Both the Roberts loons are at sea, and their mother right proud of the great atlas they gave her to follow their wanderings in. So, ill-thoughted though she is against those that are helping keep the roof over her by drinking a decent pint of beer, she couldn’t resist that invitation; away she went and was presently back with the atlas, and a fresh pot tea forbye.
So we all – except the greengrocer Carfrae, who was still chewing over the insult to him – had a keek at the map, and Will asked Would Newfoundland be in America? I said it was as much in America as Canada was and no more; you could say it was in the Americas maybe. And then Will wondered Where was it Guthrie’s American cousins lived, the creatures that syne tried to have him proved skite?
Mistress Roberts was that delighted she forgot Will’s tink joke on her aspidistra and offered tea all round; even when Rob Yule said No, he’d have another pint thanks and pay for it she drew it without as much as a sour look. She thought Will had found for certain what was troubling the laird and why he had cried out to Isa’s hearing about Newfoundland and America. Myself, I wasn’t that impressed.
But Will said that was why Guthrie was opening Erchany; the cousins had near got him in the asylum on the strength of his meanness and solitariness, and now he had heard they were plotting at him again and it was driving him to make some show of sane liberality: no doubt he’d bring Christine to witness he was in the habit of cracking a bottle of wine for her. And if we knew the name of the cousins, which we didn’t, certain enough it would be Kennedy or Henderson, the same that Isa minded him calling out in his gallery. At this the stationy said there was a great fascination, sure, in amateur detection, and Rob Yule said that might be, but there was more sense in a bit solid knowledge; if Will didn’t know the name of the American cousins he did, and it was nothing but plain Guthrie. He had been but a wean when the younger Guthrie lads went out to Australia but he minded well his father saying they’d near gone to America instead, their father’s brother’s sons were there, and that they didn’t go was said to be because there was bad blood between the families.
‘There,’ cried Will, ‘blood!’ The greengrocer gave a start, as if it was his blood was being called for, and Mistress Roberts paused with her teapot in the air, bewildered. But Will was thinking he’d fitted a bit more into his picture. ‘Wasn’t Guthrie havering to himself that night about something being in the blood? And wouldn’t it be the malice of the American Guthries he was thinking on, those that have tried to dispossess him and are maybe at it again?’
The stationy said it was highly colourable. And wee Carfrae, who had been glowering in his corner but just couldn’t resist joining in the speak again, said Maybe – but there had been others besides the American creatures at feud with the Guthries of Erchany. Wasn’t there Neil Lindsay, now, that dark chiel with his mind buried in the dim past and believing for certain that he and his were enemies to the Guthrie for ever? And at that the stationy said he didn’t see Guthrie fashing himself over a mad Nationalist loon; still, it was right to explore every avenue.
‘I’d like fine,’ I said, ‘to explore Guthrie’s gallery.’
They all stared; I’ve always found that the less one says the more it’s attended to. ‘And forbye,’ I said, ‘I’d like to know what were the verses the man was chanting that night.’
They stared more at that and the stationy said he didn’t see how Guthrie’s bit poetry could be a relevant factor.
‘Maybe you don’t,’ I said, speaking in the cryptic-like way the stationy himself likes to employ.
Rob Yule gave a bit laugh at that and said perhaps I could tell them what was in Guthrie’s mind: was Will right in thinking he had opened up Erchany for fear of the Americans?
‘I think it fell unlikely that the American cousins are fretting any more about Guthrie, or he about them.’ And at that I knocked out my pipe and prepared to dander home.
Reader, there’s ever a judgement waits on arrogance. I had got to the door of the private when it opened that briskly I had to jump back from it and in came a strange quean in motoring clothes. ‘Am I interrupting?’ she asked, and seemed fell certain she wasn’t, marching straight to the bar and speaking crisp-like but friendly to Mistress Roberts. ‘The postmistress can’t be found and I’ve just no time to look for her. Would you very much mind telephoning this? I’ll have a sherry.’ And out of her pocket the quean pulled a paper and a bit silver.
I don’t doubt we all gowked at the girl as if she had been a two-headed calf. But she never minded us but just stood, a slip of a young creature and yet with something extra-purposeful to her, drinking her sherry while the Roberts wife went through and telephoned her telegram to Dunwinnie. Syne she turned round and had a look at us, brief and concentrated, as if we were something with a couple of asterisks against us on a Cook’s tour. Then when Mistress Roberts came ben she took her change, said a word of thanks and was out of the Arms in a winking. Half a minute later came the sound of her car making off up the road as if it didn’t think to stop this side of Inverness.
There was silence for a bit. We were all thinking it unco that just as we had been talking of America and Newfoundland in should step an American lassie – for that she was that no one who had ever been to the Dunwinnie picture palace could doubt. Mistress Roberts stood polishing glasses behind the bar, and there was a gleam in her eye that didn’t come just from the effort of scouring the mortal sin of beer from them. She had the news now and she knew it.
Presently Rob had a try at her. ‘It would be a telegram, Mistress Roberts, the quean was sending?’
‘It was that,’ said Mistress Roberts, and gave the rest of her whistle to breathing hard on a pint pot.
‘To book her a room for the night up the road, maybe?’
‘Maybe aye and maybe no, and it’s nobody’s business but her own,’ said the Roberts wife, virtuous-like. She hadn’t yet forgiven Rob for the way he’d treated Carfrae’s Non-Injurious. But it was plain she was fair bursting all the same; for two–three minutes she polished her glasses as if she were trying to take the black from the face of the Devil. Then ‘Faith,’ she said, ‘I was right stammagasted!’
This time Carfrae tried, and we knew he was much liker to get round her. ‘There was something unco in the message, mistress?’
‘Maybe aye and maybe no again. If you must know it was to someone in London and it just said Hope to have important news soon.’
Will Saunders got up and joined me by the door. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘that there’s much occasion for what Carfrae calls evil idle talk in that.’
‘Maybe no and maybe aye. But I’ll tell you this. Mr Bell there ought to be real interested in the signature.’ And at that she banged down the last of her glasses and turned to give a bit stir to her teapot.
‘The signature?’ I said, puzzled.
‘Just that, Mr Bell. The lassie’s signature was Guthrie.’
8
And now there’s only what the author lad in Edinburgh will call the Testimony of Miss Strachan and I’ll be coming to Christine – Christine who you may think will be the heroine of his book. You’ll remember Miss Strachan is the schoolmistress, her that wrote a paper on Visual Education. Maybe it was no bad subject for her; she’s a peering body by nature, hungry in other people’s affairs, and joins a sharp eye to a long nose. And no doubt it was the inquisitiveness of her that took her the long way round to visit her auntie at Kildoon.