No Sorrow To Die

by Gillian Galbraith

  ‘Thank you very much, Mrs Brodie. You said, last time, that you’d planned to spend the night with your sister but you changed your mind. Why, what made you change your mind?’

  ‘Oh,’ Heather Brodie said, standing up and tossing the blood-stained collection of hankies in the bin, ‘who knows? I can’t really remember. A voice in my head told me to go home and, for once, I listened to it, obeyed it. That’s the best I can do.’

  A young woman entered the kitchen with a toddler balanced on her hip, and, as they arrived, the child opened her eyes, rubbed them and said in a sleepy voice, ‘Aunty Pippa – where’s Aunty Pippa?’

  ‘No,’ said Heather Brodie, opening her arms wide to receive the child, ‘there’s only Granny here today, Katy, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Mum!’ her daughter said in mock reproach, lifting the child and trying unsuccessfully to pass her into the outstretched arms. But the little girl clung onto her mother more tightly, turning her head away from her grandmother.

  ‘Well, it’s true, darling,’ Mrs Brodie answered, frowning. ‘We both know she prefers her aunt.’

  ‘Only because she has more to do with her. She sees her nearly every afternoon when I’m at Uni. Sometimes I think Katy prefers her to me, she cries when it’s time to come home with me. But I don’t take it amiss… do I?’ She lowered the toddler onto the ground and then went over to her mother and kissed her.

  ‘Is Harry coming?’

  ‘Yes. He’s just parking the car.’

  ‘So, sergeant,’ said Heather Brodie, turning her attention back to the policewoman, ‘here they are. I gather you’d like to talk to them too?’

  As she was speaking, Harry Brodie slouched into the kitchen. He was wearing a dark blue hoodie and carrying a copy of The Hungry Caterpillar. When he saw the child, he immediately went towards her, smiling broadly, and put the book on her lap.

  ‘Harry, darling…’ His mother got up to kiss the boy.

  ‘Mother,’ he replied coldly, accepting the kiss but making no attempt to return it. He then deliberately avoided meeting her gaze, concentrating his attention exclusively on the others, as if snubbing her.

  ‘No kiss for me?’ she said good naturedly, offering him her cheek.

  ‘Yes. No kiss for you,’ he spat back, now looking her straight in the eye, ignoring the presence of a stranger. The woman paled but said nothing.

  ‘I would like to talk to them,’ Alice said, resuming their previous conversation, ‘but separately from you and from each other, please. But I’ve a few more things to clear up with you first.’

  ‘Very well,’ Heather Brodie replied, signalling to her children that they should leave the room. They chattered to each other as they went out, with the child stumbling after them.

  ‘Boys!’ she said, as if to explain her son’s behaviour.

  ‘Could you tell me a little about your husband. For example, could he take his own medication, measure it out, lift the bottle and so on?’ Alice asked.

  ‘I always gave it to him,’ Heather Brodie replied, sitting down and pulling the loose sides of her robe together.

  ‘No one else? The children, his mother?’

  ‘My mother-in-law? You must be joking. She found it “too distressing” to have anything much to do with him. For which read “Too busy”. She had far better things to do with her time – bridge, NADFAS, the Conservatives.’

  ‘Could he have taken it himself?’

  ‘He could lift things sometimes, but things got spilt.’

  ‘So he could have taken his own medicine?’

  ‘Yes, certainly – drunk it from the bottle, say, but not measured it out or anything like that. Why?’

  ‘We need to get an impression of… of his abilities shortly before he died. Did he know what was in his medicine bottles, what they contained?’

  ‘He must have done. He was given the stuff in them every day, more than once a day.’

  ‘One other thing. Did your husband ever attend a day centre?’

  ‘A few times. He had to,’ Heather Brodie said, sounding defensive, ‘but only if everything else had failed. I did need some time to myself, just occasionally, anyone would have. He was getting worse, you know.’

  ‘Which one did he go to?’

  ‘The one in Stockbridge, on Raeburn Place. Frankly, it was a pretty good hell-hole, but it served its purpose.’

  ‘Finally, Mrs Brodie, and I’m sorry to ask, but did he ever express a wish to die? Did he want to die?’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied quietly, ‘he wanted to die. He spoke about little else, but after a while I stopped listening.’

