“Rex!” Alistair’s voice reached him in a fierce whisper. “Are you awake?”
With a deep groan, Rex threw off the covers and went to open the door in his pajamas. Alistair was still dressed in his suit. Closing the door, Rex stood with his colleague on the landing.
“What’s the matter?”
“I turned on the late night news in the library,” Alistair recounted, his face strained and shadowed in the light from the hanging lamp. “It’s happened again.” His words broke off in a strangled choke.
“What has?”
“There’s been another Moor Murder!”
“A child?”
“A seven-year-old girl from Muiredge.”
With a quick glance at the four closed bedroom doors, Rex led Alistair back downstairs. He did not want to upset his guests and worse, have them all get up again. However, Shona was still about, he saw with surprise. She looked up from the front door, where she appeared to be hiding something in her coat.
“All right, hen?” Rex asked, using a Scottish endearment reserved for women.
“I was just getting a bit o’ air to clear my head. I had a wee bit too much to drink tonight,” she added with an artificial laugh.
What an odd creature Shona Allerdice is, Rex thought. Yet he was too concerned with his friend to pay her much mind. Once they were in the library, he splashed whisky into two tumblers. The television, housed in an armoire with retractable doors, was set on low volume. Alistair stared at the screen as the clean-cut news anchor reiterated the details of the case.
“Melissa Bates was abducted from her cottage late this afternoon,” he relayed in somber tones. “She was in the care of a baby-sitter, nineteen-year-old Gail Frith, who had left her playing in the front garden while she answered the phone. She did not report Melissa’s disappearance immediately, hoping to find her before the parents got home. She knocked at the neighbours’ doors. When a small boy mentioned seeing a green van with no windows in the back driving slowly down the road, Gail alerted the police. The surrounding moor was scoured for three hours before a police dog led authorities to an isolated spot seven miles from Muiredge. The girl’s body was dredged from a bog near Loch Laidon. Heavy rain has impeded further investigation for the time being. If anyone has seen a green van in the area …”
Rex muted the volume. Alistair continued to gaze at the screen.
“This is my fault,” he said, loosening his cravat. “I feel sick. I’m going to find Collins.” He made purposefully for the door.
Rex held him back. “The police will already have picked him up for questioning. They’ll round up all the pedophiles in a fifty-mile radius. They’ll widen the net if they have to. Nobody wants to catch this monster more than the Bill.” Or the parents, Rex thought. “This may be the crime that gets him convicted.”
“The rain will have washed away all the evidence. It’s a miracle the police found the body.”
“I imagine they gave the dog an item of the girl’s clothing and the animal was able to track the scent in spite of the rain. That dog deserves a medal.” Rex was aware he was waffling on, but he could see how devastated his colleague was that he had not been able to put Collins away—if indeed Collins was responsible for the murders. It was, granted, a huge coincidence that no abductions had been reported while he was in custody. “It’s amazing they found the body at all. Seven miles is a lot of ground to cover in such a short time, considering the rugged terrain.”
“The wee boy was able to give the direction in which the van took off. He was looking out his bedroom window, wondering if the rain would stop for his birthday tomorrow.”
“Lucky break.”
“Collins got a lucky break when I was called upon to prosecute him,” Alistair said bitterly, swirling his Scotch. “I wish Britain would bring back the death penalty for child killers. Oh, God, if I could just get a hold of him, I’d wring his neck with my bare hands.” He flexed his long, pale fingers, a look of pure hate disfiguring his handsome features.
“Same M.O. as the others?” Rex asked reluctantly, dreading the answer.
“They haven’t released specifics yet. And they may not.”
Certain details of the Kirsty MacClure case had not been divulged to the press. Only the police and those involved in the trial knew about the means of strangulation and nature of the molestation. In the previous cases, other than ligature marks around the neck, no other evidence of physical trauma had been found, even though the victims had each been found stripped naked from the waist down. In the MacClure case, it had been determined that the little girl’s elasticated undergarment had been used to asphyxiate her.
