The Sunday Philosophy Club

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Isabel slipped off her shoes, picked up a book from her dressing table, and lay down on her bed. She was reading an account of a trip to Ecuador, an amusing story of misunderstandings and dangers. She was enjoying it, but her mind kept returning to her conversation with Johnny Sanderson. He had been so helpful and reassuring, and he had told her that she could telephone him at any time. Anytime before midnight. It was clear to her that Minty had tried to put her off any further enquiries by suggesting that it was Johnny who was the insider trader. That was clearly outrageous, and she would not mention it to him. Or should she? If he knew that, then would his view of the situation differ? It is possible that he might revise his view if he knew that Minty was actively trying to discourage Isabel. She could phone Johnny now and talk to him about it; otherwise she would lie there and not get to sleep thinking of it.

  Isabel reached over and picked up the telephone beside her bed. Johnny’s card was protruding from the pages of her pocket address book. She took the card out and looked at it in the dim light of the bedside lamp. Then she picked up the telephone receiver and keyed in the number.

  There was a moment’s delay. Then she heard it: a distinctive, high-pitched ringing tone, coming from somewhere just outside her bedroom.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  ISABEL FELT PARALYSED, lying in the bed, the telephone receiver in her hand. Because the large room was in semidarkness, with only her small bedside lamp illuminated, there were shadows—from cupboards, curtains, the small dressing room off to the side. When she recovered her power to move, it might have been to lunge for the light switch, but it was not. She half leapt, half tumbled from her bed, the telephone falling to the floor behind her, and in one or two bounds she reached the door. Then, holding the thick wooden banister to steady herself, she half threw herself down the stairs. She could have fallen, but did not; nor did she slip when she raced across the downstairs hallway and clutched at the door that separated the inner and outer halls. It yielded, and she flung it back upon its hinges, shattering the stained-glass panel which it contained. With the sound of falling glass, she screamed involuntarily, and a hand was laid upon her arm.

  “Isabel?”

  She spun round. She had a light on in the kitchen, and it shone through to the hall, making it possible for her to see that it was Johnny Sanderson standing in the hall beside her.

  “Isabel. Have I frightened you? I’m terribly sorry.”

  Isabel stared at him. The hand was tight about her arm, almost painful.

  “What are you doing here?” Her voice sounded cracked, and she cleared her throat without thinking.

  “Calm down,” said Johnny. “I’m terribly sorry if I gave you a fright. I had come to see you and I found the door open. I was a little bit concerned, as the house was in darkness. So I came in and checked that everything was all right. Then I went out into the garden, just to look round. I thought that there might have been an intruder.”

  Isabel thought quickly. What Johnny said was just possibly true. If one found a house with an open door, and with no sign of the owner about, then it might well be that one would look about the place to check that all was in order. But what had his mobile phone been doing upstairs?

  “Your telephone,” said Isabel, moving over to the light switch to turn it on. “I dialled it and it rang.”

  Johnny looked at her curiously. “But it’s in my pocket,” he said. “Look.” He reached into the pocket of the jacket he was wearing, and then stopped. “Or at least it was there.”

  Isabel took a deep breath. “You must have dropped it.”

  “So it seems,” said Johnny. He smiled. “That must have given you a dreadful fright.”

  “It did.”

  “Well, yes, I suppose it would. Again, I’m sorry.”

  Isabel pulled herself away from Johnny’s grip, which was dropped. She looked down at the broken stained glass; it had portrayed the harbour at Kirkcudbright, the hull of the fishing boat tiny shards now. As she looked down, the thought came to her, a thought which overthrew all her assumptions: Minty was right. Minty was not the person they should have been investigating; it was Johnny. By coincidence they had gone right to the person who was behind whatever it was that Mark had uncovered.

