But it was more than that, she admitted to herself as she finished her half pint of cider and walked back out to the car park. It wasn’t her lack of authority in the investigation that had her stumbling round so ineffectu-ally, nor was it the absence of her usual intellectual give-and-take with Duncan. It was her doubts about
Hazel that were keeping her from approaching the case in a logical way.
She thought of all the times Hazel had been there for her, a calm center when she’d struggled with crises at work and at home, an unwavering support through the loss of her baby. Hazel might be more complex, and less perfect, than Gemma had realized, but she was still her friend, and Gemma owed her the same support. She would put away her doubts, and start from there.
Looking up, she saw that the long dusk was fading into night, and the last remnants of clouds had been swept away by the wind. Lights had begun to wink on in the comfortable houses lining the village street. Below the hotel, the locomotive belonging to the steam railway that went from Aviemore to Boat of Garten sat on the track like a great black slumbering beast, and beyond the little railway station, the ever-present River Spey flowed silently, cold and deep.
Chiding herself for her fancies, Gemma was nonethe-less glad to shut herself in the close warmth of the car.
When her mobile phone rang, she jumped as if she’d been bitten, and her heart gave an irrational flutter of fear.
But it was Kincaid’s voice she heard when she answered, and a smile of pleasure lit her face.
“Any news, love?” he asked.
Sobering quickly, she said, “No. Hazel’s still at Aviemore Police Station. But I can’t believe they’ll keep her much longer, unless Ross actually means to charge her.”
“What about getting a solicitor?”
She told him about her conversation with Heather Urquhart. “Heather said she’d tell Mr. Glover as soon as he rings in the morning.”
“Can you trust her to do it?”
“Yes,” answered Gemma, rather to her surprise. “I think so.”
“Good. I’ll be getting the seven o’clock train. Can you pick me up at Aviemore at half-past two tomorrow afternoon?”
“What about Tim? Did you see him? Is he coming with you? Holly could stay—”
“Gemma, I did see him,” Kincaid said flatly. “But he’s not coming.”
“Not coming? But—”
“He knows about Hazel and Donald. I didn’t ask him how he found out. He says he won’t help her. He doesn’t want to see her at all.”
There was silence on the line as Gemma tried to come to grips with this latest disaster.
“You’ll have to tell Hazel,” Kincaid said, breaking into her thoughts. “And, Gemma, I’m not at all sure Tim’s telling the truth about where he was over the weekend.”
Her stomach knotted as the implication sunk in. “No. I can’t believe Tim had anything to do with this. Not Tim—”
“He’s got motive. He’s got no witnesses to his movements. He’s obviously distraught. And his car’s muddy. It didn’t rain in Hampshire.”
“It did here,” Gemma said slowly, unwillingly. “But even if Tim drove to Scotland—and that’s a long shot—
how could he have walked into the B&B in the middle of the night and taken John Innes’s gun?”
“They haven’t proven that Brodie was shot with that gun.”
“No,” mused Gemma. “But I can’t believe that John Innes’s small-bore shotgun would mysteriously disappear at the same time Donald was killed with a different gun.
That’s stretching coincidence a bit too far. And how would Tim have known who Donald was?”
“Tim left London on Friday. He could have been watching her the entire weekend.”
Gemma thought of the scene between Donald and Hazel she had witnessed by the river on Saturday morning, and of the nest she’d discovered in the woods. She felt cold.
“Gemma, you’ll have to tell your Scottish detective. It will be up to him to follow through.”
“But this is Tim! How can I give Hazel’s husband to the police as a suspect?” She was near shouting.
“How can you do otherwise, when Hazel herself is a suspect? Don’t kill the messenger, love,” he added, sounding as weary and discouraged as she felt. “I’m only telling you what you already know. And if you’re lucky, if your chief inspector is doing his job properly, he might beat you to it.” Kincaid paused a moment.
