‘A bit more than pennies, surely?’ said Christopher.
‘A little bit more,’ said Deirdre, smiling. She accepted her next drink from Zak and sipped at it a little more cautiously this time.
‘What about Charlotte and Ken?’ said Jemima. ‘Why did they have to do something so drastic? Couldn’t they just have talked it through with Eric?’
‘They weren’t like that,’ said Deirdre. ‘And they blamed Eric for their father’s death – although that was nonsense, of course. Bob Campbell was just a weakling – his time had been and gone. If he hadn’t gone to jail he could have still been running the show, but he was like a fatally wounded beast. Somebody had to put him out of his misery.’
Christopher glanced at her suspiciously. Had she been drinking even before they had arrived at the Queen of Scots? Or had she just recovered her flair for melodrama?
‘Charlotte and Ken wanted revenge, ‘ Deirdre continued. ‘They knew Oscar had been involved in the Glasswearie fiasco too. Poisoning Eric got rid of him and warned Oscar at the same time. Killing two birds with one stone.’
‘But how did they do it? Was it in the apple?’ said Jemima.
Christopher glanced at her and knew she was still nervous about the possibility that Eric had after all been poisoned in her own kitchen.
‘Poisoned apple! Ha!’ said Deirdre, shaking with laughter and spilling gin and tonic on Jock McLean’s shoe. ‘That would have been tragic irony – or something.’
‘It was in the lip balm,’ said Jock McLean, taking advantage of Deirdre’s pause for laughter to wrest control of the story back from her. ‘Amaryllis sussed it out first, and then Charlie told me it was true – he heard it from Keith Burnet. That’s all top secret, of course. Charlotte knew Eric always used lip balm just before he went on air. She swapped the jar out for a poisoned one after they’d finished with Penelope and were on the way to Tricia’s, then just waited for him to use it.’
‘So why did they kill Maria too? Was that another warning to Oscar?’ said Zak.
‘No,’ said Jock. ‘That was an accident. Maria must have picked up the pot of lip balm when she was in Tricia’s kitchen. When they all rushed up there to see what had happened to Eric.’
‘I saw her picking up something and putting it in her pocket,’ said Christopher. ‘I did wonder if I should mention it to Keith Burnet, in case she was removing vital evidence from the crime scene – I could have saved her life.’
‘That happens,’ said Deirdre, apparently unconcerned.
‘When they found her in the library,’ Jock continued, ‘she had used it and died almost instantly, but they arranged things to look as if she’d been attacked.’
‘I don’t know why she had to be in the library that evening in the first place,’ said Christopher crossly. ‘She could have waited until the next day, and by then maybe she would have realised she should hand the lip balm over to the police.’
‘Oh, I asked her to pop down there,’ said Deirdre airily. ‘I thought I’d left my scarf there in all the commotion. I thought she wouldn’t mind. It was just one of the things she did.’
They all stared at her.
‘What, tidying up after you?’ said Christopher. ‘Doesn’t that make you feel a bit like – well, royalty or something?’
‘Not really,’ said Deirdre. ‘It was just part of her job description.’
Zak got back with Deirdre’s drink, handed it over and gazed at the silent group round the table. ‘You didn’t need to wait for me,’ he said uncertainly. ‘You could have gone on with the story – I know most of it anyway.’
‘It’s all right, Zak,’ said Amaryllis. ‘We’re all just temporarily struck dumb by some people’s arrogance.’
Deirdre glared at Amaryllis, who glared back.
‘What were Ken and Charlotte doing there, then?’ said Christopher. ‘I don’t suppose you sent them down to collect your handbag, Deirdre?’
Deirdre began to laugh again. She must have been drinking for hours. People didn’t get into this sort of state in a few minutes. Christopher gave her a disapproving stare, but he didn’t think she saw it as she was still holding Amaryllis’s gaze.
‘Ken had to go and check on the equipment. He was worried about the others having used it.’
Christopher remembered the two taciturn men who had been operating the cameras, along with Maria. He wondered if Ken had gone to the Cultural Centre soon after Maria deliberately or whether it had been coincidence. None of the people sitting round the table here would probably ever know the answer to that.
