At the Water's Edge, Page 31

  "Look," he said. "I know this doesn't change what happened, but I've decided to send a telegram to the Colonel. I'm going to tell him Ellis was lying about being color-blind. There are tests, you know. He can't fake it forever."

  After a pause, I said, "What for? Revenge?"

  "Because he deserves it! Because in addition to what he almost managed to have done to you medically, he tried to kill you! And he destroyed the footage! And he cost me Violet! He's cost me everything, probably even you!" He dropped his head and pressed his fingers into the corners of his eyes, as though he were about to cry.

  I watched him, unmoved.

  "He didn't cost you Violet," I said. "You were just as terrible to her as you were to me."

  He quit trying to cry and looked up. "I beg your pardon?"

  "I know everything, Hank."

  "Well, apparently I don't. What are you talking about?"

  "Were you heads or tails?" I asked. "And more importantly, did you win or lose?"

  His eyes went wide and unblinking. He stared at me for a long time. "Jesus, Maddie. I don't know what to say."

  "I think I'd prefer it if you said nothing at all."

  Anna came back into the room.

  "Bob the Bobby is downstairs," she said. "He says he needs to speak to both of you right away, and since it can't wait and Maddie can't come down, he's asked me to check if it's all right for him to come up to the bedroom, even though I was very clear that it's not at all proper, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised if you said no."

  "It's all right," I said. "He can come up."

  I tried to remain calm, but was shot full of adrenaline. What if he'd come to tell us that Ellis had slipped away?

  --

  Angus and Anna led Bob into the bedroom.

  He stood at the foot of my bed, holding his cap.

  "Mrs. Hyde," he said, nodding a greeting. "Are you feeling a wee bit better, I hope? Angus tells me you were quite poorly overnight."

  "Yes, thank you. I think I'm on the mend," I said, although the effort sparked a fit of coughing. I rolled onto my side, and Anna rushed over to thump my back.

  Bob waited until I was finished and Anna had propped me up again. "I'm very sorry to intrude like this, but I'm afraid a situation has arisen."

  "What type of situation?" asked Angus, and from the way his face clouded I saw that he'd jumped to the same conclusion I had.

  "It's not what you're thinking," Bob said. He gazed at his shoes for a moment, then looked Hank square in the face. "Mr. Boyd, was there any kind of...altercation down at the shore?"

  "Sure, I knocked his block off."

  "But was he...conscious when you last saw him?"

  "He was a little worse for wear, but definitely conscious. Mewling and obstreperous, even."

  "Yes, well," said Bob, twisting his cap. "I'm afraid that when I went back to make the arrest, I found the suspect deceased."

  Angus was by my side instantly, his hand on my shoulder. I reached up and clasped his fingers.

  "What? How?" Hank demanded.

  "He appears to have drowned in two inches of water," said Bob. "I've never seen anything like it. He was facedown at the water's edge. The rest of him wasn't even wet."

  Hank laughed bitterly. "He was probably playing possum so you'd leave--he's not above doing that, you know."

  "There's no question that he's dead. The body's already at the morgue in Inverness. So the question now becomes how it happened."

  Hank's expression grew panicked as the implication sank in. He leapt from the chair.

  "My God, you can't think I killed him!" he said. "He was staggering around when I left, I swear! He must have fallen in after. I boxed his ears! That's all!"

  He swiveled to face me, his eyes desperate and his fists clenched. "Maddie! Tell him! For God's sake--you know I wouldn't kill Ellis! Tell him!"

  "It's true," I said. "Hank would never kill Ellis. They're two parts of the same person."

  Hank stared at me, stricken.

  Bob rubbed his chin for a while, thinking. "Well, given the situation--and it is indeed a first for me--I suppose I could file it as an accidental drowning...Assuming there are no objections on the part of the family?"

  He looked at me inquiringly. After a few seconds, I dipped my head in assent. Angus squeezed my shoulder, and I clutched his fingers even more tightly.

