Kissing Toads (49 page)

‘Too right,' said Russell. ‘Even
I've
done Charles II. Funny how no one ever bothers with Charles I.'

‘He was fairly boring,' Roo said. ‘No charisma, no mistresses, no head. Boring.'

‘I don't like it,' I whispered to her. ‘Didn't they use a ouija board in
The Exorcist
?'

‘You never saw
The Exorcist
,' said Roo. ‘You said it was too scary.'

‘Exactly!'

But if HG wanted it to happen, then of course it did. Ash said the cameras mustn't be intrusive and ruled out TV lighting, which led to a row with the crew, but with HG's support he got his way. It was decided five of us would take part: HG, Ash, Morty, Nigel and me. But Nigel felt it would be bad for his image as an academic historian to be seen involved in a séance, and Ash said four was too few. Roo refused to go on camera, Russell declared that even ghosts needed direction, and Dorian was at school. In the end, Russell volunteered Morag, because ‘she's a great character, and we need a Scots accent to get the authentic atmosphere'. Predictably, she said a ouija board was ‘an instrument o' the deil', but allowed herself to be persuaded. HG's staff all saw themselves as aspiring TV stars by now. Cedric would undoubtedly have been keen to join in, but fortunately didn't find out about the project until it was too late.

We did it in the great hall for reasons of ambience, with one low-wattage lamp (at the insistence of the crew) and plenty of candles. It took me ages to make up my mind what to wear. I had clothes for swanning round the garden and clothes for swanning round the castle, but nothing suitable for a séance. Should it be clinging black with cleavage, like Fenella Fielding in
Carry On Screaming
, or something ethereal and floaty with beads? Either way, I didn't have anything that fitted the bill. (It is a curious fact, but no matter how many clothes you take with you, whether on location or on holiday, there is always one occasion where you have abolutely nothing to wear.) In the end, I settled on a compromise: velvet jeans with a baroque pattern of swirls and cherubs, and a chiffon top with droopy bits. No beads. There are lengths to which I will not go.

I had a vague recollection of playing with an improvised ouija board once with some schoolfriends, using Scrabble letters and an inverted coffee cup. Come to think of it, we got in touch with Charles II. A social guy, obviously, even when dead.

We were filming in the evening so it would be sufficiently gloomy. Roo, Nigel and Russell were there, though Russell had to promise not to interfere; Mick had gone on strike since he wasn't allowed proper lighting, Dick was pissed and Nick stoned out of his brain (or vice versa). Except for those of us taking part, no one else was allowed in. Morag wore a black dress which made her look as if she was in mourning and a heavy silver cross which Morty said, in an undervoice, she ought to turn upside down.

‘This is a ouija board,' Ash reminded him, ‘not satanic rites.'

We sat round the table, HG on one side of me, Morty on the other, with Morag next to HG and Ash between her and Morty. Thank God we didn't have to hold hands. Morty started the proceedings by touching my leg. I dug my nails into the back of his hand. None of it felt very supernatural.

I was co-opted to question the spirits, should any of them turn up.

I'd never seen a proper board before, and the one Tyndall Fiske had bought was a work of art, rectangular and almost four feet long with the numbers and letters in a circle and a painted eye in the centre with
yes
and
no
written above and below it. Outside the ring of letters there were the twelve signs of the zodiac, though no one knew what for, and on one side was a disfigured, rather pouty moon, and on the other a smiley sun. The lettering looked decidedly Tolkienesque, both pointy and curly, though Ash said the influence must be Arabic, since it came from Tangiers. Nigel began to talk about someone called Zorro-something (I thought he was a sort of Spanish Robin Hood) until Russell shut him up. As the board was so gorgeous, HG got one of his poshest glasses, a heavy cut-crystal whisky tumbler with lots of room on the base for five fingertips. He inverted it in the middle, the camera started rolling, and nothing happened.

Presently, nudged by HG, I asked in a suitably hollow voice, ‘Is anyone there?'

‘Try not to ham it up,' Russell said. ‘Start again.'

‘I'm not hamming! I just wanted to be in tune with the whole paranormal thing—'

‘Start again.'

