by Jane Renshaw
‘But did I do it?’ The grin had widened. ‘A spot of attempted murder to vary the monotony of midnight assignations?’
She was saved from having to respond by a car approaching the bridge. They moved back against the stone parapet, but the car slowed and the driver’s window came down.
It was Fiona. As if on cue.
‘Oh God,’ said Hector rudely. ‘Don’t tell me he’s insisted on seeing a doctor?’
Fiona laughed. ‘He has. Balfour said it’s probably just a sprained ankle but Max is sure it’s broken. And he can’t come in to the surgery, apparently. Unable to rise from his sickbed.’
‘Hungover. Halitosis so bad you can smell it from the corridor. This one’s going to test your Hippocratic Oath to its limit.’
◆◆◆
‘What, so you’re not even telling Mr Forbes that you’re going?’ Daisy her fellow skivvy was staring at Karen in horror.
‘Yeah, newsflash: we’re not their slaves? We have free will?’ She dumped her big rucksack down on the kitchen floor and took a seat at the table, scanning the food on offer for the servants’ breakfast. ‘My boyfriend’s picking me up in like ten minutes.’ Ade had called the landline and left a message for her that he was coming to get her. She didn’t want to think about why. ‘I’ve checked my job description and there’s nothing in it about having to work in any house except the House of Pitfourie. I’m out of here.’ She grabbed a slice of toast.
‘But there’s all the party mess to clear up. Can’t you at least help with that? After what happened to Mr Weber and all the dramas, we’re at sixes and sevens.’
‘Listen to yourself. How old are you – twenty?’
‘Nineteen.’
‘“We’re at sixes and sevens” – liked you’ve stepped straight out of a period drama.’
Daisy blushed, but she smiled. Wow. She took that as a compliment?
The door opened and there was Damian, saying, ‘Have you seen Hector?’
‘Nope.’ She spread marmalade on the toast. ‘To top off a spiffing weekend’s work – shagging half the guests and servants literally senseless, and then shoving the Twat down the stairs – he’s probably asking Balf to evict those terrible oiks at Kinty.’
‘I thought you weren’t speaking to me.’
‘Piss off, then.’
‘He’s not asking Balfour to evict the oiks.’
She looked up.
‘He did that last night.’ He was grinning at her. ‘Balfour said no. Much as he’d like to give “those wastrels” their marching orders, he can’t because of the tenancy agreement. There are probably legal loopholes, as Hector suggested, but an MP can’t be seen to be heavy-handed with his tenants, particularly tenants pretending to live sustainably. So if you were hoping an eviction would give you an excuse to go back home without losing face, you’re out of luck.’
‘Piss off, Damian.’
He did.
Daisy was gaping at her. Karen squished one side of the toast down on top of the other. She was about to take her first bite when the door opened again and there was Ade grinning at her and saying, ‘There’s a much better spread laid out in the morning room if you’d like to join me? Coffee and croissants?’
What was he like? He’d just wandered into the house and was strolling around? She shoved the toast into her mouth and he took her hand and they ran upstairs, almost colliding with Damian at the bend in the corridor. She pushed past him, Ade yanked open the baize door and they ran across the hall to the morning room.
‘Nice view,’ said Ade, panting a bit.
There was a view of the woods across the lawn, where a lop-sided snowman grinned back at them. Probably Ferg’s effort. There was a tempting smell of coffee and bacon and pastry. There were a load of covered silver platters on the sideboard and toast and croissants and stuff on the table, which she guessed Daisy and Magdalena must have left there. It was apparently traditional that the toffs wandered down to breakfast whenever they fancied and helped themselves, buffet style, which let the servants get on with other stuff and just come in now and then to clear up. Daisy needed to get onto that – there were a couple of plates and coffee cups used by the early risers that needed cleared.
Ade was wearing his bobble hat and manky old boiler suit, but, ludicrously, he tucked a snowy white napkin in as a bib. She took the chair opposite him and selected a croissant. An almond one. Her favourite.
Ade poured coffee from the silver pot into her cup. ‘How the other half live, eh?’
