Murder at the Open

by Angus MacVicar

  We found him in the yard at the back, fixing a length of hose to a faucet in the wall. The big Cadillac stood nearby. Amongst an assortment of other cars it looked like a luxury liner surrounded by insignificant cargo craft.

  It was a cold morning for July, with a promise of rain in the wind. I wondered why O’Donnel had chosen such an inauspicious day to wash the Cadillac, which in any case gleamed as brightly as a showroom model. Probably because he badly wanted something definite to do, I decided — something which would take his mind off the tragedy of his employer’s death.

  His expression was drawn and sad, and I suspected he could well have done without our company; but he greeted us with the politeness of a trained servant.

  There was a long, smooth stone near the entrance to the yard — a stone on which, in past centuries, guests at the hotel had stood to mount their horses — another example of how in St Andrews ancient and modern are intermingled. We sat down on it, and O’Donnel accepted a cigarette from Aidan.

  We talked about Conrad Lingstrom, and I was glad to discover that he could still smile at the memory of his master.

  “That day at the High Hole — when he got his ace — well, I sure was happy for him, poor old guy! This last year he worked harder at his golf than at his business, but he never did get his handicap down. Miss Garson could beat him easy any time she wanted, but she often let him win, just to please him. People were always doing that — trying to please him. He was that kind of a guy.”

  O’Donnel accepted another cigarette.

  “Reckon I’d have done anything for Mr Lingstrom, after what he did for me. Sometimes he’d ride me rough, when his temper skidded. But it never worried me — not like it did Miss Carson.” He paused, and I noticed that his rather fleshy lips were unsteady. “I keep blaming myself,” he said. “That night he died, he needed me and I wasn’t there. He needed me bad, and I was drinking in that smoky dive. Wish I’d drunk myself to death!”

  He wasn’t a man for whom I could feel affection. Grey-tinged lines — not all caused by ageing skin — were etched in his brown face, and his maudlin manners caused me some embarrassment. I remembered he had once been a third-rate actor, and told myself that this might account for the instability I thought I detected in his character.

  And yet he was the only person in the Lingstrom party whose alibi was vouched for by neutral witnesses. Tosh Harrison and Ringo Jenks — not to mention Ringo’s two pals, Bert and Alf — had been closely questioned by the police. Their evidence was unshakable. From about midnight until five o’clock, during which time the murder was judged to have taken place, O’Donnel had been in the Baffie Hotel, continually under the eye of his companions. To their certain knowledge he had left the room only once.

  This was to visit the lavatory, and on that occasion he had been accompanied by both Tosh Harrison and the man Bert.

  O’Donnel was demonstrably innocent of the murder; and in spite of his unprepossessing characteristics — unprepossessing to me, that is: Lingstrom and Debbie and even Erica Garson seemed to have got on well with him — Aidan and Big Sam would have to rely a good deal on his cooperation in their search for the motive behind the killing.

  Aidan was relying on it now. “Did Mr Lingstrom seem disturbed or afraid on Saturday night, before you left him?”

  “Not in any way. He was the cheerfullest guy in St Andrews. He spoke to me just before I said good night. ‘Cliff,’ he said, ‘have the day off tomorrow. You deserve it. I’ll have a holiday myself — from golf, I mean — just so’s I can bask in my glory. If we need the car I’ll drive it myself.’ Then he — he pulled out a wad of pound notes and peeled off a couple and told me, ‘Have a good time with these, Cliff.’ I had my good time, I guess. But not him. Not the boss. Something happened”

  “Something happened all right.” Aidan’s voice was a doomsday knell. “Tell me, before the party — before he had his hole in one — did he seem worried about anything? About his niece, for example. About his business.”

  “Well” — O’Donnel dropped the stub of his cigarette and with his foot ground it into shreds on the asphalt — “it was none of my business, Professor, but I reckon he wasn’t all that happy about this merger.”

  “Indeed? Miss Lingstrom, Miss Garson and Mr Ferguson have all told us that the arrangements were going well.”

  “Yeah. It was okay in New York, right up to the time we came over here. Then a spanner got in the works, I guess.”

  “How d’you mean?”

  “It was something the boss said to Miss Garson — Saturday afternoon, while we were waiting to play off on the first tee. Maybe it meant nothing at all. Maybe he was just being cagey.”

