by A. D. Scott
“Neil?” Beech was surprised at the change in subject. “He has been researching in our family archives. He seems an intelligent, likable man, and he’s been a godsend to the Gazette.” Beech looked at McAllister but could read nothing in his face. “Is there any reason I should believe different?”
“None whatsoever. Put it down to a journalist’s morbid curiosity.” McAllister had to look away as he said this.
They bade each other farewell on the porch, and as McAllister walked down the pathway to the gate leading out onto the main road, Beech took his sister’s hand and linked it over his arm.
“No matter what was promised, I think we owe it to Mr. McLeod to help all we can.” He spoke quietly, but there was no mistaking the resolve in his voice. “Nothing will harm her, but if one believes in justice for the dead, we must help Mr. McLeod.”
Rosemary Sokolov said nothing. But her brother felt her grip tighten. Then she slipped her arm out and went back into the house.
Beech walked around to the side of the house to the area outside the coal shed where they kept the dustbins. It was the night to put them out for the “scaffies” who came early on Monday mornings.
He heard the door knocker at the neighboring house. He opened the coal shed door to find the gardening gloves. He heard the door knocker again. This time louder and longer. He put on the gloves and dragged one bin onto the path. He heard the door open and the sergeant major’s voice.
“It’s you. Get off my doorstep. Get out of my garden.”
“I’d like to speak to Mr. Bahadur,” Beech heard McAllister saying.
“He has nothing to say to you.”
“That’s up to him, isn’t it?”
“Get off my premises or I’m calling the police!” The sergeant major’s voice was at parade ground pitch, his anger unmistakable.
There followed a strange sound—perhaps a scuffle, perhaps a blow. Next came a yelp of pain, followed by a moan, then someone swearing. From the Glasgow accent that lessened the effect of the words, Beech knew it was McAllister.
“What’s wrong?” he called out.
“I think my foot’s broken,” McAllister called back. “Smart slammed the door on it and it hurts like hell.”
Beech knocked against the bin in his hurry, and the lid clattered onto the paving stones. He ran next door, where McAllister was sitting on the doorstep, the door ajar. Down the hallway, Beech could see and hear Sergeant Major Smart on the telephone.
“I want a police car here immediately. A man has attacked me on my own doorstep. Yes, I’ve told you already. I’m Sergeant Major Smart, Ness Walk.”
As he bellowed orders down the receiver he seemed not to notice, or perhaps did not care to notice, the slight figure of Mr. Bahadur slip past him, out onto the porch, where without a word he put his shoulder into McAllister’s oxter. With Beech on the other side, they walked the crippled editor, still swearing like the Glasgow East End boy he was, out into the street.
As they were about to pass through the gate to Rosemary Sokolov’s kitchen, where the first aid kit was kept, a police car came down the street at well above the speed limit, catching the trio in flashing blue light and the full beam of the headlights.
Knowing it was best to face the police, they stopped and waited. McAllister leaned against the wall and pulled out his cigarettes. Mr. Bahadur held out a lighter, as McAllister’s hands were too shaky to flick open his own. Beech stood in front of his friends, legs akimbo, arms folded, on guard.
Neither Beech not McAllister knew the constables who climbed out of the car. Nor did the constables know them. But somehow, Major Mortimer Beauchamp Carlyle, retired, managed to persuade them that all was well but McAllister must be driven to the emergency department of the hospital immediately, or they might face demotion. And all this was accomplished without once raising his voice.
“And could you let my sister know where we’ve gone?” he asked Mr. Bahadur.
Not only did Mr. Bahadur let Mrs. Rosemary Sokolov know, he put out the bins and accepted her invitation to stay the night, but not before having a long and emotional conversation with Rosemary, whom he refused to call anything other than Countess.
CHAPTER 13
As is often the case, calamity had not struck but was creeping up in small increments. And no one at the Highland Gazette had an inkling.
The assistant in the grocery on Union Street—the high-class purveyor to the gentry—was serving Mrs. Angus McLean.
