Death by Marzipan

by John Burke

  ‘No, I wouldn’t.’

  ‘As a matter of interest, why did you marry Hector?’

  ‘We get on very well together.’

  ‘Security? Another step on the social climb. Moving ever upwards.’

  ‘If you’re classifying Simon as a step up …’

  ‘You fell for him at the time. This time you’ve gone for dull stability, right?’

  ‘Stability?’ she snorted. ‘If you could have seen the state of the finances when I first got to this house. He really didn’t have a clue.’

  ‘Dull,’ Greg repeated. ‘Easy to take for a ride.’

  ‘And just what do you mean by that?’

  ‘Persuading him to sell things off. Or leaving you to do it for him. Right? Taking over his library, stripping it, altering everything in the house to suit your own taste.’

  ‘You’ve been listening to Caroline.’

  ‘No, just observing.’

  Perversely she was relishing his every word. Her lips parted a fraction of an inch. ‘You’ve really come a long way, haven’t you? Really, Greg, if only …’

  ‘Let’s get back to business,’ he said. ‘Keep Simon to one side for the time being. After Blake, we ought logically to get on to this Irvine character.’

  ‘Oh, him.’

  ‘Those few notes you dictated on him sounded pretty ferocious.’

  ‘Disgusting little creep. Lost his nerve in a crisis. Get to the white knuckle phase in any venture capital ploy, and he collapsed. A let-down. And a let-down in other things.’

  ‘You went to bed with him?’

  ‘He was bloody useless at that, too. Tried very hard, because he thought it was the only way to get what he really wanted — a deal. But the story about his real love nest will make a juicy few paragraphs.’

  Was she still harbouring a resentment against a petty slight of that kind? Old grudges still simmering so strongly that she couldn’t write them off until she had held the man up to public ridicule?

  ‘An affair?’ he demurred. ‘No great scandal nowadays.’

  ‘Not the usual sort of affair, this one. Not seducing another man’s wife. Seducing the man himself as the best chance of promotion. Imagine their pillow talk about hedge funds and futures! Very romantic.’ Her fingers were playing with the top button of her blouse. ‘The thought of it making you feel randy, Greg?’

  ‘Never been tempted in that direction.’

  ‘I’m glad. Wouldn’t want you to waste yourself. You know something?’ She undid the top two buttons. ‘After that lot of no-hopers between the sheets, right now I feel deprived. And we were very good lovers, once. You and I, always good at that, anyway.’

  The blouse loosened. Every one of her movements was graceful, calculated, impeccable, perfect timing in everything.

  He made himself think of Kate. But that did make him randy. It was always too easy and inevitable with Kate. Perhaps he should have fought more for Brigid, instead of fighting with her: too often letting her choose the ground and start the fight.

  Without turning round, she slid her hand down the door and turned the key.

  ‘Come on, the couch is quite comfortable. Unless you’d prefer the floor. More room to move about.’

  ‘I don’t need every move demonstrated,’ he said as steadily as possible. ‘I can write all the necessary details from memory.’

  ‘Memory. Yes.’ She ran her hands over her hips. ‘We were very, very good. Don’t tell me we weren’t.’

  ‘Past tense.’

  ‘Don’t look so apprehensive. You haven’t forgotten what to do about it, have you?’ Her hands stopped moving. He wondered how many men had enjoyed this lead-in and the bonus of what followed, a touch of icing on the cake she was offering them.

  Kate was whispering in his ear from far away. If that woman decides you’re going to go to bed with her, you’ll go to bed with her.

  ‘I thought you’d settled for a different way of life. Dignified lady of the manor.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Greg. Hector’s a sweetie. But you don’t have to feel guilty about him. He’s too thick, bless him, to notice anything going on around him.’

  ‘You mean too well bred.’

  ‘Too thick is what I said. Too bloody boring. Like so many of them round here — always blathering about horse breeding, but no good as stallions themselves.’

  ‘Maybe the mare just doesn’t turn them on.’

  She stiffened. ‘What’s the matter?’ She had always been swiftly impatient. ‘Lost the urge?’