“Gemma, about Tim . . . Hazel may not thank me for interfering, but after I left the house tonight, I rang Tim’s parents and asked them to go back. Tim’s mother seems a sensible woman. She said they’d take Holly home with them.”
“You told Tim’s mother—”
“As little as I could. That it was a stressful situation, and I thought Holly might be better with her grandparents. Will you tell Hazel? And I’ll ring you from the train in the morning.”
“Wait.” The rush of her anger had drained away, leaving her feeling shaken and hollow. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you. It’s—it’s been a beastly day.”
“I know.” His voice was gentle. “Get some rest, love.”
“Tell the boys I miss them.”
There was the slightest pause before he answered.
“Right . . . They miss you, too.”
When he’d rung off, she sat for a moment, wondering
if she had imagined his hesitation. Another sliver of worry lodged itself in her heart. Was there something wrong at home that he had failed to tell her?
On reaching the B&B, Gemma drove past the front of the house and parked near the barn. She’d seen the pale blur of faces through the uncurtained sitting room window, but she was determined to freshen up a bit before she returned Pascal’s keys. And she wanted to check on her room, see what sort of mess the forensics team had made.
They had left the lights on, she thought with a flicker of irritation as she stepped inside. Turning, she gasped in surprise. Hazel stood by the bed, her suitcase open, a half-folded nightdress clasped against her chest.
“Hazel! You’re back. I’ve been so worried—”
“He had to let me go. Someone saw me in the railway station this morning, just at the time you reported hearing a gunshot.”
Relief flooded through Gemma. “Thank God.” Then she remembered what she had to tell Hazel, and her heart sank. “Hazel—”
“I’m going home. There’s a late train.” Hazel put the nightdress carefully into her case. “Chief Inspector Ross said I could.”
Gemma pulled out the dressing table chair and sat down. “Hazel, there’s something you have to know,” she said reluctantly, knowing there was no way to cushion the news. “Duncan went to see Tim this evening. Tim knows about you and Donald.”
“Oh, Christ.” Hazel sank down onto the bed as if her knees had given way. “But how—”
“He didn’t say. I’m sorry.”
Hazel gazed into space, her expression desolate. “I had
meant to tell him, but in my own way, and in my own time. But now . . . how am I going to face him?”
Gemma felt a moment’s qualm at the idea of Hazel going home to her angry and disillusioned husband. But surely she was safer there than here, where Donald had been murdered. “Don’t,” she told Hazel. “Go back to London, but don’t see Tim just yet. Pick Holly up from Tim’s parents and go to our house. Then, when Tim’s calmed down a bit, you can meet him on neutral ground.”
“That’s good advice.” Hazel’s smile held a bitter irony.
“I might have given it myself, once. What about you?”
Gemma hadn’t reconsidered her own plans. With Hazel cleared by the police and off to London, there was nothing stopping her from going as well. She could ring Duncan tonight and tell him not to come—she could, in fact, pack her things and get on the train with Hazel.
Except that she found she couldn’t. She had known Donald Brodie, and had liked him, and someone had murdered him, had shot him while she sl
ept a few hundred yards away. She could not—would not—leave it in other hands.
“I think I’ll stay,” she said slowly. “At least another day or two. If John and Louise can’t keep me here, I’ll find a room somewhere else. I want to see things . . . wrapped up.”
Standing, Hazel went to the bedside table and picked up a bottle of Scotch Gemma hadn’t noticed. It was, she saw, the last-issue Carnmore that Donald had given Hazel the previous night. Hazel cradled it, as if it were a living thing, stroking the label with a fingertip. “You intend to find Donald’s killer yourself,” she said quietly, not meeting Gemma’s gaze. “Do you think I would do less for him?”
“No, of course not, but—”
“As long as I know Holly’s all right, I’m staying, too.” She looked up, and Gemma saw an unexpected resolution in her eyes. “I’ll see Donald buried—I owe him that.”
Chapter Thirteen
The friends are all departed,
The hearthstone’s black and cold, And sturdy grows the nettle
On the place beloved of old.
