Death by Marzipan

by John Burke

  ‘And when your ex-wife, Lady Crombie, was killed?’

  ‘I gather that she was in her flat in Leith. And I was here.’

  ‘You know the flat? You’ve been in it?’

  ‘Yes. Doing some background work.’

  ‘Often?’

  ‘Just the one week or so.’

  ‘And you have a key?’

  ‘I did, for a few days, but it was Lord Crombie’s, and I gave it back to him when we left.’

  ‘You got on well with your ex-wife?’

  ‘Very few people got on well with her for long. This latest business was just a professional working relationship. And I was here,’ he emphasised, ‘working on our notes, when she was killed.’

  Rutherford sighed. He was not satisfied, but obviously he had nothing tangible to chase after at the moment.

  ‘You’re not planning to leave the neighbourhood, Mr Dacre?’

  ‘There’s nothing more for me here. I’m only in the way. And I do need to get back to work.’

  ‘On those memoirs you and Lady Crombie have been working on?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘I’d have thought you might have cooked up something juicy and saleable on your own. She won’t be expecting a cut now.’

  Greg lost his cool. His own opinions of Brigid might have slid downhill over the years, but he wasn’t going to stand for a grubby little copper enjoying himself with grotty remarks of this kind.

  ‘You’re talking about my wife,’ he snapped. ‘The lady who was my wife.’

  ‘Quite so, sir. I was hoping you could help us get at the truth.’

  ‘You’ll get nowhere near it by speaking disrespectfully of the dead.’

  ‘Sorry, sir. I didn’t get the impression you retained much respect for your ex-wife yourself.’

  ‘She’s dead now, and I’d prefer to forget any personal problems. And get on with my own life, if that’s all right with you?’

  ‘It will be perfectly all right, sir, once we’ve completed our enquiries. As I’ve said, we’d prefer you not to leave.’

  ‘But you can’t expect me to hang around here. I mean, the work we were doing — it’s all over, there’s nothing to keep me here.’

  ‘I’d like to have you close at hand until we can eliminate every improbability and see what we’ve got left. Your willing cooperation’ — the politer Rutherford’s words, the worse the discord of an undertone — ‘would be far preferable to any awkward legalities.’

  ‘I can leave you my address in Norwich.’

  ‘I’d prefer you not to be so far away.’

  ‘But I can’t stay on here,’ Greg insisted.

  ‘There’ll be a room vacant at the Tam Lin. Very hospitable little inn, I believe. And within easy reach.’

  ‘How do you know there’ll be a vacancy?’

  Rutherford grinned a knowing grin. ‘I’ve arranged for one to be empty as from this afternoon.’

  ‘But how long am I expected to mess around here? I mean, I’ve got work to do.’

  ‘Have you, sir? You’ve just admitted it’s come to a dead end, if one may put it that way in the circumstances.’

  Greg decided it was time to go on the attack. ‘You won’t object to my ringing my agent?’

  ‘To get something else set up for you? No objection at all, sir. Provided she doesn’t want you to flee south too soon.’ As Greg got up and began heading for the small sitting-room, the DCI barked: ‘Just a minute. You can make any call you like from here. What d’you suppose all these phones are for?’

  ‘I wouldn’t want to block any crucial incoming calls for you.’

  Greg tried a twist of a sneer himself. ‘And in any case I prefer a little privacy when discussing my business affairs.’

  ‘Please don’t touch anything in there, or anywhere else, until we’ve finished with it.’

  Greg half expected Rutherford to veer suddenly in the direction of an outright prohibition; but at that moment DI Gunn came in, murmured something urgently, and made a brief gesture that the DCI should come with her. Greg made his escape.

  To his relief, Kate was at home, but did not sound terribly sympathetic about his woes. ‘You really have a knack of landing yourself in it, haven’t you?’

  ‘Obviously there’ll be some delay in my getting away. While I’m stuck here, maybe you can rustle up some commissions. I’ll need to make up for what I’ll not be getting from the Brigid project.’

