The Stalking Party Read online

  Dedicated with love to all the friends who have shared stalking with us at:

  Achnacarry

  Ardtornish

  Black Mount

  Conaglen

  Fealar

  Corrour

  Glenaladale

  Glenetive

  Glenfeshie

  Glenkinglass

  Knoydart

  Loch Choire

  Strathossian

  and to the stalkers and ghillies who made every day on the hill unforgettable

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Foremost among those I would like to thank for encouragement, support, and expert advice are my husband Duff, and my problem-solving sister Miranda Lindsay; my editor Karen McCall, for her boundless enthusiasm and keen eye for detail, and Merlin Unwin, my publisher, who also created the detailed map of the Strathtorran Peninsula, thereby giving apparent reality to an imaginary landscape.

  I am also very grateful to my nephew Rory Lindsay for permission to use his photograph of stalkers on the high tops at Conaglen for the jacket illustration.

  PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS

  The Glen Buie house-party

  Sir Archibald Hanbury, half-owner of Glen Buie deer forest

  Gwendolyn Hanbury, his second wife

  Nicholas Hanbury, his son by his first wife

  Marjorie Forbes, his widowed sister

  John Forbes, Marjorie’s elder son

  Benjamin Forbes, Marjorie’s younger son

  Everard Cooper, tycoon

  Lady Priscilla Cooper, Everard’s wife

  Astrid (Ashy) Macleod, Lady Priscilla’s daughter by her first husband

  Maya Forrester, widow of Gwendolyn Hanbury’s son Alec, who has inherited his half-share in Glen Buie

  Beverley Tanner, Nicholas Hanbury’s guest

  Joss and Cynthia Page, guests at Glen Buie

  Staff at Glen Buie Lodge

  Sandy McNichol, head stalker

  Mary Grant, cook

  Duncan Grant, butler and gardener

  Fergus Grant, their son, the second stalker Catriona McNichol, Sandy’s mother

  Elspeth, the cook’s teenage niece

  Ishbel, parlourmaid

  Kirsty, Sandy’s girlfriend

  The Strathtorran family

  Torquil, Earl of Strathtorran

  Janie, his wife

  Ian McNeil, his widowed brother

  Police

  Detective Inspector Robb

  Det. Sergeant Winter

  Constable McTavish

  Others

  Hector Logie, retired schoolmaster and birdwatcher

  Jock Taggart, landlord

  Donny, pony-boy and ghillie

  Chapter One

  HIGH ABOVE THE narrow neck of the sea loch known as the Sound of Gash, the stag stood motionless in the moonlight, every sense alert, every fibre in his heavy muscular body tensed for action. Steam rose from his peat-blackened coat, and drifted in twin jets from his nostrils, while the wide trumpets of his ears strained forward to catch the sound that had jerked him from fidgety, desultory grazing into full vigilance: the challenging roar of a rival.

  Behind him his twelve-strong harem, by no means enough for a handsome ten-pointer in his prime, stamped and jostled nervously, cloven hoofs crunching in the first frost of autumn. The mating-call of another dominant male drew them like a powerful magnet, yet with their present lord’s eye upon them, none of his hinds dared shift her ground.

  On the fringes of the little herd the few young males still tolerated at this early stage in the rut – a couple of two-year-old ‘knobbers’ and a stunted four-year-old with the unbranched antlers known as a switch head – used the opportunity of the stag’s distraction to edge privily nearer to the tantalising oestrogen-scented forbidden zone.

  Another roar, distinctly closer: the big ten-pointer grunted in response and, with a burst of irritable energy, forced his hinds into a closer bunch then drove through the middle, scattering them, and rounded them up once more, freezing them, daring them to defy his authority while he trotted away to confront the intruder.

  Again the young stags drifted closer.

  Thirty yards apart, in a natural arena of peat-hag, the rivals stopped to paw the ground and assess one another. Evenly matched, eight points to ten, fourteen stone to fifteen, each head bearing similar wide antlers with well-defined points – brow, bey, and trey – with cups at the top which could well have come from the same gene-pool. Brothers, maybe, who had spent the summer months grazing and cudding in amity, now super-charged with testosterone and inflamed into murderous rivalry.

