Home to Roost

by Gerald Hammond

  In a living room largely decorated with mounted antlers and stuffed birds, I found Brindle and Hempie Wright seated in basket chairs on either side of a blazing fire, sharing the dregs of a bottle of whisky. They seemed to be on friendly terms. The keeper was evidently prepared to bury the hatchet once he was sure that the poaching would stop. Wright was calmer but his eyes were wary.

  ‘Well?’ Brindle said. ‘Was it who we thought?’

  ‘Wait and see,’ I told him, as I peeled off the coat and sweaters which were keeping warmth out rather than in. I kicked off my boots and emptied the dregs into the coal-scuttle. ‘Where’s Miss Calder?’

  ‘I could hardly leave this rogue by himself, so my wife went to show the two policemen the way. She’s not back yet. So when the doctor turned up I told him he’d only have to follow a’ the tracks in the snow. He said what if the moon went behind a cloud and his torch went out? So your lassie went to hold his hand in a manner of speaking.’ The last words came back to me through at least one doorway. Brindle returned and tossed me a pair of thick socks and a towel.

  Of the local doctors who acted as police surgeons, only one was nervous and excessively cautious. ‘Dr Lasswade?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s just who it was.’ Brindle picked up the empty bottle. ‘I’m sorry, but this was the last of it. It was just the tail-end of one of the bottles Mr Jeffries supplies to keep the beaters warm. But there’s tea in the pot or beer in the fridge.’

  I finished towelling my hair and poured a mug of hot tea. The last thing I wanted was a bellyful of chilled beer. I sat down beside Wright. I was seeing him for the first time other than by moonlight. His small frame was topped by a head of ordinary size, so that it looked too large for his body. His hair was silver, as was the stubble on a face that had started out amiable and ordinary but had been given character by the effects of time and weather.

  ‘Now,’ I said. ‘Tell me what you know about the body.’

  He jumped so that the basket chair squeaked. ‘Nothing,’ he said. He gave a nervous look at the notebook on my knee. ‘God, but it gave me a fright! That was the first I knew of it, other than that Mr Kerr was missing. But maybe it’s not himself.’

  ‘And maybe it is,’ I said. ‘Tell me about Saturday afternoon, up until the time you left McKimber.’

  ‘I never left McKimber,’ he said. ‘The laird said I could bide. He said it was no weather for me to be living rough. I’m sleeping in the chauffeur’s room above the garage and my van’s inside. He made room for it, atween the Range Rover and the Jag.’

  So the laird had lied to me about Wright’s whereabouts. ‘I thought that he was supposed to be broke,’ I said.

  ‘It’s temporary,’ said Brindle. ‘Or so he hopes. He raised every penny he could to stake his son in business, but he kept the cars.’

  That made sense. I looked at Wright. ‘Tell me about the pigeon-shoot.’

  ‘But nothing happened,’ he said. ‘The laird said I was to be allowed on the shoot and given a good place. I was fine pleased. The game dealer was paying as much for a pigeon as for a pheasant – crazy, the way prices are just now.’

  ‘That’s for sure,’ said the keeper.

  ‘Mr Brindle put me at the edge of the woods, looking over the boundary between Miscally and Nuttleigh’s.’

  ‘Time?’

  ‘Noon, about. I kept back from the edge at first, to be hidden, but I never had the knack of shooting through branches. So I found myself a hidey-hole atween twa holly trees in the hedge, where I could see the birds coming and get a clear shot but they couldn’t see me.’

  ‘And you could see the countryside below?’

  ‘Aye. I’d a grandstand view when something drew my eye. Whenever the cushies stopped moving, I’d go out and pick up my birds. I didno’ look down often.’

  ‘But when you did look down, what did you see?’

  ‘I saw twa men settle in the strip of trees below me. Then a mannie and a lass came to the wee wood and put decoys out and she went back up to the bigger wood. He bided there, shooting, until another man, who I thought looked like Mr Kerr but I couldn’t quite make him out, came from the direction of Nuttleigh’s and sent him off. In atween, the farmer on Nuttleigh’s came down in a vehicle and went back. He came twice more—’

  ‘Twice?’ I asked sharply.