  ‘You mean you’ve already switched your mind off that whole thing? You can actually contemplate plunging into something else without batting an eyelid?’ she marvelled.

  He could visualise her perched on the end of her desk, the phone tucked under her left jaw, rhythmically tapping the pile of manuscripts which seemed never to diminish on the desk; or was she in the bedroom, sprawled on the edge of the bed, languidly stretching herself as she talked, and stroking the pillow?

  He said: ‘To be honest, I just needed to hear the sound of your voice.’

  There was the rustle of her breath in the receiver, gasping and unsteady. ‘You really mean that?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, it depends on who you’re impersonating at any given moment.’

  ‘There’s nobody to impersonate right at this moment. Just me being me.’

  ‘Not sure I recognise that one.’ She still sounded dazed and uncertain. ‘But by the time we do get to meet, I’ll probably have found you someone else’s skin you can slither under.’

  His gaze had been wandering as they talked, conjuring up more and more enticing visions of Kate. Abruptly it came back into this room as his eyes picked out a small black rectangle on the table where Brigid’s whisky glass had so often stood.

  It was her PDA address book. Still talking automatically, he flicked it open and pressed the initial ‘I’. Maybe Brigid had a secret code, or maybe she hadn’t even bothered to contact Ishbel recently. But there it came up: Ishbel. Alongside it, the address of a garage, and a phone number.

  He closed the palmtop, slid it into his jacket pocket, and heard Kate saying: ‘Greg, you’re rambling. What was that last bit about?’

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ he said. ‘The cops are getting restless. I’m being ordered to stay in a pub called the Tam Lin.’

  ‘Oh, my God. Ghosting the memoirs of a fairy queen?’

  ‘Not me. Not this time. Bad casting. Look, I’ll let you know when I’m settled in, and when they’re likely to let me leave.’

  ‘If they do let you leave. More likely you’ll be arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment for being a ravening serial killer and a menace to society.’

  ‘Kate …’

  ‘Yes?’ she said hopefully.

  ‘Oh, nothing. I’ll tell you when we meet.’

  ‘I bet you won’t,’ she said. ‘I bet you just somehow don’t get round to it.’

  He hurried upstairs to collect his bag and the briefcase with his own copy of the Brigid Weir story as far as it had gone. He wasn’t ready to relinquish the project entirely. Not yet.

  He had every expectation of being intercepted by Rutherford and given veiled and not so veiled warnings about not straying too far away. An incitement to stay in the bar of the inn and get permanently plastered, to loosen his tongue? But in the hall DI Gunn was busy introducing the DCI to Caroline Crombie.

  Greg quickened his pace. ‘Off to the inn, right? Following instructions.’

  Rutherford nodded brusquely, his attention already elsewhere. DI Gunn glanced at Greg and seemed about to say something, but was dragged back into the conversation with Caroline.

  Greg slowed at the main gate. The Tam Lin lay five or six miles to the right.

  He hesitated only a few seconds, then turned left, and put his foot down.

  15

  The WPCs in the incident room were busy assembling notepads and equipment on a trestle table near the door, ready to transfer ongoing records to the mobile room when it arri
ved. Rutherford had commandeered the more civilised end of the library, where he chose the larger armchair for himself and indicated to the Hon. Caroline Crombie that she should perch herself on one of the more basic office chairs. Lesley Gunn could have predicted that Rutherford’s blustering style of interrogation would put Caroline Crombie’s back up. It showed in the stiffness of her neck as she sat bolt upright, and in the cold, starchy replies she offered to his questions.

  ‘Right, Miss Crombie. To start with, where were you when your stepmother was murdered?’

  ‘Do we know the exact date and time?’

  ‘Let’s say two days before the body was found.’

  ‘I’ve been in and out of the studio most days. Out on location last Thursday, doing a shoot on flood defences at Berwick. And Friday morning I called in on one of my father’s old friends, just to chat to him for ten minutes. I was certainly just wrapping up a voice-over in the studio when news of the murder came through.’

  ‘How exactly did you hear about it?’

