The Stalking Party Read online

  From the back of the house a medley of unaccustomed noises broke into their reflections. Commotion in the courtyard. Running feet. Slamming doors. A dog barking hysterically.

  ‘What’s up?’ Gwennie rose hastily.

  Together they hurried down the passage and through the swing door. In the kitchen, Ishy was standing with her back to the sink, rubber-gloved hands clutched to her face. On a straight-backed chair drawn up to the kitchen table, a burly, shaven-headed young man in a white overall sat doubled up, retching into a plastic bowl, while Mary bent over him, supporting his head.

  ‘What’s the matter? Is he ill?’ demanded Gwennie.

  ‘Oh – oh my lady! It’s terrible. Terrible!’ keened Ishy.

  ‘Pull yourself together, girl! Stop that noise at once. Now!

  Tell me what’s wrong.’

  Nobody spoke until Mary allowed the young man to straighten. ‘There, lad. Ye’ll do now.’

  Heavy features still white and shiny with shock, he stared vacantly before him as she sloshed cooking brandy into a tumbler and pushed it into his hand. ‘Go on, Geordie, drink that and tell her leddyship.’

  He gulped convulsively. ‘I was after taking beasts frae the chiller,’ he said hoarsely, ‘when the one jammed on the rail and wouldna budge. I switchit off the power and went tae pull it out by hand, and there by ma feet –’ he swallowed hard – ‘I saw two bodies, dead as stanes.’

  ‘Bodies?’

  At her side, Gwennie heard Marjorie’s shocked intake of breath.

  ‘Ane atop the ither. A lassie and a young lad.’

  ‘Benjamin!’ Marjorie’s legs buckled and she slid to the floor.

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked Sir Archie, appearing in the doorway. His wife turned to him, white to the lips.

  ‘An accident. A terrible accident. We must get the police.’

  *****

  Autumn had turned the chestnut avenue leading up to Strathtorran House into a gold-and-ginger tunnel as Robb and Winter bumped up it slowly, avoiding the worst potholes. Though the door to the hostel was unlocked and Janie’s yellow VW Estate parked in front of it, the building was deserted. Continuing along the weedy gravel towards the big house, they spotted a slight figure in a boilersuit perched on the rungs of a ladder laid across the steeply-pitched slates above the great hall. A grappling-hook secured one end of the ladder to the roof-ridge, while the other was wedged into the top rung of a second ladder propped against the gutter. The whole apparatus looked ramshackle and insecure.

  ‘Lady Strathtorran!’ called Robb, who wouldn’t have liked to see his own wife thus employed.

  ‘What is it? Can’t it wait?’ she shouted over her shoulder.

  ‘We’d like a word with you.’

  ‘OK. Half a tick.’

  ‘To your right, my lady,’ called the rheumy-eyed, red-nosed old man in a long tweed overcoat belted with bindertwine, who stood with his boot on the ladder’s lowest rung. ‘There’s anither agley.’

  Janie crouched to her task, a slender green monkey on the vast expanse of slates. ‘Hold the ladder steady, Jock. I’m coming down.’

  ‘Here, give over.’ Winter stepped forward authoritatively, but Jock glared at him like a pugnacious terrier and refused to yield. The laird’s wife backed carefully down the two ladders and turned to face them, pink with exertion.

  ‘This roof! Every gale brings down a few more slates. We ought to have it re-done from scratch, but that would cost a fortune.’ She wiped her hands down her thighs and said, ‘That’ll do for now, Jock. Leave the ladders and we’ll finish later. Come in, Inspector – or was it my husband you wanted to see?’

  Without waiting for an answer, she pushed the ancient studded door, and they followed her into the panelled gloom of the old hall, where a dozen mounted stags’ heads surveyed them glassily. Halfway along one wall, a cabinet housed a stuffed blackcock in full display, and in another glass case an immense trout, mean-eyed and lantern-jawed, hung suspended in lonely majesty.

  Robb peered at the inscription: Greeting Pool, May 10, 1911. 9lbs 6oz. Bloody Butcher. Hon Eleanor Arbuthnot.

  ‘How can I help you?’ Janie’s impatience was contained but discernible.

  Robb said in his most reassuring rumble that he was sorry to interrupt her busy morning, but wondered if she could account for Beverley Tanner’s wish to buy Strathtorran? On the face of it she seemed ill-suited to life here, more of a townie, from what he had heard.