  It was a realisation that was sudden and complete. She did not have to reconsider it, as she stood there in her hall, confronted by Johnny Sanderson. Good was bad; light was dark; it was as simple as that. A road followed in faith was the road that led nowhere, because it stopped, suddenly and without warning, at a sign which said, unambiguously, Wrong way. And the human mind, jolted out of its assumptions, could either refuse the new reality or switch tracks. Minty might be ambitious, hard, scheming, and promiscuous (all rolled into one elegant package), but she did not push young men over balconies. Johnny Sanderson might be a cultivated, sympathetic member of the Edinburgh establishment, but he was greedy, and money could seduce anybody. And then, when everything was threatened by the possibility of exposure, it would be such an easy step to remove the threat.

  She looked at Johnny. “Why did you come to see me?”

  “There was something I wanted to talk about.”

  “And what was that?”

  Johnny smiled. “I really don’t think that we should talk much now. After this … after this disturbance.”

  Isabel stared at him, struck by the sheer effrontery of the response.

  “A disturbance which you created,” she said.

  Johnny sighed, as if confronted with a pedantic objection. “I merely intended to discuss the matter we were discussing the other day. That’s all.”

  Isabel said nothing, and after a few moments Johnny continued: “But we’ll do that some other time. I’m sorry that I gave you that fright.” He turned and looked back up the stairs. “Would you mind if I recovered my phone? You say that it’s up in your bedroom? Would you mind?”

  AFTER JOHNNY HAD GONE, Isabel went into the kitchen and fetched a dustpan and broom. She carefully picked up the larger pieces of broken glass and wrapped them in newspaper, and then she swept up the smaller fragments and carried them back into the kitchen in the dustpan. Then she sat down at the kitchen telephone and dialled Jamie’s number.

  It took Jamie some time to answer and Isabel knew that she had woken him up.

  “I’m very sorry,” she said. “I had to speak to you.”

  Jamie’s voice was thick with sleep. “I don’t mind.”

  “Could you come round to the house? Right now.”

  “Right now?”

  “Yes. I’ll explain when you come. Please. And would you mind staying here overnight? Just tonight.”

  He sounded as if he was fully woken up now. “It’ll take me half an hour. Will that be all right?”

  ISABEL HEARD HIS TAXI arrive and went to the front door to greet him. He was wearing a green windcheater and was carrying a small black overnight bag.

  “You’re an angel. You really are.”

  He shook his head, as if in disbelief. “I can’t imagine what you want to talk about. But still, that’s what friends are for.”

  Isabel led him into the kitchen, where she had prepared tea. She motioned to a chair and poured him a cup.

  “You’re not going to believe this,” she began. “I’ve had an eventful evening.”

  She told him of what had happened and his eyes widened as she spoke. But it was clear to her that he did not doubt her for a moment.

  “But you can’t believe him. Nobody would wander into somebody else’s house like that just because the door was open … if it was open in the first place.”

  “Which I doubt,” said Isabel.

  “Then what on earth was he doing? What did he have in mind? Doing you in?”

  Isabel shrugged her shoulders. “I suspect that he might wonder about my intentions. If he’s the one we should have been suspecting all along, then he might be worried that I had some proof. Some documents linking him with insider deals.”

  “This
is what this is?”

  “I assume so. Unless he was planning something else, which is rather unlikely, at this stage.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  Isabel looked at the floor. “I have no idea. Or not now. I think I should just go to bed and we can talk about it tomorrow.” She paused. “Are you sure that you don’t mind staying? It’s just that I can’t face being in the house by myself tonight.”

  “Of course I don’t mind,” said Jamie. “I wouldn’t leave you by yourself. Not after all that.”

  “Grace keeps one of the spare rooms made up,” she said. “It’s at the back. It’s nice and quiet. You can have that.”

  She took him upstairs and showed him the room. Then she said good night, leaving him standing just inside his room. He smiled, and blew her a kiss.

  “I’m just along here,” he said. “If there’s any attempt by Johnny to disturb your sleep, you just give me a shout.”

