As he walked past the two detectives, the postman sketched an exaggerated salute and said, ‘Good hunting, Inspector.’
David Moore opened his mouth to say something, but closed it quickly when McGillivray kicked his ankle. The conversation at the bar was not yet finished.
‘I’d never have thought Douglas Pettigrew had a temper like that,’ Bill Smith was saying. ‘Would you, Joe?’
‘It shook me, but like Ned said, he’s nae the poisoning type. That’s more a woman’s game, if you ask me.’
‘May Falconer? She’s game for anything. Would you believe, she comes to the door on Fridays in her nightie to pay her milk? And nae like my wife wears, buttoned right up to the chin. Nae much left to the imagination about May’s. Just flaunting herself.’ Bill laughed softly. ‘And she’s got plenty to flaunt. If I wasna a respectable married man . . .’
‘Chance would be a fine thing.’ Joe turned away to serve again, but was back in a few moments to carry on with the fascinating topic.
‘All May Falconer’s ever been interested in,’ he said, confidentially, ‘even afore she wed Gilbert White, is men, and boys. They tell me young Willie Arthur had to run for his life one night when he was delivering the papers.’
‘Ach, you’re pulling my leg,’ laughed the milkman. ‘But she’s a proper man-eater.’
‘My very words,’ whispered McGillivray, taking a sip of his whisky during the slight pause that followed.
Having given due consideration to the possibility of May White being a poisoner, the barman gave his verdict. ‘She never gets serious with any of them, though. She only married Gilbert ’cos he’d a good job that took him away most of the time, but she’s not a murderer.’ He rinsed out a couple of glasses and picked up the drying towel. ‘No, they’ll have to look in another direction for the killer.’
Bill took a gulp from his tankard, then frowned. ‘I just minded. A few days afore Miss Souter was murdered, that Mrs Grant next door to her – the quiet one – was telling me their dog had been poisoned. She was real cut up about it, and said the old woman had admitted doing it. Sneered about it.’
‘Mrs Grant would never have killed her, Bill. She wouldn’t say boo to a goose.’
‘No, nae her,’ the milkman said hastily. ‘Her sister. That one’s the boss. I wouldna put it past her, and having her dog killed could be reason enough. Some folk get really attached to their dogs.’
‘True enough.’ Joe mopped up a drop of spilt beer. ‘Me and Dolly think the world of our Bully. If somebody poisoned him, Bill, I’d feel like killing them, I know that.’
‘There you are then.’ Bill Smith finished his beer. ‘That’s what I mean, but if the ’tecs can’t figure that out for themselves, it’s nae up to me to tell them. God, look at the time. I’d better be off an’ all, or my life’ll nae be worth livin’.’
He set his glass down on the counter and went out, nodding to the two men sitting on the corner bench as he passed.
The inspector was about to rise and leave, when he realised that Joe was entering into a discussion with another customer. He motioned to his sergeant to sit still, and settled back himself.
‘I couldna help hearin’ what you and Bill were saying, Joe, and there’s another female involved in this, you ken.’ The small fat man had moved along and was leaning across the counter. ‘Mrs Wakeford, her that stays in Number One of the Cottages.’
‘Good God, Harry! She’s a real lady. You surely canna think she’d anything to do with this?’
‘I’m only going by what the wife told me a week or so back.’ Harry looked hurt. ‘Old Janet Souter had been spreading muck about Mrs Wakeford – that she shouldna be so stuck up when her mother was never married. When my Nora heard about it, she went and asked old Mrs Gray, at the foot of the Lane, if it was true. She must be about ninety, but she said it was right enough. Mrs Wakeford had been born on the wrong side of the blanket, and her mother had been single till the day she died. She said it was just like Janet Souter to dig that up after over sixty years, and likely it was just Janet Souter an’ her that would’ve remembered about it.’
Joe poured himself a small whisky. ‘I never heard about it afore, any road, but Mrs Wakeford surely wouldna have poisoned the old woman just for that?’
Harry smirked. ‘But that wasna all. Mrs Gray tell’t my Nora another spicy bit. Apparently, Mrs Wakeford had a bairn hersel’, long afore she married the Major.’