  Bob took a deep breath. "Under the circumstances, I'm not sure what the right thing is to say. And while I know this is all very sudden, I'm afraid you're going to have to start thinking about final arrangements. Please let me know if there's anything I can do to help, anything at all."

  "Thank you," I said quietly.

  After Bob left, Hank headed toward the door, moving like a sleepwalker.

  When his bedroom door clicked shut, I looked up at Angus. I knew something was coming, but nothing could have prepared me for the bloodcurdling scream that rang through the building. I threw my arms around Angus's waist, waiting as the dreadful keening subsided into wild crying.

  Angus held my head against him and stroked my hair. "And what about you, m'eudail? Are you all right?"

  I nodded. "I think so. I don't suppose I would have wished this on anyone, but my God..."

  "It's all right, mo run geal og. There's no need to explain. Not to me."

  I took his hand and pressed my cheek into it.

  Down the hall, Hank continued to rage and grieve, but there was nothing any of us could do. There was not a soul on earth who could have comforted him, because he was worse than heartbroken. He'd been cleaved down the middle.

  Chapter Forty-five

  In the end, I sent Ellis home to his mother. I didn't want to attend the funeral, and suspected I wouldn't be welcome anyway.

  Two days after Hank flew off with Ellis's body, Angus slipped into my room and my bed. He lay beside me, balanced on an elbow, stroking the hair away from my throat. He fingered the neck of my nightgown.

  "Take that off..."

  When I lay back down, he leaned over and whispered directly into my ear. "I want to marry you, mo chridhe. To make this official just as soon as we can."

  He planted tiny kisses on my neck, working his way down. When he was almost at my collarbone, he took a small piece of my flesh between his teeth. I gasped, and every hair on my body stood on end.

  "That's assuming you'll even have such a rough dog as myself," he said, continuing his descent. He kissed his way to my left breast and ran his tongue over my nipple. It tightened into a little raspberry.

  He raised his head. "Although I suppose I didn't phrase it exactly as a question, that last comment of mine does require an answer..."

  "But of course!" I said. "I want to be Mrs. Grant as soon as...oh!"

  His mouth was once again on the move.

  "Actually," he said between kisses, "you'll be the Much Honored Madeline Grant, Lady of Craig Gairbh."

  The thing he did next left me unable to respond at all--at least, not with words.

  --

  We decided to wait a few weeks for the sake of propriety, but for all intents and purposes we were married from that moment on. Angus spent every night in my bed, although he slipped downstairs before dawn so as not to offend Anna's sensibilities.

  The news from the Front made it clear that the war in Europe couldn't last much longer. City after city either surrendered or was liberated, and the Germans were driven ever deeper into their own territory. They were surrounded on all sides. They had also run out of men to recruit. They began drafting boys as young as ten from the Hitler Youth, and reenlisting any soldier who had only lost his leg below the knee.

  From there, it all fell like dominoes, beginning with a hit close to home. President Roosevelt died on April 12, and Harry S. Truman became the 33rd President of the United States.

  Three days later, British forces liberated a complex of concentration camps at Bergen-Belsen and, according to an article in The Inverness Courier, found "thousands of starving men, women,
and children, naked bodies lying four feet high stretching a distance of 80 yards by a width of 30 yards, cannibalism rife, disease and unspeakable cruelty rampant." General Eisenhower implored members of the British House of Commons to come see "the agony of crucified humanity" for themselves, because "no words can convey the horror."

  On April 16, the same day the Russians began yet another massive offensive, a desperate Adolf Hitler issued his "Last Stand," in which he ordered troops to arrest immediately any officer or soldier who gave orders to retreat, regardless of rank, and if necessary to execute them, because even if they were in German uniform, they were probably drawing Russian pay. He told his forces, "In this hour the entire German nation looks to you, my soldiers in the East, and only hopes that by your fanaticism, by your arms, and by your leadership, the Bolshevik onslaught is drowned in a bloodbath."

