Now May You Weep

by Deborah Crombie

  Where did Rab get the money to pay the men’s wages and the outstanding accounts? The records show only a paltry income these last months, much less than is needed to pay the distillery’s expenses.

  The financial situation is much worse than I had feared—I should never have trusted Rab to tell me the truth.

  I dare not think that my brother would have accepted money from Olivia Urquhart, and yet I can see no other explanation for our sudden solvency. To what lengths would he go to stave off disaster?

  And, I must ask myself, now that I have seen the ruin almost upon us, would I not have been tempted to do the same myself?

  Benvulin, 21 November

  The snow began yesterday at teatime. It came across the river in a white, billowing curtain, and in no time we could see no farther than a few feet from the door. I can only assume that Rab has stayed overnight with his acquaintances in Tomintoul. If the men were caught out on the moors, they will have had a difficult time of it.

  Benvulin, 26 November

  It snowed without stopping for twenty-four hours. If we had such weather here, in the valley of the Spey, I shudder to think of the conditions in the hills.

  I have entertained the children as best I could, but they are old enough to miss their father’s presence, and to worry.

  Yesterday, the thaw had progressed enough that I thought it safe to send one of the grooms out on horseback, but he returned some hours later, sodden and exhausted. Drifts still block the road to Tomintoul. I can only assume that Rab is enjoying the extended hospitality of friends.

  Benvulin, 28 November

  A spell of clear, bright weather has rendered the roads passable, although the moors are still buried in snow. Still no word has come from Rab. The groom I sent to Tomintoul found no evidence of his arrival. Surely, Rab had reached Tomintoul before the storm broke, unless an accident befell him on the way. I begin to fear the worst.

  Benvulin, 5 December

  Having been told that a shopkeeper reported seeing Rab pass through Tomintoul, I began to wonder if he had ridden to Carnmore to see Livvy Urquhart. Yesterday, I myself drove to Carnmore in the gig, which I was forced to abandon in Chapeltown. The track leading to the distillery was mired in mud and slush, barely passable on foot. I do think the Braes of Glenlivet are the most godforsaken place I have ever encountered.

  Livvy Urquhart professed not to have seen Rab, although she appeared much distressed by the news of his disappearance. When I confronted her with her father’s tale of the monies given to my brother, she told me her father had been mistaken, that she had withdrawn her inheritance in order to make much-needed improvements to Carnmore. Her son, Will, who was present throughout the conversation, said nothing at all.

  In the end, I had no choice but to take my leave and return to Benvulin. As I traveled, I could only imagine that my brother, set out upon an ill-advised visit to the Braes, had wandered from the road in the storm, and that the spring thaws will reveal his poor remains, now buried beneath the snow.

  Until that time, is it cruel, or kind, to keep hope alive in the children?

  Kincaid took the train from Gatwick Airport to Victoria Station. He stopped at one of the gourmet coffee stalls in the Victoria concourse, then walked the few blocks to the Yard. The blue skies he had left behind the previous morning had disappeared, leaving the city air feeling dull and sulfurous.

  They had put Tim Cavendish in one of the better interview rooms. Hazel’s husband looked as if he hadn’t slept, or bathed, since Kincaid had seen him on Sunday evening. The growth of dark stubble on his face made Kincaid think of him as he’d known him when Gemma had first moved into the Cavendishes’ garage flat.

  “Hullo, Tim,” he said, removing two coffees from the small carrier bag. Tim had always been particular about his coffee. “I thought you could use a decent cup.”

  Nodding, Tim accepted the container. “I wasn’t sure you’d come, after the way I spoke to you the other night. You’ve always been a good friend to me, Duncan; you didn’t deserve that. I thought that if I just carried on denying everything, it would go away. But it didn’t.”

  “Do you want to tell me what happened, now?” Kincaid asked, taking a seat on the opposite side of the table. “I know you drove to Scotland, to Aviemore.”

