Murder at the Open

by Angus MacVicar

  Meanwhile, however, when I opened my eyes in our bedroom at the hotel and saw Aidan peering down at me with remarkably anxious eyes, I didn’t feel like laughing at all. I was sore all over. My mouth was dry and sour. I was disgusted with myself.

  “What’s the time?” I said, sitting up in bed.

  They’d got my jacket and shirt oif. I glimpsed blood on my bare right arm.

  “Ten past midnight,” Aidan told me. To someone behind him, he said, “He’s come round, Doctor.”

  A young, fresh man with ruddy cheeks and a keen professional eye rubbed a damp piece of cotton-wool on my shoulder and began to put on a bandage. “Luckily,” he remarked to Aidan, “the bullet went right through, just nipping the skin.”

  “It’s not serious, then?”

  “Not in the least. No more than a scratch.”

  “What about his general condition?”

  “Seems a fit man for his age. He’ll survive.” He grinned at me like Dr Kildare.

  I was trying to calculate. It must have been nearly eleven o’clock when I encountered the shadow in North Castle Street. The game of hide-and-seek had probably lasted about half-an-hour. I’d been unconscious, therefore, for something like thirty-five minutes.

  “What about Debbie?” I said. “Have you — ”

  “She still refuses to speak to anyone but you,” replied Aidan.

  “Then I must get down to the hospital — ”

  “Hold your horses! I have other plans. In any case, I think I’ve guessed what she wants to tell you.”

  “But look here —”

  “We can’t wait any longer, Angus. Too much damage has already been caused by waiting. In a few minutes, even without any hard evidence, Big Sam and I are going to take a chance and put pressure on the murderer.”

  Still smiling, the doctor rummaged in the wardrobe and found a clean shirt and a cardigan which he made me put on over my bathed and bandaged torso. “Now you can have a drink,” he said. “And here’s a tablet to take with it — something which ought to relieve your aches and pains.”

  “It’s not a sedative? I’m not going to miss — ”

  “On the contrary, it’s an exhilarating drug — for an hour or so.”

  “You’re not such a bad chap,” I told him.

  Aidan poured out my drink from his private bottle of Black and White. It was a bumper, to which he added only a few drops of water from the tap in the wash-hand basin. I got it over in two gulps. With the second gulp I swallowed the tablet.

  “Fine,” said the doctor. “Now just take it as easy as you can. Come and see me at the hospital tomorrow for a final check. I think you’ll be all right, though. Golfers are fairly tough as a rule.”

  “Play yourself?”

  “Occasionally.”

  “What’s your handicap?”

  “Scratch. The Old Course brings one on.”

  I said no more on that subject. Between the golf of a young man playing off scratch and that of an older one playing off five there yawns an embarrassing gulf.

  When he had packed his bag and gone from the room, Aidan poured me another drink and took one himself. He sat on the edge of the bed, and we lit cigarettes.

  “I made a ruddy mess of it, didn’t I?” I said.

  “Not such a mess as I made!” I don’t remember him ever looking so upset before or since. “God, if you’d been killed!”

  “I nearly was, thanks to my own stupidity. Look — that shadow, did you find it?”

  He glanced at me curiously and even with some concern. “What shadow?” he said.

  “Didn’t you know? For Pete’s sake, you don’t really imagine I just got lost in the Castle grounds and —”

  “Not that. We did realise that something odd must have happened.”

  “Odd! Let me tell you!”

  I had been feeling rotten, with waves of weakness and nausea chasing each other through my stomach; but the whisky and the doctor’s tablet were now beginning to take effect, and I was able to describe events in fairly vigorous detail.

  When I had finished, he looked more satisfied. “It all fits in,” he said, the anxiety in his eyes giving place to a more characteristic smugness. “Somebody knew that once you reached Debbie in hospital, the game might be up. So this person — almost certainly Conrad Ligstrom’s murderer — decided to try and head you off. Big Sam and I expected some such attempt to be made, but we were confident we could protect you.”

  “The best laid schemes,” I said, forestalling him.

