‘You’ll get there in the end, Jemima,’ said David. ‘No need to rush. You want to make sure it’s right as you go along.’
‘Do you need the printer?’ said Christopher. He showed her how to switch it on, and she printed out the marriage records she had found so far.
‘That’s my mum and dad,’ she told David, handing him the sheet. He stared at it. She hoped he wouldn’t feel as if he had to say something but of course he did.
‘Very good, Jemima. Look – they’ve got a Farquharson as a witness.’
He pointed to the names of the witnesses.
‘John Farquharson,’ she read aloud. ‘That’s funny.’
‘Funny if it was any relation to Ms Farquharson,’ said David. ‘Who’s the other one?’
‘Joe McGillicuddy. That doesn’t ring any bells, though.’
‘Well, maybe it’ll all make sense in the end,’ he said comfortingly. She knew he didn’t know anything about it, but it was nice of him to say that. For one wild moment she felt like flinging her arms round him and giving him a big affectionate kiss, but then she remembered Christopher was also in the room. What would he think? The idea of old people embracing was probably enough to make him want either to throw up or to lie down in a darkened room for several hours.
‘I’m going to go through the deaths now,’ she announced.
‘You just carry on, hen,’ said David. He got up and filled the kettle again.
Jemima returned to the computer.
Her searches resulted in two more of the sisters being crossed off.
‘Janet died in 1916 and Maisie died in 1923,’ she told David and Christopher. ‘They were just children. Janet died of meningitis and Maisie of scarlet fever... Good old days, my foot!’
‘They were grim times,’ said David, shaking his head.
‘How many still unaccounted for?’ said Christopher.
Jemima did some calculations. ‘I think it’s just two that I don’t have any idea about: Phemie and Kirsty. I know something about all the others: Jessie got married in Dunfermline and had two children; Dotty went to America and had at least one child, Lorelei; May went to Australia and was Jim Halloran’s mother; Aggie went to South Africa and Graham to England; Maisie and Janet died young, and Mima and my mum lived into old age.’
‘You’ve done well so far,’ said David admiringly.
‘What exactly are you hoping to learn?’ said Christopher frowning in a way some people might think was disapproving, but which Jemima knew was just his way of concentrating hard.
‘Well,’ she said doubtfully, ‘I suppose I just want to know if any more of them are going to turn up.’
‘You won’t know that anyway,’ David pointed out. ‘There could be more of them around already without you knowing. There could be one following you around waiting for the chance to speak.’
Jemima shuddered.
‘Or waiting to knock me on the head, you mean.’
‘I won’t let that happen,’ said David. ‘They’ll have to get through me first.’
She felt herself blushing. ‘I don’t think anybody’s going to come after me,’ she said modestly.
‘You never know,’ said Christopher. ‘There might be somebody out there with a grudge against the whole family.’
‘Hmm,’ said Jemima. ‘There was an angry woman who said something like that – ‘
‘Angry woman?’ said David and Christopher at the same moment.
‘Yesterday,’ said Jemima, thinking how long ago it seemed. ‘In a green coat. With a funny kind of old-fashioned fluffy pink hat.’
‘Why was she angry?’ said David.
‘It was something to do with my great-great-uncle Lachlan Farquharson.’
‘That name again,’ said David, voice heavy with significance.
‘She said he’d swindled her great-granny out of something or other. I can’t remember exactly – I just thought she was a bit funny in the head, so I moved away. She didn’t come after me or anything.’
‘Some people can get very wound up about the past,’ said Christopher. ‘Did she look as if she might go around hitting people over the head?’
Jemima laughed. ‘She was only a wee short thing. She’d have had to stand on a chair to hit Jim Halloran on the head.’
‘Lachlan Farquharson – do you think he was maybe related to Ms Farquharson?’ speculated David.
‘That makes sense,’ said Christopher. ‘Jemima’s angry woman would have a motive for getting rid of her too then.’
‘She’s not my angry woman,’ said Jemima. ‘Anyway, she still wouldn’t have had the strength to knock anybody on the head.’
