THREE
“So, what do you make of it all?” asked Davison when we returned to his room. Although he had spent the first night in a camp bed in Kinmuir’s dressing room, his own room was situated at the front of the house, overlooking the loch.
“It has all the appearance of an accident, doesn’t it?” I replied. “We’ve got the testimony of James Kinmuir himself, admitting to the incident. Then we’ve got Rufus Phillips as a witness. And we’ve yet to listen to what Mrs. Buchanan has to say; I think she saw something of the aftermath. And then there’s you…”
“Indeed,” said Davison, walking over to the open window and looking out at the misty waters. “There’s a confession, a dead body, at least one witness. It seems—”
“Almost too neat to be true?”
“Yes, in a way. If Kinmuir had not received those threatening letters warning that he might be murdered, then I could accept the evidence of this being an accident. But it’s no coincidence that, within a matter of days of the letters, Kinmuir has been killed.” He paused. “I wish I’d taken greater care of him. I should have insisted on walking with him.”
“John,” I said, conscious that I was taking the unusually intimate step of using his first name, “you can’t blame yourself for this.”
“I know, but I do. Sometimes I wonder if—well, if it’s not time I sought out some other kind of work.”
“Such as?”
“Oh, I don’t know—some steady bureaucratic job in the Foreign Office.”
I thought back to some of the blows that Davison had received during the course of our friendship. In addition, there was probably a whole raft of awful tragedies that he had endured which he had chosen not to share with me. I walked over and joined him by the open window. A breeze brought the earthy smell of the moors into the room.
“Look—they’re carrying Kinmuir down,” I said.
We watched in silence as Dr. Fitzpatrick, together with a couple of young men from the estate, bore the body of Robin Kinmuir on a stretcher through the wild expanses of heather and down the path that led towards the house. Walking alongside them was an elderly-looking man dressed in a police uniform.
“That must be—what was the name Dr. Fitzpatrick mentioned? Maclehose?” asked Davison. “He looks like he should have retired years ago.”
“I wonder who they’ll send to lead the investigation,” I asked. “And what is the official line on our position here?”
“No doubt Hartford, once he gets wind of what’s happened, will inform the officer in charge of the true nature of our presence. Not that we—or rather I—have helped much.” Davison gazed down at the sad sight of the stretcher being borne towards the lodge, where a group of servants had gathered. Mrs. Baillie was comforting two of the maids. Simkins the butler stood stony-faced, the very symbol of British restraint. James Kinmuir and Rufus Phillips, who had changed into clean clothes, came out to pay their respects, followed by the other guests: Mr. Peterson, May and Isabella Frith-Stratton, and Miss Passerini. This was not a funeral with its rigid rituals; there was, of course, no etiquette or standardized form of behavior when one’s host had been shot dead. Yet the group seemed to fall into place as if they were being directed by an offstage presence, forming a semicircle as they took it in turns to say a few quiet words to themselves. As Davison and I went down to join them, a figure bolted out of the house and nearly crashed into us. It was Mrs. Buchanan, who was clearly in an extremely distressed state.
“Robin, oh, my darling,” she wailed as she ran towards the stretcher. Her normally immaculate coiffed hair was hanging down in unruly strands around her face, which was now wet with tears. She reached out and, with a shaking hand, tried to lower the blanket that covered the dead man’s face.
“Please,” said Dr. Fitzpatrick, taking her arm as he gently tried to restrain her. As she resisted him, he looked to other members of the group for help. James Kinmuir and Rufus Phillips stepped forwards, but on seeing them, Mrs. Buchanan looked at the two young men with contempt.
“I know what you did up there—I saw!” she shouted.
“It was an accident, Mrs. Buchanan,” said Rufus Phillips. “James didn’t mean to do it. He thought it was—”
“I don’t believe you,” she responded. “Robin told me that he was in fear for his life. I thought he was being paranoid. But how I wish I had listened to him.” She took a step closer to James Kinmuir. “You know, James, I never trusted you. Even when you were a little boy.”
