The Inheritance Read online

  “Who will join me for a pint or two before we start back for the island?” said Hardy as the city-dwellers gathered their belongings and stepped onto the quay.

  The men of Hardy Tulloch’s crew knew their boss did not like to drink alone. Though strong beer before eight in the morning was not to everyone’s taste, there were some who could think of nothing else after a hard night on the water. For those of more refined habits, tea and coffee and cooked breakfasts could also be had at the Puffin’s Beak, Hardy’s favorite haunt in the city.

  There was a time when the Puffin’s Beak had been mentioned in one or two guidebooks as among Lerwick’s most popular and colorful pubs, full of “local atmosphere,” they called it. The place had fallen from that distinction since adopting a policy of keeping its doors open twenty-four hours a day and serving beer as happily at six in the morning as six at night. The move was intended to draw fishermen into the establishment and had succeeded admirably. It was now the preferred destination for fishermen throughout the Shetlands whenever their boats put in at Lerwick.

  The steady influx of Shetland’s tough fisher breed through its doors, however, had a distinct drawback. Every inch—floor, walls, tables, chairs, the bar, the ceiling, seemingly even glasses scrubbed as clean as detergent and water could get them—bore the unmistakable aroma of the sea.

  From top to bottom and inside out, the place smelled of fish. It had long since been abandoned by the guidebooks. Neither its regulars nor its owners minded, certainly not the fishermen who considered it their second home in the city.

  Money primarily flowed in the Shetlands from three sources—fish, wool, and oil. The men who made their living from the first two rarely crossed paths socially with the third. The oilmen took their leisure moments in the Craigsmont Lounge, sipping wine or cognac while seated in expensive leather chairs surrounded by tapestries and oil paintings, and enjoying Havana cigars in its subdued atmosphere of wealth. They would not have been caught dead in the Puffin’s Beak. Nor was it likely that Hardy Tulloch would have received much more than rude stares with accompanying sniffs of noses held slightly aloft had he ventured into the oilmen’s domain at the Craigsmont.

  As for the shepherds who kept their sheep healthy and sheared, producing wool for the women who knit Shetland’s woolen goods, they were too busy to drink much beer or cognac. Neither establishment saw much of them.

  “What do you think, Hardy?” asked Billy Black, a Whales Reef incoming resident from Glasgow—what Shetlanders called a “soothmoother”—and skipper of Hardy’s second craft. “Is Keith’s home brew better than this as he claims?”

  Five of the men who had accompanied Hardy from the fish market and now sat around his usual table in the Puffin’s Beak were drinking from tall glasses containing the beer in question. Another held a cup of tea. A mug of steaming coffee sat on the table in front of the last member of the group.

  “After seventy-two hours at sea,” replied Hardy, waving his pint in the air, “any beer in a dry room suits me jist fine!”

  “But what’s your opinion of Keith’s brew?” persisted Black.

  “’Tis good, like he says. Might be the best, who can say?”

  “When you marry Audney, you’ll be able to drink as much of it as you like!” called Gordo Ross from the end of the table.

  “Ye think Keith’ll give me the right o’ the tap any time it suits me? I dinna think he’s likely tae gae that far,” Hardy replied jovially.

  “Not for his own son-in-law?”

  “I’m nae convinced Keith an’ Evanna is altogether happy aboot the prospect o’ callin’ Hardy Tulloch their son-on-law!” laughed Hardy.

  “But ye’re goin’ tae marry Audney, isna ye, Hardy?” asked young Ian Hay, one of Hardy’s youthful protégés.

  “Oh, aye! Ye can be sure o’ that, Ian.”

  “When are ye goin’ tae ask her, Hardy?”

  “I’m bidin’ my time . . . jist bidin’ my time. Ye canna rush a bonnie woman the like’s o’ Audney, ye ken.”

  “When ye an’ Audney’s married an’ ye inherit the pub, are ye plannin’ tae do the same for the islanders as Keith does?”

  “Shush, keep yer voice down, Ian,” put in Rufus Wood. “Nae one’s tae ken, ye mind.”