  ‘Of course she was,’ snapped Janie; and then in an obvious attempt to be more helpful, ‘but after all, so was I when I first came here. I had no idea what a slog we were going to have – any more than she would have if I’d pointed it out to her.’

  ‘Didn’t you point it out to her?’

  Janie shook her head. ‘Believe me, it wouldn’t have made any difference. I’ve seen it happen time and again: people come here and fall in love with the scenery just as irrationally as they fall in love with unsuitable people.’

  ‘Did she discuss her plans with Lord Strathtorran?’

  A pause while the blood mounted from Janie’s cheeks to her forehead. ‘Not directly, no,’ she said at last. ‘I thought it would be better if I raised the subject with him myself. I – I was waiting for the right moment. I didn’t want a knee-jerk reaction. I thought if we talked it over quietly, just the two of us –’

  ‘What happened when you did bring it up?’

  ‘Happened?’ she said uncertainly.

  ‘What was his reaction?’

  ‘He wouldn’t listen.’ Now there was no mistaking the bitterness in her tone, no further attempt to pretend all was rosy between her and Torquil.

  ‘Did that surprise you?’

  ‘Of course.’ But a moment later her shoulders slumped a trifle and she said despondently, ‘Actually, I suppose I should have known he wouldn’t even talk about plans for the future unless his brother Ian was there to shove his oar in, and that was just what I didn’t want. I might possibly have persuaded Torquil, but my brother-in-law is incredibly pig-headed, and I knew he’d be dead against selling Strathtorran, particularly if it was my idea.’

  ‘So you felt that if push came to shove, your husband was liable to side with his brother?’

  Janie nodded. ‘He always takes his cue from Ian. Always has, and I suppose always will.’

  ‘Does Mr McNeil have a financial interest in Strathtorran?’

  ‘Not really. Their father left everything to Torquil – lock, stock, and barrel. We pay Ian to manage the salmon farm, so that’s the full extent of his financial interest, though from the way he behaves, you’d think he owns the place.’

  ‘So you and your husband had a row,’ said Winter in his flat, short-circuiting way, and Janie blinked.

  ‘I don’t go in for rows, Sergeant,’ she corrected with a tight little smile. ‘I’m not good at them.’

  ‘An argument, then.’

  ‘Hardly. It’s not easy to argue with Torquil.’

  ‘Not something to complain about,’ commented Robb, who saw too much domestic violence in his job.

  ‘I’m not complaining, for heaven’s sake!’ Exasperation was near the surface. ‘Just trying to explain.’ She drew a deep breath and went on more calmly. ‘My husband was born with a malfunctioning liver, and was in and out of hospital most of his childhood. No one really expected him to live. He had one operation after another, and finally a transplant, and touch wood –’ She left the sentence in mid-air and continued, ‘It’s not surprising that he’s fatalistic about money, success, all the things we materialists worry about; but it can be difficult to live with.’

  ‘It must be,’ rumbled Robb, and she gave him a grateful glance.

  ‘Ian’s always had a lot of influence with Torquil. He talked him into coming to live here after their father died, and I went along with it, especially since in a physical sense it seems to have done him good. But mentally, of course, we stagnate.’

  ‘Don’t you go away sometimes?’
r />   ‘Can’t afford it. Ever since we came here, we’ve been sliding deeper into debt, and Torquil simply ignores the figures. I can’t do that. Kim – I mean Beverley’s offer seemed to be the lifeline I’d almost given up hope of, and I couldn’t let it slip through our fingers. I spelled it out to him: if we don’t grab this chance, we’re done for, and in trying to make him face reality, I said all sorts of things I didn’t mean – or at least didn’t mean him to know. So stupid of me,’ she said fiercely, pushing her hair back as if thinking about it made her head ache. ‘I said all the things I’d bottled up for months, and when I finally ran out of steam, Torquil said – I remember his words exactly – he said, “My poor darling! I never realised. I simply hadn’t the foggiest. The last thing in the world I want is to make you unhappy.”

