The Worried Widow

by Gerald Hammond

  Deborah looked at her father. ‘That’s what I was trying to tell you in the car.’ She went to work on her banana split, seeming unaware of the silence in the room.

  ‘You can’t be sure, Toots,’ Keith said gently. ‘You didn’t have very long.’

  ‘Long enough. You were ages with Mrs Hendrickson. And Mum got the same story.’

  ‘All the same . . .’

  ‘Let me finish my sweet,’ Deborah said, ‘and we’ll explain. I’ll need to make a sort of map.’

  Sir Peter moved the decanter out of her way. Deborah bolted her sweet and for once Molly did not reprove her. The mood was one of mildly alcoholic contentment. There had been gin, whisky or sherry before the meal and with it a wine – from a supermarket, but highly recommended by Sir Peter – and now they were to be given entertainment enriched by reality and spiced with a touch of the macabre.

  ‘Now,’ Deborah said. She seemed not to be displeased at being the centre of attention. ‘The road into Boswell Court comes along the canal bank and then jiggles sideways to make room for houses. Right? Then you’ve got four houses on the left of the road, with gardens backing on to the canal.’ She laid out four mints in their dark envelopes. ‘They don’t have numbers up there, just names and nobody uses the names much except the postie, but we’ll call them One to Four.’

  ‘Four being Mr and Mrs Albany?’ Keith said.

  ‘That’s right. And, opposite, another four houses which we’ll number Five to Eight coming back, so that the Hendricksons are Number Five and Mr Strathling is Six.’ She laid out another row of mints. ‘And, just to be sure that we’re looking at it the same way round, this is the wood beyond the houses.’ She placed a table mat. ‘It borders on Numbers Four and Five and it’s all ringed with barbed wire. There are small clumps of trees as you arrive at Boswell Court, but we won’t count those. And here’s the canal.’ She placed two forks and then looked at her mother. ‘You tell the next bit.’

  Molly nodded. ‘It was the first fine weekend of spring,’ she said, ‘so there were a lot of things going on out of doors. I’ll take them in numerical order. At Number One, Mr Kechnie was washing the cars in front of his garage.’

  Wallace jumped as if he had been stuck with a pin. ‘Kechnie? Is that the K-kechnie who has the grocer’s shop two doors along from us?’

  ‘And several others in the region. One and the same,’ Sir Peter said.

  ‘He’s a miserable, vicious old bastard,’ Wallace said. The complete disappearance of his slight stammer was enough to show that his anger was genuine. ‘Frame him for it, Keith, if you can.’

  ‘He may not need framing,’ Sir Peter said. ‘He’s one man who had a genuine grudge against Sam Hendrickson.’

  ‘How’s that?’ Keith asked.

  ‘I don’t suppose that I know the whole story, but several years ago Hendrickson’s union was in dispute with one of Kechnie’s suppliers. Hendrickson approached Kechnie, trying to persuade him not to patronise a supplier whom the union had blacked. Kechnie told him to go and boil his head, but not so politely. The dispute with the supplier was soon settled, but Hendrickson had his knife into Kechnie by then. Ever since, the grocer’s been plagued by stoppages, and by deliveries which arrive late or damaged or even contaminated.’

  ‘Surely that would have stopped when Mr Hendrickson fell ill,’ Janet said.

  ‘That I wouldn’t know,’ said Sir Peter. ‘But habits die hard. And don’t quote me but, from what I hear, Kechnie was hit hard enough that he’s still carrying a bank loan which is making his life difficult. Remember, now, you didn’t hear that from me.’

  The table fell silent while the implications sank in. ‘Go on, Deborah,’ Keith said at last.

  ‘Golly!’ Deborah said. ‘Some people play rough games. Who’s next? At Two, Mr Pollock was mowing the grass at the front. At Three, Mrs Orton and her daughter, Pat, were at the back of the house, clearing beds ready for planting-out while, upstairs, Mr Orton’s mother was sitting at her window looking across the road in the general direction of Number Six. Mr and Mrs Albany we know went next door to visit the Hendricksons, but they were indoors after they got home.’

  ‘I know Ian Albany,’ Sir Peter said. ‘Met him shooting. Good enough chap, but I wouldn’t breed from him.’

