The inspector nodded approvingly. ‘Unless she was the one who’d given him the two thousand, and was demanding repayment.’
Moore’s face cleared. ‘That could be it. She could have been badgering him for it, so he killed her.’
McGillivray smiled at his eagerness. ‘All supposition, of course, but we’ll try to get to the bottom of the mysterious benefactor when we go to Thornkirk tomorrow.’
A light tap on the door made him turn his sheet of suspects face down on the table. ‘Come in.’
A youth, about six feet tall, with fair hair standing out in spikes, positioned himself just inside the door. He fiddled with the zip of his leather jacket for a moment, then said, ‘Excuse me, Chief Inspector? I’m Douglas Pettigrew.’
No flicker of the surprise he felt showed on McGillivray’s face. ‘Ah, shut the door, lad, and sit down.’
‘No thanks. I heard you’d been asking folk about Miss Souter, so you’ve likely been told what I said to her the other week.’ He looked uncomfortably from one to the other, and, when no response came, he carried on nervously. ‘She was a bloody evil woman, and I hated her guts. She found out about May and me . . . Mrs White, I mean.’
‘The one who lives down the Lane,’ McGillivray said lightly.
‘Yes, and I’d been a proper fool over her, she was married and everything, but I thought she’d taken a fancy to me and I fell in love with her. Besotted with her, would be more like it.’
He swallowed, and became so agitated that the inspector took pity on him and said, kindly, ‘I think you should sit down, lad, and tell us all about it.’
Douglas took the vacant chair and ran his hand over his hair. ‘It’s been a total mess. I thought she was serious, but I know now she was only having a bit of fun. At the time, I thought it was great. This experienced woman, and she didn’t laugh at me for being . . . So I started staying all night. I went home about five in the morning, and if my Mum noticed my bed hadn’t been slept in, I told her I’d been sleeping at my pal’s.
‘Mum and Dad didn’t suspect anything, till that old . . . till Miss Souter told them. She’d seen me going home one morning, and she collared me in the High Street and sneered about May. I was so mad at what she said . . .’
‘You told her to mind her own bloody business,’ McGillivray finished for him, with a twinkle in his eye.
‘You know? I suppose a lot of folk heard me.’
‘You also said you’d “get her”.’ Moore had been looking back his notes to Violet Grant’s recollection of the incident.
The boy looked perplexed. ‘Get her? No, I told her I’d sort her out, but that was just . . . I wasn’t really going to do anything to her, I just wanted to stop her interfering.’
‘You didn’t plan to finish her off altogether?’ The Inspector watched Douglas’s face whiten.
‘No, honestly. I know it looks bad for me, and I knew about the arsenic, everybody did, but I wouldn’t have poisoned her.’
‘Not even after she told your father about your nocturnal assignations?’
‘No, Inspector.’ His eyes met McGillivray’s squarely. ‘Dad was raging, of course, and told me to stay away from May’s house or he’d give me a leathering. Some hopes he had of that. I could have stopped him with one hand tied behind my back. I would have defied him, I meant to, but my mum had a long talk with me later on and made me see I’d been making a proper fool of myself. She said I wasn’t the first with May, and I wouldn’t be the last.’
McGillivray smiled. ‘A sensible woman, your mum. So you got over your infatuation?’
‘I was hurt at the time, but I calmed down. I never poisoned Miss Souter. To tell the truth, I began to feel sorry for her. A lonely old maid, getting her kicks from annoying other people.’
‘Yes, she did seem to have a way of putting people’s backs up.’ Callum McGillivray leant his elbows on the table and pursed his lips. In a few seconds, he straightened up. ‘Thank you for coming to see me, Mr Pettigrew, and for explaining your situation. Have you any ideas as to who might have killed her?’
Douglas had risen to his feet and looked startled by the question. ‘N . . . no. I hadn’t even thought about it.’
‘No matter. Thank you again.’
When the door closed behind the boy, the inspector turned his sheet of paper over and picked up his pen. ‘Back to business, and back to Number Five. Douglas Pettigrew. Denies poisoning victim, but had motive and possible opportunity at any time.’
