A simple case of a missing sister. Or is it?
Ian Skair has a new client. He has been invited to an ancient castle perched on a rocky promontory on the Angus coast by charismatic Alexander Lyton, Laird of Drumlychtoun. The laird wants Ian to find his sister Ailish. It should be a simple missing person search, but most families have their secrets and black sheep, and the Lytons of Drumlychtoun have more than their fair share.
The Drumlychtoun estate has passed from father to son over the generations. Alexander is childless and Ailish is assumed to be his heir. But they havenât seen each other for over fifty years. Ailish left home when she was nineteen and hasnât been heard of since.
The case becomes more and more complex as Ian uncovers secrets and intrigues, thefts and legends which could lead both him and the family into danger.
Can Ian reunite the laird with his sister? Or will it mean telling Alexander more than he really wants to know?
The Laird of Drumlychtoun is the first full length mystery novel in the Ian Skair: Private Investigator series.
A simple case of a missing sister. Or is it?
Ian Skair has a new client. He has been invited to an ancient castle perched on a rocky promontory on the Angus coast by charismatic Alexander Lyton, Laird of Drumlychtoun. The laird wants Ian to find his sister Ailish. It should be a simple missing person search, but most families have their secrets and black sheep, and the Lytons of Drumlychtoun have more than their fair share.
The Drumlychtoun estate has passed from father to son over the generations. Alexander is childless and Ailish is assumed to be his heir. But they havenât seen each other for over fifty years. Ailish left home when she was nineteen and hasnât been heard of since.
The case becomes more and more complex as Ian uncovers secrets and intrigues, thefts and legends which could lead both him and the family into danger.
Can Ian reunite the laird with his sister? Or will it mean telling Alexander more than he really wants to know?
The Laird of Drumlychtoun is the first full length mystery novel in the Ian Skair: Private Investigator series.
The Laird of Drumlychtoun
Chapter 1
Lottie, youâre a barking clichĂ©. Ian pulled the duvet over his head and tried to ignore his dogâs manic yapping and the sound of her claws skidding across the wooden floorboards. Dogs and postmen, a stereotype well overdue an update. âBe quiet, Lottie,â he mumbled, adding a pillow to the duvet to try to muffle the sound. Lottie should have learnt by now. The postman came most days, although Ian couldnât imagine why. He never brought anything interesting, and he always got barked at. Ian paid all his bills online. His clients paid him the same way, unless they didnât want to be discovered, in which case they tapped on his door in the dead of night and handed over envelopes of used twenty-pound notes. But that didnât happen often. Most of his clients were defiant about using his services. They felt it was their right to know what their nearest and dearest got up to. All that left for the postman were flyers for pizza delivery, flashy adverts for new housing developments complete with photos of happy residents - always devoted couples - and heartbreaking circulars begging him for money to help earthquake victims or local donkey sanctuaries. He did occasionally respond to some of those, proving once again what people kept telling him - he was too soft-hearted.
The barking died down. The postman had left and Ian could go back to sleep. But the departure of the postman meant just one thing to Lottie, who now arrived at his bedside with a lead in her mouth. Ian groaned, but she was right. It was time he got out of bed and took her for a walk. He reached for yesterdayâs clothes and pulled them on: socks, jeans and his usual shirt/sweater combo. He took them off as one piece and put them on again the same way. It saved time. Although time wasnât really an issue. He had very little to do today. A bit of paperwork, walking Lottie, a meal at the pub.
Another glorious day, he thought, pulling back the shutters and looking at the sun, which was just beginning to break through a light layer of mist that wafted over the Tay. He padded into the hall to look for his boots and that was when he saw it. The letter lying on his doormat. Who wrote letters these days? It was probably something sent out to look like a real letter but actually just another device to part him from his money. Heâd been caught out like that before, usually by people who wanted him to make a will or who had elaborate plans for his retirement. These were decoy letters. They arrived in white envelopes with his name and address apparently handwritten but in reality carefully generated by a computer to look handwritten. The letters themselves always addressed him by his first name. He wasnât one for uncalled-for deference but, probably the result of his upbringing and his motherâs ideas of what was right and proper, he resented being addressed by people he had never met, or had any intention of meeting, as Ian. What was wrong with a respectful Mr Skair?
