by Blake Banner
“Yes, yes, of course!”
“Good, go, quickly.” He hurried away, calling for Brown, and I turned to face the room. “OK, now listen up, let me tell you how this is going to work.”
I stood and walked to the fireplace, where I could see all of them staring back at me.
“We’re going to need to talk to each one of you in turn, to get statements from you. It’s going to be slow and tedious, and laborious, but make no mistake, every single one of you in this room is a suspect. And when your own police arrive here, you’ll be even more of a suspect, because they won’t have had the advantage I have of having spoken to you all already, and got something of your stories.
“So we are going to take each one of you, by turns, into the dining room, get your statement, ask you some questions, and then you’ll be free to do whatever you like, except leave this house.” I smiled. “Not that there are many places you could go, if you did. Any questions?”
There was no reply, only the howl and scream of the wind and the stuttering flash of light outside the window. While I’d been talking to Gordon, the red-haired maid had brought some tea and a blanket, and Pam had come around and was now sitting huddled on the sofa staring at her husband with no particular expression on her face. I glanced at Dehan and she nodded.
I said, “Mrs. Gordon, do you feel up to answering a few questions?”
She nodded without looking at me. “Let’s get it over a done with.”
“I don’t know if you heard, Brown and the major have gone to get Dr. Cameron. When he gets here, I suggest he gives you a sedative and you try to sleep.”
She didn’t react. She spoke almost mechanically. “My son is dead. No amount of sedatives can change that. Let’s just find that bastard who did it.”
She threw off the blanket, got unsteadily to her feet, and we followed her into the dining room.
THIRTEEN
She sat at the foot of the long table and Dehan and I sat on either side of her. I studied her a moment. She was staring at the tabletop. I was aware that for her in that moment everything seemed unreal, because reality was too painful to face.
I said, “Mrs. Gordon, I think you were still unconscious when I explained this to your husband. It’s something very important that you need to understand.” She raised her eyes and frowned at me, like she couldn’t get how anything but her son’s death would ever be important again. I held her eye and said, “Your son’s murder was an almost exact reenactment of his grandfather’s murder.”
Her frown deepened as she struggled to understand what it meant. “But, that can’t be…”
Dehan leaned forward. “What is it,” she asked, “that makes it impossible?”
Pam looked at her quickly, her eyes flicking over her face, like she was trying to fathom why she was asking the question. “Because the old man committed suicide.”
I shook my head. “You must realize by now, Pam, that he did not, that he was murdered.”
And Dehan added quietly, “And for forty years nobody has been able to work out how. So that means one thing…”
Pam stared at her in horror.
I supplied the words that Dehan had left out. “Whoever killed Old Man Gordon may also have killed your son. So I am going to ask you straight out, Mrs. Gordon. Do you know who killed the old man?”
Her eyes shifted to my face, then drifted to stare at nothing but the nightmare images inside her own head. After a moment she said quietly, “No…” but it didn’t sound like an answer to my question.
“What does that mean, Mrs. Gordon?”
“I never believed…” She looked at Dehan, as though she thought she might understand what she was saying. “I never believed Charles was capable of killing his own father. I knew he resented him. I knew there was a lot of anger, but I always had it in my mind that all that resentment and anger covered up a need to be loved. He didn’t want to kill him. He wanted to hurt him, to make him pay attention! That’s why I never believed that the old man was murdered.”
She looked from me to Dehan and back again, searching for confirmation that what she was saying made sense. I was still wondering what it was exactly that she was saying. She must have seen that because she went on, looking into my eyes.
“I mean, why would he?” Suddenly her face twisted with anger and bitterness. “All he ever wanted was to hurt people. That is the joy of life for him! Causing pain and humiliation. Believe me, he would have got far more out of seeing his father’s face at our wedding than out of killing the poor old bastard!”
