‘Give me a minute,’ called a voice from somewhere at the back of the shop. Zoe peered around a bookcase to see the old Labrador padding towards her, nose quivering towards the paper bag in her hand.
‘Hey, Horace,’ she said, reaching down to scratch him behind the ears. When she looked up, Charles Joseph was standing in front of her, hands clasped together.
‘She remembered the buns, Horace,’ he remarked to the dog, with solemn pleasure. ‘I told you she would. Your timing is impeccable, Ms Adams – I’ve just put a fresh pot of coffee on. Come through to the back.’
He led her past a wooden desk with a cash register and through an arched doorway into a smaller room. This, too, was lined with bookshelves along the walls, but the central space had been left for a couple of shabby armchairs and a wide desk that looked like an antique. In one corner a jumble of coloured beanbags and cushions sprawled across the floor.
‘I call this the Reading Room,’ he said, with a sweeping gesture. ‘Rather grand, I know. But sometimes people like to have a quiet place to sit down with a book while they’re in town. Some of the youngsters come here to study at the weekends, if they can’t get any peace at home. People drop by in their lunch hour and the children like to stop off on their way home from school. I’m always pleased to have company.’ He waved towards the coloured cushions.
‘You’re better than a public library,’ Zoe said, smiling. The old man’s face grew serious.
‘I’m afraid that’s more or less true. They closed our library down a couple of years ago. Someone on the mainland decided it wasn’t financially viable. I’m all the islanders have now.’ He lifted his hands in a gesture of helplessness. ‘That’s why I give away so many books, though our young friend Edward despairs at my business sense.’
‘And you don’t …’ she hesitated, searching for the right way to phrase it ‘… worry about the money?’
Charles gave an indulgent chuckle. ‘My dear girl, I worry about it all the time. But I’ve been fortunate. I wrote a number of books when I was younger that enjoyed some success. I invested wisely, and that’s given me an income over the years. And I dabble in rare books – now and then I come across an item of more than average value, and that keeps us afloat, with what I make from the maps and walking guides. So I can more or less afford to allow my charitable instincts to get the better of my commercial ones.’
‘What kind of books did you write?’
‘Oh, studies of myths. That was my field. There’s bound to be one around somewhere.’ He poked about on a nearby shelf, running his finger along dusty spines until he pulled out a fat volume in a transparent plastic cover and handed it to Zoe. The Myths That Make Us by Dr Charles M. Joseph. The dust-jacket featured a reproduction of Rubens’ Saturn Devouring His Son.
‘Is it history?’ she asked, turning the book over to look at the back cover.
He tilted his head. ‘Partly. History, anthropology, psychology, literature, art, travel – there’s a bit of everything in mythography. This one found its way on to various university syllabuses over the years – that’s why it’s still in print.’
The inside cover showed a black-and-white photograph of the author in a tweed jacket much like the one he was currently wearing, his eyes crinkled at the edges as he smiled into the camera. He didn’t look a whole lot younger than he did now, Zoe thought, yet this book was clearly published in the last century. She turned to the inside flyleaf to find that it was dated 1975. Charles caught her looking at him and smiled.
‘I was born middle-aged,’ he said. ‘Now then – take a seat while I find a plate for those buns. Milk and sugar?’ He disappeared into a small kitchen through the back. Zoe could hear the chinking of crockery and the hiss of steam.
‘Neither, thanks.’ She sank back into one of the armchairs, the book in her lap, and flicked through a few pages, her eyes lingering over the lavish illustrated plates – reproductions of paintings, sculptures and maps.
‘Take it home if you like,’ Charles said, setting down a mug of coffee on a table he pulled up between them. She handed him the paper bag and he settled into the other armchair, elbows jutting out and hands folded together, watching her. ‘What did you want to ask me, then?’
‘Oh.’ She looked up, startled. ‘I was interested in finding out a bit more about the local history. Since I’m going to be living here for a bit.’
He continued to look at her. ‘Naturally. But I think you wanted to ask something in particular?’
‘What’s the story with the house?’ she blurted. ‘The one Mick and Kaye don’t want me to hear?’
‘Ah.’ He picked up his bun and took a large bite, leaving the question hanging while he chewed it, nodding several times in appreciation. Zoe wondered if he would make her wait until he had finished the entire thing, but when his mouth was empty he glanced towards the doorway. ‘Mick’s put a great deal of time and money into doing up that old place. Love, too, in a sense. It was important to him to redeem it. The house had been left to ruin when his father died – perhaps when you’re more settled you can get him to show you the photos. What he’s done there is extraordinary.’
‘Redeem it from what?’
‘From its history. You’re their first tenant, you know. They’d only had the website live two days when you emailed him, he said, and he was fretting that he might not find anyone at all over the winter. So you were a bit of a godsend – you can understand why they don’t want the locals putting you off the place with lurid tales. Especially a woman on her own.’
Zoe gave him a stern look. ‘I’m interested in the tales. I think I’m old enough to tell fact from fiction.’
He met this with an enigmatic smile. ‘Well. I wonder if any of us can really claim to know that.’
There was an odd pause while Zoe tried to judge whether or not he was serious. ‘So – it’s supposed to be haunted, right?’ She made the question sound deliberately sarcastic, but as she spoke she recalled the chill she had felt on the stairs, the plaintive tone of the woman singing. But that had been the whisky and jet lag. No point in telling him about that.
Charles picked up his coffee and leaned forward. ‘Are you sure you want to hear this story? Only, one can’t unknow things, you see, and there’s a world of difference between hearing it here, all cosy over buns, and remembering it later, after dark, alone in that big house.’
‘You’re doing it too, now. I’m not a child, Dr Joseph.’
‘I apologise.’ He nodded, smiling, but there was a trace of resignation in his tone, as if what she was demanding were an unpleasant but necessary cure.
‘Well, then.’ He set his cup down and eased back in his chair, steepling his fingers. ‘Tamhas McBride owned this island in the mid nineteenth century, though he never lived here until he married Ailsa Drummond in 1861. She was the eldest child and only daughter of the Reverend Teàrlach Drummond, great-great-great-grandfather to our Mick, who was then minister of the island’s kirk. The reverend was widowed and Ailsa refused to abandon him on the island after her marriage, so her new husband had a grand house built overlooking the bay on the northern coast. To say the McBrides were not liked here would be an understatement. Tamhas’s father had been a Glasgow industrialist who bought the island in the 1830s when the laird went bankrupt – it happened all over this part of Scotland. His first act as landlord was to send sixty of the inhabitants to Nova Scotia.’
‘Jesus. What, like a punishment?’
‘He claimed the island was over-populated. “Assisted voluntary emigration”, they called it. Nothing voluntary about it,