The Christmas Puzzle (Pitkirtly Mysteries Book 8)

by Cecilia Peartree

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, watching. ‘You looked as if you were going to be sick.’

  He laughed. ‘I’m fine. You’re fine as you are.’

  Her puzzlement deepened.

  ‘Is it something in these papers?’

  She made a grab for the McCallum letters, and after a brief struggle during which he feared they would be ripped in half, he gave in and let her have them.

  ‘Hmph, boring,’ she said after a few moments. ‘I can’t believe they actually thought anyone would be interested in all this stuff about the cat. And who was this Mrs Greig, anyway? Did she ever come back?’

  She put most of the letters back on his desk, keeping hold of the one she was reading.

  ‘I don’t know. I haven’t got that far.’

  ‘Is it really part of your job to read through pointless rambling letters full of trivia?’

  ‘Ha!’ said Christopher. ‘That’s most of my job, if you count all the letters from the Council telling me to do things I completely disagree with.’

  If she hadn’t been Amaryllis, he would almost have thought a coy expression crossed her face.

  ‘Would it help if someone utterly sensible and reasonable got elected to the Council to help them make the right decisions?’ she enquired.

  ‘Yes, it might, but what are the chances of that?’

  He glanced up at her again. The coyness had intensified exponentially.

  ‘You?’

  ‘There’s a bye-election coming up,’ she said.

  ‘I – um – yes. Well, stranger things have happened,’ he mumbled. It wasn’t so much that he didn’t think she could win an election, more that he didn’t know if West Fife Council needed an unknown quantity in their midst. Something between a harmless wild card and an unexploded bomb.

  ‘Thanks for your wholehearted support,’ she said, and turned to leave.

  ‘I didn’t mean – of course I’ll support you in any way I can,’ he said. ‘It would be fantastic – brilliant – to have you helping to make decisions.’

  Fantastic was the right word, he thought. In the sense of something that only existed in the realms of fantasy.

  As if sensing his disloyalty, she flounced out of the office, banging the door hard behind her. He stared blindly at the McCallum Archive for a while. After a few moments, he remembered she had still been holding one of the letters when she left. Oh well, as far as he was concerned she was welcome to it.

  After a few more moments he arrived at the conclusion that he had been disloyal not just to Amaryllis but to his chosen profession too. It wasn’t a great start to the week.

  Chapter 18 Encounters of the Unwanted Kind

  Amaryllis was halfway up the High Street before she discovered she was still clutching one of Christopher’s precious letters. She was about to turn and go back with it, but she decided not to. It would have ruined the dramatic effect, and she was aware that she needed to work on being more dramatic if she were to have any future in politics.

  She tucked the letter away in the inside pocket of her leather jacket. It wouldn’t do to damage one of Christopher’s precious historic manuscripts, even when she doubted the historic value of this particular item. As for whether Mrs Greig had ever come back or not, there probably wasn’t any mystery in it at all. Her husband had been impossible to live with for years, so in the end she gathered together her resolution and her self-respect and left him. End of story.

  She did wonder, though, about what the police had been doing in the Cultural Centre. It wasn’t the first time they had visited the place in the course of an enquiry, of course. Not by a long chalk. Presumably there wasn’t a dead body on the premises on this occasion, though. Surely Christopher would have told her if that had been the case.

  Maisie Sue was coming down the hill towards her. She seemed to have lost her new best friend Tamara. But then, Tamara lived outside Pitkirtly so she would have gone home after the confrontation of the other night.

  ‘Why, Amaryllis!’ said Maisie Sue, apparently pleased to see her. ‘I’m so glad to see you?’

  ‘Hello, Maisie Sue. Sorry about what happened with Tamara.’ Amaryllis didn’t often apologise to anyone about anything, but she felt it might be justified in this case. She had experienced real remorse after upsetting not just Tamara, to whom she didn’t owe anything, but Maisie Sue, who had been a good friend for a while, and Jan, who had once tried hard to teach her to knit against all the odds.

