‘But …’ Katie began, then thought better of it. She knew that Mrs Gunn hadn’t died in her bed. She had definitely been lying dead on the floor of her bedroom, there was no question about that, but who would believe her if she accused the husband of killing her? And how had the old devil pulled the wool over the doctor’s eyes? Too confused to think about it any more, Katie gave a long, shivery sigh.
Thom, however, wasn’t finished with her yet. ‘It beats me why you thought Mr Gunn was dead, Katie. What happened that night, exactly?’
She didn’t want to talk about it, but he was looking at her in such a perplexed way that she told him why Sammy had been fighting with his father, and how Mr Gunn had fallen down the stairs. ‘There was so much blood, I thought …’
Her head had been down all the time she was speaking, but now she looked up and was surprised to find Thom smiling at her. ‘So that was it? You made a mountain out of a molehill, Katie, and you’re free to go. I suppose I should give you a lecture about running away from what you thought was the scene of a murder, but I can’t help seeing the funny side of it.’ Sergeant Thom let out a few loud guffaws, then said, ‘Of course, the laddie’ll have to go back to his father.’
‘Oh, no!’ Katie cried. ‘You can’t send him back there! Mr Gunn used to hit him for nothing, and send him to his bed without any supper.’
Thom looked at Sammy. ‘You want to go home, don’t you?’
Sammy nodded eagerly. ‘Yes, home with Katie.’
‘No, I mean home to your father.’
‘My father?’ Sammy’s nose crinkled.
Still shaken by what she had been told, yet weak with relief that they were no longer wanted by the police, Katie quavered, ‘He doesn’t remember anything about Fenty.’
‘Aye, I can see that, but I’m afraid … you see, he’s not responsible for his actions, so he’ll have to go back there, back to his father.’
Although Katie knew that her life would be easier without Sammy – especially since Dennis was waiting in Peterhead for her – she hated the thought of him being ill-treated again, but there seemed nothing she could do. ‘You’ll have to go with the sergeant,’ she told him, tremulously.
He grabbed her arm. ‘Are you coming?’
‘No, I’m going to see my Granda, and you’re going back to where you used to live.’
‘No!’ he screamed. ‘I’m going with you!’
It took the combined efforts of the sergeant and the constable to restrain him as Katie walked out, tears flowing copiously when she heard the rumpus he was kicking up, but she dried her eyes resolutely when she arrived at her grandparents’ door, and remembered in time to knock before she went in.
Mary Ann looked up from darning the knee of her husband’s knitted drawers. ‘Oh, my God! It canna be! Katie!’
Struggling stiffly to his feet, William John took the girl in his arms with a strangled cry. ‘Oh, Katie lass, we didna think we’d ever see you again.’
They stood for some time, their joyful tears mingling, and Mary Ann lifted the corner of her apron to catch hers. Then, William John held the girl away from him. ‘Let me look at you. Ah, thank goodness you’re still the same Katie.’
‘Did you think I’d change so quick?’
Mary Ann’s dry voice broke the magic. ‘So you’ve decided to come back? Not a word in all this time and you walk in like you just went away yesterday – wi’ no explanations.’
‘I’m sorry, Grandma.’ Katie went over with the intention of kissing the old woman’s cheek, but Mary Ann averted her head, so she said, ‘Will I make a pot of tea? Then I’ll sit down and tell you everything.’
Not surprisingly, she didn’t tell them everything. With her grandmother’s beady eyes fixed on her, how could she say that Sammy had been in her bed, that Mr Gunn had tried to kill her, or even rape her? So she told them only of Mr Gunn’s cruelty to his son, hinting vaguely, to make them think that was why she had run away, that she, too, had been at the receiving end of the man’s anger at times.
Naturally, William John was up in arms at the thought of anyone hitting his Katie, but Mary Ann, with her usual perception, put her finger on what the girl had overlooked. ‘But why did you not come home here? And why did you never write? You must have ken’t we’d be worried out o’ our minds about you. I think you owe us the truth.’
Turning from the accusing eyes, Katie looked at William John. ‘Aye, lass,’ he said, ‘I think there’s still something you’re not telling us.’
