Murder Most Conventional

by Verena Rose (ed)

  My awful sister-in-law, Hilda, usually known as Fig, had just had a second baby and had been furious that Binky agreed to host the Gathering of the Clans.

  “What were you thinking, Binky?” she had demanded in that sharp voice that could cut glass if it tried. “You know I’m too weak to host any sort of gathering, let alone a gathering of hairy Highland men.” She had kept firmly to her chamber and had had meals sent up on a tray since the participants began arriving three days ago. That was fine with me as she loathed me as much as I loathed her.

  Binky and I set off. It was a beautiful, crisp autumn morning, the rare sort of day that makes one glad to be in Scotland. Before us was a hive of activity. On the lawns that stretched down to the loch two marquees had been erected—one for the Scottish dance and other competitions that might be ruined by rain, the other for refreshments. A host of smaller tents and booths were springing up around the perimeter of the grounds. Some proclaimed themselves to be headquarters for different clans, some were selling various items of Scottish regalia. One smart person had even set up a stall selling rain gear.

  Binky and I were greeted with suitable deference as we walked around. “Good to see you, your Grace. And you, Lady Georgiana. We’re honored to be at your home. As good as Balmoral any day.”

  “Don’t relay that to Queen Mary when you meet her again,” Binky muttered to me. I grinned.

  “We should go and see how the practice for the games is getting along,” he said. Actually I wasn’t averse to watching big muscular men myself. We left the show grounds and crossed the parking area where vans were unloading supplies, and some keen early spectators had parked caravans. A van advertising Glenduig, Queen of Scotch Whiskys, was off to one side at the edge of the trees, its back open.

  “They’re allowed to sell whisky here, are they?”

  Binky laughed. “It’s the top seller in the refreshment tent. The organizers reckon the sales of whisky alone fund the whole event.”

  “Knowing the Scots I wouldn’t leave that van open and unattended, would you?” I asked with a grin. I peered in as we walked past. The interior was empty. “I don’t know why he parked so far from the refreshment tent,” I said.

  “I expect he’d finished unloading and wanted to take a peek at the competitors practicing,” Binky replied. “I think that quite a bit of betting goes on at these events. In secret, of course.”

  We entered the stand of pine trees that separated the practice field from the main area. Amid the trees the hubbub fell away and we walked together in companionable silence.

  “I’m awfully glad you’re here, Georgiana,” Binky said at last. “I couldn’t have faced this on my own.”

  “Glad to help,” I said.

  “I hope you’ll also help me present the prizes,” he said. “You know what a duffer I am. I’m sure to say the wrong thing.”

  “Golly.” An image of me dropping trophies swam into my head.

  “Fig would do it normally,” he said. “But in current circumstances . . .”

  “Of course.” Rannochs put duty above all things, didn’t they?

  At that moment there was a shout from the other side of the trees. Closer by there was a thud, a sound between a groan and a whimper, then something large falling.

  “What the devil?” Binky asked. I came out of the trees to see one of the competitors running in our direction. In his hand he held a chain that dangled beside him.

  “I don’t know what went wrong,” he was babbling. “I can’t understand it.” He held up the chain as we approached. “The damned thing just few off. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “What flew off?” Binky asked.

  “The weight. A damned great stone at the end of this chain. You know, the weight-throwing event? You hurl it around your head and then let go. I was getting up to full speed when suddenly the stone came flying off and went sailing into the woods. My God, it weighs twenty-six pounds. I hope it didn’t hit anybody. It would have killed them outright.” He was still shaking his head. “I can’t understand how it could have come loose. I’ve never seen such a thing in my life before, and I’ve been doing this for twenty years now.”

  Suddenly we were conscious of a commotion some way off to our left, among the trees, and a terrified man came running up to us. “There’s been an accident,” he said. “Some poor fellow has been hit with a rock. He’s lying there dead.”

