Frozen in Crime

by Cecilia Peartree

  Chapter 35 Hogmanay Party

  Not for the first time, Christopher was glad he hadn’t known what Amaryllis was doing until afterwards. Charlie phoned Jemima to let them know they were on their way, and it was already dark when they arrived. Charlie Smith seemed grim and exhausted when they were dropped off by a police driver, but he didn’t look quite as fearsome as Amaryllis did, with her mud-encrusted hair, dirty face, and boots that had to be put outside the back door in case they messed up the new fake laminate tiles Dave had just finished fitting in the kitchen.

  Fortunately there was some pease brose left for Amaryllis after she had cleaned herself up and put on an old brown dressing-gown of Jemima’s, which was the most unflattering garment Christopher had ever seen her in.

  They all spent the night there, with Charlie and the dog occupying the settee in the front room, Amaryllis sleeping on a spare mattress on Dave and Jemima’s bedroom floor, and Christopher and Lord Murray on the extremely uncomfortable twin beds in the spare room. It would probably be the only time Christopher slept so close to a peer of the realm and listened to him snoring, although after Lord Murray’s confessions in the ambulance he wasn’t exactly over-awed by the experience. It seemed that noble families were just as likely as anyone else’s to contain thieves and murderers. More so if anything, he reflected drowsily, casting his mind back to school history lessons just before he dropped off to sleep.

  It was difficult to get any information out of Amaryllis and Charlie about what had happened at Pitkirtly Island.

  ‘Tell you at the Hogmanay party,’ Amaryllis said to Christopher as they drank tea and ate toast together at the kitchen table in time-honoured fashion.

  ‘But you know what it’s like at the Hogmanay party, don’t you?’ he said. ‘It’s impossible to talk about anything sensible. It’s far too noisy – and rowdy. You haven’t forgotten Dave dancing on the table last year, have you? The landlord made him pay for the damage too. Those bar tables aren’t cheap. Not to mention the bottles of whisky he crashed into.’

  ‘I haven’t forgotten Jemima sitting there knitting right through it all, either,’ said Amaryllis. ‘We’ll find a quiet corner and I’ll tell you everything that happened.’

  Christopher wasn’t convinced. And he wasn’t happy that Charlie Smith knew more than he did, either. It was one thing for Amaryllis to go off to Turkmenistan or Virginia wreaking havoc and escaping the jaws of death by a whisker, but the idea that it had happened in Pitkirtly brought it all too close to home.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said quietly. ‘I survived, didn’t I?’

  He sighed, but resigned himself to waiting. In fact he was so good about not pestering her for information that she began to get impatient before he did, and for the next day or two she kept dropping hints about what had happened, until by Hogmanay he was rather exasperated and even felt tempted to get his own back by not even going to the party. If the thaw continued the way it was going, he might even get himself invited up to the cattery to see if Rosie’s friends were any use at arm-wrestling. Only of course he would have to see in the New Year with Jock McLean if he did that. Hmm. There was always a down-side.

  But when it came to the point he just had to go along to the Queen of Scots. Apart from anything else, Amaryllis called round to fetch him, and he didn’t want to fall out with her permanently. Just letting her know he was a bit miffed with her was enough, and he knew he had done that already.

  She took his arm on the way to the pub.

  ‘It wasn’t nearly as good having Charlie with me as it would have been if you were there,’ she said, apparently in an attempt to mollify him.

  ‘I suppose he didn’t do stupid things and make you laugh at him,’ said Christopher grumpily.

  ‘No, it wasn’t that – he can be just as stupid as you in his own way,’ she said. ‘It was because he tried to stop me doing what I knew had to be done. He nearly got the town blown up because he thought he needed to protect me.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, really. You wouldn’t make that mistake, would you?’

  ‘I know it’s no use trying to stop you when you get an idea in your head,’ said Christopher. ‘If that’s what you mean. I’ve never met anybody so stubborn.’

  She started to laugh, but she wouldn’t tell him why.

  Dave and Jemima were already ensconsed in a small private room at the Queen of Scots, and a familiar figure stood at the bar ordering drinks.

  ‘I thought you were at the cattery!’ said Christopher accusingly to Jock McLean. Amaryllis went off to speak to Jemima.

  ‘I got the sack,’ said Jock. ‘Don’t ask. You having Old Pictish Brew tonight?’

  ‘I think I’ll need it. We’re meant to be going to hear the whole story.’

  ‘You mean she hasn’t told you it already? About having to fight her way up the ladder to the surface while the mud and water were pouring down all round her?’

  ‘What? How do you know all that?’

  Jock shrugged his shoulders. ‘Heard it in the paper-shop.’

  ‘In the paper-shop?’

  ‘I thought she would have told you by now.’

  ‘Well, she hasn’t. Why am I always the last to know everything?’

