‘This is Mrs Gilver, that found the body,’ Petrie said, when I entered the library.
Sgt Morrison nodded gravely. ‘You were very brave, madam,’ he said. ‘Very enterprising to go haring off on your own like that into the garden, rather than get help or raise the alarm.’
It might have sounded like praise but I knew it was admonishment. I refused to hang my head. ‘I was trying to keep things quiet because of the party, Sergeant,’ I said. ‘If I’d known the man was being murdered I’d have taken a different tack, obviously. Have you any ideas? He didn’t get away through the garden gate. We know that much. He might have got away round the house and out the front way, though.’ It occurred to me then that if Grant had been stationed on the drive, instead of guarding the servants’s stairway, she would have seen him. I sighed.
‘I’ve sent men along the street, knocking at the doors telling folk to check their outhouses and lock up tight,’ the sergeant said, but as he spoke I was aware of a figure hovering in the doorway, shifting heavily from foot to foot. McReadie came forward diffidently, tugging at his tight collar.
‘Begging your pardon,’ he said. ‘I need to tell you something.’
‘Who are you?’ said Sgt Morrison. ‘The guests were supposed to stay upstairs until I spoke to them.’
‘Don’t let this mislead you,’ McReadie said, waving a hand that was meant to take in his Brilliantined hair, his shiny suit and his dancing shoes, a pair of cracked patent-leather antiques I supposed had been Lachlan’s many moons ago. ‘I’m the gardener. I’m Lady Love’s gardener. I’m—’ He sniffed and put a work-roughened hand up to his face to wipe his nose as his eyes brimmed. ‘I can tell you nobody got away down the drive.’
‘Oh?’ said Morrison.
‘I saw the kerfuffle upstairs,’ McReadie said. ‘I saw Mr Spencer go rushing out and you after him, Mr Osborne. I saw the ladies go off in different directions and Mr Gilver go into Miss Cherry’s bedroom. So it wasn’t hard to guess that you were looking for him. But no one went to keep an eye on the drive. And all those cars were parked there. So, I just slipped out and stood in the shadows. Kept my eyes peeled.’
‘Very fortuitous,’ Morrison said.
‘And so it’s true, is it, your lordship?’ McReadie said. ‘Mr Spencer is murdered, is he?’ He drew a sharp breath in over his bottom teeth and wrung his hands. ‘I can’t go on my own. I’m sorry to be thinking of myself at a time like this but I can’t go all that way on my own. I wouldn’t know where to start with the money and the tickets and what have you.’
‘No, no, of course not,’ Lachlan said. ‘Don’t fret, McReadie. I wouldn’t expect you to set out across the seas.’
‘Although Mr Spencer did write it all down,’ McReadie said. ‘And the passage is paid. Coal boat in the morning, train to Edinburgh, ship from Leith. Can I sleep on it, your lordship?’
‘Sleep on it, by all means,’ Lachlan said, ‘but don’t worry. Ask Dolly what she thinks and be guided by her. She’s a woman of sound sense.’
‘Who’s Dolly?’ I whispered to Alec.
He nodded at McReadie. ‘His wife, I think,’ he whispered back.
McReadie looked black affronted to be urged towards her counsel. He glowered at Lachlan as he withdrew. I watched him leave, troubled I knew not why. Then I shrugged it off. No doubt he had only offered to sacrifice his trip for form’s sake and was annoyed to have it taken at face value instead of batted politely away.
‘Now then,’ said Morrison. ‘The inspector will be here by morning. I would like to have a tidy pile of witness statements and an empty house by the time he gets here. I can clear a fair few of the village folk, but there’s more than that to contend with.’ He turned sharply in his seat and gave me a look I could not quite decipher. ‘I believe you were drafted in as a special constable in Edinburgh a while back, Mrs Gilver.’
‘1926,’ I said. ‘Yes. How did you know?’
‘Oh, Inspector Hutcheson gave me the benefit of a lot of his insights and opinions after what happened here in February. Didn’t you know? Yes, well. So then I can’t see why you shouldn’t take a few of the witnesses yourself. You’re a detective, aren’t you? Detect.’
‘I’m not the only one,’ I said. ‘Mr Osborne here is my partner and co-detective. We could make even shorter work of it with three.’
