Stormy Petrel (6 page)

‘Oh, yes, of course. I remember. Isn't that the Hamilton house?'

‘That is right. Old Mrs Hamilton who lived there died recently, so the place is empty now. You know it, then? You've been to Moila before?'

‘Yes, a long time ago, when I was a student.'

‘I wondered . . .' Ewen Mackay had been staring hard at the other man while they talked. Now he asked: ‘Perhaps we met then? I've been wondering if I knew you.'

‘Perhaps. I don't think so.'

‘So what brings you back here now?'

‘I'm a geologist.' Mr Parsons sipped his drink placidly. He had accepted the addition from Ewen's flask. ‘There was something I remembered that I wanted to look at, and I thought it would be an interesting place to spend my leave. I've been working in Sydney. I'm planning to move across soon to the broch isle. There's an igneous intrusion there, with fragments of garnet peridotite – that's a rock from below the earth's crust – and I'd like to spend a bit of time there, though the rocks at the north-west end look pretty difficult to get at. But that won't interest you . . .' The conversation had long ceased to interest me. I was feeling the need to get back to bed and to sleep. From where I sat I could not see the clock on the mantelpiece. I got up to look, and something else caught my eye. Tucked behind the clock was a small sheaf of papers, old letters and bills, perhaps, pushed there and forgotten, presumably by the last tenants. An address was printed, and clear:

J. R. Parsons, Esq.,

at Otters' Bay,

Isle of Moila, Argyll.

So ‘John Parsons' was perhaps not genuine all the way? When Ewen Mackay suggested that they had met before, I had thought that the other man had countered with a faintly wary look. And Ewen himself, for all his outgoing charm, had certainly acted in a way that gave pause for thought. All else apart, I could not forget that movement of his hand to his pocket when ‘Parsons' knocked at the door.

I carried my empty mug out to the sink, then stood in the doorway and regarded them. Neither of them had taken the slightest notice of my movements, except that Mr Parsons was already in my empty chair, and the two of them, with Ewen Mackay's flask of whisky now standing between them, were talking about salmon fishing. A subject which, I thought drily, afforded a good deal of scope for liars.

The next move was mine. Ewen Mackay had said he could sleep on his boat, but he had made no move to invite Parsons to share it with him. There might not be space for two, and I could hardly turn the other man out now. Safety in numbers. Let them both stay. I may be a dish, but I am also a don, and not prone to see emergencies where none exist.

I said: ‘It's after three o'clock. I'm going to bed. The bedroom upstairs is all ready for my brother, and I'd prefer to have that floor to myself anyway. I see you've salvaged your sleeping-bag, Mr Parsons. I'll throw some towels down, and a couple of blankets, and you can toss for it who sleeps on the sofa and who gets the floor.' I added, out of pure malice, to Ewen: ‘And of course you remember where the old loo is. Not more than twenty yards from the back door. Good night. Sleep well.'

7

The morning was calm and bright, with sunlight gilding the whins and sending a glitter across the bay. The sea still echoed the storm, foot-high waves breaking with a long
hush
against the shingle, but the sky was blue and clear. There was no sound from downstairs. I slid out of bed, put on my dressing gown and padded out to the tiny landing. Still nothing. Downstairs there was silence, the unmistakable silence of emptiness.

I went down to make sure. Yes, they had both gone. The blankets and towels lay neatly folded on the sofa. In the scullery I found a note propped against a milk carton on the draining-board.

It ran: ‘Many thanks for the hospitality. Hope you slept well. Gone early to hunt for tent, etc. See you around, perhaps?'

It was unsigned. The reference to the tent meant either that ‘John Parsons' had written it, and was hoping to see me around, or that they had teamed up on a declared truce. Whatever the case, my social life on Moila seemed to have begun.

I put a cautious hand to the kettle. It was warm. So they had managed some sort of breakfast, and without waking me. More thoughtful than either of them had seemed last night. It must have been a truce. I put the kettle on again for myself, and went upstairs to dress.

