The Curse of Loch Ness Read online

  ‘Well,’ smiled the girl, ‘it is quite a step for me from a bedsitter in North London to a Scottish castle.’

  Kyle tugged absently at his chin.

  ‘Aye, I suppose it must come as a wee bit of a surprise. What plans do you have for the castle, Miss Millbuie? May I ask?’

  The girl shrugged.

  ‘I simply don’t know. I haven’t even seen the place yet, Mr Kyle.’

  ‘Aye, but you’ll surely sell it? A London girl such as yourself will have no wish to live up this way?’

  ‘I really don’t know.’

  Kyle coughed, clearing his throat.

  ‘I do have some interested parties if the place is up for sale. A property of that size beside Loch Ness can fetch a pretty price these days. The loch is very popular on account of the monster legends, you understand? The castle could easily be converted into a hotel for tourist development. I already have one fairly good offer from a Colonel Maitland who owns an adjoining property … ’

  Jeannie Millbuie held up her hand.

  ‘Mr Kyle, it seems that you are very keen on my selling Balmacaan Castle.’

  Kyle pursed his lips.

  ‘I am, Miss Millbuie. As the legal adviser to the Millbuie estate it is my advice that you should sell the property. You could make a substantial amount out of the deal with which you could invest in a good house in London. The wilds of Strath Errick are not a place for the likes of you.’

  A faint flush spread over Jeannie Millbuie’s cheeks.

  ‘That sounds rather unfriendly, Mr Kyle.’

  Kyle flapped his hands in dismay.

  ‘No, no, no, Miss Millbuie. I did not mean it to be so. I merely wish to advise you as to your best interests.’

  Jeannie Millbuie drew her figure erect in her chair.

  ‘Mr Kyle,’ she said slowly, ‘with due respect, I have been the judge of my best interests for a long time now.’

  ‘I mean no disrespect … ’ began Kyle but she silenced him with an imperious wave of her hand.

  ‘What my best interests are, I have not, as yet, decided. It may well be that I shall choose to sell Balmacaan Castle. But the property is mine, isn’t it?’

  Kyle, subdued, inclined his head.

  ‘It is that, Miss Millbuie.’

  ‘Well, I have come all the way from London to see it and I do not intend to start making decisions before I have done so. I only have two weeks’ vacation from the London Polytechnic and I mean to spend that time at Balmacaan Castle.’

  Jeannie Millbuie felt something of a fraud as she tried to sound assertive. She was not used to throwing her weight about but there was something in Kyle’s attitude which had roused her ire.

  Kyle sat back nodding; he had been entirely correct in his estimation of Jeannie Millbuie’s character. He sighed deeply.

  ‘I quite understand, Miss Millbuie. No offence was intended. However, should you consider the prospect of selling the property … ’

  ‘I shall, of course, consult you as my legal adviser.’

  ‘Very well. So … ’ he stood up and went to a cabinet. ‘There are only these few legal documents to sign. You say you have only two weeks’ holiday from your university?’ he added, making conversation while sorting out a sheaf of papers.

  ‘Polytechnic,’ she corrected.

  ‘Ah yes, of course. You lecture in English, do you not?’

  ‘I do; I’m an assistant lecturer.’

  ‘Aye, teaching is a fine profession,’ he spoke half to himself as he placed some documents before her and indicated with a forefinger the place where she should sign.

  ‘There now, that is all the legal work out of the way,’ he gave his thin smile as he collected the papers and returned them to the cabinet. ‘The property and the trust fund are now completely yours. I shall continue to act for you … unless otherwise instructed,’ he added, still smarting under her demonstration of independence. Simpson Kyle was unused to such attitudes from young women and clung to old-fashioned ideals.

  He handed her a large envelope.

  ‘You’ll find in here copies of all the necessary documents pertaining to the property and trust fund plus some details I have drawn up about the Millbuie family which you might like to know.’

  Jeannie Millbuie took the proffered envelope and stood up.

  ‘What about keys to the property?’ she asked.

