The Lammas Curse Read online

  “Countess Volodymyrovna,” he replied, indicating his travelling companion with a smile and a nod of his head, “owns an old dwelling at the southern end of Loch Maw.”

  “I inherited it from my aunt,” the Countess added blithely, “it may be quite a ruin. I have never even seen it.”

  “You must mean Graymalkin,” intervened the brother. “You know the old peel tower, sis, the one built on the little island at the place where the loch narrows and gushes down the beck to Duns.”

  “Oh, yes!” she exclaimed, sounding delighted. “I don’t believe anyone has stayed at Graymalkin for ages and ages. Mrs Ross, the housekeeper, will be thrilled to have some company at long last.”

  “Yes,” seconded the brother with an ironic inflection, “simply thrilled.”

  The entrée course arrived and they all turned their attention to the curried haddock served on a bed of rice. No one spoke for several minutes. Dr Watson broke the silence.

  “How long have you been playing golf?” he asked, directing his question at neither twin in particular.

  “Most of our lives,” responded the sister, who seemed to do most of the talking. “Our father was a keen golfer. He instilled in us a love for the game and we started caddying for him at about the age of five. By the time we were ten we had our own clubs.”

  “That was in South Africa?” pursued the doctor with genuine interest.

  “Yes,” replied the sister before turning to her brother. “It was an idyllic childhood, wasn’t it Carter?”

  “Yes,” he confirmed blandly. “Positively idyllic. I say, this curried haddock is delicious!”

  “I was just about to say the same thing,” affirmed the Countess. “Did your mother also encourage your love affair with golf?”

  “Our mother died in childbirth,” supplied the sister.

  “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that, Will your father be in Scotland to watch you play?” The Countess knew very well that the twins were wards of his lordship, but she wanted to elicit more background information.

  “Our father passed away several years ago.”

  “Oh, how terribly tragic. I’m sure if he could see you now, he would be very proud.”

  Surprisingly, it was Miss Dee, who had seemed the less affable of the twins upon their first encounter, who suggested rounding off the meal with a coffee in the saloon car. She invited Dr Watson and Countess Volodymyrovna to join her. The doctor feigned fatigue, and as soon as he was out of sight hurried to his compartment to peruse his letter in private. It had been burning a hole in his pocket all through lunch and he was keen to slip away without further ado. Mr Carter Dee likewise declined the invitation. He was immersing himself in Shakespeare and wanted to finish reading the Scottish play prior to: Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble...

  4

  The Letter

  Dr Watson locked himself into his compartment and checked the time on his pocket watch. He calculated he had about thirty minutes in which to read the letter he had received from Mycroft Holmes before the Countess returned. Best to re-read the first page he told himself, wondering if Mr Carter Dee had actually perused through the entire four pages of his private correspondence, despite the young man joking about not knowing the contents. The brother and sister put his teeth on edge. One moment arrogant and scornful, the next charming and chummy – Oh, well, at least he had his letter back. His eyes skated across the confident sweep of copperplate handwriting:

  Dear Doctor Watson,

  The lady in question did spend her formative years in Odessa on the estate of the Count of Odessos. The estate, about 15000 acres, lies to the west of the city of Odessa and borders the River Dnistr. The child was doted on and had a much-loved nanny who died seven years ago - a peasant woman by the name of Paraskovia.

  From a young age the lady in question had an army of private tutors and proved to be a precocious student. She easily grasped the finer points of her feminine education – embroidery, drawing, painting, dancing, singing and playing a musical instrument. By the way, she plays an instrument not unlike the violin. It is called a bandura – a sixteen stringed instrument similar to a balalaika or lute.

  When the lady in question was aged six her step-father drowned while crossing the Volga River. The ice cracked unexpectedly and he drowned along with his horse. His body was recovered after the spring thaw and given a traditional Orthodox burial, along with that of his beloved horse! The girl composed a poem in Cyrillic which she read at the funeral. There was apparently not a dry eye in the little church by the time she finished.

