The Christmas Puzzle (Pitkirtly Mysteries Book 8)

by Cecilia Peartree

  When she paused for breath before crossing the road near the Queen of Scots, Amaryllis saw that the man and dog had stopped too. They were near the tram, and the man looked as if he was deep in conversation with a woman... Elizabeth French? She reached out and patted his arm as he glanced round for pursuers and set off again. It was ridiculous, of course. He didn’t have any idea anyone was pursuing him. Amaryllis arrived at the Christmas market out of breath and cross with herself. There was no sign of the man or the dog now. They must have dived into one of the cobbled wynds that led from here up towards the High Street. If only she had come down that way from the café instead of taking that pointless diversion past the Cultural Centre.

  She was passing the tram when someone called to her.

  ‘Amaryllis! You’re a bit early today. But that’s good, because I want to speak to you.’

  Not now, she thought crossly. But she managed to smile at Elizabeth French as the woman came round from behind the tram and walked towards her.

  ‘Has there been any news? About Jackie’s death, I mean? Have you heard how the police are getting on?’

  ‘They haven’t given much away,’ said Amaryllis reluctantly. She would have liked to give a sarcastic reply about the police failing to keep her informed, but she had found Elizabeth impervious to sarcasm up to now.

  ‘It’s very hard on her father,’ said Elizabeth.

  ‘Yes,’ said Amaryllis.

  ‘Not knowing is the worst thing.’

  In Amaryllis’s experience, knowing could sometimes be quite a lot worse, but she didn’t share this thought. ‘He knows she’s dead. That’s probably enough for now.’

  ‘I wondered if maybe somebody she met in prison could have come after her,’ said Elizabeth.

  ‘But where are they now if it’s someone from outside Pitkirtly?’ said Amaryllis. ‘There’s been no sign of anyone suspicious hanging about.’

  As she spoke, Jock McLean came round the corner and across the road, looking furtive. He beckoned to Amaryllis.

  ‘I’d better let you get on,’ said Elizabeth, clambering back on board the tram. ‘Nobody suspicious, indeed!’ she added with a chuckle, indicating Jock.

  ‘What was she laughing at?’ said Jock.

  ‘You,’ said Amaryllis.

  ‘You’re making that up. There’s nothing funny about me.’

  ‘What do you want, anyway?’

  ‘Tricia’s on the case,’ said Jock cryptically.

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Amaryllis. It was one of her least favourite questions, partly because she was afraid of turning into Christopher, but it just came out of her mouth apparently without being filtered by her brain. ‘Where is she?’

  ‘We were coming down the wynd – over there.’ He waved his arm. ‘I knew I was a bit pushed for time, so we took the shortcut. You’ve got to watch your step on those cobbles though. You could easily break a leg – and I don’t want to do that again in a hurry.’

  ‘Stop rambling. Where’s Tricia?’

  ‘We saw the man with the dog coming up from the harbour. Mr Greig. We made a quick plan.’ Jock paused, presumably to allow Amaryllis the chance to gasp in admiration, but she glared at him, tapping her foot, and he carried on. ‘I went on down the wynd, and Tricia hid in the gap where there’s a garden gate and it’s set into the fence.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Amaryllis, who had used the same tactic before. ‘I know the place.’

  ‘So I went past the man and the dog – the dog tried to jump up on me but the man just pulled him away. He’s not very gentle with that dog.’

  ‘What about Tricia?’ said Amaryllis through clenched teeth.

  ‘She was going to step out from there as he came up, and pretend to be walking back up to the High Street so that she could have a chat with him. About Niagara Falls and so on.’

  ‘What’s the so on part?’ said Amaryllis. She had a strong sense of impending doom.

  ‘Well, we were chatting and we thought if you suspected him of Jackie Whitmore’s murder we might try to find out if he knew Jackie.’

  Amaryllis rolled her eyes and began to pace up and down.

  ‘God save me from all amateurs! I suppose the next phase of the plan is for Tricia to follow him home and try and get him to let her into the house to look for evidence.’

  ‘We hadn’t got that far,’ said Jock.

  ‘You’d better hope she hasn’t done that off her own bat,’ said Amaryllis. She began to run away from Jock and the tram, and an anxious-looking Elizabeth French who must have come back out when she heard raised voices. Amaryllis added, over her shoulder, ‘Back in a minute.’

