Death by Marzipan

by John Burke

  ‘Had your damn boss on the phone,’ Hector Crombie was growling at his daughter. ‘Damned impertinence. Thought it’d be more tactful coming from him than from you. Tactful? Telling me who I ought to have on the premises to suit them.’

  ‘Oh, dear. I didn’t realise he’d be going behind my back.’

  ‘You knew about his plan?’

  ‘He was on the phone to me first thing this morning,’ said Caroline. ‘Wouldn’t it be a great idea for me to be their on-the-spot reporter? Use my old room, and stay in the middle of it all. Our own reporter in the thick of it, member of the family, exclusive coverage. Take a cameraman on a conducted tour of the empty spaces, dig out some photographs of what used to be there. And clinch it all with a juicy murder story.’

  ‘Bad enough to have those scunners trampling all over the place. I’ll no’ be having your cameras and nosey parkers as well.’

  ‘And about the murder, could I ask the police to let me make an appeal to camera, direct from the house, right from the heart, for any information the public can offer?’

  ‘I’ve told ye, I’ll no’ be standing for it.’ Caroline put her arm round him. ‘And I’ve already told them, there’s nothing doing.’

  ‘That feller thought all he had to do was butter me up and —’

  ‘Nothing doing,’ Caroline repeated gently.

  She caught sight of Lesley, and was relieved to join her and lead the way upstairs to what had once been her own room.

  ‘Which I have no intention of ever occupying again,’ she announced, pulling an armchair away from the window for Lesley, while she sprawled on the bed. ‘I imagine you want to ask me some questions.’

  ‘The usual things, which I hope you won’t take objection to.’

  ‘Such as, where was I at the time of the murder?’

  ‘Exactly. Where were you?’

  ‘Exactly,’ Caroline parried, ‘what time did it take place?’

  ‘We estimate about three to four days ago. Maybe five. All that dragging downstream hasn’t helped.’

  ‘Meaning it could just about tie in with the robbery?’

  ‘Or a short time before it. That’s what we’ll have to establish.’

  ‘If it’s around that time, then I was in the recording studio, doing a couple of voiceovers.’

  ‘A whole day? Or over a couple of days?’

  Caroline pushed back a strand of hair above her ear. ‘In and out. The ordinary routine. I can probably work out the exact hours. And they’ll be logged in the studio.’

  ‘You knew Pringle before Lady Crombie … that is, before Mrs Pringle married your father and became Lady Crombie?’

  ‘Oh, indeed I did.’ It came out bitterly. ‘He was a pest round the studios. Forever shoving himself in, trying to get references to his company — and himself — on air, pretending a plug was a news item.’

  ‘You didn’t much care for him?’

  ‘No, I did not. Crap with legs.’

  ‘And …?’

  ‘His wife came along. Brigid Pringle. Only she insisted on being called Brigid Weir. Coming along just to see if Simon was living up to the big business expectations she had promoted for him, maybe. And my father was there one day, and they met. I was the one who introduced her to my father.’

  ‘You mean you already had a steady job with the company before Mrs Pringle, or Miss Weir, or whatever, came on the scene?’

  ‘Of course.’ Caroline stared. ‘Now, just a minute — has she been saying something?’

  ‘I got a vague impression that she might have been influential in furthering your career. That sort of thing was up her street.’

  ‘Not bloody likely. As you said, I was already there before she ever showed up. Bad enough, people thinking I’m only there because of my family background. That’s been an impediment rather than a help. And on top of that, Brigid … no, no way.’

  Lesley steered them back to the main subject. ‘So it wasn’t until you had introduced them that a relationship began?’

  ‘She began it.’ Caroline blurted it out; then adopted a more measured tone, holding herself in check. ‘She expressed interest in our family and the estate, and must have done some reading up on our traditions. Then, when she’d divorced Pringle, she just happened to meet my father again, and just happened to find that they had … a lot in common.’

  ‘You don’t know the circumstances of the divorce? Your father wasn’t involved?’

  ‘He certainly was not.’

