by John Burke
‘He’s dead.’
‘Oh, I’m so sorry. I really do make the most awful . . . I mean . . .’
The bright beam of a torch came wavering down the slope, and trapped both of them. Cocky began barking furiously as a hefty, blundering figure lurched towards them.
‘So there you are. But Anna, I didn’t know you were in on the act. Somebody trying to sabotage my carefully laid plots without me suspecting? Never thought it of you.’
‘I’m sorry, Chet. I just seem to have stumbled into the drama without knowing.’
‘You’ve certainly wrapped it up long before everyone had a chance to follow up their theories.’
When he put out his hand to help Georgina up, they leaned against one another for a few seconds longer than was necessary, with Brunner maybe off balance in more ways than one.
Georgina said: ‘Couldn’t I play possum again? Then you can discover me.’
With the torch beam lurching to and fro across her face like a searchlight scanning the skies, she smiled slyly at Brunner. Anna was familiar with this aspect of Chet Brunner, too. Something was going on between these two. And yet Georgina’s carefully made-up but vacant face and the ostentatious thrust of her breasts didn’t seem all that different from those of Brunner’s current wife. Maybe he was physically or psychologically incapable of reacting to anything other than minor variations on the same theme.
Other voices were chattering in the distance. Members of the party came stumbling down the slope towards the light. One girl, pale as a sylph in the moonlight, cried: ‘Somebody nearly spoilt it, but I dashed away before they really had a clue — how is it all going?’ A middle-aged couple stood with their heads close together, apparently comparing notes.
‘Too late to start again.’ Brunner grimaced an exaggerated reproach at Anna. ‘You know, I really will have to demand a forfeit from you one day, to make up for this.’ The grimace became a wolfish grin, all the more sinister in the dithering light, but so automatic and well practised that it provoked no reaction whatsoever — except for a glare from Georgina. ‘Come on up and deliver that mongrel back to its owner.’ He set off with a masterful stride, marred by his right foot getting trapped in a tuft of grass and nearly bringing him down.
When they reached the house, Brunner took Georgina’s arm and led her in through the main door. Anna headed towards the wing, Cocky eagerly bounding ahead of her.
‘When you’ve dumped that fleabag,’ Brunner called after her, ‘come in and have a drink with this weekend’s gaggle of sleuths. And I promise not to tell them all you’re really the guilty party.’
Two people were talking to Alec and Queenie, but the moment Cocky came yelping through the door, Queenie broke away and rushed towards him, making glutinous noises over him. ‘Where’ve you been, you awful little rascal? Frightening mummy like that.’ Pummelling the dog’s back, she looked up at Anna. ‘I couldn’t make out where he’d got to. Must have got out, but he doesn’t usually . . . but anyway, I was going to come out after him . . . only then we had visitors, and I’ve been getting things ready.’
Alec said: ‘Anna, an old friend’s just showed up. Sir Nicholas Torrance. You must have heard me talk of Nick Torrance. And this is — er — Lady Torrance.’
‘Lesley,’ Nick Torrance corrected him gently.
Anna had read about Sir Nicholas and his historic tower above Kilstane in the Borders. There had been something about a music festival in one of the brochures she was showered with by tourist offices to leave in her cottages; and something in the papers, earlier this year, about a couple of murders.
Sir Nicholas was tall and had a lean, patrician face, his brow made higher by the way his thick, dark hair was swept back in a long mane. His handshake was firm, yet his whole attitude was relaxed and welcoming, as if he were at ease in his own home. His wife was a few inches shorter, her head coming just above his shoulder. She, too, seemed quite relaxed and self-possessed, yet at the same time trim, almost buttoned-up in a military fashion. It was difficult to imagine her slouching, or casually propping herself against the back of the settle nearby. Her smooth helmet of light brown hair could almost have been another item of austere uniform but for the skittish curls above her ears. She had a creamy complexion touched with an even flush of sunburn, and grey eyes whose disconcerting brightness was flecked with blue, as if reflecting sudden streaks of cloudless sky. When they turned towards her husband they gleamed with deep, confident love for him. Anna felt a pang of envy.