He laced up his boots, then bent down to pick up the letter with every intention of throwing it into the recycling bin on his way out. But heâd been wrong. This was a real letter with his name and address handwritten in black ink. Better still, it used his professional name â Ian Skair: Private Investigator. Turning the envelope over, he noticed a tiny, embossed seal where the point of the flap was stuck down to the body of the envelope. He carried it to the window to examine it. The lettering was too small to read, but in the centre of the seal was the outline of a castle.
He felt that a letter like this should be treated with respect, so instead of tearing it open as he would normally have done, he carried into the kitchen, found a knife and slit it open at the top. He unfolded the letter and noted the same embossed heading. A little larger than the seal on the envelope, it was easier to read. It had the same picture and round the edge were the words Drumlychtoun Castle. Below that an address in a village also called Drumlychtoun.  He had never heard of it.
It was a brief letter:
Dear Mr Skair
I would like to engage your services on a matter that is of some delicacy, and personal to             myself and my family.Â
Please advise me of your terms and availability.
Sincerely yours
Alexander Lyton
Laird of Drumlychtoun
Â
Ian left it on his desk as Lottie was pestering him for a walk. He would reply when he got back. He put on his jacket, found his wallet and clipped on Lottieâs lead. His neighbour, Lainie, was hanging out her washing. âLovely morning for a walk,â she said, waving cheerfully. She was always hanging out washing. For someone who lived alone she had a lot of it. He supposed it might be some kind of cottage industry. Taking in washing had gone out of fashion since the arrival of domestic washing machines and launderettes. It was something his mother regretted. Sheâd always expected people to do stuff for her, not machines. He didnât stop to examine what Lainie was hanging out. He didnât want to seem nosy.
Ian agreed that it was a lovely morning. He wondered if he actually needed his jacket, but didnât return inside to take it off. This was Scotland. No one went outside jacketless in early May.
âWeâre off to the village,â he said. âCan I get you anything?â
âNo thanks. I did a big supermarket shop yesterday.â
He always offered and she nearly always refused. These offers were just neighbourly politeness. Neither expected the other to stagger up the hill from the village with heavy shopping. As neighbours went, Lainie was perfect. She was always happy to look after Lottie when he had to go out and couldnât take her with him. She liked to gossip over a cup of coffee, and they took in parcels for each other. Lainieâs parcels were usually packs of wool, which she bought in huge quantities from internet suppliers. His were smaller and heavier: his packs of painkillers or books.
The best thing about Lainie was that she didnât try to pair him off with every unattached woman she knew. Everyone else seemed hell bent on putting an end to his solitary lifestyle. Jeanie, the wife of his closest friend and ex-colleague Duncan Clyde, was always having him over for meals to which she invariably invited some single, divorced or even widowed lady of roughly his own age. All perfectly nice women. He might even consider dating one or two of them if only to keep Jeanie quiet. But none of them so far had struck him as a life partner. Or perhaps he didnât really want a life partner. Heâd messed up one marriage and he didnât relish the idea of doing it all over again. Since Lottieâs kidnap a month ago, heâd been seeing a woman called Caroline Gillespie now and then. She was good company, sometimes a little more than that. But neither of them wanted to become an item. They knew they could call each other for occasional walks or meals out that wouldnât lead to any kind of commitment. And as far as he was concerned that was perfect. No expectations â no failures.
Arriving at the bottom of the hill and the village shop, Ian tied Lottie to a lamp post and went inside for a newspaper and some croissants. While he was in there it occurred to him that the Lairdâs letter hadnât mentioned a telephone number or an email. He was going to have to reply with a letter of his own. He bought a pack of envelopes and some stamps.
The walk back up the hill to his house had made him hungry. He popped the croissants into the oven and turned on the coffee machine. Then he went into his study and re-read the Lairdâs letter, formulating a reply in his head and trying to remember when heâd last written an actual letter. How did you address a laird? He turned on his computer and started a Google search for Drumlychtoun Castle. A beep from the kitchen reminded him that his breakfast was ready and, anxious to know more, he collected his coffee and croissants and decided to eat breakfast at his desk.
