A Double Death on the Black Isle

by A. D. Scott

  “How are they coping?”

  “They are coping—just. It’s hard on both of them, but it’s Mr. M. that I worry about. He seems so withdrawn.”

  “Everything will be back to normal soon.” What tripe you talk, Joanne said to herself, it will never be normal for Mr. and Mrs. Munro.

  “I hope so,” Patricia put her cup down and tried to look casual, but all she managed to do was make Joanne more alert.

  “I met Calum earlier this morning. He called me last night to check if Sandy and I saw anyone the morning Fraser was killed. He had read my statement, but felt he had to ask again.”

  “He is only doing his job, Patricia.”

  “Exactly what I said. He’s rather dishy don’t you think?”

  “Patricia!”

  “I know. I’ve been a widow two months, I am five months pregnant, but I can fancy Calum, can’t I? Like you with John McAllister?”

  “Patricia!” Joanne was dismayed at the remark. Were people talking? Had her mother-in-law heard some gossip? Was that why Bill accused her? But, she would only ever admit this to herself, there was something fascinating about McAllister.

  Patricia grinned and sat back in the chair. “There is no harm in a private fancy.”

  “You are incorrigible.” They laughed.

  “Thank you, Joanne. I knew I could count on you.” She touched Joanne’s hand. “That’s the first good laugh I’ve had in a long time.”

  “Me too,” Joanne smiled back.

  “So, as I was saying,” Patricia was all business again, “when Calum phoned to check my statement about the morning Fraser was found, I said no, I didn’t notice anything unusual. But in the wee hours—I have to constantly get up to the lavatory in the night now, I remembered. I hadn’t thought of it before, it was so familiar, you don’t notice.

  “As we came down the driveway, I heard the rattling and at the turn into the main road, the man and his boy were there, loading the churns onto the lorry that collects the milk from the end of the farm road. I’m sure the driver will remember seeing us.”

  “Patricia, you know no one would doubt your word.”

  “I know. But . . .” she smiled, “I don’t want Calum to have any doubts about me.”

  Goodness, she is serious about him, Joanne thought. “I’m sure he has none.” She hoped her qualms weren’t obvious.

  “That’s what he assured me.” Patricia sighed, a deep slow soul shaking sigh. Her voice, when she spoke, was deeper, sadder, a reminder to Joanne of why they were friends.

  “What a mistake I made. I should have had the courage to have a baby out of wedlock. If Sandy had lived—God, that would have been a nightmare!”

  “Why did you, you know . . .” Joanne didn’t know how to ask.

  “‘Lie with him’ as the Bible says?” Patricia giggled. “Because he asked . . . he was the first man to show me real attention. And it was fun at first . . . sneaking out . . . defying my mother . . .” She was watching out the window as passersby labored up the hill, leaning forward against the steepness of the climb. “I may not show it, but I’m really sorry Sandy died.” Her face had a faraway look. “He didn’t deserve that.”

  For the first time, Sandy Skinner was acknowledged in a genuine eulogy. They were quiet for a moment.

  “Joanne, you remember the bedrooms in our house?”

  “I remember the one I stayed in.”

  “The rooms in that wing are all the same. We had them modernized three years ago.”

  Joanne was wondering where this was leading.

  “The plumbing was hugely expensive. We had a bathroom put in at the end of the hall, and washhandbasins in the bedrooms.” Patricia leaned across the table. “That was how I knew I could never stay married to him.” She dropped her voice. “Sandy, when he needed to go, couldn’t be bothered walking twenty yards to the bathroom. He would wee-wee in the basin.”

  Joanne stared, half-disgusted, half-transfixed at the information.

  “I now understand why, in spite of the scandal, you left your husband,” Patricia continued. “It’s all very well taking a fancy to a good-looking man, but when they are not in your social class, it can be quite confronting, can’t it?”

  Patricia noticed Joanne’s face and realized she might have gone too far. “Joanne, no one blames you. We all know your marriage was unavoidable. You couldn’t help it that your husband turned out to be a bad lot.” She glanced at her watch. “Heavens, court will be starting in fifteen minutes. We’ll have to hurry.” She stood. “We’ll catch up properly when the trial is over.” She dropped half a crown on to the table. “Are you coming?”

