by M. B. Shaw
Iris smiled to herself. I can’t imagine why.
‘They hate me for replacing their mother, of course,’ Kathy continued glibly, pressing her face into the dogs’ snuffling snouts again. ‘But you know what? We don’t care. Do we, Milo, hmmm? Do we, Sam Sam? No, we don’t. We don’t care because we won, and they lost, and we’re not going anywhere.’
It was an astonishingly steely display, all the more so for being delivered in such soft, husky, Californian tones.
Iris yawned, rubbing her eyes. ‘I really must get to bed.’
‘Before you do,’ said Kathy, walking over to one of the walnut bookcases, ‘there’s something I need to show you. But you have to swear to keep it between us. Nobody else knows.’
‘OK,’ Iris said warily, not sure where this was going.
Pulling out a dusty leather-bound copy of something dull enough not to have been read for at least fifty years, Kathy rifled through its pages and pulled out a crisp white envelope. Unlike the book, the envelope was obviously new, with the word ‘Kathy’ handwritten in bright blue ink on the front.
‘This was the first one,’ said Kathy, lowering her voice and handing it to Iris. ‘I found it slipped into my purse just a day or two after I arrived at the castle.’
The envelope had been torn open crudely at the top. There was a note inside, on a single folded sheet of writing paper. Expensive, watermarked paper, although the note had been typed.
You don’t know who you’re marrying, it read. Get out, now.
‘What do you think?’ Kathy asked breathlessly.
‘Well, I… I don’t know.’ Iris frowned. ‘You said this was “the first one”. Have there been more?’
‘Two more,’ said Kathy, sounding, Iris decided, more excited than troubled as she scanned the shelves for two other, nondescript books. For some reason she’d chosen a different hiding place for each. ‘One was left in my underwear drawer. Which is kind of creepy, obviously. And the third one I found in my car. Someone had slid it underneath the sun visor. I was driving home from Buckie when it fell into my lap.’
Both the other messages followed the same pattern, from the handwritten envelope to the typed missive inside, the fancy paper, all of it.
The second note read: Once you know the truth, it will be too late. Leave now.
The third, more ominously, said: Jock MacKinnon is a dangerous man. This is your last warning.
‘Have you shown these to Jock?’ Iris asked. ‘Or the police?’
‘No. I told you. No one knows. But that was part of why I wanted Jock to commission you. I need your advice. You know, to solve the mystery?’
‘Kathy…’ said Iris, not sure where to begin. ‘I’m really not sure I can help you. It’s true I ended up getting dragged into what happened to Dom –’
‘Dragged in?’ said Kathy. ‘You found the killer, Iris! You totally solved that crime.’
Iris smiled weakly, handing back the notes. ‘I’m not a detective.’
‘OK, fine.’ Kathy pouted, replacing the notes carefully in their respective hiding places before sitting back down on the couch and summoning the dogs to her lap. ‘You’re not a detective. You’re just someone – a friend – I’ve asked for advice.’
‘Right,’ said Iris.
‘So what’s your advice? Am I in danger?’ She injected this last word with such pantomime suspense, it was clear that she viewed the whole thing as more of a diverting prank than anything serious.
‘Hopefully not,’ said Iris. ‘I mean clearly, someone wants you to leave Jock. And Pitfeldy.’
‘Everyone around here wants that,’ said Kathy breezily. ‘Except Jock, obviously. But it’s not gonna happen. I’m gonna drag this place into the twenty-first century whether they like or not.’
‘Well,’ said Iris, getting to her feet, ‘my advice would be to show these notes to your fiancé.’
‘Nuh-uh, no way.’ Kathy shook her head vehemently. ‘I don’t want to upset him.’
‘And then I’d take them to the police,’ Iris continued, undaunted. ‘These are threats, Kathy. Threats left in personal, private places, places close to you. Are they dangerous? I really don’t know and nor do you. It depends who sent them.’
‘Exactly!’ said Kathy, smiling broadly up at Iris again as she left the room. ‘It depends who sent them. That’s what I need you to help me find out.’
* * *
Later, tucked tightly beneath crisp linen sheets in her guest bedroom, the sleep Iris so desperately needed eluded her as she found herself thinking about Kathy Miller. What a fascinating young woman she was, and what a mess of contradictions. Soft, yet steely. Loving, to Jock and her dogs, yet ruthless and unforgiving to her perceived enemies.
