Twice Bitten

by Gerald Hammond

The Detective Inspector joined us as the waitress brought coffee. I had asked for a pot and five cups, but I was relieved to see that he was not for once accompanied by the alluring Sergeant Bremner. If the Sergeant was not aware that I had helped her car into its absurd predicament, she would certainly have guessed that I had had a quiet laugh at her expense.

  Ewell accepted a cup (black, no sugar) and then looked at me with eyebrows raised. I glanced round but we had the lounge to ourselves except for a group of middle-aged women in the furthest corner, all talking shrilly and simultaneously. There was no danger of being overheard.

  ‘Has the identity of the body been confirmed?’ I asked.

  Ewell hesitated and then shrugged. ‘In confidence? It has and it hasn’t. We have the report on the DNA tests. Of course, the body was partially cooked over a long period. The lab did what they could. They found a partial match with DNA obtained from hairs out of his hairbrush, but not enough for a court of law. They say that discrepancies were only to be expected. Now, what were you going to tell me?’

  ‘I don’t know how many of Dougal Webb’s blackmail victims you’ve traced—’ I began.

  ‘One or two,’ he said. ‘One or two.’

  ‘—but do you know about Sir Ian Bewlay?’

  His eyebrows, which had come down, shot straight up again and stayed there. ‘What about Sir Ian?’

  ‘Do you know Mrs Dundee?’

  ‘What does she have to do with anything?’

  I decided that we had asked each other enough questions for the moment. ‘She can tell you a story.’

  ‘You tell me,’ he said. ‘Mrs Dundee – if you mean the old lady in the cottage near Gifford Hill – has been interviewed but she told us nothing of interest. I’d rather know what you make of her.’

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Here goes. About twenty years ago, Mrs Dundee was housemaid at Marksmuir House. Sir Ian seduced her – or, if you credit her story, forced himself on her. When it comes to lairds and housemaids, the dividing line can be nebulous. She bore him a son.’

  ‘A common enough story,’ Ewell said.

  ‘Here comes the uncommon bit. He never denied paternity. He couldn’t. Apparently there were several witnesses to the deed because it happened on the dining table just after a boozy lunch party.’

  I paused and for a moment there was silence between us. Then Beth said, ‘That’s awful!’

  ‘You may – or may not – think that what followed was worse. While she was unable to work, believe it or not, he stopped her wages. Afterwards, he paid her the minimum required by law for child maintenance until the boy came of age and he let her stay in the cottage in return for two hours’ work every afternoon. She had to go out cleaning in the mornings to make ends meet and even so she must have had a thin time. After she lost her other job with Mrs Macevoy she was almost starving. When we saw her, the day we found the body, she was picking over the fields for forgotten vegetables in order to stay alive while she waited for her son to come home. He’s an apprentice in the merchant navy. She begged a few rabbits off us, that day. She won’t take Assistance – she thinks of it as charity.’

  Beth was looking astonished, as well she might, but not for the reason I expected. ‘Mrs Macevoy sacked her?’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Yes. Apparently Mrs Macevoy suspected her of stealing some piece of jewellery. My own impression is that Mrs Dundee would be the more honest of the two of them. I suspect that her only deception in her life was in assuming the title of Mrs when she had the child. She’s never been married. But that’s by the way.

  ‘A year or so ago, Webb pretended to be very sympathetic and coaxed her story out of her. Soon afterwards, Sir Ian told her to stay well away from Webb, on pain of losing her cottage. Around that time, Webb suddenly sported a very expensive wristwatch resembling one which I had seen and envied on Sir Ian, who still wears a Rolex but of a slightly different pattern. That would make Sir Ian very unhappy. He’s a man who prefers every penny to work for him and nobody else.

  ‘I think we can take it that Webb wasted no time before putting the bite on him and acquiring Sir Ian’s Rolex at a bargain price. You can imagine how the story would have looked in the gutter press. She must be twenty years older than he is and she can never have been a beauty, besides hardly coming up to his navel. Imagine their photographs side by side along with the story of how shabbily he’s treated the mother of his son. His parliamentary ambitions would have gone right up in smoke.’

  ‘I’m surprised she accepted it,’ Ewell said. ‘The days are past when a landlord can behave like that. The law would have protected her. For one thing, it would never have allowed him to turn her out of her cottage.’