‘Maybe she hired a hit-man,’ said Christopher.
‘Maybe it’s that man with the mud-coloured eyes,’ said David.
The two of them burst out laughing. Jemima couldn’t believe how callous they were being. Three people dead, two of them her first cousins, and they had already started joking about it.
The door-bell rang and they all jumped.
‘That’ll be him now,’ said Christopher, with one last giggle as he got up to go to the door.
It wasn’t the man with the mud-coloured eyes. It was Detective Chief Inspector Smith with one of the women police officers again.
‘We’ve had trouble tracking you down, Mrs Stevenson,’ said Mr Smith with a reproving tone in his voice. ‘You really should have told us exactly where you were going.’
‘I was planning to stay with Amaryllis,’ said Jemima. ‘But I didn’t know she already had visitors.’
Just in time she stopped herself blurting out anything about the Tibetan teenagers; they could be asylum seekers, and although she regarded herself as exceptionally law-abiding, she wouldn’t have wanted to betray them to the authorities. Let the police find out themselves if they were so clever. She had seen programmes on television about the way asylum seekers were treated, and it wasn’t nice at all.
‘Oh, yes, the Tibetans,’ said Mr Smith casually. ‘I believe their parents have entrusted them to the care of Ms Peebles.’
His tone hinted that he himself wouldn’t entrust a dog to the care of Amaryllis, but Jemima ignored that.
‘How can I help you?’ she said.
It was just the usual sort of thing. Taking a further statement; asking if she remembered anything else; had anything odd happened lately. Suppressing a hollow laugh, Jemima calmly denied that anything odd ever happened in Pitkirtly. Perish the thought, squire! As somebody or other on television might have said.
Chapter 22
The colour of mud
It didn’t take long for Amaryllis to feel claustrophobic again. She just wasn’t used to sharing her living space.
After extracting a promise from the Tibetans that they wouldn’t encourage Jock McLean in any madcap schemes that would land them all in custody, she slipped away from the flat. She decided to be kind to Christopher and extract him from his imprisonment with Big Dave and Jemima, then she planned to track down the man with the mud-coloured eyes and interrogate him. Not in a bad way, as she might once have done during her professional career, but subtly and gently, so that he wouldn’t know he’d been interrogated at all.
She wasn’t surprised when Christopher started off by being difficult. It was as if he was programmed that way.
‘We’ll never find him,’ he said when she told him the idea as they stood in the porch of his house listening to the rain dripping through the hole in the guttering that he had been meaning to get fixed since about 1983.
‘We can start in the Queen of Scots,’ suggested Amaryllis. ‘You said Maisie Sue told him that’s where we’d be.’
‘No, she didn’t. She said that’s what she was about to tell him when he disappeared.’
‘Maybe he’s gone there anyway. Maybe she met him again and told him. Maybe he just wants to get some general background about the area. That’s what I would do.’
‘He probably doesn’t have your training and experience,’ Christo
pher muttered darkly.
‘Well, let’s go and have a look anyway. We can get a quick drink while we’re there.’
‘Is Jock still with the Tibetans?’
‘Yes, I left him in charge. Or at least, I left one of the kids in charge without telling Jock. I don’t want him persuading them to do anything silly.’
‘Hmmm,’ said Christopher, and fetched his jacket. The kitchen door, which led off the hall and which was usually open, was closed.
‘Are Jemima and Dave in there?’ said Amaryllis as they walked down the front path.
‘And the police,’ said Christopher.
‘I wish they’d leave her alone. It just gets her flustered.’
‘I’m not so sure. I think it may get them flustered. She’s been doing family history research on my computer. She talks the talk, all right.’
‘Nice to see her so wrapped up in something,’ said Amaryllis.
‘What if this has something to do with her and her cousins though?’ said Christopher. ‘She could be in danger. We were just speaking about that when the police came round.’
‘Dave’ll look after her.’
‘But he isn’t getting any younger... I wondered whether to say something to the police...’
‘They won’t give her protection on the basis of a vague hunch,’ said Amaryllis. ‘We’d better keep an eye on her between us. It shouldn’t be too difficult.’
