Twice Bitten

by Gerald Hammond

  ‘Just like you do, in fact,’ I said.

  ‘Nah,’ he said glumly after a moment’s thought. ‘I don’t think anything like that. I’ve made an idiot of myself and I know it.’

  I decided to dangle a little bait. ‘What did he want from you? Money?’

  ‘I don’t know that he ever asked anyone for money. No, when he came to the point it was little enough. He wanted my video recorder. It was a good one, mind, top of the range, but it had been playing me up now and again and I’d been looking at a newer model. Living on my own, I like having a quality video machine and watching the things I want to see when I want to see them, not when some clown of a programmer thinks it’s time I sat down. But I wouldn’t kill to keep it, even if I couldn’t have afforded another dozen of the things.’

  It certainly seemed an inadequate motive for murder – if true. But there is no way to predict what a man will do in a sudden fit of rage. Quentin Cove had never been one to go around looking for a fight, but he had a temper . . .

  I was wondering how to probe a little further without testing that temper too far, when the static scene began to shift. The outside light sprang to life. Sergeant Bremner and Superintendent Aicheson came out of the house. They got into the Range Rover and the Sergeant drove off without, apparently, even a glance in our direction.

  The Range Rover was hardly out of the drive before the door opened again and Beth emerged, wrapped in a tartan shawl. We got out of the car to meet her but she hopped up into the back seat of the big car. ‘We have to talk,’ she told the farmer, ‘but you are not crossing my threshold again.’

  I heard the farmer make a small sound. I had heard him make the same sound when he caught his finger in a gate.

  We got back into the front. While the courtesy light was still on I saw that Quentin Cove had flushed dark red and his square face looked haggard. ‘I was just telling John how much I regret—’

  ‘No time for that now,’ Beth snapped. ‘Tell Daffy all about it later. She may forgive you. I certainly wouldn’t. I saw you out here ages ago, John, but I wasn’t going to let Sam join in with us so I had to wait until they’d finished with Hannah. She came out of there in tears, so she and Sam can look after each other for a while.’

  ‘They found Mr Macevoy at Gifford House,’ I told her. ‘But they’ve cleared him of the murder somehow.’

  ‘I got that much out of them. They told me about it, just to shut me up. They’ve found the lorry driver who gave him a lift from York to Kirkcaldy on the Monday, the day after Dougal disappeared.’

  I began to repeat our discussion but Beth cut me off. She was in her overdrive. ‘All right. So I was wrong. You can crow about it later. They’ve made up their minds that there had to be a conspiracy. They’re probably right. Dougal was no lightweight. I don’t see any one man carrying him up that hill and over that sort of ground single-handed. And in their minds a conspiracy means us.’

  ‘There’s one other possibility,’ Quentin Cove said. ‘Jim Macevoy could have reached home and found his wife wondering what to do with the body of his nephew.’

  ‘Do you think she’d be much help, carrying a body across that broken ground by night?’ Beth asked.

  ‘At least it wouldn’t be uphill,’ Cove pointed out.

  ‘The police wouldn’t have missed that option,’ I said, ‘but they seem to have discounted it. We never met Macevoy. How old was he when he went inside?’

  ‘In his fifties.’

  ‘He must be sixty or more by now,’ Beth said. ‘Could you picture him managing the body with no help except for his wife? She looked like a flabby lump to me, the one time I saw her.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Cove said gloomily.

  ‘I may not be. People can perform amazing feats when they’re desperate. But we can’t bank on it. Our problem,’ Beth said firmly, ‘is that while the police are looking at us they may not be looking at anybody else. They can’t bring a case against any of us because there isn’t any real evidence and there never will be. The fiscal hasn’t yet called for an inquiry in front of the sheriff, but when it happens the facts will come out. And we’ll be smeared, for ever. Not openly but by implication. If they don’t make an arrest, we’ll have this around our necks for years. Hannah, in particular, may go down in folklore as the girl who got away with murdering her lover. We’ve got to do something.’

  ‘Definitely,’ I said. ‘But what?’

  Beth thought it over for all of ten seconds. ‘We only have long shots,’ she said, ‘so we’d better . . . what does one do with long shots?’

