The young man nodded a silent thank-you and the inspector continued his tour around the table. “And then this second murder, which snuffed out an old lady’s life…”
I noticed that he was holding something in a white handkerchief.
“I wanted to keep you up to date with the investigation,” he said, coming to stop at the far end of the table. “I feel it’s the least I can do after making you stay at the lodge when I’m sure you’d rather be… well, anywhere else but here. But now, at last, I believe you will soon be free to leave. You see, I’ve found one final piece of evidence which suggests beyond a reasonable doubt that the murderer was indeed Miss Passerini.”
“I don’t believe you,” said Mr. Peterson.
“I think you will when I show you this,” he replied.
He paused as he unfolded the corners of the handkerchief. Inside, I caught a glimpse of a metal object—brass, I think.
“This paper knife was found among Miss Passerini’s belongings. It matches exactly the type of murder weapon Dr. Fitzpatrick says was used to kill Mrs. Kinmuir.” Hawkins pointed to the edge of the knife with his little finger. “You see this here,” he said, as if he were giving a demonstration of how a tool could be used for everyday tasks in the home or workshop, such as drilling a hole or planing a piece of wood. “This sharp end was used to puncture the back of the neck. And the dimensions of the paper knife match exactly those of the wound.”
“So Miss Passerini is guilty?” asked Mrs. Buchanan.
“It seems so,” said the inspector. “What we need to do now is take her fingerprints, which can be done at the station. And, by the way, as part of the process of elimination, we will need to take everyone else’s, too.”
“Honestly,” said Mr. Peterson under his breath, uttering the word almost as if it was a profanity.
“Do you have something you’d like to say, Mr. Peterson?” asked the inspector.
The man shook his head.
“Don’t worry, this needn’t be done in Portree,” the inspector added. “I can arrange for the fingerprinting to be carried out here, at the house, so as not to put you to any more inconvenience.”
“That’s most kind,” said Mr. Peterson, barely bothering to disguise his sarcasm.
“Very well, I’ll leave you in peace to enjoy your lunch,” said Hawkins.
The inspector closed the door of the dining room on his way out. But nobody picked up their knives and forks again. Their appetites had now gone and their faces looked pale and worn. And it wasn’t only Mr. Peterson who was looking at me with contempt.
TWENTY-TWO
“Peterson, I think it’s about time you told me what the hell is going on,” demanded James Kinmuir. “And don’t try to give me any flimflam.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Simon Peterson.
James Kinmuir slammed his fist hard down on the dining table. “Both my uncle and my great-aunt have been murdered in this house,” he said, his face flushing. “If you know anything that might help solve the crimes, you must tell me, even if that means betraying your new girlfriend.”
“Excuse me?” asked Peterson.
“I’ve seen the way you and Miss Passerini have been carrying on, whispering in corners,” said Kinmuir. “And I know you’ve been trying to protect her.” He took a deep breath and adjusted his tone slightly. “Of course, that’s natural. I would probably have done the same if I were in your position. But things have got out of hand now. The police are involved. Miss Passerini is in custody and it looks as though she will be charged with the murders.”
Mr. Peterson bowed his head and remained silent.
“I’ve heard talk about a letter or letters, and just now Miss Frith-Stratton confirmed to us, or at least implied, that it was something being kept secret,” Kinmuir continued. He rightly suspected that May Frith-Stratton held certain feelings for him and took advantage of this fact as he addressed her, speaking in a silky manner. “I think—I hope—that we get on, don’t we? We’ve always enjoyed one another’s company?”
May Frith-Stratton blushed and nodded her head like a silly schoolgirl being addressed by the handsome gentleman of her dreams.
“Are you going to tell me what’s been going on?” asked Kinmuir. “I won’t be cross with you, I promise. In fact, you’d be doing me the most terrific favor.”
“Well, I… it’s just that…,” she began.
“Miss Frith-Stratton, may I remind you what we talked about?” said Mr. Peterson, standing up in a bid to silence her.