  Chapter 25 Serious Repercussions

  ‘Oh, no you don’t,’ said Jock, and went after Amaryllis.

  He heard faint sounds of protest from Elizabeth French as he dived across the road and into the wynd. It was too bad if something happened to him and Amaryllis – Mrs French would have to wear the Santa Claus outfit along with the green elf leggings or do some other madcap improvisation to fill the gap. Or maybe she could drag some unsuspecting man out of the Queen of Scots and persuade him to don the red robe of doom. He wasn’t prepared to stand by and leave it to Amaryllis to rescue Tricia from whatever danger she might even now be putting herself in.

  He raced up the wynd as fast as he could, which turned out to be rather slow, especially when he got to the steep part near the way out to the High Street. At first he could see Amaryllis ahead of him, but she gained ground and by the time he eventually emerged from the wynd near the newsagent’s, she had disappeared. Temporarily, he hoped.

  He stood there, at a loss. Mr Whitmore lumbered out of his shop and accosted him. ‘Hey, you’re pally with that woman, aren’t you?’

  ‘You mean Ms Peebles?’ said Jock.

  ‘Aye. Tell her from me that if she doesn’t do something soon, I’ll have to take the law into my own hands.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ said Jock.

  ‘That Tamara woman – it isn’t fair that she’s still walking about. She should be off the streets. Locked up while they build up the case.’

  ‘They don’t know it was her, though,’ Jock argued, still scanning the street for a sighting of Amaryllis or Tricia.

  ‘It’s as likely to be her as anybody else, isn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t think that’s how they operate,’ said Jock. Was that a spike of dark red hair up near the shop that used to be a glitzy furniture store and was now a so-called charity shop which Jemima insisted was a cover for something criminal? ‘They have to get evidence. DNA and things.’

  ‘It’s not right,’ said Mr Whitmore. ‘You tell that Tamara to watch out.’

  Jock took his eye off the spike of red hair for a moment. ‘Don’t you do anything silly now, Mr Whitmore. It’s not worth it. I expect the police’ll get round to it sooner or later.’

  ‘Better be sooner,’ said Mr Whitmore and went back into his shop.

  Jock sighed. That was all he needed.

  There was a movement by the wall of the former glitzy furniture store. Something had come out of the alley next to it. Spiky red hair, check. He turned up towards the top of the street. A neat blonde woman came out of the alley, following the red-haired one. He sighed again, and tried to make it up the hill before they vanished again.

  They were arguing when he reached them. He hadn’t ever seen Tricia arguing with anybody before, but that was the effect Amaryllis had on some people.

  ‘... shouldn’t have gone after him yourself,’ Amaryllis was saying.

  ‘I don’t see why not!’ said Tricia. ‘Even if he was up to no good, what was he going to do in broad daylight so close to the High Street?’

  ‘You’d be surprised,’ said Amaryllis. ‘And what did you go down that alley for? It’s a dead end, you know! He could have been very dangerous if you’d cornered him.’

  ‘I just thought I’d better check in case he’d gone round there,’ said Tricia meekly. ‘I couldn’t see him an
ywhere else – I looked all up and down the High Street.’

  ‘Anyway, he’s got away from us this time,’ said Amaryllis, still in a disapproving tone. ‘But we may have alerted him. He could arrange to disappear altogether overnight.’

  ‘Not everybody knows how to disappear,’ said Jock. ‘She’s right, though, Tricia. It was a bit daft to go after him on your own. But that was my fault too. I should have been the one to try and speak to him.’

  ‘That wouldn’t have done,’ said Tricia. ‘He knows me already, so he wouldn’t have been suspicious if I’d spoken to him again. I was going to bring the conversation round to Niagara Falls. I thought of telling him I had a trip to Canada planned, and asking for his advice.’

  ‘Good idea,’ Amaryllis nodded, ‘but what was your exit strategy?’

  Tricia looked baffled ‘Exit strategy? What’s that?’

  ‘How were you going to get away from him when you’d finished?’

  ‘Well, I suppose we’d just go off in different directions,’ said Tricia.

  ‘What if he didn’t let you?’ said Amaryllis.

  ‘How could he do that?’ said Tricia. ‘In broad daylight? I think you’re over-reacting, Amaryllis.’

