I opened my mouth but the Chief Inspector spoke first. ‘Even discounting the description which Mr Cunningham said that he got from Angus Brown—’
‘No,’ Henry said. ‘Don’t do that. Those could be the only true words spoken by Gus. I dare say that he’s changed his story now. But I think that we can reconcile the three descriptions which John passed along to you.’
The Chief Inspector sat back. ‘This I have got to hear,’ he said.
‘Very well. Take first the wife’s description. It seems to be of a totally different man. Well, considering the care which Mr Falconer had taken never to be seen with confederate in public, can you imagine the confederate driving up to the hotel in daylight and conferring with him outside the front door and under the bedroom windows? I suggest that the gun would have been conveyed by some trusted third party.
‘The spurious Miss McGillivray described a tall man with fair hair. Gus Brown didn’t see his hair but described him as small. But the lady was not who she pretended to be and she was in search of the dog. So she had some part in the mystery. In so far as the two descriptions can be compared, they seem to be exact opposites. I suggest that she used the occasion to plant a false description. And since she added that he had a deep voice and a Glasgow accent, I further suggest that you may be looking for a man with a high-pitched voice and stemming from elsewhere.’
‘But,’ said the Chief Inspector. He came to a halt for several seconds. ‘But Angus Brown could be the liar.’
‘If you think that, you may as well disbelieve the rest of his statement,’ Henry said. I thought that he was taking care to exclude any trace of triumph from his voice.
Henry’s argument might not be conclusive but at least he seemed to have clouded the issues very satisfactorily. The resulting silence allowed me to put my oar into the muddied waters. ‘But why would Gus pick on me to incriminate?’ I asked the general company.
‘Good question.’ Henry stopped and thought about it. The policemen waited expectantly.
‘Because you were there,’ Sergeant Ewell said suddenly into the silence. It seemed that I still had one friend in the enemy camp.
Henry shook his head. ‘Because,’ he said at last, ‘whoever stabbed you is presumed to have come to steal the dog. But you already had the dog. You wouldn’t have bribed Gus Brown to steal it from you and to stab you in the process. So, to his twisted way of thinking, your guilt would let him off the hook.’
Chief Inspector Ainslie was nodding in spite of himself. He caught himself at it and sat still. ‘That’s one way of looking at it,’ he said. ‘We assumed at first that there was an intruder and that he wanted the dog. But if that was so, we don’t believe that the intruder was Angus Brown. It was the American whom he had met previously. Then, suddenly, we find him working for the other man, the associate. I find the picture of Mr Falconer introducing or mentioning Gus Brown to his associate unconvincing.’
‘It’s open to argument,’ Henry said, ‘that anybody looking for a disreputable rogue in this locality would sooner or later be referred to Gus Brown.’
‘It’s equally open to argument,’ replied the Chief Inspector, ‘that the intruder was the other associate, that he was after the money and that he took the dog as a ploy intended to mislead.’
‘To mislead from what?’ Henry asked. ‘The dog was taken before the stabbing.’
‘You may believe that,’ the Chief Inspector said. ‘I have to keep a more open mind. Let’s suppose that the other associate, the man of finance, was after the money which had been taken by the shooting friend. He came here. He did not get his hands on the money and there was a fight in which Mr Cunningham was stabbed. Both parties would prefer that nobody asked awkward questions about the reason for his nocturnal visit, so one or the other faked the attempt to steal the dog.’
‘Far-fetched and speculative,’ Henry said.
‘Perhaps,’ the Chief Inspector said. ‘But it’s speculation which tidies up more of the anomalies than any other line of theorising. The simplest theory is often proved correct.’
I had been trying to get a word in but the two men had been ignoring me. ‘Don’t I get to say anything?’ I asked.
‘If you insist,’ Henry said. ‘But the Chief Inspector won’t be interested in mere denials.’
I subsided.
‘Take the alleged attempt to steal the spaniel,’ said the Chief Inspector. ‘What I’ve suggested furnishes one explanation which is at least credible. Can you suggest another?’
