by Molly Macrae
Daphne went on and on and on, and now that Janet was paying attention to the words, it didn’t sound at all like a speech recognizing someone’s contributions or life’s work. In fact, it didn’t sound like a written or rehearsed speech so much as a stream of consciousness oration, with the stream well on its way to leaping the banks.
“These are frivolous efforts,” Daphne was saying. “The spokeswoman for your local club”—she looked at Rhona again—“You call yourselves GREAT-SCOT, the Green Resident Environmental Alliance Trust—Start Conserving Our Tomorrow, is that correct?”
Rhona, her eyes wary, nodded.
Daphne shook her head. “I’m sorry, Joan, but SCOT might as well stand for Stop Cheating Our Tomorrow, because your wee green plans and efforts are already too late. You might as well invite construction and industry.”
She turned back to her audience and explained to them how Inversgail, by existing at all, had contaminated and brutalized the landscape and that every one of them was guilty of further degradation. “You own cars. You burn fossil fuel. You walk on pavement. You have indoor plumbing and refrigeration. You’re celebrating the construction of a footpath that will allow and encourage more people to intrude on nature, on our paradise. And now, you would hardly know there is a murderer in our paradise. A man, a stranger, has died here, was killed here, and when I questioned the response—or the lack of it—I was told by several people, ‘We don’t know anything about him.’ ‘We didn’t know this person.’ ‘We have no reason to get involved.’ That is a sad commentary on a single life and an even sadder reflection of an attitude toward the poor old world we live in, and this, this is why I absent myself from it.”
Daphne paused and stared straight ahead again. The entire room might not have been breathing. The only sound Janet heard was a gentle snore from Christine’s mother, whose head lay on her husband’s shoulder.
“Please believe me,” Daphne said, still staring forward, but now with a hand on her heart. “I do not mean to make you uncomfortable or to belittle you or your efforts. But consider this—cleaning up crime is part of cleaning up a community. Murderers are no better for the environment than other toxins.
“And now, before I leave you, I’d like to share two more quotations with you. You might say these are my mantras. One is a quote from the physicist Richard Feynman. It is this: ‘The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.’ The second quotation is from T. S. Eliot. I’ve been told it’s quite dark. Nonetheless, I find it deeply resonant: ‘All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance, All our ignorance brings us nearer to death.’ Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your warm welcome home.”
Daphne stepped back from the microphone with the look of someone expecting applause. On either side of her, Rhona, Gillian, and Gillian’s father exchanged the looks of people expecting something rather different. Rhona recovered first. She handed Daphne the plaque, somewhat aggressively, Janet thought, then whispered something to her, took her by the arm, and brought her back to the microphone.
“Can you believe I forgot the most important part of the evening?” Daphne bounced the heel of her hand off her forehead. “But first, let me assure you that I’m looking forward to the experience of being back home in Inversgail. Living amongst the weasels and the moose has given me many opportunities for new experiences, and I look forward to sharing them with your children in the schools. You’ll find that I’m game for trying almost anything once. Although once is often enough. Roast weasel, for instance. Not something I recommend.
“And now, Alistair, you old sinner, on behalf of all garden gnomes, I present you with this plaque and the honor that goes with it.” She looked at the plaque, shrugged, and handed it to him, then turned back to the microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen, enjoy yourselves at the ceilidh and dance like there’s no tomorrow, because there just might not be one.” Daphne clapped and, because they were polite and possibly couldn’t think of anything else to do, the audience joined in.
Rab caught Janet’s eye. “Are you going to let her do a talk before the signing in the shop?” he asked.
“Over my dead body.”
10
Daphne’s unusual presentation didn’t put a damper on Alistair’s spirits. He recaptured the audience by handing the plaque off to Gillian and then clicking his seventy-something heels twice in the air. He told the audience the recognition and thanks were, by rights, theirs, and then he turned and spoke to Daphne.
“Tha thu gòrach agus mì-thlachdmhor,” he said with a slight bow. “Fàilte gu Inversgail. Coisich gu faiceallach.”
