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

by Cecilia Peartree

  While Keith summoned more help, Christopher, Amaryllis and Mrs Black milled around, grabbing and letting go of alpacas more or less at random. Amaryllis suggested getting the dog out of the car and training it to herd them, but Mrs Black said that would take far too long. Christopher hoped nobody would see them cavorting around the woods in their white suits almost like some sort of coven.

  ‘Can’t you round them up without all this trampling about?’ Keith complained once he was off the phone. ‘The Chief’s going to go ballistic.’

  ‘You just try it,’ said Amaryllis, a bit out of breath and more flustered than Christopher could ever remember seeing her.

  ‘Right then, I will,’ said Keith, and to everybody’s annoyance he managed to catch one of the alpacas almost right away and to take it across the road to its own garden, where he closed the gates on it. ‘Let’s take them one at a time. We might get most of them under control before the others arrive.’

  Christopher didn’t think it was possible, but Keith turned out to have a hitherto unsuspected talent not just for rounding up alpacas but for organising other people, and he and Amaryllis were just leading the last animal into the garden when two more police cars screeched to a halt on the road outside.

  ‘We could put them back in the stables if you want,’ Christopher called over to Keith. ‘I know where they go.’

  ‘No, just leave them loose in the garden for now!’ Keith yelled. ‘We’re going to need to find out if there’s anybody at home, but I don’t want you anywhere near the house. If there isn’t anybody there we’ll have to get some animal handlers in. I suppose we’ll need to contact an animal rescue organisation later on as well, see what they can do if we can’t track down the owners... And you can give me back those white suits now too.’

  ‘Thank goodness for that,’ Amaryllis muttered. ‘I was beginning to feel as if we were all part of some weird cult, dancing around in the woods.’

  This was so close to Christopher’s recent thinking that it made him a bit twitchy.

  ‘You’ll all need to come down to the station later on today and make some statements,’ Keith said, putting away the white suits. ‘Is that going to be convenient for you, Mrs Black?’

  ‘Yes, I expect so.’

  Christopher noticed Keith didn’t seem all that bothered about whether it would be convenient for Amaryllis and him. Presumably he thought of them as part of the furniture, or possibly the wallpaper. Or maybe even the carpet, Christopher mused. Certainly he sometimes had the sense that people were walking all over him.

  Amaryllis was very quiet as they finally left the scene, waved good-bye to Mrs Black and walked away down the hill. The empty hotel loomed to their left.

  ‘I wonder what’ll happen to it,’ said Christopher, making conversation.

  ‘They’re going to have to watch out,’ said Amaryllis. ‘All sorts of layabouts will start colonising it.’

  She glanced back over her shoulder at the police cars, and, as if satisfied they were far enough down the road for Keith not to hear them, grabbed Christopher’s elbow and brought him a bit closer. ‘Mrs Black found Jane Blyth-Sheridan’s bank card at the scene,’ she hissed.

  Christopher looked blank, which wasn’t exactly unusual. ‘She must have dropped it when we were catching the alpaca the other day,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ said Amaryllis. ‘Keith thought the victim was Jane Blyth-Sheridan. But you didn’t identify her, so he’s got to start looking for somebody else.’

  ‘Oh, I see, it’s all my fault,’ said Christopher. ‘I might have known.’

  ‘No, I didn’t mean that! But what if she was Jane Blyth-Sheridan and the woman you saw wasn’t?’

  ‘But she introduced herself,’ said Christopher indignantly. ‘And the name really suited her. I thought it did, anyway.’

  ‘I wonder if anyone else in town can identify her,’ said Amaryllis. ‘It seems like the kind of place where the neighbours keep to themselves – unless they’re looking out the windows waiting to pounce on a passing stranger, that is.’

  ‘Passing stranger?’ said Christopher, alerted by the apparently casual way she threw the term into her sentence. ‘You mean you?’

  ‘It wasn’t in the road that goes past the woods and the garden centre,’ said Amaryllis, the speed with which she rushed to explain sending him on to an even higher alert. ‘It was the one behind it... That’s where the coven is,’ she added darkly.