He was looking at me and I thought that he was watching me closely. I shook my head, trying not even to think about my idea of an implanted diamond. It had been a crazy thought in a mind fuddled by painkillers, but the Chief Inspector might find it more credible than I did. The harder I tried to exclude it, the more firmly fixed it became in my mind. I could only hope that none of the officers was telepathic.
‘We’ve tried,’ Henry said, ‘but that aspect remains a mystery.’
The Chief Inspector made up his mind. ‘And until that aspect of the mystery is resolved, we must go with the theory that most nearly explains it.’
‘That we’re all involved in one big conspiracy?’
The Chief Inspector shrugged. ‘Not necessarily all of you,’ he said. ‘Dawn outings and a midnight confrontation. They could have happened outwith the knowledge of yourself and Mrs Kitts.’
So Beth and I were to be the chosen suspects. ‘What happens now?’ I asked.
‘This is a working business,’ Henry said. ‘It took years to establish and there’s a lot of money involved. You’d better be very sure of yourself before you take Mr Cunningham out of circulation. Or anybody else.’
‘Then let’s hope that it doesn’t come to that,’ the Chief Inspector said cheerfully. ‘Note that I haven’t said anything yet about taking Mr Cunningham into custody. We have been theorising. Now we need evidence. I have a search warrant with me. Much will depend on what we find.’
‘You needn’t even serve your warrant,’ I said. ‘Go ahead and search. You won’t find any large sums of money.’
‘Or luggage,’ Henry said.
The Chief Inspector sat up and stared at him. ‘What put luggage into your mind?’
‘It’s common knowledge,’ Henry said, ‘that Mr Falconer’s luggage vanished from the hotel. If it had ever been found, the newspapers would have reported it.’
Ainslie relaxed. He was leaning forward as if about to struggle to his feet – no mean task from the low settee – when the door opened.
Beth came in. The hob ferret was riding comfortably on her shoulder. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know that you still had visitors. Shall I light the fire?’
‘Don’t bother,’ I said.
‘The post’s come.’ She dropped a few letters on the coffee table and turned to go.
‘Hold on,’ I said. It had all been happening too quickly. My thinking processes had seemed to be stunned. But her appearance kicked them back into life. ‘I’ve told these gentlemen that they can search the place and welcome. I’ll explain later. You might tell Isobel.’
Beth nodded hesitantly, realising that this was not the moment for a torrent of questions.
‘And,’ I said, ‘you can leave His Nibs with me.’
‘All right.’ She detached the ferret from her shoulder and dropped him on to mine where he settled immediately. ‘I just hope they don’t make a mess, that’s all.’
The door closed gently behind her. I looked at the Chief Inspector. ‘Henry was wrong,’ I said. ‘Gus isn’t as subtle as Henry suggested. He isn’t subtle at all. In fact, he’s the stupidest man I know. He uses bluster instead of brains. I’ve just realised why he’s picked on me to drop in the shit. It’s sheer spite. How would you like to get the truth out of him?’
‘If we don’t already have it,’ Ainslie said slowly, ‘then of course we want it.’
‘I told you all that I remembered about his phone-call. I may have missed out a few words – un
intentionally, Chief Inspector. You needn’t look at me as though my flies were open. When insults are being traded one tends not to remember them verbatim. He called up to be abusive. He resented having to go on the run, as he thought, because of my interference. He got me damned annoyed. I was and am quite sure that Gus was my attacker, so for him to blame me for his troubles was a piece of damned impertinence. What’s more, when he had to run off, he had the gall to dump his ferrets on me to keep for him. And after all that he was giving me dog’s abuse. So the last thing that I said before I slammed down the phone was that I’d drowned his blasted ferrets in a bucket.’
‘And had you?’ the Chief Inspector enquired.
‘No, of course not. This is one of them.’ I put my hand up and tickled the ferret. He pushed his flat nose against my hand. ‘I couldn’t think of any other retort which would get through to him. I suggest that you get word to whoever’s responsible for questioning Gus Brown. Tell him to let slip that the ferrets are alive and well. Gus’s dog and his ferrets are his only friends in the world. Get him thinking about what I might do if he goes on lying about me.’