I was fascinated to learn that the friendship that existed between Robin Kinmuir and Mrs. Buchanan dated back many years.
“There was always something, I don’t know, rather cold about you… unfeeling,” she continued. “Of course, you could turn on the charm when you needed to. And your uncle fell for it.” She raised her hand and, with each of the words, jabbed a finger into the lapel of his jacket. “And—I—know—what—you—are.”
The young man did not say anything in his defense. He stood there with his head bowed, his eyes lowered to the ground like a schoolboy enduring a particularly vicious telling-off from his housemaster. Rufus Phillips placed a hand on his friend’s shoulder in a silent gesture of support, but James Kinmuir brushed it off, as if to say he knew that he did not deserve any sympathy.
As Mrs. Buchanan looked at the two young men, her eyes brimmed with fresh tears, but these were, I suspected, tears not of grief but of pure anger. She turned away from the friends, took one last look at the pitiful sight of the corpse on the stretcher, reached out as if to bestow a blessing on the body, and then stepped away to retire inside the house.
Davison and I stood next to them in silence for a moment before we moved away. A mixture of emotions ran through me: guilt and more than a little shame at having witnessed such an intimate scene; a burning curiosity to know more about the past relationship between Mrs. Buchanan and Robin Kinmuir; and pity for the figure of James Kinmuir, still in shock, who had been so publicly humiliated in front of us all.
“Do you think I should go and talk to Mrs. Buchanan?” I whispered.
As we walked away from the group, Davison seemed possessed of a renewed energy. “Yes, and see if you can find out any more about what Robin Kinmuir told her about those threats to his life,” said Davison. “There’s something not right about this whole thing.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t say just yet—it’s nothing more than a feeling at this stage—but let’s talk after you’ve had a conversation with Mrs. Buchanan.” He paused for a moment. “You saw her perform, you said?”
“Yes, only the once, in Macbeth, but she gave an extremely convincing performance.”
As I turned to go and talk to Mrs. Buchanan, Davison mumbled to himself a line from the play: “ ‘By the pricking of my thumbs / Something wicked this way comes.’ ”
FOUR
I followed Mrs. Buchanan back into the house and found her upstairs in the corridor that led towards her bedroom. The passage, which was painted a dark shade of red, was lined with old prints, faded portraits, and small dirt-encrusted oil landscapes. She must have seen me cast a slightly disapproving eye over the less-than-clean artworks, because she turned to me and made a comment about the lack of staff in the house.
“Robin says—I’m sorry, said,” she began, correcting herself just as Dr. Fitzpatrick had done, “that he couldn’t afford to take on any more servants. The house was getting too much for him, even with the money from his paying guests. I worried so about him. I told him to sell up and buy somewhere smaller, but he couldn’t imagine not living here, he said. And now he’s no longer with us, well, I suppose everything will go to…” A darkness clouded her eyes. “… his next of kin—James.”
“I’m afraid I couldn’t help but witness what happened just now, at the front of the house,” I said.
“I’m sorry you had to see that, but I feel so angry about it all,” she said. “And, of course, I blame myself for what happened.”
“In what way?”
She looked up and down the empty corridor and gestured for me to follow. She led me along the corridor to a door at the end of the east wing. She pushed it open and ushered me into a delightful room which was painted yellow. There was an antique bureau in one corner of the room, while in the other stood a large wardrobe, open a little so I could glimpse the vast array of outfits that the actress had brought with her.
“What a lovely room,” I said. “Even though it’s a little gloomy outside, it seems to capture the morning light.”
“Robin always gave me the nicest room whenever I came to stay,” she said.
She suggested we sit in the two armchairs by the window.
“Would you like some tea? I can ask one of the girls to bring some up.”
I thanked her and declined.
“I can’t stomach anything at all,” she said. “I’m afraid you must forgive me, Mrs. Christie, but you must realize I have experienced a terrible shock.”