  “I must call into the office first” Joanne said, making the only excuse she could think of.

  “I’ll see you later then. Bye-ee.” Patricia was gone in a rush of bags and coat and matronly headscarf, her bump preceding her.

  It was only when the waitress asked, “Can I clear the table,” that Joanne came to. As ever, an encounter with Patricia had left her completely mystified. What did Patricia want? Why had she made her feelings for Calum obvious? Why had she told her about Sandy Skinner’s distasteful personal habits? Why were they friends?

  She had no answers to all except the last question—they were friends because they had gone through ten years of schooling together. They had snuggled up together in the dormitory, two lonely little girls. As they grew older, they were drawn together when the other girls talked of missing their mothers. It was a given that one loved one’s mother, but Patricia and Joanne had shared their suspicion that their mothers did not love them.

  We share a loveless childhood, Joanne concluded, we share a history, a history longer than my marriage, that’s why we’re friends.

  And as she climbed the steps to the Gazette, Joanne had trouble erasing the image of Sandy using the washhandbasin as a lavatory. Surely it was not enough to kill someone over?

  She found Rob’s suspicion that Patricia might be responsible for Sandy’s death ridiculous. She knew Patricia. She was certain that Patricia was clever enough to have found a sound, legal way out of the marriage, without a stain on her reputation.

  When Joanne walked in, McAllister was sitting at a typewriter in the reporters’ room, the desk covered with what looked like extra large confetti.

  “I’m trying to think what to lead with if the trial doesn’t finish on time.” He pulled a sheet of copy paper from the typewriter and tore it in half, throwing it up in the air to fall and settle with the other discarded thoughts. “Any ideas?”

  “Sorry?”

  “You look away with the faeries.”

  “I’ve been with Patricia Ord Mackenzie.” Joanne sat at her typewriter. “I know I’m being unfair, but I felt she was using me. Goodness knows why.”

  “Do you feel the same when you’re with your friend Chiara Corelli?”

  “Kowalski now,” Joanne reminded him. “No, I don’t. I always feel great after being with Chiara. She’s a ray of light. We have fun. With Patricia I always feel . . .” she searched for the word, “defensive.” She looked at him. The room was too small, the spaces between the high chairs and typewriters too narrow, and he was too close.

  “McAllister, I know you know I don’t have a lot of self-confidence, but why do I have even less when I’m with Patricia?”

  “Perhaps she’s the same. Perhaps that’s why she’s so bossy.”

  “Really?” The thought took Joanne by surprise.

  “Don’t ask me. I know very little about women.” He grinned. “I know newspapers though, and as we are on deadline, here’s what we’ll do: you spend the rest of the day in court. It should be over by this afternoon, then you and Rob can both turn in a story. I need to fill these holes here . . .” he tapped the front page, “and here.” He tapped a large space on page three of the dummy. “Rob will do the factual stuff. So, go and get me a humdinger of a story with pathos, even bathos.”

  “Sir.” She clicked her heels to attention, saluted, and left.


  McAllister rolled another sheet of copy paper into the monster and started to retype his editorial, grinning all the while.

  Joanne spotted her mother-in-law. She had to squeeze past two stout women in slightly different shades of green. Both were in tweed skirts, twinsets, and hats with lethal hatpins—so beloved by early detective novelists—anchoring the felt creations to their skulls. Rob, in the row below, turned, grinned, and gave a wave.

  “How are you, Mum?” Joanne asked.

  “I’m fine. But poor Agnes is worn to a frazzle. She didney get much sleep last night.”

  “It will be over soon.” Joanne patted Mrs. Ross’s arm. She hated seeing Mrs. Ross shrink in the presence of the panoply of the court.

  The court was told to rise, the sheriff entered, the trial recommenced.

  Calum Sinclair began by calling Mrs. Munro to the stand.

  “Mrs. Agnes Munro,” announced the clerk of the court. Joanne remembered him. He was the man Rob had bought his motorbike from.