Ainslie looked at me through half closed eyes. ‘I’ve supervised the questioning of Mr Brown myself,’ he said. ‘I don’t hold out much hope, but I’ll try it – within reason. But I’m not going to convey what might be a message designed to turn him away from the truth.’
‘How you handle him is your business,’ I said. ‘But you’re welcome to suggest that I won’t be pushing for the assault charge if he tells the truth now. Strike whatever bargains you like over that, I won’t care just as long as we clear this up.’
He looked at me as though I had broken wind, but I had a feeling that it was for show. ‘As you say, it’s my business,’ he said. ‘We’re going ahead with the search now. There will be more officers here within a few minutes. I want both of you to remain in this room. Sergeant Ewell will keep you company and make sure that nothing is . . . moved. Meantime, I’ll be returning to Kirkcaldy and I might just have a word or two with Angus Brown. We’ll get the truth out of him in the end,’ he added grimly. ‘But I can’t promise that you’ll like it.’
*
Another car with a team of officers must have been waiting nearby, because within a minute or two of his departure we heard a car in the drive, feet in the hall and female voices raised in protest.
Beth rejoined us a few minutes later. She was wheeling a trolley and I realised that lunchtime had already come and almost gone. The Sergeant looked tactfully away, trying hard to suggest that he was no more than a figment of our imaginations, but Beth had included him in the mugs of soup, crisp white bread with our home-made pheasant pâté and tea. He soon unbent and began to eat.
‘Whatever else we have to put up with,’ Beth said bravely, ‘we don’t have to starve ourselves.’
I found that my appetite had deserted me. ‘What about Isobel?’ I asked. I knew that others had to eat.
‘There’s a man going through her papers and she’s far too busy standing over him to make sure that he doesn’t put back any of her breeding records out of order. I’ll take her something later. Now,’ Beth said, ‘what’s going on?’
Henry glanced at me in warning. He gave Beth a Bowdlerised version of the Chief Inspector’s words. Even so, she turned white.
Beth, perhaps in part because she looked impossibly young to be a sensible and married adult, sometimes gave me the impression of being a witless teenager, but she could keep her head in a crisis. She had a hard core of common sense and could sometimes make leaps of logic which outpaced me.
She made and daintily consumed a small sandwich before speaking. ‘They usually suspect whoever finds a body, don’t they?’ she said.
‘Usually,’ Henry said.
‘But in this case, surely it’s the other way around? If Mr Falconer had been in the water for a week or two – there’s no doubt about that, is there?’
We glanced at the Sergeant but he looked away.
‘One would suppose that there was no doubt about that,’ Henry said. ‘You may be suspected of dropping the body into some convenient pond and then moving it to the Eden for more permanent disposal. The Chief Inspector was unspecific.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ Beth said, ‘although I don’t see why we’d have waited around to find him again. But if we’d dropped him off the bridge a fortnight earlier, it would be an awful coincidence if he came drifting to our feet like that. Or does the Chief Inspector think that he was trying to accuse us from the grave?’
Sergeant Ewell continued to avoid her eye but he gave a faint shrug.
‘Well then, the state of his clothes and . . . and the rest of him surely showed that he’d been going up and down with the tide for ages. Didn’t it?’
We all looked at the Sergeant. He closed his mouth firmly at first and concentrated on spreading pâté on another slice of bread, but the habit of speech was too strong for him and he had become used to using us as his confidants. ‘The pathologist thinks it’s possible – no more than possible, mind – that somebody used an electric sander on the body.’
‘I do have an electric sander,’ I said, ‘but they won’t find any traces of skin or cloth on the disc.’
‘From which,’ Henry said gloomily, ‘he will no doubt conclude that you have changed the disc.’
Beth put a hand to her face. ‘There’s a new disc in it,’ she said. ‘I was sanding down a cupboard door which I was going to paint. When I’d finished, the disc was worn out; so I put on a new one. Oh, John . . .!’
A tall man with a drooping moustache came in, carrying a small leather suitcase. He looked vaguely from me to Beth. ‘Would this belong to either of you?’ he asked.