  “Not me,” said Hardy with a firm shake of his head. “Let a’body pay like everyone else.”

  “But you’ll keep the special brew?” pressed Black.

  “If I dinna come up wi’ better. Anythin’ Keith Kerr can do, I can do him one better.”

  “Will you keep fishing?” now asked their coffee-drinking mate, the one Englishman among them.

  “Depends. Good money in the fish jist noo.”

  “Hard work, though—and dangerous. You might fancy yourself a pub owner.”

  “Aye, no a bad life. Canna say what I might do. But wi’ a woman like Audney tae call mine, might be all the mair reason tae keep close tae home—especially at night!”

  Laughter and smiles went round the table.

  “Audney’s a beauty all right,” commented Wood. “But I hear she fancies yer cousin David.”

  Hardy’s eyes flashed. He spun toward Wood.

  “David’s no man enough for the likes o’ Audney Kerr,” he growled. “What ye speak o’ was a long time ago. She was jist a lass. Noo she’s a buxom beauty an’ she deserves a real man. That’s why she’ll be the wife o’ Hardy Tulloch an’ none other. An’ if David tries tae stand in my way, it will be the worse for him. I’ve put him on the ground in the past, an’ I winna hesitate doin’ it again.”

  “Ye’re no feared o’ hurtin’ our chief?” asked Ian.

  Hardy roared with derisive laughter. “Oor so-called ‘chief’ is the last man on Shetland I’m feared o’! An’ he’d be well advised tae stay oot o’ my way in the matter o’ Audney Kerr.”

  Hardy lifted his glass and downed what remained in a single gulp, slammed it down on the table as if visibly punctuating the warning, then shouted for a second pint.*

  *The broken bits of dialect here and elsewhere are not true reflections of Shetland speech, which would be most unintelligible to readers. These fragments are more representative of mainland Scottish speech. They are included to flavor the narrative with hints of the “sound of Scotland,” though the specifics of that sound varies widely from region to region. In actual fact, true Shetlandic and its predecessor, the more ancient Norn, derive from the Old Norse of the Vikings and Lowland Scottish English, also with reminders of Dutch and German. While Shetlanders will communicate with visitors in a heavily accented form of recognizable English, speech between native Shetlanders, especially outside of Lerwick, is extremely difficult for outsiders to make heads or tails of.

  16

  Baker and Chief

  WHALES REEF, SHETLAND ISLANDS

  Without an inkling that he was the object of such heated remarks from his cousin to his cohorts in Lerwick, David passed a few simple stone dwellings clustered in random disarray at the edge of the village. He continued into the small town, greeting the few who were out at this hour. Most, however, were still inside encouraging their peat fires into life for the day, evidenced by the wisps of smoke trailing up from the chimneys around him.

  By the time the sun rose as high in the sky as it reached in the Shetlands, the women would be in their yards hanging out laundry. Today was expected to be warm—as warm as the mercury climbed in the Shetlands on a day in September, which was somewhere in the mid-fifties Fahrenheit. In July it might reach sixty. But in these northern climes, summer was well past. The weather had already begun to turn.

  A minute or two later, David walked through the door of Coira MacNeill’s bakery. A shrill bell above the door announced his presence. As its echo died away, the proprietress walked into the main shop from her ovens in back, wiping her hands on the stained apron around her ample midsection, brow perspiring freely.

  “Weel, yoong David,” she said, “ye’re oot early—fine day, is it?”

  “Bit m
isty just now, Coira,” he replied. “And chilly enough, though it’s never cold of a morning in here.”

  “Nae in a baker’s shop, that’s the truth.”

  “If your butteries are out of the oven, I’d like a half dozen. I’m on my way to Uncle Macgregor’s. He’s especially fond of them.”

  “Aye, been on the rack these ten minutes.”

  “They’re still warm then. He and I will enjoy them with our tea.”

  The plump woman disappeared again, returning a moment later with a small white bag. She laid it on the counter, and David set several coins beside it. She scooped them up and deposited the proceeds into the till.

  “And you’ll have that cake ready for Uncle Macgregor’s birthday next week?”

