Death Will Find Me (A Tessa Kilpatrick Mystery, Book 1)

by Vanessa Robertson

  ‘Do you think I killed him?’ Tessa’s gaze was bold, her tone carefully neutral, but she was challenging him to admit that her guilt had crossed Bill’s mind, however briefly. He of all people knew that when the need arose she was perfectly capable of putting a bullet in a man’s brain.

  ‘No.’ Bill shook his head. ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘I wasn’t even angry. In the main, I just felt sad.’ And grief welled up inside her. James didn’t deserve this. In time, Tessa knew that James would have been truly sorry he had hurt her. Maybe he really had thought that an “arrangement” could be found that would suit them both. But he needed a son, and no arrangement could have given him that, only divorce and starting again. She knew too that in time she would have embraced her new freedom and wished him well.

  Coffee was brought and the pile of Bill and Tessa’s outer clothes taken away. Her feet were still cold, the leather of her boots damp from the frosty grass, and she sat down on the club fender, back to the fire, to unlace them. She felt rather at a loss to know what to do until the detectives arrived from Edinburgh. Bill handed her a cup and saucer and she sipped the strong coffee, wishing that there was a tot of whisky in it to hasten her warming.

  ‘I suppose the other obvious suspect is myself.’ Tessa’s head snapped up at Bill’s words.

  ‘Do you really think the police will suspect you? You’d never do such a thing!’ Tessa couldn’t conceive of Bill, so calm and strong, being angry enough to kill. But when she paused for a moment, she could see how the police might view him. He and Tessa were good friends, and he would understandably be angry with James for taking a mistress and causing Tessa such pain. But surely the fact that Tessa and James had decided to part would cancel out any motive he might have? Even the most prurient jury, who might suspect an affair of the type James had suggested, would be hard pressed to conclude that murdering him was a means to any possible end now that Tessa had decided to divorce him.

  The two of them were silent for a while, both alone with their thoughts and their questions. No-one came in, although Tessa heard hushed conversations in the hall as Toby and his wife, Jean, debated whether they should join them. Tessa didn’t hear the resolution of their exchange, but neither so much as poked their heads around the door; there being no social protocol for what to say to a woman who tells her husband one evening that she wants a divorce only to discover his corpse the following morning.

  An hour or so later, hearing men’s voices, Tessa and Bill looked at each other, realising that the police had probably arrived. Loathe to leave the ineffectual if well-meaning Toby to waste the detective’s time, they returned to the oak-panelled hall where they’d shared a nightcap the evening before.

  Two uniformed constables stood with their backs to the fire. They were accompanied by a tall man with sandy brown hair and serious eyes. Tessa assumed that as he was wearing an overcoat rather than navy serge, he must be the detective; summoned because of her insistence that James’s death was not a suicide.

  ‘Lady Kilpatrick?’ He held out a hand. ‘How do you do? I’m Inspector Hamish Rasmussen. I’ve been sent to look into the death.’ He didn’t sound particularly pleased to have been thus despatched. His voice had just a hint of a Scottish accent, most noticeable in the way that he rolled his ‘r’s, but it was tinged with something more formal and deliberate. His name intrigued Tessa, but now was not the time to comment on it.

  ‘How do you do, Inspector Rasmussen? I’m Tessa Kilpatrick. The deceased is – was – my husband.’

  ‘I see. And you think he was murdered?’

  ‘Quite sure. It was the gun – it was in his right hand, and he was shot in the right temple. He was left-handed.’

  ‘Very well.’ Inspector Rasmussen sighed as though sure she was being irrational. ‘I’ll go and take a look. Will you wait here, please?’ The question was purely rhetorical; he walked away without waiting for a reply. Tessa knew that he would have had to take the train across from Edinburgh and then rattle along in whatever motorcar the local police could rustle up. It was unlikely to be how he’d planned to spend his Sunday.

  Tessa watched him leave. She felt drained, and turned to go upstairs to change out of her riding clothes into something more suitable. The inspector’s eyes had flickered over her attire, and although his face remained impassive, Tessa felt it would be better if she looked a little more like the recently widowed wife of a viscount rather than a slightly scruffy groom.

