A Shocking Affair

by Gerald Hammond

  ‘It could,’ Isobel said. ‘And pigs could fly. Whichever way you look at it, something unlikely happened. Either a piece of foil blew, on a calm day, right onto the place where it would convey electricity from a faulty power source to where it would do most damage. Or else somebody put it there, which I find rather less incredible.’

  ‘I feel the same,’ I said. ‘As it happened, Peter was a very tidy soul who hated to see litter. He went to pick up the foil before touching the gate, but the result was the same. Ian Fellowes, the detective inspector, was to speak to his superiors today. They may feel that the metal foil is a little too much of a coincidence, or they may think it a very feeble reason for embarking on the expense and publicity of a murder investigation.’

  At my last words Isobel frowned, although it seemed to me that she had herself been suggesting the probability of murder. ‘Was there anyone around who wished him dead?’ she asked. ‘He seemed such an . . . an unhateable man, if you know what I mean.’

  I knew exactly what she meant. ‘Not as far as we know,’ I said carefully. ‘But there were plenty who will be better off. He was extremely well-heeled and he made generous provision for his staff, his tenants and his granddaughter.’ I decided not to make mention of embezzling solicitors, undesirable boyfriends or bereaved cat-fanciers just yet. Comments can be repeated and slander is definitely slander.

  Beth always reserves her lowest opinions for her own sex. ‘Would the granddaughter know enough to be able to rig an electrical connection?’

  ‘She’s studying for a degree in Electronics and Computing,’ I replied, ‘so we can assume that she understands the rudiments of electricity. In point of fact, although she argued rebelliously with her grandfather she told me that she had loved him and her grief was convincing.’

  ‘But could it have been due partly to guilt?’ Beth asked.

  ‘I can’t be sure, but I don’t think so.’

  In the course of a long marriage, Isobel has learned to read me. ‘Come off it,’ she said. ‘There’s something you’re holding back.’

  I decided to be a little more frank. ‘In confidence? Her boyfriend is another matter.’ I went on to describe the unsavoury Roland Chatsworth.

  ‘I don’t believe that name, for a start,’ Isobel said. ‘And you seem to have become one of her trustees as well as an executor. The things you get up to as soon as I take my eye off you! Can’t you restrain her?’

  ‘We could threaten to apply financial pressure,’ I said, ‘but she seems to be going through a left-wing phase at the moment so it might only be pushing her into her lover’s arms. And Ralph Enterkin – my co-executor – said that a court might well come down on her side if we were too restrictive. Interference from beyond the grave, he says, is generally considered not to be in the public interest.’

  ‘What’s needed,’ Beth said thoughtfully, ‘is an impoverished nobleman – some handsome young man on the lookout for an heiress. How about Freddy Crail? He’s single at the moment, flat broke and quite capable of cutting out the sort of graceless Romeo you’ve been describing.’

  Lord Crail was all that Beth had said, but he was rather a friend of mine and I would not have saddled any of my friends with Elizabeth Hay, money or no, until her attitude had abated. ‘For heaven’s sake!’ I said. ‘Things are complicated enough without any scheming matchmakers.’

  ‘You mean,’ said Isobel, ‘that if there’s any matchmaking to be done, you’ll do it.’

  ‘I don’t mean anything of the sort,’ I said indignantly, but that night, in my own bed, I found myself conducting a roll-call of eligible but impecunious bachelors. Sadly, each one that I could think of was either charmless, gay or infectious. One of them was all three.

  Chapter Ten

  In what was left of the weekend, and despite demands on my time to throw dummies, feed puppies, chauffeur Isobel to the shops and hold onto a spaniel which was determined that no way was he ever going to accept another injection, I managed to pick Isobel’s brains to the extent of being given a lengthy lesson in the use of the computer. I had been struggling and fumbling my way around Peter’s machine, terrified that one careless error might wipe its memory clean; but Isobel extended my basic knowledge of the first elements into a general understanding of the methodology behind what had been a total mystery, in particular the occasions for what is known as ‘double clicking’, which tiny event makes all the difference between triumph and frustration. I found that, on Isobel’s machine, I no longer needed to go in and out of the File Manager to find what I wanted and frequently arrived at my target without any abortive journeys in and out of various modes, the purposes of which were too obvious for even the ‘As Told To Idiots’ sort of manuals to bother to explain. I felt ready to tackle Peter’s beast with enthusiasm rather than trepidation.

