“The police? Murdo, I don’t understand. My neighbor?”
“They were already onto her…” Murdo’s words got lost as a rattly ball, cast out from a sea of babies in pushchairs farther up the path, rolled past his feet and the mothers called out to him to catch it as they hurried toward shelter in the café. “Hang on,” Murdo said and ran after it, with a backward glance and a “Pru, you stay there.”
Pru, already backing away from him, ran in the other direction, across the lawn and careening down the hill to the main path, barely able to stay on her feet. She’d go to her office, out of the weather, and ring Christopher—perhaps he could make sense of the jumble of images and words swirling round inside her.
She stopped at the bottom of the hill and put her hand against a tree trunk. The ground listed to one side, provoking a wave of nausea. She was seasick on solid ground. A few gulps of cold air got her stomach under control again. She really must eat something, she thought, and struck out again just as her phone rang.
“Pru?” a trembly voice asked as if from a great distance. “Can you help me?”
“Hello? Saskia? I can barely hear you.” Pru stopped to listen harder.
“You know what I’ve done, Pru. Will you come to me?”
“Saskia, where are you?” Pru couldn’t identify the noise in the background and thought it might be a noise in her head.
“I’m at the bridge. Will you come say goodbye?”
“Wait, Saskia—I’ll be there.” Pru shouted into the phone. In Pru’s sluggish mind, the penny dropped at last. She turned her back on her office, headed for the west gate and down the road to the bridge on Glenogle, heedless of the rain hitting her face. She stopped only twice, but the thin note of fear in Saskia’s voice kept her going. Her head seemed clearer while her body was in motion; it was when she held still that the world began to bob and weave.
A deserted bridge—no one stood at the wrought-iron railing looking down at the Water of Leith. Pru walked over to the steps, panic rising in her chest in case she should see Saskia as she still imagined Iain, lying facedown on the rocky bottom, the water rushing around and over his body.
No Saskia in the water. Pru held tight to the rail that led down the steps to the bank as she scanned the bridge. There—Saskia sat on a stone ledge that jutted out from a bridge column, hunkered down with arms wrapped around her knees, like a gargoyle on the side of a cathedral. Pru saw how she must’ve reached the spot—she had edged herself a few feet along it to reach the slightly wider part. What did she think she could accomplish there? This wasn’t the place for jumping—the water was barely ten feet away.
The spring runoff from the Pentland Hills rushed noisily below. Pru didn’t want to startle Saskia, and so she held firm to the rail and took one step down, and then another, willing the ground to hold still, until she moved into the young woman’s line of sight. Saskia turned, her eyes wide, rain dripping down her face, and stretched her arm out, hand open.
“Pru.”
“Saskia, come away from there.” Pru leaned over the rail, her own hand extended. Saskia leaned, too, and clapped a hand on Pru’s wrist.
“Come out here and talk with me, Pru. Please.”
Pru didn’t have the strength for a tug-of-war, and Saskia’s grip offered stability, almost comfort, and so she held tight to the railing with her other hand and stepped over, sinking down beside the young woman, the water rushing by beneath them. Saskia kept hold of Pru’s wrist, and Pru leaned her head back against the stone.
“Saskia, you need to come away from here—come with me so that we can talk.”
Saskia leaned her head back, too, and glanced over at Pru. With a small smile, she said, “Talking’s no good. I tried to talk to him, make him see what he’d done. Make him feel some responsibility for his actions. You’d think my very existence would be proof enough, but he’d have none of it.” Saskia wiped the rain out of her eyes and spoke in a puffed-up pretend male voice. “That part of my life is long past. I can’t just turn the world upside down to accommodate you.” She laughed. “That’s what he said to me.”
“Iain was your father.”
“I wanted to hear him say it”—she jerked Pru’s arm in emphasis—“hear him admit what he did to my mum. He ruined her life—worse, he left her with no life, just a baby girl who had to become a nursemaid and housekeeper nearly before she could walk.”
Pru’s heart picked up speed, short, rapid beats hammering on the inside of her chest as she tried to concentrate on their conversation.