This rendered Joe speechless, and he waited, with eager eyes, for Harry to continue.
‘She’d have been about sixteen or seventeen at the time, and she was sent away for a few months. Her mother put it about that she’d got a job in Aberdeen some place, but a rumour went round that she was expecting. You ken what women are like, they can twist things any way they want. Mair than likely there wasna a grain o’ truth in it.’
The barman nodded, never taking his eyes off the other man.
‘Wherever she’d been, she came back empty handed, so the rumour petered out and was forgotten.’
‘Except by old Mrs Gray.’
‘Well, she said she wouldna’ve minded onything about it, either, if my Nora hadna jogged her memory. But she was sure there had been a bairn, and it musta been adopted, or died even. Now, if that was true, Mrs Wakeford could have got the wind up in case Janet Souter would rake it up next, and had made sure the old woman would never get the chance.’ Harry swigged his beer down as if his mouth was parched from all his talking, then placed the empty glass on the counter and looked up hopefully.
Joe slipped him a free drink. ‘You get your eyes opened, sometimes, and that’s a fact. I’d never have thought that about Mrs Wakeford. I’d have said butter wouldna melt in her mouth, but you never ken, do you? An’ what if Janet Souter had spewed out to the poor woman that she kent about her murky past? It’s just the kinda evil thing that old bitch would’ve done. That would give Mabel the perfect reason for shutting her up . . .’ He stopped, scowling. ‘But I canna believe she’d have . . . No, no, we may as well forget that.’
Shaking his head at what Harry had been saying, Joe moved along to serve another customer. ‘Yes, sir?’
Harry, realising that the interesting discussion had been terminated, was drawn by a heated argument that had burst into life about the day’s football results, and took his pint glass across to where the protagonists were already waving their fists.
McGillivray let out a low whistle. ‘My God, Moore, I didn’t expect anything like that when I came in. Talk about a bonus. It makes you think, eh? There’s a lot more to our Mrs Wakeford than meets the eye.’
‘Oh, but sir, I’m absolutely positive she wouldn’t have been capable of murder. Anyway, having an illegitimate child is nothing nowadays.’
‘I’m inclined to agree with you, lad, but I am in urgent need of some shut-eye. It’s going to take me a long time to recover from getting up at three o’clock this morning to make the never-ending journey to this godforsaken part of Bonnie Scotland.’
Moore nodded. ‘Aye, I feel a bit under the weather myself. My eyes are stinging with cigarette smoke as well as lack of sleep.’
‘Right then, we may as well toddle upstairs, and, since tomorrow’s Sunday, I’d say a nine o’clock breakfast would be early enough, eh? Mind you, a twelve o’clock brunch would suit me better, but . . . we must show willing.
Chapter Ten
Sunday 27th November, morning
After breakfast, the two detectives walked along to the police station. The sleet had stopped overnight, but the pavements were still wet, and the wind still howled.
Callum McGillivray turned up his coat collar. ‘A lazy wind,’ he growled.
David Moore looked puzzled. ‘Lazy? What d’you mean?’
‘Too lazy to go round you, so it goes right through you.’
Moore groaned.
John Black followed them into the incident room in a mild state of excitement. ‘I found out last night that Janet Souter had been sneering to
people about Mrs Wakeford being illegitimate. Mrs Macdonald came up to me and told me, so if she knew, it had likely got back to the lady herself. Would that be sufficient reason for her to . . . ?’ He looked extremely uncomfortable about saying it, but it was his duty to pass on all information relevant to the case; and he had never been one to shirk his duty.
‘I wouldn’t think so, Black, but I’ve been finding things out too.’ McGillivray placed his hands together. ‘Not only was Mabel Wakeford born on the wrong side of the blanket, she’d been sampling forbidden fruit herself before she was married, and had been left in the family way by all accounts.’
The local sergeant was astounded. ‘Oh, no. There’s never been a breath of scandal about her before, not as long as I’ve been here, and that’s coming on for twenty-five years. Who told you that?’
‘We did a bit of eavesdropping in the hotel bar last night,’ the inspector admitted, ‘and apparently the information came from a lady at the foot of Ashgrove Lane. She’s about ninety, I believe.’