  ‘You could put it that way. This wasn’t part of the contract. Nice of you, but you don’t have to offer me any perks.’

  The flush that spread across her throat and round her neck was beautiful. Tempting. But he wasn’t going to be tempted.

  ‘You always were undersexed.’ Her fingers snapped the buttons of her blouse back through their eyeholes. ‘A dead loss from the start. Think you can summon up the strength to pour us a drink?’ She gestured towards the cupboard.

  He poured two liberal Glenlivets. Over the edge of her tumbler he could foretell what that fading, clouded gleam in her eyes meant. Before she could shape up any more derisive remarks, he indicated the pile of print-out he had brought in. ‘Has it ever occurred to you that your main motivation is dragging people down? You get more of a kick out of destroying one man rather than giving one a lift up. It’s knocking somebody off his perch to make room for someone else that gives you the greatest kick.’

  ‘It only ever happened to those without any staying power. Fit to be replaced by the go-getters.’

  ‘Who were suitably grateful. But what about the ones you turfed out of jobs, to make room for your latest fancies? Don’t you think there might one day be a comeback? Or several?’

  ‘No,’ said Brigid, ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Still so sure of yourself. But what are you?’ He felt very calm, yet puzzled that he was saying what he did. Was he, like Brigid, bent on settling an old score that had rankled without his ever facing up to it until now? ‘I’m not the only one impersonating other people. You’ve never been anybody in yourself, either: only a manipulator of others. Living through your power over them. Nothing in yourself.’

  She had ceased to enjoy his challenges. The heat of the moment hadn’t led to the denouement she had wanted. ‘The book’s off,’ she said. ‘You can forget it. I’ll find another ghost. Only one with a bit of flesh and muscle on him.’ She wrenched the key round, but could not go out without one parting shot. ‘I’ll tell you one thing. Michael Veitch is the arch-villain behind a lot of this. But give him his due, as a stud he really enjoyed it for its own sake, and never mind the business deal. Once he got going, there was no stopping him.’

  She swept out, leaving the door half open.

  He was sure that tomorrow she would swing back again, raring to go when some other vengeful idea came into her head.

  He wasn’t so sure about his own commitment.

  He glanced through the notes and newspaper cuttings brought in from the library and tossed on top of his print-outs. Here and there she had high-lined references to an investment consultant specialising in art treasures. One news story reported his appearance in court on a charge of resetting, but he had scraped by on a verdict of not proven. Another story, on the shinier paper of a glossy magazine, was accompanied by illustrations of some pieces he had managed to acquire for his own collection.

  Presumably Brigid was lining him up for a suitably snide chapter. Or maybe there was some other reason for her interest in a shady art dealer.

  He was toying with some improbable theories when there was a faint but frenzied rush of feet from upstairs. Somebody came running along the passage and pushed the door wide open. Caroline swayed there for a moment, steadying herself against the jamb.

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Brigid? She … she’s gone off somewhere, for a few minutes.’ Then he realised how stricken and tormented Caroline’s face was. ‘What is it?’

&n
bsp; ‘My father,’ said Caroline.

  ‘What’s happened?’

  For a moment she seemed to have forgotten why she had come here. Her gaze was fixed on the alcove beside the fireplace, and her eyes were widening as if some apparition from the house’s past was leering out at her.

  At last she said: ‘He’s dead. My father’s dead.’

  12

  The call from the Chief Super was predictable. ‘What the hell is going on there, Gunn? Another death, right under your nose?’

  ‘A natural death this time, sir.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘His own doctor, sir. Been expecting it one day. He’s been liable to strokes. A couple of mild ones, but this was the real thing.’

  ‘One hell of a coincidence. A burglary, a murder, and now this.’

  ‘The family think …’ She stopped, because she knew just how Caroline’s remark would be received.

  But it was too late. ‘The family think what?’

  She hastily skated round the words Caroline had actually used. ‘They think that the losses from that burglary had a deep effect on Lord Crombie. The worry wore him down.’