  “Let me be the judge of that.”

  “Yeah, sure. Well, what he said was that he didn’t like being taken for a ride. She asked him, ‘How come?’ He sort of humped his shoulders and said young Ferguson ought to get himself a new lawyer.”

  “That was all?”

  “That was all. The starter called us to play, and Mr Lingstrom hit a real beauty down the middle. After that I guess he didn’t give business another thought. That’s why he was so hot on playing golf. Good for business, he said: took his mind off it at the same time.”

  “Miss Garson — she knows all the details of his business affairs?”

  “I reckon so. He often asked her advice — more especially these last few months.”

  “And Miss Lingstrom? Does she take an interest?”

  “Well, Miss Debbie’s a pretty shrewd girl. She attends all the board meetings. And Mr Lingstrom was real proud that she designed most of the ladies’ golf-jackets and golf-shoes sold by the firm. Miss Garson helped with the ladies’ clubs — the Erica Garson Champions. Funny thing about Miss Garson — she plays left-handed, but sometimes she gives demonstrations in the shops and swings the right-handed clubs like she’s done it all her life.”

  “Just for show?”

  “Oh, sure. She’ll tell you she couldn’t break a hundred playing right-handed.”

  For a second or two the fog in the mirror seemed to clear. Then, as Aidan went on speaking, it blurred again.

  “Mr Ferguson, now — and Mr Cunningham. Are they golfers, d’you know?”

  “Mr Ferguson duffs around a bit. Played with Miss Debbie in New York, at the Long Island Country Club. Here, too, on the Jubilee Course, where the kids have fun. They do it for the exercise, I guess — not serious, like the boss and Miss Garson. Mr Cunningham? Well, I dunno. I’d say he’s too short-sighted to be a golfer, but I could be wrong.”

  “You could, indeed.” For some reason a smug look had established itself on Aidan’s face, and he sounded as if he might start purring at any moment. “Blind men have been known to golf. One-armed men, one-legged men, men with no legs at all — they’ve all played, some of them brilliantly. But let’s not emulate James Bond by dwelling on the more esoteric aspects of the game. Let’s keep our metaphoric eye steadfastly on the ball!”

  O’Donnel stared at him, obviously puzzled by his change of mood and conversational style. I was puzzled, too.

  Aidan continued: “As an observer on the touchline, what is your opinion of Mr Ferguson and Mr Cunningham?” Something flared in O’Donnel’s eyes. I couldn’t tell what it was, because in a second it was gone, and his expression had become hard and careful again.

  In a low voice, he said: “You’ll excuse me, Professor. I’m a servant. Mr Ferguson and Mr Cunningham are guests of the family. I’d rather not answer that question.”

  It was like a speech out of a play, too good to be true. But it seemed to please Aidan. He got up from the stone, smiled and patted O’Donnel on the back.

  “Good for you! It wasn’t a question I ought to have asked.” I wondered what had come over him: his questions are usually well chosen and seldom abortive. “By the way,” he went on, “could we trespass further on your good nature? I’d like to have a look at Mr Lingstrom’s clubs — and Miss Garson’s. You’re busy, I know, but
if you could spare a minute to show us”

  “I’m not all that busy.” O’Donnel rose also, though with a suggestion of reluctance. “Just thought I’d give the car a wipe. You know, to pass the time.” His eyes were sad again.

  “You don’t mind doing this for us? It won’t bring back too many sad memories?” Aidan was marvellously kind.

  “Well, it’s your job to see them, I reckon. Though I may as well admit I haven’t been near them since — since Saturday evening, after we came in. I cleaned them at the time and left them ready for — for the next game. Yesterday and today — well, what was the good”

  “Of course. I understand.” Anyone not knowing Aidan would have said that with his sympathetic touch he ought to have been a clergyman. Or an undertaker.

  O’Donnel led the way towards a long, low outhouse at the far end of the yard. He opened the door with a passkey. I followed the others inside, suspicious about the whole set-up.

  Aidan and I, being members of the Royal and Ancient, kept our clubs in the Clubhouse, where they were cleaned and looked after by one of the staff. Guests of the hotel who had no other facilities kept theirs in this shed, a passkey being available to anyone who wanted it, on payment of a deposit. The place was fitted with a dozen lockers, some spartan wooden benches, a foot-bath and several racks for drying clothes and shoes.

