Murder on the Moor

by C. S. Challinor

  “He has a lot on his mind. Why is Shona so interested in Alistair?”

  Estelle stared at him, dumbstruck. “Well, it’s obvious. She has designs on him for her daughter. If she could marry Flora off to a wealthy man, the hotel would be secure. It’s in trouble.” She leaned farther across the table. “Who else’s shoes did you find coal dust on? I didn’t buy for one minute that you had hidden a woolly lamb in the coal shed. You have more sense. So, tell me. What were you really doing out there?”

  Rex smiled wolfishly at her. “Now, Estelle, you don’t really expect me to divulge any more sensitive information to you, do you?”

  Estelle straightened in her chair and sighed in defeat. “I suppose not. I’ve been a complete idiot, suspecting you in the first place and then blabbing to Shona.”

  “No real harm done,” Rex conceded. “But now Helen will expect a diamond ring.” He put a finger to his lips.

  Mrs. Farquharson gasped. “A ring?”

  He shot her a warning look.

  She nodded solemnly. “Cross my heart twice and hope to die if I tell this time.”

  You didn’t die last time you made that promise and broke it, Rex thought. “Who’s still in the house?” he asked.

  “That journalist. Bertie and the Allerdice boy are outside somewhere.”

  “I’ll speak to Rob Roy next.” Rex thanked Mrs. Farquharson and waited for his next interviewee. He hoped Donnie would return soon, since he could not reasonably detain the Allerdices any longer. On the other hand, there was no sign of the tow truck and, short of taking the three-wheeler, which could not possibly transport the whole family and their guest up the hill, there was no way out. Only Rob Roy and Donnie had worn footwear suitable for a long walk back to the hotel across muddy hills and water-logged glens.

  Beardsley’s owlish face peered through the opening in the door. “Heard you wanted a chat.”

  Rex gestured toward the chair. “Just an informal Q & A so I can help get the police up to speed when they arrive. They’re tied up with the latest child abduction on Rannoch Moor for now.”

  “Aye, it’s still monopolizing the news.”

  “Not the sort of story you’d want to cover, I suppose?”

  “Och, I prefer to stick to nature subjects. The editor at the Inverness News-Press is really interested in my article on Lizzie. It’s a huge regional paper and would be a stepping stone to the nationals. I just need one or two good photographs.”

  “Shona said you had a sighting yesterday.”

  “Aye, I saw Lizzie all right, but she wouldna surface. These creatures have a sixth sense. That’s why it’s usually fishermen who catch a glimpse of them. They’ll be sitting quietly in their boats with their lines baited when suddenly the sea monster appears out of the blue. If I could prove the existence of Cousin Bessie in Loch Lown, it would make headline news.”

  “I assure you, nothing like that exists here.”

  “But you said you hadn’t plumbed the depths. Some of the lochs are hundreds and hundreds of feet deep.”

  “If I do spot her, Rob Roy, I’ll let you know. In the meantime, this is private property and I don’t want any nosy thrill-seekers trespassing on my land.”

  “Understood.”

  “Of course, Loch Lochy is a different matter. Mr. and Mrs. Allerdice would welcome the publicity. How long do you intend on staying there?”

  “I’m not sure exactly, but I’m that close to getting a photo.” The journalist indicated about an inch between his thumb and forefinger. “Just one good shot and I’ll have it wrapped up.”

  “Have you ever visited Loch Lochy before?” Rex asked.

  “Never. My interest in plesiosaurs is fairly recent. Too much has been done on the Loch Ness Monster.”

  “Aye, it’s been going on a long time. I’m surprised Nessie is still alive.”

  “They live as long as elephants.”

  “Is that so?” Rex scooted his chair back from the table and crossed his legs. “Might there be another reason you wish to prolong your stay at the hotel?”

  Rob Roy regarded him darkly behind his clear lenses.

  “Flora?” Rex suggested with an innocent smile. “Are ye not just a wee bit sweet on the lass?”

  The journalist relaxed in his chair. “Oh, I see. I thought maybe you were under the impression I was freeloading off the Allerdices and, well, I resented the, ah, implication.”