‘Don’t you believe him, sir?’ The sergeant reddened at the look he received. ‘No, of course. Never discount a suspect till he can prove his innocence.’
McGillivray smiled grimly. ‘Never forget that, lad. He said he hadn’t poisoned her, but as you and I both know now, the old woman wasn’t poisoned. He had motive, opportunity, and easy access to insulin and a needle, as you said yourself.’
‘So did lots of other people, I’d imagine. You don’t honestly think he did it, do you, sir? After all, he came here of his own free will.’
‘He could’ve been ferreting about to see what we’d found out.’ The inspector folded his list and placed it in his breast pocket. ‘You thought we hadn’t many suspects, but there’s seven names on my sheet already, and that’s six too many.’
David Moore spent the next hour typing a detailed report of all that had transpired since their arrival in Tollerton that morning, while McGillivray made a few telephone calls checking on Stephen Drummond’s mysterious windfall, with no success. Then he sat so deep in thought it appeared that he had fallen asleep, but he sat up alertly when the noise of the typewriter stopped.
‘You know, Moore, if that arsenic hadn’t been dragged into it, I’d have gone about this investigation in a different way. I’d have concentrated on finding somebody with easy access to insulin, and enough medical savvy to know the stuff would kill her. Not many people would know that.’
‘No, sir. Is there anybody who would fit the bill?’
‘The doctor, the chemist and his son are the only three who spring to mind, and I can’t think Randall had any cause to do it. The other two – well, Sydney Pettigrew surely wouldn’t turn killer because an old woman knew his son was carrying on with a married woman? Douglas, now, is a different matter. His animal instincts were aroused anyway, by May, and, I suppose, in an emotional state like that, he could easily be carried away by the desire to take revenge on Miss Souter for telling his father. But surely not in such a devious way?’
David Moore sat up suddenly. ‘Sir, why don’t we start asking people if they’re diabetic? We’d find out who had insulin, then we could find out if they’d any kind of motive, and tie the case up that way?’
‘Because,’ McGillivray said, heavily, ‘I don’t want other people to know about the insulin. As long as we keep making it look as if our enquiries are purely about the arsenic, the murderer’s going to think he’s got away with it.’
The sergeant couldn’t quite understand how that would help, but he nodded intelligently.
The inspector smiled and explained. ‘A cornered killer, or a killer who fears his little trick’s been discovered, often turns nasty and kills again. I want to avoid that, if I can. And sometimes a killer tries to make another person look guilty. I’d have said, originally, that the first person who mentioned the arsenic, and tried to point a finger elsewhere, was the person we were after.’
‘But that was Mrs Wakeford.’
‘Exactly. And the dead woman’s nephews would have been the obvious suspects, anyway, even if she hadn’t implicated them. God, Moore, my brain’s going round and round in ever decreasing circles, like the Hoojah bird, and you know what happened to it.’
The young sergeant chuckled. ‘It flew up its own . . .’
‘Right! Now, if you’ve finished that report, we’ll have time to snatch forty winks before dinner.’
As they stood up to leave, the door burst open and Derek Paul charged in. ‘I found it, Inspector.’ He held up a smallish pla
stic bag containing a white, powdery substance.
McGillivray’s head had jerked up angrily at the intrusion, but now he beamed with delight. ‘Good lad. Where was it?’
‘Well, there was a pile of logs in one corner, and I decided I’d better shift them in case the arsenic was underneath somewhere. I was going to pile them into the old barrow that was sitting upside down in another corner, and when I lifted it up, there was the bag. I’m sure it’s the arsenic, sir.’
‘Yes, it probably is. Thanks, Constable, you’ve solved one problem anyway, and it didn’t take you long.’
Full of pride, Derek Paul left the room and the inspector frowned suddenly. ‘Why the bloody hell didn’t the Thornkirk lot find this? They were supposed to have searched thoroughly.’
‘Sergeant Black handed them what he said was the arsenic,’ Moore reminded him. ‘It was the analyst’s report that showed it to be flour.’ He thought it best not to say anything about their own unfruitful search. They had gone through the house and the garden like a dose of salts and hadn’t gone into the shed either.