  Caroline had said that she was the one who had introduced her father to Brigid. Lesley suspected that she had never forgiven herself for it.

  ‘You can’t think of any reason why Pringle should have come back into the grounds? He couldn’t have expected much of a welcome. And he didn’t get one.’

  ‘It looks to me as though he got the welcome he deserved,’ said Caroline quietly.

  From you? thought Lesley. Aloud she said: ‘Thank you, Miss Crombie. Perhaps you can think back and see if anything significant occurs to you. Things do swim up out of one’s memory, you know.’

  ‘Yes, I do know.’

  ‘You did say you’re definitely not moving back in here?’

  ‘Definitely not.’

  ‘May I have an address and phone number where I can reach you?’

  Caroline handed her a card, with a Linlithgow address and phone number on one side, and the studio number and an extension number on the reverse.

  The questions she had raised with Lady Crombie went on fermenting in Lesley’s mind. Had Brigid had specific reasons, or even just an accumulated hatred, strong enough to drive her to kill her treacherous second husband? Or to hire someone to do the job for her? Because he was up to something again? And if so, what?

  Or was her best line of enquiry the one about Simon Pringle being one of the thieves, who had fallen out with the rest of them because he was, as usual, playing some kind of double game? Just how much useful background could he have contributed about the layout of the house?

  And if Lord Crombie had come across him skulking in the grounds …?

  In spite of what Brigid had said, wouldn’t an ex-soldier and game sportsman be capable of ridding himself of a pest who threatened the even tenor of life here? Possibly, even, suspecting his wife of backsliding and being ready to do some sort of devious deal with her ex-husband, provided the terms were right? Worrying about the threat to the tenor of his life here … deciding to remove the canker before it could take hold.

  This was getting too theoretical. She would have to sort out the separate strands and avoid letting them snarl up into misleading patterns.

  From outside there came the faint sound of tyres on the gravel. Lesley reached the top of the steps in time to see Greg Dacre getting out of his car. She hurried down to intercept him, ready to fire a few questions before he could brace himself to contrive a defence.

  And behind her on the terrace, Brigid Crombie was saying in a voice clear enough not to need raising to a shout: ‘Right, let’s have it: just what did that ridiculous woman have to say for herself?’

  10

  Sullen darkness had settled down on the afternoon long before the real dusk. Late summer lightning flickered along the ridges like strobe lights in a faraway disco.

  Greg supposed that he ought to be flattered by the eagerness of two women each wanting to claim his undivided attention. But between them they had all the menace of two key figures on a selection board who proposed pinning him down in their crossfire until he admitted he wasn’t up to the job. And he was still trying to cope with the news that in his absence they had found Simon murdered. He ought to be given time to work out his own thoughts on that death. He had long ago learned to associate any number of unpleasant things with his one-time friend, but never anything quite so unpleasant as his manner of departing this life. Simon, beaten at last. Somehow taking that one final step too far, and getting his comeuppance. You couldn’t feel sorrow, not after all this time and so many dirty tricks. B
ut still it was one hell of a shock. Simon, out of the picture at last.

  Over Brigid’s protests, DI Gunn insisted that legal necessity gave her the right to fire the first salvo. In what Greg had known as the library and main workroom for Brigid and himself, she set him in a corner some way away from a screen whose writhing shapes kept plucking at his attention, and said: ‘I’d like you to tell me anything you know about the late Mr Pringle. Anything that might explain why somebody wanted to kill him.’

  ‘Plenty of scope there.’

  ‘Please, Mr Dacre. This is serious. We do need a lead.’ She waited a moment, then fired it at him: ‘I gather that Lady Crombie, your ex-wife, was also Pringle’s ex-wife. Would you have any reason to believe that she wanted him out of the way?’

  He wasn’t going to tell her that this was the first thought that had crossed his mind when he heard the news on the radio this morning. Not that Brigid would have strangled Simon with her own hands, but she would certainly have known exactly where to go to hire the necessary executioner.

  And laid herself open to blackmail?