“Which was what, exactly, Peterson?” asked Kinmuir.
“It’s none of your damn business,” snapped Peterson.
“How dare you,” said Kinmuir. With his left hand he grabbed Mr. Peterson by his collar while his right formed a fist. “I’m warning you, if you don’t tell me exactly what has been going on, I will strike you.”
Mr. Peterson tried to push him away, and it looked as though the scene could turn ugly. The rest of the guests reacted with horror. Rufus Phillips tried to prize his friend away from Mr. Peterson, and when this failed, he attempted to use himself as a buffer between the two men. But Kinmuir managed to brush him aside.
“Oh, please stop,” cried May Frith-Stratton. “It’s too much.”
“I think you’ve proved your point, Kinmuir,” said Davison as he tried to intervene, or at least made a gesture of doing so. I was sure that he hoped, as I did, that the conflict between the two men would inspire someone in the room to tell the truth.
“Look—he’s showing his true nature,” said Mrs. Buchanan of James Kinmuir. “I always knew he was a brute.”
“Don’t talk about him in that manner,” said May Frith-Stratton. “You know he never laid a finger on his uncle.”
Mrs. Buchanan stood her ground. “He may not have killed Robin, but… well, you can see what kind of man he is.”
James Kinmuir was readying himself to punch Mr. Peterson when suddenly Isabella Frith-Stratton uttered a cry of despair.
“Stop!” she shouted. “Don’t lay a hand on him. I’ll tell you everything you need to know, I promise, as long as you don’t hurt him.”
“Miss, please, restrain yourself,” said Mr. Peterson. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”
“I know very well what I’m doing, sir,” she replied.
“Sister—what are you saying?” asked May. “Surely you don’t…”
Isabella looked with such love at Mr. Peterson that the expression almost brought tears to my eyes. None of us had had any idea of her true feelings for the handsome young man until this moment. And the revelation silenced the room.
“You’re right, Mr. Kinmuir, th-there was a letter, or rather a n-number of letters,” she began somewhat hesitantly.
Mr. Peterson tried to free himself so that he could stop Isabella Frith-Stratton from continuing, but he was restrained by Kinmuir.
“Go on, miss, please,” James Kinmuir said.
“Isabella, best not say another word!” exclaimed May.
Kinmuir turned to May and again gave her that particular look which no doubt melted her heart. “If you’d let your sister tell me the truth,” he said gently, “I’m sure that it would be in everyone’s interests.”
May remained silent as Isabella began to speak. “Yes, the letters. I think, if I’m right, that each of us in this room probably received one before coming here,” she said.
Mrs. Buchanan looked bewildered, as did James Kinmuir and Rufus Phillips.
“Or if not all of us, then at least quite a number,” Isabella continued, looking at Davison and then at me. I nodded my head in encouragement.
“What did the letters say?” asked Kinmuir.
“They… well, they were written in the form of an invitation. And that invitation was to come to Dallach Lodge to see someone suffer.”
At this, James Kinmuir stepped away from Mr. Peterson as the strength in his body appeared to seep away. He placed a hand on Rufus Phillips’s shoulder to s
upport himself.
“Go on,” said James, even though it was obvious that, pale and in shock, he would rather not hear another word. “And who was that someone you would see suffer?”
“It was Robin Kinmuir,” said Isabella.
Mr. Peterson looked broken now. All those strange looks and odd intimidations made sense now. He must have believed that I too had received one of the letters; it had seemed that he had even thought that I had been responsible for the crime.
“Do you still have the letter?” asked James. “And do you know who it was from?”
“No, I’m afraid not on both counts,” she replied. “I was told that I should burn it as soon as I had read it. And it was unsigned.”
James blinked repeatedly as he tried to comprehend the awful truth. “But I don’t understand: Why would you want to come here to see my uncle suffer?”
“I can’t speak for everyone, by any means, but for me it was a way of seeing justice done.”
“Isabella—please, no more!” beseeched May Frith-Stratton.
