Ghosts of the Vikings

by Marsali Taylor

  I remembered the shadow I’d seen on the stairs at half past two. Going up, going down? I couldn’t be sure.

  ‘Cause: one of the cyanides, in his water bottle.’

  ‘So he did have more poison on him,’ I said.

  Sergeant Peterson gave me a look that reminded me I shouldn’t be there. ‘Or someone else had already switched the poison he had for something harmless, and kept what they’d stolen. The lab report will tell us.’ She repeated my arguments, ‘He didn’t see us arrive, and it’s not likely he’d have carried more poison when he had the ring.’

  ‘So we’re thinking, Freya,’ Gavin interposed, ‘that someone else doctored his water bottle, then came in and typed the note?’

  She nodded. ‘SOCO will tell us what prints there are on the laptop.’ She glared out at the sea. ‘When they get here. The ferrymen say the 10.45 should run.’ She flicked through her notes. ‘Alibis: well, anyone could have got up in the night. Mr and Mrs Lynch did, but they each said that was earlier, around one o’clock, so unless they’re working together, they’re out of it. They also both said they went downstairs, so as not to wake anyone else. After that, they say, they heard nothing until Ms Blake started screaming.’

  ‘A husband and wife working together’s not impossible,’ Gavin said, his voice carefully neutral, ‘but I’d need to see a very strong motive.’

  I kept quiet.

  ‘Mr Rolvsson, the director, and Ms Blake were together all night. They both said that neither of them got up – but given that the room has twin beds, unless they shared one, it would be possible for one of them to get up without waking the other one. I’ll need to ask about exact sleeping arrangements. Mr Fournier, downstairs, said he did get up, around four, he thought, but he stayed downstairs, as would be natural, and Mr Michel, the accompanist, says he didn’t get up. No corroboration of the last two. The last one, Mr Portland, well, he checked into the Lerwick hotel all right, just after lunchtime yesterday, but of course there’s no proof that he stayed there.’

  ‘Did he have breakfast?’

  Sergeant Peterson shook her head. ‘But there’s coffee in the rooms, so if he’s a one-black-coffee-for-breakfast man then he could have taken that and gone. The bed had been lain in, and a mug used.’

  ‘If he went all the way to Lerwick, he’d have had to move fast to get back on Unst before the ferries stopped running. For the moment, I think he’s out of it for this one. Let’s focus on the others.’ Gavin paused for a moment, thinking. ‘So, going right back to the first afternoon in Unst. No, earlier, to the phone call to the caterers.’ He looked at me. ‘Bryony admitted she made it, but her reason didn’t make sense. However ...’ He explained my putting-Maman-out-of-action theory, and Sergeant Peterson nodded.

  ‘Would she really be naive enough to think it would work?’

  ‘If she thought she’d got the musical director in her pocket. So, the phone call: she couldn’t swear nobody overheard her, but she was certain she’d done her best to make sure they wouldn’t. That gives us two possibilities. Firstly, that someone did overhear, and used the scheme to poison Kamilla ...’ He paused and looked round. ‘I’m assuming here that her death was indeed murder, which is still far from being proved. Or, two, that there was someone who knew of the allergy, saw the seafood and took the chance to poison her. I don’t think it likely that the allergy was just coincidence. It was too public a way of poisoning her, yet not public enough. By that I mean that there were a number of people around, but too small a number. If you wanted to murder her openly, it would be much easier to get her a glass of poison in a big reception, like the opening night in France.’

  ‘Unless,’ I said, ‘the murderer had a new and pressing reason to get rid of her, and just hoped we’d put it down to allergy. That fits with using Adrien’s poison.’ I turned to Sergeant Peterson. ‘Did he admit to the “mad” conversation?’

  ‘He denied it most vehemently,’ she said. ‘I didn’t believe him.’

  ‘Maybe he couldn’t take her final rejection. If he couldn’t have her, nobody would. Operatic. Maybe the poison maybe being soda bicarb was to throw you off the scent, make it possible for somebody else to have killed her. Then he couldn’t take it and killed himself. Then there was the letter you didn’t find, the one from France.’ I frowned. ‘I thought that was odd.’

  ‘Why?’ Gavin asked.

