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

by Cecilia Peartree

  There was a noise a bit like a factory chimney being demolished. It grew louder and louder until Amaryllis pulled her mobile phone out of her pocket and answered it. Jemima spoke, in her usual telephone voice, which was at least a decibel louder than usual and very prim, as if she were sitting, with a hat on, bold upright in a sensible chair with the kind of upholstery that scratched you, and antimacassars on the arms and the back.

  ‘I wondered if you might be going to the shops today,’ she said.

  ‘We’re near the supermarket right now. Do you want us to fetch you something? Is everything all right?’

  ‘Oh, yes, we’re both fine. I just thought maybe you could bring us a wee packet of custard creams. And maybe some wafer thin ham. I’ll give you the money when I see you.’

  Amaryllis frowned. Jemima and Dave liked to go to the shops nearly every day, even if they only bought one or two things. Jemima had always claimed it did them good to go out and get a bit of exercise, and only buy as much as they could carry each time. It wasn’t like her to ask for a favour at all, never mind one like this. It wasn’t even raining, for once. The sun had made a rare appearance and the only clouds in the sky were innocent little white ones.

  ‘Does the weather forecast say it’s going to rain?’ she enquired.

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Jemima. ‘Not until Wednesday. Even then they’re not sure if the depression from the Atlantic will turn south and by-pass us or not.’

  Jemima and Dave monitored the weather forecast for all parts of the world closely. If their cover story had been that they were meteorologists and she had interrogated them about the long-range forecast for Western Australia or Japan or Belgrade, they would have been utterly convincing.

  ‘OK,’ she said at last. ‘We’ll be round in ten minutes with the biscuits and – what was the other thing?’

  ‘Wafer-thin ham... I wouldn’t ask, only....’

  The connection cut out.

  ‘What’s the matter with Jemima?’ said Jock McLean.

  ‘Did you hear all that?’

  He nodded. ‘Most of it. Not like them at all. There must be something wrong.’

  ‘We’d better run round there and see what’s happened.’

  Twelve minutes later – there had been someone annoying in front of them in the supermarket queue who hadn’t enough money in their purse to pay the bill, and Amaryllis had eventually handed over the extra herself to avoid waiting any longer – they were hurrying up Jemima’s front path and ringing the door-bell impatiently. Jemima opened it a crack, with the security chain on.

  ‘Oh, good, it’s you,’ she said. She undid the chain and let them in.

  ‘I’m glad to see you’re using that,’ said Amaryllis. ‘Now all you need to do is get someone to fix that skylight window in the attic – the one I usually get in through – and you’ll be quite safe.’

  ‘The attic?’ Jemima squeaked. ‘I’d forgotten we had an attic.’

  ‘You certainly do.’

  ‘Come into the kitchen. Dave’s just put the kettle on.’

  ‘Now then,’ said Amaryllis sternly, after the shopping was put away and they were all adequately served with tea or coffee, ‘what’s going on? No,’ she continued, holding her hand up to pre-empt protests, ‘I know something’s happened, and I’m not leaving here until I know what it is.’

  ‘Do you promise not to kill him?’ said Jemima.

  ‘Kill who? If someone’s upset you, I’m not making any promises except that I’ll hunt him down and...’

  ‘That’s what Jemima’s afraid of,’ said Dave.

  ‘All right, the worst I’ll do is tie his shoelaces together - is that all right with you?’

  ‘You could maybe think of something in between tying his shoelaces together and killing him,’ said Dave.

  ‘It isn’t Mr Kilpatrick, is it?’ said Amaryllis, hoping the answer was yes, which would mean she could kill two birds with one stone – but only figuratively. Or tie their shoelaces together.

  ‘Who?’ said Jemima.

  ‘Oh, dear,’ said Amaryllis. ‘Someone else.’

  ‘It was that Mr Anderson from the garden centre,’ said Jemima. ‘He threatened us. Along by the river.’

  A huge wave of rage built up inside Amaryllis. She couldn’t even speak for a moment.

  ‘He was quite nasty,’ said Dave. ‘Said he wouldn’t want anything to happen to us so we’d better keep out of his way.’