  ‘It’s a pity you didn’t tell him that sooner.’ Deborah said. ‘His daughter’s a blot. Mr Strathling, at Six, isn’t much help. He was indoors until he heard the shot, watching the racing on the gogglebox – he seems to be a fan, he was doing the same thing when I called on him. His wife was out shopping both times, she works in the bank so that Saturday’s her best day for shopping.’

  ‘I saw somebody I supposed was him washing a car this morning,’ Keith said. ‘It must have been between races.’

  ‘I know Ben Strathling,’ Wallace said. ‘But I’d forgotten that he lived up there among the nobs. He gave us a good quote for our insurance.’

  ‘He covers me as well,’ Sir Peter said. ‘And I’ve met him socially. Bumped into him once or twice at the races or in gaming clubs. His company’s one of the biggest and best although they’ve been getting sticky about paying out on claims recently.’

  ‘If you’ve quite finished chatting,’ Deborah said severely, ‘I’ll take up the story. At Seven, Mr Beecher was away fishing but his wife was digging the back garden. The McLaings, at eight, were away on holiday.’

  ‘Beecher’s a customer at the shop,’ Wal said. ‘Not fishing tackle, though. Cartridges. He shoots sixteen-bore. You altered the cast of his pump-gun last year, Keith.’

  ‘I remember the gun. I don’t know that I ever set eyes on him.’

  ‘On top of all that,’ Deborah said firmly, ‘the window-cleaner was working. He comes round some of the houses weekly and some fortnightly, so he was there again today and I spoke to him. Despite the sound of Mr Orton’s mower – it’s electric, so it isn’t too noisy – he heard the shot and he’d got as far as Number Six, the Strathling house. Of course, he was facing the windows; but he says that he sees most of what goes on.

  ‘The milkman, old Mr Rogers, was going round collecting the money for the week.

  ‘All those people,’ Deborah said, ‘or at least most of them – the Kechnies went out before we got there this morning – were positive that no strangers were around the place. There was some to-ing and fro-ing among the residents, but no strangers.

  ‘And to top it all, Kenny Stuart, the farmer, was working the field which runs behind Numbers Five to Eight and round the corner of the wood. He was drilling barley. Mrs Beecher swears that the tractor never stopped for a minute. And you know what Kenny is about intruders.’

  ‘No,’ Molly said. ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Kenny’s brother runs a family shoot on the land,’ Keith explained. ‘They get poached now and again by . . . well, I won’t name any names, but they come from the council houses further along the canal. So Kenny only has to see a strange figure on his land and he’ll uncouple the tractor and go after them. He doesn’t have the rights to that wood, but a lot of his pheasants pick nesting territories there. The residents are always complaining, Kenny says, because they have more than enough trouble with the rabbits without pheasants getting into the gardens and making dust-baths in the flower-beds.’

  Sir Peter knew all about pheasants in the garden. ‘It’s not so much the flower-beds,’ he said, ‘but when they get into the potato-patch they uncover the young tatties, which go green and toxic in the sunlight. Still, I don’t suppose anybody grows anything as plebeian as potatoes up there.’

  Molly preferred to stick to the original subject. ‘Kenny couldn’t do anything about somebody walking along the towpath,’ she said.

  ‘The towpath’s the other side of the canal,’ said Deborah. ‘The fields and gardens come right to the canal bank. There is a footbridge over the canal, from a footpath between the gardens of Three and Four, but Mrs Orton’s sure that nobody used it except Mrs Pollock, who was coming back from a quick visit
to her cousin and stopped for a chat just before they heard the shot. There was an angler on the towpath, but Mrs Orton says that he never moved, not even to catch a fish.’

  ‘He wouldn’t c-catch a fish,’ Wallace said. ‘Not there. Not more than a couple of inches long.’ He passed his cup for more coffee.

  ‘The point is,’ Deborah said, ‘that those people saw each other moving around, and they didn’t miss much. Well, of course, nobody’s in the same place all the time. People do go for a pee or a cup of coffee or to fetch tools. But not one out of all those people saw a stranger. So unless somebody got into the wood during the night and waited for Mrs Hendrickson to wheel her husband up the garden, or Mr Rogers smuggled somebody up in his van, I don’t see how any outsider could have got there at all.’