‘Indeed.’ She ate a bit of croissant. ‘Damian says Balf’s not going to evict you. Us. He can’t because of being an MP and not wanting the bad publicity.’
‘Sorry to intrude,’ said Damian’s voice. ‘I know: piss off. But I’m hungry.’
Karen sighed.
‘Now now, children,’ said Ade. ‘We’ve met, haven’t we? Damian, isn’t it?’
‘That’s right.’ Damian smiled, coming round the table to offer his hand. ‘And you’re... David?’
Ade suddenly stood, sending the chair shooting backwards into Damian, who half-fell against the table, rattling the crockery. Ade hauled him upright and shook his hand, gripping it tight. ‘Sorry!’ he smiled. ‘Bull in a china shop, that’s me! It’s Adrian, actually.’
‘Ade!’ said Karen.
But Damian was smiling back at him. ‘Ah, yes, of course. My mistake.’
‘Are you all right?’ Ade said, still holding onto Damian’s hand. ‘Sorry about that.’
‘Oh, don’t worry about it.’ Damian finally extracted his hand and repositioned the chair. ‘Furniture can be tricky, can’t it? Unpredictable. The carpenter maybe didn’t speak nicely enough to the chakras. Do trees have chakras?’ He looked Ade up and down. ‘Gatecrashing breakfast is a new one on me, but I don’t imagine Balfour will mind. Seated next to you at the breakfast table, even his future son-in-law might start to look good.’ He raised his eyebrows at Karen. ‘He can tell himself it could have been worse.’ He gestured at Ade as if he was something tracked in on the sole of someone’s shoe.
Ade was suddenly in his face, a fistful of cashmere twisted in his hand. Behind Damian, the door opened and Ferg’s stupid face was blinking at them.
Damian smiled.
And she finally realised what he was doing.
‘No! Ade!’ she rapped out. ‘He’s not worth it!’
But Ade had slammed Damian up against the wall. Ferg just stood there. Karen ran round the table and grabbed Ade’s arm.
‘He’s trying to provoke you! So he can get you charged with assault!’
Very slowly, Ade released his grip. He patted Damian’s chest, smoothing the cashmere, and looked from him to Ferg. ‘Well, fortunately for us all, I don’t believe in violence.’
‘Tell that to the chair,’ said Damian.
‘You fucking manipulative bastard!’ Karen spat.
A conviction for assault could mean a jail sentence, given that Ade probably – she didn’t know, but she was guessing – had previous convictions. Damian must have told Ferg to give him a few minutes and then come in, but do nothing to intervene. So there’d be a witness.
‘Let’s go,’ she said to Ade. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
She couldn’t look at Damian. What had Ade ever done to him? It was like Ade was some lower form of life whose existence offended him, a maggot or a cockroach that needed squashed.
Out in the hall, she started fuming: ‘That –’
But the rant would have to wait, because Claire and Daisy were out here, carrying trays of dirty glasses across to the baize door, and Perdita and Hector were coming down the stairs with Cat’s mum, Dr McAllister.
‘It’s what’s termed a grade one sprain,’ she was saying.
‘That’s the least serious?’ said Perdita.
Dr McAllister nodded. ‘A slightly torn ligament. He just needs to elevate it, rest it... But there’s really no need for him to stay in bed. If it doesn’t improve in a few days, he should make an
appointment and come in to the surgery. Or see his own doctor.’
‘His doctor’s in London,’ said Perdita. ‘Thanks so much for setting our minds at rest, Fiona.’
‘And I’m sure Max will be anxious to apologise for calling you out for nothing,’ Hector added. ‘When he’s um... feeling better.’
Dr McAllister didn’t look at him, she looked down at the stairs, but she was smiling to herself. What was it all these women saw in Hector? Even really clever ones like Dr McAllister? It just made no sense.
The Forbes genes were so messed up. And Damian had a double whammy because his mum was so evil, and with the nurture factor on top... Why had Karen not realised before what a bastard he was? Just because he was quite entertaining, because life was never dull when Damian was around – and up until now that had kind of been Karen’s priority – she must have gone all this time, all these years, overlooking the basic, indisputable fact that Damian Forbes was fundamentally a shit.
