‘Thanks.’
Was it his imagination, or was there an emotional tremor in her voice? He sneaked a look at her. She was frowning. Probably to keep the tears at bay.
He frowned too, in solidarity. It seemed to work.
'See you soon, then,' he said, turning towards the taxi driver, who had been waiting with commendable patience.
'Wait a minute,' said Amaryllis. He paused. She suddenly flung her arms round him from behind and hugged him tightly. He twisted in her grasp, wondering what it was all about but unable to tell without seeing her face.
'See you tomorrow?' she said at last, stepping back. He tried to see her face but she was gone, running over to her front door to unlock it for the party of Tibetans.
'Women, eh?' said the taxi driver, shaking his head. 'Can't live with them, can't live without them.'
Christopher paid him as quickly as possible, hoping not to have to listen to any more homespun wisdom.
He was walking up the road from Merchantman Wynd, not taking much notice of his surroundings, when a voice said his name. He glanced up. Andrew was walking towards him.
'Do you know if Amaryllis lives somewhere down here?' he asked. Christopher reluctantly paused to speak to him.
'Yes, she does. Why?'
'I was hoping to talk to her. Do you know the address?'
'Yes. But she's kind of busy at the moment. Visitors.'
'Ah,' said Andrew, as if he understood, which seemed unlikely.
'Is it urgent?' said Christopher.
'Not really,' said Andrew. 'I wanted to thank her, that's all.'
'Oh, yes,' said Christopher.
Andrew stared at the ground for a few minutes, and then looked up and said, 'I suppose it isn't really a secret. Amaryllis helped me with Clarissa. She was stalking me, for want of a better word.'
'Mmm,' said Christopher.
'Amaryllis managed to get her to stop bothering me. It's made such a difference. You've got no idea. I just can't thank her enough. I thought I'd ask if she wanted to come out to dinner. I've brought her flowers.'
For the first time Christopher noticed the small bouquet Andrew held down by his side, presumably to protect it from the gale that was still blowing. He wasn't sure that Amaryllis was a flower person, but somehow it irked him that he had never had this idea himself.
'What did Amaryllis do?' he asked.
'I don't know - I think they had a heart-to-heart and Clarissa learned something from all the experience Amaryllis has... Don't you think mature experienced women are sexier than young flighty girls?'
Christopher didn't know what to say. He didn't feel his usual 'Mmm' did justice to the situation.
'Oh well,' said Andrew. 'Maybe I'll leave it for another time.'
He began to walk in the direction Christopher had been going. There was an awkward silence. Christopher tried to think of some way of explaining Amaryllis to Andrew, but it was such a huge topic he didn't know where to start. The main thing in his mind was that Andrew was lucky he didn't know just what sort of experience Amaryllis had.
'At one point I even wondered if Clarissa was mad enough to kill those people,' said Andrew with a laugh.
'Mmm,' said Christopher. He noticed a lane leading round behind some houses. This was his chance to get away. 'I'm going up this way - see you at work on Monday, then.'
'Yes,' said Andrew and walked briskly away towards the High Street. Christopher waited until he had gone and then came out of the lane and followed at a safe distance. He didn't have any alcoholic drinks in the house, thanks to Jemima and Dave, and he needed to go to the nearest shop to replenish his supplies. After the conversation he had just had, only a stiff drink would do.
Chapter 32
Just like a jigsaw puzzle
The next day, on their way to visit Mrs Stevenson in hospital, Christopher and Amaryllis encountered Maisie Sue again.
‘Why, Amaryllis! We didn't get the chance to catch up when I saw you yesterday - you were gone so quickly.’
‘Hello, Maisie Sue,’ said Amaryllis.
Maisie Sue was holding tightly to her patchwork scarf, which the wind was threatening to snatch cruelly from her, but which Christopher thought belonged in the harbour anyway.
‘So did you find your friend?’ said Maisie Sue brightly.