There were a few titters and Janet caught a bemused look or two, but Daphne bowed her thanks to Alistair and air-kissed his cheeks. At that, the audience roared, and then James Haviland and his fellow musicians took over the stage.
“I understood some of that Gaelic,” Janet said proudly. “Welcome to Inversgail. That was certainly nice of him after the gloom and doom she poured on the evening.”
“Murk and smirk, more like,” Christine said, “because she’s a bampot. I’m away, Janet. My old dears need their beds.”
“See you,” Janet said and then turned to Rab. “Did you catch the rest of what Alistair said?”
“Bit long to go into.” Rab got up, his feet looking ready to join the first dance. “Will the gist do?”
Janet nodded.
“She’s a bampot.”
Janet watched the first few dances, her toes tapping. There was no formality to wait on before joining a set, but she hadn’t danced a reel or jig in years. Her plan was to absorb the footwork and lilt by osmosis and so avoid making a fool of herself when she did join in. She watched Tallie and Summer march, turn, and polka as directed by the caller in “Gay Gordons,” and then step, slide, turn, and swing in an “Eightsome Reel.” Gillian, Tom, and Alistair were out there, as well as the other teacher Janet had met when she’d gone to the school. Rab went past in a set with Rhona. Daphne didn’t dance, but Janet saw her and Rachel Carson mingling. Rachel Carson shook hands and Daphne made small talk, her earlier odd behavior no longer evident.
When the next dance neared its end, Janet’s toes told her to get up and go for it. She stood and saw Reddick sitting alone. On a whim, she asked him to join her. He agreed and they lined up opposite each other for “The Flying Scotsman.” Reddick bowed, the dance began, and they received a thumbs-up from Tallie, who was guzzling a lemonade on the sidelines.
Janet and Reddick circled each other and every so often came together to slip-step down the middle of the rectangle formed by the other couples in the set.
“You seem to be moving well,” Janet said during their first slip-step. “Are you fully recovered from your fall?”
Reddick said he was and they separated again.
“An unusual woman, Daphne Wood,” Reddick said during their next slip-step. “What were you discussing so seriously while you ate?”
“Civic organizations,” Janet said, but before she could ask him why he wanted to know, they’d separated again.
“Any progress on Sam Smith’s death?” she asked as they made another trip up the middle.
“That name hasn’t been released yet.” Reddick’s footwork was briefly confused on that slip-step.
Coming back together, Janet said, “The name was easy enough to guess. We haven’t told anyone.”
“It will be released soon, but thank you.”
“Do you know where Norman Hobbs is?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
They separated again, and Janet found the pattern of both the dance and Reddick’s answers frustrating. He sounded as though he took lessons in reticence and loyalty from a BBC butler. But when they came together for one last slip-step journey up the middle, he surprised her.
“I understand your concern for Hobbs. I assure you, there’s nothing wrong and he’ll be back soon.”
“Thank you for that,” Janet said. “Quick question. I
s Yon Bonnie Books implicated in Smith’s death?”
“If that becomes the case, you will be the first to know.”
“The Flying Scotsman” came to an end and Reddick thanked Janet for the dance. She hoped she hadn’t put ideas in his head with her last question, but she had the sneaking suspicion he’d been working to keep a straight face. That was fine with her. She joined Tallie and Summer in “Gay Gordons” and saw that Reddick had taken a seat near the stage. She wondered what or who he was watching, because he didn’t appear to be watching the dancers. The next time she looked over, he’d gone—from the library, apparently, because she didn’t see him again.
“She didn’t eat anything,” Gillian said when she and Janet met at the drinks table. “I asked her weeks ago, when the students were setting the menu, if she had a favorite dish she remembered from childhood. Was there anything, I asked, anything she’d particularly like to have here this evening? So we have her to thank for the Brussels sprouts. And then she brought that horrible salad and ate nothing at all.”
“Don’t let it bother you,” Janet said. “It’s a wonderful event.”