And so, with many hesitations and tears, she told them how Mr Gunn had come to be lying on the landing. ‘I couldn’t come here and I couldn’t write, in case the bobbies found us, and we were …’ She meant to say that the police had found them the minute they set foot in Cullen, but Mary Ann didn’t give her the chance.
‘Where have you been all this time?’
Katie had just said that she had been in Peterhead when an imperative rap on the door made her stop, fearfully.
William John took her hand in his. ‘If that’s the bobbies, I’ll not let them take you away, Katie lass.’
‘Aye?’ said Mary Ann to the policeman on her doorstep.
Walking past her, Sergeant Thom looked at Katie. ‘There’s a bit of a problem. We couldn’t get the laddie into the police van, so we phoned through to his father’s shop in Huntly to ask if he would come and collect him, and Mr Gunn says he wouldn’t want to upset his second wife by making her look after a mental defective. He wanted us to put him in a Home, but there’s no charge against the laddie now and we have no reason to have him shut up anywhere.’
‘Thank goodness for that,’ Katie said. ‘I wouldn’t let him go into a Home, anyway.’
Thom seemed somewhat at a loss. ‘The only thing we can do is leave him with you.’ Opening the outside door, he gave a signal with his hand, and Sammy walked reluctantly inside, his sullen face lighting up when he saw Katie.
‘You’ll be responsible for him,’ the sergeant told her, ‘but we need to know where we can contact you.’
After writing down the address she gave him, he said, ‘I think that’s it all cleared up, but if you have any trouble with him, let us know – here or at Peterhead.’
When the sergeant went out, Sammy flung himself at the girl. ‘Oh, Katie! I thought you didn’t want me!’ Noisy sobs burst from him as her arms went round him.
‘Whisht, whisht,’ she soothed, stroking his back. ‘It’s all right. We’re together again, and we’ll be going home to our own house.’ Over his shoulder, she saw the dark scowl on her grandmother’s face. ‘I have to take him,’ she said. ‘He can’t manage on his own.’
‘The two o’ you could bide here,’ William John suggested, but Mary Ann cried, ‘No! I wouldna feel safe wi’ him. I’m surprised at you, Katie. By law, his father’s bound to have him back …’ She stopped, puzzled. ‘You said he’d killed his father, but Thom said he spoke to Mr Gunn on the telephone.’
Katie shrugged. ‘I thought he was dead, but it seems he wasn’t. I’m still glad we ran away, and I’m glad Sammy’s not going back there. Oh, Grandma, can you not understand?’
‘I understand a lot more than you think,’ Mary Ann said, grimly, ‘and if you go back to Peterhead and bide in the same house as him, you needna bother coming here again.’
‘Oh, now!’ William John exclaimed, in dismay. ‘She’s just doing what she thinks right, you canna blame her for that.’
‘She’ll not get inside this door again if she goes off wi’ him. Can you not see what’ll happen? If it hasna happened already,’ she ended, eyeing Sammy with distaste.
It had happened already, Katie thought wryly, knowing what was in her grandmother’s mind, yet she couldn’t desert Sammy now. ‘Come on,’ she told him. ‘We’d better go.’
William John stood up. ‘I’m sorry, Katie lass.’
‘It’s not your fault, Granda, and we’ll be fine. I wasn’t going to stay here, anyway, even if I didn’t have Sammy.’ At the door, she sudde
nly ran back and kissed him, then walked out with her head high, tears glistening but not shed.
William John turned on his wife. ‘You were awful hard on her,’ he muttered.
Mary Ann sighed. ‘It wasna easy, but did you not see the way that daftie looked at her? She’s storing up trouble for herself, and I dinna want to be landed wi’ looking after her when she has his bairn, for that’s what it’ll come to.’
‘Katie wouldna let him …’
‘Laddies like that have great strength when they’re roused – their bodies or their anger – and if he wants her, she’ll not be able to stop him. But she’s made her bed and she’ll have to lie on it, though she’d better not let him in beside her again.’
‘You should have let her bide here, then, where we could keep an eye on her.’
‘She didna want to bide here, and like I said, I wouldna feel safe wi’ him about the place.’