  Several times while she was talking to the policewoman, Ella Brodie’s fair hair fell across her eyes, but each time she flicked it away again with a languid toss of her head, a few loose strands always remaining. Seated on the sofa, she was trying not only to answer the questions put to her but also to keep her fractious child content, holding up framed photos of another toddler and showing them to her.

  ‘Is that Katy?’ Alice asked, looking first at the image and then at the little girl.

  ‘No, me. They’re all of me. We look identical at the same age.’

  ‘Is that one not Harry?’ Alice asked, pointing to one of a child with short hair, sticking out its tongue and brandishing a bow and arrow at the photographer.

  ‘Nope. None of them are, I’m afraid. I’m Aunty’s favourite, you see. But it evens out. Granny adores Harry.’

  ‘Well, down to business, I suppose,’ Alice said, getting out her notebook. ‘Where were you last Saturday night?’

  ‘On the Saturday night I was with Harry in his flat. We went to Smith’s first, then home. All night,’ she said, slightly petulantly. ‘I stayed the night there – as I’ve already told Mr Riddell more than once.’

  Forgetting that he was supposed to wait until his sister’s interview had finished, her brother wandered into the room, his eyes fixed on the screen of his DS. Ella shook her head, exasperated at his absentmindedness. Catching sight of her, he said, irritably, ‘What?’

  ‘You were supposed to wait, dimwit, remember?’

  ‘Whatever,’ he replied, making no attempt to move from the armchair where he had sat down.

  ‘Where were you on the Sunday night, Harry?’ Alice asked.

  ‘Pub, then home,’ he replied, never looking up, his thumbs continuing to move feverishly over the controls on his little black box.

  ‘All night?’

  ‘Yeah. With her.’

  ‘Could either of you tell me,’ Alice asked, ‘whether your father would be able to take his own medicine from the bottle? Was he capable of lifting the stuff to his lips and drinking it?’

  ‘Nah…’ the boy replied, ‘he’d drop it or something.’

  ‘Yes, probably not,’ his sister confirmed, now opening a glossy magazine and showing it to her silent but fidgety child. ‘As Harry says, he’d drop it or miss his lips or something.’

  ‘Who usually gave him his medicine?’

  ‘Mum. It was always Mum,’ Ella Brodie replied, the boy remaining silent, apparently unaware in his absorption in his Nintendo that a further question had been asked.

  Following Heather Brodie out of the kitchen, Alice walked towards the front door, and as she stepped over a new patch of blood-soaked carpet their eyes met. ‘Fanta,’ the woman said, a little smile playing on her lips, ‘it’s Fanta this time. Looks like she killed Cock Robin. She did it, detective, she’s the guilty party, I can assure you. Look, you can still see a few feathers… oh, and a leg.’

  As Alice was returning to her car, trying to digest the information she had received, her phone went.

  ‘How did you get on with the widow?’ It was Eric Manson’s voice.

  ‘Fine. She was easy, talkative, seemed to say much what she had said before,’ she replied, searching in her pocket for her car key.

  ‘And the kids?’

  ‘They said exactly what Thomas said they would say, nothing new. They don’t t
hink their father could have taken the stuff.’

  ‘Are you coming back now, then? I’m just off to see the old woman Brodie, somewhere in the wilds of East Lothian. You might even know the place. I could wait for you, pet.’ He sounded as if he wanted the company.

  ‘I’d planned to speak to Heather Brodie’s sister, Sir. I imagine she’ll say the same as before, but I think I’d better double-check it. She’s a part-time reception teacher at Hamilton Stewarts, over Cramond way.’

  ‘OK. Fine. See you back in the office in a couple of hours.’

  Alice turned the car into the winding drive of the private school, and every so often its shock-absorbers squeaked in protest as they rocked over the sleeping policemen which broke the otherwise flawless surface. The car park seemed to be the exclusive preserve of shiny black SUVs with tinted windows, BMWs and Range Rovers, and the small police vehicle seemed like an unloved interloper amongst them, further marked out by its caked-on dirt and missing hub cap.