  ‘Back them,’ Cove said.

  ‘Right. Mr Cove, can you get us into Dougal’s cottage? Or have the police sealed it?’

  ‘No problem. But you’re probably too late. The seals have been broken. Somebody went through the place – probably more than one person. The police know, but they haven’t bothered to seal it again. I took a look inside for myself. Nothing seems to have been stolen, so I jalouse it was somebody looking for whatever Dougal had been holding over them.’

  ‘They probably found it,’ I said. ‘It’s hopeless, isn’t it? If somebody already got screwed for a car or a watch – or a video – his motive’s gone. He never seems to have bitten the same person twice.’

  ‘Thanks very much,’ Cove said.

  Beth leaned forward. ‘But we don’t know that,’ she said. ‘Mr Cove, what was the next demand he made on you? What was the next guilty secret? Did he find some trace of Daffy on the bull-bars at the front of this car? Was he going to turn you in for attempted murder?’

  ‘Nothing of the sort!’ Quentin Cove’s voice went up through the roof. I could sense his outrage. It was as unmistakable as a fart in the confined space. ‘I’d been daft for a while, I admit it. I did three things I’ll be bitterly ashamed of for the rest of my days.’

  ‘Four,’ I said. ‘You let my tyres down.’

  ‘All right, four. Dougal spotted the switch of dogs and he took my video off me and that’s all. Damn it, Dougal was already dead when . . . when I . . .’

  ‘When you tried to injure Daffy. All right,’ Beth said. ‘Keep your socks on. I wanted to be sure. Who else is there? Mr Cove, you were closer to him, geographically, than anyone else. What expensive toys did he have? The car, the watch, the video. What else?’

  ‘Clothes,’ I said.

  ‘You can’t blackmail somebody for clothes,’ Beth snapped. ‘At least you could, but there’s nobody I can think of whose clothes would have fitted Dougal. What else did he covet?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ Cove said. ‘We didn’t let our hair down and have heart-to-heart blethers.’

  ‘I must ask Hannah,’ Beth said musingly. ‘Yes, I think we definitely want a look inside his cottage.’

  ‘Whatever you’re after, it’s probably gone,’ I told her. ‘The victim took it back. Or the police have it. We might get a solicitor to ask for disclosure of what they’ve found.’

  ‘Later,’ Beth said. ‘First, let’s be sure that it’s gone. You’ll be at home in the morning?’

  ‘I’ll watch for you,’ said Quentin Cove.

  ‘Right,’ Beth said. ‘And until then, you bastard, behave yourself, you hear me?’ As she got out of the car and the courtesy light came on, her elbow gave him an accidental crack over the head that made his eyes water.

  Chapter Eleven

  I was in no doubt that Beth’s view of our predicament was the right one. We had seen other instances in which the law and justice had failed to coincide. A verdict of not guilty was often taken to mean got away with it. Not proven was worse. And if no charge was brought against anybody, that could be the worst of all because there would not even be the cold comfort of either of the other verdicts. The odium would stick. Hannah would be tainted for ever and – God help us! – the whisper might go round that she and I had conspired to kill her lover in order to further an affair of our own. Such a rumour would be no more unreasonable than many that had circulated on the local gossip-
vine.

  When I mentioned the danger to Beth, she only nodded. I realized then that she was, as so often, ahead of me and that this had been one of the reasons for her call to arms. My ambition to drop Sir Ian Bewlay into the mire up to and over his balding head would have to take second place for the moment.

  I was in a fever to dash around and do something, anything, to upset the status quo, but Beth calmed me down and set me to clearing the decks for the morning. I spent the rest of the day walking dogs in the darkness and helping with the last feed and clean. Beth, meanwhile, was in her hyperactive mode, pulling more than her weight around the kennels, comforting Hannah until Daffy’s return relieved her of that necessity, attending to Sam and between times making phone call after phone call. And somehow during all this frenzy a meal made it onto the table.

  Sam, protesting loudly that he wanted to see his favourite video for the thousandth time, was soon banished to bed and we settled in the kitchen with Hannah and Daffy – not in order to enjoy our knocking-off drinks, long after our usual time, but to take them anyway as a comfort and a lubricant to serious discussion.