  The step-aunt, who owned the adjoining estate, subsequently moved into the Odessos estate of her brother and took over the raising of the child.

  By age twelve the lady in question could read, write and speak several languages. These were: Ukrainian, Russian, French and English. She then set about mastering Latin. Her Bible studies were conducted in both Latin and English.

  She is proficient in archery, fencing, and is an excellent markswoman. Horse-riding – a strongpoint with Ukrainians going back centuries - is also her strongpoint. She can harness a horse blindfolded and ride bareback, steering the horse using only her knees. By the by, she also demonstrated an interest in bee-keeping and during her younger years could often be found in the apple orchard with the bee-keeper!

  By age thirteen she began to travel with her step-aunt, mostly on the Continent, largely in France, staying at the various homes belonging to the step-aunt or with aristocratic friends, where she continued her studies with private tutors, concentrating on fine arts, classical poetry, medieval literature and ancient history.

  At age fifteen she was sent to a Swiss finishing school near Lausanne – Le Palais au Printemps – where she refined her French accent. She also honed her sporting skills and won both the archery and fencing competition that year. Along with the usual classes in etiquette, deportment, and conversation, she studied rhetoric, and was dux of her class, winning both the Cicero and the Seneca prize.

  At age sixteen she began travelling again with her aunt. They paid an extended visit to London and the surrounding counties then ventured across the Atlantic to the east coast of the United States of America. During this time she added geography to her bow with the help of various private tutors who travelled with them.

  At age eighteen she made her debut in New York at the Belle Epoque Bal Blanc and had several eligible suitors in hot pursuit but the step-aunt decided to take off again. They briefly visited South America before crossing the Pacific Ocean to Australia.

  Just prior to the twentieth birthday of the lady in question, the step-aunt was bitten by a tiger snake during a picnic at a place called Hanging Rock. The venom proved fatal and the step-aunt was buried in the local cemetery at Mount Macedon.

  Soon after this tragedy, the lady in question met and married the man you mentioned, with the said alias, a grave-digger by trade who struck it lucky in the goldfields and became an hotelier with a string of hotels and public drinking saloons from one end of Victoria to the other. His forebear had been transported for life after being convicted of the crime of forgery. They were married for three years until such time as the husband shot himself.

  The lady in question then sailed to England and began to trace her connections.

  All seems above board at this stage but I await corroborating evidence. You will appreciate that further enquiries will need to be conducted discretely so as not to set off alarm bells and because the people involved value their privacy above all. Information is trickling in from near and far. I think the only continent the lady in question has not visited is Antarctica!

  Yours M

  Dr Watson had read through the contents of the letter quickly and now sat back in his seat and began to take it all in. The first thing that struck him was that Sherlock would have been proud. The second thing was that the young lady had received an excellent education, the sort only great wealth can provide. The third thing was that Mycroft had not used the Countess’s name.
He didn’t know why that detail made him feel relieved but it did. Perhaps he felt that if Carter Dee or his sister had read the letter they would not have known for certain who the subject was, and likewise who the sender was. Mycroft really was a closed-tyler compared to Sherlock.

  He was about to start re-reading the letter when the door to the compartment began to rattle. Someone was trying to gain entry. Hastily he folded the paper into quarters and shoved it back into his pocket.

  “Why on earth did you lock the door?” quizzed the Countess, tone tinged with chagrin, as soon as the door rolled back.

  “I was going to grab forty winks,” he lied, thinking on his feet, “and I wasn’t expecting you to return quite so soon. I gather Miss Dee grated on you just as much as she grated on me.”

  “Au contraire, mon ami! Nous allons bien. I am just going to freshen up in the bathroom and then I shall head straight back to the saloon car. Miss Dee and I have discovered we have much in common. It is astonishing how many likes and dislikes we share. We could be kindred spirits.”

  “Really?” he said sceptically.

  “Yes, we are both of us orphaned, vulnerable and alone in a foreign land.”

