Beneath the Abbey Wall

by A. D. Scott

  Later, Rob decided the shriek had definitely come from Bahadur. “A Nepali war cry,” he described it to Joanne. “Absolutely bloodcurdling.”

  He looked at the tableau of Sergeant Major Smart lying on his stomach, not daring to move, Bahadur sitting on the soldier’s back, one arm around the man’s neck, and in the other hand a long thin knife, the business end resting lightly on Smart’s jugular vein. It must have penetrated the skin, but only slightly; a thin trickle of blood, no more than a shaving cut, had erupted, but the smell of blood, the scent of bloodlust, the discharge from the gun filled the room. When he realized Sergeant Major Smart was going nowhere, Rob was so relieved, he laughed loudly. Then stopped abruptly.

  McAllister understood and gave his junior reporter a grin that made Rob think of a skeleton. Which he may well have been if not for the Gurkha.

  “What’s going on?” Beech rushed in and stood beside Rob, legs akimbo, pointing an old double-barrel shotgun, kept for deer hunting, into the room.

  “Good grief, man! Put that away!” McAllister yelled. “You’re terrifying the life out of me.”

  Pointing at Bahadur, who had managed to remove Sergeant Major Smart’s legs without letting go of his stranglehold, nor removing the knife from Smart’s neck, McAllister said, “Our savior.”

  “Well-done, Mr. Bahadur!” Beech called out. He cocked the shotgun and saluted the former Gurkha commando, who for once did not return a salute from an officer.

  Rosemary Sokolov appeared, looked around, said nothing—she’d seen worse in Shanghai—went towards Rob, examined his forehead, saw the bleeding had slowed down, and told him, “The police and an ambulance are on their way.”

  “A doctor will do me,” Rob said. “I’m not up to hospital and the sight of a nurse.”

  What Rob most remembered, when he and McAllister talked it over later, was that once the initial terror was over, he had been really annoyed: picking glass out of his hair; dabbing with the end of a curtain at the blood running down his forehead; seeing the pockmarks in his pride and joy, his Marlon Brando bike jacket.

  Then, he remembered, he became more than annoyed—he was furious. “I’m going to be a television star one day, so if I have scars on my face, I’ll kill you,” Rob had yelled at the now trussed-up soldier still lying on the floor, Bahadur on one side, Beech on the other, Smart’s artificial legs well out of his reach. How that had happened Rob had no idea. But he guessed it was Bahadur’s doing.

  McAllister, his hand shaking as he desperately tried to light a cigarette, missing the end of it at least three times before succeeding, had said, the accent pure Glasgow, “Television star! That’ll be right.”

  Afterwards they laughed at how shock made them think of the most ridiculous things: Rob—his future television career; McAllister—although he did not say, had had a flash of Joanne laughing, as she danced with him last year, in the Caledonian Ballroom.

  By the time the police arrived with a clamor of unnecessary bells that set all the neighboring dogs barking, it was dark. When they switched the lights on, the scene in the sitting room looked even worse.

  When the police left with Sergeant Major Smart, Rosemary Sokolov insisted they all come next door for tea, or a brandy. McAllister politely refused. He walked to the end of the garden, needing to be alone. Whether it was the night air, or delayed shock, or lack of a decent meal for weeks, maybe a month, he didn’t know, but he had to lean against the garden wall to light a cigarette.

  Mr. Bahadur was watching him. McAllister saw him watching him. He nodded. The small man smiled, white teeth flashing in the dark skin and the dark night.

  “Now I can go home,” he said, “but only after we make a memorial ceremony for Miss Joyce.”

  “Amen,” said McAllister.

  * * *

  Saturday morning, McAllister was in his office with DI Dunne. There was a knock on the door.

  “Go away,” he shouted. So Rob walked in.

  “What’s happening with Eilidh?”

  He asked McAllister the question, but DI Dunne answered, “She’s home, and so far only charged with obstructing the police in their inquiries. She’s denying she did anything, insisting she found the keys in her courtyard.”