  Simpson Kyle raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Gracious me … there’s no need to worry about that. Mistress Murdo, the old laird’s housekeeper, is still living at the castle and taking care of the property … that is until you make your wishes known as to what you will do. I sent her a letter to say that you were coming to Scotland and so she will be expecting you.’

  ‘Very well, Mr Kyle. I shall drive down to Strath Errick tomorrow. Thank you very much for all your help.’

  Kyle followed her to the door and shook hands.

  ‘It is always a pleasure for the firm to serve the Millbuie family.’

  After the door had shut behind the girl, Simpson Kyle stood a long time gazing moodily out of his rain-splashed window.

  Suddenly a broad smile cracked his solemn features.

  ‘Aye,’ he chuckled, ‘aye, she’s a Millbuie right enough.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  Jeannie Millbuie sat picking at her evening meal in the large and almost empty dining room of the Caledonian Hotel. The room smelled of freshly laundered linen table cloths and the atmosphere was one of coldness, a quality of newness as the hotel emerged from its winter’s respite and prepared for the turbulence of the tourist season.

  There were a few people eating their evening meals. Three were assorted travelling salesmen who, contrary to the popular tradition of camaraderie among the travelling fraternity, sat at different tables, studiously ignoring each other. There was also an elderly couple whose appearance and bearing seemed to proclaim an ex-India army officer and his memsahib regretting the passing of the empire. The man had a red face which was thrown into vivid contrast by a bristling white moustache and piercing blue eyes. He barked his order for dinner as if he were ordering the Khyber Rifles into a final desperate charge. The woman was tall, thin and seemingly anaemic and showered disapproval on everything and everyone with disdainful sniffs.

  Jeannie found time to be amused by the caricature.

  She had spent most of the day looking around Inverness. It was her first visit to Scotland and she wanted to see as much of the place as was possible.

  Since her interview with Simpson Kyle that morning she kept feeling tinges of irritation. It was the presumption on the solicitor’s part that she would meekly accept his advice. It was true that she was inclined to sell the property and had only come to Scotland because the inheritance had given her an excuse for a short holiday in a country she had never visited, in spite of her interest in the origins of her grandfather. She certainly had no wish to settle in Scotland; she was English and, moreover, a Londoner and did not really feel happy anywhere else. But she liked to make her own decisions in her own time. That was something her boyfriend, Tim, had found out. He had been pressing her to marry him for nearly a year now but she wondered whether she would be making the right choice. Tim had a lot of qualities which she felt were important to her but she wondered whether Tim and herself were exactly right together. Jeannie admitted she had a somewhat romantic ideal. For a year now she had been thinking about the situation, much to Tim’s increasing fretfulness.

  She smiled ruefully and found herself wishing that Tim could have come to Scotland with her. It would have been nice. Tim was a fellow lecturer at the Polytechnic, but his students had just sat an examination so poor Tim had to remain in London to catch up on the correction of their papers. He had wanted Jeannie to put off her Scottish trip until the summer when they could have made the trip together to see this incredible piece of luck which had come Jeannie’s way. ‘Hell, Jeannie,’ he had laughed, ‘now I must marry you — now that you’ve become an heiress …
or a clan chieftain or whatever. You’ll be able to keep me in the style to which I am not accustomed!’

  She found herself smiling. She would ring him after dinner.

  The situation had not allowed her to wait until summer. The cousin she had never known, the old laird named Donald Millbuie, had died nearly a year ago and it had taken the lawyers all that time to trace her. Decisions about the property had to be taken as soon as possible. The solicitor, Simpson Kyle, had already suggested in a letter that she sell the property but Jeannie had felt an urge to see Balmacaan Castle where her grandfather had been born and which had been the birthplace of countless Millbuies. She had decided to take a vacation of two weeks and drive to Scotland to see the property before making up her mind what to do. Certainly, having come all this way, she was not going to let Simpson Kyle dictate to her before she had even seen Balmacaan.

  She dug her fork savagely into her potatoes to relieve the surge of annoyance she felt.

