“No! Of course not,” she retorted with the first hint of defensiveness. “She ran—she looked before I could stop her.”
“Then you must have told her which meadow,” Ross suggested reasonably.
“No. It was a natural assumption. Everyone walked that way.”
“You’ve been here how long, Miss James?” Ross shuffled his papers again.
“Two days.” She compressed her lips, as if unwilling to be drawn further. He could hear her accent more clearly now—London, but not Cockney, and not posh.
“In two days you’ve learned everyone’s habits?” he asked, combining admiration with a dash of skepticism.
“No.” This time her flush was unmistakable. “But I’m observant, Chief Inspector, and as I said, the path was obvious.”
Ross thought for a moment, considering what she had told him—and what she had not. “About your friend, now, wasn’t it rather early for someone to be going for a drive?”
Gemma James shifted in her chair for the first time. “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask her.”
This was the least cooperative response she’d given so far, and Ross had the distinct impression that she’d both dreaded the question and rehearsed the answer. There was definitely something fishy here, and not just the piscine parade on the wall. And Hazel Cavendish had vomited—not a surprising response under the circumstances, but was there more to it than the shock of unexpected and violent death?
“You said you and your friend came for a cookery weekend. Was Mrs. Cavendish previously acquainted with Mr. Brodie?”
“Yes, she knew him. She also knew Louise Innes—they were at school together—and Heather Urquhart is her cousin.”
Cozier and cozier, thought Ross. He didn’t like it at all. “What was the nature of Mrs. Cavendish’s relationship with Mr. Brodie?”
“I believe they were old friends.” Gemma James gazed at him with such limpid candor that he suspected he would get no more out of her and changed his tack.
“Tell me about the others,” Ross said, settling back in his chair. “And how they were acquainted with Mr. Brodie.”
“Well, there are the Inneses, who own this place. John cooks, and Louise runs the house and does the gardening. I believe they came here from Edinburgh a couple of years ago, and, um…I think perhaps they cultivated Donald Brodie for his contacts.” She looked uncomfortable as she added this, as if she felt disloyal.
“Then there’s Martin Gilmore. He’s John Innes’s half brother, and he’s interested in cooking. I don’t think he’d ever met Donald before this weekend.
“Pascal Benoit, the Frenchman, had some sort of business dealings with Donald, but I don’t believe he ever said exactly what they were. And Heather Urquhart, Hazel’s cousin, is Benvulin’s manager, so she probably knew Donald better than anyone. I think she’s quite cut up by his death.”
“Thank you. That’s very helpful.” Ross heard Munro shift behind him, as if preparing to close his notebook. He lifted his hand slightly in a halting gesture and focused all his attention on Gemma. Deliberately, he used her title for the first time, calling on her professional instincts. “Now, Inspector James. Have you seen or heard anything that leads you to believe one of these people might have had reason to kill Donald Brodie?”
She studied her clasped hands for a moment before looking up at him. “No. I’ve no idea why anyone would have wanted to kill Donald. But…I did see…something. Yesterday evening. A woman came to the house, with a child, to see Donald. He went out to her, and from the window I could tell that they were arguing. And there was another man, standing back in the shadows. The rest of us went in to dinner, and after a few minutes Donald joined us. I don’t know what happened to the woman or the other man.”
“And no one questioned Mr. Brodie about it?”
“No. It was…awkward.”
“You don’t know who this woman was?”
“No.” She looked away from him, out the window at the police cars now flanking the drive, and she seemed to come to some decision. “But I had the distinct impression that Heather Urquhart did.”
10
The wild roses had just come into bloom, pink
roses and white, and the broom was yellow as
meadowland butter with an eddy of scent now and then that choked the brain like a sickly sweet narcotic.
—NEIL GUNN, The Serpent
CALLUM HAD BREAKFASTED early before going to pick up the trekkers’ luggage from the guesthouse in Ballindalloch. Aunt Janet would guide the group back to the stables by a different route, with a stop for a picnic lunch. For a moment, he envied them their amble along the wooded trails, with pauses to gaze into the trout pools that lay like jewels along the Spey.
