Cousin Once Removed

by Gerald Hammond

  ‘Come and see.’

  Keith led the way down the stairs. Molly gasped when she saw the man on the floor, struggling against her clothes line.

  ‘Just stand by,’ Keith said. ‘Trust me for one minute. Then I’ll explain.’ He went down on his knees. With his last length of cord he tied a bowline round the man’s neck and checked it carefully to be sure that it would never slip. ‘You poor chap!’ he said. ‘Let me help you up.’

  With Keith’s help the man got on to his feet, but before he could stand fully erect the link between his wrists and ankles came taut. Quickly, Keith attached the rope from the man’s neck to an overhead pulley which more usually supported a clothes drier.

  ‘I haven’t much time,’ Keith said, ‘so I’ll say it just once. I’m going to take the gag out for about ten seconds. In that time, if you want a good puke, you’ve got your chance. But you also tell me what drug you gave my dogs. Otherwise, if one of them dies, you can have a share in the grave.’

  ‘You can’t do that,’ Molly protested. ‘Keith, you can’t–’

  Upstairs, the front door bell began to ring.

  ‘Before you get too uptight,’ Keith said, ‘you may as well know that this is the nutter who stuck me with the crossbow bolt. If I hadn’t been turning at that moment, he’d’ve killed me.’ Keith untied the cord and removed the duster. ‘Now then, Creepy Jesus, you’ve got one chance and only one to tell me what you gave my dogs.’

  Creepy Jesus’s face above the beard was greenish grey and his wild eyes seemed unfocused, but the message had got through to him. He groaned out two faint syllables. Keith made out the name of a well-known sleeping tablet.

  Keith hesitated and then threw down the gag. He handed Molly her rolling pin from a drawer. ‘Stand guard,’ he said. ‘If he tries to shout, zonk him with this. Try not to kill him too much. Then cut him down before he hangs himself.’ He saw that Molly was swinging rapidly from sympathy with the oppressed to indignation that anybody should dare to take up arms against her beloved Keith. ‘But as long as he stands there quietly, leave him be.’

  Molly nodded uncertainly.

  ‘Promise me? In words?’ (Keith never considered a non-verbal promise binding.)

  ‘I promise,’ she said.

  Keith darted back up the stairs and admitted the vet, whom he found, in overcoat and pyjamas, about to doze off on the doorstep. ‘Did Molly tell you we’ve had an intruder? He doped the dogs. I found the empty bottle,’ Keith improvised. He repeated the name furnished by Creepy Jesus.

  Keith hovered anxiously while the vet examined the sleeping dogs and gave each an injection. ‘Just leave them as they are,’ the vet said at last. ‘They should make it through the night. It’s a bit by-guess-and-by-God, because we don’t know how much they were given. But if they’re not both up and around by midday, call me again.’ He yawned. ‘I should get such a sleep!’ he added.

  Keith took him to the door and pointed him in the direction of his car.

  *

  In his younger days Keith had lived on the fringe of a world in which it was the custom first to demand information with threats and then to offer violence. Keith knew that physical attack must often fail, simply because it is finite and must end some time. The determined victim can stick it out. Keith’s interlude with the girl in the valley had suggested to him another way to extract information. Much more effective, he thought, would be the pain from within one’s own muscles, pain which would continue to escalate until ended by capitulation.

  The desired result seemed already near when Keith returned downstairs. Under the eye of an unsympathetic Molly, Creepy Jesus was suffering. As an alternative to taking his weight on his throat he was forced to take the strain on his bent legs. The effort demanded of his legs and back was already evident in his sweating face and his laboured breathing. Soon, Keith knew, over-strained muscles would begin to share the strain with other muscles less well adapted to the particular task, violently increasing the load on the skeletal joints.

  Keith pulled out a chair and sat down facing his captive. Molly perched on the corner of the table. While Keith spent a few seconds considering the order of his approach, there was a silence broken only by Creepy Jesus’s gasping breaths. Yet Keith noticed that those wild eyes kept flicking in Molly’s direction. Had she said or done something while he was out of the room?

  ‘I think you should go back to bed,’ Keith told Molly.

  ‘I’m staying.’

  ‘All right. But cover yourself. I want his full attention.’