‘It’s mine,’ I said. ‘I’ve had it for years.’
‘There’s a TWA sticker on it.’
‘I’ve been to the States several times.’
‘Ah? Well, it’ll have to go to Forensic.’ He wandered out again. Beth got up and closed the door after him.
‘Let’s look at this from the Chief Inspector’s viewpoint,’ Henry said, ‘and see what we have to contend with.’ He turned his sharp eyes towards Sergeant Ewell. ‘You’re not secretly taping this, are you?’ (The Sergeant looked blank and then shook his head.) ‘Well, if you are and if anybody tries to edit what I’m going to say, we’ve three witnesses to the fact that I’m speaking hypothetically. We’ll start from the assumption that the Chief Inspector believes you, John, to be the elusive shooting companion. Or, possibly, me.’
‘You?’ I said blankly. ‘Do you mean it? You aren’t just thinking of drawing the enemy’s fire?’
‘I’m not so stupid, nor so quixotic. Come to think, I would make a better suspect. I could spare the time and I haven’t been ill for half the winter as you have. The Chief Inspector hasn’t mentioned that possibility, but there are several other things which he hasn’t seen fit to mention yet. If he’s thinking along the lines which I would follow if I were in his shoes, he can’t think that Isobel is wholly innocent. For all we know, he has another search warrant for my place.’
Henry looked again at the Sergeant, who looked away into the empty fireplace. ‘Of course, we don’t know what other lies Gus may have fabricated. Anyway, one of us – in the Chief Inspector’s view – is Mr Falconer’s shooting crony and knew or found out about the swindle. At the most propitious moment, he invites him back home for breakfast and a hot bath after a dawn wildfowling trip and drowns him in the bathwater. Thereafter he – or any permutation from the four of us – dresses him again, works him over with the sander and stows him somewhere wet, such as the small pond on The Moss, until he or they think that any traces of soap or whatever are beyond detection. Accept for the moment that, in order to support the eventual story, Anon was abandoned in or near St Andrews at about the same time. Then, much later, you, with some help from Beth, drop the body off the bridge before dawn on a rising tide, keep pace with it along the bank and wait for it to come ashor
e further upstream.’
‘You make it sound sort of possible,’ Beth said after an uncomfortable pause, ‘but, if we’d done all that, why would we go to so much trouble to be helpful, identifying Anon and all that?’
Henry was speaking more slowly and I could see that he was struggling to stay ahead of his own argument. ‘For the same reason that you made sure that the body was found. You wanted it confirmed that he was dead.’
‘But why?’
‘Damned if I know. You’d have to look inside the Chief Inspector’s mind to answer that one,’ Henry said helplessly. ‘And know what stories Gus Brown’s been feeding him.’
Sergeant Ewell’s professional reticence broke down at last. He turned to face us. ‘It isn’t Bob’s fault,’ he said. ‘Chief Inspector Ainslie, I mean. What you’re up against, I think, is that one of my rivals for the next promotion vacancy works with him in Kirkcaldy. If he can make me look a Charlie for trusting you with the dog, his chances will be that much better. They think, between them, that the dog gie’d you the slip first time. You wanted it known that the man was dead so that you could get your hands on the dog. And I was fool enough to bring her back to you. That’s what they think.’
It was difficult to know what to say. My mind went wandering. ‘Is Chief Inspector Ainslie your brother-in-law?’ I said. ‘You referred to an inspector.’
The Sergeant sighed. ‘I referred to what my wife said when he went up to inspector. What she said when he climbed another rung I wouldn’t even repeat.’
Beth was sticking firmly to the mainstream of argument. ‘It still doesn’t quite make sense. Why does he think that we’d want another dog?’ she demanded.
The Sergeant looked from one to another of us. ‘You haven’t guessed? It’s because of the money. There’s been just no trace of it at all.’ (I closed my eyes. I could guess what was coming.) ‘They think that the money was used to buy a diamond or some other such thing, which was then implanted under the spaniel’s skin, ready for the trip back to America.’
Whose Dog Are You? (Three Oaks Book 2) Page 13