Once, it had been enough, evenings with his feet stretched towards the fire in his cottage as he read about the exploits of his Jacobite forebears. Then Alison had come into his life, and with her the worm of discontent.
Suddenly, a wave of exhaustion swept over him. He pulled the van onto the verge, just where the road curved to reveal the sweeping meadows of Benvulin. Gazing at the view, he tried to form in his mind the things he loved rather than think of Donald Brodie—the scents of wild thyme and pine on a still summer’s day, the clusters of red berries on rowans in the fall, the black tracks of ptarmigan on the winter snow. Callum had lived easily in the rhythm of his life, and if he had felt socially awkward with women, he had enjoyed his guide duties, telling the tourists about the terrain as they rode, the plant and animal life, the history that seemed to breathe from the rocky land.
His eyelids drooped and he jerked himself awake. The previous night’s lack of sleep was beginning to tell on him, but it had been worth it. Everything he had done, he had done for the best, for Alison, and for Chrissy. Surely, now that Alison knew the truth about Donald, she would see things differently. Checking in the rearview mirror, he pulled the old van into the road again. He would pay Alison a visit that evening, but first he had responsibilities to meet.
He had only gone a few miles when he saw the flash of blue lights ahead. Rounding a curve, he braked hard. Police cars lined the road, and a crowd milled in the verge. His first thought was of his father—he and Janet worried constantly about Tom’s weaving progress down the narrow, winding road, but at least walking was safer than letting him behind the wheel of an automobile. Had the old man tempted fate once too often and stumbled in front of an oncoming car?
But as Callum drew nearer, he realized that the thickest part of the mob had gathered in front of the Inneses’ gate. He spotted a van bearing the familiar logo of Grampian television. Dread gripped him. He pulled the van off onto the verge, and when he pulled the keys from the ignition, he saw that his hands were shaking.
He pushed his way through the crowd to the gate but found his way blocked by a uniformed constable. “What is it? What’s happened?” he asked.
“Sorry, sir. I’m not at liberty to say.”
“But I’m a friend of the Inneses. Are they all right?” Callum moved forward, and the constable stepped sideways neatly, blocking his path. “Sorry, sir. Can’t let you through. Orders.”
Callum hesitated, wondering if he might push his way past, when he felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Peter McNulty, the stillman at Benvulin. McNulty motioned him aside, out of the constable’s hearing.
A dark-haired, blue-eyed Celt, McNulty usually displayed a debonair charm, but now his eyes looked bloodshot, and he was white and pinched about the mouth. Callum gripped his arm. “What is it, Peter? What’s happened here?”
“It’s Donald Brodie. Someone’s bloody shot him,” McNulty said hoarsely. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and took a sip from a flask.
“Brodie? He’s dead, then?” Callum stared at him.
“Aye.” McNulty passed him the flask. “I’ve a wee cousin on the force. He saw the body.”
“But—” Callum stopped, still trying to take in the implications.
“He
was a good man, a good boss.” McNulty sounded near to tears. “Better than his father. God knows what’ll become of us now with her in charge.”
“Her?”
“Bloody Heather Urquhart. She’s a cold bitch, that one, who cares for nothing but her own power. She’ll try to convince the board of directors to sell to one of the large holding companies, because she thinks they’ll make her managing director. It’s not her family’s business at stake, and if you want my opinion, she’d like nothing better than to see the Brodies done for.” McNulty swigged from the flask again, but absently. “French, Japanese, Americans, Canadians—soon there won’t be anything left in Scotland owned by Scots.”
There had been a McNulty as stillman at Benvulin since Donald Brodie’s great-great-grandfather’s time. While Callum knew what it would mean to Peter to see Benvulin pass out of the Brodie family, he had more urgent concerns.
“But who could have killed him, Peter? Do ye think it was Heather Urquhart?”
