Beneath the Abbey Wall

by A. D. Scott

  “Bill is living with Betsy Buchanan. And Betsy wants him to marry her.” She hesitated. “Betsy is pregnant.”

  Betsy had been in tears when she made Joanne promise to tell no one. “Cross your heart you’ll never tell,” Betsy had said, and Joanne had to look away, scared she would laugh as Betsy invoked the cross your heart and hope to die promise she had last heard in the school playground. But Neil would never repeat the information.

  “Wow,” was all he said.

  His reaction, or rather nonreaction, was not what she expected. Can’t he see what this means?

  “Betsy’s not sure what Bill will do.” She knew she was blethering but it was important he understand. “Betsy is helping me get evidence of Bill’s infidelity. Then I’ll apply for a divorce. We need a witness to stand up in court and testify, or at least have some photographs of them in a compromising situation . . . what? Why are you laughing?”

  “It’s all so ridiculous. Not you. The law. It’s the same in Canada. You have to have proof of infidelity. I’ve even covered a case where dirty sheets were shown in court.”

  “That’s horrible.” Joanne found this distasteful and vowed to change her sheets as soon as Neil left.

  He helped himself to another cup of tea. “I admire you, Joanne. You have made a new life for yourself, a new career. It will be hard living here as a divorced woman, but you are prepared to do it.” He reached across for her hand. “And I know you can.”

  A numb sensation gripped her whole body, a deep-down chill, colder than any Scottish winter, gripped her toes—even in sheepskin slippers. She wrapped both hands around the mug of tea—but still the ice penetrated. Her shoulders in the cozy moss-green twin set, bought to bring out the color of her eyes, felt bare. She was as exposed as an unwanted daughter left out in the snow, and she knew it.

  “You’ll have no trouble getting back into the boardinghouse? I thought your landlady was an ogre.” She needed him gone.

  “I have a key.” He was surprised but did not want to show it. “Maybe another time we can find somewhere to be together for longer? It was perfect in Ullapool.”

  “Maybe.” She could hear his voice change, trying to reassure her. It didn’t work. Fatigue hit her, and she wanted to cry. Though why, she had no idea. Often, after a conversation was over, after the person had gone, when it was too late, it would come to her—the hidden heart of the matter.

  “Sorry,” she said as he put his arms around her, “I am exhausted, and these past weeks have been dreadful.”

  “I hope that doesn’t include me.”

  “Oh no, of course not. It’s just that Mrs. Smart’s death . . . she was a good woman . . . ”

  “So I keep hearing.”

  “And Don McLeod is a friend.”

  “You want me to use the back door?”

  “Please.”

  He leaned towards her to kiss her. She buried her face in his shoulder, the tweed scratching her nose, making her want to sneeze. She wanted to stay there safe and forever. But there is no forever, to him I’m just a fling.

  “Sorry, I’m exhausted.” She pushed him away. And if he sensed her distress, he didn’t say.

  She didn’t hear the garden gate shut because she had oiled it in preparation for Neil’s visit. She put out the milk bottles, locked the doors, put out the lights; she brushed her teeth; she went to put on the new nightgown, the new one she couldn’t afford but had bought in the bridal department of Arnotts. She stuffed it back under the pillow and threw herself onto the mattress, pulling the eiderdown over her, and started to cry. She cried, she sobbed, she sat up, she told herself, speaking aloud, “This is ridiculous.” She lay down. Sleep did not come.

  She waited. The alarm clock on the bedside table showed twenty past two.

  She got up, went to the kitchen for water, saw the two mugs, two plates, one remaining slice of apple pie and she sobbed, great burns and rivers of tears streaming out of her eyes and her nose. She washed the dishes, still sobbing. She wrapped the pie in waxed paper and put it in the pantry and went back to bed. When she picked up her library book and tried to read, she couldn’t see the text.

  She didn’t register what she was saying, over and over the same phrase—she was saying, more a refrain than a conscious thought, What have I done? What have I done?

  * * *

  The next day wasn’t any better. The day after deadline was usually a late start for Joanne, and she was glad of it.

  “Gazette.”