  “Aye, laddie. But he’s a dour auld man. Hardly seems the like tae be havin’ a party for his birthday.”

  David laughed and picked up the bag. “I’m planning no party, Coira. Just Dougal and me and Saxe and Isobel and a few others. Not that you wouldn’t be welcome yourself, as would anyone in the village—”

  “Nae, nae . . . I wouldna set foot in the man’s hoose.”

  “I know how you feel,” rejoined David. “I’m afraid you and Aunt Rinda still bear him a grudge after all these years.”

  “Your aunt’s a shrewd judge o’ character, yoong David, ye mark my words.”

  “That may be, Coira. But I find her to be wrong in this case. The man’s not what you think. He keeps up a gruff exterior to annoy people like you. But he’s been good to me. That goodness has to come from somewhere.”

  “Weel, I’ll grant ye that. But he never smiles when he comes in my shop.”

  “As why should he, the way you treat him? Do you smile at him, Coira?”

  “I wouldna give him the satisfaction!”

  “There—see what I mean? It seems to me you’re to blame too. You ought to try flashing him one of your pretty smiles sometime and watch if he doesn’t melt.”

  The woman flushed at the compliment. But she gave no indication that David’s words would alter her opinion of the laird.

  “I will allow that I’m aye indebted tae him for bein’ more than fair wi’ my rent,” the widow MacNeill reluctantly acknowledged. “Hasna raised it in twenty years, an’ if a body gets ahin’, he’s nae bothered aboot it.”

  “As I recall, he actually lowered yours when your husband died.”

  “Weel, ’tis true enouch, I’ll grant ye that. Still, I dinna like the man. And ye shouldna call him Uncle when he’s nae such thing.”

  “He’s my grandfather’s cousin,” said David. “What would you have me call him, my cousin such-and-such removed? And whatever else he may be, he’s a man deserving of my esteem. With my own daddy dead, ‘Uncle’ is the most respect I can give him, so that’s what I call him, whatever the exact relation.” David turned toward the door. “Good morning to you, Coira,” he said cheerfully as he left.

  As her bell tinkled behind him the woman watched the young chief leave her shop, thinking to herself that he was a fine lad in spite of his affinity for the aging Macgregor Tulloch.

  Distant as the relation between the two men was, however, even on an island filled with second, third, and fourth cousins, the old man had no closer family to watch over him in his old age. Coira MacNeill was humanitarian enough to be grateful that David loved the man.

  No one, she thought, should have to reach the end of his days alone.

  17

  Uncle and Chief

  David continued through the village and past its small harbor, taking note of which fishing boats were readying for their day’s labors on the waters of the North Sea.

  Reminded again that somewhere out there the wreck of the Bountiful lay on the bottom, with the three bodies of its crew who had perished in it, he waved at several fishermen as he walked by. Most returned his greeting. Had Hardy Tulloch been present rather than at the Puffin’s Beak in Lerwick, he would likely have ignored David altogether. The two young men may have shared family roots, but they had little else in common. The one exception was Audney Kerr. If the involvement between the three could not properly be called a “love triangle,” it was certainly true that feelings ran high. Everyone on the island was watching developments.

  Leaving the eastern precincts of Whales Reef, David followed the shoreline for another three-quarters of a mile before striking off inland. He crossed the road and continued toward the largest structure on Whales Reef save the wool factory, his uncle’s home and ancestral seat of the laird of the island. Though in reality it was far more than could be done justice to by such an appellation, the spacious and, in its own way, magnificent dwelling had been known for four generations simply as the Cottage.

  Ten minutes later David crested a slight rise and caught his initial glimpses of the gables and turrets of the home of the man for whom he felt such affection, seventy-seven-year-old Macgregor Tulloch.

  Strange, thought David as he approached and glanced up at the chimney. No white trail of smoke rose from it. He now realized that the pleasurably familiar smell of peat had not met him as he walked toward the house. A fire was always burning in the hearth of the massive stone fireplace of the Cottage by this hour. His uncle Macgregor was always up by 6:30 or 7:00 to stoke the coals, add fresh peats, and put on the kettle for tea before heading out to his dogs and sheep.