“Yes, of course,” I said. “You were friends with Mr. Kinmuir for many years?”
She nodded her head, the pain visible on her face. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Robin was a complicated man, but I loved him,” she said. The statement was a simple one, but it spoke volumes.
I did not say anything but waited for her in the hope that she would continue. She took out a handkerchief and dabbed her eyes.
“Yes, I suppose he was the love of my life,” she said.
“How did you meet?” I asked gently.
She looked at me as if to ascertain whether I was the kind of person to whom it was wise to tell her story: Was I a woman who would judge her? I must have passed the test, because she began to embark on her narrative.
“You’ve probably guessed already, but I was Robin’s mistress,” she said. “Have I shocked you?”
“No, not at all,” I said with all honesty. Friends had often told me that I was the least shockable person they knew.
“Catherine—that was Robin’s wife—was a nice enough woman, but she didn’t have the kind of spark that a woman needed to maintain a husband’s interest, particularly if that husband happened to be Robin,” she said. “And then, after their son, Timothy, died, well…”
“What happened to Timothy?”
“He died in the war,” she replied. “The loss was a terrible blow for both of them, but Robin absolutely doted on him. So many people lost loved ones, of course, but that death hit Robin very hard indeed, and I know he still grieved for him even years later.”
“I see. You said Robin was complicated. In what way?”
“Well, so many ways!” She laughed at her statement, but it was the kind of laughter that could melt into tears at any moment.
I could not let her know that I had any prior knowledge of Kinmuir’s background, particularly his work for the Secret Intelligence Service. Perhaps Mrs. Buchanan knew nothing herself of this aspect of his life.
“And did Catherine know of… of you?”
“Yes, yes, she did,” she said. “I know I should have been racked with guilt—a woman who lures away a husband is not so popular with her own sex—but the truth is I wasn’t in the least. Robin told me that… well, certain aspects of his married life were far from satisfactory—nonexistent, if you catch my drift.”
I thought back to the sterile stretch in my own first marriage when my husband, Archie, had withdrawn his affections. I blushed at the thought of Max’s healthy appetite and hoped that that side of my next marriage would continue to blossom. I felt a little light-headed at the prospect but forced myself to push the thought away; I had to concentrate on what Mrs. Buchanan was saying.
“Robin had such energies and was quite unconventional,” she said. “I loved that in him: that he didn’t care what the next man thought of him. Why should he? He was greater than a hundred average men put together! He had thought of divorcing Catherine—he promised it on so many occasions—but I insisted that he shouldn’t. In truth, I was fearful that if he divorced her and married me, then he would eventually see me as his wife and not his… well, not his lover.” She looked at me once more, assessing the way I responded to her. Her eyes were like those of a cat: watchful but somehow unreadable. “I’ve become so used to mixing in theatrical circles that sometimes I forget myself. My frankness can be too much for some. Are you sitting in judgment of me?”
“Not at all,” I said. I told her a little about my writing and my detective stories, of how I was interested in the many shades of light and darkness that lay in the human heart.
“Yes, I can see that in you,” she said, eyeing me once more. “I’ve come across many writers during the course of my career and they’ve all had a quite wonderful ability to feel sympathy with others. Like actors, in a way, who have to disappear into their characters. Yes, I feel very comfortable talking to you, my dear.”
I wanted to steer her back to what she had hinted at earlier. “You said that you blamed yourself for… for what happened up there on the moor?”
“I just wish I had done more to stop it from happening,” she said. “You see, Robin had received a horrid letter saying that he should be in fear for his life. He didn’t tell me about it to begin with, but I knew something was bothering him. He was a robust man—he’d experienced more than his fair share of tragedies and troubles—but when I first arrived a few days ago I could tell that he was upset. I thought, at first, that he had been thinking about Timothy. But when I raised the subject with him, he told me it wasn’t anything to do with his grief over his dead son. Finally, after a lot of persuasion, I managed to get it out of him—that he’d received this nasty letter. He wouldn’t show it to me—he maintained that he’d burnt it, but I wasn’t sure whether he was telling me the truth—but he told me what it had said. I dismissed it as the work of some crank; after all, there are enough of those on this island, people who think a trip to Portree is like traveling halfway round the world. But now I wish I had taken it seriously.”