  ‘That’s all right!’ exclaimed Maisie Sue. She was in a particularly exuberant mood. Amaryllis had noticed this happen before as the Christmas season approached. She seemed to enjoy making Christmas cushion covers and other useless things for the home, and baking festive treats that were apparently traditional at the other side of the Atlantic. She hadn’t lived in Pitkirtly for long enough to be worn down by cynics like Jock McLean, who had been heard to declare that he would have gone to a heathen country for the whole festive season if he could find one where the evil tentacles of Christmas hadn’t extended their terrible clutches. This of course made it even more satisfying to have coerced him into being Santa Claus. Amaryllis smiled to herself, then changed her mind and tried to look concerned.

  ‘Was Tamara all right afterwards?’ she asked.

  ‘She was fine,’ said Maisie Sue firmly. ‘Jan and I called a cab to take her home. We didn’t think it was right for her to be thrown about on one of your buses.’

  Amaryllis opened her mouth to disclaim responsibility for the local bus service, but instead found herself saying, ‘It must have been terrible for her – what happened to her daughter, I mean.’

  ‘Well, we didn’t talk about that any more after you left,’ said Maisie Sue. ‘Jan showed her some knitted holiday decorations and we invited her to join the new Craft Club we’re planning on starting up next year. I guess it helped her to think about something else.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Amaryllis. ‘I won’t talk to her any more about it.’

  Privately she considered it might have been better to encourage Tamara to talk about what had happened and even to wallow in it until she had no more tears left, but she could see that Maisie Sue would prefer to sweep it all under the carpet – or more likely under a specially hand-made log-cabin quilt – so there was no point in discussing it with her.

  As she went down the other side of the hill and reached her own flat, she was still debating with herself whether to speak to the police about Tamara’s daughter.

  She almost turned back in the other direction when she saw the man standing on the doorstep. But by the time she saw him, she knew he had seen her too, so there was no escape. With his large build and ungainly posture he might have had trouble catching her if she had run away, though.

  ‘Mr Whitmore.’

  ‘Hello,’ he said, puffing slightly.

  ‘Do you want to come in?’ It went against the grain to invite him into her own space, but she didn’t think she wanted to have the kind of conversation she imagined having with him out in the open here.

  He puffed even more as he followed her up the stairs. She began to worry that she might have to call for medical help. It wouldn’t look very good either if the father of a presumed murder victim was found collapsed in her flat. She squashed down that ignoble idea. It didn’t really matter too much what it looked like. The main thing was that it was only fair to give Mr Whitmore the chance of justice for the death of his daughter, if justice was what was required, while he was still alive himself.

  She brought him a cup of tea once he was sitting down. She had persuaded him to take one of the uncomfortable chairs at the table, not because she wanted to torture him but because she wasn’t sure if he would be able to get up again if he slumped on to the sofa. She wasn’t sure either if he might break it beyond repair. Another ignoble thought to squash down. She sighed at the prospect of all the ignoble thoughts one day exploding out of her and attacking an unsuspecting bystander – probably Christopher – when squashing
them down inside her became impossible. It would be a bit like a volcano that was overdue for a major eruption.

  ‘Have you closed your shop this morning?’ she asked.

  ‘No, the boy’s looking after it for a wee while. I won’t leave him on his own for long, mind you.’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know how the police are doing,’ she said, sitting opposite him. ‘But they were in the Cultural Centre this morning looking at old newspapers.’

  ‘Newspapers? What would they be looking at those for?’

  ‘Perhaps they think something that happened in the past is the key to it all.’

  ‘Something that happened in the past....’

  His flabby face took on a grim expression. Not that it had been particularly sunny even before this.

  ‘You’d think they’d check their own records first,’ said Amaryllis helpfully. She blinked. Why hadn’t she thought of that before? Had the police explained themselves to Christopher before they started work in the Cultural Centre today?

  ‘Hmph. Probably can’t find any,’ said Mr Whitmore. He took a gulp of tea. ‘Or they’re not trying hard enough.’

