by JANICE FROST
“Not a very funny one.”
“How are your ribs?” Moira asked Elspeth.
“Painful.”
“Well then, no real harm done.”
“I’m glad you think so.” They glared at each other.
Anxious to break the deadlock, I asked, “Where did you learn to fight like that, anyway?”
“My brother,” Moira said. “He loved that TV series, Kung Fu. The one with David Carradine? Took lessons and taught me. He said it’s good for girls to learn a bit of self-defence.” She looked at her watch. “I’m off out again in a minute. When I told Andrew what happened to my clothes, he offered to buy me a new wardrobe. Never look a gift horse in the mouth.”
Elspeth turned on me the moment Moira left the room. “You could have been more supportive, Ros. We are best friends.”
I stared at her but didn’t say, I didn’t tell her I practically caught you coming out of her room.
Shona and Lucy came downstairs soon afterwards, giving the lie to Elspeth’s prediction that Lucy wouldn’t surface until tea-time. We told them what Moira had said. Somehow or other the whole question of who had perpetrated the malicious act of destroying Moira’s clothes blew over, and we never did look at that guest list. I couldn’t help wondering, though, whether Elspeth’s early rise, her efforts to set the house in order before the rest of us came downstairs, even her stilted conversation with Moira, arose from the depths of a guilty conscience.
* * *
As if the episode with the ripped clothes hadn’t provided enough drama, only a couple of days later our household was shaken by another crisis.
This time Elspeth, Shona and I heard the news second hand.
It was a Saturday morning. We were enjoying a leisurely breakfast in the kitchen. Elspeth and I were still in our dressing gowns. Shona had been out for an early morning run and was sitting at the kitchen table, showered and dressed, her hair wrapped in a towel. An acrid smell of burning pervaded the air, a sign that Elspeth had decided to have toast for breakfast instead of her usual cornflakes. At weekends, she bought an uncut loaf from the baker’s and sliced it into doorsteps too big to fit in the toaster without burning. She was scraping the worst of the charring off her latest burnt offering when Lucy shuffled into the kitchen.
“Good morning,” she said in a subdued tone.
“What’s up?” Shona asked immediately.
Before Lucy could answer, Moira entered the kitchen, a dark look on her face. She crossed to the sink to rinse a mug under the tap, elbowing past Lucy, who was pouring milk over her bowl of muesli, and causing her to spill milk over the table. Moira didn’t apologise. After making her tea, she stomped out of the kitchen, ignoring everyone except Lucy, to whom she gave a glowering look in passing.
“What the hell is up with her this morning?” Elspeth said as soon as Moira was out of earshot. Her eyes fixed on Lucy. “Have you done something to upset madam?”
“Something terrible,” Lucy said, sounding miserable.
Elspeth pushed aside her blackened toast, a wicked gleam in her eye. Shona raised an enquiring eyebrow. Here we go again, I thought. More drama.
Lucy pushed her muesli around in the bowl. “I told her I wouldn’t say anything.” The kitchen was instantly eerily silent. You could have heard a pin drop. “And I can’t.”
“No way we’re letting you off with that, Lucy!” Elspeth said. “Come on! You can’t leave us in the dark. We won’t tell her you told us.” Elspeth, round-eyed, was sincerity itself.
Lucy should have known better, but she looked to be weighing up Moira’s wrath against the admiration she would earn from the rest of us for being the bearer of tasty gossip. In the end, she couldn’t help herself. She spilled. Breathlessly.
“Stuart Brogan came here last night when you were all down the pub.” Lucy had had a cold and stayed at home. “He caught Moira and Andrew Kelso in bed together. They fought. Moira had to pull them apart.”
“Shit!” It took a lot to impress Elspeth. She stared open-mouthed at Lucy, shock rapidly turning to delight. This was obviously the juiciest piece of gossip she’d heard for a long time.
“Huh! Bound to happen sooner or later,” Shona commented. She turned to Lucy. “But why is Moira pissed off at you?”
“Yesterday afternoon she gave me a note to take to Stuart Brogan. He was supposed to be coming around in the evening, but Moira had seen Andrew earlier in the day and he’d told her his wife was going to her mother’s until Sunday. The note was to tell Stuart she’d got her period early and had really bad cramps, and that he shouldn’t come here.”
