Murder on the Moor - C. S. Challinor [1]
“Now, take heed,” the younger brother said. “The leak will likely get worse, so I suggest ye get a bigger pan.”
“We’ll take fifty pounds now for the consultation,” the other said. “Ta verra much, squire,” he added as he pocketed the money in greedy anticipation of an afternoon at the pub.
Rex was now anxious to get the two men out of the lodge before Helen returned from the village shop and saw the mud they had tracked up the stairs on their work boots. She was as industrious and house-proud as a badger and had spent the past two days sprucing up the place in preparation for the housewarming party.
He felt less enthusiastic about the proceedings. The whole point of the lodge, after all, had been for them to spend time together by themselves. A stroke of luck had brought him to this property near Inverness, a couple of hours’ drive north of Edinburgh, where he lived.
It might seem odd and slightly suspect to some people that a mature man would live at home with an aging, if still sprightly parent, but the arrangement had made sense when Rex lost his wife to cancer. He had not wanted his son, then fifteen, coming home from school to an empty house, and so he had moved back in with his mother. Now that Campbell was away at college in Florida, Rex felt an increasing desire to spread his wings.
After mopping up the mess on the stairs, he wandered down the path to wait for Helen at the gate. The stone lodge stood sideways to the loch, which at first sight seemed odd, but in fact was quite logical. Logic always counted more for Rex than aesthetics and may have been the reason the Victorian hunting lodge had not been snapped up sooner.
The front door—at the side of the house—faced north toward the village of Gleneagle. The conservatory built onto the south side hoarded any sun the thrifty Highland summer deigned to bestow within its glass walls and looked upon a garden carpeted with bluebells and hedged by late-flowering rhododendrons and azaleas.
The best view, though, was reserved for the living room, whose large windows opened onto the loch. This is where the logic of the architect back in 1845 came into play, for Loch Lown comprised only a narrow body of water, not much wider than the breadth of the house, and by positioning the lodge in this perpendicular manner, the most important rooms embraced a long perspective of the lake.
Gleneagle Lodge was the only residence on the mile-long loch, which had once belonged to the laird of Gleneagle Castle, now a tattered ruin at the top of the hill in the direction of the village. Parcels of the estate had been successively sold off to honor the debts of the dissolute Fraser family, distant relations of the famous clan of that name, until the grounds had shrunk to the confines of the four-bedroom lodge, loch, and several hundred acres of hill and glen, currently in the proud possession of Rex Graves, Queen’s Counsel.
The loch, though not large, was deep, and believed to connect by means of underwater tunnels via Loch Lochy, a neighboring lake, to Loch Ness. Fortunately for Rex, Loch Lown was off the beaten path and sunk amid steep pinewood hills surmountable only by one axle-breaking road or by the most energetic of hikers. Rex hoped his ubiquitous “Private Property—Keep Off” and “Deer Stalking Strictly Prohibited” signs would further deter the public from venturing onto his land.
He spotted a figure cresting the hill and, minutes later, the form of Helen appeared carrying a basket. He started out on the single-track road and began climbing. The foothills bloomed with purple heather. The sunlight filtering between the pine trees warmed his shoulders. It would have been perfect weather were the air not rife with biting midges, the curse of Highland summers. Swatting them from his face, he smiled up at Helen as she plunged down the