  “Och, noo,” Rex emphatically replied. “They are indebted to your interest in their loch.”

  Beardsley smiled tightly. Rex could tell the journalist was not sure if he was being sarcastic or not. He couldn’t see what was going on with Beardsley’s hands behind the table, but guessed the fingers were wriggling with impatience.

  “And it is such a pretty spot. Where did you say you were from again?”

  “Brora, originally.”

  “That’s north of Inverness, isn’t it?”

  “Look,” Rob Roy cut in. “I promised Flora I’d go after Donnie. He’s always wandering off somewhere and causing her to fret.”

  “Aye, of course. Thank you for your time. I’d like to speak to the lad as well.”

  After the journalist left, Rex went to find Helen and located her upstairs putting clean towels in the guest bathroom.

  “I suppose we might as well use this bathroom,” she said.

  “Might as well,” Rex agreed. “I should have left it in the state I found it so the police could take a look, but I didn’t know then that Moira was missing, and the water was seeping through to the library ceiling.” That would have been around the time Moira drowned in the bath. “So much for preservation of the scene and non-contamination of evidence,” he added ruefully.

  “It’s not as if you found any blood or anything,” Helen consoled him.

  “There’s some chipped paint on the window ledge, but that could be from when I crawled through. I may have wiped footprints other than mine off the floor as well. Has Cuthbert returned yet?”

  “No, but Estelle doesn’t seem too concerned. She’s taking a nap in her room. The Allerdice family minus Donnie is playing cards in the living room. I made them some cocoa and banked up the fire. Alistair is in the library watching the news.”

  “I shall take a walk around the property, see if I can’t find Cuthbert and the boy. I’d like to have a word with each of them.”

  “Don’t go far,” Helen begged. “I don’t know which of the guests murdered Moira.”

  “You’re safe enough. Just don’t go near Alistair.”

  Helen jumped at his words. “What do you mean, Rex? Surely—”

  “Just stay in public view, lass, and you’ll be fine.”

  Rex headed out of doors, planning to find somewhere out of earshot of the guests and away from prying eyes. While skirting the gorse-decked loch, he noticed what looked like a jellyfish. On closer inspection, he found it to be a plastic shower cap, such as Moira had been accustomed to wear in the bath. Grabbing a twig, he dragged it out of the cold gray water and wrapped it in a clean handkerchief.

  Hoping against hope that her phone had enough charge left in the battery, he continued up the hill where he might get a good signal. Sheltered from the wind behind a stand of conifer, he called his legal contact in London whose services he had used before.

  “Thaddeus, sorry to call you on the weekend,” he said.

  “Mr. Graves, sir, I’m delighted to hear from you. How are you?”

  “Just fine, but I’m up at my Highland retreat without a laptop or charger for the mobile and I don’t know how long it will hold out.”

  “Do you have a land line, sir?”

  “It’s been cut.”

  “Oh, I see. Well, you had better just tell me what you need and where I can reach you.”

  Rex gave him the details of the drowning at Loch Lochy two summers ago and the names of the people involved. He added those of his guests he knew less well. “See what you can come up with,” he instructed the young law clerk. “
And dig deep into these peoples’ backgrounds.”

  A clerk for one of Rex’s ex-colleagues at the prestigious London firm of Browne, Quiggley & Squire, Thaddeus was an excellent researcher with highly placed connections. He was also discreet and therefore a perfect ally in his private cases. Rex gave him the numbers for both Moira’s and Shona’s phones and stressed the urgency of the situation before terminating the call.

  Consulting the card Alistair had given him, he punched in the numbers for the coroner in the hope she had already had a chance to examine Moira’s body.

  “Dr. Macleod speaking,” answered an older woman’s voice, brisk but kindly, with only a hint of Scottish.

  “Rex Graves, QC. I’m calling aboot the victim pulled from the loch at Gleaneagle Lodge. My colleague Alistair Frazer supplied the information to the medics.”

  “Are you a relation of Moira Wilcox?”

  “No, just a good friend. She was staying at my house.” He gave Sheila Macleod the whereabouts of Moira’s father in Glasgow so the police could inform him of her death. “I wonder if you might let me have a few details if you’ve had time to look at the body.”