  “I haven’t much future as a criminal, obviously. It was bloody stupid leaving that receipt in the car. But then, I wasn’t thinking very clearly. I hadn’t been thinking very clearly for a long time.” Tim turned the pasteboard coffee cup in his hands but didn’t lift it.

  “Maybe you should start at the beginning,” Kincaid suggested.

  “The beginning?” Tim’s abrupt laugh held no humor. “Can you believe that I was bored with my life? Every day, I saw the same self-absorbed patients, every evening I went home to the same comfortable routine, and I saw my dreams of doing big things, memorable things, vanishing year by year.

  “I never said anything, but I was a bit less patient, a bit more quick to crush Hazel’s enthusiasms. It all seemed petty to me—a new rose for the garden, a new recipe for dinner, what book Holly liked best that day. I even had the temerity once to accuse Hazel of not living in the real world. She looked at me with such astonishment, such disappointment.

  “And then, even when I saw her with him, it didn’t occur to me that I’d brought it upon myself.”

  “You saw Hazel with Donald? In London?”

  “It was quite by chance—but then most life-changing events happen purely by chance, don’t they? I was walking down the Liverpool road at lunchtime one day when I saw Hazel go into a café. When I glanced in the window, she was sitting down at a table with him, and the expression on her face…I realized I hadn’t seen that look in years…if ever.” Tim shook his head, as if it still amazed him. “My world turned upside down. From that day forward it was all I could think about. I followed her. I watched her. I dug her mail from the rubbish bin.”

  “Did you find anything?” Kincaid asked when Tim didn’t continue.

  “No. It wasn’t until she told me she wanted to go to Scotland that I realized who he must be. Donald Brodie, her first love, the man she almost married. It wasn’t until the day she left that I found the confirmation—she’d been careless enough to leave an old photo, and his business card, under her blotter.”

  “That’s when you decided to go after her?”

  Tim turned the coffee cup in his hands again, then at last lifted it to his mouth, wincing as if the liquid pained him. “I had to see for myself. That’s all I could think as I drove. It was late on Friday evening by the time I found the B&B. I slept for a few hours in a lay-by, then I found a place to hide the car and walked to the house through the woods. It was daylight by then. I saw them together, in the meadow…after that I don’t remember much.”

  “This was Saturday?”

  Tim nodded. “I know I watched the house all that day, and as it began to get dark, I saw the gun cabinet through the open scullery door.” Tim met Kincaid’s gaze, his eyes red-rimmed. “I don’t know what possessed me. I could see them moving about, and when the kitchen was empty, I walked into the house. The gun cabinet was unlocked, and I took the first one to hand.”

  Kincaid felt cold in the pit of his stomach. He found that no amount of forewarning had really prepared him for this. Dear God, how could he charge his friend with murder?

  “I went back to my hiding place,” Tim went on, “and I watched her come out with him after dinner. I heard them arguing, and later…” He swallowed. “I thought I would shoot him. I thought perhaps I would shoot them both.

  “But when they came out of the wood, I found I was paralyzed. I’d never shot a gun. I didn’t know how to do it, or how far it would shoot. I think it was then that I began to realize the absurdity of it—that I was actually contemplating harming another human being. Then he—Donald—went into the house, and I had missed my chance.

  “Hazel stood there in the moonlight, looking after him…and then suddenly s
he dropped her face into her hands and began to sob as if her heart would break.” Tim fell silent, and it took all Kincaid’s patience not to prompt him.

  “I almost went to her,” Tim said at last. “But then how would I have explained myself? What she had done was human, and forgivable. What I had done…what I had contemplated doing…was truly terrible…inexcusable by any standard I had ever held. Can you understand that?”

  Kincaid nodded. Hardly daring to hope, he said quietly, “Tim, what did you do then?”

  Tim had sunk back in his chair, as if he had come to the end of the part of the story that mattered to him. “She went inside. I stood there with this thing in my hands, this gun, trying to figure out what to do with it. It didn’t seem right to just set it down on the ground and walk away. After a bit, I tried the scullery door. It was locked, so there was no way I could put the gun back.