  As usual when Christopher raised his voice, there was a freakish lull in everyone else’s conversation, so that his words rang out across the suddenly still air like an important announcement. In some ways he supposed they were. An announcement that he was fed up with being kept in the dark, especially by Amaryllis. Not to mention his other friends.

  ‘I suppose you both know the whole story by now too?’ he said to Dave and Jemima, having picked up his pint of Old Pictish Brew and marched across to the table. He stood over them, glowering.

  ‘Have a seat, Christopher, don’t just stand over us like that,’ said Jemima placidly. ‘You don’t want me getting a crick in my neck do you? At my age that can be quite nasty.’

  At least Jemima hadn’t brought her knitting this time. He sat down between her and Amaryllis, who been silent and meek throughout his miniature tirade although she must have known it was aimed at her.

  When they were all sitting there, she said,

  ‘I haven’t told anybody what happened. I wanted to wait and see if it was finished.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ snapped Christopher.

  She looked at him. Her eyes were uncharacteristically sombre.

  ‘Charlie Smith should be here soon. He’ll tell us.’

  ‘How did the man in the paper-shop know?’ he said.

  Jemima smiled in an irritating way that suggested she could see through everybody’s foibles and inconsistencies. ‘He likely made it all up himself,’ she said, leaning back in her chair.

  Christopher was even more cross now that he was unexpectedly in the wrong.

  ‘What I don’t understand is where the golden peacock fitted into it all,’ said Jemima. ‘I’ve made my own little one, just to remind me of everything.’

  She brought out a little beaded peacock from her capacious handbag, and set it on the table. They all stared at it. Christopher wasn’t sure what to say. It was rather a hideous thing constructed mainly of gold wire, with purple and orange beads sticking up out of its head, and a neck twisted at such an unnatural angle that it seemed to have been strangled.

  ‘I don’t think I could eat a whole one,’ said Jock McLean at last.

  Jemima glared at him.

  ‘Is it a brooch?’ said Amaryllis.

  ‘You could put it on a key-ring if you wanted,’ said Jemima. ‘There’s a little loop here – look. Oh dear, the neck’s gone a bit wrong.’

  She picked it up and was just manipulating it back into place when Charlie Smith, the dog and Maisie Sue arrived at the same time. There was a minor skirmish as the landlord queried the presence of the dog and Charlie assured him it was a highly trained working police-dog which was allowed into any premises.

  ‘We aren’t really togeth
er,’ Maisie Sue assured them as she sat down. ‘We just bumped into each other on the way down the High Street. I wouldn’t want anyone to think anything of it.’

  Christopher couldn’t imagine Charlie Smith and Maisie Sue getting together even if they were the last two creatures left on earth. Or at least, he didn’t want to imagine it. Of course the more he tried not to imagine it, the more it imprinted itself on his brain, so that it was there even when he tried to think about the new archive material that had been donated to the Cultural Centre just before Christmas and which he planned, as a treat, to take his time cataloguing once he went back to work.

  Charlie brought some drinks over to the table. The dog sat down on his feet and sighed.

  ‘Let’s hear it all, then,’ said Dave. ‘We don’t want to hold up the party.’

  ‘It’s only half-past eight,’ said Jemima. ‘There’s plenty of time.’

  ‘But we need to get in the mood,’ said Dave.

  ‘Not in the kind of mood you got into last year,’ said the landlord, who chose that moment to come over and collect the empty glasses. ‘You could have got barred for doing that, you know.’

  He closed the door behind him as he left.

  ‘Shouldn’t Lord Murray be here?’ said Jock McLean. ‘Or has he gone back to his stately home in disgrace?’

  Charlie pulled his chair a bit closer to the table and leaned forward. ‘Don’t tell anybody I told you this, but he’s been arrested.’

  ‘What for? Impersonating a human being?’ said Jock, laughing. ‘Or has the revolution started and nobody’s told me?’

  ‘It’s a bit more sordid than that,’ said Charlie. ‘He’s an accessory in the jewel robbery case.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Christopher. ‘It’s about what he told me in the ambulance, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, kind of. But he told us it all over again when we were talking to him about his brother. Didn’t seem to see anything wrong with it.’

  ‘Hmph! Typical!’ said Jock McLean.

  ‘Why don’t you start at the beginning, Mr Smith?’ said Jemima gently.

  ‘The trouble is, I’m not entirely sure where that is,’ said Charlie.

  ‘The drowned girls?’ Amaryllis prompted him.

  ‘Yes, I suppose that’s as good a place as any… The drowned girls. It was recorded as an accident at the time, you know. But in the light of what’s happened since, we’re no longer sure about that.’

  ‘Just get on with it, man!’ muttered Dave. Jemima nudged him to shut him up.

