by Alan Hunter
McGuigan hoisted her up – she was only a feather to him – and hesitated a second; then he gave a jerk of his head to Gently and Brenda and went striding off towards the house. They got out of the Cortina and followed him. Hamish scrambled up anguishedly from his knees. He ran after his master and jigged along beside him, expostulating, twisting about to face the big man.
‘Och, Knockie, if ye’d only listened! I was for tellin’ ye – I kent she meant trouble.’
‘No more of that, man.’
‘Ay, but she tellt me – I kent fine about the vagayries ower at Tudlem.’
‘Whist – hold your tongue.’
‘But Knockie, I maun tell ye – the Englishman kens ye were up the braes!’
‘Man,’ McGuigan growled from his belly. ‘If ye winna hold your tongue, by gar, I’ll grip it an’ stow it down your thrapple!’
In the yard stood a blue Sunbeam Alpine, presumably the property of Mary Dunglass. McGuigan marched past it and up the steps of the porch and crashed open twin doors with his boot. They followed him in. He carried his burden into one of the rooms and laid her tenderly on a sofa. She was conscious again now. She was staring at McGuigan, her eyes dark against her pale face.
‘If I’m not mistaken,’ McGuigan growled at Gently, ‘you’ll be wanting a word or two with us.’
Gently nodded. ‘It could help if I understood certain matters.’
‘Ay – but first the lady must get her breath back – and then we’ll want some cracks of our own. You’ll be good enough to bide in the sitting-room, man – I’ll have Lettie fetch you in some refreshment. Lettie!’
A dour, mannish-faced woman appeared at the door to listen with downcast eyes to the laird’s instructions. She made a tart little bob to Gently and Brenda and stood aside to usher them out.
‘What about my car?’ Gently asked.
‘Give the keys to Hamish. He knows what to do.’
Gently handed them over; then they followed the dour woman to a room on the other side of the house.
‘Offer me a cigarette,’ Brenda said, when the door closed. ‘George, this is upsetting. They really love one another.’
‘I’m afraid they do,’ Gently shrugged, offering his case. ‘And not even a Scots jury is going to miss it.’
‘McGuigan’s a devil. He doesn’t deserve her. And she’s a daft bitch – she doesn’t deserve him.’
‘As you say, they’re made for each other.’
‘And now they’re right up the creek.’
She accepted a light, began stalking the room and puffing out short jets of smoke. It was a dull room. It contained Victorian furniture that simply looked seedy and outmoded. High on the wall hung a large, grimy case from which peered a family of moulting wild cats; near the window stood a vast fretwork cabinet exhibiting dusty trays of geological specimens.
‘My God, it needs a woman around,’ Brenda nagged.
‘Sit down,’ Gently said. ‘We may be here for a while.’
‘But George, why didn’t she marry the great oaf in the first place, instead of wasting her sweetness on Donnie Dunglass?’
‘Perhaps she loved Dunglass.’
‘Never in your life. She didn’t love anyone before she loved Jamie. He’s the guiding light of her frabjous existence, and if you don’t know that you don’t know anything.’
‘It did strike me that way,’ Gently admitted. ‘But I was waiting to get an expert opinion.’
‘Now you’ve got one.’
‘Perhaps you can tell me something else. Do you like McGuigan – or don’t you?’
‘Hah,’ Brenda said, straddling before him. ‘The trained brain. I shall have to be careful. When you put a question to me like that I’m supposed to effervesce with mindless truth. I hate McGuigan. I hate his beard. I hate his size. I hate his vanity. I hate McGuigan with a fierce hate. And I like him very much. Will that do?’
‘It seems adequate,’ Gently grinned. ‘Let me switch you to the lady.’
‘Oh, she’s just a fribbling, gipsyish thing,’ Brenda said. ‘I’d share my flat with her tomorrow, and pinch her stockings like nobody’s business.’
‘Neither, you’d say, is cut out for murder.’
‘Jamie might frighten someone to death.’
‘But not go after them with a dirk.’
Brenda shook her head decidedly. ‘He’d sooner grapple them by the thrapple.’