  Like saluting duellists, they raised and lowered their armed heads and then, by common accord, swung broadside on and began to pace parallel tracks across the peat, back and forth, back and forth, at each turn narrowing the gap until they were jostling shoulder to shoulder.

  Suddenly, as if at a signal, the two heads clashed together, their lean haunches pivoted sharply, and with locked antlers and straining backs they fought for the advantage of the slope. They broke free, charged, and clashed again, grunting and wrestling in ferocious combat that belonged to a different world from that of the twinkling necklace of headlights circling the loch road a thousand feet below, or the glowing blue screens in holiday chalets along the foreshore of the Sound, that separated them from the Strathtorran peninsula.

  Ten-points was heavier, Eight-points younger and more agile, but soon weight began to tell. Step by step the challenger gave ground until, with blood streaming from a gash in his shoulder, he turned abruptly and fled downhill with the older stag in hot pursuit.

  Bounding over rocks and tussocks, the beaten challenger leapt white-water runnels and jinked through peat-hags in his efforts to shake off his pursuer. In a matter of minutes they descended two hundred precipitous feet, galloping full tilt across a landslip of huge jumbled boulders as easily as if it had been smooth lawn. Twice Ten-points drew close enough to deliver slashing blows to his fleeing opponent’s haunches, but each time a desperate swerve saved his life, and after galloping the best part of a mile from the scene of their encounter, the victor abruptly tired of the chase.

  With heaving sides and outstretched neck, he watched his rival out of sight, and his roar of triumph echoed across the bleak hillside. Then he waded into a wallow and rolled, urinated, rolled again and, silvered with sweat and dripping peat, trotted back towards his hinds.

  They were gone.

  The corrie was empty, silent apart from the sharp yap of a hunting fox, but as he stood there snuffing the frosty air, a freakish eddy of wind stealing round the hill told the stag what had happened as plainly as if the theft had taken place in full view. Head upflung, powerful hocks driving him forward like pistons, his nostrils recognised the scent of treachery, and he trotted smartly in pursuit.

  Tucked away in a sheltered grassy bowl at the top of sheer cliffs, he came on them like an avenging fury. Hinds and calves scattered at his approach, but he paid them no heed, his concentrated rage targeted wholly on the runty switch engaged in mounting his most favoured hind, the pearl of the harem.

  The first the ravisher knew of his peril was a vicious sideways swipe which knocked him off his hind legs, swiftly followed by a series of short, fierce jabs at his unprotected belly. With a squirm and a bound, the switch regained his feet and lowered his head more in submission than provocation, but it was too little, too late to deflect the mature stag’s furious charge. Weight, strength, and rage of battle were all in Ten-points’ favour. The frontal impact of those mighty antlers was enough to break the switch’s neck, but instead of standing up to the charge, the youngster feinted sideways, so that the left-hand point of his own unbranched antlers ripped his attacker from shoulder to flank and, d
riven deep by the force of his charge, slid in to pierce Ten-points’ intestines.

  An assassin’s stroke from an assassin’s weapon, but the switch’s involuntary blow was to be his last. Wrenching free, the big stag charged again, catching the youngster off balance and hurling him over the lip of the cliff to perish far below, while the hinds briefly raised their slim necks to watch, then returned to the serious business of grazing.

  High on adrenalin, the stag paced to and fro across the cliff’s edge, sometimes swinging his head round to nose at his flank. Presently the sweat dried and the fire of battle ebbed. He lay down, rose and circled, then lay down again, and deep in his belly the wound began to burn. Still grazing, his hinds moved away, but he did not follow.

  Dawn found him stumbling alone through the mossy, overgrown wood that clothed the loch’s steep sides, his antlers draped in bracken caught up in his many falls, shiny loops of intestine pushing through the ugly gash in his flank. When he reached the semi-circle of yellow shingle, he lowered his head to lip at the water, then slowly waded in until the blessed cold numbed his burning belly into insensibility.