‘And I’m not related to any of them,’ said Alec. ‘I can do the family.’
‘And I can take care of the household servants and casual staff,’ said Grant, stepping forward from wherever she had been lurking. I thought briefly that a bell round her neck was not by any means an unwarranted option. ‘I’m an assistant detective with Gilver and Osborne,’ she added. ‘With special responsibility for household liaison.’
I rolled my eyes at Alec. But Sgt Morrison wanted the case in order before the inspector descended and he agreed readily enough.
It was a long night even at that. Hugh appointed himself steward and conscripted Donald and Teddy as his staff, and between them they shepherded guests one by one out of the ballroom and into the card room for Alec, the library for me, the drawing room for the sergeant or the breakfast room for Grant. I took names, addresses and endless breathless reassurances of perfect ignorance until my head rang and my pen hand cramped from all the writing.
By dawn, when the fleet of police motorcars made their stately way up the drive and an austere military figure climbed out of the first one, knuckling his back and smoothing his moustaches, we were all back together in the library, amalgamating our night’s findings and agreeing that they added up to nothing.
‘Did you speak to the woman whose dancing partner bumped David Spencer on the head?’ I said to Grant.
‘Yes. She’s a Miss Roderick,’ said Grant. ‘From the street. She pops along and helps out whenever there’s a party.’
‘And who was the man?’ I said. ‘I asked everyone and no one admitted to it.’
‘What’s this?’ said Sgt Morrison.
‘Probably nothing,’ I said. ‘Someone banged into Spencer, but very hard, while we were dancing. I wondered if it was deliberate. If someone was angry enough to bump into him, perhaps that same someone was angry enough to attack him more seriously.’
‘Yes, but it wasn’t deliberate,’ Grant said. ‘It was Miss Roderick’s brother and he was drunk. He threw his head back laughing at something she’d said and made the unfortunate contact. Miss Roderick said it sounded like a mallet hitting a croquet ball.’
‘She must have been dancing cheek to cheek to have heard it over the din,’ I said.
‘Holding him up, I think,’ Grant said. ‘He really was quite pickled, they tell me.’
‘And did he confirm this version, Mr Roderick?’
‘He’s gone,’ Grant said. ‘His sisters had been at him to take himself off before he embarrassed them and that bump was the last straw. He left straight away.’
‘We can get him at his house and ask him about it,’ said the sergeant. ‘Strange that Mr McReadie never mentioned him leaving. That’s all.’
‘Oh, but he did,’ Grant said. She leafed through her notebook, which – I was amused to see – was a replica of mine. ‘In his statement, Samuel McReadie said he saw a Mr Roderick make his way, unsteady but without falling, down the drive and no one else left until Constable Petrie arrived on his bicycle.’
‘And with that our one wee wisp of a solution blows away,’ said Morrison, as steps rang out on the marble floor of the hall and the fabled inspector arrived.
I was banished rather smartly. The inspector, whose name was Snell, took my notebook with a pained look, as though picking slugs out of his salad, and dismissed me. He looked no more approving of Alec’s untidy sheaf of loose pages, scribbled over with a pencil and, when it came to Grant, his top lip almost turned itself inside out from the strength of his sneer. I was too exhausted to protest. I simply trailed off up to bed, past the burned-out candles, past the discarded dance cards and abandoned champagne glasses, a
verting my eyes from the dusty sadness to be glimpsed through the half-open ballroom door.
Grant was too tired to be waspish. She stared dully at my pot of hairpins as I shrugged out of my skirt and jersey, then she took a silk scarf and wound it tightly round my head.
‘Try not to toss about,’ she said. ‘I’ll mend everything in the morning.’ Then she left me, not even taking my stockings to wash or my shoes to polish. I pulled my nightgown on and was just getting into bed, trying not to wake Bunty, when Hugh appeared.
‘Boys all right?’ I said.
‘Sound asleep,’ said Hugh. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Nothing a week’s sleep won’t fix,’ I said. ‘Did Donald say anything?’
‘He didn’t have to,’ Hugh said. ‘His devotion to Mallory, his assumption that a second murder will not make any difference, his loyalty to this benighted place and the horrors it contains apparently go without saying.’