  Twelve days later, Mussolini and his mistress were executed by firing squad after trying to escape to Switzerland. Their bodies were then hung upside down on meat hooks in the Piazzale Loreto. A woman approached and cried, "Five shots for my five assassinated sons!" before pumping another five bullets into Mussolini's already-battered corpse.

  The next day, April 29, American forces liberated Dachau, the first of the German concentration camps to be erected, and among the last to be liberated. Upon their approach, the Americans encountered thirty coal cars filled with decomposing bodies. Within the camp, they found approximately thirty thousand emaciated survivors, who continued to die at the rate of several hundred a day, because their systems were too weak to take nourishment.

  On April 30, the Russians took Berlin and raised the Soviet flag over the Reichstag. Deep in their bunker, with the battle raging above them, Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun poisoned themselves and their dogs, after which Hitler shot himself in the head.

  --

  We huddled around the radio that night, every one of us breathing through our mouths. It was almost too much to believe. At long last--after more devastation and cruelty and callous disregard for human life than any of us could have possibly dreamed up--the hostilities appeared to be over. They were, in fact, although it wasn't made official for another week, when all remaining German forces surrendered unconditionally.

  When Victory Day was finally declared, the collective jubilation became chaos. People ripped down their Blackout curtains and set them on fire in the streets, sirens blared and church bells rang, victory parades turned into wild impromptu parties, people whooped and danced and sang, strangers made love in bushes off to the side of the road, bonfires raged, and bagpipes called out triumphantly from every hill the whole night through.

  At ten the next morning, Angus and I got married. The day after that, Anna and Willie did the same.

  Chapter Forty-six

  A few weeks after our wedding, I noticed that Angus had quietly had the gravestone with his name on it replaced with one that didn't. This time, it was I who knelt and traced the names of Mairi and her baby, leaving behind the handful of bluebells I'd just gathered from the Cover.

  Knowing I'd paid homage to just one grave, I continued on to the Water Gate, picking more flowers on the way. After placing them at the water's edge, I stared across the loch's shiny black surface, and wondered what, exactly, had happened to us out there. Was it Mairi? Was it the monster? Or was it something else entirely?

  The monster--if there was one--never revealed itself to me again. But what I had learned over the past year was that monsters abound, usually in plain sight.

  --

  When Angus asked if I was ready to see my new home, I said that yes, of course I was, as long as he was entirely sure the army had removed all the land mines. He roared with laughter when I told him about my escapade, and told me that there weren't any mines in the first place--the signs were there to keep civilians out, as well as to keep the commandos in. The live ammunition, however, was real.

  "What do you think?" he asked, when we rounded the bend and reached the oak-lined drive. The Nissen huts and barbed wire were gone, so it was the first time I'd seen the Big House in its entirety.

  Angus's arm was around my shoulder, and he watched my face expectantly.

  "Oh, Angus!" I said, skipping ahead of him. "It's magnificent! Is it locked?"

  "I don't think so," he said, and then laughed as I ran ahead.

  --

  The double doors were huge and studded with brass. The entranceway was draped with carved boughs and vines, starting above the pediment and reaching almost to the ground. Just above that was an enormous coat of arms, and way up at the top, over a frieze of rearing horses flanking a shield, was a clock tower in a cupola that Angus told me was added in 1642. Each window was graced with a carving, and forty-foot Corinthian pillars ran up the wall between them.

  When I walked through the front doors and found myself looking up at a vast, multistory gallery, I caught my breath. Generations of larger-than-life Grants glowered down at me from the oak-paneled walls, the frames that contained them separated by gilt curlicues. Most of them had ginger hair; all of them had Angus's striking blue eyes.

  There was not one room on the main level that didn't have intricate plasterwork on its ceiling, and most were either painted or trimmed with gilt. Every detail was exquisite--from the ornate chandeliers to the medieval tapestries to the "cabinet of curiosities" that once belonged to Louis XIV. The upholstered furniture seemed oddly shabby until Angus told me that it dated from the early 1700s, and that all the velvet was original.

