by John Burke
‘What exactly did you communicate, then?’
‘The simple facts. Her own monetary legacy, the endowment of an award in the cinematographic arts, and your own inheritance of the estate. I fear it put her in a gey combative mood when she left here. I thought it my duty to give Mr Chisholm, as executor, advance notice of a possible — hm — confrontation. And yourself, of course.’ As Anna tried to fight her way out of a daze of incomprehension and demand some explanation of his remarks about Alec, he hastened to conclude: ‘I shall be in touch again, Mrs Chisholm, just as soon as it is right and proper for me to do so.’
Anna was sure that every minute of the phone conversation would be meticulously recorded and charged for in due course.
Before she could pour herself a large glass of cold water and sit down to try and make sense of the things she had just heard, there was the swish of car tyres in the stableyard. Going to open the door, she rehearsed the stock phrases. No, we have no vacancies, and in any case we do not deal with casual trade but work exclusively through a letting agency. Or, if it was yet another TV team or a newspaper reporter, she would suggest they got in touch with the police, soaked up the good news, and went chasing off to film the wrecked Ford and interview any available officer.
A Vauxhall Vectra had stopped in the yard. The man who got out of it was ruddy featured and had a commanding air. Anna, used to sizing people up the moment they arrived, assessed him at once as a businessman golfer, a Rotarian, probably keen on shooting or fishing or both, with the assumed military bearing of a chief accountant wanting to be regarded as something heartier.
‘Are you the proprietor of this place?’ The bossy bluster of his voice tied in with her assessment.
‘I am. But I’m sorry, we don’t accept bookings from passers-by. They all go through the letting agency in —’
‘An agency? And what exactly is that agency running here — a club for two-timers?’ He stared at Covenanter’s Cottage. ‘Yes, that’s the one I saw on TV.’ He stomped past Anna and hammered on the door.
‘Look here,’ she protested. ‘You’ve no right to —’
Walter Robinson opened the door. ‘If it’s any more bloody interviews, we’re not . . .’ He went pale. ‘Oh, hell, no. Richard!’
‘So it was you. I might have guessed. You devious . . . you rotten little —’
Sharon appeared suddenly at Walter’s side, knotting the belt of her dressing-gown. ‘Ooh. Oh, no. Richard, you’re not supposed to be here.’
‘Neither are you.’
‘But how did you . . . I mean, whatever brought you here? I mean . . .’
Richard glanced at Anna. ‘Can you imagine what it’s like, getting your boots on ready to go out for a day’s fishing, and there on the room telly is your wife, half naked on the screen.’ He swung back to Sharon. ‘That cameraman did you proud, didn’t he? Made a real meal of it.’
‘I wasn’t half naked.’
‘Staying with your dear old friend Amanda, eh? Liars, both of you. Cheap liars. Both of you having a wonderful giggle about it afterwards.’
He advanced towards Wally, who shrank back against Sharon. ‘Now look here, old chap —’
‘You bastard. You miserable, cheating bastard.’
Walter bridled. It was the only way to put it. Anna had never seen a man bridle before. ‘Hey, now. Just a minute.’
Richard began advancing slowly on him. ‘Right, Mr Walter bloody Robinson. The moment my back’s turned, you think it’s great fun to . . .’ He grabbed Walter by the shoulders and pushed him indoors, carrying Sharon along with them in the rush. Anna heard a thud of blows, Sharon whimpering, and Walter yelling. Abruptly the two men came out again, Richard with blood on the knuckles of his right hand, this time dragging Walter with him instead of pushing him. Sharon stumbled after them, howling something incoherent. Walter was staggering in the middle of the yard when Queenie’s Fiat swerved in at a characteristically awkward angle. He tried to dodge, and lurched head first into the flowers in the horse trough. Cocky shot out of the car and frisked up to him, making three wild leaps in the hope of getting into the trough so that he could lick Walter’s cheek, but just couldn’t make it.
Richard turned and jabbed his finger at his wife. ‘While I finish with this miserable creep, you can go and make yourself decent. Or as close as you can get. And then come and get straight into the car.’
‘I’m not going to be bossed about.’