  Thus I arrived back at Newton Lauder on the Monday, in the early afternoon, with the car full of clean clothing and my head so filled with good intentions that I hardly noticed the presence of an unfamiliar small sports car in the big garage.

  Joanna met me at the door. Her manner still subtly suggested that there were delicious secrets between us. She had been too well trained to keep me talking in the hall. She brought me a cup of tea in the sitting room before making her report. There was still no word of Spin, but another wanderer had returned to the fold. Elizabeth Hay had moved back into the house.

  ‘But not . . .?’

  Joanna shook her head emphatically. ‘He was with her when she came but we wouldn’t let him over the doorstep. We thought that that would be the right thing to do.’

  ‘Absolutely right,’ I said. ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘She’s in her room. Studying for her exams, so she said. And there were messages. Mr Enterkin will be here at about four and Inspector Fellowes will be meeting him here. And Mr Paterson phoned. He sent his apologies. The computer isn’t quite ready but he’ll send or bring it out this afternoon.’

  Another matter was intriguing me. ‘Did Hamish come here during the weekend?’

  She looked at me in surprise. ‘Aye, he did, about nothing in particular. I think he fancies me, that one.’ The idea did not seem to displease her, beard or no beard.

  I moved into the study. Alone with my teacup, I wondered what to do until the computer arrived. I checked the answering machine but most of the few messages were mere formalities. There was a call, however, from Mr Synott – Peter’s Mr Snot – asking me to call him back. I had not liked Mr Synott and, following my gaffe, he was the last person I wanted to speak with. I decided to put off returning his call indefinitely. I skimmed through the mail but there was nothing that I could answer without Mr Enterkin’s help or approval. I thought of fishing, but there was a blustery wind which would have made casting difficult and, among the trees, very possibly expensive. Instead, I decided to go and see Hamish. There was a question which I had not thought to ask him. But, hard behind the thought, the mountain came to Mohammed. Joanna brought him to the door.

  Hamish had brought some accounts, for feed and fuel and grit, to be settled. I said that I would approve them and pass them to Mr Enterkin for payment.

  ‘Hamish,’ I began, ‘you said that you saw nobody in the wood that morning. But did you hear anyone?’

  He shook his tousled head. ‘Not a soul.’

  ‘Not even outside the wood?’

  ‘The sound of my working was in my ears,’ he said. ‘I never heard Sir Peter coming, though I wasn’t far away. I mind that I heard a heavy vehicle in the distance, on the road it would’ve been, but that was all.’

  I decided to leave it there and move on. Beth’s words were still fresh in my mind. They had referred to Elizabeth Hay but they were just as applicable to Joanna, so while I had Hamish at my mercy I decided on a little unforgivable interference. I would have invited him to sit down except that his clothes were sprinkled with sawdust.

  ‘Hamish,’ I said, ‘Joanna thinks that you fancy her.’

  He drew himself up
to his considerable height. ‘Is there any reason why I should not?’

  ‘None at all,’ I said hastily.

  ‘Well, I’m ta’en up wi’ her, right enough,’ he said. ‘But she hardly knows I’m alive.’

  ‘She knows you’re alive all right,’ I told him. ‘But . . . tell me, Hamish, how long have you had that beard?’

  ‘A’ my days.’ He seemed unsurprised at my question. Evidently his late employer had shown similar unexplained curiosity.

  ‘Oh, come on!’ I said. ‘You can’t have had it for the first fifteen years. What do you look like underneath it? I only ask because Joanna dropped a hint about not being able to fancy you with all those whiskers. She said that kissing you would be like pushing her face into a gorse bush. Something like that – I don’t recall the exact words.’