  Amaryllis shook off Jock McLean’s hand, which she found on her arm. ‘Who the hell does he think he is?’

  She paced across the kitchen, thinking rapidly. She paced back to the table. ‘No, that can’t be right.’ She paced to the door and stared out to the hallway. ‘But he was the most likely to be able to work the sound system... and with a bit of help...’ She spun round to face them. ‘I have to go back to the garden centre.’

  They were all silent apart from Jock, who groaned.

  ‘He won’t like that,’ said Jemima.

  Amaryllis could hardly bear the tremulous note in Jemima’s voice. For the first time that she could recall, Jemima sounded like a vulnerable old woman instead of the feisty, wiry, resilient person she had always seemed to be.

  ‘I don’t care whether he likes it or not,’ she said flatly. ‘Somebody needs to have a good look at that sound system and the access points to the site, and collect the evidence of his guilt, and the police obviously aren’t doing it fast enough.’

  ‘Keith won’t like this either,’ Jock reminded her. ‘You’re supposed to be keeping out of his hair.’

  ‘I’d better find a way of doing it without bothering Keith, in that case,’ said Amaryllis.

  ‘I don’t know how you’re going to do that,’ said Jock.

  Amaryllis smiled her most dangerous smile.

  ‘I’ll think of something,’ she said.

  Chapter 25 Damage limitation

  Jock scowled at Jemima after Amaryllis had gone. ‘Now look what you’ve done!’ he said. ‘You know what she’s like – you’ve set her off and now nobody’s going to be able to stop her.’

  ‘She’ll wriggle out of trouble, all right,’ Dave told him. ‘She always does.’

  ‘I’d better go back to the Cultural Centre and let Christopher know,’ said Jock. ‘He’s used to picking up the pieces.’

  ‘Maybe there won’t be any pieces,’ said Jemima.

  Dave laughed. ‘Wouldn’t it be even worse if she vanished without a trace? We’ll come with you. Get your coat, Jemima, it’s not any warmer out there.’

  ‘But Mr Anderson...’

  ‘Stuff Mr Anderson!’ Dave roared, making the other two jump. ‘Why should we be cowering in here like – what are those wee cowerin’ tim’rous beasties again?’

  ‘Mice,’ said Jemima.

  ‘Yes, why should we be cowering in here like mice when he’s out there swaggering around as if he owns the place?’

  Jemima went and got her coat. She was pleased in a way to see Dave back at full strength. For a few days there she had imagined some of his personality had been shocked out of him, what with that funny turn and the hospital and then the aggression of the garden centre manager. She just hoped they weren’t putting themselves in danger by going out. When this kind of thing happened on television – a woman going on her own into a dark old ruin at night, or walking along a deserted path by a canal – she or Dave would quite often shout at them not to be so silly. Not taking their own advice was going against Fate or something. Not that Jemima Douglas believed in Fate, of course. She prided herself on not believing in anything unless she had seen it with her own eyes, which ruled out quite a lot of things.

  ‘Come on, now,’ said Dave as they left the house. ‘We’ve got to stride out confidently. No sign of nerves. That’s it, hold on to my arm.’

  Jock ruined the effect by stumbling over the kerb when they crossed the road to go down the High Street, but apart from that Jemima thought they presented a convincing image of a group of people so conf
ident of their own power that they were immune to anything a jumped-up garden centre manager could throw at them.

  They made it down to the Cultural Centre without incident, except when their noses were so high in the air that they failed to notice Jan from the wool-shop at first, despite her waving frantically at them, and when Jemima finally lowered her gaze enough to spot the woman, it was obvious she was already in the huff with them all. This meant they had to stop and apologise, and Jemima felt she had better buy a couple of balls of four-ply in the wool-shop, which in any case would come in useful for when Dave wore out his last pair of socks, something that happened at regular intervals.

  Christopher seemed to be expecting them, which was odd, but he said to Jock, ‘Have you got them back yet?’

  ‘No,’ said Jock. ‘We got distracted and lost him. Sorry.’

  ‘I suppose I’ll have to let the Council know.’

