Murder at Midnight

by C. S. Challinor

  “They do now,” Señora Delacruz pointed out, indicating the room at large. “And if it’s as much gold as you say, I’m not sure a pair of gamekeepers and their shotguns will act as much of a deterrent.”

  “How did you know th—” But Ken was cut off mid-question by a loud and distressed gasp.

  Everyone looked over to where Drew Harper was clutching his throat, alternately struggling to loosen his tie and trying to cough or retch. He had grown alarmingly red in the face and his eyes bulged. Rex’s first thought was poison. Julie started shrieking and gesticulating wildly.

  “I knew something like this would happen,” Vanessa Weaver cried out in vindicated glee.

  Alistair’s partner, John, was beside Drew in an instant, acting upon professional reflex while the others stood by in shock, except Rex who had moved in almost as quickly.

  “Is he choking on something?” John asked Julie.

  She pointed to the box of chocolates on the table. John immediately got behind the house agent and, grabbing him around the waist, performed the Heimlich manoeuver, whereupon a small projectile issued from Drew’s mouth.

  John picked it up from the floor. “It’s a hazelnut,” he said examining it.

  Drew, visibly relieved, almost laughing now, said, “It went down the wrong way.”

  Julie said she would fetch him some water and rushed to the drinks cabinet.

  “Close call, mate,” Jason said, with just a hint of satisfaction on his face. He probably thought Harper had received his just desserts for calling him out on misappropriating the gold coin.

  “All’s well that ends well,” Ken exclaimed, beaming at everyone, filled tumbler in hand. His face was ruddy and he had untied his checkered scarf so the ends fell either side of his navy sweater.

  Of the men, he seemed the most affected by drink. Jason, the jock, was holding his own, and John Dunbar had been mostly abstemious, having declared himself the designated driver when it came time for him and Alistair to leave. Drew Harper had been coddling his third whisky for a while now. The women, all on wine, except for Catriona, were merry. Rex was keeping an eye on Julie, though he knew Helen would be too. Her friend had had a serious breakup earlier in the year and was feeling, as Helen put it, “fragile.” Hence the two getaways to Gleneagle Lodge and the combined assault on Drew Harper. Rex gave a sigh. Perhaps it was too soon for Julie. She was on the rebound and clearly smitten by the attractive bachelor. Hopefully her infatuation would not be unrequited.

  “Lucky we had a medic in the house,” Alistair said proudly, clapping John on the shoulder.

  Lucky it wasn’t anything more serious, Rex thought, recalling the murder at his housewarming party.

  4

  resolutions

  “Time for a party game,” Julie announced giddily.

  She had laddered her black tights above her boot and appeared flushed, either from excitement or else too much drink. Rex again wondered about the wisdom of letting Helen set her up with Drew, who was beginning to cast around for a means of escape.

  Rex caught Helen’s eye and communicated his concern with a slight nod in Julie’s direction coupled with a worried look. Helen crossed the room to join him. “Julie is just letting her hair down. She won’t make a fool of herself in front of Drew.”

  “I hope not,” he said.

  “Here’s my idea,” Julie followed up when she had everyone’s attention. “We all write down our New Year resolutions and entrust them to Rex. Then, at the end of the year, we can see how we did!”

  “Are these resolutions to remain private?” John asked.

  “They could be … But wouldn’t we be more likely to keep our resolutions if everyone knew about them? And it would be more fun. A bit like a game of truth or dare? We can sit around the table by the fire where there’s more light.”

  “I suppose we could just lie.” John obviously opposed the idea.

  “That’s hardly entering into the spirit of things,” Vanessa Weaver retorted with a laugh. “I’m game.” She looked about her. “Has anyone got a pencil and paper?”

  Cleverly produced a couple of writing implements from the recesses of his creased jacket, one a sharp pencil, the other an elegant capped pen, which he set down in the middle of the oblong coffee table carved in oak. Jason came up with a disposable ballpoint pen with no nib. “Well, this Biro is useless,” he said, frowning and returning the empty plastic tube to his pocket. “Wonder why I kept it.”