  I’d been mulling it over while I’d sat in the drawing room, bag at my feet, Cat in my lap. ‘Because her French wasn’t very good. Kamilla worked in England, then the States, and in that interview she gave in the station she didn’t sound very fluent. She’d learned it in school, I’d say, and this was the first time she’d used it since, in the week’s rehearsing for the big opening in the château.’

  ‘But she was singing in French,’ Gavin said. ‘Surely she’d speak it?’

  I shook my head, and quoted Caleb at them. ‘They get taught how to pronounce the languages they sing in, at music college, emphasising the vowel sounds, but they don’t necessarily speak it.’

  ‘Was the handwriting French?’ Sergeant Peterson asked.

  I shook my head. ‘I really didn’t look.’

  ‘What became of the letter?’ Gavin said. We all looked at him. ‘Let’s focus on that. It wasn’t in her handbag or case, nor in anyone else’s that we searched, and I agree with Cass that it’s unlikely anyone could have got it before her death. So, unless Fournier, Portland or Rolvsson took it with him, it’s been disposed of here. There were no fires to burn it in. So how would you get rid of it?’

  ‘Use a lighter, or a match, in a sheltered corner outside, and stamp the ashes,’ Sergeant Peterson said.

  ‘Tear it into tiny pieces and throw them into the sea,’ I suggested.

  Gavin looked across at Constable Buchanan. ‘I’ll put you on to investigating that. Think about what you’d do, here, to get rid of an incriminating document.’ He made a sympathetic grimace. ‘The bin first. You don’t know, Cass, if the catering firm took their waste away with them?’

  ‘She took the black bag out, but surely she’d just have taken it to the bin store.’

  ‘When was it stolen?’ He considered. ‘Kamilla took it away before the performance. There was the rehearsal.’ He turned back to me. ‘Did Fournier watch that?’

  I shook my head. ‘But they went back to their rooms afterwards.’

  ‘So it would have been a risk that she’d have seen it was gone, and made a fuss.’

  ‘During the concert,’ Sergeant Peterson said.

  ‘They were all at that. Then back to their rooms to get out of costume, and down to dinner.’

  ‘Do you have any idea what order they came down in?’

  I shut my eyes and tried to visualise them, but had to shake my head. ‘They came in more or less in a bunch. Then, after Kamilla collapsed, they went out in a bunch too. Maman took Bryony straight to her room, so nobody would get a chance to search it after that.’

  ‘Unless she left it,’ Sergeant Peterson pointed out. ‘Our lives would be so much easier if all these bedrooms were en suite. She was being sick, and if she hadn’t been, she’d still have needed to clean her teeth, take her make-up off, all that. Someone just needed to wait in the drawing room for her door to open, nip in, get the letter and exit. Plenty of time, when she’s going upstairs, and even more if she went downstairs. Furthermore, with these heavy doors, and the handy wedges, she wouldn’t have heard the perp, and he would have heard her.’

  Gavin nodded. ‘Another question. How did the perp know Kamilla had the letter?’

  ‘Maybe she told him,’ Constable Buchanan said. ‘Just before or just after the rehearsal. It had to be. There was no other time.’

  ‘But they were all dressing,’ I protested. ‘Two in each room, except for Fournier. She couldn’t just march in on them and say, “I’ve got a letter which ...”.And what could it have said, to be a motive for murder? Why would it have been sent to her?’

  ‘I tend to agre
e with that,’ Sergeant Peterson said. ‘She couldn’t have barged in on any of the men then, except for Fournier. Or there was her own room-mate, Bryony.’

  Constable Buchanan scribbled frantically.

  ‘Good questions,’ Gavin said. ‘What could have been in the letter, and why should it have come from France?’

  ‘Something she’d been investigating while she was there. Something she’d noticed and asked about.’

  ‘They all live there,’ I said. ‘Maybe it was from someone who thought she was falling for one of the others, and wanted to warn her off him because ...’ My imagination ran out there. ‘Because he’d got a wife already, that he’d driven into a psychiatric hospital, or kept shut up in the west wing, like Jane Eyre.’

  Sergeant Peterson gave me a scornful look. ‘You’re sure it was from France?’

