Death by Marzipan

by John Burke

  Lesley dialled the Black Knowe number from memory.

  ‘Torrance.’

  ‘Sir Nicholas. Detective Inspector Gunn here.’

  Why hadn’t she just called herself Lesley Gunn? There had been a few days when she had thought there might be something between them. She had helped him solve the mystery of a missing quaich, and between them they had exposed a sheet of music as a forgery and an historic legend as a mockery. They had drawn very close together, hadn’t they? With a shiver of chagrin she admitted that she wouldn’t mind having an excuse to be close to him again.

  ‘Hello there, detective inspector.’ Just as solemn yet jocular as Dr Smutek.

  ‘I need your help.’

  He must have remembered at once the way they had solved the problem of that supposedly traditional song which had been a contrivance. ‘Don’t tell me somebody’s threatened to reveal that all Rabbie Burns’s songs were really written by William McGonagall?’

  ‘Right now I’m at Baldonald House.’

  ‘Isn’t that where they’ve just discovered a chunk of Roman pavement?’

  ‘Glad you’re still in touch with real history.’

  ‘Someone’s lifted the lot and flogged it to the Americans?’

  ‘Nothing to do with the pavement.’ She was in no mood for banter, though the mere sound of his lighthearted, laid-back voice could almost persuade her that seriousness was a mug’s game. She decided to lead into the problem gently. ‘You’re a bit of a wine expert.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that.’

  ‘Knowledgeable enough to help me in a problem I’ve got.’

  ‘What sort of problem? What to order early for Christmas?’

  ‘Nick …’ She had no right to use his name so fondly, with such a rush of memory. It made no sense. But she had said it and there was no taking it back. ‘It’s a matter of a cellarful of vintage stuff, or what was a cellar, till most of it was nicked. They must have had a large delivery van to shift the stuff. Belting up the A1 and cutting across the Merse, it’s all too easy nowadays.’

  ‘I’m flattered, but —’

  ‘And I’m puzzled by the labels on the bottles that are left.’

  ‘Labels?’

  ‘I’m sure there’s something odd. Oh, and,’ she added, ‘there’s been a murder.’

  ‘Count me out.’ He sounded very firm. ‘Never mind the cellarful of wine. Or cellar half full. Or a quarter full. Me, I’ve had a bellyful of murder, thanks very much.’

  ‘Please, Nick.’

  ‘And in any case, I’ve been thinking of spending a couple of months in the south of France. Wallowing in wine, since you mention it. Recuperating from all our own melodrama here. Maybe even composing a masterpiece.’ His own melodrama, she thought wryly. She would concede that it had been weird enough at Black Knowe, but when it came to melodrama, could it hold a candle to Baldonald?

  ‘When would this be?’

  ‘As soon as I can get packed.’

  She couldn’t restrain herself from asking: ‘With anybody special?’

  ‘Haven’t got as far as thinking about that.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ she said despondently, ‘you can find plenty of volunteers.’

  So that was that. Daydreams down the drain. And technical assistance swirling away down the same plughole.

  She went upstairs, hooked now on this irritating business of the wine labels rather than on the decease of Simon Pringle — certainly no fine vintage year himself. There had been a bottle in Lord Crombie’s snug. Not his usual tipple, but perhaps he had felt in the mood for a change from the malt.

  She had not expected to find Gregory Dacre there. Nor had she expected to be greeted with such a questioning gaze, as if he knew something she didn’t and was wondering whether to tell her, or wanting to sound her out.

  She picked up the bottle. She was no expert, but she was sure this vinegary smell was no recommendation for the contents.

  From out of the wall there came a sound like a door slamming. As its resonance faded, she knew it must come from downstairs. Yet it had been immediate, echoing into this room. She stared at him, and in a flash of wild guesswork said: ‘As a matter of interest, when you and Lady Crombie were working together in the Edinburgh flat, did you go to bed with her?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with you? Or anybody?’

  ‘So you did.’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘Or here? In this room?’