  Henry had been listening attentively. ‘She’s feudal,’ he said. ‘I thought so when we met her on the hill. To her, he’s the laird and therefore omnipotent. His whims are acts of God. If she falls on hard times, that’s fate. You find them like that sometimes in the country.’

  Ewell shook his head unhappily. ‘That’s so. The attitude gets handed down from generation to generation. He was very high-and-mighty when we interviewed him. He didn’t know a thing and seemed to be insulted that we thought he might. I’ll tell you this much – I’m not looking forward to confronting him again.’

  ‘Then don’t,’ said Beth.

  ‘I must.’ Ewell smiled grimly. ‘Of all the people with a connection to Dougal Webb, he’s the only one we’ve spoken to who has refused to account for his whereabouts between the time when Webb was last seen alive and the latest probable time of death.’

  ‘In your shoes,’ Henry said, ‘I would leave that interview to your superintendent. It’s more his job than yours.’

  Ewell looked a little happier.

  ‘You haven’t exhausted the other possibilities yet,’ I said. ‘Did you ever find out where the Lotus came from?’

  ‘Miles away,’ Ewell said. ‘Tracing ownership was easy. Apparently it was a cash deal and the previous owner, a Mr Pratt, claims to have received a satisfactory price.’

  ‘Well I, for one, do not believe it,’ said Henry. ‘I can’t see a salaried farm manager, especially one as thrifty as Dougal Webb, forking out the going price of a nearly new, expensive car totally unsuited to life on the farm. I take it that the seller was “Sanctimonious” Pratt?’

  Ewell’s mouth fell open. ‘You mean Mr Timothy Pratt, the would-be councillor? I never connected the names. He lives outside Fife and Kinross, so the enquiry was conducted for us by the Tayside Force.’

  ‘And is buddies with Sir Ian,’ Henry said.

  ‘He gets up on his soapbox for animal welfare,’ I said. ‘But he shot his own dog up the backside quite deliberately, to teach it a lesson. He only meant it to sting but he hopelessly misjudged the range. That was on one of Sir Ian’s shoots, where Webb was commonly a beater.’

  ‘You’ve stolen my thunder as usual,’ Henry grumbled. ‘I intended to spill those particular beans myself. I was at Three Oaks when he brought the poor beast to my wife, howling miserably – the dog, Inspector, not the Pratt. The damage was so bad that she had to castrate the poor beast. Imagine how that would look to the animal lovers whose votes he’s canvassing.’

  Detective Inspector Ewell sighed heavily. ‘That will be another uncomfortable interview. If I land Superintendent Aicheson with the interrogation of two members of the Establishment, I will not be popular.’

  Beth had an anxious expression, which gave her the look of a pretty teenager. ‘Accepting that,’ she said, ‘there’s somewhere else you should look first. Why do you suppose Mrs Macevoy suddenly dispensed with the services of Mrs Dundee?’

  ‘According to Mrs Dundee, Mrs Macevoy said that a piece of jewellery had gone missing,’ I reminded her.

  ‘And you said that you didn’t believe it.’

  ‘I did and I don’t.’

  ‘Well, then.’

  Detective Inspector Ewell frowned. ‘She never reported any such thing to the police.’

  ‘
Because it never happened,’ Beth said firmly. ‘John pointed Mrs Macevoy out to me in the supermarket just now. I’ve seen her in there in the past, without knowing who she was. She was always doing the typical shopping of a woman living alone. I rather envied her.’

  I was startled. ‘You envied her living alone?’

  Beth laughed and patted my hand. ‘No, you idiot! I envied her being able to do her shopping in a basket instead of a trolley, buying convenience foods instead of joints and sausages and eggs and bacon and vegetables by the ton and . . . and . . .’

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘I get the message.’

  ‘But I get the messages. Today, her shopping wasn’t as big as mine but it was much bigger than usual.’

  ‘Maybe she was doing two weeks’ shopping in one. Or stocking up for a visitor.’

  ‘She was shopping for a man,’ Beth said. ‘Steaks and things. And beer and cigars. I’ve never seen her buy any of those before.’

  Detective Inspector Ewell had literally jumped in his chair. ‘She touched a nerve?’ I asked him.

