Bryony wailed into her handkerchief again, but consented to rise and follow me up the stairs, mopping her eyes. ‘She didn’t even eat any of it.’
‘Allergies are funny like that.’
Except that it was supposed to look like food poisoning, if Magnie’s suspicions were correct: everyone sick, with one person worse than the others. Had Bryony really poisoned our after-dinner tea? Or had Adrien poisoned the fruit salad?
The room was moving towards some sort of order. Maman had identified Kamilla’s suitcase and some of her dresses, and was folding them away on top of a tumble of underwear and T-shirts that looked as if they’d never been taken out. ‘The rest are Bryony’s, I think.’
Bryony looked around and nodded. ‘Yeah, all the rest are mine.’
There seemed to be nothing but clothes in the suitcase. A letter with a French stamp ...
I turned around, giving a sweep of the room with my eyes, but couldn’t see it anywhere. The bedside table had a drawer, but it was empty. In her handbag sitting temptingly beside her case? I had no helpful excuse for opening that.
‘May I look in your case too, Ms Blake?’
Bryony made a grudging face of acquiescence. ‘S’pose so.’ It was sitting on an upright chair; she gestured towards it. ‘The plastic bag is my dirty washing.’
Sergeant Peterson flipped expertly through the clothes, then turned her attention to the mantelpiece. ‘How about all this make-up?’
‘The red bag is Kamilla’s, and that’s mine.’ She began separating out the jars ranged along the shelf. ‘Mine, mine, hers, that one as well – there.’ She shoved a shopping bag’s worth of little jars and bottles towards the red make-up case. They included several little canisters of vitamin pills, including one labelled in what looked like Finnish, with “Senna capsules” in English beside it. I didn’t pick it up, in case of fingerprints, though Bryony’s would be on it now too, but she saw me looking. The malice sparked in her eyes again. ‘That was how she kept her figure.’
‘Senna?’ I asked. Sergeant Peterson turned round to look.
‘Laxatives.’
Laxatives ... suppose there’d been nothing wrong with the seafood. I had no difficulty supposing that. Shetland seafood deserved its high reputation. I could see Sergeant Peterson watching me figure it out.
‘Sooner her than me,’ I said casually, and turned away to look out of the window. Allergies were uncertain things, everyone knew that. They could be fatal, or not. Or perhaps the person who’d killed Kamilla didn’t know about her allergy. They wanted it to look like an accidental death, in the best Agatha Christie tradition, as Magnie had said: poison everyone and give one person extra. You wanted to make everyone ill. Now, would laxatives given to someone who didn’t need them cause sickness and stomach cramps? I didn’t know. But Adrien had spoken of ‘the runs’ too. I wished I had my laptop, to look up how long senna pods would take to work. They’d dissolve in hot liquid: several in the teapot, several in the cafetière. Coffee was bitter stuff, it would cover the taste, whatever it was. I hadn’t drunk my tea, and nor had Caleb. It was Bryony who’d served it out, though I had a memory, now I concentrated, of Kamilla lifting up each lid and stirring. Nobody would actually be harmed, just ill for a bit. Then Kamilla was given the dose of whatever had killed her. It would have been easy to drop something into the wine glass that had shattered as she’d fallen. Something that acted fast on the respiratory system ...
Except that these were Kamilla’s pills. It was too much of a coincidence that she should play a trick with them the day somebody decided to murder her. I wondered how many of the cast knew she had them. Bryony, obviously, and anyone else who’d been in her room: Adrien? Caleb?
I’d been silent too long. ‘It’s fairly blowing up,’ I said, as if the only reason I’d been at the window was to check the weather. On my left, the Loch of Belmont was churned and muddy, choked brown replacing yesterday’s sparkling blue; ahead of me, the Loch of Snarravoe was white with crested waves. ‘Look at the waves on that loch.’
I turned around again, just in time to see Sergeant Peterson lifting Kamilla’s senna pods, oh, so casually, finger and thumb on the rim of the plastic container, and placing them in her suitcase, in a corner, where they would be held still enough not to smudge fingerprints. She made room for the make-up case at the other end, added Kamilla’s handbag and closed the zip. ‘If you wish, Mrs Lynch, we can take this and return it to Ms Lange’s parents. I’ll give you a receipt for it.’