‘Ah, yes, old Mrs Gray. She used to be quite a character about the place till she was housebound. Arthritis, I think. And she dug all this up, did she? I wouldn’t have thought she was one for that kind of thing.’
Callum McGillivray smiled. ‘It was pulled out of her, it seems, by someone harvesting the seeds Janet Souter had sown. Now, that secret, if it’s true, is something that Mrs Wakeford would have wanted to suppress. But would she have had the ability to procure insulin and a hypodermic needle? That’s what we’ll have to try to find out.’
Moore butted in. ‘And she was the first person to mention the arsenic, remember, and you said that might have been done to confuse the issue.’
The inspector nodded absent-mindedly. He was savouring the thought of giving John Black another surprise. ‘We picked up another titbit, though. Did you know that Douglas Pettigrew almost strangled somebody on the street a while back?’
Black looked suitably shaken. ‘No, I hadn’t heard that. But why on earth would he want to strangle anybody?’
‘He’d been having an argument with another youth, over Mrs Gilbert White.’
‘And of course you knew that she’s our local seductress. Well, your sojourn in the bar certainly paid dividends.’
‘It was quite profitable, and it shows that the young man in question would be capable of losing his temper to such an extent as to render him murderous. We also know he could have obtained a syringe and insulin from his father’s shop.’
‘That’s true,’ Black said sadly. ‘You’d better have another word with him, Inspector.’
‘I fully intend to. In fact. I think I should see him before I do anything else. Does he live near here?’
‘Across the street, above the chemist’s.’
‘Where else?’ McGillivray groaned.
‘He works in the garage at the end of the High Street every second Sunday, though. He takes turns with the time-served mechanic.’ Black screwed up his face in thought. ‘I think this is his week on. Yes, he wasn’t there last Sunday when I went in for petrol.’
‘That’s at the other end of the street from Honeysuckle Cottages, I presume? Right, Moore, we’ll stretch our legs and walk along there first, then we’ll come back and pick up the car to go to Thornkirk to see the two nephews.’
The owner of the garage was obliging enough to let them use his small office to talk to his young apprentice, who came in looking rather apprehensive.
‘Mr Dow says you want to see me?’
‘That’s right. There’s a little matter we’d like to clear up.’ The inspector turned to his sergeant. ‘Moore, read out what you wrote in your notes last night.’
David Moore had recorded, after they’d gone upstairs, as much as he’d remembered of the conversations they’d overheard in the lounge bar, and while he read out the few lines pertaining to the quarrel, the eighteen-year-old’s face grew redder and redder as his lack of control was recalled to him.
‘Now then, Mr Pettigrew,’ McGillivray said severely, emphasising the Mister as though the boy didn’t really deserve the title, ‘would that be an accurate account of the incident?’
‘Er . . . yes . . . I suppose so.’ Douglas was obviously embarrassed. ‘I just went wild when Jim Dunne said that about May – Mrs White. I told you before, I was besotted with her at the time, and I just lashed out.’
The inspector held up his hand. ‘Oh no, Mister Pettigrew, you didn’t just lash out. That would have been the normal reaction, I agree, but you attempted to strangle this other lad. Not the usual method of showing displeasure, if I may say.’
‘I don’t know what came over me, honest I don’t. I’ve never done anything like that before, or since.’
‘Are you absolutely sure of that?’
‘Of course I’m sure.’ Douglas was beginning to sound slightly rattled. ‘I only wanted to stop him saying anything else about May and I went for his throat.’
‘Quite.’ McGillivray’s eyes bored into the young man’s. ‘And Miss Souter had also said some terrible things about your paramour. Are you sure you didn’t end up trying to kill her, too, striking it lucky this time?’ If he had hoped to goad the boy into admitting that he had, he was disappointed.
‘I did feel like killing her,’ Douglas said, honestly. ‘But only for a few minutes. I’d never have done anything to hurt her, really, the same as I wouldn’t really have strangled Jim Dunne. I only wanted to frighten him.’
‘Which I’ve no doubt you succeeded in doing.’ McGillivray leaned back in the rickety chair with his hands together.
