‘And so he probably will.’
‘More likely he’ll tell Blosson to look again and then pass on his conclusions,’ Bruce said.
‘No,’ I said. ‘He’s a fair man and a conscientious one.’
‘I hope you’re right but I’m afraid you’re not. I did ask that he give me his answer face-to-face and he didn’t exactly promise but I gathered that he would probably come through to see the scene for himself and, if so, he’d meet me there. I asked him to give me at least a few minutes notice so that I could get hold of you.’
‘Me? Why me?’
Bruce gave me the sort of look that one might give to a backward child. ‘Because you did most of the deducing, searching, finding and listening. And you know the locality and a lot of the people. You could interpret the actions of that damn dog – all but eating the evidence, which even I could understand if not approve. Your account would carry more conviction than mine. So I wanted to ask you to stick around for the next few days where I can find you if I need you in a hurry.’
‘I suppose so,’ I said. I spent most of my days in or near Three Oaks so that normally it would have been no hardship. ‘But I meant to go to Kirkcaldy tomorrow,’ I said.
‘If you’re in luck and I’m not, the Detective Superintendent may invite us to go there for a discussion. Otherwise, I’d rather that you were within reach. You could always help me with the inventory,’ he added hopefully, sounding like somebody offering a favour.
‘For the same hourly rate that you’re being paid?’
‘In your dreams! What are friends for?’
‘Not for helping you with inventories,’ I told him.
*
Bruce settled down to study some papers and I headed for the stairs again. This time, it was the phone that stopped me. I picked it up in the kitchen and flopped into one of the basket chairs.
‘Captain?’ said Bob Guidman’s voice. ‘I did as you winted and spak tae the auld leddy. Saturday forenoon she was watching oot o the kitchen windae, cause I’d axed her to keep an ee on the cushies. If they war feeding at ony yin place in the rape field, I wis going to try my luck there.’
‘And?’ I said. ‘Can I speak to her?’
‘Och, she’s no liking for a this technology. I’ll tell you mysel. She thinks she seen Mr Branch go back alang the lane towards his ain hoose. Aboot half-eleven, that would hae been, or mebbe a bittie earlier.’
‘She can’t be sure?’
‘She says it wis awfie like him an there wis a liver-and-white spaniel. He’d on a fawn blazer and white breeks.’
‘Many thanks,’ I said. ‘If that’s what Alistair Branch was wearing on Saturday, she may have done him a big favour.’
‘Dinna hing up,’ Bob said quickly. ‘I’ve no finished. A minute or twa efter that, a mannie in a white shirt and khaki shorts came out of the back yett tae the auld bitch’s hoose. He stooped doon for a while an then gaed back intil her gairden an the yett shut.’
‘Who?’ I asked. ‘Who was it?’
‘She couldna tell.’
‘A stranger?’ I suggested.
‘Maybe, but likely no. He was facing the other way, a-purpose, while he could, an keeping yon holly between hissel an these hooses. Could ha been Mr Pelmann, or Roley Bovis from next door, or some other thickset, black-heided chiel of that sort. Mrs Bovis, even, the way she was putting on the beef, last time I seed her.’
‘It can’t have been Mr Bovis,’ I said. ‘He was at an auction in Kirkcaldy.’ I decided to leave more detailed questioning to the police, but there was one vital question to which I was burning to know the answer. ‘Ask her whether there would have been time for Mr Branch to get home after she saw him, change his trousers and get round to Mrs Horner’s house?’
‘I a’ready axed her that. She said no.’
‘She’ll say the same to the police?’
‘Aye. She will that.’
‘Thank you, Bob,’ I said. ‘And give thanks to your wife. You may be helping to prevent a good man being set up.’
I went back into the sitting room to give Bruce the glad tidings.
‘She doesn’t seem to be very positive,’ he said doubtfully. ‘Perhaps I’d better phone and speak to her before I ring the Detective Superintendent.’
‘I don’t think she approves of telephones,’ I told him. ‘You’d better go and see her.’