  “I think that’s the last we’ll see of him tonight,” said Isabel. She felt safer now, but there was still the thought that unless she did something, the issue of Johnny Sanderson was unresolved. Jamie was there tonight, but he would not be there the following night, nor the night after that.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  IF GRACE FELT any surprise at finding Jamie in the house the next morning, she concealed it well. He was by himself in the kitchen when she came in, and for a few moments he seemed at a loss as to what to say. Grace, who had picked up the mail from the floor of the hall, broke the silence.

  “Four more articles this morning,” she said. “Applied ethics. No shortage of applied ethics.”

  Jamie looked at the pile of mail. “Did you notice the door?”

  “I did.”

  “There was an intruder.”

  Grace stood quite still. “I thought so. That alarm. I’ve been telling her for years, years, to use it. She never does. She never listens.” She drew breath. “Well, I didn’t actually think anything. I didn’t know what to think. I thought that maybe you two had had a party last night.”

  Jamie grinned. “No. I came when she called me. I stayed over—in one of the spare rooms.”

  Grace listened gravely as Jamie explained what had happened. As he came to the end of the explanation, Isabel came into the kitchen, and the three of them sat down at the table and entered into discussion.

  “This has gone far enough,” said Jamie. “You’re out of your depth now and you are going to have to hand the whole thing over.”

  Isabel looked blank. “To?”

  “The police.”

  “But what exactly are we going to hand over to them?” asked Isabel. “We have no proof of anything. All we have is a suspicion that Johnny Sanderson is mixed up in insider trading and that this may have had something to do with Mark Fraser’s death.”

  “What puzzles me, though,” said Jamie, “is the fact that McDowell’s must have had their own suspicions about him. You say that Minty explained that this is why he was asked to leave. So if they knew, then why should he be worried about your finding anything out?”

  Isabel thought about this. There would be a reason. “Perhaps they wanted the whole thing hushed up. This would suit Johnny Sanderson, of course, and he would not want anybody from the outside—that is, you and me—finding out about it and making a fuss. The Edinburgh establishment has been known to close ranks before this. We should not be unduly surprised.”

  “But we have last night,” said Jamie. “At least we have something more concrete on him.”

  Isabel shook her head. “Last night proves nothing,” she said. “He has his story about why he came in. He’ll stick to that and the police would probably just accept that. They won’t want to get involved in some private spat.”

  “But we could point out the link with the allegations of insider trading,” said Jamie. “We could tell them about what Neil told you and about the paintings. There’s enough here to give rise to a reasonable suspicion.”

  Isabel was doubtful. “I don’t think there is. The police can’t demand that you explain where you get your money from. They don’t work that way.”

  “And Neil?” Jamie persisted. “What about the information that Mark Fraser was frightened of something?”

  “He has already declined to go to the police about that,” said Isabel. “He would probably deny that he’d ever spoken to me. If he changed his story, then the police could accuse him of misleading them. He’s not going to say anything, if you ask me.”

  Jamie turned to Grace, wondering whether she would support him in his suggestion. “What do you think?” he asked. “Do you agree with me?”

  “No,” she said. “No, I don’t.”

  Jamie looked at Isabel, who raised an eyebrow. There was an idea forming in her mind. “Set a thief to catch a thief,” she said. “As you say, we’re out of our depth here. We can’t prove anything about these financial goings-on. We certainly can’t prove anything about a link between all that and Mark Fraser’s death. In fact, it looks as if that probably isn’t the issue—there simply isn’t any link. So what we need to do is get the message to Johnny Sanderson that we’re no longer involved in any way. That should keep him from me.”

  “Do you really think he might … might try to harm you?” Jamie asked.

  “I felt pretty frightened last night,” said Isabel. “He could. But then it’s occurred to me that we could get Minty to tell him that she’s fully aware of his visit here. If she gets the message to him that she knows that he’s been leaning on me, then he would presumably not try anything further. If I came to any harm, he would have at least one archenemy who would point the finger at him.”

