Chapter and Hearse Read online

  ‘I think I can see them now, my lord,’ said the boy.

  And it must be said, the Sheriff admitted fairly to himself, there were men around too who were locked together by equally ancient enmities. Memories in the Highlands were long and unforgiving. Perhaps this was what Her Majesty at Holyroodhouse had been told …

  Perhaps too it was different over in France.

  ‘There’s three of them, my lord,’ announced the hall-boy, peering out.

  Sometimes, of course, the Sheriff reminded himself as he scanned the horizon, the enmities were still red and raw, just like the scars on Murdo Ross’s face. These were still livid from an altercation at hogmanay with Black Ian – Ian Tulloch – of Eileanach. The man had drawn his dirk at Murdo Ross – kinsman and friend – over the delicate matter of which of the pair should at the turn of the year first-foot a certain young lady at Achnagarron, and Ian Tulloch hadn’t been seen at Eileanach or anywhere else in Fearnshire from that day to this.

  The pipes were calling to each other now like urgent vixens …

  Moreover – and this was where the Sheriff’s responsibilities came in – that lament also meant that the death was of a Fearnshire man who should not have died: that is to say that he – whoever he was – had not died in his bed of a sore sickness or old age.

  Thus, according to the old custom of the country, it followed ineluctably that the Sheriff of Fearnshire had duly to be told, and that he had a duty to enquire, had to inspect, had to pronounce and – if it were then proved that the death had been unlawfully at the hand of another – had to punish. What happened in France might well be different, but this was Scotland and, as far as Rhuaraidh Macmillan himself was concerned, this was how things were going to stay, new Queen or not.

  The drone of the other pipes could be heard quite clearly now and soon a little gaggle of men hove into view, hurrying down over the brae.

  The hall-boy, the keener-eyed of the two, took his lips off the chanter long enough to say, ‘Angus Mackintosh of Balblair, my lord, and a Mackenzie…’

  ‘Colin of that ilk,’ observed the Sheriff without enthusiasm. The man was a troublemaker.

  ‘And Merkland of Culbokie, Younger,’ said the hall-boy, resuming his pipes.

  Rhuaraidh Macmillan advanced towards the threshold and waited for the men to reach him, sniffing the air as he did so. It was a little warmer today and not before time. Spring, he decided, must really have come to the Highlands at long, long last – and that after one of the darkest, coldest winters in living memory. It was the same each year, though, he conceded to himself. He always began to doubt the return of warmer weather and then, suddenly, like the midges, it was upon them.

  The drone of the pipes died away as the three visitors drew near. Colin Mackenzie stood forward as self-appointed spokesman, while Angus Mackintosh and young Hugh Merkland kept a pace or two behind him.

  ‘We’ve found Black Ian,’ announced the man Mackenzie breathlessly. ‘Ian Tulloch…’

  ‘Dead,’ added Hugh Merkland.

  ‘Long dead,’ supplemented Angus Mackintosh.

  ‘And Murdo Ross is away over to the west,’ said Mackenzie, adding meaningfully, ‘today.’

  ‘Just as soon as he heard Black Ian had been found,’ chimed in Angus.

  Colin Mackenzie said, ‘You’ll no’ have forgotten, Sheriff, that it was Ian Tulloch that struck Murdo Ross.’

  ‘I remember,’ said the Sheriff shortly.

  Striking any man was bad, striking a relative or friend much worse. Doing it with a weapon in the hand was never likely to be forgotten, still less forgiven. Even worse was the crime of following a man to his own dwelling place and assaulting him there – otherwise known as hamesucken. And that was what Ian Tulloch had done.

  ‘Murdo Ross was off like the De’il himself was chasing him,’ contributed Hugh Merkland, ‘as soon as he was told the news.’

  ‘Perhaps the Devil was chasing him,’ said Mackintosh insouciantly. ‘How can any man tell what Satan looks like?’

  Merkland ignored this and went on eagerly, ‘Will we be going after him for you, Sheriff?’

  ‘You will not,’ said Rhuaraidh Macmillan firmly. ‘You will be first telling me where you found Black Ian dead.’

  ‘In a barn at Eileanach.’

  ‘More bothy than barn,’ put in Angus Mackintosh.