  Returning downstairs, leaving Florence to pack, Tessa found that Bill too had changed and was now outfitted in a dark tweed suit and polished brogues.

  ‘Bill, when we’re finished here and the police let us go home, will you come back to Edinburgh, please? Just for a day or two? I don’t want to have to answer everyone’s questions on my own.’ Tessa tried to sound matter-of-fact rather than pleading. She saw the concern in his eyes as he turned towards her; he knew that this could send her back to the dark and lonely places she’d inhabited after her return from the Front.

  ‘Of course.’ Tessa’s chin wobbled and Bill held out his arms to hug her. For a moment at least, she felt comforted.

  And like that, held in Bill’s arms with her head on his shoulder as she fought back tears, was how Inspector Rasmussen found them when he returned from viewing James’s body. They sprang apart, and Tessa saw his carefully placed blank expression flicker for a moment, as he registered the not-so-grieving widow, who had no alibi and plenty of motive for murder in the arms of another man who, it could reasonably be surmised, also had plenty of reasons to kill James.

  Chapter Six

  ‘The body will be taken to Edinburgh for a post mortem.’ Inspector Rasmussen was not given to preamble, and Tessa was a little taken aback that he did not preface this with any expression of sympathy or regret. Nor did he give anything away, simply taking out his small, black notebook and unsnapping the elastic that held it closed. Tessa could have kicked herself. She knew that for now she was the main – probably the only – suspect and to let him see her in such a compromising position was foolish. She knew that she needed to be more vigilant, to tap into the discipline that had kept her safe during the war. She glanced at Bill, seeing him flush slightly as he stepped away from her.

  In his city-dark overcoat and hat, the inspector looked strangely out of place amid so much tweed and plaid, and Tessa wondered about his background. She needed to pay attention, to know her enemy.

  ‘You agree then? That it looks as though he was murdered?’

  ‘Lady Kilpatrick, I agree that the circumstances may be suspicious, and that further investigation is necessary. I’ll know more after the pathologist has done his work.’

  ‘I see. When will that happen?’ Tessa felt a little frustrated; she wanted him to agree with her theory and for plenty of energy to be directed towards finding the killer, not this steady, deliberate approach.

  ‘Tomorrow morning. I will need someone to come to the mortuary in the afternoon to formally identify the body. Perhaps your father, or—?’ He looked at Bill as though wondering what his place was in all this.

  ‘I’ll come myself. Dead bodies aren’t new to me. You can tell me what you’ve discovered.’ Tessa spoke firmly and noticed a slight lift of the inspector’s eyebrows as he wrote this down in his notebook. She could tell that he worked hard to maintain a calm and expressionless manner; he gave little away, but the tiny gestures he couldn’t hide were very telling. She guessed that by tomorrow he would have made enquiries into her background and know all about her history: at least that which wasn’t still classified information.

  ‘I’m sure that I will have much to tell you, just as I will have many questions to ask you in due course.’ With that, he snapped his notebook shut and turned to speak to Toby about some practical matter, underlining his authority by dismissing Tessa as though she were one of his junior constables. She glanced at Bill, and they both realised that although they were innocent of any crime, Rasmussen was an opponent to be taken
seriously.

  Harrison, the chauffeur who had been with Tessa’s family since the days of carriages and horses and who had, after his spell in the army, returned able to turn his hand to horse power of a different type, had the Rolls waiting outside, luggage loaded. Tessa and Bill left quickly, barely staying long enough to express their goodbyes and gratitude to Toby and Jean. Never had hosts looked so pleased to see the back of their guests.

  The journey from Fife to Edinburgh took almost three hours: short as the crow flies, but long with the need to drive west to cross the Forth at Stirling and then drive back east to the city. Tessa wished she’d taken the train on the way there and had someone collect her, rather than listen to her mother’s insistence that she take Florence and allow Harrison to drive them.