  Jamie sounded doubtful. “So we should talk to Minty?”

  Isabel nodded. “Frankly, I can’t face it. I wondered if you …”

  Grace rose to her feet. “No,” she said. “I’ll do this. You tell me where this Minty woman is to be found and I’ll go and have a word with her. Then, just in case there’s any doubt, I’ll go and have a word with this Sanderson person. I’ll leave him in no doubt that he’s not to come round here again.”

  Isabel glanced at Jamie, who nodded. “Grace can be very firm,” he said, adding quickly, “Of course, I mean that in the nicest possible way.”

  Isabel smiled. “Of course,” she said. She was silent for a few moments, and then went on. “You know, I feel that I’m showing an appalling lack of moral courage. I’ve looked into a very unpleasant world and have simply drawn back in fright. I’m throwing in every towel in sight.”

  “What more can you do?” said Jamie crossly. “You’ve already interfered. Now you can’t do anything more. You’re fully entitled to look after yourself. Be reasonable for once.”

  “I’m walking away from it all,” said Isabel quietly. “I’m walking away because somebody has given me a bad fright. It’s exactly what they want me to do.”

  Jamie’s frustration was now palpable. “All right, then,” he said. “Tell us what you can do instead. Tell us where we go from here. You can’t, can you? That’s because there’s nothing else for you to do.”

  “Exactly,” said Grace. And then she went on, “Jamie here is right. You’re wrong. You’re not a moral coward. You’re the least cowardly person I know. The least.”

  “I agree,” said Jamie. “You’re brave, Isabel. And we love you for it. You’re brave and good and you don’t even know it.”

  ISABEL WENT THROUGH to her study to deal with the mail, leaving Jamie and Grace in the kitchen. After a few minutes, Jamie looked at his watch. “I have a pupil at eleven,” he said. “But I could come back this evening.”

  Grace thought this a good idea, and accepted on Isabel’s behalf. “Just for a few more days,” she said. “If you don’t mind …”

  “I don’t,” said Jamie. “I wouldn’t leave her by herself in the middle of all this.”

  As he left the house, Grace followed him out onto the path, catching him by the arm. Glancing behind her towa
rds the house, she lowered her voice as she spoke to him.

  “You’re wonderful, you know. You really are. Most young men wouldn’t bother. But you do.”

  He was embarrassed. “I don’t mind. I really don’t.”

  “Yes, well, maybe. But here’s another thing. Cat’s got rid of that fellow with the red breeks. She wrote to Isabel about it.”

  Jamie said nothing, but blinked once or twice.

  Grace tightened the pressure on his forearm. “Isabel told her,” she whispered. “She told her about how Toby is carrying on with another girl.”

  “She told her that?”

  “Yes, and she was mighty upset. She ran out, sobbing her eyes out. I tried to speak to her, but she wouldn’t listen to me.”

  Jamie began to laugh, but checked himself quickly. “I’m sorry. I’m not laughing at Cat’s being upset. I was just so pleased that now maybe she knows what he’s like. I …”

  Grace nodded. “If she had any sense she’d get back to you.”

  “Thank you. I’d like that, but I don’t know if it’s going to happen.”

  Grace looked into his eyes. “May I say something really personal? Would you mind?”

  “Of course I wouldn’t. Fire away.” He had been instantly buoyed by the news which Grace had imparted and now he was ready for anything.

  “Your trousers,” whispered Grace. “They’re very dull. You’ve got a great body … sorry to be so direct, you know, I wouldn’t normally talk like this to a man. And your face is tremendous. Tremendous. But you have to … you have to be a bit more sexy. That girl is, well, she’s interested in that sort of thing.”

  Jamie stared at her. Nobody had spoken to him like that before. She undoubtedly meant it well, but what exactly was wrong with his trousers? He looked down at his legs, at his trousers, and then he looked at Grace.