“That will be all, thank you,” Margaret McLean said. “And I’d like to settle last month’s account.” She produced the account and the money. He screwed it into the pneumatic system, and it whizzed off upstairs to the accounts department.
As he was wrapping her tea and sugar into neat brown paper parcels, he said, “We like prompt payers like yourself, Mrs. McLean, and we pride ourselves on being the same.” He looked cross as he said this, as though Margaret was somehow responsible for his problem. “Take the Gazette; first you can’t get them to give you an account, next you get a bill in red writing”—he spoke as though this was a summons from Saint Lucifer himself—“and our establishment always pays on time.” He glared at Margaret for not showing an appropriate response at the very thought of red ink. “I expect it’s taking time to get back to normal after . . . if you can get back to normal after . . . ”
“Such neat parcels,” Margaret McLean said, putting them in her wicker basket and thanking the assistant once more as he handed her her receipt and change. As she crossed the street to the car, she wondered if she should pass the conversation on, then decided it was none of her business. Even though she wrote an occasional gossip column, About Town, for the Gazette, she was not a gossip.
On the west coast, Mr. Graham Nicolson, the Gazette correspondent, heard of an incident regarding nondelivery of the newspapers to the Isle of Skye.
The van that picked up the newspapers off the train had had a puncture and missed the island ferry. Mr. Nicolson wasn’t told that the man had gone off to the pub to forget his cold hands and wet britches, that the rain got under the van’s tarpaulin, ruining that week’s edition, that the remaining newspapers were dumped at the local tip, and all calls to the Gazette had gone unanswered. Mr. Nicolson felt it a personal insult when the Gazette was criticized, but even he had to admit it was gaining a reputation for unreliability.
These are difficult times, he kept telling himself and others. And with his old friend and fellow Gaelic speaker and lover of fine single malts Donal McLeod in gaol charged with murder, he too was not sleeping well.
No one at the Gazette noticed that far fewer people were giving birth, marrying, or dying; when Neil laid out the “Hatched, Matched, and Dispatched” columns, knowing they were the best-read part of a local newspaper, he couldn’t know that lately they were abnormally short.
No one knew that the results of a contentious bridge tournament had appeared with the names of the winner and the runner-up reversed, until the winner himself confronted Betsy and left with apologies for having made her cry.
A quarter-page advertisement, canceled for lack of funds, appeared in three more editions free of charge, but no one noticed except the very happy haulage contractor—and he wasn’t about to tell Mrs. Betsy Buchanan her mistake, as he was still hoping she would pose for his company calendar as Miss April.
No one recognized that without the sharpness of Don McLeod’s wee red pencil, the standard of the copy was declining. Rob was the worst offender, being a devotee of adverbs, which, in Don McLeod’s stylebook, was a capital offense.
No one monitored the decline in circulation. No one had the figures. And the accounts—no one had sat down and done the simple arithmetic because there were no numbers.
The Highland Gazette was slowly slipping to a standard below everything McAllister had worked towards and, for a short five and a half months, had succeeded in achieving.
* * *
Another Monday morning meeting was due to begin. Then Betsy Buchanan arrived and ann
ounced from the doorway of the reporters’ room: “Mr. McAllister will be in late. You’ve to start without him.”
Rob said, “Thanks, Betsy,” and Neil smiled at her.
Joanne saw the smile and snapped, “Is there anything I need to know about the advertising, Mrs. Buchanan?”
“What do you mean?” Betsy thrust out her bosom like a wee cock sparrow, her face flushed. “I can cope fine.” She fled down the stairs.
Joanne turned back to the typewriter to finish writing up a report from the Highlands Tourism Authority. She was trying to keep her face in neutral, suppressing the temptation to smile, to laugh, to shout out, I’m in love. He chose me! She tried to ignore the tingle in her arms and her knees that crept up whenever she sat in the same room as Neil, typing in rhythm with Neil, leaning over the table to check a document, when saying anything—even hello and good-bye. She felt she was in a cloud of static electricity, and wouldn’t have been surprised if her hair stood on end.
