Long Tale Press

SOLO female on a long hike, I found words pinned to a dead man’s chest and they mesmerised me. “The march came fast. The old tune, the fine tune, when the wild men in their red tartan came over hill and moor.”

Uneasily, and close to panic at discovering a corpse, I scanned the hilltop for wild men but there was only this still one. I was in the Scottish Highlands, remote and deserted.

Because I was overdrawn at the bank and overweight on the scales, a camping trek had seemed my wisest holiday from showbiz. Banjo in backpack, I intended to commune with Nature and maybe invent fresh songs. Now the remote mountain trail had produced this horror.

While hesitating beside the body, I imagined bagpipes droning among pine-scented crags to match the rhythm I was reading: “The tune with the river in it, the fast river and the courageous, that kens not stop nor tarry, that runs round rock and over fall with a good humour, yet no mood for anything but the way before it.”

The man lay near a shoulder-high cairn of fist-sized stones that topped a scarp above an extensive loch. Wild country indeed, after miles of tramping from the Uloughness ferry, where I had alighted from a gasping Fort William bus. Live people were rare in this region, a dead one cause for panic. He was elderly, his suit lightweight, hardly garb for walking this wilderness. His thick form was crumpled as if victim to a heart attack. Then I noticed the dagger handle, its blade hidden deep, and I knew this was murder.

Mystery also. The typed lines were attached by safety-pin to his waistcoat. I yanked the paper free. The message might explain something, for doubtless the victim and his killer had perused these phrases also.

I glanced left, right and behind as heat tingled my scalp, for my finger had touched a splash of blood across one corner of the page. I stumbled in a daze, off the track into bracken and gorse. The wild tune of those imagined bagpipes teased my ears and persisted while I fled down towards the loch. There was a squat castle guarding its shore, the only building I had encountered in this rugged panorama. The castle’s dark walls swallowed the sunlight that glinted from the vast mountain lake.

Only when I paused to examine its squarish military outline, its tower, and the narrow road twisting lochside, did I realise my fist still gripped the sheet of paper that breathed a living glory from the dead man: “The tune of the heroes, the tune of the pinelands and the broad straths, the tune that the eagles of Loch Duich crack their beaks together when they hear, and the crows of that countryside would as soon listen to as the squeal of their babies.”

The bagpipes still skirled. What? The sound was real, not imagined after all, and it was coming from down there at the castle, pulling my alarm to its hypnotic beat. Down, down the hillside I slid, scattering stones and twigs, my heart thumping, my senses recognising a new sound, a human sound. It was the voice of a woman somewhere below. She was singing to the sweet groan of those pipes.

Faint at first, then surging to full throat, the melody echoed over the water and amid the pines. It was a song familiar to me, with a wistful lilt I had often performed myself when engaged for a folksy gig. More suited to harp or guitar accompaniment, it was that popular Scotttish air, “Over the sea to Skye”.

The invisible voice singing it was what one might expect to hear in an opera. It was a glorious soprano, now outsounding the drone of the pipes and beckoning me towards it. As I paced down, a skittering disturbed the waters of the loch, in the shadows near clumped rocks where small fish splashed in the shallows, as if dancing. Incredibly, the music was calling them too.

Soon a slate tiled roof appeared on a level with my boots and in my haste, unbalanced by the backpack, I fell over a bank through prickly heather and thistles before bursting onto flat tarmac, a car park. I spotted an orange tour bus and hurried past it where massive walls anchored the castle as if they were defying the landscape’s hostility on this age-old shore. Loud people were having fun on smooth lawns.

They sat about wooden tables on grassy terracing that stepped down dry-stone walls to a pebbled beach. To alert them, I flagged the paper above my head, lurching into their midst. A portal with sculpted pediment framed the musical performers - gaudy bagpiper and the diva wearing grey slacks and rollneck sweater. They went abruptly silent.

One of the picnickers, an extremely fat man, grabbed my elbow with a laugh and snatched for the crumpled sheet of paper. “She’s guessed it, sonovabitch. Everyone listen up. Heck, I reckon we have a winner.”

My mouth, open to blurt my gruesome discovery, gaped like a frozen trout, because attached to this bloke’s chest was a sheet just like the one I carried. My eyes narrowed to its different message: “I wandered lonely as a cloud that floats on high o’er vales and hills . . .”