  I shook my head. ‘It was certainly a letter, and handwritten. I think it had a foreign stamp, but I never looked any closer.’ Aboard a ship, privacy was a matter of delicately balanced etiquette, which included handing over letters without any kind of inspection or comment. ‘I assume it was hers, because she took it. It was Per who said it had a French stamp.’

  ‘Can you go back to the way she looked when she saw it? Take us through that again.’

  I did my best. ‘I was in the kitchen. The sun was coming in the window and hitting the door just at eye height, and as you came in, it dazzled you. She came in and stopped, and turned her head away from it, and that’s why her head was turned to the worktop where the letters were. She took a step backwards into the room, and stared. I wasn’t sure at first what she’d seen – whether it was the letters, or my sailing jacket across the chair. Whatever it was, it was a shock. Recognition, that’s the best I can do. Something she wasn’t expecting to see. She grabbed the letter, almost mechanically, as if she didn’t really see it, shoved past Per and ran out of the room. Then, half an hour later, at the rehearsal, she was still strange, as if she wasn’t quite there.’

  ‘Unexpected recognition,’ Gavin repeated. ‘She knew the writing, but didn’t expect to hear from that person, and hearing from them was a shock.’ He shook his head. ‘We can investigate the hotel where she stayed in France, and see if she had any visitors during that rehearsal week. Freya, you take that in hand. Get the address from Madame Lynch.’ He checked his watch, and stood up. ‘So we’re agreed – I stick with the company, with Lerwick back-up if need be, and you keep things going here.’

  ‘What about the missing treasure?’ I asked. ‘Could that have had anything to do with it? Adrien found it that afternoon, and there was the “mad” quarrel he denied.’ An idea was stirring deep down in my subconscious. Treasure. ‘Maybe the letter’s just a red herring.’ Something was connecting itself together, and it was just out of sight in my brain. I frowned and repeated ‘treasure’ to myself. He’d found the treasure that afternoon, before the quarrel.

  ‘She refused to go along with his stealing it, so he killed her?’ Gavin said.

  ‘What missing treasure?’ Sergeant Peterson asked.

  I stared at her. ‘But wasn’t that what you were looking for? When you were searching?’

  She gave me a loftily superior look, the mermaid making allowances for human stupidity. ‘That was our excuse. What we were actually looking for, of course, was poisons, something that might have caused Lange’s death.’

  ‘But Peter phoned you! After I’d been drugged.’

  ‘Hang on, Cass,’ Gavin said. ‘Take us through this, slowly.’

  I left my train of thought to sort itself out. ‘On Friday afternoon, Adrien found something on Vinstrick Ness, the headland where the Viking graves are. I scared him off, but someone drugged me that night, and dug up ... whatever. I told Peter ...’ His surname momentarily escaped me; I gestured. ‘He lives in the yellow house here, and he said he’d call you. So when you turned up to search, I assumed it was in response to that.’

  Sergeant Peterson shook her head. ‘I never got that message. We came because Gavin phoned about the suspicions over Kamilla’s death.’

  ‘Follow that up, Freya,’ Gavin said, ‘and let me know as soon as possible.’ He glanced up at the shut door between us and Vincent Fournier’s sitting room, and lowered his voice. ‘Keith Sandison was telling me that he was suspicious that there was someone local selling items on through someone south.’ He looked over at me. ‘He thought you might be mixed up in that, Cass, until he realised who you were.’

  ‘Fournier wasn’t here.’ He’d been fetching Per back from Lerwick, I remembered. ‘We didn’t search his bags.’

  ‘His Paris office is next door to the man who made Maman’s jewellery. Adrien’s father. Antiquaire.’

  ‘Interesting connection. I know he used to live here. Does he visit Shetland often now?’

  I shrugged. ‘Dad would know.’

  Gavin checked his watch again. ‘But we wondered why he’d come to join the tour here. Freya, we’ll do his bags now. There’s just time before the ferry.’

  He rapped on the door, and he and Sergeant Peterson went in. The door swung shut behind them. Constable Buchanan went off to search for the missing letter – I presumed – and I was left listening to the swelling noise of voices from the other side of the door. Fournier was at first courteous, but irritated. The irritation grew to annoyance, as they strewed his newly packed belongings over the floor, then a note of real anger came in. I wished I could see what was happening. Gavin’s tone, answering him, was even and reasonable, but with an authoritative edge to it. Fournier’s anger turned to bluster, then silence. Gavin came out of the room at last with both hands full of a package of bubble wrap. ‘There was a false bottom to his case,’ he said.