  “She told me, my dad, and Mrs. Andersen that Smart gave her the knife and she put it back in the courtyard wall.” Rob was furious that she might escape prosecution. “Isn’t that enough? And ask her about the Dansette, the clothes—she could start a shop with all the stuff in her wardrobe bought with the money she’s been taking off the sergeant major for months—if not longer.”

  “Maybe.” DI Dunne looked dubious. “When her father came to take her home, she became hysterical. WPC McPherson thinks she might end up in Craig Dunain.”

  The mention of the lunatic asylum, or loony bin as it was usually known, made Rob shiver. Then he remembered Eilidh’s capacity for deception and wondered if it was all an act to prevent her from being charged with accessory to murder.

  “I’m still puzzled as to how Eilidh had the keys,” McAllister said.

  “She’s sticking to her story that she found them,” DI Dunne said. “And she believes her boyfriend will give her an alibi. But I asked my colleagues in Glasgow to interview the medical student.” DI Dunne pulled out notes of the phone call.

  “The student, Dennis Cameron, remembers that night well because the next morning, he and Nurse Eilidh broke up.” DI Dunne was skimming through the statement. “He’s good at describing that night, good on the detail.”

  “He’s training to be a doctor,” McAllister said. “He’ll make a good witness.”

  “On the Sunday night around the time of the murder, he was in the house, waiting for Eilidh. They had come home around six; he heard Mrs. Smart, as he calls her, arrive not much after. Sometime before nine, Eilidh went out, saying she’d only be five minutes, she needed to buy milk for breakfast.”

  * * *

  When the Glasgow police interviewed Dennis Cameron, he told them, “It wasn’t five minutes, more like half an hour. Next, I heard Mrs. Smart leave . . . ”

  “Did you know her, sir?” a detective asked.

  “I’d bumped into her once as she was coming in, and another time I went next door to ask for shillings for the gas meter. She was nice.”

  “So you heard Mrs. Smart leave?”

  “I heard her call out good night, their front door shut, the gate opened—it needs oil—and about ten minutes later, I heard the gate again. It was Eilidh.”

  “Mr. McLeod did not go out at all?”

  “No, I would have heard.” Dennis was embarrassed to say so, but sound carried in the wee workman’s terrace, and he was grateful there was an empty house between Mr. McLeod and Eilidh. “It must be the courtyard walls—sound carries.”

  “What happened next?”

  “I looked out the window. Eilidh was in the courtyard corner. She had a torch. When she came in I asked her what she was doing, and she said she was chasing a rat. Sounded unlikely to me—most girls run a mile if they see a rat.” He did not add that Eilidh was excited and that night she had been all over me like a rash. He had put it down to his charm.

  The fight the next morning had started when he asked where the milk was.

  “What milk?”

  “The milk you went out to buy last night.”

  “When can I come to Glasgow to live with you?” she had asked.

  “The milk?” he had replied.

  He was used to her nagging about Glasgow, she had asked a dozen times. He always said, I have to finish my studies, then we can be together. But this time she had turned on him.

  “You’re all the same,” she had screamed, “you get what you want, then you leave.”

  He had never mentioned leaving. He thought he loved her. He had wanted to wait until he was a qualified doctor, then they would marry.

  When he had finished giving his statement to the Glasgow police, he said, “Would you tell Mr. McLeod I’m really sorry about his w
ife.”

  “So what does the sergeant major have to say to all this?” McAllister asked.

  “Not a word. No, sorry, he is saying, ‘Name, rank, number, that’s all you’re getting out of me,’ and so far, he’s stuck to his word.” DI Dunne was doubtful they would get more from the man.

  “Look on the bright side,” he added when he saw McAllister’s face. “He won’t get off on the charge of attempted murder. You and Rob will be star witnesses.”

  DI Dunne stood and began to button his coat. “Thank you, gentlemen, I’ll be in touch.”

  “When will Don McLeod be released?” Rob asked.

  “Immediately, I think. But your father will know the details.” With that the policeman left.

  McAllister lit a cigarette. He stood, then walked up and down the room twice, to vent his anger.

