Sergeant Peterson made a disdainful face. ‘Pornographic literature in the accompanist’s bag.’
‘Really?’ I said, forgetting that I was there on sufferance. I couldn’t imagine quiet, homely Charles reading dodgy magazines.
‘Hardback comics.’
‘Oh, bandes dessinées.’ They were entirely mainstream in France, but I supposed that Sergeant Peterson hadn’t come across them before.
‘How about the letter with the French stamp?’ Gavin asked.
Sergeant Peterson shook her head. ‘Nothing. Not in her case, nor her handbag. No sign of it.’
‘Meaning it’s probably been taken and destroyed. Easy enough to take it from Lange’s room, in the confusion after she collapsed.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘They were all still there, I’m sure of it, until I sent them upstairs. You know the way people stand around, not wanting to just go. Then Maman took Bryony to bed, so the room wouldn’t have been empty.’
‘Who tidied away her handbag?’
I hadn’t thought of that. ‘You’d need to ask about that.’ Maman, I’d have thought, but I wasn’t going to say so to Sergeant Peterson.
‘Then there are the three who aren’t here.’ She consulted her notebook. ‘Fournier, though his case is here, we’ll get him later. Then Caleb Portland, he went off somewhere, and the musical director, Per Rolvsson, who went with Kamilla. He expected to meet the company in Lerwick.’
‘Fournier’s bringing him back here, if he can get in before the ferries stop.’
Gavin made a gesture towards me. ‘Cass overheard an odd conversation in which Kamilla accused someone of beind “mad”.’ He nodded at me, and I retold the story.
‘Who do you think she might have been talking to?’ Sergeant Peterson asked.
‘Not Charles,’ I said. ‘He doesn’t speak English. Not Maman; I’d just heard her singing in her bedroom. Probably not Caleb, because he came into the drawing room with that healthy outdoor glow, as if he’d just been for a ten-mile hill tramp.’
‘Moreau, Fournier, Ms Blake, Rolvsson.’ Gavin’s gaze sharpened.‘What’s Fournier doing here?’
‘He’s the backer, isn’t he?’ Sergeant Peterson said. ‘Keeping an eye on his investment?’
‘He’s an empire-builder,’ Gavin replied. ‘He’s just opened a new hotel in France, with a mint of money spent on it, and he’s got an office in Paris. He should be keeping an eye on those, instead of hanging about with opera singers.’
‘He wasn’t with them in the Scotland bit,’ I said. ‘He just flew over to join them here.’
‘Unless he’s keen on Kamilla – we need to go into that, check there are no links between them.’ Sergeant Peterson made a note. He turned back to me. ‘Any preferences, Cass?’
‘Probably Adrien or Bryony,’ I said slowly. ‘Unless there’s a link between Kamilla and Fournier that we don’t know about. Rolvsson speaks English, of course, but the company language is French, so I’d have thought they’d have spoken in that. Once you’ve got used to communicating with somebody in one language you wouldn’t naturally change.’
‘We’ll be going into her relationships with all of them.’
Gavin nodded. ‘What about the mad, mad?’
‘Maman spoke about Bryony being jealous of her. There were some tricks played as if the ghost of her dead brother was haunting her. But,’ I said tentatively, conscious of Sergeant Peterson’s sceptical gaze, ‘there was also a suggestion that it might have been Adrien. He apparently fancies himself as a medium. Maman thought he might have been trying to get her to get him to try to contact her dead brother, you know, as a way to get close to her again. Suppose he tried something like that here, and she’d caught him? Wouldn’t that sound mad as a ploy to get her to love him again?’
‘That strengthens the murder theory,’ Sergeant Peterson said. ‘He played his trump card, the contact with the brother, and she still turned him down.’
It didn’t sound enough to kill someone for.
Gavin nodded, but more in a showing-he-was-listening way than in agreement, and rose. ‘Right. I want to keep my cover as Cass’s partner.’ His head lifted, listening. ‘That sounds like Mr Lynch and Fournier have returned. We’ll go back out and socialise.’
