Thicker Than Water, Excerpt One: Sarclet Broch, 1943
Violet looked around anxiously as she started along the rough path that led from the rear of the castle grounds directly towards the haven. Now that she was through the gate and beyond the wall and trees, the landscape was wide open and she no longer had an excuse to offer if asked what she was doing and why she wasn’t in the castle, cleaning, as she was meant to be. Or if asked why she was carrying a woven shopping bag containing lemonade, sandwiches and a tartan blanket.
Not that anyone was likely to ask. You didn’t need to be as experienced as Mr Mackay, the butler, to be able to see that Sarclet Castle’s days as a family home were behind it. Certainly as far as the colonel and his family were concerned, anyway.
She’d walked into the kitchen one morning earlier in the week to overhear the younger Mrs Mackay asking the older one if there was any word about the castle being closed up. The two women stopped talking when they saw Violet, who pretended not to have heard anything. It was a thought that had crossed her mind too. A live-in housemaid didn’t get paid much, but the money came in handy for her mother in Thurso and Violet wasn’t sure what else she could do without leaving Caithness.
By rights, she should have been conscripted into war work when she turned 20, in June of the previous year. But Colonel Gough, the 2nd Earl of Wick, had pulled strings and Violet found Sarclet Castle a pleasant and relatively undemanding place to work, so was happy to remain there. All good things come to an end, though, and Violet had a feeling that her days at the castle might be numbered.
It was a beautiful day, still warm despite being well into September and with just a few fluffy white clouds to break up the blue sky. Violet had changed from her maid’s uniform into her best summer dress, the blue one with the red and yellow flowers on it that buttoned up the front.
The most important thing about the weather was that there was very little wind and what there was came from inland. There were times in her two years working here when she’d seen fierce onshore winds carrying so much salt and sea spray that they could have stripped paint, even within the relative shelter of the trees and high walls protecting Sarclet Castle and its gardens.
Violet never thought of herself as especially pretty but she’d been told more than once, by more than one man, that she looked like a young Dorothy Lamour. She found the comparison flattering, as she knew she was meant to, but she never saw the likeness herself. The previous summer she’d met her younger sister Elizabeth in Wick and taken her to see ‘The Jungle Princess’ at the Pavilion Picture House simply because it starred Dorothy Lamour. She enjoyed the film but didn’t see anything of herself in the woman on the screen.
The path Violet was following reached the top of the grassy cliffs surrounding three sides of Sarclet Haven above its most southerly corner, and she paused to look down on it. The harbour had been made as unusable as Royal Engineers and the colonel’s Home Guard could manage. Coils of barbed wire had been stretched out thickly between the base of the cliffs on either side of the stony beach. There was still a rowing boat pulled up out of the water, well above the barbed wire and close to the old fishing station, but there was now no way of getting it to the sea.
Things had been different until about this time the previous year. No one talked openly about it, not to her anyway, but Violet had heard whispers that something dark and extraordinary had happened while she’d been away, spending a few days with her mother and sister in Thurso. She’d returned to find the castle in disarray and marines patrolling the gardens and nearby coastline. The defence of the harbour had been taken much more seriously afterwards.
From where she stood, Violet could have made her way in either direction to join tracks descending to the head of the harbour below her. Instead, she stayed at high level on a path that took her above the outer corner of the harbour before turning south-east towards Sarclet Head, a path that passed close by her destination.
Violet stopped and watched as two small aircraft, which she thought were Spitfires, flew overhead in the direction of Wick. She thought of Peter and smiled. She opened her handbag and took out the telegram, then re-read it for perhaps the tenth time since the telegraph boy had cycled up to the front door of the castle late that morning. Thankfully it had been Violet who had opened the door and taken the telegram.
It still said the same as it had then, in the poor handwriting for which the unpleasant postmaster at Thrumster was well known: ‘Miss Violet Bain. Sarclet Castle. Today’s flight cancelled. See you at the usual place at 2.30 p.m. Peter.’
In the two months that she’d known him, Peter had never sent her a telegram before. He’d once telephoned the castle to let her know he couldn’t make a planned meeting. That had led to a ticking-off from Mr Mackay the butler. But that seemed preferable to spending 6d for nine words, including the address, then 1d for every additional word. The telegram she was holding had not been cheap to send. Violet wasn't mean, but she was careful and it did cross her mind that Peter could have saved 4d by leaving out the unnecessary ‘at the usual place’ and another 1d by omitting her Christian name.
She knew there was a train on the Wick and Lybster line that left Wick at 1 p.m. on weekdays and got into Thrumster about twenty minutes later. She imagined that Peter would have caught that, then walked from Thrumster. It was less than two miles so he would probably already be at the broch, waiting for her.
Sarclet Broch formed a mound covered in rough grass and heather. Peter had told her that it had been higher until ten years earlier, when some friends of the colonel who thought themselves to be accomplished antiquarians had persuaded him to let them dig into the top of the mound.
They’d dug out the interior of the broch, revealing a massive circular surrounding wall that stood taller than Violet could reach with her arms extended above her head while standing on tiptoe on the flagstone flooring. Other interior features they’d uncovered included partial stone dividing walls separating off some of the areas and what seemed to be bed platforms, plus a large hearth in the centre of the broch and a deep stone well that always had water in it despite the broch’s location on top of cliffs.
The antiquarians had also reopened the entrance to the broch, which was on its east side even though that side faced the sea and the worst of the weather. Peter said that there was much more to be excavated on the site, probably including smaller surrounding buildings and the outer face of the main broch wall. But that would depend on the landowner being interested enough to agree to the work. Violet doubted that the colonel would ever again be that interested in his estates in Caithness.
To get to the entrance, Violet had to walk around the south side of the mound. Then she bent over and, nearly crouching, shuffled along the low entrance passage. She stood up as she emerged into the interior with an expectant smile on her face.
‘Hello, Peter! I’m here!’ she called.
There was no answer.
Violet wasn't unduly worried. Perhaps Peter’s train had been delayed? It was such a beautiful day that it would be no hardship to go back outside and climb up the mound, then sit on the blanket on the top of the broch wall in the sunshine, watching for Peter to arrive.
She turned back towards the entrance passage but stopped when she heard what sounded like a shoe scuffing on the stone floor behind her.
Violet spun around and when she saw who it was she realised why she’d received a telegram rather than a phone call from Peter. The man took a pace towards her and she saw he had a knife in his hand.
Even on a beautiful afternoon with very little wind, there was no chance of Violet’s screams being heard by anyone other than her killer.