You couldn’t imagine anyone less floatable than a cloud. I’m large-waisted myself, but this guy’s big belly flopped close to his thighs, stretching belted pink trousers and a yellow blazer that boasted narrow downward stripes of red, white and black. His fleshy cheeks swelled at me like bright-red tomatoes set in pillows of dough. Had this been a circus he would have been the baggy-pants clown.

Beside him peered a scrawny, longarmed woman in black slacks and a floppy hat of tartan cotton that allowed spiky hair to tease her tall brow and weather-browned features. She, too, had adorned her bosom with a sheet of paper, its familiar verse on her white blouse taunting my confusion: “Wee sleekit, courin, timrous beastie, o whit a panic’s in thy breastie.” Ascerbic and alert, she added her own comment. “This woman does not belong to us.”

Lonely Cloud scrunched his vivid cheeks at me, mouthed like a guppy, grinned again at the paper he had jerked from my hand, and accused in an American accent, “What the heck are you doing with Tam’s poem?”

A grumpy woman, middleaged and dowdy, bulging from a floral frock, squinched hatefully at him, “Laird Tam never had a poem. That’s what foxed us all. He did not stick to the rules.” Her hostile squint intensified into my face. “Who are you?”

“Sheil B. Wright,” I panted. “The B was added by myself to make a stage name. Pleased to meet you.” My hand went mechanically to shaking status but she ignored it, just went on aiming belligerence. While I tried, unsuccessfully, to read the literature on this one’s adorned bodice, she declared to a chorus of agreement: “No. She’s not. She is not one of us.” There were about ten of these poetry loonies.

The obese Yank, making closer scrutiny, agreed I was indeed, sonovabitch, not one of them. Only now realising my demented appearance, he abandoned ebullience and explained softly, as if to calm me, “The game is Guess The Poet. We each pick a few lines and the others have to name the author. I am Wordsworth and she,” – nodding to the tanned athlete in tartan – “she is Rabbie Burns. We’ve all guessed everybody, I tellya, except Tam’s puzzle. Has the cunning old badger sent you to claim his victory? Where the heck is he anyway?”

I told them.

THE police came by helicopter. While we were waiting I learned that the outing I had blundered among comprised the Loch Ulough Book Club, and that the corpse had been their patron and weekend host. He was a wealthy landowner, affectionately known as Laird Tam.

Chief Inspector James Stirling wore a kilt with a furry sporran that was the same colour as his tiny taut moustache. Into this deep sporran he would soon bag the blood-smirched paper I had plucked from the victim, but not without some preliminary chastisement. He directed a glare at me. He lacked height yet had a big bald head allowing maximum brain capacity. His nose and ears were also outsized, designed for sniffing out clues and hearing helpful whispers.

This nose aimed at me now while his ears were wide to my tale of finding the body. His firm fingers stroked the plastic pouch that protected the evidence. His voice was calm, yet uttered with a clarity that relayed official retribution. “It is an offence to remove material from the scene of a crime.”

Chief Inspector Stirling’s men were still probing the death scene on the ridge above the castle. He had descended by an easy stone stairway, prior knowledge of which would have saved me from my thorny tumble.

Now he was seated with a mug of tea at one of the chunky tables on the terrace. He had seated me opposite, and had secured the crumpled page in its forensic wrapping beneath an ashtray. Exhibit One.

I had seen this fellow before, in a cowboy movie, and instantly recognised my plight. His cold stare, even without twin holsters and a lightning draw, would halt a buffalo stampede. Furthermore, his gentle Highland lilt held more menace than a midnight bog on a moonless winter night. The book clubbers stood about us in a circle, eager to see discomfiture heaped upon the messenger who had interrupted their jollies.

“Looking beyond your stupidity,” steel-eyed Stirling told me quietly as his fingers teased the wrinkled sheet, “we have a mighty puzzle here. Why was Laird Tam wearing the words of Munro?”

His comment caused gasps and sighs from the onlookers. “Och! The brilliant polis!” one declared. “Straight off he guesses Neil Munro. What d’ye think of that, Mister Wells?”

“Tam cheated,” hollered the fat American. “It is prose. Tam selected prose, not poetry.”

Detective Stirling was not to be interrupted. “Neil Munro,” he repeated. “Scotland’s greatest author.”