Clearly, she had a great many of the latter – beside the mysterious writer of the threatening notes – and it wasn’t hard to see why. In many ways, from first impressions at least, Kathy Miller was not an easy young woman to like. Entitled. Arrogant. Immature. And yet Iris found that she did like her. She could imagine how isolating it must be, stuck out here in the middle of nowhere in this magnificent but alien place, wedded to its traditions and fearful of change, knowing that everybody except your future husband and your dogs loathed you. All the way down to the local taxi driver.
Iris found herself wondering whether the much talked-about wedding would actually take place. And, if it did, how long the latest MacKinnon marriage would last. So far, at least, the relationship between Kathy and Jock was the most inexplicable and baffling part of all. On paper it might seem to be a simple case of a beautiful young gold digger setting her sights on a rich old fool. But in reality none of that rang true.
It was well after midnight by the time Iris finally fell into a fractured, dream-tossed sleep.
Chapter Three
On the morning of the bank holiday, as tactfully as he could, Jock tried over breakfast to persuade Kathy not to come to the fair.
‘I have to go. Someone’s got to judge the sodding marrows. But you’ve a choice, my darling. Why put yourself through it?’ he said.
But Kathy was having none of it. ‘Fiona always went, didn’t she?’
‘Well, yes,’ admitted Jock.
‘My mother was Lady Pitfeldy,’ Rory observed pithily from behind his newspaper. ‘You’re not.’
‘Not yet,’ Kathy shot back, wounded.
Iris looked away awkwardly. Understandably, Kathy’s com-paring herself to Jock’s ex-wife, and Emma and Rory’s mother, had gone down like a turd in a swimming pool. But Kathy herself seemed oblivious to the fact that Emma looked as if she might choke on her eggs Benedict at any moment, or that her husband Fergus’s cheeks had flushed from their usual pink, through red and scarlet to a sort of nuclear vermilion that Iris would have loved to paint, if only she’d had her brushes handy.
‘Mummy didn’t go to the fair,’ Emma observed waspishly. ‘She hosted it. St Kenelm’s fair has always been held at the castle. It’s part of our duty as the baron’s family.’
‘That’s enough,’ said Jock firmly.
‘You all know our reasons – my reasons – for not hosting the fair this year. I appreciate that the Reverend Michaela may feel differently, and that’s her prerogative.’ Turning back to Kathy, he added, ‘But I don’t want you going down there, my love, only to get yelled at.’
‘I’m a tough cookie. I can stand a little yelling.’ Kathy smiled back at him, an odd mixture of vulnerability and defiance. ‘No, I’m sorry, honey, I’m holding my ground. If those bullies in the village think they’ve shamed me out of coming to the fair, then they’re in for a surprise. You have to meet negative energy with positive. Right, Iris?’
‘Hmm? Oh, err – well, yes, I suppose so,’ Iris stammered, blushing, horribly aware of Rory’s eyes boring into her, and embarrassed to have been dragged into a family quarrel. It was bad enough to have to witness it. The sooner she moved into her own place the better.
* * *
‘Rory’s been telling hi
s father for years that the estate won’t survive unless we open it to the public. But of course when I say it, I’m the devil incarnate,’ Kathy said to Iris as they drove down to the fair together in Jock’s new Tesla. (Yet another sign of Kathy’s influence: I’m encouraging him to think more environmentally. We’re all global citizens, after all.)
Kathy certainly didn’t look like a devil. In fact, she was utterly radiant this afternoon in a white lace cut-out dress and with her hair sexily piled up into a messy bun. Iris felt positively frumpy sitting next to her in cut-off jeans shorts and an old Labatt’s T-shirt she’d stolen from Ian decades ago that had worn so thin she felt as if she were naked.
She spent most of the short drive down to the village trying to talk to Kathy about the threatening notes. The more Iris thought about them, the more they worried her. If Kathy really was in danger, and she’d done nothing to stop it, she would not be able to forgive herself. But Kathy’s own focus was elsewhere, namely on proving to all the local ‘haters’, as she called them, that she was here to stay.