  Merkland said, ‘The men were taking the sheep up to the hills for the summer…’

  Sheriff Macmillan nodded. The annual movement of the sheep to the higher ground was a late spring ritual in Fearnshire. The French had a special word for it – transhumance – not that the new Queen would be likely to know about it, for all her regal French connections. Summer pasture for sheep would not be one of the concerns of her world … She had others, though, from all accounts. Mostly to do with the heart, he had heard.

  ‘… and when they got up there the drovers tried to open up the place as usual but they couldn’a get in,’ Merkland was saying.

  ‘How did you know he was dead?’ asked the Sheriff.

  There was a pause while Mackenzie shifted from foot to foot. ‘He was hanging from a beam.’

  ‘We saw him through the cracks in the wood,’ vouchsafed Colin Mackenzie. ‘We couldn’a get in either, you see.’

  ‘Dead long since, with a bang-rape round his neck,’ supplied Angus Mackintosh.

  ‘Someone must have been after the hay,’ said the Sheriff.

  A bang-rape was a rope with a noose used by thieves for carrying off corn or hay. It would do fine for hanging a man too.

  ‘Maybe so, Sheriff, but they didn’t steal what hay was there,’ said Angus Mackintosh. ‘It’s still strewn about in the bothy.’

  ‘Ian’s axe is there too,’ said Mackenzie. ‘It’s standing against the wall.’

  ‘Nobody could get in to take it, you see,’ contributed Hugh Merkland. ‘The door was barred on the inside.’ He waved a hand. ‘It still is.’

  ‘So why then did Murdo Ross go away to the west when he heard?’ asked the Sheriff, not unreasonably. For a man to take his own life in these parts was rare enough, but a man who had harmed friend and family might well feel that he should. ‘If the door had been barred on the inside by Ian Tulloch …

  ‘Anyone,’ sighed the Sheriff, ‘who had reached man’s estate could have told Black Ian that remorse was the most difficult – in fact, the only intolerable – emotion with which to live.’

  There was an uncomfortable pause and an uneasy shuffling of feet as it became apparent that not one of the three wished to answer his question about Murdo Ross.

  ‘Well?’ demanded Rhuaraidh Macmillan.

  Eventually Colin Mackenzie said uneasily, ‘We couldn’a see anything there, Sheriff, that Black Ian could have been standing on … before…’

  ‘Nothing at all,’ said Merkland.

  ‘Not a thing.’ Mackintosh of Balblair endorsed this. ‘We looked.’

  ‘Whoever had put him there must have taken it away with them,’ said Hugh Merkland, adding, ‘Whatever it was.’

  ‘I see,’ said the Sheriff.

  ‘Now shall we go after Murdo Ross for you, Sheriff?’ said Merkland impatiently. ‘He’ll be well away by now.’

  ‘No,’ said Rhuaraidh Macmillan at once. ‘You’ll come with me back to Eileanach. First I must see the body.’

  Now, super visum corporis was a phrase Her new Majesty at Edinburgh, a daughter of Mary of Guise or not, would surely understand. They said she was good at the Latin as well as at the French. It was her lack of comprehension of the Gaelic, indeed of nearly all matters Scottish, that was the worry …

  * * *

  Mounted on his palfrey, his clerk riding a little behind him, the Sheriff led the party out towards the broad strath above which lay Ian Tulloch’s lands. The journey took time. The bothy was far away up in the hills, alongside the route of one of the old coffin roads over to a clan burial ground and already halfway to the west as it was.

  His mount stumbled
and slipped from time to time as it tried to pick its way over the bare stony track towards the rough building. What was possible for men on foot and hardy sheep was not so easy for a horse. Spring might have come to the lower-lying ground, but higher up winter had only just left. Rhuaraidh Macmillan could see that even higher there was still snow and ice lying on the side of the ben. On a north-facing hillside, both could linger all summer.

  ‘There, Sheriff –’ Colin Mackenzie pointed. ‘You see yon bothy over there?’

  ‘Aye,’ agreed Macmillan, automatically noting that any footprints in the snow leading to the building were long gone. And so were any footprints in the snow leading away … Equally, any marks made by footprints on the ground since the thaw would have been overlaid by those made more recently by men and sheep.

  ‘Look, Sheriff, through this gap here…’ Colin Mackenzie already had his eye to a crack in the door.