—neil munro, “Nettles”
Grantown-on-Spey, May
Every year, since Livvy had left her father’s house to marry Charles Urquhart, she had come back to Grantown in May and September for an extended visit.
Usually, both Charles and Will had accompanied her, but as Will had grown older, he and his father had several times made their own expeditions.
These annual fortnights had been a necessary and much-anticipated element of Livvy’s life. There was shopping for staples and household goods not readily available in the Braes or Tomintoul, the refurbishing of their wardrobes, the time spent cloistered with her father in his study, the visits with her two aunts and her father’s neighbors, the catching up on the latest in fashion and gossip. Always Livvy had made the transition from coun-
try to town easily enough, but this time, on their arrival in Grantown in mid-May, she found herself restless and out of sorts, unable to settle to any of her ordinary pursuits.
First, there were the condolences to be got through, trial enough, so many months after Charles’s death, even if kindly meant. But as the days regained their ordinary pattern, she felt more alien, rather than less. She began to realize that although she and Charles had not spent much time together on these visits, she had been unconsciously aware of the solidity of his presence, and it was this that had kept the two parts of her life linked together.
Now she was adrift.
She had moved back into the room she’d occupied as a girl, hoping to find some connection with the person she had once been, sufficient unto herself, but that long-ago girl eluded her. The days were lengthening, and she found it difficult to sleep, as she always did at this time of year.
But now, she felt feverish as well, stretched, her senses raw with exhaustion.
Her father insisted that she and Will should accompany him to an upcoming dance at the Grant Arms Hotel, so she filled her time with sewing, making over a gown of her aunt’s. It was a dusky purple, a suitable color for a widow. Livvy reduced the puff of the sleeves and added a bit of lace to make it more stylish; this would, after all, be her first formal outing without Charles.
Her father took Will to the local tailor’s shop to be fitted for evening clothes, his first, and in the evenings Livvy helped him practice his dancing. Will was now, after all, the man of the house. If it was time for Livvy to face the world on her own, it was time for Will to give up boyish pursuits and take his place in Highland society.
None of these preparations, however, eased Livvy’s
discomfort as the night of the dance arrived. It had been seventeen years since she’d appeared in public without the armor of a husband at her side, and she felt as awkward as a girl. She stood just inside the door of the ball-room, watching the dancers glide by in a shifting blur of pattern and color. The air was filled with the scent of perfume, of warm bodies and hot candle wax, a tincture as dizzying as laudanum.
Will swung by her, looking quite the beau with old Mrs.
Cumming on his arm. When had he grown so tall? He had become a man in this last year, in more than looks, and Livvy felt a rush of pride. The girls would be noticing him soon, if they hadn’t already. In fact, Livvy saw one of the Macintosh daughters cast a simpering eye his way, but Will fortunately seemed oblivious. He caught her eye over Mrs. Cumming’s shoulder and smiled, his usually serious face alight with his pleasure.
Then Livvy felt ashamed of herself for indulging her own vanity. She was thirty-five years old, and widowed; she should be past worrying about such things. It was Will that mattered now, with his life spread before him.
But then Rab Brodie spun by her, with his angular sister, Helen, and her pulse quickened in spite of herself. When Rab returned after the next interval and offered her his arm, she hesitated only a moment. There was no impropriety, after all, in dancing, and if a little voice whispered in her ear that by such small steps the mighty are fallen, she pretended not to hear.
Gemma woke to the sound of whimpering. Her first thought was of the children, then, as consciousness came flooding back, she remembered where she was. She sat up, blinking.
It was past daybreak; a pale light filtered in through the
drawn curtains. In the next bed, Hazel tossed restlessly, moaning now. Then the moan rose to a scream, and Hazel sat bolt upright, panting, her eyes open but unfocused.
“Hazel!” Gemma leaped from the bed and crossed the gap between them, grasping Hazel’s shoulder.
“No. No!” Hazel cried out, flinching, and it was only when Gemma shook her firmly that she seemed to realize where she was. She looked up at Gemma, her face streaked with tears.