  Following signs to the junior school across an immaculate gravelled area, Alice reached a pair of double doors guarded by a security lock. She searched in vain for a bell or an intercom, and just as her patience was running out, a heavily pregnant woman smiled indulgently at her as if she was a forgetful fellow-mum, punched in the code and allowed her to follow her in.

  Inside was a large, glass-roofed atrium with classrooms leading off it on all four sides. In one corner, an anxious-looking schoolmistress stood poised over a CD player, and arranged around the walls were rows of empty chairs, as if awaiting the audience for a performance.

  As the strains of ‘Colonel Bogie’ started up, Alice made for the nearest seat and suddenly pairs of children filed in, hands clasped and raised high for the Grand March. Within a couple of minutes a reel had begun, and through her feet she could feel the wooden floor begin to vibrate as fifty or more little children bounced up and down on it, the tartan sashes over their shoulders loosening and flapping free. Among them, like giants, moved members of staff. The tallest of these bore a strong resemblance to Heather Brodie – a paler, subdued version of her, like a poor prototype for the more glamorous younger sister.

  When first spotted by Alice, the woman was dancing a Dashing White Sergeant, and dangling from the tips of her thin fingers were her partners, both little girls, neither of whom reached much above her bony knees. Her head was held erect, gaze directed straight ahead, and the footwork of her pas de basques was impeccable, high-stepping in time to the beat. She appeared determined to ignore the fact that all around her the children were skidding and spinning, not dancing, little boys and girls colliding, bouncing off each other, then falling in dizzy heaps to the floor and giggling.

  As her threesome drew parallel to another, a schoolmaster with his own diminutive partners now jigging opposite her, she flashed him a token smile and then her mouth resumed its tight, trap-like set. After a further pairing, she looked short-sightedly around the hall, and when she saw Alice she bestowed on her a discreet nod of acknowledgement.

  The sound of the final chord was the cue for her to disentangle herself from her tiny partners, one of them continuing to pirouette alone. The teacher set off resolutely towards the policewoman, and on reaching her extended her over-large hand and said, in a thin, quavery voice, ‘I’m Miss Michelson. The Head told me that you needed to speak to me, I assume it’s about poor Gavin’s murder. Sorry to have kept you waiting, we’re practising for a country-dance festival in Perth tomorrow.’

  Then she sat down, legs to one side, ankles clamped together and hands folded in her lap. Alice followed the sequence of questions that she had asked earlier, and listened intently to the schoolmistress’s answers as she recounted the evening’s events. As she spoke, all the while she clasped and then unclasped her fingers. And the responses she gave accorded with those given by Heather Brodie in almost every detail, providing perfect corroboration of her account. She named precisely the same shops, precisely the same eating-place, dropping in precisely the same asides as she did so.

  While she was in mid-flow, a little girl with anxious, wide saucer-eyes plumped herself down on the seat next to Alice’s, swinging her legs to and fro, then leant over towards her and said, ‘Guess what?’

  ‘What?’ Alice whispered, distracted by the child.

  ‘Boys’ poo is gold. It’s gold – they do gold poo.’

  ‘Really? How d’you know?’

  ‘Rhuari told me. He said I could buy…’

  ‘Helena!’ Miss Michelson said, interrupting the girl and tapping her gently on the knee with her left hand. ‘Off you go. It’s playtime now and I need to speak to this lady.’

  Instantly, and apparently taking no offence at her peremptory dismissal, Helena slid from her seat and ran off to join a crowd of children who were milling around a tea trolley, chattering and jostling while they waited for their piece of cake.

  ‘They’re all obsessed,’ the schoolmistress said fondly, shaking her head, her eyes continuing to follow the girl.

  ‘After The Norseman?’ Alice asked, nudging her onwards, reminding her where she had got up to in the story.

  ‘After that…’ the woman replied, her washed-out blue eyes finally moving from the child and onto Alice’s face, ‘we went to the theatre to see A Woman of No Importance. It had Martin Jarvis in it. We both love him. We had no booking at The Norseman so we took pot luck.’

  ‘Really?’ Alice said, thinking to herself how unconvincing it all was. The sisters’ versions tallied unnaturally well, the very expressions they used were identical. Everything matched, and all just too closely. They sounded more like echoes of one another than two independent voices, and that effect could not have not been achieved by accident or coincidence, but as a result of planning. They had conferred together, exchanging and agreeing all the details. Something was going on.