Saskia’s grip tightened, turning Pru’s fingers to red sausages. “Do you know what it’s like Pru, to care for someone who should be caring for you?”
“Saskia, let’s go—come to my flat, it’s just up the road. We need to find you some help.”
“She couldn’t even boil an egg for my tea,” Saskia said in a shaking voice. She swallowed hard and took a deep breath, smoothing out the pain on her face. “He got what was coming to him. Like father, like daughter—you recognized that, Pru.” Another secret smile, as if they were two conspirators. “Our native flora,” she said, in a mocking tone. “I showed him another use for his precious spindle tree, didn’t I? Wasn’t he just surprised when I turned up at his office and offered to make him coffee? He was even more surprised when I told him who I was.” She cut her eyes at Pru. “It was in his coffee—just like it was in yours. By the time I followed him here, he could barely stand.” Saskia raised her left arm high; a smooth gray stone filled her hand. “All it took was a little persuasion”—she brought the stone down hard on Iain’s imaginary head—“and down he went.” She leaned over to look into the water and pulled Pru’s arm with her.
“Oh God,” Pru cried and tried to pull back before they both toppled in. It might not be far, but the water was cold.
Saskia continued to gaze at the scene in her mind. “I took his wallet out and gave him what he never carried himself—a picture of the two of them when Mum was happy. But you were onto me—you went to ask Mum about him, didn’t you? I couldn’t let you go on with that.” She fell silent.
Tamsin had said Iain was alive when he fell into the water. The queasy feeling in Pru’s stomach grew at the thought of Saskia rifling through Iain’s wallet as he lay facedown in the stream. But where was Mrs. Murchie? “I thought Mrs. Murchie found Iain.”
Saskia gave Pru a sly look. “She saw me leave. I had to do something—but I didn’t know it would be so very easy,” she said, a note of delight in her voice. “I ran off round the corner, but then, I came back and found her staring at him. ‘You were here,’ she said to me. ‘Did you see what happened?’ She was flustered, red-faced, crying—all I had to do was say, ‘Why no, I didn’t see anything. I’ve only just arrived. You must be mistaken.’ ” Saskia laughed. “You say anything with enough confidence, and people will believe you—it’s how I learned to keep social service from taking me away from Mum. I’d meet them at the door and say, ‘My mum’s doing well, thanks. She’s just nipped out to the shops.’ ” Saskia’s face darkened. “And all the while she lay on her bed with the lights out and the curtains drawn.”
“Mrs. Murchie was looking for her cat,” Pru said, clinging to this fact like a lifeboat.
Saskia smiled regretfully. “I’m sorry, Pru.”
“Of course you are,” Pru said, wishing that she could keep Saskia in better focus. An oily sheen seemed to cover her eyes, and although she shivered from the freezing rain, her skin felt hot. Saskia needed help that Pru couldn’t give. “Let’s ring Christopher. He’s here. He’ll come. Why don’t we do that?” She tried to pull away, but the girl’s hold was like a Chinese finger puzzle—the more Pru pulled, the tighter Saskia’s grip.
“It’s too late.”
Pru tugged weakly at her arm. “Saskia, you’re hurting me.”
“Soon they’ll find the note you left them.”
“What note?” Had she written someone a note and forgotten?
“On your comp
uter,” Saskia said, her voice full of sadness. “Your suicide note and your confession—you couldn’t go on, you see, not after what you did to Iain. Even though it was an accident that you pushed him in the Water of Leith, the guilt was too much for you. Such a sad story,” she said, clicking her tongue, “and you about to be married and all.” Saskia gave the stone in her left hand a tiny toss, as if assessing its weight.
“No one will believe I came here to kill myself,” Pru said, her tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth.
“They will when I tell them how distraught you’ve been lately—and you know how convincing I can be, don’t you? There’s no other way.”
“Of course there’s another way. Saskia, let go of my hand. Now.” She could no more take physical command of the situation than she could fly. “You don’t want to do this—you know you don’t. There are people who will understand, and they will…”
“Take me away? Who would look after my mum then, answer me that? You saw what she’s like. No, once you’re gone, it’ll all be finished, and perhaps we’ll find some peace at last.” She raised her arm and said, “Turn away, Pru. Don’t look.”