  “Because you never throw anything away,” Flora reminded him fondly, the incident regarding the gold coin apparently forgotten.

  “I’ll get what we need.” Rex strode down the hall to his library and gathered a fistful of pens and pencils, and a pair of scissors. He grabbed a couple of sheets of thick cream notepaper headed with Gleneagle Lodge in elegant black script, along with the address and landline number. He then returned to the living room and added his assortment of writing tools to the collection, folded the two sheets of notepaper, and cut them into small rectangles. He directed everyone to write their name on the back. The rest of the guests approached the table and brought extra chairs as necessary, chatting with excitement.

  “I don’t remember ever making my New Year resolutions public,” Flora fretted.

  “Why worry?” asked Jason. “Unless it’s really embarrassing.” He nudged his girlfriend in the ribs.

  “Mine’s not, particularly,” Zoe said. “I just wonder if they’ll come true if we speak them aloud.”

  “They’re resolutions, not wishes,” Margarita Delacruz said with a shrug, and took an elegant puff of her elongated cigarette.

  “And what do the resolutions of our gracious hosts entail?” asked Cleverly. “They should have the honour of going first.” When nobody contested this, he said, “Rex?”

  Spending more time at this place, Rex thought. Without any blasted interruptions. He wrote the first part down and communicated it to the gathering around the table. He enjoyed coming to Gleneagle Lodge to relax and sometimes work on a difficult case, and to spend quiet time with Helen roaming the countryside or else skiing.

  “Good one,” said Jason.

  “And Helen?” the professor prompted.

  “A beautiful spring wedding,” she said without hesitation and wrote on her piece of paper.

  “I’m sure it will be,” Flora assured her. “I’m so very much looking forward to it.”

  “We’ll go in order,” Julie dictated, nodding at John seated to Helen’s right on the large sofa resting against the wall.

  “Mine is to give up smoking,” said the medic. “I mean, I’ve quit, but I plan to stay off cigs for good this time. Alistair can’t abide smoking.” John winked at him across the table.

  “Plus it doesn’t reflect well when you’re an ambulance man,” the Scottish advocate teased his partner. “Treating people for strokes and nicotine poisoning. You need to set an example.”

  Alistair and John had met at Rex’s weekend housewarming party. It was John’s ambulance that had removed the body. Rex tried to console himself that at least a new romance had blossomed out of the tragedy.

  Señora Delacruz tapped her ash into a heavy glass bowl and said, “I don’t inhale very much,” which Rex thought odd since she had to suck the nicotine all the way through a cigarette holder, thus requiring more effort. She added, “And I only smoke socially.” Which was rather antisocial in Rex’s, the reformed pipe smoker’s, opinion. Her slim black holder created an arc of smoke.

  Rex got up and opened a side window just a crack as he went to change the compact discs in the stereo system. He selected a compilation of Scottish dance music with an upbeat tempo to keep his guests awake for the last hour or so until midnight.

  “Quitting is hard,” Ken Fraser commiserated with John. “I’ve managed to cut down on my pipe, but I’ve put on weight as a result.”

 
; “I’m with you there,” Rex said, crossing to the bay windows. He kept his pipe in his pocket out of habit, and found comfort in fingering it in times of stress. On a few dire occasions he had come to within a hair’s breadth of lighting up and taking a heavenly puff.

  He glanced out the dark window. Sleet was driving into the canted panes, pinging relentlessly on the glass. He imagined a trespasser peering through the lit windows at the revelers within, and it gave him an uneasy sense of foreboding. He hastily drew the burgundy velvet drapes and returned to the group seated around the coffee table.

  “Well, on the subject of weight, that’s my resolution.” Catriona vowed to join a gym and lose half a stone. She made a note on her paper and handed her pencil to Ken seated in an adjoining armchair.

  “Easy. My resolution in the coming year is to find the gold,” her husband proclaimed as he wrote. “Almost one and a half million pounds!” He let the pencil drop and rubbed his hands with glee.

