I Saw Him Die

by Andrew Wilson

  May Frith-Stratton looked with frustration at Mrs. Buchanan before she addressed Mr. Peterson again. “If we can just get back to the matter in hand,” she said. “Your connection with Mr. Kinmuir.”

  “Yes, of course,” said Mr. Peterson. “My father also worked for the SIS. He was everything a boy could want in a father: brave, handsome, with a sense of duty that ran through him like his own blood. He was my hero…” His voice cracked, but he forced himself to continue. “Of course, he never talked about his work while… while he was alive. It was only later, after his death, that I learnt a little of the truth. In 1916 my father was sent on a mission to Maastricht, where he worked with Robin Kinmuir. Kinmuir was behaving somewhat erratically at that time. I believe that had something to do with the death of his son in the war. But even so, it was no excuse for what he did. Kinmuir got rather lazy and relied too much on one route to get his reports out of the country and back to Britain. The Germans took advantage of this: they managed to intercept a batch of reports, and, as a result, my father was one of eleven men who was captured and executed at Hasselt that December.”

  “I don’t mean to sound callous, but isn’t it one of the risks of the job?” asked Davison.

  “Yes, I’m sure it is, but there was something rotten about the whole affair if you ask me,” Mr. Peterson replied. “It was odd that Kinmuir managed to wheedle his way out of the country, while my father had to sacrifice his life.”

  “How do you know all of this?” asked Davison, in as cool a manner as possible.

  “Of course there were no written records that I had access to, and so it was information that had been relayed to my mother from various sources.”

  “And you trust these sources?” asked Davison.

  “Yes, I do,” Mr. Peterson said. “And obviously I must make it clear that, when I came here to Skye, I had no intention of hurting Kinmuir.”

  “But you were very happy to watch him get hurt?” asked Mrs. Buchanan.

  “Yes, I suppose I was,” said Mr. Peterson. “And what about you, Mrs. Buchanan? Did your letter say the same thing?”

  Mrs. Buchanan drew herself upwards with grace and dignity, as if she were stepping onto the stage at one of London’s grandest theaters. She declaimed the words slowly, enunciating each consonant and vowel for maximum effect. “I received no letter—no letter of any kind,” she said.

  The revelation silenced the room.

  “And I must admit I’ve been left shocked by what I’ve heard here,” she said, placing great emphasis on the word, which she then repeated. “Shocked by you, Mrs. Christie. Shocked by you, May and Isabella. And shocked by you, Mr. Peterson.”

  The other guests all tried to speak at once, but Mrs. Buchanan quietened them with a light rise of her hand.

  “And to think I was staying here among a group of people, some of whom I came to regard as my friends,” she continued. “I feel like I’ve been living on top of a nest of vipers. I can’t bear it a moment longer.” She got up to go. “I feel it my duty to tell the police of this.” She raised her voice as she headed for the door. “Inspector!” she shouted. “Inspector!”

  It was Davison, ever the diplomat, who tried to calm the situation. “Mrs. Buchanan, I can understand why you’re feeling distressed.”

  “Distressed?” she answered. “I’m not distressed. I’m horrified. I loved that man more than I can say. Do you know how it feels to lose someone you love in that way?”

  I knew Davison had experienced such a loss himself when a friend had been killed and had felt the pain keenly. But of course he could never make his feelings public.

  “And then to find out that a group of… of…” She was going to use a more impolite term, but stopped herself. “… people had turned up at Robin’s home with the express purpose of watching him die. The whole prospect sickens me to my stomach. Even if none of you killed Robin, then at least you should be punished for—”

  At this moment a stern-faced Inspector Hawkins opened the door and entered the dining room, followed by James Kinmuir and Rufus Phillips. It seemed the whole thing would come out into the open now. Even though I had lied about my part in the scheme, that I too had received a letter, I was sure that the inspector would understand that I had done so in order to try to expose the guests’ nasty little secret.