She raised a trembling hand and pointed toward the drawing room. “And if he looks upset now, it’s not for the loss of his son! Oh, God no! It’s because he won’t have him there to torture, torment and humiliate anymore!”
Dehan leaned forward. “Mrs. Gordon, Pam, I’m a little confused. I’m not sure what you are telling us here. Because on the one hand it sounds as though you’re saying Charles Gordon Sr. would not have killed his own father and his son, because he would prefer to torment them, but on the other it sounds as though you’re suggesting he did. Can you clarify this for me?”
She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and gave a long, shuddering sigh.
“I don’t know what I’m saying.” She opened her eyes again, then looked back at Dehan. “I’m telling you I never believed that the old man was murdered. He was always going on about how it was murder, and the fellow who came up from London. But I never believed it. It didn’t make any sense to me. Who would want him dead? But now, you’re saying this to me, and the only person who’d had any kind of motive was Charles… But I can’t believe it. His own father, his own son!”
I sighed and flopped back in my chair. “Where were you this afternoon and this evening, Mrs. Gordon?”
She gaped at me. Her jaw dropped and her eyes went wide. “You think I killed my own son?”
I shook my head. “I think that is very unlikely, but I still want to know where you were, because then maybe you can confirm where other people were. If we can nail down everybody’s whereabouts up to cocktails, then it won’t be hard to spot the person with no alibi. That’s the theory, anyway.”
She closed her eyes.
“I left you at the inn. That must have been one or one thirty. I’m not sure. I walked back because I wanted to clear my head. I went up to my room and had a wee lie down. But then, about three or so, he came in and said he needed me to leave the bedroom because he was entertaining!”
Her face flushed red. I nodded that I understood. “Did he tell you who he was entertaining?”
“He didn’t need to.” Her face and her voice were savage. “His latest fancy is Sally Cameron. It’s not the first time he’s had her here, but he’s never been quite so blatant about it before.”
Dehan raised an eyebrow. “What would make him become blatant like that, do you think?”
The room went very quiet. It was the same question I was about to ask. Pam stared hard at her hands and her jaw worked, but she didn’t say anything for a good while. Eventually she shrugged and shook her head. “Old age? Complacency? The knowledge that he can get away with blue bloody murder and nobody will raise a fucking finger to stop him?”
I drummed my fingers softly on the table. “It was hard to miss, Mrs. Gordon, that you and he did not draw together when you discovered your son was dead. It was Sally who was consoling him.”
“That would be no great surprise to anybody.”
“Is it possible that theirs is more than just a passing affair?”
“I’ve no doubt she believes it is.”
“And if she is right, could that be why he has become more blatant?”
She gazed at me with hostile eyes. “What has this to do with my son’s murder?”
I nodded several times. It was a good question, and I wasn’t sure what the answer was. “So, he asked you to leave the room. What happened next?”
“I dressed and went downstairs. My son and the major were in the drawing room,
but I couldn’t face seeing people so I went out onto the terrace. Bee came out after me and sat with me. The woman is insufferable. She is forever trying to be kind to me, in spite of my low class! I could….” She stopped herself and took a deep breath. “She knew that Sally was there. She had arrived with the groceries for the kitchen. Charles has a taste for working class wenches. No doubt the whole fucking house was gossiping and giggling about Sally making her ‘delivery’!”
Dehan asked, “What happened next?”
“We talked for a while. I asked her how she could still love him after the way he had treated her for all these years. She gave me some crap about how she loved him because of the way he was. I told her she must be a fuckin’ masochist, and she said maybe she was, but she didn’t care. She was happy just to be near him.”
She gave an ugly smile and snorted. Dehan narrowed her eyes. “What’s funny?”