No lights, camera, no action. I asked the same question. ‘Is anyone there?' Morty was suppressing a grin; Ash looked inscrutable. Morag, probably because of her religious training, had the right kind of frozen glare, like Mrs Danvers in
Rebecca
.

HG said, ‘We may not all believe in this, but there's no point in doing it without conviction. Try to keep an open mind.'

Then the glass moved.

It moved to
no
.

‘Who's taking the piss?' Morty demanded – but at least he demanded it in a hushed voice.

Ash said: ‘No reason why the dead shouldn't have a sense of humour.'

Further questioning revealed a severely dyslexic spirit with an inability to keep to the point. Not surprisingly, it turned out to be Charles II.

‘Perhaps it's Bonnie Prince Charlie,' Roo suggested from the sidelines. ‘You know – he thinks he's Charles III, but he got the wrong number.'

The glass whizzed instantly to
yes
.

‘See?' I heard Russell murmur. ‘Ghosts take direction.'

He and Roo shouldn't have been talking, but everyone knew this section would be cut.

‘Ask him if he hid out in the maze,' HG prompted me.

I obliged. The glass, picking up its cue, went to
yes
.

‘Do you know anything about the death of Elizabeth Courtney?' I went on, deciding to cut to the chase. I didn't believe there was a spirit there at all, let alone Bonnie Prince Charlie (who was centuries too early to have known Elizabeth), but I might as well play along and ask the important questions.

The glass didn't move at all, but the silence felt suddenly tense. Then it slid from side to side, as if unable to make up its mind.

In the background, there was an audible hiccup (from Dick), and the camera stopped rolling.

Russell said: ‘Bugger.' Morty gave a short laugh, HG looked exasperated. Only Morag still maintained her fixed stare, as if she was gazing into another dimension. (Or, as Nick said later: ‘On some really cool stuff, man.') She spoke in a voice that would have been husky if Morag had done husk.

‘
She's here
.'

‘Who?' I cried. ‘Who's here?'

‘Camera!' hissed Russell. Dick hiccupped again. The camera jammed.

Morag didn't seem to hear me. She appeared to be talking to someone – listening to someone – who wasn't there, asking questions, repeating phrases and fragments, as if horrified by what she heard. If it was an act, it was a good one. There was no eye-rolling or mouth-frothing; her expression stayed oddly blank. What made it somehow more convincing was that her Scots accent lightened (I'd always suspected it was overdone), so she sounded quite different.

‘Amends . . . ye want to make amends? . . . One evil deed . . . but such a deed . . . Ye would not give her even a single night? . . . To pay lifelong is not enough. His love wore out? But yours did not. A woman loves for aye . . . He married you . . . after all those years o' watching and waiting . . . There were others? There would be . . . but ye saw to it he could not harm you? Because ye knew . . . ye knew the truth . . . His cousin too? The wickedness of it . . . wickedness and greed . . . And ye were part of it . . . ye led her to her doom . . . All for love? Will ye tell that to the good Lord? Blood on your hands . . . for love . . . May He have mercy on your soul . . .'

She fell silent, and there were tears on her face – I saw the glitter of them in the candlelight, though her stare had not changed.

Ash said gently, ‘Morag.'

She blinked, and seemed to focus on us again.

‘Great show,' said Morty.

‘Ha' ye finished wi' yon inferrnal game?' Morag said, indicating the board. ‘I must . . . I must ha' dropped off a wee minute. I wouldna stay awake tae chat wi' the deil. Ye could talk tae demons wi'out me.'

‘Actually . . .' HG said. He and Ash explained to her what had happened, while her face grew stiff again, this time in shock – disbelief – disapproval – any combination.

I got up and walked away. I needed to think. Light was dawning; facts were falling into place. Morag had evidently been communicating with her great-great-however-many-greats aunt; there were clues in the one-sided conversation, road signs pointing me in the right direction. If I could just concentrate for a moment . . .

In my head, the memory of Elizabeth Courtney said, ‘
Yes!
'

‘I've got it!' I said, turning to the others. No one took any notice, so I said it again, louder. ‘I'VE GOT IT!'