  “What’s all this I hear about a letter?” he asked.

  The guests stood before him like shamefaced children who had been caught out.

  “I have had enough of your lies,” Hawkins declared. There was anger and passion in his voice. “This man has lost his uncle and his great-aunt, two people who were dear to him. They were murdered here at their home, a place where they should have felt safe. And now Mr. Kinmuir tells me that you were all summoned here so you could witness his uncle’s suffering, his death.”

  “No, not I,” said Mrs. Buchanan. “In fact, I was on my way to talk to you about this exact matter.”

  “Well, we’ll get to that in due course,” said Hawkins, who clearly did not believe her. “First of all, I want to hear about these mysterious letters. Who received them? What did they say? What did they look like? Do any of you still have one in your possession? Were there any marks on the envelopes to give a clue as to where the letters were posted? Then I want to know about each of you. Why did you come here? What connected you and the late Mr. Kinmuir? And if any of you have started to make any travel plans, I suggest that you cancel them immediately. No one is leaving this place.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The protestations flew like bullets across the room. James Kinmuir said he didn’t want to share his house with men and women who had traveled to Skye to watch his uncle be murdered. Mrs. Buchanan claimed she was not only innocent—she stated again that she had received no such letter—but that she had an important rehearsal for a play to attend in London. Both the Frith-Stratton sisters said they regretted their behavior and began to apologize. And Mr. Peterson demanded some sort of legal representation.

  After silencing the guests, the inspector sent everyone back to their rooms. He said he would call us one by one to the library to be interviewed once more. I accompanied Davison back to his suite. Neither of us knew how to begin the conversation, and we sat in silence in the armchairs by the window while we contemplated what we had just witnessed. There were so many questions that we didn’t know where to start.

  Finally, it was Davison who spoke. “The first thing I can do is check Mr. Peterson’s story about his father. That’s easily done by going to Hartford.”

  “Had you heard of a Mr. Peterson in relation to that failed mission in Maastricht?” I asked.

  “No, I never learnt the names of the individual men. I only knew that Kinmuir headed it and that it resulted in the deaths of eleven agents.”

  “Do you think that’s the kind of thing that Kinmuir wrote about in his memoir?”

  “I wouldn’t have thought so. He would have known that to expose such a mission in detail would be actionable,” replied Davison. “But we need to hunt down that manuscript. Now that the sergeant is no longer stationed outside the late Robin Kinmuir’s room, we should have a better chance of finding it. I doubt the police would have taken it away; to them it’s just a boring pile of paper. And what do you think of the Frith-Stratton sisters’ story?”

  “It strikes me as plausible,” I said.

  Davison looked baffled. “But what I don’t understand is why. Why would the murderer send a letter to each of these people inviting them to stay at the lodge to watch Robin Kinmuir suffer?”

  “And how did the killer know of the connections between each of the guests and Mr. Kinmuir?” I asked.

  “Let’s presume Miss Passerini is the murderer,” said Davison. “We don’t know what kind of grudge she bears against Mr. Kinmuir, but obviously it was something so deep and painful that it drove her to commit a murder and also compelled her to search for other people who had been wronged by him. Then she took the trouble of finding out where ea
ch of these people lived and sent an invitation to come to Dallach Lodge.”

  “Then there’s the issue of the rhyme,” I said. “ ‘Who killed Cock Robin?’ Why would Miss Passerini, by virtue of the Latin root of her name, advertise the fact that she had killed the man?”

  “Unless she always knew that she would be caught and she was proud of her revenge.”

  “Perhaps,” I said. “It does seem that all the evidence points to her as the killer. Yes, there’s the lie she told, the stamp on her passport showing that she had recently returned from South America, the source of the curare poison. And also the weapon that killed Mrs. Kinmuir, the paper knife, was found among her possessions. And yet… and yet. There’s something not right about all of this.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know; it feels as though somebody is playing a kind of game. A very wicked game, but a game nonetheless. It’s like they are having fun. Enjoying the complexity of it all, almost like setting a particularly fiendish puzzle.”