‘So if she died of poison like Eric,’ Jemima prompted, fixing Jock with a stare, ‘why did they have to pretend she’d been attacked?’
‘And why was there so much blood?’ said Dave. ‘People don’t bleed all over the place once they’re dead – do they?’
Jemima elbowed him in the ribs.
‘Well, they don’t, do they?’ said Dave. ‘I’m only stating a fact here, Jemima.’
‘It’s a good point,’ said Amaryllis, dragging her gaze away from Deirdre’s for long enough to smile at him reassuringly.
‘It wasn’t hers,’ said Jock. ‘They analysed the blood on the carpet – and on the banana suit. It definitely wasn’t Maria’s.’
‘Whose was it then?’ said Deirdre, puzzled.
‘It was artificial – Charlie didn’t say any more than that,’ said Jock.
‘Ah!’ said Deirdre. ‘It’d be stage blood, I expect. Ken used to carry some about with him. He was a bit of a joker. He once pretended to have injured himself on my jewellery and threatened to sue me.’
‘Killing Maria by mistake wasn’t very funny, was it?’ said Jemima. ‘So what about you, Giancarlo?’ she added, looking over at the boy, who had been sitting very still but who seemed to have listened intently. ‘Why did they choose you as their next victim?’
He shrugged. ‘I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, I guess.’
‘And they thought you had overheard something, and that’s why they attacked you,’ said Amaryllis.
‘I had seen Charlotte and Mr McLaughlin together, and heard something she said,’ Giancarlo admitted. ‘But I wasn’t anywhere near understanding what it meant.’
‘They must have been getting desperate by then,’ said Amaryllis. She glanced at the worried faces of her friends with a smile. ‘I like it when that happens – once they get desperate, they panic and start making mistakes.’
‘And then you got too close to them, so they decided they’d have to get rid of you,’ said Christopher to her. ‘What I don’t understand is...’
‘Well, I don’t understand any of it,’ announced Dave.
‘I don’t want to understand it,’ said Deirdre. She got to her feet unsteadily, raised her glass and said, ‘I want to make a toast – to Eric. The best third husband anybody could wish for.’
After they had joined her in this toast with all the enthusiasm of a couple of cats being offered the chance to go out in the rain, she added, ‘And goodbye and good luck to the people of Pitkirtly – the best one-horse town in the west of Fife.’
She chose to make this her exit line, and wouldn’t even accept Christopher’s generous offer to walk her across the road to the bus stop.
They all waved as she left the bar. Christopher sensed a suppressed cheer building up in certain quarters. He and Amaryllis offered to buy a round of drinks. Standing at the bar watching Charlie Smith go about his work, Amaryllis said softly, ‘What don’t you understand?’
‘Oh, nothing... Well, how was it that you let Ken and Charlotte catch you?’
‘I’m not losing my skills, if that’s what you mean,’ she said.
‘Of course not,’ he said politely.
She laughed. ‘That wasn’t completely convincing, Christopher. I’m definitely out of practice. I’m thinking of asking if they’ll let me do a mission every so often to keep my hand in.’
‘Please don’t,’ said Christopher. He stared at her. ‘Ha
ven’t you ever thought that those skills of yours are more or less redundant in Pitkirtly?’
‘If anyone had asked me that before I moved here, I would have thought so,’ she said. ‘Now I’m not so sure.’
THE END
About Cecilia Peartree’s other novels
The following are the other novels in the Pitkirtly series, in order:
Crime in the Community
Reunited in Death
A Reformed Character
Death at the Happiness Club
Frozen in Crime
The Queen of Scots Mystery
The following are not in the Pitkirtly series:
Murder in the Midi
The Lion and Unicorn Quest
The Four Seasons Quest
Thank you for buying this ebook. You may also be interested in keeping up with news of my writing and other aspects of my life on one of my blogs:
http://mccallumogilvy.wordpress.com
http://ceciliapeartree.wordpress.com
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