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

by Cecilia Peartree

  ‘Of course I’ve told them,’ said Jock. ‘It doesn’t really make sense, though. Nobody else would have had time to get out of the place without being caught. We were round at the front until the police came. Amaryllis was at the back, by the greenhouses.’

  ‘What if somebody went over the fence to the place where the alpacas are?’ said Jemima, who had been trying hard to visualise the scene as they talked. ‘They could maybe get out that way.’

  Charlie shook his head. ‘Not over that fence. It’s lethal. Could even be electrified, for all we know.’

  ‘Are people allowed to have electrified fences round their gardens?’ said Jemima.

  Nobody answered that.

  ‘So who did it then?’ said Jock McLean, staring at them all almost as accusingly as if he thought one of those present had pulled the trigger.

  ‘Amaryllis must know more than she’s told us,’ said Charlie.

  ‘It can’t have been her,’ said Christopher fiercely. The dog growled again.

  ‘I’m not saying it was,’ said Charlie. ‘But she must have seen something at least. Or the police must have something else on her... Pity we didn’t catch up with her before she started roaming round the area. If one of us had seen her, we might have given her an alibi. But it’s hard to do if we don’t know the timetable of events.’

  ‘The best thing would be if there was another murder,’ said Jemima, surprising even herself. She blushed as they all stared at her, but carried on regardless. ‘While she’s with the police, I mean. Then they’d know it wasn’t her... Not that I want anybody else dead, of course. I would never wish for that.’

  ‘None of us would,’ said Christopher.

  ‘Hmm,’ said Charlie. ‘Let’s just concentrate on the garden centre case and not speculate about things that probably won’t happen... What did the voice sound like, then, Jock?’

  Jock closed his eyes. ‘It was a man’s voice, for a start. Or I suppose it could have been a woman’s voice, if she wanted to sound like a man. And then, it sounded as if it was coming from a long way away – and yet it was quite loud. And maybe a wee bit distorted...’

  ‘Amplified?’ said Charlie. ‘I mean – as if it was coming through a sound system? Or a megaphone.’

  Christopher wrote something in his notebook while the others thought this over.

  ‘Could be,’ said Jock at last. ‘It definitely wasn’t right, anyway.’

  ‘Mmm, sound systems,’ said Charlie slowly. ‘That’s odd. I had somebody round here one day last week asking if I wanted one installed in the pub.’

  ‘What did you say to them?’ enquired Dave. ‘You didn’t agree to it, did you?’

  Charlie shook his head. ‘Told them it would annoy the regulars. You know, if there was something that made more noise than them.’

  ‘Oh, ha ha,’ said Dave, unconcerned.

  ‘Funny, though,’ said Charlie. ‘I didn’t ask for anybody to come round trying to sell me that kind of thing.’

  ‘Don’t they try it on all the time, though?’ said Jock. ‘Double-glazing, broadband, loft insulation... They’ve got no shame.’

  ‘They don’t usually bother with me,’ said Charlie, shaking his head.

  ‘Maybe the dog keeps them away,’ suggested Christopher.

  Charlie stared at him. ‘You know, sometimes I’m not sure if you’re joking or not.’

  ‘Ashley,’ said Jemima. ‘Ashley would know if they’ve got something like that at the garden centre. For customer announcements or whatever.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Christopher. ‘She’d know if there’s another way in and out as well. Whether somebody could’ve got out without being seen by the people we know were there.’

  Charlie nodded. ‘We’d better think of a way of speaking to Ashley without Keith Burnet finding out, in that case. Or there’ll be hell to pay.’

  Chapter 13 The wrong side of the table

  Amaryllis faced her old school friend, Sarah Ramsay, across the interview table. A young uniformed constable sat nearby to take notes and presumably to ensure fair play. Sarah had explained that the recording machine had temporarily broken down. Amaryllis’s suggestion that they should try switching it off and back on again hadn’t gone down well.

  Maybe they should have sorted it out with a friendly hockey match. Not that hockey was necessarily the friendliest of games, as far as Amaryllis could recall. But then, Sarah didn’t look as if she was in the friendliest of moods.