  ‘I was told she’d been found by Mr McIntyre’s clerk.’

  ‘Mr McIntyre?’

  ‘The family solicitor. The young man was still away, helping the police with their enquiries, when I went round to the office.’

  ‘You went round to the solicitors?’ Rutherford contrived to make it sound the most heinous thing she could have done in the circumstances.

  ‘To take up where Brigid had left off. She had been in town to arrange my father’s funeral and see if there were any urgent legal problems.’

  ‘And that was your first thought — to pick up the routine as if nothing had happened?’

  ‘Somebody had to take over. I owe it to my father’s memory. He hated people hanging about and not getting a job done.’

  ‘You were very fond of your father?’

  Caroline’s head tilted back a fraction. She was looking down her nose at Rutherford as if he were some baffling alien species. ‘I see nothing unusual in that.’

  ‘Och, now, it’s not all that usual nowadays. Children fall out with their parents, leave home, couldn’t care less.’

  ‘In the circles you move in, perhaps, chief inspector.’

  Lesley detected the same inflection which Caroline had used when referring to ‘Lady Crombie.’

  ‘And fond of your late stepmother also?’

  ‘We found a modus vivendi. I wouldn’t put it any stronger.’

  ‘You mean you couldn’t stand her.’

  ‘I mean that for my father’s sake I made an effort to get along with her.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have gone so far as to kill her?’

  Most women would have flown off the handle at that, but Caroline’s cold distaste for the questioner was more than a match for his suggestive jab. ‘He wouldn’t have wanted that.’

  ‘But then, after his death …?’

  ‘What would have been the point of killing her then?’

  ‘And the earlier death — Simon Pringle?’

  ‘On the few occasions I met him, Pringle struck me as an exceedingly unpleasant person, and the world is better off without him. But why should I have had anything to do with him?’

  ‘Why, indeed?’

  ‘I still think,’ Lesley interposed, ‘it all has to tie in somehow with these business types Lady Crombie was going to write about. She aimed to show them up. They wanted her silenced.’

  Rutherford glowered. ‘And I think they’re all separate. Or the murders are, anyway. But it’s time to give Fettes Avenue a nudge. Ask them what progress they’re making — whether the local crime squad saw anybody with the Crombie woman that day in Edinburgh. Or heard even a whisper of anything out of the ordinary.’ He swung back towards Caroline, still pursuing some vague hunch of his own which made no sense to Lesley. ‘As a matter of interest, Miss Crombie, where were you at the time all this was going on?’

  ‘I’ve told you. Mostly at the studio. Several days on the trot. The Edinburgh police didn’t waste any time: got in touch with me at once. They’re pretty familiar with our programmes, and where I’m likely to be found. I couldn’t offer them any explanation, any more than I can offer you one.’ She gave Lesley a vaguely friendly nod, which she would certainly not have offered to Rutherford. ‘Though I think all the probabilities are in that theory of yours. A lot of powerful businessmen were known to be targets in her forthcoming book, and they might have wanted to silence her. And since I’ve told the police in Edinburgh everything I know’ — she turned back to Rutherford and became imperious again — ‘there’s little point in my going over it all again. I didn’t come here for that.’

  ‘What did you come here for, Miss Crombie?’

  ‘To continue with arrangements for my father’s funeral.’

  ‘You do realise, of course, that Edinburgh won’t be releasing Lady Crombie’s body until forensic tests are complete. And until we have more evidence to lay alongside it and see what gels and what doesn’t.’

  ‘I don’t see what relevance that has.’

  ‘I thought possibly you were considering a joint ceremony for Lord and Lady Crombie.’

  She stared at him in mounting disgust. ‘That’s not my intention. Brigid said my father would have been in favour of cremation. I don’t agree. He should be laid to rest in the family vault.’

  Laid to rest. For all the taut, aggressive modernity of her appearance, Caroline spoke in the language of old, sentimental tradition.

  ‘Alongside the rest of our family,’ she finished.

  ‘Including your own late mother, no doubt,’ said Lesley respectfully.

