Along the Highland roads heading for the castle sped the rest of the Halburton-Smythes’s guests.
First to arrive was the raddled and still beautiful Mrs Vera Forbes-Grant and her banker husband, Freddy. They had a country home quite nearby. Then came Miss Prunella Smythe, a stage-struck spinster lady related to Colonel Halburton-Smythe who frequently wished she were not, and elderly Sir Humphrey Throgmorton, a collector of fine china who lived on the Scottish borders and was an old friend of the colonel.
Captain Peter Bartlett was already there, having arrived two days previously. As the first of the guests rolled up, he was lying fully dressed on his bed, admiring a silver cigarette box he had stolen from the library and wondering how much it would fetch.
Jeremy Pomfret had arrived in time for luncheon and was lolling in front of the library fire, tired from his drive up from Perth and too much food and wine.
He was a small, chubby man, and although he was nearly forty, he looked about twenty-five. He had a shock of whitish-fair hair and round blue eyes fringed with white lashes, which looked out ingenuously at the world from a cherubic face. He was very rich, and his passion was shooting anything at all that he was allowed to shoot.
He thought uneasily about the bet he had just made with Captain Peter Bartlett. Colonel Halburton-Smythe had told them at luncheon that he was not organizing a grouse shoot this year, on account of the mysterious dearth of the game birds. So the usual retinue of beaters, made up of crofters, itinerant farm labourers, and schoolchildren on holiday, had not been hired. But anyone who wished to take his chances bagging a few brace on a walk-up was welcome to do so, the colonel had said.
Captain Bartlett had immediately turned to Jeremy.
“Brought your gun, laddie?” he asked, though everyone who was anyone knew that Jeremy Pom-fret never went anywhere without a brace of shotguns.
“Yes, of course,” he replied.
“In that case, how about a bet to see which of us bags the first brace?”
And so the bet had been made, for five thousand pounds.
It had seemed perfectly reasonable and sportsmanlike at the time, especially to a mind mellowed with good claret. And five thousand pounds meant little to Jeremy. But now, sitting down by the fire and thinking it over, he began to have doubts.
Did Peter Bartlett actually have five thousand pounds to bet? He had met the captain before, briefly, at various social events in the Highlands and in London. He had always seemed a bit of a sponger, always broke. Why, then, was he so eager to bet what would be to him a large sum of money? What was Bartlett up to?
Anyway, the details were to be worked out the next night, when there was to be a buffet party held in this chap Henry Withering’s honour, for Colonel Halburton-Smythe had suggested that the bet be made known to all the guests in case anyone wanted to make a side bet.
Still wondering what Bartlett could be up to, Jeremy Pomfret fell quietly asleep.
He snored gently through the noisy welcome being given to that famous playwright Henry Withering.
“This is where we turn off,” said Priscilla, slowing the car. “We take this secondary road. The main road goes along the front of the village and stops outside the Lochdubh Hotel.”
For the first time that long and weary day, the scenery pleased Henry Withering’s eye. “Stop the car a minute,” he said. “It’s lovely.”
The village of Lochdubh lay on the shores of a sea loch of the same name. It consisted of a curve of eighteenth-century cottages, their white walls gleaming in the soft late-afternoon sun. A riot of pink and white Scottish roses tumbled over the garden fences. The waters of Lochdubh were calm and mirror-like. The air smelled of roses, salt water, seaweed, tar, and wood-smoke. A porpoise broke the glassy surface of the water, rolled lazily, and then disappeared. Henry drew a deep breath of pleasure as he watched the circle of ripples from the porpoise’s dive widening and widening over the loch. A keening voice raised in a Gaelic lament arose from someone’s radio.
“It makes London seem very far away – another country, a wrong world of bustle and noise and politics,” said Henry, half to himself.
Priscilla smiled at him, liking him again. She let in the clutch. “We’ll soon be home,” she said.
The car began to climb up a straight one-lane road away from the village. They reached the crest of the road and Henry twisted his head and looked back. The village nestled at the foot of two towering twisted mountains, their sides purple with heather. Then he realized they had stopped again. “It’s all right, darling,” he said. “I’m too hungry to admire the scenery any longer.”
“It’s not that. I just want to have a word with Hamish.”
Henry looked at her sharply. Her cheeks had a delicate tinge of pink. He looked ahead.
A tall, thin policeman was strolling down the road towards them. His peaked cap was pushed back on his head, and his fiery red hair glinted underneath it. He was in his shirt-sleeves, and the shine on his baggy uniform trousers above a large pair of ugly boots made it look as if he had ironed his trousers on the wrong side. He was carrying a bottle of Scotch under his arm.
What a great gangling idiot, thought Henry, amused.
But as the policeman recognized Priscilla and came up to the car, his thin face was lit up in a peculiarly sweet smile of welcome. His eyes were greenish-gold and framed with thick black lashes.
“It’s yourself, Priscilla,” said the policeman in a soft, lilting accent.
Henry bristled like an angry dog. Who did this village bobby think he was, addressing Priscilla by her first name? Priscilla had rolled down the window. “Henry,” she said, “I would like to introduce Hamish Macbeth, our village policeman. Hamish, this is Henry Withering.”
“I heard you were coming,” said Hamish, bending down from his lanky height so that he could look in the car window on Priscilla’s side. “This place is in a fair uproar at the thought o’ having a famous playwright among them.”
Henry gave a cool little smile. “I am sure they are also excited to learn that Miss Halburton-Smythe is finally about to be married.”
One minute the policeman’s face was at the car window, the next it had disappeared as he abruptly straightened up. Henry looked angrily at Priscilla, who was staring straight ahead.
Priscilla muttered something under her breath and opened the car door, nudging Hamish aside. Henry sat listening to their conversation.
“I did not know you were engaged,” he heard Hamish say softly.
“I thought you would have heard,” Priscilla whispered. “You, of all people. You always hear the gossip first.”
“Aye, weel, I heard something to that effect, but I chust could not believe it,” said Hamish. “Mrs Halburton-Smythe was aye saying you was to marry this one or that one.”
“Well, it’s true this time.”
Henry angrily got out of the car. If he did not say something to stop this tête-à-tête, he had an awful feeling Priscilla was going to apologise to this village bobby for having become engaged.
“Evening, Officer,” he said, strolling around to join them.
“Why on earth are you carrying around that great bottle of whisky?” asked Priscilla.
“I won it at the clay-pigeon shooting over at Craig.” Hamish grinned.
“What an odd colour of Scotch,” said Priscilla. “It’s very pale, nearly white.”
“Weel, ye see,” said Hamish with a smile, “the prizes was being giffen away by the laird, and his wife was alone in the tent wi’ the prizes afore the presentation.”
“That explains it,” giggled Priscilla. She and Hamish smiled at each other, a smile that held a world of understanding and friendship from which Henry felt excluded.
“Explains what?” he demanded sharply.