  Rhuaraidh Macmillan reluctantly brought his horse to a standstill on the track. There would be those – and plenty – who held that Murdo Ross had been well within his rights in exacting his revenge on Ian Tulloch for raising his weapon – if he had, that is – against Murdo in anger, let alone in jealousy; who would insist for all time that Black Ian had received only his just desserts for an attack on a life-long friend – to say nothing of one with blood ties.

  That, however, was not the law and the law must be served above anger and jealousy. This applied in Fearnshire if not any longer in Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh. Aye, there was the rub. Rhuaraidh Macmillan straightened himself up in the saddle. The difference was that he himself was responsible for the upholding of law and order in Fearnshire. Who exactly it was who was responsible for law and order and not anger and jealousy triumphing at the Scottish court today was not for him to say …

  The Sheriff dismounted and bent his eye – albeit unwillingly – to the crack in the wooden door of the bothy.

  What the three men had told him was true. Swinging from a high beam without handholds to reach it was a body. That it was of Ian Tulloch he was in no doubt. ‘Black’ might have been how the man had been known in his lifetime; it was assuredly an accurate description of how he now looked many weeks after his death.

  The Sheriff’s gaze travelled down from the suspended body to the floor. What the men had told him about that was true too. There was nothing at all there which Black Ian could have climbed on or kicked aside to jump to his death. All that was visible was a large damp puddle on the floor, surely greater by far than could have come from the body above. He put his shoulder to the door of the bothy and found, as the others had done, that the entrance was still firmly barred against them.

  ‘Shall we batter the door down, Sheriff?’ asked Hugh Merkland, always a man of action rather than thought.

  ‘No,’ said Rhuaraidh Macmillan sternly. ‘Wait you all over there while I take a look around.’

  He walked slowly and carefully round the outside of the bothy. Ramshackle it might be, but it was still proof against the elements and animals. Deer would not have been able to get in there any more than the four men could. The primitive building had never boasted windows or a chimney.

  ‘Murdo Ross’ll be away over the hills by nightfall,’ murmured Merkland restively. ‘We’ll no’ catch him now.’

  ‘And Black Ian didn’t have any other enemies,’ said Colin Mackenzie with emphasis. ‘None at all.’

  ‘Och, one enemy’s enough for any man,’ put in Angus Mackintosh of Balblair, stroking his chin sagely. ‘Isn’t it, now?’

  ‘Black Ian was his own worst enemy,’ said the Sheriff, stepping back to examine the roof. ‘He didn’t need others. You all know that.’

  ‘Aye, that’s true,’ conceded Colin Mackenzie, nodding. ‘The man should never have taken cold steel to a kinsman right enough … What is it that you’re seeing on the roof, Sheriff?’

  ‘Nothing,’ replied that official with perfect truth. ‘It’s quite sound.’

  ‘It would need to be up here,’ observed Angus Mackintosh, looking round the bleak countryside. ‘If the wind had once got under it, yon roof would be away up over Beinn nan Eun in no time at all.’

  ‘Or down in the loch,’ said Merkland.

  Colin Mackenzie pointed down the hill. ‘It’s a wonder Black Ian didn’t just jump into Loch Bealach Culaidh there – if he had a mind to make away with himself, that is.’

  ‘It’s hard to drown if you’re a swimmer,’ remarked the Sheriff. ‘Or if the water’s frozen.’

  ‘It’s hard to hang yourself from a high beam without having anything to hold on to or stand on to get you there,’ said Hugh Merkland. ‘I still think we should be away after Murdo Ross…’

  ‘No,’ said the Sheriff quietly. ‘Tell me, is that Ian Tulloch’s own axe I saw in there?’

  ‘It is,’ said Mackenzie.

  ‘Ah…’

  ‘Man,’ exploded Merkland, ‘you dinna need an axe to hang yoursel’.’

  ‘Ian Tulloch did,’ murmured the Sheriff.

  ‘But…’ Merkland’s eyebrows came together in a ferocious frown.

  ‘He couldn’t have done what he did without an axe,’ said the Sheriff. ‘Or something like it.’

  ‘But it’s rope you need to hang yoursel’,’ protested Colin Mackenzie. ‘We all know that.’

  ‘Mind you,’ said Rhuaraidh Macmillan, ‘I’m not saying that Black Ian didn’t need the rope as well as his axe.’

  ‘But…’ Hugh Merkland began his objection in turn.

  The Sheriff said, ‘He needed the rope afterwards.’