  “Quite. After you left the hotel, while Big Sam, Sergeant McCrimmon and I were making preparations to follow you, Erica Garson and Cliff O’Donnel also volunteered to come. They went to get coats. For about a minute we waited for them to rejoin us. Then, when they didn’t show up promptly, we started off on our own. But that small hesitation on our part was enough for your ‘shadow’. We imagined you’d take the route to the hospital via North Street. By the time we reached the intersection of North Castle Street, the murderer was already pursuing you across the Scores in the direction of the Castle. We actually heard the revolver shots, effectively silenced though they were.”

  “Then when you got into the Castle grounds you couldn’t tell which way we’d gone and spent time looking for us?”

  “We weren’t even sure you were in the Castle grounds. We separated, so as to make a wider search. Eventually, however, you started yelling, and I, for one, understood vaguely what had happened. But I was on the west side of the Castle — the wrong side from the point of view of cutting off your ‘shadow’s’ escape — and by the time I’d got in touch again with Big Sam and McCrimmon, the murderer had got away.”

  “I heard quick footsteps retreating,” I told him. “And a splash in the sea — probably the gun being disposed of.”

  He nodded. “At this stage we were joined by Erica Garson and Cliff O’Donnel. Big Sam sent the Sergeant and the chauffeur round by the east side, while he and Erica Garson and I began to pick our way along the cliff at the western end, in case you should try and climb down before the others reached you.”

  “Nobody saw the shadow?”

  “A complete vanishing act, I’m afraid. It seems, however, that as McCrimmon and O’Donnel were humping you round from the back of the Castle they were joined by Bill Ferguson and three rather tipsy students. They’d heard the commotion, they said — Bill walking in North Castle Street and the students wending their way home along the Scores — and had immediately come running. Under a stretch of broken-down wall, Bill picked up a dark blue dust-sheet, which he handed over to Big Sam. An interesting exhibit, Angus. Quite voluminous when shaken out of its folds.”

  “The shadow’s disguise?”

  “Undoubtedly. Discarded on the spur of the moment, like the revolver. It came from the boot of Bill’s own car, you know. He used it to protect the sample products he carried about with him. Says it must have been stolen, of course.”

  There was a knock at the door. Sergeant McCrimmon put his crew-cut bullet head inside, suddenly smiling broadly as he saw me finishing my second glass of whisky.

  Then, grave again, he turned to Aidan. “The Inspector’s compliments, sir. Everyone’s ready to go to the hospital, if you are.”

  “Thanks. Tell him we’ll be down in a couple of minutes.”

  “Very good, sir.” The door closed.

  “The hospital?” I said.

  “Yes. Get a move on if you want to come.”

  He gangled up off the bed, stubbed his cigarette in an ashtray on the mantelpiece and began to rinse out his glass in the wash-hand basin.

  “Certainly I want to come.” I got up, too, feeling slightly dizzy as my feet touched the floor. “But what’s the idea?”

  “I told you — we’re going to put pressure on the murderer. The doctors have given us permission to hold a meeting in Debbie’s room. She’s feeling better, and though in ordinary circumstances they might have kept her quiet tonight, they’ve stretched a medical point i
n a situation of such gravity.”

  He took my glass and washed it, too. His hair stuck up around his balding pate, and I noticed the brightness of his eyes behind the horn-rims. Judging from his pompous use of the English language, he had almost regained his normal form.

  I took a comb to my untidy hair, while the last traces of dizziness disappeared under flooding excitement.

  “But look here, Aidan,” I said, “how can you make sense of it? You and Big Sam are agreed that though Cunningham may be a rogue, he didn’t murder Lingstrom, because he and Bill Ferguson have mutual alibis. And as for Bill, he was keen on the merger and had every reason to keep Lingstrom alive. Debbie and Erica Garson also have mutual alibis. In any case, Debbie is apparently too small and slight to have done violence to her uncle, while Erica Garson is left-handed and Lingstrom was murdered by someone swinging a club right-handed. O’Donnel has an alibi, too — vouched for by the bookies — and anyway, he looked on Lingstrom as his benefactor. As I say, how can you make sense of it?”

