by Blake Banner
I scratched my chin. “Did you ever consider contesting the will?”
“Nah. ‘S’what my gerl-friend says to uz. ‘Bobby, why din’ya contest the will? Yiz would’a got something!’ But how would I know aboot contesting a will? I ask you! Ah know aboot building, an’ gardening, workin’ the land, honest labor! Ah don’t know about lawyers and their feckin’ lies.”
“I can see why you’re mad.”
He glanced in the mirror again and an expression you could only describe as evil cunning seemed to crawl over his face. “But mah gerl-friend, Lizzie, see? Now, she’s workin’ as a secatery fer a firm o’ lawyers over on the mainland, and she knows aboot wills. So maybe the old bastard might get a surprise yet, so he might!”
He came to a halt outside the gates. I woke Dehan and we climbed out. I paid Bobby Armstrong his money while she yawned and stretched, and he turned around and drove away, toward the woodlands. The sky behind the castle had turned dark with cloud, and I found I was perspiring under my jacket. I grabbed Dehan and we started to walk down the long drive toward the great pile of stone and the storm which was brewing behind it. I said, “I need a shower and an hour’s sleep. How about you?”
“Nope. I need an hour’s sleep and a shower.”
“That dovetails nicely, then.”
As we approached, to the right of the great tower and a little bit beyond it I spotted Sally Cameron’s Volvo parked beside the kitchen orchard, outside what I now realized were the steps that led down to the kitchen. When we reached the main entrance, I had a thought and said to Dehan, “You go on up. There’s something I have to do. I’ll join you in a minute.”
She gave me a sleepy frown. “What are you up to, Stone?”
I shrugged. “Maybe nothing. I’ll be up in five minutes.”
She climbed the steps and pushed through the door while I went around the side of the tower, where Sally Cameron’s Volvo was parked. Just beyond the steps that led down to the kitchen, there was a door that seemed to be a storeroom of some sort. I descended the stairs, tapped on the door and opened it.
I found myself in a large, old-fashioned kitchen, with a heavy oak table in the middle, an ancient iron range and cupboards that might have looked new in the 1920s. There were also a number of people there, and they were all staring at me with startled faces.
There was Brown, the butler, dressed as though he belonged with the cupboards, there were two pretty young girls in maids’ uniforms, one a red-head and the other with very black hair and very blue eyes, and there was a woman in her fifties dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt that claimed to be from UCLA. She had been rolling pastry on the table and had stopped in mid-roll to scowl at me.
It was the butler who spoke. “Good afternoon, sir. Would you be lost at all?”
I smiled. “No. I thought I recognized Mrs. Cameron’s car.”
He nodded. “Aye, she’s only after delivering the groceries.”
The cute maids grinned at each other and started giggling. The red-head looked at me with a dangerous smile and said, “Och, aye, and noo she’s delivering som’at else!”
Cook scowled at her and snapped, “Peggy! Mind yer tongue!”
Peggy had no intention of minding either her tongue or her business. Her white cheeks flushed red, she stared at Cook with bright, insolent green eyes and said, “Am I lying? Is it a lie? Is she no upstairs delivering som’at else?”
I decided I liked Peggy, but Cook clearly didn’t agree. She stared at the butler with furious ‘do-something-about-this-child’ eyes and said, “Mr. Brown!”
Mr. Brown made a face of reproof at the girls and snapped, “You two! Off with yous. Go and polish the silver fer tonight, and keep your mouths shut!”
They flounced off prettily and within seconds started giggling again. I said, “I’m sorry, I seem to have…”
“Och, not at all, sir. Mrs. Cameron is upstairs, sir, um… delivering… uh… attending to…”
I raised my eyebrows and smiled. “Perhaps the verb is unimportant,” I said. “I’ll settle for the location.”
He smiled a little sickly and muttered, “Mr. Gordon, Sr., sir. A private matter…”
“Of course, well, it wasn’t anything vital. Perhaps I’ll catch her later.”
“Indeed, sir.”
