Wildfire at Midnight by Mary Stewart

Author:Mary Stewart
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯)
Publisher: Hachette UK
Published: 2011-02-16T13:00:00+00:00

12

Camasunary IV

I slept late next morning, after a night of nightmares, and woke to a bright world. Mist still haunted the mountain tops, lying like snowdrifts in crevice and corrie, but the wind had dropped, and the sun was out. Blaven looked blue, and the sea sparkled.

But it was with no corresponding lift of the spirits that, at length, I went downstairs, to be met by the news that Roberta had not yet been found, and that the police had arrived. I could not eat anything, but drank coffee and stared out of the window of the empty dining-room, until Bill Persimmon, looking tired and grave, came and told me that the police would like a word with me.

As luck would have it, the officer in charge of the Macrae murder had come over from Elgol that morning, to pursue some further enquiries relating to the earlier case. So, hotter upon the heels of the new development than any murderer could have expected, came the quiet-eyed Inspector Mackenzie from Inverness, and with him an enormous red-headed young sergeant called Hector Munro. A doctor, hastily summoned in the small hours by telephone, had already examined the bodies of Marion and Beagle, and a constable had been despatched to the site of the new bonfire, to guard whatever clues might be there for the Inspector to pick up, when he should have finished his preliminary questions at the hotel.

This information was relayed to me hastily by Bill Persimmon, as he led me to a little sitting-room beside the residents’ lounge, where the Inspector had his temporary headquarters.

Absurdly enough, I was nervous, and was in no way reassured when the Inspector turned out to be a kind-looking middle-aged man with greying hair and deeply-set grey eyes, their corners crinkled as if he laughed a good deal. He got up when I entered, and we shook hands formally. I sat down in the chair he indicated, so that we faced each other across a small table. At his elbow the enormous red-headed sergeant, solemnly waiting with a note-book, dwarfed the table, his own spindly chair, and, indeed, the whole room.

‘Well now, Miss Brooke . . .’ the Inspector glanced down at a pile of papers in front of him, as if he were vague about my identity, and had to reassure himself: ‘I understand that you only arrived here on Saturday afternoon?’

‘Yes, Inspector.’

‘And, before you came here, had you heard anything about the murder of Heather Macrae?’

I was surprised, and showed it. ‘Why – no.’

‘Not even read about it in the papers?’

‘Not that I recollect.’

‘Ah . . .’ he was still looking down at the table, talking casually. ‘And who told you about it?’

I said carefully, wondering what he was getting at: ‘I gathered, from hints that various people let drop, that something awful had happened, so I asked Mr. Grant about it, and he told me.’

‘That would be Mr. Roderick Grant?’ He flicked over a couple of papers, and the sergeant made a note.

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