  He smiled an irritating smile which provided me with further evidence that he was back in business, his confidence restored. “A conjuror,” he said, “distracts your attention at the crucial moments by clever business. Bearing this in mind, we’re going back to the beginning to take a fresh look at the problem.”

  He would say no more. He led the way downstairs to the hall, where we joined the others.

  *

  O’Donnel drove us to the hospital in the Cadillac — Erica Garson, Bill Ferguson, Aidan, Big Sam, Sergeant McCrimmon and myself. The car was so roomy and luxurious that none of us felt cramped in our bodies, though I, for one, felt cramped in my mind.

  The secretary had reminded Sam that she and O’Donnel were due at Prestwick to meet the lawyer from New York at seven in the morning — and that the journey there would take approximately two and a half hours — but she’d been assured by the Inspector, in his heaviest tone, that our business in Debbie’s room would be over in a few minutes.

  The time now was nearly one o’clock. As we drove smoothly along the Scores, turning right through Murray Park into North Street, the town was quiet and apparently deserted. The wind had fallen away into a stillness that promised well for scoring on the Old Course in the morning. But golf didn’t bulk large in my thoughts at that moment.

  I was trying to figure out what Aidan had in mind. Jock and his colleagues were concentrating on five names, one of which might be that of the new Open Champion. I was concentrating on five murder suspects. But was I on the right track? Weren’t there others who might have wished Conrad Lingstrom ill? I dug into the turgid mess of my thoughts and came up with the memory of a tattoo-mark.

  What disturbed me was Aidan’s reference to a conjuring trick. Which important clue had I failed to recognise? Was there a definite clue involved at all? Might not Aidan be depending simply on his own particular brand of ‘deductive logic’ to demonstrate guilt?

  It appeared that a show-down was imminent. Within the next half-hour, Aidan and Big Sam hoped to break the murderer’s nerve and witness an act of self-betrayal. But on all the evidence up to date, the murderer’s nerve was finely tempered, even though in the past day or so it had obviously been subjected to increasing strains.

  In any case, why choose Debbie’s room in the hospital as the scene of the show-down? In her weak physical state, would it not be dangerous to expose her to a shock such as a revelation of the murderer’s identity was likely to cause?

  But as I thought of Debbie, more strange ideas began to trouble me. I remembered the incident on St Rule’s Tower, when the question of her attempted suicide had been raised. In a flashing moment of unease, the possibility occurred to me that her present illness might not be as serious as I imagined.

  The Cadillac was now half-way along North Street. Hotel fronts swam past on either side. Behind these fronts professional golfers would be sleeping — or trying to sleep — in preparation for tomorrow’s test of nerve and muscle in the final two rounds of the Open. I hoped they felt calmer and more confident than I did.

  Big Sam was in the front with O’Donnel, his shoulders slightly hunched, his head pushed forward. He reminded me of a heavyweight boxer getting ready to meet the assaults of a powerful opponent.

  O’Donnel, on the other hand, sat erect at the wheel, his chauffeur’s cap at its usual elegant angle. But from where I was, in the centre of the back seat between Erica Garson and Bill Ferguson, I could see part of his lower face. The skin was dry and muddy, the jaw set in a hard line. A nerve or a small muscle was working in his cheek.

  Aidan and Sergeant McCrimmon occupied bucket seats backing on the front. A glass panel behind Aidan’s head was open, and if he and Big Sam had wanted to communicate with each other they could have done so without difficulty. But it seemed as if no one wanted to speak.

  When Big Sam barked out an order to O’Donnel directing him to the right into South Castle Street, the sound of his voice was so harsh that Erica Carson and Bill Ferguson were both startled into small involuntary movements of their hands.

  Three of the five principal suspects were here — one at the wheel, two sitting on either side of me. I tried to find some sense in what details I had learnt of their characters.

  O’Donnel, for instance.

  A former drink-addict, a former small-time actor, but now the prototype of the faithful servant, trained in a democratic tradition. There was a kind of raddled glamour in his appearance — a reflection, maybe, of a new and grateful outlook upon life.

