‘They should be at school, too,’ said Amaryllis, and felt even more middle-aged and middle-class when Jock McLean, a retired head teacher, said, ‘Hmmph! They’ve already learned more in their lives than most people learn from school, even if they’re there every day all bright and shiny and waiting to learn – which I can tell you doesn’t apply to every teenage kid around here.’
‘But they might want to go to university,’ said Amaryllis. ‘Their mother’s a doctor.’
Jock agreed that in that case they might need some formal education to supplement what they had gleaned from the mountains of Tibet, the wheelie-bins of Pitkirtly and the transition from one to the other.
‘Anyway, that’s enough of that,’ said Amaryllis brightly. ‘Would you like Monopoly again? Or will we teach Jock to play Spy Chase?’
They nodded vigorously to the second of these options, perhaps thinking Jock would be a pushover. He rolled up his sleeves and set out to prove them wrong.
Soon after that, Christopher came back. He seemed preoccupied, and even a bit depressed.
‘I met Maisie Sue,’ he confessed when Amaryllis questioned him. She didn’t like to think of herself as a ruthless interrogator, but she worried that sometimes she did carry her professional skills over into her personal life. Perhaps that was why Christopher, although a good friend, didn’t seem to want to take their relationship any further. It would serve him right if she went off with someone else, although she was hard pressed to think of a candidate for her affections. She considered present company. Jock McLean? She almost laughed out loud. Big Dave? She’d have to fight Jemima for him, and it wouldn’t be pretty.
‘So how is she these days?’
‘About the same,’ he said gloomily. ‘Oh, that reminds me – she seemed to think somebody was looking for me, but I’m not sure if she’s got the right end of the stick. He was maybe just looking for somebody who knew the town... Anyway, if you see a man in brown with mud-coloured eyes tell him I was asking for him.’
‘Mud-coloured eyes?’ said Jemima, who had evidently been listening in on their conversation. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Just brown, I think,’ said Christopher. ‘She always thinks up names for colours – it comes from all her quilting I suppose. Jewel coloured this, seaweed coloured that. Mud-coloured eyes.’
Listening to all this nonsense, Amaryllis was suddenly overwhelmed with a kind of quiet joy, engendered by the normality of it all. Nobody was talking about terminating anybody, or worrying about what the Americans would do if the UK did that, or hacking into anybody’s computer to try and find the layers of meaning hidden within the innocuous façade of the operating system. It was all on the surface, and made sense as it was, without any decoding required.
‘I think he was really looking for Ms Farquharson,’ added Christopher. ‘The news is all round the town, by the way.’
‘Ms Farquharson? And the rest?’ said Amaryllis, slightly alarmed by the speed of the Pitkirtly grapevine.
‘Maisie Sue didn’t know about the latest one yet,’ said Christopher.
‘I don’t know anybody with mud-coloured eyes,’ said Jemima.
‘Neither do I,’ said Big Dave. ‘It’s all nonsense.’
‘Do you want to go over to my house now and leave your stuff?’ said Christopher to Jemima. Amaryllis wondered if he knew Jemima and Dave would drive her mad if he left them with her for too long. But he probably wasn’t thinking like that at all: men seldom did. He had a task to do, that of settling Jemima into his house, so he wanted to get on and do it. That was all. He wasn’t thinking of her at all.
There was raucous laughter from the other side of the room where Jock McLean and the teenagers were playing the game.
Jemima looked at them for a few moments with an expression that, Amaryllis thought, bordered on wistfulness, and then got to her feet.
‘We might as well go now,’ she said. ‘I’ve told the police I’ll be here, Amaryllis – could you send them on to Christopher’s if they turn up?’
She picked up her bag. There was a slight scuffle between Big Dave and Christopher for the right to carry it for her. Big Dave won, and the three of them left. Amaryllis opened her mouth as they went, to tell Christopher to come back later if he liked, then she closed it again. He knew where she was. There was no need to pester him about it: she knew he would make up his own mind one way or the other.
