7 A Tasteful Crime

by Cecilia Peartree

  Amaryllis and Keith looked at each other.

  ‘But you must have just missed the bin-men,’ said Amaryllis. ‘Didn’t you?’

  ‘Well, I thought I would have done,’ said Zak. ‘But when I went out, one of them had got caught in that sticky tape and he had to stop and get it out of the way so they could empty the bins. So I gave them the bag. They’re not supposed to take bags that aren’t in the actual bin but they were in a good mood.’

  ‘You idiot!’ yelled Amaryllis and ran out of the building.

  She was going to feel like an even bigger idiot as she chased along behind the bin lorry, but it would be worth it. She wasn’t going to let the evidence slip through her fingers, no matter how often an unkind Fate got in her way.

  Chapter 23 A Quiet Drink

  As Amaryllis dashed past them, closely followed by Keith Burnet, who was followed at a greater distance by Zak Johnstone, Christopher caught Jock’s eye.

  ‘I need a drink,’ he said. ‘Let’s lock up here and pop round to the Queen of Scots.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t mind if I do!’ said Deirdre, who had refused to go off with Oscar in the car, saying she would walk up to the hotel later. ‘Unless somebody would kindly run me up to the hotel, of course.’

  Was she batting her eyelids? He wasn’t sure.

  ‘What in?’ said Jock, chuckling. ‘A trolley from the supermarket? Or maybe you’d like a lift in that apple contraption.’

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ said Deirdre. ‘Doesn’t anybody have a car around here?’

  ‘Well, there’s Dave,’ said Christopher. ‘If you like roller-coasters.’

  She shuddered. ‘Well, maybe we can sort something out later... Is the Queen of Scots still in the same place as it was?’

  ‘Yes, but they’re very fussy about who they let in,’ said Jock.

  ‘Are you going to just stand there and let your friends insult me?’ said Deirdre to Christopher.

  ‘No, we’d better move along if we’re going to get to the pub before closing-time,’ said Christopher. He was in two minds about this. He didn’t want to have to introduce Deirdre to any more of his friends in case she offended them, but on the other hand, then they would see how awful it must have been being married to her, and they would understand.

  He wasn’t entirely sure what he expected them to understand, but the line of least resistance seemed to be to take her with them anyway.

  Jemima and Dave were in the Queen of Scots, sitting at the usual table. Charlie Smith appeared to have forgiven Dave for the big apple incident.

  He couldn’t remember whether Deirdre had met either of them before. The time when he had been married to her seemed like a completely different life in which even the laws of nature might not have been similar. He might as well have been on another planet then. Planet Youth, he thought with a little smile. Where even the air you breathe is young and full of promise. Now, of course, it was rotten with the stench of unfulfilled dreams.

  He went from smiling to groaning within a few seconds.

  ‘Are you feeling all right, Christopher?’ said Jemima, eyeing him anxiously.

  ‘Aye, you look a bit green,’ said Dave. ‘Here, have a seat and I’ll get you a pint.’

  ‘It’s all right, thanks, Dave,’ said Christopher. ‘Deirdre’s getting me something.’

  ‘Deirdre?’ Jemima frowned. ‘Is that the same Deirdre....?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Christopher. ‘My ex-wife.’ He wasn’t used to talking about her in these terms, just as he had never completely got over the embarrassment of being divorced, so he stumbled over the word. Was it all down to his father’s disapproval, which surely to goodness he should have outgrown by now, or did he still have some sort of unprocessed feelings on the subject? And did he really need pop psychology to help him put all this behind him or shouldn’t he just push it to the back of his mind in the time-honoured way?

  ‘Are you still drinking that Pictish stuff?’ said Deirdre, interrupting his inner monologue as ruthlessly as ever. ‘I don’t know how anybody can touch it. Sure you don’t want a whisky as long as I’m buying?’

  ‘Old Pictish Brew’s fine,’ said Christopher. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re thanking her for,’ said Dave in a stage whisper as Deirdre returned to the bar to harass Charlie. ‘She’s a real pain in the –‘

  ‘Dave!’ said Jemima. ‘She can hear you.’

