Unquiet Spirits: Whisky, Ghosts, Murder by Bonnie MacBird

Author:Bonnie MacBird [Bonnie MacBird]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2017-06-20T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 22

Ghost!

made my way back to the East Tower, eventually managing to locate the spiral stone steps that led to the remote hall and our rooms. This area remained shrouded in obscurity, unlike other areas of the castle, with only oil-lit wall sconces and candles casting a dim glow. Considering this and its haunted reputation, I puzzled again why we had been placed there.

However I was eager to share what I had learned from Mrs McLaren and approached Holmes’s room, at some distance down the hall from my own.

I knocked, but he did not answer. As I stood there listening, Mungo, our elderly attendant approached with a tray of water, whisky, and biscuits to tide us through the evening. ‘Refreshments for you both, sir.’

I noted that his hands trembled, causing the glasses on the tray to rattle.

‘Please bring them to my room. Mr Holmes appears to have retired.’

‘Very good sir.’ He began following me down the hall to my room. ‘If I were you, I would go inside your room, sir, and remain there,’ said he.

‘One moment, Mungo,’ I said. ‘I saw a chamber pot in my room. Surely there is plumbing? I believe you pointed out the lavatory at the end of the hall. It is modernised, operable, is it not?’

We had reached my door, and Mungo stood there, with an unreadable expression.

‘Do not go down there, sir, at any time during the night. During the day, yes, but not at night.’

‘Why? Is it operable or is it not?’ said I with some asperity.

‘There is a ghost who often appears at night. It is a danger, sir. A servant fell down the steps nearby and broke his neck. Please do not ask me more.’ The tray rattling grew louder.

‘Give me that, please.’ I relieved him of his tray before its contents were dashed to the floor. ‘I do not believe in spirits, Mungo, save those that you have brought me to imbibe. Either the plumbing works, or it does not. Which is it?’

The old man hesitated, then answered with reluctance.

‘It is built over a very old latrine from centuries past, sir. Just a long empty channel, several storeys deep, that is how they did it then.’

‘But the laird has modernised the buildings. You have electric lighting, at least in some places. You mentioned modern plumbing earlier in the day.’

‘When the workmen came to clear out the one in this hall … down there,’ Mungo indicated the end of our hallway past Holmes’s rooms, ‘to build the new facilities, they found …’ he shuddered.

‘Spare me the details, Mungo.’

‘No, sir. They found what were thought to be human remains. More than one body, in fact.’

‘My God! Recent?’ I was beginning to think the McLaren estate was a veritable minefield of tragedy.

‘Difficult to tell, because of, well, the condition, after time, in … you understand. But the bones were shattered, as if fallen from a great height. Fallen, pushed, we do not know. Imagine, sir!’

I inwardly cringed at the thought of such barbarity.

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