Maman made an ‘as you like’ gesture. ‘I will go and see them, of course, when the tour is over, but it would be easier if you took it now.’
‘Then I will.’ Sergeant Peterson turned to me. ‘I’ll search the men’s rooms next.’ She gestured upwards. ‘Who is upstairs?’
‘Adrien – you met him downstairs – with Per, our director, who went with Kamilla to Lerwick, and has not yet returned. Fournier, our backer, has gone to fetch him – he is in the downstairs room, off the dining room. Then in the other upstairs room are Charles and Caleb.’
‘Caleb’s gone too,’ I said. ‘He wanted to explore the mainland.’
‘But Charles is here? Very well, we’ll start with him.’ She turned to me. ‘Ms Lynch, you could stay and keep Ms Blake company while she does her make-up.’ Her green gaze swept along the pots. My job was to watch Bryony use all of those little jars.
‘I’ll probably learn a lot,’ I said, and sat down on the chair.
‘This is nonsense,’ Bryony said crossly, as they left the room.
I shrugged. ‘Police get funny ideas in their heads sometimes. Maybe what she really wants is for you to keep an eye on me, so that I’m not eavesdropping on them in the men’s rooms.’
She stared at me. ‘Why on earth would you want to do that?’
‘I wouldn’t.’ Above the sound of the wind buffeting the house, above the sound of the waves crashing on the beach, there was the throb of a distant motorboat. I could imagine it as if I was on it, the bounce as it slammed off one wave and rose into another, the green water spraying over the forepeak and sluicing down the windows. Keith would be standing, braced, the wheel tugging under his hands, with Gavin beside him watching forwards as intently, shoulder against the side of the wheelhouse.
In her reflection, Bryony spread cream over her face from the first tub in the row, and followed it with a skoosh of coloured cream from the mini-dispenser beside it. Then she leaned forward to put powder on her eyes. I didn’t see this being of any help; I didn’t believe in a cream potent enough to kill from eyeshadow or blusher. If there had been poison in one of these delicately coloured potion pots, it would have to be in the cream spread all over the face, or maybe in hand cream. I had a vague memory of someone Greek dying from poisoned gloves. Bryony finished blackening her curled lashes and stretched out a hand to the bottle of cream, putting a knob in her palm and swirling it around her fingers, working it into her manicured cuticles. No, there was nothing in there. Bryony shot a malicious glance at me from under her mirrored lashes. ‘Well, are you learning anything?’
‘I’m not a make-up wearer,’ I said.
‘I can see that.’ Her eyes touched my scar. ‘You shouldn’t be so proud. That could easily be covered, just with cream foundation. Want me to show you?’
I shook my head. ‘I’m used to it.’
The throb of the engine became a roar as it curved around into the bay, then cut suddenly as the motorboat edged into the pier. I could imagine Gavin leaning out to catch the rungs of the iron stepladder, bag in the other hand, saying ‘thank you’, clambering upwards with the wind catching the heavy pleats of his kilt and whisking them backwards as if he was falling. Then he’d be on dry land, head up, alert as one of his own Highland stags, looking around him at the dig of Belmont, up on the hill, and the pale yellow house before him. He’d shoulder his bag and start walking along the road, just as I’d done this morning, past the lodge and round the curved wall to the kitchen door, or he’d make
his way through the gate to the front, like a visitor from Scotland for Thomas and Elizabeth Mouat in the days when this house was a home.
Bryony rose. ‘Do you think the sergeant wants you to watch me getting dressed too?’
‘I’m sure she doesn’t,’ I said, and escaped.There was a murmur of voices from upstairs, but I didn’t try to go there. Instead I went into the writing room, with the three tall windows that looked over the bay. The motorboat was just leaving, and a solitary figure in a kilt was walking briskly up the road, head high, just as I’d imagined. A rush of gladness filled me. Help was at hand.
I caught up my jacket from the curved banister and went out to meet him.
Chapter Fourteen
I wouldn’t have flung myself into his arms if they hadn’t opened to receive me as soon I got within hugging distance. They were warm and secure around me. Gavin kissed my cheek, then my mouth, and let me go again, tucking my arm under his. ‘How’s it all going? Has Freya Peterson arrived?’
‘She’s busy searching right now. I don’t suppose you know how long senna pods take to work?’
