by M. B. Shaw
‘What happened?’ asked Iris.
‘Well, I wasn’t there,’ said Jock. ‘All of this is what Edwin told me later. But according to him they argued about Angus. Edwin was already drunk when Beatrice showed up, which didn’t help matters. Anyway, at some point things got physical between them and he pushed her. She fell backwards, hitting her head on one of these stones.’ He touched the palm of his hand to his own skull to mark the spot where Beatrice Contorini had suffered her fatal injury. ‘Edwin said she died instantly.’
Iris’s mind raced. She could picture the scene: Edwin, drunk, shocked and panicked, already mentally confused. The girl, lying dead in the open.
‘When did you first hear about this?’ she asked Jock.
‘About two hours after it happened.’ He screwed up his face, as if willing the awful memories to go away. ‘I’d just got back from Edinburgh and Angus came running into the castle. I’ll never forget it. He was as white as a sheet, crying uncontrollably. We were in my study.’
‘It was Angus who told you?’ Iris asked. ‘Not Edwin?’
‘No.’ Jock shook his head slowly. ‘Angus said nothing, and I mean nothing. Not a damned word. The poor boy was mute with shock. But it was obvious something pretty serious must have happened, so I put him in my car and we drove up to the woods.’ Jock took two deep breaths to steady himself. ‘Evidently, he’d heard a scream and had headed to the bothy. I think he thought Edwin might have been injured, caught in a badger trap or something. In any case, he arrived here and found – he found –’ Jock started shaking. ‘By the time he brought me back here, Edwin was already trying to cover the body with rocks. He was babbling about Linda, hateful things. He was out of his mind.’
‘So what did you do?’ asked Iris.
‘I slapped him,’ said Jock. ‘To stop the hysteria.’
‘And then?’
‘Then we buried her.’
‘All three of you?’
‘No. Just Edwin and me. Angus couldn’t. I told him to go home.’
‘And did he?’
‘No. He wouldn’t touch her, but he insisted on staying. He didn’t want to leave her. It was awful.’ Jock’s voice broke. ‘I remember him lying down on the ground sobbing, with his face literally pressed into the stones we’d used to cover the grave site. I had to physically drag him away in the end. Edwin couldn’t do it. Couldn’t even speak.’
‘Tell me about what happened in the days that followed?’ Iris asked eventually, once Jock had regained his composure.
‘What do you mean? Nothing happened.’
‘Well, did Angus not blame his father for what had happened?’
‘No, I don’t think so,’ said Jock. ‘It was an accident.’
‘According to Edwin.’
‘According to Edwin, yes. But Angus believed him, and so did I. His grief, Edwin’s grief and guilt over what had happened – that was real. You couldn’t fake that.’
‘He wasn’t guilty enough to go to the police though, was he?’ Iris observed. ‘To face justice for what he’d done, even if it was an accident? To put that poor girl’s mother out of her misery?’
‘No,’ Jock admitted. ‘He was afraid of being sent to prison. So was I. Angus, I think, would have gladly gone to the police. It would have given him some relief, poor boy. But he’d already lost his mother, and now this girl who’d been his first real love. He couldn’t lose Edwin and me too.’
‘So, you all just lived with it?’
Jock stared ahead blankly. It was dark now, and his expression was hard to make out, even from so close.
‘We all just lived with it,’ he repeated. ‘For weeks we waited for the police to turn up at the castle. For someone to come looking for Beatrice. But no one did.’
‘Until Paola.’
‘Until Paola,’ Jock sighed. ‘That was the first time I learned –’ His voice broke again and Iris finished the sentence for him.
‘That Beatrice may have been your biological daughter?’
He nodded. ‘And Angus’s sister. Yes. But as I say, that wasn’t what brought Paola here the first time. She was simply a mother, searching for her missing daughter. She’d retraced Beatrice’s steps as far as Edinburgh by that time, and she already knew about Angus and the miscarriage. The first time she came to the castle I was here on my own, thank God. Fiona was off on some months-long course in Surrey – we were spending a lot of time apart by then – and Angus was away, too. He and Edwin were in London, visiting an early-onset Alzheimer’s specialist that I’d found for them.’
