The Winter Ground (36 page)

‘It’s going to be a delicate matter,’ I said. ‘Lord Buckie lives in his grief, Inspector, to an extent that is hard to explain.’

‘Wears it like winter drawers, eh?’

The phrase had some aptness if no poetry.

‘And he is far from well. Dying, in fact. Hearing this about his brother might be the end of him.’

‘I’m sure you’ll do a grand job of softening the blow,’ said the inspector. ‘And I’ll be right there to help if you need me.’ I was about to argue with this proposed division of labour, but the memory of Lord Buckie in his library, in his cardigan, and the thought of him wilting under the action of the inspector’s caustic tongue swayed me. I have never thought of myself as having a particular way with words but at least what talents I had did not run to scorching epigrams and unanswerable put-downs of the sort Hutchinson scattered about him; I would make the best of it that I could.

First, though, I had the cosy family Christmas to which I had been looking forward with such simple joy and the prospect was almost enough to make me regret those hordes of relations who were not, by lucky chance, converging upon Gilverton this year. As well as the lingering sulks the circus had engendered – by its withdrawal in the case of the boys and by its development into mayhem as far as Hugh was concerned – all three were feeling bitter about the loss of a day on the hills.

‘Not much of a holiday, Mother,’ said Teddy. ‘Church!’

‘And nothing but stodge to eat all day,’ said Donald.

Indeed, Mrs Tilling always made three kinds of potato to accompany the goose as well as strengthening her bread sauce with barley until it stood up in the sauceboat with a spoon in it like a flagpole on a hilltop, and then there was nothing at tea which had not had the benefit of a little suet somewhere in its gestation, and neither Hugh nor Nanny would countenance a winter morning which did not open with porridge; by suppertime on the typical Christmas Day a steam engine, ploughing into any one of us, would not have knocked us off beam.

My day was brightened, although Hugh’s was not, by the late addition to our party (for I could not in all conscience ignore Alec’s plight, no matter what he had said about a quiet day at home and a cutlet). He arrived, just after breakfast, bearing gifts of such finely judged propriety that they made me smile: a box of excellent cigars for Hugh, lavish heaps of silly games and sickly chocolates for the boys and, for me, a rare lily bulb wrapped in instructions for its successful growth and a hideous little enamelled watering can with which I was supposed to hover over it until it honoured me with a bloom.

Hugh was delighted, no less by the lily bulb than the cigars, I thought, and the day plodded on in its suety way harmlessly enough until just after tea, when we were all gathered in front of the library fire, faced with the big decision of the season: to veto charades and feel oneself a churl or to play charades and half die from embarrassment and boredom. Every year one hopes that the boys will have outgrown the desire and every year one’s hopes are dashed again.

‘Oh, come on, Mother,’ said Donald. ‘One hour of fun, one day a year.’

‘I cannot agree with your summary of your woes,’ I told him. ‘When you are grown up you will look back and see that your lives have been nothing but fun since the day you were born. You are as spoiled as any two children ever were.’

‘I’m not spoiled,’ said Teddy. ‘Gosh, Mother, if you saw the prep we do and how hard we work all term, you wouldn’t begrudge us one measly little game of charades at Christmas.’

‘And anyway,’ said Donald, ‘when I’m grown up, I’ll be doing what Daddy is doing now. Shooting and mucking about and fishing and what have you.’

This was said with such innocence that I could not help laughing even though Hugh’s brows lowered.

‘I have some telephone calls I need to …’ said Alec, fleeing the room and the need to keep his face straight.

‘When I’m grown up I’ll play charades with my children every day after tea,’ said Teddy, as dogged as ever.

‘You’ll be stuck in a law office or stuck in the army, Ted,’ said his brother. ‘I’ll be here playing charades with my children but there’ll be none of that for you.’

Teddy’s face clouded and Donald gave him a look of pure glee.

‘Hugh,’ I said. ‘What have you been—’ I managed to bite my lip, but I had gone too far already. Hugh’s face was stony.

‘No, no, no,’ said Teddy, just as he had ever since he was a tiny boy, always trying to out-argue his brother and never quite making it. ‘Because maybe Mr Osborne will leave me Dunelgar, so there! Because he’s got no wife and children and we’re practically his family anyway, so there! And Dunelgar is bigger than Gilverton and it’s got better—’

‘Go to your rooms, now, both of you,’ said Hugh. If he had had a whip he might have cracked it.