‘Well, now.’ Queenie had slipped into the role of efficient, bustling housewife. ‘If you’d like to come and see your room, freshen up . . .’
There was a resounding thump as Brunner came striding in, bashing the edge of the baize door with his elbow. ‘What’s this I hear? Nick. Damn it, so it is. Only now it’s Sir Nicholas, isn’t it? Still making beautiful music, though? Especially with your beautiful bride? What a bloody marvellous surprise.’
Alec started explaining about them staying the night.
‘But of course they’ll be staying the night.’ He boomed even louder. ‘More than one night, if you can manage it.’
Queenie tried to cope with Cocky backing away from Brunner and clawing up her leg. ‘I’ve just finished getting our spare room ready, and —’
‘No way.’ Brunner waved a contemptuous hand. ‘Must have a proper suite in the main house. I’m sure Queenie would do her best to make you comfortable, but we’ll have to do better than that. Can’t have a fellow landowner slumming it in the servants’ quarters, eh?’ He slapped Queenie on the shoulder, which set Cocky off barking furiously. ‘No offence, sweetie, eh? Just nip off and tell the chef there’ll be two more hungry mouths for dinner, there’s a love.’
Talking of a chef made it sound very grand, thought Anna. In fact the kitchen was run by a tough workaday cook from Glasgow with the help of a general dogsbody, both of them happy to work close to real film and telly people they could talk about to their friends and relations.
She saw the stiffening of Lesley Torrance’s neck as Brunner took her arm and squeezed it as he led her away. Odd that in spite of the occasional lecherous wink and grin, he had never touched Anna in a way that would have that effect on her. She wasn’t sure whether to be grateful or offended.
Nicholas Torrance’s lip curled as he followed. The door swung shut behind them.
Queenie let out an odd little whimper which might almost have come from her dog. She ought to be used to Brunner’s brash offensiveness by now. Alec was hardened to it; but Queenie, as Anna knew all too well, reacted to every slight. Her chattering, hospitable mood would soon give way to the brooding gloom of a Russian drama.
Alec squeezed her arm. A quite different squeeze from the sort Brunner inflicted on women. ‘Less trouble for you, my dear. Don’t have to worry about making up the bed now.’ He had always been protective towards her, always the antidote to the spites and insults of life — even more so since her beloved Peter had died.
‘I’d much rather they stayed with us than with him. Always taking over, shooting off his mouth without giving a thought to other people’s feelings.’
‘Yes, I know. We all know. But that’s just the way he is.’
‘One day,’ Queenie intoned, staring straight ahead. ‘One day . . .’
*
Lesley made polite noises as she was introduced to the crowd in what Brunner had already described with a flourish of his left arm as the banqueting hall, but she still could not entirely dismiss that inner self which had been Detective Inspector Gunn. She could not help sizing up the assembled characters, not making snap judgments yet instinctively slotting them into categories with which experience had made her familiar.
Voices ebbed and flowed, waves overlapping so that half-finished sentences were dragged away and then overlaid by ripples from a different direction.
‘A pity it had to be cut off just as I was getting to grips with the clues . . .’
‘Just what did that bit abou
t the locked door and the icicle have to do with the poison cupboard?’
A middle-aged couple showed each other slips of card on which they had scribbled notes, smiling and agreeing, then shaking their heads.
Abrupt and loud, a young man who had been standing alone nursing a tumbler of whisky said to nobody in particular: ‘Maybe tomorrow we could try a whole new game. Of fraud.’
Brunner turned and glared. ‘Too complicated. Ask any lawyer. No way you can simplify it dramatically.’
‘You haven’t usually found it too complicated.’
There was a shocked hush.
Brunner’s face had gone very red. Then he uttered a booming laugh. ‘Come off it, Harry. We don’t like bad losers. In these games or any other.’
