‘But what exactly did you do?’ said Per, from behind me. He came around Kamilla’s bed to sit on Bryony’s bed, beside her. She drew away from Maman, and cuddled up to him instead, face flushing crimson.
‘I phoned the restaurant and asked for fish. I knew Kamilla couldn’t eat it. I was just being mean. I was fed up of her being so, so triumphant all over the place, as if she just had to ask and have.’
I remembered the way Kamilla had cleared her from her seat in the train, without even asking whether Bryony, too, would prefer a forward-facing seat.
‘I never expected her to die. I know it was horrid of me, but how could I have thought of that? I knew she wouldn’t eat it. I just wanted, just for once, for her not to get everything her own way.’
Per put his arm around her. ‘There, now, there. It was a stupid prank to play, but we understand that you did not mean it to have such consequences. You have told us now, you can think no more of it. See, I will stay with you for a bit, and you can drink your tea, and get warm, and rest.’
He nodded a dismissal at Maman, and she rose. I followed, then paused at the door, biting down my curiosity. Were Bryony and Per an item, then? There had been something she’d said earlier ... yes, Per phoned and told me, about Kamilla’s death. I’d noticed the satisfaction in her voice, as if she was getting special treatment.
It didn’t make sense to me. I remembered the aggrieved note in her voice as she’d said I didn’t know she had an allergy, as if Kamilla had somehow taken an unfair advantage. I was sure she’d been telling the truth then, so why should she lie about it now? Besides, there was everyone being ill; she hadn’t confessed to that.
Dad had left his laptop open on the table in the curved-window writing room. I nipped in there now and googled senna pods. Wiki only said it was used as a laxative, which I knew. I tried senna pods buy, and found Kamilla’s pill bottle. I looked at the reviews. Several people warned of stomach cramps on the first use. Maman had had stomach cramps, and Adrien too had mentioned them. Bryony had been sick, but that could have been distress at Kamilla’s death, if she’d really been the person who’d phoned, imitating Maman. I accepted that; she was the most likely person. But why should she have poisoned everyone, and when?
I scrolled up again, and looked for how long the pods took to work. Effects occur from 8-12 hours after administration, it said helpfully, and may last up to 24 hours. They’d started to be ill in the middle of the night, so the pods had been given sometime between midday and four o’clock. I remembered following Maman up the stairs to find everyone assembled in the drawing room, with Bryony behind the tea and coffee pots, dispensing. It would have been so easy for her to drop a capsule into each cup. Nobody was watching her; why should they? She knew who took what; she’d just pass them their cup, and they’d drink it.
She hadn’t poured my cup, though; I’d done that myself. And now I started thinking about it, Caleb had arrived after me, grimaced at the teapot and brought out his own bottle of Diet Coke. Caleb and I, the two who hadn’t been ill. I went off downstairs to find Gavin, in the kitchen with Adrien and Fournier. ‘Come and see where we’ll be sleeping.’
We crossed the grass and went into the pavilion. Gavin looked critically round. ‘Lovely in summer.’
‘Upstairs is nice too,’ I said encouragingly. We clomped up the wooden stairs. I indicated the floor. ‘A blow-up mattress, a couple of downies. We’ll be fine.’
‘Yes, we will,’ Gavin agreed. He leaned against the wall, russet head tilted quizzically at me. ‘What did you want to tell me?’
‘Bryony says she was the person who phoned to ask for seafood.’
‘As a trick against Kamilla?’
‘That’s what she says.’ I spread my hands. ‘I believe that she phoned. She was the natural person to imitate Maman. I just don’t see why. Like she said, Kamilla wouldn’t eat the seafood. At worst, she’d just not get a starter. And she didn’t mention the senna pods. So if she lied about it, it’s likely she used them.’ I explained my theory that they were in the afternoon tea. ‘Everyone that was there was ill, I think – well, Adrien and Maman were, and Fournier looked as if he’d been up half the night.’
‘That could have been digging treasure.’
‘True.’
‘If Kamilla was ill, could Bryony step into her role?’
I shook my head. ‘Wrong voice. She’s a soprano, and Kamilla was a mezzo.’