I left the way I had come and made my way up to our room deep in thought. When I went in, Dehan had thrown the covers off and was lying under a single sheet, fast asleep. The window was open, but it was still close and warm. I went into the bathroom, stripped and had a long shower, hot, cold, hot, and then cold again. By the time I had dried myself off, the food and whiskey-induced fogginess had cleared. I pulled on a pair of jeans and sat by the window for a while, looking out at the gardens and thinking.
It was almost forty years ago, but to this small group of people it was like it had happened yesterday. All the passions, the relationships, the motives… They were all as alive and real today as they had been back then. And Dehan had sensed it, that was why she hadn’t been able to leave it alone. And it was why I felt the same.
Eventually I pulled on some socks and boots and a shirt and made my way down again to the drawing room. There was nobody there, so I crossed the room and tried the library door. It was open.
The room was large. Maybe forty or fifty feet square with dark bookshelves rising fourteen or fifteen feet to the ceiling. The windows were leaded and the light that came through them was dappled by leaves. There were a couple of writing desks and a nest of chesterfields around a cold fireplace. A long, dark map table occupied the middle of the floor.
It took me about ten minutes to locate the big leather-bound books that held the old newspapers. Ten minutes after that, I began to find the articles reporting Old Man Gordon’s death. There were a number of photographs. He had been a very handsome man, with intense, penetrating eyes. It’s hard to tell from a photograph, but I thought he had the eyes of a fanatic. Some of the articles gave potted biographies and I noted with a mixture of irony and interest that the old man’s wife, Gordon Sr.’s mother, had not been Scottish.
There were a couple of grainy pictures of the crime scene, too. I wasn’t surprised to find that there was no handkerchief on the floor. You don’t lock yourself in a room to blow your own brains out, and then cover your hand to avoid GSR.
Henry Green had been right. The old man had been murdered. By whom was not so hard to answer. The pool of suspects was pretty small, though the obvious candidates were not necessarily the right ones. How was the real challenge.
How do you get into a locked room, shoot somebody in the head, plant their prints on the weapon and then leave, without unlocking the door or the windows, and with no secret passages?
I read carefully through all the reports but they didn’t add anything new to what I already had. In fact, I had a bit more than the reports had. I had at least one motive nobody seemed to know about.
I got up and made my way back to the drawing room. Charles Jr. was there having coffee with the major. They looked surprised when I came in. Charles smiled.
“Ah, you’ve been exploring the library. Splendid! It really doesn’t get enough use. Did you find anything you liked? Have some coffee.”
I told him I would and sat in a chair by the fireplace. Outside, the light had dimmed and the breeze was turning into a blustery wind. He rang the bell for Brown and I said, “I was looking at the newspapers, the articles on your grandfather’s death. I hope you don’t mind.”
He laughed. “Our pet mystery. No, not at all. I doubt it will ever be resolved. If it is even a mystery at all. I suspect he’d just gone completely batty and shot himself.”
I shrugged. “You may be right, but if it had been my case, I wouldn’t have closed it. I think Henry was right to be uncomfortable. The absence of gunshot residue on his hand is very troubling. It is not possible to discharge a weapon, especially in a closed room like that, and not get GSR on your hand. The angle of the shot, also, is really, to be hones
t, not possible.”
They were both staring at me fixedly. Finally, Charles said, “Good lord, you’re quite serious.”
The major muttered, “My word…”
I laughed. “By all means, tell me to butt out. I’m supposed to be on honeymoon, and this isn’t even my continent, let alone my jurisdiction, but I guess it’s just professional habit. If I were back home, I’d be telling my inspector that this was a homicide that should be reopened.”
Charles Jr. stammered for a moment, then said, “Well what do you suggest I should do? The case was closed and the coroner ruled it a suicide. I’m not sure one can just…”
The door opened and Brown came in with more coffee on a tray. He poured me a cup and handed it to me, then withdrew.
