7 A Tasteful Crime (17 page)

‘There’s been another death,’ said Christopher gloomily.

‘Oh, no!’ said Tricia. ‘Surely not!’

‘So that’s why you need
ed an alibi, Christopher!’ said Penelope. ‘What happened?’

‘It was Maria.
In the library.’

‘With the spanner,’ added Jock with an inappropriate chuckle. Why couldn’t he resist it? They all ignored him.

‘Did it happen last night, then?’ said Penelope.

‘Yes
, at least we found her this morning. I wasn’t really under suspicion, though. They just wanted to know who had keys to the building.’

‘Oh, dear,’ s
aid Penelope. ‘I think Zak has keys too.’

‘Wasn’t he out with Hattie?’ said Jock. They all turned and stared at him.

‘How do you know about Hattie?’ said Christopher.

‘You told me,’ said Jock.

‘Well, I think I’ll go home now,’ said Tricia. ‘I could do with just sitting and thinking for a while… Darren, aren’t you meant to be at the cattery? Have you told Rosie where you are?’

‘She knows all about it,’ said Darren. ‘She told me to take as long as I needed.’

‘I suppose I’d better get back to work,’ said Christopher.

Jock watched Tricia and Darren walk off together. He, Penelope and Christopher headed on down towards the Cultural Centre.

‘I wonder if I’d be allowed to go home now,’ said Penelope.

‘Better hang on a bit,’ Christopher advised. ‘You don’t want to have to come back from Aberdour just to have coffee and biscuits with Inspector Armstrong… It’s only iced rings. Not really worth it.’

‘Is it all right if I stay at your house a little longer, then?’ she said to Christopher.

‘Wait a minute!’ exclaimed Jock. ‘What about Jemima?’

‘What do you mean, what about Jemima?’ said Christopher.

‘Will they drag her in for questioning too? Surely Eric McWhatsit must have been in her kitchen too.’

‘I don’t think Dave will let them drag her in,’ said Christopher.

‘I’ll go round to her house and warn her,’ said Jock.
‘Just in case. She might want to go into hiding or something.’

‘Wouldn’t that be a sign of guilt?’ said Penelope. ‘Not that I think Jemima could possibly be guilty of anything,’ she added hastily.

‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like to come down to the Cultural Centre with me?’ said Christopher to Jock. ‘Deirdre’s there.’

‘Ha! Excuse me if I don’t find the prospect of seeing Deirdre very tempting,
’ said Jock. ‘That reminds me, what’s happened to Amaryllis? She’s usually in the thick of things.’

‘What do you mean, that reminds you?’ said Christopher crossly. ‘What on earth does Deirdre have to do with Amaryllis?’

‘Nothing, nothing – nothing at all,’ said Jock. ‘But maybe I’ll come with you after all.’

‘I’ll just get on back to your house, then,’ said Penelope to Christopher.
‘Unless you’d like me to get you a piece of fish for your tea?’

‘Better not,’ said Christopher with apparent regret. ‘I’m not sure when I’ll be back. I wouldn’t want it to go to waste.’

‘Here!’ said Jock as Penelope went off along the street that led to Christopher’s house. ‘You’d better watch that one. She’s got her feet under your table.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Unless you’d like me to get you a piece of fish....’ said Jock in what he hoped was a recognisable imitation of Penelope’s tone. ‘What with her and Deirdre and Amaryllis, you’ve got your hands full all right.’

He couldn’t help feeling just a wee touch of envy. At one time he had imagined himself to be the debonair man about town with the string of women fancying him. Well, maybe not debonair exactly... Now it seemed to be Christopher’s time to shine. How quickly his
own star had faded.

‘Here today, gone tomorrow,’ he murmured.

‘What are you talking about now?’

‘Nothing....
’

They walked on down the High Street in a manly silence
, both hunched up against the wind and rain.

As they turned the corner into the car park in front of the Cultural Centre, Jock saw that something unusual was happening outside the building.