  ‘Aye. Just afore the sun went down and again later when it was dark. I could only see the headlights that time and the flashing of torches but it sounded like the same vehicle.’

  I had forgotten about our search for Ian Kerr after the shoot, as far as we were concerned, was over. ‘Go on,’ I said.

  ‘Nothing to go on about. There was another lad stayed shooting late, but he left when it was real dark. I waited, and when the moon came out the cushies were still unsettled and on the move. But Mr Brindle came after me, in a right rage, and telled me the shoot was past and I was to bugger off.’

  ‘I never—’ Brindle began.

  ‘He didn’t say it quite like that, but that’s what he meant. Well, it was fair enough. I made him wait while I picked up the last of my birds – I’d got sixty-three all told, for seventy-one cartridges. So I came back to the big house and the laird gied me a dram.’

  ‘Who and what else did you see or hear?’ I asked him.

  ‘You want to know about foxes and owls?’

  ‘Not particularly,’ I said. ‘Stick to humans.’

  ‘Then not a damn soul. Even while it was dark it was still and so quiet you could have heard a flea fart. There was nobody else, after the other chiel went.’

  The ‘other chiel’ would have been Andrew Nairn. ‘If that’s Ian Kerr’s body in the pond,’ I said, ‘he got from the small wood on Nuttleigh’s up to the pond on McKimber.’

  ‘No’ while I was there,’ Wright said firmly. ‘Or, if he did, he went a’ the way round by the roads.’

  I thought it over. Wright seemed to believe what he was saying. If there was a lie among his words it was a small boast; I decided that nobody, not even Deborah, could kill sixty-three woodpigeon with only eight misses.

  Allan Brindle was thinking the same. ‘You were waiting until the birds were down,’ he said.

  ‘’Course I was,’ Wright agreed. Obviously, he felt that anyone who fired at a bird on the wing when he could wait for it to settle was wasting valuable cartridges.

  Brindle caught my eye. ‘Late on,’ he said, ‘the others had gone to their homes. Anyone could walk through the woods, even carrying a body on his back, without meeting a soul.’ Hempie Wright began to protest. Brindle talked over the top of him. ‘But,’ he said, ‘look at his boots.’

  I looked. Wright was wearing heavy shooting boots of suede leather. I recognised the make. Keith had offered me a pair, but even at a discount they were too expensive for a working copper.

  ‘The laird gied me these,’ Hempie said proudly. ‘They belonged to that son of his. Too small for himself they were, but they fit me fine.’

  ‘That’s by the by. Point is,’ Brindle said, ‘that anyone carrying a body to the pond and putting it where you found it would get his boots wet. I wear boots much like those myself. They keep the wet out fine – the only way water can get inside is over the top – but you can see they’ve been in water for hours after. When I went to chase this old rascal away at the end of the shoot, his boots were dry. I noticed while I was wondering to myself where he stole them.’

  I imagined myself single-handedly carrying a body of no little weight to the feeder stream and pushing it under the ice. I had to admit that it would have been impossible without getting my feet wet. But had Hempie Wright necessarily been single-handed? I tried to formulate a trick question that would determine whether the laird had been in the woods again that night.

  But voices could be heard outside, then footsteps in the little hallway. The living room door opened and Deborah and Mrs Brindle ushered Dr Lasswade into the room. Their manner was deferential. In country districts, the doctor ranks with t
he minister. There was an interval of confusion while they removed coats and, in the doctor’s case, galoshes. The three basket chairs were already in use. Brindle rose and gave his up to Deborah before helping his wife to bring more chairs from the kitchen.

  I caught Deborah’s eye. She looked shaken and so white that she was almost green, but she managed to nod. So the body was that of Ian Kerr. I had had little doubt of it.

  The doctor accepted a mug of tea. ‘What happened to your face?’

  ‘I had a fall.’

  ‘Damn nearly had one myself,’ he said. ‘It’s slippery out there. I’ll clean it up for you in a minute or two. Silly business, being fetched from my bed to confirm that the man was dead. As if he could possibly have had a spark of life left in him. But that’s what the law requires. Who do I report to?’ he asked me.

  ‘I’m waiting for instructions,’ I said. ‘In the meantime, you’d better tell me and then put in a formal report in the morning.’