“Let me guess,” Elspeth said. “You forgot to deliver the note.”
“It just completely slipped my mind.”
“Typical Moira,” Elspeth said. “Gets you to do her dirty work and then blames you when it goes tits up.”
“She’s right, Lucy. This isn’t your fault,” I said. “You aren’t responsible for Stuart and Andrew finding out about each other. Like Shona said, it was bound to happen sooner or later.” Poor Lucy. I knew she must hate Moira being angry at her.
“Can’t expect to have your cake and eat it forever,” Elspeth hooted, rubbing her hands in glee. “God, what I wouldn’t have given to be a fly on the wall.”
Lucy looked stricken. “You . . . you can’t tell her I told you, Elspeth. Please.” Elspeth let out a long, exasperated sigh. Lucy gave her a pleading look. Finally, Elspeth promised that she wouldn’t breathe a word.
“And don’t behave all smug around her so that she guesses, either,” I cautioned Elspeth, knowing her only too well. Not for a nanosecond did I believe that she intended to keep her promise to Lucy.
“I’ll be inwardly smug,” Elspeth promised, zipping her lip with her finger. She passed Lucy a slice of burnt, buttered toast. “Here you go, Lucy. I reckon you deserve some of my Tiptree marmalade on that for making my day. Now, let’s have all the juicy details.”
“It was awful,” Lucy said. “Moira called me a moron. Said I was a useless waste of space who couldn’t even be trusted to run a simple errand. And she was right. I am useless.”
Shona and I offered words of reassurance, while Elspeth waited impatiently for Lucy to continue.
“Stuart turned up at nine. I was in the sitting room. I saw him pass the window and I was going to run to the door and tell him not to come in, but he was already in the hall when I went to answer his knock. I . . . I’d come in earlier and forgotten to lock up after myself. He . . . he ignored me when I said he shouldn’t go upstairs.”
We waited, mouths agape, while Lucy, in a hushed voice and with a nervous glance at the door, got to the climax of her story.
“There was a lot of angry shouting. Stuart was doing most of it. I ran upstairs and was just in time to see him drag Andrew out of Moira’s bed, stark naked. He was making fists of his hands, just like a . . . a boxer.”
“What was Andrew doing?” Elspeth asked.
“He was, you know, covering his . . . bits,” Lucy said. “He probably thought Stuart would kick him where it hurts. Which meant he couldn’t really defend himself when Stuart threw a punch at him. Andrew’s got to have a black eye today. He’s going to have some explaining to do to his wife.”
“Serves him right for cheating on her,” Shona said.
“Poor Andrew. That Stuart Brogan looks like a real brute.” Leave it to Elspeth to take Andrew’s side.
“What happened next?” I asked.
“Well, Andrew managed to punch Stuart before Moira got between them. I thought Stuart was going to punch her too but he suddenly got himself under control. He made this sort of howling sound, like a wild animal, and ran right past me out of the room. Nearly knocked me down the stairs.”
“What did Andrew have to say when he realised Moira’d been cheating on him?” Shona asked.
“As soon as Stuart was gone, he started questioning her. Funny, I don’t think he quite grasped what Stuart’s presence meant at first.”
“It wouldn’t possibly occur to him that he might not be enough for any woman,” Shona commented dryly. I was inclined to agree. Andrew Kelso was a vain man.
“Then, suddenly it must have clicked,” Lucy said. “He was furious.”
“Was he still naked?” Elspeth asked. I rolled my eyes.
“Yes. But then Moira caught sight of me watching from the hall and she came over and shut the door, so I didn’t see anything after that.”
“Did you listen? What did you hear?” Elspeth again.
“They had a shocking row. Moira called him a hypocrite and a coward, and he called her a whore.” There was a collective gasp. Even Elspeth seemed outraged at the insult. Shona was incensed.
“Fucking hypocrite,” she railed. “So like a bloody man to use a word like that to describe a woman who isn’t a fucking virgin. I bet he doesn’t think of himself as a whore despite all his shagging around.”