  Lingstrom’s clubs and Erica Garson’s were contained in expensive-looking bags, the secretary’s being mounted on a detachable trolley. Each bag was decorated in large letters with the words: GOLF PRODUCTS CHAMPION CLUBS. Hunched, hands in pockets, O’Donnel stood with an unhappy look on his face while Aidan peered at both sets as if he were short-sighted — which, in spite of his horn-rims, he wasn’t.

  With a strange inconsequence, my friend murmured, “Did Mr Lingstrom ever talk politics to you?”

  O’Donnel started. “Politics? Not on your life! He always said politics is punk — bad for business.”

  “So, as far as you know, he had no enemies in the political sense?”

  “No, sir. He had no enemies, period.” The declaration was emphatic, and O’Donnel’s voice echoed loudly in the low-roofed shed.

  “Mr Lingstrom had quite an armoury of clubs.” Aidan, again switching his attack, was counting them. “The full range from a driver to a sand-wedge.”

  “I told you, he was serious about his golf. A complete set or nothing for the boss.”

  “Except a 4-iron.”

  “What?”

  “There’s no 4-iron in his bag.”

  I looked across at O’Donnel. He was acting as if he’d seen a ghost, staring at the bag, his mouth open, head thrusting out from drooped shoulders.

  “It — it was here, Saturday night”

  “Oh, it’s still here — don’t worry!” announced Aidan. Like a conjurer, he turned to Erica Garson’s bag and withdrew a club from one of the plastic tubes, holding it gingerly by the patent rubber grip. “Odd, isn’t it? A right-handed ‘Champion’ consorting with the bar sinister.”

  “That’s the boss’s 4-iron okay! But — but”

  “Look, O’Donnel!” Abruptly, Aidan’s gentleness became the harshness of a sergeant-major. “Who in the Lingstrom party — besides yourself — has a pass-key for this shed?” The man straightened up, stiffening his body as if prepared at last to accept this new assault on his burden of knowledge. “Miss Garson for one. And Miss Debbie — and Mr Ferguson.”

  “Everybody except Mr Cunningham, in fact?”

  “That’s right.”

  Aidan glanced at me out of the corner of his eye, betraying smug triumph. “I think we’ve found the murder-weapon,” he said; “Though Big Sam will have to send it to the lab before we can be sure.”

  O’Donnel was shivering, as if he felt the cold. “You mean the boss was killed with — with his own club?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Then — then who did it?”

  “I have a theory on that point, too. What you have told us this morning has been extremely helpful.”

  A few minutes later O’Donnel locked the door behind us. Ragged clouds were speeding across the sky. The rain wasn’t far off. Sanders and Lema might even be caught in it before they finished their round.

  We left the chauffeur to get on with cleaning the Cadillac. He seemed unhappy and at a loss for words. Aidan’s briskly expressed gratitude for his help and cooperation failed to comfort him.

  We went inside to find Big Sam. Carrying the 4-iron on his shoulder like an old-style rifle at the slope. Aidan was in good spirits.

  “Angus, my boy,” he murmured, “‘Summer is y-comen in. Loud sing cuckoo!’”

  *

  Big Sam and the sergeant were in conference in the lounge upstairs. They looked up with some irritation as we came in. But when Aidan presented them with the 4-iron and explained the circumstances in which he’d found it, the atmosphere became a good deal warmer.

  “Ay, we’ll have it sent to the lab in Glasgow right away,” said the Inspector. “See to it, McCrimmon! Tell them I want a report by tomorrow at the latest.”

  “Right, sir.” The sergeant got up, holding the club gingerly in his handkerchief.

  “And when you’ve done that, check up on the lads keeping an eye on Miss Lingstrom. Impress on them again that if there’s another slip-up like last night I — I’ll clap them in the Bottle Dungeon in the Castle and let them starve to death. Starvation would be good for some of them!” he leered. “Fat lumps!”

  “Yes, sir,” said Sergeant McCrimmon with vague diplomacy, and left.

  But it was evident that Big Sam was basically in a happy humour. As we finished giving him an account of our talk with O’Donnel, his ghoulish smile reminded me of an old tom cat in the process of cornering a mouse.