  Rob waited. There was no explanation. He made a guess.

  “You’re furious because the sergeant major might get away with murder.”

  “I’m more than furious, if he were here I’d beat the hell out of him—or worse.”

  Rob thought about it. How could they prove it? I haven’t a clue, he decided.

  “If he gets away with it, you could always ask Jimmy McPhee to make sure his life is unbearable after he gets sent away for trying to shoot you.”

  “Who tried to shoot whom?” Joanne had only heard the last part of the sentence, but she saw Rob’s cuts. “And what happened to your face?”

  “Wasn’t me Smart was aiming at, it was him.” Rob pointed to McAllister, was now leaning back in his chair, smoking and smiling.

  “No! What happened? When? Are you all right?” She was staring at him, horrified at the thought of McAllister being killed. “And why are you grinning at me like a demented ape?”

  McAllister stubbed out his cigarette. He walked the five paces across the room. He put his arms around her, hugging her. She was embarrassed. She was laughing. She was almost in tears. “What?” was all she could say.

  “Find a babysitter. I’m taking you out to dinner.”

  “Can I come too?” Rob was grinning so hard at the sight of McAllister with his arms around Joanne, the cut on the edge of his mouth cracked. “Ouch!”

  “No,” they both said.

  “In that case, I’ll babysit.”

  * * *

  That evening, they were seated in the restaurant, dinner over, and in McAllister’s case three glasses of wine to Joanne’s one, before he had the courage to tell her.

  “As Smart was pointing the gun at me, all I could think of was, I hadn’t told you I love you,” McAllister began.

  With a table between them, he was speaking quietly, in a flat voice, choosing his words carefully—the revelation so momentous he had to suppress his emotions in case he said what he really wanted to say, which was, Will you marry me?

  Too soon, he kept reminding himself, much too soon.

  “McAllister, I don’t know what to say . . . ” She was finding it hard to look at him—her shame still consuming her.

  “Don’t say anything. And don’t worry, you won’t have to put up with me for much longer, I’m resigning from the Gazette, going back to Glasgow.”

  “But why?” She was horrified at the thought of McAllister leaving—and horrified she might lose her job if another editor was appointed.

  “It will be impossible to work together, so it’s best I leave.” He saw her face. Don’s words came back to him, Don’t do like I did.

  McAllister began, “I thought I was going to die. Smart had the gun pointed at me. I could see it in his face. He was going to kill me. There was a shot. Glass flew everywhere. Rob was at the window, blood pouring out of his head—at least that’s what it looked like. I thought the bullet had hit him, but he was still standing—well, sitting. Then I saw Smart on the floor, Gurkha Bahadur on his back, one arm round Smart’s neck, a knife at his neck, and I was in shock, I thought I was going to die, and I . . . ” He started to laugh. “I couldn’t steady my hand to light my bloody cigarette.”

  “So only because you thought you were going to die could you say you love me?” Her eyes were the bright green they became when she was passionate about something.

  “Aye.” When he smiled at her, she remembered what an intriguing man he was.

  “What about . . . ” She could not bear to say his name. “About what happened between me and . . . ”

  “Neil Stewart.” It hurt McAllister as much as it hurt her to say his name, but he knew there was no running away from the memory. “I can’t talk here—let’s walk.”

  He signaled the waiter, paid the bill. They fetched their coats and once out in the street the river drew them, but McAllister instinctively walked across the bridge to the opposite bank, turning right towards the firth; he was not ready for even a distant sighting of the Smart mansion—or the abbey wall.

  On the northern side, on the last half mile of the river before it reached the firth, there was a narrow gravel beach. The salmon fishermen would launch their cobles from here, rowing out with the nets, searching across the swift flow for the huge fish that spawned further upstream.

  It was low tide. They walked down the slipway and onto the sandy stones. The smell of sea and river and loch and fish and drains was strong but not unpleasant. The light of stars dancing on water, a waning moon, and the dim streetlamps made it a place where, not seeing each other clearly, only sensing the space between them and perhaps a light hand on the arm, a brush against each other, they could talk. They both knew this was to be the conversation, the one they had been avoiding since the day they met, the one that would decide their fate. And they were afraid.