  ‘And the police,’ said Jock.

  Christopher sighed heavily. He glanced round the little group. ‘Where is she? Don’t tell me you let her go after Mr Kilpatrick on her own?’

  ‘Not really,’ said Jock uneasily.

  ‘You did, didn’t you?’

  ‘No, it’s Mr Anderson she’s gone after,’ said Jemima.

  She explained the whole thing all over again for Christopher’s benefit, and he and Jock explained about Mr Kilpatrick and the maps. He put his head in his hands. ‘This just goes from bad to worse.’

  ‘I wonder why he wanted the maps,’ said Jemima thoughtfully.

  ‘Who knows?’ said Christopher. ‘It’s probably going to be one of those great unsolved mysteries of life.’

  Even his hair looked a bit wild after he had run his hands through it, and his words weren’t the kind of thing he would usually say either.

  ‘Maybe it’s something to do with family history,’ suggested Jemima. ‘You know – looking to see where his ancestors lived centuries ago.’

  ‘But those are new houses up there,’ said Christopher. ‘Even the one where the alpacas are – the Blyth-Sheridans’ house – has been torn down and re-built. Except for the old stables, of course.’

  ‘The old stables?’ said Jemima.

  ‘That’s where the alpacas are kept,’ said Christopher. ‘The woman who wasn’t Mrs Blyth-Sheridan after all showed me.’

  ‘I suppose he maybe wanted an old map to see what the layout was before the new houses were built,’ said Jemima. ‘Or how much land they owned around there... He’d have done better to look at rental records in the National Archives, of course.’

  Oh, dear, she had better change the subject now. Dave tended to get cross when she started talking about the National Archives. He had been thrown out of there once – well, not thrown out exactly, because he hadn’t been allowed in to start with. The staff had said the photo he had provided for his little identity card wasn’t suitable, although it was quite a tasteful shot of him leaning happily against his latest pick-up truck. Dave couldn’t be bothered going all the way to Waverley station to get a new one taken in the machine, so he had waited for her outside. Jemima hated going through records in a rush with somebody waiting for her. Especially since she knew he wouldn’t dream of going into a coffee shop or something to pass the time, but would sit on a bench nearby for hours, even if it started hailing. Men were funny like that. At least he didn’t ever head off to the nearest pub while he was meant to be waiting, unlike some men she could mention.

  ‘Or he could have looked at some census records on the computers in the research room here, of course,’ she added hastily. ‘They can tell you quite a lot. There’s more stuff online too, if you know where to look for it. Window tax. Horse tax. Old newspapers.’

  ‘He didn’t seem to be interested in family history,’ said Christopher.

  ‘Maybe he didn’t want you to know what he was interested in,’ suggested Jemima.

  ‘That sounds quite likely,’ said Jock McLean, scuffing his shoes against the skirting-board as if he wasn’t interested in it either.

  ‘Talking of things going from bad to worse,’ said Dave at this point, picking up the conversation from a long way back, ‘did you know Amaryllis is planning something?’

  Christopher took this piece of news quite well. He just shook his head very slowly. ‘I suppose it would be a miracle if she wasn’t, really... Do we have any idea what it is?’

  ‘She wants to get into the garden centre again – something to do with Mr Anderson, and access points,’ said Jemima, trying to remember exactly what Amaryllis had said just before she went off.

  ‘She’s going to get into trouble,’ said Jock.

  ‘What else is new?’ said Christopher.

  Jemima frowned at him. She had imagined he might show a bit more concern. After all, they all knew Amaryllis was his dearest friend. At one time she and Dave had hoped it might be more than that, but nothing had developed yet in that direction. Still, there was always time, as she knew only too well herself. Maybe they just weren’t ready to settle down yet or to make the compromises you always had to make when you did so. Even getting used to Dave had been a struggle in some ways. She didn’t think she would ever learn to like watching championship darts on television, or enjoy hoovering up toenail clippings from the kitchen floor. So she could dimly understand that it might take a while for a man to understand why Amaryllis liked to break into people’s houses, or stalk around at night all dressed in black, and equally that a woman would need to be quite saintly to let Christopher spread out the McCallum letters all over the place and leave them lying around for weeks.

