Cold, Lone and Still (6 page)

When Carbridge and his companions came in, I heard Hera give a peculiar little cry. As for me, I was so flabbergasted that I could feel my head swimming and I suppose I came as near to fainting as I have ever been in my life. However, it was Carbridge all right and as full of effervescence and bonhomie as ever. He appeared to have forgotten our dispute and my high-handed action at Crianlarich, and soon the ‘old boy, old boy’ stuff began again, and the advice to Hera: ‘My tip, fair one, is to avoid that climb unless you go up by pony.’

Before the footweary but triumphant quartet — Jane’s feet must have responded to my treatment — had gone to the kitchen quarters to prepare something which would restore their wasted tissues, Hera dragged me outside and on to the bridge over the River Nevis again.

‘You told me he was
dead
! You said you
fell over him
! You said he had been
murdered
! You said he had a
knife
in his back! You said he was
stone-cold and stiff
!’ she babbled. Well, shock has different effects on different people. Now that I had recovered a little, the shock of seeing him had made me reckless.

‘So you believed all that guff,’ I said. ‘Poor old you!’

She smacked my face and, as I suppose I was really somewhat hysterical at the time, this summary treatment had its usual result. I apologised and assured her that I had been certain it was the body of Carbridge that I had seen. I tried to take her hand. She shook me off, turned aside and began to cry.

‘For heaven’s sake, stop it!’ I said. ‘When they’ve had their meal, we’ve got to face that lot again.’ We did. There was much euphoria. There was triumph that they had walked The Way and much exhibiting of souvenirs they had bought in Fort William. Todd, said Carbridge, had been the favourite of the ladies. Tansy and Patsy had both bought him presents.

When they had all turned in for the night, I said, ‘Darling, I
did
fall over him, I
did
see him. I
did
touch him. I could have sworn it was he. I spoke out of turn just now, I know I did, but please don’t hold it against me. I’ve had the most awful shock. You can’t imagine what it was like when that lot walked in. And then, when you turned on me —’

‘I didn’t turn on you. Don’t you think I had a shock, too, after all you’d said?’

‘Yes, of course, but (and, please, I am not intending to start an argument) I do think my shock must have been more severe than yours.’

‘So you were telling me the truth? — or, at any rate, you thought you were.’

‘Darling, I swear I was!’

‘Then,’ she said, with a complete return to her usual forthrightness, ‘we’ll go home first thing tomorrow and when we get back to London you’d better see a psychiatrist. I’m not going to father my children on a man who sees a corpse where no corpse is. All that nonsense about falling over it in a dark passage!’

‘There
was
a corpse all right,’ I said, ‘but I made a mistake about whose corpse it was. I suppose I was badly rattled, and you must admit that Carbridge is a very ordinary-looking bloke. So far as his clothes are concerned.’

‘Well, I’m glad now that you wouldn’t let me go to the police. Nice fools we should have looked if we had reported finding a dead man who, a day or two later, was able to climb Ben Nevis and eat a hearty supper afterwards.’

‘Look, I made a mistake. Do I have to keep on spelling it out?’

‘I’ve looked a lot of times at the map since we started out. There’s no castle marked.’

‘It wasn’t a castle, I tell you. It was only a ruin and probably wasn’t important even in its heyday.’

‘Can you remember what the place looked like?’

‘I think so. Why? If we’re not going to the police, I shan’t need to describe it to anybody.’

‘Just as well, perhaps.’

‘Could
you
describe it?’

‘No, of course I couldn’t, but I would be willing to agree to your description if it ever came to the point. A thick mist, like the one we ran into, sends my wits wool-gathering. I never could find my way in a fog.’

I looked suspiciously at her.

‘Are you trying to tell me something?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ she said, with an emphasis I could not account for at the time. ‘I want you to see a psychiatrist or a doctor, or an eye specialist, or even all three, as soon as we get back to London.’

‘I’ll be shot if I do!’ I said hotly. ‘What are you getting at, for God’s sake?’

She smiled in a cat-like way and repeated that I needed my head, my blood pressure and my eyes tested. I could have struck her to the ground. Instead, I attempted a verbal attack.

‘You’re becoming senile,’ I said. I thought the ungentlemanly shaft would hurt her. It did not. She still smiled.

‘Yes, but I wear well,’ she said, ‘which is more than you do. When I was your age, at least I didn’t see things which weren’t there.’

She was four years older than I was, a fact I had always deplored.

‘If you are going to make nasty cracks about what I saw or didn’t see, I shall marry Jane Minch,’ I said.

She laughed. ‘The children will look like plover’s eggs,’ she said. ‘Those freckles! Oh, my God!’