  Just then the doors of the dining room burst noisily open and a band of four bearded men, whose ages ranged from twenty to fifty years, entered and were shown to a table followed by the disapproving stares of the rest of the guests. Their leader was an elderly man with a shock of white hair, looking rather like Lloyd George. There was something about him which made Jeannie label him as an academic of sorts. He looked rather ‘professorish’. His talk was animated, his hands made stabbing gestures in the air and one sweeping motion would brush aside interruptions which came now and then from the three younger men. The younger men were weir built, observed Jeannie, and looked like fishermen. They all had an out-of-doors look about them. She wondered briefly if they were local men, but then the sounds of well-modulated English accents drifted across the dining room.

  She was still studying them when the waiter, a sandy-haired man, came to clear away her plate.

  ‘Finished, miss?’

  Jeannie nodded.

  ‘What would you like to follow, miss? I can recommend the cream caramel, or there is a gateau, if you wish.’

  ‘The caramel will be fine,’ said Jeannie absently.

  The sandy haired waiter caught the line of her gaze and smiled, dropping his voice confidentially.

  ‘They’re the monster hunters,’ he said.

  ‘They are what ?'’

  Jeannie turned startled eyes to his.

  ‘They are a group of people from some university conducting some scientific search for old Nessie.’

  ‘Nessie?’ repeated Jeannie in bewilderment.

  ‘Yes, miss. You know, the Loch Ness Monster … Nessie.’ Jeannie smiled.

  ‘Oh, that.’

  The waiter grinned broadly.

  ‘I gather you don’t go in for such things as ghosties and ghoulies and wee timorous beasties the like of Nessie, eh?’

  ‘Well,’ admitted Jeannie, ‘you read so much about the Loch Ness Monster in the newspapers but no one has ever found it in spite of all the attempts made by scientists and suchlike. Surely somebody would have found something indisputable by now?’

  ‘Aye,’ observed the waiter, ‘but then the loch is a large place, miss. It is near enough twenty-five miles long and over a mile wide in places and goes to a depth of seven hundred feet at its deepest point. You take it from an old submariner, you could hide a fleet of submarines in there and not find them.’

  Jeannie was impressed.

  ‘I had no idea that Loch Ness was so large.’

  ‘Aye, and I’ll tell you … ’

  The sandy-haired waiter suddenly caught sight of the head waiter looking meaningfully in his direction and hurriedly gathered up her plate. ‘I’ll bring you the cream caramel at once, miss.’

  When he returned the head waiter was no longer in the room.

  ‘Do you believe in this monster legend?’ pressed Jeannie, intrigued.

  ‘Well,’ reflected the waiter with a grin, ‘maybe and maybe not. It’s certainly good for the tourist trade with the likes of yon,’ he nodded at the party of academics, ‘getting publicity for the loch and all. But if you ask me … there is something there right enough.’

  Jeannie observed the twinkle in the man’s eye and wondered whether he was leading her on.

  ‘And what do you think is in the loch?’

  The waiter laid a finger against the side of his nose.

  ‘That would be telling, miss,’ he grinned. ‘But they do say that people have been seeing things in Loch Ness for centuries … even back to the time of Saint Columba and that is nearly fifteen hundred years ago. What do they see? I don’t know, miss, because I’ve never seen anything myself. But whatever it is, all the people who say they have seen it describe something which sounds remarkably similar. Could it be that they are merely repeating the previous descriptions or do they really see something?’

  The head waiter re-emerged into the dining room and the sandy-haired waiter started to busy himself in tidying her table.

  ‘Whatever it is, miss,’ he said, turning with a wink before departing for the kitchens, ‘it brings in good money during the season so I’m not going to complain, am I?’

  The elderly man’s voice rose in timbre from across the room: ‘No, no, no, my dear boy. A plesiosaurus! A plesiosaurus! The signs are all there.’

  The voice then dropped to an animated mumble.

  Jeannie shook her head and smiled to herself, stood up and made her way to the lounge for a coffee.

  *

  It was a bright Spring morning when Jeannie drove her red Volkswagen saloon out of Inverness and headed south on the A862. The hotel receptionist had told her to head towards Inverfarigaig and then ask for directions to Balmacaan from there. Although Jeannie had some local maps with her, she never trusted maps and always preferred to ask the way. About six miles out of Inverness she pulled off the road and asked directions to Inverfarigaig from an old man lolling at the gate of his cottage, watching the traffic speeding to and from Inverness.