“That’s what Dad says. He just laughs and says Daphne’s the way she is because the fairies took her when she was a bairn, but when they found out what she was like, they kicked her out again. He’s loving this evening, isn’t he?”
“Has she always been so—”
“Thoughtful?”
If there’d been a glint of sarcastic pleasure on Gillian’s face when she said that, Janet missed it. But she didn’t miss the narrowing of Gillian’s eyes as she saw Tom swing past with their fellow teacher on his arm.
Toward the end of the evening, Janet spotted Daphne at the buffet. Daphne looked over her shoulder, then took a plastic container from her backpack and scooped it full of haggis balls, adding a dollop of the whisky mustard sauce for good measure. Rachel Carson sat at Daphne’s feet, looking left, then right, then left again as though ready to let Daphne know if anyone was on to her. Daphne snapped the lid on the container and stuffed it into her backpack.
A short time later, Gillian, Tom, and Alistair left, taking Daphne and Rachel Carson with them. They all looked happy enough in each other’s company. Maybe they’re going for a pint, Janet thought. If they were, she hoped it was somewhere other than Nev’s. Danny was a good publican who knew how to make everyone welcome, but making Daphne welcome might tax even him.
Tallie came over, as Janet watched them go, and handed her a folded note. “Daphne asked me to give this to you.”
“Oh dear.” The paper appeared to have been torn from Daphne’s notebook. Janet unfolded it and read: I finally have the name for our crime-solving collaboration: S.C.O.N.E.S.—Shadow Constabulary of Nosy Eavesdropping Snoops.
“Did you read this?” Janet asked her daughter.
“Strangely, even after her warning about ignorance and death, reading that note didn’t tempt me,” Tallie said. “What is it?”
Janet passed it to her. “She thinks the four of us should be jumping at the chance to help her find that poor soul’s killer. Of course, I told her no. And told her no again this evening.” She took the note back, crumpled it, and jammed it in her purse.
“Of course, you did.”
Janet saw her daughter giving her a thoughtful look. But not the sort of “thoughtful” Gillian seems to think Daphne is, I hope.
“Some of us are going for a pint,” Tallie said. “Want to come?”
“Who’s we?”
“Summer, Martin, James. Maybe Pat the accordion player.”
“No thanks, darling. Bed and a book sound good to me.”
“Who’s under the covers with you tonight?” Tallie asked.
“Jeeves and Bertie.”
“Kinky. Don’t you three stay up too late.”
Janet called her bedtime reading running away from reality. Tallie told her if she ever felt guilty about it, she could call it business prep and feel virtuous. Janet thanked her and said that wouldn’t change anything. She’d just feel guilty about enjoying her work so much.
One of James Haviland’s fiddle tunes ran through Janet’s head as she drove home. It was a mournful piece he’d played after the dancing was over, suitable for the mist that was moving in again. Suitable for evoking ghosts, Janet thought, and so she wasn’t entirely surprised to see a small, agitated shadow tapping its foot as it waited at her front door.
“Maida?”
Maida, arms wrapped tightly around herself, blocked Janet’s way. She wasn’t just agitated; she had no sweater or coat and she was shivering.
“What is it?” Janet asked. “Come inside where it’s warm.” She put a hand out to guide Maida aside so she could put her key in the lock, but Maida flinched, pulling away. Janet got the door unlocked and pushed it open. Another shiver ran like a spasm through Maida. “Come inside right this minute,” Janet said, taking Maida firmly by the elbow. “I’ll make tea. Unless you’d rather have—”
“Something stronger might be better,” Maida said.
Janet hadn’t been expecting company and wondered about the state of the kitchen. Maybe it would be best to settle Maida in the living room. But what does it matter, really? She’s family, after a fashion. Odd family, maybe, but not as odd as Daphne. Janet poured a small whisky for Maida and one for herself. She brought a knitted throw and put it around Maida’s shoulders, and then sat down with her.
“Maida, tell me what’s happened. Are you hurt?”
“No! No, I’m not.” She put a hand to her mouth and took several gulping breaths.
