Sauce For the Pigeon

by Gerald Hammond

  ‘It’d take a clever man,’ Keith said. ‘These systems are supposed to be tamper-proof. If Russell’s so sure that Muir was killed in the woods, why’s he getting so uptight?’

  Ritchie shook his head reproachfully while keeping a firm hold on his glass as if afraid that Keith might snatch it back. ‘You’re not that daft,’ he said. ‘If anything turns up in the house that goes against his case, he wants to show that it could have been put there.’

  Keith thought that he could feel a cold sweat running down his back. He tried to look both injured and innocent under Ritchie’s bland but penetrating scrutiny. ‘I wouldn’t do a thing like that,’ he said.

  ‘Would you do a thing like giving me your fingerprints?’ Ritchie asked softly. ‘Now, hold on a minute before you get up to high doh, and let me say a bittie more. When Chief Inspector Russell came to believe that Mrs Muir’s alarms had been interfered with, his own team had gone back to Edinburgh. So he asked us to help. We found just the yin good print inside the control box, and it’s not one of Mr Paterson nor yet of the late Mr Muir. Now, I can’t force you to give me your prints, not without I arrest you first. But, if you refuse, you can see the way Russell will take it. It’s maybe better you give them to me than have him come out here himself to get them.’

  Keith nodded. He could see more than that. He could see the fragments of evidence which might be essential for Jake’s acquittal being thrown out of court. Worse, or at least equally serious, would be his own prosecution for attempting to pervert the course of justice. He stared vacantly at a sporting print on the further wall while his mind, like a trapped mouse, raced around the possible bolt-holes only to find them blocked. The one faint chink lay in the fact that Munro and Ritchie, while not convinced of Jake’s innocence, would not see a good defence thwarted out of malice. But was that chink large enough?

  ‘Surely you already have my prints on file,’ he said, probing. ‘You’ve taken them often enough.’

  ‘You know we’re not allowed to hang on to an innocent man’s prints after the need for identification is over.’

  ‘Munro would hang on to a set of mine, rules or no rules.’

  ‘He had a spring-clean, just the other day,’ Ritchie said. ‘He can’t put his hand on them now.’

  ‘That’s very interesting,’ Keith said.

  ‘Of course, I could always take something with me. Surreptitiously, as it were.’

  Keith got to his feet and went to his drinks cupboard, a 1920s reproduction of an early nineteenth-century étagère, and selected a glass. Two days earlier Molly’s cousin from Arbroath, an elderly man with old-fashioned courtesy, had visited Briesland House. After accepting a dram of Keith’s whisky he had insisted on washing and polishing the glass and returning it to the cupboard. The glass had been the odd one out, sole relic of an earlier set and seldom used. Keith picked it up by the rim through the clean handkerchief which Molly always placed in his breast pocket, and tipped the dregs of his own glass into it.

  ‘You’d better take this,’ he said. ‘Surreptitiously, as it were.’

  Ritchie took a small polythene bag from his pocket but sat looking at the glass without picking it up. Then his bland, bucolic gaze lifted and his eyes locked with Keith’s. ‘Afore I take this,’ he said, ‘just tell me, man to man and honest to God. Have you taken anything out of that house, or put anything into it?’

  ‘No,’ Keith said. ‘I have not.’

  ‘Nor tampered with anything in a way that would make or mar evidence?’

  ‘No,’ Keith said.

  Ritchie nodded slowly. He drained his own glass and pushed it across the desk. ‘If you’ll turn your back a minute,’ he said, ‘I’ll just borrow that glass, surreptitiously as it were.’

  Chapter Eleven

  Keith had intended, as the date for Jake’s trial approached, to spend an increasing proportion of his time on a last spurt of investigation and a methodical analysis of the alternative theories so much desired by Mr Enterkin.

  But it was not to be. When Deborah contracted a mild case of the flu which was circulating at the time, Keith had managed largely to ignore the problem, leaving the extra work to a harassed Molly; but when Molly caught the bug and went to bed with a more serious attack, Keith, aided by a recovered and helpful Deborah, had to take over the household and nursing duties. Then, a week before the trial and just as Molly was getting back on her feet, Keith succumbed. The virus hit him hard. He lay in bed with a soaring temperature and a swimming head, vaguely aware that the world was rushing on and that he should be rushing along with it.