‘And Paola had never been to Pitfeldy before?’ Iris asked, thinking of Eileen Gregory’s testimony. ‘Years before, I mean, when Emma and Rory were still at boarding school.’
‘No. Never.’ He seemed surprised by the question, and Iris had no doubt that his answer was genuine. Which meant that the housekeeper had either lied, or that she’d got confused, muddling up Paola Contorini with one of Jock’s myriad earlier mistresses. That was certainly possible.
‘So she met with you alone?’
‘Yes. She showed me pictures of Beatrice and I did my best to put her off. I told her that her daughter had never been to the estate; that Angus hadn’t seen or heard from her since they broke up.’
‘Did she believe you?’
‘At first I think she did, yes. But once she started to recognise me, things got tricky. She was certain we’d met before, but she wasn’t sure when or where. Then, about two weeks after that first visit she came to the castle again, very distressed and clearly the worse for drink. She’d made the connection between me and Massimo Giannotti, and she started accusing me of having attacked her, and of being Beatrice’s father.’
‘What did you do?’ asked Iris. ‘I’m assuming Angus and Edwin had returned by then?’
‘Yes. But I lied and told her Angus was travelling in Europe. I knew that if she met him in person and started asking questions there was a good chance he would break down and admit the truth. So I tried to calm Paola down. I admitted I’d been at the Danieli. I denied attacking her, but I offered to take a paternity test and I think that mollified her quite a bit.’
‘Did you take one?’
‘Not in the end, no. The fact is, Paola wasn’t sure herself what had happened that night. And the main thing she wanted by this point, of course, was simply to find her child. So I talked her round, with the help of a lot of whisky. I offered to help her search for Beatrice, and suggested she stay at the castle for a few days, while we looked into things together. She agreed. Once she was safely asleep in one of the guest rooms I rang Edwin and told him to go away for a while, taking Angus with him.’
‘And he did?’
‘Yes,’ said Jock. ‘I can’t remember where they went. It’s all a bit of blur now. But they both left and I had a few days to try to talk Paola down from the edge and convince her that her daughter had never been here. At one point I think I nearly managed it. She was close to giving up and going back to Italy.’
‘But she didn’t, obviously?’
‘No.’ Jock rubbed his eyes wearily. ‘She didn’t. One day she walked into the village and ran into John Donnelly at the Fisherman’s Arms. Donnelly told her that he thought he recognised Beatrice – which he did, of course, from the school trip to Venice. Not from here. That was the irony. But Paola didn’t want to hear it. She came back to the castle screaming blue murder at me, insisting that we call the police and tell them what we knew. I knew then that there was no way around it.’
‘You killed her?’ Iris kept her voice low and even, as unthreatening as she could make it despite her pounding heart.
‘Yes,’ said Jock. ‘I strangled her with my dressing gown cord, in Mary’s old bedroom. It was extremely quick. Then I took her out to the bothy and buried her beside her daughter.’
‘Your daughter too,’ Iris reminded him.
Jock looked at her, stricken. ‘Yes, I think so. My daughter too. Poor girl! I’ve buried both my daughters, Iris. Can
you imagine what that feels like?’
‘You still have Emma,’ Iris reminded him.
Jock nodded and looked away sadly. He’d like to love her, but he can’t, thought Iris. She wondered if that might change now, now that the truth was finally coming out. Stranger things had happened.
‘When Edwin and Angus came home the next morning, I told them what had happened,’ Jock continued, resuming his confession. ‘That I’d had to kill Beatrice’s mother, to protect them both, myself and the estate.’ He looked at Iris pleadingly, willing her to accept this rationalisation.
‘How did they react?’ she asked.
‘Edwin went into shock, I think. He was already mentally so fragile. I think Paola was the last straw.’
‘And Angus?’
Jock bit his lip, fighting to contain his emotions.
‘He cried. He cried and cried. Then he hit me.’ He raised a gnarled hand to his cheek, remembering the blow. ‘Which I deserved, of course. After that we never spoke of it again. Not until you and Kathy took that walk and the dogs found… what they found.’
‘So he forgave you?’
