by Molly Macrae
Rhona crossed her arms over her chest, her shoulders rising slightly. But the argument, if it was one, didn’t bother Gillian enough for her to lift her cheek from her knitted hands. Janet didn’t know if the tension between the women was old chemistry or fallout from the shock of Daphne’s death. It might be a mixture of both, but whatever tensions or emotions were stirring at the table, she was fairly certain Gillian still didn’t know the police considered Tom a suspect. Otherwise, how could she sit so calmly? And then she wondered why no one seemed to know he was a suspect.
Janet took out her phone and sent a group text to the SCONES. “if tom is missing & a suspect why no hue & cry to find him from police?” When she looked up from her phone, she knew she’d missed something.
“No,” Gillian said. Her back was straight, her forearms on the table, the fingers of each hand curled. The look in her eye offered a challenge to Rhona. “He can’t make it.”
“Are we talking about Tom?” Janet asked.
“What?” Gillian turned the challenge toward her.
“I asked about her dad,” Rhona explained to Janet. “I asked if Alistair is coming along tonight.”
“But what about Tom?” Hope asked. “Why aren’t we talking about him?”
“Photo shoot,” Gillian said, her hands going to her lap. “He’s on a photo shoot.”
“Where? And missing classes?” Hope hadn’t once looked up from her glass and couldn’t have seen, as Janet did, how each question made Gillian look more miserable. “He didn’t say anything about being away. He’s not answering his mobile. He always takes my calls. Is he taking yours, Gillian?”
“Can’t you leave it?” Gillian said. “He’s on a photo shoot and he’ll be back soon enough. End of story.”
“You don’t expect anyone to believe that at this point, do you?” Hope asked. Now she did look at Gillian, and Janet could see that Hope’s eyebrows certainly didn’t believe it.
Janet went to join Christine and her parents at their table near the door. “Is the memorial well and thoroughly planned?” Christine asked when Janet dropped into the chair beside her.
“We tabled the idea for the evening,” Janet said. “I’ll tell you about it later.” She greeted Christine’s parents, Helen and David. David introduced her to the other couple at the table and they all made polite noises at each other.
“When it comes time to plan my memorial,” Helen said, “I hope you’ll remember …” She turned to David. “What was it I want remembered?”
“Next time you think of it, we’ll write it down,” David said.
“And forget where we’ve written it, like as not,” said Helen.
While Helen, David, and the other couple laughed, Janet quietly asked Christine if she had read the text she’d sent. “No one answered,” she said. “I was beginning to wonder—” Her phone buzzed and she pulled it out. “Here’s Tallie. She says, ‘good question.’”
“You often ask brilliant questions,” Christine said. “I look forward to hearing the answer to that one. In the meantime, I asked my own.”
Janet looked at her phone again. “I don’t think I got it.”
“Something I asked Danny, and he said yes.”
Janet put a hand to her chest.
“Good Lord, no,” Christine said. “You should know better than that. No, when he gets a chance, he’ll take us out back to see where he found Sam Smith.”
Janet mouthed a silent, “Oh.”
“Here he is now,” Christine said, nudging Janet’s elbow.
While Christine told her parents they’d be back shortly, Janet sent a text letting Tallie and Summer know where they were going. Then they followed Danny behind the bar and through the kitchen, where a lank young man with an enormous pair of tongs conjured the warm smell of fish from a bubbling deep fat fryer. They passed through a small office, a back room, and on out the back door. Janet didn’t ask why they were going to see where Sam Smith had died, but she doubted Christine was hunting for auras.
“Can this be called a wynd?” Janet asked when they stepped outside into what she would call an alley. It was wide enough for a single vehicle.
“A wynd? A bit posh, but you could call it that, if you like,” Danny said. “After finding that poor lad, and after finding Daftie Daphne back here gawking, acting like she might sell tickets to the tourists, I was ready to call it a pain in the arse. There’s where he was.”
They stared at an unremarkable patch of ground near the back door. Janet did feel something, but unless she’d suddenly gained supernatural senses, she knew it was just the unutterable sadness of Sam’s death.
“We saw Tom leave with Gillian that night,” Christine said. “So he must have come back. Did she come back with him?”
“I didn’t see her,” Danny said.
“Did Tom know anyone in the party? Did he join them?” Janet asked.
“I’ll tell you what I told the police. He joined them with a fist or two, after they’d gone outside, and that’s the first I noticed he had anything to do with them. Do I know what the argument was about? No.”
“Have you seen anyone from the party here since then?” Christine asked.
“Except that they’d be young men who aren’t regulars, I wouldn’t recognize them.”
“Could Daphne have been here that night?” Christine asked.
“I don’t think she could slip in anywhere unnoticed. The dog certainly couldn’t.”
Janet walked to the corner of the building, where a space narrower than her own front path separated Nev’s from the newspaper building. “He could’ve walked down the alley or come through this passage. But why? Was he chased? When you broke up the fight—”
“High spirits gone awry, is all,” Danny said. “It was hardly started when I sent them outside, and over before anyone bloodied a nose or blackened an eye.”
Janet started down the passage toward the street. Danny and Christine followed.