  Hannah was still red-eyed and bemused by being pitched suddenly into a strange new world, but when Beth pressed her for details of what Detective Sergeant Bremner had asked her she pulled herself together. She told us that the Sergeant, after the now customary minute-by-minute dissection of Hannah’s activities over what seemed to be an unnecessarily prolonged period, had suddenly changed tack. Had Hannah quarrelled with Dougal? Had she been jealous? Or had he tried to blackmail her? Into sleeping with him, perhaps? What threat had he held over her? ‘And then,’ Hannah said indignantly, ‘she up and asked me whether I fancied Mr Cunningham.’

  ‘What did you tell her?’ Daffy asked, enthralled.

  ‘I told her that she had a mind like a cesspool and that if she made any more suggestions like those I’d tell Mr Cunningham.’

  The others laughed. I cringed. The idea that my wrath could constitute a threat to be held over the police was a new one to me, but it seemed that, rather than fancying me, Hannah still regarded me with awe. I was uncertain whether to be flattered or insulted.

  Beth was trying, not very successfully, to hide a smile. ‘What else?’ she asked.

  ‘Sergeant Bremner said that there were a carving knife and two smaller kitchen knives in Dougal’s kitchen and she wanted to know if there should have been any other ones. I said that I didn’t know. And was I sure that Mr Cunningham hadn’t come to meet me that night? I said definitely not and anyway I had your car so he’d have had to walk about ten miles or take a taxi. Then she wanted to know if you’d ever seen that film before and I said that I knew for a fact that you hadn’t. But she went on and on, suggesting things you’d hardly believe.’

  ‘We’d believe them all right,’ Beth said. ‘But I’m afraid we may have to go on and on, like Sergeant Bremner. First . . . Daffy, Mrs Kitts may be back tomorrow if Mr Kitts is still improving. Either way, can you manage the place if Hannah comes with us tomorrow morning? We need to look through Dougal’s cottage.’

  ‘No problem,’ said Daffy.

  ‘But do you really need me?’ Hannah asked nervously.

  Beth paused for a moment, wondering whether to be brisk or motherly and deciding to attempt a compromise. ‘We do need you,’ she said. ‘It may be difficult for you and bring back all sorts of memories you’d rather put aside but you’ll have to be brave. We have to untangle this horrible mess if you’re not to be bothered again and again, so in a way it’s for your own good. Mr Cove says that Dougal’s cottage had been entered. You’re the one person who may be able to give us a fresh lead by telling us whether anything’s missing. Or if anything’s there that wasn’t there before. Or if there’s anything there that he wouldn’t have paid for but might have got by . . . by putting pressure on people.’

  ‘By blackmail,’ Hannah said stoutly. ‘It’s all right. I didn’t know anything about it at the time and I didn’t believe it at first, but thinking it over since then I’ve been remembering how he could set his heart on things. Not money, just things. And most of the time he did care about how people felt, but when he wanted something he changed completely and was ready to ride roughshod over anybody. I can easily believe that he’d use threats.’

  Hannah had been pressed to accept a vodka and tonic instead of her usual shandy. Beth caught Daffy’s eye and Daffy surreptitiously topped up Hannah’s glass. The unaccustomed alcohol was having the desired effect of loosening her tongue, but what came out in response to Beth’s probing was mostly negative. Did Dougal have any enemies? Not to say enemies but he didn’t seem to get on with people. Then who were his friends? Hannah could only think of Elsie Dundee’s son Jimmy, who on his visits home had usually gone for a pint with Dougal. Who else might he have been blackmailing? Hannah had no idea.

  Beth sighed and held out her own glass for a refill. ‘We have to get a starting point,’ she said. ‘And you’re not being very helpful. Hannah, Dougal coveted things. Did he ever say, “I wish I had a such-and-such”?’