  ‘Well, basically Malcolm Murray was always a problem and an embarrassment to the family,’ Charlie began. ‘His older brother of course always knew he would be the one to inherit the estate and the responsibilities, so he maybe had more sense of his place in the scheme of things. It was when Malcolm was in his late teens that the drowning incident took place. He and a friend and two girls were out on Pitkirtly Island playing around in the tunnels. He somehow got hold of explosives and set them off. Part of the tunnel collapsed, water came in, and the two boys got out and the girls didn’t. The whole thing could have been much worse for Malcolm than it was. But their father, old Lord Murray, knew the Chief Constable, so it was played down and turned into an accident, although the other boy later spread the word around that it had all been Malcolm’s fault.’

  ‘And they put him in the army,’ said Christopher. ‘To protect the family name.’

  ‘Yes, he was shipped off to basic training first and ended up in Iraq and then Afghanistan,’ said Charlie. ‘He was thought to have been some kind of hero in Afghanistan, but apparently that was just a rumour started by one of his friends.’

  ‘Lord Murray said he’d gone to rescue people who didn’t want to be rescued, or something,’ said Christopher, trying to remember exactly what the wheezing aristocrat had been talking about in the ambulance.

  ‘Indeed – he killed some local warlords in the process, and they came after his unit,’ said Charlie. ‘He and his friend James Molyneux got the boot from the army after that. Malcolm Murray returned to Pitkirtly. He was always full of new schemes. He said he was planning to go and start something up in Africa. But it was all just talk.’

  ‘Who’s this James Molyneux?’ said Jock McLean.

  ‘He got me out of trouble once, in Uzbekistan,’ said Amaryllis. ‘I always called him Jimbo after that.’

  Christopher looked round at her. She still had the sad expression in her eyes, but she did glance up and smile at him a bit ruefully. She had been taken in by Malcolm Murray, but perhaps it was the role of her friend Jimbo that hurt the most.

  ‘But what about the golden peacock?’ said Jemima. She waved her own version of it in front of Charlie’s nose. He seemed completely bewildered. ‘Where does that come in?’

  ‘According to Lord Murray, his brother claimed to have sold the golden peacock years ago, before he even went into the army, and replaced it with a fake without anybody else in the family knowing. When Lord Murray himself needed money, he got the jeweller in Pitkirtly to find a buyer for what he fondly imagined was the real thing. Then Malcolm returned and confessed it was a fake, so Lord Murray persuaded him to go and steal it back. We don’t know if Lord Murray’s telling the truth about that part of it – it looks as if he may have known earlier it was a fake. Of course Malcolm and his accomplice couldn’t resist stealing other things too. They needed the money for their African scheme – which, by the way, was to do with setting themselves up as mercenaries and smuggling in weapons, and not with any charity work.’

  ‘What about the homeless man?’ said Christopher. He glanced down at the dog, which appeared to be listening intently.

  ‘He was ex-army too,’ said Charlie. ‘He knew both the others from Afghanistan, and he was a witness to the robbery. When we took him into the cells for the night they were afraid he’d shop them. They decided to get rid of him, thinking nobody would care enough to do anything about it.’

  ‘Except the dog,’ said Amaryllis. She sounded almost as if she were about to burst into tears, only that Amaryllis wouldn’t do that, especially in the Queen of Scots. Maybe the wood smoke from the landlord’s over-enthusiastic real fire had got into her throat.

  ‘Then they carried on with their plan to threaten to blow something up if the authorities didn’t pay them a massive amount of money. They didn’t have much respect for the forces of law and order: they didn’t think we would catch them and stop them in time. Especially as they guessed correctly that everybody would rush to protect the power station.’

  ‘If it hadn’t been for Amaryllis you wouldn’t have stopped them at all,’ Christopher pointed out. Charlie glared at him.

  ‘That’s a matter of opinion,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘As we all know from previous experience, it’s always better to work with the forces of law and order if you possibly can… Anyway, Malcolm Murray didn’t really care if we stopped them in time or not. He regarded Pitkirtly Island as his playground, he knew that the Council had given planning permission for the mining tunnels to be filled in and consolidated in the near future so that they could construct walkways and a children’s playground there without any chance of people falling down abandoned mineshafts. If he couldn’t play in his tunnels and on his island then he wasn’t going to let anyone else do so either.’

  Christopher shivered at the mention of abandoned mineshafts. He was surprised and pleased when Amaryllis’s cool smooth hand crept into his at that moment, hidden from the view of the others by the table.

  ‘When Malcolm Murray and James Molyneux left Old Pitkirtlyhill House a few days ago after abandoning several people in a smoke-filled basement they only escaped from thanks to the persistence and courage of Christopher Wilson…’

  There was a small round of applause at this point. Christopher blushed, and Amaryllis squeezed his hand.

