2 Reunited in Death

by Cecilia Peartree

  But Jemima Stevenson had never been a flouncer. She just pulled her woolly hat into the right position, squared her shoulders and demanded that he think of a family member with a more unusual name to start with.

  ‘It’ll be a lot easier to track down somebody called Ignatia Farthingale than John Smith,’ she said. ‘We won’t get so many results, and we should be able to tell which is the right one.’

  ‘I don’t think there are any Farthingales in my family,’ said Jock.

  She couldn’t tell whether he was using his famous weapon of irony or not. She decided to take his words at face value.

  ‘It doesn’t have to be Farthingale. Just think of somebody with a more unusual name than Smith. Look – my great-great-uncle was Lachlan Farquharson.‘

  She keyed in the name with nonchalant expertise.

  ‘See – only three results. That one there must be my great-great-uncle, he’s the only one with the right dates... Now let’s try and find somebody in your family.’

  ‘How about Fenwick Colquhoun?’ suggested Jock. She tried to analyse his words for any trace of irony, but he seemed to be perfectly serious.

  ‘Fenwick as a first name?’

  ‘Yes. Is that unusual enough for you?’

  She typed it in. There was a pause.

  ‘There!’ she said triumphantly. ‘Only one result. Is this your relative?’

  Jock peered at the screen.

  ‘I’ve got the wrong glasses on. Wait a minute.’

  He went through a rigmarole of taking off his glasses, putting them away in their case, fishing out another case, taking out glasses, putting them on, and peering at the screen again. Jemima seethed. Some people were just their own worst enemies.

  ‘I think that might be my grandfather,’ said Jock after prolonged study. ‘My goodness, that’s impressive. Is there a picture of him hidden here somewhere?’

  He started pressing keys again. Jemima actually wrenched the keyboard out from under his fingers and held on to it. Search results for Abraham Lincoln appeared on the screen.

  ‘How did that happen? I was only trying to see if – ‘

  ‘There aren’t any pictures in this index,’ said Jemima, still clutching the keyboard and speaking slowly and clearly to conceal her irritation. ‘Pictures are much further down the line. You’d need to get more documentary evidence – death certificates, parents’ marriage and so on. Then there might be a newspaper obituary. If you’re lucky.’

  The meeting room was getting crowded. Jemima had a minor inspiration.

  ‘Why don’t we let somebody else use the computer just now? We could go into the library and look up their local records. There might be something about him –‘

  ‘He wasn’t from around here,’ said Jock with satisfaction. ‘Thurso. Or maybe Wick. That’s where he was from. Or maybe Kyle of Lochalsh. Or Golspie.’

  ‘He doesn’t really belong in the Pitkirtly Homecoming day then, does he?’ snapped Jemima.

  ‘All right, I won’t bother about him any more if he doesn’t fit in,’ said Jock. ‘God knows, I’m used to that sort of thing... Let somebody else play with the computers. I’m going into the library to change my books now. I may be some time.’

  He stalked off. Well, Jemima reflected, at least I broke through his protective shell of irony. She had an uneasy feeling, though, that he wouldn’t forget this small disagreement.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said a small woman in a green quilted coat and a fluffy pink hat that Jemima wouldn't have been seen dead in. ‘Did I hear you say your great-great-uncle was Lachlan Farquharson?’

  Jemima turned to the stranger with relief.

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ she said eagerly.

  ‘It’s just that I think he may have swindled my great-grandmother out of rather a large sum of money,’ said the small woman in an accusatory tone.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Jemima. ‘I must just go and see what’s happened to my friend. He was a bit upset about something.’

  She put the keyboard she had been holding all this time back on the table, and wandered out to the foyer. This family history day wasn’t working out at all as she had hoped it would.

  'Mrs Stevenson,' said a faint voice at her elbow. Her spirits plummeted further. She turned to face Clarissa, who now looked like a piece of chewed string. Her hair drooped, her eyelids drooped, the corners of her mouth drooped as if she didn't have the energy to hold any of them up any longer.

  'Oh, dear,' said Jemima, meaning every word of it.

  'He's doing it again,' said Clarissa, her voice trailing downwards as if it, too, was drooping.

  'Doing what?'

  'He's got some American woman in a corner of the folk museum and - ' she choked back a sob.

  'And what?'

  'You know - he's getting too close to her.'

  'Do you mean Andrew?' Jemima tried not to seem incredulous, but really, Andrew! She doubted very much if he was actually the small town Casanova of Clarissa's fantasies. 'What American woman?'

  Clarissa shrugged thin shoulders. Even this movement was half-hearted. Jemima wondered if the girl was suffering from anaemia - or maybe it was thyroid. Or maybe she just needed a tonic. 'Just one of the visitors. She's got very yellow hair. It can't be natural. And a loud voice. I think she's American.'

  'Let's go and have a look,' said Jemima. She wasn't at all convinced by Clarissa's account - and as for Graham's sighting of Andrew and a woman in the furniture shop, that could have been pure malicious fabrication, for all anybody knew.

  Of course, it was the wrong thing to do. She should have known that.