  “Then I noticed the garden shed. I went inside, and put the gun on the potting bench. Even then I remember seeing the irony in it. Life and death.”

  “And then?”

  “I walked to my car and drove back to London. I stopped and slept in a lay-by for a few hours near dawn; I’m not sure where. That day was a blur. I didn’t want to go home on Sunday—I didn’t see how I was going to face Hazel the next day. There’s no going back from something like that.

  “And then, when I heard Donald Brodie had been shot, I wondered if I’d done something I couldn’t remember, if I had completely lost my reason. I went over and over things, trying to find a gap. I’ve never been so terrified. You can see why I didn’t want to talk to anyone else; it all sounds utterly mad.”

  “Tim, are you telling me that you didn’t shoot Donald Brodie?”

  “I’m only guilty of intent, and that, in my book, is bad enough.”

  “Not in the eyes of the law.” Kincaid’s mind raced. If Tim had left the gun in the garden shed, what had happened to it? Louise was the gardener, but if she’d found it, why hadn’t she said so? Unless…Shock fizzed in Kincaid’s veins. Unless it was Louise Innes who had shot Donald.

  Gemma drove south on the A9, pushing the posted speed limit. She’d left a message for Chief Inspector Ross, asking him to meet her at Benvulin. It was time for a conference, even though it meant confessing to trespassing on Ross’s turf as far as Callum MacGillivray was concerned.

  Callum had told her he’d seen Louise from a distance on Sunday morning, walking across the river meadow with a shotgun. He hadn’t thought she’d seen him, but he had begun to wonder when she’d come calling on Sunday afternoon.

  Gemma remembered Louise making an excuse to go out, shortly after the police had finished their interviews that day. And then yesterday, when Louise had been out gathering boughs, had she slipped into Callum’s cottage with Pascal’s tablets? It was Louise who did the rooms in the B&B, Louise who would naturally have seen the bottle of painkillers, Louise who could have pocketed it so easily.

  Drops of rain began to spatter against the windscreen, and Gemma slowed, swearing. Rain after a dry spell always made driving conditions particularly hazardous, and she couldn’t afford an accident. Moving over into the center lane, she resumed her musing.

  Louise, then, had had the means and the opportunity, but why would she have shot Donald Brodie? And where did Tim Cavendish come into it? Reaching for her phone, she speed dialed Kincaid, but the call went directly to voice mail. He was probably still in the air, she thought, glancing at the dashboard clock, but he should be landing soon. She hung up without leaving a message; she would talk to Ross first.

  But if Louise had used the shotgun, why had residue not shown up in the swab results? It took more than scrubbing with soap and water to remove nitrate traces. An image came back to her—Louise arranging the boughs she had cut, her hands scratched and dirty, a nail broken. She’d guessed Louise normally wore gloves when she gardened, but what if Louise had been wearing her gloves when she fired the gun, and they had protected her hands? She could have found some way to dispose of the gloves, but then she wouldn’t have wanted to call attention to their absence by getting a new pair.

  Was there any physical evidence to support Callum’s statement? Callum could be easily discredited in court, given his demonstrated grudge against Donald over Alison Grant. Without motive or forensics evidence, the case would be difficult to prove. Nor did it help to go into an interrogation blind, without some idea of the reason behind the crime.

  If anyone might understand Louise’s motives, Gemma realized as she exited the motorway, it was Hazel.

  The rain stopped, then started again, drumming against the windscreen in volleys. As Gemma turned into Benvulin’s drive, she saw a figure sprint from the house to the distillery office. The woman was recognizable even at a distance, in the rain, by the fall of long, dark hair.

  Gemma parked the car, grabbed her anorak from the backseat, and held it over her head as she ran for the office herself. The temperature had plunged in the half hour since she’d left Inverness, and a biting wind plucked at her clothes.

  She found Heather already at her desk, the phone to her ear. When Heather looked up at her entrance and covered the mouthpiece, Gemma said softly, “Hazel? Is she still in the house?”

  Heather shook her head, frowning. “No. She left a few minutes ago.”