'Friend? - oh, Jemima!' said Amaryllis. 'Yes, that's all sorted out.'
'And how about the man you were looking for?' said Maisie Sue to Christopher, half turning towards him either to make him feel included in the conversation, to exclude Amaryllis or for some third reason he would never be able to work out, being a mere male.
‘Man?’ Christopher tried to remember what they had been talking about the last time they met Maisie Sue. After a moment’s pause he remembered, and started to feel cross again. ‘Oh, we found him,’ he said.
‘You found him? And did he tell you what all the mystery was about?’
‘Not exactly,’ said Amaryllis.
‘Oh, dear, so it’s still a mystery?’
‘Yes, you could say that,' said Amaryllis. 'He’s in hospital.’
‘In hospital?’
Christopher hoped Amaryllis wouldn’t get cross with Maisie Sue. It wasn’t Maisie Sue’s fault that her own silliness always seemed to infect everybody around her.
‘He’s in hospital in Edinburgh,’ Amaryllis explained. ‘He has head injuries but they aren’t life-threatening.’
The nurse at the reception desk had apparently divulged that much to Amaryllis at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, just before the police came along and evicted her - something about which Amaryllis had still been indignant when she described the scene to Christopher.
‘Head injuries?’ Maisie Sue’s eyes looked as if they might pop out. She obviously didn’t live in the same world as Amaryllis and her friends.
Christopher, against his better judgement, took pity on the woman.
‘Let’s go for a coffee and we'll tell you about it,’ he said.
Amaryllis looked at her watch pointedly. 'We're on our way to the bus stop actually.'
'We've got twenty minutes,' said Christopher. 'Twenty-five if the bus is late.'
He knew she wanted to break into the police incident room on the way to make sure they were tying up all the loose ends in exactly the way she would have done it herself, but that would just have to wait for another day. It was also too wet and windy to stand around the car park trying to communicate in short sentences with somebody who was all too evidently on a completely different wavelength.
They went into a small coffee shop that the owner liked to think of as Pitkirtly’s equivalent of Starbucks, but which actually wasn’t anything like the real thing. But at least it stayed open into the evening and had an espresso machine of sorts. Amaryllis, her earlier bad mood having given way to an expiatory attack of niceness, described, patiently and without using too many big words, to Maisie Sue exactly what had happened when she and Christopher found the man with the mud-coloured eyes in the lane behind the glitzy furniture shop.
‘Wow! It’s like something out of CSI Miami!’ said Maisie Sue at the end of the story. Nobody bothered to point out to her that real life tended not to be as glossy, glamorous and completely free of the kind of sights and smells that would give you nightmares for months, as CSI Miami. The woman didn’t need to know that. Let her spend her life taking patchwork to new heights, and not clearing up the mess left by villainous sleazebags of all kinds. Each to her own.
Later that day, Christopher and Amaryllis heard the whole story of the murders. Fittingly, Christopher thought, this happened at Mrs Stevenson’s hospital bedside, where the police had been considerate enough to convene a meeting. Mrs Stevenson, in a pink fleece dressing-gown and no woolly hat for once, looked as if she was the one in charge, sitting as she was bolt upright in bed with a huge number of pillows.
‘All she needs is a crown,’ Christopher whispered to Amaryllis.
‘Now that we’ve put everything t
ogether,’ said Detective Chief Inspector Smith, ‘it all makes sense, but it’s a grim story all the same – a tale of family relationships, bad blood, greed and murder.’
‘I never thought that kind of thing would happen in my family,’ said Mrs Stevenson, looking somewhere between thrilled and appalled.
‘It happens in the best of families,’ sighed Mr Smith. ‘Before I start the story, I have somebody to introduce to you.’
On cue, the door of Mrs Stevenson’s side ward opened and a man was wheeled in. He wore a brown dressing-gown, he had mid-brown hair and his eyes could conceivably have been described as mud-coloured, at least in this light.