  ‘This is bloody monstrous. What the hell has this got to do with anything that … I mean, with anybody who’s been disillusioned enough once —’

  ‘Once your successor was out of the way, old mistakes could be corrected. You’d both made a mistake, but once you’d got together again you found that —’

  ‘Look, if you’re trying to set me up as being jealous of bloody Simon —’

  ‘Weren’t you?’

  ‘Once upon a time. I grew out of it.’

  ‘And it didn’t start nagging again when you were with your ex-wife?’

  ‘I’ve told you —’

  ‘She is your ex-wife. I thought maybe, with you ghosting her memoirs and sort of getting to grips with her in a very intimate fashion, one might imagine you could be drawn closer again.’

  ‘That’s what I’d call a lively imagination.’

  ‘You didn’t even consider it?’

  ‘I did not.’

  Something in his tone jogged her attention. ‘Did she consider it?’

  ‘Not in Edinburgh.’

  ‘Here, then?’

  Instead of dodging the question or indignantly asking what the hell this had to do with anything, he rose to the bait. Old rancours died hard, if ever. ‘She could never bear to take no for an answer.’

  ‘That figures. But this time she got a no?’

  ‘All those reconciliations, way back. When Brigid wanted it, and only when Brigid wanted it. Gushing on about how silly we’d been — meaning how silly I’d been — and come on, let’s make beautiful music again. To her tune, of course.’

  ‘She wasn’t pleased when you turned her down this time?’

  He was putting the brakes on, a bit late. ‘Who says anything about turning her down, or not turning her down? And what’s it got to do with Simon’s murder? Or Hector’s death, or any other damn thing?’

  ‘You’re still going ahead with the book?’

  ‘She keeps changing her mind. Maybe I’ll change mine.’

  ‘What might influence her? Whether you were in the mood to satisfy her in every particular, or whether your — um — prose style wasn’t quite as poetic as she’d have wished?’

  ‘You’ve got her wrong. Whatever you gave her, physically or mentally, it had to be exactly the way she had decided it ought to be. Nothing poetic. No reservations. Just get at the fundamentals when you’re ordered to.’

  ‘Which you rejected.’

  It dawned on him that she was staring questioningly at that gap in the wall — the laird’s lug. Wretchedly he said: ‘I’ve been wondering. You don’t suppose Hector could have heard?’

  ‘Heard what?’

  ‘Enough to give him a stroke.’

  ‘Can you tell me exactly what you and Lady Crombie said? Or what you were doing that might have hit him that hard?’

  ‘We weren’t doing anything.’

  ‘But what you were saying. Can you recall that, word for word?’

  ‘I’d rather not.’

  ‘Mr Dacre, I may have to insist.’

  ‘What good will that do now? We don’t know for sure that he did hear.’

  And there were no other witnesses. When Caroline Crombie found him, her father was already dead. Even before rushing downstairs to tell the others and then calling the doctor, she had been quite sure of that. And whether he had heard it or not, the conversation of his wife and Gregory Dacre, no matter how inflammatory, didn’t constitute a criminal offence. Not in any category so far established. ABH — Actual Bodily Harm. GBH — Grievo
us Bodily Harm. UMH — Unprovable Mental Harm?

  Lesley Gunn was in a bad mood as she got ready to drive back to the Tam Lin. Somebody had to pay for all this. Somebody had to help her prove to HQ that she was capable of solving a mystery on her own, wrapping it all up, fingering the villain. She would show them.

  On impulse she took the exit road past the west gate. She slowed as the lodge came into view, and found herself stopping on the level stretch of tarmac beside it.

  Mr Murray kept her waiting a few minutes before answering the door. He was profuse with his apologies. ‘I’m sorry. Keeping you on the step. So sorry. I was playing about with the scanner, and had to close it down safely. Wouldn’t want to lose my designs, you know.’

  She followed him into the main room. Through an open door she could glimpse a pattern of coloured cubes and parallelograms flicking and interlocking across a screen.

  ‘Designs?’ she queried.

