The Woman on the Cliff

by JANICE FROST

  In any case, it turned out that Andrew and Moira had not been as discreet as we, and they, had thought. The police soon found out about their relationship, and an enraged Menzies paid us another visit, demanding to know why we’d seen fit to conceal this vital piece of information from him.

  Lucy hadn’t thought about it until after Menzies and Nevin had gone. As for me, that glare from Elspeth had cautioned me to keep my mouth shut.

  But Elspeth’s attitude worried me. She gave the impression that if Andrew turned out to be Moira’s killer, it would make no difference to her opinion of him at all.

  Chapter Three

  We’re not going straight to St Andrews. My old friend, Elspeth Blair, has invited us to stay the night at her house in Edinburgh.

  I hate driving on motorways, so we take the scenic route to Edinburgh. It involves sticking to the A-roads, which will add a lot of time to our journey, but as I’ve said already, I’m not impatient for this trip to be over.

  Izzy and I skipped breakfast in favour of an early start. Even so, it’s going to take the best part of the day to get to Edinburgh. I don’t just despise driving on motorways, I also hate driving for more than a couple of hours at a stretch. The plan is to stop at Scotch Corner for breakfast, then have another stop later for lunch, perhaps somewhere in Northumbria or the Scottish Borders. It’s a drive I’ve done many times before, with Doug at the wheel.

  Sometimes I forget that I’m a widow. My husband of ten years, Doug, was killed nine years ago in Iraq. He was a photojournalist.

  There haven’t been many men since Doug’s death. It was a while before I fully accepted that my husband wasn’t coming back, and in the meantime, working full time and raising my daughter alone kept me busy. If loneliness ever drove me to bring a man home to my bed — and that wasn’t often — I would insist on him leaving while Izzy was still asleep or after she’d gone to school. Not the ideal basis for a lasting relationship.

  When she was about eleven, Izzy began asking me why I didn’t start dating again. Since she’d given me her approval, I joined an online dating group and met a man called Simon. We dated on and off for a couple of years, but our hearts weren’t really in it and we called it a day. I’ve resigned myself to the idea that I may never find someone to grow old with.

  Around eleven a.m., I turn into the unremarkable services at Scotch Corner. The homogeneity of these places is at once depressing and reassuring. You can’t tell one from the other, but you can be pretty certain about what you’ll find there.

  I’ve had a soft spot for them since the days when Doug and I, unable to afford the train, travelled by overnight coach from London to Edinburgh to visit our families. It was an endless journey, with a single stop at a service station to relieve the monotony.

  Izzy and I drink coffee and munch on bacon butties, surrounded by lorry drivers and business people, and other travellers less easy to categorise. And then it’s back on the road. We don’t stop again until we reach Jedburgh. I’m not hungry, but Izzy announces that she’s famished again, so we choose a café that caters for both our appetites.

  Elspeth won’t be home from work until six, so there’s no advantage in arriving early. After lunch, we take a stroll along the river and visit the beautiful ruins of Jedburgh Abbey, before beginning the final phase of our journey.

  The sky is growing dusky by the time we hit the outskirts of Edinburgh. Elspeth lives in a palatial four-bedroom house in Morningside, one of the poshest areas of town. She’s a successful accountant and doesn’t need to worry about money.

  Her life has been tumultuous at times. Briefly married and divorced twice, Elspeth describes herself as a serial spinster. She has a son, Aaron, from her first marriage, whom she seldom sees. For the past eight months, she’s been in a relationship with a man called Duncan Shore, a quietly-spoken civil servant who works in the Scottish parliament. I don’t hold out much hope that their relationship will endure. Elspeth isn’t an easy person to get along with. You need to be able to understand why she is the way she is.

  Elspeth waves from the window when we step out of the car. She’s trying to tell us that Duncan is coming out to help with our bags, but there’s no need. Izzy and I have it under control, balancing suitcases and boxes between us, so that when Duncan meets us at the end of the path, he’s redundant.

  “Here, let me take some of those,” he fusses.

  “If I let go of one, they’ll all go flying,” I laugh. “Anyway, they’re not heavy, just a bit bulky.”

