Echoes of Sherlock Holmes: Stories Inspired by the Holmes Canon(97)

“Oh, Sherry, I didn’t hear you.” He quickly rearranged his face into his usual affable expression.

I delivered Morag’s invitation and started to go back to the house. Then I turned and blurted the thought that had come into my head. “Your name isn’t really Stefan, is it? That’s why you didn’t hear me.”

“Ach, I was merely daydreaming,” he protested, shaking his head. Then something in his face relaxed and he sighed. “No, you are right, Miss Sherry. It is not. But please don’t say anything to anyone.”

“But Morag and Giles—”

“Oh, your employers know who I am, but they have promised discretion. You see, I try to do some things for my country that will help people, and there are those who don’t like that. Or like me.” He gave a ghost of a smile. “So better I be Stefan for a while.”

“Mum’s the word.” I nodded solemnly, all the while a little thrill tingled up my spine. Maybe I was here for something besides cleaning and washing up, after all.

After that I worked even harder at noticing details. I made it my business to know everyone on the estate, from the white-haired, burly gamekeeper to the tall, thin beekeeper, who was spending the summer in a little hut on the hillside that the Scots called a bothy. There was a tenant in the distant estate cottage as well, an ex-military bloke called Trevor. He looked a soldier, with his flat cap and neat little moustache, and his enormous Irish wolfhound was always at his side.

We were only a few miles from Balmoral as the crow flies, and as July rolled into August, we began to see black cars on the road that ran past the lodge.

“Security,” Giles growled into his beard when I asked him. “Advance teams for the bigwigs who’ll be arriving for the shooting parties at Balmoral.”

Stefan grew quieter, abstracted, and spent more and more time poring over papers he kept locked in a briefcase in his room.

Well, I could put two and two together, couldn’t I? Stefan was here for more than learning about estate management, and his summer-long visit had something to do with the August parties at Balmoral. I tried to keep an eye on him as much as I could, but then the Glorious Twelth arrived and we were absolutely bonkers with work. We had two weeks of parties with only men, and they wanted packed lunches for the shooting and the fishing, as well as full-course dinners most nights.

Morag was as big as a house by this time and looked exhausted, so I tried to take up slack in the kitchen where I could. Cooking, it turned out, was only chemistry.

Then we had a break. Two cancellations, two pleasant couples, and a single woman in Room 6. She was an actress and her name was Amanda.

The two wives were tweedy types, as big on sport as their husbands, so were out during the day, but Amanda spent more time around the lodge. She said she was resting and had thought a holiday in the fresh air would do her good.

Amanda was anything but tweedy. She wore Burberry and Prada and chattered about hairstyles and nail polish and celebrities, the sort of thing I’d found desperately boring at school. But I found I didn’t mind, really. When I told her she looked familiar, she said I’d probably seen her in a coffee advert on the TV or in some horror movies. “Bit parts,” she added with a shrug. “But they pay the bills.”

They must, I thought, for her to have booked a week at Burns House.

She went out with the shooting parties and seemed chuffed with her braces of birds, but fishing, she said, was really her thing. But then the rain set in, coming down in sheets for three solid days. The guests were bored and Morag kept me busy organizing charades and board games and helping with special treats in the kitchen.

“I thought it wasn’t supposed to rain in August,” said Amanda, popping her blond head in the kitchen door. The kitchen was supposed to be off-limits to guests, but Morag seemed to welcome the female company, too.

“It doesn’t, usually. But this is Scotland. There are no guarantees.” Morag wiped a floury hand across her brow.

Amanda came all the way in and wandered about the room, stopping to admire the array of bottles and jars of spices and vinegars on the shelves of the big dresser. Then she spied the picnic hamper. “Ooh, what fun,” she said, folding back the top. “That’s what I’ll do when the rain stops. I’ll take a fishing picnic and invite Stefan. Will you make us something nice, Morag? Maybe a game pie? With cold salads, and a tart?”

I turned away so she wouldn’t see me frown. Stefan had been very chatty with her over the last couple of days and he had lost that worried air. I felt a little disappointed in him. It seemed even a serious man was easily distracted by a fragile-looking woman who made him feel important. And Amanda, I’d decided, was older than she’d first looked. I could see the fine lines at the corners of her eyes, even with her always perfectly applied makeup.

I snapped at Stefan the next time he spoke to me and he looked surprisingly hurt, but I’d begun to wonder just what sort of a bloke Stefan really was. Had he told me the truth about why he was spending the summer at Burns House? Or did he have a more nefarious purpose?

The next day dawned fair and the sky was a rain-washed, brilliant blue. The fields around the lodge were emerald, and on the moors the rain had brought out the heather in glowing, purple swaths.

“You know it will be muddy by the river?” Giles warned at breakfast when Amanda proposed her fishing picnic.