A Kind of Grief

by A. D. Scott

  “And to Mrs. Mackenzie,” he added.

  “I can’t see how she is connected to Alice, apart from being chief gossipmonger.”

  “Neither do the police.”

  “Elaine thinks or at least wonders if Mrs. Mackenzie saw something.”

  “Or someone.”

  “And doesn’t recognize the connection, the significance.”

  “Or she does.”

  “But what could Mrs. Mackenzie have seen that would make her a target? Wouldn’t she have told everyone? Or at least told Calum?” Joanne dropped into the chair. “If her accident does connect with Alice, this is . . .”

  “Serious.”

  “Mrs. Mackenzie could still be in danger.”

  “Not if it was a warning.”

  “Do you think that would stop that woman?”

  He had no wish to think further about Mrs. Mackenzie. “I have to go into the office. I’ll finish unpacking the books tonight.”

  She knew he wouldn’t. He would start to read, and somehow, whilst still reading, get up, settle in the armchair, the books from the box scattered on the floor awaiting a decision—keep or donate.

  After a sandwich lunch, she spread a newspaper on the sitting-room floor and, with a duster and a damp cloth handy, began unpacking the remaining volumes. She rifled through the pages, small puffs of dust falling onto the newspaper, then stacked them according to size. Arranging alphabetically or otherwise, she’d leave to McAllister.

  In one box she found a book written in Latin with many pages missing. But as the book was hand-stitched, with any glue long since disintegrated, she thought little of it. As she fanned the pages of some smaller books, she could feel where pages were also missing. After a fifth book in the same condition, a thought struck her.

  Too intrigued to wait until McAllister came home, she called the Gazette.

  “He’s out,” Lorna informed her.

  “Is Hector in?”

  “He is. But I’ll have to run upstairs and make him pick up the receiver.”

  “Tell him to call me back.”

  Joanne smiled. When working at the Gazette, she’d tried to make the editorial staff function efficiently. And she’d succeeded. Mostly. Hector, however, was not a person who could be organized.

  “You wanted me?” Hec sounded astonished that anyone should ask for him.

  “Do you know anything about paper?” Joanne found herself reflecting Hec’s abrupt speaking patterns.

  “Maybe. Try me.”

  “Old books. Could you date them?”

  “I thought you said paper.”

  “I’ve a collection of old books.” Telling him how she’d acquired them was a longer conversation she had no time for. “Sheets of paper are missing. It seems to be a pattern.”

  “At the beginning and end of them. At chapter breaks.”

  His confidence startled her. “How did you know that?”

  “It’s what people do when they need old paper.”

  “Why?”

  “Well . . . Look, I’m free for the next hour. I’ll come over.”

  After Hector left, Joanne was confronted with yet another puzzle.

  “Elaine, I am so sorry to bother you at work. Maybe I can call back when you’re free?”

  “Don’t worry,” Elaine said. “Dinner is finished, so most of the residents are having a nap.”

  Joanne was about to say, But it’s only half past twelve, then remembered how at old people’s homes, the residents were fed early: breakfast at seven, tea at five o’clock, and in bed and lights out by eight.

  “How is Mrs. Mackenzie?” Joanne asked out of good manners, not because she was interested but more because she’d heard her husband complain that once again they were without a junior reporter. When she’d offered to help out, he’d said, “Your work comes first,” and when she’d understood he was referring to her writing, her editing the manuscript, she’d been thrilled. Yes, I am working, I am writing.

  “Not much wrong with her tongue.” Elaine laughed. “And poor Calum is scared he’ll lose his new job.”

  “Tell him to come back. Monday, if possible.”

  “I’ll fib a wee bit. I’ll say you said he needs to be back by then. It might be the only way to persuade him to leave.”

  “Tell him Mr. McAllister said it, not Mrs.” Joanne knew Elaine would know why. “What I wanted to ask may seem strange. Did you ever hear of old books being sold from up your way? Maybe a private collection?”

  “I’ll ask around, maybe start with the auctioneer. Lots of old stuff comes up at estate sales.”