  He laid the bubble wrap on the table, and unrolled it. Inside were a dozen plastic bags, each containing objects encrusted in earth. I could make out the shapes of a bead necklace, several of the tortoise brooches, a comb. ‘It was a woman’s grave,’ Gavin said. ‘We can take these to the museum, though I’d rather put them back with their owner.’

  Suddenly the bead necklace, the words, clicked together in my head. I knew why Kamilla had called Adrien mad. I left the thought safely recovered, and concentrated on the matter in hand. ‘So it was Fournier who dug them up?’ I shook my head. ‘But he didn’t get the chance to drug me. He was nowhere near me. It was Adrien who ...’ Then I got it. Gavin gave me a questioning look.

  ‘Peter handed my cup to Adrien,’ I said slowly. ‘It was Peter who poured my tea. He drugged me. I told him about Adrien having found something, and where, and he went straight to Fournier. They knew I’d be on watch, so I had to be put out of action. He said to me that he’d tell the police, and when Sergeant Peterson turned up, I never doubted that was why she’d come. But if Peter didn’t phone her after all ...’

  ‘It’s a civil offence, not a police one,’ Gavin said. ‘Sergeant Peterson’ll talk to the landlord, and he and Historic Scotland can press charges.’

  Sergeant Peterson nodded, and began making notes in her book. Gavin glanced out of the window, then at his watch. Over at Gutcher, the ferry was backing out of its berth.

  ‘I suddenly had an idea.’ I leaned forward. ‘I know why Kamilla called Adrien mad. See, Adrien apparently had this thing about Schliemann. You know, he dug for Troy and found – or faked – something he said was Helen’s jewels. The replicas Maman was wearing.’ I remembered them dangling like sunken gold in Sergeant Peterson’s hands. ‘Adrien’s grandfather, or great-grandfather, had seen Schliemann’s wife wearing them. I know it was him on the headland.’ I spread my hands over the bags. ‘Suppose he’d gone to Kamilla and said, “I’ve found Viking jewellery and I’m going to dress you in it, the way Schliemann dressed Sophia.” Not contact with her brother, but his real trump card, his ambition. The reason he brought his metal detector. Wouldn’t that sound mad?’

  ‘And she turned his offer down,’ Sergeant Peterson said. ‘Murder and suicide after all? He knew about the allergy, reme
mber.’

  ‘Let’s see what forensics comes up with,’ Gavin said. He lifted the brooch in its bag, turning it over in his hand, then laid it down. ‘We’ve got this pair, anyway.’ He lifted his rucksack. ‘Time for us to go.’

  We were just walking towards the metal ramp with our bags and Cat’s basket when a grey Berlingo came racing down the road, swirled round the car park and skidded to a halt. Keith Sandison waved at us from the window. ‘Magnie phoned me,’ he said. ‘The police are talking to Peter o’ Belmont.’ He scowled. ‘And Vincent, that used to work at Sullom Voe. Is it true you found grave goods on him?’

  Gavin nodded. ‘A woman’s grave.’

  ‘Well,’ Keith said. He nodded to himself several times, then fished in his pocket, and brought out a piece of wood attached to a string. He held it out to me. ‘Might be handy, lass, next time you’re chasing villains. Just whirl it abune your head.’

  I looked at it, puzzled. It was just a piece of wood with a couple of holes drilled through it. I unwound the string and looked at it, then realisation dawned. I caught his sideways grin at me.

  ‘Don’t try it out here, lass.’ He jerked his chin at the others, waiting in the cars to be allowed on the ferry. ‘Wait for you’re on your own.’ He glanced down at Cat’s basket. ‘Really on your own. You’ll gluff your cat something terrible.’

  He turned to go back into his car.

  ‘Hey,’ I said, ‘that first night. When you scared the three strangers. Where did you disappear to?’ Then I remembered Inga and me playing at Jarlshof, and the moon dipping behind the clouds. ‘The souterrain.’

  He nodded. ‘I stood beside the opening and just waited for the moon to go behind the clouds, then ducked into it.’

  ‘I should have thought of that,’ I said.