  ‘So let’s go over this again from the beginning,’ said the Chief Inspector, as Amaryllis wondered if she should think of her former hockey team-mate. ‘For some reason that you won’t divulge, you decided it would be a good idea to break into the grounds of the house where you thought the alpaca had come from, and when you failed in that aim you traversed the grounds of the former hotel next-door and intruded on to the property of a neighbour whose garden backed on to the one you wanted to get into. Can’t you give me any idea of your motivation?’

  ‘I still don’t know why you’re making such a big thing about it,’ muttered Amaryllis, experiencing an uncharacteristic feeling of guilt. It was as if Sarah was still the head girl of their school and she was still the rebel who was always in trouble. Perhaps they were destined to go through eternity in a series of this kind of encounter. She frowned as she tried to think of a movie she had once seen where the underlying premise was something like that.

  Sarah Ramsay frowned back. ‘It’s a big thing, as you call it, because there’s been a suspicious death! I suppose with all that’s happened since you came to live here, that seems like an everyday occurrence to you, but believe me, it’s important.’

  ‘You sound almost as if you’re blaming me for everything that’s happened here in the last few years,’ said Amaryllis slowly. ‘I don’t think that’s very fair.’

  ‘It isn’t fair of you to keep pushing against the police the way you do either,’ retorted Sarah. ‘So why were you so determined to get into that garden? Do you have a secret obsession with alpacas?’

  ‘No, of course not! I don’t know anything about them. I thought perhaps the woman Jemima and Dave had seen chasing the alpaca might be in some sort of trouble. That’s how this started.’

  ‘In trouble? Why would you think that?’

  ‘The way they described her. She sounded a bit desperate. I thought I might be able to help her catch the animal – or something.’

  It all sounded terribly lame, and she wouldn’t have blamed Sarah for not believing the story. But the Chief Inspector sat back, took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes, and said wearily, ‘But your friend Christopher helped her instead, when he came along... Honestly, Amaryllis, why do you do this?’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Get yourself into the middle of police cases. There must be lots of other things you could do with your time.’

  ‘Well, I tried politics, but it wasn’t for me,’ Amaryllis said with a laugh. ‘Then there was a knitting club, years ago...’

  ‘Listen. I’ve got a problem.’

  ‘Don’t you mean Houston, we have a problem?’

  ‘This isn’t the right time for fooling around,’ said Sarah, fixing Amaryllis with a steely gaze. ‘My problem is that one of the neighbours has shopped you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘One of the neighbours has placed you at the crime scene quite a while before you say you were there. And dragging something along with you, too... Now, I don’t think you’ll have failed to notice that the man wasn’t killed at the scene. The lack of blood, the tidy way he was set out... We’re in the middle of running forensics, of course, to make sure of that and to try to establish where he was killed. But in the meantime, you’re the only one in the frame.’

  ‘What does he mean, dragging something? The only thing I was dragging was my feet... It was hard work going the long way round and having to climb over his fence. How the hell does he think I manoeuvred a dead body over his fence in the first place?’

 
; ‘Calm down,’ said Sarah, and Amaryllis realised that by the end of her little speech she had been standing over her former friend and more or less shouting in her face. She simmered down, slumping back into the hard chair. After a moment Sarah carried on. ‘You seem to think you know who this neighbour is, but without giving too much away I can tell you it may not be the person you imagine it is. And by the way, we’ve also logged a second complaint from a neighbour that you were acting suspiciously just today in the same area... This isn’t the Middle East, and you’re not a secret agent any more, Amaryllis. This is a law-abiding town – apart from the recent cases, of course, but they’re just a blip in the crime statistics – and people notice things that are out of the ordinary.’

  Amaryllis, feeling even more like the school rebel, kicked the table leg a couple of times and muttered, ‘You really don’t know Pitkirtly, do you?’

  ‘Be that as it may,’ said Sarah, sounding even more like the head girl or even the headmistress, ‘can you explain why one of the neighbours might have seen you doing the things that have been reported to us?’