  Dave winked at Christopher. ‘Nothing like a pint of Old Pictish Brew. That’ll give you some of your colour back.’

  ‘So,’ said Jock McLean, coming over with his pint and settling down in his usual place, ‘have you been up to the police station yet to be grilled, Jemima?’

  ‘Oh, no, nothing like that,’ said Jemima. ‘A very nice policeman did pop round to the house this morning and we had a chat, but it wasn’t exactly a grilling.’

  ‘More of a light toasting,’ said Dave, chortling. ‘Jemima asked as many questions as he did.’

  ‘Did you get much out of him?’ said Jock.

  Deirdre appeared with Christopher’s pint and her own drink, set them down and pulled over a chair from the next table. Christopher noticed that the dog, whose tail she had trodden on, gave a very quiet yelp and then moved over slightly to get out of the way.

  ‘You’d better watch out,’ he murmured to Deirdre. ‘That’s Charlie Smith’s dog and he doesn’t like anybody kicking it.’

  ‘I didn’t kick it!’ said Deirdre indignantly. ‘Anyway, isn’t it against health and safety regulations for him to have his dog in the pub? What if we were eating in here?’

  ‘We won’t be,’ said Christopher.

  ‘Even so,’ said Deirdre, moving her feet well away from the dog and tucking them under her chair.

  ‘Everything all right over there?’ called Charlie.

  ‘I told you – he must have heard the dog,’ said Christopher.

  Deirdre frowned and sipped at her drink.

  ‘Well, did you get anywhere with the police, then?’ said Jock to Jemima.

  Sometimes Jock looked and acted very much like a terrier, Christopher thought. Or maybe he had only noticed the resemblance because of the dog conversation.

  ‘It was that nice constable. Not Keith Burnet. The other one. He looks about thirteen – or maybe even younger, when he smiles.’ Jemima sighed. ‘If I were fifty years younger – don’t say anything, Dave! There was a wee girl with him too. She didn’t say very much though.’

  ‘But what did they ask you?’ said Jock.

  She shrugged. ‘Oh, the usual sort of thing. Did Mr McLaughlin eat anything at my house? Did he bring any food with him? Did he seem well enough when he left? I said to them, I don’t let people leave my house if they look ill. I keep them there and call the doctor. Nobody’s going to die of poisoning in my kitchen.’

  ‘It’s all right, Jemima,’ said Dave, patting her hand. ‘Nobody has yet.’

  Jemima looked over at Deirdre. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Mrs McLaughlin. I didn’t mean to upset you.’

  Christopher glanced round. There were tears streaming down Deirdre’s face. She put her drink down on the table and brought both hands up as if to try and stem the flow.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she gulped. ‘I didn’t know I was going to do that. I hardly ever cry.’

  ‘What you need,’ said Jock, ‘is another drink.’

  ‘I don’t think...,’ said Christopher. His voice tailed off into silence as he realised he didn’t have any right to stop Deirdre drinking herself into a stupor if she felt like it. Even when they were married his influence over her had been tenuous, and now it was non-existent.

  Jock went off to the bar again to get her another glass of something.

  ‘So were you just before Tricia in the programme?’ said Christopher to Jemima idly.

  ‘We were first,’ said Jemima. ‘I wish now I hadn’t messed up his hair. It seems so undignified, after what happened.’

  ‘Eric was very fussy about his hair,’ n
odded Deirdre, and soon tears were streaming down her face again. ‘Oh dear, now I’ve started I don’t seem to be able to stop.’

  Maybe she’s going to melt, thought Christopher, vaguely remembering a character he thought might have been called the Snow Queen from a long-ago almost-forgotten pantomime. His sister Caroline would remember, he thought suddenly. He almost wished Caroline were here now, except of course that it would have been asking for trouble to bring her into the Queen of Scots. Especially when Deirdre was here too. He couldn’t remember the two women having been friends, to put it mildly. The scrap Deirdre and Amaryllis had engaged in would be nothing compared to the full-scale warfare of which Caroline was capable.

  ‘Would it help to try and work out why this happened?’ he said in a desperate attempt to distract her from her own tears.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, did Eric have any enemies, for instance? Or could somebody else be mistaken for him?’