Peter considered for a moment, his eyes bleary. “No,” he said slowly. “She’s a serpent, that one. Not her style to shoot someone point-blank in the chest.”
“Oh, Christ,” Callum muttered, trying to banish the image. “Look, Peter, I’ve got to go.” Turning away, he blundered his way back to the van and climbed inside. He sat there, trying to think things through.
He had been up early that morning, walking Murphy down towards the river. He had heard a shot, he remembered, but had thought nothing of it. And then he had seen—no, that was bollocks.
Surely it had been a trick of the morning light, the mist rising from the river, a twist of his imagination. Callum shook his head as if to clear it, but it didn’t help. For the first time in his life, he doubted the evidence of his own senses.
Like a priest, Ross had seen them in all their affliction—those dazed and befuddled with grief; those who went sharp and prickly with it, as if they could defend themselves; those who collapsed, like jellies taken too soon from the mold.
Perhaps that was why he had stopped attending the church. He had had little confidence in the comfort traditionally offered to the bereaved, and even less in God’s ability to punish the wicked.
On this morning, he called the suspects—and they were all suspects to him until proven otherwise—in what seemed to him the order of least importance. Of course, such initial impressions could be misleading, and it was only by a careful piecing together of their stories that he would be able to form a truer picture.
He began with Martin Gilmore. The young man came in with an air of suppressed excitement, and Ross had the impression he was struggling to rearrange his bony features into an expression of appropriate solemnity.
Having ascertained that Gilmore had shared a room with Brodie, and that he had heard Brodie go out about daybreak, Ross said, “You must have had some conversation with the man, then. What did ye talk about?”
Gilmore shrugged. “I don’t think he took me very seriously. Oh, he was friendly enough, but he was an Alan Breck sort of character—you know, all Highland disdain for someone who came from the city. If you weren’t born stalking stags and gaffing salmon and drinking whisky with your mother’s milk, you weren’t in the same club.”
“But he signed up for this cookery weekend.”
“Not that he had much real interest in the cooking. It was more of a lark for him.” Gilmore paused for a moment, as if wondering how much he should say. “And I think he had another…agenda. There was something going on between him and Hazel—Mrs. Cavendish.”
Ross raised an eyebrow. “What sort of something?”
“I’m not stupid, you know,” the young man said, his eyes gleaming with sudden malice. “They’ve all treated me like an idiot. There were all these awkward silences and loaded glances. And after that other woman came last night, you could have cut the tension with a knife. They went out together—Donald and Hazel—after dinner, and you could tell there was a row brewing.”
“Did you hear them argue?”
Gilmore looked disappointed. “No. They must have gone round to the back of the house.”
“Did you see either of them after that?”
“No. The rest of us sat round next door, in the sitting room, and after a bit I went to bed. There’s no telly,” he added, as if inviting Ross’s disbelief.
Ross thought a moment, then backtracked. “You said a woman came here?”
“Just before dinner. Rang the bell and asked to speak to Donald, apparently. She had a child with her.”
“Any idea who she was?”
“Not a clue. A bit tarty, though, from what I could see. Made me laugh, everyone trying to have a gander without being obvious about it.”
“Did anyone say anything?”
“No. All too bloody polite, weren’t they?”
“All right, Mr. Gilmore. If you’ll just go and give your statement to the constable in the kitchen.”
Martin Gilmore stood. “Can I go after that?”
Glancing at his notes, Ross said with casual friendliness, “Keen to get back to work tomorrow, are you?”
Gilmore flushed an ugly, mottled red. “I’m out of work just now. Temporary setback.”
When he had left the room, Ross muttered to Sergeant Munro, “At least he had the grace to feel embarrassed about it. Most of the layabouts these days seem to find being on the dole a reason to brag.”
“Weel, I’d say he’d got himself free meals and a comfortable billet for the weekend,” reflected Munro. “What do you wager he’s still here tomorrow?”