  The conversation checked again.

  Wallace broke the silence. ‘A pheasant can m-make the devil of a noise when it’s disturbed,’ he said. ‘Nobody heard a cock squawking, or saw any of them rocket up?’

  ‘Not to mention,’ Deborah said. She looked at her father. ‘I could go back and ask.’

  ‘Definitely not,’ Keith said. ‘We’ve done our job and been paid off. We’re in good odour with the police for once, but that won’t last long if we start interfering.’ He hesitated and then decided to dangle a bait. ‘And we have a satisfied client for the moment,’ he said. ‘If we go on, we may find that we’re throwing suspicion in the direction of that son of hers. He seemed to know a little too much and you’re so sure that no outsider could have come in.’

  ‘He was in Edinburgh,’ Deborah protested.

  ‘Maybe. And maybe he was such a familiar sight that nobody noticed him. You go ahead and type up a report of all that you and your mother can remember between you, give the police a copy and one to Mrs Hendrickson, we owe her that much. And then we’re finished.’

  ‘You’ll be having it quiet for the next couple of weeks, then?’ Janet asked.

  Keith looked at her sharply. He knew the warning signs. ‘I was going to update the price list of vintage guns for sending out,’ he said.

  ‘I could do that for you,’ Molly offered. Keith gave her a look of reproach.

  ‘The thing is,’ Wallace said, ‘Janet and I wanted a break up Speyside. We thought we’d have to p-put it off. But if you’ve finished with the Hendrickson case . . .’

  Keith sighed. Minding the shop while keeping up with the gunsmithing and other work meant long hours. On the other hand, he could not get away from the fact that he was, in reality, a shopkeeper, or that Wallace was overdue for a holiday. ‘All right,’ he said.

  They moved to other subjects. Deborah went to fetch the lockplates from Sir Peter’s gun. She had rubbed them with black grease and then wiped off the surfaces so that the engraving stood out sharp and black.

  Sir Peter was pleased. ‘You’ve brought the two animals closer together, which is an improvement,’ he said. ‘And you’ve caught Bael’s expression better than the photograph did. That look of “I’ll be walloped for this but it’s worth it”. The wicked old beggar!’ he added affectionately. ‘If he was a person, he could sue you for libel.’

  Deborah accepted the praise modestly. Her manner for the rest of the evening was subdued.

  *

  When their guests were gone and Deborah had been sent upstairs, Keith, in a mood of mildly alcoholic benevolence, offered to help with the washing-up. His offer was declined. Molly set great store by her best glass and china and Keith, when he had a drink in him, could get careless.

  ‘You go on to bed,’ Molly said. ‘I’ll finish up.’

  Keith was not sleepy. ‘I need a winding-down period after all that talk,’ he said. ‘Otherwise I’ll just lie and do some pondering that nobody’s going to pay for. I think I’ll go and potter. I never cleared up after testing Mr Wilmington’s cartridges. Set the burglar alarm after me and I’ll knock when I want back in.’

  ‘All right. But put your coat on; it’s cold outside. And leave me the pepperbox pistol, if you’ve got it on you. Just for my peace of mind.’ Molly was not thinking of the threatening phone-call but of Keith, slightly fuddled, deciding to check or unload the distinctly tricky antique.

  In the former coach-house, Keith cleaned and oiled his pressure-barrel and gathered up the spent cartridges. Thrifty as ever, he dropped the used crushers into his pocket. The small cylinders of lead could be added to his melting-pot, the next time that he was pouring bullets or balls for use in his muzzle-loaders.

  When all was tidy, he switched off the single overhead bulb and stood for a moment in the doorway, waiting for his eyes to adjust.

  It was a black night. The lamp over the back door washed a little light over the courtyard but it was soon swallowed by the greedy darkness. Keith was about to set off towards the glow when he thought that he saw a moving shadow.

  ‘Who’s there?’ he called. His voice had risen, along with the hairs on the nape of his neck.

  There was no answer. He thought that imagination had tricked him but a foot scraped on gravel and suddenly the vague shadow was the silhouette of a man, very close, and two hands grabbed his lapels. He expected a butt and lashed out, low and hard, but his fist bounced off a wall of solid muscle. The hands against his chest pushed him with a weight and strength sufficient to send him reeling back from the door until he fetched up against his bench.