  ‘So I said, “Do you really mean you’ll accept Kim’s offer?” and he said, “Good lord, no. I’ll do anything you like, my love, but you can’t expect me to sell Strathtorran. Not when it’s been in our family for three hundred years.” And then...’ – her voice wobbled suddenly – ‘he just walked out of the room, and things have been strained between us ever since. The maddening thing is that it was all for nothing. Neither of us ever saw Kim again, so I’ll never know if her offer was genuine, or if she was just a Hanbury stooge.’

  ‘Would Sir Archibald want Strathtorran as well as Glen Buie?’

  ‘Of course he would.’

  ‘Even though he’s been told to stop stalking himself?’

  ‘What difference does that make? If the whole forest was reunited, he could sell it for twice the price. There’s nothing the Hanburys would like better than to see us scuttle back South with our tails between our legs.’

  ‘Yet you seem –’

  ‘Friendly enough?’ Her laugh had a bitter ring. ‘There’s only one difficult Commandment, Inspector, and that applies just as much here as in the suburbs.’

  Love thy neighbour, thought Robb, but already she was hurrying on, as if Torquil’s absence had unfettered her tongue. ‘When we moved here, we were determined to get off on the right foot with the Hanburys. We knew a hostel wasn’t something they’d normally welcome, but damn it, we’ve got to live. We thought we could work things out together. After all, they’re only summer raiders. They couldn’t dictate how we live all year round.’

  ‘Did they – do they – try to?’

  She hesitated. ‘The old guard are still pretty starchy. Gwennie, for instance, and Lady Priscilla, and that frightful Everard Cooper...’

  ‘What about the younger generation?’

  ‘Oh, Ashy’s as much our friend as theirs. No problem with her. Who else? The Forbes boys I hardly know; Nicky was here one winter, poor kid, banished to the wilds by his father with orders to study for his A-level retakes. Some hope! We got to know him a bit then, but we haven’t seen much of him since.’

  ‘Was that the winter your brother-in-law’s wife died? Will you tell us how that happened? Just after Christmas, wasn’t it?’

  Janie bit her lip and nodded. ‘After Hogmanay. January 3rd. We were all feeling a bit flat – not to say hungover. The party was breaking up and most of our visitors were leaving. Alec Forrester was due to fly off to the States at the end of the week to take up his new job – that was before he was married, of course. We were all sad to see him go. Actually, that was the last time we ever saw him.’

  She sighed. ‘If he hadn’t gone – if he had taken over from Archie – if, if, if! Where was I?’

  ‘January 3rd,’ supplied Winter.

  ‘Yes. Pouring with rain as usual, and Eliza said she was feeling ghastly, so Torquil took Ian to the ferry. He was due to rejoin his regiment in Ulster after catching the night boat from Stranraer.’

  ‘Did he and Eliza part on good terms?’

  Janie made a curious little noise in her throat, which seemed to indicate equal reluctance to tell tales or lies. ‘Not all that,’ she said eventually. ‘It crossed my mind that they’d had a – a disagreement. A bit of teeth-gritting over the goodbyes.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, I’m ashamed to say that after they all left, I went straight back to bed, and I thought Eliza would do the same. When I woke up it was already starting to get dark, and I was alone in the house.’

  ‘What time was that?’

  ‘Oh, three-ish. Then the dogs came scratching at the door, wanting their dinner, and that’s when I began worrying, because Eliza’s Jack Russell was very much her dog, and simply never left her. I fed them, and little Tigger began whining to go out again, and I was sure something was wrong, so I rang around, but no one knew where she was. As soon as Torquil came back from Stranraer we got together everyone who was even half sober, and set out to search, but of course it was hopeless in the dark.’

  ‘Did the stalkers from Glen Buie help search?’

  ‘Oh, yes. And even Nicky, though he’d been in bed with ’flu and Mary Grant tried to stop him going out. It was a pig of a night. Everyone joined in...’ She cocked her head, listening. ‘Hullo! Listen to that. Davie McTavish is in a hurry.’

  Seconds later both Robb and Winter heard the distant wail of a siren.

  ‘Check the R/T,’ snapped Robb, and Winter sprinted across the gravel to where the Land Rover was parked. Below the dashboard, a red light was flashing.

  By the time Robb rounded the corner of the building, Winter had turned the vehicle in its own length and shoved open the passenger door. ‘Trouble at the Lodge,’ he said as Robb eased his stiff leg aboard.