Rex wondered if an examination of Melissa Bates would reveal an escalation in the perpetrator’s behavior.
“I tried calling Dalgerry,” Alistair informed him. “But he’s not answering his phone.”
“He’ll be busy with this new case. Just let the chief inspector do his job, Alistair. There’s nothing you can do tonight.”
“The poor parents!”
“The poor babysitter,” Rex added. “Think how guilty she must feel. I wonder how long she was on the phone.”
“She said only a few minutes, but she admits she was talking to her boyfriend, so who knows? Phone records will probably show it was twenty minutes or longer.”
“I wonder what subterfuge the murderer used to lure the wee girl into his van. A kitten? Sweets? Oh, no,” Rex exclaimed, noticing a water stain on the ceiling. “This place leaks like a sieve. Looks like it’s coming from the guest bathroom.” He tuned in again to the rain drumming on the eaves beyond the drawn curtains. “Now I’ll have to get the roof looked at. It’s like pouring money into a bottomless well.”
“Didn’t you get an inspection done?” Alistair asked in self-
defense. He was, after all, the one who had notified Rex of the sale of Gleneagle Lodge and highly recommended the solicitor.
“I did, and there was a lot of deferred maintenance on the place which I was made aware of. I just did not expect everything to go wrong the moment I signed the papers. It should have been called The Money Pit.” Rex shrugged helplessly. “And it needs to be properly winterized before I can use it for skiing holidays.”
“It’s a great investment,” Alistair insisted. “You have all these acres and your own loch, for goodness sake.”
“Aye,” Rex conceded. “I like the place just fine. It’s a great place for nature-walking.”
“And skiing, eventually. Much better than paying those outrageous prices for lodgings in Aviemore.”
“All right, you’ve convinced me, Alistair.”
“I wish the little boy could have got a glimpse of the man,” his colleague muttered, his attention reverting to the muted television set, which showed shots of rainy moorscape and an area of bog cordoned off with blue-and-white police tape.
“Wishes are futile,” Rex cautioned Alistair. “Try to get some sleep. We’ll call the police in the morning and see if there are any developments.”
“I’ll never be able to sleep.” Alistair slumped into an armchair and put his head in his hands.
Rex went back upstairs to see if he could find a sleep aid. “I’m surprised you’re still awake,” he said, seeing Helen sitting up in bed reading a paperback novel.
Covering her mouth, she yawned deeply. “I was waiting for you. You’ve been gone twenty minutes.”
“Won’t be long now.”
“What are you looking for?” she asked when he came back out of the bathroom. “I heard you ransacking the cabinet.”
“Alistair needs something to help him sleep.”
“Is he okay?”
“Aye, he’s just a bit uptight about work.”
“In my wash bag. I always travel with a few pills.”
“Thanks, lass.” Rex returned with the bag and sank down on the bed. He felt bad about lying to Helen, even if it was only by omission. The last time he had done that, it had almost cost him his relationshi
p with her. But he didn’t want to upset her with this new development.
He doubted he could sleep either after what he had seen on TV about the Melissa Bates murder. It made him glad his son, Campbell had reached age twenty without any serious mishaps in his young life. A broken toe and the removal of his tonsils was all. It also made him hesitant about seriously considering the possibility of having another child. Helen was still of child-bearing age and had mentioned a couple of times how she had always wanted a daughter. In light of the Moor murders, the prospect sent a shudder through his core.
“Rex?” Helen held out a couple of tablets in the palm of her hand.
“Aye?”
“You seem very pensive.”
“I was having one of those philosophical moments when you weigh life’s pleasures with the reality of the world we live in.”
“You think too much.”
“There’s been another child abduction out on Rannoch Moor,” he confided at last. “Alistair saw it on the news tonight. The police have recovered the body.”
Helen clutched at the neck of her negligee. “Oh, my God! Poor Alistair. Is that why he can’t sleep? Does he know the child?”