  ‘No,’ said Amaryllis, shrugging her shoulders. ‘I didn’t have anything with me, and I had only just got to the garden centre when it all kicked off. Either he saw someone else or he’s making it all up. Have you even identified the victim yet?’

  Sarah took a moment to straighten all the paperwork that was lying on the table in front of her before saying, ‘You know I can’t tell you that. And why should anyone make up stories about your movements?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t you believe me instead of some complete stranger?’ Amaryllis countered.

  ‘Could you go along to the tea-room, Constable McLean, and get us all some tea?’ said Sarah suddenly to the uniformed officer who had been sitting silently, writing in his notebook. ‘And maybe a few biscuits, as long as they aren’t those pink wafer things.’

  ‘I’d prefer coffee, if it’s all the same to you,’ said Amaryllis. She didn’t really want either tea or coffee – a neat whisky might have helped, though – but she was still feeling sulky and unco-operative.

  ‘Tea – coffee – whatever,’ said Sarah with an impatient wave of her hand.

  The constable left the interview room.

  ‘You do know that I’ve got to do this, don’t you?’ said Sarah urgently to Amaryllis.

  ‘What do you mean, you’ve got to? You’re the one in charge – you can do what you want.’

  ‘It isn’t as simple as that, and you already know that. It’s because we’re old friends. I’ve got to be seen to take these reports seriously, otherwise they’ll send somebody even worse than me – I know that’s hard to believe – and you’ll be in real trouble.’

  ‘So I’m not in real trouble right now?’ said Amaryllis.

  ‘Look,’ said Sarah, ‘I know you didn’t kill that man. Apart from anything else, you wouldn’t have done it in such a bizarre way or drawn attention to it. For God’s sake, they might as well have made a big sky-written arrow pointing to the scene. No, you’d have done it secretly and silently, and hidden the body somewhere it would never have been found. And you’d have made damn sure you were nowhere around if it was discovered after all.’

  ‘Nice that you know me so well. But do I really have to stay in custody?’

  ‘We’re going to have to keep you in overnight just to make a point,’ said Sarah. ‘Unless those friends of yours decide to mount some sort of idiotic rescue operation.’

  Amaryllis smiled in genuine amusement for the first time since her arrest. ‘That’s exactly the kind of idiotic thing they might do.’

  Chapter 14 Hell to pay

  Christopher woke up with an uneasy feeling. It was almost as if he had to take a test that day, or handle some hideous staff crisis at the Cultural Centre, or...

  He sat up in bed, suddenly remembering.

  Amaryllis! She would probably never forgive him for abandoning her overnight in a police cell, at the tender mercies of whoever was on duty. She might even have expected him to organise some sort of extremely dangerous rescue mission. Although she should know him better than that by this time. It was far more likely that Charlie and Jock would get together to do that kind of thing. Or Jemima and Dave. Or almost anybody else, if he were to be painfully honest with himself.

  Then there was the fact that he had promised to speak to Ashley, despite his serious misgivings about what would happen if Keith found out. For some reason he had even minuted it as an action point. Why on earth had he even taken notes on the meeting at the Queen of Scots? He would have to destroy them this morning before doing anything that might land him in police custody, in case they were found and produced in evidence.

  Just as he was going downstairs, the doorbell rang.

  He had no doubt about who he would find on the doorstep. It didn’t give him very much pleasure to discover he had been right in his supposition.

  ‘Hello, Christopher,’ said Jemima, beaming. ‘Are we too early for you?’

  ‘I told you he wouldn’t be up and about at this time on a Saturday,’ boomed Dave, next to her. His voice was reassuringly back to its normal default volume.

  Christopher looked down at himself to make sure he wasn’t still in his pyjamas. He vaguely remembered getting dressed, but that might have been yesterday. ‘I’m up and about,’ he said. ‘Haven’t had my breakfast yet, though. Do you want to come in for some toast?’