  ‘Quick as you like, then.’ Robb’s hand sought automatically for the seat-belt he knew wasn’t functional as the vehicle swung out of the chestnut tunnel and between tall stone pillars, then headed up the track towards Glen Buie.

  *****

  Old hands that they were at coping with crises, Gwennie and Mary Grant had restored a semblance of calm in their respective domains before the police car swept under the gate-arch, with Robb’s Land Rover close behind. They found that Marjorie had been coaxed into bed with Valium and hotwater bottles, Ishy slapped out of hysterics, and Sir Archie was trying, like a worried sheepdog, to round up his scattered flock. In twenty minutes he had aged ten years.

  ‘Ashy and her mother went up to the trout-loch, so I’ve sent a ghillie to fetch them back,’ he told Robb. ‘John Forbes has taken Maya off to fish the river – without a word to me, naturally. They could be anywhere on six miles of river. It drives me mad,’ he said with suppressed fury, ‘the way people drift off without leaving word of where they’re going. Johnny knows that perfectly well, but does he care? Does he pay any attention to what I say?’

  ‘They can’t be far, darling. They’ve only been gone an hour.’ Gwennie took his arm in a comforting grip, but he shook her off as if his nerves were strung too tight to bear her touch.

  ‘All this bloody week,’ he muttered. ‘One ghastly thing after another.’

  ‘Who else is missing, sir?’

  Gwennie said, ‘Nicky may have gone into Tounie. Mary asked him to get some crayfish, and if he can’t buy them at the harbour, he’ll have taken the ferry across.’

  Silently Robb endorsed the complaint about drifters, but there was no point in voicing it now. If backed into a corner, Sir Archie would be on the blower to old Blood-and-Guts before you could say knife, and at this point the less interference from above the better.

  ‘Everyone else accounted for?’ They nodded. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that Benjamin was missing?’

  Sir Archie groaned. ‘Don’t rub it in. We thought he’d sloped off to another of those concerts, and when he didn’t show at dinner, we supposed he was afraid of getting a rocket from his mother. He knew she’d be furious because he’d sneaked away from the stalking-party, and I daresay he’d got wind of the fact that I had a bone to pick with him, too.’

  ‘What bone was that, sir?’

  Sir Archie beckoned him into the study and waved him to a chair. ‘No reason not to tell you, now the poor boy’s dead,�
� he said after a moment’s thought. ‘The fact is, young Ben was crazy about cars. Obsessed with them. Couldn’t keep his hands off them. He’d been in trouble at school for pinching a master’s car and driving it off the road. My sister paid him off, and we managed to keep it out of the papers. It gave Ben a fright, and we hoped he’d learned his lesson, but –’

  ‘Was he doing it again? Joyriding?’

  ‘Listen,’ said Sir Archie heavily. ‘Yesterday morning one of the crofters asked to see me. Name of Buchan. Angus Buchan. One of his Blackface rams had gone AWOL and he’d been searching for it for days. Eventually he found it dead below the bank on that sharp bend in the loch-road just a couple of miles from here. It had obviously been hit by a car. Then Mrs Buchan remembered seeing a red sports car skid badly there last Tuesday evening.’

  ‘Your son’s car?’

  ‘There aren’t many red sports cars around here. But from her description the driver sounded like Ben.’

  ‘Have you spoken to your son about it?’

  ‘He’s off running errands for the cook,’ said Sir Archie with a return of the pent-up exasperation, ‘though why she can’t get Duncan or one of the boys to fetch her bloody crayfish is beyond me.’

  ‘The game dealer usually comes on Friday, right? Who, besides yourself, knew the collection day had been altered?’ asked Robb after a few minutes’ consideration.

  ‘Mary knew. And Ashy – I remember mentioning it to her.’

  ‘Sandy? Fergus?’

  ‘I doubt it. The collection day doesn’t make much difference as far as they’re concerned. That chiller can take twenty stags, and we never get that many in a week. Top of the range model. I put it in last year. I wasn’t having bloody Brussels saying our hygiene wasn’t up to scratch.’

  ‘You don’t keep it locked?’

  ‘Of course we do.’

  ‘Who knows where the keys are kept?’

  ‘Everyone,’ said Sir Archie, and rubbed his eyes wearily. ‘Whoever unlocked that chiller yesterday has to be one of us.’

  *****