  He had a ruthless air and the physical attributes of a killer; but did he possess the strength of character to plan a murder in cold blood? And if he’d showed signs of being a potential murderer, why had Conrad Lingstrom and Debbie kept him in their employ for so many years? Why did Erica Garson, the personal secretary, seem to rely so much on his help in this unhappy situation? I had seen him perform for Debbie little acts of encouragement and affection which seemed to me the very opposite of those to be expected from a vicious killer.

  Bill Ferguson.

  He was lean and darkly pale, with a habit of frowning in a saturnine way. He was obviously worried and in considerable distress, though doing his best to hide it. He, too, had the physical qualifications required in a killer. But his moods could well be explained and excused by, first of all, Debbie’s inexplicable change of attitude towards him and, secondly, by business anxieties connected with the proposed merger and his own lawyer’s defalcation.

  He was genuinely in love with Debbie, I thought, and I had a feeling that Debbie was — or at any rate had been — in love with him. How could a girl like Debbie fall in love with someone capable of killing her uncle? Then I remembered that in the histories of crime, love is frequently shown to be the mainspring of murder, so I gave up this particular line of reasoning.

  Glancing at Bill now, I saw that his head had sunk low on his chest as he slumped in the corner. He looked relaxed, except for a hard and angry glitter in his eyes.

  I shifted my position and looked sideways at Erica Garson.

  She was wearing the black frock she’d had on at the funeral. A fur-trimmed coat lay open at the neck, its dark colour contrasting with the dull white skin of her throat and face.

  Was there fear in her expression? I couldn’t be sure. Maybe it was just pain at the futile tragedy of her life. Lacking sympathy and support from her parents, she had drifted away on a course of her own. Physical courage and determination had earned her glory on the golf-courses of America. But then her heart had betrayed her, and in her association with Conrad Lingstrom she had experienced a kind of shipwreck. Here was the classic ingredient in a build-up to murder: jealousy of a younger woman, not in a physical sense but in the region of something far more important as far as she was concerned — affection and friendship and the security of love.

  And the will. That question of Conrad Lingstrom’s will. I saw her strong fingers bunched on her lap. I shivered.

  But Debbie and G
ordon Cunningham at the hospital — they were suspect, too. I had known that all along, in spite of impressions which seemed to declare the contrary. But surely Debbie’s frail-seeming hands were incapable of dealing out violent death. Surely Cunningham’s myopic eyes made him unsuited to the task of aiming and striking at a small target of human flesh and bone.

  “Straight ahead down Abbey Street. Then along Abbey Walk.” Big Sam’s curt instructions dowsed my nebulous conjectures like a draught on flickering candles.

  “Sure. I know the way,” returned O’Donnel, with a trace of irritation.

  Bill Ferguson stirred, looked up and said: “What’s all this in aid of, anyway? If Debbie’s going to be upset — ”

  “Debbie’s very much upset already,” interrupted Aidan, suavely. “The next few minutes may actually have a therapeutic effect on her.”

  “What the hell d’you mean by that?”

  Aidan shrugged. “You’ll find out, Bill. You’ll find out.”

  Bill muttered something which to me sounded angry and contemptuous. I may have been wrong, however.

  “Do you know who killed Conrad?” Erica Carson’s voice was forced out between well-kept, even teeth.

  “I think so,” Aidan told her.

  “Then why doesn’t Inspector McLintock go right ahead and — ”

  “There are reasons, Miss Carson. I hope you are going to be patient — and sympathetic — for Debbie’s sake.”

  The high Precinct Wall loomed up on our left. In this area, two days before, Aidan and I had gone looking for Gordon Cunningham. We had found him at last and chivvied him to humiliation on the pier. Now, in an abstract sense, we were chivvying someone else to the verge of self-destruction. Or could it be Cunningham again?

  The wall hemmed us in, yellowish grey in the light of occasional street-lamps. Both Aidan and Sergeant McCrimmon were watching me. The policeman’s face was stolid. Aidan’s wore a quizzical look, as if he were trying to follow the course of my thoughts.

  Then gates appeared on our right. The Cadillac slowed down and turned into the drive leading up to the hospital.