McGillivray’s brows lifted. ‘It must have been the old she-devil herself, right enough. That’s why she was so positive her nephews would be disappointed.’
‘She must have had a mind like a corkscrew,’ remarked Moore. ‘What a thing to do.’
‘Somebody else’s mind must have been even more twisted, though.’ McGillivray lifted the plastic bag off the table. ‘I’d better get this sent to Thornkirk to make sure it really is the arsenic, but I’m ready to bet a month’s salary that it is. Then we’ll maybe get peace to go back to the Starline and catch up on that forty winks before dinner.’
He looked at his watch. ‘Damn. Twenty winks is nearer the mark now.’
Chapter Nine
Saturday 26th November, evening
At eight forty Callum McGillivray looked out, with disgust, from the Starline’s dining-room window at the sleety rain teeming down outside.
‘Bang goes my constitutional,’ he remarked, sadly.
‘What are we going to do, sir?’ David Moore could hardly conceal his relief at not having to walk anywhere in that weather. It would be bad enough going by car.
The inspector rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘I’d better give Black a ring, in case anything’s cropped up since we left.’
He was gone for less than five minutes. ‘He says he’s picked up a little bit of scandal, but he thinks it could wait till morning, so it can’t be anything of earth-shattering importance. I was thinking, though, what would you say to popping into the bar for a while?’
‘I’d say that was a good idea, sir.’
‘Right! Lead, on Macduff.’
‘The name’s Moore, sir.’
McGillivray pretended to cuff his sergeant’s ear as they made their way through Reception. ‘Lead on, Moore? That doesn’t have the same impact, does it?’
The young man grinned. ‘Sounds better to me.’
The lounge was crowded, so they had to stand up at the bar, which quite pleased the inspector, who knew from past experience that much gossip was exchanged over a pint in small communities. Unfortunately, the conversation centred on the Thornkirk football team, which had been winning all its games that season, and had beaten a Second Division club that very afternoon.
At last, one cheery red-faced man turned round, beer mug in hand, and stared at them accusingly. ‘You’re the ’tecs here about old Janet Souter’s murder.’
‘Guilty.’ McGillivray smiled broadly, although he was rather disappointed that they’d been recognised, because the men might close ranks now and tell them nothing. On the other hand, some people found it exhilarating to talk about a murder if they weren’t actually involved.
‘A dirty business, murder,’ another man commented.
The inspector nodded. ‘It is. Did you know the dead woman at all?’ He knew they would expect him to ask.
‘Oh, aye.’ The first man laughed. ‘I’m Ned French, the postie. She was a right old battleaxe, and no mistake, though I never really fell foul of her. She was glad to get letters, likely.
McGillivray turned to the other man. ‘Did you know her?’
‘Nobody could help knowing her, she made sure o’ that, but I delivered her milk. Bill Smith’s the name, and many’s the ear-bashing I got for being late wi’ her pinta.’
‘Did you see her every day?’
‘Every blessed day, but not on the morning of the day she was found dead. I thought she was having a long lie, maybe feeling her age a bit, so I just carried on. I wish I’d looked in her window now, though. If I’d seen her lying ill in her bedroom I could have got the doctor up. She might still have been alive, and they could have taken her to hospital to have her stomach pumped out, or whatever it is they do for poison nowadays. I feel kind o’ guilty for not making sure she was well enough, for she wasn’t, was she?’
‘You weren’t to know,’ McGillivray said. ‘That’s life.’
The postman laughed. ‘Not in her case it wasn’t.’
‘That’s not funny, Ned,’ snapped the milkman.
‘You know fine nobody’s sorry she’s gone.’ Ned French did, however, have the grace to look a little ashamed.
David Moore, who had been keeping one eye open for movement in the seating area, nudged his superior. ‘There’s a vacant corner now, sir.’
The inspector smiled apologetically to the two men. ‘Excuse us, we’re going to have a sit-down. My feet are just about killing me. What’ll you have? This one’s on me.’
Having paid for two pints, he followed Moore to the cushioned bench along the wall and, as he’d expected, the conversation at the bar continued to revolve round the murder. Now he’d maybe find out something.