Just like his brother. Poor Claire was so busy pretending not to look at Hector that she was holding the tray at an angle and stuff was going to fall off it.
‘Claire – watch out,’ Karen called to her.
Claire righted the tray just in time, but one of the glasses fell over. Karen set it upright.
‘Thanks,’ Claire muttered.
Karen looked up at Hector and said loudly: ‘Is he still saying you pushed him down the stairs?’
‘Oh, probably.’
‘What?’ said Dr McAllister.
‘Yep, Hector’s the prime suspect for pushing the Twat down the stairs,’ Karen said over her shoulder as she and Ade followed the others through the baize door.
On the other side of it, Claire banged the tray down on a table.
‘You okay?’ said Karen.
She nodded.
‘He’s not worth it.’ And as Claire looked past her: ‘Um, this is Ade? My boyfriend?’
‘Hi.’ Ade reached past Karen to offer his hand with a smile.
They made a quick get-away. Ade had parked the white van with ‘Kinty Fallen Stock’ on it in the courtyard. Next to all the expensive four-by-fours, it brought the tone down very satisfactorily. He heaved her rucksack into the cab and she climbed up after it. It felt so good to be out of there.
‘So that’s the housekeeper,’ said Ade as he reversed out. ‘I’d expected someone more along the lines of Mrs Doyle. I’m assuming he’s shagging her?’
‘Yeah. Yeah, he is.’
Ade shook his head. ‘Droit du seigneur, eh?’
She didn’t know what that meant, but she nodded. ‘Makes you sick.’
◆◆◆
There were two massive dishwashers in a large room off the kitchen. Whoever had decided on that location hadn’t considered the people who actually had to use them – everything that was unloaded had to be lugged through to the cupboards in the kitchen.
When Claire mentioned this to Magdalena she just grimaced, banging about the kitchen putting the clean crockery and cutlery away. Claire wondered how long she’d worked here. Probably a few years, anyway.
‘Do you live in?’ she asked.
‘Yes. Flat over laundry.’
‘I’m in a cottage in the woods, which is a bit spooky, to be honest. Particularly as it’s the cottage the man who died lived in. John Cameron.’ Thank God she’d been given Pond Cottage as her accommodation – it was proving a very handy way of bringing John into a conversation. ‘He called himself Chimp? Did you know him?’
Magdalena, stopping with a plate in her hand, frowned. ‘Yes. Chimp. He was a nice man. He came here, did some work, but don’t tell Mr Forbes, okay? He was mooning. As handyman.’ She opened a cupboard and put the plate away.
So John had been scoping the place out. Interesting. Had he found something to suggest that the Twat was involved in Hector’s criminal network? Had the Twat rumbled him? Was it possible that he had been responsible for John’s death?
She improvised: ‘I’d heard that Chimp had become... a bit disillusioned with his employer.’
Magdalena’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Who tells you this?’
‘Oh – one of the men he worked with.’
‘Mr Forbes is very good employer.’ She glared at Claire. ‘Very good estate.’
‘Well, yes,’ Claire agreed hurriedly. ‘That’s been my experience, so I was surprised to hear that about Chimp.’
‘On this estate, Aucharblet, if an old person wants firewood, they buy. At Pitfourie, all have logs delivered. No charge!’ She widened her eyes at Claire. ‘And part of Chimp’s job, it was to help old people. Fix leaking tap, fix doorbell, fix window, fix slates on roof, help with television when old folks can’t find right blooming button. Not just Pitfourie tenants. All. All pensioners in village, in countryside around.’
Blimey.
How much must all that cost?’
Perhaps that was the way it had always been, in his father’s time, and Hector was just carrying on the noblesse oblige family tradition. But he could have stopped it. He could have called a halt to all the freebies at any point, and he hadn’t.
‘There’s also a care home, isn’t there, run by the estate...?’
‘The Pines.’ Magdalena nodded. ‘My friend, she works there. It is nice. Very happy for the old folks. Mr Forbes, he visits often, and his brother too. They visit, they talk, they play Scrabble.’
Scrabble.
