4 Death at the Happiness Club

by Cecilia Peartree

  Maisie Sue had a moment of guilt. She had more or less lured the sisters here under false pretences: the promise of pancakes didn't really make up for the terrible news they would hear before too long. But she waited until they each had a mug of coffee and a pancake with maple syrup in front of them before deciding reluctantly that it was time to call the police.

  She would have to be downright sneaky about it, but that couldn't be helped. As Dilly lifted the spoon loaded with pancake towards her mouth, Maisie Sue said casually,

  'I need to make a call right now. Would you excuse me for just a few moments?'

  She whisked herself out of the room before they could speak. For some reason her heart was pounding fast. For goodness' sakes, Maisie Sue, she told herself, don't give yourself palpitations over this. It'll be unpleasant, nothing more. It's not for you to get all twitchy about it. Leave everything to the cops. Now let's get this over with.

  She had picked up the house phone and pressed '9' for the first time when she became aware that Dee was standing right behind her. With a huge effort of will she managed not to jump clear out of her skin.

  'So what's this call you need to make?' said Dee in a conversational tone. 'It wouldn't be to the police, would it?'

  'The police? Why should it be to the police?' Maisie Sue parried. Her mind raced. Could she press '9' twice more before Dee stopped her? She pressed the button once. Dee put her hand down and cut off the call. Maisie Sue stood there and listened to the dialing tone and feeling foolish.

  'You'd better come back to the kitchen,' said Dee.

  'I don't think so,' said Maisie Sue. The front door was tantalizingly close: if she took a few steps sideways…

  'We should talk,' said Dee.

  'No,' said Maisie Sue, panicking at the idea of having after all to break the news herself. 'I need the police to tell you - I mean -'

  There was a pause while they stared at each other. Dee's eyes were hard as marbles.

  'I can't let you talk to the police,' she said. 'No matter what you suspect.'

  'I don't suspect - I know!' cried Maisie Sue, thinking of Sean Fraser lying out on the mud-flats. 'I just didn't want to be the one to tell you. Oh well. Let's sit back down.'

  They returned to the kitchen.

  'Are there any more, Maisie Sue?' said Dilly, waving an empty spoon.

  'Never mind the pancakes, Dilly,' said Dee. 'Maisie Sue's got something to tell us.'

  'You'd better sit down,' said Maisie Sue, feeling miserable. 'It's bad news.'

  Dee sat down next to Dilly, and they both stared at her blankly.

  'I was walking on the beach this morning - just before I met you - and I found something,' said Maisie Sue. She had to force the words out: some part of her fought against it, and as a result her voice came out much quieter than usual. 'Someone,' she amended hastily. 'Your brother. Sean. I didn't look too closely, but I'm afraid there's no doubt he's dead.'

  Silence. She supposed the news might take a while to sink in. She had a silly instinct to mitigate the effects by babbling on. 'I wanted to ask the police to tell you this. They've had practice at doing it - they've got trained people who do that kind of thing. I knew I'd just blurt it out and upset you - and I have. I can see that. I'm sorry.'

  Dee's face was now contorted and Dilly bit her lip. A small moan came from one of them.

  'Can I get you a drink?' said Maisie Sue in desperation. 'I've got some brandy. Or I could go to the store for some -'

  'No!' Dee snapped. Another moan escaped her, and another. She put her face in her hands and sobbed, shoulders heaving. Maisie Sue wondered whether to throw a glass of cold water over her, but Dee wasn't the kind of person you did that to. Not at close range, anyway.

  Dilly suddenly, shockingly, laughed aloud. She raised one hand as if to try and stifle the sound, but just waved it uselessly around in front of her face instead. Dee looked up, caught her sister's eye and laughed too.

  She had been laughing all the time! Maisie Sue felt as if she was the one who had received a glass of cold water in the face. Her legs trembled and she sat down suddenly in a kitchen chair. They knew already, she thought. She should try and escape, but somehow there was no room in her mind for that as well as the horror of the sisters' knowledge.

  Chapter 25 True Colours

  'He's come back,' said Dilly to Dee. 'You said he'd gone.'

  'I thought he'd gone,' said Dee.

  'What about the other one? Will he come back too?'