  ‘I’m sure they are trying,’ said Amaryllis, testing out her new role on the side of the authorities.

  ‘Do you think they ever try as hard when it’s somebody who’s got the wrong side of them in the past?’ said Mr Whitmore. He fixed her with a stare. ‘My Jackie got into trouble a couple of times. But she’s – she was – a good lass.’

  ‘How did she get on at school?’ said Amaryllis. She was trying not to mention the incident of Tamara’s daughter and the elf suit, but there would be no harm in leading him round to it gradually.

  ‘All right, considering,’ he said. ‘Of course, there were people out to get her then too.’

  ‘Were there really?’ said Amaryllis, trying to sound surprised.

  ‘The music teacher for one – he made a terrible fuss when she hit him over the head with her recorder. You’d think it had been a brick. Better if it had been. At least it’d have shut him up for a bit longer... Then there was the girl who played in the hockey team. You’d think they could mend a broken hockey club quite easily, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Hockey club?’

  ‘Yes – the girl hit Jackie on the ankle with it. She said it was an accident but we knew it wasn’t. Jackie picked up the club thing and threw it against the wall, and it broke. Got suspended for that. It’s always the same... One law for them and one for us.’

  Amaryllis wasn’t clear about who he meant by ‘them’ and ‘us’ in the context but she nodded in a semblance of agreement anyway.

  ‘Was that at secondary school?’ she enquired.

  He rose to the bait. ‘Aye – but there was things that happened before that too. That wee girl in the daft elf outfit... No offence.’

  ‘It’s ok. What girl was that?’

  ‘I saw the girl’s mother back in town not long ago. You’d think she’d have the sense to stay away. The girl punched my Jackie on the nose when they were at school. There was blood everywhere. Jackie got in an awful state.’

  ‘Did she see Jackie in the elf costume? The girl’s mother, I mean.’

  ‘Yes. She created a bit of a scene too. I wasn’t there but somebody told me. She was shouting and bawling. Crying. Jackie came home upset. Said she didn’t want to be an elf ever again, but then that other woman talked her back into it.’

  ‘Elizabeth French?’

  ‘Is that her name? Some woman from the Council. Jackie should have taken the hint and kept well out of it. She’d maybe still be with me if she had done.’

  His pale eyes filled with tears. Amaryllis couldn’t bring herself to pat him on the shoulder. Now that things had become emotional she just wanted him to leave. At least she had learned a little more about Tamara’s dealings with Jackie. The encounter must have been tricky for both of them. But perhaps worse for Tamara, who might have imagined Jackie was mocking her in some way by wearing the elf costume. Tamara wouldn’t have known Jackie had been more or less forced to take part in the Christmas festivities as part of her community service. Perhaps she didn’t even know about the part Jackie had played in the events at the Queen of Scots.

  Amaryllis had the food for thought. All she needed was the chance to digest it in peace.

  Unfortunately at that moment the doorbell rang.

  Mr Whitmore lumbered to his feet. ‘That’ll be a friend of yours. I’d better be getting on.’

  ‘It’s all right, you don’t have to go,’ lied Amaryllis, showing him out as quickly as she dared. By the time they had negotiated the stairs, the doorbell had rung twice more.

  ‘All right, all right,’ Amaryllis muttered as she finally opened the door downstairs to let Mr Whitmore out.

  Jason Penrose was waiting on the step. The two men glared at each other in passing, almost as if they were rivals for her affections instead of something entirely different.

  ‘It never rains but it pours,’ said Amaryllis.

  Jason looked at the clear sky and frowned. ‘No sign of rain yet.’

  ‘Ah, but sun before seven, rain by eleven,’ said Amaryllis. ‘I suppose you might as well come in.’

  ‘I’ve never heard that one before,’ said Jason, following her back up the stairs.

  ‘But surely you get invited into all sort of places,’ said Amaryllis.