‘No, but I can find out. Has someone got senna pods?’
‘Kamilla had. She used them as a diet aid.’
He laughed at the disdain in my voice. ‘She should have gone on the Cass Lynch diet, climbing a mast six times a day.’
I remembered Kamilla sparkling in her scarlet frock. ‘She didn’t need to diet at all. She had a beautiful figure.’
‘She was young too,’ Gavin said thoughtfully. ‘Early twenties?’
‘Something like that.’ I hugged his arm against me. ‘Oh, I’m glad you’re here. There’s just too much going on – Kamilla, and this skullduggery with the treasure. I can’t wait to be out at sea in peace.’
Gavin gave the tumbling white waves a droll look. ‘Even in this?’
‘Blissfully quiet compared to a day with an opera company,’ I assured him. ‘Have you had any lunch?’
‘Keith made some soup on board. It was very welcome, even if the mug kept trying to knock my teeth in every time we hit a wave. I’ll go and join Freya first, and get a proper look at Moreau’s metal detector.’
I remembered Vincent’s comments earlier. ‘His father runs a jewellery shop, or workshop, specialising in replica antiques. It was him who made Maman’s Helen of Troy gold stuff. You don’t suppose he’s ostensibly selling replicas to cover a trade in the real thing?’
‘It’s a good theory, but whether someone like Moreau junior, who has a reputation as an opera singer, would involve himself in that kind of trade, is another matter. Why should he? He’s getting enough work to keep himself going, unless he’s addicted to something expensive, like gambling or drugs.’
‘According to Bryony, he’s odd. Possessive. Kamilla ran away to the States to get away from him. But according to him, all was roses.’ I gave him a brief overview of Maman’s, Bryony’s and Adrien’s own accounts of their affair. ‘I’m not sure who to believe. Maman, I suppose, that they’d had an affair four years ago, but after that ...’
‘All that’s easy to find out.’ Gavin made a face. ‘Well, when I say easy, it will mean a lot of talking to people all over the place, but it can be found out. I’ll get on to that one.’ He brooded for a moment. ‘I don’t like the sound of that poison ring at all. I’ll get Freya to take it off him.’ He stopped and pulled out his mobile. ‘What’s the signal like here? Oh, four bars.’ He sent a text, waited a moment for the reply, then put the phone away. ‘What’s the skullduggery with the treasure?’
‘Of course, I didn’t manage to tell you about that this morning. Someone drugged me.’ I told him all about it, with a few extra comments on the ancestry and morals of the people who’d humped me back aboard Khalida.
‘Any interesting bruises?’
‘It was too cold to look. But you’re right, it would be hard for them not to bump me somewhere.’ I was going to add, ‘I’ll check later’ but then I remembered that later might be a joint affair. ‘I didn’t feel anything.’
‘Definitely two people, then. Did you get a chance to look at the site where you saw them working?’
I shook my head. ‘The tides meant I had to get Khalida across while I could. Peter – he lives in that yellow house, there – he was going to go look.’
‘Maybe we could get your Dad to run us over later, if he’s still with the company.’
‘He’s at some wind farm meeting in Cullivoe right now, but I’m sure he could. Or would you be okay to drive his car?’
‘I’ll check insurance with him. I’d like to meet your Viking ghost.’
‘To say nothing of the aliens with the fancy headgear?’
‘Definitely them, though not without back-up. I’ve been reading up about them on the police computer. I’ll see what Freya has planned.’
We’d come around the bend of the drive now, to where the house was properly in view. Gavin paused to admire it. ‘1775, according to the brochure, and Britain’s most northerly restored Georgian house.’
‘It’s lovely inside. Well, slightly too grand for the likes of me, but Maman fits in beautifully.’
His fingers twined around mine. ‘And if you’re not going back over to Khalida, where are we going to sleep?’
I knew I was blushing, and didn’t mind. ‘Can you survive a bit of cold?’
He gave me a quizzical look. ‘It’s too cold for camping, if that’s what you’re suggesting.’
‘Not quite.’ I nodded towards the further pavilion. ‘The little house there. It’s not normally used until summer, but there’s a blow-up bed we could take over to it.’
‘What’s the alternative?’
‘Separate couches in the sitting room, right opposite Maman and Dad’s bedroom.’