  ‘What were you up to?’

  ‘Just looking for some harmless information,’ she said.

  ‘Harmless? Ha!’

  ‘All right! I was trying to find out which neighbour lied about seeing me earlier on the day the man turned up dead in the garden centre, that’s all. They told the police I’d been lugging something into the grounds, and that was why the police dragged me in for questioning. Sarah Ramsay said she had to do it. I want to know why someone should lie about me, and why Sarah’s so scared of those Neighbourhood Watch types.’

  Christopher stopped in his tracks.

  ‘Ashley!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘I don’t think it could have been Ashley,’ said Amaryllis doubtfully.

  ‘No, I don’t mean it was her that lied to the police. I mean, she should be able to identify the woman. She was talking about her to Keith and me. Said she had been into the garden centre a few times. She seemed to know quite a bit about the alpacas... But do you think Keith would ask his girl-friend to do it?’

  ‘If he had to, he would. In any case, just because she’s pale and fragile it doesn’t mean she can’t cope with things. You should never underestimate women. The smallest ones are the deadliest.’

  Christopher laughed, in spite of the seriousness of the topic of conversation. ‘Thanks for the tip. I always thought the red-heads were the worst.’

  ‘There must be someone else, anyway. A relative. An old friend or neighbour. Someone from their old life before they came here.’ Amaryllis suddenly gasped and clutched his arm very tightly. ‘Penelope! That’s it! I was talking to her about them just the other day. Jane and... I can’t remember the man’s name... Paul? Phil? Let’s go and see her now.’

  ‘I expect the police will get round to her if she’s really a friend of theirs,’ said Christopher doubtfully.

  ‘No, let’s go round there. Before we forget.’

  They rang Penelope’s doorbell three times, and stood on the doorstep for so long that net curtains twitched in two neighbours’ windows. She was obviously out, although Amaryllis suggested she might be in the bath, an image Christopher had trouble accommodating in his brain.

  ‘We could try asking Zak,’ said Amaryllis. ‘Do you know where he lives?’

  ‘Even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you. We don’t need to disturb half the town. If there’s a desperate rush, the police will take care of it.’

  It took a while but he persuaded her to give up, temporarily at least. She might sneak back round to Penelope’s later, but that was not his problem.

  After Amaryllis had gone her own way down to her chic modern apartment, Christopher had intended to go home and prune something in the garden, which was how he should spend summer weekends rather than chasing alpacas round the woods, but he found his steps inexorably taking him round to Jemima and Dave’s house to let them know what had happened. It would only be a kindly act, he told himself, to save them from dying of unsatisfied curiosity. He ignored the part of his brain that was telling him he was heading towards being one of these wrinkly old men who hung around in cafés all day picking up and regurgitating gossip, then catching buses on unnecessary journeys so they could talk it through with the bus driver as well. He had encountered such men on the bus before, and his heart always sank when he saw them.

  ‘Aha!’ said Jemima when she opened the door to him. ‘Come in and sit yourself down. I thought you might be round, so I’ve opened another packet of biscuits.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Christopher, hoping this didn’t mean she and Dave considered him
as some sort of vulture who went round feasting on the contents of other people’s biscuit tins.

  In the familiar surroundings of Jemima’s kitchen, with the kettle on and the instant coffee ready in the mugs, he went over the events that had occurred since he last saw them – only a couple of hours ago, he realised, glancing at the big kitchen clock which as well as telling the time depicted a silly-looking stylised teddy-bear wearing a pale blue patchwork outfit. He wondered, not for the first time, if one of them had won it in a raffle.

  ‘Mmhm,’ said Jemima at the end of his account. ‘We saw her too, remember.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Oh, yes. When we went up to the garden centre that first time, she was out in the road trying to catch one of her animals. She spoke to us. Very well-spoken – a wee trace of an English accent – and quite smartly dressed, considering.’

  ‘Yes, that sounds like her all right,’ said Christopher. ‘Although I suppose it could describe lots of people.’