  The red sun rose over the high, frost-glittering hills, and touched the rippling wavelets with gold, and still he stood chest-deep, watched and noted by ravens commuting across the Sound, and golden eagles wheeling in wide sweeps from shore to shore. Noted, too, by the powerful tripod-mounted telescope belonging to the birdwatching retired schoolmaster whose croft commanded the finest view on the Strathtorran peninsula.

  ‘A braw heid,’ muttered Hector Logie, who lived alone and was in the habit of talking aloud. Minutely he adjusted the focus to count the points. ‘What ails him now, I wonder?’

  Thrice while cooking breakfast he left his porridge to splutter unstirred in the pan while he returned to his telescope, and on each occasion it seemed to him that the stag had moved deeper into the water. Hinds and calves were coming down from the hills, dipping muzzles in the shallows to drink, but they ignored the stag and he, in turn, took no notice of them.

  ‘Wounded sair, poor bugger,’ diagnosed Logie, ‘though whether by his brethren or mine, and how long it’ll tak’ him tae die, the Dear only knows.’

  It occurred to him that someone else might also know. Dumping mug and porringer in the sink, he dialled the cottage of Sandy McNichol, head stalker of Glen Buie forest.

  ‘Is that you, Kirsty?’ he asked when a woman’s voice answered. ‘Can ye tell me now, did Sandy lose a beast in the Glas Corrie yestreen? The boat came down the loch wi’ nae stag in it that I could see.’

  He held the receiver away from his ear as she shouted shrilly above the squalling of the bairn, and presently Sandy himself came on the line.

  ‘A wounded beast? Ten points? Not ours, but I’d best give him a bullet tae end his suffering. Where is he, Hector? Aye. Aye. I ken the spot. He’ll have been fighting, for sure. Keep your glass on him now, man, and I’ll be wi’ ye right away.’

  Ten minutes passed before Logie saw the green Land Rover swing out of the Glen Buie lodge drive and speed along the loch road, and when he looked back at the stag, only his branching head was still visible above the water.

  As Sandy’s burly form emerged from the vehicle, slipping a rifle from its canvas sleeve, the wounded stag gathered the last of his strength and struck out into the raging white-capped waters of the Sound.

  Chapter Two

  SIR ARCHIBALD HANBURY had spent too long in City boardrooms to allow his square, blunt-featured, good-humoured face to reflect his feelings, but as he finished carving the haunch of venison and took his place at the head of the long table, his heart sank.

  Oh, my darling, my best beloved! he appealed silently to his wife Gwendolyn, stately and serene at the other end of the shining expanse of mahogany, What have I done to deserve this?

  But Gwennie was beyond eye-contact, talking to her own neighbours, as remote as if she was on another planet. He could hardly blame her for allocating him the most recent arrivals among his female guests as his dinner companions, but as his practised eye surveyed the two young women between whom he was inescapably planted, he felt isolated and depressed by the thought of the conversational spadework ahead.

  On his right sat his son Nicky’s addition to the guest-list, though whether she rated as girlfriend, guru, or simply business colleague he had yet to find out. A thoroughly modern miss, or more likely ms, thought Sir Archie despondently: skinny, dark, intense, with an uncompromisingly cropped head and, unless he was very much mistaken, an outsize chip on her shoulder.

  Still, he mustn’t complain. If entertaining this particular visitor was the price he had to pay for Nicky’s return to the fold, he would put the best face he could on it. There had been times in the past three years when he feared that his efforts to interest Nicky in what should eventually become his inheritance had merely served to alienate him. This long-sought rapprochement was a delicate plant, and must be protected from the slightest chill.

  Prospects for conversation looked only slightly easier on his left. Maya Forrester, widow of his stepson Alec, was another unknown quantity, born and bred to a different kind of life. She was twenty-four years old, stunningly attractive, daughter of a Tennessee judge and a history professor, and black as your hat.

  Shouldn’t say that, he chided himself. Shouldn’t even think it. A good horse is never a bad colour. But why, oh why couldn’t Alec have married a country-loving tweeds-and-pearls English girl, instead of leaving this exotic flower as part-owner of Glen Buie?