‘So she is.’Gavin mused for a moment. ‘I agree, it doesn’t hold together. On the face of it, the senna pods seem pointless, unless ... you don’t suppose they could be connected with your treasure-hunter?’ He considered that for a moment, then shook his head. ‘All they achieved was keeping everyone awake all night, and so more likely to notice him sneaking out to dig things up. No, it doesn’t make sense yet.’ He eased himself off the wall. ‘But it will. Let’s try another tack. Bryony, the perp, goes for the classic Agatha Christie method: poison everyone slightly, and give an extra dose of something lethal to the victim.’
I shook my head. ‘Then why go crazy with remorse now? Or rather, if she’s crazy with remorse, why not admit to deliberately killing her?’
‘Because she’s hoping to pass it off as an accident. ‘I didn’t mean to do it.’ A practical joke gone wrong. If all she admits to is phoning the restaurant, that’s plausible.’
I made a face. ‘I’m certain that she didn’t know about the allergy, whatever she says now, and if she didn’t know about it, then why phone and ask for seafood?’
‘Here’s an idea,’ Gavin said. ‘I’ll go with your feeling she didn’t know about the allergy. In which case, seafood’s ideal for making someone ill. She was all set to make Kamilla ill –’ He stopped, shaking his head. ‘So she just made everyone ill. No, that doesn’t work. It only works if she actually planned to kill Kamilla – in which case, you’re right, the remorse doesn’t fit, although of course you can never tell. She might not have been prepared for the difference between plotting to kill her and her actually being dead.’
‘Suppose someone else overheard her phoning, and decided it was the ideal set-up for murder. In that case, we’re assuming Bryony’s telling the truth: she knew about the allergy, and decided to play a nasty trick, but she didn’t do the senna pods, which were Kamilla’s after all.’
‘Are you certain nobody else could have doctored the afternoon tea?’
‘I wasn’t there when it was dished out. She was sitting at the tea tray, but it would have been equally easy for somebody else to pass the cups across. She would know, if somebody did that.’ I visualised that. ‘It would have been harder for that person to drop a capsule in without either Bryony or the person he was taking it to seeing. People wouldn’t look at Bryony making their tea, but they would look at someone passing it to them.’
‘No amateur conjurers among the cast?’
‘Goodness!’ I tried to imagine Adrien, or Caleb, or dignified Per, in tails and a top hat, with yards of knotted handkerchiefs. Suddenly it rang a bell. ‘Good grief, yes. Vincent Fournier used to do tricks. I’d forgotten that. He made coins disappear, then found them somewhere else. Maybe that’s why I have this vague feeling that he’s untrustworthy. I didn’t like people who broke the rules of nature, even then.’
‘I wish I had the authority to question Bryony,’ Gavin said. ‘I can’t. I’m not officially on the case, I just have a watching brief until we get the cause of Kamilla’s death, and that won’t be until Monday.’ He put an arm around me. ‘Come on, let’s go and look at this treasure site of yours.’
Chapter Sixteen
Dad was fine about us taking the car. ‘Don’t go going to Yell, now. You’ll maybe get there, but not back again. I had a quick drive to the marina after my meeting, and your boat was fine.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. I hoped it was true. If I climbed the hill to the west of the house, I might even be able to see her, with the aid of spyglasses. There was bound to be a pair somewhere in the house. We left Cat rattling his ma
rble round the drawing room skirting board, and drove – or rather, Gavin drove, for I’d still not got round to passing my test –around the house, past Peter’s yellow house and the two modern ones, then along past the Loch of Snarravoe. Dad’s car was too heavy to jump sideways as a gust hit it, but I felt it rock as the wind came at us between the hills.
‘You had the clearances here too,’ Gavin said, looking up at the long-ruined crofthouses.
‘Laird clearances for sheep in the mid-Victorian era,’ I said, remembering having read John Graham’s Shadowed Valley in school, ‘and then still more folk emigrated in the days of the herring boom. The merchants in Lerwick made a killing, but the ordinary folk with their sixareens couldn’t compete with the Scottish herring drifters.’
‘Don’t let me miss the turn-off to your bay.’
‘A couple of miles yet. Bordastubble, Lund, and it’s likely got a ‘Viking Trail’ sign too.’
‘Are you patrolling tonight?’
