Page 4 of And the Corpse Wore Tartan
Roberta wiped the slime from her mouth and spat into the toilet bowl. Did her best nonchalant shrug. ‘I might have had alittlebit to drink, but I didn’t do anything that—’
‘Impossible!’ Susan stormed out of the bathroom, slamming the door behind her, setting the fluffy bathrobes swinging again.
Clearly, she hadn’t understood just how ill Roberta was.
Deep breath. ‘I NEED IRN-BRU! AND MAYBE SOME BACON? I could go bacon...’ Another horrible gurgling noise erupted deep inside. ‘Hold on.’ She gripped the wooden seat and swallowed hard. No more being sick. No more being sick. No more being sick. ‘Urgh...’
Susan reappeared in the doorway, eyes blazing, mouth all pinched up like an angry fish. Voice a hard, hissing whisper: ‘It’s five in the morning; will you keep your bloody voice down!’ She turned to leave, then turned back. ‘And if you think I’m taking you to another wedding, or anywhere else,everagain, you can roll it sideways and cram it up there!’
Wait, what?
‘Wedding?’ As soon as the word left Roberta’s bitter-yuck-flavoured mouth, it all came flooding back. She screwed her whole face shut. ‘Oh God...’
The horror.
THE HORROR!
2
A happy sun blazed away in the bright blue sky, happy fluffy wee clouds making happy fluffy shapes as Roberta’s MX-5 roared along the winding road. Got to give it to those tartan Highland buggers, they know how to do scenery. Heather-clad hills in full purple bloom, a shimmering loch, swathes of deep-green forests... Some sort of eagly thing wheeling overhead. Idiot sheep taking a break from doing whatever it was idiot sheep did to watch her wee sports car flash past.
Top down, music on, singing along with Lemmy on ‘Ace of Spades’.
Couldn’t get much better than that, could you?
She stuck her foot down.
Hills crowded in on either side, then the road twisted around to the left and the whole thing opened up. A valley, guarded by regimented ranks of Forestry Commission pines, all standing to attention in the sunshine. And smack bang in the middle of it: Skirivour Castle, just visible over the treetops.
OK, so it wasn’t the prettiest castle – more Frankenstein than Disney – but they’d painted it a pinky-gold colour that looked jaunty among all that verdant greenery.
The road wound down the valley side, to a high-arched bridge spanninga deep gully and a swollen river. All very picturesque as Roberta wheeched over it and into the woods. Following the signs, music belting out.
A set of huge stone pillars rose on either side of the narrow road, with ‘SKIRIVOURCASTLEHOTEL’ picked out in wrought-iron letters across the top.
To be honest, the castle wasn’t any prettier up close. It sulked at the end of its wide gravel driveway, a drooping fountain splashing out the kind of feeble stream that implied it needed a visit to the doctor’s, where someone barely out of medical school would snap on a rubber glove and stick a finger up its bum.
Union flags fluttered from poles, flanking a pillared portico that was big enough for an eightsome reel. Someone had draped the thing in a whole heap of red-white-and-blue bunting, and clusters of gold balloons bobbed in the air – above weights wrapped like wedding presents. Bet there were doves somewhere. Places like thisloveddoves.
A sign pointed to a gap in the hedge: ‘RESIDENTANDGUESTPARKING’. Course, the temptation was just to abandon her MX-5 in front of the main doors, but that wasn’t really in the spirit of the thing, was it? So she parked in the far corner of the designated spaces, like a good little girl, next to averyexpensive-looking Jag and a couple of Porsches.
Stuck the roof up.
Popped the boot and grabbed her luggage.
Sauntered back to the castle’s entrance.
Pushed through the ornate carved double doors, and into amassivelobby.
It was at least three-storeys tall, the floor covered in a red-and-yellow tartan carpet that probably seemed like a good idea at the time. But the thing that really stood out was the huge metal stag that dominated the space. Thing hadto be twice the size of a real stag, if not more, looming over everything from its six-foot-tall plinth in fullMonarch of the Glenpose.
It wasn’t alone in here either. Every wall and flat surface in the place was crowded with stuffed boars’ heads and stags’ heads and pheasants and grouse and hares and all the rest. As if someone had gone out and slaughtered every animal on the estate then carted it off wholesale to the nearest taxidermist.
Whole heap of oil paintings too – the kind that got printed onto coasters and sold in museum gift shops. Couple of tapestries. A bunch of claymores and shields and halberds. Twin suits of armour stood guard at the bottom of a sweeping wooden staircase that curled away to the balconies running along both sides of the lobby.
Like... Like Hollywood’s idea of how Scotland was meant to look. Brigadoon, with even more kitsch.
A wee man appeared at her elbow, done up in full Highland regalia, complete with pointy bunnet that had feathers poking out of it. Not the best outfit for someone who looked as if they were made of wrinkles, bones, and string. His voice trembled more than his hands as he pointed at a silver tray with a bottle and some cut-crystal tumblers on it. ‘Would you care for a complimentary welcome dram? It’s a twelve-year-old Glenfeòrag, made just down the road.’