  ‘She certainly did.’ Ewell looked from Beth to me and back again. ‘This is no secret – it just hasn’t hit the media up here yet. Mrs Macevoy’s husband was jailed in England, because that’s where the rape took place. He was sent to Parkhurst. For some stupid administrative reason, the only address they had for him was the hotel where he’d been staying when it happened. So word has only just reached us.

  ‘Apparently he lost his remission because he took part – a small part – in a riot in which a prison officer was injured. He was going to have to serve out his time, which would mean several more years. So he absconded from a working party. They thought that they had him bottled in the Isle of Wight. Then he was supposed to have been seen in Kent and again on a Channel ferry. Only when that lead turned out to be false were all Forces circulated and even then it took us a few days to make the connection with a local resident.’

  ‘Now they tell you,’ I said.

  ‘Exactly.’

  The group of women seemed to have left. We had the lounge to ourselves. There was a silence while we assimilated the addition of a new character into the shifting scene.

  ‘In that case, there’s something else you should be thinking about,’ Beth said at last. She looked bashfully at the Detective Inspector. ‘You don’t mind my making these suggestions?’

  Ewell shook his head dumbly.

  ‘It’s nothing very hard and fast, just a pointer. When John was telling me about going to Ardrossie last Sunday, he said that Mr Cove was hunting under the floor for the stopcock.’

  ‘Nothing very odd about that,’ Henry said. ‘In an old house, floors get relaid and the access hatch ends up in a different place, miles from the stopcock, which may not be needed for years at a time.’

  ‘I know all that,’ Beth said impatiently. ‘I do know about old houses. I’ve never lived in any other kind. But John said that when he came up from under the floor he was all dusty with dried earth.’

  I wondered where on earth (or in it) she was leading us. ‘In an old house, the solum – the ground under the hung floor – isn’t usually covered. It’s just bare earth,’ I explained. ‘It gets very dry.’

  ‘I wish you’d both stop interrupting,’ Beth snapped. ‘You keep telling me things I’ve known for years and making me forget what I was going to say next. Where was I?’

  ‘You were saying that Mr Cove was dusty,’ said Ewell. He still did not quite smile but there was a glint of amusement in his eye.

  ‘Yes. And when John told me that, I had a sudden sense of – what do you call it? – déjà vu. I remembered Dougal Webb coming to deliver dog-food and standing in our doorway. For once, he’d come in his farming clothes instead of dressing up for Hannah’s benefit, and his clothes were dusty with dry earth.’

  ‘Farmers do get dirty,’ I said.

  ‘You’re interrupting again,’ Beth said severely. ‘It had just thawed and the ground was very wet and muddy. But it was definitely earth, not barn dust or chaff. I thought he must have been digging in an outbuilding or something like that. But Mr Macevoy, when he was jailed, was also under suspicion of embezzling from the firm he worked for. None of the money ever turned up. And Dougal always seemed more flush with money than he should have been. He dropped hints about a legacy but nobody seems to know of any other relatives than the Macevoys.’ She glared at me. ‘And before you think you have to remind me that he was a blackmailer, let me point out that we don’t know of a single occasion when he asked for money.’

  ‘He was too careful for that,’ Ewell said. ‘He preferred to force people to sell him valuable things at silly prices. Very difficult to argue about afterwards – a bargain being a bargain under Scots law, silly or not. He probably saw nothing wrong in what he was doing, using leverage to get a better bargain. He may have felt that it was no more than an extension of normal business practice.’

  ‘Which it is, of course,’ said Henry.

  ‘Not a defence which would stand up in court,’ the Detective Inspector said. ‘Adding it all together, what Mrs Cunningham is suggesting is that Mr Macevoy had hidden his hoard under the floorboards at Gifford House and his nephew found it or knew that it was there.’

  Beth was nodding. ‘He was good at wheedling secrets out of people.’

  ‘But it fits very well,’ Ewell said. He sounded slightly indignant, as though Beth had no right to precede him to logical conclusions. ‘It even fits with some bits and pieces that you don’t know. I’ll set it out and you can tell me if I’m assembling it wrongly.