  Mrs. Munro took the oath then took her seat. Joanne noticed how much the woman had shrunk in body and spirit. Even sitting up straight, she was tiny in the chair.

  Mrs. Ross was leaning forward on the bench, as if to catch every word and whisper and sigh. Joanne noticed that Patricia, slightly to her left and two benches down, did the same.

  Calum Sinclair gave Mrs. Munro a slight smile and a nod, trying to reassure her. He hated what he was about to do.

  “Now, Mrs. Munro, I want you to recall the night your son didn’t return from the village.” He was trying to keep his vocabulary as inoffensive as possible.

  “Yes.”

  “That evening, when did Fraser go out?”

  “The back o’ six.”

  “Did he tell you where he was going?”

  “No.”

  “Did he tell you who he was going with?”

  “No.”

  “Did you see or hear anything more of your son that night?”

  “No.”

  “You said you didn’t see or hear anything of Fraser that night, but did you see or hear anyone else?”

  “I heard the lads across the farmyard come home.”

  “How do you know it was them?”

  “Their dogs didn’t bark, but mine gave a yelp or two. That’s what woke me.”

  “Anything else?”

  “One of them, I don’t know who, called out, ‘see you in the morn.’”

  “Did you hear anything more that night?”

  She hesitated, and thought. It had taken her a long time to get back to sleep, she remembered. Every whisper of wind, every move of her husband she heard, every chime of the clock in the hallway, but no sound of Fraser returning. The dogs in the big house had barked in the early hours, but they were always a bit flighty those ones—pets, not real working dogs like the farm dogs.

  “No. No, I never heard anything more that night.”

  “When did you first notice that Fraser had not come home?”

  “I didn’t. My Allie told me.”

  “Your husband?”

  “Aye.”

  “And what time was that?”

  “Nearly eight o’clock. See, I don’t go and wake our Fraser like I used to. . . .” She paused, recalling how, one time, he had yelled at her when she had taken him a cup of tea at half past six, expecting him to be up, ready to join his father and his brother in the fields. The language had horrified her, so once was enough.

  “Sorry?” She hadn’t heard the next question.

  “When your husband informed you that Fraser wasn’t home, what did he say?”

  “He said, there’s been a terrible accident, and he had phoned for the doctor. Then ma husband said that the doctor wouldn’t be any help because our Fraser . . . he died.”

  Her husband hadn’t told her that the doctor insisted on calling the police; that piece of information she had overheard when the doctor came to the farmhouse to wash. After climbing into the ditch, his hands and his shoes and his trousers were muddy.

  A nice man, our doctor, she thought.

  A tear trickled out, but she wasn’t crying. It was something that happened regularly since she lost her son, and she didn’t notice anymore.

  Calum Sinclair paused. “I’m sorry I have to ask you these questions. I realize how hard this is, so I’ll try to be as brief as possible.”

  She nodded. “Thank you.”

  Joanne felt Mrs. Ross tense. Jenny McPhee shifted in her seat—it may have been her sons on trial, but she felt for Agnes Munro.

  “Mrs. Munro, you said that that night, you heard the others from the farm return.”

  “Aye, that’s right.”

  “You said you heard nothing more that night.”

  “Aye.”

  “That morning, the morning Fraser was found, did you hear anything unusual?”

  There was a long pause.

  “No, I heard nothing unusual.”

  Calum went to his table, ostensibly to pick up another sheet of paper, but thinking rapidly how to put the next question. What had Jenny McPhee said? “She’s no telling everything”? What had Mrs. Munro just said? “I heard nothing unusual.” He had it.

  “Mrs. Munro, earlier that morning, you heard nothing unusual.” He looked at her. “Did you hear or see anything, an everyday event perhaps, something so normal that you forgot?” He spoke slowly, carefully pausing between the commas in his questions.

  “I don’t know what you mean.” But Agnes Munro was incapable of lying. She sat with her arms tight into her sides, her hands clutching onto the life raft that was her handbag.