  The other one? Maisie Sue's heart gave another sickening lurch. How many sickening lurches could a heart take before it lurched for the last time? She didn't want to think about that. She hadn't wanted to think about Sean and what had happened to him, but that had been forced on her by circumstance. It was clear now that she had been right not to want to break the news, although not for the reason she had at first imagined.

  'Not if you keep your mouth shut,' said Dee to Dilly.

  'I didn't like the other one,' said Dilly. 'I dream about him sometimes - and about the big black hole.'

  'Sssh,' said Dee sharply.

  'Can we leave now?' said Dilly. 'I want to go on the ferry.'

  'I told you, the ferry only goes twice a week,' said Dee. 'We've got to wait for the right day.'

  So that was why they were still around! That was why they had been driving up and down in the Porsche, not really caring whether they were seen or not. Maisie Sue recalled Christopher talking about the ferry from Rosyth. He and his sister had travelled on it together just as the Fraser sisters planned to do. They must have killed Sean themselves, she reflected gloomily. It had been one of those family feuds. Maisie Sue knew all about strong feelings running riot in families. She didn't think she could ever bring herself to murder Pearson's mother, but if she were forced to return to the States who knew what might happen?

  She stared across the table at Dee, who stared back with an odd, puzzled expression. Just a little too late, Maisie Sue worked out what it meant. Dee had seen realization creep across her face and was surprised she wasn't trying to make a getaway. But that in turn mean they had something in mind for her…

  'No!' she squeaked as Dee got up, came round the table and grabbed her by the arms.

  Strangely, the first thing that popped into her head was the memory of how she thought she would be safer in a place where she knew her way to the knife drawer. That didn't seem anything like so weird now. Her instincts hadn't been wrong; it was just that she hadn't taken enough notice of them. Well, she certainly would trust them more in future - if there was a future.

  Dee bent Maisie Sue's arms round behind the chair and held them there. 'Find something to tie her up with,' she told Dilly. 'Rope - string - wire - whatever.'

  'But where will I look, Dee?'

  Maisie Sue opened her mouth to suggest places to look, and then closed it again quickly. She wasn't that stupid.

  Dilly opened the kitchen cupboards, one after another. She produced a power cable, a cloth which, she took time to explain, could be torn into strips and then joined up to make a rope, and finally a ball of Christmas string.

  Dee, still holding Maisie Sue's wrists behind her tightly and painfully, scoffed at these offerings. 'How about the cupboard under the stairs?'

  At that moment the door-bell rang. They all jumped, and just for a second Dee loosened her grip a little. Maisie Sue wrenched her hands free, pushed Dee out of the way and headed for the door. Behind her she heard Dee remonstrating with Dilly for getting in the way.

  There were two fuzzy shapes behind the frosted glass door panel. Maisie Sue hoped they were Christopher and Amaryllis. She shouted as she ran across the hall, Dee now in pursuit.

  'Help me! Help! Call the police!'

  Dee kicked her feet out from under her and she fell on the floor. The door-bell rang again.

  'OK, I'm on my way,' Maisie Sue muttered, her face against the rug, Dee's weight pinning her to the floor.

  'Will I answer the door?' she heard Dilly e
nquire.

  'No, don't be silly!' said Dee. 'Get back in the kitchen and wait!'

  The letter-box rattled.

  'Help!' said Maisie Sue, this time in an even more muffled voice. Dee was using one hand to push her face into the rug. She wriggled free in time to hear a familiar voice speaking through the opening in the mailbox.

  'Is everything all right in there? Maisie Sue?'

  'She'll just be watching some gangster film on television,' said another, somewhat gruffer, voice. 'Come on, Jemima, we can't stand around here all day.'

  'Here's some tablet anyway,' called Jemima, and a small package dropped on to the door mat.

  'Come on now,' scolded Dave. 'We'll be late.'

  'But I -,' said Jemima, and then the letter-box snapped shut and Maisie Sue couldn't hear any more.

  Dee said something rude under her breath about Jemima and Dave. Maisie Sue tried to heave herself up, dislodging Dee in the process, but she only succeeded in undulating a bit, much as she imagined the Loch Ness Monster might do. Only on a larger scale, of course. Maisie Sue knew she wasn't exactly petite, but she certainly wasn't a massive scaly throwback to the Jurassic period.