  “It would be impossible to work in the same office, even the same town as you, when you know my feelings,” McAllister said.

  “Well, I’m not resigning from my job over a man.”

  “Good for you.” He laughed. Then he sighed. “That’s why I have to go back to Glasgow.”

  “Because you can’t face me?”

  “Because I can’t be around you, loving you, without hope . . . ” He picked up a stone and threw it as far as he could out across the river. It disappeared into the fast flow of water without a sound.

  “I know it’s impossible for you to forgive me,” she started, “but I’ll miss you so much . . . ”

  In the pause that followed they both knew it was time.

  “Joanne, I love you. What happened with Neil in the last two months—is it over?”

  “It’s over.” She sounded bitter and he hated that. “I can’t believe I made such a fool of myself. Falling for him like I did, it was like I was bewitched. I knew he was going to leave. He made no promises, he didn’t encourage my fantasies . . . I can’t explain even to myself how I lost my senses.”

  “I have no right to judge you.” He turned to her, took her elbow. He turned her around slightly so he could see her face, or the shadows on her face, in the streetlight above them. “But I know this: Don, Joyce, all that has happened, we have to learn from them, and as Don said, not make the same mistake.”

  “I can’t see . . . ”

  “Joanne Ross.” He spoke as though he was pronouncing a death sentence. “May I court you?”

  “McAllister!” She started to laugh. She threw her arms around his shoulders. She leaned back and, looking into his eyes said, “That is the most preposterous thing anyone has ever said. Court me. And you the writer. Can’t you think of a better way to put it?”

  “I write. I don’t know how to romance in words. But,” he pointed out, “I could send you letters telling you how you paralyze me, how I can’t think when I’m around you, how I can barely stop myself from kissing you.”

  She reached up. She touched his hair. She put a hand behind his head. She pulled him towards her. She kissed him. At first lightly. Then longer. It felt right.

  “I think you should stay,” she murmured.

  “Persuade me.”

  She kissed him again.

 
; * * *

  Sunday afternoon, McAllister knocked on Joanne’s front door.

  “Hello.” She knew she was blushing and she was aware of the girls watching them.

  “I came to ask if you would all like to come to dinner at my house?”

  “Do you have a television?” Jean asked.

  “I do.” He did not tell that he had had it delivered and installed this morning, a Sunday, breaking the Sabbath and all the rules by promising the shop owner he’d write a feature on his business.

  McAllister provided soup, Joanne an apple pie. They stayed in the kitchen, the children in the sitting room, happy in front of the TV set.

  “So, McAllister, what are your plans? Are you staying in the Highlands?”

  “I’m courting you, remember? We’ll talk, spend time together, see how it goes. Is that acceptable?”

  “More than acceptable. I’ve never had anyone I can really talk to—except Chiara. But never a man. I loved it when we used to talk late into the night, when you shared your books; even jazz is beginning to sound more than just a cacophony of cats.”

  She was about to ask him if he could really forgive her for the affair with Neil. But she stopped herself. If it really mattered to him, I wouldn’t be here in his house, my children with me.

  And ever after, when Neil Stewart’s name was mentioned, McAllister would feel a twinge of jealousy, but mostly gratitude to the stranger who had forced him to acknowledge that he, McAllister, who thought he knew most things, was illiterate when it came to the language of the heart.

  CHAPTER 23

  Don McLeod had been released on Saturday at mid-morning.

  As he walked out into an ordinary street on an ordinary November day, he felt the thaw beginning to melt his heart. He didn’t want that; it meant facing the loss of Joyce.

  “Can I give you a lift?” Beech’s voice was loud and clear and most of the street could have heard him if they took an interest in the prison—which they tried very hard not to do. “I thought perhaps you would like to join us for luncheon.”

  “Thank you,” Don said, his voice faint, unused to speaking across a space more than eight feet.