Death at Glamis Castle (23 page)

Charles was standing in the doorway of the adjacent bedroom. “Why don't you take a quick look in the loft?” He turned to give Kate an encouraging smile. “Well, go on, dear. Beryl Bardwell never hesitates to snoop, does she?”

She couldn't argue with that, for Beryl Bardwell, in the name of research, often did things that Kate wouldn't ordinarily do herself, such as scanning the addresses on envelopes, or eavesdropping on a conversation. Now, smothering her guilt, she gathered her skirts and climbed the steep ladder to the dusty loft. It was empty except for a broken chair and a narrow rope bed which was covered by two thin mattresses, a coarsely-woven sheet, and a scratchy woolen blanket. With some surprise, she noticed a man's brown woolen coat hanging on a peg beside the window, and a scuffed leather satchel open beside the bed. Hadn't Simpson said that Flora and her mother lived alone, and that her father was dead? Then whose was the coat and the satchel? Some relative's, perhaps, who had come to stay with Flora after the death of her mother?

Suppressing her dislike for the task, Kate went to the coat and quickly searched the outside pockets, finding nothing but a tin of tobacco and a small leather purse with a shilling, a wooden match, and a button in it. Inside the torn lining of an inner breast pocket, however, she found a piece of lined notepaper, folded, with several columns of minuscule numbers written in blue ink. The coat itself, which smelled of tobacco and whiskey and was worn nearly through at the elbows, bore the label of an Edinburgh tailor.

The unlined satchel proved to contain a pair of gray wool trousers, a neatly-folded blue shirt, darned black woolen stockings, and several handkerchiefs. Kate took the clothing out and laid it on the bed, then from the bottom of the bag pulled two books: a small New Testament printed in German, and a thin-leaved leather-bound copy of Sir Walter Scott's volume of Scottish history,
From Montrose to Culloden
. Quickly, she riffled through the pages, but there were no loose papers tucked into either book. On the fly-leaf of the New Testament, however, she found a name—Herman Memsdorff—neatly written in the same blue ink as that of the list of numbers.

A quick glance under the mattress, under the bed, and around the loft revealed that there was nothing more to be seen, so Kate replaced the clothing in the satchel and, tucking her finds under her arm, went back down the ladder to the main room.

Charles was standing in front of the fireplace, holding a framed photo in his hand. “The young woman in the middle would be Flora, I take it,” he said, handing her the photo. “I recognize the woman on the right as her mother,” he added reflectively. “Hilda Memsdorff MacDonald. I've no idea who the man might be.”

Kate studied the photo, which appeared to have been taken in front of the cottage. “Yes, that's Flora,” she said. The two women looked enough alike to be sisters, both with the same pleasant smiles, the same firm jaw, the same dark hair curling about their faces. The man, in his mid-thirties and also dark, with very dark eyes, had something of a similar look, she thought, although the set of his jaw was partially disguised by a jagged scar. She looked up. “Memsdorff, did you say? Is that Hilda's maiden name?”

He nodded. “I found it on a framed marriage certificate, on the wall in the bedroom. She was born in Bavaria, it would seem. She and Malcolm MacDonald were married in Glasgow.”

“Then these things,” Kate said, putting the books on the table and handing the folded piece of paper to Charles, “must belong to her brother or to a cousin. Some male relative, at any rate. The name Herman Memsdorff is written inside the New Testament.” She replaced the photograph on the mantel, and as she did, it fell out of the frame. “A man's coat with an Edinburgh tailor's label is hanging beside the window,” she added, as she bent to pick it up. “I found the paper in a breast pocket, inside the lining. The man would seem to be visiting, for there's a satchel with a few clean garments in it, as well. I found the books in the satchel.”

“Well done, Kate,” Charles said, looking down at the paper she had handed him.

Kate straightened, turning the photograph over. There was a date on the back, June 1900, and three names, written in a flowing script: Herman, Flora, Hilda. “Charles,” she said, placing the picture on the table, “this man in the photo—he's Herman Memsdorff, the same man who's sleeping upstairs. His name is on the back.”

“Ah,” Charles said absently. He sat down at the table, still studying the list of numbers. After a moment, he pulled the two books toward him and began to turn the pages as if he were looking for something. As Kate watched, he began to work from the list, first to one book, then the other, a frown growing between his eyes. Finally, he laid the list aside and reached for the photograph.

“Herman Memsdorff, eh?” he said, examining it closely. “Kate, we may have found Firefly.”

“Firefly!” Kate exclaimed, staring at him disbelievingly. “Andrew's German spy? Here, in the MacDonald house?” Her skin began to prickle. If the spy was indeed related to Hilda MacDonald—her brother, say—the murdered woman might have been an accomplice in Prince Eddy's disappearance. She might even have been a spy as well. But what about Flora? How much did she know about what had happened? Was she—

“There's no point in speculating about any of this,” Charles said, “until Andrew has a chance to look at what you've found. But I'm virtually certain that the list of numbers you found is some sort of cipher code.” He took a small notebook from his pocket, tore out a page, and scribbled a note on it, asking Flora MacDonald to come to the castle immediately for an interview. He folded the paper, wrote the words EXTREMELY URGENT on the outside in block letters, and propped it against a salt shaker.

“In the circumstance,” he went on, rising from the table, “I think the coat and the satchel had better come with us. If they turn out to be innocent, we can easily return them.” He climbed the ladder and came down a moment later with the satchel in his hand. He gathered the photograph, the list, and the books, and put them in it.

“Come on, Kate,” he said, taking the satchel and starting for the door. “We have another call to make.”

“Oh?” Kate asked, hurrying after him. “Where are we going?”

“To find Constable Graham,” he replied.