‘I can survive a bit of cold.’
We walked on in self-conscious silence, into the house, and straight into the middle of a row in the wide hallway.
‘You have no right!’ Adrien insisted. His cheeks were flushed with anger. ‘This isn’t school, where the prefect can confiscate a boy’s catapult. I am an adult, and this ring is my property.’
‘There’s no question of confiscation, sir,’ Sergeant Peterson said. Her voice didn’t even try for soothing. ‘We would like to test the substance in it, that’s all. It could, for example, be drugs, which I’m sure you’d agree we have every right to take.’
Maman appeared on the stairs. Adrien turned and appealed to her. ‘Eugénie, this officer is trying to take my ring. You’re the native here. Can you give their CC a bell and sort it out?’
I could see her going for dignity. Her head rose, her shoulders straightened. ‘My dear Adrien, I think the easiest thing for you to do is just to let them take it away for whatever tests they wish to do – or, if they would permit, perhaps they could just take the contents, which, I admit, I would be very happy for you not to have access to.’ She came down the last steps, took his arm, patted it, and went into best French floweriness. ‘Given your great distress at our poor Kamilla’s death, I do not think you should have such a thing about you.’ She turned to Sergeant Peterson, frowning at this sudden flood of French, and went into English. ‘Would you permit, madame lieutenant, that one gives you only the powder from the ring, and not the ring itself?’
Sergeant Peterson looked across at Gavin, who met her look with the slightly embarrassed stare of someone who’d just arrived in the middle of a row that was nothing to do with him. Her eyes went back to Adrien. ‘I think that would be acceptable, sir, so long as you don’t dispose of the ring, in case we want to examine it further.’
‘But please log that I’m allowing this under protest,’ Adrien said. He watched in brooding silence as Sergeant Peterson’s henchman produced an evidence envelope. The ring opened as I’d conjectured: a little flick of one finger and the white powder tumbled into the envelope. It would have been easy to spike a bowl of fruit salad. Constable Buchanan sealed it, put it into his briefcase and clicked the locks o
ver.
‘Thank you, sir,’ Sergeant Peterson said. ‘Do you have any more of this powder with you?’
Adrien shook his head. ‘Why should I have? What’s in this ring is a lethal dose. And, what’s more, there’s no law in England that says I can’t carry it on me.’
‘This is Scotland, sir,’ Sergeant Peterson said smoothly, but I could see from the hint of uncertainty that crossed her face and was as quickly smoothed away again, that she was longing to be back in the station consulting whatever big book of laws they had to see if he was right. ‘Now, you were going to show us your room.’
Adrien gave an annoyed snort, and led the way upstairs. Maman came forward to kiss us. ‘Gavin, how nice to see you again.’
She had recovered her poise, although her eyes were still red-rimmed. She gestured upwards. ‘You don’t really think that the powder is real poison?’
‘The labs will tell us,’ Gavin said. ‘Of course if it isn’t, there’s the question of when it was changed. It didn’t look much, I agree, but very much less than that could be a lethal dose, depending on what it was.’
‘Cyanide, I think,’ Maman said. ‘Was that not what the wartime Resistance carried, cyanide pills?’
Gavin spread his hands. ‘If it ever held poison, there’ll be traces of it among whatever’s been substituted.’ He looked around, and went back to visitor mode. ‘A beautiful house, this. Will you show me around?’
‘I haven’t tasted it, of course,’ Sergeant Peterson said. ‘It smells like soda bicarb to me. The lab will know if there’s a residue of something more serious.’
We’d taken refuge in the dining room. Gavin turned the evidence bag over in his hands. ‘A nice handy source of poison. Did everyone know he had the ring?’
‘It sounds like it. And of course he’d take it off to wash, so all our perp had to do was wait for him to go for a shower, and swap it then.’
‘Meaning,’ Gavin said, ‘that the murder, if it was murder, and if this was what was used, was sparked off by something recent. Yes, Moreau said it was poison, but there’s no guarantee of that. A murderer who’d planned Lange’s death before the start of the tour would have brought his own poison with him.’ He echoed Maman. ‘If Moreau went on about suicide, and flourished the ring, any sensible friend would have swapped the contents.’ He paused, thinking about it, then changed tack. ‘Anything interesting in the bags?’
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