  On the Saturday, three days before the trial was due to open, Mr Enterkin came to visit. He found Keith downstairs in his dressing-gown, huddled in front of a blazing log fire.

  ‘My dear boy,’ he said, ‘should you be up?’

  ‘I’m not up,’ Keith said. ‘And I’ll not get up, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Stay seated by all means. I’ll join you if I may. Keith, you look terrible. I once had an uncle who, despite great age, only succumbed at last to the combined effects of satyriasis, dementia and alcoholism in his garden shed. When he was found three weeks later, he still looked better than you do. Take an old man’s advice and go back to bed.’

  Molly entered with a tray. ‘That’s what I keep telling him,’ she said. She provided Mr Enterkin with tea and biscuits, and Keith with a bowl of broth.

  Keith tried the broth and made a face. ‘I’ll be all right,’ he said. ‘I’ll have to be. I’ve got to meet Watty Dunbar off the plane tonight.’

  ‘No you don’t,’ said the solicitor. ‘That’s one of the things I came to tell you. I’ve just had another cable from Mr Dunbar. He’s been delayed for one more day. Some technical problem, I understand.’

  ‘Could we get him on the phone?’

  ‘No, of course not. He’s in transit by now.’

  ‘There!’ Molly said. ‘So you may as well go back to bed.’

  ‘I’ve got to get used to being on my feet,’ Keith said. ‘I’ll still have to meet Watty tomorrow.’

  ‘I can do that,’ Molly said.

  ‘The sooner I can see him, the sooner I can start following up anything he tells me.’

  ‘Well, that won’t be tomorrow evening,’ Molly said. ‘You can’t follow anything up late on a Sunday night. Let me fetch him. You can see him on Monday morning, and that’ll be soon enough.’

  ‘After all,’ Mr Enterkin said, ‘the prosecution aren’t calling you, and they’re bound to take two days. The earliest we could need you would be Thursday morning.’

  ‘That’s another thing,’ Keith said. ‘Why haven’t they called me? Have they changed their theory?’

  ‘They called your partner instead,’ Mr Enterkin explained. ‘It was his entry in your records.’

  ‘I see.’ Keith yawned hugely. He put his bowl down, half-empty.

  ‘I ought to get him back to bed,’ Molly said. ‘What else did you want to say? I don’t want to be rude, but . . .’

  ‘That’s all right, I quite understand. Now that I’ve seen him, I share your concern. Keith, we can expect you to be back among the living by Thursday at the latest, can’t we? We are rather counting on you.’

  Keith stifled another yawn. ‘I’ll be there,’ he said. ‘With bells on.’

  ‘But will you be – ah – on the ball? Well, we shall have to wait and see. Apart from telling you about the delay to Mr Dunbar, I came to give you one more fragment of information. The prosecution is still revealing the details of its case with all the generous abandon of a dog relinquishing its favourite bone, but they could hardly fail to provide us with a list of their witnesses and copies of certain statements. And even that they left until what is virtually the eleventh hour. The list includes the name of a gunsmith in Perth who, it could safely be assumed, had sold Muir his gun and would be asked to identify it. We don’t have his precognition, but it transpired that your partner knew the man and had even put him under some obligation. So Mr
James phoned him and obtained the answer to one of the questions with which you’ve been badgering me, the number of Muir’s gun. I have it here.’

  Mr Enterkin handed Keith a slip of paper.

  ‘Thanks,’ Keith said. ‘That’s good.’ He put the paper, unseen, into the pocket of his dressing-gown. His eyelids were drooping.

  ‘Go back to bed,’ Mr Enterkin said.

  ‘Take a hot bath,’ Molly added. ‘And don’t forget your mixture.’

  *

  Keith’s fever abated next morning but he slept for most of the day, awakening during the evening when Deborah, walking very carefully, brought him another bowl of Molly’s broth. He squinted at the bedside clock. He seemed to be thinking through a layer of cotton wool but he could do his sums.