I sipped. “That’s your call, Charles. Maybe it’s something you should discuss with your family. There’s probably nothing you can do without fresh evidence anyway. I’ll tell you what, though: would you object to my having a look at the room where it happened? I have to admit, this is like a red cloak to a bull for me. I can see as clear as day that it could not have been suicide, but I’ll be damned if I can see how it was done.” He stared at me and I raised a hand. “Forgive me if I am insensitive.”
“No! No, no! Not at all! I wasn’t even born at the time. Um, I’m not sure how Daddy would feel, or Mummy for that matter, but I suppose they needn’t know, need they?”
He grinned at the major who beamed and said, “Top hole!”
EIGHT
At just before four o’clock, Dehan had woken up to find I was not there.
She rose, went to the bathroom and showered, then pulled on some jeans and a sweatshirt and went downstairs. She found the entrance hall empty and silent and went to the drawing room expecting to find everybody having afternoon tea. But the drawing room was empty too, though the French windows were open and a breeze that was turning into a blustery wind carried snatches of loud conversation across the lawn to her. She stepped over and looked out.
She saw Bee sitting at a white, wrought iron table on the terrace some thirty or forty feet away. Her dress was flapping in the rising wind and she held her hat down on her head with her left hand. She was looking up at Pamela, who was standing, leaning forward slightly, with her back to Dehan, her fists clenched by her side. Dehan had been about to step out, but something about their demeanor made her pause and withdraw a little back into the drawing room.
Bee was saying, “My dear Pamela, if he upsets you so much, why don’t you simply divorce him?”
Pam’s voice was shrill and Dehan wondered if she had continued drinking after she’d left them at the pub. She spat her words at Bee like venom. “And leave him all for you? You’d like that, wouldn’t you!”
Bee’s laugh was a shrill hoot. “Oh, Pam! You must be drunk! What utter nonsense! After all these years? Don’t be so absurd!”
“Don’t patronize me!”
“Then don’t be such a child! You’ve been married almost forty years! And you still get upset! It’s too foolish of you.”
Pam took a step toward her, pointing back toward the French windows. Her voice was savage. “I have given the best years of my life… no… all my life! to that… that parasite! And he treats me like…”
“Pam, darling, he treats you like what you are: a foolish child who after a lifetime of marriage has still not grown up!”
“How dare you!”
Bee looked away and sighed. “Oh, do stop dramatizing everything. What did you expect?”
“I expected my husband to love me! I expected at the very least to be respected! I did not expect to be humiliated and insulted every day for the rest of my life!”
Bee turned back to face her and there was something sad, almost compassionate in her expression. She sighed and said simply, “Oh, Pam…”
Pam pointed a trembling finger at her. “Don’t you dare patronize me!”
“Oh, do stop, darling…”
“How you can…!”
Bee’s voice was suddenly animated. “How I can? My dear girl! How you can, after all these years married to the man! Why, you must surely have realized what he was like by now! How can you still be shocked by his behavior?”
Pam’s hands went to her face, her shoulders hunched, and she started to sob. Her voice came twisted and damp with tears. “But that… that awful woman! Why? How can you stand it, Bee?”
Bee sighed again, but this time with weariness. “What choice have I got, Pam?”
“You could leave him! We should both leave him!”
Bee gave a small laugh. “No, I couldn’t. He knows we won’t.” She paused, watching Pam sob. After a moment she said, “The difference between us, Pam, is that you never loved him. I have always loved him, not in spite of what he’s like, but because of what he is like. He is a beast, an arrogant, bad man, and I adore that in him. But you, you simply grew to need him. And the more he ill-treats and humiliates you, the more you need him. You should leave him. Really you should. You should teach him a lesson.”
Suddenly Pam’s voice was shrill. “Oh, I will! Believe me, I will!”
She turned and rushed toward the French windows. Dehan stepped out and Pam almost collided with her. As she pushed past, she stopped and stared at Dehan, her face streaked with mascara and tears.
“No doubt it will be your turn next!”
And next thing, she was rushing across the drawing room toward the door. Dehan looked at Bee, who still sat at the table, holding down her hat against the wind. Dehan fingered her hair from her face and approached. Bee looked away.
