This story comes from Dr. Sutherland’s book A Time to Keep (1934).
The farm of Invernauld is at Rosehall, a remote place in Sutherland, eleven miles from Bonar Bridge, and on the lonely highway that leads to Lochlinver on the west coast. Half a mile from Invernauld, and on the steep hillside, is the village of Altass. On Thursday night, 18th March 1909, Neil Hughes called at the village shop to buy paraffin. He was a tall, handsome man of forty-five. Once he has been a prosperous merchant in Stornoway, and now was a peddlar in small goods, sleeping in a tent which he carried around the country. Respected by the farmers and crofters, he had no difficulty in finding camping grounds where he could stay as long as he pleased. As a peddlar he was doing well, and in his wallet was £40 in notes. Having bought the paraffin, he returned to his tent, a quarter of a mile from the farm house. In the morning he was found dead in his tent, with his head smashed beyond recognition. He had been murdered for his money as he slept, and the canvas of the tent had been ripped open above the place where his head lay. An axe and two hammers were found outside the tent. On the Monday they buried him as Altass, and a young man was employed to dig the grave.
The murder was a great sensation, as it was about eighty years since the last murder in Sutherland. Then, as now, the victim had been a respectable peddlar, but the murderer of 1830 had dug his victim’s grave. All this was remembered when on Tuesday morning the police arrested the young man who had dug Neil Hughes’ grave on the previous day. In a few days the lad was released, and the search for the murderer continued.
Later one afternoon three weeks later I was returning on foot to the doctor’s house after making a few visits in Tain, when I saw a policeman running towards me.
“You’re wanted, Doctor.”
“Where?”
“At the Royal: in the stable yard. The sheriff’s there, and our serjeant: in a wagonette. They’re waiting for you.”
We both ran the short distance to the Royal Hotel. “What is this about?” I asked on the way.
“I don’t know, Doctor. Some say you are going to arrest the Rosehall murderer.”
Most exciting, and I ran faster, but reflected that Ross-shire was not the wild and woolly west, and that in Scotland murderers could be arrested without a sheriff and a doctor.
In the stable yard was a two-horse wagonette, in which sat Sherriff Mackenzie and the sergeant of police. I clambered in: the wagonette started, and the sheriff explained:
“There is a dead body ashore at the Meikle Ferry. As the Fiscal is away I thought I had better go myself, and we need a doctor’s report. It it’s the Rosehall murderer he’s saved a lot of trouble and expense to the Crown. Maybe it’s another victim.”
Our road led west, past comfortable detatched houses, with small lawns and the inevitable sycamore trees, on the fringe of the town; the into arable country between hills and the Dornoch Firth. As the firth narrows, the hills on either side approach the shore, until at last far west the mountains of Inverness and Sutherland stand face to face across the Kyle of Loch Alsh. Two policemen on cycles overtook and passed us. A third appeared, cycling fast, and blown with exertion. The sheriff stopped the wagonette. “You look winded, There is room for you and your cycle in the wagonette.”
“Thank you kindly, my lord, but I’ll be there afore you.” He jumped onto his cycle and dashed ahead.
The sheriff, a tall, grey-bearded man, turned to the sergeant: “Why all this hurry?”
“Och, they’ve made up their minds it’s the murderer, and each wants to be there first. A little exercise will do them no harm, I’m thinking.”
During the drive I tried to remember all the things I should observe. If this was to be the prelude to a criminal trial, what questions would be put to me. I remembered Sir Henry Littlejohn. A body washed up by the tide has not of necessity been drowned. A person may faint, fall into the sea, and die of shock. Anyone might be murdered and their body thrown into the sea. That is not death by drowning, although the body is returned by the sea. In death by drowning the lungs are filled with water, and often the stomach.
How long had the body been in the water? I had not brought a thermometer. A dead body sinks, and only rises to the surface when buoyed by the gases of decomposition. In warm water, these gases generate quickly, and the body may rise within two days. In the cold of winter decomposition is slow, and the body may lie at the bottom for a couple of months. From suicides in the Thames and in the Seine tables have been prepared. Knowing the temperature of the water, you can say how long the corpse has been submerged.
Some miles from Tain we left the main road and went down a short track over grown with grass, leading through gorse to the flat shingle beach. All that remained of the ferry was an old stone hut with a broken door. It was a lonely place beside a grey sky in the late afternoon. Far out some birds were floating on the water.
The body lay face downwards above the receding tide, and the waves of the calm sea lapped the shingle.
In a half-circle, some yards from the body, were six policemen and about a dozen men, women, and children from crofts on the hillside. As I turned the corpse over on to its back and old woman wailed: “Ah, puir laddie, he’s touched it.” In that country the first to touch a drowned corpse will be the next to drown.
Dusk was falling, and the sheriff turned to the sergeant. “Get the men to move the body into that hut, and let one of them stay with it all night. In the morning, send a cart and bring it to Tain.”
The sergeant called to his Force: “Here, you men, shift the body into the hut, and you, Donald, can watch it for the night.”
“I’ll dae nae sich thing, Sergeant. Me stay the night in a place like this with a body like that. I’ll nae do it, and ye’ve nae right to ask, and none knows better than yersel.”
The sheriff smiled. “Well, Sergeant, take the body back to-night in a cart and keep it in the police station.”
“I’ll do no such thing, my lord. What do you think my wife would say to that? A drowned body in a police station?”
The sheriff became impatient. “You will do as you are told. You will take that body in a cart and leave it for the night in the covered part of St Duthus. The Town Clerk will give you the keys.”
The next day in the ruins of the old cathedral near the golf course I made a post-mortem examination. Death was due to drowning, and the police found that the man was a pauper, an inmate of the poorhouse at Bonar Bridge . He was presumed to have fallen into the river during a storm ten days previously.
The Rosehall murderer was never found. In Ross and Sutherland the people will tell you that in the trenches in Gallipoli a dying soldier confessed to the crime. They always hope for the best.