‘Of course, we could be wrong,’ Gently mused. ‘I’ve dealt with some really likeable murderers. And it would be so convenient for Inspector Blayne to have such a clear-cut, uncomplicated solution. I daresay nobody will pull many strings on behalf of a pocket laird and his light-o’-love – not like they would for a Nationalist group, with its fingers in everyone’s pie.’
‘You’re so beautifully cold-blooded about it,’ Brenda said. ‘Your noble professionalism slays me.’
‘I’m just reviewing the situation as it stands,’ Gently said. ‘Blayne is human – and it may be his superiors are sympathizers with the S.N.A.G. If that were so, then his play with them this morning may have been a bluff for our benefit – a pretence that if they were really involved he would still do his duty without fear or favour. No policeman in his senses could overlook the other angle, and Blayne was appearing to do just that. Eventually, when he charges this pair, we will be expected to be satisfied that he gave equal attention to S.N.A.G.’
‘But that would be a deliberate frame!’ Brenda exclaimed.
‘Not if McGuigan and Mrs Dunglass really killed her husband. It would just be a diplomatic deception to support the characters of Blayne and the S.N.A.G.’
‘But Jamie and Mary didn’t kill him.’
‘Nor, perhaps, did the S.N.A.G.’
‘Then who did?’
Gently lifted, dropped his hands. ‘Some other party. Our friend X.’
‘Oh, I hate being logical!’ Brenda cried, beginning to stalk the room again. ‘Nothing ever came of a syllogism except another syllogism. Facts, figures, slick arguments, they’re just a mental screen against what is. I know what I know what I know – and Jamie and Mary didn’t kill him.’
‘This morning you were equally positive she had a hand in it,’ Gently grinned.
‘There you go again – demanding consistency! How did I know they were in love?’
‘Doesn’t consistency matter?’
‘Of course it doesn’t. It’s simply the first fallacy of logic. What is is is when it it, and what is now is they are innocent.’
‘I’ll have to remember that,’ Gently said. ‘It must have some other applications.’
‘Oh George, I’m unhappy about this business.’
Gently humped his shoulders and stared at the wild cats.
Lettie returned, as sullen as before, bearing tea on a tarnished tray. She laid it on the cabinet without a word but gave her eloquent bob before departing.
‘How she loves us,’ Brenda sighed. ‘It was probably her who shopped us when we sneaked the Land Rover.’
‘We’re the enemy,’ Gently said. ‘She remembers Culloden.’
‘Bannockburn too, I shouldn’t wonder.’
But the tea was good, and there was a plate of scones still warm from the baking. They sat on low chairs with high, carved backs and sipped and ate and gazed at the room. It was a sad room, as well as a dull one. It smelled of disuse and straitened fortune. Nothing in it was new except a few books which lay stacked on a whatnot in the dimmest corner. Perhaps four generations had slipped away since that furniture had been new and modish, since the candles were lit and a Laird of Knockie had entertained guests with his fossils. Yes, it needed a woman around . . . especially, it needed a rich widow.
‘I suppose . . . I suppose,’ Brenda murmured.
Gently chewed a scone and said nothing.
They finished the scones and drained the pot. Soon after, McGuigan and Mary Dunglass came in.
McGuigan closed the door.
Mary Dunglass, with a deal more colo
ur in her cheeks, slipped shyly to a high-back chair and sat droopingly to stare at the carpet. McGuigan stood. He found a post for himself before the rusty iron hearth, leaning back, elbows on the mantelshelf, his beard tilted at the world. He took a fierce look at Gently.
‘Well, we’ve had our words, man,’ he said tightly. ‘We have this matter straight now. You can go ahead with your questions.’
‘Just a moment,’ Gently said. ‘I don’t have any right to ask questions. In Scotland I’m simply a private citizen – nobody is answerable to me.’
‘You’re acquainted with Blayne, are you not?’
‘Only as the officer investigating a certain case.’
‘Ay, and you talked it over with him, and gave him your mind – you ken the case as well as he does.’
‘That may be so, but he’s your man.’
‘It’s you I want to be asking the questions.’
‘Please!’ Mary Dunglass broke in. ‘It’s your help we’re asking for, Superintendent. We’re in sore trouble, Jamie and I – he’s too proud to ask you, but I’m not!’
‘Is that the truth?’ Gently asked McGuigan.
