Page 36 of The Midnight Secret

‘Nothing. It just makes you wonder, doesn’t it, how well we ever really know our friends and neighbours. All those years we lived cheek by jowl, and yet I never once suspectedany of these secrets. Not Mary and Lorna’s. Not yours and Donald’s. Not Jayne and Norman’s...Am I such a fool?’

‘David, you see the best in people. There’s nothing wrong with that.’

‘No? Not even when people are getting hurt? Norman beats Jayne! Someone murdered Mathieson. They stabbed him repeatedly in the chest, over and over.’ He shook his head. ‘The rage they must have had...! Frank was a powerful man.’

‘Aye, but he was tied up, remember. Or at least, he was when Flora and I saw him.’

He looked back at her. ‘When did you see him?’ he frowned.

‘In the middle of the night, when we were coming back from the other side, after the birth...Flora could scarce walk. It took us hours.’

‘Oh!’ David flinched at the thought of his sister’s suffering. ‘Yes.’

‘Lorna had gone ahead with the baby to take it to Mary while it was still dark, so she could get the neighbours over as witnesses...’ Mhairi faltered as she thought back, remembering the horror of that night, Flora’s pitiful cries as she had staggered over the moor. ‘When we saw Frank, he was on the ground and tied up, just as Effie had left him. He was conscious, but barely. He’d got through most of a bottle of whisky.’

‘Whisky? Where did he get that from?’ They both knew the minister had been intolerant of any alcohol on the isle.

‘Captain McGregor brought it over for Eff, with the money she’d earned guiding...It was all planned. She needed to keep Mathieson incapacitated until she could get off the island. She’d tied him up, but she’d left a knife nearby for him to free himself, and some water and oatcakes. It was enough to keep him going till theHarebelldropped anchor a few days after. Frank was out of it when we passed by, but definitely alive.’

‘My God,’ he muttered. ‘All this was happening that last night.’

‘I know. I keep wondering if we were the last people to see him alive. Well, I mean – apart from the murderer.’

They had arrived at the bus stop now. A few people were lingering, and several heads turned at her last word.

David stood in silence for a few moments and she could see he was thinking hard.

‘What?’ she asked, seeing his concern grow.

He lowered his voice to little more than a whisper. ‘In the photos the police showed us, the ropes had been cut. Mathieson had got himself free.’

Mhairi shuddered at the thought of what the factor might have done to Effie if he hadn’t been attacked. ‘Okay.’ She wasn’t sure where he was leading with this.

‘That suggests to me it had to have been a man who did it.’ A dark look came into his eyes. ‘A strong man – with a strong propensity for violence.’

Mhairi stared at him, sensing a hypothesis quickly taking root in his mind. ‘Norman?’

‘He’s probably one of the few men who would have been able to go toe to toe with Mathieson physically.’

She blinked rapidly. She had never particularly liked Norman, but to see him as a murderer...? ‘He and Frank were friends, though. They were always together.’

‘Precisely. And it’s almost impossible for anyone to spend time with either one of them for more than ten minutes and not have some sort of disagreement break out. They’re both bullies and they both like to be top dog. It would have been Frank on St Kilda, given his position with MacLeod. But once we were evacuated...I wouldn’t be surprised if Norman began to overstep, would you?’

Mhairi remembered only too well Norman’s grandioseambitions. He had denied his own sister her happiness because he wanted her to ‘marry up’ like Flora and wed a rich man from the mainland.

David dropped his head lower towards her as he leaned against the wall. ‘There’s a theory that Mathieson was stealing from MacLeod, isn’t there?’ he asked. ‘Effie said the police arrested the steward at Sholto’s estate, and he confessed there were three of them in it. Him, Frank, and another.’

‘Something like that...’ Mhairi said slowly. ‘Although I’m not sure if it’s proven.’

‘Well – what if the third man was Norman?’

‘As far as I know, there’s only this steward’s word for that, and I wouldn’t put much credence by what he had to say. Effie told me he even tried to implicate her in the thefts.’

‘But just say itwasNorman,’ David pressed, a dog with a bone now. ‘There’s no honour among thieves; it would have been each man for himself. What if one of them double-crossed the others? They had a disagreement, it became a fight...We were only hours away from leaving the isle at that point. Norman would have known he had a good chance of getting away.’

‘That’s pure speculation David. We have no proof of any of it. Not that they were in cahoots together, nor that they fought...’

But David was looking at her with newfound conviction. ‘It was him, Mhairi. I know it was. And I’m going to go to the police and tell them.’

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