W
e were lucky with the train from Glasgow, where we spent the night. The run from there to Euston passed without incident and, except that I was aware that she was keeping an eye on me, I might have thought that Hera had forgotten all about what had happened. The only spoken reference she made to our excursion in the mist was in the form of a quotation from a nostalgic poem by W. J. Turner. We were reminiscing about our walk along The Way, but steering well clear of our visit to the ruins, when she said, looking at me in a commiserating sort of way which was rather galling:

‘ “I dimly heard the master’s voice

And boys far-off at play,

Chimborazo, Cotopaxi

Had stolen me away.” ’

‘I am not a thirteen-year-old schoolboy, and what I saw and touched had nothing to do with the mountains of Ecuador,’ I said, ‘still less with the Grampians of Scotland.’

‘Knows his geography, too!’ she said, with the simulated admiration she might have extended to a bright child of five. I grinned, determined not to allow her to see that she had irritated me.

‘If you let out a crack like that when we’re married, I’ll clout you,’ I said.

‘Another infantile reaction,’ she retorted, so, as usual, she had the last word. We had dinner in Soho, then I took her by taxi to her flat and walked back to my own. I had nothing but my rucksack to carry. She had invited me in, but I knew that, if I accepted the invitation, we should either quarrel or make love, or perhaps the one would follow the other, and who knew in which order?

‘You’re angry with me,’ she said, when I would not go in.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Sometimes I’d like to murder you, but I’m never angry with you.’

‘Sometimes? Never? Do those come under the heading of lies, damned lies, or statistics? And perhaps we had better not mention murder for a bit. I might begin to think you are obsessed by it.’

So, like the chap in
A Shropshire Lad
, I walked home alone ‘amidst the moonlight pale’, and while I walked and long after I had let myself into my flat and had gone to bed, I turned over in my mind all that had happened since I had been in London the last time. It did not make for comforting thoughts. I reviewed everything that I remembered about the mist, the realisation that we had lost our way, the unexpected discovery of the stone wall, its entrance arch, the glassless window through which we had climbed and my subsequent discovery of the body. It was of no use to tell myself that only some of this had happened. Either all of it, or none of it, I told myself, had fallen within my experience. I was worried and fearful.

‘Well, how did your holiday go?’ asked my partner when I turned up at our offices a couple of days later. ‘You’re back early, aren’t you? Anything go wrong?’

‘Sandy,’ I said, ‘I am going to describe to you all the objects which I imagine I can see in this room and you will check with me whether I am really seeing them or not. Or — no!’ I went on. ‘I might only
think
you were agreeing with me. In fact, for all I know, you may not be here at all, and neither may I, come to that. There’s no proof, is there?’

He looked at me with eyes which were both sceptical and concerned.

‘I suppose you didn’t roll down a mountain and hit your head while you were in Scotland, did you?’ he asked.

‘No, of course not. At least — well, no.’

‘Then what’s all this about?’

So I told him everything. After all, we had been at school and college together and there had always been a strong bond between us, and I hoped I could at least trust him not to laugh at me.

‘All I can say,’ he said, when he had told the girl in the outer office to fob off all callers, whether personal or by telephone, until he gave the all clear, ‘is that you only
thought
the fellow was dead. He must have come back to consciousness a bit later on, rejoined his party and gone on to Fort William, while you were lazing the time away at the Kingshouse hotel.’

‘I don’t think that’s possible. I
know
there was a corpse. Hera thinks I ought to see a psychiatrist. She’s hedging about our marriage, I’m afraid.’

‘Well, obviously the poor girl doesn’t fancy yoking herself with a fellow for whom the wagon may come trundling round at any minute.’

‘It’s not funny, Sandy. I shone my torch on the chap as well as touching him, you see. Either I’m potty or something very strange has happened.’

‘Well, look, to ease your mind, why don’t you fall in with Hera’s idea? She’s been phoning me. Why don’t you consult a psychiatrist? They’re not all cranks, you know.’

‘She only mentioned it once. I don’t think she was all that serious. Surely she couldn’t have been. I had no idea, though, that she had been talking to you. What else did she say?’

‘Look, if she’s got any doubts in her mind, the best thing is to set them at rest as soon as you can.’

‘I don’t know any psychiatrists.’

‘That is where I have the advantage of you. I know the best one in the country. She isn’t a quack; she won’t feed you a lot of hot air all ballooned up in the jargon some of these people use, and she’s fully qualified in medicine as well as in psychiatry.’

‘She?’

‘Dame Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley. You’ll like her. I’ll ring up and make the appointment, if you like. She only takes cases which interest her, and I think she’ll fall for yours. Besides, we’ve got her granddaughter on our list.’

‘We have?’

‘Sally Lestrange, the occasional novelist and a ghostwriter for the non-literary bods who have a life story to tell. Dame Beatrice will sort you out.’