“James and Martin said they heard the noise next door,” Christine said. “Sound and fury?”
“And came to naught,” said Danny. “It didn’t take more than threatening to call the police and they were gone. That’s what I thought, anyway, until I found the poor bugger. Then I thought one or two of the lads had gone too far.”
“But the police have cleared them,” Janet said. “As far as we know.”
Heading toward the lit street, the passage wasn’t a frightening place. There was a minor amount of litter, unidentifiable bits of urban detritus. They passed a window and a door in the Guardian’s wall, the window long-since bricked up.
“Where did the brick come from?” Janet asked as they emerged onto the pavement in front of the businesses.
“There’s always been some back there,” Danny said. “Leftovers from this and that. The sort of thing you hang onto, if it isn’t in the way, because you never know.”
They stood on the pavement looking back at the passage. From this end, with the streetlight only reaching so far, it wasn’t an appealing space. The sort of space I wouldn’t enter at night, if I didn’t have a very good reason, Janet thought, because you never know.
“What happened when you broke up the argument?” Christine asked.
“They took off running.”
Janet tried to picture the chaotic scene. “Did Tom run?”
“I’ve never known Tom to run from anything. He stood, just there, and laughed.”
“Just where?” Janet asked.
Danny moved to the mouth of the passage. “Here.”
“Evening, all,” James Haviland greeted them. “You gave us a start, popping out from between that way.” He stepped away from the front of Nev’s, and Janet saw that Martin was with him. She hadn’t noticed them, but she’d been focused on the passageway.
“Did I hear you mention Tom?” James asked. “Have you seen him?”
“Sunday,” Janet said. “At the signing.” She wondered about the intent of his question. The idle curiosity of a
friend? The sniff of a newshound?
“Sunday. Aye.” James craned his head to look past Danny, who hadn’t moved from the opening of the dark passage. “He’s a good man. I count on his photographs.” He straightened. “Well, if you see him, tell him we’re on deadline.”
Before rejoining Helen and David, Janet and Christine went to catch up with Tallie and Summer in a corner of the darts room. “Officially missing, but the press doesn’t know?” Janet asked. “How can that be?”
“I’m willing to bet James knows,” Summer said. “We danced around each other with the same kinds of questions, but we didn’t ask and we didn’t tell. I think Martin caught onto that. Maybe if I went over and caught James alone in his office—”
“Not alone and not tonight, please,” Janet said.
“Which I was about to say.”
“Good.”
“We do have to trust some people, though, Mom,” Tallie said.
“Trust can be a slippery devil.” Christine put an arm around Tallie’s shoulders. “And hope a false prophet. I’m not sure I believe that, but where did I hear it recently?”
“Rab,” Summer said. “He read it in someone’s tea leaves yesterday.”
Tallie and Summer quit the darts room when Janet and Christine did. The other couple at Helen and David’s table had gone home, but Rab and Ranger had joined them. Rab got up to pull another chair over and they all listened as Helen reminisced about a dog.
“Whose dog are we getting all soppy about?” Christine asked Rab.
“Wee dog you had when you were a lass. Saved Danny’s life when he fell in the harbor.”
“I saved Danny’s life,” Christine said. “I’ve never had a dog.”
“Shame,” Rab said. “From the sound of him, Pogo would have been a champion.”
“Danny might like that version of the story better, too. Pogo wouldn’t have pushed him off the wall in the first place.”
Danny came from behind the bar with a half pint, and pulled another chair over to the table. “Pogo didn’t just save my life, ken. He taught me to dog paddle, first, then pulled me out. I owe my naval career to him. God, I loved that dog.”
“He and Chrissy were inseparable,” Helen said. “A lass and her pup.”
“Mum, while you’re remembering days gone by, do you remember Daphne Wood? Did you know her as a child?”
“I nursed a lot of lasses like her. Lasses who don’t like getting paste or paint on their hands and cry over skinned knees. You weren’t like that, Christine. I was aye proud of you. Who were we talking about?”
“Daphne Wood.”
“She was … I can’t think of the word.”
“She must have gotten over her fear of ick,” Janet said. “Judging from her books and the years she spent in the wild. She was hardly out there skinning the animals she trapped with a clothespin on her nose. But she had definite ideas about what she wanted or needed while she was here.”
“People change,” Summer said. “Some.”
“Some do.” Danny nodded. “Or somewhat.”
“Not all changes are happy ones,” Helen said. She held her hands out, turning them over, and gazing at their backs as though wondering who the old things belonged to. “Some change is just change and some shouldn’t be allowed to happen.”
Heads nodded. David took one of Helen’s old hands, kissed it, and held it between both of his.
“But like it or not, change is necessary,” Summer said.
“Aye,” Danny said. “Still, necessary or not, it’s not for everyone. Some folk find a comfortable harbor and anchor themselves for the duration. Ride it out, like.” He and Rab raised their glasses half an inch toward each other.
“Pernickety,” Helen said. “That’s the word I was looking for. I knew she was that pernickety, and that’s why I was surprised.”
“Why were you surprised, Mum? What surprised you?”
“You’ll have to ask her. It’s not for me to say.”
“She’s gone, Mum. It won’t matter now.”