Jock frowned. ‘I don’t know if he forgave me. I hope so. But I don’t know. What I do know, now more than ever, is that the poor boy never forgave himself.’
‘And you?’
‘I blocked it out over the years, I suppose. Tried to move on. But it was always there. If I’d never slept with Linda, never betrayed Edwin in the first place, perhaps I wouldn’t have done it. If I hadn’t owed him so much, and loved Angus so much – I don’t know. But the guilt ate away at me and I took it out on Fiona and the children and myself. I was lost until I met Kathy. She made me feel alive again, happy again, things I’d thought weren’t possible. But now she’s gone too, and I’ve no one to blame but myself.’
A stirring in the woodland behind them made both Iris and Jock turn around. Haley, looking smaller than ever beneath the towering pines, took a few steps towards them, the torch in his hands making dancing patterns of light on the bothy’s broken stones.
‘Ah.’ Jock nodded, looking from Iris to Haley and back again, resigned rather than reproachful. ‘I see.’
He’s relieved, thought Iris. He wants this to be over.
‘Jock MacKinnon.’ Haley’s voice rang out like a clarion in the still night air. ‘I’m arresting you for the murder of Paola Contorini…’
Chapter Thirty-six
Iris pressed her face against the train window, watching the wild Scottish landscape as it shot by like a roll of speeded-up film. Every few seconds the sea would come into view, great grey-white waves frothing madly as they crashed against the shingled shore, before the track looped around another headland and it was snatched from sight. From the comfort of her empty first-class compartment, Iris took it all in: the high, scrubby moors, dotted here and there with pine forests in dark green and brown. The fresh snow of the last few days had all but melted, but there was still an almost visible chill in the crisp, blue-skied January air, a brittle frosting that made the blades of grass on the verges shimmer stiffly and gave a silvery, metallic sheen to the rivers and lochs.
It was a landscape Iris had come to love, and a part of her was sad to be saying goodbye to Pitfeldy. But at the same time, she was ready to leave Scotland. She would miss her cosy little haven at Murray House and Stuart Haley’s easy companionship. She would miss sex with Jamie Ingall, and the way he managed to bring her out of herself and forced her to notice and take pleasure in the simple things in life. But she wouldn’t miss the morbid gloom of the castle, or the pervasive sense of sadness that still hung over Pitfeldy woods, even now that the truth had been brought to light and justice, of a sort, had been done.
‘You look like you’re miles away.’
Kathy Miller, sitting beside her looking as preposterously beautiful as ever in a pair of black cigarette pants and a bottle-green cashmere polo neck that brought out her eyes, rested a hand on Iris’s shoulder.
‘It’s not too late to change your mind, you know. Come with me to Tahiti!’
‘I can’t,’ said Iris. ‘I appreciate the offer, but I really, truly can’t.’
A few days after a very difficult Christmas, Kathy had suddenly decided that she would be going on what would have been her and Jock’s honeymoon by herself, and had invited Iris to join her. ‘I need a break – we both do. And the hotel is supposed to be totally amazing. It has these cool little huts with floors made of glass, and you can see all the fish and coral and everything.’
It pleased Iris to see Kathy coming back to life, even if she was surprised it had happened so soon after Jock’s confession and arrest. But perhaps she shouldn’t be surprised. Her latest sitter was nothing if not a survivor. And where better than an idyllic island to begin the next chapter of the wild ride that was Kathy Miller’s life?
‘You will let me know, won’t you, when they set a date for Rory’s trial?’
‘Of course,’ said Iris. ‘Stuart Haley’s promised to keep me up to date with any news.’
It was ironic to think that, after everything that had happened, Rory would be the only member of the MacKinnon family actually to go on trial. Inexplicably, he had continued to plead innocent of both the poisoning of Milo and Sam Sam and the campaign of poison-pen letters to Kathy, which Haley had finally charged him with on New Year’s Day. There would be no trial for the Contorini murders, as Jock had pleaded guilty to killing Paola, and Edwin had been deemed mentally unfit to face court proceedings for what likely would have been a manslaughter charge for Beatrice’s death. Angus had also admitted his own part in helping dispose of the bodies. Jock was right; he had never forgiven himself, and almost seemed disappointed when the lawyers told him he would spend no more than a year in prison. But Hannah had stuck by him, and he appeared to be slowly coming to terms with the new realities, not only that Jock was his real father but that Beatrice may have been his biological sister.
