A Shocking Affair

by Gerald Hammond

  Mrs Enterkin withdrew into a kitchen, opening directly off the huge living-dining room. She left the door open, allowing delicious smells to emerge, because, she explained with a sweet smile, she didn’t mind cooking the meal but she was damned if she was going to be left entirely out of the conversation. Her accent came from somewhere in the far south-west, Devon I rather thought, which almost but not quite triggered my memory.

  Ralph gave me a ferocious gin and tonic complete with ice and lemon, poured a sherry for himself and took another through to his wife, but his mind was not really on such courtesies and comforts.

  When he had the pair of us seated opposite one another in a couple of not uncomfortable steel and leather chairs, he demanded, ‘What in hell’s been going on this afternoon? I was back in my office, preparing a brief for counsel who will be attempting to convince a jury that one of the sons of Newton Lauder did not after all press the pursuit of a certain lady’s virtue beyond the point at which courtship becomes harassment. In this, I fear, he will fail, but don’t quote me. Thus I heard nothing until Penny, who had been in the hotel since eleven a.m., returned in mid-afternoon laden with gossip and rumours which had been flying around the town. And it would seem that you were at the heart of the business.’

  I did not answer immediately. Four or five hours seemed to be rather a long time for a respectable lady to have been hanging around the hotel, absorbing gossip and rumours. But then, belatedly, I put together the length of that visit, my recollection of the Devonian accent and the attractive if comfortably upholstered lady and realized at last that she had been the plump barmaid who had served us when we lunched with Sir Peter at the hotel and with whom I had thought Ralph had been on surprisingly familiar terms. All things considered, he had carried it off very well, perhaps from long-standing habit. Some might have found it socially problematic to introduce the barmaid to a fellow-guest as his wife and he had evidently decided to postpone introductions altogether. I mentally reviewed such words of social chit-chat as I had exchanged with Ralph and decided that I had not dropped any serious bricks. ‘Which business are you referring to?’ I asked cautiously.

  ‘Any and all of them,’ he said. I gestured with my eyes towards the open kitchen door. Ralph snorted. ‘My wife is privy to almost every secret in the town,’ he said, ‘but she disgorges them only to me. And not always to me, I strongly suspect,’ he added in the direction of the kitchen. ‘I would have every objection to my wife working at all, let alone as a common though skilled barmaid, were it not that she picks up every morsel of tittle-tattle and usually relays it to me. Not that I am interested in gossip per se, you understand, but its value when litigation or prosecution is pending may be beyond rubies. So you may speak freely.’

  ‘I see.’ Again, I took a few seconds for thought. ‘I’ve been holding my tongue,’ I said at last, ‘because, though the driver of the fish van seems to be spreading a version of the facts all over the town, it wasn’t for me to add to the confusion and maybe make Ian Fellowes’s job more difficult. But if Ian was prepared to take you into his confidence as an executor of the estate, and you share the same confidences with Mrs Enterkin, I suppose I can do the same.’

  ‘Then, instead of prating about it,’ Ralph snapped, ‘I suggest that you do so.’

  ‘Now, now,’ came Penny Enterkin’s voice. ‘Manners, Ralph.’

  ‘Quite right,’ Ralph said gruffly. ‘I apologize. Now get on with it.’

  Between their insistence on hearing every detail and the necessity of filling in those parts of the story not yet known to Mrs Enterkin, the telling took some little time. Indeed, we were called to the table before I had even finished with the recovery of Spin. From that point on, the insistence of my hostess that I should not allow my food to get cold delayed the story still further. We had finished the soup course, complete with garlic bread, before I had revealed Synott’s bombshell and we were through the roast beef, which was accompanied by an excellent claret, before I was able at last to arrive at Keith’s unmasking, if I may be permitted the cliché, of the villain.

  At that point, Ralph put down his wineglass with a haste which must have endangered the Edinburgh crystal and said, ‘Oh dear! Oh dear! Oh dear!’

  ‘Friend of yours?’ I asked.

  ‘By no means. But here I have been, consoling myself with the thought that no regular client of mine appeared to be suspect and it turns out that a man who I have steered through physical injury suits, financial disaster and a charge of driving while under the influence is right at the forefront of suspicion.’ Ralph refilled his glass but only held it up to the light. ‘Is he guilty?’

