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Authors: Jemma Harvey

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‘He'd never have got away with it,' HG said. ‘Someone would have recognised him.'
‘He was tanned to a crisp from the sun and prematurely aged from all those African diseases,' I reminded him. ‘They didn't have any drugs then. He'd probably had everything from beriberi to lesser spotted swamp fever. Also, he grew a beard. Look at the pictures: Alasdair as a young man and Archie after his return. They're awfully alike, even though they're by different artists.'
‘He might have pulled it off,' Roo said. ‘That was another age. Even if some of the villagers
did
guess, they wouldn't necessarily have said anything. The McGoogles were aristocrats, the most important family in the area. Archie, or Alasdair, was the Laird. Best to shut up and stay on his good side.'
‘It's possible,' Nigel admitted cautiously, wary of any idea he hadn't thought of first.
‘It's
obvious
,' I insisted. ‘Iona married him. “
All those years of watching and waiting
 . . .” He must've promised her he'd come back some day, come back and marry her – and he did. Like in “The Highwayman”:
Look for me by moonlight
,
Watch for me by moonlight
,
I'll come to thee by moonlight
,
Though Hell should bar the way
.
‘My grandmother told me he had the luck o' the deil, Archie McGoogle,' Morag said. ‘There's only one way tae win the deil's luck. Ye mun sell your soul.'
‘What happened to him?' Roo asked Nigel.
‘There was a son,' Nigel said. ‘He was scholarly rather than athletic, a disappointment to his father. Then there was a stillborn child, or more than one. After that, Archie lost interest in his wife. He had a roving eye and was still an attractive man, for all his weather-beaten appearance. And he was the Laird. There were women enough willing to oblige him in these parts. Iona threw herself into charitable works – she was an exemplary lady of the manor, stoic, long-suffering, always kind to the poor and needy. Whatever guilt she bore, she must have done her best to expiate it. She lived to be over ninety, and saw both her husband and her son die.'
‘How?' I asked.
‘The son was sickly – he died of a wasting disease. Archie had a fall from his horse. It was a black stallion called Demon, notoriously difficult to manage; Archie prided himself on mastering difficult horses. It reared and bolted just outside the castle, close to where the maze used to be. The rumour was it saw something no human eyes could see, but ghost stories, once started, have a tendency to persist. It galloped along to the loch, stumbled or something, and Archie was thrown into the water and drowned. A belated and rather inadequate punishment if he was indeed Alasdair and a murderer twice over.'
‘Maybe that wasn't his punishment,' Ash said. ‘Maybe his punishment – if that's the word – was to stay here, in the home he'd killed for . . . an impotent spirit bound to this place for all time. More than one person has seen a figure in Highland dress here; perhaps they weren't imagining it.'
‘Brie and her intuition?' I said.
‘Being empty-headed doesn't make you empty-eyed. She
might
have seen something. We think of evil as a weight, a burden on the soul. Could be that isn't just a metaphor. Evil weighs Alasdair down, holding him here – unfinished business, wrongs that can never be put right. His spirit must linger on, pointlessly, till it withers away altogether.'
‘Do you really get paid for this baloney?' Morty asked.
‘Why not?' said Ash. ‘You get paid for yours.'
‘Considering what has just happened,' Roo said, ‘sneering isn't just cheap, it's stupid.'
‘Oh, Morag here gave a great performance—'
‘I dinna perrrform for any man,' Morag said superbly, rather as if she'd been accused of pole-dancing. ‘I'm no' clear what I said, but I were Iona's image when I were a child, so my Grandma told me. She said the likeness made a bond between us. She had a picture of Iona when she were young and beautiful, but she kept it locked in a drawer, because Iona wasn't well thought of i' the kirk. She turned to heathen ways when she got old, nae doot wanting to confess and be free o' her sins.'
Heathen ways? I mouthed, visualising witchcraft and pagan rites.
‘I think she means Catholicism,' Roo whispered.
‘Do you still have the picture?' HG asked Morag.
‘Ay, that I do. Her picture, and the box she left us, the box wi' no key. They say she gave it tae the vicar firrst, to be broke open if she died before her time, but she had a long life though none too happy, and the box came back tae her family in the end.'