  Dr Lasswade glanced round the room and then seemed to decide that the others knew so much already that if I did not mind them hearing what he had to say, then so be it. ‘He’s dead,’ he said. ‘I tell you that for what it’s worth.’

  ‘The body’s been moved?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course it’s been moved,’ he said irritably. ‘The two constables fetched it out on to the bank for me. He was obviously dead, but how else could I confirm it? Did you think that I was going to put on frogman’s gear and swim down to check his pulse?’

  I had to agree, although I was sure that Superintendent McHarg would vent his temper on the subject at some later date. ‘Could you make a preliminary guess as to when he died?’ I asked.

  ‘Not a hope. Some time between when he was last seen alive until . . . I was going to say until you found him, but he must have been dead for some hours. The ice was clinging to the body. Try the pathologist. If you can find out when the dead man ate his last meal, you may get some help.’

  ‘Nor what he died of?’

  ‘Now, there I may be able to help – subject, as always, to confirmation by the pathologist. You’re sure . . .?’ His eyes indicated the other four occupants of the room.

  ‘We’ve already seen him,’ Deborah said. She shuddered. ‘It was awful. Nothing you could say would be worse than that.’ Mrs Brindle, who was looking subdued, nodded silently.

  I was not leaving the warm room for the sake of confidentiality when the facts would no doubt be all over the district within a few hours. ‘Go ahead,’ I said.

  ‘Very well. He was poisoned.’ (I felt a sense of shock in the room.) ‘I could be ninety-nine per cent certain that it was strychnine. The symptoms were typical. Opisthotonos.’

  ‘He seemed to be bent over backwards,’ Deborah said in a hushed voice.

  ‘That’s what I said. That and risus sardonicus – the grinning effect to which you took such exception,’ he added to Mrs Brindle.

  Hempie Wright put his face down in his hands. ‘That’s what I saw through the ice,’ he said. ‘Him grinning up at me. Made me think of the way he’d look when his temper was going.’

  ‘And that’s all I can tell you,’ the doctor said. ‘Let’s have a look at your face.’

  Mrs Brindle refilled the teapot and then took herself off to bed. Somebody, she said, would have to be up and about in the morning – which was not very far away. Soon, we heard bathwater running.

  The next few minutes were less than pleasant while the doctor washed the abraded side of my face and sterilised the scrapes, but when I caught sight of myself in a mirror my appearance, only slightly marred by a flesh-coloured plaster, would no longer have frightened horses.

  During the doctor’s ministrations, Allan Brindle took a phone-call. Now he hung up. ‘That was the boss,’ he said. ‘Mr Jeffries himself in person. He seemed amused. In fact, he was laughing his head off. There’s to be no prosecution over the poaching. He says there’ll be no more. You hear that?’ he asked Wright severely.

  ‘I hear you.’

  ‘Can I count on it?’

  ‘Ask the laird.’

  ‘I’ll do that,’ Brindle said and I thought that he probably would.

  The doctor repacked his black bag. ‘You should go home to bed,’ he said. ‘Take a day or two off work.’ He was in the habit of giving the same advice for everything from ingrowing toenails to pregnancy, which is why his practice was booming.

  ‘In the middle of a murder enquiry?’ I said.

  He shrugged.

  The radio began to beep in the pocket of the coat which I had draped over the fireside irons. I dug it out.

  ‘Superintendent McHarg’s on his way,’ said Control. ‘He’s at the top of Soutra now. Switch to Channel Eight and he can reach you.’

  Wishing that I had left the radio in the snow, I switched to Channel Eight. Mr McHarg’s voice came through immediately. He sounded as a superintendent of police might be expected to sound who had been fetched out of his bed in the small hours.

  ‘Sergeant Fellowes?’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘What the hell’s going on? Can you speak freely?’

  I glanced at Hempie Wright. Allan Brindle got to his feet. ‘Come through into the kitchen,’ he told Hempie. ‘You can help me cut a few sandwiches.’

  Deborah made herself small in her chair.

  ‘I’m clear to speak now,’ I said.

  ‘Update me, from the end of your last report.’

  It took nearly half an hour to give him all the details. When I finished with the doctor’s tentative findings, he interrupted for the first time.