  ‘What,’ Alice began, conscious as she asked the question that it might push this highly-strung woman beyond her limits, is A Woman of No Importance about?’

  A new-born baby rabbit finding itself staring into the eyes of a stoat could not have looked more petrified. But Miss Mitchelson drew on her reserves, managed to control herself and said, in a cracked voice, ‘You know… I simply cannot remember. I slept through large chunks of it. I haven’t been sleeping well lately for some reason. Martin Jarvis took the part of Lord Illingworth, I know that much. Otherwise it’s completely slipped my mind. Perhaps, thinking about it, the trauma of Gavin’s death… has blanked it out, somehow. But Heather could tell you, I’m sure of that. You could always ask her, if you really need to know.’

  The theatre’s website was of little use, as the play’s run had come to an end, so Alice, deciding to try her luck with a human being, phoned the theatre instead. When the receptionist answered the call she was still trying to get her head around number nine of the ‘Ten Ways To Titillate Your Lover’ in her magazine. It must surely be for Olympic athletes only, she thought, turning the page upside-down in wonderment. Finally wresting her attention away from the article, she answered her caller, parroting, ‘Martin Jarvis, on Saturday?’

  ‘Yes, he was in a starring role in your recent production of A Woman of No Importance, is that right?’

  ‘Martin Jarvis was in A Woman of No Importance?’

  ‘Yes, was he? On Saturday last?’

  ‘Sorry, I’m temporary here,’ she replied, then, turning away from the receiver, shouted, ‘What you sayin’? He what?’ In the background, Alice could just make out the voice of a man bellowing at the receptionist.

  Her voice returned. ‘He was, but he got sick, like, so for the last few performances it was his understudy. What’s that?’ she bawled at her colleague before returning to the line. ‘Simon,’ she said, ‘Simon… something or other took over for him.’

  ‘On the Saturday, for the Saturday performances?’

  ‘Yer. Yer. On the last performance on the Friday and all Saturday.’

  ‘Are you certain about that? someone
told me he was playing the part last Saturday.’

  ‘We certain?’ the receptionist shouted to her informant, and after a short pause she came back and continued, ‘He wasn’t even in Edinburgh on the Saturday. He’d gone home.’

  Dusk was beginning to fall as Detective Inspector Manson drove down Haddington’s High Street, drawing furiously on his cigar, inhaling and re-inhaling its smoke endlessly, his car windows sealed against the cold. Chains of sparkling Christmas lights were hung between the elegant Georgian buildings on either side of the street, lighting it and the people below as they scurried from shop to shop, parcel-laden, racing against closing time. Just as he passed the Victorian statue of a rampant goat, he was forced to swerve in order to dodge a mud-spattered Land Rover, which, accustomed to the local car etiquette, had reversed from its parking place into the main thoroughfare as if it had right of way.

  ‘I’ll get you later, you fucker,’ shouted Manson, his words lost behind the glass.

  Hand still pressed hard on his horn, he turned right into the Sidegate, past the entrance to St Marys, heading south across the Tyne on the Waterloo Bridge and then hugging the Lennoxlove Wall for a mile or two. To his jaded eyes, the countryside before him looked dead, bare-leaved and black-earthed, no crops yet through with their promise of life to come. The vast expanse of East Lothian sky was tinged with crimson from the sun’s dying rays, and, suddenly and unexpectedly, he felt unutterably miserable, intimidated by the oppressive, unnatural silence, and made desolate by the empty, alien landscape. He speeded up on the deserted road, determined to finish his task as quickly as possible and return to the city with its bright lights, its warmth and its people. Return to Margaret.

  As he passed the turn-off to Samuelston, a pheasant dashed out of the verge, straight under his wheels. Immediately he jammed on his brakes, trying to avoid it, but he heard, and felt, the thump as he hit it square on. A few stray feathers floated upwards, one brushing his windscreen. In his rear-view mirror he watched the wounded bird, lying in the middle of the road, a single wing flapping piteously, its body getting smaller all the time. He knew he could not go back to finish it off. It would die soon anyway, he told himself. The next person’s wheels would have to do the deed for him. Correction. For it.