  “Thanks, Elaine.”

  After a minute or so of pleasantries, Joanne put down the phone. She caught her reflection in the mirror. Dust coated her hair. A smudge was on the tip of her nose. I’m a mess—and Hector said nothing.

  But he had been absorbed in the books, examining the paper, the writing, the printing style, so she shouldn’t be surprised that he’d barely noticed her. Hector was on a mission to date the books, the paper and the ink and everything about them.

  “Why are you so interested in these ones? They’re mostly in Latin,” she’d asked as he put back another desecrated volume of religious tracts.

  “Because there might be a Leonardo notebook in amongst this lot.”

  “Really?” The thought thrilled and appalled her equally.

  “Highly unlikely, but . . .” He went back to examining one particular volume that was older than the others, before sighing and returning it to the stack. “Forsythe had that bird drawing authenticated. Then there are your two wee sketches. If we found the book they came out of . . .”

  Hector had left her with more questions than answers.

  Joanne had to rush to bathe and wash and dry her hair, to be ready for the two o’clock appointment at the hospital. It was a routine checkup of the almost-healed injury she’d received five months previously.

  Maybe I should mention I’m seeing shadows. She was certain she saw movement when no one was about. The feeling of being watched was never strong enough to mention, yet frequent enough to make her uneasy. “It’s only birds,” she’d mutter. “Wind whistling. Rain drumming. Cloud shadows.”

  Maybe we need a dog after all, she thought. She wondered what had happened to the wee Skye terrier she saw at Alice’s. There would be plenty room for him in the new house.

  On Monday, Calum came back to work at the Gazette. He lasted all of three days. It was Lorna who precipitated the crisis.

  “Good story on the golf, Calum,” Don told him.

  Calum went pink.

  “Made a deadly boring game sound interesting,” Rob said.

  Even though miffed at his description of golf, Calum was more thrilled by praise from Rob McLean than from the editors.

  “Even though the paper’s only been out a few hours, I’ve had phone calls objecting to Mr. McAllister’s editorial,” Frankie Urquhart told them. “They’re mostly for, not against, the new shops and offices.”

  McAllister grinned. He liked to stir up controversy.

  Frankie continued, “It’s progress. High time this town caught up with the rest of the country.” He was in the destroy-and-rebuild camp. “Got to move with the times,” he told his father. Frankie was a modern young man. “Soon be 1960,” he’d say, “a new world.” The destruction of historic buildings didn’t matter to him. His obsession with Elvis, with clothes and haircuts and suede winkle-picker shoes, annoyed his father and his sister, who said his feet and his hearing would be damaged forever.

  “I’m more interested in how many believe in the two-headed sheep,” Don said to Frankie. Any reply was lost as Lorna came in, and, stating the obvious, she placed the envelope in front of the editor. “A telegram,” she said. She didn’t linger to find out what was in it. Another point in her favor, Don decided.

  The telegram was addressed to McAllister. He was concerned but not overly, as he’d spoken to his mother two days ago and all was well. After two wars where
the news, always bad, came by telegram, receiving one was always unsettling.

  He read it silently. The others in the reporters’ room tried to pretend they were not curious. “Calum.” McAllister looked up, and trying not to laugh said, “Your mother wants to know why you don’t return her phone calls.”

  Rob and Frankie caught each other’s eye and had to look away.

  “I do, I always do.” Calum switched from a happy man, delighted with his new job and new colleagues, to a short-trousered wee boy.

  Don lifted the telegram, read it, and sighed. He needed a junior reporter, not a junior schoolboy. “I think I know about this.” Taking the telegram with him, he went downstairs.

  “Lorna.”

  “Aye?”

  He handed the telegram over.

  “Oh,” she said. “Right.” From under the desk, she produced a stack of messages and handed them to the deputy editor. Each one had a date and a time and a similar message. “Mrs. Mackenzie called.” “Calum’s mother called.” “Calum’s mother.” “C’s mother.”

  Don sighed again; he was doing a lot of sighing over Calum Mackenzie.

