Only then had he felt ready to interview Hazel Cavendish. He summoned Munro, who appeared looking even more lugubrious than he had earlier in the day. Eeyore the donkey, thought Ross, that’s who Munro reminded him of—although Munro’s nature was surprisingly optimistic considering his countenance.
“Two things, sir,” said Munro as they clattered down the stairs. “We found Alison Grant’s address here in Aviemore, traced her phone and electricity services. A constable went round, but there was no one at home. He’ll try again in a bit.”
“Why don’t you go, Sergeant?” suggested Ross. “I’d rather trust your judgment on this one. What else?”
“John Innes’s gun, sir. It’s not licensed. His other two shotguns are, but not the little Purdy.”
Ross was not surprised. “Damn family guns,” he muttered. “Just because there’s no record of purchase, people can’t be bothered. Well, I’ll throw the book at him on this one.” They had reached the interview room. He stopped and automatically straightened his tie. “Now, let’s see how our wee birdie’s getting on.”
Hazel Cavendish stood up abruptly at their entrance, sloshing coffee over the table, then looked round wildly for something to mop it up.
“Sergeant, see if you can grab a kitchen roll,” said Ross. When Munro had gone, he studied the woman before him. Time and isolation had taken their toll, he noticed. The flesh seemed to have molded itself more tightly to the bones of her face, leaving the planes and hollows more pronounced. And he saw that her hands were trembling, although she clasped them together to hide it. The remains of her sandwich lay in the open plastic box, shredded to bits. Ross couldn’t tell that she had actually eaten any of it.
He shook his head disapprovingly. “Ye need to eat, lassie, keep up your strength.”
“What I need,” she countered, facing him across the table, “is to go home and see my daughter.”
“Weel, the sooner you answer our questions satisfactorily, the sooner ye can go—although you may be obliged to stay in Scotland for a few more days.” To his delight, it did not seem to have occurred to her that she could refuse to talk to him until she had a lawyer’s counsel, and as he had not actually charged her, he was not obliged to advise her of her rights.
Munro came back, his arrival silencing her protests for the moment. While Munro swabbed the table, Ross turned on the recorder, stated the date and time, and identified the participants.
“Can we get ye some more coffee, Mrs. Cavendish?” he asked as he sat down. “Munro can fetch it from the machine—”
“No, please, I don’t want anything, except to go home. I don’t understand why you’ve brought me here.”
“Ach, weel, why don’t we start at the beginning, then. Tell me about your relationship with the deceased, Donald Brodie.”
She twisted her hands together in her lap but met his gaze directly. “We were close once, years ago, before I was married. But I hadn’t seen him in years.”
“Then how do you explain your row with him after Alison Grant came calling at the B&B last night?”
Her hands tightened, and he heard the small catch of breath in her throat. “You’re mistaken, Chief Inspector. We didn’t argue.”
“Is that so?” He smiled at her. “Weel, I have it otherwise from a number of sources. How do you explain that, Mrs. Cavendish?”
“I—I don’t know.”
“You and Mr. Brodie went out together after dinner, and you were heard shouting. Now, I would call that a row, myself.”
“I—I was worried about the child. She had a child with her when she came to see him.”
“Alison Grant?”
Hazel nodded. “I was afraid he’d made promises to the woman—to Alison—that would hurt the child.”
“A very noble sentiment, Mrs. Cavendish. And it was that worry drove you to have sex in the woods with Mr. Brodie?” Ross thought it worth the gamble that the DNA test on the semen sample found in the woods would give him a positive identification. He knew Hazel Cavendish had been there from the fiber match, and it seemed highly unlikely that she’d been meeting someone else.
Her eyes had widened. “Oh, God,” she whispered, covering her face with her hands.
“It will go easier for ye, lass, if you’ll just tell us the truth,” encouraged Ross at his most sympathetic.
“It wasn’t like that—what you said.” She dropped her hands, gripping the table edge as if it might anchor her. “He’d asked me to come. Donald. He wanted me to leave my husband. It wasn’t until I saw that woman and her child that it really hit me what damage we were contemplating. Not just my husband, my daughter, but this woman who cared about him, and her child, and then I saw that it would ripple outwards from there.