“No, but he was the prosecutor in the Collins trial. He thinks if he’d done a better job and got a guilty verdict, he could have prevented this latest murder.”
“But Collins was acquitted because he had a watertight alibi for the exact time of Kirsty’s death.”
“Exact time of death can be very hard to pinpoint,” Rex told her. “And Collins’ girlfriend could have been lying for him, credible as she was on the witness stand. I just don’t know. All I do know is that Alistair is a damn fine advocate and, if he doesn’t get a grip on himself, it’ll ultimately cost him his career. I’ve seen it happen before when barristers lose their nerve.”
“Not every barrister wins practically every case. You’re just exceptional.”
Rex deposited a light kiss on her nose. “Thank you.”
“Shall I make Alistair some warm milk to wash down these tablets?”
“No, just stay where you are. I’ll be back to prove that I’m exceptional in places other than court.”
“Oh, right,” Helen said with a broad smile. “Hurry back, then.”
By the time Rex drifted blissfully into sleep, the house was quiet beneath the downpour. He woke up once in the night, staying alert long enough to register the fact that Helen was not beside him before falling back into a deep slumber. Later, as dull light began to seep in around the curtains, he felt her warmth in the bed and thought how lovely it would be not to have to get up before some decadent hour of the morning. Nine o’clock would be heaven.
As he half rose from the pillows to peer at the luminous hands on the alarm clock, he became aware of an incipient headache, which he attributed to the whisky he had consumed the night before, and which he might have been able to sleep off given half a chance. As it was, the house was already alive with the sounds of people rising and preparing for the day.
At just after seven, as he was shuffling out of the bedroom in his slippers to see to his guests, Flora accosted him on the landing. “Do you mind if I use your bathroom? Someone’s in the cloakroom downstairs and I’ve not been able to get into the one upstairs since yesterday night.”
“Maybe the door’s jammed.” Rex tried the knob on the bathroom door. “It’s locked.” He knocked. “Hello? Is anybody in there?”
Flora, standing beside him with her thighs squeezed together, wore a pained look on her face.
“By all means, use ours,” he told her. “Helen went down to the kitchen.”
The young woman scooted into his bedroom. He knocked again at the bathroom door.
“What time does the paper arrive?” Cuthbert asked, emerging from his room.
“The boy usually delivers the papers before six.”
“No sign of them, old chap. I’ve already been down. Maybe he couldn’t get here because of the rain, though it’s eased off a bit now.”
“He comes on his bicycle, but he’s never missed a delivery, even in snow.”
Hamish Allerdice came out of his room, bleary-eyed and unshaven. “Morning,” he croaked. He rattled the bathroom doorknob and swore. “Someone’s in there. I haven’t been able to get in all night. Had to go downstairs.”
“Flora said the same thing,” Rex informed him. “I really don’t want to break down the door. Perhaps it locked itself. I’ll go and see if I can get in through the window.”
He mooched down the stairs and changed into his Wellingtons. Voices burbled from the kitchen. The faucet was running in the cloakroom. He imagined everyone must be up by now. Stepping outside the front door, he was struck by the penetrating chill. A dreary rain persisted through the wan early morning light. Mist decapitated the tops of the hills and floated in wreaths across the silvery loch. A shiver coursed through his body and soul.
Turning the corner of the lodge, he glanced up at the bathroom window. He suspected it was locked, since it was close to a drainpipe and therefore accessible to a determined burglar. Still, it was worth checking before he caused damage to the bathroom door.
He kept a ladder in the stable. Pulling the back of his sweater over his head, he made a run for it, splashing through the puddles in the gravel driveway and splattering mud on his jeans.
At the near end of the stable, Donnie lay cocooned in his blanket on the trundle bed, snoring peacefully. Coals glowed in the free-standing heater, generating a pleasant warmth within the confines of the white-washed walls. Careful not to wake the boy, Rex grabbed the ladder from where it stood beside the power lawn mower, scythe, and sundry other garden utensils at the opposite end and, hoisting it onto his shoulder, trudged back through the rain.
