‘In so many words?’ Fellowes asked.
‘Near enough,’ said Calder.
‘Until seven-thirty, then,’ said Fellowes.
They made their departure. Seen through the back window of the car, they seemed to be arguing.
‘We may as well have that drink,’ I said.
Enterkin seemed to be on the point of agreeing but he looked at his watch. ‘Is that the time? I have one last client to visit. I’ll leave you to drink alone. But not too heavily. Our Detective Inspector was correct when he warned you about Calder hospitality. But I must rush. I shall return in the morning.’
‘We’ll meet this evening,’ I reminded him.
‘So we shall, so we shall. Until then!’ He eased himself into his car and rushed very slowly away.
I returned to the house and told Mary Fiddler that I should be dining out. She seemed to have started work already on the evening meal but she took my defection cheerfully. No doubt Ronnie would benefit to the tune of my portion.
There was time to spare. The absence of company seemed a poor reason not to enjoy sampling Peter Hay’s collection of malt whiskies. I found an already opened bottle of a malt that was new to me and drank a private toast to absent friends.
Perhaps I should have resumed work on the Confirmation. Enterkin had asked for a summary of Peter Hay’s assets and I thought that I could remember the instructions that Peter had given me on how to winkle the information out of the various files on the computer, springing off from his last return to the Inland Revenue. But I would have to see Peter’s accountants next week anyway. It had been a long day and would get longer. All work and no play, I told myself, would make me a very dull old gentleman. So I gathered up my fishing gear, called the two Labradors and set off for the small loch.
There is no accounting for the ways of fish. There was an abundant hatch of insects – until I anointed myself with repellent I was being eaten by midges – yet hardly a rise of fish. One trout was rising within reach of the bank but after a few misjudged casts I had scared him with the line and he had gone deep. They would be feeding below, on nymphs and emergers, I guessed. I took a seat against a tree to change my fly for a suitable nymph from Calder’s shop. But I had missed my nap that afternoon and a large malt whisky was no substitute. I closed my eyes for a second against the brightness of the day, and was asleep on the instant.
I was jerked awake by a hand on my shoulder. My eyes snapped open. The light was fading. Hamish was stooping over me. ‘Thank God!’ he said. ‘For a moment, I was thinking I had another corpse to deal with.’
I yawned and stretched and pulled myself together. ‘Not this time,’ I told him. ‘Still no sign of the spaniel?’
‘Not a trace. He may turn up yet.’ Hamish shuffled his feet shyly. ‘Ronnie and I’ve had a wee crack about the dogs. If we get the spaniel back, he’ll take the old Labs on. That way, they’ll spend most of their days back at the house where they’ve lived. You’d prefer that, eh, old ones?’ The dogs, aware that they were being addressed in kindly terms, thumped their tails.
‘That seems sensible.’ I could hear splashes from the water as trout after trout rose to the hatch, but there was no time left for fishing. Hamish helped me to my feet. ‘I’ll have to go,’ I said.
Hamish nodded, but he was not going to let me go just yet. ‘You’re staying on in the big house?’
I said that I was, meantime.
‘And there’ll just be you and yon Joanna in the place at night?’
I agreed.
Hamish looked me in the eye. ‘I think a lot of Joanna,’ he said. ‘Ah weel, you’ll be able to see that nothing comes over her.’
‘I’ll be going home tomorrow for the weekend,’ I told him. ‘Perhaps you should take a look in, just to see that she’s all right.’
He only nodded but he helped me to gather up my things. Hamish and I understood each other. He had made it clear that he had an interest in Joanna while I had assured him that I would not lay a finger on her. On the whole, I decided as I hurried through the calm, luminous dusk, I was rather flattered. At my age, I am not often credited with being a danger to young women. I rather wished that the danger could have been real.
*
I just had time for a quick shave, a shower and a change into a tolerably presentable suit before Ian Fellowes’s car returned to the door, but there was no sign of the policeman. His wife was at the wheel. Deborah Fellowes was very alluring in what I supposed would be called a cocktail dress of elegant simplicity. She was alone in the car so I guessed that a sitter had been obtained.