‘Do you think Rory will change his plea?’ Kathy asked.
‘I don’t know,’ said Iris. ‘I doubt it. I think he’s too entitled to admit his own guilt, even when the evidence is overwhelming.’
After a lengthy second interview with Eileen Gregory, Haley surmised that she had not written the notes, but that someone had been swiping the envelopes from her office at the castle. Now that they had Rory’s fingerprints on file, from his dog-poisoning arrest, they were able to prove conclusively that that someone had been him. Iris had filled in the last piece of the puzzle, remembering the old-fashioned typewriter in Fiona MacKinnon’s Edinburgh flat. It seemed that Rory had typed the letters during visits to his mother, who may or may not have known about them, and then had found opportunities to leave them, once or twice persuading one of the maids to leave them for him, where Kathy would find them during his many visits to the castle.
‘I always meant to ask you’ – Iris thought suddenly – ‘at the Halloween party, I saw Rory pull you aside – it looked very heated. What were the two of you talking about?’
Kathy bit her lower lip awkwardly. ‘I suppose I may as well tell you. At the time I didn’t want Jock to know. But Rory had tried it on with me, several times, in fact, when I first moved into the castle.’
‘No!’ Iris was genuinely shocked.
Kathy nodded. ‘He acted like he hated me for pushing out his mom. And I think he did, to some degree. But he also felt humiliated that I wasn’t interested in him sexually. That I chose his father over him.’
‘Wow. I can imagine,’ Iris murmured.
‘I never thought he’d go as far as he did, though,’ said Kathy, swallowing hard. ‘When I think about poor Milo and Sam Sam. I just hope they lock him up and throw away the key.’
It was striking, Iris thought, how much more emotional she felt about her dogs’ deaths than she did about her fiancé turning out to have been a murderer who would spend the remaining years of his life in prison. Indeed, Kathy’s relationship with Jock continued to be an enigma to Iris. Many t
imes, over Christmas at Murray House, Kathy had expressed ongoing love and sympathy for him. ‘We weren’t meant to be,’ she told Iris, almost whimsically. ‘But I know how much he loved me. I’ll always hold him in my heart.’
What a strange thing love is, Iris thought. Kathy’s for Jock. Jock’s for Edwin. Beatrice’s for Angus. Paola’s for Beatrice. What strange and terrible things it drives us to.
‘You know what really gets me,’ said Kathy, warming her anger towards Rory like a flame between cupped hands. ‘Now that Jock’s in prison, the castle and estate will automatically pass to Rory. I mean, how unfair is that?’
‘Very,’ Iris agreed. ‘Does poor Emma not get anything, then?’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t worry about Emma,’ Kathy scoffed. ‘She may be many things, but she’s certainly not poor. Fergus’s dad’s sitting on an estate the size of Balmoral, and there’s a private income to go with it. Emma’s attachment to Pitfeldy is purely sentimental, believe me. No, that’s not what bugs me. It’s the thought of Rory living there, lording it over everyone. I actually heard a rumour that he’s moving his mother back in. Can you believe that?’
‘Well, it was Fiona’s home for thirty years,’ Iris reminded Kathy gently.
‘I guess so,’ said Kathy. Shrugging, she turned her attention back to her phone, her bad mood dissipating easily and instantly, like dandelion seeds in the wind. ‘How long till we’re in London, exactly?’
* * *
About three hours later with a slow creaking of brakes, the train finally pulled into the platform at King’s Cross.
‘I guess this is goodbye?’ Kathy pouted, once they’d pulled their respective suitcases through the barrier. ‘Are you sure you won’t change your mind? Bora Bora’s a whole lot warmer than London in January, you know.’
‘I know,’ said Iris, hugging her. ‘And I hope you have a wonderful time and meet some gorgeous, bare-chested, shark-spearing local and live happily ever after on the white sand. But I have a dreary flat in Clapham calling my name.’
‘Thank you, Iris,’ Kathy said sincerely.