This brought more exclamations and a concerted jabbering from the booklovers. I had the impression it disturbed them more than the murder. The Scots admire their literature with a passion fully equal to their regard for liquefied grain in high-priced bottles.

“But surely,” blurted the skinny-limbed woman in the tartan bonnet. “Surely Robert Louis Stevenson?”

“Sir Walter Scott,” said another.

“John Buchan, Kenneth Grahame, Arthur Conan Doyle, Alexander McCall Smith . . .” The alternative nominations flew fast, yet Stirling remained deaf to them, directing his gaze down to the evidence. “The genius,” he told them quietly, “who created Para Handy’s comic adventures on a Clyde pufferboat. And Erchie the Glasgow waiter. Fine sense of humanity. And now a clue to murder.”

“Duffy the coalman,” volunteered the tartan bonnet, “and don’t forget that cunning salesman Jimmy Swan.”

Stirling nodded to her dismissively, and I was thinking that if Homicide had a Literature Division this quaint detective must head it. He was still lecturing softly, as if exploring a train of thought. “Here we have no comedy but haunting words,” he mused. “They are from “The Lost Pibroch”. Hmm. Pinned to the chest of a murdered man. Why, why?”

“Heck, lootenant, it was just a game,” said Wells in his brash drawl. “And prose breaks the rules. Everyone else had a poet. That was the agreement.”

Stirling gave him the fast-draw stare and a gentle rebuke. “Sur, although they do not rhyme, these lines which you have called prose are the grandest poetry to an exiled Scot. They are poetry the world over to my countrymen living far from their native land.”

“Okay, lootenant, have it your way. It’s sure true that Tam was exiled for many years. We arrived together from Chicago just a week ago, but he never said anything about any lost pea broth.”

A cloud dimmed the sun, a blackbird cried from up on the tower, a swan on the loch splashed great wings, all these like a portent preceding the woman who now appeared. The nearest pines were whispering in a sudden gust, not an unpleasant sound, yet odd. The same could be said of the Fritheen of Ulough, a title from prehistory and the druids: she was not unpleasant, just odd.

Her name was Abeline. Tall, neat and stately, her raised fingers acknowledged the bowing tree branches while she strolled across the lawn to stand before the kilted detective. I felt my neck prickle when, for the first time, I heard her speak.

“My brother Tam was absent seven and a half years, now his absence is permanent, his soul locked in the Zone of Rebirth. Otherwise I could have made contact and received the name of his killer. I wanted to have that ready for you, Sergeant Stirling.”

A nutter, but the policeman accepts her statement, dipping his chin, scratching his little moustache. “Nowadays, my lady, it is Detective Chief Inspector. The evidence will tell us the culprit soon enough.”

This was the mistress of the castle. Her copper locks fell to her waist like frayed ropes and they framed a narrow face and jawline that were deathly pale. Severe eyes peered from deep sockets, a gun-duel match for Stirling. High-noon lochside was my weird fantasy when I saw her staring him down, but that’s just the way I often consider strangers. It is how I think up notions for my ballads. There’s folksong material everywhere when you’re born with a twisted imagination.

She had that quality known as Presence. Simmering from within, this gained impact from a priestly gown of forest green and a brass badge that glinted on her breast. This unusual medallion, suspended from a broad golden chain, was like a broken cross. I studied it.

There was a solid central square, golden and glittering, from each corner of which a metal twig pointed the four cardinal directions. I wondered if it was some kind of Highland compass. In any case, she looked the sort of person unlikely to get lost. Did she always dress like this, I asked myself, or had she donned gladrags to welcome the cops?

Her slow, long fingers rubbed the lopsided icon. “Tam’s soul is silent. However, the goddess tells me there is a business connection. Brigit was clear about that.”

Who is Brigit? I’m wondering, yet Stirling just nods. “My lady, the laird’s soul may be silent but I can assure you I shall catch, and speedily enough, the villain who dispatched it. I myself did the investigation, remember? Seven and a half years ago as you say. Time speeds, does it not? It hardly seems to be so long since the explosion.”

“We do not talk of that.” As if to ward off the unwanted topic, she raised her arms to a volley of clacking bangles, and draped sleeves fell loose to her elbows, which were heavily tattooed with what I took to be celtic sworls. “Tam came home to us for the coming of age,” she said. “Tomorrow is his son’s birthday, his only son.” She stressed the word ‘only’, a little detail I was to recall later on.