  ‘Ha!’ was her first reaction to this. ‘There was nobody else quite like him.... He tried to walk like Charlie Chaplin, but he was more like Mickey Mouse.’

  Christopher sensed that Dave’s quivering face was caused not by him being about to burst into tears too, but by an attempt to stop laughing out loud. He pressed on, regardless.

  ‘So, could this have been an accident? Was he allergic to anything?’

  ‘It isn’t called allergy now,’ said Jemima primly. ‘I read in the paper you have to call it food intolerance.’

  ‘Was Eric intolerant of anything?’ said Christopher.

  Deirdre started to laugh this time. ‘Intolerant? I’ll say he was intolerant! Gypsies, gays, anybody whose skin was darker than his, children, cats, dogs, anybody older than him, anybody who came from the Highlands... He wasn’t tolerant of anybody.’

  Why on earth had Deirdre ever married the man in the first place?

  Christopher pressed on again. ‘I didn’t mean that. Did he have reactions to any kind of food? Shellfish...’

  ‘Shellfish! He certainly was,’ said Deirdre. She roared with laughter, startling the dog, who got up and pointedly moved to lie under another table at the other side of the room. She caught Christopher’s eye and calmed down a little. ‘Sorry – I think I was with him too long. I picked up his sense of humour.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that,’ said Jemima frostily.

  Deirdre calmed down a little more. ‘No. He could eat anything. He never even had a stomach upset. He wasn’t allergic to anything at all. He was stung by bees several times but he didn’t swell up and die... Sorry, that came out all wrong. I don’t think it could have been anything like that.’

  ‘Did you ever see him choke on his food?’ said Christopher patiently.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ enquired Jock, returning from the bar and placing a larger drink than before in front of Deirdre.

  ‘He’s playing at detectives,’ said Dave. ‘He’s not as good at it as Amaryllis, though.’

  Christopher debated whether to go into a huff. The only thing stopping him was that he didn’t know if anybody would notice or not.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Deirdre to Jock before turning her attention back to Christopher. ‘No, he never choked on his food that I know of.’

  ‘Did he have medical problems?’ said Christopher.

  ‘He took blood pressure pills,’ Deirdre admitted. She seemed reluctant to say it, as if she was taking great delight in ruling out all possibilities about her husband’s death.

  ‘Could he have forgotten to take them yesterday?’ said Christopher.

  ‘It doesn’t work like that,’ Jemima interrupted. ‘I take them too, and it doesn’t matter if you miss a day. It’s a long term thing.’

  ‘Maybe they’re different from your tablets, though,’ said Dave. ‘Maybe he’d explode if he missed one. His blood would start pumping out through the top of his head, and....’

  ‘Dave!’ said Jemima, Jock and Christopher simultaneously, though not at the same volume or pitch. The dog yelped again, and Charlie gave them another hard look.

  ‘We didn’t touch him!’ called Jock.

  Deirdre didn’t seem too upset by this line of questioning. ‘I don’t think that could have been it,’ she said calmly. ‘He seemed quite normal at breakfast-time.’

  ‘Well, that leaves deliberate poisoning,’ Christopher pointed out. ‘So do you know if he had any enemies or not?’

  ‘Not really,’ said Deirdre. ‘I suppose somebody in his line of work always has a few people who resent their success, and stalkers who follow them around, and people who get miffed because he isn’t as funny off-stage as he is in pantomime...’

  ‘Do they really?’ said Christopher. ‘I wouldn’t have thought so.’

  ‘That’s because you’ve never lived in the cut-throat world of show-biz, darling,’ said Deirdre. He wasn’t sure if he liked her calling him that. In fact he was quite sure he didn’t. But he couldn’t protest in case the others thought he was making too much of it.

  ‘Do you think any of these stalkers followed him to Pitkirtly, then?’ said Jock, apparently hanging on her every word.

  ‘There’s no knowing,’ said Deirdre, pebble-brown eyes gleaming. ‘Just because I haven’t seen any of them around here doesn’t mean they don’t exist.’

  There was silence as the people gathered round the table tried to work out whether this made sense or not.