  “You sound like Little Nell in the jungles of darkest Africa!”

  She ignored the facetiousness. “Miss Dee has promised to give me some golf lessons on her free days. She agrees it is the perfect sport for a young lady, not as perspiring as tennis or badminton. She dreams of establishing a golf club exclusively for ladies. When I told her I have a few spare acres out by Hampstead Heath she became quite excited. She has lots of ideas on how a golf course should be laid out. She has a keen sense of humour and is the most charming, witty, gay, and kind person I have met for ages.”

  “We cannot possibly be talking about the same Miss Dee. I’m thinking of the one who is rude, aloof, cold and brusque.”

  “You were the one who knocked into her,” reminded the Countess, “and almost ruined a new set of expensive clubs which, to her, are more than just a plaything. Oh, look! The train is cutting through the middle of a Stone Age circle!”

  He glanced out of the window as she disappeared into the bathroom. A few moments later, with her luxuriant brunette mane re-coifed and all the loose wisps neatly tucked back, and a fresh application of rouge highlighting her Slavic cheekbones, she reappeared, smiling the carefree smile of those born bright and beautiful.

  “What was so important about that letter that caused such a fuss anyway?” she continued interrogatively as she moved to the door and stood with one hand on the brass handle and the other poised dramatically on her hip. “If I didn’t know better I’d say you were working undercover for The Foreign Office. You certainly behaved most peculiarly. Ce qui est?”

  He was getting better at telling lies and barely paused for breath – a job at The Foreign Office was definitely a future possibility. “An old chum from my time in Afghanistan wrote that he would be visiting London over Christmas. I may have mentioned the name Colonel Haytor to you, anyway, he mentioned some dates we might get together. I didn’t want to make a hash of his visit by losing those dates.”

  She rolled her smoky blue-grey eyes as she whirled out the door and disappeared in a perfumed haze of musk, civet and scented violets.

  She certainly must have hit it off with her new best friend. They had probably designed an entire golf course on a napkin by now, including the perfect club house and the perfect wardrobe of sporting attire to go with it, in herringbone, houndstooth, Prince of Wales check and every combination of plaid dreamed-of to date. She did not return to the compartment until moments before the train pulled into Glasgow Central Station at five minutes before six.

  The Royal Scot waited a mere five minutes on the platform before rolling out again. By the time it chugged into Princes Street Station in Edinburgh the train had covered 400 miles in less than eight hours. An engineering marvel! They arrived in the Scottish capital with ample time to check into their hotel and make a reservation for dinner.

  5

  The Caledonian Boar

  The Caledonian Boar Hotel was situated on a leafy square just off Princes Street, a stone’s throw from the train station, making it a comfortable and convenient staging post for travellers who preferred not to journey-on after dark.

  “Guess what?” the Countess trilled, as several porters took charge of her luggage, relieving Xenia and Fedir, her personal maid and manservant, of the task. “The Dees are staying at this hotel too!”

  Dr Watson’s face fell and he couldn’t bring himself to speak.

  “This will restore your good humour,” she continued cheerily, “Lady Moira is staying here too.”

  They had mounted the grand sweep of stairs leading to the first floor when he paused mid-step and turned to look at her. “How do you know that?”

  “Miss Dee told me. She and her brother are meeting the dowager for dinner tonight and then tomorrow they are travelling together to Cruddock Castle. His lordship’s widowed mother came to Edinburgh in order to do some Christmas shopping and to have her regular medical check-up. We have been invited to join them for dinner tonight in the hotel restaurant. I think our Scottish sleuthing holiday is starting off rather splendidly.”

  He commenced climbing the stairs once more but stopped abruptly a second time, his voice fell to a concerned register. “You didn’t, I mean, you haven’t, surely you didn’t mention anything about what we talked about, I mean about the three deaths being suspicious?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Miss Dee-lightful didn’t manage to make you to drop your guard?” he tested.