  “I have, and I can tell you I’ve examined several drownings in lochs. In fact, I published a medical article on the subject last year. In a smaller, slightly brackish lake like Loch Lown, you might find some effects of hypertonicity in the victim’s blood and lungs, indicative of salt concentration. Not so in this case, and no aspiration or ingestion of any vegetation or other particulate matter, although I found aquatic debris in the victim’s hair. I would therefore be inclined to concur with the theory provided by Mr. Frazer that this drowning took place in the bathtub.”

  Adjusting the phone to his ear, Rex perched on a damp log, green and springy with clinging moss. “What else did you find, doctor?” he asked with all the reverence he could infuse in his voice.

  “Hip fracture consistent with a heavy fall. The bloodless scratches on her hand also occurred postmortem. The blood clots quickly once the heart shuts down, as I’m sure you’re aware.”

  “So following my assumption, she was dead before she was pushed out the window?”

  “Before she sustained her injuries, yes. A bruise inflicted post mortem, as on Moira’s hip, will contain the normal count of white blood cells and no more. This is because extra white blood cells only rush to the site of an injury to start the healing process while the body is still living.”

  “Any other forensic clues?”

  “I was not able to lift any prints, I’m afraid. Nor much else. I would guess—and this won’t go into my report because it is only a guess—that if the victim was murdered, someone pushed her head under the water. Not much force would have been required if she panicked and slipped.”

  “Right,” Rex concurred. “There was a lot of water on the floor, but that could have been from sudden displacement of the water when she went under, rather than a struggle. I didn’t see any marks around her throat or anything. No one heard anything either.”

  “I have just begun to catalogue the injuries,” the doctor informed him. “But the ones I mentioned are the most obvious. The trauma to her right hip might just conceivably have been caused by striking a rock when she was released into the loch, but it’s rather uniform, so I think a flat surface where she made contact is more likely. So far, I have noted an elevated level of alcohol in her system, which may have slowed her reactions when confronted by an alleged assailant. That’s all I have for the time being.”

  “I’m most grateful to you, doctor.”

  After Rex ended the call, he thoughtfully tapped the phone against his chin. Dr. Macleod had not come up with any great surprises, but it was reassuring to have his theories substantiated by an expert. He could now proceed with more confidence.

  Meeting Helen at the front door, where she was anxiously waiting, he asked, “Do you fancy a walk? I need to round up Cuthbert and Donnie.”

  “I thought that’s where you went.”

  “I had other business to attend to first.”

  “I’ll just get my anorak.” She disappeared back inside and re-emerged dressed for the elements. “I was getting worried.”

  He pulled her away from the house. “I found Moira’s mobile—”

  “Where?” Helen demanded.

  “Hidden in the coal shed. But don’t let on.”

  At that moment a window squeaked open above them. “Are you going out to look for Bertie?” Estelle blared out from the guest bedroom.

  “Aye. If he returns in our absence, tell him to stay put. Same goes for Donnie.”

  “I could come with you. I’ll be ready in a jiffy.”

  “We won’t be long,” Rex answered, moving on his way. The window slammed behind him. “She doesn’t sound pleased we’re going without her.”

  “I couldn’t bear it if she came along. She’s so bossy! Why are we going this way?” Helen asked, hurrying after him.

  “It’s most likely Cuthbert went back to the spot where Donnie saw the hummel yesterday, over in Deer Glen.”

  A quarter of a mile uphill, they crossed a wooden footbridge spanning a burn and followed upstream as it pursued its ghostly trickle past lonely mountain ash and grassy fringes rampant with harebell.

  “I’m still a bit stumped,” Rex admitted, leading the way along the bank. “I think I’ve narrowed down who might have killed Moira. I just don’t know for sure.”

  “Perhaps I could help.”

  “Who do you think murdered Moira?” he asked.

  “Hamish Allerdice.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “Because he’s a lewd scumbag who can’t keep his hands to himself!”

  “The same could be said of Cuthbert Farquharson for pinching your bottom, but go on.”