“Justice?” asked James, pronouncing the words as if he had tasted poison in his mouth.
“Yes, for what he had done,” said Isabella. “In the past.”
I looked around the room and gazed upon the guests with a horrible new fascination, as if seeing them for the first time. They had all been playing their parts, declaring their lines and taking their cues with a grotesque professionalism that rivaled that of Mrs. Buchanan.
“And what was it he had done?” I asked. “What could possibly be so bad that he deserved to die?”
“I must warn you once again, Miss Frith-Stratton,” said Mr. Peterson.
“Let her speak!” shouted James Kinmuir.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Peterson,” said Isabella. “I know you’re right—we shouldn’t be talking like this—but I couldn’t bear to see you hurt. Also, it’s better it’s all out in the open, among us at least. After all, we now know who was behind the death of Mr. Kinmuir. Now that Miss Passerini is going to be charged with the murder, it means… well, surely it means none of us is implicated.”
“Thank you, Miss Frith-Stratton,” said James Kinmuir. “I know how difficult this must be for you, and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your honesty and bravery. I’m sure Mr. Peterson, once he has composed himself, will thank you for it, too. Now, can you tell me more about this letter? I ask you again: Who did it come from?”
That was a clever touch. Isabella, thinking Simon Peterson might show her a little attention or some kindness in the future, immediately became more animated and confident. And, of course, there was no love lost between her and Miss Passerini.
“The letter was typewritten and not signed, so I don’t know who it came from,” said Isabella. “I realize it was very wrong of me to come here with my sister. But we’d had such a difficult time of it over the years. Our mother, God rest her soul, was always telling us how Robin Kinmuir had ruined our father. You should have heard the way she spoke about him—and she was quite the lady.”
“I know my uncle was no saint and he had his faults, as do we all,” said James. “But what was he supposed to have done?”
“Although we are quite well-off now, which is due in the main to the success I—or rather we—have had with our romance novels, that was not always the case,” said Isabella. “You see, Mr. Kinmuir swindled our father out of his fortune. Apparently, we once lived very comfortably in the countryside, in a big house just outside Reading. Daddy invested a great deal of money in an investment scheme with Mr. Kinmuir. They were supposed to share the risk. But when the scheme started to go wrong, Mr. Kinmuir stepped away. Our father tried everything—even said he would go as far as taking the case to the courts—but Mr. Kinmuir threatened him with certain ruin. He had, it seems, amassed evidence which seemed to show Daddy in a bad way. Blackmail, I’d call it, but apparently our father thought the risk too great. He didn’t want a scandal, and so he took full responsibility for the failure of the scheme. The house had to be sold. Everything he had worked so hard for disappeared almost overnight. He felt he had let our mother down. He was nothing, worthless; he’d brought shame to the family. What was the point of carrying on? My mother was pregnant at the time. And then, just before she went into labor with us… he took his own life.”
“Oh, my,” said James. “I had no idea.”
“Our mother made us promise that if we came across Robin Kinmuir, we should exact the most terrible revenge,” added Isabella. “Obviously we were never going to do the very worst, but when that invitation arrived, it seemed fortuitous, almost too good to turn down.”
“But of course we didn’t realize that it would turn out like it did—that it would actually end with… with murder,” said May as she turned to address James Kinmuir. “And obviously I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you. You do know that, don’t you?”
“I see,” said James, who was just beginning to comprehend the repercussions of Isabella Frith-Stratton’s testimony. He looked at each of the people in the dining room in turn as the realization sank in.
“Oh, my God,” he whispered. “Is that what you all came here for? To watch my uncle be murdered?”
TWENTY-THREE
James Kinmuir fled from the room, closely followed by Rufus Phillips. May Frith-Stratton looked like a broken woman. I caught Davison’s eye, nodded my head and, thinking quickly, began to speak. I hoped that if I too “confessed,” then it might lead to some of the guests telling me more about their own backgrounds. I took inspiration from the story I had just heard from the Frith-Stratton sisters.
