Closer to Death in a Garden (Pitkirtly Mysteries Book 10)

by Cecilia Peartree

  ‘The keys? How did you get those?’

  ‘Dave gave me them,’ said Amaryllis airily, brandishing the car keys in front of Charlie’s nose.

  ‘He said you could drive his car?’ said Jock incredulously.

  ‘Sort of,’ said Amaryllis. ‘Jemima and I followed the ambulance.’

  Charlie and Jock exchanged a glance.

  ‘He’s not going to be pleased,’ said Charlie.

  ‘Can I get a lift home with you?’ said Jock.

  Amaryllis decided it was time to change the subject.

  ‘Did you call an ambulance too?’ she said to Charlie.

  ‘It’s all under control,’ he said.

  Amaryllis doubted that very much.

  Chapter 5 Alpaca Central

  Algernon didn’t want to go back into his pen. Christopher could see why the woman had needed his help. Surely she wasn’t on her own in this whole alpaca operation? As they wrestled with him, one pushing and one pulling, a few more hairy heads appeared over the line of doors further into the depths of the stables.

  ‘Just – one – more push!’ puffed the woman. He was reluctant even to think of her by name in case the act of remembering it etched this whole episode permanently on his brain. ‘There – I think we’ve done it!’

  Algernon broke away at the last minute and made another bid for freedom. Jane Blyth-Sheridan – Christopher’s resistance had given way – grabbed at the rope and stopped him in mid-flight.

  ‘Come here, you little bastard!’ she snapped.

  ‘Not all that little,’ muttered Christopher. He didn’t feel qualified to comment on whether the animal was a bastard or not. He supposed all animals were, technically.

  As Ms Blyth-Sheridan slammed the door to the stall shut, and moved a bolt into place, he took a couple of steps back in case Algernon recognised him as a captor and mounted some sort of attack. But instead he saw the alpaca turn and lick the woman’s hand.

  ‘Oh, yes, that’s all well and good,’ she said to him in the crooning voice some women kept for babies and kittens. ‘It was a different story five minutes ago, wasn’t it?’

  She gave him a final pat on the nose and added, to Christopher, ‘I need a drink. Would you like something?’

  ‘Well, I’m with some...’

  ‘Or would you rather meet the family?’

  Judging by the sweeping hand gesture which took in the whole interior of the stables, she didn’t mean her human family.

  ‘I can’t stay long,’ he said, thinking he would compromise and just have a cup of tea. Jock and Charlie would be all right for five minutes, and he had no doubt Amaryllis would turn up. In fact, he felt a bit silly for dashing up here thinking she needed help when he knew perfectly well she was better able to look after herself than anybody else of his acquaintance.

  Jane Blyth-Sheridan led him past the four other alpacas and out through a door at the other end of the stable. They had arrived at the entrance to the house, a modern-looking building with a balcony that ran round the top floor. A double garage, the doors closed at present, was built on to it at an angle.

  ‘It was all done back to front, so the front door’s round at the other side,’ she said as she led him into the house, ‘and I expect you’re wondering why the stables are so old and the house is so new.’

  He hadn’t really noticed the age of the stables, distracted as he had been by the animals inside.

  ‘We had to knock down the old house when we bought this place,’ she continued, heading from a sort of lobby into a huge utility room with a built-in clothes airer thing and from there into a massive kitchen with gleaming units and completely clear work surfaces. Even living on his own, Christopher couldn’t manage to keep the worktops clear. He sometimes wondered if someone – Amaryllis was the chief suspect – was breaking into his house at night just to confuse him by moving things around in the kitchen, taking bread out of the bread-bin and cheese and lettuce out of the fridge and leaving it lying around. Or maybe he was walking in his sleep and doing it. Or he wasn’t quite as obsessively tidy as he imagined.

  ‘What would you like?’ she asked, breaking into his ruminations just as ruthlessly as Amaryllis broke into people’s houses. ‘The brandy’s through in the drawing-room, but there’s wine in the fridge. Or I could put the kettle on.’

  ‘Coffee would be nice,’ he said weakly.

  ‘Hmm. I’m not sure I can work the machine. I don’t suppose instant would do, would it? Just this once?’