“This went on for about twenty minutes,” Lucy continued. “Then I realised Andrew was coming towards the door, so I scurried off to my room. I heard him bang the outside door downstairs, and then Moira came to my room and started shouting at me.” Lucy dissolved in tears.
“Poor Lucy,” Shona said, giving her a hug. I made her a cup of tea.
“Have some more marmalade,” Elspeth said, offering Lucy the jar.
If Moira had wanted to keep the news of the bust-up from the rest of us, she should have forgiven Lucy — or at least pretended that all was well between them. Unfortunately, she ignored poor Lucy and even treated her shabbily over the next couple of days, leaving her out of conversations and criticising everything from her accent to her choice of clothes. I longed to take her to task over her unkindness to Lucy, but feared making things worse by giving away that I knew about the fight. Elspeth had no such qualms.
“Leave her alone,” she cautioned Moira, after overhearing her lay into Lucy for forgetting to turn off one of the bathroom taps. “It’s not her fault you’ve had a bust-up with your boyfriends.”
“What?” Moira’s eyes flashed dangerously.
“Don’t play the innocent. We know all about it,” Elspeth said. “Seems to me like you should take responsibility for your own mistakes and leave Lucy out of it. And don’t look at Lucy like that. You would have told us all about it soon enough. You were just choosing your moment. I bet you just love the thought of having two men fighting over you.”
“Elspeth Blair. I swear . . .” But just what Moira was about to swear was left unsaid, for, with serendipitous timing, Andrew Kelso walked into the room, half-hidden behind an enormous bouquet of red roses.
“Am I interrupting something?” he asked.
“Oooh! Are those for me?” Moira squealed.
“Roses for love . . . and . . . forgiveness?”
Elspeth rolled her eyes. After Moira had ushered Andrew out of the room, she hissed, “Everything always turns up roses for that bitch. Stuart Brogan had a lucky escape if you ask me.”
The following morning it was back to business as usual. Moira floated about the kitchen on cloud nine. Elspeth scowled into her bowl of cornflakes while Moira recounted in all too colourful detail the amazing make-up sex she and Andrew had indulged in for half the night.
“Yes, we heard,” Shona commented, yawning.
A few days later, Moira informed us that she’d seen Stuart Brogan. “He was still furious, of course, but I can’t do anything about that. I told him from the start I wasn’t ready for an exclusive relationship. Pity it’s over in some ways, though. He was great in bed, but on balance, Andrew’s more experienced . . . and more use to me.”
After a dismissive shrug, she added, “Stuart will get over it in time. Though for now, I’ll be giving him a wide berth. Honestly, if looks could kill, I’d be dead already.”
Chapter Fifteen
Stuart Brogan’s sister, Isla Farrell, greets us at the door. Her house is on a small estate in Cupar, a town roughly nine and a half miles from St Andrews. She peers closely at Innes.
“Aye, I remember you,” she says, apparently satisfied that he is indeed the PC who investigated Moira’s murder years before. “You’re wearing well, I must say. Come on in out of the cold.” She shows us into a bright, airy sitting room. “Aye, it was a terrible business right enough. I remember it like it was yesterday. My mum and dad never got over it.”
A girl of around six is sitting on a comfortable sofa with a tablet balanced on her knee. “My granddaughter, Belle. Off you go upstairs for a bit, Belle. I need to talk to this lady and gentleman. If you’re a good girl, we’ll go to the park when I’m finished.”
Without a word of protest, Belle pads out of the room. As soon as she’s out of earshot, Isla says, “The police were wrong about Stuart. He didn’t kill that girl. We grew up together and I know he didn’t have it in him to do a thing like that.”
The reality of what it must have been like for Stuart Brogan’s family hits me again. Mr and Mrs Brogan’s anguished protestations of their son’s innocence had washed over me at the time, arousing only the faintest stirrings of sympathy amidst stronger feelings that they were somehow to blame for turning their son into a cold-blooded killer.
Today, I see things differently. I look at Isla and wish I could confide in her what we know about John Menzies. But I still don’t know if it’s the truth or just another version of it. I’m reduced to telling her I’m sorry for what she and the family have suffered.
“Ach, well, my mum and dad are at rest from it all now. Reunited with their innocent son in heaven.”