She drove briskly and competently but had time to talk. ‘Traditionally,’ she said, ‘I thought in-laws were supposed to hate each other. But the curse of my life is that my husband and my father get on too well. With Dad’s encouragement – and mine, I must admit – Ian has taken to the country and everything rural like the proverbial duck to water. And Dad never could resist a mystery. Before Ian came along, he was always poking his nose in and upsetting the police. So a detective for a son-in-law was just what he’d have asked for if a genie had popped out of a bottle. In fact, I’ve sometimes wondered if he didn’t mastermind the whole thing. Without our help, to be honest, I don’t think Ian would have earned his last promotion, or certainly not so soon. So if the two of them aren’t away ferreting or shooting somewhere, Dad’s acting as Watson to Ian’s Sherlock or more often the other way around.’
She sounded so indignant that I had to laugh. ‘That doesn’t sound like much of a curse on your life,’ I said. ‘More of a blessing.’
‘I suppose it is, most of the time. But then something like this comes up and the two of them forget common sense and go dashing about the place, getting into trouble. They’ve vanished now, on some ploy of their own. They’ll probably make dinner late, sit down to eat still covered in mud, if nothing worse, and be thoroughly pleased with themselves for having put a cat among somebody’s pigeons.’
‘Don’t knock it,’ I said with feeling. ‘The opposite, conflict between in-laws, is worse. Is this ploy of theirs anything to do with Peter Hay’s death?’
‘Damned if I know,’ she said.
We collected Mr Enterkin from below his flat near the Square and left Newton Lauder again, travelling northward. But before we came to the main road that bypassed the town, we turned off onto a byroad and turned again between stone pillars, to park in front of a substantial Victorian house. The twilight was almost gone and the light spilling from windows made it difficult to see more than stone walls decked with Virginia creeper and what seemed to be a wide and well-kept garden, in the spread of light from a lamp over the front door.
Molly Calder was as irritated as her daughter by the disappearance of their two men, but I gathered that she was not unused to such treatment. She dismissed the subject in very few words, carried Deborah off to help her and, with another word of apology, left us in the cheerful sitting room to comfort ourselves with the contents of Keith’s drinks cupboard. Ralph Enterkin remarked that we could easily enjoy an hour or two in those circumstances and I had to agree. My interest in malt whiskies had been rekindled by the sample from Sir Peter’s collection and Keith had a remarkable selection for us to try.
However, I only had time to drink one large one and to pour another when the two wanderers arrived. They joined us in the sitting room within a couple of minutes, washed and tidied and unashamed but looking, I thought, very serious. Deborah and Molly followed them in pursuit of a drink and an apology.
When at last everybody was holding a glass, Molly took her husband to task. ‘Where did you have to go that was so urgent?’ she asked.
The two men exchanged a quick glance. Some message passed. ‘We may as well tell you,’ Ian Fellowes said. ‘Most of us have an interest in the matter and those who haven’t are well able to keep a confidence. The fact is that we think that Sir Peter Hay’s death was neither natural nor accidental.’
He had avoided using the word ‘murder�
��, but an echo of it hung in the air. I think that each of us had been holding in the dark recesses of our minds a fear that, somehow, Peter Hay had been deliberately killed. To have that fear dragged out into the light stopped the conversation dead.
Molly Calder broke the silence. ‘Not another word!’ she said. ‘If we start to discuss it here, dinner will burn. Come through to the dining room.’
Keith directed us to chairs in a panelled dining room which, like the sitting room, had been furnished with antiques, some genuine but most, I could guess, reproduction. Nothing had been given a place which would spoil the air of comfort and old-fashioned solidity belonging to the house, and all was very well kept. Molly Calder’s love for her home shone through.
When we were seated, I tried to put a question to Keith, but he shook his head. ‘Have patience,’ he said. ‘We’d never be forgiven if we said another word before my wife was here.’
‘And mine,’ said Ian Fellowes.