“So, you think that… that what happened to Robin this morning wasn’t an accident?” I asked.
“Of course it wasn’t! It was part of some plan.”
I knew I must test her by going along with the accident theory. “But James Kinmuir thought he was firing at a grouse. He didn’t mean to kill his uncle. And he’s already taken the blame for the accident.”
“Nonsense!”
“You said that you saw what really happened? What did you see, Mrs. Buchanan?”
She blinked repeatedly, almost as if to clear the uncertainty from her mind. “I saw James shoot him—Robin—dead.”
“But weren’t you on the other side of the moor? And wasn’t it quite misty?” I didn’t want to dismiss her story out of hand, but I had to establish, if not the truth, then at least how her version differed from the accounts given by three different witnesses, including Davison.
“Yes, I was some distance away, but…” Her voice trailed off.
“Didn’t it happen the way that James and Rufus said?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “But what about that letter? It’s just too much of a coincidence, surely, that Robin received a threat to his life and then gets shot. I can’t prove anything, you see, but I suspect a great deal.”
“I’m sorry, but I couldn’t help but overhear you say to James, ‘I know what you did up there—I saw!’ ”
“I thought if I said that, that I’d seen something, perhaps he—James—would tell the whole story,” she said. “It was naive of me.”
“So you didn’t see anything… unusual?”
Her face, normally so poised and serene, filled with tension and frustration; lines that had been barely discernible before made themselves visible. “If you put it in those terms, I suppose not. I know I’m not making sense. And you must think I’m the perfect fool…”
“Not at all,” I said gently. “I understand completely. You haven’t got the evidence to back up your claims, but you feel with all y
our being that you’re right. Is that what you are saying?”
She seemed to relax. “That’s exactly right, my dear. I couldn’t put it any better myself. But what do you think I should do?”
“You should tell the police about your suspicions.”
“Yes, I suppose I must. After all, there’s no love lost between us. James knows what I think of him.”
“Which is what, exactly, may I ask?”
Mrs. Buchanan paused as she considered how best to express herself, or perhaps how much she was going to give away. “I’ve told you so much already, I may as well tell you everything,” she said. She took a deep breath and began.
“Robin’s younger brother, Crane, married my friend Ada Sinclair. Ada’s mother and my mother were the best of friends, and Ada and I had grown up together in a village in Hertfordshire. Our lives went off in different directions: I went on the stage at sixteen—well, fifteen, if the truth be told—but all Ada wanted was to be married. She met Crane at a dance and fell deeply in love with him. She had a child—a son, James—and seemed perfectly happy. She wrote the most wonderful letters telling me of her life in Scotland. I’d write back, sharing details of my career on the stage and something of my adventures in London. Some of the stories you really wouldn’t believe!” A mischievous sparkle lit up her face. “Sorry, I digress. Ada was always asking me to go up to visit, but of course I had my work. That always came first. Nobody could accuse me of not taking my craft seriously. But at the end of a run of an Ibsen play I felt exhausted, absolutely hollow. I had nothing left to give. And then an invitation from Ada came to go up to Scotland for a weekend party. It was a thoroughly delightful weekend, and of course—you know what I’m going to say—that’s when I met Robin. And, yes, he was with Catherine. I suppose one could say that he became smitten with me; ‘infatuated’ is the word. I dismissed his advances completely—I’m not that sort of woman—but then, when he was next in London, he sought me out. I was playing Cleopatra, one of my most powerful roles. The critics were in ecstasies over me. Robin came to my dressing room and insisted on taking me out for supper. He told me about the misery he was enduring, the prison of his marriage. And that’s when our affair began.”
I Saw Him Die Page 4