  ‘That’s not a fair question,’ Penny said. ‘Surely it’s up to a jury to decide.’

  ‘I’m not asking for a decision. Once a jury decides, their decision will become fact. But an opinion at this stage might be invaluable.’

  ‘It might mean that you can’t take the case,’ I suggested. ‘Or not without pleading him guilty.’

  He shook his head. ‘It would only be your opinion. I’m entitled to believe that you might be wrong. But if he killed Sir Peter, I wouldn’t want the case anyway. Sir Peter was my client too.’

  ‘My opinion,’ I said, ‘for what it’s worth, is this. There’s no shadow of a doubt that he was ripping off Peter Hay in circumstances which Peter would have had every right to resent. I think that a jury would accept the draft letter and list of properties as indicating that Peter intended to take him to court, which would have spelled his ruin. As to whether he did kill his patron, I wouldn’t know for sure. Personally, I think it probable. But no doubt Ian Fellowes and the forensic science laboratory will be able to settle the matter.’

  ‘No doubt,’ Ralph said. The thought seemed to pain him. He turned to his wife. ‘Has Inspector Fellowes spoken with Jock McAnderton yet?’

  ‘The last that I heard,’ she said, ‘no.’

  ‘Still in confidence,’ I said, ‘Ian was going to spend the rest of today on the search of the area and in asking certain questions. As, for instance, does McAnderton buy the supermarket’s frozen shepherd’s pies.’

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear!’ Ralph said again. ‘I shouldn’t think there was any doubt about it. I know that, being a widower and often working out in the country, he has a small microwave in the cab of his truck. He runs it off that generator of his to heat himself up a meal.’ He stopped fiddling with his glass and drained it. ‘Even if I don’t eventually take on this case, I think that I should have a word with him. I’m the nearest that he’s got to a solicitor at the moment.’

  ‘You can’t,’ I said.

  ‘I must. He’s entitled to legal advice.’

  ‘You would be queering Ian Fellowes’s pitch,’ I said. ‘I only told you as my fellow executor, and in confidence.’

  Ralph combined a frown with his pouting expression of deep thought until his wife told him that he was in danger of getting stuck that way. ‘I don’t remember anything being said about confidence,’ he said at last.

  Penny got up to serve the sweet course. ‘I do,’ she said. ‘I remember it being said several times. But Jock must have heard the rumours by now. Maybe, if he has any sense, he’ll contact you himself.’

  ‘But he doesn’t have any sense,’ Ralph said. ‘He never did. I’m going to phone young Fellowes. The least I can do for McAnderton is to go along when the police visit him, make sure that he has his proper rights and then fix him up with other representation. Excuse me.’

  He left the room, taking the cordless phone with him and leaving Penny and me to discuss the weather and how much Peter Hay would be missed. He returned after ten minutes.

  ‘Ten a.m. tomorrow,’ he said to me. ‘And young Fellowes wants you to come along too. He expects to start off on the subject of the frauds. He’ll fetch you himself.’

  *

  I awoke to more sunshine, birdsong, the comfortable realization that Spin had been retrieved and a sensation of unease when I remembered that today was the
day when I would help confront a suspected murderer – strongly suspect but just possibly innocent. I comforted myself with the thought that I was not required to accuse him of anything more than fraud, of which I could be reasonably certain. I walked the dogs and ate breakfast in a mood of mild apprehension.

  My breakfast was served by Mary Fiddler, who was not usually at work so early in the day. She explained that there had been some rearrangement of hours between Joanna and herself so that Joanna and Hamish (each perhaps wanting to tie the knot quickly before the other could change their mind) could go shopping for an engagement ring.

  ‘I’m pleased that they’re following the conventional path,’ I remarked. ‘Most couples these days move in together first and get married later if at all.’

  ‘That’s so,’ Mary said comfortably. ‘But Ronnie had words with the pair of them. She’s his daughter, ye ken. He thinks I don’t know.’

  Ian arrived just after nine-thirty in the police Range Rover, sitting beside the sergeant who was driving. I joined Ralph Enterkin, who was already installed in the back.

  As we emerged from the archway I asked, ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Cartley’s Farm,’ said Ian. ‘He went to work as normal. He can’t have got word, despite all the rumours that have been buzzing around.’