  Molly got up, put on an old macintosh from behind the back door and resumed her seat on the table.

  ‘Now,’ Keith said. Creepy Jesus’s eyes settled back on him, like insects. ‘Did you ever play tiddlywinks?’ Keith asked.

  ‘Hunh?’

  ‘Because you’re going to have discs popping out all over the place just like that if you don’t get loose soon. And the only way you get loose is by spilling all you know.’

  ‘You’re not going to let him go?’ Molly said incredulously.

  ‘I might, if he’s a good boy.’

  ‘Keith, you’ve got to give him up to the police. He tried to kill you.’

  Keith moved his shoulder experimentally. It was still slightly tender. ‘I can’t prove that he tried to kill me,’ he said. ‘Only that he bought a crossbow. He might get off on that. And it’s a bit late to let on that I caught the burglar. And, finally, if I throw him to the cops the whole story’s going to come out and I’m not ready for that yet. At least, I don’t think I am.’ Keith returned his attention to Creepy Jesus. ‘What’ve you got to say for yourself, Sunshine?’

  The man glared at him. Keith would not have believed that two eyes, mere globes of soft tissue, could hold so much hate together with so little real sanity. His speech, it turned out, was out-dated American slang, intended to be hippy-talk and delivered in a strong Glasgow twang horribly discordant with his Christ-like appearance. He spoke in a series of short breaths as he fought the increasing strain on his body. ‘I don’t have to . . . tell you a word, man.’

  ‘You don’t,’ Keith agreed. ‘You can hang there instead. Be my guest.’

  A few seconds of silence and cramp persuaded Creepy Jesus to speak again. ‘No need to . . . blow cool. Don’t know what . . . word you want.’

  ‘What did you come here for?’

  ‘Who you tryin’ . . . to kid? . . . I was hoping to score . . . with those shooters. . . . The ones by C. J. Ross . . . from France.’

  ‘You’re sure you didn’t fancy your chances at knocking me off? You tried once before.’

  ‘Christ no! Hey, man . . . what the hell! . . . You wrote down that I’d . . . had first crack at you. An’ I didn’t,’ he added suddenly but too late. ‘I’d’ve been easy meat for the fuzz. Just wanted . . . enough bread . . . to take me away to hell and gone. . . . Let me down, man . . . this is killing me.’

  ‘Probably. Tough titty. You bought the crossbow.’

  Creepy Jesus hesitated and then capitulated. ‘Okay, so I bought the crossbow for . . . for somebody else.’

  ‘Just about everybody else I can think of is accounted for. Who would you like to nominate?’

  ‘Not saying.’

  ‘You may be sorry. Who were you going to sell the pistols to?’

  ‘Highest bidder. . . . Cut me down, man.’

  Keith thought it over and then shook his head. ‘No, you had a client.’

  ‘The girl, man,’ Creepy Jesus said desperately. ‘The Duguidson chick.’

  ‘How much did she offer you to kill me?’

  Creepy Jesus tried to clamp his mouth shut, but the snarl on his face left his sharp teeth showing.

  ‘I don’t buy it,’ Keith said. ‘I think the only word of truth you’ve told me is that your back hurts. Which moves me not one damn bit, because somebody put a crossbow bolt through me, meaning to kill me, and in my book it all adds up to you. Well, I don’t have to hand you over to the cops. I gave them
a hair-by-hair and pimple-by-pimple description of you and pointed them in the direction of Bonnyrigg. I don’t suppose they’ll knock up Mr Threadgold during the night, but come breakfast time they’ll have your number. If I let you go – and I don’t advise you to start counting on it – but if I were to let you go now and you started running straight away, you might have time to screw some money out of your client and be gone before the hunt warms up. But if you don’t start telling me something I can believe you can bloody well wait here until morning and think about your sins.’ Keith got to his feet.

  ‘I’ll be dead . . . by then!’

  ‘Probably. Who shot me with the crossbow? I want to hear it from your own lips. And,’ Keith said, ‘if you think that the idea of you dying bothers me you’re living in a dream world.’

  Creepy Jesus rolled his eyes but failed to find any help. ‘All right, you mother!’ he said. ‘It was me shot you.’

  ‘Now tell me something new.’