  Everyone, clearly envious, wished him good luck, even if he couldn’t keep the coins. But perhaps there were gold bars among the treasure, as Professor Cleverly had indicated, citing the priest’s diary.

  “As for me, I hope to make head of department,” Cleverly said, whose turn it was to state his resolution. “Lord knows, I’ve waited long enough.”

  “True,” Rex agreed. The professor had taught at the University of Edinburgh since obtaining his doctorate, without any substantial advancement. It was his time, and Rex wished his old college friend well.

  “You deserve it, Humpty,” Señora Delacruz stated from across the table. Humpty? thought Rex with mirth. “You have published more than Peebles and what’s that other pompous ass’s name?” She waved her hand airily. “They will be forgotten. But your research will live on.”

  “Thank you, my dear,” Professor Cleverly acknowledged with a bow of the head.

  “Zoe, it’s your turn,” Helen reminded the young woman, who showed reluctance to speak.

  “I’m really afraid if I say it aloud, I’ll jinx it.” Zoe smiled most becomingly in her shyness. Her face, though a trifle long, held undeniable charm. Curled up in the capacious armchair in her filmy green dress, she was the picture of youth and loveliness. The effect was not lost on the house agent. Rex caught Drew staring at her with admiration just a moment too long. Julie noticed too and pinched her lips.

  “Poppycock,” said the professor. “You are a modern young woman, are you not, Zoe? Leave the superstitious voodoo to the old and ignorant.”

  Zoe twiddled a long tendril of reddish-gold hair that flamed in the firelight, her secret playing on curvaceous lips.

  “We’ve told ours,” John egged her on, holding up his piece of paper. “Written for posterity to take note of.”

  “Go on, Zoe,” Jason seconded. “Everybody else has been spilling their guts.”

  “It can’t be as lame as mine,” Flora encouraged her.

  “Well, okay, then.” Succumbing to the pressure of her peers, Zoe said in a rush, “My resolution, or dearest wish, is to get the part of Wild Rose that I auditioned for before Christmas.” She blushed and darted a hopeful look at her mother.

  “Ooh, how exciting,” Flora exclaimed. “No one told me you were an actress. Is it a play or a film?”

  “It’s for a miniseries airing on ITV. Wild Rose is the female lead part and also the title. It’s about two feuding families in the Highlands. Wild Rose is in love with Jack MacBride, the neighbouring landowner’s son, but their parents are bitterly opposed to their relationship, and they have to meet in secret on the moor.”

  “Sounds like a cross between Romeo and Juliet and Wuthering Heights,” Alistair remarked pleasantly.

  “It is a bit soapy, I suppose,” Zoe trailed off with obvious misgivings about divulging her New Year’s resolution.

  “Oh, not at all,” Helen hastened to assure her. “It sounds just the sort of thing Julie and I like to watch with a glass of wine after a gruelling day at the school. I love romance. And set in the Highlands! How perfect.”

  Helen’s friend did not look as enthusiastic, Rex noted; probably because Drew was watching and listening with avid interest.

  “I teach geography, and Helen is a school guidance counsellor,” Julie explained to Zoe in an obvious attempt to regain his attention.

  “Any notable actors going to be in it?” the house agent asked Zoe.

  “There’s a rumour going about, and it is only a rumour, mind, that a famous actor will play the detective. Rose and Jack discover a body, but they can’t say anything because they weren’t supposed to be out together, especially at night. There’s a series of mutilated bodies, actually—all young females.”

  A serial killer on the moor, Rex thought, unpleasantly reminded of events he would have preferred left out of the conversation.

  “Jack the Ripper,” Alistair suggested, seemingly adamant on drawing parallels. Rex glared at his colleague in an attempt to silence him. Had he forgotten the nightmare they had both been involved in that summer?

  “Wow,” Flora said.

  “I hope you get the part,” Jason said. “Then we can all say we knew you before you were a celebrity.”

  “I think she will,” said her mother. “She has the face, body, and talent.”

  “I have to play an eighteen year-old, though,” Zoe informed her audience. “And I’m twenty-four, almost.”