There was another outburst of laughter from Jock McLean and the Tibetans. She wondered what he had been saying to them.
‘Would you like some lunch now you’re here?’ she asked him. He got up gratefully from the floor when it was time to eat, bending his knees with difficulty and using a chair to hoist himself up. Jock McLean was quite a lean, fit man, but he was still an old one. She had never been able to guess how old, but definitely over retirement age and possibly over seventy.
‘Did you hear about Jemima’s body?’ she asked him while they were eating. He choked on his cheese roll.
‘No, I don’t mean it like that,’ she added hastily. ‘She opened her front door and a man’s body fell in and landed in her hallway.’
‘On that awful beige carpet?’ said Jock, recovering and carrying on with his roll.
‘Yes, probably, I don’t know... Anyway, it turned out to be a cousin she’d only just met the day before when her other cousin was murdered in the library.’
‘Accident prone family,’ said Jock casually.
‘This cousin was Jim Halloran from Australia, and the other one was Lorelei McAndrew from Texas.’
‘Different names,’ observed Jock.
‘They’ve all got different names. Their mothers were all girls...No, that doesn’t make sense. Their mothers were all sisters. There was only one boy in the family. Ten sisters and a brother.’
‘Ten girls? That's about nine too many,’ said Jock, taking a swig of espresso. She hoped he wouldn’t go hyper and start dancing around the living-room. He was quite active at the best of times.
Amaryllis sighed as she placed the dishes in the dishwasher. Domesticity was all very well, but she wasn’t really cut out for it. On the other hand, she didn’t feel she should wish for something more exciting to happen, under the circumstances. The good people of Pitkirtly were probably wondering when the excitement was going to stop.
She was putting Jemima's tea cup into the top rack when she suddenly remembered her promise to speak to Clarissa. She frowned. Was there any chance that the girl was down at the Cultural Centre putting away the things from the Homecoming Day? Andrew might even be there too, which would enable Amaryllis to carry out a fiendish plan that had popped into her head while she had been discussing the situation with Jemima.
It was worth a try.
'Won't be long!' she called to Jock. 'Don't do anything I wouldn't do.'
'And you!' he called back.
The main door of the Cultural Centre was closed, but Amaryllis pushed at it gently and it swung open. She slipped in, hardly disturbing the air as she moved.
Andrew looked up, startled, as she materialised beside him in the meeting room. In many ways his face was meant for startlement, just as she always felt Christopher's natural expression was one of amiable bewilderment.
'Hello,' he said.
'Amaryllis Peebles,' she said, guessing that he might not remember her.
'Yes, you're a friend of Jemima's, aren't you?'
He paused in his task of unpacking books from a box, as if waiting for her to explain herself.
'I just dropped in to see if you needed any help,' she lied. 'With tidying up and so on?'
She waved a hand at the boxes.
'Not really,' he said. 'It's a case of putting everything back in its place. You have to know where it goes... But thanks anyway.'
He paused again.
'That's all right, then,' she said, leaning in just a bit too close to him. He leaned back slightly.
'So the police have let you back in, then?' she added to
fill the gap. Surely Clarissa, whom she had spotted putting the kettle on in the staff-room, would burst in upon them any minute now - that was the idea, anyway.
'Yes. I think they've finished in here.'
'That was quick.'
Amaryllis leaned further towards him. Any more of this and she would topple over and land at his feet. It was harder work than she had expected.
'Yes,' said Andrew. He turned back to the boxes. Amaryllis put her hand on his arm to stop him.
At that moment Clarissa launched herself from the corridor outside towards Amaryllis, half-crying, half-shouting. 'Get your hands off him!'
Amaryllis caught her by the shoulders and held her. The girl was shaking with sobs. Her hands came up to attack Amaryllis then fell by her sides.
After a moment Andrew said, 'I'd better go, then.'