Pam pointed at the drawing room door. Her accent seemed to be getting stronger the madder she got. “That bastard humiliated and broke me, and because of that I’ve tolerated all the shit that he’s thrown at me for nearly forty years. I watched him break my son’s spirit, I watched him parade one tart after another through our bedroom, I let him rape me more times than I can remember. I watched him—the one girl my son fell in love with, they even got engaged, and that bastard seduced her, bought her, just so he could humiliate his own son. And I sat by and watched it happen, year after year, because he had broken me, too.” She shook her head. “But Sally Cameron? She’s an even bigger bastard than he is. And she’s thirty years younger than him, and she knows he needs her more than she needs him. And she will not tolerate the likes of Lady Bee and all the other tarts parading around the house…”
I said, “You think he is planning to divorce you and marry Sally?”
She looked sourly at her hands. “Of course he is. And then he’ll get a taste of his own bloody medicine, because she will take him for everything he’s got, and then dump him for a younger man.”
Dehan shifter uncomfortably in her dress and kicked off her red satin shoes. “So, you talked to Bee, then what?”
She shrugged. “She made me angry. She couldn’t see that we were both as screwed as each other. They were going to kick us both out. It made me so mad that all she could do was defend him…” She studied Dehan’s face a moment. “Then you came out onto the terrace. I’m sorry about what I said.” She smiled ruefully. “You’re probably the first woman in years he’s met and hasn’t screwed.”
Dehan shook her head. “So where did you go from there?”
“I went to one of the spare rooms. Frankly, I just wanted a good cry and a sleep. As I came out into the hall…” She glanced at me. “You and the major and my son were just going into the study.”
“How long did you stay in the guest room?”
“Until…” She rubbed her face with her hands and took a deep breath. “Until about half past six. Then I showered, changed and came down.”
“Did you see anybody?”
She shook her head. “No, the study door was closed.”
“Who was in the drawing room?”
She shrugged. “Exactly as you saw it. You came in just after me.”
“You didn’t witness the row with Dr. Cameron?”
“No. He had just left when I came down. Charles was talking about it. He thought it was funny. So did Sally.”
“We are almost done, Mrs. Gordon…”
“Please stop calling me that. I’m no his wife anymore. I’ve got to stop pretending to be somebody I’m not. I’m Pamela May, no Pamela Gordon. The only thing that tied me to that bastard was the son we had together. Now he’s gone and I am free.” She raised her eyes to mine. “I’m Pamela, or Pam.”
I nodded. “Pam. Did Robert Armstrong have any quarrel with your son that you know of?”
She looked surprised. “Bobby?” She shrugged. “Bobby’s always been a miserable bastard. Nobody likes him, except that stuck up tart he’s with, Elizabeth, Lizzie. He has always hated my…” She sighed. “He has always hated Charles Sr., because he says he cheated him out of his inheritance. Which is patently absurd. All he did was persuade his father not to give away their estate to complete strangers on the strength of some dubious connection based on clan history.”
I shrugged. “Still, the resentment was there.”
“Against Charles Sr., never against my son, as far as I am aware.” She looked suddenly drawn. “Detectives, the fact is that nobody on Earth could have had any conceivable motive to kill Charles. You knew him. That was him through and though. He was a kind, sweet, gentle soul. If anybody deserved to die it was his father, and God knows enough people had motive for that, me the first among them. It is a cruel, twisted irony that it was his son who got murdered.”
There was a tap at the door and Brown stepped in. “Detectives, Dr. Cameron is here.”
I looked at Dehan, we stared at each other a moment in a kind of silent telepathy, then I sighed and sat forward. “Thank you, Brown, will you send him in, please?”
He stepped out and a moment later opened the door again to admit Dr. Ian Cameron and his black bag. His face said he was both very confused and very annoyed. He took three strides, saying, “Would somebody mind telling me…” Then he stopped dead in his tracks, staring at Pam. After a moment, the anger drained from his face. “Pam? What in the name of God…?”
I watched him approach the table, grab a chair and drag it over beside Pamela. He held her hand, touched her face and examined her eyes, all in a matter of a few seconds. “What happened to you, lass?” He scowled at me and Dehan. “What the hell is going on?”