  ‘Afterwards?’ echoed Merkland.

  ‘After he had used the axe.’

  ‘But…’ began Colin Mackenzie.

  ‘And the rope together,’ said the Sheriff.

  ‘I still don’t understand,’ said Colin Mackenzie.

  ‘Neither did Murdo Ross,’ said the Sheriff, ‘and that’s why he’s away to the west in such a hurry.’ Rhuaraidh Macmillan gave the door of the bothy another great shake. ‘It’s barred right enough and by my reckoning it was Ian Tulloch himself that put the bar on the inside there.’

  ‘And so,’ demanded Colin Mackenzie truculently, ‘how did he get himself high enough to hang himself from that beam without anything to stand on?’

  ‘Ah,’ said the Sheriff neatly, ‘he did have something to stand on.’

  ‘But there’s nothing there,’ said Colin

  Mackenzie. ‘Nothing at all.’

  ‘There’s nothing there now,’ said the Sheriff patiently. ‘There was something there that he could stand on at the time.’

  ‘That’s taken itself away?’ growled Colin Mackenzie derisively.

  ‘In a manner of speaking, yes,’ replied the Sheriff. ‘But it was brought there by Ian Tulloch himself using the bang-rape and his axe.’

  Colin Mackenzie drew himself up and said with dignity. ‘I’m thinking that you are for making fools of us, Sheriff.’

  ‘Is it the Little People we’re going to have to thank for killing Black Ian, then?’ chimed in Hugh Merkland scornfully.

  Angus Mackintosh asked instead, ‘What is there, then, Sheriff, that Black Ian could have brought here with an axe and a noose that’s gone away on its own after he used it?’

  ‘A block of ice,’ said Rhuaraidh Macmillan, pointing to where some still lay unmelted further up the hillside. ‘Now will you be away, all of you and find Murdo Ross and tell him to come back?’

  Chapter and Hearse

  ‘Sloan,’ barked Police Superintendent Leeyes down the telephone, ‘you’re wanted, and quickly!’

  ‘I’ll be right over, sir.’ Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan didn’t exactly click his heels together, but he did get to his feet pretty smartly.

  ‘No, not by me. Don’t come to my office.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘It’s the Assistant Chief Constable who’s asking for you.’ The Superintendent didn’t even try to keep his amazement at this unlikely event out of his voice. ‘Don’t ask me
why.’

  ‘Me, Sir?’

  Detective Inspector Sloan did a rapid mental revision of his past week and work. As far as he knew, he hadn’t blotted his copybook in any way, but you never knew. With the Police and Criminal Evidence Act in operation, even not offering a suspect a cup of tea was capable of being misconstrued by a defence solicitor.

  ‘You, Sloan. He says,’ said Superintendent Leeyes, ‘that it’s a sudden emergency.’

  ‘I’m on my way.’

  * * *

  The Assistant Chief Constable – a gentleman copper if ever there was one – received him with his customary courtesy.

  ‘Ah, Sloan, there you are…’ If there was anything urgent pending, it certainly didn’t show in his manner. ‘Take a seat.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ It wasn’t going to be a disciplinary matter, then: rebukes were delivered to a man standing. On the carpet, if there was one.

  ‘A little problem has cropped up this morning in connection with the Minster.’

  Sloan sat down. That explained one thing anyway. Calleford Minster was not in Superintendent Leeyes’s ‘F’ Division and the Superintendent took as narrow a view as did the Coroner as to what was and what was not within his jurisdiction.

  ‘And,’ continued the Assistant Chief Constable unhurriedly, ‘it’s got to be resolved before tonight.’

  ‘I see, sir.’

  ‘By half past seven, actually,’ said the Assistant Chief Constable.

  ‘Time is of the essence, then, is it?’ ventured Sloan.

  ‘It was and it is,’ said his superior enigmatically.

  ‘And the problem?’

  ‘There are two problems,’ said the ACC, ‘and one of them is murder.’

  ‘Ah!’ And the victim, sir…’ Every case had to begin somewhere and every case – every murder case anyway – had a victim. ‘Do we know…’

  ‘Oh, yes, Sloan. There’s no doubt about that. The man’s name was Lechlade. Walter Lechlade. Exact age unknown. Probably about forty.’

  ‘And his occupation?’ If unemployment carried on on its present-day scale, a man’s occupation – or lack of it – would soon cease to be worth recording.