  ‘It’s fine, thanks.’ Christopher was horrified to think she expected him to want anything but instant. But the coffee machine, a fearsome and very shiny thing, was in keeping with the rest of the kitchen. There was no sign that it had ever been used. Maybe Mr Blyth-Sheridan, if there was such a person, couldn’t work it either.

  ‘If Madeleine were here she could work it,’ said Jane Blyth-Sheridan. ‘But it’s her day off.’

  Madeleine’s day off? Christopher could tell he had inadvertently wandered into a different social stratum from the one he usually inhabited.

  Once the kettle was switched on, she invited him to sit at the table – scrubbed pine, naturally, and free of any scratches, dents or mysterious stains – and they tried not to catch each other’s eyes while they listened to the water heating up. After a while he couldn’t cope with the silence any more.

  ‘How long have you had them?’ he enquired.

  ‘Them? Oh, the alpacas!’ She laughed as if she was surprised he would even ask the question. ‘Only a few months. It was one of his business ideas. But he isn’t the one who has to go and catch them when they stray, needless to say. Typical!’

  ‘Um,’ said Christopher, hoping the kettle would boil and distract her from this minor rant. He guessed that ‘he’ was Mr Blyth-Sheridan.

  ‘No,’ she continued, ‘he’s the one who jets around the country claiming to be looking for buyers for the wool. As if we’re going to get any kind of commercial interest in such a tinpot operation. We’d need a whole farm of them before we could actually sell any of the stuff. And I certainly didn’t sign up for that!’

  Christopher began to rise to his feet, convinced now that she had forgotten all about the coffee and that he had better get out before she started on any personal revelations.

  She waved him back down, getting to her feet instead. ‘But I’m forgetting about the coffee. I’m so sorry.’

  He relaxed for a moment as she made the coffee, took down a replica Coronation souvenir biscuit tin from a shelf and stared into it, presumably in the hope of finding biscuits. ‘I bet Madeleine’s had them all. She wanders about, you know, in the middle of the night. Looking for something to eat and anything else she can find.’

  The coffee was terrible, and Christopher had a sudden desperate longing for toast to go with it. Or at least, he had a desperate longing to be somewhere else, eating toast with somebody else. This made him think of Amaryllis. He really should try and find out if she was all right.

  Before he could make his apologies and leave, there was a bleeping sound. His hostess picked up her mobile phone, which had been lying on the table, read the message and abruptly jumped up from the table again and left the room without speaking.

  He waited a few minutes. Maybe he could sneak out before she came back. Would that be a horrendous breach of etiquette? Did he really care if it was?

  More minutes passed. They could turn into hours, and he’d still be sitting there, trapped by his own indecisiveness.

  At last Christopher stood up, his chair scraping on the floor despite his efforts to move silently. That would bring her back if anything did. He waited, one hand hovering above the kitchen table. Nothing happened. He moved as quietly as he could back through the utility room and into the lobby by the back door, which he now saw she had left open. He tiptoed past the stables, afraid of causing the alpacas he knew were inside to stampede and make a concerted bid for freedom.

  Still moving forward, he cast a glance back over h
is shoulder to make sure he wasn’t being followed, either by Jane Blyth-Sheridan or by a stray alpaca.

  He caught a glimpse of something moving, and paused for a moment. Had somebody just darted between the stables and the house? He had the impression that it had been a young man with dark hair, but he hadn’t had time to take in any details.

  ‘Hey, watch where you’re going!’ said a man’s voice, seconds before he turned his gaze to the front again and found he was just about to collide with a uniformed police officer. He skidded to a halt, making marks in the gravel.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Where are you off to in such a hurry?’ said the policeman.

  ‘Nowhere! I mean – I’ve got to meet some friends out there.’ He gestured towards the road, where he hoped Charlie and Jock were waiting.

  ‘Friends?’

  Was it Christopher’s imagination, or was this police officer less amiable than the average law enforcement person around Pitkirtly? Maybe he had been trained by Inspector Armstrong or something.

  ‘Yes. Charlie Smith and Jock McLean. We were looking for somebody.’