  A large shadow came through the doorway, black against the lesser darkness outside, and the door was pulled to.

  Keith thought, frantically. He was in no doubt that the man was larger than himself and stronger, probably younger and he might very well be armed. Mixing it at close quarters would not be a good idea. Rather, this was a man to hit with something hard and heavy while remaining well outside his grasp. He heard, faintly, a slithering sound which, after a moment of panic, he identified as hands sliding on the wall, seeking the light-switch.

  The dark was to his advantage – Keith knew the layout as surely as he knew Molly’s soft contours. The single light-bulb was above his reach. He took one of the crushers from his pocket and tossed it to one side, to cover his own sounds while he fumbled on the bench. It would take all night to unbolt the pressure-barrel from its bench but surely there must be something . . .

  With an upsurge of relief, he felt Mr Wilmington’s gun-barrels under his hand – two conjoined, lightweight tubes, jaggedly burst at the heavier end. He swung them overhead.

  The first three swings found nothing. The fourth hit the light-bulb. It must have coincided with the man finding the switch, because there was an instant of light, too brief for vision, and then darkness again and the sound of thin glass falling on the cobbled floor.

  Keith stood and strained his eyes. If any starlight was filtering through the skylight above, he could not see it. But the other man had been waiting in darkness. If his night vision were good . . .

  ‘Where are you, ye bugger?’ said a voice. ‘I can wait as long as you.’ It was deep and gruff, accented with the Glasgow-Irish growl of the Scottish industrial belt. Where had Keith heard such a voice recently? No, not heard. Mrs Hendrickson had described it.

  Wrong, he could do no harm. But if he were right, he could unsettle the other man.

  Keith took three soft paces to his left. His prayers were answered and his soles did not crunch on glass. ‘Hello, Hughie,’ he said. He flicked another crusher against the wall and slipped back towards his bench. Somebody seemed to have removed it.

  His shot in the dark seemed to have struck home. The man started to speak and bit his words off. When he began again, he was speaking carefully. ‘You didna’ heed the warning you was given on the phone.’ he said. ‘I’m here to give you another that you’ll no’ forget so quick.’ He seemed to be waiting near the door, as Keith would have expected.

  The words ‘shot in the dark’ came back to Keith. He had found the corner of his bench by cracking his knee against it. He put down Mr Wilmington’s barrels where he could find them again and waited for th
e agony to abate. There was no sound of movement. Perhaps he had not, after all, groaned aloud. He felt in his coat pocket. He usually carried a few cartridges there in case of sudden need and habit had not let him down. He found the three cartridges which he had shown Inspector Gowrie, only that morning.

  He covered the noise by lobbing a small handful of crushers into the corner while he stuffed a cartridge into the breech of the pressure-barrel. He wondered whether to use another crusher to hold the piston down over the pressure-vent, but decided that an extra flash would be all to the good. He heard the sound of a footfall. The man was moving. Well, if he had wandered in front of the barrel that was his problem.

  Keith turned his eyes towards the door and hit the trigger.

  The blast of the gun and the slam of the shot on iron almost drowned a squawk of surprise. In the bright flare, Keith saw the man to his right, almost in the path of the shot but looking away from him. In the newly intensified darkness and silence, Keith took two paces and swung Mr Wilmington’s gun-barrels, in a downward chop in case his man had ducked.

  The blow landed solidly and he heard the man say ‘Shit!’ with deep feeling. Two seconds later, as he was beginning another swing, came the sound of a falling body.

  Keith stopped his swing and walked to the door. He met bare wall, fumbled the wrong way, came back again and put his hand on the doorknob. An instant later, he was outside in the cold, clean air.

  When he came back a few minutes later with a torch and a shotgun, there was no sign of the man and only the smell of gunsmoke, the broken bulb and a few drops of blood to confirm that he had ever been there. The man’s skull, Keith decided, must have been built on Clydeside. The remains of Mr Wilmington’s barrels had bent into a hoop.

  *

  A pair of tired-eyed, uniformed constables had dealt with Keith’s Saturday night call, but Detective Inspector Gowrie arrived in time for coffee on the Sunday morning. Keith received him in the study.