“Where’s your car? I didn’t see it when I drove up. Where’s your coat?”
“My coat’s with my purse. I left them both over there and I couldn’t make myself go back.”
“Where? To the library?”
“Did you eat any of the salad Daphne brought?” Maida stopped, overcome by an emotion that did alarming things to her color and coherency.
Janet reached out and took her shaking hand. “Maida, what is it?”
“That woman. Do you know what she did? Do you know what she is?”
“Christine thinks she’s become eccentric from living alone for so many years. Actually, she called her a bampot, and frankly I’m inclined to agree. But, please, don’t repeat that, Maida.”
“No,” Maida said, shaking her head. “You don’t understand. Bampot’s just the beginning of it and that’s too mild. I’d call her a cannibal, but then I would sound like a bampot. But she took my houseplants—my African violets, purple passion, and prayer plants—and she chopped them up and disguised them with a bit of spinach and lettuce and served them up as salad at the ceilidh.”
Janet’s first concern, after calming Maida, was whether Daphne had poisoned anyone, including herself. She shuddered, remembering the last wretched mouthful she’d eaten before setting her plate aside. She didn’t feel any different, now, several hours later, but how long would poisoning by prayer plant take? Surely Daphne wouldn’t have let Rachel Carson finish what was on her plate without knowing her exotic greens were safe.
Janet poured another small whisky for each of them and then opened her laptop. “I’ll just check to see if the plants are toxic.”
“They’re not,” Maida said. “I wouldn’t keep them if they were. Not with Freddie and Wally.” Freddie and Wally were her three- and one-year-old grandsons.
“That’s very good and thorough of you, Maida. Still, I’ll feel better if I check. I don’t mean to doubt you, but in times of crisis, librarians look things up.”
Maida sipped and watched as Janet tapped her keyboard, stopped to read, and tapped some more. “She’s definitely not right in the head, and no telling what she’ll get up to next. She’s a danger.”
“Ah, I’ve found what we need,” Janet said with a rush of relief.
Maida took a last sip—more of a gulp—and put her glass aside. “It’s our duty to stop her. I’m going to call nine-nine-nine.”
“But they
’re not poisonous,” Janet said. “You were absolutely right, Maida, so there’s no need to call the police. No one actually recommends eating any of the three plants, but they aren’t toxic. I know the plants meant a lot to you—”
“They were like my babies.”
“I can tell,” Janet said. She was beginning to regret refilling Maida’s glass.
“I want Norman Hobbs to arrest her for destruction of private property.”
“You don’t think the plants will grow back?” From Maida’s reaction to that question, Janet guessed not. “It isn’t exactly an emergency, though, Maida, so nine-nine-nine probably isn’t the appropriate number. We could call Gillian.”
“I will certainly call Gillian. I will call her and I will call Norman Hobbs. He has a cutting from one of my prayer plants. He’ll understand the tragedy and he’ll know how to handle this.”
Janet suggested a pot of tea and a little more thought before making the call. Maida wouldn’t hear of it. Her phone, however, was in her purse, and her purse was with her coat.
“And I left them both behind when I ran out of the house. We’ll use yours.”
Janet made the call, wondering if Reddick’s prediction was accurate. Maybe Norman Hobbs would finally answer his phone.
He didn’t. Reddick did.
“What did Ms. Wood say to you about the plants?” Reddick asked after hearing Maida’s story. He’d taken the chair nearest to her and spoke calmly and quietly.
“She said they’d be no bother,” Maida said with a quaver. “She said it was like living in a garden.”
“I think he means what did Daphne say when you went over there this evening?” Janet said. “How did she explain the, um, harvest?”
Maida moaned, looked at the floor, and shook her head.
Reddick turned a stern eye on Janet. She mouthed “sorry” and clamped her lips firmly so he’d know she meant it.
“Ms. Wood didn’t say anything?” he asked, turning back to Maida. “Are you sure, Ms. Fairlie? I know this is upsetting, but you needn’t be uneasy or afraid. Did she threaten you in any way when you confronted her?”