The Megstone Plot by Andrew Garve

Author:Andrew Garve [Garve, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781447215820
Publisher: Pan Macmillan UK

Chapter Ten

There was too much swell for the launch to come right in, even on the lee side, but she had a dinghy in tow, and the policeman, a solidly built, gray-haired sergeant, rowed himself to a sheltered inlet and scrambled ashore. As he drew near me, he stared as though I were some apparition.

“Commander Easton?” he said. There were disbelief and awe in his voice—but no trace of hostility.

I nodded.

“Well, I’ll be damned!” He looked at Shelduck, he looked at the limpet shells and eggshells scattered all round her, he looked up at the smouldering fire on the summit, and he looked again at me. “Are you all right, sir?”

“More or less.”

He was obviously bursting with questions, but sensibly he didn’t ask them. “Well, we’d better get you out of it,” he said. He produced a flask from the side pocket of his coat. “Here, drink some of this—it’ll do you good.” I took the flask, and it was full of hot coffee laced with brandy. I’d almost forgotten that such comforts existed. I sipped it slowly while he went aboard Shelduck and packed my bag. Then, in a dour Scottish silence thickened by incredulity, he helped me into the dinghy and rowed me to the launch. The boatman nodded to me, goggling. He seemed totally deprived of speech.

I was still very much in the dark myself. As we set off in the direction of Seahouses, I said, “What brought you, Sergeant?—did you see the fire?”

He shook his head. “Not till we’d almost got here. It was the bottle with your message in it.”

I nearly said “What bottle?” but I bit the words off just in time. “Ah!” I said, and waited.

“Washed up this morning, it was, at Bamburgh.”

Light began to dawn. I couldn’t for the life of me imagine how Isobel had done it, but if a bottle had been found with a message from me in it, she was obviously the only person who could have fixed it. I might have been right about her reluctance to sacrifice herself, but it was clear that I’d grossly underrated her initiative.… I gave a noncommittal nod. The less I said the better, till I knew a bit more.

By now the sergeant couldn’t contain his own curiosity any longer. “What happened, sir?” he asked. “How on earth did you come to get stuck like that?”

I told him in a couple of hundred well-chosen words. He kept shaking his head from side to side. “Och, there’s going to be some trouble over this,” he said. He continued to stare at me. “What do you want to do when you get ashore? Shall I take you along to the hospital?”

“There’s no need for that,” I told him. “I’ll be all right once I’ve got a bit of food inside me.”

“The hotel, maybe?”

“Will they have me like this?”

“Aye, they’ll have you.”

I nodded again and let my chin sink on my chest. I didn’t have to pretend to be exhausted.

The news had begun to get around, and there was a little knot of people on the quay.

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