  ‘Another friend?’ said the policeman sternly.

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘You’d better come with me,’ said the policeman. ‘Is there anybody else in here?’

  ‘Anybody? Well, Mrs Blyth-Sheridan was here a minute ago, but she went off somewhere.’

  ‘We’ll find her,’ said the police officer with confidence.

  They walked to the gates together. Christopher realised Ms Blyth-Sheridan had forgotten to lock up after they had brought in the alpaca.

  ‘There you are!’ said Amaryllis, who was standing by Dave’s car, her hand on the bonnet as if she owned it.

  ‘Is this your other friend?’ said the policeman in a resigned sort of way.

  ‘Yes,’ said Christopher. He wished he and Amaryllis were sitting at his own kitchen table eating toast at this very moment. He wondered if he was about to be arrested for being in Jane Blyth-Sheridan’s house, or for rustling an alpaca, or even for admitting to having friends like Charlie and Jock. Then he saw that they were standing around a bit further up the road chatting to Keith Burnet.

  Keith gave him a wave. It seemed that arrest probably wasn’t imminent. The uniformed officer walked off, leaning weight to this surmise.

  ‘There’s a body in the garden centre,’ said Amaryllis.

  ‘A what?’

  Christopher recalled Jock’s dazed expression and his insistence on calling the police. So something really had happened up here on the fringes of town. It hadn’t been an over-reaction or an outbreak of uncharacteristic vividness of the imagination on Jock’s part.

  ‘A dead body.’

  ‘Why didn’t he say so?’

  ‘From what I heard, he didn’t have time to chat before you were dragged off by a woman with an alpaca,’ she said. ‘What was all that about?’

  She sounded vaguely amused. He frowned. Had he expected a more extreme reaction?

  ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘We were looking for you when I found the alpaca. Algernon. Then the woman came along. I had to give her a hand – she wasn’t going to get him back into his stable on her own... Funny, though.’

  ‘What was funny?’

  ‘She went off somewhere. While we were having our coffee... Never mind all that, though. Is there really a body in the garden centre?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘He seems to have been shot.’ She put just the smallest amount of stress on the word ‘seems’.

  ‘Can’t they tell?’ said Christopher.

  ‘Hmm,’ said Amaryllis.

  Keith Burnet had come up behind Christopher, as he realised when another voice joined the discussion.

  ‘I can’t comment on that,’ he said, before either of them even asked him to comment. ‘Now tell me, did any of you lot have an alibi for the time of the shooting?’

  ‘Alibi?’ said Christopher. In all his dealings with the police he couldn’t remember ever having been asked for an alibi before. It was quite exciting. ‘Shooting?’

  ‘A shot was definitely fired,’ said Keith. ‘Didn’t you hear it?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so... When would that have been?’

  ‘Probably about the time the strange woman was accosting you in the wood,’ said Amaryllis.

  ‘Don’t give him any clues,’ said Keith reproachfully.

  ‘The strange woman... the alpaca... Wait a minute. There was a bit of a bang just before the alpaca came out of the bush.’ Christopher was proud of this feat of memory. ‘It was a door banging in the wind.’ He stared at them. Keith was shaking his head, a pitying expression creeping across his face. Amaryllis was smiling in that unnerving way she had.

  ‘There wasn’t any wind,’ she said to him. ‘And,’ she added as if it settled the matter, ‘there wasn’t any door.’

  Chapter 6 An Unnecessary Rescue

  Jemima was a bit surprised when she woke up in the morning and found herself in hospital. She only vaguely remembered the events of the previous day, but as they came back to her she thought of Dave, and panicked.

  ‘Just try and relax, dear,’ said the nurse who had woken her up to take her temperature and blood pressure.

  ‘David...’

  ‘Is that the big man you came in with?’

  ‘Yes. Is he all right?’

  ‘He looks a sight better than you, that’s for sure,’ said the nurse with a laugh. ‘You went as white as a sheet just now.’

  ‘It was only because I remembered what had happened,’ said Jemima, leaning back on the pillows.

  The nurse tried her blood pressure again.

  ‘It’s gone right down now,’ she said, sounding almost disappointed. ‘But I’ll have to put it on your chart though.’

