Did You Declare the Corpse?

by Patricia Sprinkle

  She chewed her lower lip and blinked away tears that had filled her eyes. “Not yet. First I wanted to walk a while, trying to get used to the idea that he’s gone and to figure out what I ought to do about the group now.” She rubbed one cheek with her palm. “But I never did.”

  “Which?”

  “Either. I still can’t believe Jim is gone, and I don’t have a clue what to do.”

  “Call the agency back home,” I suggested. “This can’t be the first time they’ve had a death on a tour.”

  She gave me a strange, worried look. “Yeah, that’s what I ought to do, I guess.” She glanced up at the stage, and I suspected one reason she was focusing so hard on the play was not simply to see it performed at least once, but to postpone talking with her bosses and explaining the mess her first tour group was in.

  “I think the police are likely to expect us to stay at least until they have interviewed all of us,” I continued. “I asked Eileen if that would put her out, but she says she doesn’t have any other guests coming for a couple of weeks.”

  Joyce’s eyes widened. “A couple of weeks? We can’t stay here that long. Who’d pay?”

  I had no answer for that, so maybe it was time to bite the bullet and do what I came for. “Do you know where I could find Norwood Hardin? I heard he was going to be here.”

  I expected her to ask why I needed him, but she just screwed up her mouth like she’d eaten an unripe persimmon. “He’s supposed to be. If you find him, tell him he is very late.”

  She had spoken into a gap in the conversation onstage. The short actor called down, “Are you talking about Norwood?”

  “The one and only,” Joyce said shortly.

  “If we don’t rehearse the sword scene, somebody is likely to get killed.” The actor picked up a sword lying on the stage and swished it through the air. “The most likely candidate is me.”

  It occurred to me that they might not have heard of the coffins in the chapel yet, if they’d driven straight from Aberdeen to rehearsal. “Speaking of killed,” I called, loud enough to be heard on stage, “have you heard that two men have died or been killed in the village this afternoon, and put in coffins over at the Catholic chapel—coffins the joiner says were ordered for this play and delivered there by mistake? And do any of you happen to know anything about the coffins?”

  “I didn’t order them,” Joyce added quickly.

  The three actors came to the edge of the stage to stare down at us. They shook their heads in unison, then exchanged puzzled looks. “We don’t need coffins,” the woman pointed out.

  The shorter man demanded, “For real? Two men have been killed in Auchnagar? This afternoon?”

  I couldn’t tell which he found more unbelievable—that murder had been done twice that afternoon, or that murder had been done in Auchnagar.

  “They appeared this afternoon.” I corrected the story. “I haven’t heard when they were killed, or even what happened to the second one. The first one was hit on the head.”

  “A friend of Mrs. MacGorrie’s,” Joyce added.

  The shorter one swore. “We might as well pack up and go back to Aberdeen, then. There’s no way this play is going on now.”

  The taller one demanded, “Did you know all this, Joyce, and let us go on rehearsing as if nothing had happened?”

  Joyce didn’t speak.

  It was inexcusable, but I decided she didn’t need another load on her shoulders right then. “I just came to tell her,” I told them.

  The woman shrugged. “We might as well pack up and head back.” They started collecting scripts and jackets. “What’s to be done with the props?” she called down to Joyce.

  “Just leave them,” Joyce said wearily. “I’ll talk to Mrs. MacGorrie later.”

  I still needed to find Norwood Hardin, or to tell Sergeant Murray what I had overheard between him and Jim. The time was past for worrying about ruining his reputation—which was dubious, in any case. At least two people had been murdered, and I could well be giving Norwood the time he needed to skip the country.

  I stopped by the chapel and worked my way through a crowd that seemed twice as large as before. “Hey, Constable Roy,” I greeted him again. Again he looked over my shoulder with that expression I suspected he’d seen on some television show, so I spoke to his chin. “I need to speak to Sergeant Murray on a matter of importance.”

  He shook his head. “He’s interviewing somebody else just noo. If ye’d care to wait—”

  The wind was rising again, and the day winding down. I’d rather wait in my warm room. So I fished in my pocketbook for a card and jotted down a note. “Remembered something. Will be at Heather Glen.” I hoped Sergeant Murray wouldn’t be inclined to ask how it happened to slip my mind that Norwood had threatened Jim.

  Back at the guesthouse, Eileen put her head out the kitchen door as soon as the back-door bell jangled and the dog barked. “I thought you might be Roddy.”

  “He’s not back yet?”

  “No, and I cannae for the life of me think why they’re keeping him so long. Do you ken who it was that died?” Worry had made her lapse into broad Scots.

  “They haven’t said yet.” I could think of several reasons Roddy might be kept, but none of them was likely to comfort her. “Maybe Roddy saw or heard something.”

  “Och, he never pays attention to fit’s gan on around him. He’s aye got earphones in his ears and music playin’.” She turned back to the kitchen, then thought to ask, “Are you wanting a cup of tea? Marcia and I’ve moved our base of operations to the kitchen, and she’s just made her first oat bannock. They can be a comfort when you’re anxious.”

