvet, brocade-covered sofa that sat plum in the middle of the bender. Jimmy's slicked-back dark hair and gleaming white false teeth added to the resemblance of a growling guard dog. That was what Jimmy was doing—guarding the family.

“You know the police'll be here soon. They'll no be wanting a cozy chat by the fireside.”

“But we didney do anything,” protested Geordie, the older of the two.

Jimmy looked at his wee brothers in amazement. “Do you no know the facts o' life yet? We're dirty tinkers to them. That's enough.” He lit a cigarette, threw back another dram, not wanting to show his wee brothers his fears for them. “When they do come, and if they arrest you, you say nothing. Do you hear? Nothing at all.” But Jimmy knew it was as impossible for them to keep their mouths shut as it would be for a cockerel not to crow at dawn.

Their mother was watching all this with a detached expression on her shrewd, dark face, leaving it all to Jimmy. She knew her boys were nervous, and it wasn't because of the police.

“Are you scared Jimmy might find out about the betting?”

“What's this?” Jimmy asked.

The boys wouldn't look at their mother. Jenny laughed. “There's not much escapes me.”

Jimmy sighed. “Let's be having it. The whole story mind.”

Geordie had the good sense to know they were caught. William too. They told the story, sentences bouncing back and forth between them. Both chimed in with the final statement in almost a shared breath.

“It was nothing to do with us. Fraser was fine when we left him.”

The story was simple. The brothers had been running a small business for a year or so—betting on darts matches, the plowing competition, the winners at the Black Isle Show. It was no great empire. The farmhands were occasionally in debt to them, but only for shillings, maximum a pound. Except for the elder Munro son. He was into them for eleven pounds. Expecting his army payout, he seemed good for it. Then that night, when asked to pay, he told them to get lost. He was never going to pay dirty tinkers.

“We waited outside,” Geordie told Jimmy. “We were going to give him a kicking, but Fraser left the hotel bar with the boys from the farm.”

William continued the story. “There was shouting and swearing, a bit of pushing and shoving, a few kicks, but that's all. Honest.”

“Aye,” Geordie said, “somebody shouted they was going to call the police, so we left.”

In their version, the scuffle broke up, they all went home.
Geordie and William left first. They could hear the others behind them, they said. They walked on, and were soon over the hill and saw and heard nothing more.

“That's it?” Jimmy asked.

“Aye,” Geordie said. “Fraser Munro was well away, staggering and shouting and swearing, calling a' the others from the farms a bunch o' lassies, stay at home mammy's boys. Telling them he was a real man, he could fight, knew how to kill—but it was nothing new, he was aye going on like that.”

“He was having a right go at the laird's daughter, Patricia,” William remembered. “Right crude about her he was.”

“So, let me get this straight,” Jenny said, “you two fine wee laddies, you threatened Fraser Munro, you gave him a shove and a kick, all in front of witnesses?”

“Only after he said he would never pay us the money,” William protested.

Jimmy ignored him.

“Then you walked over the hill, only a hundred yards or so separating you all until the turn-off to the farm, then on you two walked, on your own, into the night, and nobody saw you. Right?” Asked Jimmy, wanting the story clear.

“We saw each other.”

Jimmy laughed with no hint of humor. Jenny looked worried.

“Have you heard any more, Ma?” he asked.

“Not much. The cousins are asking around. But no one can fathom how a kick or two at the hotel could kill Fraser.”

“We didney kick him hard, we . . .” started up one of the boys.

“Enough,” Jimmy bellowed. “Shut up the both of you and let me think. Go and see to thon two mares. I want them in perfect condition for the Black Isle Show. Get!” He stood, his five-foot-five body falling into a half-boxing stance, his fists in a
half-clench, scaring the daylights out of his brothers. They were glad to escape to the comfort of the horses.

“I've a bad feeling about this,” Jenny said when the boys were gone.

After watering the animals, the young men brushed and combed the two prize horses. The ponies watched on as the fairest of the mares were groomed, given a treat of molasses and generally fussed over. The Black Isle Show was eleven weeks away. This mare and maybe her companion had a good chance of winning their class.

A chill began to creep over the boys, and it was not from the gathering dark. Maybe it was not as simple as they had first thought. After all, they began to realize, what had the truth got to do with it, between a tinker and the law, between landowners and land dwellers, the landless Traveling people—the tinkers?

It was no more than a passing worry—with a mother like theirs and Jimmy as a brother, nothing could go wrong, nothing that couldn't be sorted.

When the police arrived in the early evening, DS Wilkie barged into the bender with neither a greeting nor an explanation. Jenny McPhee sat calmly in her chair and offered them a cup of tea.