‘Box???' Several of us spoke more or less at once. ‘She left a box?'
‘Her confession!' Roo breathed. ‘Like Lady Mary. Her confession she made to protect herself.'
‘Of course,' said Nigel. ‘If Delphi's right, Alasdair was a habitual killer. He wouldn't have hesitated to dispose of a wife he no longer loved – unless she had a hold over him.'
‘Did you open the box?' HG asked.
‘No,' said Morag, who was clearly superhuman. ‘It were her secret, and she died in her bed. There was nae call to go opening it.'
HG paused before taking the plunge.
‘Would you let us open it?' he said.
Chapter 12:
Pro-Celebrity Marriage
Ruth
We broke open the box on camera, in a moment of incredible TV drama. The real-life drama was pretty hot, too.
Sure enough, there was a letter inside. Delphi wanted to read it out on camera but we let Morag do it; that seemed more appropriate. It was written in the slanting script of the time, with long sentences and capital letters all over the place, and it went on for several pages.
‘This is the True Confession of Iona Cathleen McGoogle, née Craig, being an Account of my Terrible Crime and an Indictment of the man who was my Lover and who led me into Evil. If any open and read this, after my Death, may they find it in their Heart to Forgive me, though I have done little to deserve their Forgiveness. Yet not a night now passes when I do not wish the Deed Undone, and wake in the Darkness like Lady Macbeth, to see Blood on my hands that will never wash off.
When I was but sixteen, I loved and was beloved by Alasdair McGoogle, Laird of Dunblair. We were Betrothed in secret, for he had no Money, and said he would have to go to the Colonies to seek his Fortune before we could be married, and he would not have me Bound to him, though I was not unwilling to be so Bound. Then, in the summer of my seventeenth year he went to London, and wrote to me from that Capital of Empire that he had met a woman of great Wealth who was enamoured of him, and he planned to marry her, for the sake of his Family, though he would always love Me. I learned later that his Mother, who had long suspected our Attachment, was not pleased with the Match, though they were in Sore Need of Money for the Upkeep of the Estate. I thought my Heart would break, but I determined not to Stand in his Way. Eventually he returned, bringing the Heiress with him, and came privily to meet with me, unbeknownst to both his Betrothed and Lady Mary his Mother. He told me he still loved me, he loved me more than ever, and could not Live without me, but he must marry for Financial Advantage. He said he would wed the Heiress, and she would go into the Maze and vanish, like the other McGoogle Bride of long ago. Many have entered the Maze and never come out: the Legend of the Castle had taken them. At first I was shocked, and could not speak, but his Love for me overcame my Resistance, and the Danger of this Venture excited me in the most Dreadful Way, causing me to forget or abandon the Moral Precepts with which I had been brought up. Furthermore, the Heiress was an Englishwoman, older than my Beloved and not handsome, and I was so sunken in Wickedness, it was all too easy for me to see her as my Enemy, deserving of her Fate. I became involved in the Preparations for the Wedding, in order that Alasdair and I could meet in the Castle, but I was consumed with Jealousy every time I saw his Future Bride, for all her Plainness, and I made him Swear to me he would never Hold her in his Arms, never bestow on her a single Kiss. Therefore on the night of the Wedding we put our Plan into action . . .'
It went on, as I said, for several pages. Lady Mary's ultimatum, Alasdair's exile, his vow to return. Iona's Torment when she heard of his death, her Unbounded Happiness when a letter arrived six months later, unsigned, carrying the message that he still lived. And at last, beyond hope or expectation, he came back. Whether he found her changed, far removed from her seventeen-year-old loveliness, she did not say. He married her; he had no choice. She had waited faithfully for so many years, and, in any case, she knew too much. And with marriage came the final disillusionment, the realisation that the man for whom she had sacrificed her Immortal Soul no longer loved her, was perhaps incapable of loving anybody. Knowing him as she did, she wrote this confession, the only safeguard of her future.