  “Mine are heavy,” Izzy says. She slings a large canvas tote off her shoulder and thrusts it at Duncan, who pretends to buckle under the weight.

  Elspeth is on the doorstep waiting to greet us. There are hugs, kisses, sighs and exclamations. Duncan, slightly awkward in the midst of all this female shrieking, busies himself with the bags.

  “No more of that auntie stuff, Izzy. Just call me Elspeth now that you’re all grown up.”

  “Ok, Auntie Elsp—”

  Elspeth has prepared the spare room for us. Like the other rooms in the house, it is elegant and spacious, with ornate cornice work around a high ceiling, painted in white. A vase of scented lilies sits on a table top near the window. Izzy screws up her nose. She’s never liked their scent. I tell her to put up with it because they look glorious there, framed in the window with its backdrop of pink sandstone buildings and, more distantly, the brooding outline of the Pentlands.

  “Duncan’s made a lasagne, when you’re ready,” Elspeth calls from the hallway, and right on cue, Izzy declares that she’s ravenous.

  Duncan has laid the table in the dining room, in a wide bay window. Elspeth pours chilled Pinot Grigio into cut-crystal glasses, and we eat by flickering candlelight with the blinds drawn up, so that the garden outside seems to glow and waver in the encroaching darkness.

  “I miss the smell of the hops,” I say, referring to the aroma — some say stink — that pervades the Edinburgh air at certain times.

  “You can still smell them but it’s not as pungent as it used to be. Most of the breweries have closed down,” Elspeth says.

  Our conversation veers randomly from topic to topic as we play catch up with each other’s news. We haven’t had many opportunities to meet up in the past year. Sometimes it’s like that. It depends on the patterns of both our lives. That song, ‘Who Knows Where the Time Goes?’ is the refrain of our lives.

  “Elspeth’s had another promotion at work,” Duncan says, his voice full of pride. He’s a keeper, I think, and hope Elspeth can hang onto him.

  “Did I tell you Aaron’s off backpacking in New Zealand?” Elspeth says, her words drawing a deep sigh of envy from Izzy.

  “I’ve told Izzy she can do that when she’s thirty — and only if she’s completed her Krav Maga master’s training.”

  “I’m going. Next June to September,” Izzy says. “Get used to it, Mum.”

  “So, why St Andrews?” Duncan asks, topping up our glasses. Izzy is already a little drunk. “Apart from the obvious, of course. English universities aren’t good enough.”

  We laugh. Izzy was born in England. She has an English accent and has to put up with a certain amount of teasing whenever she comes north of the border.

  “Well, it’s Mum’s and Aunt— I mean, Elspeth’s fault, partly. They’ve always told such great stories about what they got up to when they were students there.”

  I glance at Elspeth. There’s one story we’ve never told. I wonder if that’s what Elspeth is thinking too.

  “I like the four-year degree structure,” Izzy continues. “And the fact that you can do more subjects and don’t have to choose your main one until after two years.”

  “It has a reputation for being a bit elitist, doesn’t it, St Andrews?” Duncan asks. “Didn’t Prince William and Kate whatshername go there?” Elspeth and I roll our eyes.

  I hadn’t been aware of the elitist tag when I applied to go there back in the eighties. I’d spent a lot of happy family holida
ys in St Andrews with my parents when I was growing up. I associated the town with sandy beaches and boat trips, the Lammas Fair and walks on the pier. Ice cream on hot July days. That’s what influenced my decision to apply.

  I look at Izzy’s face, flushed and glowing in the candlelight. She’s only a little younger than Moira was when her life ended so abruptly, so violently. I give a shudder and Duncan, thinking I’m cold, draws down the blind against the draught from the window.

  “So, Shona’s in town,” I say a little tentatively. Elspeth raises an eyebrow. “She flew in from Sydney earlier in the week to visit her parents.”

  Shona specialised in geology after she graduated. She has worked all over the world, most recently for a mining contractor in Australia. I haven’t seen her for over a year.

  “That’s nice,” Elspeth says without enthusiasm.

  Elspeth and Shona were never particularly close. “Perhaps we could have a get-together on Sunday evening?” I suggest. “Before I head back to London on Monday?”

