What Will Burn by James Oswald (ebook reader web .txt) 📕

it a solidity McLean didn’t get from the enormous conference centres, shopping malls and business hotels that had been popping up in the city in recent years. Bairnfather Hall had the benefit of a couple of centuries of not falling down, too. That helped.

‘If you could wait here a moment, I’ll just see if I can find Mr McPherson for you.’ The doorman had stopped by a door that was a good six feet taller than it needed to be, and surrounded by an architrave that must have taken months to carve. McLean checked his watch while they waited, Harrison doing something with her phone. He was surprised she could get a signal behind all this stone.

‘Charlie McPherson. How can I help you?’

A man not much older than the one who’d led them to this point had appeared at the door as if by magic. He was dressed a little less formally, his double-breasted suit and shiny, slicked back hair giving him the air of a fifties used car salesman rather than manager of such an exclusive hotel and vast estate. His proffered hand was aimed at McLean, even though Harrison stood a little closer.

‘Cecily Slater,’ McLean said as he shook that hand. McPherson’s grip was loose, warm and sweaty, but there was no mistaking the twitch as he heard the name. He looked from McLean to Harrison, then back again, his faux-helpful smile falling to an expression of resigned weariness. He pointed at another over-large door a fair distance away.

‘Why don’t we go to my office.’

Charlie McPherson’s office was the most opulent McLean had seen in many a year. He wasn’t sure what the room had been originally, back when Bairnfather Hall had been a private residence. It might have been Lord Bairnfather’s study, or possibly a ladies’ withdrawing room. Like the rest of the building, it was larger than anyone could possibly need, with a high ceiling decorated with ornate plasterwork. Two tall windows looked out on to the formal gardens to the rear of the house, and from there to the woods that climbed up the northern flank of the Pentland Hills. Between them, McPherson carried out his business from a massive antique desk, but he led McLean and Harrison to a long table incongruously blocking an Adam fireplace. Despite there being no fire in the grate, the room was comfortably warm.

‘Coffee?’ McPherson asked as he poured from a glass jug he’d removed from under a catering-style filter machine. McLean nodded, and soon enough the three of them were seated around one corner of the table.

‘Lady Cecily.’ McPherson gave his head the most minimal of shakes. ‘What a terrible business.’

‘Lady Cecily. Yes.’ McLean put his emphasis on the title. ‘I have to admit that we weren’t initially aware of her . . . lineage? I knew she was part of the family, but I thought maybe a distant cousin. Not Lord Bairnfather’s aunt.’

McPherson raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m surprised. Lady Cecily Slater, daughter of the ninth Lord Bairnfather.’ He pointed to a portrait hanging on the wall not far from the fireplace. ‘That’s him there. Sir Reginald Archibald Slater before he inherited the title.’

‘And yet she lived in the gamekeeper’s cottage?’ Harrison asked the question before McLean could voice it himself.

‘She’s . . . She was quite a character. Could have had a nice townhouse, even her own suite here in the hotel for that matter. Sir Reginald does. That’s the current Lord Bairnfather, named for his grandfather.’ McPherson shook his head a bit more effusively now. ‘But no, she insisted on that cottage. She used to say it was where she was born, and it was where she was going to die. That seems rather prophetic now.’

McLean took a sip of his coffee, pleasantly surprised at how good it was. ‘Did you see her much?’

McPherson tilted his head like a confused dog, eyes going out of focus as he read some calendar in his brain. ‘Lady Cecily? No. Can’t remember the last time she came to the hotel. She didn’t go anywhere. Hips were pretty much shot to pieces, and she didn’t trust doctors enough to let them give her new ones.’

‘So, you’re telling me she lived alone in that cottage, cut off from the world. Quite literally, given the state of the track and the bridge. Ninety years old and nobody did anything about it?’

‘I . . . That is . . .’ McPherson squirmed in his chair like he needed to be excused. ‘She’s . . . was . . . very forthright, you see. And her nephew, the current Lord Bairnfather, he always defers to her.’

McLean thought it odd, perhaps even verging on careless, but it matched what the farmer, Tam Uist had said. And he’d known old women like he imagined Cecily Slater to be. His grandmother had been one of them. Self-destructively independent.

‘Ms . . . Lady Cecily lay undetected for the best part of a week before the farmer found her. It seems strange to me that nobody noticed the fire. You don’t recall anyone mentioning the smell of burning? Somebody must have noticed something, surely?’

‘Believe me, Inspector. I’ve asked all the staff and nobody remembers anything. The gamekeeper’s cottage is a couple of miles away, in that direction.’ McPherson pointed at the fireplace. ‘First we knew anything was amiss was when your constable came round. I was told it was a tragic accident. Has that changed?’

McLean ignored the question. ‘Going back over the past few weeks. Can you remember a group of people coming here, maybe drinking at the bar? Not the usual crowd or guests at the hotel?’

McPherson gave McLean that confused dog look again, only this time his gaze remained clear. ‘We don’t have a usual crowd, Chief Inspector. This isn’t that kind of hotel. People don’t come out here for a drink on the way home from work. We cater for very high-end weddings, wealthy industrialists and celebrities who don’t want to be disturbed. The most you’ll find in our bar is a few of the hotel guests having a drink before going to bed. I told all of this to Constable Stringer.