  “You could pass for eighteen,” Drew said appraisingly.

  Julie shot him a stricken look, her cheeks coloring slightly. A woman well into her forties, she would feel threatened by a willowy young beauty when a seductive man like Drew was at stake. Rex knew for a fact he jogged four miles each day. And the touch of silver at his temples only served to lend distinction to his lean-featured good looks.

  “Women can pass for much younger with a little savoir-faire.” Margarita Delacruz winked with allure, and Rex could tell the women and some of the men were dying to ask her age. However, good manners prevailed, and the party game continued with Alistair.

  “I’m such a dunce at party games!” he despaired, looking around for inspiration. He apparently thought he might find some in his tumbler of whisky, the rest of which he downed in one gulp. “Um-um-um. Yes, I’m going to catch the Loch Ness Monster. That’s it!”

  “Pathetic,” John said, shaking his head at his partner. “For a start, you’ve got no chance. And you’d think with your brains you could come up with something better.”

  “It doesn’t even exist,” Margarita Delacruz scoffed. “It’s nothing but a tourist gimmick.”

  “Someone saw a sea monster like Nessie in Loch Lochy,” Flora informed her.

  “Nonsense.”

  “We took a photo of it from the dining room window at the hotel.”

  “A trick of the light or a log maybe?”

  “Well, if Alistair wants to go chasing figments of the imagination, that’s his business,” Rex said, eager to press on with the parlor game as the hands on the clock face moved inexorably toward midnight. “We can remind him of his folly twelve months hence. Flora, lass, please give us something sensible.”

  “I resolve to spend more time with my brother, even though I’m really busy with my art courses and my part-time work at the coffee shop,” she added apologetically.

  “You said earlier your resolution was silly, Flora,” Vanessa Weaver said. “But taking care of your brother is commendable.” She cast a tender look at her husband’s motionless body in his wheel chair, and Rex warmed toward her. The Scottish whisky, with its distinctively clean, almost medicinal taste, made him feel expansive, and he viewed his guests with good will, hoping all their resolutions came true.

  “And I’m going to work hard on finishing my sculpture,” Flora’s boyfriend continued beside her. “I’m sculpting a room-size space shuttle.”

  “What is it made of ?”
inquired Helen, who had a genuine affinity for young people, one of many qualities Rex appreciated about her.

  “All reclaimed materials,” Jason replied. “Egg cartons, coat hangers, duct tape, yoghurt lids, you name it.”

  “Jason can make stuff out of nothing,” Flora said. “He’s brilliant.”

  “My dad doesn’t think so. He has a chemist shop and wanted me to follow in his footsteps, but all that pill-counting and selling cough drops and bath salts didn’t appeal in the slightest.”

  “I expect he just wanted you to have a secure future,” Alistair said in the father’s defense. “I wanted to become an artist, but my father persuaded me otherwise. I think it was the right decision, in retrospect. But kudos to you for sticking to your guns.”

  Everyone next turned toward Señora Delacruz. What would the intriguing lady come up with?

  _____

  “Ah, this is so difficult …,” Margarita began. “Perhaps keep on doing what I have been doing so far? Traveling to remote parts, exploring cultures. But, yes, maybe something artistic, too. Perhaps I shall take up water colour in the coming year.”

  Rex couldn’t speak for all the guests, but he could tell by the expressions on one or two faces that they felt mildly let down. Painting in water colour seemed a bit undramatic for a person of such striking presence and personality, whom he could readily picture dancing the tango.

  “Well, I plan on winning Interior Designer of the Highlands this coming year,” Vanessa Weaver burst out, clearly anxious for her turn. “It’s a very prestigious award and brings in a lot of work.”

  “How do you go about achieving that?” Flora asked, reaching for her glass of ginger ale on the table.

  “You submit a design board of your best project for the year. That would be my work on the Georgian mansion in Ardnamurchan-and-Ardgour. If you make the cut, the judges visit the property. Then, if nominated, you’re invited to a ball at Glenspean Lodge, where the winner is announced.”