‘Hugh,’ I said. ‘Christmas Day, dear.’

Donald and Teddy, possibly reading his face more accurately than I, got to their feet and scurried out.

Hugh and I were silent for a minute after they had gone. Then, unwisely, I spoke.

‘What have you been saying?’ I asked again.

‘This place
will
be Donald’s and that’s that,’ he replied. ‘No point in pussy-footing around the plain facts.’ He paused. ‘But there are rather uglier facts I should rather my sons did not have forced down their throats, Dandy.’

‘Their mother having a job of work to do and having a little help with it is not an ugly fact,’ I said. ‘And it’s hardly shoved down their throats – they know nothing about it.’

The ensuing stubborn silence was still going strong when Alec joined us again. He congratulated us on heading off the charades. He got no answer from either of his hosts. And so another merry Christmas danced to its close. Even Bunty was dejected, missing the circus girls greatly and shooed out of the kitchen by a harassed cook and maids while the unwanted feast was prepared and the even more unwanted leftovers dealt with afterwards.

By ten o’clock on Boxing Day morning, the spirits of all were on the rise again. The staff were having their party, Hugh, Donald and Teddy were back amongst the gorse and bracken with another poor doe in prospect, and Alec, Hutchinson and I were bowling north in the Vauxhall tourer which had been Alec’s Christmas present to himself.

‘Much more economical than the Bentley,’ he said, when I raised my eyebrows at the sight of it. I was familiar with the undentable male philosophy that the purchase of a new motor car can save pots of money, and so I said nothing.

Bunty, full of cold potato and therefore good cheer, was standing on the back seat with Alec’s spaniel, Milly, their two heads stuck out into the wind, eyes streaming and teeth snapping at gusts, while Inspector Hutchinson gathered his coat round him and assured us that the fresh air would do him the world of good. (He did look rather grey after his ‘wee dram’, and Alec’s driving, with or without a new engine to run in, is never quite like a nursemaid rocking a cradle.)

‘And at least we know Robin Laurie is not going to be there,’ Alec said as he swung sharply on to a bridge, bounced over its summit and hooked his way back out on to the road again (why the bridge makers and road makers of this land could not have sat down together over a can of tea in their bothy and organised the join between their two enterprises, I have never been able to see, but any road with a goodly share of bridges upon it always gives a slight feeling of going in and out of the dusky bluebells; on the current occasion, Inspector Hutchinson gave a soft moan).

‘Do we?’

‘I rang round,’ Alec said. ‘Caught as many of the Benachally dinner gang as I could put a telephone number to. I’m going to have to have them all at Dunelgar for a party – that was my pretext – but I managed to work Robin in a few times and apparently he’s in town.’

‘Odd,’ I said. ‘His brother’s last Christmas by all reckoning and whether Robin is the paragon of fraternal affection Lord Buckie thinks him, or a vulture ravening after the spoils to come – the more likely alternative, given what we know now, don’t you think? – I’d have bet high stakes he’d be up there.’

The winter weather – most disobligingly given the expectations one has inherited from so many Christmas cards – had abandoned the tingling crispness of recent weeks in favour of fog and drizzle and the morning had seen Perthshire at its most unutterably grim, when the stink of winter fodder and the soft oppressiveness of a thousand damp pine trees seep in at the edges of the window frames and take over the house. But there must be some point on the globe where latitude begins to trump meteorological pressure, where the weather simply gives up and hands responsibility over to the Gods of the North. If so, then somewhere between Perth and Banff we reached it and came out into glittering brittle sunshine. To inhale the air was like plunging into a mountain stream and the inspector breathed it in deeply and began to grow some pink and purple patches again.

‘Nice spot,’ he said. ‘I’ve never been much of a one for coming up north. No need for any more of what we get plenty of in Blairgowrie to my mind – I’d rather get the train to the wife’s sister in the Lakes, except for the beer – but this’ll do.’

Lord Buckie, we heard with some surprise upon presenting ourselves at Cullen, was in the garden, taking his morning constitutional, but a hallboy would be dispatched to fetch him in if we would care to step into the library and wait.

I put a hand on the arm of the maid to stop her (for it is often surprisingly hard to stay a well-trained servant in her tracks and certainly they can ignore any amount of verbal persuasion), saying that the gentlemen would go to the library but, if she would direct me to the gardens, I should go to Lord Buckie myself.

The maid seemed to catch the scent of trouble we could not help having brought with us.