  “Well, I think Hamish came on to Moira and things got a bit out of hand. He might have gone back to shut her up before she said anything to his wife.”

  “Plausible theory. Who else?”

  “It’s Hamish,” Helen insisted, beginning to sound winded from the exertion of climbing. “I can’t imagine Alistair killing anyone, and Cuthbert is inept.”

  “The actual murder didn’t take a whole lot of brains.”

  Helen turned to face him. “Then why haven’t you outed the suspect yet? All you’d have to do is tell the person you knew exactly how they did it and wring a confession out of them.”

  “The problem is,” Rex said, taking this opportunity for a break and filling his pipe, “the murder could have been executed by any one of them, except for perhaps one thing—maybe two. And the question of motive.”

  “What two things?”

  Rex tamped down the Clan tobacco with his thumb. “First, I need you to help me walk through this, in case I missed something.”

  “Unlikely—but okay …”

  “I think we can eliminate Alistair from our list of suspects.”

  “But you said to keep away from him.”

  “Aye, and I still want you to do that. But he’s the only guest who, to my knowledge, has been here before.”

  “Wouldn’t that give him an advantage?”

  Rex sucked on his pipe stem and blew out a ring of smoke. “The islet,” he said at length.

  “What about it?”

  “The person who disposed of Moira’s body can’t have known about the islet when they dumped her in the middle of the loch. Too much risk of the body getting washed up, which is what happened. But with all the rain, the murderer wouldn’t have seen it.”

  “I suppose,” Helen conceded. “However, the Farquharsons came just before the rain started, so they might have seen the island, even though it is quite a way off. That’s if they were paying attention. All Cuthbert could think about was going after deer. And Estelle was talking nineteen to the dozen and wouldn’t have noticed if the monster of Loch Lown had done an impersonation of Free Willy right in front of her.”

  Rex chuckled at the vision of the killer whale, transformed into Bessie, vau
lting the barricade to freedom. “Estelle is strong enough to have hoisted Moira’s body through the bathroom window,” he pointed out. “And Flora described someone fitting her description appearing on the stairs with a weapon. She could have used it to threaten Moira.”

  “I’ve got it!” Helen cried out in excitement. “Estelle knocked at the bathroom door, using some pretext to get Moira out of the bath and then forced her back into it and drowned her.”

  “Continue.”

  “Then she pushed Moira’s body out the window and got herself down somehow … Perhaps the ladder was already in place. All she had to do then was drag the body into the boat and row it out onto the lake.”

  “No drag marks,” Rex pointed out. “A dead body would have made deep tracks in the lawn, which even the rain couldn’t wash away.”

  “She used a twig or something to get rid of them.”

  “No time. Someone might have noticed her disappearance.”

  “Well, I don’t really think it was her, anyway. I can’t think of a reason for Estelle to kill Moira, except that her chump of a husband was playing the gallant knight to the poor damsel in distress. And Flora and Shona don’t have the gumption. So other than Hamish, we’re left with that oddball Rob Roy, whose only interest is loch monsters, and Donnie. But he’s as slow-witted as Cuthbert is inept. Plus he roams the glens. He might have known about the island in the loch.”

  “What aboot a complete stranger to these parts?”

  “Who? Oh, you mean the man at the Gleneagle Arms wearing something on his head? The barman said he entered the pub at nine o’clock last night and asked for directions to the lodge.”

  “That was probably Moira’s cab driver. She told me they got lost. That might explain why the man was in a bad mood. He’d driven all the way from Edinburgh. It was dark and raining, and he had no doubt been given the runaround by the xenophobic villagers. Still, the fact that he was wearing something unspecified on his head, perhaps to protect him from the rain, is curious …”

  They resumed their walk. The path, cutting through Scots pine, branched off to the left and then rose steadily to give a bird’s-eye view of Loch Lown, looking remote and secretive as it pointed its long pale finger of water. Beyond, on the northern slopes, sheep grazed in upland pastures dotted with scree and cairns of gray rock. Farther away, the moors rose in a brown and green camouflage pattern, while in the far distance soared misty-topped mountains clad in native Caledonian pine and stippled with waterfalls.