‘The mud-coloured man!’ said Amaryllis and Christopher together.
The man didn’t look all that pleased with his new nickname, but he didn’t say anything. The wheelchair was parked near Mrs Stevenson’s bed.
'I thought you were in Edinburgh,' commented Amaryllis.
‘This is Mr King and he’s a probate researcher,’ said Mr Smith. It seemed to Christopher that he was waiting for some sort of a reaction, or at least, he seemed disappointed when nobody said anything. After a pause for dramatic effect, he continued. ‘He’s currently employed by the estate of a Miss Isabella Trent, of Durban, South Africa, who died intestate on the 23rd of January this year... Mr King, would you like to say a few words?’
‘Yes, thank you, Detective Chief Inspector... Miss Trent left quite a substantial estate, but she didn’t have any immediate family. So after some research carried out by the firm of solicitors in South Africa, they employed me to locate any cousins in the UK – my research concentrated in particular on those who might be still living in Pitkirtly. I was looking for first cousins of Miss Trent, but the children of first cousins would also be relevant to my search.’
‘So – who was this Miss Trent?’ said Amaryllis.
‘Miss Isabella Trent was the daughter of Jack Trent, of Durban, a wealthy businessman, and Aggie Murray, originally of Pitkirtly.’
‘My Auntie Aggie!’ exclaimed Mrs Stevenson.
‘Indeed,’ said Mr King. ‘Aggie Murray was the daughter of Bella Murray of Hillside Street, Pitkirtly.’
‘I never knew I had a cousin Isabella,’ said Mrs Stevenson. Christopher wondered if it was better not to know about cousins at all or to find them and then have them murdered immediately afterwards, as had happened in the case of Jim Halloran.
‘Jack Trent was an only child, and the son of two only children, so it was no use looking to that side of the family. The first people I located in this area were the Farquharsons,’ said Mr King. ‘Miss Trent had occasionally corresponded with Jessie Farquharson, formerly Watson, nee Murray, so we had a head start in their case. I wrote to Gloria Farquharson, who mentioned she also had a brother, Graham, but that he had changed his name. Unfortunately I did mention a possible legacy to her, and she must have said something to her brother, with tragic results.’
‘So he killed his own sister to get her share of some pie-in-the-sky legacy?’ said Big Dave.
‘Not just his sister,’ said Detective Chief Inspector Smith. ‘He then took advantage of the family history day to track down two of his mother’s cousins, Lorelei McAndrew and Jim Halloran, and to kill them as well. He even went the extra mile, so to speak, by leaving Jim Halloran’s body on Mrs Stevenson’s doorstep.’
‘Then it was my turn,’ said Mr King dolefully. ’He wasn’t sure how many cousins were left to go, so he decided to try and stop me before I contacted any more of them. But I had already written to you by then, Mrs Stevenson.’
‘Had you?’ said Mrs Stevenson.
‘The letter!’ said Big Dave, sliding his hand into his inside jacket pocket. ‘I forgot about it in all the stramash!’
He took out the letter and held it out to Mrs Stevenson. She opened it and they all watched as she read it, taking her time. She let it fall on the bed.
‘So this was what it was all about?’ she said.
‘It was greed, and family,’ said Mr Smith. ’Excellent motives for murder, either together or separately.’
‘So, Mrs Stevenson, you are left as one of two surviving cousins, and you will inherit a substantial share in what is a not inconsiderable estate,’ said Mr King. 'Of course I can't go into details at this point, but there are shares in diamond and gold mines as well as a very healthy portfolio of assets across a wide range of interests.'
Christopher watched as Mrs Stevenson took this in. She looked weary now, as if the responsibility of it was just the last straw. He watched her gaze turn towards Dave, who was standing irresolute not far from her side. And finally Christopher saw the smile spread across her face like the sun coming out.
‘I won’t let it change my life,’ she said to all of them. ‘If you won’t.’
2 Reunited in Death Page 20