  “I give him at least three a day; that’s enough.” Lorna was looking at Don through black-rimmed eyes, through a thick fringe of hair that reminded him of a Highland cow—only no Highland cow had eyes as blue as Lorna’s. “I haven’t the time to keep answering the woman and keep this office running properly. We’re a newspaper, no the loony bin.”

  “Lorna.”

  “Sorry.” Her pale-pink-lipstick mouth set straight, she was trying not to grin.

  He expected rebelliousness from her, as that seemed to be Lorna’s default setting—weird makeup, weird clothes, and a taste for American poetry and novels that only McAllister had heard of but even he hadn’t read. As for Lorna’s “Ban the Bomb” badges pinned to her overlarge jumpers, her home-knitted hats, her duffel coat, Don ignored them, on McAllister’s instructions.

  He said, “Lass, no matter how tempting, it’s not for us to interfere in someone’s private life.”

  “It is when it interferes in the running of the office, specially on deadline day.” She rifled through the stack of messages, putting the Wednesday pile separate. It was thick. “This is from yesterday. Today’s pile is beginning to mount.” The phone rang. “Gazette. Good morning, Mrs. Mackenzie. Yes, I’ll give him the message.” She disconnected the line. She said nothing but stared pointedly at Don.

  He sighed. “I’ll deal with it.”

  Her sniff said she doubted it. “You’d better give him these.” Then she took the pile back. “On second thought, maybe not. I’ll give them to him when he comes by,” implying there was no need to further humiliate poor Calum.

  Don nodded. Another act in her favor.

  “One other thing,” Lorna added. “I’ve had a few phone calls asking for Mr. McAllister, and when I ask for a name, he says, ‘A friend,’ and I say, ‘Putting you through,’ and then he hangs up. One, even two calls like that I don’t notice, but there’ve been a few. Maybe it’s a burglar checking if the boss is at work or something.”

  “Thanks, Lorna.”

  Don walked up the stairs, thinking, or something. And not at all pleased with thoughts of what that something might be.

  “I have to go home,” Calum said as the deputy editor walked into the room.

  “Aye, I guessed that,” Don told him. “Take a half day tomorrow. Go home for the weekend. But I expect you back first thing Monday morning.” The or else went unsaid but was understood. “McAllister, can I have a wee word?”

  McAllister assumed the wee word would be about Calum. When he heard about his own phone calls, he asked, “What do you think?”

  Don replied, “Nothing good.”

  McAllister felt sick. “I’ve had enough of this.” Without an explanation, the editor left.

  For home, Don assumed. He guessed he might have to put out a newspaper without Calum; one good reporter, half an editor, and an enthusiastic sales manager meant a major headache. Hector didn’t count, as he couldn’t write. “I’m too old for this,” Don muttered.

  The solution came from Lorna.

  When he asked her to put in an advertisement for a cadet reporter, she said, “I’ll do it. I’m good.” He was thrilled. She’d scare the life out of the members of the town council—and maybe bairns and the churchgoing—but he liked the solution.

  Don replied, “You’re not good yet, but you will be,” and began composing an advert for a receptionist.

  Late that afternoon, McAllister was summoned to the police station for a “chat.” He was not happy.

  “I’m not yours to command,” McAllister said as he greeted Mr. Stuart.

  “This is important,” Stuart said.

  The lack of an apology annoyed McAllister. “Before you start, I have a question. Did you, or your cohorts, kill Alice Ramsay?” He’d had no intention of asking the question. He didn’t even believe it probable. But the man and his arrogance, his upper-class Englishness, riled McAllister. A lot.

  “No, we did not kill Alice Ramsay.” His clear distaste for the question from a mere editor of an insignificant local newspaper pleased McAllister.

  Looks like he’s sooking on lemon sherbet. The formal tone, the word choice and phrasing, alerted McAllister. And the “we” meant it was unlikely that the man was a lone operator with a private grudge—unlikely, although not impossible. Did not kill her, he accepted. But did something to cause her death, directly or indirectly? He wouldn’t rule it out.

  “Again, I will remind you that you’re bound by the Official Secrets Act.”