‘Oh, yes, you are. And when we get home . . .’
He did not specify what was likely to happen when they got home, but Anna thought she detected in Sharon’s stare a dawning interest. All at once she was in quite a rush to pack her case.
‘Come on, stand up and let’s finish this.’ Richard put a hand on Walter’s shoulder.
Alec was out of the car. ‘That’s enough. Whatever’s been going on here, we’ll have no brawling on these premises. If you don’t stop at once, I shall call the police.’
‘I’ve told him to get up, and he’s bloody well going to get up.’
Walter emitted a muffled moan. ‘My knee.’
‘Come on, get up and tell it to take the weight while I get ready to knock you down again.’
‘My knee. Oh, Christ, my knee.’
‘That’s enough. Leave him alone.’ Alec’s firmness brought him a doting smile from Queenie. ‘We’ve had one murder here already. We don’t want another one.’
Sharon appeared in the doorway of the cottage, carrying her suitcase. She waited demurely as Richard strode towards her and snatched the case from her.
‘All right. Get in the car.’
She lowered her head and walked meekly towards the car, waiting by the passenger door. Her husband opened the boot, hurled her bag in, and slammed the top down again. He hesitated, glowered; and then came to open the door for her to get in. She smiled even more demurely at him.
‘Look here . . . just a minute . . .’ Walter at last heaved himself out of the trough, his face smeared with soil and a runnel of blood from his nose. A twisted strand of damp fern drooped behind his left ear. ‘You can’t just . . .’
The Vectra purred into life, the tyres sprayed grit, and Queenie grabbed Cocky out of the way as it headed for the road and went speeding off up the hill.
Alec helped Walter to his feet. ‘I think you’d better go in and have a wash. And then do your packing and drive off home.’
‘With my knee in this state?’
‘Maybe your insurance company can pay for your transport home.’ There was a flicker of mischief in Alec’s voice. ‘But then you’ll need to find your way back here to pick up your own car when you’ve quite recovered.’
‘Oh, all right. All right. I suppose I have to manage.’
Twenty minutes later he limped out with his case, and eased himself into the driving seat of the Honda.
As soon as he was gone, Anna went in to put the furniture straight after the brief tussle had overturned the coffee table and sent a chair scudding across the room. As she got a grip on the table, she felt a stickiness on her right hand.
‘Oh, this is disgusting. There’s blood on it. And on the carpet.’
Behind her, Queenie said. ‘Oh, do let me help, dear. We’ve just been down to the village, and I did think to buy some more cleaning materials, so we can set to. And Stables is all right, isn’t it? Ready for any new people you can get for next week.’
‘For the rest of this week, the Torrances are coming back. They asked for the cottage. Probably thought things would be too chaotic up at the Lodge.’
‘Why on earth are they coming back? I thought they’d be well on their way home by now, or wherever it was they were heading.’
‘They caught up with the Watermans.’ Anna explained what had happened. ‘And now they’ll be in Ayr, giving a full account to the police.’
‘Well, I never. You mean they overpowered Ronnie Waterman? And Martine — it was Martine, wasn’t it?’
‘It was. She’s injured
and in hospital. I don’t know all the details, but I expect we’ll be hearing before long. But that’s not all.’ She poured herself a glass of water, her hand shaking. ‘There’s the little matter of Chet Brunner’s will.’
Alec frowned. ‘But that’s one of my problems right now. Keeping the administration ticking over until we get some idea of what he —’
‘I think you’d better ring Mr Haining in Ayr. He was trying to get in touch with you earlier.’
Alec went off to the kitchen, where the pay-phone sat in a slot beside the central heating boiler.
Queenie eyed Anna nervously. ‘What’s this about, dear? Can you tell us?’
‘I don’t know if I ought to. It’s up to Mr Haining to —’
‘Oh, blow that old fart. Tell me what you know. Or what you think of it all.’
Anna braced herself. ‘It doesn’t make any sense. There’s some money for Jilly-Jo —’
‘Just ‘some money’? That doesn’t sound too good.’
‘An endowment for an annual sort of BAFTA-cum-Oscar in his name.’