Hastily he drew a heavy-breasted girl in a low-cut silver gown towards Lesley and made a big show of introducing her as Georgina Campbell — ‘One of the most promising of my protégées.’ Georgina said ‘Lady Torrance’ and made a slight curtsey, accompanied by a supposedly roguish smirk to show she wasn’t that impressed. Lesley categorized her as basically a tawdry but expensive tart on the make.
A pair of willowy young men were not as queer as they tried to make out, thinking this was the in thing. One woman with an afro hairdo that threatened to sag down one side of her brow headed for Lesley and gushed: ‘But surely it was your husband who wrote that terrific backing track for dear Liam and Susie?’ Others were putting on a big countryside act, yet failed to look authentic in their Barbours and tweeds, conflicting with two men who had opted for dinner jackets and one woman who must recently have been to an Edinburgh fashion show.
‘We all looked smarter last night, didn’t we?’ Brunner made a booming apology. ‘Had a Highland Ball. And games. No, not those sort of Highland Games. No caber tossing on my premises — don’t want the china and glassware wrecked. This evening we’d started on a murder game. Clues galore. Unfortunately it was cut short by an intruder wrecking the plan.’
‘But isn’t that how most murder investigations turn out?’ said Lesley. ‘Thrown off course by the unexpected?’
‘Aha! There speaks the expert. Still not shaken off the old uniform? No, sorry. Of course, CID — always slinking around in ordinary clothes, taking unsuspecting villains by surprise.’ He spread his arms towards the gaggle of guests. ‘Now, there’s an idea. We have a real live detective, only recently retired, on the premises. Maybe tomorrow we can concoct another mystery, really authenticated by an expert?’
‘You mean we have to sing for our supper?’ said Nick.
‘I can promise a good supper, don’t worry. And maybe something else, if you’re interested. You couldn’t have shown up at a better time.’ He put a stop to further introductions or general conversation by steering Nick away towards the huge baronial fireplace, far too big for what had once been only a hunting lodge. He did not invite Lesley to join them; but his inability to keep his voice down to a confidential level meant that she heard nearly every word. ‘Don’t want to let your talents rust just because you’ve acquired an ivory tower, eh? And it must cost a bit to keep places like that heated. Don’t I know! I could put some work your way if you’re interested.’
‘What kind of work?’
‘I’ve signed up a fabulous new group on a long recording contract. Don’t really have time to concentrate on them as much as I ought to. Remember ‘Play Bach’?’
‘Jacques Loussier?’
‘That was the guy, yes. Well, these kids have got something way ahead of that. Right in the mood of the moment. Swinging Symphony Babes — you know, classical stuff but shaped to appeal to the kids. Smart kids, not just the punk brigade. Bach Blues, Fugueing the Beat, we’ll dream up some titles. But although they’re good, these kids don’t know how to mix to get the right balance. They need someone who can tell them where to position themselves, where to point the fiddle, and everything, to make the mixing easier. Somebody at the control desk who knows good music and good sound from bad.’
‘I haven’t been in on that scene for a few years now.’
‘Look, Nick, there’s no way a musician like you could forget. And,’ he intimated heavily again, ‘you must need regular injections of cash to keep that castle of yours going. Come on, you don’t have to feel embarrassed with me, old partner. We Lowland lairds have to stick together, haven’t we?’ In that rumbling undertone which failed to be an undertone, he added: ‘You inherited in a roundabout family way, old son. Me, I had to work in a devious way for mine. But here we are, fellow quaffers of the quaich.’
Lesley wished they had passed that turn-off and driven on through the night to any other destination.
*
Anna kept to the path on the way down, with only the fitful moon to guide her. But on the lower level were the reassuring lights in both cottages. Two cars neatly parked in the slots at the far end of the stableyard, exactly as specified in the brochure, with the rear pointing outwards in order not to blast exhaust fumes into the neat little flowerbeds. She wondered about the couple in Stables Cottage, and what Maxwell had been in prison for. If Stuart had been right about that. And the other two . . . well, Covenanter’s Cottage had a very comfortable bed. She could only hope they wouldn’t make too much of a mess in it.