‘I’ll talk to Moreau again. See if he admits to being the one she called mad.’ She rose, and paused. ‘Oh, the other interesting thing was the senna pods, in the room shared by Blake and Lange. I’ve had a look on the Internet, and it seems that a dose of them would give just the symptoms everyone complained of: stomach cramps, the runs. Only Blake claims to have vomited, which makes seafood poisoning unlikely.’
‘Get the container fingerprinted. Blake claimed they were Kamilla’s?’
Sergeant Peterson nodded.
‘It seems unlikely to me. She was young, healthy, active, whereas Blake was thirty, and looks as if she had a sedentary lifestyle.’
‘She didn’t want to let you search,’ I recalled. ‘Then she caved in suddenly when you said she’d need to tell you what was hers and what Kamilla’s, as if she’d realised she could disown them that way.’
Gavin nodded. ‘Let’s see what forensics says about who touched the canister last.’
A pinchful, a pillful,
Fir spewing, spaigie, pains,
A mouthfu’, a cupfu’
For sleep that never ends.
... poison
Saturday, 28th March (continued)
Tide Times at Mid Yell, UT
Low Water11.15, 1.0m
High Water17.32, 1.7m
Low Water23.49, 1.3m
Sunrise05.44
Moonrise11.00
Sunset18.33
Moonset03.04
Waxing quarter moon
Petals o’ velvet,
Da colour o’ blud,
Proctected bi’ thorns,
The symbol o’ love.
Chapter Fifteen
Maman came forward to meet us as we emerged into the hall. ‘Bryony seems to have gone missing.’ Her slim fingers twisted together, and her face was taut with anxiety. ‘She got dressed, and sat in the drawing room for a bit, while the caretaker vacuumed the bedrooms, but she was still really upset. Then she went out, and I thought she had gone downstairs to make a cup of tea, but she didn’t return.’
‘How long’s she been gone?’
Maman spread her hands. ‘Half an hour, I would think. And it is a cold wind out there. I’m certain she doesn’t have suitable clothing to be out in it for this long.’
‘Right.’ Gavin came into the hall, frowning. ‘She’s probably perfectly okay, but given the weather conditions, I think we should look for her. Is everyone upstairs in the drawing room?’
Maman nodded. ‘Mostly. Charles is in his room, I think, but Adrien is there, and Vincent, and Per have arrived.’
‘I don’t want to admit to being police unless I have to. Can you send – let me see, yes, your husband and Vincent along the shore, and Adrien and Per in the car to the ferry terminal, in case she’s walked there.’ He turned to me. ‘Another hill walk, Cass?’
‘Excelsior.’ I zipped my jacket up. ‘Where?’
‘I to the hills will lift mine eyes. It’s a natural impulse to go upwards in trouble. We’ll look where the dig is, the Belmont longhouse.’ He nodded to Maman. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll find her.’
Gavin set a good pace back along the drive, with the wind behind us lending a helping hand. If it hadn’t been so serious, I’d have lifted my jacket above my head and used it as a sail, as we used to as bairns, in the school playground. ‘If she’s up there, if she looks upset, I’ll send you in to her first. We’ve got no reason to think she’s dangerous, and she knows you, you looked after her this morning, whereas she doesn’t know me at all.’
I didn’t have enough breath to say ‘Thanks’.
We crossed the road to the marker pointing upwards: Viking Longhouse. The hill was grazed smooth by sheep and ponies, with a clearly marked track lea
ding upwards to a fenced area. I took three steps off the road and found a squelch of bog between us and the start of the path. Gavin sidestepped it neatly, like a sword dancer, kilt swinging, and I took a flying leap over it and just managed to land dry-footed on the one tussock of firm ground projecting out into the bright-green mire. It wouldn’t have swallowed me, of course, but I’d have sunk to my knees in stinking peat water. Now I was stranded, with bog all around me. I did two more leaps, soaking one shoe in the process, and landed at last beside Gavin, who was watching with interest from the firm ground. ‘Don’t tell me,’ he said. ‘No bogs at sea either.’
‘Plenty in my childhood,’ I assured him. ‘But then I just sploshed through.’