  ‘He’s still working there? There’s one thing I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘The complaint at Home Farm was in connection with a roof renewal and second-hand materials. But that surely couldn’t apply to rebuilding a wall, could it?’

  ‘Something very similar could,’ Ian said. ‘I was making some enquiries last night. In recent years, someone told me, you could engage Jock McAnderton to do some building work using your materials, and he’d do a fine job. I’m told that his masonry could ring like a bell. But if you got a lump sum price from him, so that he was responsible for buying the materials, he grudged every grain of cement that went into it.’

  ‘An old story,’ I said. ‘And a sad one.’

  We turned off the road to Newton Lauder and began to climb the other side of a shallow valley. The land was farmland, all part of the Hay estate, and seemed to be in good heart. We passed a figure plodding up the roadside, carrying a paper bag.

  ‘The nephew,’ Ian said. ‘He’ll have been down to the town for their lunch.’

  Thinking back to when Jock McAnderton had pointed out Cartley’s Farm to me, I thought that we must be there; and when we drove on I decided that either I had misunderstood him or my sense of direction had deserted me. But then we turned off through a farmyard and round the back of some barns to where one wall of an old stone-built cattle-court was half down and half rebuilt and Jock McAnderton was cleaning and arranging his stones and hoisting them onto his scaffolding ready for a day of masonry work. Beside him, his lorry was parked and the generator in the trailer was ticking over.

  The Range Rover drew up, nose to nose with the lorry. We dismounted. I saw McAnderton’s eyes go from one to the other of us.

  Ian said, ‘I am Detective Inspector Fellowes and I have some questions to put to you.’

  McAnderton nodded. ‘I’ll just put this thing off, so’s we can hear ourselves,’ he said. He turned to his generator. It was done so naturally that I suspected nothing until Ian jumped forward. But he was too late. McAnderton stopped, flipped back a lid and made a grab at a pair of terminals. I heard the note of the diesel deepen and accelerate as an electrical load came on. For a second or two his back arched and all his muscles were in spasm. Then he collapsed. He seemed to be living still, but I was sure that only the continuing current through his body was responsible for the ceaseless muscular tremor.

  The sergeant was about to lay hands on the body, but Ian shouted at him to keep back unless he wanted to go the same way. ‘For God’s sake,’ Ian said, ‘how do you stop this thing?’ The sergeant found the right control and the maddening mutter died away. McAnderton’s body relaxed and fell to the ground.

  I turned away quickly to face the wall. I found that Ralph was still beside me. Neither of us wanted to look at the still twitching body. Behind me I could hear Ian’s voice, summoning help by radio. I put out a finger and scratched at the mortar in a section of rebuilt wall that must have been a day or two old. It came away as powder. ‘Almost pure sand,’ I said. ‘Some people never learn. But he knew what was coming and he was ready to kill himself. We should have guessed. The generator was running although nothing was connected to it.’

  ‘Yes. Oh dear, oh dear!’ said Ralph. He sounded desolate.

  ‘Perhaps it’s best this way,’ I suggested.

  ‘You think so? But consider. What will the Inspector of Taxes make of his debt to Sir Peter? Will he let us write it off before Inheritance Tax? Or only the balance after recovering what we can? Or what? You’ll have to get quotes immediately from a reputable builder for repairing or replacing the faulty work. And you’d better have all his plant and materials impounded, before some other creditor thinks of it. In theory it makes no difference but I believe the old adage about possession being nine points of the law, does have a foundation of truth.’

  It was clear that Ralph’s distress was not on behalf of this former and now late client.

  *

  My story is almost done. The procurator fiscal brought both deaths before the sheriff in quick succession and the burden of his decision was that Jock McAnderton had murdered Sir Peter Hay and then died by his own hand.

  There is one final point. On rereading what has gone before, I see that I have tried to give at least some physical description of each character of importance, excepting only myself. If any reader should be curious as to my appearance I may say, beyond the fact that I look elderly to the point of decrepitude, that any regular viewer of television may have seen me on the Scottish news, giving away the granddaughter of Sir Peter Hay in marriage, and also playing the part of the late baronet in the documentary Syndicate Year and still later its successor On The Moor. I suppose that it would be rather late in life for me to embark on a fresh career as an actor, but you never know.

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