  ‘Do you think Keith Burnet would like us to go up there and give him a hand with the identification?’ said Jemima uncertainly. ‘Only I always like to help the police if I can. He’d have to send a car for us though. I’m not sure Dave’s really fit to drive yet, whatever he says.’

  Christopher was fairly certain that Keith would prefer it if neither Jemima nor Dave got under his feet, but he said diplomatically, ‘I think he’s probably following up other avenues just now. Her husband might be at home. Maybe there’s dental records or DNA at a pinch.’

  ‘That poor woman,’ said Jemima, shaking her head as she crunched her custard cream. ‘And what’s going to happen to those animals of hers?’

  ‘I’m sure alpacas are in demand somewhere,’ said Christopher. He pushed back his chair and got to his feet. ‘I’d better be going. I just thought you’d want to know what happened.’

  ‘That was nice of you. It’s good to keep up with the local news.’

  ‘She’d never have forgiven you if you hadn’t told her,’ added Dave. ‘Imagine the shame of having to read about it in the papers before she knew it all!’

  ‘I don’t suppose any of us know it all yet,’ said Christopher. ‘Even Amaryllis seems a bit baffled.’

  Chapter 18 Identity crisis

  Jemima had an idea early on Sunday morning before Dave was awake. She lay there for a while debating with herself whether to get out of bed to make a note of it in case she had forgotten by breakfast time, which was only too likely, whether to wake him up to tell him, or whether to lie there telling it to herself over and over again in the hope that this would make her remember it later.

  She glanced at the corner of the window, where the glimpse of daylight visible round the corner of the curtains showed that it was about five o’clock, or maybe even earlier if the day was bright and sunny. On the other hand, it was August in Pitkirtly, and the days were only rarely bright and sunny. Even if they were like that at five in the morning, they had usually clouded over by breakfast time.

  What had she been trying to remember again? She dredged the idea out of the deeper part of her mind to which it was already starting to sink.

  Maybe she should go and tell the police. But would they just laugh indulgently at the ramblings of a silly old woman? It might be better to run it past one of their friends first, to see if they laughed. Well, she knew Jock McLean would laugh anyway, so there was no point in even considering him.

  She turned over, pulled a blanket back over her that Dave had managed to steal, and carried on thinking of ways to remember. Maybe she should have kept a notebook and pencil by the bed to record flashes of inspiration, the way she had heard of writers doing. But this didn’t really happen often enough to justify a separate notebook.

  ‘What if the woman was pretending to be somebody else?’ she said to Dave, suddenly remembering it again just as Dave was getting their second round of toast out of the toaster.

  He jumped, dropped a piece of toast in the sink and swore under his breath.

  ‘David Douglas! What’s the matter with you?’

  ‘It burnt my fingers,’ said Dave. ‘Sorry.’ He got one of Jemima’s best plates out of the cupboard, placed the other piece of toast on it, carried it ceremonially over to the table and presented it to her with a flourish. ‘Your toast, milady.’

  He got out the bread again and put another slice in the toaster.

  ‘Mind you put that other bit in the recycling.’

  He saluted. ‘Message understood.’

  Jemima couldn’t help laughing at him. He didn’t seem to know whether he was a royal footman or a humble army private. For her part she would have to decide, presumably, between being a queen and turning into a regimental sergeant-major.

  She decided she would have to be a queen. She didn’t have the power in her voice to bark orders at people.

  ‘Now, what was that you were you saying?’ he asked, sitting down at the table to wait for his toast. ‘Somebody or other pretending to be somebody else?’

  For a moment Jemima thought he was talking about her putting on airs and pretending to be like royalty. She got ready to take offence, and then remembered her idea.

  ‘You know how that patient pretended to be a nurse in the hospital and I thought he was a nurse because he was wearing a nurse’s uniform and he was in the right place and trying to hand out medicine?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Dave, after a short pause while he looked as if he seemed to be working out what she was talking about. ‘Easy enough to make that mistake.’

  ‘Well, what if the woman we saw chasing the alpaca was in the right place wearing the right outfit and we didn’t even think she might not be the right person?’