  ‘All I know is . . . those shooters, man . . . the pistols . . . they’ve got a history . . . Val and Hugh, they found out something . . . last year . . . at the family mansion in France.’

  ‘Oh, I knew that,’ Keith said. ‘I guessed something like that from the first, and I knew I was right as soon as Sir Henry tried to buy them. But now I’m guessing that that’s yesterday’s news. What else can you tell me?’

  Creepy Jesus shook his head so that sweat flew.

  ‘Too bad,’ Keith said. ‘If you don’t make it through the night I’ll dig a grave between the lilacs and dance on it from time to time. That’s what I think of men who try to kill me. A good night to you. If you think of anything else, try shouting. I’m two floors up, but you might just manage to wake me.’

  *

  In the morning the man was gone. Keith made the utility room his first port of call and found only a few cut strands of rope. Molly had followed Keith to bed after twenty minutes during which, armed with the carving knife in case she had to defend herself, she had cut Creepy Jesus free, as Keith had been almost sure she would.

  It seems unlikely that Creepy Jesus ever knew how lucky he was. During the night the old spaniel’s heart had given out under the strain. So there was a grave between the lilacs after all, but no dancing.

  *

  It was a late start that they made for Edinburgh, but Keith made up time on the road and dropped his wife and daughter, nervous but glad to be uninjured, at the West End with instructions to work their way along Princes Street and then to seek out the car on a meter in Queen Street or York Place.

  Keith spent the morning arguing with the Customs and Excise at Leith over the import of his guns. He snatched a bite of lunch in the St James Centre and spent the afternoon in Register House.

  Molly had found the car by the time Keith returned to it and had established herself in the driving seat. Deborah was already strapped into her own seat in the back. Keith settled himself down beside Molly. For once he was disinclined to assert his male prerogative to drive. ‘I got what I wanted,’ he said with satisfaction.

  ‘You got more than you wanted,’ Molly said. ‘There was a summons under your wiper.’

  ‘That’s not mine,’ Keith said. ‘Throw it away. I pinched it off somebody else’s windscreen. Traffic wardens don’t bother if they see that you’ve already got a summons. Let’s get along home. I want to phone the university. And then I’d like to ask Mrs Threadgold what the legal question that Valerie Duguidson asked her husband was, as if I couldn’t guess.’

  Chapter Nine

  By ten-thirty on the Saturday morning, Keith was beginning to feel that the week had already gone on long enough. One cause among many was that his study was in a state of congested disorder. Keith had been reared in a farmhouse among utilitarian furniture and whitewash, and however much he might decry Molly’s veneration for Briesland House it gave him eternal satisfaction to have a room to himself which could almost have figured in a Stately Home.

  Ronnie and a companion had delivered four large crates to the study and were being regaled by Molly in the kitchen while Keith began the process of opening the crates.

  The Duguidsons arrived – ahead of time, Keith noted. Molly, determined as ever to miss no moment of drama, got rid of her brother and joined the party but caused a further delay by offering refreshments.

  Keith glared at her. ‘I did not invite these two young yobs here in order to feed them,’ he pointed out.

  Molly remembered that those two had lured Keith almost to his death. She also remembered that she had been quite unable to extract from Keith a single word about what he was expecting to be said or done. ‘What did you invite these two young yobs here for then?’ she asked.

  ‘Not to be insulted,’ the girl said. She got to her feet.

  Her brother caught her by the sleeve without getting up. He had arrived in a mood of nervous garrulity but had then dried up. Now he found his voice again. ‘Let’s get it over,’ he said huskily. ‘I’ve been scunnered of the whole thing ever since it happened, and then you getting your pants back through the post and knowing that he – you – knew who we are. . . . Go on, Mr Calder, for God’s sake. The floor’s yours.’

  ‘Since what happened?’ Molly asked.

  ‘Since Mr Calder got injured, of course,’ Valerie Duguidson said impatiently. She sat slowly down again. ‘That’s what he means.’

  Her brother took over again. ‘All right, I met you and took you up to Foleyhill. We had nothing against you, but our need seemed paramount at the time. Call me anything you want. But, honestly, nobody was meant to get hurt, we just wanted to be able to put some pressure on you to sell us something at the same price you paid for it.’

