I decided I should make discreet inquiries to find out if Mrs. Simpson had been present when the other accidents happened to the prince. I noticed Lachan and Murdoch exchange an amused glance as she swept from the room. Then they too got up and excused themselves. One by one the party dispersed to go and rest before dinner or, in the case of Babe, to have yet another bath before dinner. I resolved to go and see exactly where this boulder fell onto the car and if it was possible that someone could have given it a convenient push. It was not unheard of for rocks to fall down mountain-sides, but the chances of timing a rock to fall on a car would be slim, I should have thought. But I couldn’t deny that it was yet another accident.

I went up to change for dinner. I was in the upstairs bathroom when I heard voices. I should probably clarify that I am not in the habit of hearing voices. The plumbing system at Castle Rannoch is eccentric, to say the least. It was added a few hundred years after the castle was built, of course. One of the features of the plumbing is that voices are carried by the pipes from one part of the castle to another. Two men were talking in low tones, in what sounded like Scottish accents.

“So are you going to tell her?” I heard one voice whisper.

“Are you mad? We’d be chucked out on our ear. She’d see to that. And I can’t afford anything to come between me and my goals right now. This place is ideal for it. You must see that.”

“What if somebody saw?”

“Then we plead ignorance. We didn’t mean it, did we?”

And the sound of chuckling reverberated in the pipes.

Chapter 16

Chapter 16

Castle Rannoch
August 18
Evening.

I stood there, not noticing the rain and wind blowing in on me. (Oh, didn’t I mention that it’s a Castle Rannoch tradition to keep bathroom windows open at all times? Guests find this somewhat startling and hard to endure—especially when coupled with the tartan wallpaper and the groans and creaks emitted by the pipes.) A conspiracy then. It had never occurred to me before that maybe there could be Scottish nationalists at work in the castle—men who wanted home rule, like Ireland, or maybe wanted to replace the primarily German strain of monarchy with the old Stuart dynasty. Rannoch seemed an odd place to be harboring such feelings, as our family traced its ancestry back to the Stuarts on the old duke’s side as well as to the currently reigning monarch through my grandmother.

I went back to my bedroom deep in thought. When my maid, Maggie, came to dress me for dinner and was anxious to chatter about castle gossip, I was happy to oblige her.