“Aye, the coming of age,” Stirling agreed. “Yes, that.”

“Yes what? And who the heck is this Brigit?” The tycoon was not as clownish as his clothes indicated. Inside the fancy-dressed blubber was a forceful mental engine. “And what’s this about an explosion?” he demanded. “I am Herbert George Wells.” He spoke his name as if it would convey an impressive biography to this kilted Dick Tracy.

“H.G. Wells,” Stirling noted. “He was an English author. Some call him the father of science-fiction. Would you be related, sur?”

“Hell no, I’m an architect, that’s my science. Look, officer, I came here, we came here, Tam and me, to fix up a deal. Nothing to do with birthdays or blasting or Brigit, I tell ya. Darn it, he’s my business partner.”

“Was,” corrected Stirling softly. “And Brigit is the Fritheen’s spiritual guide, a Scottish deity. reputed to be the midwife at Christ’s birth.”

“Sister of the sun,” added Abeline, with a snooty pout at the tycoon. “The Pope made her a saint.”

Stirling completed the less divine information. “The coming of age, sur, is a local tradition. Has been for many generations. Tomorrow on the lad’s twenty-first, Laird Tam was to reveal a secret.”

“He never mentioned any secret to me, I gotta tellya.”

“It is a family matter,” said Fritheen Abeline from her superior height. “The hiding place of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s warchest. It has been in our care for more than 250 years.”

“You don’t say. That sure is old. That’s older than the United States.”

Her chin lifted at his vulgar interruption. “The treasure was awarded to our custody, after Culloden.”

“What’s that?”

Momentarily, her eyelids dipped, tut-tut, at such ignorance. It was the detective who answered, “A battle, Mister Wells sur. Not far from here. Defeat caused Britain’s rightful heir to the throne to flee, back to Italy.”

An excited cry came from the woman in the bonnet. “The treasure chest is still hidden in the castle, Mister Wells. Somewhere nobody knows, except Laird Tam. He knew.”

“Thank you, Pru.” Frostily, Abeline turned back to Herbert Wells and clarified, “It is a sacred trust down the generations. The hiding place is revealed to the laird’s first-born.”

It is strange how odd snippets of history intrude into every British occasion, including a crime scene, but then Britain is a strange country. It is populated by a mongrel mix of Celts, Vikings, Germans, French and Dutch, to which our recent decades have added dark-skinned folk from Empire. Here, beside a mountain loch, I found myself thrust into their ancient heritage and their peculiar individualism. Good material for a song but.

At this particular moment, the creepy dame was mouthing her own doleful psalm, again massaging her peculiar talisman, addressing us all. “That trunk is hidden forever now. Only Tam knew the secret. He had yet to pass on its location to Randolph.”

Chief Inspector Stirling had been dipping his chin to validate each known fact that was being repeated. “I shall question Randolph,” he announced. “It could have a bearing, a thing like that.”

A beefy young man in full-rig tartan, presumably Randolph, was trudging across the lawn to stand beside his aunt. Shorter than her, even counting an eagle feather in his bonnet, his fleshy form sported all the woven finery to impress and delight foreign tourists like me. Under one arm he hugged a set of bagpipes. Truly a Pied Piper.

I had noticed his startling uniform of green and yellow earlier, brightening the far side of the terrace beneath the sombre portico where he had accompanied the singer. He must have dressed up to perform for the picnic, and his soulful playing had accompanied my descent from the ridge.

Round bellies make grand pipers, I’ve been told. It has something to do with breathing and blowing. Strange, I thought while regarding Randolph’s challenged belt, how breathing and blowing also makes for grand athletes, but such an energetic switch to the running track would, for him, be impossible.

“Don’t fash yourself, Aunt Abby, I shall sniff out the hiding place.” He gripped his relative’s elbow and shouldered his pipes as if about to help her march back to the castle in a military two-step.

She looked alarmed. “Do we really need to find it, Randy? Does it matter? Now that your father’s gone.”

“Pop was gone more than seven years, Auntie. It’s not as if we’re used to having him around.”

She bristled at this, eyes arched, lips tight. “That statement is callous. I would expect better of you, Randy.”