So we had patience until a chilled soup was before us. An excellent white wine, which I could not place, medium dry but with a tang to it, was served, unusually, from decanters. Looking back, it seems strange that the news had not spoiled our appetites, but we had already accepted the baronet’s death and had our suspicions as to the means of it. Shock would return later when the culprit’s identity emerged. For the moment, nothing had changed very much.
‘Now,’ said Molly. (We were by then all on first name terms by tacit agreement.) ‘Who could possibly have wanted to kill Peter? He was the nicest person you could have hoped to meet!’
Deborah looked at her mother with tolerant affection. ‘Mum, you’re just too innocent. Everybody liked him – well, almost everybody – but a lot of folk will profit from his death.’ (I caught Ralph Enterkin’s eye. We were both thinking of Dorothy Spigatt.) ‘Even more, probably, will think that they’d be better off, because that’s how folks’ minds work. And there are others around with a tumbrel mentality. More to the point, Ian – or Dad – what makes you think that somebody killed him?’
Ian put down his spoon. ‘The pathologist confirmed what we had already suspected, that he had died as the result of a powerful electric shock. Almost the last thing the Professor said to us was that Sir Peter’s left hand was clamped on a piece of silver foil, of the kind found covering dishes of food sold oven-ready. Sir Peter did have a habit of picking up rubbish in order to take it home and throw it away, but although the pathologist accepted that as an explanation of why the current was so diffused as to leave no burn-marks on the hand, Keith pointed out what I was already thinking, that metal foil of that sort seemed a strange thing to find in open countryside. Possible, I suppose, that a dog or a fox had stolen it out of a dustbin and carried it off, but unlikely.
‘So, on a hunch, we took another hard look at Henry’s photographs.’
‘We could do with one or two much bigger enlargements,’ Keith said to Molly. ‘Do you think they could stand it?’
‘Easily,’ Molly said. ‘The negatives are razor sharp. And there’s a good depth of field, so you weren’t using a very high shutter speed.’ She smiled at me. ‘You must have a very steady hand.’
‘I’ve practised,’ I said modestly.
‘Could we stick to the point?’ Deborah said. ‘What makes you think –?’
‘Cool it,’ said her husband. ‘We’re telling you. And yes, the photographs are razor sharp. On one of them in particular, taken from the other side of the fence and showing Peter with the spaniel and Hamish, you can see the metal gate and there’s nothing untoward there at that time. But that was while you were on the outward journey?’ He looked at me and I nodded. ‘A later shot, taken when you were on the way back, shows the place. It’s a very distant shot, but there’s a tiny blink of light near a hinge of the gate. And it’s not caused by dust on the negative because under powerful magnification the negative shows a distinctly dark spot in the emulsion. On the print it looks silver rather than white. That’s one that we’d like pulled up bigger.’
‘It set us wondering if the metal foil might have blown against the fence,’ said Keith. ‘When Peter came back, he would have seen the stuff on the fence and reached down to take it off, got an electric shock and clamped on it before going down. We haven’t heard back from the manufacturer of the unit, and I don’t suppose that we will for a week or more, but it seemed possible that the sudden earthing caused the unit to blow, momentarily releasing a higher current. Apart from the fact that Mr Flaherty said it wouldn’t happen, there’s only one other thing wrong with that for a theory.’
‘That there wasn’t any wind,’ I said.
‘Exactly,’ Keith said. ‘So we hurried back to the place, to have a good look before the weather breaks and traces are lost.’
‘And?’ said Deborah.
‘And there are definite traces of something greasy on the gate and one of the wires,’ said Ian. ‘I’ve taken samples for analysis and comparison with the grease on the foil, but it looks like beef gravy. It’s lucky that one of the dogs didn’t happen along or they’d have licked it clean.
‘So now we’re guessing that somebody put the foil there, twisted round a wire and the post or the hinge of the gate, so that the gate would be live. They could have waited in the tractor shed and used jump leads to send mains voltage along the wires when they saw Peter arriving at the gate. Instead of getting the shock when he touched the gate he went to pick up the foil instead, but the result was the same.’ He blew out his cheeks and made a helpless gesture which nearly knocked his glass over. ‘You may well think that it’s a piece of wild guesswork, a tower built on sand, a coat sewn onto a button and all the other expressions for a wild speculation. And maybe it is. But we’ve been cudgelling our brains, such as they are, and we can’t come up with a better explanation.’