‘ Look! There they both are, waiting for you.’

Christopher took one look and accelerated into a run.

Jock followed a little more sedately, marvelling at Christopher’s turn of speed. He didn’t look like a sprinter by any stretch of the imagination.

Chapter 22 Handbags at twenty paces

Even Amaryllis wasn’t sure exactly how it had started. It could have been when Deirdre tried to push past her in the doorway, or perhaps it had been when she stood on the other woman’s foot. Then there was the elbow in the ribs followed by the kick on the knee. After a while they had both lost track of what was happening. Amaryllis was rather impressed by Deirdre’s viciousness. It took years of training for most women to come anywhere near that level of violence.

Whatever the reason, they were interacting in a way that could only be described as fighting by the time
, almost simultaneously, Christopher dashed across the car park and Keith Burnet came back round the corner from the bins with his scene of crime tape. Both men homed in on Amaryllis, grabbing her by one arm each and pulling her away from Deirdre.

‘Thank goodness!’ said Deirdre, with a roll of her eyes which, in Amaryllis’s opinion, was quite unnecessary.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ said Christopher crossly, still holding on to Amaryllis’s arm, but, she was pleased to note, speaking to both women equally.

‘She started it,’ said Deirdre with a barely discernible whine in her voice.

Amaryllis kept quiet. She wasn’t going to enter into a childish competition to avoid blame. Even if she hadn’t started it – which of course she hadn’t.

She shook off Christopher’s grip. Keith Burnet had let her go almost immediately.

‘Have a bit of respect,’ said Keith.

‘Oh, sorry,’ said Deirdre, putting the accent on the second syllable and once again sounding uncannily like a primary school age child.
‘I’m not the one who has no respect. She doesn’t even have a good reason to be here.’

‘Ms Peebles has been very helpful to us with evidence,’ said Keith Burnet, blushing. Presumably
, thought Amaryllis, he was embarrassed by the fact that she had been of some use on this occasion instead of getting in the way. Perhaps that would teach him a lesson.

‘Has she?’ said Christopher, sounding amazed.

‘Yes, she has,’ said Keith. ’She pointed out to me that the bins were about to be picked up. Vital evidence could have been destroyed.’

‘That was very clever of her,’ said Deirdre in a sour, unpleasant tone. ‘I wonder why she would do a thing like that.’

‘Deirdre,’ said Christopher suddenly. ‘Have you been drinking?’

Deirdre laughed. ‘What do you think?’

‘Or maybe you’ve just been nasty for so long that you’ve forgotten what it’s like to be nice to people,’ he said.

‘Oh Christopher
, you’re killing me!’ Deirdre laughed so much that she had to lean forward and clutch her sides. ‘Oh, dear, I’m getting a stitch. You’re just the same as ever! Thanks for reminding me why I couldn’t stand it any more.’

It was unfair, but Amaryllis felt irrationally relieved by this. It wasn’t that she actually wanted Christopher for herself in any way apart from friendship, but that she wanted to know that he saw his ex-wife realistically and didn’t harbour any secret longings to revive their relationship. Now it was quite clear that he didn’t.

She was grateful for Keith Burnet’s unexpected support too. For much of the day she had wondered if she had become a stranger in her own town, which was how she now thought of Pitkirtly. Now she knew she had been accepted as a native, to be protected at all costs from the attacks of outsiders.

‘What have you done with the black bag?’ asked Keith at this moment.

Amaryllis glanced round, her initial calm confidence that she had the bag close by giving way gradually to the sinking feeling of someone who doesn’t know what she’s done with something. This was an unfamiliar feeling to Amaryllis. Usually there was a part of her brain that kept track of apparently useless details.

‘I just put it down here for a minute,’ she muttered, looking at the doorway as if she expected it to appear there. ‘Or maybe it was in the foyer.... I’ll go and get it.’