‘Oh, dear. Gracious me.’ Queenie wriggled on her chair and giggled. ‘That’ll give the studios something to quarrel about each year.’
‘And the estate, including the house and all this place, cottages and all, come to me.’
‘To you?’ Queenie put her head on one side like a querulous bird, and then her voice became a trill. ‘But that’s lovely. What a lovely surprise, my dear. But why you?’
‘That’s what I don’t understand. The way it’s worded, it makes no sense. Something about my getting all this ‘as some recompense for the troubles inflicted on her by my son.’ That’s the way Mr Haining quoted it.’
Queenie had gone suddenly rigid. The twittering, bewildered look which so often seemed an act, put on to get her out of awkward arguments or situations she didn’t want to face, was wiped away. She was staring fixedly at something she couldn’t avoid any longer.
Cocky, curled up at her feet, whined uneasily.
‘I suppose it’ll all come out now.’
Before she could say any more, another car swept into the yard. It stopped with a slither of tyres. Cocky began barking as Anna opened the door, prepared again to fend off visitors.
Both front doors of the electric blue Jag opened. Hagan got out of the driver’s seat. Jilly-Jo came storming round from the other side.
‘Pleased with yourself, are you?’ Jilly-Jo’s baby-doll face was contorted. There was a fleck of spittle on her lower lip. ‘So po-faced, butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth, would it? And all the time you were having it off with Chet. In one of your scruffy little love nests down here?’
Queenie squeezed past Anna, raised her arm, and slapped Jilly-Jo so hard across the face that she lurched sideways into Hagan’s arms. Queenie winced as if the blow had jarred up the muscles of her arm. Cocky burst out between Anna’s feet and did an ecstatic victory lap round the yard.
‘If you wasn’t a woman, you’d pay for that,’ growled Hagan.
‘Get out of here,’ said Queenie. ‘The two of you. This is private property.’
‘Oh, you’re in on it too?’ Jilly-Jo shrilled. ‘What sort of a stitch-up d’you call this? After all I’ve done for Chet. All I gave him. Everything. And all the while, behind my back, you’ve been fixing things, getting him to sign away all the things that belong to me. His wife. Not just a piece on the side, but his real wife. Not just a . . .’ She saw Queenie’s arm begin to flex again, and stopped. ‘Very well. You obviously know what’s in his will, because you’ve fixed it the way you wanted it. But I’m not going to lie down and let it happen. There’s going to be one hell of an inquiry into this, believe you me.’
‘We’ll be going to law, that I’ll be telling you,’ said Hagan.
Cocky let out a squeal that was close to hysterical laughter.
‘And right now’ — Jilly-Jo made an attempt at dignity which was beyond her acting talents — ‘we’re going back to the house. To my house and my private suite. You’ll be hearing from me very soon. Believe me, you will.’
They waited for the Jag to reverse, swerve, and head for the lane, then went back indoors. Queenie stood still in the middle of the floor for a moment, her face screwed up in a spasm of pain. Before Anna could ask if she had hurt herself, Alec came out of the sitting-room.
‘Quite a situation,’ he said quietly.
‘I still don’t understand any of it.’ Anna sat in a chair across the kitchen table from Queenie. ‘He told you, did he, that stuff about Chet’s son and the troubles he’d caused me?’
‘He did, yes.’
‘But I never knew Chet’s son.’
‘You did,’ whispered Queenie. ‘You were married to him.’
‘Peter? You can’t be . . .’ Her gaze wandered helplessly from Queenie to Alec.
He said: ‘Yes. Peter was Chet’s son.’
‘But you . . .?’
‘Alec married me in spite of that.’ Queenie smiled up as Alec came round the table and put his arm round her shoulders. ‘The best thing that ever happened to me.’ Her smile faded. ‘But I don’t see why he had to make that filthy remark about my Peter. What did he mean by him causing you troubles? My Peter never hurt anybody, never . . .’
Alec reached for her arm. ‘Let’s go and leave Anna to think about things. She does have a lot to think about.’
Anna stared at the trace of bloodstain left by Walter Robinson. Everything else was so unbelievable that she was letting her mind become hypnotized by something real and tangible. Blood on the table.