  “How are you, Joanne? It’s been ages since we had a get-together.” Margaret McLean had hoped to catch up with her on deadline night, but Rob had said Joanne was with Neil Stewart.

  “I know. We’re so short-staffed, I never seem to have a moment.” Except for Neil, she realized.

  “Would you and the girls like to come over on Sunday afternoon?” Margaret asked. “We’d love to see you all.”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t, I’m busy.” The excuse sounded weak even to her own ears. She was not busy. But she would not commit to anything, in case Neil might want to be with her. The previous night was not forgotten, but the power of hope and illusion was formidable. “Once this case is over and Don is back, I’ll have more time. Sorry.”

  “Maybe tea or coffee on your lunch break . . . I’ll call you.” Margaret was not upset when she hung up the telephone, only concerned. She knew an obsession when she saw one.

  The next call followed the first by two minutes.

  “Hello, stranger.”

  “Elizabeth. I know, I am so sorry, things are not easy here.”

  “Never mind. Stay for lunch after church on Sunday. We can catch up then.”

  This lunch there was no avoiding. For Elizabeth, Joanne’s sister, church was not optional, and Joanne had not attended in three weeks. Although in no way overbearing, nor critical, Elizabeth kept her eye on her sister. She did not know of Neil Stewart, but she would not approve if she did. That was what kept Joanne away—fear that her sister and her husband the Reverend Duncan Macdonald would guess her adultery.

  Joanne slumped in her chair. It was almost midday. She had work to do. She needed to call Chiara, whom she hadn’t spoken to all week. She had laundry to do, shopping. She needed a haircut; she needed to finish sewing a dress for next week’s dance. She needed to sleep.

  Neil might be at the library working. Dare she interrupt him when she changed her library books? He was irritable the one time she had interrupted him in the archives. Maybe he was at the guesthouse typing up his notes. Or at the home of one of the illustrious families of the Highlands, reading their family letters and documents, ferreting out their secrets, their skeletons. She wanted to run to fly to his side. This passion was burning her up. She needed to ask, to know.

  She put her elbows on the table, her head in her hands, and addressed her absent friend and mentor. “Don McLeod, where are you when I need you?”

  “In gaol,” McAllister answered.

  She jumped. She let her hair fall forward to hide her face. Then looked up. They looked at each other. She saw how old he was looking. He saw how exhausted she was.

  “Don and I, we used to talk. Nothing serious, he didn’t do serious, but he had a knack of putting everything into perspective.”

  McAllister listened. That was what he too missed most about Don.

  “I’d tell him something that was bothering me, he’d say it wasn’t worth the time of day.” What she didn’t tell him was Don’s exact phrase, There’s nothing worth getting your knickers in a twist over. “I miss him.”

  “Me too.”

  They both hesitated. The moment passed.

  “Right, I’ll see you later,” McAllister said.

  “Right, I’ll finish this.” She gestured to the typewriter.

  “Thanks for all the extra work you’re doing.”

  “Not at all.”

  She started typing. He went into his office and shut the door.

  And both of them, in their separate thoughts, in
their separate lives, felt the loss of the closeness that could perhaps, so McAllister hoped, have become more.

  CHAPTER 17

  When Rob came in to work on Friday morning, the only person there was Hector. And he didn’t count.

  “Where is everyone?”

  “Search me.” Hector didn’t look up from his proof sheets.

  Rob ran back downstairs. “Hello, it’s Fiona, isn’t it?”

  Fiona, who had returned to the Gazette, dragged back by her mother, after quitting for a day, couldn’t look at Rob. She was not terrified of him the way she was terrified of McAllister and her dad, but she thought Rob was a dreamboat, so could barely answer.

  “I’m looking for Mrs. Buchanan.”

  “I’m sorry, she’s not here.” She was sorry she couldn’t help Rob McLean, singer with the Meltdown Boys.

  “McAllister?”

  “He’s not come in. Mrs. Ross neither.” Two sentences, one after the other—she was getting braver by the minute. “Mrs. Buchanan is with Mr. Beech sorting out office stuff.”

  The telephone rang.