  “Or the plotting of a detective novel?”

  The idea troubled me. “I hope not,” I said. I had come across that kind of person before and I did not relish the thought of encountering it again.

  “What do you think of Mrs. Buchanan’s denial?” asked Davison. “Her statement that she had never received a letter?”

  “I don’t trust that woman,” I said. “She’s an actress.”

  “Indeed. And there is our suspicion about her possible involvement in the disappearance of Mr. Kinmuir’s wife, Catherine.”

  “Yes. What do you think we should do about that letter?” I asked, referring to the one I had found, together with the torn photograph of Mrs. Buchanan with a mystery man, among the actress’s belongings. “Do you think we should hand it over to Inspector Hawkins?”

  “I’m not sure,” replied Davison. “Perhaps we should keep it to ourselves for the time being.”

  “I’m wondering about the identity of that man in the photograph,” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s best to keep an open mind, that’s all,” I said. Another thought crossed my mind. “What are we going to do about the newspapers? Surely reporters will begin to descend on us like flies when news of the deaths gets out?”

  “Don’t worry about that,” said Davison. “The department will issue a notice preventing any reporting of the deaths until a certain date in the future, by which time both of us will have moved on from here.”

  Just then a black car drove up outside and a couple of men stepped out. A minute or so later the shrouded body of old Mrs. Kinmuir was carried out on a stretcher and placed inside.

  The thought of what had happened to the dear old lady with the pink cheeks sickened me. It also made me very angry. “That was particularly evil,” I said, “to do that to a defenseless woman who was losing her senses.”

  “Do you think there are two different killers at work?”

  “It’s certainly possible,” I admitted. “After all, the curare on the razor was a premeditated crime if ever I saw one. That took a great deal of planning. As did the assembly of the various guests at the lodge to witness the murder. But then the stabbing of Mrs. Kinmuir in the back of her neck with the paper knife was something more spontaneous, done in a panic to silence her.”

  “Because she had seen something out of the window from the attic? The murder of her nephew? She certainly looked out over the moors where Robin Kinmuir died. However, it doesn’t make sense, because the old lady was not only senile but practically blind as well. She can’t have seen anything.”

  “Something is being held back from us,” I said. “How do we know that what we have heard is the truth? After all, so far we’ve only got the word of Mr. Peterson and the Frith-Stratton sisters that they came here to watch a man be punished. That sounds bad enough, but it’s not the same as murder. The point is that even when the inspector has finished his interviews, how will he know what is true and what is a lie?” I paused. “What if all of them are lying?”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  We waited until the house had gone to bed before entering Robin Kinmuir’s quarters. Both of us carried a candlestick, and as we stepped inside the room, the dim golden light from the flame cast a series of strange shadows across the red walls. Looking at the constantly shifting dark shapes, I was reminded of that haunting image told by the Greek philosopher Plato about a cave and a group of prisoners.

  I felt like one of those prisoners confined to the cave that was Dallach Lodge, and the events I had witnessed—the murder of Robin Kinmuir and his aunt, Mrs. Kinmuir—were like the shadows in the story. Although the bodies were very real, there was something fantastical about the murders themselves. In Plato’s cave the images were created by objects passing in front of a fire and then projected onto a blank wall. But who was the person at Dallach Lodge who was hidden behind a fire, responsible for the fabrication of these shadows?

  And then there was the mystery about the “Cock Robin” rhyme, the Sparrow, passer, and Miss Passerini. Even though the evidence pointed towards the young woman—and the paper knife had been found in her room—I still had my doubts about her guilt. It was almost as if there were too many clues.

  “Shall I start over here by the desk, while you look in the bureau over there?” asked Davison.

  The spell was broken and I was brought back down to earth. There was little point in indulging myself in philosophical allegories or childish nursery rhymes when I had a job to do. The room needed to be searched.

