Frozen in Crime

by Cecilia Peartree

  Chapter 27 Master of Pitkirtlyhill

  Amaryllis didn’t intend to go into the grounds on her own, but she found herself moving so fast that even before she had paused to consider a strategy she had already cut another hole in the fence further away from the gate than before, hoping there might be a gap in the security coverage. In some ways it was just as well she had done this on her own: she knew she worked best without other people holding her back.

  She had definitely had to leave Dave and Jemima in the Land Rover. It was safer for them, and they could act as backup or even just call or go for backup if necessary. The decision to leave Christopher behind hadn’t been quite so clear-cut, and she couldn’t help feeling slightly guilty about him. He would either freak out or go into a hurt silence when he found out. Either way, at some later time she would wish she hadn’t rushed on ahead. The trouble was that she had constructed a scenario in her mind in which at least one person she knew was involved in the armed robbery, and possibly in the murder of the homeless man too, and she wanted the chance to get it sorted out herself before anyone else came along to interfere. If she had to do something slightly dodgy, the kind of thing where she stood on the line between legality and crime, perhaps even edging one toe over the line, she didn’t want Christopher around to act as her conscience. She knew that, although he seemed vague and woolly at times - well, all the time, to be honest - he had a very much more inflexible attitude than she did to what was legal and what wasn’t.

  Justifying her actions to herself took up most of the time that she spent dodging through the vegetation at the other side of the fence, moving fast, trying to think like a wild animal that skimmed across the surface of the snow. It was still soft and untrodden in here where no traffic pounded it down into a solid lump of ice. The scrubby little bushes which the deer had undoubtedly been ravaging came to an end at the side of the drive that she knew led up to the house. She had to walk up the drive from here or dart across the open space that would usually be carpeted with rough grass but at the moment was covered in a thick blanket of snow. She was reluctant even to leave footsteps on it to show the path she had taken, although she was reasonably sure the cameras would have picked her up somewhere by now anyway. She shivered suddenly. She had borrowed a parka from Dave, wearing it over several layers of jumpers and the PI vest to fill out its cavernous space, but it was quite an old one without all the scientifically researched layers of fabric and down that her own one had, and it wasn’t entirely fit for purpose.

  She had almost decided that the homeless man had been one of the armed robbers. She remembered that he had limped and that the golden peacock had been found in the Land Rover after his body had been transported in it. His motive must have been simple desperation. Amaryllis wondered if perhaps he had got to know his accomplice in the army. She knew there were cases of men who came out of the army and couldn’t cope with civilian life and ended up homeless. He might even have arrived in Pitkirtly because he knew his old comrade was there, and then either not managed to meet up with his friend or been turned away by him. No, that wouldn’t work if they had then linked up to plan and carry out the robbery. Maybe it was after the robbery that he started sleeping rough. But that didn’t work either, because people had seen him around town before that - hadn’t they? And also, once the robbery was done, in theory the conspirators would be rich and wouldn’t have to sleep on the streets.

  She frowned as she circled the house, keeping within the scrubland area, looking for the best way in.

  It didn’t entirely add up. And yet, if it didn’t, then how did the homeless man get hold of the golden peacock?

  Conscious that she still had more questions than answers in her mind, she knew she had to concentrate on finding a way into the house and if possible collecting more evidence and then getting out without being caught. This wasn’t what the jeweller had in mind when he asked her to have a word with Lord Murray. But then, the jeweller probably didn’t imagine that Lord Murray himself was the victim of theft either. She felt he could have been a bit more careful about who he was buying from, though. Had he been over-awed by the mention of a title? Or simply dazzled by the sight of the peacock?

  At one point, the night before, Amaryllis had been doubtful about whether Lord Murray even existed. But she had done a bit of research online which had reassured her. He didn’t very often go outside the boundaries of his estate and was sometimes described in the papers as ‘the reclusive Lord Murray’ which seemed appropriate enough. His gamekeeper, on the other hand, wasn’t mentioned at all online. Perhaps he was the one who didn’t exist.

  At last! She had found that the house was built into the slope of a hill, as almost any house would have to be around here, and that there were more storeys at the front than the back, which was the reason for the impressive steps up to the front door. At the back, where the lowest storey almost disappeared into the ground, one of the windows wasn’t closed properly. She headed for it, crossing the open ground to the house in a weaving gallop which she hoped would minimise the risk of being picked up on camera, although she knew that if anyone was watching the screens in the security room constantly they were certain to spot her.

  She was halfway through the window, having prised it fully open with the wire-cutters, when she heard a voice behind her.

  ‘Nice of you to drop in again, Miss Peebles.’

  Firm hands wrapped themselves round her legs, which were flapping around in mid-air in an undignified way as she wriggled through the window, and pulled her backwards, setting her down carefully in the snow.

  She turned to face Mal.

  ‘You’ve got some nerve, breaking in during daylight hours,’ he said. His face was transformed by a sneer into being dark and sinister. ‘You’d better come this way.’

  Oh dear, thought Amaryllis, I’ve put myself and others in danger again. Just what Charlie Smith keeps telling me not to do. She braced herself to overpower Mal. It wouldn’t be easy, but it should be possible. He didn’t have a gun trained on her, after all. Just as well since she was only armed with wire-cutters.

  Of course, she still didn’t know if he was only being stern with a trespasser who had caused damage to the fence, in his fairly legitimate gamekeeper’s son role, or if he had a more sinister reason for marching her in through the back door, which was at the foot of some rather dangerous, slippery stone steps, and then along a dark corridor where closed doors stood at intervals like blank-faced sentinels. But she already had her suspicions of him, so she was prepared for the worst, or so she thought.