After squirming uncomfortably for a few moments, Douglas said, ‘If you’re finished with me, I’d better get back to work. I know it’s no excuse, but I was ashamed of what I did to Jim Dunne. I realised, afterwards, he was only speaking the truth, and I should have been grateful. I apologised to him the next day, you know, and we’re still good pals.’
Callum McGillivray smiled. ‘Good. I’m sorry we had to ask about it, but when we hear of somebody with a short fuse, we naturally have to investigate.’
‘I suppose so. Is that all?’
‘Did you ever have any medical or pharmaceutical training yourself, lad? Your father must have wanted you to learn the business?’ The inspector looked searchingly at the boy.
‘Who, me?’ Douglas laughed derisively. ‘I was a big round zero at school, and I left as soon as I was sixteen. My dad was a bit disappointed, but I always wanted to be a mechanic, so when George Dow offered me an apprenticeship, Dad didn’t stop me.’
McGillivray changed his tactics. ‘Can you account for your movements during last Wednesday night?’
‘Eh?’ The youth’s expression showed no fear. ‘I thought it was Thursday the old woman was poisoned. Or was it done the night before?’
‘Just answer the question, please.’
‘You surely don’t suspect me of . . . ?’ He stopped when he saw the stern expression on the inspector’s face. ‘OK. Wednesday? I was playing snooker in the church hall. They’ve got a table in the back for the Youth Club.’
‘Can you prove that?’
Douglas raised his eyes to the roof, then sighed. ‘Four of us were playing in pairs, and they’ll all tell you I was there. Do you want their names, the other three?’
The inspector nodded. ‘And their addresses, if you don’t mind. We’ll have to verify your statement. My sergeant will make a note of them.’
‘OK.’ Douglas said again. ‘Well, Jim Dunne was one. You know, the one I nearly strangled a few weeks ago, according to you.’ He gave a lopsided grin and reeled off the rest of the details, while Moore valiantly scribbled them down.
McGillivray gave a tight smile. ‘Thank you. I think that will be all for now.’
The boy looked very relieved, and he shot out of the poky office as if someone had attached a lit firework to the backside of his trousers.
‘Do you want me to check up on his alibi now?’ Moore asked as they went out.
<
br /> ‘No, we’d better go to Thornkirk first. You can do it when we get back. Hello, here’s Black. What’s he looking so upset about, I wonder?’
‘Thank goodness I caught you,’ the local sergeant said as soon as he opened his car door. ‘There’s been an attempt on Mrs Grant’s life. Apparently, she’d been in agony since very early this morning with stomach pains, but she wouldn’t let her sister call the doctor until about half past six. Randall thought it was food poisoning, and had her rushed to Thornkirk Hospital. They’ve just phoned to tell me they found traces of arsenic in the sample they tested after they made her sick. Her sister’s there with her now.’
‘Back to the Starline!’ McGillivray wished that they hadn’t come to the garage on foot. ‘I’d meant to see the nephews next, but this takes priority.’
The local sergeant having given them a lift back to the Starline, it took less than five minutes for the two detectives to settle into the Vauxhall and head off, Moore tearing along the road to Thornkirk as if testing how fast the old car could actually go, and not one word of caution from his superior on keeping to the speed limit. The DCI had other things on his mind.
‘Damn and blast!’ McGillivray thumped his left hand with his right fist. ‘I was afraid something like this would happen.’
‘Has Mrs Skinner tried to silence her sister, do you think?’ David Moore sounded his horn and passed a small Fiat doing fifty.
‘I never jump to conclusions, but it seems more than likely. Mrs Grant was dangerously near breaking point, poor lady.’
Little else was said on the twenty-mile journey. The sergeant had to concentrate on driving at high speed, and the inspector was in a cold sweat at several near misses. When they arrived at the hospital, he asked to be dropped at the main door before Moore parked the car, and hurried to the information desk. ‘Mrs Violet Grant?’
The receptionist checked and said, ‘Still in Emergency, and she’s not being allowed any visitors meantime.’
McGillivray was halfway along the corridor. ‘Police,’ he called over his shoulder.
Grace Skinner was sitting on a bench in the waiting area, whitefaced and dabbing her eyes, and she looked up mournfully when the inspector approached her.
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