  A slightly longer pause this time. Then Dave said, cautiously, ‘I think I see what you mean.’

  ‘Well, do you think I should tell the police?’

  Dave wrinkled his forehead in a way that reminded her of how he used to look sometimes when she was holding forth about some exciting new family history discovery or scrapbooking technique. ‘I don’t know, dear. It isn’t exactly evidence, is it?’

  ‘But it might point them in the right direction,’ said Jemima. ‘They might not have thought of it themselves.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Dave again. ‘That Chief Inspector Ramsay’s a clever woman. She’s probably thought of all the angles.’

  Jemima felt frustrated by his lack of understanding that, no matter how clever Sarah Ramsay was, she hadn’t had the same hospital experience and the idea of somebody deliberately pretending to be somebody else might not be so fresh in her mind.

  Luckily the door-bell rang, so she didn’t have the chance to get cross with Dave. While he went to answer it, she told herself it wasn’t his fault she hadn’t explained her theory properly. Maybe she could think of another way of putting it. And this was good practice for the moment when she had to try and convince the police, after all.

  She didn’t feel quite so lucky when Dave led Jock McLean into the kitchen.

  ‘Do you want some tea – or coffee? Toast? A wee biscuit? You’d better sit down. Jemima’s got a bee in her bonnet.’

  Jemima hadn’t necessarily wanted to try and explain her idea to Jock McLean, who presumably also suffered from all the disadvantages of his gender when it came to appreciating female intuition and lateral thinking. But she started at the beginning with the body in the woods, and persevered, and to her surprise Jock was a little more understanding than Dave on this occasion.

  ‘Yes, I know what you mean,’ he said. ‘It’s like the time I thought the man dressed up as a clown was really selling tickets for the Edinburgh Tattoo, when it turned out they were fake all along. Just as well I found out in time,’ he added mournfully. ‘I might have gone along to it expecting to get in. There was a terrible downpour that night, too. Thunder, lightning, the works. I was quite grateful to him in the end.’

  ‘What did you want to go to the Edinburgh Tatttoo for anyway?’ said Dave.

&nbs
p; Jock shrugged his shoulders. ‘Just one of those things I thought I should do at least once.’

  ‘I don’t know why,’ said Dave. ‘Lot of men in kilts playing bad tunes on so-called instruments. The unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable.’

  ‘Isn’t that fox-hunting?’ said Jemima.

  Dave and Jock ignored her.

  ‘You’re quite right,’ said Jock. ‘I had a lucky escape there.’

  ‘What if,’ said Dave after a gulp of tea, ‘the woman we saw was different from the one Christopher saw later on? And different again from the one who’s been found dead?’

  ‘That would make three women altogether,’ said Jemima. ‘Who are they all?’

  ‘Maybe one of them was a neighbour, or a friend of the first one,’ Dave suggested.

  ‘You and Christopher should get together and do some of those artists’ impressions,’ said Jock. ‘Then you might be able to work it out.’

  ‘That’s no good,’ said Jemima. ‘We’re all useless at drawing.’

  ‘There must be somebody around here who isn’t,’ said Jock. ‘Maisie Sue’s quite arty, isn’t she?’

  ‘She’s away on holiday,’ said Jemima. ‘She left us her house keys in case anything happens.’

  ‘Where’s she gone?’ said Jock.

  ‘Oh, just up north,’ said Jemima. ‘Skye, or somewhere. She told me she’s looking for quilting inspiration.’

  ‘That’s a shame,’ said Dave. ‘Isn’t there anybody else we know who could do it?’

  ‘Oh, I know!’ said Jemima. ‘The wee girl from Rosyth. You know the one. She’s a real artist.’

  ‘She might not want to do it,’ Jock objected. ‘Last I heard, she wasn’t going out much. Had a bit of a breakdown at the end of all that to-do in the spring. She’s still staying with Mrs Petrelli, though.’

  Well, finding the girl and persuading her to help would give them something useful to do for the rest of the day, Jemima thought happily, folding her hands demurely in her lap. It should keep Dave and Jock out of mischief for a while, if nothing else.