‘Why should you think so? You’re as bad as Hera. You both think I’m bats just because I identified a dead body wrongly.’

‘I don’t think that’s the whole story, Comrie, old chap. Hera doesn’t think so, either. Tell me, are you suffering from some sort of frustration?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘You’ve slept with Hera more than once. She told me so. She says she thinks she was too hard on you when she wouldn’t let you book a double room at the hotels in Scotland. She said it was expecting too much of a hot-blooded he-man—’

‘The last thing I am, and the last thing she thinks about me. Good Lord, I can exercise self-restraint when I’ve got to! It was all part of her plan. It was the whole object of the holiday. What do you think I am? — the lineal descendant of thousands of ever-copulating rabbits?’

‘I’m only telling you what Hera said about the strain she put upon you during that holiday. As you suspected, she has already told me the whole story. It’s not as though
she
saw that dead body —’

‘Only because I took care she didn’t. One doesn’t introduce sensitive girls to itinerant corpses.’

‘She also says she can’t remember any castle.’

‘There wasn’t any bloody castle! She’s the one who needs a psychiatrist, not I. Anyway, it was a fort. I suppose she doesn’t remember the mist and our losing our way in it.’

‘Oh, yes, she admits to the mist. She said that, because of it, and because you tried to take a short cut, you both wandered off your route, but she says you had hit your head pretty badly and that most of your story is sheer fantasy. She’s very worried about you.’

‘Perhaps she’d like to break the engagement,’ I said. ‘I felt there was a hint of it in the air.’

‘I think she might consider that course very seriously. What about you?’

I thought of a freckled child I had held in my arms, and did not answer.

I knew Dame Beatrice’s name, of course, in the way one knows the name of most celebrities, but I had never thought that one day I should be asking for a consultation. An assured voice answered the telephone.

‘Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley?’ I asked hopefully, for the voice inspired confidence.

‘Who is speaking?’ I gave my name and asked whether Dame Beatrice would see me. I was asked my business.

‘I’d like to become a patient,’ I said.

‘She takes very few cases nowadays. What’s the trouble? You can tell me. I’m her secretary.’

‘I’ve recently come back from walking some of the West Highland Way, and I’ve had a very disturbing experience.’

‘All right. Hold the line.’ I waited, but not for long. When she contacted me again, she said, ‘What kind of experience?’

‘I stumbled over the dead body of a man I thought I knew. This was somewhere on Rannoch Moor, but he turned up hale and hearty at Fort William.’

‘Sounds promising. Well, I’ve been told to use my own discretion, so I think you had better come along. Thursday, as near eleven in the morning as you can manage, would be the most suitable time and day.’

I say I knew Dame Beatrice’s name, but I was not prepared for her appearance and still less was I prepared for her beautiful voice. She would have become, I thought, a singer of great repute had she chosen the concert hall instead of medicine and psychiatry. In appearance she was small and thin, dressed like a macaw, and had brilliant black eyes. She would never have ‘made it’ in opera. I cannot think of any role she could fill.

‘Now,’ she said, when the tall secretary had left us, ‘there is plenty of time before lunch. Do you care to walk round the garden and look at the stables, or shall we “get down to the nitty-gritty”, as I believe you modern young people express it?’

‘I’m feeling a bit embarrassed and very nervous,’ I said.

‘Very useful and, of course, quite natural. Sit down again.’

‘Not a couch?’ I asked, feeling rather like a man jesting with the dentist or on the morning of his execution.

‘We shall see. State your case.’

I do not know whether it was the eyes, the pursed-up little mouth or the beautiful voice which convinced me from the very outset of the interview that my mind was going to be set at rest, but so it proved. She told me to take my time and that is what I did. When she heard all that I could tell her, she said, ‘A pity you and your fiancée do not read the Scottish newspapers. Have no fear for your reason, my dear Mr Melrose. You
did
find a corpse. The only thing is that you did not manage to identify it correctly.’

‘There
was
a dead man in those ruins?’

‘Of course there was a dead man.’ I thought she looked at me in an appraising way. ‘Ring the bell twice.’

I did this and it was answered by the secretary. I suppose she had been briefed beforehand, for she was carrying some newspapers which, without being instructed to do so, she handed to me as I resumed my seat opposite Dame Beatrice. It occurred to me that Sandy had been on the telephone before I arrived.

‘Another heart is set at rest, I opine,’ said the secretary.

‘Mr Melrose is fortunate that you read your country’s press, Laura,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Again take your time, Mr Melrose. You will find those journalistic outpourings both heartening and of interest.’

I read avidly. The body had been identified as that of an ex-convict called McConachie, and the conclusion seemed to be that he had been tracked down, after an attempted strangulation, and stabbed to death by one of his acquaintances whom he had double-crossed when it came to the division of the spoils. The police had received a tip-off (not from Hera, I hoped), had visited the area and had found the body. Identification was no problem. The man’s photograph and fingerprints were on record and the police were in no doubt as to his identity and that of the murderer.