  Unable to face more discussion of what had happened, knowing that she would have to go through it again when she reached Heriot Row, Tessa pulled a blanket over her knees and stared out at the wintry countryside. She kept seeing the gun by James’s hand. Had he been killed with his own gun? And if so, why would he have taken it away with him? She knew where he kept his army-issue Webley and resolved to check it when they returned.

  The bigger question, assuming that her convictions were correct, was who would want to kill him? She dismissed the idea of a woman doing such a thing. Some at the party might have wielded a small-bore shotgun on a grouse moor, but shooting someone with a hand gun at close range was something else altogether. Perhaps the husband of one of the women at the party had found out that his wife had had a dalliance with James? Caroline was unmarried but Tessa had no reason to assume that his other mistresses had been. In fact, if all he had been after was an “arrangement” rather than a second wife, then a bored married woman might have been a better option. But cuckolded husbands could be jealous, possibly even murderous.

  It was five o’clock by the time Tessa and Bill reached her parents’ house in Heriot Row. The sandstone townhouse stretched five floors from basement to attic and stood, elegant and inscrutable, amid a terrace of twenty or so almost identical dwellings. The row faced south across gated, wooded gardens: access permitted only to those who lived in these favoured streets. The afternoon was already pitch dark, pale yellow light from the street lights pooling on the pavement. It had been a long day, and Tessa would have to tell her story again, first to her parents and then to James’s father. She wished that she did not have to be the bearer of so much bad news.

  Tessa’s mother, Lady Elspeth McGillivray, was in the first-floor drawing room, reading by the fire and she looked up at their arrival, first pleased and then puzzled as she took in Bill’s presence, James’s absence, and the solemn expressions on both their faces. Tessa said nothing but crossed to the drinks’ tray, poured a couple of fingers of malt for Bill and herself and took a deep breath. Sir David appeared in the doorway just behind them, tall and greying at the temples. He smiled broadly, pleased by the return of his only child, then took in the atmosphere of the room, the whisky – earlier than usual – in Tessa’s hand and realised that something was terribly wrong.

  Two hours later, they sat down to dinner. Lady Elspeth was in head-to-toe black, and from her sharp look Tessa realised that she was expected to have changed into widow’s weeds, rather than her blue dress. She smiled blandly, despite the silent reproach, and took her place, to the left of her father and opposite Bill. Kincaid, the household’s butler for some twenty years, poured Tessa’s wine and the party sat in silence for a few moments while he served the soup. There was so much to say and yet no-one wanted to begin.

  ‘What are the police planning to do now?’ Sir David was the first to crack.

  ‘I imagine they’ll talk to possible witnesses and see if anyone saw anything suspicious. I’ve got to go to the mortuary tomorrow to identify the body.’

  ‘Was there anyone else around? I thought you said it had happened late at night?’ Sir David continued to ask questions, ignoring his wife’s frosty glances. Even with such a significant event, Lady Elspeth would have preferred not to discuss murder at the dinner table.

  ‘He was seen by a footman at one in the morning. We found him around eleven. His body was cold, but the night was freezing and it wouldn’t have taken long to cool down.’ Tessa spoke plainly, having lost her more delicate sensibilities over the last few years, and feeling too weary to hide it. She felt a foot brush her shin and looked up to see Bill flick his eyes in her mother’s direction. She was looking a little pale and had abandoned her soup.

  ‘That’s quite a window of opportunity.’ Tessa’s father had not noticed his wife’s discomfort and ploughed on. ‘Are there any suspects? Did he argue with anyone? Owe them money? Insult someone’s wife?’ Tessa thought better of pointing out that James had mainly been bedding other men’s wives rather than insulting them.

  ‘I don’t think he had money worries, and the only person he argued with all weekend was me.’

  ‘That you know of…’ Bill was quick to interject.

  ‘He must have been upset if you asked him for a divorce,’ Tessa’s mother pointed out. ‘What made you do such a thing, Tessa? You just needed to let him adapt to being home again. Lots of people have found it difficult – look at the Haydoke boy.’