  Or was Simon himself already in the blackmail business, and that was why he’d met his end in the Baldonald grounds?

  ‘Mr Dacre.’ DI Gunn dragged him back to the present.

  Greg stared around the room. He was sure he could contribute nothing. The flickering of the screen was irritatingly hypnotic. But she was expecting some response. ‘My ex-wife is, as you say, also Simon Pringle’s ex-wife. From what I’ve gathered, she had good reason to leave him, and good reason to detest him. But that was quite some time ago. I can’t see why she should suddenly up and clobber him one.’

  ‘And your own experiences with the late Mr Pringle were so far back that you no longer felt any violent antagonism, either?’

  ‘So Brigid’s been filling you in on that? Much embroidered, I imagine. Not that Simon’s activities needed much embroidered, to bring them out in their true colours.’

  ‘You do sound as if you still dislike him. Quite a lot.’

  ‘He was a nasty little creep, and I’m not sorry he’s out of this world now, but he was nothing to do with me any longer.’

  ‘And you can’t think of anybody else who might want him dead?’

  Like a kick in the groin came the thought of Ishbel. His daughter, whom he hadn’t seen over all these years, but who had fallen like her mother into Simon’s clutches. Where was she? If they were still living together, why hadn’t she come forward the moment that news of his death reached the papers and the news bulletins? Maybe she had, and the detective wasn’t telling him. Or maybe she was already on her way. Or maybe not. She might have good reasons — or very bad reasons — for not wanting to show up.

  ‘Mr Dacre?’ said DI Gunn sharply.

  Until he knew just how much Brigid had told her about Simon and Ishbel, he had to stall.

  ‘Has it occurred to you,’ he improvised, ‘that Simon might have been a ringleader in the robbery? Or at any rate an essential part of it. Slinking into the grounds to make a last-minute appraisal. Or even …’ The euphoria of his confrontation with Blake and the others came surging back, and he let the ash from his nonexistent cigarette drop on to his lap, while breathing smoke languorously out through his nose and narrowing his eyes in thought. He went on earnestly: ‘Or even jumping the gun, getting here early and trying to set something up for himself. Only — yes, this could be it — they didn’t trust him, and had him followed, and realised he was going to ruin the whole project. Because if he was here before the exact date and time they’d planned, he —’

  ‘Mr Dacre, could we please do without the Belgian accent and the leetle grey cells? I’ll do the questioning, if you don’t mind, and then make the theories fit the answers. Not the other way round.’

  He waited for another question which might provoke the same crazy suspicions in the detective’s mind as were already seething in his. How much had Brigid told her about the relationship between Simon and Ishbel? And how much might she infer from that?

  He could hardly repress a gasp of relief when they were interrupted by a man in a white coat, peeling off plastic gloves and laying them carefully in a tray on one of the trestle tables. ‘Inspector, sorry to interrupt, but I think you’d better come and see this.’

  ‘Can’t it wait ten minutes?’

  ‘We’d rather you had a look right now.’

  They went out, and Greg could give vent to a shaky expulsion of breath. But there was no respite. Brigid was impatient to pounce into the gap the detective inspector had left.

  ‘Come upstairs and let’s have it.’ She urged him up to the half-landing and into Hector’s snug, where Hector and Caroline had obviously been going over and over the events of the last couple of days. ‘Now, for God’s sake’ — Brigid overrode everybody and every other consideration — ‘just what did go on in London?’

  *

  Greg told of the deal that Hill had suggested.

  ‘Rubbish,’ said Brigid.

  Hector Crombie cleared his throat. ‘Should no’ be dismissing it out of hand, m’dear. If there’s a chance of getting things back —’

  ‘No chance whatever. We don’t compromise with folk like that.’ Brigid smiled conspiratorially at Greg. ‘We’ve really got them on the run, haven’t we?’

  A contest was more to her taste than any compromise.

  Throughout Greg’s summary, Caroline had been sitting very still, sheathed in tight black trousers and a black blouse buttoned up to her very white throat. Now her voice was as tight as the fabric down her thighs. ‘You mean you’d put your nasty little book before any chance of recovering our family belongings?’