  ‘Ask Mum to come up,’ he said.

  Molly came up immediately, looking anxious. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

  ‘No, but I’m getting nearer. Shouldn’t you be away picking Watty up off the plane?’

  ‘Mr Enterkin had another cable from Watty. There wasn’t a seat for him. It’ll be tomorrow now, without fail.’

  ‘That’s cutting it fine,’ Keith said. ‘Ask Ralph Enterkin to get a message to him if he can. He’s to phone me here, any time, and reverse the charges. Can do?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  Keith took two more mouthfuls and dozed off. He thought that he woke again immediately, but the angle of the sun told him that it was another morning already. He was deciding that he felt a little stronger and that his head was beginning to clear when he realized that the sun had gone forward again in several great leaps and Molly was dumping a tray at the bedside.

  ‘How now?’ she asked.

  ‘Better. I don’t think a breeze would knock me down now, not if I held on to something. My mind hasn’t quite caught up with me yet. This is Monday?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Jake’s trial opens tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And Watty?’

  ‘He got a seat on a plane but he has to break his journey in Athens. And the Greek telephone people are on strike. He’ll be here late tomorrow.’

  ‘Please God!’ Keith looked at his tray and discovered that he was ravenously hungry. ‘Do we have any steak in the house?’

  *

  Tuesday afternoon arrived all too soon. Keith found that it was easier to feel strong in his bed than when up and about. He tottered down to his study again and crouched over the fire, waiting for his head to stop swimming and trying to take in Molly’s instructions for Deborah’s well-being. An incoming phone call gave him a moment’s peace.

  ‘That was Mr Enterkin’s office,’ Molly said. ‘Watty’s plane has engine trouble. He’s stuck near Paris. Mr Enterkin will be calling here on his way back from Edinburgh and we’re to tell him. Watty still hopes to get here tomorrow.’

  ‘He’d bloody better,’ Keith said. ‘I’m in the box the day after.’

  Mr Enterkin, when he arrived, looked worried; but he refused to get excited over the delay to Watty Dunbar. ‘He should be here in time,’ he said, ‘but even if he’s not we still want you in court on Thursday morning. He got your message, but no doubt the fleshpots of Paris . . . Anyway, you may be relying too much on his contribution. What, after all, could he have seen?’

  ‘He was overlooking the road between this house and the place where the body was found. He may be able to say that Jake didn’t go by.’

  ‘Which wouldn’t help, if the deed were done the night before. No, Keith, we’ll have to lean heavily on your evidence.’

  ‘What are the chances?’

  Mr Enterkin made his extraordinary thinking face. ‘We don’t know yet – the prosecution hasn’t finished putting on its case. Sometimes,’ Mr Enterkin burst out, ‘I yearn for the dear old days of capital punishment.’

  ‘You can’t mean that!’ Keith said.

  ‘I do indeed. Juries used to think twice and yet again about their reasonable doubts. Now that the convicted man lives on so that any slight miscarriages of justice can be rectified, they tend to receive circumstantial evidence with less suspicion.’

  Keith considered that statement and disliked it. ‘What’s been said so far?’ he asked.

  ‘After the opening formalities, and before the advocate depute could get a word in for the prosecution, Richard Garrard, our senior counsel, jumped in with a complaint that the prosecution had hampered the defence by withholding information or providing it, if at all, very late. The advocate-depute said that he was sure that his learned friend was exaggerating, so Garrard backed up his complaint with chapter and verse. Then the advocate-depute changed ground and said that most of the defence’s questions had been referred to the police and that he regretted if the officer-in-charge had been dilatory in dealing with them. Garrard tried to work round to a suggestion of bias on the part of the officer concerned, but Lord Bickenholme, who knew perfectly well what he was getting at, cut him off. Was Mr Garrard, he asked, requesting an adjournment?

  ‘His lordship knew just as well as Garrard did that an adjournment would leave the accused lingering in the dungeons, almost certainly until the fraud case was disposed of – which, as I’ve said, looks as if it may go on for ever. So Garrard said that he was only asking his lordship to note the position, and Lord Bickenholme said that it was noted.’