  Chapter 24 Amaryllis – retrieving the banana

  The refuse collectors were angry when Amaryllis at last overtook their vehicle and stood in front of it in the road, waving her arms at them.

  ‘Serve you right if I ran you over!’ shouted the driver after using a selection of words she had rarely heard in Pitkirtly before.

  ‘We’re only doing our job,’ muttered one of the other men.

  When Keith eventually caught up, he had to step in between an increasingly irate Amaryllis and a man whose Council-imposed politeness standards were being tested to the limit.

  ‘Come on, guys,’ he said. ‘Break it up.... Craig, I’ll have to impound the vehicle. We have reason to believe some evidence in a criminal case has been accidentally taken on board. I’m going to have to get a full search carried out.’

  During the ensuing chorus of complaints, Amaryllis tried to climb on the back of the truck, was pushed off by one of the men and sternly told off by Keith, who said she was lucky not to have fallen in and been crushed, and if she did it again he would personally push her in with the rubbish.

  All in all, she enjoyed the interlude. She liked the feeling of being a rebel who dared to stand up to the might of the Council refuse collection service, and at the same time she found it amusing that she and Keith seemed to be working collaboratively for once. However there was a sense of anticlimax once the other men had dispersed. A constable even more junior than Keith came along to guard the truck while Keith returned to the Cultural Centre, which he realised he had left completely unattended.

  ‘There just aren’t enough of you to go round,’ Amaryllis said to him before he went away. ‘Maybe you should swear in some concerned citizens as special constables, or whatever they’re called these days.’

  He gave her a look. ‘Don’t even think about it.’

  ‘No, not me!’ she exclaimed, trying to sound convincing. ‘I was thinking more of Christopher – or Jock McLean.’

  ‘He’s the worst of the lot,’ said Keith bitterly. ‘Born awkward. Don’t quote me on that.’

  He walked off down the hill.

  ‘Just wait till I tell Jock!’ said Amaryllis to Zak, who was standing irresolute, having missed most of the interesting part. ‘He’ll probably get that tattooed on his forehead.’

  ‘What are we going to do now?’ said Zak as they walked away, going in the same direction as Keith but a bit more slowly. He sounded like a disgruntled five-year-old. Not that Amaryllis had very much experience of five-year-olds, apart from having been one herself some time before.
/>   ‘Shouldn’t you be at work?’ she said to him.

  He shrugged. ‘Constable Burnet won’t let me in. Or anybody else. The library’s a crime scene. It could be days before we get back in and start work.’

  ‘You could go home then.’

  ‘That’s a bit tame.’

  ‘Yoohoo! Amaryllis!’

  Only one person in the world was in the habit of addressing Amaryllis like that.

  Maisie Sue crossed the road to reach them. Ken and Charlotte from the television crew were tagging along behind her like a kind of medieval entourage, only in modern dress and with cameras slung over their shoulders and round their necks.

  ‘They’ve let you out of the police station, then,’ commented Amaryllis. Ken and Charlotte glared at her.

  ‘I guess we’re free citizens again now,’ said Maisie Sue. ‘I couldn’t tell them a whole lot. Mr McLaughlin was on the floor having a seizure minutes after he arrived at Tricia’s.’

  ‘Did they question you as well?’ Amaryllis glanced at Charlotte and Ken. Of course, they had both been in Tricia’s kitchen when Eric died. She had almost forgotten about them. Perhaps the ability to blend into the background like a chameleon was just another skill a TV technician needed. Maybe it was even in the job description. She resolved to try and find out more about the two of them. ‘We’re just going down to the coffee place at the harbour. Do you want to come with us?’

  Amaryllis saw Zak blink in surprise. Her reasoning was that she would be able to talk to the two of them in the open air without being overheard, whereas if they went to a café or to the Queen of Scots anyone could be listening. Outside Giancarlo’s coffee kiosk, she would be able to see other people coming from a reasonable distance away, and she could turn the conversation back to something innocuous before they were within earshot.

  ‘All right,’ said Charlotte. ‘We’re meant to be tidying up in the Cultural Centre but we can’t go in there just now.’

  ‘Might get some footage of the harbour,’ said Ken. ‘Is it old and picturesque?’