From here, the near side of the fence that surrounded the longhouse site was silhouetted against the sky. The grass underfoot was slippery, studded with the first celandines, like pale-gold daisies. We trudged upwards, and gradually the site itself came into view: a gate, an information board, a scatter of waist-high stones, some sort of white canvas.
Gavin paused at the top of the hill. ‘Breather,’ he said. ‘Get your heart rate steady before we go any further.’
The view was worth pausing for, in spite of the freezing, buffeting wind. On our right, the headland was curved like a crouched cat, the cliff at its end highlighted by the sun. The farm was laid out below: two stone byres with the farmhouse in the centre, enclosing a square of farmyard, just like at Gavin’s house, and a line of low sheds with red corrugated roofs. Past it, there was a field half-filled with huge black plastic rolls – ‘tractor eggs’, we used to call them. Belmont was side on, the squares of yellow daffodils bright, and behind it, across Yell Sound, I could make out the ice plant on Cullivoe Pier. If I’d had spyglasses I’d be able to see my Khalida ... I felt a sudden wrenching of homesickness, that she was there, almost close enough to see, yet barred from me by the tumbling white water. Instead, I’d be in a cold pavilion with a stranger – and at the thought, a curling writhe of panic rose in my throat. He wasn’t a stranger, I told myself, he was Gavin, and stamped the panic down in practicality. ‘Let’s find her.’
‘One more minute.’ His hand came warm around mine. ‘The more upset she is, the more we need to be really calm.’ He nodded downwards at the rock beside us. ‘Now, that’s interesting.’
I looked at it. It was just a flat-topped rock, with a series of indentations in it, holding the water, roughly in a square pattern.
‘Those,’ Gavin said, dipping one finger into the deepest one. ‘Bronze Age cup marks.’ He looked around. ‘People have been living here for four thousand years.’
I looked at the indentations more closely. ‘A board game?’ It seemed a lot of work for a game of solitaire.
‘Or part of a ceremonial ritual. Nobody knows.’ He gave me a quick, keen look. ‘Ready now?’
My heart rate had steadied to normal. ‘Ready.’
We walked side by side up the last bit of path to the final hill-dyke, and at last we got a view of the far side of the site. Bryony was huddled in the far corner of the longhouse, head sunk into her knees, sheltered from the howling wind by the crazy-paving walls, her green Edwardian jacket pitifully inadequate for this weather. The gate was swinging open over the duckboards underneath it. Past it there was a squared boulder, furred with lime-grey lichen and knobbled moss, and to the right was the interpretation board, with an artist’s impression of the longhouse when it was whole: a low house with a thatched roof, and cows kept in the nearer half. The long rectangle of the Viking house was clear to see, but the walls were reduced to waist height, and the floor was spread with agricultural fleece, which the wind had teased to long fibres. Bryony had taken refuge where the people had lived. I pitched my voice low, and called her name. ‘Bryony! It’s Cass. I’ve come to help you.’
Her head stayed down; her arms clutched tighter around her knees. I took a deep breath and began walking towards her. Gavin waited by the gate while I stumbled over narrow paths of long grass, and between tumbled boulders. I’d have to cross the longhouse itself. I set a tentative foot on the fleece and found it solid. I picked my way towards her: fleece; the first wall; the soft jumble of peat and gravel core; the inner wall; fleece again, stretched taut over uneven stones so that it gave squashily as I walked, with a crunch like thin ice.
Bryony lifted her head to see me approach, then huddled further into her corner. She was giving out a low moaning, as if she was in pain, and rocking over her doubled legs. The wind made snakes of her dark hair.
I had to go up onto the wall again, and over the corner of the second room. I nearly tripped into a hole under the fleece. Here, it was the dirty colour of dried mud, and it flapped in the wind as I picked my way across to her, and hunkered down beside her. She didn’t speak, but her rocking paused for a moment, and the low moaning stopped. ‘Bryony,’ I said, ‘you’re getting cold. Let’s go back down to the house and get you warm.’
The dark head shook.
‘Come on,’ I said, in the most encouraging voice I could manage. ‘If you stay here much longer you’ll never be able to sing tomorrow.’