  ‘I expect it isn’t the same without Amaryllis breaking in to make it,’ said Jemima sympathetically.

  ‘She doesn’t do that every morning,’ said Christopher. ‘Only on special occasions.’

  ‘Is she still safely locked up?’ said Dave.

  Christopher put the kettle on and rummaged for enough slices of bread. He had bought a larger toaster the previous year to cater for all the people who seemed to like to crowd into his kitchen in the mornings.

  ‘Unless somebody’s gone and got her out in the middle of the night,’ he told them.

  ‘Who would have done that?’ said Jemima, wide-eyed and innocent.

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Jock McLean. Charlie Smith.’

  Dave’s laugh rumbled round the kitchen like a roll of thunder. ‘They’re all talk, those two. You need Jemima and me to get things done. That’s why we’ve come along – we’ll help you to find Ashley and speak to her.’

  ‘Are you sure you’re both fit to be wandering about the town?’ said Christopher. He got out the butter and marmalade while he was waiting for the toast to pop up.

  ‘We’re fine,’ said Jemima. ‘I’m not letting Dave drive yet, so we’ve got to wander about a bit to pass the time.’

  Once they had all temporarily had enough toast, they phoned Charlie to see if he wanted to come with them to look for Ashley. He said he was busy and he knew the garden centre wasn’t open again yet but that if he had time he would run up there in his people-carrier during the morning to see if the staff were in. He also told them where Ashley lived, but warned them not simply to go up to the front door and ask if she was in, because her mother was a nosy old dragon – Charlie’s own description – and although she disapproved of Keith, she would undoubtedly tell him they had been round, just to make trouble.

  Christopher, Jemima and Dave talked it through while they had another round of toast, and decided to divide their resources, so that Christopher would be the one to hang around at the end of Ashley’s street waiting for her to come out of her house, and Jemima and Dave would be the ones to spend the morning at the window table in the café in the High Street, watching for her to walk past, and ready to dash out and lure her into conversation.

  Christopher couldn’t help feeling he had drawn the short straw.

  This feeling intensified about an hour after he had taken up position, when he saw Keith Burnet and Ashley coming along the road together. He used a half-formed plan to pretend to be tying his shoelace, followed up by a start of surprise as he straightened and saw them. The surprise wasn’t en
tirely artificial as he had remembered, too late, that his shoes didn’t have laces.

  Keith gave him an odd look, a nod and a rather formal ‘Good morning.’

  Ashley said brightly, ‘Hello, Christopher! I haven’t seen you up here before.’

  ‘Oh, I sometimes walk around a bit on a Saturday morning,’ said Christopher, falling into step with them and hoping this looked casual enough.

  ‘I’m just chumming Keith down to the police station,’ said Ashley. ‘He doesn’t usually have to work at weekends, but he’s got to help with – um – an interview today.’

  Her voice tailed off a little towards the end of the sentence, presumably when she realised who Keith might be interviewing.

  ‘So is the garden centre still closed, then?’ said Christopher with a smile.

  Keith glared at him.

  ‘Neither of us can discuss the case with you,’ he said sternly.

  ‘Of course not,’ said Christopher. ‘But I was just thinking it must be quite inconvenient not knowing when it can open up again.’

  ‘It’ll be whenever we’re ready,’ said Keith.

  ‘I wonder if the manager’s had customers ringing him to complain,’ said Christopher.

  ‘Oh, yes!’ said Ashley. ‘Some of them are really persistent, too. He’s had one woman on the phone about ten times wanting to know when she can collect her antirrhinums. She’s worried they’re going to have finished flowering before she gets them bedded in.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ said Christopher.

  He noticed Keith trying to steer Ashley into position ready to cross the road. Maybe it was time to give it a rest. He might be able to follow her once she’d left Keith at the police station and corner her on her own then.

  Keith turned to him just before he and Ashley stepped off the kerb and said, ‘I don’t want you thinking you can ask her questions behind my back. Just go on down the road and leave us to get to the police station. Otherwise there’s an empty cell waiting right next-door to your friend.’