‘Oh ...’ I suddenly realised that striding around boggy hills in the freezing dark clashed with being more romantic. ‘I did say I would, originally, and then I was supposed to be going to Lerwick for tonight, but I haven’t yet told Peter I’m not going ...’
‘That sounds like a yes. We’d better walk the land beforehand. I know you know it now, but I’d like to see where I’ll be charging around in the dark.’
‘You don’t need to. I mean, shouldn’t you be staying with the suspects?’
‘There’s no proof they are suspects yet,’ he reminded me. ‘Here’s the turn-off. Lund.’
We came around the corner, and past the Bordastubble Stone, crouched against the bleached heather, with the first green of new grass showing through the brittle stems. Below us, my peaceful, sundrenched bay was slashed with waves, rolling on to the beach in a jigsaw mass of foam, and hurling themselves into the air at the base of Vinstrick Ness. Beyond, Bluemull Sound was purple-grey, hazed over with spindrift, the notched waves rolling down it at a frightening speed. I was glad I wasn’t out in it.
We drove past the House of Lund, past the still-buried Viking longhouses and down to the car park in front of the graveyard. Shetland-trained, I let Gavin close the door on his side before I opened my own. Even so, the wind caught it with a force I hadn’t expected, and nearly tore it from my hand. I managed to hold it, but I had to lean on it to get it shut again.
It was noisy here: the wind ran steel fingers along the telegraph wires, rattled the twigs of the rugosa bushes, moaned across the empty reaches of the sky. On the beach, the waves pounded and sucked back, knocking pebbles down with them, then crashed on the beach once more. The wind whirled the sand into the air, so that the beach seemed to hover above itself.
Gavin offered me his crooked arm. ‘Ready?’
‘Ready.’
Our first steps were like walking against a giant hand, heads down, jackets flattened against our chests, each step pushing forwards. Then, as we went along the beach, the wind came sideways on to us, salt-sharp, trying to push us up the beach into the dunes. The waves roared at our ears, the flying sand stung our cheeks. We gained the shadow of Vinstrick Ness at last, and paused for a breather before climbing up the hill.
‘Wild,’ Gavin said, looking out at the pounding breakers.
‘Perfect windsurfing weather.’ I’d seen the clear sails whizzing across Tresta or Busta voe in the wildest of winds, with each black-clad figure clinging on below.
Gavin tilted his head back and took a long breath of salt air, then turned his head to smile at me. ‘Upwards?’
‘Upwards,’ I agreed. The wind snatched at us as we came out of the shelter and began scrambling up the side of the headland, hands clutching the tussocks of grass in the steeper places, shoes searching for a foothold on the uneven ground. I pulled my hood up and fastened it with with Velcro, but then had to undo it again to see where I was going. The wind buffeted my windward ear until it hurt, and I tugged my hood back up. We were almost at the top now; a last scramble, and we stood braced against the whirling air.
The view was spectacular: the dark sea whitened with great brush-strokes of foam, which turned close-up into great breakers that smashed on the beaches, or flung themselves halfway up the cliffs. The white streaks of bubbled water streamed away from each headland as if the island itself was moving. Above us, the grey cumulus scurried by, breaking and re-forming against the lighter cloud behind; at our feet, each longer grass stem moved with the ripples of the wind, flattening to show its silver back. You could see the gusts moving across the land as easily as if it was cat’s-paws on the water.
It took me a moment to orientate myself among the knobbles of rock on the Ness, but once I found the right place the disturbance was easy to spot. I definitely hadn’t been dreaming. Last night’s workers had taken a square plug of turf out of the hill, set it to one side – there were crumbs of earth tangled in the heather – and dug beneath. The grass was squashed down where something heavy had rested: a black bag covered with the dug-out earth would be my guess. More earth had been put in, to make up for what was missing, and the turf plug replaced exactly level with the surrounding grass.
‘A neat job,’ Gavin commented. ‘Professional.’
‘A couple of days, and there would be no sign that anything had happened,’ I agreed.
We were bent over, looking at it, when a shadow loomed over us. For a moment I thought I was seeing my Viking again, the pointed helmet dark against the sky, one arm raised, then I clocked the peak-hooded oilskin jacket, and recognised Keith Sandison.
‘I saw the pair of you up here,’ he said, ‘and thought I’d come and see what you’d found.’