‘I mean, who do they think they are? Do they think I’m intimidated?’
Once they’d arrived at the fair, Iris watched, part horrified and part awestruck, by Kathy’s chutzpah as she sauntered like a supermodel into the judge’s tent in search of Jock, ignoring the death stares and muttered asides as she passed. ‘You go enjoy yourself,’ she insisted blithely to Iris. ‘I don’t need a wing man.’
You don’t need anything, as far as I can see, thought Iris, impressed. At least Kathy’s supreme self-confidence meant that Iris was free to explore the fair on her own, a prospect that filled her with childish excitement. It all looked such fun.
* * *
Iris felt the heat rising up from the turf as she stepped through the lichened gate onto the school playing field, as if the ground itself were sweating. Pitfeldy’s annual church fair had fallen on the hottest Bank Holiday Monday in anybody’s memory. Throngs of locals milled around, marvelling at the weather and the turnout, even while they muttered complaints about having been banished from the castle.
‘I doubt we’ve half as many stalls this year as last,’ Iris heard the old biddy who was manning a bric-a-brac stall grumbling to her friend on the tombola. Iris had been delighted to find an entire set of vintage dolls’ house furniture stuffed into an old shoebox, for sale at the bargain price of five pounds, and was standing waiting for her change. Dolls’ houses were a passion of Iris’s, her secret, guilty pleasure.
‘Aye, well, how could we?’ the biddy’s friend replied. ‘The field’s half the size of the castle grounds. Takings’ll be down, that’s for sure. Thanks to Lady Muck.’
As Iris took in the scene in front of her, she could only imagine the church would be raking it in. She didn’t think she’d ever seen a busier fair in her life. Children tore around in sticky-fingered posses, clutching melting ice creams from the Mr Whippy van and enjoying the rare taste of total freedom, while their parents gossiped and drank in the beer tent or sunned themselves outside at the stalls. In the background, a genuinely fabulous brass band provided a live sound track of classics from Elgar to Percy Fletcher to John McCabe, and as well as the usual bric-a-brac, toy and book stalls, Iris spotted traditional games, from coconut shies to splat-the-rat and wellie tossing. Some local teens had organised a ‘fun’ dog show, while the pony club was running considerably more serious horse competitions, from dressage to jumping and everything in between. A decent-sized, tartan marquee housed various farming exhibits from home-grown vegetables to ‘prettiest sheep’. Finally, up in the far left-hand corner of the field, a beautiful array of painted fishing boats had been lined up in a spectacular rainbow of blues and reds and gold, all vying for this year’s coveted ‘Best Decorated Boat’ trophy from the Pitfeldy RNLI.
‘They’re bonny, aren’t they? Better this year than last, I’d say.’ The landlady from the Fisherman’s Arms noticed Iris gazing at a glossy dark blue boat inscribed with what looked like black tribal markings. It was simpler than the others, but for Iris at least it stood out from the crowd.
‘They’re all amazing,’ Iris replied truthfully, wracking her brains for the woman’s name. They’d met only yesterday, when Iris had popped into the pub for lunch, but she’d forgotten her name already. Some symptoms of middle age were more irksome than others.
‘Of course, they’d have looked better up at the castle, you know, where they should have been,’ said the landlady. ‘But what can ye do? Until that dreadful American slings her hook, we’ll all have to grin and bear it, I suppose.’ She shook her platinum bobbed hair in disappointed resignation. ‘Anyway, nice tae see you again, Iris.’
‘And you.’ Beryl? Brenda?
It was no use. Luckily the landlady didn’t seem to notice that Iris had blanked on her name, and was as friendly today as she had been yesterday, when Iris had ventured down into Pitfeldy to pick up the keys to her rental house and explore the village for the first time. Some of it had been as she’d expected. The grey stone architecture and steep cobbled streets. The sense of community: kids playing in the street, mums chatting to each other on the high street and in the Asda car park, dads tinkering with their cars, revelling in the long-weekend freedom. But other things were a surprise. The poverty, for one, was pronounced in ways that weren’t familiar to Iris. Poundlands and pawn shops and Ladbrokes betting parlours seemed to have usurped half Pitfeldy’s available retail space, and the Job Centre, although closed over the weekend, was evidently much frequented. Also much frequented were the village’s two fish-and-chip vans, unsurprising, perhaps, in a fishing town, although judging by the size of some of the denizens of Pitfeldy, Iris suspected that the chips were outselling the fish six to one. And there was a video rental shop still going, something Iris hadn’t seen in the south for years.