  “Get on with it, man.”

  “As you now know, Alice Ramsay is not the name she was using when she worked for us.” Her family surname carried the ancient Scottish title “of that Ilk.” It had always amused him. “However, some of the persons she came into contact with”—concocted false identities for, he didn’t share—“knew her from the past.”

  “Knew her by her real name, Alice Ramsay?”

  “Quite. When she left us, she took some of the tools of the trade with her. Whether she used them for private commissions we don’t know.” He hadn’t shared his concern—later, anger—over the missing passports with his superiors. Nor had he mentioned the paper, the specialist ink, and watermark tools she had also purloined.

  Neither McAllister nor DI Dunne commented. They could guess at the larger implications of false passports and faked identities, but the inner workings of the world of Mr. Stuart, the Man from the Ministry, were too remote, too murky for them.

  “Our operatives and support staff such as Alice have as little contact as possible. Her job was simply to provide the necessary identification; she was not to intermingle with the individuals themselves. But as they were from the same social circles, it was perhaps inevitable. Then the scandal involving those persons . . .”

  McAllister and Dunne had been speculating which governmental scandals Alice Ramsey had been connected to. Moscow, they both concluded, knowing this would never be confirmed or denied.

  But now this.

  “Did Alice Ramsay know the Cambridge spies?” McAllister knew he was unlikely to hear the truth, but he had to ask.

  “That is classified information,” Stuart snapped. His body stiff, his eyes blank, the anger was clear, the affront at being questioned by a mere provincial journalist with a working-class accent.

  McAllister and Dunne exchanged glances. Both well versed on the spy scandals, they were aware that one of the traitors who had defected to Moscow had the Scottish name, Donald Maclean.

  McAllister tried again. “So Alice Ramsay was involved in the Cambridge spy ring. Interesting.”

  Stuart jerked back in a motion that reminded McAllister of a man hit by a sniper’s bullet. “I never said that.” He glared at both men. “That matter is over and done with. The traitors have escaped, and if I ever hear that either of you share such wild speculation or attempt to publish . . . If information
should come your way, anything unusual, especially any documents, perhaps someone asking intrusive questions, I need to know. Immediately.”

  “I know, I know,” McAllister said. “We’ll be clapped in irons and thrown in the Tower of London if we don’t.”

  “Why did you want to talk to Mr. McAllister?” Dunne intervened. He could feel the animosity between the men building, and wanted Stuart gone; a quiet life in a quiet town was the sum of his ambitions.

  Stuart cleared his throat, the nearest to an apology the inspector would receive. “Miss Ramsay’s manuscript. We’d like to examine it.”

  “How do you know about the manuscript?”

  The involuntary tilt forward, the blood draining from the editor’s face, the heel of his hand pushing hard against the table scared Dunne. “Manuscript?” the inspector interjected.

  “It wasn’t mentioned at the auction, so how do you know we have a manuscript?” McAllister’s question came out as a hiss, as vicious and as fierce as a swan defending its young.

  “One of our operatives was on the removal team that collected the pictures.”

  McAllister thought back to that day. Had the manuscript been out on display? He didn’t think so. Could he prove it had been locked in the writing box? Not without asking Joanne. Scaring her.

  “I assumed you acquired it along with her books.”

  McAllister did not believe him, and the sight of his eyebrows rising towards his hairline made Stuart realize his mistake. “It was Alice’s plan to paint the flora of her glens and perhaps make a book of her work. Part of the reason she retired, she said.” He looked away. She had spoken of her progress the last time they saw each other. But that brief meeting in the Station Hotel he hoped to keep secret. “I told her I could perhaps help find a national publisher, in a private capacity, of course—our department does not deal in original works.”

  This was as close to a joke as the man was ever likely to make, and Dunne, for one, was grateful.

  McAllister nodded. His suspicion that the man somehow knew about Joanne’s project had been confirmed. He wanted out of this room. Away from this man. He wanted to be home, music playing, girls laughing, Joanne looking up from a book or her knitting or the dinner table, looking at him with those green eyes, smiling. And him smiling back.