Death of a Kingfisher

by M C Beaton

  Hamish examined the place where the chair lift had started its murderous journey, noticing the long scorch mark on the bottom stair. He climbed up to where the banister had been sawn off and studied it. He called to Jimmy, who was following him up. “Come and have a look at this. Right, it was sawn through, but there are traces of glue. I think it was done when the house was quiet and then superglued together again. When everything was ready, all anyone would need to do was to pour a bottle of nail varnish remover over the banister, and it would be guaranteed to collapse under the force.”

  He climbed high until he was standing up under the glass cupola. “Now, why did that smash?” he said.

  “That maid, Bertha, has been rousted out of bed. She said the glass was aye leaking water when it rained and Mrs. Colchester was too mean to get it repaired. She was carrying a stick. Maybe she pointed it at the glass in a last-ditch attempt to rescue herself and the whole thing shattered. Well, you saw the bloody mess that was left of her.”

  “I wonder who gets her money?” said Hamish. “Surely it stands to reason her daughter gets it.”

  “Not necessarily, if the maid’s gossip was anything to go by. She didn’t seem to like her daughter and she loathed her grandchildren. She was an odd old bird. The front door was never locked. Anyone could have walked in. The only place locked in here is the strong room where she kept her husband’s collection of gold, silver, and jewellery.”

  “Is it all still there?”

  “We won’t know until the morning. The bank manager has the key and the key is in the bank vault, which is on a timer. She left a copy of her will with him as well.” Jimmy stifled a yawn. “Better get some sleep while we can.”

  Before he went to sleep, Hamish looked up how to make rocket fuel on the Internet. There were even videos showing you how to cook it up in your kitchen out of a mixture of cornstarch, potassium nitrate, corn syrup, sugar, and water. But surely that concoction alone would not have been as powerful as the one that sent old Mrs. Colchester sky-high.

  Then maybe out on the moors there was some sort of test site. He drifted off into sleep and dreamt that he was looking down into the pool in the glen, and there, looking up at him from underneath the water and smiling, was Mary Leinster. He awoke with a jerk. He must put all thoughts of the woman out of his head. She had been just about to give more reasons for her divorce when Dick had burst into the restaurant with the news of the murder. But those blue eyes of hers were enough to addle any man’s wits. It was rare to see such blue. People often had grey-blue eyes, or pale blue, but hardly ever that colour of the summer sky or like the blue of the kingfisher’s wing.

  Hamish’s thoughts darkened. There was a psychotic killer on the loose. He was sure that the killing of the kingfishers was tied up with the death of Mrs. Colchester. To actually hang that poor bird from the branch was wicked. He did not like the Palfour children. They did not have the easy cheerfulness of children, and yet their parents seemed normal enough. Maybe it was the sort of free-for-all school they attended. He thought such schools had died out. Children without discipline could easily turn to crime. Then if the parents had enough money, they sent them to fashionable psychiatrists, always dumping the emotional burden on someone else. His final thought was that he was sure when he returned to the Colchester home in the morning, he would find Ralph Palfour, released from custody. Blair had acted like a bull in a china shop as usual. The police really had nothing to hold him on.

  When he returned to the hunting box in the morning, it was to find Jimmy Anderson already there with his squad of detectives and police. Policewoman Annie Williams was playing on the front lawn with the children. She would rather have avoided the little horrors, but duty was duty and she had been ordered to keep them occupied. How could the children seem so carefree, wondered Hamish. Maybe all the violent shows on television and violent computer games had deadened their souls.

  He approached Jimmy. “Where’s Blair?”

  “In bed. His wife, Mary, says he took a tumble down the stairs last night. Wouldn’t blame her if she pushed him. The bank manager should be here soon and some lawyer from Strathbane.”

  “The motive can’t be robbery,” said Hamish, “if the key to the strong room was kept in the bank vault. Did you look for another one?”

  “Maybe later. The forensic boys are still going over everything. Ralph Palfour is back.”

  Hamish grinned. “I thought he might be. Where’s this nursery of his?”