*
This time, I managed to make it all the way upstairs. I came down, feeling much refreshed, to find that Bruce had taken me at my word and gone out, but the rest of the gang had already foregathered in the sitting room and Henry was dispensing my drinks with a generous hand.
As usual, business was cleared away first. While decision-making was rife I brought up the current area of dispute. The diary was beginning to fill with engagements – field trials and invitations to shoot or to pickup, all clashing and competing for attendance. For once, we were more or less unanimous even if some of the decisions were unsatisfactory compromises. I made entries in the firm’s diary and hid it away quickly before mind-changing could begin.
Business finished, the questions surrounding the death of Mrs Horner were given an airing. First extracting an oath of confidentiality which had at least a fair chance of being honoured, I brought them up to date with developments, withholding only the source of my information about Mrs Pelmann and the unfortunate Horace.
If the sin of killing and eating a little girl’s pet rabbit was already known to them, the retelling of it brought down a fresh wave of condemnation on the late Mrs Horner. Beth’s comment was typical: ‘I always knew that she was a horrid person,’ she said, ‘but I wouldn’t have believed that anybody could be so beastly. I’m not surprised that she was murdered.’
‘Are you suggesting that Mr or Mrs Pelmann, or the two together, killed her?’ Henry asked.
‘Well, no. Probably not. I was only suggesting that anybody who could do that sort of thing could do other things even worse, and make serious enemies.’
Henry introduced a fresh slant. ‘If your informant quoted the conversation accurately to you and you repeated it verbatim,’ he said to me, ‘there was at least a suggestion that Mrs Dalton also had had a slanging match with the since deceased lady.’
‘I believe you’re right,’ I said.
‘I’m sure you are,’ Beth said. ‘Months ago, I called at the shop. Mrs Horner was already at the counter and Mrs Dalton followed me in. Mr Campbell was serving and he chatted to both of them and they both chatted back to him but not a word to each other. I thought at the time that there had to be a coldness between them, but Mrs Horner made a hobby of putting folks’ backs up so I forgot about it.’
Mention of Mrs Guidman’s observations from her kitchen window brought Roland Bovis back to mind. ‘When are you going south again?’ I asked Henry.
‘Late on Sunday,’ he said. ‘My ward seems to have fallen out with one of the tenant farmers and I’ll have to spend a day or two sorting it out.’
‘I was going to take a couple of hours off tomorrow and go to Kirkcaldy for that gun,’ I told him, ‘but now Bruce wants me to stay available.’
‘I’ll go,’ Henry said immediately. ‘There’s another auction on Saturday and I’d like to look at the pictures.’
‘Well, for God’s sake don’t buy any more,’ Isobel said, ‘unless you’re going to buy me a bigger house.’
Chapter Five
I found Friday’s Scottish papers interesting. When I saw the first editorial – in the Scotsman – I walked down to the village. Mrs Campbell allowed me to glance at the others. While still managing to report on developments in the case of Mrs Horner (without actually having anything new to say) each admitted to having been fooled by the lady’s letters, which had purported to come from many different members of the public. Acknowledgements ranged from bald admissions to what verged on abject apologies to the whole canine species. What interested me was that the truth had emerged simultaneously in all the papers. Evidently
there had been much comparing of notes before the unpalatable truth was accepted.
I met Bruce again outside the front door. ‘There was nobody at home at the Guidmans’ yesterday,’ he said. ‘Well, I suppose everybody has to go out some time. I only came back for some papers and I’ll try there again later on. Are you coming?’
‘I have more than enough to do here,’ I told him. ‘I was going to take a brace of young dogs for some training on the Moss, but I suppose you want me to be more available than that?’
‘Train them here,’ he snapped. He had been looking forward to collecting his fiancée to sail on the catamaran which a friend of his kept in Tayport harbour. He cleared his throat and, with an effort, summoned up his reserves of diplomacy. ‘I may as well go back to Mrs Horner’s house. If Detective Superintendent Fraser’s as good as his word and comes to meet me, today or any other day, I want to be there before he changes his mind. And I can’t see myself prattling convincingly about scents and rabbits.’