“We did argue. I was angry with him, but even angrier with myself. I told him it was never going to work out between us. What we did then…in the woods…I suppose it was a good-bye.”
“And this morning?”
“I couldn’t face seeing him again. I thought I’d just pack and leave, but there was no train. I decided I had to face up to things, so I came back. And that was when…Gemma told me…” She lifted a hand to her mouth, pressing her fingers against quivering lips.
“Why didn’t you tell us this from the start?”
“I was so ashamed. And I suppose I was hoping it wouldn’t have to come out, that my husband wouldn’t have to know.”
That was it, thought Ross, feeling a firecracker fizz of inspiration. That was the reason that made the pieces fit. Of course she hadn’t wanted her husband to find out, not if she’d made up her mind to go back to him.
“That’s all very plausible, Mrs. Cavendish,” he said. “But I think that’s not quite how it happened. I think you met Mr. Brodie again this morning, and that when you told him you meant to go back to your husband, he threatened to expose you. Then you found some excuse to take the gun—no, wait.” Ross frowned, working out an even better scenario. “I think you told him last night, and he threatened you then. Was that why you argued? And the sex, you were placating him. Did you invite him to meet you this morning, a romantic rendezvous? He would never have thought you meant to harm him—”
“No!” Hazel pushed away from the table and stood. “I would never have hurt Donald! How could you even think—”
“Sit ye down, Mrs. Cavendish,” soothed Ross. Having failed to shock her into a confession, he knew he had little hard evidence to support his theory. “If you’ll—”
There was a knock at the interview room door. Munro got up, and as he went out, Ross glimpsed one of the officers assigned to the Aviemore detail.
A moment later, Munro looked in again and said, “Sir, a word with ye…”
Ross switched off the tape recorder and joined him in the corridor.
“You’d better hear what P. C. Clarke has to say,” Munro told him quietly, “before you go any further.”
The constable nodded at him. “Sir. Someone from the car hire office in the railway station recalls seeing a woman matching Mrs. Cavendish’s description early this morning. He remembered because it was odd to see someone turn up, bags and all, two hours before the scheduled train. He said she sat in the waiting area for half an hour, then went out again.”
“Did he remember the time?” asked Ross, his heart sinking.
“Getting on for six o’clock, sir. He had come in to arrange an early car pickup.”
“All right,” Ross growled. “Get a statement. Then have him make a definite identification.” He turned away, swearing under his breath. That would make it just about the time Inspector James had reported hearing a gunshot, and he bloody well couldn’t make a case on the premise that Hazel Cavendish had been in two places at the same time.
Gemma left Benvulin when the team arrived to search the offices. With a last glance back at the house, set like a jewel above the river, and the distinctive twin pagodas of the distillery, she got into the BMW and eased the car into the drive. When she reached the road, she
hesitated a moment, then turned left, away from Innesfree.
Heather had said she’d bring Pascal back to the B&B to collect his car later on, so Gemma had no reason to hurry. Nor was she sure the forensics team at the B&B would have finished their search of the room she shared with Hazel, and the thought of being on the premises while someone went through her belongings made her skin crawl.
But there was more to her reluctance than that, she realized—she just wasn’t ready to face the others, to answer their questions about Hazel, to see those she had considered friends as suspects.
She drove on, absently watching the light and shadow play across the hills, through the hamlet of Nethy Bridge, and then across the Spey and into the planned Victorian town of Grantown-on-Spey. Finding a spot in the car park, she carefully locked the BMW and walked down to the High Street.
Most of the shops were closed, it being a Sunday afternoon, but the newsagents and pubs and cafés seemed to be doing a brisk business. There were people walking purposefully along the pavements, which suited Gemma—she felt the need to be near people doing ordinary things, but she didn’t want to speak to anyone. “Wallpaper,” Kincaid would say accusingly to her when she got into such a mood. “You want human wallpaper.” Imagining the sound of his voice made her throat tighten with longing, and she felt a wash of relief as she thought of his arrival tomorrow.