Worse than marmalade?
Chapter Fourteen
DCI McAdam had been very properly, politely congratulatory on the behaviour of Sir Nicholas and Lady Torrance. The capture of Ronald Waterman had been admirable, though without actually saying so she managed to imply that there had been an element of luck in it. Since this was true, neither Nick nor Lesley cared to challenge the implication.
They recorded statements, one part of which displeased McAdam. Each of them reported, as closely as possible to the original wording, what Ronnie and Martine had said about finding the body and dragging it away, but not being responsible for having reduced Chet Brunner to the state of a corpse.
‘And you believed them?’
‘Oddly enough,’ said Lesley, ‘yes.’
‘Me, too,’ said Nick.
‘I think the weight of evidence will overcome their pretences.’ Something in her aggressive tone suggested she might have been talking down such doubts in herself. ‘Anyway, thank you again. Your co-operation has been much appreciated.’
‘Too late for my wife to be given a police medal?’ Nick had asked.
‘I’m sure the appropriate authority will want to issue a formal commendation. And of course you may expect a great deal of praise in a number of television news programmes.’ She made that sound far from desirable. Shaking hands stiffly, she said: ‘Safe journey home.’
‘Oh, we ought to mention that if you want to get in touch with us, we won’t actually be back at Black Knowe until the weekend.’
For some reason McAdam looked disconcerted to learn that they would be staying a night or two in Stables Cottage. Since things were now virtually wrapped up so far as she was concerned, she would perhaps have been glad to wipe all the supernumeraries off her record.
On the way back to Balmuir, Nick grinned. ‘See what I’ve saved you from? You’d have finished up just like that.’
‘She’s a conscientious officer.’
‘I’m sure. And she’s not going to be distracted from her course of duty by niggling little doubts.’
As they went through Balmuir and up the slope to turn in between the gateposts of Balmuir Lodge, Lesley said: ‘Hold on a minute. We’re supposed to be going to the cottages, not the house.’
‘Oh, damn. I wasn’t thinking. I’ll turn round at the end.’
But when they reached the wide terrace in front of the house, Alec Chisholm was em
erging, followed by Jilly-Jo waving her arms and shouting. As Nick stopped and opened his door, the lumpish form of Tam Hagan lumbered out in Jilly-Jo’s wake. He set himself beside her, his jacket buttoned up tightly, with the air of a bouncer waiting for any chance to clobber somebody. Lesley, on her way in with Alec, stopped in the doorway like a member of the audience arriving late for a performance.
‘We’re off to see a solicitor,’ Jilly-Jo announced. ‘I’m not going to be cheated out of my rights as a loyal wife by some piddling little provincial solicitor.’
Obediently picking up his cue, Hagan nodded. ‘I know just the man in Glasgow. Someone who really knows what he’s doing. Nobody cheats on me. On us.’
Lesley saw Nick’s right eyebrow raised in her direction at those pronouns. Me . . . us . . .? They suggested Hagan’s interest in Jilly-Jo was not exclusively an amorous one.
Jilly-Jo headed for the Jaguar parked against the low stone wall, glaring at Lesley as if she were under suspicion as a potential rival. It was quite a compelling performance, striding from stage centre to stage left, lacking only the swirl of a silken scarf, with the added spice of Georgina Campbell coming up the steps to the far end of the terrace at the same time.
‘And you,’ Jilly-Jo blazed. ‘You can get out of here before I get back, or I’ll have you thrown out.’
‘Chet owes me. I’m not just going to clear out without a penny. Something to remember him by,’ she snivelled, trying her own brand of calculated melancholy. ‘He wouldn’t want that to happen to me.’
Hagan managed to eye her up and down as he followed Jilly-Jo to the car.
‘Crap,’ said Jilly-Jo. ‘You were just one of his cheap little trollops.’
‘You’d never understand a real sincere relationship, you wouldn’t. No wonder he wanted to ditch you.’
‘A relationship? We know what sort of relationship you two were in, don’t we? But at least the pictures he took of me were artistic. Not like the filth you posed for.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