Unlike Gilmore, Pascal Benoit seemed genuinely saddened by Brodie’s death; nor did Ross detect any uneasiness in his manner. Even if the man had dressed hastily, his clothes spoke of wealth, and he had the unmistakable assurance of one used to power.
“I’m not quite sure I understand what it is that you do, Mr. Benoit,” said Ross, when they had got the formalities out of the way.
“I represent a French company with multinational interests, Chief Inspector. In the last few years, we have acquired three distilleries in Scotland, all of which have performed quite well. We would be interested in adding another such property to our portfolio, and as there are few family-owned distilleries still operating, we cultivate an ongoing relationship with those that are.”
And that was business-speak for hovering like vultures waiting for a corpse, Ross thought. Schooling his face into an expression of pleasant attentiveness, he asked, “But did you have a particular interest in Mr. Brodie’s distillery?”
“Benvulin would make the jewel in our crown,” admitted Benoit. “We had hoped to convince Mr. Brodie of the benefits of such an arrangement. While we would have assumed financial responsibility for the distillery, he would have been encouraged to remain as managing director.”
“I take it Mr. Brodie had not yet agreed to this plan?”
“No. It was only a friendly discussion. And now, well…” Benoit gave a shrug. “This is a terrible tragedy. Donald’s death will be a great loss to the industry.”
“What will happen to Benvulin?”
“That I can’t say, Chief Inspector. I imagine any such decisions will be made by the board of directors.”
“Is there no family member to take on Mr. Brodie’s position?”
“I’m afraid I’ve no idea. I’d suggest you ask Miss Urquhart.”
Making a note to do just that, Ross excused him. The man was far too canny to admit that his firm might benefit from Donald Brodie’s death.
As Benoit left the room, the constable on duty in the hall stepped in. “Sir, we’ve found a gun cabinet in the scullery. It’s not locked, and it’s possible there’s a gun missing.”
“What’s the owner’s name?” Ross glanced at his list.
“Innes, sir.”
“Take him to look at the cabinet, then bring him in here.”
As they waited, Ross heard the first sharp spatter of rain against the windowpanes. He swore under his breath, and Munro s
tood and looked out the window.
“I think the worst of it will hold off a bit yet.” Munro stretched his long neck and cracked his knuckles, a habit Ross found profoundly annoying.
“Will ye stop that, man,” he snapped. “How many times do I have to tell ye?”
“Sorry, Chief,” said Munro, looking more doleful than ever. “I get the cramp in my fingers.”
They sounded like an old married couple, Ross thought with a glimmer of amusement, although Munro was much better tempered than Ross’s ex-wife. Before he could apologize, the door opened and the constable popped his head in.
“Mr. Innes says there is a gun missing, sir, a small-bore Purdy.”
“Send him in, then.”
“I don’t know how it could have happened,” John Innes said as he entered the room. A large man with thinning hair, dressed in a pullover that had seen better days, he seemed to vibrate with agitation. “That was my grandfather’s gun. I always lock the cabinet, always. I don’t know how—”
“Sit down, Mr. Innes, and let’s begin at the beginning. I’m Chief Inspector Ross.”
Innes hesitated for a moment, as if unsure what to do with himself in his own dining room, then pulled out a chair.
“Now, that’s better,” Ross continued. “Why don’t you describe the gun for me.”
“It’s Purdy lightweight, a twenty-gauge. A scroll and vine pattern, made before the Great War.”
Ross blanched. In good shape, a gun like that could be worth thousands of pounds. How could the man have been so careless? Making an effort to keep his temper, he said, “This gun cabinet of yours, Mr. Innes, who would have access to the key?”
Innes took a breath. “I keep mine on my key ring. It’s usually in my pocket, except at night, when I put them on the dressing table.”
“Is that the only key?”
“No. My wife has a copy. Louise usually hangs her keys on the hook by the scullery door when she’s at home.”
“So you leave the key to the gun cabinet in plain sight, in the same room?”
Now May You Weep Page 14