  “I’ll arrange it,” Elspeth volunteers.

  “To old friends,” Duncan says, raising his glass. Elspeth and I exchange a look. There’s the slightest pause before we raise ours.

  “To old friends.”

  Chapter Four

  Shona had been informed of Moira’s death before she got back from Lewis. As soon as Menzies and Nevin left, I’d walked along to the phone box near our house to call her. She returned to St Andrews hell bent on finding someone to blame.

  “Why did none of you wonder where she was?” she demanded as soon as the four of us were together.

  “We assumed she was with Andrew,” I said. Lucy merely blubbered and Elspeth didn’t comment. There was no point in her angering Shona more by pointing out the obvious: that, for her, a weekend without Moira around was a cause for celebration.

  “How the hell could she be with Andrew for two bloody days? He has a bloody family, remember?”

  “She’s been away with Andrew before. To those conferences he’s forever going to. His wife doesn’t usually go with him now they’ve got the baby,” I said. “Or she and Andrew might have taken the train to Edinburgh for the weekend while his wife went to her mum’s or . . . or something.”

  Shona was having none of it. “Moira had barely enough of her grant left to last to the end of term. How could she afford to go shopping in Edinburgh?”

  No one had said anything about shopping. I was about to retort that maybe Andrew Kelso had paid for them both, but I knew Shona would only trash that theory too. She’d calm down eventually and stop irrationally blaming us.

  Lucy stood by, biting her lip, while Shona raged and ranted. Like me, Lucy didn’t go in much for conflict. I hoped she wouldn’t start on about her conspiracy theory. That would send Shona over the edge.

  “I mean, two days. I would have thought one of you might have had the gumption to realise something might be up with her . . .”

  Elspeth allowed Shona to rant for a few more minutes before she intervened. “Are you quite finished, Shona?”

  “No. I’m just getting started. I—”

  “Shut up,” Elspeth said, making Lucy and I cringe. “Just. Shut. Up.”

  “What did you say?” Shona’s eyes blazed.

  “You heard me. None of us are to blame for Moira’s death. Stop trying to take the moral high ground just because you weren’t here. I don’t recall you missing me and coming to enquire after my health when I had the flu.”

  It had been a joke between them until that moment. Elspeth had come down with flu in the middle of December, and hadn’t had the strength to drag herself out of bed to go down to the kitchen to make a cup of tea. The only other one in the house all weekend, Shona hadn’t realised Elspeth was ill in bed until Saturday evening, when Elspeth, practically dehydrated, had crawled out of her room to ask for a glass of water.

  Shona coloured. Her mouth opened and closed. Tears filled her eyes. I crossed the room and gave her a hug.

  “I know. I know,” I repeated over and over, until Shona, cried out, collapsed on the couch.

  “It’s just . . .”

  “You wish you’d been here,” I said.

  “Yes.” She looked at us all in turn. “I’m sorry.”

  “No need.” Elspeth shrugged.

  “Who would do such a thing?” Shona asked.

  I glared at Lucy, hoping she wouldn’t take this as an invitation to voice her crazy theories.

  “The police asked about boyfriends,” I said.

  “And?” Shona prompted.

  “Well, we mentioned Stuart but not Andrew.” Unexpectedly, Shona didn’t ask why not. Like the rest of us, she probably couldn’t see him as a murderer. I thought guiltily of Stuart Brogan.

  “Well, Andrew’s a shit, but I can’t believe he’d hurt anyone,” Shona commented. “He’s a spineless shit. What about Stuart Brogan? I mean, he did hit her that time.”

  “We can’t just leave this to the pigs to investigate,” Lucy said. “They’re useless. And they’re not to be trusted.”

  I thought of Inspector Menzies and felt some sympathy with Lucy’s pronouncement. And then I thought of PC Nevin. “They aren’t all rubbish. They’ll be coming back to talk to us again. We should think about what we know that might help them.”

  Lucy snorted.

  “Which of you was the last to see her?” Shona asked.

  I thought back to Friday. It was my busiest day, lecture-wise — two in the morning, a tutorial group in the afternoon. In between classes, I’d spent time in the library doing research for an essay. “I saw her at breakfast on Friday morning. She’d run out of coffee and I let her have some from my jar,” I remembered.