“I ken that well enough. The pernickety thing took herself off to Canada.”
“Is that what surprised you, Helen?” Janet asked. “That she went to Canada?”
“No, I had an idea she’d want to get away. They often do and come back later. Glasgow or Edinburgh is usually far enough, though. But now I can’t be sure. It’s been a long time. Too long.” Helen started to get up.
“Where are you going, Mum?”
“To find the loo. It’s been too long.”
“We need to talk to Gillian,” Janet said later, once Christine had settled Helen and David in the car.
“We do,” Christine said, “although if this happened, depending on with whom it happened, it might still be a delicate situation.”
“Or Gillian might not know anything about it,” Tallie said. “But we’ve all had experience asking careful questions, so if the situation is at all delicate, then between the four of us, or just a couple of us, we should be able to manage it.”
“And when do we tell Norman Hobbs and let him deal with it?” Summer asked.
“When we know it won’t be wasting his time because Mum was talking about another Daphne, another lass, or someone with a dog named Pogo and fairy wings, as well,” Christine said. “I’ll see if she remembers more in the morning.”
“Or your dad?” Tallie asked.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Janet’s phone buzzed with a text. By the time she pulled it out and read it, Christine was waving and driving off. Janet raised a hand and started to call after her, but stopped.
“What?” Tallie asked.
“We need—” Janet dropped her hand to her mouth, then shook her head. “Not us. Tom. And Gillian. They need our prayers. Hillwalkers found his body.”
26
Janet waited until she was home to call Constable Hobbs. “Thank you for the text, Norman, but do you believe it was suicide?”
“There was a note.”
Tom Laing had taken himself to a lonely part of Glen Sgail with a packet of scones, a flask of tea laced with whisky and something else, and a bottle of whisky besides, apparently intending to do himself in in style. A note found with the body apologized to Gillian and confirmed for the specialists that he’d killed Daphne and then taken his own life. At a guess, he’d been dead several days.
“This is appalling, Norman, and it has to be utterly devastating for Gillian. But saying there was a note and saying you believe the note are two different things. What kind of scones and tea? Are they what Daphne had? Will the Major Crime Team have to come sniffing around Cakes and Tales again?”
“Nothing has been confirmed, but there was the same odor of almonds present.”
“Summer’s scones for the signing were orange almond, but the orange scent is stronger. Wait—are you saying it was cyanide?”
“No. Tom helped them out there, too. They found a book on poisonous plants in his rucksack. He used a piece of cherry laurel as a bookmark. All parts of the cherry laurel are highly toxic and smell strongly of almonds. Reddick tells me that Nero poisoned the wells of his enemy with laurel water, and during the eighteenth century, there was a habit of using laurel water in baking for the almond scent and flavor. But a wee bit of laurel goes a long way, and that practice led to accidental—and perhaps not-so-accidental—poisonings.”
“Where did he get it?”
“The hedge round the old Farquhar garden at the school would do. It’s quite common. The specialists will run tests, but they’re confident they know the answers to all three deaths.”
“Sam. That’s why his cause of death hasn’t been released.”
“Aye. It was a complicated death. There was evidence suggesting he’d ingested something toxic, though not a lethal dose. The almond smell gave them possibilities to test for in the first two deaths. Now with Tom’s death, and the new evidence at that scene, they very likely have the answer, although the precise cause of death, in
each case, will be withheld, pending a toxicology report.”
“What was that you said—the note confirmed for the specialists that he killed Daphne? Confirmed how? Did he actually say he killed Daphne? Did he say anything at all about Sam?”
“No.”
“Is that what’s bothering you about it?”
“That, and his choice of whisky.”
“That’s when I blew it,” Janet said after repeating the conversation to Tallie. “I had to go and say the words ‘whisky society,’ and suddenly he had another call.”
“He really might have had another call,” Tallie said. “What kind of whisky did Tom have?”
“I didn’t quite catch what Norman said. It sounded like ‘aardvark,’ but I’m almost positive that wasn’t it.”
“Although that might be why Norman was surprised by Tom’s choice. Can’t you hear the slogan? ‘Drink Aardvark Vat Forty-nine, so braw it lays you on your spine.’”
“I can’t be laughing at a time like this. I’m going to bed.”
Janet and Christine stopped by Gillian’s the next morning, fairly certain she wouldn’t have gone in to teach. She hadn’t. She didn’t cry while they were there. She also didn’t believe what Norman had told her.
“It was good of him to come tell you,” Christine said. “Our Norman is a decent chap.”
“Not if he believes Tom was a murderer,” Gillian said. “Not if he believes he killed himself. Tom is the last person I’d ever imagine killing someone. He was a contradictory sort, aye, and sometimes he drank too much. Who doesnae? But he had everything going for him. He could have gone pro with his photos. He was planning to. He worked hard. He took care of himself. He did yoga.” She stopped, breathing hard, and then choked back a sob. “He gave kilted yoga a try, after seeing a clip on telly. Made me laugh.”
She didn’t laugh now. There were no more choked sobs.
In the silence, they heard the click-click-click of nails on the bare floor. Rachel Carson came from another room and looked at them.