  'I've found a rope!' said Dilly excitedly.

  Five minutes later, after an undignified struggle, Maisie Sue was back on the kitchen chair, wrists tied behind her and also, she thought, tied to the chair itself. Dee and Dilly conferred together in whispers, pausing only to glare at her as if the situation was all her fault.

  The door-bell rang again.

  Dee sighed impatiently. 'Don't your friends ever give up?'

  'They wouldn't be friends if they did,' said Maisie Sue, her spirits lifting. Maybe Jemima and Dave had gone and fetched Christopher. Or Amaryllis. Or both of them. Amaryllis would be a good person to have on your side in a fight, but Christopher seemed like a better prospect as chief hostage negotiator.

  The bell rang again.

  Dee opened the kitchen door and peeped out cautiously. Maisie Sue heard the rattle of the mailbox again.

  'Mrs MacPherson!' came a faint voice from outside. 'We have reason to believe you're at home. Mrs MacPherson! We need to speak to you as a matter of some urgency. It's about your visa.'

  The bell rang again.

  'Who's that?' said Dee, glaring at Maisie Sue.

  'Oh my, let me see,' said Maisie Sue. 'I guess it must be the man from the immigration department again. About my visa. They may even have come to deport me.'

  The mailbox rattled again.

  'You can run, but you can't hide, Mrs MacPherson. We'll catch up with you, whether you like it or not.'

  'What will they do if you don't answer?' said Dee urgently. 'Will they break the door down?'

  'Well now,' said Maisie Sue. 'I can't just recall whether they're on the list of people who have the right to break into people's houses… Of course, back home you'd be able to defend yourself from that kind of thing.'

  'With a gun?' said Dilly eagerly. 'Have you got a gun, Maisie Sue?'

  'Sssh, Dilly!' said Dee, but it was too late.

  'I hadn't used a gun before,' said Dilly in a dreamy voice. 'I hadn't even held one in my hand. It was hard. And cold. I wasn't sure how to fire it, but Dee showed me how to work the safety catch.'

  The door-bell rang again and the letter-box clicked.

  'Mrs MacPherson? I'm afraid we may have to break down the door!'

  Dee glanced around the kitchen as if planning a last stand. She ran to the back door and tried to open it, but it was locked.

  'Where's the key?'

  'It's in my purse,' said Maisie Sue. 'Upstairs.'

  Dee twisted the door-handle viciously and spoke in the kind of language Pearson had used after he drove his BMW into a deer that had unwisely strayed on to the Limekilns road.

  'Can I go upstairs for it?' said Dilly. 'I'll be as quick as I can.'

  Take your time, thought Maisie Sue.

  The sounds at the front door had stopped: had the immigration officer gone for good, or was this just a strategic withdrawal? After all, they wouldn't want to break in unless they absolutely had to.

  Dee paced up and down.

  'Get yourself another coffee if you want,' said Maisie Sue.

  Dee scowled at her. 'Do you have any duct tape? I'm getting a bit bored with all your chatter. Shut up, or I'll have to tape your mouth up.'

  After a while Maisie Sue, obediently silent, started to wonder what Dilly was doing upstairs. To judge from the woman's behaviour so far, it could be anything from trying on outfits to jumping out the window or shredding Maisie Sue's passport.

  Dee didn't say anything, but she went out of the room and stood at the foot of the stairs for a moment before storming back into the kitchen and demanding, 'What have you got up there that's so interesting?'

  'That's for me to know and for you to find out,' said Maisie Sue, and then recoiled as Dee slapped her across the face.

  'I thought I told you to shut up!'

  They were still glaring at each other when footsteps approached.

  'Look what I found,' said Dilly, still in that dream-like voice. She was carrying a gun. Thoughts rushed into Maisie Sue's mind from all directions. The one that jostled its way to the front like a really determined shopper on the first day of Macy's sale was that she wanted to kill Pearson. Close behind that was a feeling of embarrassment that she might have misled the police about whether there was a gun in the house. Only after these came the fear of what Dilly would do next. For a moment Maisie Sue thought an earthquake had started, then she realised the tremor that ran through her was caused by her own body shaking, not by anything geological.