  ‘That’s close enough,’ Hamish said. I could have sworn that the area of skin that I could see around his eyes and nose was blushing. ‘She said that, did she?’

  ‘Something like it.’ I was curious. ‘What do you look like under the whiskers?’

  He shrugged and shifted from foot to foot in embarrassment. ‘It’s been a long time. She really said that? About kissing me?’

  ‘She really said it. But you didn’t grow the beard to hide a birthmark, a hare lip or a bad scar?’

  ‘Nothing like that. My dad had a fine beard and I always fancied looking like him.’

  ‘Then why don’t you think about taking it off?’

  ‘I’ll think about it.’ Hamish stroked his beard fondly. ‘Of course I will. But it’s been where it is for a good few years now. I’d be taking a chance. I can’t call to mind what I looked like and anyway I was in my teens the last time I saw myself without it. Suppose I look real daft? I could have the whole town laughing at me. They’d ken fine why I did it.’

  He had a point, but there was another side to it – if a point can have a side. ‘What you think you look like doesn’t matter,’ I pointed out. ‘It’s what Joanna thinks that matters. And who can predict what kind of looks will take a woman’s fancy? You’ll just have to place your bet. After all, you can always grow it again if she turns you down. As for the whole town laughing at you, that’s the way people always think, being a self-conscious species. But it’s seldom if ever true. Hamish, if some other man took off his beard to please some girl, you wouldn’t point the finger of scorn at him, would you?’

  ‘That’s true,’ he said. ‘But, man – Mr Kitts, I mean – it’s a big step to take. And a girl can’t think much of a man if all she wants is to change him.’

  He wanted to be persuaded but I had already assumed enough responsibility. ‘It’s up to you, Hamish,’ I said. ‘If you feel that the chance of winning Joanna isn’t worth the risk of being laughed at, that’s your business.’

  ‘Aye,’ he said unhappily. ‘That’s so.’ He became businesslike again. ‘I was wanting to get Geordie Jennings to plant trees on his set-aside land, but he says he’d lose the grants.’

  ‘I’ll have a word with him,’ I said. ‘When shooting continues on much the same basis as it was before the trees were planted, there’s no problem.’

  Hamish brightened, already envisaging new game coverts on large tracts of Home Farm. In his mind, the new trees were as good as planted and matured. He switched tracks. If the shoot were to continue as before, he pointed out, it was not too early to be considering the first advertisements of the ‘let days’. We settled down to discuss the wording.

  As he prepared to leave, he returned to the subject of Joanna. ‘She really said that? About kissing me?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘She really did.’

  As he left the room, he was stroking his beard affectionately.

  *

  After Hamish made his thoughtful departure, I had ten minutes to myself. I meant to put them to good use, but I had again missed my doze of the early afternoon. I relaxed for a moment in the wing-chair and within seconds I was away.

  I was woken by the arrival of another visitor at the front door. I managed to achieve full wakefulness before Joanna, almost fawning, brought in a young man. He was dark and well built and he had the modelled cheekbones and jaw muscles of the classically handsome. He had brought back the computer and, with it, Mr Paterson’s further apologies. Paterson, who was electronically talented far beyond the call of a local TV shop, or so Keith had told me, had been called into Edinburgh to deal with a problem in the automation of a small factory, leaving the young man to return the computer, deliver a large box of computer paper and induct me into the mysteries of computer viruses.

  He settled in the swivel chair. ‘You chose the right moment. There was a virus waiting in the pending e-mail,’ he said, with all the solemnity of a surgeon explaining that he had operated just in time to save the patient’s life, ‘and when Jake had swept the entire memory with an anti-virus program he keyed for any more incoming e-mail. A whole lot more mail arrived and he traced another virus in that lot. He couldn’t be sure which message it was in. Somebody seems determined to crash this computer. You do know what I’m talking about?’ he asked solicitously.