‘You have to assume that somebody knew that we’d be going that way,’ I objected.
‘He always went that way into Home Farm,’ said Deborah thoughtfully, ‘when he was at home and meant to go and potter about with a dog and a gun. If you wanted to intercept him, you waited at the gate. And I think that everybody for miles around knew it.’
The soup was finished. Telling us to remain seated, Molly got up. We passed her our empty soup plates and she served the main course, a game pie. I learned later that during the season it was her habit to collect any badly damaged birds and, with Deborah, to turn them all into a very savoury stew which could be bagged and put away in the freezer as pie-fillers, ready for instant production in the event of unexpected guests.
‘I’m enjoying the wine,’ I said, ‘but I don’t recognize it. Do you mind if I ask what it is?’
‘Not at all,’ Deborah said. ‘It’s Vintner Number Three, fermented slowly at a very constant temperature, racked with great care and given just enough time to mature.’
‘It’s from a concentrate?’ I was impressed. Mother and daughter were ladies of talent.
‘It is. And it has a kick, so beware,’ Ian said.
Molly resumed her seat. As the vegetables circulated, she said, ‘What else have you found out?’
‘From the gate,’ Ian said, ‘we went to the farm and took Geordie – Mr Jennings – round to his tractor shed. He told us that he was across the fields on foot at the crucial time, using a herbicide spray beneath the fence to keep the weeds from growing up and shorting the wires.’
‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘I remember Peter giving him a wave.’
‘He also said that he might or more likely might not have seen somebody going into his tractor shed but he definitely couldn’t have seen them once they were inside. But somebody inside could still have seen the gate and known when to switch on the power.
‘We took a good look at where the energizer unit had been. There was a pair of jump leads at the other end of the bench, but nothing like long enough to reach from the nearest mains outlet to the unit, nor to the fence or any wiring connected to it. The cables which run to the energizer are clip
ped to the wall and there’s no sign that they have been unclipped and fastened up again. But, of course, the place is a workshop and there was any amount of cable lying around. Any ingenious handyman could have rigged up a connection to put mains current into the fence wires. According to Mr Jennings, nothing had been touched – by which he meant that it all looked familiar. In a guddle like that, he wouldn’t have known if the junk had been turned over by a bulldozer. So, really, we’re not much further forward.’
Ralph Enterkin had been listening in silence while doing justice to the food. ‘What happens next?’ he asked.
‘I’ll have to make a report to the fiscal,’ Ian said, ‘and to my bosses in Edinburgh. Much will depend on their reactions. They may be understandably sceptical. We may not be able to take it much further until we have the report from the manufacturer of the energizer and another from the lab. I’ll have to assemble a team and go over the ground with a fine-tooth comb, metaphorically speaking, and try for prints on the foil, on the gate and around the junk in the tractor shed. And I could do with larger blow-ups of all Henry’s film, if you’d be so good,’ he added to Molly.
‘Yes, of course,’ Molly said. ‘And if you don’t mind, Henry, I’d like to make prints for myself. Your photography’s good and you’ve made a record of Peter’s last few hours, showing him being himself and . . . happy.’ Her voice broke on the last word but she pulled herself together and dabbed her eyes. ‘If somebody killed him on purpose, Ian, you must catch the beast and put him away.’
‘I’m glad you included the “if”,’ Ian said. ‘We don’t know anything for sure yet. But we won’t let anyone get away with murder if we can possibly prevent it, I promise you that.’
*
‘You’ll keep us fully posted?’ Ralph asked sleepily as Deborah drove us through the darkness. Ian hesitated. ‘As executors, we have to walk with care,’ Ralph added.
Ian, in the front passenger seat, turned his head. ‘I don’t quite see –’
A Shocking Affair Page 12