I froze on the spot. The laird’s lug—was it possible that he had left something there for me to find? I ran back to the house and through the great hall, then pushed aside a tapestry in the darkened hallway beyond. The small door in the wall opened and I felt my way up the steps into the small round chamber. It was only when the door closed behind me, plunging me into complete darkness, that I realized that of course there was no electric light. I was seized by a sudden and irrational fear that the killer would be waiting for me and I half stumbled, half slithered back down the stairs. I couldn’t find the doorknob for a moment and was about to hammer on the door when my fingers closed around it. I pushed out past the tapestry, nearly giving one of the maids a heart attack.

“Oh, my lady, you gave me such a fright,” she gasped. “I had no idea there was a door there. Oh, my goodness.” And she had to lean against the wall with her hand over her heart.

“Go and have a cup of tea, Jinty,” I said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Off she went and I went to find a candle and matches. Luckily they were not hard to locate in a place where frequent power cuts were the norm during bad weather. I also brought with me a doorstop and propped the door open. The candlelight flickered from the stone walls as I went into the chamber. Of course it was quite empty. It most resembled a prison cell, with a stone bench running around the wall and the ceiling tapering to a vault just above my head. Set into the wall were narrow slits that allowed past lairds to listen in to conversations in the rooms on the other side—presumably to see if anyone was plotting to assassinate him.

I felt silly about my panic and was about to leave when I noticed the map, lying on the bench in the far corner. I picked it up. It was a road map of central Scotland, put out by the RAC. Someone had drawn a circle extending about twenty miles out around the Balmoral area and written the words: CastleCraig? Gleneagles? Dofc? The last looked as if he had left a word unfinished.

I stood staring at it in the flickering candlelight. Had this map lain in the laird’s lug for ages, left by someone who wanted to do a bit of rambling through the glens, or had Hugo left it for me to find? The latter seemed a bit far-fetched until I looked down at the floor and noticed that it hadn’t been swept for some time and that there were signs of fresh footprints from a shoe bigger than mine. A man had been in here recently.