  ‘A new brochure for the house, purely tentative. Skating round the missing items, you understand. But now, with Lord Crombie dead, one wonders what the future will be.’ Murray raised his large hands in a splayed gesture of grief. ‘I’m sorry. So sad. So very, very sad. Poor Lady Crombie.’

  Lesley recalled that on her first interview with Mr Murray she had sensed her old colleague and antagonist DCI Rutherford standing at her shoulder, eager to strike rather than discuss. She had balked at the idea of tackling the bereaved Lady Crombie, but right now she was in a mood to emulate him.

  ‘Designs,’ she repeated. ‘Including some wine bottle labels?’

  Murray’s hands descended slowly, one plucking at his beard as if to steady his head and stop it wagging to and fro. ‘I’m sorry?’ Same words as he had used a minute ago, but with a very different, shaky inflection.

  ‘Who asked you to forge those labels for a load of inferior wines?’

  ‘Inspector, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘I assume we could call up all the individual specimens you’ve got lodged in that machine? Just out of curiosity, I’d like to run through them.’

  ‘This is outrageous!’ Murray eyed the door to the next room.

  ‘Don’t try it,’ said Lesley. ‘Don’t try wiping it all.’ She slipped her mobile from her bag. ‘If you’re not prepared to co-operate, I’ll get one of our girls down from the library. They’re both dab hands at this sort of thing.’

  He went on tugging at his beard, and still his head went on shaking in hopeless denial.

  At last he croaked: ‘It was only a joke.’

  ‘On whom?’

  ‘It was a challenge to design the labels, find the right paper, run them off. That’s all, truly it was.’

  ‘And who issued the challenge?’

  He gulped. ‘It was Lady Crombie’s suggestion. The original wine tastings had cost too much to set up. Tutor’s fees, cost of selections of good wines, and so on. So Lady Crombie suggested cutting out the frills and substituting a sort of … well, cut-price function.’

  ‘And people were easily fooled?’

  ‘The Crombies’ friends just enjoyed the socialising. Their palates weren’t exactly on connoisseurs’ level. Socialising and drinking just for the fun of it. No harm in that. And the police are too busy in the towns to do much breathalysing round these parts.’

  ‘So you forged some impressive labels,’ Lesley summed up, ‘and conned the Crombies’ acquaintances into paying through the nose for cheap plonk.’

  ‘It was a bit of a joke between us — Lady Crombie and me.’

  ‘And Lord Crombie was in on it?’

  ‘Oh, no. Lady Crombie felt he wouldn’t countenance it.’

  ‘No. I don’t imagine he would. But didn’t anybody ever complain they were getting rot-gut?’

  ‘It wasn’t all that bad. Just a bit cheaper than what the lecturers had been giving.’

  ‘Just an excuse, in fact, for a piss-up.’

  Lesley let him stew for a minute. He had another tug at his beard, spread his large hands on his knees, then glanced desperately at the sliding patterns on the screen beyond the doorway. If some telepathic remote control had been available to switch it off, he would have blanked out that geometric shuffling in the hope that every other shred of evidence would miraculously disappear with it.

  At last she said: ‘Lady Crombie has quite a hold over you?’

  ‘She’s been the one who’s kept me going here.’

  ‘She’d have thrown you out if you didn’t play ball?’

  ‘I owe Lady Crombie a lot,’ he said stiffly.

  She knew he had been a schoolteacher, but had not asked why he had given it up and come here. He could be old enough to have retired in the normal run of things; but on the other hand, if it was some years back … She wondered what had driven him here into Brigid’s clutches, and why he had let himself be led into a cheap little job of forgery.

  Abruptly she said: ‘You taught art, didn’t you?’

  ‘I … that is, when I taught at the Academy … yes, art was one of my subjects. I’ve made good use of it,’ he added defensively, ‘in the brochures I’ve designed for the house.’

  ‘And helped Lady Crombie even more? Used your knowledge of paintings, and their value, and how to make copies which would fool the ordinary viewer if hung in shadowy corners?’

  ‘No,’ shouted Murray. ‘I’d never have done that. Never.’