Damn her pride—she must have sounded an ungrateful cow on the phone earlier. Not that she had exactly protested, but he must have heard the reluctance in her voice. How could she have even considered letting her desire to do it all herself—and to get the better of Chief Inspector Ross—get in the way of anything that might help Hazel?
She walked on, trying to put her mind into neutral, admiring the tidy symmetry of Grantown’s High Street, which opened out into a large green at the top end. The town was ringed by the hills that rose above it on the north and west, and by the heavily wooded valley of the Spey on the southeast. It gave the place a secure feel, and as lights began to glow in the windows of the large houses facing the square, she found herself enchanted.
The imposing edifice of the Grant Arms Hotel anchored the square. Gemma was just crossing the greensward to have a better look when the sky darkened and a squall of wind and stinging rain blew up out of nowhere.
Sprinting for the hotel entrance, she darted inside and stood in the lobby, panting and shaking the water from her hair like a drenched dog.
Although she had seen tour coaches parked outside, the hotel appeared comfortably elegant. The woman from the reception desk crossed the lobby, and in a friendly, Highland voice she asked Gemma if there was anything she needed.
“A cup of coffee would be grand,” admitted Gemma, still shivering slightly from her unexpected soaking. “The rain caught me by surprise.”
“That’s the Highlands for you,” the young woman said with a smile. “We pride ourselves on our unpredictability. The restaurant’s closed until dinner, but I’ll just fetch you a cup from the kitchen, if you don’t mind having it in here.”
Having accepted gladly, Gemma wandered about the lobby as she waited, discovering a small plaque detailing the history of the hotel. When the receptionist returned with her coffee, Gemma said, “I see you had Queen Victoria as a guest.”
“In 1860.” The young woman grinned. “That was the greatest moment in Grantown history, if you can believe it. Still,” she added a bit wistfully, “it must have been grand in those days—all the balls and dinner dances. And the clothes must have been lovely.”
“And bloody uncomfortable,” offered Gemma, and they both laughed. “Can you imagine corsets?”
When she’d finished her coffee, the rain had stopped. She went out again onto the green and stood for a moment, looking up at the hotel in the gathering dusk, imagining the square filled with carriages and traps and the chatter of excited voices.
With a sigh of regret, she turned away. She had no business indulging in a fantasy of a happier time. Returning to the car, she phoned the police station in Aviemore and inquired about Hazel. There was a different—and much less accommodating—sergeant on duty, who told her only that he believed Mrs. Cavendish was still with Chief Inspector Ross.
Gemma then rang the bed-and-breakfast and spoke to Louise.
“You’re coming back for supper?” Louise said, an appeal in her voice. “John’s put together a goat cheese tart. He thought it would suit Hazel…he was hoping…”
“Don’t count on me,” Gemma told her evasively. “I’ve a few more things to do, and I wouldn’t want to hold you up.” The idea of sitting in the Inneses’ dining room, facing two empty chairs, suddenly struck her as an impossible feat.
But the truth, she realized as she drove slowly out of Grantown, was that she had nothing to do, and her frustration at her lack of control was interfering with her ability to think clearly. She somehow had to let it go, to find a different perspective. She’d stop somewhere, have a pub meal, think things through.
Once on the main road, she passed up the turning for Nethy Bridge and took the next, the route to the village of Boat of Garten. The receptionist had recommended the bar meals in the Boat Hotel there. She found the place easily enough, but as she climbed out of the car, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the car window. For the first time that day, it occurred to her that she was unwashed, uncombed, and still wearing the clothes she had thrown on before six that morning. Oh, well, she thought, shrugging as she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, she would just have to do.
Entering the bar, Gemma gave her order and took a table by the window. Over her solitary meal of cock-aleekie soup, she tried to sort out the events of the day in her mind. So accustomed was she to having Kincaid as a sounding board that she felt handicapped without his presence.