  ‘You believe that?’

  ‘I think I do, sir. It really did prey on his mind. There must have been real anger boiling up inside.’

  ‘Hm. I think I’d like a second opinion on this.’

  Poor Crombie, thought Lesley. In any other circumstances his death would have been simply recorded, just as his own doctor wanted to record it, and there would have been no reason for extra indignities. But other investigations had been going on around him, and he couldn’t be kept out with them. Nobody and nothing could be regarded as innocent and straightforward.

  More paperwork. More unpleasantness for the family.

  ‘He died of a broken heart,’ was what Caroline had actually said.

  Lesley’s uneasiness conflicted with her sympathy for the bereaved daughter. ‘We … well, in our line of work we don’t often find cases of that.’

  ‘You don’t believe anyone could die of a broken heart?’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘I believe it,’ said Greg Dacre quietly. ‘Even if you don’t actually die right away, you can suffer a hurt that’ll fester until in the end it kills you. Unless you find an antidote to fight it.’

  Lady Crombie’s only comment was: ‘Hector did let it weigh on him too much. Out of all proportion. They were only things. I did try to get him to see it all in proper proportion.’

  It was difficult to intrude on family grief — though Caroline seemed to be the only one showing any real grief. Not that she looked for sympathy. Certainly she did not want to exchange even conventional condolences with her stepmother. After that first stricken outburst, she had remained cool and practical. Offered the chance of handing over some studio commitments to a colleague who was prepared to give up free time to help out, she drove to Glasgow and then on to Dumbarton for some historical re-creation, and then was back at Baldonald to keep an eye on things.

  To keep an eye on her stepmother — from sympathy, or suspicion?

  Lesley found herself confronted by a tricky balancing act. She had to smooth the ruffled feathers of the doctor with a tactful request for a second opinion on Lord Crombie’s death, and ease her way in and out of the funeral arrangements while still pursuing the evidence in the case of Simon Pringle.

  The Chief Super might be wrong in doubting the coincidence of Crombie’s death. But surely there could be no mere coincidence between Simon’s death and the burglary. There had to be a link.

  Lady Crombie, seizing the reins to set in motion the arrangements for a funeral announcement, positively enjoyed answering phone calls of commiseration over the next two days. Then there was the matter of death announcements in The Times, The Daily Telegraph, and The Scotsman. Notification of the family solicitors. Tie everything up, be done with it.

  For a moment Lesley was tempted to go for her, here and now, with a blunt question about that painting which Smutek had reported. Her old bully of a DCI, Rutherford, wouldn’t have hesitated. Catch ’em while they’re most vulnerable, he would have snarled. But Lesley couldn’t bring herself to tackle a woman so newly widowed. It would have to wait. In the meantime, she settled into a corner of the library to assemble such fragments as they had collected into the beginnings of a jigsaw which must be completed before too long.

  There was news of the credit card with which the mythical Mr Ross had paid for his cottage by the Ettrickbridge road. A professional forgery, re-imbossed upon a genuine card, it had turned up across the Border in Carlisle. The man trying to use it had been arrested and was in custody. Unfortunately he was not the man they were looking for. He had found the card in a litter bin and been silly enough to take a chance on using it. He was known to the Cumbrian police as a petty crook and a clumsy chancer, but with no known connections with the shady art world. Among prints on the card were some which matched up with those found on the electric cooker in the cottage kitchen, but not with any of the prints from within Baldonald House. Not surprising, thought Lesley wearily: Mr Ross had merely been the one deputed to keep Mrs Dunbar occupied away from the premises while the actual raid took place. Once it was over, he discarded both Mrs Dunbar and the stolen card.

  She went through sheets of notes and records of incoming calls. The main facts that the girls at the VDUs and telephones had to report were scattered details about Simon Pringle’s movements in the weeks before his murder. Nothing out of the ordinary there. He had been doing freelance work for the computer division of an office equipment firm, his schedules and movements being left very much to himself; but had been seen a couple of times by the firm’s manager in Edinburgh having what looked like rows with a fair-haired girl who had apparently been giving him a lift in a hire car.