  ‘Can I see him?’

  ‘Mr Douglas? The consultant’s with him now. But don’t you worry, he’ll just be doing the test for Alzheimer’s.’

  ‘Alzheimer’s? My Dave doesn’t have anything like that.’

  ‘He’ll be all right, then. I expect they’ll want you to take it too.’

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ said Jemima.

  The nurse packed up the blood pressure machine and took it away.

  A male nurse came round with some orange pills, but Jemima refused them.

  ‘But they’re for your diabetes, dear,’ said the nurse. ‘You’ve got to have them.’

  ‘I don’t take them at home,’ said Jemima firmly. ‘You must have got me mixed up with somebody else.’

  After a bit more pointless argument, the nurse finally checked Jemima’s name on the chart and agreed that she wasn’t Doreen Mackenzie and she didn’t have diabetes. After he had moved on, presumably to try and find the unfortunate Doreen, two hospital security officers arrived and there was a short chase after which he was taken away, securely held between the security men.

  The first nurse came back, shaking her head.

  ‘That’s the second time this week... They need to keep a better eye on that one.’

  ‘Is he really a nurse?’ said Jemima faintly.

  ‘No more than I’m an astronaut. His medication’s made him a wee bit funny in the head, and they can’t seem to keep him in the right ward.’

  ‘Oh, dear... Can I go home now?’

  ‘Not until the doctor’s been round,’ said the nurse firmly.

  Jemima wondered how you were meant to tell whether somebody was really a nurse or not, when any random person could put on a uniform and wander around offering people pills. They might not have been pills but sweeties, of course. But even that could have been dangerous to some of the patients. Oh, dear.

  After breakfast, Dave appeared at her bedside, looking the picture of health. ‘It was indigestion,’ he said. ‘They think there might be some gallstones, but I’ve to come back for a scan for those.’

  ‘Can’t they do the scan now and save you a journey?’ said Jemima di
sapprovingly.

  ‘No – they said the technician only works on alternate days and nobody else knows how to work the machine.’

  ‘Hmph!’ said Jemima. ‘How come they’ve let you get out of bed, if there’s still something wrong with you?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Dave, perching on the end of the bed. ‘Nothing wrong with my heart. The doctor said I could live another thirty years. Easy.’

  ‘We might as well go home, then,’ said Jemima.

  She was trying to summon up the nerve to get out of bed – it seemed a long way to the floor – when the nurse re-appeared.

  ‘And what do you think you’re up to, Mrs Douglas?’

  ‘I’m going home,’ said Jemima. ‘Now that Dave’s all right.’

  ‘Not so fast,’ said the nurse. ‘The doctor hasn’t seen you yet.’

  ‘I’m sure he’s got plenty of other people to see,’ muttered Jemima. She was feeling rebellious, all of a sudden. Knowing that Dave was more or less all right was a big relief, of course, but now she wanted the extra reassurance of their lives returning to normal.

  ‘You might as well let him give you the once-over,’ said Dave, annoyingly cheerful as he sometimes was. ‘It won’t do any harm.’

  ‘As long as he knows I’m not Doreen Mackenzie,’ said Jemima, swinging her legs back on to the bed and scowling around indiscriminately in all directions.

  ‘Who’s Doreen Mackenzie?’ said Dave, baffled.

  ‘There’s nobody here called Doreen Mackenzie,’ said the nurse. ‘He made her up.’

  It took a while to explain to Dave what this all meant, and by the time they had done that, and the consultant, who looked like a teenage boy Jemima had once known who was always getting into trouble for unravelling girls’ pigtails in class and throwing their hair ribbons in the waste-paper-basket, had been round and told her she would have to watch what she ate in case her cholesterol went up, then rounded on the nurse and gave her a telling-off about bed-blocking, half the morning was gone. The doctor didn’t even bother with the Alzheimer’s test, telling her it was patently obvious to anybody that not only did she not have Alzheimer’s but that there were medical students who were less alert than she was. Quite a few medical students, apparently, especially first thing in the morning. After the doctor had gone, Dave told her the test was easy-peasy and he had scored ten out of ten on it and got a gold star.