Their steps turned effortlessly down the road that led to the Queen of Scots, favourite haunt of their little group of friends. It was where they had first met, in fact. Christopher glanced sideways at Amaryllis and wondered if she remembered that day. She showed no sign of nostalgia, however. Her mind seemed as usual to be pursuing some other agenda.
‘The police must have thought of all that,’ she continued. ‘They’ll have somebody at work tracing living relatives already.’
‘But they don’t have the family knowledge that Jemima has.’
She pondered this.
‘They know about her scrapbook.’
‘Yes, I think they took a photo-copy of the family Bible page,’ said Christopher. ‘But she’ll have lots more in her head. People do usually. Family stuff. Auntie Flora’s little white terrier; Uncle Archie always bringing Dinky cars when he came to see you. Nobody else knows them unless you write them down. ‘
‘Hardly worth writing down,’ reflected Amaryllis.
‘Well, you never know,’ said Christopher, smiling. ‘One person’s odd reminiscence could be someone else's vital clue.’
They arrived at the Queen of Scots just as he said that. A couple of smokers standing outside in the rain gave him an odd look.
‘Last one to the bar buys the drinks,’ he said, holding the door open for Amaryllis to make sure she was first in.
She laughed. ‘Couldn’t you just have offered to buy me a drink?’
‘You might have thought I was trying to pick you up, and taken offence,’ he said solemnly.
Amaryllis glanced quickly round the bar as they went in. It was a habit of hers anyway, sizing up potential threats. On this occasion she had an excuse for it; but she didn’t see anyone with mud-coloured eyes.
‘Somebody was asking after you,’ said the barmaid to Christopher as she poured his pint of Old Pictish Brew.
‘Let me guess – a man dressed in brown, with mud-coloured eyes,’ said Christopher.
‘How did you know that?’ said the barmaid.
‘Look out – you’re spilling it,’ said Amaryllis. She picked up her gin and tonic, and headed over to their usual table. Christopher joined her with his pint.
‘Is that old Pictish Brew any good?’ she asked idly.
He took a slurp. ‘Terrible. But the name appeals to me.’ He took a great big gulp.
‘So he’s been here already,’ said Amaryllis. ‘I wonder where he went.’
‘The barmaid didn’t give him my address,’ he told her. ‘So we don’t need to worry about him surprising Big Dave and Jemima.’
‘Someone might give him it, though,’ said Amaryllis, trying to be delicate with her gin and tonic. They might have to go the rounds of other pubs – not that there were very many in the town.
‘I’ll phone and warn them.’
Christopher fished out his mobile and called the house number.
‘No reply.’
‘They probably don’t want to pick up your home phone,’ said Amaryllis. ‘People can be funny like that... Does either of them have a mobile?’
‘Not sure,’ said Christopher. ‘I suppose I’d better head back up there and warn them they might get a visitor.’
‘Drink your drink, for goodness’ sake,’ said Amaryllis. ‘Stop worrying.’
She sat back in her chair.
Christopher fidgeted.
The door opened and Maisie Sue swept in, a swirl of rain around her.
Christopher jumped to his feet. Unfortunately this movement attracted her attention.
‘Christopher! I’ve been looking for you.’
‘Oh, God,’ said Christopher. ‘I mean, oh good. We’ve been looking for the man with the mud-coloured eyes.’
Maisie Sue came over to their table. She gave Amaryllis the ghost of a half-smile.
‘But that’s why I’ve come to find you! I just saw him again!’
‘Where?’
‘He was on his way up the High Street. Looking for another of your English pubs.’
‘Scottish,’ said Christopher.
‘Oh, I'm sorry, Christopher! I know how picky you folks are about that kind of thing. He told me he’d looked for you in here, and the barmaid told him you hadn’t been in.’
‘I suppose we’d better go and find him, then,’ said Amaryllis. She took another prim sip of her gin and tonic. ‘Drink up, Christopher.’
‘You can’t rush Old Pictish Brew,’ said Christopher reproachfully.