  A sob escaped from the weight-thrower. He staggered forward like a drunken man. We followed him. At the edge of the trees a man was sprawled face down among the bracken. His skull had been dented in and a great stone lay beside him, spattered with blood and hair. I swallowed hard and turned away.

  More people were now gathering. “That’s Archie Campbell,” someone whispered in disbelief. “What was he doing here? Spying on Ross MacDonald?”

  “He was saying that Ross MacDonald’s new method of hurling was illegal in the bar last night,” someone else claimed. “No doubt he wanted to see for himself.”

  “So he could copy Ross’s action and beat his biggest rival,” another voice added.

  “This man was also a contestant in the weight throwing?” Binky asked.

  They looked at him as if he’d just arrived from the moon. “Aye, he was. Archie Campbell—he and Ross MacDonald here are two of the best in Scotland. Always been rivals.”

  “Until now,” a somber voice added, and they turned to look at the weight-thrower. There was an uneasy pause.

  “You’re not suggesting I did that deliberately,” the man said.

  “You are a MacDonald, are you not?” one man demanded. “And he was a Campbell, poor man.”

  “What’s that got to do with it?” Binky asked.

  Again the group looked shocked at his ignorance. “The Campbells and the MacDonalds? Did the Campbells not come down in the night and slaughter the MacDonalds, men, women, and children?” a thin, little man with bright red hair said.

  “Did they? I never heard about it,” Binky said. “Was it in the papers? When was this?”

  “You know, the massacre of Glencoe, in the seventeen hundreds,” I whispered to him.

  “Oh, that massacre,” he said, looking relieved. “It was a frightfully long time ago, wasn’t it?”

  “Old grudges die hard,” one of the men muttered.

  Ross MacDonald shook his head. “Not with me. Archie was a good friend. A rival, to be sure, but we got along just fine. And as for me killing him, I might be good at throwing the weight but even I could never have arranged for a weight to come free at the precise moment to hurl itself three hundred yards toward the woods and kill an unseen man. That’s just plain daft.”

  “Someone should go for Constable Herries,” one of the men suggested.

  “His Grace is here,” another man corrected. “He’s a justice of the peace, isn’t he? That’s better than a village bobby.”

  All eyes turned to Binky. “Oh, I don’t think we can possibly have a crime here,” Binky stammered. “An awful accident, but as Mr. MacDonald said, it’s just not possible to aim a dashed great stone so precisely that it kills someone so far away in a wood.”

  While they had been talking I had been taking a good look at the body. Not because I was ghoulish but I had happened to stumble upon a few dead bodies in my life and had picked up a thing or two from detectives. And if my brother were to be put in charge of the investigation, I hadn’t much hope that we’d arrive at the truth.

  The first thing I noticed was that Campbell had been struck on the back of the head and sprawled forward. That in itself was strange. If the stone had hurtled straight at him, wouldn’t he have been hit on the forehead or, more likely, tried to get out of the way? I checked around the body. The ground was still soft from recent rains, and not too far away was a large, deep footprint. It might have been there for a while, but then again it might not. And
on a bramble bush, not far from the body, I spotted a fragment of light brown fabric. I removed it and examined it. Not a tartan. So not from a kilt then. And most of the men around here were wearing their kilts.

  At that moment I heard a strange sound. “Psst!”

  I looked in the direction it came from and saw Queenie beckoning me from among the trees. “Over here, miss,” she whispered. “I know I shouldn’t have sneaked out of the house without permission, but I wanted to get a look at the big blokes for myself. And I saw it happen. Just like he said. He was whirling the bloody thing around his head when suddenly there’s a snap and it goes flying off at the woods. But I’d swear it wasn’t in this direction. It was more down that way.” And she pointed farther off to where the battlements of the castle rose above the trees.

  “Thank you, Queenie,” I said. “That’s most helpful.” I went over to Binky. “I think we should summon the police after all. This could be a case of murder.”

  “But we’ve already agreed it was impossible . . .”