McGuigan’s beard stuck out even straighter. ‘Ay,’ he growled. ‘She tells you true. We need your help, man – there’s all that’s to it.’
‘But how can I help you?’
McGuigan scowled. ‘You can hold us for innocent, for a start. And it’s just that you’re English an’ have no standing that sets you where you can do that.’
‘I’ll have to inform Blayne of anything you tell me.’
‘So you will – and so you should. But you need not think like him, none the more – you can pit your wit with Mary and me. You ken the case man, you’re a grand expert, it should not be past you to get at the truth – an’ the truth must be got at if we’re to win out – we’re dooms deep, man. Dooms deep.’
‘Say yes,’ Brenda said. ‘Or I’ll kick you, George.’
‘Oh please, yes,’ pleaded Mary Dunglass.
Gently wriggled his shoulders. ‘Carry on then,’ he said. ‘As long as you appreciate my position – I can’t hold out on Blayne.’
McGuigan lowered his beard and re-established his elbows on the mantelshelf. His large face, partly in shade, had an air of archetypal majesty. Though he was roughly dressed, his athletic build showed strikingly under his slack garments, and the shirt parting at his throat gave him a slightly coltish look.
‘You ken Mary and I are cousins,’ he said slowly. ‘That’s in the Scots way, you understand – she’s a McGuigan from Cuitybraggan, which is over the hills – I spent a while there in my father’s time. I kent Mary from a wee bairn. There’s a year or two between us.’
‘Ay, I grew up with Jamie,’ Mary Dunglass said. ‘He was at school with my brothers at Invergoyll. Then the war came, and Jamie was away and I didn’t see him again for fifteen years.’
‘I was in the Control Commission after the war,’ McGuigan said. ‘Then I was flying for Charter Airways. Then I was two years in Rhodesia. I didn’t come back here till my father died.’
‘To find your cousin married,’ Gently said.
McGuigan nodded. ‘The year before I got back. Dunglass was a cousin on her mother’s side – they’re a Glasgow family with big connections. And – I don’t know how to put it – we just picked up again – Mary came visiting to Cuitybraggan. And Dunglass was cool, you’ll kindly believe. He was not the mark as a husband.’
‘Worse than that,’ Mary Dunglass said bitterly. ‘He was keeping some woman in Balmagussie. I won’t blush for lovin’ Jamie – I had a husband not worth two pins.’
‘And so it went on,’ McGuigan said, ‘with a meeting now, a meeting then – till last night was once too often, I’m thinking, and some person tipped Dunglass the wink.’
Gently looked at Mary Dunglass. ‘So you were up the braes last night,’ he said.
She slanted her face from him. ‘And if I was,’ she said, ‘it was no particular business of Inspector Blayne’s. I didn’t kill Donnie – I didn’t ken he was there – by his own account he was off to Balma’. I had Mollie McGrath to swear I stayed indoors. Why should I tell the Inspector I went out?’
‘You’ll have to tell him now,’ Gently said.
‘It doesn’t matter now. He’s on to Jamie. And I ken now what I didn’t ken then, though I never did believe it in my heart.’
‘That Mr McGuigan didn’t kill your husband?’
She stared at Gently defiantly. ‘Ay.’
‘You thought it was possible.’
‘I didn’t believe it. But I didn’t have it then from his own lips.’
She smiled at McGuigan, who remained stern.
Gently said: ‘I want to know more about this assignation. Mr McGuigan only returned from London yesterday – how did you know he would be at the meeting place?’
‘Och, it was prearranged,’ McGuigan said. ‘We fixed for one meeting at another. And coming north to Knockie you pass through Tudlem, so it was just certain I’d pause there when I was back from a trip.’
‘You had no communication about it yesterday.’
‘None.’
‘Nor at all – since the meeting before?’
McGuigan shook his head. ‘We had a manner of communicating, but nothing passed between us since we met last Saturday.’
‘Would you care to explain what that manner was?’
McGuigan shrugged. ‘It’s no matter now. I used to ring Mattie Robertson – who keeps the Bonnie Strathtudlemand she’d pass the message to Molly McGrath. It’s by ringing Mattie this afternoon I heard what had happened to Dunglass.’