Stop fretting! She had to keep telling herself that. Stuart, easygoing Stuart, was right when he accused her of twitching too much over details and unfounded apprehensions. There were times when she almost invited minor panics — created them, went looking for trouble because that gave her something to cope with, something to keep her from looking back, something tangible to cope with instead of brooding over things which could never now be altered.
There had been the occasional silly flicker of anticipation. That young forestry researcher who had taken Stables Cottage for two weeks, a few months ago, and been so easygoing and chatty. Sharing a few meals with her and laughing and making her laugh. Promising he would come back for a real holiday instead of just working here. A bit of a daydream, like in some dreadful woman’s magazine. Wiping out Peter’s betrayals, the gruelling, repetitive work, the seedy atmosphere created by Chet Brunner and his schemes. Wiping the whole slate clean so that she could fall in love and head straight for a happy ending.
So corny. So pathetic, so utterly ridiculous.
On her own doorstep she had a sudden vision of Peter slamming the car door and striding towards her. Just as she sometimes remembered him on the corner by the village pub, both of them laughing about something ridiculous. Only there had also been corners where she remembered them quarrelling about money, about some sharp practice he had been up to, though the real reason behind it was her growing awareness of the situation with Stuart’s wife.
Yet it was lonely without him. Better, maybe, to have someone to quarrel with than have nobody around at all?
Of course there was Stuart around now, if she needed him.
She opened the front door and looked back across the yard. All as it ought to be. Both the present couples seemed to be in favour of peace and quiet and being left alone. Nothing to concern her. Quiet occupants. A pleasantly warm, tranquil evening. No problems.
Apart from the odd make-believe corpse. She must be careful not to trip over any more of those.
Chapter Five
For two weeks they had been accustomed to the soothing sway of the ship, rocking them to sleep after Nick had rocked Lesley to ecstasy, and reflections from sea or fjord had sent a hypnotic rhythm across the ceiling. Now the sheer steadiness was unnatural, disturbing. Lesley had spent a restless night. Nick had woken in the small hours to realize that, although she was lying still in order not to disturb him, she was tensely wide awake.
‘You all right?’ he murmured.
‘After all those nights at sea, I’m not used to a bed that stays still.’
‘Shall I make it move, then?’ He edged his left arm around her shoulders, and his right hand began to stroke her in a soothing rhythm. After a few minutes she was not soothed
, but hungry. They made love, and she sighed, and murmured, ‘Is it really going to keep getting better and better?’ and turned over and went off to sleep. But around dawn he woke again, and she was staring at the ceiling as if willing it to rock and glow and lull her to sleep.
Unexpectedly, drowsily, she said: ‘I like your friend Alec.’
‘He was always a first-rate bloke to work with. Utterly reliable. And patient, no matter what happened.’
‘He’d need to be, working for that slob.’
‘You didn’t take to Chet?’
‘Did you expect me to? I know a crook when I see one.’
‘Not exactly a crook. Just a smart operator. Came into his own when television franchises were fiddled about with in Thatcher’s time and there were openings for little independent companies. And cheapo films for the sex cinemas. Then all he had to do was talk bigger, and make the smut glossy instead of just tatty. Suddenly you’re a cult figure. Begin to take yourself seriously. And get other people to take you seriously — and put up the money.’
‘You mean you went along with him? Let him use you?’
‘Never had to work with him when it didn’t suit me.’
‘I still say he’s a crook.’
‘Police intuition? Prejudice? Determined to secure a conviction at all costs? Poor old Chet — he doesn’t stand a chance now.’
‘You always want to believe the best of people, don’t you?’
‘While it’s been your full-time job to believe the worst of them.’
Lesley propped herself up on one elbow. Nick looked up at her and marvelled at the smoothness of her bare shoulder in the light of dawn, the grace with which she invested even the awkward act of pushing herself up and then swinging her legs off the bed. She pulled the curtains back. Early morning sunshine fingered those shoulders and her hair.
‘The sooner we get out of this place, the better.’