“George McPhee, William McPhee, I'm here to arrest you on the charge of involuntary manslaughter.” Wilkie was looking at Jimmy as he said this, furious it was not Jimmy he was arresting. And he was more furious that the procurator fiscal had refused to charge the McPhees with manslaughter, the lesser charge carrying a much lesser sentence.

An older policeman from Muir of Ord knew the McPhees well, had known Jenny since childhood, and had nothing against them. He gave Jenny a private nod of apology for the detective
sergeant's manners and said, “Geordie, William, you need to come wi' me.”

“Handcuff them.” DS Wilkie ordered.

The older policeman shrugged. He knew it was unnecessary, but also knew better than to argue. He clicked the locks on the boys' wrists and for the first time, they were scared.

“I'll be down to the police station to see you the morrow,” Jimmy told them. “And mind what I told you.”

The boys left, a policeman apiece, and Jimmy poured himself and his mother a hefty dram.

“I hope to hell they remember to hold their tongues.” But Jimmy and his mother knew they both suffered from verbal diarrhea. “I'll have the solicitor see them in the morning. Maybe a night in the cells will get it into their thick heads how serious this is.”

“They think it's only an assault charge. Even that is no right. Thon sergeant would like a real go at a McPhee. So would many o' the rest o' them.” Jenny knew the man as a vindictive, prejudiced outsider with no idea how the farms would suffer without the tinkers to help work the land. “Somebody gave the Munro lad a right good kicking, so I heard, and left him at the Devil's Den, bleeding, they say.”

“Aye. And who better to blame than some tinker boys who'd already had a run in wi' him.”

“We'll know more the morn. You have the solicitor lined up?”

“Aye. I has a talk wi' him,” Jimmy replied. “When I gave him ma name, he knew who we are, and he doesn't seem to have prejudices about us. I liked him.”

Jenny McPhee immediately felt better. This was high praise indeed from Jimmy and she knew his judgment was uncannily accurate.

If Jimmy likes this solicitor fellow
, she thought,
he must be good.

J
oanne knew she had to attend the funerals. No matter that her ribs hurt, it hurt to sit, the bump on her head throbbed, she had to be there to—in the Scottish parlance—“keep up appearances.” After two days, the physical pain was easing. The shame less so.

She went to the Black Isle with her mother- and father-in-law. Children did not attend funerals, so the girls were with Chiara Kowalski.

“Are you all right?” Chiara had asked when Joanne brought Annie and Wee Jean to her house.

“I'm fine,” Joanne replied. “I didn't sleep all that well last night, that's all.”

Annie looked at her mother and Chiara would have said it was a look of contempt if it had come from an adult.

The day had two seasons, winter and spring. The Munro funeral took place in a subarctic squall of driving rain alternating with sleet. The Ord Mackenzie funeral, as everybody called it, was favored with crisp spring sunshine.

Patricia was sitting with the Munros as Joanne and her in-laws went into the gloom of the parish church. Granny Ross went to join her cousin, Mrs. Munro. She moved along the pew and the two women, sitting shoulder to shoulder, looked more like identical twins than cousins. Even their hats—dark, funereal felt bowls—matched.

The minister said the right things over the coffin of a boy he
once knew, but a man who was a stranger. Mrs. Munro sobbed. Her husband stayed silent. Amongst the rest of the mourners, there was a restlessness, an absence of emotion other than pity for Mr. and Mrs. Munro.

The overriding feeling that day was curiosity and a barely suppressed thrill that an event as exciting as this had happened in their small community.

As they filed out of the church and walked to the grave, Mrs. Ross looked around counting the mourners.
At least a hundred
, she thought. She was pleased. It showed the Munros' standing in the community.

The funeral tea was well attended, and uncomfortable. In a land of the taciturn, the conversations were even more brief than usual. The visits to the farmhouse were perfunctory. Duty was done, but there were few takers for the ample supply of tea and whisky and ham sandwiches laid out in the front parlor.

Out the back, in the yard near the steadings, the male mourners discussed the arrest of the tinkers with little enthusiasm. Yes, the tinker boys had hit him, maybe it led to his death, but Fraser himself, hadn't he been the one to start the fight? It didn't seem right.

“Aye, weel, I always thought he had it coming to him,” one of the bolder of the mourners said.

“Haud yer wheesht,” Old Archie told him.

“I heard they've arrested two o' the McPhees,” a neighbor said to Archie. “Always trouble that lot.” The man's self-important nod made the old farmhand furious.

“We're here to bury the dead,” he said in a voice audible to everyone. “No to gossip like auld fishwives.”

The morning's harsh weather a distant memory, the Ord Mackenzie funeral was conducted in bright sunshine. There was an
almost celebratory atmosphere as old friends met, onlookers stared, and Patricia was center stage, elegant in the role of grieving widow.