The castle and surrounding estate, he discovered, had been in the Lyton family for centuries. The Drumlychtoun Estate of several hundred acres was a tenant run co-operative which produced organic food [SW1] for local marketplaces. After getting side-tracked by links, as one invariably does when using Google, Ian knew a lot more about sustainable food production than he had known before, but very little about the Laird himself. He returned to his search for the castle. The original fortress was built some time in the thirteenth century on a remote part of the Angus coast about fifteen miles from Montrose, but in around 1600 it had been washed into the sea and replaced by a more modern castle built further inland. This, with a few additions over the centuries must, from the address on the letter, be where the Laird now lived. He found photographs of the castle, a dour looking stone building perched on a small hill on the far side of a lake and approached by an arched bridge. He found no information about the current Laird who, from the tone of his letter, didnât sound like a very young man. So why, Ian wondered, did he need the services of a private investigator? His usual cases concerned workplace dishonesty or marital infidelity. As the landlord of a large estate the former sounded more likely and the sort of case he would prefer. Ian hoped that this wasnât going to be yet another case of spying on marital infidelity. It was not much fun in places like Edinburgh or Dundee. It would be a nightmare in a remote coastal village. It would involve sitting in his car, camera poised, parked in windy bits of rural Scotland or outside seedy hotels. Although perhaps someone with connections to a laird would be able to afford less seedy establishments for his or her trysts. It made very little difference. Ian would still have to be parked outside it. Cold winds didnât discriminate between cheap and expensive hotels. On the east coast of Scotland it was windy and wind had no respect for the size of oneâs wallet.
Ian turned to his reply to the Laird. He had never written to one before, or even spoken to one as far as he could remember. How did they like to be addressed? He clicked into Google again and found a site that dealt with Scottish etiquette. Momentarily distracted by a page that addressed the problem of whether to wear oneâs kilt belt above or below a sporran chain, not something he had ever worried about before but might just lead to sleepless nights in the future, he found information about the correct way of dealing with lairds. In a letter, it said, a laird should be addressed by his full name and on the envelope he should write the name followed by Laird of_. He trusted Google enough to assume he would get the protocol right and not fall at the first hurdle by upsetting a promising client.
Dear Alexander Lyton, he wrote.
Thank you for your enquiry.
I am enclosing a list of my terms and fees.
I am unable to confirm my availability until I know more about the type and scale of the   work involved. I would be happy to discuss this with you further if you find the enclosed        agreeable.
Yours sincerely
Ian Skair
Private Investigator
Â
He added his phone number and email just in case someone in the Drumlychtoun household had decided to join the twenty-first century and make his life easier. Then he addressed the envelope to Alexander Lyton, Laird of Drumlychtoun and put it aside to post on his next visit to the village.
 [SW1]Suggest changing one of these to avoid repetition, e.g. âturned out organic produceâ or âproduced organic foodsâ?
Do you like cozy mysteries that isn't the elderly, nosy woman who gets into trouble all the time? How about a retired police detective in Scotland with the cutest little dog?
This detective decided that it was time to retire from the police force after being shot and becomes a PI. He takes on cases such as dog napping and stray spouses. But this time there is a castle, a ring, and a sister who has been missing for decades. Might not be so boring.
The pace of the story is slow. If you are used to the murder or mystery occurring in the first pages, this will be a different pace for you. There is a lot of setting up the people and the scenes. Most times when I encounter this, it is boring. I didn't find this to be the case in reading this particular book. The characters are so well done that I enjoyed my time getting to know them and their backstory.
This is my second writer with a British background and British characters. The laidback style seems to be similar. Not sure if it is a cultural thing, but both were enjoyable but not highly dramatic. There was not a lot action but a lot of thinking on the part of the main character. The reader spends more time in the head of the detective as he reasons things out including much of his personal life.
Again, that might sound boring to those who like high-packed drama mysteries, but I enjoyed it. There was some history and cultural things thrown in which had me researching them and learning more. I might have some Scottish blood, but I know nothing of the culture outside of Outlander. So I don't know much. Will be checking into what this author is doing.
Give the book a chance. I think you'll enjoy it.