  Halfway through the sentence, Jock tried to warn her by putting his finger to his lips, and then with a throat-cutting gesture. She took no notice, of course.

  ‘Over-reacting!’ exclaimed Amaryllis. ‘Someone who may have already committed two murders is quite capable of being arrogant enough to think he can get away with anything, in daylight or not. Once we get to this stage even I prefer to leave things to the police.’

  Jock gave her a sceptical look. She ignored it.

  He wondered whether there was any point in him even being there, if the women were going to keep ignoring him like this. Then something struck him. ‘Two murders? What’s the other one?’

  ‘This isn’t the time or place,’ Amaryllis began.

  ‘Go on, you’ve got to tell us now,’ said Tricia.

  ‘Come back into the alley and I’ll tell you.’

  The alley seemed to be disused now, although maybe there were deliveries to the charity shop as there had been when it was a furniture store. And there was a little pile of cigarette ends in front of one of the boarded up doorways.

  ‘Two of them,’ said Amaryllis, lowering her voice. ‘He killed his wife twenty years ago, or whenever it was she disappeared, and then he killed Jackie Whitmore because she was about to discover the grave he had dug.’

  ‘On Pitkirtly Island?’ said Jock, inadvertently raising his voice.

  ‘Sssh – yes. Not that many people go there, so he must have thought it was an ideal place to hide his wife’s body,’ said Amaryllis.

  ‘It was Mr Greig all along!’ said Tricia. ‘I can’t believe it.’

  ‘He’s been very busy since Jackie Whitmore’s death,’ said Amaryllis. ‘He’s been concealing evidence all over the place. He must have thanked his lucky stars that the letter mentioning his wife’s disappearance turned up at a time when he was able to steal it without any difficulty.’

  ‘Well, he isn’t exactly a sweet old man,’ said Tricia, frowning. ‘But I still can’t imagine him doing anything like that. Especially at his age. Do you really think he’d have the strength for it?’

  ‘It wouldn’t take much strength to push somebody in a hole,’ Amaryllis pointed out. ‘Or to batter them over the head once they’d fallen in.’

  ‘How awful,’ said Tricia. ‘And so you think those bones that were found are Mrs Greig’s? After all this time!’

  ‘Are you sure about all this?’ said Jock, feeling it was time he contributed something. ‘I must admit he doesn’t seem very nice, but then I don’t know him at all.’

  ‘Niagara Falls is the only missing piece of the puzzle,’ said Amaryllis.

  ‘I don’t understand what Niagara Falls has to do with it,’ said Tricia.

  Jock was glad she had asked the question so that he didn’t have to.

  ‘It’s the poncho,’ said Amaryllis. ‘You get a poncho to wear when you go out on the boat or go underneath the Falls in a tunnel. It doesn’t have to be Niagara Falls, though, I admit. You can buy them at theme parks. Or at the Zoo.’

  ‘But why?’ said Tricia.

  ‘It was the Druid,’ said Amaryllis. ‘Tamara said she had seen a Druid, perhaps with a hood up, walking out towards the Island. It seems to have given her a bit of a fright. Perhaps she thought she’d seen a ghost at first. But I just thought a long flowing poncho with a hood might look like a Druid’s outfit.’

  ‘That’s a bit daft,’ said Jock. ‘It might just as easily have been somebody with a long coat on.’

  ‘But the poncho flies out behind you as you go along, especially if it’s one of those flimsy things that are like plastic bags,’ said Amaryllis. ‘That’s what made me think of it. I suppose it could have been something else, though.’

  ‘You couldn’t really identify anybody from a poncho,’ said Jock.

  ‘But he does take his dog out that way. And there was the letter – it disappeared when he bumped into Jemima in the car park. And he could’ve stolen the police records and damaged the microfilm at the library so that nobody would know his wife had disappeared. And he was there on the spot too. That’s always suspicious.’

  ‘The letter could still have blown under a car,’ said Jock. ‘The police might have accidentally binned their records. The microfilm might have perished, if that’s what microfilms do if they’re kept somewhere warm or get wet somehow... It’s all very circumstantial.’

  ‘That’s why we’ve got to break into his house,’ said Amaryllis, ‘and look for the letter.’

  She said it as if it were an entirely reasonable thing to do. It took Jock a minute to realise that it wasn’t.

