A Double Death on the Black Isle Read Free Page B

explained.
    â€œOh really? And who’s doing Town?” Rob had meant this as a facetious remark and nearly fell off his stool at the answer.
    â€œYour mother.”
    This time McAllister had consulted his deputy and Don had agreed with him. Margaret McLean was as well informed about goings-on in the town as Don McLeod, but in an entirely different social strata. Birdlife and nature, on the other hand, meant nothing to Don—nor to most of their readers. Don cared little about farming practices, but anything that stirred up the farming gentry was fine by him. The final argument on the hiring, McAllister wanted kept secret. But Don knew. Beech was on the board of guardians, that obscure body that oversaw the finances of the newspaper for the investors.
    â€œ ‘Town and Country!’ ‘McAllister’s Mischief,’ that’s what it should be called,” Don was to remark later over his usual pint and a half. And as usual, he was not wrong.
    With Don McLeod as deputy editor and chief subeditor; Joanne Ross and Rob McLean on reporting duties; Hector Bain the photographer; McAllister the editor-in-chief, writing the leader and obituaries; and Mrs. Smart overseeing the finances, they were all set to revamp a newspaper essentially unchanged since 1867.
    Later that afternoon McAllister was sorting through the photographs of the fire. They were spectacular. He finally chose one showing flames shooting up through the decking, an oily black cloud of smoke ascending towards heaven, the name of the boat,
The Good Shepphard
, clear, the whole disaster showing in duplicate on the flat-calm waters of the canal basin. And in silhouette, to one side of the picture, his body conveying his anguish, was the skipper—Alexander Skinner of the Black Isle.
    â€œGreat front page for the new
Highland Gazette
,” McAllister murmured, happy at last. “Let’s hope this story runs for weeks.”

T WO

    T he bruising on Joanne Ross was invisible. Like a peach with the flesh discolored around the stone, she seemed untouched. But the shame of “having to get married,” that understated euphemism for the rush to the altar, followed by a six-month pregnancy, marred her own marriage and caused her parents to disown her. Ten years on, they had not relented; they had never forgiven her for shaming them, never met their grandchildren. The pain has softened but when asked by friends, by her children, she made excuses about never visiting—the price of the train tickets, her parents being too elderly to have young children around, anything other than tell the truth.
    She was aware that she was a quarter-step ahead or behind the beat of the community. Her mood often depended on the weather, her opinions seemingly influenced by a mischievous imp hovering somewhere in the region of her left shoulder. A tune, a song, a poem could change her walk. Her wide-open face showed the bloodlines of a true Scot. But her cheekbones were on the edge of too strong, her mouth on the side of too wide, and her skin too freckled to be considered beautiful.
    She knew her husband was ashamed of her; he’d married a woman who would never fit in, in the Highland town where respectability was all-important and being “different” was a sin.
    â€œStubborn,” her husband, Bill Ross, called her. “Too much schooling” in her mother-in-law’s opinion. “Stuck up” was thephrase one of the mothers at the school had used.
A mind of her own
, McAllister thought, but he meant that as praise.
    Joanne shook off thoughts of her failed marriage and went back to typing. She worked steadily, her athletic shoulders wrestling with the heavy, awkward typewriter as easily as a cowboy with a steer, plowing through lists scribbled on scrap paper, typed notes, scrawls on the back of an envelope, and one that just said “repeat last year’s.” They were all notices of the holidays and events surrounding