  His home address at the time of this employment had been traced to a bed-sitter in a back street between Musselburgh and Leith. The landlady there was reluctant to talk about any of her tenants, whom she referred to as ‘guests’, and when it was revealed that the questions she was being asked were connected with the murder she had avidly read about in the papers, she tried to make out that there had been a mistake and it must be a different person, and she made it a rule never to accept rent from a murderer or anyone of that ilk.

  Gradually she was persuaded to speak more freely when it was made clear that the police were not blaming her for not spotting a born killer, and furthermore that they were not interested in what rents she charged or declared to the taxman.

  The main thing she contributed was that for some months he shared the bedsit with a blonde girl who he said was Mrs Pringle, though the woman hadn’t believed this for a minute. It was often the girl who paid the weekly rent, nearly always in cash. Again the informant slowed down at this stage, obviously thinking again of a tax vulture swooping on payments in cash and just what records were kept, or not kept.

  No, she didn’t know where the girl had gone. Both of them had left at the end of last month. She thought they had quarrelled, and that didn’t surprise her. It wouldn’t have been the first time she’d heard a row going on. Nasty, sneering type that Pringle fellow had been. But at least they’d paid up before they went, even if they didn’t give a week’s notice as they were supposed to do.

  Who on earth was the girl, and where was she?

  Overlapping the matter of Simon Pringle’s death — and Lesley was convinced there had to be overlapping and interweaving between the two — were inconclusive bits and pieces about the burglary.

  There was still no trace of the van which had been seen here on the day of the thefts. Not surprising, with so little identification to go on. Two vehicles which had been stopped on suspicion within the first twenty-four hours had yielded no stolen artworks, though the Strathclyde police weren’t displeased to find that one of them contained a load of drugs smuggled in through Stranraer. No whisper of any artworks slipping out on to the market, except that one puzzling item re
ported by Dr Smutek which must have been removed before the burglary. Removed and replaced by a fake? Or had Lord Crombie known about the sale, bitterly as he might have regretted it? There was no chance of asking him now.

  And as to Pringle’s murder, could a lover’s tiff with some blonde girlfriend have blown up into a crime of passion?

  It was time to go looking for that girl, whoever she might be.

  Lesley felt wretchedly that she needed help: someone to bounce ideas off. And she knew who she wanted it to be.

  If he was prepared to listen.

  She had no intention of letting the two WPCs in the incident room hear her appeal. There was a phone in the sitting-room where Brigid Crombie and Greg Dacre, banished from the library, had worked. After one interruption, Brigid had apparently locked the intervening door to keep any of the incident room staff blundering in on the two while they were working. Lesley went out into the corridor to use the outer door.

  Halfway down the main staircase was Brigid Crombie, smartly dressed in black: suitable mourning attire ready and waiting in her wardrobe, one felt. Always prepared for any occasion, was Brigid Weir cum Lady Crombie.

  ‘Back to bloody Edinburgh,’ she announced.

  ‘Lady Crombie, I don’t think you ought to —’

  ‘There are things that simply have to be done by someone who knows how to do them. Got to see our solicitors, and Hector’s broker, and the chairman of his club. They’ll probably want to send some sort of solemn delegation to the funeral. When we’re allowed to settle the date,’ she added heavily. ‘Somebody really does have to cope with all these matters, inspector.’

  ‘Couldn’t you send your daughter — your stepdaughter, I mean?’

  ‘She’s got another of those pathetic weekly television chores to go through. Couldn’t get out of it at short notice, but she’ll be coming back via Selkirk to have a word with the minister.’

  ‘He’ll be holding the service in the chapel?’

  ‘God forbid. I simply won’t have that. The chapel’s a wreck. And a dangerous one at that. The family vault’s for worms and rats. Hector always said he’d prefer to be cremated. Scatter his ashes along the loch — that’s the way he’d have wanted it.’ She eased her way politely yet forcefully past Lesley. ‘And now, if you’ll excuse me, I really must be on my way.’