  I followed her inside, where Marcia stood over a griddle, turning something with an uneasy expression. “Is it done?”

  Eileen peered at it, but I had the feeling her attention was still on the back door. “Och aye, it’s well enough. Slide it onto the plate, now.” Marcia brought it to the table looking as proud as if she’d prepared a four-course dinner. “Now we’ll cut it and have a wee taste,” Eileen told us. “MacLaren, would you pour us out some tea?”

  Pleased to be treated like family, I brought down cups and saucers from the cupboard and poured from the metal pot that seemed perpetually full. We were each given a quarter of the oatcake and pronounced it a success. We were sharing Marcia’s second oatcake when the doorbell jangled and the dog bayed again.

  Dorothy poked her head in, her cheeks pink, her eyes full of tears and her lashes spiky with them. “Have you heard what’s happened in the village?” Without waiting for us to answer, she spilled it all. “Jim Gordon is dead and another man, as well. They found their bodies over in the Catholic chapel this afternoon. Can you believe it?” She stumbled toward one of Eileen’s kitchen chairs, collapsed into it, laid her head on her arms, and burst into tears. Through her sobs, she cried, “And Jim made such beautiful music.”

  As an epitaph, it wasn’t bad.

  21

  “You didn’t happen to hear who the other man was, did you?” I asked when she’d quieted down a bit.

  Dorothy nodded, and gulped like a child. “The laird’s brother-in-law, the one Brandi said was so funny. Stabbed, they say.” She wept again.

  I felt a chill sweep up inside my clothes. The whole time I’d been looking for Norwood, he’d been dead in the second coffin?

  Roddy stormed home a few minutes later, incensed. “They blistered me for leavin’ the chapel long enough to get some smokes,” he raged. “They cannae expect a man to stand watch over a corpse a whole afternoon without a single reek. How was I to know somebody would choose chust that very time to bring in another body? And now they say I cannae leave the village while they’re investigating. I’ve got to call my mate and tell him I’m not comin’ to the bloody rally.” He glared at his mother, daring her to object to his choice of words.

  She simply said, absently, “Aye, you’ll have to do that,” then asked the question that worried her. “They don’t think yo
u had anything to do with this, do they?”

  “They havenae said it, but I wouldnae put it past them.” He went to call. Eileen’s hands trembled while she fetched two more cups and spoons and added water to the teapot.

  Marcia turned to Dorothy with a sharp look. “What were you doing all day?”

  “Working.” Dorothy pulled off her coat and gloves and headed for the Aga, where she stood with her back to us while she held her hands over the stove top to warm them. “The gallery in the village needed someone to frame pictures, and I know how to do that, so I volunteered.”

  “You mean Alex Carmichael’s place?” Eileen turned from pouring Roddy’s tea and gave Marcia a worried frown.

  A wave of pink rose up Dorothy’s neck beneath her braid. “Yes. He’s not paying me,” she added, turning to give me a quick, anxious look. “He just gave me a canvas and let me paint on his deck this afternoon.”

  “I hope ye know that Alex has a steady girl over in Aberdeen,” Roddy told her, returning from his call. “Crazy about her, he is.” I hoped Roddy would never come live in the American West. He’d never be at home on the range—he was much too fond of the discouraging word.

  Dorothy, however, just pulled her braid to hang over one shoulder and announced with dignity, “I’m not marrying the man, I’m working for him.” She tugged the braid for emphasis as she spoke—and looked mighty attractive, I might add. Roddy seemed to think so, but I could tell his mother wanted to talk with him privately.

  I pushed back my chair. “Dorothy, why don’t we take our cups into the lounge while Eileen gets on with her preparations for tea?”

  When we were comfortably settled before the fire, I asked, softly, “When you sat on Alex’s deck painting this afternoon, you didn’t happen to see anybody go into the Catholic church, did you?” I wasn’t sure how many back-yards and bushes might block the view between Alex’s deck and the chapel door, but they weren’t far apart, so it was worth a shot.

  She started to shake her head, then hesitated. “I saw Roddy leave, while I was setting up my easel. But once I get to painting, I don’t think at all. I just paint what I see and don’t think about anything else. I painted today until my hands got numb, but I wouldn’t have known I was cold if Alex hadn’t come to ask if I was warm enough.” In spite of what she’d told Roddy, her voice was soft and her dimples flashed when she said Alex’s name.

  “Are you sure you aren’t in danger of confusing devotion to art and devotion to the art-gallery owner?” I teased softly.

  She tossed her braid and it swung around to hang down her back. “Of course not. Alex is old, eh? Thirty-three his last birthday. But he’s asked me to stay here and work for him a year, and he says I can paint when we aren’t busy. He says he can’t pay much, but I have some savings. Do you think I should?”

  “How badly do you want to?”

  “If I could have just one year to see if I’m any good, eh? And if people like my work—Oh, Mac, if I just could!” Dorothy got as pink when she was earnest as when embarrassed.