Ten minutes later, she rolled the article out of the Underwood, popped it into Neil’s tray for subbing, and the thought came to her, There’s something wrong with Betsy. She sighed and went to check, only because Neil was working and only because she had to get away from him in case anyone noticed how different she was, how much she had changed, how much her whole life had altered.
Joanne went downstairs to the tiny office behind the reception desk, smiling at Fiona as she went in, but getting no response back. The fifteen-year-old was straight out of Technical High School with a proficiency in typing and bookkeeping, and Betsy’s cousin’s daughter.
But perhaps she can’t talk in joined-up sentences because of her terrible pimples. Joanne immediately felt guilty about having such an unkind thought and looked around the dismal room. Lined with shelves holding accounts folders from probably the last fifty years, a two-bar electric fire, scuffed and stained desks, and semibroken and obviously uncomfortable chairs, Joanne felt sorry for Betsy. This is no place to work. She sighed and, turning to Betsy, saw the tears she hadn’t heard.
“Betsy, what’s wrong?”
“I can’t cope.” She waved her hands at the three piles of paper in front of her, all substantial. Joanne saw that some were envelopes that hadn’t been opened, and she was scared to check the date stamp.
“I’ve that much to do”—Betsy was sniffing now, most unlike her usually smart, perky self—“and I’m that much behind . . . and I can’t afford to lose my job. Not now. If Mr. McAllister finds out, he’ll kill me.” Her hand flew to cover her mouth. “Heavens! I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean that . . . ”
“Sit down, Betsy. Start at the beginning.”
“It’s the accounts. They’re all over the place. And I can’t find half the invoices and . . . the bookkeeper says I have to make them all tally by the end of this month or she’ll tell Mr. McAllister . . . And I’m . . . I can’t tell Bill . . . I don’t know if he’ll stand by me . . . ”
“Betsy, what on earth are you talking about?”
“I . . . ” Betsy looked at Joanne. She had never liked her rival much. Like Bill Ross she thought Joanne was too big for her boots—Betsy’s mother’s phrase—and all because Joanne spoke with an educated almost non-Scottish accent and used linen napkins at meals—so Granny Ross had told everyone in the Church Women’s Guild.
But her instinct told Betsy that Joanne had much to lose and much to gain from her predicament, and might turn out to be an unexpected ally.
“Joanne, I’m in a right mess,” Betsy said, and a single large tear escaped, running down her Max Factor pancake makeup that Joanne considered more appropriate for evening than daytime.
An hour later, Joanne returned to the reporters’ room half worried, half elated, but with no clear idea how to help Betsy out of a sizable pickle. But I will help. Joanne surprised herself with the thought.
* * *
“Serves me right for sticking my foot in the door,” McAllister had said to Beech on the previous evening as they waited in the emergency department for the results of the X-ray.
“At least it is a Sunday, not a Saturday night after the pubs have closed.” Beech’s loud voice and his hearty clipped accent rang around the empty waiting room and cheered McAllister up immensely. He could well imagine Mortimer Beauchamp Carlyle facing ravaging tribesmen of the Abyssinian Highlands and terrifying them off with his voice alone.
There was only one small bone broken in his little toe. The bruising was extensive, the pain intense, and next morning McAllister found he needed a stick to walk. Changing gears in the car hurt far more than a break in the small toe would suggest. After climbing the stairs to the reporters’ room, he held the Monday meeting with his foot up on a chair and a glass of whisky in his hand.
Rob immediately asked, “What happened?”
McAllister had to admit that he had put his foot in the door in an attempt to speak to Gurkha Bahadur.
“He is unavailable,” the sergeant major had said before deliberately swinging the door shut on McAllister’s foot.
“The rotten swine . . . ” Joanne said as she came into the reporters’ room, catching the end of the tale.
McAllister lit a cigarette. “Good of you to join us, Mrs. Ross.”
“But I was . . . ” It was her turn to flap her wrists.
McAllister had an enormous capacity for intellectual reasoning and a limited capacity for emotional self-analysis and could not believe how painful it was to be with Joanne. It hurts worse than my foot.