  The old man removed his pipe and jabbed it in a southerly direction.

  ‘Keep on this road until you come to the village of Dores. Then you best turn off onto the B852, that’s the old General Wade’s Road. Just before the village you will see Aldourie Castle off to your right. Then you come to the village and soon after there will be a turn also to your right. That’s General Wade’s Road.’

  She thanked him and drove on.

  Two or three miles from Dores, which turned out to be a small village nestling amongst the trees on the very edge of the waters of the loch, she caught her first glimpse of the famous Loch Ness, a vast expanse of water stretching away in the distance. She could see the silvery-grey waters from the top of the hill whose gradient made a gentle descent into Dores. Once in the village she found the turn-off easily enough, passing an aging wooden signboard which pointed the way to Inverfarigaig.

  So this was General Wade’s Road? Jeannie mused as she sent her Volkswagen along the B852. Although the road was nearer to the loch side than the main roadway, her view was obscured by thick growing clumps of trees and bushes and stumpy hillocks. The road was straight but, after all, she reflected, it had been built as a military road. That much she remembered from her history books. General Wade had been sent into Scotland to construct roads to facilitate troop movements between the Hanoverian garrison forts by whicn the Scots could be brought to heel. As a child she recalled learning one of those ridiculous verses through which history is supposed to be impressed into a young mind:

  Had you seen these roads before they were made,

  You would hold up your hands and bless General Wade.

  When she had returned home to impart her new-found knowledge, her grandfather’s face had reddened in anger.

  ‘Listen, young lady,’ he had admonished, ‘you’d best remember one thing about General George Wade … to a true-hearted Scotsman his name stinks in the same manner that Attila does to the European Christian. The English say we should thank him for our roads, eh? We should also thank him for the
military defeat of Scotland and the destruction of her culture, her Celtic culture. He was no more than a militaristic genocidal maniac!’

  In spite of his years in London, Dougal Millbuie was a partisan Scot.

  He would never, she recalled, stand or sing the National Anthem — ‘God Save the Queen’.

  ‘I mean no disrespect to the English people,’ he would emphasise, ‘but yon’s just an anti-Scottish dirge which no self-respecting Scot should lend his voice to.’

  ‘What do you mean, Grandpa?’ Jeannie had asked, round-eyed.

  ‘Yon song, lassie, was composed when the English Hanoverians were fighting the Scots who were supporting the Stuarts in an attempt to bring back the Stuart monarchy and sever the union with England. That was a union made against the will of the vast majority of Scottish people. It was ‘God Save the King’ in those days, meaning fat German George. And there was a fourth verse to it … a verse which is so conveniently left out these days.

  ‘God grant that Marshal Wade

  May by Thy mighty aid

  Victory bring.

  May he sedition hush

  And like a torrent rush

  Rebellious Scots to crush,

  God Save the King.’

  Old Dougal Millbuie had paused: ‘I’m no anti the English people but I’ll no sing a song which celebrates the subservience of my nation.’

  Jeannie smiled as she remembered her grandfather. He was a fiery and passionate man. It was a pity she had not listened more closely when she was younger to his stories about Scotland.

  The hills were now rising in a series of knolls and craggy escarpments. To her right the tangle of trees and undergrowth suddenly gave way to an outcrop of rock. The road had dropped almost level with the waters of the loch and twisted in an abrupt blind curve and then started to ascend into the trees again. Jeannie pulled over, close to a protecting stone wall standing like a parapet along the loch side. She climbed out of the car and stood quietly breathing in the scenic splendour. The vast brooding expanse of water stretched as far as her eyes could see. This was the widest point of the loch and across it, on the opposite shore, she could make out the inward sweep of Urquhart Bay behind which, so she recalled from her brief perusal of the maps, the valley of Drumnadrochit lay. Yes, she could just make out the barely visible tumbled remains of Urquhart Castle, standing in its solitary grandeur by the waters. The old square castle once guarded the entrance to the bay and was now famous as a favourite tourist beauty spot.