“This wind!” she said. “I should go inside, but I rather like it. It blows the cobwebs from one’s mind.”
Dehan sat. “Pam looked pretty upset.”
For a moment it was as though Bee hadn’t heard her, then she said, “You’d best ignore her. Enjoy your honeymoon. Don’t get involved.”
Dehan narrowed her eyes and chewed her lip a moment. “It’s hard to ignore something like that.” After a moment she added, “My father told me once that if people invested as much effort in not ignoring things as they do in ignoring them, the world would be a nice place to live in.”
Bee smiled. “You Americans are forever telling stories about what your fathers ‘always used to say’ to you. I wonder if any of them are true.”
“That one is. He was a great one for not ignoring things. I’m the same.”
Bee raised an eyebrow at her. “Is this the same relentless persistence you use when interrogating your suspects?”
Dehan shook her head and smiled. “No. Usually I take them down a back alley and beat seven bales of shit out of them.”
Bee threw back her head and hooted with laughter. “Oh you are so naughty! I love it!” She laughed again and Dehan watched her. Finally she went quiet and sighed. “I love him dearly, Carmen, but he is a pig, an absolute swine, and he does make poor Pam’s life a misery. And young Charles’. He bullies them mercilessly and takes every opportunity to humiliate them. Frankly…” She shook her head, gazing at the heavy black clouds that were building in the north. “I don’t know how she’s stuck it out all these years.”
“Almost forty years.”
Bee nodded. “An eternity.”
Dehan sat back and raised an eyebrow. “But, Bee, isn’t that exactly what you have done?”
“Oh, it’s quite different. I am hopelessly in love with him, you see. I have always known what he was like. Ever since he was engaged to my sister…”
She left the words hanging, held Dehan’s eye. Realization dawned. “You were with him before…”
“As soon as I turned sixteen. He knew how I felt. I couldn’t resist him. I would have done absolutely anything for him. I still would, even today.” She heaved another big sigh. “I am a one-man woman, Carmen, much like you, I suspect. But where you hit the jackpot, I got the booby prize.”
“So he was with you when he married Pam…”
“I came shortly after.”
/> “Why did he marry her? If he wasn’t in love with her…” She shrugged and shook her head.
“I’ve often wondered. He wanted somehow to cock a snook at his father, I suppose.”
Dehan shook her head. “No. That doesn’t make sense. His father was already dead when he married her.”
Bee stared at Dehan a moment and then tapped her head. “Not up here, he wasn’t. Charles Sr. and Pam have more in common than you might imagine. Neither of them is capable of letting go. Charles was a rebel, an anarchist, and he wanted more than anything else in the world to be rid and free of his father. He detested his father with a passion. And yet, he never walked away, never sold the castle or the island. Instead he stayed here. Why?”
Dehan spread her hands and shrugged. Bee smiled and went on.
“Here you have a handsome, intelligent, talented, Harvard educated lawyer. And what does he do when he graduates? He comes to Gordon’s Swona and marries the publican’s daughter.
“Now, you have the publican’s daughter: she is lively, bright, capable, she hates Gordon’s Swona and her great dream is to get away. She marries a man who is a multimillionaire several times over and within a year he has already given her ample cause for divorce. She could leave him and walk away with her independence and a small fortune. Does she?” She shook her head. “No, she stays with him for nearly forty years, on Gordon’s Swona. I am no psychologist, Carmen, but I think they both have a character flaw. They are weak, what they might call today addictive personalities. But more than that…” She gazed away again, toward the French windows. A cloud passed in front of the sun and for a moment it grew dark. “I don’t think Charles knows who he is without his hatred for his father.” She looked back at Dehan. “Once he was free of him, he didn’t know what to do. It was as though his fight against his father had defined him somehow, and without it he didn’t know what to do, or who to be. So he continued that fight, even after he had won, and he married Pam simply to dishonor his father’s memory. He certainly didn’t love her.”
Dehan frowned. “And you think she got some kind of Stockholm syndrome.”