  Joanne, along with everyone else in the courtroom, was watching Mrs. Munro and what she saw was a woman in her late fifties looking like Wee Jean caught out in a lie.

  “Before you heard the news about Fraser, what did you hear or see that was not unusual? That was completely ordinary?”

  The only sound was of Mrs. Munro, repeating in a voice punctuated by sniffs, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

  She opened her handbag. She rummaged in the depths. She found a clean hankie. It didn’t help. She couldn’t stifle the sobs or stop the tears.

  “We’ll will take a fifteen-minute break,” the sheriff announced.

  The sigh from everyone in the courtroom was as soft and loud as a gust of wind through a pine forest.

  Calum Sinclair sat in his chair, not happy about the break.

  So close, he thought, so near. When I question her again, I will seem like a monster . . . but it has to be done, she knows something.

  Thinking exactly the same as Calum, Rob joined Joanne as she was leaving the court saying, “Drat, just as it was starting to get interesting . . .”

  “Rob.” Joanne gestured to her mother-in-law just ahead of them.

  “Ooops, sorry, I hope she didn’t hear me,” he whispered. “Joanne, what did you make of all that?”

  “I can’t talk now, my mother-in-law is really upset.”

  “Later then.” Rob watched Joanne as she went to comfort Mrs. Ross. Whatever it is that Agnes Munro is hiding, Mrs. Ross knows too, he realized. But will Joanne have the nerve to ask her?

  Rob returned to the courtroom, taking his place on the bench.

  “Mum, is there anything I can do?” Joanne was surprised how tightly her mother-in-law clutched her arm. She looked down at her and noticed how all this had aged her.

  You poor soul, Joanne thought, family means everything to you.

  Mrs. Ross looked up at Joanne, “I need to see how Agnes is doing.”

  “I don’t think they’ll let you into the chambers. Why don’t we find a bench and wait.”

  Sitting close, ignored by the steady stream of passersby chatting in whispered excitement, Joanne instinctively took her mother-in-law’s hand, and Mrs. Ross squeezed back.

  “You’re a good lass.” Mrs. Ross’s words were murmured down into her lap. And Joanne was all the more overwhelmed as she knew the words were truly meant.r />
  They continued to wait, nothing more was said, nothing more needed to be said.

  I know I should ask her what’s going on, Joanne thought, but some things are more important than a job.

  Five minutes later Joanne returned and told Rob, “The sheriff has allowed the doctor to see to Mrs. Munro. I’m not sure if the poor woman is ready to answer questions yet.”

  “Joanne, she has no choice.”

  “I know.”

  They were silent while all around, the murmur ebbed and flowed like the tide on a shingle beach. Thirty minutes passed and nothing changed. Forty-five minutes passed and the clerk of the court appeared. The defendants returned. The procurator fiscal and Calum Sinclair came in together. The sheriff was announced. The court rose. The sheriff sat. The court sat. The sheriff nodded to the fiscal. The fiscal rose.

  “Your Honor, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, additional testimony has been given, and therefore the prosecution wishes to withdraw the charges against George Williamson McPhee and William Stewart McPhee.”

  The fiscal sat.

  A babble of voices filled the courtroom, echoing off the high ceilings, disturbing the pigeons sitting on the stone window ledges—a babble that could be heard throughout the administrative offices in the castle and down the hill to the police station.

  It took the threat of clearing the courtroom before the sheriff could continue. He thanked the jury, told them they were dismissed, thanked the two opposing councils, stood, and left.

  The noise level soared again. Then a lone voice cut through the confused murmur.

  “Ma, can we come hame noo?”

  “Aye boys,” Jenny McPhee used her singer’s voice. It echoed through the courtroom. “You can come hame.”

  “What the hell was all that?” Rob asked no one in particular.

  “That was the sound of ma brothers being let out o’ gaol,” a voice came from behind.

  Rob turned. “Jimmy, what’s going on?”

  “No idea,” Jimmy McPhee said. “But I’m happy.”

  “Joanne?” Rob asked.

  “Search me,” she replied.

  “Come on,” Rob said, grabbing her arm “we have a front page.”