He turned to Rob. “Sergeant Major Smart has charged me with assault. Your father thinks he’ll drop the charges in return for me not countersuing him for assault.”
Rob grinned. “I’m sure my father will win the argument. But what happened?”
“What have we for this week?” McAllister did not want to discuss the ignominy of a broken toe.
“‘Editor of local newspaper charged with assault?’” Rob suggested.
The silence that followed, the absolute stillness of McAllister—apart from the curl of smoke coming from the cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth—made them all hold their breath.
“Is there any news on Mr. McLeod?” Hector broke in. “Any progress on the case?”
“He’s in hospital. He’s as well as can be expected, but it’s hard for him to talk. And no, there’s no progress in his case.”
“Why no’?” Hector looked across at McAllister. “Why aren’t we doing anything?”
“We will get this newspaper out. We will do all we can. We will—”
“Most of the pages are filled with the usual,” Neil broke in, “but we need a front page.” He hesitated. “I’m assuming the rival press will report Mr. McLeod’s attempt to . . . his being admitted to hospital.” Neil looked around. “It is news.” He held his hands out in a half apology.
“See if the story turns up in the Aberdeen daily. If it does, you write it up, you’re neutral in all this.” McAllister got to his feet. Winced at the pain. His stick clattered to the floor. Hec retrieved it for him. All four of them looked at one another as they listened to his shuffle down the stairs.
Rob was about to turn on Hec, but the photographer got in first. “I’m no’ sorry for asking. Mr. McLeod will be before the judge in three, no, four weeks.” He gathered up some contact sheets, put them into his schoolbag, and left.
“I have the front page for you, Neil,” Rob told him. “An old acquaintance of ours—Mrs. Janet Ord Mackenzie—is up for sentencing this morning. She killed a farmhand on her estate. Although everyone knows the story, I can spice it up enough for a front-page splash plus a full inside-page story.” He shook his motorbike jacket off and put on the smart blazer he kept on a hanger for court-reporting duties. “Joanne will fill you in on it.” He smoothed down his hair. “See you later.”
They waited about thirty seconds, then Neil reached out for her hand and pulled her to him.
“Good morning, Mrs. Stewart.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I’m joking.” He leaned his head on her shoulder.
That’s why I don’t want you to say it, Joanne was thinking. But she said nothing. His hand strayed to her lower back, was caressing her, making her shiver. She stood back a pace. “Neil, not here.”
“Where? When?”
That was the problem. “I don’t know,” she said. “Certainly not at my place. No, wait, maybe you could come over on Wednesday. The girls stay with their grandparents on press nights.” She was breaking her self-made rule: never have anyone male in her house, her refuge; not because she might be found out, more because it was her sanctuary.
“I’ll try to keep my hands busy typing until then . . . Now, the sentencing of Mrs. Double Barreled, what’s that about?”
“Mrs. Ord Mackenzie, right, well, a few months ago, last Easter . . . ” And she told him the story of the double death on the Black Isle estate of her friend Patricia, not forgetting to mention her front-page scoop, her very first lead story, and he was duly appreciative. I love him, she thought, and he’s leaving. But now, there was a glimmer of hope. So I must ask Hector as soon as possible.
* * *
It was early afternoon before Joanne managed to find herself alone with Hector. “Hector, I was wondering if you could do something for me? Something personal.”
“Oh aye?” He didn’t mind doing favors and assumed it was the usual—taking pictures of children—and he liked Joanne’s girls, especially Annie, who was friends with his sister.
“It’s a bit tricky.” She hesitated, then came straight out with it. “I want you to take compromising pictures of my husband, Bill, with Betsy Buchanan so I can get a divorce.”
“What?”
It was not that Hec hadn’t heard or didn’t understand, it was that he did not do that type of work, no matter that it would have made him money. He had been asked to do this before, usually by solicitors who specialized in divorce—although divorce was rare, and he had always refused. In Hector’s opinion it was tacky, there was no artistic merit in it, and he would have to appear in court to verify when and where he had taken the pictures.