She scuttled into the building, away from what she now saw as censorious eyes. None of the others followed her. She hoped that meant Christopher was talking Deirdre down from her hysteria, or better still, had sent her packing. Or that an albatross had appeared in the skies over Pitkirtly and had swooped down and carried the woman off.

There were no black bags in the foyer.

She closed her eyes and tried to think of all the things she had done while holding the bag.

She had stood
outside the front door bandying words with Keith. What had happened next?

Ah, the paramedics had come out with the trolley, and she had held the door open for them. Was she holding the black bag then? No! She had put it down in the corner. She opened her eyes and looked steadily at the corner, waiting for the bag to materialise. But she didn’t really think it would. Amaryllis was confident about most of her own abilities, and she had to admit to herself that the transmission of matter wasn’t one of them.

Perhaps someone had moved it. She looked towards the office. The door was closed.

Obviously a closed door was no barrier to someone of her skills, but she hesitated all the same. She didn’t want to interrupt anything private or, worse still, anything that might embarrass an outsider. Her
brief experience of the behaviour of television people suggested that this was only too likely.

She would have been happier if Keith Burnet had been with her to lend authority to the intrusion, but there was no doubt she had to go in there even without him.

She opened the door – it wasn’t locked – and peered in.

Oscar sat at Christopher’s desk, quite alone.

‘Has she gone?’ he asked.

‘Gone? Oh, you mean Maria. Yes, a little while ago.
.. Have they told you how it happened?’ she said.

He shrugged.
‘No, not really. But you know what the police are like. Everybody’s guilty until proven innocent. I can’t imagine they’ll share any of their suspicions with me, of all people.’

Amaryllis’s view was that if he couldn’t persuade the police to share their suspicions, then he deserved to be locked up and have the keys thrown away.

‘Do you think it was poison again?’ she said cautiously.

Oscar leaned back in the chair, causing it to creak alarmingly. ‘What’s all this about? Do you have a licence to snoop?
Or is it just a hobby of yours? If you want to interrogate people, join the police. They’ve already asked me all that.’

She didn’t like his attitude,
and if she had indeed been in the police force she wouldn’t have let him off as lightly as they seemed to have done, but on the other hand she supposed some people might make allowances for the very recent loss of his wife. She could see she wasn’t going to get anything out of him either way.

It seemed tactless to ask if he had seen a black rubbish bag.
Oscar might take it as some sort of an insult to his wife’s memory. Amaryllis wouldn’t normally have bothered about these niceties, but she was now conscious that her apparent acceptance by the people of Pitkirtly brought with it certain responsibilities. Including the one about being nice to visitors. A rebellious thought crossed her mind at this point, and just for a second or two she wondered if the price of acceptance in Pitkirtly might be a little too high, but she ruthlessly hustled the thought on its way. She would do this properly.

‘Are you all right there?’ she said.

He gave a heavy sigh. ‘Fine,’ he said.

‘Would you like me to get you a coffee or anything?’

‘Hmm. I’m not sure I want to eat or drink anything more in this town.’

‘That’s a bit unfair!’

‘Is it? Can you guarantee the coffee won’t be poisoned? Or that somebody won’t creep up behind me while I’m drinking it and hit me on the head? There’s evil in the air around here. I can smell it. I can taste it. I wish we’d never come here.’

‘You can’t really blame the town for what’s happened,’ said Amaryllis.

‘Oh, can’t I? I’ve been reading up on the kind of things that have happened in this town over the past couple of years, and if I’d known about them before, we definitely wouldn’t have come. The murder rate’s worse than Chicago, for God’s sake!’

‘Why did you come here anyway?’ she said. She wished she could just walk away, but she had noticed a small
pile of black bin bags by the window, and what she really wanted was for Oscar to walk away so that she could investigate them.

‘We were meant to go to Blair Atholl, and then when they dropped out we thought we were going to this other place at the back of beyond, only it turned out somebody had made
the other place up. Pitkirtly was our last choice, believe me.’