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travelled to the altar. Once again red roses - that most unlikely accompaniment to a funeral—were here placed, defiantly as it were, in vast vases.
    Jemima felt in her handbag. It was no time to be arguing about the relaxation of the Church's rules concerning head-covering. Which as far as she knew had occurred many years back in the rest of the world, but news of which had evidently not penetrated Glen Bronnack. A chiffon scarf, Hanae Mori, printed with a design of hearts, emerged and fluttered nervously in her fingers as she tried to tie it rapidly over her hair. Its pale pretty colours must make her, she thought, look even more unsuitable among the sea of black hats and veils which stretched before her.
    Captain Lachlan himself was in no way discomposed by the priest's anger.
    'Father Flanagan, you may now-proceed with the funeral of his late Majesty,' was all he said, with a calm Jemima envied.
    'I will not be burying Mr Charles Beauregard under such flags and roses and the like,' replied Father Flanagan fiercely. 'I said it to his face when he was alive and I'll not be holding my tongue when he's dead. I denounce the Red Rose and all its works. An insult to the dead, and to Almighty God and to his sorrowing family.'
    'Are you referring to me, Father?' said a clear female voice from somewhere above their heads. Jemima realized for the first time that there was a gallery in the plain church. She looked back. The gallery, which ran the width of the church, over its doorway, was totally empty except for one girl, sitting in the centre on what looked remarkably like a kind of wooden throne.
    'Since I am the only member of this family sorrowing over the death of Charles Beauregard; it is my request that the Red Rose is present,' continued the high clear voice. ‘I instruct you, Father, to proceed with my brother's funeral.' She paused, and looked furiously, disdainfully, at the rest of the congregation below her. 'I regard the rest of you, as you well know, as murderers.'
    'Her Majesty Queen Clementina,'- murmured Captain Lachlan with something like reverence. He even managed a kind of bow.
    'Murderers,' repeated Miss Clementina Beauregard.
     
     
     

CHAPTER 5
    Dead but not buried
     
     
     
    There was a kind of commotion in the little church, a subdued but audible buzz ofhorror. Jemima dropped her eyes from the improbable figure of vengeance in the gallery, and tried to form some impression of the members of the congregation as individuals.
    The general image of the congregation was now dissolving into a series of portraits. Miss Clementina Beauregard was already a portrait in her own right. Or rather, sitting there, with her long fair hair under a black velvet beret and her black clothes with white frills at the neck, she had the air of a mermaid in mourning. What was that Hans Andersen story about a little mermaid who walked on knives to gain the man she loved ... Clementina Beauregard would have done well as a mourning mermaid. Cold, even in her sorrow.
    The rest of the congregation did not look as though they had come out of any sort of fairy story. They were neither fey nor frail in appearance. Or to put it another way, they were positively beefy-looking. What you might expect in a Scottish church of any denomination on a Sunday. Except that this wasn't Sunday, and Jemima was reluctantly coming to the conclusion that nothing in Scotland was going to be quite as she had expected.
    The front left-hand pew had an obvious gap at its end. That, she guessed, was for the absent Colonel Henry to slip into. And it was likely now to remain empty. The woman who actually headed the row was wearing a conventional black hat. She continued to stare persistently in the direction of Clementina and her gallery.
    The Colonel's lady? Presumably. It was an unexpectedly sweet face, with those kind of features-small nose, round chin-which time blurs, removing the prettiness of youth, leaving behind something slightly pathetic,