‘Your apology is accepted,’ I said.
Before he could decide whether or not to deny that any apology had been offered, a dark Isuzu Trooper, clean and shining but beginning to show rust, turned in at the gate and stopped with a yelp of tyres. I turned towards it with my eyebrows raised and what I hoped was a polite and enquiring smile. We still had two trained dogs for sale and we were at the time of year when owners suddenly realize that the old dog is getting too stiff to work for another season.
It was soon clear that this was no prospective client. The sole occupant came out of the car like a bull through a hedge. He was a tall man, almost bald, with a barrel chest, a flat stomach and an athletic step. The fact that he was well into middle age seemed an irrelevance among so much energy. His face, which was heavily modelled, was twisted into an expression of controlled anger. In the bright sunlight it was difficult to make out whether he was snorting steam, but I could well have believed it.
‘Which of you is Cunningham?’ he demanded.
I was tempted to point at Bruce but honesty prevailed. ‘I am.’
He rounded on Bruce. ‘Then you’re Hastie? The lawyer?’ His big hands made a pass in the air.
He thrust forward, almost colliding chest to chest with Bruce. Bruce, showing courage which surprised me, refused to step back. ‘Go ahead,’ he said. ‘Use violence. I haven’t had a good lawsuit in weeks. What seems to be your problem?’
The moderate answer took some of the wind out of the big man’s sails. ‘Seems? Seems?’ He found more words and forced them out between gritted teeth. ‘My problem, as you call it, is that you two have been suggesting that the Horner woman was killed by me or my wife. We’ve just had the police at us, asking questions, one after the other. And, I may tell you, I’ve a lawyer of my own.’
‘Factual statements made to the police are not actionable,’ Bruce said.
Although we had cast suspicious glances towards several, if not most, of the villagers, there was only one family who could have been advised of it by the police. The man seemed to be building up a second head of steam. ‘In point of fact,’ I said, ‘we never suggested anything of the sort. I take it that you’re Mr Pelmann?’
He nodded, the action looking more like an aborted head-butt. I noticed that he was wearing navy slacks and a white shirt open at the neck. He could have been the man who Bob Guidman had seen walking with a woman. ‘You admit it then? Or how did you know who I was?’
‘Did the police tell you that we had made any such statement?’ Bruce enquired. Hannah appeared in the doorway and he called to her. ‘Hannah, come and be a witness.’
Hiding a smile, Hannah approached and waited.
‘Well?’ Bruce said.
Pelmann was deflating. ‘They implied it,’ he said vaguely. ‘Your names were mentioned.’
‘That was very indiscreet of them,’ I said. ‘They may have meant to make mischief. Do you ever wear shorts?’ I asked him.
‘Good God, no!’ Pelmann seemed to be confused by the turns the discussion had taken so that he was relieved to find something to be indignant about. ‘I hate to see hairy knees about the place, even my own.’
‘You know that they’ve arrested Alistair Branch, on very slender evidence?’ I asked.
‘I heard,’ he said gruffly. He seemed uncertain whether to continue directing his antagonism at us or to switch it to the police. ‘Bloody nonsense. If Alistair sees a beetle in front of him he steps carefully over it. Least violent person I know.’
‘I agree,’ I told him. ‘And all we’ve done is to point out that there are others with the opportunity and as strong a motive. Yours haven’t been and won’t be the only names mentioned. Far from it.’
‘You think we’d have killed her over somebody else’s pet rabbit? Come on! I’ll apologize to the McIntoshes when they come back and offer to buy Katie a new rabbit and that will be the end of it. With a little luck, it’ll mean that they never ask us to house-sit or rabbit-sit again.’
‘It’s no less unlikely than killing her over a dog-turd,’ I said, ‘and once the deed was done, anybody would have had a motive to try and shift the blame onto poor Alistair.’
‘Well, don’t you try to shift it onto either of us.’
‘We’re not trying to incriminate anybody,’ Bruce said. ‘But the evidence against Mr Branch is slim and could have been contrived. You’re as convinced as we are that he’s innocent. The more people we can suggest who had equal motives and opportunities, the sooner the police will have to realize that their case is seriously flawed.’