Yes, you just do that, thought Amaryllis. Avoid the problem and it's bound to go away. She kept hold of Clarissa, even when the girl started trying to wriggle free. Andrew's measured footsteps receded into the distance until the door clunked as he went through to the foyer.
'Let me go,' Clarissa whispered.
Amaryllis had never had a younger sister or a daughter. The closest she had come to being a confidante was one memorable night in Cape Town when a younger colleague seemed to be on the brink of a huge and career-threatening mistake of the romantic kind. Normally she would steer well clear of giving advice, but she had promised Jemima, and in any case Clarissa's erratic behaviour had caused her to be mixed up in rather an interesting murder investigation.
'Come and sit down,' she said, leading Clarissa to the group of hard chairs at the end of the table. When they were seated, she took Clarissa's hand firmly in hers. It might be that the girl was not in a rational enough frame of mind to see the sense in what Amaryllis had to say, but maybe the words would permeate her mind in due course and weaken this unhealthy fixation.
'Listen to me, Clarissa. This is going to have to stop. You can't keep on attacking anyone Andrew speaks to or looks at. It's making you seem - well, unstable. And dangerous.'
'Dangerous?' said Clarissa in a quavery voice. It was hard to imagine anyone less dangerous than she looked at the moment: reddened eyes, tearstained face, slender fragile fingers, the appearance of utter defeat.
'Yes, dangerous. You've put yourself in the frame for the murder at least of Lorelei McAndrew and maybe of Jim Halloran as well. And you had a connection to Gloria Farquharson. If I were on the police team I'd be looking very closely at you.'
'Jim who?'
'Halloran. The man you sent flying in the church hall yesterday.'
'Oh,' said Clarissa blankly.
'He was found dead first thing this morning.'
'But that's ridiculous,' said Clarissa.
Amaryllis waited.
'It's just - Andrew,' said Clarissa. 'I can't help it - something just comes over me. A wave of feelings. Like a sudden storm that's beyond anyone's control. A tornado. A tsunami. '
What is it with all the meteorological similes? thought Amaryllis, sorry she had said anything to trigger this lava flow of emotion.
'But it isn't anything to do with anybody else,' said Clarissa. 'I don't mean any harm.'
'Andrew's had plenty of time to take an interest in you,' said Amaryllis as gently as she could. 'I think you have to accept that he likes and respects you as a colleague but nothing more.'
Clarissa closed her eyes, took a few deep breaths and opened them again. She glared at Amaryllis. 'How do I know you don't just want him for yourself?'
'This may seem unbelievable to you,' said Amaryllis, still trying to be gentle. 'But no, I don't. As far as I'm concerned, Andrew's a nice boy. That's all. I have all the men I need in my life right now.'
Clarissa frowned, but not for very long. A tear squeezed itself out of one swollen eye. She sniffed. 'What am I going to do?'
'I expect you'll think of something,' said Amaryllis, standing up.
'No - wait - what if the police come for me?'
'You haven't done anything - you'll be fine.'
'Don't leave me in here on my own!'
Clarissa jumped to her feet. She insisted Amaryllis wait for her to collect her bag and coat from the staff-room. They left the building together, but in silence. Amaryllis guessed the girl was nervous about being in the Cultural Centre alone after recent events. It was reasonable enough.
Fortunately they parted at the bus stop in the High Street. Amaryllis had already had enough of being patient and gentle with someone she found extremely annoying. She now had the irresistible urge to behave really badly to make up for this interlude. It was rather disappointing not to find Christopher waiting on the doorstep when she got home. Somehow he never minded seeing her worst side.
Chapter 21
Fluffy in pink
As soon as they got inside Christopher’s house, Jemima demanded to be allowed to use his computer.
‘You do have broadband, don’t you?’ she asked anxiously.
Christopher assured her that he did. Jemima wouldn’t normally have been so rude as to make demands when she was only just in the door, but she reasoned that these weren’t normal times. Desperate times need desperate measures, or something, she told herself.