“It was just a dream,” soothed Gemma, patting Hazel as she would one of the boys. “Try not to think about Donald—”
“No, it wasn’t Donald,” Hazel said, shaking her head.
“Oh, Gemma, it was the strangest thing. I was in our old house, at Carnmore, except that it wasn’t exactly our house. Some things were the same, but others weren’t.”
She frowned. “The kitchen was red, I remember that, and there was a rocking chair by the stove.” Rubbing at her bare upper arms, she began to shiver. “I know that doesn’t sound frightening, but I was terrified. It was as if I was seeing things through someone else’s eyes, and I couldn’t get back to myself. And then—” She stopped, swallowing hard. “Then I was in the distillery, and there was a fire—maybe it was the kilns. I’m not sure, but I was frightened—not as myself this time, but as her—”
“Her?”
“Yes.” Hazel nodded, looking surprised. “I’m sure of it, I don’t know how. She was afraid, and then there was shouting, and blood, and the smell of whisky . . . the smell of whisky everywhere.” She shuddered. “God, I feel sick.”
“What you need is a cup of tea,” Gemma said briskly, padding over to the kettle. She sloshed it, decided there was enough water for two cups, and switched it on. “It’s
only natural you should have nightmares, after what’s happened.”
“Yes, but it . . . it was so real. Not like a dream at all, yet at the same time I knew I was dreaming. I’ve never experienced anything quite like it.”
Gemma put two tea bags into the comfortably mis-matched flower-patterned cups Louise had provided.
“Was there ever a fire in the distillery?”
“Not that I know of.”
As Gemma made the tea, she thought of the photo she’d seen in Heather Urquhart’s office, and of the little that Heather had told her about the distillery. “I have an idea,” she said, handing Hazel her cup. “Will you take me to see Carnmore?”
“What?” Hazel stared at her. “Now?”
Gemma glanced at the clock on the bedside table, then opened the curtain until she could see out into the garden.
It was not yet seven, and the sun was shining. “Yes. Why not? We’ll skip breakfast. We could pick up something on the way.”
/> “But— What about—” Awareness of what the day would hold flooded back into Hazel’s face. “Shouldn’t we be doing something—”
“There’s nothing we can do this morning but wait.”
Gemma had stayed awake, worrying into the wee hours of the morning. As she considered each angle of the case, she ran smack into her own helplessness. She couldn’t call on the firm’s solicitor to learn the disposition of Donald’s will; she couldn’t attend the postmortem; she couldn’t query the forensics results, or the findings of the house-to-house inquiries. Any little morsel of official information would have to come by the grace of Chief Inspector Ross, and Gemma suspected she would do well to get a crumb.
There was a bright spot—Heather had promised to ring
her when she’d heard from the lawyer, and that information might give her something to go on with. And she would chat up the other guests, but she sensed that would be better done when she could get them on their own, and once the police had finished with the property. The presence of the team completing the search of the area would not exactly invite confidences.
As for suggesting that Chief Inspector Ross inquire into Tim’s movements, she had decided to wait at least until Kincaid arrived after lunch, in hopes that Ross would be thorough enough to request London’s help without her having to interfere.
She had rung Kincaid before going to bed, letting him know that Hazel had been released but that she and Hazel both intended to stay on a little longer.
“You don’t have to come,” she’d added, but without much conviction.
After a moment’s thought, he’d said, “You’re determined to have a hand in this case, aren’t you, whether the local force likes it or not.”
“Something like that,” she’d admitted. “There’s another thing—Hazel wants to stay for Donald’s funeral, and I won’t leave her here on her own.”
“I don’t suppose it will make any difference if I remind you that it’s inadvisable, and that if the Northern Constabulary complains to your chief, you’re going to have a hard time talking your way out of this.”
Deborah Crombie - Duncan Kincaid & Gemma James 09 - Now May You Weep dk&gj-9 Page 20