  “Highland Gazette, can I help you?” With an unknown caller her confidence was high, her voice clear. That changed when she identified the voice. “Oh hello, Mr. Stewart. Yes, thank you, I’m fine. Yes, he’s here.” She handed Rob the receiver and turned away to hide her crimson face and the unfortunate spot that had sprung up that morning, which she examined every five minutes in the lavatory mirror, leaving the phone unattended.

  “Rehearsals? Yep, same time, same place.” He listened. “I can put the word around, but the best place to find the McPhees is the Ferry Inn. Right, see you then.” Rob put down the phone. “Thanks, Fiona. Hey, would you like two free tickets to the dance next Friday? Bring your boyfriend but don’t forget to keep a dance for me.”

  Crikey, Rob thought, she looks as though I’ve offered to strangle her not dance with her.

  Listening to Rob running up to the reporters’ room, her heart still racing at the thought of a dance with him, she ignored the phone. It stopped, rang again almost immediately. She picked it up but didn’t have a chance to say anything. “Yes, Mrs. Ross. I’ll let them know.” She wrote, Mrs. Ross, not in until the afternoon. Then a woman, dragging a three-year-old who kept kicking the counter, came in to place a classified, and Fiona forgot to pass on the note.

  McAllister appeared at eleven thirty.

  “Where is everyone?” He stood in his customary stance, filling the frame of the door to the reporters’ room, but instead of reminding Rob of a watchful heron, he made him think of a scarecrow that crows were nesting in.

  Rob took one sheet of paper out and put another into the machine, saying, “Hec was here. Now he’s gone. Beech is working with Betsy, heaven help him. Joanne’s not in yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “How should I know?”

  There was no reply. Rob looked up, saw McAllister. He took in the shirt that needed ironing, the purple shadows under the eyes, the pasty skin, and although he would not swear to it, there seemed to be a tremor in the editor’s right knee. “What’s happened?”

  “I was at the gaol.”

  “Right.” Rob nodded. “Your office? A drink?”

  “My house. I need to eat.”

  “I need to get this off to Mr. Brodie, QC. Will it need an update?”

  “Maybe. Wait until we’ve talked.”

  “Give me an hour.”

  When Rob arrived he walked straight through to the kitchen. He was carrying a bag of plums and some oranges.

  “You look like you have scurvy, so I brought these.” He found a bowl and put the fruit on the table. “And you need a haircut. You’re not your usual Paris Left Bank suave self.” He flung off his leather jacket.

  McAllister immediately felt better. He liked Rob, appreciated his humor, and was dreading the day, which he saw as inevitable, when the young reporter would spread his wings and take off for parts foreign and south.

  Lunch consisted of mutton pies, beans, HP Sauce, and sliced tomato garnished with parsley, a relic from McAllister’s days on the newspaper in Glasgow—except for the tomato and parsley, as nothing uncooked would ever pass the lips of a Glaswegian.

  When they finished, Rob started washing up, knowing it would be easier for McAllister to speak without the help of a drink if his audience had his back to him.

  “Don’s smaller.”

  Rob didn’t interrupt.

  “Thinner, too.” McAllister took a long draw from his cigarette. “But he likes Brodie.”

  “Mr. Brodie, QC,” Rob interjected.

  “Aye. As Don tells it, the conversation was not long but made Don feel much better about his chances.”

  * * *

  Don McLeod had searched his prodigious memory and could find only good things about the advocate Mr. William Brodie, QC; he was not a Highlander but from the Carse of Moray, so almost. But Don had not expected the lawyer to bear a close physical resemblance to himself twenty years and many fewer drams ago.

  “Brodie, QC.”

  “No need for me to state my name.”

  “Mr. Donal Dewar McLeod,” Mr. Brodie recited. “Let us begin. I know the background to your marriage and the subsequent events when Mrs. McLeod went to India.”

  “Mrs. McLeod?”

  “Is that not her legal name?”

  “It is.” Don had never heard her called this, and it broke his heart.

  “The news of Mrs. Smart not being legally Mrs. Smart will be momentous enough,” the advocate had explained. “The news of two elderly good folk of the town in bed together in the early hours of a Sunday evening? That will never do.”