Christopher kept his computer in the kitchen, which Jemima found handy for being supplied with cups of tea made by David, stationed at the table quite near her. Christopher himself had gone upstairs with the vacuum cleaner, perhaps to get her room ready. Taking a deep breath to expel all irrelevancies from her mind, she set to work. She was on a mission. She was confident that David knew better than to interrupt her, except to announce the arrival of another cup of tea or maybe a custard cream biscuit at her elbow.
She started with the Scotland’s People website.
The main problem was keeping focussed on the job in hand. She soon realised that her normal methods, based on browsing and intuitive leaps, were no use, and to get to the bottom of this she would have to be more systematic. She opened her scrapbook at the family Bible page and looked at the list of names. Some family historians would have poured scorn on her for not having previously checked out all her grandmother’s children and traced them right down to the present day. But Jemima had always been wary of finding living relatives, not that the ones she had met so far had stayed alive for very long. She had concentrated up to now on tracing back as many of her lines as possible as far as she could go in the birth, death and marriage records. That had been a lot of work in itself.
Now she planned to try and find out what had happened to all her mother’s sisters – and the brother, of course. Had some of them died young after all? Her mother hadn’t mentioned that possibility, but she might just not have wanted to talk about it. The list of things her mother hadn’t wanted to talk about would, if written down, have stretched from here to the other side of the Forth. Had some of the sisters married in Scotland before emigrating to far-flung places? Or would she have to wrestle with some American or Australian genealogy sites to find the answers? The idea made Jemima shiver in anticipation. She was up for a challenge.
‘Are you feeling the cold, hen?’ said David affectionately.
‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘It was just – ‘
No, it was impossible to explain to him the thrill of the family history chase. He just wouldn’t understand. As far as he was concerned, all his ancestors had been coal miners right here in Pitkirtly since the dawn of time, or at least since the start of the coal industry, and there was nothing more to be said about it. Jemima sometimes wondered if the women of the town had had lives of their own too, dim unchronicled lives in the shadow of the winding gear, producing a baby a year, working their fingers to the bone and worrying all the time about pit accidents. Maybe some of them had worked as miners themselves, carrying huge loads on their backs, scraping a living from the earth in the only way they could think of.
‘I’m fine,’ she said again, and turned back to her search results.
Marriages in Scotland around the 1930s and 1940s. As she had feared, she only got results for four of the Murray siblings, leaving seven unaccounted for. Her own mother, Annie, had married in 1933 – and had been widowed ten years later when her husband, Jemima's father, was killed parachuting into occupied France on behalf of the Special Operations Executive. Jemima hadn’t thought of it before but this gave her a kind of link with Amaryllis.
Auntie Mima had married in the 1940s, but Jemima knew she hadn’t had any children. Jessie, the eldest of the sisters, had married someone called John Watson in 1924 in Dunfermline. Jemima vaguely remembered there had been a boy and a girl, but for some reason a falling-out had happened within the family. Her mother, Annie, didn’t speak to them and hadn’t said anything about them except to make an odd comment when Jessie’s death notice was in the paper. Something about the wrong side of the tracks.
The other sister whose marriage she found was Aggie, who had married in the early 1930s, but Jemima knew she had emigrated to South Africa because of the box of exotic fruit, a source of great excitement in the dark days after the War.
David put a tinned salmon sandwich at her elbow.
‘Do you not want a break now?’ he said gently. ‘You’ll give yourself eye-strain.’
Jemima looked up from the keyboard. Somehow time had passed and the day was drawing in. She glanced at Christopher’s kitchen clock. It was nearly three. Christopher was sitting at the kitchen table reading the paper.
‘I’m sorry, Christopher,’ she said to him. ‘I didn’t notice the time. I expect you’ll be wanting to use your computer.’
‘No, don’t worry about me,’ he said, turning a page of the paper. ‘I only use it for trivia anyway. Your research is far more important.’
‘I’m not getting on very fast,’ she said. ‘Proper researchers would do it much faster.’
2 Reunited in Death Page 13