Pam drew breath but I put my hand on her arm. “Mrs. Gordon has had a very powerful, traumatic shock. You may consider she needs a sedative to be able to sleep. After that, we will tell you exactly what has happened, and in fact you may be able to help us sort it out. It’s a bit of a mess.”
He studied us a moment, then turned back to Pamela. “Pam?”
She nodded. “Please, Ian, just give me something to knock me out for few hours. I’m shattered.”
He opened his bag and took a small plastic bottle of tablets. Then he looked at me. “I should accompany her…”
Dehan rose and went to the door. She called Brown and the major. Meanwhile, I shook my head at Cameron. “Just this once, Doc, we’ll let the major and the butler do it.”
“What the hell is going on here?”
“We’re about to tell you.”
The major appeared at the door. Pam took the tablets from Cameron’s fingers. He said, “Take two, no more.” She rose and crossed the room to the major. They departed with Cameron staring after them as Dehan closed the door. Dehan sat. Cameron looked from me to her and back again. He was worried. He repeated, “What the hell is going on? Somebody had better start explaining or else…”
I sat forward and interrupted him. “You had a row with Charles Gordon Sr. this evening. What was that about?”
“Mind your own fuckin’ business is what it was about!”
“Was it his fucking business you were mad about?”
He stood. I don’t know if he was going to leave or hit me. I looked up into his face and said, “Charles Gordon has been murdered, Doctor.”
The blood drained from his face. “What? No, I…” He turned and pointed to the door. Then realization set in. “You mean…”
Dehan nodded. “The son. Charles Gordon Jr. Now, Doc, suppose we start again? What was the row about?”
FOURTEEN
He sat slowly at the table, staring at Dehan, then at me.
“Young Charles…? Murdered? He can’t be… It’s absurd! I should see the body! Thus is insane! Why, he may not even be dead! Have you all lost your minds?”
I said, “Nobody has lost their mind, Doctor, and believe me, he is not alive. We’ll take you to see him in a while, so you can write a death certificate. But before that, we need to ask you some questions.”
; His face flushed with anger. I got the feeling that was something that happened often and easily.
“Who the bloody hell d’you think y’are? You cannot interrogate me! I’m a Scotsman in my own fuckin’ country! You can’t come in here demanding to ask me fuckin’ questions! You bloody Americans think you can…”
I cut him short. “Take it easy, Doc, nobody is marching in anywhere or demanding anything. It looks like we might be cut off for the next couple of days or three. Gordon Sr. asked us to look into his son’s murder. Nobody can force you to answer questions, to us or to your own cops for that matter. But he’s been murdered, there is no question about that, and it makes sense to start investigating before the trail goes cold.” I shrugged and spread my hands. “I can’t see that it makes much difference what nationality we are. The fact is we are experienced homicide detectives.” I shrugged. “But if you want to refuse to talk to us because we’re Americans, that’s fine, we can notify the cops when they get here that you were unwilling to cooperate.”
He closed his eyes and sighed. “Don’t be absurd. It’s just a shock. I’m still reeling. How did it happen?”
We both stared at him for a long moment, waiting. Finally, Dehan said, “This is the third time we’re having to ask you this, Doctor. We’re not here for a chat and a gossip. We’re here on Mr. Gordon’s invitation to investigate a homicide, until such time as the Scottish PD can be notified. Now, for the third time, what did you argue about?”
He sank back in his chair. “As though you don’t already know! OK! We’ll play along wuth the wee farce! Sally was—is—having an affair wuth that old bastard. Until recently they were at least discreet, an’ I thought it would blow over. The man is notorious fer the number of women he has had affairs wuth. He seduces them, plays around with them for a week or two, then sends them packing. But that didn’t happen with Sal. It went on, and on. And it just seemed to get more serious every week. Till suddenly we were being invited fer dinner at the fuckin’ castle.”