  ‘I know roughly what a computer virus is,’ I said. ‘But just to be clear, a virus will infect and eradicate everything in a computer’s memory? Not just the electronic mail bit?’

  ‘The lot. But the whole system’s clean now and I’ve brought you a printout of the waiting messages. If you want to go on using the e-mail facility you’ll have to keep on disinfecting it – with this program.’ He produced one of the rigid squares known as a floppy disc – I had to admit that Ralph Enterkin had a point when he complained about the jargon – and he began to explain the use of the program but, despite Isobel’s coaching, in the first ten words he had left me far behind.

  ‘Hold on a minute,’ I said. It had occurred to me that Elizabeth Hay had no discernible motive to erase information from the computer. I left the room, headed for the stair and met Joanna on the landing. ‘Go and knock on Miss Elizabeth’s door,’ I said. ‘Ask her to come down to the study and help me with a problem.’

  ‘She’s not in a very good mood,’ Joanna said doubtfully.

  ‘When was she ever?’ I asked. ‘If she won’t come, just let me know. I’ll deal with her.’

  I thought that the time was probably ripe for a showdown. But Elizabeth Hay was in an improved mood or else Joanna had reported the implied threat, because the heiress came clattering down the stairs while I was recrossing the hall and dead-heated with me at the study door. She preceded me into the room and stopped dead. ‘I’ll be damned,’ she said. ‘Duncan Ilwand!’

  ‘Miss . . . Hay!’ my visitor retorted. ‘Elizabeth Hay, isn’t it?’

  ‘You two know each other,’ was all that I could find to say. I tried not to let it sound like a question.

  ‘We’re fellow students,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Duncan’s a year ahead of me.’ I noticed that she had lost her sulky scowl and instead, for once, was looking and sounding almost shy. ‘Whatever brings you here?’

  ‘I work for Jake Paterson when I’m at home – vacations, weekends or whenever he needs help,’ young Mr Ilwand explained. ‘It’s good experience and it supplements my grant.’

  ‘He was trying to explain to me how to disinfect and protect the material in your grandfather’s computer against viruses,’ I told her, ‘but it’s rather above my head. If you’re going to be here for a few days, perhaps you’d look after that side of it for me?’

  ‘Yes, easily,’ she said. She pulled up another chair beside the swivel and the two of them were immediately lost in a huddle from which the occasional word which escaped was meaningless to me. I relaxed in one of the easy chairs and glanced through the newly printed-out messages. There were some items of mere gossip from correspondents all over the world and a few business communications of little importance. None of them stood out as being probable vehicles for delivering a virus.

  When Duncan Ilwand got up to go, Elizabeth jumped to her feet. ‘I’ll
see him to the door,’ she said. Such courtesy and consideration were not a normal part of her repertoire. She returned, looking slightly flustered, and settled behind the computer again. ‘Oh,’ she said, recollecting herself. ‘Is this all right? Or do you have secrets locked up in it?’

  We seemed to be making rapid progress towards at least minimal observance of the courtesies. ‘No secrets,’ I told her. ‘It will all be yours soon anyway. In fact, you could be of even more help. I’ve tried to look at anything that might be important, but God alone knows what I’ve missed. You could sort out the material and give me a note of everything you think your executors ought to be aware of.’

  She eyed me impishly from under an errant lock of hair. I began to see that her sex appeal was not entirely due to her financial prospects. ‘I could do that,’ she said. ‘But, if I do, will you let Roland into the house?’

  ‘Don’t push it,’ I said lightly. ‘I can always hire somebody at what would eventually be your expense. Help me, and we’ll take a more liberal view of finances as your trustees.’

  ‘I suppose,’ she said. She pecked absently at the keyboard.

  ‘Tell me something. Who would know enough to be able to introduce a virus by way of the electronic mail?’

  She looked at me with that air of amused superiority that makes me want to slap any youngster who patronizes me on the subject of computers. ‘Almost anybody computer literate,’ she said. ‘Which means almost everyone from twelve to twenty plus anybody older who’s taken the trouble to bone up on computing.’