  “It’s called Palfour Garden Centre and it’s out in Fulham in London.”

  “Heffens! Think of the price of real estate. He could sell it to a developer for a fortune.”

  “I’ll try him later on that. I gather the family has owned a garden centre there forever. Maybe there was something in his father’s will forbidding him to sell it.”

  “I’ve been thinking, Jimmy, someone would want to test yon rocket. I’ll bet somewhere up on the moors there’s a test site.”

  “Good point. Why don’t you take fat Dick there and go and search?”

  “Will do. But come on, Jimmy, let me see what’s in that strong room first.”

  “Right you are. Here they come.”

  Jimmy, Hamish, and Dick were standing outside the front entrance as two cars crunched their way over the gravel and came to a stop.

  “Why a key?” demanded Hamish suddenly.

  “What? Why?”

  “I mean a strong room these days would surely have some sort of computerised entrance.”

  “It came wi’ the house. Old Lord Growther’s father had it installed. He went a bit weird in his old age and kept food in it.”

  “Food!”

  “He thought his servants were stealing the food, so he locked it all up in there.” He turned from Hamish to greet the new arrivals. “I am Detective Inspector Anderson,” he said to the first man. “And you are?”

  “I am Mr. Braintree from the bank.”

  “And I,” said a man behind him, “am Mr. Strowthere, of Strowthere, Comlyx, and Frind, Mrs. Colchester’s lawyers.”

  “Right,” said Jimmy. “Follow me. We’ll go into the house from the terrace at the back. The forensic people are still going over the place. The strong room is just inside to the left at the end of a corridor.”

  They found Ralph and Fern Palfour waiting nervously for them on the terrace. They were introduced to the banker and lawyer. “May I know what was in my mother’s will?” asked Fern.

  “Good idea,” said Jimmy. They all arranged themselves around a table on the terrace. Mr. Strowthere opened his briefcase. “Give us a simple summary,” ordered Jimmy, “and you can go through the details later.”

  Mr. Strowthere cleared his throat. He’s enjoying this, thought Hamish sourly. Pompous idiot. The lawyer was a plump florid man. “Mrs. Colchester,” he began, “called on us a month ago and caused us to draw up a new will. In it, she leaves her money to Mary Leinster for the beautification of the Fairy Glen, formerly known as Buchan’s Wood.”

  “She can’t do that!” screamed Fern. “Is there nothing for me and the children?”

  “Mr. Colchester has left this house and grounds to you, Mrs. Palfour, and all the plenishings of same house.”

  Odd Scots word plenishings, thought Hamish. Means the contents. Still, I suppose if you can replenish, you can plenish.

  Ralph clutched his wife’s hand. “It’s not that bad. There’s supposed to be a fortune in the strong room.”

  “You mean she never showed you the contents?” asked Jimmy.

  “Just the once,” said Fern. “She said it was father’s precious collection and it would come to me when she was dead.”

  Jimmy rose to his feet. “I think we should examine that strong room right away and discuss the contents of the will later.”

  Mr. Braintree led the small party into the house from the terrace and along a stone-flagged corridor to a massive iron door at the end. He was as thin as the lawyer was plump. His bones almost visibly creak
ed as he put a case on the floor and, after fumbling around inside, produced an enormous key.

  He inserted it in the lock, twisted it, and the door swung open. He switched on a light. There were shelves stacked high with gold and silver ornaments: watches, epergnes, statues, clocks, snuffboxes, and various other precious objects. Glass cases held what seemed to be rare old maps. Fern Palfour had enough in here to kill for, thought Hamish.

  The banker had taken out a thick inventory. “I will need to make sure everything is here,” he said. On a table in the middle of the room was a large leather case. He approached it. “I will start by checking Mr. Colchester’s jewellery.”

  “We’ll leave you to it,” said Jimmy, turning away, but Mr. Braintree had flung back the lid and let out a horrified gasp. Jimmy swung back. “What’s up?”