  She didn’t even dare to speculate on how much older Christopher and Amaryllis would need to be before they were ready, fearing that the answer might be a hundred or so, at least in Amaryllis’s case.

  ‘Old newspapers,’ added Christopher thoughtfully. ‘Remember when we went into Dunfermline to have a look at them before?’

  ‘But we don’t know what we’re looking for,’ said Jemima.

  ‘Any mention of the Blyth-Sheridans, maybe,’ said Christopher. ‘Or a report on the garden centre opening? That would be covered in the local paper, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Ashley would know all about that,’ said Jock McLean. ‘No need to trek all the way into Dunfermline.’

  ‘We’re not supposed to speak to Ashley, though,’ Jemima objected.

  A glimmer of mischief appeared in Christopher’s eyes, maybe for the first time since Jemima had known him.

  ‘We could look some things up online, though, couldn’t we? There’s no harm in that.’

  ‘No harm at all,’ said Jemima.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Dave. He glowered at Jemima. ‘Remember where all that family history stuff got you last time.’-

  ‘This isn’t the same at all,’ said Jemima. She looked at Christopher. ‘Race you to the research room!’

  Chapter 26 Expert witness

  Amaryllis wasn’t a big fan of the internet in general. She had always preferred to find things out for herself in real life, usually while someone was chasing her with a gun. There was a certain urgency about research in those circumstances that got her adrenalin going.

  However, she had found a use for Google on this occasion. She didn’t know how long it might have taken her to locate the animal rescue organisation without it. Once she had obtained the number and contacted them, it was easy enough to convince them of her credentials as an international expert on alpacas, and therefore the perfect person to go in and rescue the alpacas from their home next to the garden centre. She arranged a rendezvous at the Blyth-Sheridan’s gate with someone from the organisation that very afternoon. Apparently the police had passed on a set of keys for use in rescuing the animals.

  ‘Thanks very much indeed for calling,’ said the woman at the other end of the line. ‘I don’t know how we’d have managed otherwise. We haven’t been able to find anybody else locally who knows anything about them, and it’s getting quite urgent. Of course we have temporary acc
ommodation here that will do for them to be going on with, but apparently catching them can be a wee bit problematic.’

  Oh, yes, thought Amaryllis, she might not strictly speaking be an international alpaca expert, but she knew about the difficulties of catching them all right. She was sort of hoping they would turn out all to be shut in the stables when she went in to catch them, and not roaming free around the garden. But either way, she would cope.

  The man from the animal rescue place was waiting when she got there. He had a horse-box with him, parked on the grass verge by the entrance.

  ‘I hope this is big enough,’ he said. ‘We’re not quite clear about how many there are.’

  Amaryllis looked at it with what she hoped seemed like a practised eye. ‘Oh, you can get several of them in there,’ she said airily. ‘Have you got the keys?’

  ‘Yes – I thought we’d go and check out the place first, then when we’re sure the animals are all securely shut in, I can take the horse-box right in and we can lead them into it, one at a time... Is that what you would advise?’

  ‘Oh, definitely.’

  It sounded so easy when he said it like that.

  Half an hour later, she wasn’t so sure. One of the alpacas had rushed out of the stables while they were leading another one into the horse-box, and started rampaging round the grounds, then another one had made a bid for freedom while being led in, dragging the man from the animal rescue place behind it as if he weighed almost nothing.

  ‘Is there anything we can tempt them with?’ he said at last. ‘Any special delicacy that alpacas are particularly fond of?’

  He sounded a bit sarcastic – almost as if he suspected she wasn’t quite as international an expert as she had purported to be – but Amaryllis had Googled alpacas while she was searching for the contact details for the animal rescue place, and she knew the answer to this.

  ‘Chopped fruit and raw vegetables,’ she said, getting the plastic bag out of her rucksack. When she dug into it and gave him a handful of chopped pineapple, lettuce and carrots, she knew he had given in and decided to believe her. She had been fortunate that the corner shop near Jemima’s house sold packets of chopped and washed fruit and vegetables.