I dutifully spent the morning in outer space. Once Crispin arrived, I would want to be out and about with him, so I worked till lunchtime, and was rewarded by reaching the halfway mark, and with a new idea to carry me through the next section of the story. I wrote up the notes, made myself some scrambled eggs, then decided to walk over to the post office to see if my brother had telephoned last night with any message.

Mrs McDougall, busy behind the counter with customers, merely shook her head at me, and signed towards the rear door of the shop, which led through into her house, where the telephone was. I went cheerfully through, finding the coins as I went.

My sister-in-law answered, so quickly that she must have been right beside the telephone. She spoke almost before the first ring had finished.

‘Yes? Is that the hospital?'

‘No,' I said, ‘it's Rose. Don't tell me something's turned up at this stage to stop Cris getting away?'

‘Oh, Rose . . .' Nothing abrasive now about Ruth's voice. I heard her draw in a quick breath and swallow, and felt my hand tighten on the receiver as I said, more sharply than I intended: ‘Please. Tell me. What's happened? Is Crispin all right?'

‘Yes, he's all right. At least, he's hurt, but not badly. It's his leg – the ankle. They thought it was broken, then they said it was just a bad sprain, but apparently they want to do another X-ray, so I simply don't know what's happening. He tried to phone you last night, the number you gave him, but there was something wrong with the line—'

‘We had a rough night. Ruth, please, how was he hurt? What has happened?'

‘He was in that train, the one that crashed last night, the derailment south of Kendal. He was on it, the sleeper for Glasgow. I thought you'd have heard about the accident. Didn't you get it on the radio?'

‘No radio. Go on. About Crispin.'

‘He's all right, really. He phoned me himself. It wasn't a bad accident. There was a coach dragged off the line, but it didn't overturn, apparently, till everyone had been got out. Nobody killed, but a few people hurt. Cris tried to help, of course, but as soon as the ambulances came they sent him off to the local hospital, and that's where he is now. I did wonder why you hadn't called sooner—'

‘Yes, well . . . Have you got the Kendal number handy?'

‘Yes, but he's leaving there today. I told you they want to do another X-ray, and they're sending him to Carlisle for that, the Cumberland Infirmary.'

‘To Carlisle? But you said he wasn't much hurt.'

‘No, he's not, don't worry. He sounded quite normal when he phoned, just annoyed about the holiday. He said he'd call again as soon as he heard the result of the new X-ray, but not to worry about it, it's just the extra fuss they make when there's a doctor involved. You know how it is. So we'll just have to wait and see. He won't be able to do much walking, of course, but he still wants to come.'

She finished on such a note of surprise that in spite of myself I laughed. ‘He sounds all right, anyway. Try not to worry, Ruth. I'll ring off now in case he's trying to get through to you. But I'll come up here to the post office this evening, and call you again.'

‘Fine. I'll get his number for you and you can call him yourself. What about you, though, Rose? Are you all right there, on your own? I don't see how he can make it before Monday, and that'll be a whole week.'

I was surprised, and touched. ‘I'll be fine, thank you. The cottage is rather cosy, and I'm busy on a new story, so I'll have plenty to do even if the weather's bad. And when it's fine, well, it's a lovely little island, and I can have some bird-walks of my own. Give Crispin my love, Ruth, and I'll ring tonight and see how things are.'

‘I'll tell him. Goodbye, Rose.'

‘Goodbye.'

Mrs McDougall was still busy when I went back into the shop. I collected what I needed, and when I got to the counter I found that she and her neighbours were discussing the train accident. Mrs McDougall, with a quick, concerned look at me, took my basket from me and dumped it on the counter.

‘I hope it was not bad news, Miss Fenemore? Did you not think that your brother might be coming north soon? And from London, so it would be on the line where they had the accident, would it not?'

‘Yes. And he was on that train, I'm afraid. No, no, thank you very much, it's all right, he isn't badly hurt, a sprained ankle, and they say it isn't serious, but it does mean he can't come north yet . . .'

