Free Wildfire at Midnight by Mary Stewart

that a filthy grotesque thing like that should catch up with her'7 What was it all about9 There's something more than queer about it. Alastair. \ can't explain just how I feel about it, but it-—it's somehow particularly nasty."
    He said, inadequately: "'Murder's never pretty."
    "But it can be plain," I said, ''and this isn't just plain wicked murder. She wasn't just hit or stabbed or choked in a fit of human passion. She was deliberately done to death, and then—arranged. It was cold-blooded, calculating, and—and evil. Yes, evil. Here, too, of all places, where you'd think that sort of perverted ugliness had no existence. It's haunting me, Alastair."
    He said, a little lamely: "The police are still on it, and they won't let up, you know."
    I said: "Who do you think did it?"
    "Janet—"
    "You must have thought about it. Who? Jamesy Far-lane?"
    "I—look, Janet, I wouldn't talk too much about it—"
    I said: "You mean, in case it's someone in the hotel?"
    He said uncomfortably: "Well—"
    "Do you think it's someone in the hotel?"
    "I don't know. I—don't—know. If it frightens you, my dear, why don't you go somewhere else? Broadford, or Portree, or—"
    "I'm staying here," I said. "I want to be here when they do nose out this devil, whoever he is. Whoever he is."
    He was silent.
    I said: "Good night, Alastair," and went back upstairs to my room.
    I never took the tablets, after all. My dead-of-night walk among the murderers must have been the kind of shock therapy that my headache needed, for when I got back to my room I realized that the pain had completely gone.
    I got into bed and surveyed the rest of my booty.
    I had got, I discovered, two copies of The Autocar. The books were The Bride of Lammermoor, and the abridged edition of Frazer's Golden Bough.
    The Bride of Lammermoor put me to sleep in something under ten minutes.

Chapter 7
    NEXT MORNING, SURE ENOUGH, IT WAS RAINING, with a small, persistent, wetting rain. The sheep grazing in the glen near the hotel looked damp and miserable, and all but the nearest landmarks were invisible. Even Sgurr na Stri, just beyond the river, was dim in its shroud of grey.
    When I came down, a little late, to breakfast, the place was quiet, though this was the Sabbath quiet rather than a depression due to the weather. I could see Alastair Braine and the Corrigans sitting over newspapers in the lounge, while Mrs. Cowdray-Simpson and the old lady had already brought their knitting into play. There were, however, signs that even a wet Sunday in the Highlands could not damp some enthusiasms: Colonel Cowdray-Simpson, at the grille of the manager's office, was conducting a solemn discussion on flies with Mr. Persimmon and a big countryman in respectable black; Marion Bradford and Roberta were in the porch, staring out at the wet landscape; and near them Roderick Grant bent, absorbed, over a landing net that he was mending with a piece of string.
    He looked up, saw me, and grinned. "Hullo. It's too bad it's Sunday, isn't it? Wouldn't you have loved a nice day's fishing in the rain?"
    "No, thank you," I said with decision. "I suppose this is what you fishing maniacs call ideal weather?"
    "Oh, excellent." He cocked an eye at the sullen prospect. "Though it mightn't prove too dismal even for laymen. This is the sort of day that can clear up in a flash. Miss Symes might get her climb after all."
    "Do you think so?" Roberta turned eagerly.
    "It's possible. But"—he shot a wary half glance at Marion Bradford's back, still uncompromisingly turned—"be careful if you do go, and don't get up too high. The mist can drop again as quickly as it can rise."
    He had spoken quietly, but Marion Bradford heard. She turned and sent him a smouldering look.
    "More good advice?" she asked in that tense, overconfident voice that made anything she said sound like an insult.

    Roberta said quickly: ' It's good of Mr. Grant to bother, Marion. He knows I know nothing about it."
    Marion Bradford looked as if she