  ‘It’s rubbish,’ Brigid repeated. ‘They don’t have any of the pictures or anything else, and they wouldn’t know where to start looking. They’re only bluffing. They don’t hold any cards.’

  ‘You can’t be sure of that.’

  ‘They wouldn’t know where to start. They’re crooks and shysters, each and every one of them, but not in that particular field.’

  ‘They may have useful contacts.’

  ‘I’m the one who gave that lot all their contacts. I know them. I know their capabilities, and what they’re not capable of.’

  ‘You thought highly enough of them once,’ Caroline pointed out. ‘Top quality executives, wasn’t that your line?’

  ‘Not top. Just the Marzipan Layer.’

  ‘If they’re prepared to play along — if you know them so well, surely you could use them —’

  ‘I’d rather destroy them. And the best way to do that is finish the book. Light the blue touchpaper and retire immediately! Only I’m not proposing to retire.’

  Hector Crombie appealed to Greg: ‘Look, old chap, would you say they could be dangerous? I like to know in advance which flank to defend.’

  ‘They can’t be dangerous.’ Brigid, too, was looking at Greg. ‘If they were serious, they’d have killed you. And Miss Vaughan-Smith. Bang goes the ghost, bang goes the editor. But me — I’d still be around.’

  ‘For as long as it takes them to get to you,’ said Caroline.

  ‘Gregory, if they had any real organisation at all, they’d have found a way of getting you accidentally run over when you’d left the house. Or boobytrapped your car on the way back from the station. They had plenty of time, if they’d had any coherent policy.’

  ‘You sound disappointed.’

  ‘No, just contemptuous of the lot of them.’

  ‘You would have set it up somehow!’ said Caroline. ‘Without wasting one moment on compunction?’

  Brigid smiled but didn’t consider an answer worthwhile. Looking at her, Greg knew she would have been capable of doing just that. Just as well they were on the same side — for the time being, anyway.

  ‘And that’s all you can think of at a time like this?’ Caroline was still on edge. ‘With all this going on here —’

  ‘Exactly. We can’t possibly work in an atmosphere like this. G
regory and I must go back to Edinburgh. Concentrate. Speed things up.’

  Greg shared Caroline’s disbelief. ‘You seriously think we can continue as if nothing has happened?’

  ‘How else do we spend the time? I’ve told them all I know. Or all it’s good for them to know. And I suppose our sonsie little copper’s put you through the wringer as well? And found you could tell her as little as I could — I hope.’

  Greg said: ‘Just how much did you tell her about Ishbel?’

  He was aware of Caroline’s fingers clenching over her knee until the pale skin over her knuckles went quite white. Hector, puzzled, looked from his daughter to his wife.

  Brigid said: ‘How much did you?’

  ‘There was nothing to tell. Not so far as I was concerned.’

  ‘Good. Because I never even mentioned her existence. No need to stir up false assumptions.’

  ‘We can be sure they really are false?’

  Caroline was as slim, dark and quivering as a snake preparing to strike. ‘What the hell are you implying? You can’t seriously imagine Ishbel would be capable of … you haven’t seen her for God knows how many years, but you’re ready to let her be accused of … of …’

  ‘We owe it to the lass to keep her out of it,’ said her father soothingly. ‘She’s had a bad enough time as it is from that Pringle blackguard. I’ll nae be letting her be hurt any more than she already has been.’

  ‘Understood?’ Brigid was glaring at Greg. ‘The police don’t know about that dismal business between Ishbel and Simon, and they don’t have to.’

  ‘Sooner or later, if they keep digging —’

  ‘Let them do their own digging. None of us is going to plant crazy suspicions in their mind.’

  ‘And when they ask us why we never mentioned Ishbel before? Our own daughter?’

  ‘We tell them it never occurred to us. We’d both of us lost touch, and we couldn’t imagine how she could be concerned.’

  ‘Not one word.’ Caroline ground it out syllable by vehement syllable. ‘Not … one … bloody … word.’