‘Well, if you’re not going anywhere, I guess I’ll bring my drink over here too,’ said Maisie Sue. Christopher gulped his Old Pictish Brew down so quickly that Amaryllis didn’t think it could have touched the sides. He glared at her as she took another sip of her drink.
‘Hurry up,’ he hissed as Maisie Sue retrieved her drink from the bar. ‘She’s coming over. We won’t be able to get away.’
‘Get away?’ said Maisie Sue sweetly. ‘Are you going somewhere?’
‘Christopher’s in a hurry to find the man with the mud-coloured eyes,’ said Amaryllis. ‘I wonder if you can tell us anything more about him, Maisie Sue?’
‘I guess I can try,’ said Maisie Sue, cradling a lager and Irn Bru, a drink she had only recently been introduced to by Jock McLean in a mischievous moment. She thought for a moment, giving them a welcome respite from the sound of her voice, and then said, ‘I guess he might have had black shoes. Very highly polished.’
‘Wow, that really is useful,’ said Amaryllis. She saw Maisie Sue watching her uncertainly for signs that she was being sarcastic. I must stop winding people up, she told herself. But maybe not just yet.
‘So he had brown hair, brown eyes – ‘
‘Mud-coloured,’ said Maisie Sue.
‘Mud-coloured eyes,’ continued Christopher, ‘brown jacket... Was he wearing glasses? Did he have facial hair? How tall was he? Was he overweight?’
‘My, my Christopher,’ said Maisie Sue, ‘you’ve been learning interrogation techniques from somewhere, I can see.’
She gave Amaryllis a sideways glance.
‘Just answer the questions,’ said Amaryllis, trying to sound like a policeman from a television show.
‘No facial hair,’ said Maisie Sue. ‘About medium size. No glasses... Am I free to go now?’
For the first time ever, she took her drink and moved to another table without Christopher and Amaryllis having to make an excuse to get away from her.
‘I think you offended her,’ said Christopher with glee.
Amaryllis sipped at her drink again, and suddenly jumped to her feet and ran f
or the exit.
‘Last one to find the mud-coloured man’s a sissy,’ she called back at him. She gave Maisie Sue a big grin. She suddenly felt more light-hearted than she had for a while. Maybe she’d been suffering from jet lag. Or – it occurred to her in a flash that illuminated everything with painful brightness – maybe she and Christopher hadn’t spent enough time together, just the two of them. She pushed that idea right down into the deepest recesses of her brain. She had a feeling that the more she thought about it, the more hideous snags she would find in it.
Chapter 23
The attack
Christopher was pleased to see Amaryllis looking a bit more light-hearted. She had maybe been suffering from jet-lag until now. After all, it was a long journey from China, and she had arrived back just as this latest situation was developing. It was good to see her running up the street giggling as he pretended to chase her.
‘Where are we going?’ he called after her, breathlessly. He would have to get into training if he was going to spend much more time with her.
‘We’d better start in the High Street,’ she called back over her shoulder, jogging onwards and upwards.
It was starting to get dark, and all the shop windows were lit up, so that the Christmas decorations glittered more brightly and the fairy lights the butcher had strung incongruously around the dead rabbits twinkled more prettily. Christopher noticed he had added a picture of Bambi to his display. Presumably this meant he would be selling venison for Christmas.
They wove their way in and out of groups of late shoppers. Even Amaryllis had slowed down now.
‘Let’s go in here,’ she suggested as they reached the end of the lane that led to the wheelie-bins where the Tibetans had been living.
‘There won’t be anybody there now,’ said Christopher.
‘You never know,’ she said, and led the way. She had a small torch in her jacket pocket, and it gave at least some light in the darkness. The roller shutter door of the loading bay was closed and there was nobody in the lane at all. Except....
‘Did you hear a groan?’ said Christopher uncertainly.
Amaryllis was one step ahead of him, both physically and mentally; when they came to the wheelie bins she darted behind them. ‘Come in here, Christopher. Look at this.’
2 Reunited in Death Page 14
