‘I was late,’ Giselle repeated woodenly. ‘I was supposed to be here at eleven. If I’d been on time, I might have—’ Her voice broke and she bit her lip, her chin trembling.
‘You did your best, hen.’
Giselle wasn’t convinced. Her best would have been if she’d managed to save her. Those ten minutes could have made all the difference. Mhairi had only just passed…
Tears fell at last, hot and fast, and she sobbed, her shoulders shaking. She felt an arm around her and looked into Avril’s white, grief-stricken face.
Her friend’s cheeks were wet. ‘I should have known something was wrong. She always rang for her morning tea.Always.’
‘She was waiting for me to join her,’ Giselle said through her sobs. ‘I shouldn’t have been late.’
‘Stop blaming yourselves.’ Cook shoved a second tumbler at Avril. ‘It was her time to go.’ Although she said it in a matter-of-fact tone, her eyes brimmed with tears. Cook (not her real name, but her title) had worked at the castle for years, long before the craft centre had come into existence. Although the castle’s kitchen was now run by a head chef and an array of kitchen staff, she was still a formidable presence and saw to Mhairi’s meals personally, the way she’d done for forty years. The two women had grown old together, although Cook was over a decade younger than Mhairi.
‘Did they say what it was?’ Avril asked.
Giselle lifted a shoulder in a shrug and the blanket slipped down her arm. Cook hoisted it back up, then lowered herself slowly into the chair next to her after moving a book aside. They were in the library, having been ushered out of the parlour when the paramedics arrived.
‘Heart attack or stroke, I expect,’ Cook said. ‘There’ll have to be a post-mortem.’ Her expression was pained and sorrowful, her face pale with shock. Mhairi’s loss would hit her the hardest out of all of them.
When Cal walked into the room, everyone stared at him, falling silent as they waited for news.
He shook his head, his grief apparent in the set of his jaw and the tension around his eyes. ‘They’ve taken her to Broadford,’ he said. ‘I wanted to go with her, but there wasn’t any point.’ He blinked hard, sank into a chair and buried his head in his hands.
‘What’s happened?’ Jinny demanded, hurrying into the room, breathless and anxious. ‘Why was the ambulance here? Who’s hurt? One of the guests?’ Jinny, the gift shop’s manager, also had a close working relationship with Mhairi. She was going to take the news hard, too.
Giselle’s face crumpled again and she pressed her hands to her face. ‘It’s my fault.’
Cook patted her on the arm. ‘Hush, hen, it’s not your fault.’
‘What’s going on?’ Jinny repeated.
Cal spoke. ‘It’s Mhairi; she’s dead. A stroke or a heart attack, they think.’
Jinny shook her head. ‘No, no, that can’t be right. I sent her yesterday’s sales figures first thing this morning, and she…Oh, hell.’ She began to cry.
Avril asked. ‘What do we do now?’
Cal’s face twisted as he fought to control his expression. ‘The show must go on. We’ve got guests in the castle and a couple of coach tours on site. We can’t simply turf them out. And I’ve got to tell the others – they’ll have seen the ambulance, and I want them to hear the news from me. Then I’ll need to inform her solicitor.’ He looked drawn and grey, his tan faded by grief.
‘But Cal! She’s dead!’ Jinny looked appalled.
‘I know. I was with her when they called it.’
‘Called it?’ Avril asked.
‘Made the decision to stop resuscitation.’
Giselle gasped. ‘I thought she was dead before I…’ She put a hand to her mouth.
‘She was. There was nothing you could have done. The paramedics had to try, but she was already gone.’
‘But we can’t carry on as though nothing has happened,’ Jinny protested.
‘We have to,’ Cal said. ‘We can’t simply ask the guests to leave. And if we did, how long would we shut the castle and craft centre for? The rest of the day? The weekend? Next week?’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘Mhairi made her wishes clear. In the event of her death, we have to keep everything running as normal until I take instruction from her solicitor.’
Jinny subsided, her eyes brimming with tears. ‘I don’t think I can. And look at Avril – and Giselle. You can’t expect them to just go back to work.’
Cal caught his bottom lip between his teeth. ‘Avril, would you like to go home?’