  “All the jewellery has gone,” cried Mr. Braintree. “I checked the inventory two months ago and it was all here.” He waved the inventory in the air in his distress.

  “Give me a rough idea of what’s missing,” ordered Jimmy.

  “A necklace of rubies and diamonds said to have belonged to the Empress Josephine, a diamond tiara and necklace, rings, bracelets, all precious, all worth millions. And at least four Fabergé eggs.”

  “There must be another key to this room,” said Hamish. “Did Mrs. Colchester say she had another key?”

  “No, never!” he gasped. “She was quite clear on that point. When she lodged the key with us, she said it was the only one.”

  “Where did she live before coming up here?” Jimmy asked Ralph.

  “In London until just before Christmas. She lived in a big house in Eaton Square. She was originally from the Hebrides and she said she missed Scotland.”

  “I’ll need to get on to the Yard,” said Jimmy. “Do you know the name of her bank in London?”

  “Yes, it is the Grosvenor Merchant Bank. Her money and shares and so on are still there. She put only a small amount with us along with the key to the strong room.”

  “Who drew up the previous will?” asked Jimmy.

  “We did,” said the lawyer. “She said it was her first will. In it, she left everything to her daughter.”

  “I want that will contested,” said Fern furiously. “Mary Leinster got to her some way.”

  “I don’t see that Mary Leinster can gain personally from the money,” said Hamish. “It will go to the trust, is that not the case, Mr. Braintree?”

  “Yes, that is so.”

  “We’ll leave you to the inventory,” said Jimmy. “Mr. and Mrs. Palfour, if you don’t mind, I wish to take statements from both of you.”

  He turned to Hamish. “I like that idea of a test site. See what you can find.”

  Chapter Five

  The cruellest lies are often told in silence.

  —Robert Louis Stevenson

  Hamish felt quite sulky as he drove off with Dick. “I would have liked to stay for those interviews,” he complained at last. “I don’t like being sidelined.”

  “Well, that’s what you get for being the village bobby,” said Dick cheerfully. “Where do you think of looking first?”

  “Perhaps that old quarry outside Craskie. They’d want something with a bit o’ height.”

  “They?”

  “I’m sure that more than one person is involved.”

  “What about Mary Leinster and her brothers?”

  “Why them?” demanded Hamish sharply.

  “Well, her millions go to Mary.”

  “Not to Mary. To the trust.”

  “Books can be fiddled.”

  “Don’t be daft, man. Jimmy and his detectives will have thought o’ that one. Now shut up and let me concentrate.”

  They searched the quarry, but there weren’t any signs of sinister activity. Hamish sighed. “There’s another one, off the Drim Road.”

  “I’m hungry,” complained Dick.

  “You’re always hungry,” snapped Hamish. Dick had put him in a bad mood by talking about Mary. Was he letting his feelings for her cloud his brain? Well, he would need to go on as usual, suspecting everyone. It was another rare sunny summer day, with the air dry enough to keep the horrible biting Scottish midges at bay. The mountains had that comforting blue look about them. It was only when rain was about to arrive that every detail stood out sharply as if on a steel engraving.

  They reached the quarry outside Drim. Hamish let Sonsie and Lugs out and then filled up their feeding bowls and water bowls.

  Dick muttered something under his breath about Hamish caring more for his pets than one hungry policeman. Hamish had parked on the lip of the quarry. He began to make his way carefully down the side with Dick stumbling and cursing after him. The roads that trucks had once used to enter the quarry were now made impassable with a thick carpet of brambles and gorse.

  “I’ve got something,” called Hamish from the floor of the quarry. Dick came panting up to join him. “See, there’s a sort of cradle here that might have held a rocket, and there are scorch marks on the ground. I’d better phone Jimmy and get forensics onto this.”

  “Now can we eat?” asked Dick plaintively.

  “Aye, we’ll go into Drim. I want to ask Jock Kennedy who runs the local shop whether any strangers have been seen around.”