  “Take it, if you want it and can afford it,” I advised. “You’ll never be younger or freer than you are now.” It’s so easy to give advice like that to other people’s children.

  I took a bath and washed my hair before tea, while the bathroom was free. Laura came up to the room while I was drying my hair. “How was your mountain climbing?” I asked.

  “Hill walking,” she corrected me, flushed and happy. “It was fine.” She was still subdued, though, and she got more so when I filled her in on the two deaths.

  “Poor Joyce,” she exclaimed. “What do you do when a member of your tour dies?”

  “It’s doubly hard because they’re sure to cancel her play.” I chose my new heather gray slacks, but added a bright green sweater. Catching Laura’s expression, I said, “Brandi’s not going to expect us to wear mourning, and I’m certainly not mourning Norwood Hardin.”

  Nevertheless, Laura chose black slacks and a gray sweater. As she went to brush her hair, she commented, “I wouldn’t have Joyce’s job no matter how much you paid me. I wouldn’t put it past Brandi to demand that the travel agency pay to return Jim’s body to the States. Did you know that Sherry wanted them to refund part of her ticket price because you’re on the tour?”

  Putting on my shoes, I stopped with one leg in midair. “Why on earth should they?”

  “Joyce said that the deal was, if somebody on the trip persuaded somebody else to come, they were to get a discount on their ticket. Since Kenny sent me information about the trip, they got a discount when I signed up. Once Sherry saw you were here, too, she wanted Joyce to refund more money for you. I tell you Mac, that woman—” She broke off and dragged a brush through her own hair instead of finishing the sentence.

  “Did Joyce give her the refund?” I considered tying a colorful scarf around my neck, then decided to forego it. Not only did it look too jaunty for the way I felt, but there was still a killer loose in the village. I didn’t want a handy scarf around my neck if he or she got ideas about adding me to the tally.

  “No. Joyce told Sherry she’d check on it, but later she told her that if anybody got a refund because you came along, it would be me. That made Sherry furious, as you can imagine. She doesn’t like me.”

  “She doesn’t like you because you spend a lot of time with her husband.” There, I’d brought up the forbidden subject.

  Laura huffed. “Sherry’s got him between such a rock and a hard place, he doesn’t know which way to turn.” I waited to see if she would name the rock or the hard place, but she merely asked, “Ready for tea?”

  Laura, Dorothy, and I sat alone that night at the table by the window. Marcia was eating in the kitchen with Eileen, the Boyds didn’t come at the gong, Brandi still hadn’t returned, and Joyce chose to sit alone at the empty table in the far corner, in the seat where Jim Gordon had eaten breakfast that morning. I wondered if she’d chosen his seat deliberately, or because it had its back to the rest of us. She was trembling in spite of having on the heaviest sweater I’d seen her wear on the trip. I remembered that she’d had to walk all the way back from the theater without a parka, and wished I’d thought to take her down something to put on. When Laura noticed that Joyce was alone, she left Dorothy and me and went over to join her, but Joyce waved her away. “I’d prefer to be alone, if you don’t mind.”

  “Is there anything we can do?”

  “Not really. You would not believe what a mess this all is, and I don’t have a clue what I’m supposed to do now. But I don’t think you can help. Thanks.” She looked utterly drained. I wondered if she’d ever really gotten rid of her migraine, she was so pale.

  Sherry came in late, looked around, and demanded, “Where’s Kenny? I want to show him some china I bought in an antique shop. It’s eighteenth century, I’m sure, and very fine.”

  “I’m sure the dealer will be particularly sorry to lose it,” Laura said with a strange emphasis on the verb, “but Kenny hasn’t been around all day.”

  Sherry glared at her and headed toward Joyce.

  Joyce gave her the same quiet, “I need to be alone just now. Sorry.”

  Sherry gave her a curious look, then stalked over to our table and sat down next to me with an irritated flounce.

  “You must not have heard what happened in the village today,” I told her.

  “I’ve been out of the village since ten, and just got back. Eileen’s neighbor gave me a ride. She was visiting her sister, but if I’d known she was going to stay so long, I’d have caught a bus back. What happened?”

  “There have been two deaths,” Dorothy said in a hushed voice. I suspected this was the closest she’d ever come to tragedy.

  “They weren’t simply deaths,” I pointed out. “They apparently were murders.”

  Sherry stared around at each of us in turn like she was waiting for somebody to burst out laughing and admit it was a joke. “Who? Why? Where is Kenny?” Her voice rose in fear.

&
nbsp; She tensed to spring from her chair, but I caught her arm. “Neither victim was Kenny, but somebody killed Jim. Sometime this morning, apparently.”

  She looked around the table and her eyes narrowed in suspicion.“Well, Kenny didn’t do it, no matter what you think!” She jumped up and ran from the room.

  That took the baking powder out of our biscuits. We sat there chewing Eileen’s delicious meal like it was sawdust and foam rubber. The phone rang in the back of the house, then Eileen came through. “It’s for you,” she told Joyce. “Mrs. MacGorrie’s secretary.” Joyce didn’t return to finish her tea.