He shrugged. “Inherited. People said Pop was callous too. Remember? After his partner copped it. Boom! He skiddled off to America before the police were done snooping.”

The so-called snooping, I came to learn, had been into a fatal blast that killed Laird Tam’s associate in an ill-fated commercial venture. They had been building an underwater observatory, deep in the loch. The pressurised tank, designed for tourists to observe the fish, had burst apart when the partner took it down for testing. Next day the laird left urgently. He had stayed in New York, answering all legal inquiries by telephone, post or email. The coroner’s verdict was left open, death by cause unknown.

Abeline was still flashing optic rebuke at her indiscreet nephew when a constable approached to hand the chief inspector another forensic pouch, larger than the one protecting Neil Munro’s poetic prose. Apparently the police pathologist had extracted the weapon, for here it was.

I recognised the ornate handle, but the whole of the blade had been buried in Laird Tam’s chest and this was my first sight of it. Overall, the deadly thing was the length of my forearm, more of a bayonet than a dagger. It would have taken an almighty thrust to shove its steel so deep. All the way in, right to the blood-washed hilt.

Stirling was holding it high and I saw the smeared length of it. The tapered metal carried the gruesome stain to a needle point. It was beautiful in form, lethal in usage.

“Metal cast in one piece, blade through to grip,” Stirling noted. “Top quality steel. Now, that is surely most interesting.” Just as interesting, to me, was his expertise in ancient weaponry, revealed with the same casual authority as his booklore. Lips pursed in concentration, he was perusing the hilt. “The grip is wire-wrapped as far as the guard. Symmetrical arms of the cross curved down towards the point, and, hmmm, one arm shorter than its mate.”

“Jeez, oh baby! That is one nasty stiletto.” Herbert Wells like everyone else had his eyes fixed on the sharp horror. “Looks Italian to me, lootenant. Could be a Mafia hit-man’s. Two of their Chicago heavies tried to extract a fee from me and Tam.”

“Fee for what?” Stirling’s pounce rattled Wells into stammering recitation.

“Heck, you know how they try it on. Over there, any business heading for a winner gets the treatment.”

“And what might be your winner, Mister Wells sur?”

“Guess it’s our property scheme.” He jerked a flabby wrist at the castle. “Tam planned to divide up the whole dang estate and sell it off piecemeal. You know, for deer hunting and salmon fishing. Grouse too. That kinda stuff. Big money there, lootenant. The Gulf millionaires flock to Scotland every season. There’s gonna be a five-star Hyatt highrise on the other side of the lake, and the castle will be rebuilt into luxury flats and harems for the sheikhs or whoever can afford to buy in. I’m head of a construction company, see. Knock ’em down, build ’em bigger, that’s why Tam took me on as his partner.”

The chief inspector absorbed this information with his wide ears and a slow nod, then returned his attention to the stiletto. “Forget the Mafia, Mister Wells.” he said. “This is a Scottish dirk.”

Accusing, Abeline raised her voice. “Why do you say Scottish?” She was directing a searing look not at Stirling but at Herbert Wells, whose statement that Laird Tam intended to sell the family home had obviously upset her. Her expression said she suspected any possible mafiosi hereabouts would be headed by this fat loud-mouthed sassanach from across the Atlantic. She clutched her crooked cross, fingers working its four points like rosary beads, maybe seeking direction.

“The dirk is probably of Italian manufacture.” Stirling was peering more closely at the blade. “Yet there is no doubt as to its style, definitely Scottish. The balance is designed to follow its point well into the thrust. The twin-eared cross, one side shorter, the hilt topped by a wee pommel bar, all these traditions are well known. Plus this.”

He pointed to the end I would have called the knob. “The pommel cap is cast in the shape of a rose that has been white enamelled.”

Abeline caught her breath and stepped back, while Stirling continued grimly. “I count the petals.” His forefinger tapped around the emblem’s circumference.

“Hey now, a rose has gotta be English,” asserted Wells, “unless it’s our yellow rose of Texas. White rose is Limey, like Yorkshire pud. Everybody knows that.”

“Seven petals, rosa alba,” the detective declared. “What say you now, my lady?” But Abeline the Fritheen had gone, mumbling in retreat, clutching her twisted cross. His predatory eyes met only her back while young Randy hastened her indoors.