  “So you think your hunch is working out? You believe that club is the murder weapon?” he said to Aidan.

  “Yes.” There was a world of smugness in the monosyllable.

  “Because you found it in the wrong bag?”

  Aidan nodded. “I see it like this. Whoever killed Lingstrom had a key to the outhouse. Or access to a key,” he corrected himself. “After the killing, the murderer cleaned the club, rushed back to the outhouse and — excited and in the dark — thrust it into the wrong bag.”

  “Ay, plausible enough,” agreed Big Sam. “But the lab tests will provide the proper scientific answer.”

  “Is that quite certain?” I said. “I mean, if the murderer cleaned the club thoroughly, would any traces of contact with human blood and tissue be left?”

  “You overestimate the skill of the murderer, Mr MacVicar. You also underestimate the resources of our scientists.” He was so heavily dogmatic I couldn’t help being impressed. “That 4-iron has a grooved blade and inscribed lettering on the sole,” he went on, magisterially. “Unless it was steeped in some kind of abrasive solution for a considerable time — which is unlikely — then, if it is the murder weapon, some traces of blood will almost certainly be found on it. Lingstrom’s blood. And even the tiniest speck will be enough for the lab boys to work on. You see what I mean?”

  I made humble noises in the affirmative.

  Aidan cleared his throat. “And now, Inspector, for the past fifteen minutes I’ve been noticing a certain gleam of excitement in your eyes,” he said. “Am I correct in deducing that you have something to tell us?”

  “H’m, maybe you are.” He paused for a moment, then added: “You’ve done well, Professor, about the club and about O’Donnel. Very well, indeed,” he repeated, and I smiled to myself at this reversal of Aidan’s usual role as master with student. “Maybe you deserve — what’s it called? — a quid pro quo.”

  “Maybe I do,” said my friend, pleasantly.

  “All right.” Big Sam took a plain envelope from his pocket and spilled its contents on the green baize of the table-top. “As you know,” he went on, “while Miss Ling-strom was at breakfast and before the chambermaid came along, the sergeant and I had a look in
her room. We found this on the carpet just under the dressing-table.”

  A few grains and slivers of glass sparkled in the light from the window. “They were lying in shadow,” he explained, “and if we hadn’t been on the game we might have missed them.”

  Aidan bent forward, peering at the fragments with as much fascination as if they’d been the Crown Jewels. “The missing pieces from the face of Lingstrom’s wrist-watch?” he said, softly.

  “I believe so.” Carefully Big Sam scooped them back into the envelope. “The larger pieces fit.”

  Nebulously, like a reflection in muddy water, a picture of the truth began to shimmer in my mind.

  *

  In the afternoon the wind blew even stronger and rain-showers swept across the bare, flat lands of Fife. The Championship Committee had decided to close the Old Course at two o’clock, so that the greenkeepers could cut new holes and put the finishing touches to the greens and bunkers without interruption from players. Few of the pros, however, would have gone out in such difficult conditions in any case, for wind and rain tend to play havoc with the rhythm and the grooved swing which are so essential to good golf. The weather prospects for the next day, when the first round of the Championship would be played, were anything but encouraging, and St Andrews became a place of uneasy inactivity. Even the roaring of jets from the Airfield at Leuchars was temporarily silenced.

  As far as the police investigation into the murder case was concerned, inactivity seemed also to be the keynote, though I knew well enough that in the background various scientific tests were being made and shrewd watch kept on all the people concerned.

  As the wind howled in the narrow streets and visitors scurried out of the rain into tea-shops and bars, I had the feeling that St Andrews was holding its breath, in anticipation of sensations to come: sensations arising both from the mystery of Conrad Lingstrom’s death and from the mystery of the ultimate winner of the Open.

  Like a huge, disjointed doll, Aidan collapsed into an armchair in the main lounge, a jug of coffee and a packet of cigarettes handy at his elbow. He was in a thinking mood, he said, and made it obvious that for the time being he had no use whatever for my company. It was exasperating. Now that with a clear conscience I could have left him and gone out to spend the rest of the day before dinner either watching or playing golf, there was no golf to watch and no weather to play it in. Life has a contrary quality, I thought, and mourned a certain sluggishness in my liver.