‘Right.’
Claire turned away to the worktop and stabbed a knife into its slot in the block.
Could she be more confused? She wanted to believe that Hector was the person Magdalena thought him, but really, what did this woman know? Okay so it was a good estate, they did good things...
He played Scrabble with the old folks.
How could someone who did that be a bad person?
33
Wilkins looked back at her from the other side of the glass. One of Karen’s earliest memories was of standing at the dining room table downstairs – she’d have been about five years old – with Damian and Anna and the two Drummond brothers from the home farm, watching in anticipation as Mr Forbes, Damian’s dad, turned the key in Wilkins’s side. He had told them that Wilkins used to have a job painting the Forth Railway Bridge but then there’d been a problem with health and safety and he’d been fired without a reference.
‘How could he paint?’ one of the Drummond kids had objected.
Mr Forbes had nodded. ‘That was part of the problem.’
She’d only been a little kid but she hadn’t been daft. ‘Not even a real mouse could have a job, and Wilkins isn’t real.’
‘Robots make cars, don’t they?’ Mr Forbes had asked her.
And as she’d watched Wilkins somersault his way down the table, laughing her head off with the others, she had wondered – just for a millisecond – if maybe it was true. Could it be true that Wilkins had worked on the Forth Railway Bridge? And now every time she went over the bridge on a train, this ridiculous image came into her head of Wilkins with a paint brush, up on one of the high girders, somersaulting along it, closer and closer to the edge. A health and safety nightmare.
She opened the cabinet door, grabbed Wilkins and shoved him in her pocket.
Ade had told her to get something of Damian’s to pay him back, and Wilkins fitted the bill perfectly. She ran down the stairs and into the study. She was meant to be dusting all the books in the open bookcases in here. Damian always had his nose in a book. He’d be pissed off if a whole load went missing.
◆◆◆
Claire sat at the kitchen table at Pond Cottage, scrolling down the search results on her tablet while grazing her way through the Chocolatier’s Table. After almost two whole days of drudgery at Aucharblet, she had a free afternoon and had decided to spend it searching the cottage and trawling the internet for details of the accident – as opposed to just sitting and stressing about what Phil and DCI Stewart were going to say if and when they found out about her catalogue of transgres
sions and, let’s face it, out-and-out misconduct.
She selected a Blackcurrant Bombe and let it melt in her mouth as she tried to focus on her next steps.
The cameras, which she’d concealed in the hedge at the front and a conifer at the back, hadn’t caught anyone entering the cottage in her absence. Did that mean that they’d got what they’d been looking for first time round? Still, she needed to do another search, this time looking at the fabric of the building, the floorboards and skirting boards and the wood around the windows, for spaces in which something could have been hidden.
She’d do a bit more Googling and then make a start.
There were plenty of old articles about Hector’s father’s death in the online archives of the Press and Journal, the newspaper to which everyone up here seemed to subscribe. She started with the first one and worked forward.
Laird of Pitfourie dead in horror crash
Police are appealing for witnesses following a fatal accident yesterday morning on the B9677 in which Alexander Forbes, 58, died and his son Damian, 7, suffered life-changing injuries when the Volvo sedan in which they were travelling collided with a wall. The accident is currently the subject of an ongoing police investigation, but no other vehicle is thought to have been involved.
Tenants and workers on the Pitfourie Estate today expressed their shock at the death of a popular laird. Bill Coull, Pitfourie’s head gamekeeper, said today, ‘None of us can believe he’s gone. He was a fine man and will be sorely missed.’ Local shopkeeper Violet Smart added, ‘He was very much an old school sort of landowner with a deep sense of obligation to the community. His death is a sad loss to us all.’
It is a loss that is also keenly felt more widely.
The article went on to quote various people from Aberdeenshire Council and conservation groups, and also Balfour Jarvie MP: ‘Alec Forbes was the best friend I ever had. He was great company, had a wicked sense of humour, but above all he was a thoroughly decent human being. The kind of man you’d want at your side in a tight spot. We’ll all miss him terribly. My deepest sympathies are with his wife Irina and sons Hector and Damian.’