‘I know Janet Souter was an old pest,’ the milkman was saying, ‘but she shouldna’ve been bumped off. Nobody deserves that . . . especially poison.’
‘She asked for it, Bill.’
‘What d’you mean?’
Ned French assumed an expression of great wisdom. ‘Well, broadcasting about that arsenic she got and putting the idea in somebody’s head. Only a damn fool would do that.’
‘She was far fae bein’ a fool, though; she’d a’ her back teeth in, that lady. The idea musta been in his head afore,’ the milkman reflected. ‘The arsenic was just a means to an end.’
‘It must’ve been one of her nephews. She was worth a good bit, and they likely got sick of waiting for her to kick the bucket.’ The postman took a long draught and finished his beer. Licking his lips, he pushed the empty glass towards the barman. ‘Same again, Joe. What about you, Bill? Right, a pint for Bill, an’ all.’
When the barman laid the brimming glasses down in front of them, Ned clamped his hands round his. ‘Makes you think, poison. Maybe Joe here’s doctored our beer. Eh, Joe?’
The barman looked outraged. ‘For God’s sake, Ned, don’t act the goat. It’s not funny, like Bill said. It could have been anybody. We all knew she’d got arsenic from Davie Livingstone. Could’ve been you, even. You were at her door often enough wi’ letters, you could easily have done it. Or Bill there, when he was delivering her milk.’
‘Oh, aye, we’re real criminals, Bill and me.’ Ned French threw back his head, roaring with laughter. ‘There’s lots o’ folk I’d like to get rid of – the wife, for a start. What about you, Bill?’
The milkman laid down his tankard, looking serious. ‘I dinna ken, Ned. It’s OK laughing about it, but somebody must’ve done it.’
‘That’s right, Bill.’ The barman looked solemn. ‘Me and Dolly was just speaking about it at teatime. Somebody must’ve wanted the old woman out of the way desperate, afore he went an’ poisoned her. Her nephews, now, they ken’t they’d get her money eventually. She was nearly eighty-seven, Dolly says, and she’d have died naturally in a year or two, so there wouldna’ve been any need for them to do it.’
‘Not unless they were needing the cash in a hurry,’ the postman agreed.
‘They both had their own businesses, I remember her telling me once,’ Bill Smith put in. ‘So they must’ve been well enough off, you’d think.’
The two drinkers mulled this over while Joe served another customer farther along the bar. When he returned, he took up his story again.
‘As my Dolly was sayin’, what about young Douglas Pettigrew? He threatened to sort her out for telling his father about him and May Falconer.’
The postman shook his head. ‘No, that was afore she tell’t his father. She’d said something nasty to Douglas about May, and that’s why he lost his head. Mind you, that lad’s got a wicked temper.’
Ned French paused to take a drink, and Callum McGillivray nudged his sergeant. Moore obediently cocked his ears and paid avid attention to the men’s conversation.
‘You were saying, Ned, about young Pettigrew’s temper,’ the barman prompted.
‘Oh aye. It was a few weeks back, but I saw him putting his hands round Jim Dunne’s throat to strangle him.’
‘God Almighty! What for?’ Joes eyes nearly popped out.
‘It turned out they’d been discussing girls, and Jim had said May Falconer was the one to go to if you wanted a lark and a roll in the sack. Douglas turned white and jumped on him. The other lads had to haul him off, and he was shouting, “I’ll kill you for that, Jim Dunne” when they dragged him away.’
‘Well, I never heard anything about that.’ Joe sounded indignant as he leaned his elbows on the counter. ‘He comes in here now and then, but I’ve never once seen him lose his temper. But it just shows you. He could have killed the old woman.’
Ned considered, then frowned. ‘Poisoning’s nae a young person’s style. If she’d been strangled, now, I’d say Douglas could be the killer, he’s strong enough.’
‘Aye, he’s a strong laddie.’ The milkman nodded, wisely.
‘Aye . . . well . . . but she wasna strangled.’ Ned drained his glass again, but gestured that he didn’t want a refill. ‘I’d better get home, or the wife’ll be up to high doh.’
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