  Jock said that one of the locals, Andy Colluch, had said he thought someone was blasting in the old quarry a week ago but when Andy went there the next day he couldn’t see anything. They got directions to Andy Colluch’s croft. Dick dug his heels in and demanded food first. Ailsa, Jock’s wife, took pity on him and said they sold hot snacks and she could let them have a couple of mutton pies.

  Hamish waited impatiently until Dick had gulped down the last of his pie and said sharply, “Let’s go.”

  Dick wondered what had happened to the usually laid-back Hamish. But Hamish was feeling driven. It was the sheer malice and wickedness of the death of Mrs. Colchester that was getting to him. She could have been strangled, poisoned, or hit on the head. Why go to this elaborate means of murder?

  Andy Colluch, a wizened old crofter, volunteered the information that as he was driving back from Strathbane a week ago, he thought he saw lights over by the old quarry and heard an explosion. He had gone up the following day to check whether someone was opening up the old quarry but had not seen anything.

  Hamish phoned Jimmy with what he had found out, and Jimmy had said he would send a team over as soon as they had finished with the house. “We’ve found out something else,” said Jimmy. “From the bits of the wreckage, it looks as if the engine of the stair lift had been tampered with and a more powerful one put in.”

  “When could all this have been done with people in the house?” demanded Hamish, exasperated.

  “You’ll never believe this,” said Jimmy. “The day before, two men with cards claiming to come from the chair lift company said they had come to give the thing an overhaul. It wasn’t a day for either of the cleaning women. The Palfours had taken the children out for a run in the car. Mrs. Colchester went to her room. She came down the stairs later under her own steam, saying she was not sure whether the men had finished.”

  “Why didn’t they tell you before?”

  “Because they didn’t know,” said Jimmy, “and I didn’t know until the shepherd, Gale McBride, who runs his sheep on the grass there saw the men leaving and asked them what they had been doing. Bad description. Baseball caps pulled down over the eyes, answered in grunts, drove a pickup but Gale didn’t get the registration.”

  “But it may mean someone inside the house was working with them,” said Hamish.

  “How do you make that out?”

  “The superglue on the safety belt. If it had been put on earlier, it would have dried hard. Someone had to creep out of the shadows and doctor it just as she was about to make the ascent.”

  “Worse than that, we seem to have the world’s press camped out up here. The Fairy Glen is coining it.”

  “What!”

&nb
sp; “Aye, naturally the press want a look at the place and that Mrs. Timoty is right there at the turnstile to charge them, along with all the other ghouls, and along with every teenager from miles around who hopes to be discovered by a television camera and become an instant celebrity. We’ve told Mary Leinster to close the place down for a week. We can’t work with all this circus. We’re getting auditors to go through the glen’s trust fund to look for anything odd, and when they get their millions, believe me, the audits will go on.”

  “Are the Palfours still going to contest the will?”

  “They’ve got enough out of that strong room to set them up for life. I don’t think they’ll bother. But folks seem to have gone fairy mad. They’re saying the fairies did it.”

  “Mrs. Colchester said the day afore she died that she had something to tell me,” said Hamish. “Maybe someone wanted her stopped.”

  “Could be.”

  “What does Annie Williams make of the children?”

  “She says they have been traumatised.”

  “That precious pair! They didn’t give a rap for their grandmother and openly wished her dead.”

  “She feels it’s something that happened to them afore they came up here but our Annie was aye softhearted. Stay where you are until the forensic people arrive.”

  Dick and Hamish sat down on flat rocks in the quarry and waited in the sunshine. Sonsie and Lugs had disappeared somewhere. Hamish told Dick the latest news.

  “Highly technical fairies,” said Dick. “I didnae think folk would still believe in them.”

  “They don’t talk about it but the superstition runs deep. They’re supposed to be little men, mischievous and resentful. Some say that maybe one time there was a smaller race of beings driven into hiding in the rounded hills by a stronger race. They mostly wear green and live in green hollow hills. They dance by moonlight, leaving marks of circles on the surface. They often ride in invisible procession, and all a man can hear is the shrill ringing of their bridles. They do not, as far as I know, run around fixing up stair lifts.”