  I tried to imagine the Colonel's reaction when he first stepped inside all those years ago. When he looked up at the portraits of his relatives, did his fantasies of finding the monster grow to encompass fantasies of becoming the laird? During his stay, as he harassed servant girls and adopted his upper-crust accent and commissioned estate tweeds, did he secretly ascertain how many male Grants stood between him and the title?

  There was no doubt in my mind. Ellis probably had too.

  --

  Although the war was over, Europe remained in chaos: there were food shortages and transportation crises, a staggering number of refugees streaming from city to city, mass surrenders of German troops, hundreds of thousands of freed prisoners, as well as innumerable wounded soldiers who now faced the prospect of trying to rebuild their lives.

  I'd never forgotten the wounded men on the SS Mallory, particularly the soldier who had caught my gaze and held it. He opened my eyes, awakening me to a reality I had somehow managed to avoid until that point. While Hank and Ellis carried on without a care in the world, it was men like the burned soldier, Angus, and Anna's brothers who sacrificed everything to save the rest of us. I wanted to give something back.

  When I told Angus what I had in mind, he folded me wordlessly into his arms.

  And so the plans were laid. For the next few years, the Big House at Craig Gairbh would be a convalescent hospital for injured soldiers.

  Epilogue

  Within two months, hospital beds and portable screens lined the halls and ballroom. The East Drawing Room became a surgery, and the Great Hall a burn unit. We moved into the servants' quarters on the top floor with Conall, and before long, Meg joined us, having decided to become a nurse.

  The patients both crushed and amazed me. I watched as a forty-seven-year-old sergeant, newly blind and learning to find his way around with a cane, first fingered the petals of a peony, and then leaned over to bury his face in it. I held the hand of a boy who was not yet twenty as he cried in frustration after donning his prosthetic limb for the first time. I cheered from the sidelines during the frequent wheelchair races in the Great Hall. The library became a game room. One indomitable soldier, twenty-two years old, whose spine and left arm had been shattered, had one of us wheel him into the library each morning, then spent the rest of the day defeating anyone who dared take him on at chess.

  I rooted for these men, and hundreds like them, as they passed through our lives and our home. It was a comfort to me to see them taking sol
ace in the garden, or cooling in the shade of the fountain.

  Meg was a great favorite with the soldiers, and she married a young corporal, who was also from Clydebank, the following Valentine's Day--an event that Angus and I had to skip for the happiest of reasons. I went into labor the night before, and just like that, Valentine's Day was redeemed.

  Two of our children were born during that time, to the great delight of the soldiers. After all the horror, death, and despair, the babies were the truest possible affirmation of life.

  Life. There it was. In all its beautiful, tragic fragility, there was still life, and those of us who'd been lucky enough to survive opened our arms wide and embraced it.

  Author's Note

  And now for the usual caveats about writing fiction based on real events: I've appropriated some parts of the history of monster sightings. In particular, I transformed the "Surgeon's Photo" into the "Colonel's Photo," and reimagined the Royal Observer Corps sighting completely. The British Aluminium plant at Foyers was indeed bombed during the war, but at noon rather than at night, and in February 1941 rather than January 1945. Similarly, while I tried to stay true to all other facts about the creation of the Special Service Brigade, Achnacarry Castle did not become Castle Commando until 1942.

  While I did not fictionalize any of these, the facts and numbers associated with some of the battles and certainly the death camps are inaccurate in the book because I had to base them on the information that would have been available to my characters at the time, which was limited to the nightly BBC broadcast and what was reported in The Inverness Courier. The real numbers and full truth took years to come out, and, as we now know, are even harder to comprehend than those that so horrified Maddie.

  For Bob,

  'S tusa gradh mo bheatha

  Acknowledgments

  I don't know if writing drives people crazy or if crazy people are driven to write, but I could not possibly have written this book without the help of the following noncrazy people, to whom I am forever indebted: My husband, Bob, my Rock of Gibraltar--without your unwavering support and belief, none of this would have been possible, and I certainly would not be able to continue.