  ‘Strychnine?’ he said. ‘That has to be premeditation. Where would somebody get strychnine in a hurry, in the middle of the night and out of the backwoods?’

  Deborah looked up. ‘Moles,’ she said softly.

  ‘Moles, sir,’ I said, hoping to hell that she knew what she was talking about.

  McHarg’s voice became an incredulous squawk. ‘Moles? You get strychnine from moles?’

  ‘They use it to poison moles,’ she whispered. ‘Dip a worm in it and drop it into a mole-run.’

  I passed the information on.

  ‘Oh. That’s the sort of work that man Wright does, isn’t it?’ he asked.

  Deborah hesitated and then nodded. She was making warning faces.

  ‘I believe so, sir,’ I said. ‘But he’s not the only one.’

  ‘You’re thinking of the digger driver? I don’t see him carrying strychnine around with him – unless you’re going to tell me that they use it to clean diesel engines or some damn thing – and the Spanish police report that he’s behaving just as you would expect a Brit on holiday to behave. Badly, that probably means. But there’s no sign that he doesn’t mean to return.’

  Mrs Brindle had re-entered the room with a plate of sandwiches. She came and leaned over me. She was wearing a sensible dressing-gown hanging open over a very revealing nightdress. She smelled of bath salts and warm woman. She whispered into my ear, making a teasing gesture of it. ‘Is that about Ron Campbell?’ she asked. (I nodded.) ‘Well, Allan and I went out for a drink after the shoot. Ron was in the bar and he was making a night of it with his mates. He was well on when I saw him, and no sign that he was planning an early night.’

  She straightened up, pulled her dressing-gown around her and left the room. Deborah was looking at me sternly.

  I had missed some of what McHarg had said. ‘You have the man Wright there?’ he was saying.

  ‘In the next room.’

  ‘Don’t let go of him. It’s clear what happened. Kerr shot a bird which flew on to the woods. He went to look for it and came across Wright, up to some of his tricks. Wright killed him. That’s why he waited around until the other shooters had packed up. Then he carried him to the pond and pushed him under the ice. Eh?’

  ‘The keeper says that Wright’s boots were dry when he saw him later,’ I pointed out. ‘And you can’t suddenly push strychnine into somebody’s mouth in a fit o
f temper.’

  ‘So somebody else was with him. That chap Youngson, the landowner. He’d have more to lose than Wright, if it were to come out that he was nothing but a bloody poacher. He’d be disgraced – and we could have jerked his gun permits. He went home early, but he could have come back – bringing Wright a flask of coffee or something, if they’re as thick as you say,’ Mr McHarg added in sudden inspiration. ‘Kerr wouldn’t hesitate to accept a hot drink from such a source while Youngson tried to convince him that there was an innocent explanation for whatever he’d seen. And Youngson lied to you about not knowing Wright’s whereabouts.’

  ‘That might have been because of the poaching,’ I said.

  ‘And it might not. Well?’

  ‘There are still a number of anomalies to be explained,’ I said.

  ‘So explain them.’

  ‘But—’ I said. I stopped.

  ‘You don’t sound happy, Sergeant. But being happy isn’t in your remit.’

  ‘It sounds plausible,’ I said, ‘but I don’t think it’s what happened. More investigation . . .’

  ‘What other explanation have you? Do you think you can make a case against Campbell?’

  ‘No.’

  He was still some miles off and yet I could see the expression which always came over his face when a subordinate was, in his view, being obstructive. ‘I don’t want somebody on this case who isn’t wholeheartedly with me,’ he said. ‘We’re making heavy going of it but I should be there in twenty minutes. The first thing we need is a positive identification. Go now, straight away, and break it to Mrs Kerr and ask her to come and identify the body. After that . . . we’ll see about you and your hunches.’

  The radio went dead.

  ‘Is he always as nasty as that?’ Deborah asked with her mouth full.

  ‘Not always,’ I said. I grabbed a sandwich. ‘Usually. We’d better go. You’re the chauffeur, so come and chauff. If you take me to my own car—’

  ‘You’d get stuck without the jeep,’ she said. ‘And it’s still not insured for you. I’m coming along.’

  It was irregular but her reasoning was sound. My coat and boots were almost dry. We dressed and went out.