  Keith thought that Hugh Duguidson was trying to stretch credulity rather far. ‘Whose idea was it?’ he asked.

  ‘Creepy suggested it. And he bought the crossbow and shot the deer. He denied shooting at you, but he’s lost the crossbow and with Creepy you never know whether he’s telling the truth or not. If he did it, we don’t know what got into him or who got at him. So you needn’t blame us. Anyway, you got your own back on Val and you can take a poke at me if you want, so you don’t have to be too vindictive about it.’

  ‘I don’t have to be,’ Keith agreed. ‘Whether I will be or not depends on whether I get a little collaboration from you. For starters, tell me what this is all about.’

  The boy opened his mouth but the girl spoke quickly. ‘There’s a story attached to those pistols which –’

  ‘Wrong!’ Keith sang on a long note.

  ‘It’s true! It makes them more valuable. To me, both as a student and as a member of the family –’

  ‘Almost true, but it’s not what you’re so het up about. You’ll have to do better if I’m not to go to my old friend Chief Inspector Munro and say that I now know who lured me up to Foleyhill so that their resident nutter could put a bolt through me. Let’s start again. We’ll take it more or less in chronological order. You two are remote cousins of the Batemores?’

  The two youngsters nodded in unison.

  ‘About a year ago,’ Keith went on, ‘you spent a holiday in Lady B.’s château. The Batemores don’t take much interest in you, so I suppose that was young Brian’s doing. Don’t bother denying it. Your pal Creepy let it out. And the Batemores will be here later, I can ask them.’

  ‘What of it, then?’ It was the girl again. That sulky look, Keith thought, spoiled her face.

  ‘Just this. You’re a postgraduate history student – I asked the university. You’re working on a thesis subject to do with French history. Lady Batemore’s lineage is an inseparable part of that history. Her family archives or muniments or whatever you call them would be just your cup of tea. Your cousin would be sure to give you access to them.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘No reason. Creepy Jesus tried to buy me off with the story of you finding a letter or something among the family papers. He said that it was about the duelling pistols.’

/>   ‘All right,’ she said despondently. ‘You win.’

  ‘You’re still trying, aren’t you? But you needn’t be quite so determined to get sent to prison. We can arrange it with half the effort. Those duellers are not, repeat not, what it’s all about, and you know it. You had the bloody nerve to scrounge free advice from Mr Threadgold, who you and your unwashed commune had been persecuting. You asked him for a legal opinion. He told you that what you’d been thinking just wasn’t on.’

  ‘He could be wrong,’ she said.

  ‘He could, but he wasn’t. I’ve asked my own solicitor. And there’s another thing. When Lady B. came to the shop the other day, our discussion was informative. She offered me a big inducement in return for first pick of any three guns and a not much reduced offer for any one gun. When I suggested any two guns, she went tepid on me. So I reasoned that she wanted the duellers, but she wanted something else a damned sight more. Probably something which she might never have known about if you hadn’t drawn it to her attention by pinching something else out of the family archives – a document which she intended to recover either through the courts or through her son, who has the run of your doss-house.’

  From the odds-and-ends drawer in his desk Keith produced a small pistol of the Derringer type. He sighted it at a corner of the ceiling. ‘As a collector’s piece,’ he said, ‘this would hardly seem to be worth the stamp on a cheque. But suppose I told you that this was the pistol Abraham Lincoln was killed with.’

  ‘Keith!’ Molly said. ‘It isn’t? –’

  ‘No, of course it’s not. I’m just trying to get across the difference in values, from a collector’s point of view, between a poor antique and an historic item. When I’m looking at guns I might buy, I always have in my mind that one of them may have figured in a famous killing or have belonged to somebody in the history books. I’ve only scored once and that was in a small way. I’ve another gun upstairs which I’m hanging on to, because I suspect that it once belonged to a famous explorer but I can’t prove it yet. I’m saying all this to explain that the possibilities were already in my mind when I bought these guns, and, as soon as Lady Batemore gave me the clue, my mind jumped to one gun in particular – partly because the man who sold it to me mentioned the “deux pauvres étudiants” who’d been after it. You two amateurs pushed the price up to a level which I wouldn’t have paid, except that the resemblance to a certain famous and well-do-cumented gun was almost jumping up and down in front of me, screaming for attention.’