‘Got what?' said Morty.

‘The truth, the mystery, the secret of the maze. It came to me then – something Morag said.'

‘Go on,' HG said grimly. Why grimly I don't know, but people do grim at these times. It builds up the suspense.

I was all for that.

‘Iona did it,' I said, ‘we know that, but not with Archie –
with Alasdair
.' Puzzled expressions met mine. ‘Don't you see?
They
were the ones who were madly in love – the Romeo and Juliet syndrome, only without much opposition. Their problem was cash. The McGoogles were poor, and Elizabeth Courtney was rich. She fell for Alasdair, and he planned to marry her, and then kill her. Iona went along with it because she loved him. Like Jackie in
Death on the Nile
. She loved him “
beyond reason and beyond rectitude and beyond pity
”.' I'd done a dramatisation of the book once on radio. ‘Elizabeth didn't even know about the previous engagement, so Iona lured her into the maze, gave her the slip close to the centre, and Elizabeth found her own way there. And at the heart, behind the statue, was Alasdair, her new husband, her love. He put his arms round her, gave her one last false kiss –' I felt I owed it to her to get the maximum amount of drama out of the story – ‘and strangled her. Then he hid the body in the chamber which, you can bet, only the McGoogles knew about. The legend was his cover story. Without a body, there was no crime – just another tragedy to add to the McGoogle family saga. It was a superstitious age, and there was no proper forensic science. The maze took the blame. Brides were always disappearing there: it was practically a tradition.'

‘It sounds good so far,' Russell said, ‘but then it all falls down. If he'd got away with it, why Africa?'

‘What did Morag say that gave you the clue?' Roo asked.

‘How did—'

‘Wait!' I was still sorting it all out in my mind. ‘Morag said, “
You wouldn't give her even a single night
 . . .” Don't you see? Iona was passionate and possessive – she couldn't bear for Alasdair to sleep with Elizabeth even
once
. That's why they had to do it on the wedding night. Then he pretended to be grief-stricken and destroyed the maze and any plans of it
to conceal the body
. That way, even if someone heard or guessed about the underground chamber, they'd never be able to find it.'

‘By George,' Russell said, in the words of Professor Higgins, ‘I think she's got it.'

‘It certainly fits in,' HG said. ‘But then . . . Africa?'

‘His mother,' Roo said, struck with the light of inspiration. ‘His mother knew.'

‘Of course,' said Nigel. (He hadn't said anything to date, and an
of course
was long overdue.) ‘She knew he was in love with Iona – that was why she disapproved so strongly of his marrying Elizabeth. She must have sensed his moral weakness and distrusted his motives accordingly. She feared all along what her son might be capable of. When Elizabeth vanished, she would have guessed the truth and confronted him. His exile was the price of her silence. He had murdered – for nothing – and she wore black to the end of her days, not in mourning for her daughter-in-law but for her son.'

‘Yes, but she must have known he would come back after her death,' Russell said prosaically.

‘He died first,' HG pointed out.

‘Maybe she left some sort of confession of what she knew,' Roo said. ‘In the hands of her lawyer, to be opened in the event of Alasdair's return. Only when he died she destroyed it.'

‘Not wanting to risk blighting the family honour,' I concluded.

‘Then Archie came back, so Iona married him?' Morty sounded sceptical.

‘We know that,' said HG.

‘No,' I said. ‘You still don't get it. It wasn't
Archie
who came back. It was
Alasdair
. Morag said: “
His cousin, too?
” In the wilds of Africa anything could happen – and it did. Alasdair killed his cousin and stole his identity. I expect he had a faithful henchman who helped him, some local chief whose life he'd saved and who thought killing relatives was the order of the day.'

‘That's
so
politically incorrect,' said Russell.

‘No it isn't,' I protested. ‘Africa is like that – raw and primitive. Life there is cheap. I know: I read a Wilbur Smith once.' Roo stared at me. ‘On holiday. Anyway,' I went on, ‘he waited till
after
Lady Mary's death, then he came home. That
proves
it. Archie wouldn't have needed to wait.'