  ‘Sometimes.’ Hannah carefully suppressed a ladylike burp. ‘In fact, quite often. It was his way. Mostly it was cars. He’d see a four-by-four, much more suitable for a farmer than the Lotus, and he’d say, “I could be doing with one of those.” Once it was a real pearl necklace and he said, “I wish I could give you something like that,” and I said that he didn’t have to worry about it, I wasn’t the sort to wear pearls, pearls would look silly on me.’ Hannah blinked and hurried on. ‘Sometimes, when we saw something happening, like an accident or a really weird car or once it was a girl with her skirt tucked into the back of her knickers, he’d say, “God, I wish I had a video camera!” And I remember him watching one of Mr Hatton’s dogs working sheep and saying that about a camera and also saying, “I wish I owned that dog.’”

  ‘That’s interesting,’ Beth said. ‘John, just suppose that he’d had something serious on you, something that you’d really hate for anyone to know, and he demanded that you hand over your favourite dog – which would that be?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Probably Ash.’

  ‘Well then, would you have killed him in order to keep the dog?’

  I considered the question seriously. ‘It would depend on circumstances,’ I said. ‘It’s too easy to sit here and say “no”. I’m not a killing sort of person except in the way of duty, but I’m no different from other men. If the demand came at the height of a furious quarrel I suppose it might prove to be the last straw.’

  Beth looked at me speculatively and then decided on a change of subject. ‘Hannah, can you think of anyone who’ll be better off with Dougal dead?’

  ‘I suppose his uncle . . .’

  ‘Who was still hitch-hiking northward at the time. Did Dougal have any insurance policies?’

  To my surprise, Hannah’s glow was not just the firelight but a definite blush. ‘That was another thing he said he wished he had. He said that he was going to start one for me. And once, when I admired his Lotus, he said that he was going to make out a will in my favour. But I don’t know that he did either of those things.’

  ‘Surely,’ I said, ‘if the police had found either a will or an insurance policy with you as the beneficiary, they’d have said something?’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure,’ Hannah said. ‘Sergeant Bremner kept asking me things like what difference was Dougal’s death going to make to me. I said that losing a boyfriend was bound to make a big change. Obviously. I wasn’t going to give the impression that I’d been expecting to be better off. But I think she knew.’

  ‘Oh, my dear!’ Beth said.

  *

  Isobel arrived on time in the morning. Henry, she said, was back on his feet, shaky but self-sufficient, and she was glad to get back to Three Oaks and less demanding patients. After a quick rush at the more demanding chores we were able to leave Three Oaks, confident that Daffy and Isobel could at least keep things ticking over. The morning
was dank. We settled Sam in front of his favourite video, fobbed off Isobel’s questions with a very brief résumé of events and made our escape.

  At Ardrossie I turned into the farmyard. Quentin Cove was standing on the now exposed tarmac. He was talking to Detective Inspector Ewell.

  ‘Oh, hell!’ I said.

  ‘I left a message for him,’ Beth said firmly, ‘asking him to meet us here. But I didn’t think that he’d come. I just wanted to be able to show, afterwards, that we hadn’t done anything behind his back.’

  ‘He won’t want us sifting through Dougal’s home.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ Beth retorted.

  I drew up beside the two-year-old Allegro which I assumed had brought the Inspector. He seemed to be unaccompanied. ‘He’s become the enemy,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t think so. But that’s why I didn’t tell you sooner,’ she said obscurely.

  We disembarked. Ewell walked to meet us while Quentin Cove kept his distance and looked ready to take to his heels. I could guess that Ewell had not been offering words of comfort.

  ‘If you’ve abandoned us to the wolves . . .’ I began.

  Ewell shook his head sadly. ‘None of my doing,’ he said. ‘I suspect that the Super gained the impression from Sergeant Bremner that I was going easy on you.’ He saw my eyebrows go up. I was always a believer in loyalty to my immediate superior. ‘I’m not blaming the lassie,’ he added quickly. ‘She wouldn’t run with tales. But if the Super asked her a direct question, she’d have to give an honest opinion.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said. I had a suspicion that the knives might be out for Detective Inspector Ewell, who was too unsophisticated a man to realize it. What I was much more certain of was that Ewell was not above moderating his own opinions for the sake of a pretty face; but I had already known that from his fatherly attitude to Beth over the years.