“I suppose it would be a good idea if we all came clean,” I said. “And I don’t mind going first. I too got a letter, identical to the one that the Miss Frith-Strattons received. I thought at first it was some kind of practical joke. You all know that I’m a novelist and a few years ago my name was in the newspapers when my marriage broke down and I ran away. Since then I’ve received my fair share of missives from the unhinged and the unbalanced. You see, I didn’t recognize the name of Robin Kinmuir; I was certain I hadn’t come across him before. But then, I began to think back to my childhood, when my father—like the father of the Miss Frith-Strattons—had lost a great deal of money.”
That fact was true enough, as were the memories of that difficult time which I could draw upon. I told the guests of the fear of losing the family home, Ashfield, and how my elder brother and sister had pleaded with our mother not to sell it. I related tales of servants having to be dismissed and cutbacks in the kitchen. There were no more lavish dinner parties with endless numbers of courses. As a girl I hadn’t understood the seriousness of the situation, but as an adult I looked back at the time first with sadness and then with anger.
At this point I had to draw on my imagination. When the mysterious letter arrived, I said, I asked my sister a little more about the circumstances of our father’s change in fortune, and it was then that she had recalled that it had had something to do with a Mr. Kinmuir. I kept the existence of the letter to myself but had enlisted the services of a friend—Mr. Davison—who volunteered to accompany me to Skye to find out more. I thought, foolishly, that it would put to rest certain ghosts that had been troubling me. I also believed, again naively, that it might have the beginnings of a good story.
“But when Mr. Kinmuir was actually killed, I was, like all of you, shocked by the course of events,” I said. “I also felt guilty, as if I had somehow contributed to the terrible crime.”
“And yet the letter said nothing about poor old Mrs. Kinmuir,” said Isabella Frith-Stratton. “If I had known that she was going to suffer too, I certainly wouldn’t have come here.”
“I wish we’d never set foot in this place,” said May. “And why didn’t you keep your mouth shut? Did you see the way James looked at me as he left the room?” She looked at Isabella with a peevish expression; she no doubt blamed her sister for extinguishing whatever small flame she had imagined existed between herself and Jam
es Kinmuir.
Isabella ignored her. “I can understand why Miss Passerini would want to do such a thing to Mr. Kinmuir, what with all that had happened to her,” she continued. “But doing that to the old lady—no, that was too much.”
I felt I was getting closer to the dark heart of the mystery. But I could not risk asking too many questions in case I was exposed. I saw Mr. Peterson studying me closely. I could tell he did not trust me, but I needed him and my fellow guests to believe that I was one of them, that I had received a letter that had brought me to Dallach Lodge in order to—if not seek revenge, exactly—then at least revel in watching it being meted out. And so, even though I was desperate to ask the next natural question—what had happened to Miss Passerini in the past?—I remained quiet.
“I know something of your story, Mr. Peterson,” said May Frith-Stratton. “But perhaps you’d like to tell us a little more?” Her tone was far from sympathetic. Was she out to try to hurt her sister just as, in her eyes, Isabella had hurt her?
“Do you think that’s wise?” he replied.
“I think it’s only fair, after what we’ve shared,” said May.
“Very well,” he said. “In addition to Mr. Kinmuir’s business interests, which you are aware of, he also served as an agent in the Secret Intelligence Service.”
“A spy?” cried May.
“I don’t believe it!” said her sister.
The statement caused Davison to stir in his seat, but years of practicing deceit in the name of duty meant that his reaction was so subtle that probably only I was aware of it.
“A secret agent?” responded Mrs. Buchanan with skepticism. Her expression shifted from one of doubt and disbelief, to thoughtful consideration, to acceptance and understanding. “I see. It all makes sense now. I wondered why he would often leave me with no explanation. There were long gaps of time with no contact. I thought he was just being… well, a man, or a certain type of man. Thoughtless and selfish. But now that makes perfect sense, and, if I’m honest, it serves as a source of great consolation.”
I Saw Him Die Page 15