But it was more than that, she admitted to herself as she finished her half pint of cider and walked back out to the car park. It wasn’t her lack of authority in the investigation that had her stumbling round so ineffectually, nor was it the absence of her usual intellectual give-and-take with Duncan. It was her doubts about Hazel that were keeping her from approaching the case in a logical way.
She thought of all the times Hazel had been there for her, a calm center when she’d struggled with crises at work and at home, an unwavering support through the loss of her baby. Hazel might be more complex, and less perfect, than Gemma had realized, but she was still her friend, and Gemma owed her the same support. She would put away her doubts, and start from there.
Looking up, she saw that the long dusk was fading into night, and the last remnants of clouds had been swept away by the wind. Lights had begun to wink on in the comfortable houses lining the village street. Below the hotel, the locomotive belonging to the steam railway that went from Aviemore to Boat of Garten sat on the track like a great black slumbering beast, and beyond the little railway station, the ever-present River Spey flowed silently, cold and deep.
Chiding herself for her fancies, Gemma was nonetheless glad to shut herself in the close warmth of the car. When her mobile phone rang, she jumped as if she’d been bitten, and her heart gave an irrational flutter of fear.
But it was Kincaid’s voice she heard when she answered, and a smile of pleasure lit her face.
“Any news, love?” he asked.
Sobering quickly, she said, “No. Hazel’s still at Aviemore Police Station. But I can’t believe they’ll keep her much longer, unless Ross actually means to charge her.”
“What about getting a solicitor?”
She told him about her conversation with Heather Urquhart. “Heather said she’d tell Mr. Glover as soon as he rings in the morning.”
“Can you trust her to do it?”
“Yes,” answered Gemma, rather to her surprise. “I think so.”
“Good. I’ll be getting the seven o’clock train. Can you pick me up at Aviemore at half-past two tomorrow afternoon?”
“What about Tim? Did you see him? Is he coming with you?
Holly could stay—”
“Gemma, I did see him,” Kincaid said flatly. “But he’s not coming.”
“Not coming? But—”
“He knows about Hazel and Donald. I didn’t ask him how he found out. He says he won’t help her. He doesn’t want to see her at all.”
There was silence on the line as Gemma tried to come to grips with this latest disaster.
“You’ll have to tell Hazel,” Kincaid said, breaking into her thoughts. “And, Gemma, I’m not at all sure Tim’s telling the truth about where he was over the weekend.”
Her stomach knotted as the implication sunk in. “No. I can’t believe Tim had anything to do with this. Not Tim—”
“He’s got motive. He’s got no witnesses to his movements. He’s obviously distraught. And his car’s muddy. It didn’t rain in Hampshire.”
“It did here,” Gemma said slowly, unwillingly. “But even if Tim drove to Scotland—and that’s a long shot—how could he have walked into the B&B in the middle of the night and taken John Innes’s gun?”
“They haven’t proven that Brodie was shot with that gun.”
“No,” mused Gemma. “But I can’t believe that John Innes’s small-bore shotgun would mysteriously disappear at the same time Donald was killed with a different gun. That’s stretching coincidence a bit too far. And how would Tim have known who Donald was?”
“Tim left London on Friday. He could have been watching her the entire weekend.”
Gemma thought of the scene between Donald and Hazel she had witnessed by the river on Saturday morning, and of the nest she’d discovered in the woods. She felt cold.
“Gemma, you’ll have to tell your Scottish detective. It will be up to him to follow through.”
“But this is Tim! How can I give Hazel’s husband to the police as a suspect?” She was near shouting.
“How can you do otherwise, when Hazel herself is a suspect? Don’t kill the messenger, love,” he added, sounding as weary and discouraged as she felt. “I’m only telling you what you already know. And if you’re lucky, if your chief inspector is doing his job properly, he might beat you to it.” Kincaid paused a moment. “Gemma, about Tim…Hazel may not thank me for interfering, but after I left the house tonight, I rang Tim’s parents and asked them to go back. Tim’s mother seems a sensible woman. She said they’d take Holly home with them.”
Now May You Weep Page 19