‘And you can trust these two ladies?’
‘Ay, we can.’
‘They’re two of my own folk,’ Mary Dunglass said. ‘Molly came with me from Cuitybraggan, and Mattie’s her cousin from Glencoram.’
‘Then who do you think gave you away?’
‘Neither of those two,’ Mary Dunglass said.
‘Then who?’
She shook her head. ‘It was the person who rang him, I’m sure of that. He gave me an auld, auld look when he came to tell me he was away – he kent then – no’ before – I should have taken warning from it.’
‘And neither of you can guess who that person was?’
‘We were always gey careful,’ McGuigan said.
‘Somebody who might want Dunglass dead?’
They both stared at Gently, but said nothing.
‘Well,’ Gently said. ‘Let’s get to what happened. You had this assignation fixed up for last night. You, Mr McGuigan, were waiting at the Stane. Tell me what you saw from up there.’
‘I saw you and Miss Merryn,’ McGuigan scowled. ‘And you picked our very spot, man, for sitting down. And I was cursing you grandly through my beard, I tell you that to your face,’
‘Where was your car?’ Gently smiled.
‘I have a wee hidin’-place in the timber. I was up at the Stane round nine o’clock time – nothing was stirring there then.’
‘Did you see Dunglass drive towards Balmagussie?’
‘I ken he went off before I got up there.’
‘Donnie left at half past eight,’ Mary Dunglass said. ‘Jamie couldn’t have seen him from where he was.’
‘So where exactly were you at half past eight?’ Gently asked.
McGuigan paused. ‘I’d just be setting out from the car,’ he said. ‘Mary wasn’t expecting me till late. I had my supper in Balma’. Then I drove to the place where I leave the car and sat there a while, perhaps half an hour.’
‘Could anyone have seen you there, seen you go there?’
‘They’d need to know where to look,’ McGuigan said. ‘I come into the back road out of Glen Skilling, and passed nothing and nobody on the way.’
‘That’s the opposite end to Halfstarvit?’
‘Ay. Dunglass could never have spotted my car.’
‘But apparently someone did spot your car – and phoned Mr Dunglass while yo
u were still sitting in it.’
McGuigan stood frowning at the faded carpet. ‘I cannot just figure that out,’ he said. ‘There’s never a telephone till you come to Skilling – that’s more than four miles away. If the car was seen where I hide it they must have been on the phone in minutes – they’d need a car – and there wasn’t a car – I had the road in sight all the time.’
‘Was there in fact a phone call?’ Gently asked Mary Dunglass.
‘Indeed there was,’ Mary Dunglass said. ‘I heard it ringing, and Donnie picked it up, and straight after that he came to say he was going out.’
‘Did you hear what he said?’
‘No, I couldn’t hear that – he was in the hall, I was in the sitting-room – but at first he sounded angry, then he spoke soft, then he hung up with a good bang. Inspector Blayne was busy tracing the call – maybe he can tell you where it was made from.’
‘Hm,’ Gently said. ‘We’ll pass that. Mr McGuigan leaves his car to go up to the Stane. It apparently takes him about half an hour, and presumably he has a private way up there.’
‘Och, there’s a dozen ways,’ McGuigan said. ‘If you ken the braes like a mountain man. I took a line up through the trees then worked along to the Stane.’
‘Seeing nobody.’
‘Just so. And nobody seeing me, you ken. It was a soft, quiet manner of evening, with the doves crooing down below.’
‘And at the Stane, nobody.’
‘Till yourselves – and I watched ye coming from far away.’
‘But Dunglass was up there. He took the path before us. We noticed his tracks on our way up.’
‘You did, did you,’ McGuigan said, shooting Gently a sharp glance. ‘And what time do they say the man died, if I would not be asking a wrong question?’
‘Around eleven o’clock, or a little later.’
‘Oh my God!’ Mary Dunglass exclaimed. She swung away from them, her hands to her face, and gave a little keening moan.
‘Then he was well alive,’ McGuigan said fiercely, ‘when I came down from the Stane last night – and you can give me the time of that yourselves, for you were leaving below when I was leaving above.’
‘We saw you at the Stane,’ Gently said. ‘But when you came down we don’t know.’
‘I came down then.’