  “Yes, very well,” I said, as I placed my candlestick on the top of the mahogany bureau.

  I opened the front and immediately noticed a sheaf of papers sticking out of one of the top drawers. Bringing them closer to the light, I saw that they were related to the running of the lodge: household expenses; bills from the people who supplied the house with meat, fish, and provisions; and copies of receipts from various guests who had stayed at the lodge in the past. As I continued my search I came across evidence of Kinmuir’s perilous financial position. There were a few stern letters from a bank in Inverness and threats of legal action over building work that had not been paid for. It was clear that Robin Kinmuir had been in a great deal of difficulty. Could the real motive for his murder have had something to do with that? Was he killed because of an unpaid debt or series of debts? But, if so, why did old Mrs. Kinmuir have to be murdered, too?

  “I think I’ve got something,” said Davison. “Look.”

  I turned to see him holding two black notebooks. “This must be the memoir he was writing,” he said. “Listen—Kinmuir has called it My Secret, Secret Life. Well, as soon as Hartford sees this, he will make sure it stays secret and never sees the light of day.”

  “Do you think James knows about it?”

  “I’m not sure. Why?”

  “Well, if the estate is in debt, as I’m sure it is—”

  Davison finished my sentence. “Then this might well prove to be a valuable asset. Yes, I can see that James may feel the need to exploit any resource available to him. The first thing we need to do is see what it contains.”

  “What’s the best way of doing that?” I asked. “I’m sure Mr. Glenelg will be back any day to carry out an inventory of everything in the house.”

  “I know it’s not ideal, but let’s take a notebook each. If we work through the night we might be able to finish it.”

  Davison opened one of the journals at random and read a few sentences that I could tell annoyed him. “How I am going to control my temper is beyond me,” he said. “ ‘Traitor’ is too weak a word for this man. Honestly, if Kinmuir had not already been murdered, I swear I could have done it myself.”

  “I wish I could believe you were joking,” I said. “If it makes it any easier, why don’t we read through them together with a pot of coffee to hand?”

  “Yes, that’s a good idea. Otherwise I might work myself up into such a frenzy, my blood will boil and I’ll end
up having a seizure.”

  “Take the notebooks back into your room and I’ll see if I can make some coffee,” I said. “I’ll join you in a few minutes.”

  I left Davison and, with the candlestick, made my way down the corridor. I took the stairs one step at a time and as gently as I could, as I did not want to disturb the sleeping guests. With each creak of the steps I winced inwardly, willing my feet to make myself as light as possible. I had put on some weight recently, no doubt the result of my happiness at meeting a man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. But did Max really want the same? The nagging doubts invaded my mind once more. What would he be doing this minute? I knew he was seeing friends in England, but where was he? Would he still be awake, reading some dusty text about the ancient world? Or would he be lost in sleep, his handsome head resting upon his pillow? I was desperate to talk to him, but I could not risk contacting him. If I did so, he would pick up the timbre of unease at the back of my throat. Also, I could not bring myself to lie to him. If I did, how would that bode at the very beginning of our life together?

  Suddenly I was gripped by a sense of panic. I had to bring this to a halt. What was I doing, creeping down the stairs of a strange house in Scotland in the middle of the night? How could I ever explain my work for Davison to Max? The very idea of uttering the words Secret Intelligence Service seemed impossible and absurd. The notion that I worked for the British secret services would be met by a hearty laugh—something so blatantly ridiculous that Max would assume I was pulling his leg. His amusement would turn to shock and then horror. How could I have kept something like this from him? He would rightly wonder, if I had been lying about this aspect of my life, what else was I hiding from him? And how could I put myself in danger in such a way?

  When this was over—whatever “this” was—I would tell Davison that it was my last collaboration with him. I could not continue to work for the SIS as a married woman. It would be unseemly, too difficult to incorporate into my new married life. My thrills would be confined to those of my imagination, the ones I managed to tap out on my typewriter, the ones that lay between the covers of a book.