  ‘My mother died in a plane crash on a charity mission to Ethiopia.’

  ‘I’m sorry. So she’s not buried in the vault.’

  ‘No, even though she belonged there. And nor will Brigid be. When you do get round to releasing Brigid, she can be cremated, since I assume that’s what she would have preferred.’

  Lesley said: ‘One thing, Miss Crombie. On the subject of family, you say you went round to see your family solicitors as soon as you heard the news. Was there any particular reason for that?’

  ‘I’d have thought that would be obvious. To see how far Brigid had got with the funeral arrangements, and invitations to my father’s club members and other old friends. And to stop any steps she might have taken towards his cremation.’

  ‘And was there anything else while you were there?’

  All at once Caroline was less haughty. On the surface her manner did not alter, but she was bracing her right foot against the floor as if her chair had become unsteady. ‘The usual drab legal jargon. Wringing of hands, expressions of deep distress. Mental arithmetic, summing up the balance between lost income from the deceased, and charges they could reasonably make for getting probate and spinning out administration of the will for as long as possible.’

  ‘Now that both your father and Lady Crombie are dead, you will presumably inherit the estate?’ said Lesley.

  ‘Actually’ — she might have been picking her way very carefully over loose stones — ‘it’s between two of us.’

  Rutherford thrust his meaty neck forward. ‘Two of you?’

  ‘Myself and Brigid’s daughter Ishbel.’

  Rutherford shot Lesley a baleful glance. ‘You never said anything about the woman having a daughter of her own.’

  Lesley glanced at Caroline, and was sure that Rutherford, like herself, must have smelt that almost rancid tang of fear. ‘She doesn’t seem to have played any part in anything around here for a long time,’ she excused herself as smoothly as possible. ‘Lady Crombie mentioned her when I first interviewed her, but I got the impression they didn’t see much of each other any more.’

  ‘You got the impression,’ Rutherford mocked. ‘But now it looks as if her mother did still think very well of her indeed: well enough to —’

  ‘It was in my father’s will,’ said Caroline, ‘not Brigid’s.’

  ‘He split the lot between the two of you? After his wi
fe’s death, that would be.’

  ‘No.’ Caroline’s head went even further back, so that now she was staring at the ceiling. ‘While she was still alive, she’d get only a small legacy. The property is for Ishbel and myself. I fancy that my father thought we’d make a more dignified job of running it than Brigid would have done.’ A touch of gentleness crept into her voice. ‘He grew very fond of Ishbel when she did come here.’

  ‘Just a minute. You say this girl is Lady Crombie’s daughter. But she’s not your sister?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then her father …?’

  Lesley knew the answer to this one. ‘The first husband. Gregory Dacre.’

  Rutherford was for a moment out of breath. Caroline took the opportunity to stand up and move towards the door. Rutherford gulped and waved a threatening hand. ‘Miss Crombie, you can’t just walk out until we’ve finished.’

  ‘If you’ll excuse me, I’ll get on with what I came here for.’

  ‘I’ve got a lot more questions to ask.’

  ‘Think them over while I cope with the task in hand. I’m not likely to leave for quite a time yet.’

  She was scarcely out of the room when Rutherford slammed his fist down on the table.

  ‘Looking down her nose at me, and asking why we could suppose she might want to get rid of Lady Crombie after old Crombie’s death! Knowing she was in line for that much money! What better motive?’

  ‘But did she know beforehand?’

  ‘The old man could have told her, just to spite his wife or maybe to … oh, hell, this’ll take some working out.’

  ‘But she made it clear that Lady Crombie inherits precious little. So if the bulk of the legacy was all for the two girls anyway, there wouldn’t be any motive for either of them to murder the widow.’

  ‘You’ve met that woman. I haven’t. But from what I’ve heard, she doesn’t sound the type who’d let the two girls get away with that sort of share-out. Maybe she was already stirring it up, and they had to remove her. Two girls,’ he repeated. ‘Just what do we know about this daughter of Dacre’s?’