But Pru did look. She saw the large stone that filled Saskia’s hand. “No!” Pru shouted, struggling weakly. She watched as the young woman raised her arm higher and higher and at the moment Pru expected to feel the stone crack her skull, another hand shot down from above and clapped hold of Saskia’s wrist.
Saskia cried out, opened her hand, and the stone fell. As she twisted around to discover her interceptor, she let go of Pru, too, and Pru followed the stone into the water. The stone landed well; Pru did not. She went in feetfirst and ended with a belly flop in the shallow stream, knocking the breath out of her and smacking her face against the bottom. One clear thought pierced the fog in her brain: Don’t drown. For a moment her arms and legs flailed about, before she dragged herself up onto all fours, coughing up the water she’d swallowed. She could hear unintelligible shouts from behind her on the bridge. The water isn’t cold, she thought. Shouldn’t it be cold? Just as well; perhaps she could stay right here and rest, because she wasn’t too sure she could move.
One second, one minute, one hour later, someone grabbed her shoulders from behind.
“You’re all right now, you’re all right,” he said.
Pru turned her head. Who was this nice young man in uniform?
“Come on, let’s get you out of here.” He half-dragged her to the edge and out of the water—her legs seemed to be filled with lead—and appeared to pull a blanket out of the heavens, throwing it around her while she stood shivering. She put the back of her hand to her mouth and it came away with a splash of crimson.
“Are you all right?” This time it was a question.
She nodded, a reminder that nodding wasn’t a good idea.
Another uniform appeared. They each took one of her arms and walked her up the steps. Such a commotion awaited her—police cars, an ambulance, and people everywhere. Pru found it difficult to register all the details, and later remembered only snapshots of the scene: Saskia, her chin stuck out and looking away from Tamsin, handcuffs locking her wrists together; Bill the barman from the Pickled Egg talking with a uniform.
One scene lasted the longest. Murdo stood over Mrs. Murchie with his head bowed. He pulled off his woolly green cap and twisted it in his hands as she reached up and tousled the memory of his wild curls.
The uniforms helped Pru onto a stretcher. As they rolled her toward the ambulance, she looked up at faces around her. She opened her mouth—she had something to tell them. They all leaned forward.
“I don’t feel very well,” she said.
Chapter 37
Pru lay on her left side curled up in a ball. Her body insisted on the position—it was too sore from hours of retching and cramping to be stretched out in the bed. She opened one eye halfway and saw a room with a fluorescent glow, a recliner in the corner, and curtains pulled across a window. An IV ran clear liquid into her right arm; she had a splint on her left wrist, and something stuck out on her bottom lip. Her head seemed to be filled with cotton balls, but at least nothing hurt and the world held still. She lay there breathing and thinking she could do with a good rest, when she became aware of low voices behind her.
“The blood tests on Blackwell came back showing the presence of glycosides,” Tamsin said. “Dizziness, irregular heartbeat, intestinal upset.”
“And they’ve identified the source?” Christopher asked.
“We found a mortar and pestle on her workbench. She ground up seeds from the spindle tree.”
“Spindle tree?”
“Euonymus europaeaus,” Pru croaked, stirring as little as possible.
Footsteps. Tamsin came into view and sat in the chair next to the bed. “Well,” the DS said, smiling, “welcome back, you.”
Pru smiled but kept her head on the pillow. “It must’ve been in the coffee—she brought the jar in herself. It tasted terrible.”
Tamsin nodded. “She’d left the jar on your office tea tray—wiped clean of any prints, except she missed one of hers on the bottom, clear as day.” She glanced behind Pru and said, “I’ll leave you two to it. I’m off to audition a soprano on ‘O Mio Babbino Caro’ for the ceremony.” She shrugged. “Hamish loves opera.”
Christopher took Tamsin’s place when she left. He pulled the chair closer; Pru wiggled her fingers at him, and he took her hand in his. They didn’t speak. He leaned over and ran a finger across her forehead, along the edge of her ear, and down the line of her jaw.