  Macgregor Tulloch had lived alone since the ill-fated marriage of his youth. Though he had two men and a woman who lived at the Cottage and worked for him, he did not want anyone stoking his fire or brewing his tea. He preferred to enjoy the first hours of the day either alone or with a visit from David. He would share the morning hours with no one else.

  His butler-valet and housekeeper, therefore, ate breakfast in their own apartment on the ground floor at the end of the south wing. His gamekeeper, in his private lodgings adjoining the barn, did the same.

  As he drew near the house, a commotion of barking interrupted David’s thoughts. Three rambunctious white-and-black sheepdogs sprinted toward him with boisterous wagging, licking, sniffing greetings.

  “Where’s your master this morning, lads?” said David, stooping to give each of the three a tussle and affectionate pat.

  David looked about. Everything seemed in order, other than the complete lack of evidence of human life. Leaving the dogs outside, he opened the great oak door of the Cottage and walked inside. A lifeless chill met him. Walking through to the kitchen, he found it cold and dark.

  “Uncle Gregor!” he called. “Uncle Gregor . . . it’s David. I’ve come with fresh butteries!” he called again as he set the bag on the table.

  He made his way into the spacious great room where the huge fireplace sat stone-cold. The coals had been packed the previous night, but no sign of life was anywhere. Unconsciously David shivered.

  Growing alarmed, David flipped on the lights and made for the stairs. He took them two at a time, hurried down the corridor, then slowed as he entered his uncle’s bedroom.

  The moment he saw the form lying motionless under the familiar blanket of MacDonald tartan, and the ghostly white face on the pillow, he feared the worst.

  He hurried to the bedside, placed a tender hand on his uncle’s shoulder. No response came from beneath the tartan. Hesitantly David laid a gentle hand on the pale face where it lay in apparent peaceful slumber.

  The cheek was ice cold.

  “Oh, Uncle Gregor . . . Uncle Gregor!” whispered David in a forlorn tone of grief-stricken affection.

  He withdrew his hand and stood staring down at the bed as tears filled his eyes. Wiping at his eyes and blinking hard, at length he stooped and tenderly kissed the cheek whose owner had departed for warmer regions sometime in the night.

  18

  Life in the Fast Lane

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  The days following the final Midwestern Investments signing were hectic for Madison Swift and her able assistant, Loni Ford. News of the deal was already circulating throughout the financial w
orld.

  Everyone wanted a piece of Madison Swift. Suddenly she was on Wall Street’s radar screen as someone to watch.

  Several days later Loni walked into her boss’s office following Maddy’s return from a luncheon meeting.

  “Jackson from Fidelity called while you were out,” she said, taking her customary seat opposite Maddy’s desk. She passed across the phone message. “He’s insistent on talking to you.”

  “Not interested,” replied Maddy. “I’m happy where I am.”

  “I told him that. He wants to talk to you anyway.”

  “Nothing he says will make me jump ship.”

  “He insists . . . says they’re preparing an offer you can’t refuse.”

  “Just watch me!”

  “You might as well get it over with and call him. Otherwise he’ll keep hounding you. And I’ll have to keep passing along his messages!”

  “He’s one of those guys who thinks if he can keep you on the phone long enough, eventually he’ll sway you to his point of view. But okay,” agreed Maddy, “I’ll call him. Anything else come up in the last two hours?”

  “Montgomery—in charge of Far East small cap upstairs—wants to pick your brain about some new directions they’re considering for China.”

  “China!”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “I’m no expert on the Chinese economy.”

  “I told him that’s what you’d say. But your reputation has people on tenth talking. At least that’s the water-cooler scuttlebutt.”

  “Are you a water-cooler eavesdropper, Loni?” said Maddy with a smile. “Picking up the office gossip? I didn’t know that about you.”

  “Just enough to keep you abreast of what you need to know.”

  “Good girl. Got my back, I like that.”

  “I try. Anyway, I think Montgomery simply wants to meet you and get your big-picture impressions.”