Stirling began striding over the green after them, then diverted course to speak to his constables. With their help he ushered the book club members towards the castle. He called back to me. “What is your name?”

“Sheil B. Wright,” I called back. “I added the B to make a stage name. I sing songs.”

“I haven’t finished with you,” he warned. “Come inside.”

So in I went, following this dour, erudite, implacable highland hound.

WHEN I walked up to the sturdy portal that fronted the castle, I came upon the American again. He sat deflated on a stone bench, his steam gone, his cheeks white, his breathing noisy. A slim young woman was attending to him. From her clothes I recognised the diva who had belted out ‘The Skye Boat Song’ fortissimo to bagpipe accompaniment. Her dark hair was arranged in a short style that matched her animation and her dogmatic greeting.

“He’s had a turn, poor man,” she told me. “Too much excitement. Dip this in the fountain again, will you.” She pushed a bundled cloth at me, damp to hold. I realised she had been mopping his brow with it and, as I opened it out, I recognised a silk scarf. Probably her own.

The fountain near the castle’s entry fed a pond ornamented by giant stone thistles, the central and largest one spouting water. When I returned with the sopping scarf, she applied it with expertise to the back of Wells’s neck, then across his forehead before dabbing his fat cheeks. She had unbuttoned his tight pink shirt and was pressing a palm to his heart. “He’s okay, but would you mind? Go ask the Fritheen for a tot of whisky. That’ll see him right.”

Obedient to her briskness, I dashed into a high-roofed expanse of flagstones, no carpet, and immediately halted in surprise.

Peering down at me from the far wall was a massive tapestry. It stretched right across the plastered surface, above a cavernous empty fireplace and down either side to the bare floor, dominating the whole of this Great Hall. Bathed by a toplight, the impressive extent of colourful threads depicted a single portrait of a young woman.

She had a tight silver perm and a red military jacket. She wore a high lace collar of filigree lace, blue sash draped diagonally from the buttons on one frail shoulder to her skinny waist, lots of golden braid, and a huge star medal on her flat chest. Obviously this was a woman of great importance and with military connections.

Hang on, Sheil, it could be a young male wearing a fancy wig¬. This puzzled thought was interrupted by agitated voices from an open door to which I hurried. Abeline stood before the chief inspector in a small anteroom, a sort of miniature lounge or reception nook where callers might be required to wait. There was no sign of her fancy-dressed nephew.

Conveniently at my elbow, just inside the door, stood a well-loaded drinks trolley. No need to interrupt their business. I grabbed a shot glass and poured good amber stuff from a crystal decanter. She saw me and her eyes flashed across the room. “You there! What are you up to?”

Clattering the decanter back to its nest, I stuttered guiltily, glass in hand. “It’s for Mister Wells. The nurse said he needs it bad. He seems to have collapsed.”

“Nurse? What nurse? There is no nurse. You must mean the English doctor.” But already I was hurrying back to deliver the_ uisge beatha,_ water of life of the Gaels. Old remedies often work wonders. This one did, anyway.

Herbert Wells gulped his medicine in one swallow and nodded his thanks. First to me, then to “the English doctor”. I guessed she was in her mid-twenties, an attractive woman with intelligent eyes and a slow smile. This was directed at me warmly, as if to acknowledge my help in the crisis.

“I am Doctor Irene Morrison.” She pushed a dark curl back into place and regarded her tiny wristwatch while pressing Wells’s wrist for a pulse. There is no reason why a doctor should not sing for fellow picnickers, yet I was struck by the transformation from vocal expertise to the medical sort. Her expression now fitted her caring role − a concentrated frown and sure long fingers. I wondered if she sang to her patients.

The doctor was here as one of the book group, a fact made clear when she straightened up after arranging her soggy pink scarf on the bench to dry. A sheet of paper was pinned to the breast of her woolly. Despite the creased lines of type, I recognised the words: _ “There was movement at the station for the word had passed around . . .”_

“Banjo Paterson,” I said. “Not many English know him.”

She chuckled. “Their loss. I am Australian by marriage but it didn’t work, so here I am home from Downunder. Are you Australian?”

“On holiday,” I said. “Sheil B. Wright. The B is self added to make a stage name. I sing folk ballads.”

She looked pleased to meet another vocal performer and I might have learned more about her, but the patient interrupted.

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