  ‘Johnny Haydoke is not merely having problems, Mama. He has shellshock. He was a patient at Craiglockhart War Hospital for months. James was perfectly fine, mentally and physically.’ Tessa knew that she sounded impatient and wished she didn’t.

  ‘So why did you ask for a divorce?’ Her mother persisted.

  ‘Do you really want to know?’ Tessa took a breath, continuing before her mother could demur. She felt Bill’s foot against her shin again and she moved her legs out of his reach. ‘I caught him in the library with another woman. They were getting quite… um… friendly.’

  ‘He was a friendly man. Very sociable.’ Tessa rolled her eyes at her mother’s ability to be obtuse when it suited her.

  ‘Mama, you know what I mean. She was sitting on the desk with her skirt hitched up and her stocking tops on show for the world to see.’ Tessa heard Kincaid’s sharp intake of breath behind her and saw Bill bite his lip, trying to hide a smile. Her mother’s jaw had dropped. ‘So we had a conversation, quite loudly, about this and I told him that I wasn’t prepared to put up with it and he told me that lots of men have mistresses. Then the subject got on to my not being able to have children and how he needs a son. So I told him that I was going to divorce him. He had no grounds which he could cite to divorce me, you see.’ Tessa rattled off the events of the previous evening and took a gulp of wine.

  ‘I see.’ Lady Elspeth’s voice was slightly faint. ‘Well, that’s something. It’s not nice for men to divorce their wives.’ She caught Kincaid’s eye and he rushed to top up her glass.

  ‘Well, this has saved me the bother hasn’t it?’ Tessa said brightly. ‘The only problem is that as far as we can see, no-one there had reason to kill James. And who would have a gun to hand to do such a neat job? And then the way he was posed to look as though he’d committed suicide…’ She grew more serious. ‘On the other hand, I have a perfect motive to kill him, I have no alibi and I’m perfectly capable of shooting him. I didn’t do it, but at the moment I think Inspector Rasmussen has me marked as his prime suspect. His only suspect, really.’

  Everyone was silent then. What she had said was all too true. Dinner continued with desultory conversation and when they made to go up to the drawing room for coffee, Tessa made her excuses. She needed to telephone Hector, James’s father, and tell him the news. She’d put it off until after dinner but couldn’t delay any longer.

  The McGillivray household had had a telephone since they were first available: Sir David being passionately keen on new inventions. For a while it was barely used as so few people that they may have wished to call had similar instruments. The device was installed in a hall cupboard, fixed to the wall with a hard wooden bench next to it. Comfort was hardly a priority as no-one talked on it for
more than a minute or so. Lady Elspeth had no desire to hold conversations, but thought of the telephone rather as a kind of speaking telegram in that important information could be passed on in the shortest possible time, often with details following in a letter. Unlike a telegram, she didn’t denote the ends of sentences with the word ‘stop’ but it always hung there, unspoken.

  Tessa shut herself in the cupboard and put a call through to James’s father at his house in London. She couldn’t bear the thought of sending a telegram, redolent as they were of bad news from the Front. The Earl of Glenogle had received those twice in the last few years, to inform him in brutally economic words that his two eldest sons had perished at Ypres and Passchendaele respectively. The news that his third, and last, child had died would be devastating. Tessa waited for several minutes while Anderson the butler went to fetch the earl to the telephone and then, voice cracking, she told him the dreadful news. That she was a suspect, she kept to herself. There was no need to complicate matters further.

  The earl was calm, as she knew he would be. Brimful of the grit and resolve that had seen him through the Boer War, quite apart from the travails of the last few years. He thanked Tessa for telephoning and for her undertaking to write the following day after her visit to the mortuary. They did not discuss funeral arrangements, save for Hector stating that he would inform the minister in the village and wait for Tessa to tell him when James’s body would be able to return home for the final time.

  When she replaced the ear piece, Tessa realised that however much sadness she felt at James’s death, she would never be able to comprehend Hector’s loss, repeated over and over, pointless and shattering.