‘We have to take him away,’ I said. I lay back against my pillows. ‘I mean detach him from her and take him away.’
‘Of course,’ said Hugh. ‘I shall speak to Lachlan in the morning.’
‘Even if she sues for breach of contract.’
‘Of course,’ Hugh said again. ‘But I’d be very surprised if they had the gall to attempt a suit.’
He swung his legs up onto the bed, nudged Bunty with his knee until she rolled over and made room, then lay back on the pillows beside me.
‘Thank you for flying to my side earlier, by the way,’ I said.
‘Of course,’ said Hugh a third time and, as I turned out the light, he reached for my hand.
He was gone in the morning. Bunty was long gone too. I awoke alone in a cold bed with the sun high in the sky and the sound of someone shouting somewhere in the house. My eyes flew open and I bolted upright, but whoever it was was not shouting ‘murder’ or ‘help’. As I strained to hear, I thought I caught the words ‘fool’ and ‘disgrace’ and ‘full extent of’ and something that was probably ‘law’.
‘What on earth?’ I said, as Grant came round the door with a tray of tea and toast. ‘Who’s that?’
‘Inspector Inverness,’ said Grant. ‘Whatever his name is. Snell? He is most displeased and he’s got no one but himself to blame.’
‘What’s happened?’ I said.
‘The inspector and sergeant and constable between them have got as far as deciding that someone killed David Spencer and then slipped back into the house.’
‘Well, we’d got that far,’ I pointed out.
‘They conjectured that it was someone who knew that David Spencer killed Lady Love.’
‘And avenged her,’ I said. ‘It makes a certain amount of sense. But why the commotion? Why the raised voices?’
‘The police think the only way to catch the murderer is to take everyone’s fingerprints and try to match them to whatever smudges they can lift from the pruning saw.’
‘Very sensible,’ I said. ‘Is there a problem?’
‘Samuel McReadie has gone by boat to catch the train to Edinburgh and has taken his pruning saw with him.’
‘What?’ I said. ‘How did he get his hands on it? Wasn’t it under lock and key?’
‘Yes, of course it was,’ Grant said. ‘But his wife is the housekeeper and she has a key to every lock. She gave it to him while he was packing.’
I caught sight of myself in the dressing-table mirror across the room and closed my mouth, but I could not do anything about my eyebrows. They refused to climb back down my face to where they belonged.
‘Is she some kind of fool?’ I said.
‘That’s what the inspector thinks,’ Grant said. ‘He called her a disgrace to the Highlands and promised her she’d feel—’
‘The full extent of the law,’ I joined in as she finished. ‘I heard that bit. So she helped him pack, did she? That’s remarkable. It’s not every wife that would be so loyal when her husband sets off halfway round the world to get a flower for another woman.’
‘She’s Applecross born and bred,’ said Grant. She gave me a sly look. ‘She has family here to comfort her until he comes home.’
‘What are you getting at, Grant?’ I said.
‘I’ll give you a clue,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t Miss Roderick’s brother who clonked Mr Spencer on the head last night while dancing. It was her brother-in-law.’
I narrowed my eyes, thinking. ‘What is the name of Mr and Mrs McReadie’s son?’ I said at last, my eyes widening again of their own volition. ‘The one at Oxford. The one whose life Lachlan saved? I know I’ve heard it.’
‘Roddy,’ said Grant, smiling. ‘Short for …’
‘Roderick!’ I said. ‘He was given his mother’s maiden name as a Christian name.’
‘As they do in these parts,’ said Grant. ‘You’ve got it now.’
‘So,’ I said. ‘Sam McReadie was, dancing with his sister-in-law.’
‘Sam McReadie!’ said Grant. ‘He was that close to you and you never knew it was him.’
‘All men look the same in black tie and Brilliantine,’ I said. ‘And I was concentrating on Spencer anyway. So, he was close enough to Spencer to bang heads, close enough to hear what he thought was a confession. He followed Spencer and killed him and now he’s hopped it.’
‘Yes,’ said Grant. ‘He wasn’t stationed at the front gate at all. He didn’t see any “Mr Roderick” staggering home. He made that up. And the Roderick sisters closed ranks.’
I whistled. ‘Will they catch him at Leith before he sails?’