Extending it to its full length, he propped it against the wall of the house and climbed to the bathroom window above the library. To his great relief, he found the sash window unlocked and managed to push it open with ease. As he did so, he remembered that this window had been on the McCallums’ to-do list. It had been jammed shut from hardened paint when he purchased the house. They must have unstuck it and forgotten to lock it afterward. What a pair of incompetent fools! He should have hired someone else.
The window aperture proved a tight squeeze for his stocky build, and he was only able to execute the maneuver by bumping his head and scraping his ribs on the wood frame. No window treatments had yet been installed, but no one could see in except on a ladder. He landed beside the empty bath and surveyed the water pooled over the tiled floor.
Och, don’t say we have a big leak in the ceiling! he despaired. He was beginning to think he probably should have shopped around a bit more before letting Alistair persuade him what a great investment Gleneagle Lodge would be. At the time he hadn’t known that Alistair and the solicitor were more than just friends …
He stepped across the sodden bath mat and made muddy prints to the door. As he unlocked it, he noticed a dressing gown in the form of an embroidered burgundy kaftan hanging from the brass hook. It looked like something Moira might have brought back from Baghdad. Why had she not worn it back to her room?
He examined the opened door. Helen was crossing the landing at that precise moment.
“I came to ask you what you wanted for brea—Rex! Just look at your muddy feet! What are you doing? Why is the window open? There’s a dreadful draught.”
“I had to climb in. The door was locked.”
“It looks like there was a flood in here!”
“I know. I canna understand it. The walls and ceiling are dry as far as I can see. I thought there must be a leak.”
“Perhaps the McCallums can take a look when they come to fix the radiator.” She stood in the doorway in a fluffy blue sweater and jeans, surveying the scene. “I’ll get a mop.”
“Nay, lass. You just see to breakfast. I’ll clean this mess up.”
“Would you like some eggs? I set up a buffet in the dining room.”
“Tea
and a bacon sandwich would be grand. Any signs of departure yet?” he asked under his breath.
“The Allerdices and Cuthbert Farquharson are still at table. Rob Roy is making eyes at Flora, but she won’t have any of it. Her own eyes are on the bigger prize, I suppose. Her brother hasn’t come in yet. I haven’t seen Moira or Estelle either.”
“You mean to say, the Allerdices are showing no signs of leaving yet?” Rex’s face fell.
“It’s a testament to your wonderful hospitality, Rex,” Helen joked with a crooked smile that never failed to win him over. “They said the hotel cook and the waiter will have breakfast under control at Loch Lochy.”
“The guests will probably be relieved not to have that silly Shona fussing over them.”
“Well! Someone got out of bed on the wrong side this morning! See you downstairs.” Kissing him lightly on the cheek, Helen backed into the landing. Rex shut the bathroom window, still flummoxed about the locked door.
“Gracious! What happened in here?” Estelle asked, sliding on the wet floor in her slippers and grabbing onto the sink for support, almost wrenching it out of the floor. She wore a crimson velvet dressing gown with frilly lace trim down the buttoned front. Her hair was in curlers and a greenish-gray face mask covered all but her mouth and eye sockets. “Sorry, if I look a fright,” she said, taking note of the shock that must have registered on his face.
“Ehm … Not at all. I was just trying to fathom how so much water got on the floor.”
“Well, clearly someone had a bath and water must have sloshed over the sides. Perhaps they slipped. Those old-fashioned tubs are less stable than the modern ones.”
“I’ve never had any trouble with them,” Rex countered, though judging by how she had almost uprooted the sink, he could see how she might manage to dislodge one. “In any case, where is the person now?” he asked in vexation. “The door was locked. The bathroom was empty. They couldn’t just have vanished. Unless they went through the window, and why would they have done that? I managed to unbolt the door without any problem. It wasna stuck.”
Murder on the Moor Page 5