  Tricia glanced at her watch. ‘Aren’t you two meant to be dressed up in your costumes by now?’

  ‘I thought we could leave that to Elizabeth today,’ said Amaryllis. ‘We’ve got important stuff to do.’

  ‘It’s not very fair, though, is it?’ said Tricia.

  She should have known better than to appeal to Amaryllis’s sense of fairness, reflected Jock. But to his surprise Amaryllis said meekly, ‘I suppose you’re right. Come along, Jock. We can’t keep our public waiting.’

  ‘But what about breaking into the house?’ puffed Jock as she set off down the street at a brisk pace.

  ‘That’ll keep,’ said Amaryllis.

  ‘You’re not going to do it later on your own, are you?’ said Jock suspiciously.

  ‘Perhaps not,’ said Amaryllis.

  She didn’t even pretend to promise not to do it. Jock could see he would have to find reinforcements before night fell if he was going to have any chance of stopping her. Unfortunately Tricia went home soon afterwards, turning off towards her own house further down the hill before they reached the Cultural Centre. He would have to try and recruit somebody else.

  Maisie Sue and Jan were rearranging things on their tables when he and Amaryllis arrived back at the tram. Maisie Sue had brought along some sort of bunting. When Jock went up for a closer look he saw it was made of quite intricate patchwork, with different shapes and colours for each patch.

  ‘It’s crazy patchwork,’ said Maisie Sue, blushing inexplicably. ‘I designed it myself.’

  ‘Must have taken a while,’ said Jock, unable to think of any suitable comment that didn’t involve a play on the word crazy.

  ‘Only about ten hours in all,’ said Maisie Sue.

  Ten hours? That was five sessions at the Queen of Scots – well, maybe four – but only one and a bit stints of being Santa Claus. Maybe he should take up a craft, but it would have to be a masculine one. Maybe he could whittle away at small carved objects or do a bit of welding in his spare time.

  ‘Come along, Mr McLean,’ said Elizabeth. ‘The first batch of children will be arriving in five minutes. We don’t want them to see Santa without his beard, now do we?’


  Jock would have been quite happy not to wear the long white beard. It tickled his nose and the elastic was too tight round his ears. He had noticed a funny smell on it sometimes too. Sort of lemony. A bit like Elizabeth’s perfume, come to think of it.

  Amaryllis came down the stairs in her elf suit.

  ‘Has your family always lived in Pitkirtly?’ she asked Elizabeth suddenly.

  ‘More or less,’ said Elizabeth, still busy with Jock’s beard. ‘Why?’

  ‘Just wondered,’ said Amaryllis. ‘Do you have any relatives overseas? In Canada? The States?’

  ‘Well, I do have a cousin in Canada,’ said Elizabeth, sounding wary. As well she might, Jock thought. When Amaryllis started asking random questions, there was often something sinister behind them. But what on earth had the innocuous Mrs French done to attract an interrogation? He shook his head in disbelief.

  ‘Do you think you could stay still for another tiny moment, Mr McLean?’ said Elizabeth, still trying to get the beard at the proper angle.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. He glared at Amaryllis. He hoped she would interpret this as a signal to back off. It seemed to work. She jumped down off the tram and went towards the ice.

  He looked out for one of his friends during the afternoon and evening. Maybe he could get Dave and Jemima to accompany Amaryllis on her house-breaking expedition. Well, Dave anyway. Surely he and Dave together could cope with anything the man with the wee white dog could throw at them. Or Christopher. Hmm. At least if he went along, there might be a certain amount of safety in numbers.

  ‘Evening,’ said Giancarlo suddenly. He was leaning against the side of the tram, but Jock hadn’t seen or heard him approach.

  ‘Evening,’ said Jock from his position in the tram vestibule where the conductor might have stood in times past.

  ‘Giancarlo!’ said Amaryllis from just behind him, where she was rummaging in the sack, presumably to make sure there were still plenty of presents left in it.

  ‘Hey, Amaryllis!’

  ‘No lasagne tonight?’ said Amaryllis hopefully, coming out from behind Jock’s chair to talk to Giancarlo.

  ‘It’s run out,’ said Giancarlo, giving her one of those smiles of his that shouldn’t be allowed in a civilised society, in Jock’s opinion. ‘I’ll try and get you some tomorrow.’