She began crying, great, gulping sobs that made her breath shudder. I put an arm round her, and waited. At last she lifted her head. Her face was red with crying, her eyes swollen, the lashes dark and gummy with tears. ‘It was all my fault. I didn’t mean to harm anyone, not like that. I just wanted ... she had so much luck, and she wasn’t even that good ...’
‘It was you who phoned to ask for seafood?’
She nodded, and brushed the tears away with one hand. ‘But I never meant to kill her. Never, ever!’
‘I’m sure they’ll understand that,’ I said soothingly. ‘Come on, now, you can tell us all about it down at the house.’
She shook her head, but I started to draw her upwards. ‘You need to get warm. A cup of tea, with brandy in it.’
‘I’m cold,’ she agreed, surprised.
‘All the more reason to get moving. Come on.’ I gave a firm, steady pull, and got her to her feet. The wind hit us as we came up above the shelter, slapping our cheeks, probing cold fingers down our necks. I braced myself against her instinctive attempt to sink down again. ‘On we go. Let’s get out of this wind.’
It was in our faces, so I went first, to shelter her from it, towing her behind me over the jagged boulders that stuck up like teeth into the former doorway, across the second longhouse and onto terra roughly firma. Gavin came up and put his arm round her waist, so that we were walking her between us. She moved like an automaton now, silent, giving the occasional sob, as we manoeuvred her through the gate and on the path down the hill. Gavin must have worked out a dry path, for he steered us to the left, away from the swamp we’d come across, down across heather. As we were coming down, I saw the beach search party look up, spot us, turn, and start walking towards the house, dark dots against the green grass. The pier party was probably back by now. We came over a drier spit of rough grass, and back onto the road at last. Once we were on the flat ground, we linked our arms in hers and fairly marched her up the road. She was beginning to shudder now, as well she might, dressed in her cloth jacket and office pumps, hatless, scarfless, gloveless, in the cold of a March gale. ‘Straight to bed with you,’ I said cheerfully, ‘with a hot water bottle at your feet, and a cup of tea with brandy in it, and nobody bothering you till you feel up to seeing them.’
She gave the ghost of a nod at that. Her feet quickened as we came around the bend in the drive. Gavin went in ahead, and so we found the kitchen door closed on the chinking of mugs, and the hall cleared for us. I took her up to the room she’d shared with Kamilla, and busied myself getting her bed ready, with the covers turned invitingly back, while she took her clothes off and got back into her onesie.
‘There,’ I said, drawing the covers up over her. ‘I’ll just go and get the bottle and tea.’
She nodded.
‘And don’t worry about anything.’ I wasn’t sure what I should say. Ka
milla’s things had gone, but the gaps they left shouted her absence. ‘They’ll understand.’
The kitchen seemed full of people.‘How is she?’ Per demanded.
‘Cold.’ I filled the kettle, and dug my hot water bottle out from my backpack. ‘Not hypothermia cold, I’m pretty sure. She just needs rest and peace until she’s calmed down.’
‘But what in heaven possessed the girl to go charging up the hill like that, without a word to anyone?’ Dad asked.
I spread my hands vaguely. ‘The shock of Kamilla’s death, I think.’
‘I will go up and speak to her,’ Maman said.
Maman would be better than me at the touchy-feely stuff. I made the bottle and tea, and handed her the mug. ‘Bring this.’
We headed upstairs and back into the room. When Maman sat on the chair by the bed, Bryony gave a wail and clung to her. She began crying again, and speaking through the sobs, but the only words I could make out were ‘so sorry ...’. I put the hot water bottle at her feet, and sat down on Kamilla’s bed.
‘I didn’t mean to,’ Bryony said, surfacing at last from Maman’s shoulder. ‘I feel so dreadful about it. I just thought ... it wasn’t a joke exactly, but I was envious.’ Her voice was steady now, her eyes intent, as if she was picking her way through a score that she’d only half-learnt. ‘We’d started out together, I’d been singing longer than her, and she’d got everything, just through luck, being blonde and pretty. It wasn’t fair ...’ She sniffled for a bit, then wiped her eyes again. ‘I know, it was horrid of me. I can’t believe I did it. I don’t know what came over me.’
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