  ‘Who was that?’ said Jason as they arrived at the top of the stairs. ‘Wow, cool room.’

  He tried to open the door to the balcony but it was locked. Amaryllis didn’t want him wandering out there anyway, so she waved him to Mr Whitmore’s chair at the table.

  ‘I don’t have long,’ she told him. ‘I’m supposed to be down at the tram for two o’clock.’

  ‘Hard going, when you have to be there every day,’ he observed, sitting down meekly enough.

  ‘I had yesterday off. It’s not so bad. Being there gives me the chance to see what’s going on.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Jason. ‘I hear from Constable Burnet that you do a lot of that.’

  ‘It’s for the public good,’ she said primly.

  ‘And for fun?’ he suggested.

  He was doing that twinkling eyes thing again. On this occasion she didn’t find it attractive.

  ‘And talking of fun,’ she said, ‘how is your dig going?’

  ‘That isn’t fun,’ he replied. ‘It’s perfectly serious. I think we’re within hours of a possible press release.’

  ‘How do the police feel about that?’

  ‘I’m not sure they’re all that happy, but no such thing as bad publicity, you know.’

  ‘I don’t think that saying applies to the police,’ said Amaryllis. Of course she was the last person to quibble about people breaking into police stations, or their gardens, and doing things that would disrupt the valuable work going on in there – or at least she would have been the last person until her recent conversion. Now she was more ambivalent. And she did wonder if Jason’s quest had more to do with personal aggrandisement than with genuine research. One thing she had certainly never approved of was personal aggrandisement.

  ‘What do you want?’ she asked abruptly.

  ‘I just thought I’d stop by and say hello,’ he said.

  ‘Try again.’

  ‘Honestly? They won’t let me back into the police garden to finish the dig, and I was wondering if you could use your influence...’

  Amaryllis went into paroxysms of laughter. She vaguely sensed that he was trying to make himself heard, but she couldn’t discern any actual words.

  ‘I’ll see myself out,’ he said, raising his voice slightly, presumably to try and reach her. ‘If you change your mind, you can get a message to me through FOOP.’

  ‘Change my mind.’ After choking the words out, mostly to herself as Jason was halfway down the stairs by then, Amaryllis gradually calmed down, recovering enough to run and open the door to the balcony, stick her head out and shout something extremely rude
at him as he walked up the hill. He made a rude gesture back. In many ways he was her kind of man.

  Chapter 19 The Day After

  Jock had spent all day on Sunday sitting in his front room, more or less motionless. He had the television on for the company but didn’t watch anything, or at least not consciously. Getting home the night before had been more of an ordeal than he had imagined it would be, and by the time he flung himself into bed, head aching and most of his limbs protesting strongly, he almost wished he had tried to call the doctor to check out his head. The only thing that stopped him was that he knew there wasn’t even an emergency doctor in Pitkirtly after hours, and he would have had to ring the helpline and put up with a lot of inanity in order to be advised to take an aspirin. Or did they even advise aspirin these days? He had a packet of it in his kitchen drawer which had been there since he moved into the house, but he prided himself on having an iron constitution and never needing painkillers. Except for that time he had been blown up, of course. But that had been a freak accident and not a sign of weakness on his part.

  He wasn’t going to let the ice incident put him off going to the Queen of Scots later on, of course, after he had done his turn as Santa. But maybe he should leave with the others in future, no matter how tempted he was to stay on until closing time. He and Christopher and Amaryllis were all friends, and there was no need to worry about being the odd one out with them. In fact there was very little sign these days of anything at all romantic between them. But why was he even thinking about this kind of thing? It was nothing to do with him. He obviously just didn’t have enough to think about these days. Not enough in his own life... His thoughts strayed for some reason in the direction of Tricia Laidlaw, and he steered them back into line after a bit of a tussle over who was in charge.

  On the way down to the tram to get ready for the day’s session on Monday, he met Amaryllis, who was loitering near the fish shop.

  ‘You’re not getting obsessed with lemon sole too, are you?’ he enquired.