  ‘Waste of time,’ Keith said.

  ‘I’m not so sure. Bickenholme’s an unusual judge. You said yourself that he’s a good man. If by that you meant that he sets justice almost as high as the law, I’m inclined to agree with you. He may remember the exchange when we need him to. Anyway, the trial then got under way.’

  ‘Did they call Russell?’

  ‘They did not. I think they guessed that we might seek to prove bias. And, after all, he wasn’t the arresting officer nor did he personally make any of the important finds. The first few witnesses were purely formal. They called the man who reported the burning Land Rover and followed him with the first police officer to reach the scene. He described the body and the vehicle, without saying anything new, and introduced all the bits and pieces which had been found lying around.’

  ‘Including the Land Rover’s windscreen?’

  ‘No. The officer spoke to the veracity of photographs of the wreckage, but none of the wreckage was produced except for electronic components and some crumpled metal fragments which I rightly suspected might turn out to be the remains of tins such as those in which explosive powders are sold. He also introduced photographs of the decoying scene. The advocate-depute asked him whether he concluded that the dead man had been shooting pigeon over decoys, and before Garrard could even object he replied that it was not for him to draw conclusions. Which rather cut the ground from under Garrard’s feet when he came to cross-examine.’

  ‘Crafty sods,’ Keith said.

  ‘Succinct. Whether accurate, time will tell. Garrard did manage to extract the information that there had been no sign of a flapper, nor of a hide. In particular, no camouflage netting.

  ‘Next came the constable who found Muir’s gun among the bushes. The barrels are conspicuously bent. Attention was called to the absence of a fore-end, but he replied that it would have been easy to miss it in the undergrowth. Do you get undergrowth beneath rhododendrons?’

  ‘He was probably referring to the rhododendrons as being the undergrowth,’ Keith said.

  ‘Possibly. He was followed by your partner’s friend, who identified the gun as having been sold by him to the dead man.

  ‘Next came Muir’s dentist who identified his own handiwork from his records.’

  ‘Who was it?’ Keith asked. ‘McRobb?’

  ‘Lumbly. I know what you’re going to say,’ Mr Enterkin added quickly. ‘Sometimes that old soak can hardly find your mouth. I changed to McRobb myself a couple of years ago. I can only say that Lumbly came over quite convincingly.

  ‘Next, they called two forensic scientists, a pathologist and a technician. The
pathologist batted first, and he was probably the least informative witness of the lot. He explained, in detail which turned several of the jury green, that the body had been in an explosion followed by a fire of great intensity and some duration, as a result of which the outer layers were incinerated and the inner parts overcooked. The resulting tissue changes had made an analytic examination of anything but the skeleton impractical, except that, for some highly complex reason which I did not trouble to follow, he believed that death had occurred prior to the fire. He produced photographs of a depressed fracture of the skull which he believed might well have caused death, and he also stated that the damage could have been caused by a blow from the gun barrels and was consistent with the bend in the barrels. On cross-examination, he agreed that the damage to the skull could have occurred in the explosion; and that respiration would have ceased immediately, thus explaining the lack of whatever it was that he had sought in vain.

  ‘The boffin came next, and he was still in the box when we adjourned for the night. He spoke to his examination of the Land Rover. He stated that traces of both nitrocellulose powder and gunpowder had been identified, and he made an estimate as to the amounts required to produce the effects observed. This turned out to be quite a wide bracket, certainly embracing the quantities missing from our friend’s workshop. He admitted that his calculations were imprecise and commented that similar results were unlikely to occur twice.’

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  ‘I know, dear boy, I know. The point is, can you suggest any useful questions to be asked on cross-examination?’

  ‘No, I can’t,’ Keith said. ‘I agree with him.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Mr Enterkin said. ‘Do try to make it to Parliament House in good time tomorrow. I have an unpleasant feeling that the advocate-depute intends to spring a surprise on us by way of this boffin and you might be able to suggest the right line to take.’