They exclaimed and condoled, with – once I had assured them that nothing serious had happened to my brother – a rather charming mixture of sympathy for me and pleasure in the excitement of the news. I gave them their full due, repeating all that my sister-in-law had said, and told them that I would hear from my brother himself that evening, then paid for my groceries and made my escape.

I was halfway home before I realised that, with all the worry and talk about the accident, I had forgotten to ask Mrs McDougall about Ewen Mackay. Or, indeed, about John Parsons.

Not that it mattered, as I would probably not see either of them again, but the scene last night had been strange, and my curiosity was aroused.

Take Parsons first. He was, I was sure, an imposter. I refused to believe that he chanced to have the same name as the previous tenants of the cottage – unless he himself was the previous tenant, and had for some reason returned to Moila without wanting to be known? I remembered that, according to Archie McLaren, the family had used a boat, and done all their shopping in Tobermory, avoiding the islanders. An echo of Parsons' geological jargon last night sounded in my head. I had heard the word ‘garnet'. Perhaps he really was a geologist. Perhaps he had discovered a seam – did you have a seam of garnet? – and had come back secretly to exploit it, and . . .

This was Hugh Templar taking over. Nonsense. Forget fantasy and look at fact. Take Parsons again. He had – possibly – lied about his name. He had certainly lied about seeing the cottage light. If he had been chasing his flying tent up from the machair on the west of the island, he might have got up as far as the bogland near the lochan, but surely the light from my cottage would not be visible until he had followed the road downhill past the curve and almost into Otters' Bay. Hence, his excuse for coming to the cottage was also a fake.

Now take Ewen Mackay. Maybe he had not lied, and in any case what he had said about the cottage being his home could easily be checked. He had known where the coal was kept, and the Calor gas poker, and he had had a key – which, now that I thought about it, I should certainly have asked him to hand over to me . . . But there was that unmistakable and disquieting reaction to the knocking on the door, and then the pointless deception which followed; pointless, because he must have known he could not get away with it. Had it merely been a quick try at getting rid of the intruder? But why? Then there was the rather sharp bout of questioning, which had had, on both sides, a sort of wariness about it.

And finally, the note this morning, with its suggestion of a truce between the two men.

I stopped in mid-stride, so suddenly that an oystercatcher, which had been guddling among the reeds at the edge of the lochan, took off seawards with a screamed complaint.

Supposing, just supposing, that Mackay and Parsons had arranged to meet at the cottage. The storm had been fortuitous, and extra. Mackay, key in hand (where had he really got it from?), had made his way to Otters' Bay, and had walked straight in, assuming the cottage to be empty. I found it hard to believe that, even if he had been out of the country, his family could have moved away without his knowing. Unless, of course, they had not wanted him to know, and had seen to it that he had no address for them.

Which would say certain things about Ewen Mackay.

So, for some reason impossible to guess at, he and Parsons had arranged to meet. It was I, the unexpected tenant of the empty cottage, who was the joker in the pack. I had made them welcome, accepted their nonsensical stories because it didn't matter one way or the other, and then gone obligingly off to bed and left them to their meeting . . .

Something moved on the farther side of the lochan, something bulky and dirty white, caught in the bog myrtle, where it shifted and billowed in the breeze. John Parson's tent? Could there have been that much truth in what he had said?

I dumped the carrier with my groceries down beside the road, and set off across the moor. Not that it mattered (I told myself again) one way or the other, but now that my brother's arrival was postponed at least until Monday, it would be good to have something of the story checked. And of course, if the object did happen to be the flyaway tent, its owner would need it back.

It was not a tent, nor indeed any sort of camping equipment. It was an old plastic sack, probably used by a farmer and left outside to blow away. And it could have blown a good distance in last night's gale. I regarded it with distaste, decided that the rain would have washed it reasonably clean, then dragged it clear of the bog myrtle and looked around me for somewhere to dump it out of sight.

A fox's earth, long abandoned, and not taken over by birds or rabbits, provided the dumping-ground. I stuffed the sack down out of sight, and straightened, to see that my search had brought me above a cleft in the moorland through which a glimpse of the western machair could be seen.