Kate and Charles were partway down the walk when they were stopped in their tracks by a woman's high, shrill voice, sounding half-exultant and perhaps a little mad.

“Lookin' fer our Flora, are ye? Well, ye willna find her here. She's gone.”

Startled, Kate turned. The voice belonged to a thin woman sitting on a stool in the dooryard of a cottage that fronted on the alley, her dirty white apron full of beans, which she was shelling into a basket at her feet. Her iron-gray hair was twisted into a black chenille net at the back of her head. Her face was twisted, too, with a look of righteous wrath.

“You're right,” Kate said with a pleasant smile, speaking up before Charles could say anything. “Flora doesn't seem to be at home, unfortunately. We'd be very grateful if you could tell us where we might find her.” At Charles's nudge, she added, “And Mr. Memsdorff as well.”

The woman stuck her long nose up into the air. “As tae Memsdorff, I canna say, sin' I haen't seen him for a day or twa. But Flora, now . . .” She shook her head scornfully. “Flora's gone, an' by my reckonin', she willna be back. Runnin' after the gypsies, she is.”

“Running after the gypsies?” Kate asked, puzzled.

“Aye.” The woman snorted and threw a handful of bean pods onto the ground. A chicken darted out of the weeds, picked up a pod in its beak, and scuttled off. “Nae better'n she needs tae be, is our Flora, for all her flouncy airs. A bonnie kettle o'fish, it is! Her poor mother murdered an' not yet in her grave, and Flora's awae wi' th' first man who cooms knockin'.”

Charles stepped forward. “What man? It's important that we find Miss MacDonald. If you know where she's gone—”

“Where?” The woman tossed her head. “Who can tell? Packed her clothes in a valise, an' off she's gone. Once these young women run off wi' the gypsies, ye mun give 'em up for lost, for lost they be.”

“How do you know,” Kate asked, “that Flora's run off with the gypsies?”

“Because I saw her with these awn twa eyes!” the woman replied triumphantly. “That handsome tinker wi' his pig on his back coom an' knocked bold as brass on her door an' she let him in an' closed it b'hind him. And her a lone woman!” She rolled her eyes, obviously relishing the thought of what had gone on behind the closed door.

“And then what happened?” Kate prompted.

“He was in there for a long time afore he left. But he hadna been gone five minutes when she was out o' the house after him, valise in her hand an' her hair tumblin' all wild an' loose around her ears, hussy-like.”

“A valise?” Charles asked.

“A valise,” the woman asserted. “But did she coom down th' path tae the street like a guid Christian girl wi' naething tae hide? Nae, o'course not. She crept round the back o' the cottage tae the path tae the auld flax mill. Runnin' off, she was. Her voice rose victoriously. “Off with the raggle-taggle gypsies.”

Somewhere in the weeds, a chicken cackled.

“To a Mountain Daisy” Robert Burns, 1786

 

 

 

 

For the better part of the last hour, Oliver Graham had been sitting at the small wooden table which he used as a desk, in the tiny anteroom that was his office in the Glamis Village jail. Before him on a greasy paper lay the malodorous remnants of the lunch which he had obtained from Mrs. Collpit at the Glamis Inn pub: hot fish pie, buttered bread, a scrap of briny pickle, and a baked potato, scorched on the bottom. Usually, Oliver ate in the pub, at a table facing onto the street. In that way, he could see what went on outside, and he could be seen keeping watch, as it were. But today, feeling impertinent eyes on his back and fearing that Mrs. Lovell might not be the only nosy body who had overheard his conversation with Flora, he had asked for his lunch to be wrapped so that he could take it to the privacy of the jail to eat, along with a bottle of ale.

But the pie and potato had proved rather hard going, for the confidence that had soared in Oliver's heart after the encounter with Flora had plunged again, as he reviewed the conversation that ran like a refrain in his mind.

“We must gae on as friends,” Flora had said with finality, “for a friend I shall always be tae ye, for the sake of the auld days.”

With sad reflection, Oliver thought that her words did not hold out a promise that a lover could fasten his hopes to. Friendship for the sake of old times was not what he wanted, no, not at all! What he wanted, with an almost frightening passion, was Flora as mistress of his heart and his hearth, as the mother of his children. What he wanted was to wrap his arms around that slender waist and hold her tight against him, and he feared that her proffer of friendship was a repudiation of his greater passion.

But as he reflected further on their conversation, a greater fear began to grow within him, as he remembered the wildness in Flora's voice when she said, “I hae things tae do, and when they are done, ye are likely tae repent o' yer offer.” The venomous cloud of doubt and suspicion began to darken his thoughts once again. What might she do that could cause him to reject her? What could she have done that—

The office door opened and a neatly-dressed lady came in, a straw boater perched on coils of russet hair. Lord Sheridan followed on her heels, carrying a badly-scuffed leather satchel—not at all the sort of satchel that belonged to a gentleman, Oliver thought. He set it down just inside the door, and stepped forward.

“Good afternoon, Constable.” Lord Sheridan turned to the lady, who was watching Oliver with a penetrating gaze that seemed to reach deep into his concealed thoughts. “Lady Sheridan, I should like you to meet Constable Graham. Constable, this is my wife.”

Evading Lady Sheridan's probing gaze, Oliver rose hastily from his seat. “Yer ladyship,” he said, with what he hoped was the right sort of bow. Hastily, he bundled what was left of his lunch in the paper and thrust it into the small iron stove in the corner behind him, where to his chagrin it sizzled fiercely, with the smell of frying fish. Turning back, he asked, “What can I do for ye, m'lord?” He spoke somewhat humbly, chastened by the recollection of his earlier encounter with this man.