  “That sounds like Moira. Always running out of something,” Elspeth said.

  There was a silence. I could tell that, like me, the others were remembering Moira and all her idiosyncrasies. It was true that she was forever running out of things and relying on the generosity of her housemates. She wasn’t above pinching stuff either, a slice of bread here, a hunk of cheese there. It drove Elspeth crazy, but the rest of us tolerated Moira’s transgressions because for the most part, she was good to be around — always cheerful, ready with a witty comment or even a helping hand if you needed one where academic work was concerned. And to be fair, although she’d borrow a spoonful of jam, at some later date she’d buy you a whole jar in return.

  “I saw her on Friday afternoon,” Elspeth said. “Must have been around two o’clock. I was on my way to a lecture. She was getting money out from the hole in the wall outside the Royal Bank of Scotland.”

  We all looked at Lucy. “I passed her later on. Between four and five? Near the students’ union. She was talking to a man I didn’t recognise. An older man. She seemed to know him.”

  “So, we don’t know where she went after that?” Shona asked.

  “I didn’t come back here on Friday night.” Coming from Lucy, that was unexpected. As far as we knew, she didn’t have many other friends. “A girl in my Spanish group had a party at her flat. A lot of us crashed there for the night.”

  “Well, I for one didn’t miss you,” Elspeth declared. “Which just shows that none of us really know what the others are getting up to.”

  This remark, clearly for Shona’s benefit, resonated with all of us. But somehow it made it worse to think of us all going about our everyday business, while Moira was . . . what? I was momentarily thankful that Menzies had held back the details of what exactly had happened to Moira.

  “Lucy, you should tell Menzies and Nevin about the man you saw Moira talking with,” I pointed out.

  Lucy nodded. “I’ll go tomorrow morning. After my nine o’clock lecture. I can give them a pretty good description, I think.”

  “Not much point,” Elspeth commented.

  I forgot to ask Lucy if she ever contacted Inspector Menzies about the man she’d seen with Moira. In any case, speculation about who murdered Moira was swiftly overtaken by event
s. The following day, Stuart Brogan was discovered, hanged, in his uncle’s garage. In his pocket, the police found a note of confession and a ring that had belonged to Moira.

  Chapter Five

  Izzy wakes first and gives me no quarter. This isn’t a morning for lying in bed. She pads across to the window and pulls back the heavy velour curtains, flooding the room with bright October sunshine. I scrunch up my eyes, pull the cover over my head and pretend to go back to sleep.

  “Wakey, wakey, slugabed. Time to get up.” Izzy bounces on the mattress until I give in, sit up, rub my bleary eyes.

  “Why? What’s the hurry? Is something special happening today?”

  “Yeah, I’m leaving you, remember? Or, more precisely, you’re leaving me.”

  Never in life. I look at her. My girl. She’s perfect. I know I’m her mum, but I think she’s beautiful. She has Doug’s long, lean body, his gingery fairness and violet eyes. I’m always taken aback when people say she resembles me, because I can’t see it. To me she’s a female version of my late husband, a gift that keeps on giving.

  Izzy pulls out of our embrace. For a moment, we’re attached by long strands of static gold hair. And then she’s off, a firefly darting around the room, collecting her washbag and towel, throwing clothes out of her suitcase until she finds the ones she wants for the day, all the while singing tunelessly — that at least she does get from me.

  “I’m off for a shower, Mum. See you in five.”

  “Wait,” I say to the empty room. Before I have a chance to feel maudlin, Elspeth appears in the doorway with three mugs of tea. She steps between Izzy’s strewn clothes, shoes, and Sebastian, who’s rolled off the bed in the night and is lying face down on the carpet.

  “Sorry,” I say. “I didn’t bring her up to be so messy.”

  “I’m used to it. Aaron’s just the same. His room’s only tidy now because he’s not here. And we were the same at their age, remember?” I nod, thinking of our untidy house share on North Street.

  “Lucy was the worst,” I say. “Never learned what the kitchen sink was for.” We laugh, remembering the piles of dirty dishes, the pots and pans encrusted with grease and burnt food.