  'Where did you get that, Dilly?' asked Dee.

  'Upstairs,' said Dilly, nodding as she carried the gun to her sister and presented it as if it were a trophy of war.

  Dee reached for it, Dilly pulled away, and in the same movement she managed to grasp the handle in one hand and raise the barrel. Maisie Sue instinctively tried to make herself smaller, while at the same time knowing it was impossible.

  Dilly's fingers flicked off the safety catch and tightened around the trigger - and just as Maisie Sue thought she detected the final squeeze that meant disaster, there was a huge crash as the back door swung open and a lithe figure dressed all in black hurtled forward, colliding with Dilly and deflecting her aim so that the only damage done by the bullet was to a framed sampler stitched by Pearson's mother with a pair of ruby slippers and the words 'There's no place like home'. It had been too cute for words, but now that a bullet had lodged itself in the 'o' of 'home', it could become a talking -point.

  Amaryllis picked herself up off the floor and dragged Dilly back to an upright position, taking possession of the gun as she did so. Dee made a dash for freedom and was foiled by Christopher, who stood in the doorway apologising for his clumsiness in blocking her way until the police arrived a few seconds later.

  It was Chief Inspector Smith who finally freed Maisie Sue from the chair.

  'Now tell me,' said Maisie Sue, 'have you found Mr Fraser yet?'

  Rather to her disappointment, Mr Smith confessed that the police had indeed found the body on the mud-flats. But he did seem interested in what she had to say about Dee and Dilly, and asked her to give a full statement when she felt up to it. After that he had to leave in one of the police cars, but Amaryllis and Christopher stayed on, and Christopher helped with the next batch of pancakes.

  'I'll make the coffee if you like,' Amaryllis offered.

  Maisie Sue stopped beating batter for a moment. 'No, wait. I've got a better idea.'

  She went into the dining-room and came back with the brandy bottle in one hand and the whisky bottle in the other. The bottles didn't seem to have quite as much in them as they should, but the others wouldn't know that.

  'I think we deserve something stronger.'

  'I think we do,' said Amaryllis. She glanced at Christopher. 'You deserve it for that impression of an immigration officer alone. I don't know that the
y would really tell people they can run but they can't hide, though.'

  'I didn't think they would,' said Maisie Sue.

  They both looked at Christopher accusingly.

  'I had to improvise!' he said. 'You only gave me two minutes' notice. And I don't really do acting.'

  'You were quite good, considering,' said Amaryllis.

  'You both did real good,' said Maisie Sue firmly, and started to pour the drinks.

  Chapter 26 The secrets of happiness

  The landlord of the Queen of Scots hosted a tea-dance in memory of Sean Fraser and the Happiness Club. Amaryllis had never imagined she would get the chance to attend such a glittering occasion. It was a real eye-opener.

  Christopher was running late because he had been seeing off Caroline, Faisal and Marina, who had stayed the weekend with him. He didn't know yet that he had missed out on hearing some vital information at the Queen of Scots, where everything worth talking about was brought to the tables in the saloon bar sooner or later.

  As Jemima and Dave waltzed past in a slow and stately manner, Amaryllis turned back to Chief Inspector Smith, whom she planned to grill mercilessly about all the details of Sean's death and the fate of the sisters. He hadn't wanted to tell her anything at first, but she had plied him with Old Pictish Brew and now she felt he was ready for revelations.

  'This is all in the strictest confidence, of course,' he said, leaning forward so that their foreheads almost clashed over the table. 'I don't want you running off to the papers with it, mind.'

  'I'm hurt that you even think I'd do that, Charlie,' said Amaryllis.

  'I suppose the trickiest part about this case was all the people who were always milling about, getting in the way,' he mused. 'Present company excepted. You and your friends were the least of my worries, for once.'

  'Good,' she said encouragingly.

  'The fact that it was Mr McLean who blew up the boat, for instance - glad he's making a good recovery, by the way.' Mr Smith looked pointedly across to the bar where Jock McLean, balancing on one crutch, talked with animation to Trisha Laidlaw at one side of him and Rosie from the cattery at the other. Had he actually invited them both to come to the tea-dance with him? Amaryllis wondered idly.