  “Not Mr. MacDonald,” I said. “Someone else. Someone who staged this whole thing.”

  The small crowd that had assembled around us stared at me in disbelief.

  “Take a look at where he was struck on the head,” I said. “If he’d been watching Mr. MacDonald, as you all suggest, then how could he have been hit on the back of the head?”

  “He saw the stone coming at him and had turned to run away,” one of the men suggested.

  “No time,” I said. “By the time he realized it was heading straight for him he would only have had a second at the most.”

  “Then what are you saying?” Binky asked.

  “That someone else set this up to frame Mr. MacDonald or to get rid of Mr. Campbell by making it look as if it was an accident.”

  There was a muttering among the crowd. I realized, too late, that this was now a crime scene, but a dozen men had tramped all over it. I checked their feet to see if one of them could have made the footprint, but none of them seemed to be wearing boots or have a foot that giant-sized.

  “Did Archie Campbell have a falling out with anybody that you know?” Binky asked, trying bravely to act like a justice of the peace.

  This produced laughter. “Archie fell out with just about everybody when he’d had a drop too much,” someone said. “And that was every Saturday night. And he had an eye for the ladies.”

  “So plenty of people with a motive for wanting him dead?” I asked.

  They looked perplexed at this. “You don’t go killing a man just because you’ve had an argument in a pub or because he’s flirted with your wife,” one of the men said.

  It looked as if we had an impossible situation. A deserted woodland and plenty of people in the vicinity with a possible motive for murder. The only thing I could think of to narrow it down was that it had to be someone who knew when Ross MacDonald was practicing and the mechanics of the weight throwing. But again, that could apply to half the men here.

  “Look at this, would you?” Ross MacDonald demanded, holding out the chain to us. “Does that not look to you as if the metal has been cut through, just where the chain joined the band around the weight?”

  We were all peering at it when we heard shouts from through the trees, and two men came running toward us.

  “Come quickly,” they called, beckoning furiously. “There has been a terrible accident.”

  “Not another one? Where now?” Binky asked.

  “Up this way, in the trees at the edge of the meadow.”

  We followed them, and it was a case of deja vu. Yet another man was sprawled among the bracken, his head smashed and a big stone lying beside him, spattered with blood and hair.

  The rest of the men had come with us, including Ross MacDonald. He gave a hysterical laugh.

  “Well, surely nobody could claim that I killed two men with one throw,” he said. “I might be the best hurler in all of Scotland, but I surely can’t pull off a feat like that.”

  “We should maybe stand back and treat this as a crime scene,” I said. The men hastily stepped away, glancing at one another nervously. I stood looking down at this new body. Another big man but he was not wearing the Highland dress. Instead he was wearing some kind of tradesman’s brown coat. His tradesman’s cap had fallen from his head, and he was slumped to one side. I noticed his hand was also bloody as if he had put it up to ward off a blow.

  Before I could take in any more someone exclaimed, “This poor man was surely killed with the weight from Ross MacDonald. Look at the stone—it has the groove on it where the metal band usually goes around.”

  Then someone yelled, “Look who it is. It’s Fergus Finlay!”

  “Fergus Finlay? What’s he doing here?” a deep voice demanded.

  “Who is Fergus Finlay?” I asked. I should have said who was Fergus Finlay because the poor man was very dead.

  “He was the third athlete who vied for the overall champion at Highland Games,” someone muttered to me. “Ross and Archie and Fergus. They were always the best of the bunch.”

  “I heard he wasn’t up to competing this year,” one of the men said. “Wasn’t he struck by a car and in the hospital?”

  “Aye, he was,” another agreed. “And was that car not driven by Ross MacDonald himself?”

  Eyes turned again to focus on Ross. He was glaring now. “I did knock him down with my car. That’s correct. But the fool stepped out in front of me blind drunk. He lurched out of the pub. I was only doing ten miles an hour, but he literally fell under my wheels. There were plenty of witnesses, and they all agreed with me. I was nae charged with anything. And I’ve nae a grudge against Fergus Finlay.”