  “Left?” Gemma repeated blankly. What could have possessed Hazel to leave without news of Tim?

  “She borrowed my car. She said she wanted to go to Carnmore. I think it was—” Heather’s attention shifted back to the phone. “Yes, I’m still holding,” she said into the mouthpiece, then covered it again as she looked back up at Gemma. “I’m sorry, Gemma. I’ve got to take this call. It’s the chairman of the board.”

  Gemma was debating whether to wait for her to finish her call or to go on to the Inneses’, when Heather added, “Oh, by the way, Louise rang a few minutes ago. She was looking for Hazel as well.”

  20

  Fair the fall of songs

  When the singer sings them.

  Still they are caroled and said—

  On wings they are carried—

  After the singer is dead

  And the maker buried.

  —ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON,

  “Bright Is the Ring of Words”

  From the Diary of Helen Brodie, Benvulin, 25 March 1900

  TODAY, BENVULIN SHIPPED the first of many casks of our best aged whisky to the Aberdeen grocers. I have labored over the winter to keep the distillery running until this contract could be brought to fruition, and now we can only hope that this sale stimulates interest from other blenders.

  None of this, however, would have been possible without the mysterious infusion of funds into our bank account. Livvy Urquhart has never admitted to the gift, and her father, when I called upon him in Grantown, avowed he must have been mistaken. So I have incurred an unacknowledged debt that I cannot repay, and if Rab’s children have an inheritance, they will owe it to the Urquharts.

  Margaret has not returned from London, even to visit the children. I will keep them here and raise them with the care I would give my own.

  The thaws came early this spring, with much rain. No amount of searching, however, among the moors and tracks, has turned up any sign of my brother. I would have been content with even a button from his coat, so that I could set my mind to rest.

  Benvulin, 15 May 1900

  As the months pass without word or sign of my dear brother’s body, the doubt has grown in my heart like a cancer. What if, I ask myself, Rab did visit Carnmore on that fateful day, and some misadventure befell him there?

  I called on Olivia Grant once again, and spoke to her like a sister. Still she denied me most forcefully, saying that Rab never came to Carnmore. But there is a change in her since the autumn, a new grimness in her countenance, a hardness to her manner. I took my leave as firmly, saying I meant to pursue the matter.

  But what, in truth, can I do? I have the word of a shopkeeper in Tomintoul who thou
ght he glimpsed my brother, cloaked and hatted, riding through the village—nothing more. What authority would give credence to such a tale told by a grieving sister?

  Do I owe the survival of everything my brother held most dear to a woman responsible for his death? Such a terrible irony seems more than I can bear. For if our life here at Benvulin has gone on as before, the light has gone from mine.

  I will not forget what we owe the Urquharts, nor will I allow those who come after me to do so.

  As Hazel drove, the last entries in Helen Brodie’s journal kept repeating in her head. As the road snaked over the tops of the moors, she glimpsed the snow markers and shuddered. Rab Brodie could very easily have been lost as a blizzard swept over the hills, and if so, it was highly unlikely his remains would have been found in this vast, trackless expanse of heather and bracken. His sister’s affection for him had made her imagine things, and Hazel understood the need to lay blame for the death of someone so loved.

  And yet…the images from her dreams clung, insinuating themselves into Helen’s story like wraiths. Blood and whisky…a violent death at Carnmore. Will Urquhart had been her grandfather, Olivia Urquhart her great-grandmother. Was it possible that her dreams were somehow a reflection of Livvy’s experience, a translated snippet of consciousness?

  She shook her head. That was nonsense, even more daft than Helen Brodie’s suspicions. And yet…the Brodies had taken Rab’s death at Carnmore for fact—that much was obvious. Helen had passed the story, and her diaries, to Rab’s children, and so it had come down the generations.

  Donald had known it, that much was clear—perhaps not when he had first fallen in love with her, but later, after his father’s death. Was that why he had left the interest in Benvulin to her? To settle a debt? As a mark of forgiveness for the sins her family had committed? Or both? Had he meant to tell her? She would never know.