Pelmann thought that over and I saw his muscles relaxing. ‘Damned if that isn’t quite reasonable, in a wacky sort of way,’ he said at last. ‘But, dammit, there must have been dozens of people with that much reason to drown the old bitch. Why pick on me? She was the most malicious bugger I ever came across. Anybody could have done it – and got a vote of thanks from the community.’
‘It just happened that a member of the police was present when we turned up Horace’s pelt and bones,’ I said. ‘That’s the only reason you came to be singled out. You wouldn’t care to suggest a few more names to put forward?’
‘No, I bloody wouldn’t! These are my neighbours. And my friends.’
It seemed to me that while he was in a less aggressive and more confiding mood it might be a chance to gather some more information. ‘How about Mrs Dalton?’ I suggested.
He froze. I thought for a moment that I had gone too far. Then I saw a gleam of amusement come into his eye. It was followed by a twist to his mouth suggesting that he was not without a trace of the malice which he had attributed to the late Mrs Horner. ‘You do get bypassed by the local gossip, don’t you?’ he said.
‘I heard that she had had a major row with Mrs Horner,’ I said.
‘She and everybody else. Yes, you could put it that way.’ He paused again, restraining himself, but malice conquered all. Or perhaps it was the lure of a story to a natural raconteur. He leaned back against his car in the relaxed attitude of a man entertaining friends with anecdotes in the pub. ‘I’ll tell you a part of it. This was a year or so back. The Daltons had only just moved here and they hardly knew anybody, but Mrs Horner had at least been civil to them. The Daltons were due for a holiday abroad to celebrate a wedding anniversary. When they told the police that the house would be empty, the cops asked who would be holding the key and the Daltons could only think of asking Mrs Horner.
‘Well, when they came back they could see that their things had been disturbed. Mrs Horner had gone through everything. She’d even invited her few cronies to join her.’ Pelmann saw my eyebrows go up. ‘Hellish thing to do, wasn’t it? I don’t wonder that you’re surprised.’
‘I was only surprised that you mentioned friends,’ I told him. ‘I didn’t think that there was any such animal. She seemed to have taken an advanced course in How To Lose Friends And Alienate People.’
‘She did have a few. Not many and none of them friendly. She was tolerated rather tha
n liked. Nobody inside the village, she’d alienated all of them except Roland Bovis. For some reason, and I really can’t believe that it was sex – although the most extraordinary couples do make music together – the two of them got on like the proverbial house on fire. Martha Bullerton out at Seagrove Cottages, only half a mile away, was quite pally with her, to name another, and one or two ladies in Cupar. If you didn’t keep a dog and were prepared to listen to some of her nastiness, she could be quite affable.
‘The word didn’t take long to go round. Mrs Dalton may look as though butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, or anywhere else for the matter of that. Do you know her? You’d think that she didn’t have a thought in her head beyond darning the minister’s socks, collecting for charity and other good works, but she must be a warm piece in secret. By the time the Daltons returned, the details of her underwear were known all over Fife. And pretty fancy stuff it is, too, I’m told. Not intended to keep her warm. Him, yes; her, no. Is that a better motive than a dead rabbit?’
‘Yes,’ Bruce said softly, ‘I rather think it is.’
‘Well, there was a lot more even than that.’ Pelmann hesitated. ‘I’m not going to tell tales about Fred Dalton. He’s a friend. Ask him yourselves.’
‘He was in Wormit,’ I said. ‘Or was he?’
Pelmann looked into our faces and was satisfied. He nodded and, without another word, settled himself in the Trooper and backed out into the road.
We had forgotten Hannah, standing silently by but listening intently. She was usually a respectful employee – far more so than Daffy – but something in Pelmann’s revelations had touched a nerve. ‘How you men stick together!’ she said. ‘He didn’t want to snitch on a friend, but the friend’s wife was another matter altogether. Men!’
Dead Weight (Three Oaks Book 11) Page 11