  ‘We’ve been watching for Mr Macevoy at roads and railway stations. He may have been home before we knew that he was loose. When Mrs Macevoy was interviewed, after the body was found, she gave the officers a tour of the house. They really only wanted to visit the kitchen to see whether any knives were obviously missing, but she had non-matching knives collected over the years, not a matching set. She swore that none was missing and it was impossible to be sure, one way or the other. She almost dragged the officers round the whole place. She said that the finding of a body had made her nervous and she wanted them to make sure that no villains were lurking ready to jump out at her, would you believe? She put on a good show. They reported that there was no sign of a visitor. He was probably under the floorboards all the time. That’s what threw us off the scent. If she put down the carpet after he hid, the officers would ignore the underfloor space. They were looking for an unwelcome intruder who couldn’t have pulled the carpet back once he was under the floor.

  ‘So it would seem that Macevoy arrived home, found that his nephew had been dipping into his hoard, killed him and put the body under the bonfire, ready for cremation when the foresters cleared up and lit the fire. I must go. This must be followed up immediately, before he can bolt abroad. Thank you, Mrs Cunningham. Thank you very much.’ The Detective Inspector’s voice was steeped in sincerity. He jumped to his feet. ‘We’d have got there in the end, but you’ve been an enormous help. How much was the coffee?’

  ‘Have it on me,’ I said.

  He nodded and hurried out of the lounge. There was a fresh spring in his step.

  ‘You men are all so impetuous,’ Beth said peevishly. ‘I hadn’t finished, not by a mile. And if he thinks that he’s going to find Mr Macevoy lurking under the floorboards he’s got another think coming.’

  ‘How do you make that out?’ I asked her. ‘I thought that that was exactly what you were predicting.’

  ‘Think about it a little more,’ Beth said. ‘For years, Mrs Macevoy’s been living in that house in some style, paying her taxes, running a swish car and going for cruises. I don’t see any scandal-rag paying so much for “My Life With A Sex Fiend” that it would support that kind of lifestyle indefinitely.’

  ‘She seems to have been pally with Sir Ian,’ Henry suggested. ‘He may have been keeping her.’

  ‘That man wouldn’t keep her in tampons,’ Beth snapped.

&n
bsp; I was struggling to catch up. ‘You think that she was sharing the hoard with the nephew?’

  ‘She’s hardly the type to let him collar the lot. And then, can you see Mr Macevoy arriving home, finding that the nest-egg that I suppose he was counting on to take him abroad had been frittered away by his two nearest relatives and then killing one of them and settling down happily with the other one – the one who shopped him years before?’

  ‘Now that you mention it,’ I said thoughtfully, ‘no.’

  ‘She didn’t seem to have any lumps on her,’ Henry said reflectively. ‘Nor did she have the air of one who is acting under duress.’

  ‘Well now,’ said Beth, ‘from what Daffy told us, Dougal was his nephew not hers. Dougal’s mother was Mr Macevoy’s sister.’

  ‘Now you’re losing me again,’ I grumbled.

  ‘Well, hang on to this. I don’t know much about DNA and genetic fingerprints and all that stuff, but it does seem to me that if Dougal was Mr Macevoy’s nephew they’d have enough bits of DNA in common to give the partial result that Inspector Ewell says the lab found.’

  I had an uncomfortable feeling that Beth was going too fast. For one thing, Mr Macevoy would have needed to remain on the sweetest of terms with his wife if she was to give him food and shelter and not run to the police the first time that she went out to do the shopping. ‘Let me see if I understand,’ I said. ‘You think that there was a fight and Dougal killed his uncle? And then decided to go into hiding? Why would he do that, rather than stay put and bluff it out?’

  ‘You do want miracles, don’t you?’ Beth thought for about half a second. ‘It seems to me that Mr Macevoy was the one with good reason to be angry. Or, at least, he would see it that way. My guess – and of course it is only a guess – is that there was a furious quarrel and he grabbed up the knife and Dougal got cut before he could get hold of it and stab his uncle. If a body turned up with a knife-blade or a stab-wound in it and Dougal was walking around with an obvious knife-slash, somebody would make the connection. So Dougal decided to vanish. If they managed to get rid of the body successfully, he could always surface again with a story about an accident and loss of memory, which would explain both the scar and his disappearance. Maybe he intended to do that anyway after the cut had healed.’