My relief, intense though it was, was accompanied by a sense of anti-climax. Was it for this sordid and uninspiring solution that I had sacrificed sleep and my peace of mind, had almost quarrelled with Hera and wrecked any pleasure I might have had in recollecting my holiday? Thoughts of the holiday, however, emboldened me, over lunch, to put a question to Dame Beatrice.

‘I told you what was the object of the exercise,’ I said. ‘Why Hera and I took the holiday?’

‘To test whether you and your fiancée were sufficiently compatible in temperament to risk taking one another in marriage, I think you said.’

‘Yes. Well, if I may ask such a question, what do
you
think, now that you’ve heard the whole story?’

‘Ask Laura. She can usually read my mind.’

‘Some chicken, some neck!’ said Laura obscurely, but I knew what she meant. I, too, found Dame Beatrice formidable. ‘All right, then.’ Laura said. ‘If it were up to me, I’m bound to say I think you’re batting on a sticky wicket. Your young woman wears the trousers at present. That’s all right during the period of wooing, but I’m not sure it would work in married life. You would find yourself the toad under the harrow.’

‘I’ve no particular wish to be top dog,’ I said, feeling nettled by her summing-up.

‘No, but marriage should be an equal partnership. Why wouldn’t you let her see the body?’

‘Oh, dash it all! One doesn’t deliberately give a girl a shock of that kind!’

‘The shock might have been less for her than it was for you,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Tell me — had you anything personal against this man whose corpse you thought it was?’

‘He irritated me, just as he irritated everyone else. There was another chap whom I was also anxious to keep my eye on, this fellow named Todd. I mentioned him when I was telling you about the holiday.’

‘Yes, but you never thought it was Todd’s body you found?’

‘No. I was certain I’d found Carbridge, but, of course, I didn’t exactly linger beside the corpse. All I wanted was to get Hera away from the place as soon as ever I could. I just grabbed her and dragged her out, although it was raining buckets when we got on to the moor.’

‘Yes, what about this place? Do you retain a vivid picture of it? These ruins, do you recall them clearly?’

‘Well, no, I wouldn’t call it a vivid picture. I had hit my head rather hard, if you see what I mean. The ruins seemed as full of mist as the moor outside. My recollection of them is hazy.’

‘But you remember coming to a wall, ducking under an archway and climbing into the ruins through an embrasure?’

‘Well, it seems a bit nebulous now, but, yes, I’m sure I remember all that. Well, no, perhaps I dreamt that part of it. I’m sure Hera believes I dreamt the whole thing, including finding the body.’

‘Not surprising,’ said Laura, ‘when the same body turned up hale and hearty at Fort William. Enough to cause any right-minded girl to have doubts. Still, you’ll be able to reassure her now. Keep the papers and show them to her. They ought to convince her that at least there was a corpse and that you found it.’

‘I wish I could convince her that there was a building, too. She seems to doubt the whole story. The only bit she really agrees with is that we lost our way in the mist.’

‘Yes,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘What about the dark passage?’

‘I’m sure about that,’ I replied.

The two women looked at one another. Then Dame Beatrice said, ‘There is something you are keeping to yourself. Had you not better tell me what it is?’

‘No, there’s nothing,’ I said. I could feel her brilliant eyes probing my brain. ‘Unless you mean the row I had with Todd at Crianlarich, but it was only a verbal exchange. Fisticuffs did not come into it.’

‘It was not Mr Todd’s body you mistook, you see. Interesting, but are you sure about that?’ I said I was perfectly certain, so she said, ‘Well, Mr Melrose, I do not think you need psychiatry, but we shall see how matters develop. We must wait upon events.’

‘I hope there won’t be any, so far as this business is concerned,’ I said. ‘Thank you very much for the papers.’

‘Sit down again,’ said Dame Beatrice, for I had risen to go. ‘Tell me more about this set-to you had with Mr Todd.’

‘Oh, it was nothing,’ I said. ‘As a matter of fact, he apologised.’

‘For what?’

‘For trying to persuade Hera to opt out of the youth hostel and go to the hotel for the night, so I tackled him and sorted him out. “Honestly, I had no idea she was engaged to you,” he said. “When I met you two at the airport hotel, I just thought it was a holiday pick-up and that you’d got together because you found you were both going to walk The Way. After all, she doesn’t wear a keep-off-the-grass ring, does she?” I told him the engagement hadn’t been announced, but that there was a ring in her possession. He apologised again and said he hoped no hard feelings. It was a genuine misunderstanding, he said. Well, that was the end of it because, of course, we didn’t run into him again until we got to Fort William.’