Gavin stood back, gesturing to the just-visible black line. ‘Someone’s been digging here.’
‘They have that,’ Keith said. He shot me a sideways look, suddenly mistrustful. ‘I thought you were on watch here last night, lass.’
‘I was. Someone drugged me, after dinner.’
I got a sceptical look from under the bushy eyebrows. ‘Wi’ a sleeping pill, something like that?’
‘That’s what I think it was.’ I explained what had happened. ‘I’d have thought myself that I’d have dreamt it, if it hadn’t been for the sand in my hair – and this.’ I nodded at our feet. ‘Nobody’d been digging here yesterday, at least, not before four o’clock.’
‘Not after, either.’ Keith scratched his chin. ‘I kept an eye on the place mesel, after you went off to your mam’s concert. There was naebody here before seven, I can swear to that.’ He seemed to change his mind suddenly. ‘It’s bitter up here. Come up to the house, and have a cup o’ tay, and we’ll put our heads together.’
He led us up to the crofthouse above Upper Underhoull, and the field where the pig-snouted aliens had searched. ‘Will you tak’ tay or coffee?’
‘Coffee,’ I said. My eyelids were beginning to droop. Gavin nodded in agreement. Keith stomped his rubber boots on the porch floor and gave a shout inside. ‘Maggie! Two visitors here.’
Maggie was a little, plump lady with an old-fashioned pinnie in a pink and white print, and a distrustful look to her mouth. I couldn’t quite imagine her wearing a Viking brooch. We followed Keith in taking our shoes off, and I was glad we had, for the lino flooring of the hall and kitchen was brand new, and so immaculate you could have eaten your tea off it without risking the smallest germ. Keith waved us into a traditional kitchen, with a couch by the Rayburn, a sheepdog dozing on the rug beside it, a drop-leaf table under the window, and a pair of binoculars on the sill. There was a warm smell of peat smoke. I undid the Velcro under my chin and took my gloves off. Maggie waved us towards the couch. ‘Dip dee doon.’
‘Coffee, baith,’ Keith said, and she nodded, shifted the kettle onto the Rayburn hotplate, and began taking mugs down from the tree on the dresser. ‘Milk? Sugar?’
I shook my head. ‘Yes, please,’ Gavin said. ‘Milk.’
Keith sat down on an upright chair by the table, and scrat
ched his chin again. ‘I doubt you’re right enough. This man you saw, that seemed to find something here in the morning, he’s marked it on the metal detector’s GPS, and come back when it was quiet.’
‘It could have been him who drugged me. He passed me the cup.’
‘But in that case,’ Gavin said, ‘who was the other one? It would have taken two to manhandle you into the cabin.’
I hadn’t thought of that. ‘Good point.’
‘Might it be one of the other singers?’ Keith suggested.
I spread my hands. ‘Not Per, he went on the helicopter. Bryony wasn’t in a fit state this morning.’
‘That could be good cover for having been up half the night.’
I shook my head. ‘Those nails never saw a spade in their lives. Not Maman, of course. Charles?’ I considered Maman’s downtrodden accompanist. ‘I don’t see Charles doing anything so wildly romantic as searching for hidden treasure.’
‘Caleb,’ Gavin said.
I tried to conjure up his face. ‘Maybe ... he has Shetland links, if that’s relevant, but to Inga and Charlie, and I’d swear they’re not involved in any antique jewellery theft. Besides, he doesn’t seem to know them. It’s three generations back.’
‘Who have we missed?’ Gavin totted them up on his fingers. ‘Fournier. The businessman who organised the tour.’
I brightened at that idea. ‘There’s a family link between Adrien and Fournier. He spoke about it this morning. Adrien’s father has an antiques shop next door to Fournier’s Paris office, and when the role of Hippolytus came up, it was Fournier that Adrien phoned to worm himself into the company.’
Keith Sandison cut into my musings. ‘When was that?’
I tried to remember. ‘I think it was only a fortnight ago. The other singer broke his ankle – no, his hamstring.’
‘My find was a fortnight ago,’ Keith said. ‘A fortnight and odd days. It only hit the headlines when those young boys found another cache.’
‘Was it reported at all?’ Gavin asked.
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