‘I would wish for Death,' she concluded, ‘though that is a Sin, but it is a small Sin beside the far greater ones I have already committed. However, I cannot leave my son while he is still a child, and with such a Father, so while Life remains to me, I will do what little I can to atone. Sometimes I pray to the Soul of Elizabeth Courtney –' that was the first and only time she mentioned her victim by name – ‘in whatever Paradise wherein she may dwell, that she might look down on me in the Fires of Hell, and, like the Blessed Damozel, that she may shed a tear for me, a single tear, in Sorrow and Pity for the woman who has so wronged her.'
‘Do you think there is Forgiveness?' I asked Ash. After reading that document, I'd picked up the habit of speaking with capital letters.
‘We have to hope so, don't we?' he responded.
HG arranged for Elizabeth's bones to be buried in the churchyard, though at the opposite end from the McGoogle family vault. There was a small service which we all attended, while the crew filmed from a tactful distance. Since we were all working on a gardening show, the flowers were exceptionally beautiful.
‘Now that the mystery is solved,' Delphi said, justifiably pleased with herself for doing most of the solving, ‘her spirit can move on. So can Iona Craig, with luck. I mean, I didn't like her –' we all tended to speak of them as if we knew them personally – ‘but she
was
sorry for what she did, and spent years being miserable and trying to make up for it.'
‘What about Alasdair?' I said. ‘I suppose we're stuck with him.'
‘Doesn't matter,' Delphi said generously. ‘There's plenty of space. And like Ash said, he's impotent and withering away.'
‘I don't think that was quite how he put it . . .'
Later on, we had a meeting, as a result of which we approached HG.
‘All right,' he said. ‘This looks like a serious delegation. What's the problem?'
‘We don't want you to replant the maze,' Delphi said.
‘Why not? That's supposed to be the whole point.'
‘The mystery was the point,' Delphi said, ‘though we didn't know it till we got started. Now we've solved it. Mysteries are like skeletons: you dig them up and plant over the spot and move on. That's what we need to do. Nigel says you learn from history; you don't repeat it.'
‘You mean if I replant the maze I might find myself murdering Basilisa? A good idea, but I've left it too late.'
‘The maze wasn't evil in itself,' I said, ‘but it was used for an evil purpose. It was never a place for lovers to lose themselves on a sunny afternoon; it was a snare where people could be trapped and killed. Morag says if it's replanted all the spectres will come back. She may be exaggerating – after all, we've laid a few to rest – but do you really want to spend the next ten years listening to her dire warnings?'
‘I'm accustomed,' HG said.
‘Besides,' Delphi said by way of a clincher, ‘it doesn't fit with the rest of the garden at all. We're going for the informal look, all wild flowers and rambling shrubs and statues peeping through clouds of May blossom. Against that background the maze will be
so
out of place, you'll have to call in another gardening show to come and get rid of it.'
I agreed with her, Russell agreed with her, even Morty agreed with her; but HG remained obdurate, clinging to his pet project like a small boy with a toffee apple. It's bad for his teeth and he's covered in stickiness, but he won't give it up. We were temporarily stymied. Mini hedges were springing up in rows, looking rather silly at the moment but still suggesting the imminent arrival of Birnham Wood at High Dunsinane. Delphi tried to subvert Jules and Sandy to dig them up in the night, with the idea of blaming it on the dogs, but Sting was too well trained to be a successful suspect and Fenny had missed out on the digging gene.
‘Perhaps we could arrange for something really spooky to happen,' Delphi said, ‘which would put HG off. Like . . . finding all the shovels and stuff scattered across the ground one morning, covered in blood, or . . .'
‘Digging up a skeleton at the heart of the maze?' I said.
‘Yeah, great – oh.'
Unexpected support came from Auld Andrew, who held forth on the subject at some length in broad Scottish (or possibly braw Scottish). We didn't understand much of what he said, but the gist was clear, involving as it did much saliva-spraying use of the local ‘ch', much rolling of Rs in words like ‘accurrrsed', and even the occasional hint that we were all doomed. After a confrontation with him HG did appear slightly damped, but it may have been because he needed to go and wash off the spittle.
BOOK: Kissing Toads
5.17Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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