  I was watching the blood still flowing down Fergus’s skull and dripping onto the ground. And I realized that Archie Campbell had been dead quite a while longer. The blood on his head had already congealed. I also noticed something else . . . There was a jagged tear in the deliveryman’s coat that Fergus was wearing. The light brown coat. And I knew that the scrap of fabric I had seen on that bramble bush would match. And he was wearing massive boots . . .

  “Tell me,” I said, addressing all of them now, “did Fergus Finlay have a grudge against Archie Campbell?”

  There was a pause and then someone said, “Wasn’t there that scandal with Fergus’s wife and Archie Campbell a while back? Didn’t he catch Archie sneaking out of his house in the early morning when he came back early from that fishing trip?”

  “It sounds as if he had a grudge against both MacDonald and Campbell,” Binky said, unusually quick on the uptake for once.

  My brain was racing now. I was putting together the brown deliveryman’s coat with the tear in it, the big boots, and the scrap of fabric caught on the bramble, and the pieces of the puzzle were beginning to fall into place. “I think we should examine that whisky van parked nearby,” I said.

  “The whisky van? But what’s that got to do with it?” one of the men asked, but the others were already heading toward it. They were all ready to examine whisky, even this early in the morning.

  “They are only allowing competitors and deliveries onto the grounds at the moment,” I said. “Since he wasn’t scheduled to compete, I think Mr. Finlay must have gained access driving that van.”

  They all followed me like obedient dogs through the trees. The back of the van was still open. Inside there was no sign of any whisky bottles but only a small bag of tools. I heard a definite sigh of disappointment.

  “Could this be used to cut through a chain or the metal band?” I asked, pointing to a pair of what looked like big pliers.

  “Aye, it could that,” several voices replied. “Those would cut through metal. No problem.”

  “So what are you suggesting, lassie?” one of the men demanded, frowning at me. “If someone killed Archie Campbell and Fergus Finlay and it wasn’t Ross MacDona
ld, are we looking for yet another person? An unidentified murderer?”

  I shook my head, willing for once to ignore the fact that he’d called the sister of a duke lassie. “Fergus Finlay was not murdered,” I said. “His death was an accident.”

  They were all staring at me now. “This is how I think it happened,” I said. “I believe that Mr. Finlay plotted this whole thing to get rid of his biggest rivals—both of whom he had a grudge against. He wanted it to look as if Mr. MacDonald killed Mr. Campbell either deliberately or accidentally. Either way he’d be eliminating his two biggest rivals from future Highland Games. He knew that Archie Campbell would be trying to spy on Ross MacDonald’s practice session to see how his new throwing method worked. So he sneaked up behind him and killed him with a stone similar to the weight on MacDonald’s chain. He had managed to cut through the chain earlier so that during the windup for the throw, the weight would come loose and go flying into the trees.

  “Everyone would then think that Archie Campbell had been killed by Ross MacDonald’s weight. Everything went as planned. The weight flew off perfectly when the chain broke. There was only one thing he hadn’t counted on—MacDonald’s new method really did make the weight fly farther! He was watching from the trees, and suddenly he sees the weight come hurtling in his direction. He tries to get out of the way, to defend himself, but he’s too late. He is struck by the flying stone. Poetic justice, wouldn’t you say?”

  They were all looking at me as if I was a magician or a witch. “I say, Georgie,” Binky said. “How on earth did you figure that out? Dashed clever of you.”

  “Well, we saw the whisky van parked far away from the refreshment tent with the back open. I found the footprint made by a big boot near Campbell’s body and a scrap of fabric caught on a bramble near the body that matches the tear in the coat Mr. Finlay is wearing. And he certainly had the inside knowledge of the sport and a strong enough motive.”

  “Aye, she’s a bright lass all right,” someone nattered. “She’ll make some laddie a grand wife.”