  It took a moment for Don to recover. All he could think was, It would have pleased her so much to be Mrs. Donal McLeod, and I denied her that.

  “Did Mrs. McLeod have her own keys to the house and gate?”

  The questions came quickly.

  “Aye, she did.”

  “The keys? Her handbag? Did she have them when she left?”

  “Of course.”

  “Did Smart know about your marriage?”

  “He did.”

  “When?”

  “He knew in India.”

  “So why . . . ?”

  “He wanted her money.”

  “And why did she agree?”

  “She didn’t want to break her father’s heart.” The lawyer stared, waiting. “Smart blackmailed her into it.”

  Mr. Brodie stared again, waiting. “Blackmail?” he prompted. Then, seeing Don would say no more, he moved on. “If Smart were the murderer, was he capable of it? And how did he manage it? And why now?”

  “He was well capable of it, and he’s much more mobile than he lets on.” Don paused. “I’ve had plenty of time to think about it, but I just canny see him doing it—much as I’d like him locked up for the rest of his life.” He rubbed his chin. He needed a shave. Mr. Brodie knew that his client would have to look immaculate for the court, and he made a mental note to see to it.

  “He knows where I live,” Don continued. “He’s followed her often enough. Maybe he had a key to the back door of the church. He was a member there. But how did he know about my knife?”

  “And what changed after all this time that would make him kill her now?” Even though his thoughts were not helpful, Brodie was pleased Don was talking.

  “Search me.” Don shrugged, but the flicker in one eye—as though a light had suddenly been switched on in the periphery of his vision—alerted the advocate.

  “There must have been a reason Smart snapped—if he did.”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  Mr. Brodie knew Don was lying and knew there was no point threatening him with prison—the death of the woman he loved was a life sentence. “What about the Gurkha, Mr. Bahadur? Is he a likely candidate? He has inherited a large sum of money. He knows how to use a knife. ”

  “Never. That man loved Joyce, protected her like she was his sister.”r />
  “I’ve never found love stops people from killing each other.”

  The way Mr. Brodie said this made Don look closely at him. The lawyer looked back.

  “I didn’t do it,” Don said.

  “Glad to hear it, Mr. McLeod. Now, defense strategy. I will do everything I can to discredit Smart. I will also do everything I can to cast doubt that you rose from your bed in a postprandial state, followed her, then killed the love of your life in a neat, cold, calculating manner, with your own knife, which you then returned to its usual niche in the wall.”

  “The fiscal will argue I was drunk.” Don gave a bleak smile, knowing everyone would believe that.

  “If you can tell me why the sergeant major was blackmailing her, that might help establish a clear motive.”

  “No.”

  From that emphatic negative, the advocate knew he would gain little more from the interview.

  “I’ll be back, Mr. McLeod,” he said as he put his papers into a folder and tied it up with red ribbon. “You won’t tell me now, but I’m sure you will, when faced with a life sentence.”

  Don doubted that, but when he was returned to his cell, he spoke to Joyce, a habit he had fallen into, as what he missed most about her was the conversations, having a person to talk about anything and everything to. That and having someone to put your arms around. “I promised, lass. So don’t worry. I’ll keep my word.”

  Don had told McAllister most of the conversation with Mr. Brodie, but left out Sergeant Major Smart’s blackmailing Joyce McLeod née Mackenzie into a bigamous marriage. He did not want McAllister in the cell next to his.

  * * *

  McAllister told Rob most of the conversation between himself and Don, but left out the end.

  “How is everything at the paper?” Don had asked.

  “Muddling along,” McAllister replied.

  “How’s the Canadian shaping up?”

  “He’s good at his job.”

  Don heard the unsaid. “What’s he like?”

  McAllister could only shrug. “He’s intelligent, interesting, good-looking, gets on well with everyone.” The bitterness in his voice alerted Don.

  “Beech has been helping him in his research. He’s playing harmonica in Rob’s band. He has Betsy charmed. He is seeing Joanne outside of work. They went away to the west coast together.”