But if Pitfeldy was poor, it still retained its charm and character, and almost all of that was due to the fishing fleet. Every morning the trawlers and line-fishing boats continued to head out in search of their respective catches: monkfish and flatfish for the twin-rig trawlers, haddock, sole and skate for the line boats and almost exclusively herring from the single-boat pelagic trawlers, designed to plunder only the North Sea’s upper waters. Once upon a time every boy in the village would have gone to sea when he reached adulthood as a matter of course. These days the fishermen were a dwindling group. But they were much respected in Pitfeldy and the signs of their trade were everywhere, from the pervasive smell of fish as much as half a mile from the harbour, to the fishing names and references in every pub, shop, park and civic building, to the ‘fishermen’s sweaters’ for sale in Millie’s, the expensive woollen shop next to the town hall, where the few tourists to the town were enticed to spend their money.
‘You’ll faind some lovely knitwear at Millie’s for a fraction of what ye’d be charged in London,’ Iris’s landlady, Mrs Rivers, had explained helpfully when Iris had popped into Murray House to pick up the keys. A primly dressed woman, originally from Edinburgh’s posh Morningside (famously described by one Scottish stand-up as the ‘Cultural kairnel of the known wairld’), Mrs Rivers was from the outset keen to establish Pitfeldy’s more genteel credentials in Iris’s mind. ‘Murray House might not be Pitfeldy Castle,’ she’d admitted, ‘but I think you’ll faind the home to be very tastefully appointed.’
‘I’m sure it’s lovely,’ Iris had said. She’d seen nothing so far except a living room piled high with her packing crates from Hampshire and London.
‘The Fisherman’s Arms does a much-admaired cheese-and-haddock pie, should you be peckish after unpacking all your boxes,’ Mrs Rivers had continued, pressing the keys into Iris’s palm. ‘And then, of course, once you’re settled in, we do now have Harriet’s on the high street for all your hair and beauty needs. Including gel manicures,’ she’d added excitedly, perhaps having glimpsed Iris’s stubby, bitten-down painter’s nails.
* * *
Back at the fair, Iris strolled down the hill to
wards the coconut shy.
‘Singles or doubles, miss?’ the bloke manning the coconut shy asked her. He wore a shiny pair of football shorts and no shirt, allowing his vast, sunburned beer belly to jut forward freely like an enormous, hairy egg.
Iris, who’d never heard of ‘doubles’ coconut throwing before, now noticed couples lining up to compete in pairs against one another. One of the pairs were Angus, the gillie from the castle, and a kind-looking girl, probably in her twenties, who was wearing a yellow sundress and a wide-brimmed hat to protect her fair skin. Angus’s girlfriend, presumably, although from the look of them they could almost have been brother and sister.
‘Doubles looks brilliant,’ she told beer-gut man wistfully, ‘but I’m here on my own, so I’d better go for singles, please.’
‘Story o’ my life, love. That’ll be a pound.’
‘Nah, don’t do that,’ came a voice from behind Iris. ‘I’ll pair up with you. We can take on the vicar and Mr Donnelly here.’
Iris spun round to find herself face to face with an odd-looking trio. The man who’d spoken to her was young, solidly built and handsome, with a mop of dark brown hair in constant danger of flopping into his sea-grey eyes. To his left was a woman around Iris’s age, in full vicar’s attire despite the heat, dog collar and all. The famous Reverend Michaela, presumably. Next to her was a thin, wiry man whom Iris judged to be in his sixties, in smart-casual khaki trousers and an open-necked shirt that revealed a small tuft of greying chest hair. He exuded an air of friendly authority and looked as if he might have been a bit of a looker in his youth.
‘Oh, OK. I suppose I could,’ Iris said awkwardly, feeling slightly thrown by both the young man’s directness and his attractiveness.
‘You won’t beat us,’ the vicar told Iris playfully. ‘The headmaster and I are a winning team, and Jamie here knows it. That’s why he’s been reduced to accosting strangers to try and help him.’