‘I don’t know if they’re going to try,’ said Grant. ‘I don’t think the police have put it all together. They think McReadie is peculiarly devoted to his favourite implements and his wife is peculiarly stupid, or loyal, or both.’
‘What are we to do, Grant?’ I said. ‘What on earth shall we do?’
19
Of course what we did was tell the austere inspector everything. As soon as I was dressed – flat of hair but otherwise quite buoyant, considering – I sought out the troika of Inspector Snell, the Inverness sergeant and the Lochcarron sergeant, Constable Petrie having gone back to stray dogs and scrumped apples. I did not walk unaided into the lion’s den. In fact, between the three of them and the fact that Grant was at my left hand and Alec at my right as we advanced, the meeting was more like an ambassadorial summit than a witness coming cap in hand to men of law.
‘He confessed?’ Inspector Snell thundered. ‘And you just kept dancing?’
It sounded rather marvellous, almost a philosophy one could live by, but I attempted to look grave. ‘He didn’t confess to murder,’ I said. ‘He confessed to love. He confessed to being here to try to whisk Lavinia away with him. He didn’t confess to killing her when she refused him.’
‘As good as,’ the inspector said. He winced as a gunshot rang out. Hugh and the boys had gone out early, more to get away from the torrid atmosphere in the house than from any desire to kill stags, for Hugh usually undertakes a scrupulous fast from his shotgun as spring progresses, to let excitement build for the birds come summer. I was not sure whether the inspector – a Highlander after all – disapproved on account of the Sabbath or if he simply disliked the noise, but I was glad Hugh was annoying him.
‘And even at that,’ I said, bringing my attention back to the inspector’s point, ‘we tried our best to track him down when he left the ballroom.’
The inspector waved an impatient hand. ‘I need to get on to Edinburgh and Leith,’ he said. ‘McReadie’ll not get on a ship, if I can help it. He’ll not get off the train, if I can help it.’ He looked around Lord Ross’s desktop with an irritation it was momentarily hard to account for.
Grant correctly identified his concern. ‘The only telephone is in the little alcove in the hall,’ she said. ‘It’s not exactly private, but Mrs McReadie is in the kitchen with the door shut and so she’ll not hear you and get upset.’
‘The question of upsetting Mrs McReadie does not concern me,
’ the inspector said. ‘I could live with Mrs McReadie being beside herself with anguish. That would be fine by me.’
He was reaching the pitch of ire where he might start lashing out indiscriminately at whomever was to hand and so the three of us left the three of them, closing the library door softly and then all breathing out in unison.
‘Is that that then?’ said Grant. ‘Is the case closed, madam? Are we done?’
I might dispute the choice of the word ‘case’, not to mention the word ‘we’, but it was a good question otherwise.
‘We certainly can’t join in with a manhunt in any useful way,’ Alec said. ‘They’ll catch him before he gets on the ship.’
‘In that case,’ Grant said. ‘I think I’ll start packing. We always meant to leave today, didn’t we?’
‘Scandalising the locals with our Sunday driving,’ I agreed. ‘Easter Sunday, no less.’
‘But I’ll just stop by Miss Mallory’s room,’ Grant said, as she was walking away. ‘Try and persuade her to come with us. You wouldn’t mind that, madam, would you? Different for Miss Cherry. She’s got her husband and her in-laws as well as her father. And she’s got the daily round of crofting. But it’s going to be awful for Miss Mallory if we go off and leave her now.’
‘Grant,’ I called after her. ‘You are not fooling me. You are probably not even fooling Mr Osborne.’
‘On what score?’ said Alec.
‘She has probably already rung up shops and ordered samples to be delivered to Gilverton,’ I said. ‘She’s going to dress Mallory for this wedding if it kills her.’
‘But she’s right,’ Alec said. ‘We can’t disappear and leave the poor child here after this.’
‘I’ll broach it with her at church,’ I said. ‘I take it we’re going to church, are we? It is Easter, after all.’
Alec was staring at me.
‘What?’ I said.
‘It is indeed,’ he said. ‘It’s Sunday. Easter Sunday. The most Sunday-like Sunday of the entire year. And yet McReadie has gone away by boat?’
A Step So Grave Page 23