‘Nothing wrong is there, madam?’ she said, looking warily at Alec and the inspector. A town maid would surely have identified Hutchinson straight away even with Alec’s complicating presence at his side, but this girl might never have seen a specimen of the type before and so although his air, his notebook, his very winter coat and brown boots, screamed ‘police’ as clearly as would his whistle, she abandoned her short attempt to place the unlikely trio and merely curtsied.

As I let myself through the garden door, I was still wondering about the oddness of a dying man tramping around bare paths in the depths of December but, given the southerly slope of the ground, the high surrounding wall clothed with the delicate skeletons of fanned fruit trees, and the bright mossy green of the winter lawns, dotted with balls of box and with peacocks fashioned from golden-leaved yew, it was very far from being the desolate wasteland of the Gilverton gardens at this time of year, was almost pleasant on such a sunny day.

‘Mrs Gilver?’ Lord Buckie had seen me before I him. He was standing at the end of a long arbour, bare now and very bright with new paint, looking up along a grass path towards me. ‘You creep in and out like a house mouse, my dear,’ he said, ‘but very welcome, always welcome. I am delighted to see you.’

He would not be if he could divine my purpose and I should not, for kindness’ sake, postpone setting it out before him.

‘Lord Buckie,’ I said, ‘I am charged with a very difficult task this morning.’

‘Not bad news?’ he said. ‘Oh my, not Robin!’

‘Not … I have no news of him,’ I said, shrinking from actual reassurance, ‘but I do need to talk to you and I am going to be asking you to revisit very painful memories.’

‘On what … Pardon me, my dear Mrs Gilver, but on what authority? On what grounds?’

I stared unhappily at him. Ought I to tell him that there was a police inspector in his house? That
was
my authority, after all.

‘I am trying to help someone,’ I said, which sounded feeble even to me, but he was a shrewd as well as a kind old thing, and I fancy he saw that only some urgent purpose could overcome my clear distaste for the task before me. He tucked my hand under his arm and began to walk again, leading me around the paths, among the trees, passing frozen ponds, catching occasional drenches of impossible sweetness from the tiny waxen flowers of some bare-branched shrub which lined the walkways.

‘It’s about your daughter,’ I said.

‘Ambrosine,’ said Lord Buckie, knowing immediately which daughter I meant.

‘And how she died,’ I went on. ‘Did you – forgive me – but did you see it?’

‘I am not sure whether to be glad or sorry, but I did not. Why do you ask?’

‘Did anyone?’

‘Anyone besides Robin, you mean?’

‘Yes. Anyone else.’

‘No,’ said Lord Buckie, ‘he was quite alone, otherwise there might have been a happier outcome. I was here when he came back, soaked to the skin, shivering. Of course I was sure he would be next for the wretched influenza and then I should have no one. But he and I were both spared it.’

‘And was Robin … I do not know how to say this … Was he a fond uncle? Was he a favourite amongst your children?’ Lord Buckie gave a short and rather dry laugh.

‘He was young and full of his own concerns,’ he said. ‘Rather wild, as a matter of fact. Rather wilder even, in his youth, than he is today.’

‘But Ambrosine,’ I persisted, ‘he must have been terribly fond of her to risk his own life that way. Or would you say he is just one of those men who would act without thinking, for anyone?’

‘I couldn’t say,’ said Lord Buckie. ‘He was decorated – he’s no coward. Perhaps it was unthinking or perhaps he did it for me but it was an unselfish act, of that we can be sure.’

‘Of course, of course,’ I said absently, quaking at the thought of taking his cherished memory and twisting it into a blackened travesty of itself, telling him that Robin had killed, not saved, had hated or at least had felt a cold nothingness, had certainly felt no love.

‘No, I mean a really truly unselfish act,’ Lord Buckie said, and he shook my arm slightly to emphasise his words. ‘My boys went first, you know, in that terrible plague. Two strong lusty boys, snuffed out like candles. And then my two little girls. But I still had my oldest. My heiress. I am a marquis, you see. This is a Scottish marquisate, my dear, not an English earldom.’ He must have seen my look of puzzlement. ‘I inherited my title from my mother. The Marchioness of Banff and Buckie. My grand parents’ only child and what is called these days a game old bird. She laid out these gardens and put in all the heating, you know. Drew up plans herself and fired five builders before she was satisfied. Ah, Mother! But the point is – I am an old man, and I’m beginning to ramble – that any of my five children could have been my heir. The girls as well as the boys.’