  He kicked a door open, and shoved her into a room. She heard the door close and lock behind her. It was pitch dark, and she couldn’t find a light switch, although she felt along each wall in turn. It wasn’t a large room and she decided it might be a cellar. This suspicion was confirmed when she stumbled into some racking which didn’t so much rattle as clank, as if laden with bottles. A wine cellar, then. Oh well, at least I can drink myself into oblivion, she thought, and immediately discarded the idea. She had to keep a clear head and remain focussed, otherwise she wouldn’t be able to fight her way out when he came back.

  If he came back, said the small, frightened part of her brain that she usually managed to keep well under control. And what about the spiders?

  ‘Spiders?’ she said out loud into the darkness.

  There was a groan from somewhere in the room. She jumped almost out of her skin. Visions of hideous monsters, of vampires kept in coffins from which they only emerged at night, and -

  ‘Stop it, you idiot,’ she told herself, and realised she had spoken aloud again. ‘Who’s that?’

  Another groan. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘No, I don’t know. You’re the one who’s supposed to know,’ she said accusingly.

  ‘Oh. Let me think. Alastair Murray. At your service.’

  She paused for a moment, trying to work it out. ‘Are you Lord Murray of Pitkirtlyhill?’

  ‘I am. At least I think s
o. My head’s hurting. I’m a bit fuzzy round the edges. Sorry.’

  ‘It’s not your fault.’

  As they spoke she had been working her way over to the source of his voice. She bumped into more racking, then kicked something softer. He groaned again.

  ‘That was me,’ he said, still sounding not quite all there.

  ‘I’m Amaryllis Peebles,’ she said clearly, hoping he might recognise her name and draw the appropriate conclusions.

  But he just said, ‘Delighted to meet you, my dear.’

  She tried to recall everything she knew about him. The main thing, of course, was that he had once been the owner of the golden peacock, so she decided to start with that and to hope that all other relevant facts could be extracted from him as she went along, preferably before Mal came back. She would keep an ear open for that too.

  ‘Did you once own a golden peacock said to have been made by Fabergé?’ she said.

  ‘What is this, an interrogation?’ he mumbled. There was a shift in the air and a sort of scraping sound as, she imagined, he tried to drag himself upright. ‘Not in the police, are you?’

  ‘No! Certainly not.’

  ‘Hard to tell these days… Yes, we had the golden peacock. My grandfather insisted it came from the Romanov collection but there was a lot of confusion about that.’

  ‘And you sold it in a jeweller’s shop in Pitkirtly not long before Christmas?’ she enquired, realising how unlikely that would seem to him with his cultured English accent and old-fashioned mannerisms.

  He laughed. ‘No, I certainly did not sell the golden peacock in Pitkirtly. If I had wished to dispose of it, I would have used our family jewellers’ in Knightsbridge. I don’t believe I’ve ever set foot in a jeweller’s shop in Pitkirtly - I didn’t even know there was one. I only go there once in a blue moon, of course. Church services sometimes, school prize-giving occasionally. Not for shopping.’

  He probably got all his food delivered in hampers from Fortnum and Mason’s, she thought, and immediately scolded herself for being such an inverted snob.

  ‘I’ve been doing all my food shopping online lately,’ he added calmly, shattering the stereotype. ‘One of those supermarkets. They bring it in their own brand plastic bags - bad for the planet, useful for putting out the rubbish.’

  ‘So if someone sold the golden peacock in Pitkirtly, it wasn’t with your consent or approval?’

  ‘No, certainly not! Apart from anything else,’ he said, ‘it would have been a fraudulent transaction. The peacock was fake.’

  ‘Fake?’

  ‘There may have been a golden peacock from Fabergé in our family at one time, but the one we have now - or had, if you’re right about it being sold - certainly wasn’t genuine.’

  ‘Do you have any idea when the fake was substituted? If your family ever had the real one in the first place, that is.’

  ‘Oh, we had records that suggest it was real when it came to us,’ he said. ‘But the last time I looked at it closely a year or so ago, I realised it wasn’t. The stones were wrong. I asked a friend who has expert knowledge and he confirmed it.’

  She couldn’t see his face in the darkness, but his voice had a kind of sad, resigned tone about it, and she wondered if he had known all along that someone in his own family had made the substitution, sold the real one and kept all the proceeds.

  ‘Was it -?’ she started to ask.

  The door swung open suddenly, and Amaryllis half-turned and saw a figure outlined against the dim light from the corridor.

  ‘Well, this is a cosy little scene,’ said Mal. ‘I see you’ve introduced yourself to my big brother.’

  ‘Your brother?’

  ‘Yes. Who did you think I was - the butler?’ He laughed without any warmth in his voice.

  ‘So you’ve met Malcolm before?’ said Lord Murray. He had very little expression in his voice.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, trying to equal his lack of expressiveness with her own, although she was afraid her surprise had already worked its way through into her speech. It would have been better if she could have pretended to know a bit more than she actually did. It would have given her a bit more of an edge. Now all she had to rely on was her martial arts skills combined with some other kinds of fighting that often produced results more quickly but in a less orthodox way. She would also have preferred that Jimbo hadn’t known Mal and hadn’t told him about her past. She had lost the element of surprise that was sometimes on her side. But of course Mal didn’t know the extent to which she had kept her skills up to date since leaving the intelligence service.

  Amaryllis balanced on the balls of her feet, geared up for fight or flight. Which was it to be?