Her husband closed his mouth quickly. Mary Ann would be safe from even the vilest fiend, but it was more than his life was worth to say it. This was his house, though, and he should have put his foot down and said Katie and the laddie were welcome in it, but he hadn’t been feeling well this past day or two, and he wasn’t up to fighting with her.
Katie tried to keep calm while she and Sammy walked to the station. Mr Gunn wasn’t dead! The words screamed inside her head, and even when they were on the train, the clickety-clack of the wheels on the sleepers changed to ‘Gunn isn’t dead, Gunn isn’t dead’, until she almost asked Sammy if he could hear it. She tried to think of something else, but all that came to her mind was what the sergeant had said about Mrs Gunn. Yet her death hadn’t been natural. If her husband had strangled her, of course, there would have been marks, but he might just have held a pillow over her mouth, he was crafty enough. And the rhythm of the wheels took up the new refrain, ‘Crafty enough, crafty enough’.
Oh, God! she thought in despair. He was bound to want revenge on her and Sammy for what they had done, that was why he had pestered the police to find them. He hadn’t known where they were before, but Sergeant Thom had likely given him their address when they spoke on the telephone. Her fear of Mr Gunn was growing much greater than when she had worked at the Howe of Fenty.
Then she remembered something that nearly made her swoon with relief. How could she have forgotten that Dennis was coming back to live at Marischal Street? He would help Sammy to throw Mr Gunn out if he turned up, and once he saw he was wasting his time, he would give up all thoughts of revenge. In any case, she wasn’t quite so sure now that he would come after her. Maybe she had been over-reacting. The sergeant had said he had married again, and he was probably happier than he had been with his first wife. She had been worrying herself for nothing – seeing danger where none existed.
She turned to Sammy as the train pulled into Peterhead. ‘It’s good to be home again, isn’t it?’
Chapter Sixteen
Livid with anger, Angus Gunn slammed the earpiece back into the upright receiver of the telephone, and sat for a moment glaring at it. Then, with a loud exclamation of disgust, he jumped up and stamped through his shop. Not caring that it was early afternoon and he still had four hours of business to conduct, he locked the door, hauled down the blinds and returned to the small back room.
It was abominable! He had banished Katie Mair and his son from his thoughts on the day he married Betty Runcie, and it been the unwelcome visit from the police last week that had stirred everything up again. Leaning forward with his elbows on the table and his hands at his temples, he let his mind travel back to that morning three years ago.
Wondering what had happened, Angus pulled his head free of the sticky substance that was holding it to the floor. His whole body was aching with excruciating pain, especially the side of his head. He touched the area gingerly and when he took his fingers away, they were covered in blood. For a moment, he thought that he was on the battlefield again, or in the military hospital, then, noticing a familiar zigzag crack on the ceiling, he realized that he was lying on the landing of his own house and remembered that he had fallen down the stairs during a fight with his son. He must have hit something which had opened up his old wound.
He tried to stand up, but it took him some minutes to get to his feet, and he had to lean against the wall until his head stopped spinning and his stomach settled down. He was getting over the dizziness when he noticed that his wife was lying in the doorway of her room. She must have heard the commotion and tried to come out to find out what was going on, but he did not have time to bother about a woman in a faint. He had more important things to do.
Picking up the spar of the bannister which his fall must have dislodged, he went upstairs to give his son a good beating, and, discovering that both garret rooms were empty, he gave a sardonic laugh. They imagined they would escape his wrath by running away, did they? Back in his own room, he flung on his clothes and picked up the keys of his car. Wherever they were, they could not have gone far, and he would soon catch them.
Recalling only the most important events, Angus skimmed over his six hours’ search of every road within a ten-mile radius of Fenty, and his cool reception by the Huntly police when he laid charges of assault and abduction against his son, although he did eventually convince the sergeant that Sammy had assaulted him and had then abducted Katie, which should have been enough to have him locked up in an institution. He had said nothing about Katie’s attack, as he had wanted to deal with her himself, and had intended to continue his search for them once he cleaned himself up and had something to eat. Things had not gone according to plan, however.