  They entered the Folk Museum quietly and discreetly enough; Andrew was indeed in the corner leaning over a woman with very blonde hair. They seemed to be deep in conversation, although it wasn't necessarily of a romantic nature. For one thing, Jemima realised immediately that the woman was old enough to be Andrew's mother. Of course some men wouldn't be at all put off by that, but she considered it slightly weird, and her previous experience of Andrew suggested he was conventional enough to agree with her.

  She turned to Clarissa to try and put these thoughts into words that would make some impact on the girl; but Clarissa was no longer standing by her side. Instead, finding some energy at last, she had pushed her way through the other people in the room and now confronted Andrew.

  'Andrew! Can I have a word with you?'

  Andrew said something Jemima couldn't hear. He had on a strained half-smile. The very blonde woman put her hand on his arm and spoke to him, smiling warmly at Clarissa as she did so.

  Clarissa stared fiercely at the woman's hand as it rested on Andrew's arm. Jemima almost winced as she imagined Clarissa slapping the hand away and grabbing Andrew for herself. She had started to close her eyes against the picture when she realised it had all been in her own head.

  Andrew said something to Clarissa. His half-smile had gone and he was looking quite stern.

  'But I need to speak to you! Now!' said Clarissa loudly and clearly. 'Alone!'

  The very blonde woman removed her hand from Andrew's arm. Andrew frowned and spoke to Clarissa again. If only he hadn't been so quiet and discreet, thought Jemima, desperate to know what was going on. But then, that was his way. He was maybe a bit too discreet for his own good.

  'Fine!' said Clarissa. She gave the very blonde woman a venomous look, turned on her heel and marched off in the direction of the library. She was probably going to sulk somewhere in the foreign languages section, where Jemima had found her several times before. There wasn't much call for foreign languages in Pitkirtly so that part of the library was almost always deserted.

  Wondering at the intensity and volatility of Clarissa's emotions, Jemima went back through to the foyer, where she noticed that there were people wandering about looking lost, and although there was nothing on earth she hated doing more than she hated interacting with members of the public in this kind of environment, she couldn’t stand by and let fellow family historians wander ab
out looking lost. Especially when she had been personally involved in setting up this family history day for them.

  Glancing up from a floor plan of the building on which she had been pointing out to a visitor where the coffee vending machine was – as well as warning them not to use it due to its temperamental nature – she noticed the woman in the fluffy pink hat making her way purposefully through the throng and going out the main door. At about the same time David appeared by her side and, silently divining what she was doing and the fact that she needed some assistance with it, started to help with all the questions.

  ‘I’m a Cockburn on my mother’s side, of course,’ she heard him say proudly. She smiled to herself. She had drawn him into it as she knew she would.

  Soon after that the screaming started.

  Chapter 10

  Screaming the place down

  Amaryllis thought at first that it was jolly, girlish screaming of the kind people might do if they had suddenly found they were descended from Jesus Christ or related to Princess Diana. She could imagine some of the women here indulging in that if they got really excited by their ancestry.

  Then she considered the possibility that it was panicky screaming of the kind an arachnophobe might emit if a spider suddenly fell on their head while they were driving along the M90 motorway,

  As she moved towards the sound, she realised, as she heard the sobbing that had followed the screaming, that something awful had happened in the library.

  Although highly trained and experienced in emergency situations, Amaryllis had noticed before that it was a bit different when the situation involved your friends. For a start, you weren’t operating at maximum efficiency because you had to consider, not just the logistics of the situation, the rational thing to do, and what your enemies might do, but also the effect anything you did would have on people close to you. She didn’t enjoy that kind of thing. But she took a deep breath and went in through the library door.

  The first thing she noticed was that Christopher wasn’t there. This could be a good or bad thing.

  The second thing was the small group of people at one side of the room, near the self-help books. Amaryllis had never even considered looking at a self-help book, and the only reason she knew they were there was that she had noticed on her abruptly curtailed visit to the building the day before that a man in a dog-collar was standing by these particular shelves, looking as furtive as only someone in a dog-collar could, while consulting a book entitled ‘Sex: What Women Want and other stories.’

  There was a sobbing woman in the middle of the group: she was surrounded by other women in various stages of tartan, and one elderly man who stood there irresolute, holding a beige handbag.

  Amaryllis got out her Security Services id card again: using it in civilian life twice in two days must be some sort of record.

  She held it up in front of her as a talisman.

  ‘Amaryllis Peebles, security services. What’s going on here?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said the nearest woman, softly spoken and perhaps Canadian. ‘This lady came through the door there – ‘she pointed to a door marked ‘Fire Exit’ – ‘and just started screaming. That’s her husband there. She hasn’t been able to tell us what’s wrong.’

  Amaryllis looked at the door. It was standing ajar, and there was darkness beyond. Whatever had given the woman such a fright could be still there, but she wasn’t afraid of anything real, and she didn’t believe in ghosts, so all she had to do was take a look. Still she hesitated. By opening the door she might open up a box of secrets that was better left locked.

  She gave herself a shake, physically and mentally. She definitely didn’t believe in ghosts, or in anything that wasn’t real. Even her instincts could be explained scientifically. The rational explanation for her hesitation in this case was that it didn’t make sense to go from light into darkness – for a few moments, she would be silhouetted against the light and therefore more vulnerable than she liked to be.