  ‘After they left the house, as they thought, in flames, they put on skis to make us think they were planning to ski all the way over the hill to Longa
nnet, but in fact they only skied to the edge of Lord Murray’s grounds, where they entered an old mine tunnel and proceeded through it on foot to the place where they’d left the explosives.’

  ‘Meanwhile we travelled by helicopter and got there first!’ said Amaryllis, at last showing a small spark of enthusiasm. ‘Using our knowledge of the maps Mal had on the kitchen table when he was finalising his plans and Christopher and I came knocking at the door.’

  ‘Amaryllis and I investigated the tunnels, and located the explosives, but when we heard them coming we separated.’ Charlie’s voice took on a grimmer tone at this point. Was this where Amaryllis had insisted on doing things her way and he had objected? Christopher wasn’t sure.

  ‘Charlie was very brave and distracted Mal to give me time to get along to the end of the tunnel,’ said Amaryllis sweetly. Jock McLean gave her a suspicious look.

  ‘And that was when reinforcements arrived by land and sea,’ said Charlie, trying hard to stick to the official line.

  ‘By sea?’ said Jemima.

  ‘Yes, from Rosyth,’ said Charlie. ‘They happened to be on exercises in the Firth of Forth and they headed for Longannet when the ransom demand came in.’

  ‘So was that when you got drenched in mud and sea water?’ enquired Christopher, still holding Amaryllis’s hand.

  ‘It wasn’t quite as dramatic as the man in the paper shop made it seem,’ she protested. ‘I’m not any kind of a heroine.’

  ‘Amaryllis opened the sea gate at the end of the tunnel,’ said Charlie. ‘She clung on to the ladder when the water rushed in, and climbed up and hammered on the hatch at the top. Luckily for her, the landing craft had just arrived and the men from the navy were able to give her a hand out.’

  ‘So you were ready to sacrifice yourself to save Pitkirtly!’ said Jemima. ‘I think you deserve a medal, dear.’

  ‘Jemima could make you one,’ suggested Christopher, light-headed with the terror that had flooded his mind just as the sea water had flooded the tunnels. ‘With gold wire and purple and orange beads.’

  ‘It wasn’t the most dangerous thing I’ve ever done in my life,’ said Amaryllis modestly. Christopher sensed that she was rather pleased that she had managed to do something important and worthwhile, even if she hadn’t really intended to.

  ‘Are the two men in custody?’ said Dave.

  Charlie made a face.

  ‘James Molyneux was caught in the tunnels when we went in. He had an ice-axe with him, and it saved his life. He jammed it into the rock and hung on to it. There was no sign of Malcolm Murray, but the roof had caved in with the force of the water, and another team of officers found a body washed up at the other end, near the grounds of Old Pitkirtlyhill House.’

  ‘So it’s the end of his epic quest,’ said Amaryllis quietly. Christopher had never known her so subdued. He guessed it was because she had initially been so well taken in by Mal: she would take a while to forgive herself for being such a bad judge of character.

  ‘Oh well, you’ll just have to concentrate on your PI business. Maybe you can re-brand yourself as an expert on lost cats or something,’ he said, trying to cheer her up by being stupid again.

  ‘That reminds me,’ said Jock McLean. He was about to say more when his mobile phone suddenly rang – or at least, something played ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ in his pocket. He took out the phone, glanced at the display, and his face brightened. ‘Rosie. Maybe she’s speaking to me again after all.’

  He didn’t bother getting up from the table and moving away for privacy. They heard him say, ‘That’s great!... How did it happen? So they’re all present and correct now, are they?... I can be up there in the morning if you like. If I can get a lift.’

  He faced them all after disconnecting.

  ‘So what had you done? At the cattery?’ said Dave, preparing to look menacing.

  ‘It was one of the cats,’ said Jock. ‘She said she couldn’t find him – and I had been the last one in there, putting more Fun-Cat in his dish.’

  ‘Fun-Cat?’ Amaryllis mouthed to Christopher. He felt a huge, stupid laugh building up inside him.

  ‘That was why she fired me.’

  ‘And?’ said Dave, leaning back and looking a bit less fierce.

  ‘She’s found him. He never got out. He had just found a way of hiding in between the little house thing and the wire fencing. He was there all the time.’

  ‘That’s what Fun-Cat will do for you,’ said Amaryllis, nodding wisely. She still had a tight grip on Christopher’s hand. He felt her nails digging into him as a warning not to laugh.

  Amaryllis could be quite a scary woman sometimes.

  ~~~

  Author’s Note:

  Frozen in Crime is a mystery novel in the ‘Pitkirtly Mystery’ series. If you enjoyed it, please try the others in the series, also available digitally:

  Crime in the Community

  Reunited in Death

  A Reformed Character

  Death at the Happiness Club

  To find out more about Cecilia Peartree please visit my blog at https://ceciliapeartree.wordpress.com or follow me on Twitter: @ceciliapeartree.