I think of the time I accompanied Moira and Stuart to the cinema, how they’d fought. Of Moira returning later with a black eye. Stuart might not have been a killer, but he’d been no angel either.
“Did you ever meet Moira Mackie?” Innes asks.
“Aye,” Isla says. We wait, hoping she’ll elaborate, but her lips are clamped shut. There’s a glimmer of suspicion in her eyes. She looks at me. “You sure you’re not reporters from one of those trashy papers?”
Innes reassures her that we are who we claim to be. The suspicion doesn’t fade completely, but she gives us the benefit of the doubt.
“Stu brought her back to the house a few times. Never overnight, though. We didn’t have a spare bedroom and my parents wouldn’t have let them sleep together under their roof. Stu brought her along to Mum and Dad’s silver wedding anniversary do at the social club. I could see straight away that she was out of our Stuart’s league.
“Stuart was besotted with the girl. He just couldna see past her. Aye, she was bonnie and no doubt that had something to do with it. But he was stupit to think she’d stick with him for long.”
There’s a faraway look in her eye now. I can tell she’s remembering. I feel a twinge of guilt for raising past ghosts. After Leah’s death, and again after Doug’s, people kept telling me that eventually I’d remember all the good times we’d enjoyed together. I lost count of how many times I heard the words, ‘Remember him the way he was before.’
Before he was dragged from his jeep, forced to his knees and shot through the head on a lonely, dusty roadside, far from home and the people he loved and who loved him. For the longest time, all I could think about was the fear he must have felt, and the thoughts that must have raced through his mind in those last, anguished moments.
“I’m sorry if our coming here is dredging up bad memories for you,” I say.
Isla studies my face for a moment, then says perceptively, “I’m not the only one who’s haunted by the past, by the looks of it.”
I tell her that I lost my sister and my husband. As I speak, I am aware of Innes looking at me with concern. My confiding in her this way creates a bond between Isla and me. “What sort of things did Stuart tell you about Moira?” I ask.
“Well, he went on and on about her looks, as you’d expect. I’m not saying she didn’t have a good figure but she was on the skinny side. I used to kid Stuart about her no’ havin’ any curves.” Isla is a
curvy woman and I suspect she always has been. “He thought she was perfect. He was blind when it came to that girl, she had him twisted round her pinkie.” Her expression hardened. “Little did he know she was cheatin’ on him wi’ that professor.”
Andrew Kelso wasn’t a professor back then, but neither Innes nor I point this out.
“Mrs Farrell,” Innes says, “what do you remember about the weekend Moira Mackie was murdered?”
“Och, it was terrible. I still remember Stuart coming home in the middle of the night, out of his head on drink. Wailin’ and bawlin’ like a big bairn. He woke the whole house up. That was on the Monday, after he found out about her murder. Another couple of days and Stuart was dead too.” Isla gives a sniff.
Innes gives her a moment or two to recover. “I’m sorry. I know it’s probably painful for you to go through it all again, but I don’t have access to the notes from the original investigation. They were lost in a fire.”
“Well, there’s no’ that much to tell. Stu was in a state about it. Then next thing we know, that Inspector Menzies is telling us he’s been found hanged in my uncle’s garage, with a note in his pocket sayin’ that he was the one who killed Moira.”
The silence after Isla’s words lengthens into minutes. Isla’s gaze travels to the hall again. Her granddaughter is very quiet. As if reading my mind, she says, “Belle’s a contented little thing. She’ll be up there drawing, no doubt. I’ve never known a bairn who likes to draw so much as that one.”
Gently, Innes draws her attention back to his question about the weekend Moira died, and where her brother might have spent it.
“He was away drinking somewhere.”
“In a local pub?”
Isla shakes her head. “Stu took to drinkin’ too much after he split up with that lassie. He’d take himself off on his own, sometimes to our dad’s boat wi’ some cans, and just drink himself into a stupor. On the Sunday morning, the morning after the lass was killed, our dad found him on the boat, still drunk. That wasn’t the first time either.”
“So, no one in the family had seen Stuart that weekend? Until your dad discovered him on the boat? On the Sunday morning?”