  “Pas du tout! And there’s no need for that rudeness.”

  “You didn’t reveal anything about the Wicca symbolism?”

  “I was discretion itself!”

  Somehow he felt less than convinced and by the time he reached his room he had a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. There was more than meets the eye about Catherine and Carter Dee.

  The dining room of The Caledonian Boar was unapologetically Jacobite. It displayed portraits of William Wallace, Robert the Bruce, Mary Queen of Scots, and the Earl of Bothwell. It featured Jacobean furniture, tartan rugs, chandeliers fashioned from antlers, and purple heather in vases on each table. Anywhere else it would have looked like a twee parody of Scottishness, but this was Scotland, after all. Lady Moira always stayed at The Caledonian Boar whenever she visited Edinburgh and that was recommendation enough for them.

  The dowager was about seventy years old but looked much older. She was the visual incarnation of the fictional jilted bride, Miss Havisham, just before she went completely bonkers. She had a pale complexion, one shade removed from death, wispy, white, bird’s nest hair, coiled and up-pinned, oodles of jewellery, white lace gloves, and a white silk dress with an overlay of white lace. If she had announced to all and sundry that she was the high priestess of geriatric vestal virgins no one would have doubted her.

  “I know Graymalkin Tower quite well,” she said in a softly rasping voice that sounded like she’d swallowed cobwebs. “It has been quite a while since anyone has stayed there.”

  “What concerns me,” responded the Countess, “is whether Graymalkin is habitable.”

  “You will find it quite habitable,” assured the dowager confidently. “Mrs Ross, the housekeeper, would make certain of that. Graymalkin might be ancient but it is not derelict. It is a small but interesting dwelling of four parts. The tallest section, the peel tower, was built in the twelfth century, around the same time as Lammas Abbey. The sturdiest section, the keep, was built in the thirteenth century, around the time of the Viking invasions. While the two wings that link the different sections are more recent – sixteenth and seventeenth century. They boast larger windows, larger rooms and larger fireplaces. The place is reminiscent of Eilean Donan Castle, right down to the footbridge which thankfully did away with the inconvenience of crossing the causeway, especially in the dead of winter.”

  There were
two unoccupied seats at the table and they were waiting for these to be filled before ordering a la carte. One seat was reserved for Mr Carter Dee who had decided to take a brisk walk prior to joining them for dinner. The other was for Lady Moira’s companion-cum-lady’s maid who was finishing off some letter writing in her room.

  When the latter made an appearance, Dr Watson sprang from his chair and clasped the young woman to his chest in a gesture bordering on dangerously exuberant or possibly lunatic. The pretty young thing blushed profusely and didn’t know where to look. She had wavy, upswept, auburn hair, a gorgeous creamy complexion, and a pert, little, upturned nose.

  “Uncle John!” she stammered with embarrassment as he released his bear-like grip. “What, er, what are you doing here, er, I mean in this part of Scotland?”

  “I’m on holiday,” he gurgled enthusiastically. “I will be staying at Graymalkin Tower with my travelling companion, Countess Volodymyrovna. Let me introduce you.” He turned to the Countess. “Miss Adeline Lambert,” he announced proudly, as if she were his long lost daughter returned to the fold after forty years in the wilderness and not merely the niece of his late wife, whose name had slipped his mind.

  “Enchanté,” said the Countess as the young woman took her seat. “What a glorious coincidence! Dr Watson was just saying the other day that he was hoping to look you up while we were holidaying in this part of the world.”

  “How is it that you chose to stay at Graymalkin?” asked the young woman, expressing curiosity. “No one has stayed there for years and years.”

  Dr Watson jumped in with a reply. “The Countess inherited Graymalkin through her step-aunt and when she professed a desire to visit, and I heard there was a golf tournament nearby, well, nothing could keep us away. So here we are!”

  “In that case, I will see quite a bit of you, Uncle John, since I live at the opposite end of the loch at Mawgate Lodge. I am companion to Lady Moira.”