***
Angus gave a gasp of horror when he saw his reflection in the hallstand mirror. No wonder the police sergeant had given him such a strange look. If his eyelids swelled any more they would prevent him from seeing, his right cheek was a solid mass of bruises and the left side of his face was so encrusted with blood that he could not tell how badly it was damaged. Before bathing his injuries, he went upstairs for some of the cotton wool his wife used to remove the cold cream she rubbed into her face at night. He was a little surprised that she was still lying unconscious, but he had no compunction about having left her, and no inclination to do anything for her. Stepping over her, he made for the table by her bed, and with the long roll in his hand, he walked across the room again. Only then did he notice that Marguerite’s skin, always pale and unhealthy, had a definite blue tinge now. He bent to touch her with trembling fingers, and jumped away clutching his chest when he found her brow ice cold.
Reeling back, he thumped down on her bed, wishing that his brain would function, but the side of his head was throbbing worse than ever, and his heart was hammering so erratically that he expected it to run out of power and grind to a halt at any second. His shocked body slowly recovering, he did not feel sorry that Marguerite was dead – she had never been a proper wife to him – but she might have chosen a better time for her demise. How would he explain why he had left her lying there for so long?
If he could lift her into bed, he could go and tell the doctor that she was worse, and pretend to be shocked when they returned to the house and found her dead. He was amazed at how heavy she was, but after trailing her across the floor, he eventually succeeded in his purpose, although his final, desperate heave started his heart palpitating again.
Downstairs, he dabbed his face clean and when he saw the gaping three-inch wound on his left cheek, the wound Katie had made with some sharp weapon, anger boiled up in him once more. Camouflaging it with a strip of sticking plaster, he went out to his car.
It had all been so easy, Angus recalled. His show of shock and grief when they found Marguerite dead had made Doctor Graham quite concerned for him. ‘I will ask the undertaker to call,’ the man had said, ‘but do you want me to contact someone to help you make the arrangements for the funeral?’
‘I would rather do everything myself,’ he had replied, as brokenly as he could. ‘I owe it to Marguerite.’
He had owed her nothing, he thought now, and because of her, he had been forced to remain in the house for the next four days – until after the funeral. It would have looked bad to be scouring the countryside when he should be acting the grieving husband. That was why the scent had gone cold, and the police had been no help.
Oh, God! Thinking about that girl had started his blinding headaches again. Raising his eyes to the small mirror on the wall, he shuddered at the sight of the ugly scar. Until last week, he had completely forgotten how he had come by it – he had presumed it was another wound from the war – although he was very conscious of it. Too conscious, Betty often told him. Betty? Yes, he should stop remembering that awful time and think about Betty.
The café where he usually went for lunch had been very busy, and he asked a woman sitting alone if she minded him sharing her table. She said, ‘Please do,’ and while they waited to be served, they introduced themselves, smiling rather sadly when it turned out that she was a widow and he a widower. Over the meal, they talked of local happenings, discussed current affairs, and when the conversation flagged, he said, ‘It is good to have someone to talk to, someone sensible. My housekeeper is not blessed with brains, and I would send her away tomorrow if I thought I could find someone better.’
He had only been making conversation, and was surprised when Mrs Runcie laid her hand on his sleeve. ‘If you don’t think I’m too pushy, Mr Gunn, I wouldn’t mind the job. Jim did leave me some money, but after a year and a half, it’s nearly all gone, and I’ll have to take a job of some kind.’
‘You mean … you would be willing to come and keep house for me?’ He could hardly believe it, because she was such an attractive woman, with rich brown hair and lovely blue eyes. He had felt drawn to her as soon as he sat down beside her.
‘If you think I’m suitable.’
And so it had been arranged, Angus reflected. At first, he had supposed that she, like the girl he dismissed, would not be averse to sharing his bed, but she had rather Victorian morals, and so he had proposed marriage a few months later. At the time, he had wondered if he was being too rash. Women were notorious for changing their ways once the wedding ring was on their finger. Docile creatures became shrews, or else they withheld their sexual favours, like Marguerite. The making of their son had been no pleasure for him, with her weeping all the way through it, and it had been the same on every one of the rare occasions she had let him near her, until he sickened of her and looked elsewhere.
The Three Kings Page 18