“Did you save me?” she said at last. “Did you catch hold of Saskia’s hand before she hit me?”
He smiled and shook his head. “Not me. That was Murdo.”
“Murdo,” Pru said. “Dear Murdo. He and Mrs. Murchie found each other, didn’t they? I didn’t make that up?”
“They did indeed. They stopped in to see you in the afternoon, but you were asleep by then.”
“What time is it now?” she asked.
Christopher tipped his wrist and peered down his nose. “Half ten.”
“At night?”
“Saturday morning.”
“Really?” Her vision sharpened as her senses dragged themselves back to reality, and she saw that Christopher’s shirt collar stuck out of his jumper at an odd angle, and he had dark circles under his eyes and stubble on his chin. “Have you been here the whole time? Did you sleep here?”
He nodded behind him. “I took a kip on the chair in the corner.”
“That must’ve been restful.” Her mind wandered back to the previous day as she tried to recall her arrival at the hospital. She came up with the memory of speaking to him through a closed door as she sat on the toilet with a pan in her lap. Her face reddened. “I told you to go away, didn’t I?”
His ears grew pink, and one corner of his mouth turned up. “The doctors said that the effects would wear off, you just needed time, and they would give you a sedative. I went over to the station for a while.”
The reason she lay in the hospital with her insides reamed out came back to her in full detail. “I want to talk to Saskia.”
Pru still had hold of Christopher’s hand, and she could feel his muscles tense. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”
“Iain was her father. Her mum suffers from depression. Saskia spent her whole life being a nursemaid. She blamed Iain.” More pieces of the story filtered into Pru’s head. “Did you go to my office? Did you see the note she wrote?”
“I saw it.”
“But you knew I didn’t write it.”
“I knew you were in danger.” He kneaded her good hand absentmindedly. “I had gone to the station early about Murdo and found Blakie poring over specs for a new glasshouse, so I tracked down Duncan. By that time, Mrs. Murchie had been in, and Duncan had talked with Murdo.” He looked at the wall behind her. “No one knew where you were, and so we spread out. They found you at the bridge while I was still at the Botanics, so I
caught up with you here.”
They fell silent again, until Pru asked, “What’s on my lip?” She crossed her eyes in an attempt to see.
“Stitches,” he said. “Four of them. You ran into a rock at the bottom of the Water of Leith.”
“Good thing gardeners are always up on their tetanus shots.” She tapped a finger lightly on his hand. “I want to tell you something. I’m a gardener.”
Even with her brain still fuzzy, she saw his eyebrows raise and knew that what she said didn’t make sense. Explain yourself, Prunella, as her mother used to say. “I mean, I want to be a gardener.”
A smile of relief overtook the shock, and he laughed, holding her to him. “All right, my darling. Then you shall be a gardener.”
She heaved a great sigh. “I would love a cup of tea,” she said. The conversation had expended a great deal of energy, and she could feel herself drifting off on a calm sea. Her eyes closed, and she squeezed his hand to reassure herself of his presence. Scraps of thought drifted through her mind. “Mr. Menzies,” she managed. “Good news.”
“Excellent.”
Her eyelids fluttered. “Churches,” she said. “We won’t be able to look at churches today.”
“I don’t think we’ll need to.”
Half a giggle was all she could manage. Did he think they’d be married in the hospital ward? The image faded before it was even half-formed, and as it did, one more thought bobbed up from the flotsam and jetsam in her mind. She squeezed his hand. “Christopher, do you know how to dance?”
Chapter 38
After two days in the hospital, Pru moved back to her flat. “I should start packing,” she said, lying in bed and looking out through the lace curtains to the primroses in someone else’s front garden. The Botanics would want the flat back now that her special project had turned into such a special mess.
“Certainly not this moment,” Christopher said, bringing in a cup of tea and sitting on the edge of the bed.
Between a Rock and a Hard Place: A Potting Shed Mystery (Potting Shed Mystery series Book 3) Page 24