  ‘But were you asked? You say you’d never have done it. But were you ever asked to do it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Would you have been surprised if it had been suggested to you?’

  He looked more and more unhappy. ‘I don’t know anything at all about the pictures.’

  ‘You couldn’t have set them up on that machine of yours?’

  ‘Of course I couldn’t. It’s too small. It would take a much bigger scanner to produce a template to work from.’

  ‘But then the forgery would be simplified?’

  ‘Painting by numbers,’ he grinned feebly. ‘Yes. But I never had any part in anything that big.’

  ‘You knew Simon Pringle, the dead man?’

  ‘I just may have seen him. But I don’t see what that’s got to do with wine labels or paintings.’

  ‘Neither do I. Not yet. But somehow it’s all tied in with everything that’s been going on. Forgeries, robberies, deaths …’

  ‘Lord Crombie’s death.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘That’s the worst of it. A great gentleman. I’d never have wanted him to be hurt.’

  Hurt by finding out that his wife was flogging off the family heirlooms, wheeling and dealing behind his back, and when the going got sticky was having forgeries made to replace the genuine stuff she’d flogged off without even letting him get a glimmer? ‘Using your own knowhow’ — she came back to worry away at that nagging notion — ‘to put a proper value on the real paintings, and help her to contrive replacements.’ Inspiration struck breathtakingly. ‘Replacements,’ she said, ‘which had to be stolen when some items were due to be loaned out on international display, to hide the fact that they were fakes.’

  ‘I’ve told you, I don’t know anything about that. It’s all too incredible.’

  ‘Incredible? Oh, and while we’re at it, you wouldn’t be a dab hand at forging credit cards, would you?’

  ‘Credit cards?’ He looked genuinely perplexed.

  ‘They wouldn’t be too big for your scanner.’

  But she couldn’t really believe he was any more than a minor player in a devious and growingly dangerous game. She also believed, though, that in that minor way he had been used, and that other men had been used in a major way. Why had Brigid been so sure, after being told by Greg Dacre of the cabal’s threats and offer of help, that nothing could be done about it? Very quick to poohpooh the remotest possibility of their having any way of getting to the loot and restoring it on their own terms.

  Because she already knew where it was?

  A l
ot of things were shifting to and fro in DI Lesley Gunn’s mind like the interlocking patterns on Mr Murray’s screen. Most of them were edging in to close around one woman in particular. She ought to have tackled that woman head-on; ought not to have let her swagger her way off so easily.

  When Lady Crombie got back from Edinburgh, she would stay right here until she had answered a lot of questions.

  13

  Duncan McIntyre was a man with a wide, flat face and a chin so shallow that it looked as if someone had sliced a few inches off it with one clean stroke. The sag of his lower lip, so close to the chin, gave all his pronouncements a melancholy droop of their own, and his shiny black suit was at odds with the teak and rosewood modernity of his office furniture. Brigid had always suspected that he kept himself looking so seedy and olde-worlde in order to impress old-fashioned clients like Hector and his contemporaries, while holding in reserve a character in keeping with the fixtures and fittings.

  Today he had better be bang up to the minute and ready to tackle immediate concerns.

  She said: ‘What about our unfair dismissal case? You’ve had time enough to get a boot up Sandy Cameron’s backside. What sort of squeal have you had back?’

  ‘Lady Crombie, one has to work in reasonable consultation with your old company’s legal advisers. One tries the reasonable approach first.’

  ‘Carpet slippers make no impression on shysters like that.’

  McIntyre appeared shocked by her priorities. ‘Surely,’ he said in the tone reserved for clients of an older, more courteous tradition, ‘it’s more important at this time to settle the problems of your late husband’s estate? I need hardly say how distressed we’ve all been here by the news, after all the years we have had the honour of —’

  ‘Naturally I’m here to discuss that as well. But it shouldn’t take long. I don’t envisage any major problems. Knowing my late husband, I’m sure everything’s straightforward.’

  McIntyre cleared his throat apprehensively. ‘Well, yes, Lady Crombie. Of course. Very straightforward.’