  Being a fair man, he wouldn’t dream of holding Maya responsible for Alec’s death, but there was no doubt in his mind that marrying her had been the mistake that precipitated the tragedy. Head over ears in love, Alec had thrown up his steady job in a merchant bank, and ploughed a ridiculous sum of money into a deep-sea fishing venture.

  We’ll fly over next summer, Mum, when the boat is laid up, he had written to Gwennie. I want to take Maya to the hill, and show her Glen Buie. She’ll love it, I know...

  Alec had never been a great communicator, and the long silence that followed had scarcely worried them. It had been Judge Paulson, Maya’s father, who eventually telephoned, his deep voice choking, to tell them the Jenny B had been lost with all hands.

  This was no time to rake up such memories. Sir Archie shook them off, turning his attention determinedly to the girl on his right. Now, what the hell what her name? He had been so taken aback when Nicky arrived with her in tow that he had failed to listen properly when she was introduced.

  He tried to sneak a look at her place-card, but it was half hidden by a plate. All he could see was LEY, and that struck no chord. There was something odd about the condition of her plate, too. Meat and gravy had been scraped off and deposited on her side plate, leaving only a brownish smear among the main-course vegetables.

  I might have guessed, he thought.

  ‘Is that enough for you, my dear?’ he asked kindly. ‘I can ring for some cheese, if you like, or an egg?’

  ‘I wouldn’t put you to the trouble.’

  ‘No trouble, my dear. Can’t have you starving.’ He pressed the bell with his foot, feeling her bristle at the two ‘My dears’ and searching his mind for the missing name. One of those odd, unisex affairs: a place he knew quite well. Henley? Berkeley?

  ‘Some cheese for Miss … er …’ he mumbled to Duncan Grant, gardener-cum-butler, attentive at his elbow.

  ‘My name is Beverley,’ said the girl sharply, ‘and I said I didn’t want any cheese.’

  ‘Oh! Sorry. Just as you like. Thank you, Duncan. No cheese.’

  ‘Verra guid, Sir Archibald.’ Duncan cat-footed away.

  ‘Nicky should have told us you are vegetarian,’ said Sir Archie, hoping he sounded friendly, not patronising – heaven forbid!

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Er ... then why?’

  ‘Your cook told me what you were going to eat tonight.’

  ‘Venison?’ He looked at his plate and laughed. ‘Don
’t worry, it isn’t high. And you don’t get your ears cropped for eating it, nowadays.’

  ‘How can you joke about it?’ she demanded fiercely.

  ‘Joke? My dear girl …’ He caught the note of patronage, smothered it, started again. ‘I’m not joking, far from it. Feeding this household is a serious business. We have to live off the land as far as we can. No supermarket, no delicatessen, only the boat three times a week to bring the grocery order.’

  ‘How can you be so cruel? Killing beautiful wild creatures for sport?’

  ‘It would be a damned sight more cruel if we didn’t,’ he said bluntly, disliking her, yet determined to be fair. She didn’t understand how a deer-forest was managed – how could she, unless Nicky had explained? She probably expected it to be some kind of wildlife park, complete with notices explaining the ecology of the region and warnings about slippery bridges.

  ‘If we didn’t keep numbers down to a sustainable level and shoot out the surplus beasts, the place would soon be overrun with deer and half of them would starve. No natural predators, you see. No wolves, coyotes, hyenas, wild dogs.’

  ‘So you play God?’

  ‘We manage very poor resources in the most humane way we can.’

  ‘How can you say that?’ she exclaimed angrily.

  ‘It happens to be true.’

  Beverley made a disgusted sound and began to cut up her vegetables, then laid the knife on the side of the plate, transferring the fork to her right hand. ‘Why can’t you let the poor creatures live their lives as Nature intended?’

  ‘Nature never intended deer to live on a barren mountaintop.’ His tone was dry. ‘They’re woodland animals. They need shelter, leaves to browse, decent grazing. Do you know that if you take a 15-stone stag from here and release him in his proper environment, somewhere like Thetford Chase, for instance, his progeny may grow to weigh thirty stone? It’s only through miracles of adaptation that deer can survive here, in the last wild corners we humans have left for them.’

  ‘There’s lots of grass along the river,’ she said defensively.