  For goodness’ sake, Amaryllis, she told herself. You’ve handled worse situations than this. Don’t forget the time in Baghdad, with the human bomb. She stepped forward, taking a small torch out of her pocket as she pulled at the door. It creaked rustily but swung towards her. She stepped into the narrow corridor, flicking on the torch to give some visibility.

  The outline of a door at the end of the corridor. Some boxes. A step-ladder. If this was supposed to be a public fire exit, it definitely contravened the regulations. She turned the beam downwards to illuminate her footsteps, so that she was a bit less likely to fall over something. Something lay untidily across the corridor like a heap of old clothes. What would a heap of old clothes be doing lying in the fire exit corridor in a library? Amaryllis had a bad feeling about this.

  She stooped down to have a closer look. And stood up suddenly as someone came up behind her, fast.

  ‘Move aside, please, madam. We need to get in here and have a look.’

  Amaryllis was cross with herself for hesitating. If she had been quicker off the mark, she could have started her own investigation before the police got here. Not for the first time she wondered if she was getting too old for all this.

  She turned away and went back into the library. The little group was still there, but now augmented by several uniformed police officers. Two women constables were comforting the sobbing woman – now only whimpering softly to herself – and there were a lot of official notebooks in evidence. As she watched the group, she noticed Clarissa sliding out from the foreign language section and join it, lurking behind the man with the beige handbag. There was something stealthy about her movements, as if she didn't want anyone to know where she had been.

  Amaryllis tried to go out to the foyer, where she just glimpsed Jemima Stevenson looking anxiously in her direction, but her way was barred.

  ‘Detective Chief Inspector Smith, Fife Constabulary,’ said a tall dark man she remembered vaguely. ‘Don’t go anywhere for a little while – we may need to get your prints and a DNA sample.’

  ‘I think you’ll find they’re already on file,’ said Amaryllis. She showed him her id card. He nodded as if the image were already imprinted on his mind and he didn’t really need to look properly.

  ‘I think we need to have a word about your unauthorised visit to the incident room, so stick around anyway.’

  Damn, thought Amaryllis. She found the library steps and perched on them, prepared for a long wait.

  Out in the foyer, Christopher, who had followed Big Dave and the police back over to the Cultural Centre just before the building was secured by the police, was feeling stressed, although he didn’t really believe in stress as a concept. Mrs Stevenson wouldn’t stop going on about the family history day being ruined, and it somehow being all her fault. A pity, thought Christopher, that she had found her voice after all those years only to use it to irritate people. Big Dave didn’t seem to be irritated: he listened to her every word as if it were Shakespeare.

  The police had closed the door to the library, but Mrs Stevenson and Andrew were trying valiantly to keep the family history day going. Christopher thought they were fighting a losing battle, since the police would undoubtedly close the whole building down any minute now. It was embarrassing, with all these foreign tourists around – some of them had travelled long distances to be here, apparently, although he found that hard to believe.

  He was proved right when Detective Chief Inspector Smith fought his way through the crowd to the reception desk, around which Christopher, Mrs Stevenson and Big Dave were clustered.

  ‘Who’s in charge here?’ demanded Mr Smith.

  Christopher looked round for someone to be in charge, and decided to appoint himself on a temporary basis.

  ‘I think that’s me at the moment. Graham’s on his break, and the others are somewhere about. But I can’t take any decisions – I’m only a part time attendant.’

  ‘The place wouldn’t run properly without Christopher,’ said Mrs Steve
nson, exaggerating wildly.

  ‘Well, maybe you can get these people to stop milling about. We need to close down the building, but we’ll have to take names and addresses before anybody leaves.’

  ‘Names and addresses?’ said Christopher, glancing round at the medley of people.

  ‘Close down the building?’ said Mrs Stevenson in dismay.

  Mr Smith lowered his voice. ‘There’s been an - incident. We’ve found a body.’

  Mrs Stevenson gasped and covered her mouth with her hand.

  ‘Where? Who is it?’ said Big Dave.

  ‘I really can’t say at this stage,’ said Mr Smith. ’But we do need everyone to remain calm, gather together in an orderly fashion and wait their turn to speak to the police.’

  Christopher thought the chances of that were about the same as of a massive golden eagle swooping in through the Cultural Centre entrance, picking him up in its talons and flying off with him. In a way he wished that would happen.

  ‘There are people who’ve come from New Zealand to be here today!’ said Mrs Stevenson. ‘I met one lady who had travelled by train for two days to get to the airport, then it was a two day flight with changes and stop-overs – is that the right word, David? – and then she had to get up here from London, and she has to go back to Edinburgh tonight because there isn’t a hotel in Pitkirtly.’

  ‘There’s hotels in Fife though,’ said Big Dave, loyal to his native county. ’She could have stayed a bit closer than Edinburgh.’

  ‘I don’t suppose she knew that, though,’ said Christopher, although why he felt he had to rush to the unknown New Zealander’s defence he didn’t know. ‘She probably just booked the Travel Lodge nearest to the airport or something.’