7 A Tasteful Crime (26 page)

In the distance he heard the police sirens approaching. He decided he could even cope with the embarrassment he would doubtless feel
at some point during the next five minutes as Amaryllis gave the police a hard time.

‘Thanks for saving my life,’ she said without turning round.

‘You’re welcome,’ said Jock and Giancarlo together. They glared at each other. The world settled back on its axis.

Chapter 34 Catching up in the Queen of Scots

‘So, does this kind of thing happen a lot?’ said Deirdre, leaning on the bar in the Queen of Scots.

‘Only in months with rain in them,’ said Christopher.

‘Pitkirtly’s certainly changed since I was here last,’ she said, taking an over-sized gulp of her gin and tonic.

‘Not really,’ said Christopher. He turned and glanced
over at the usual table where the usual suspects had begun to assemble. Jock McLean, Dave and Jemima were first as always. He knew Amaryllis would be late. He had thought Jock might bring Tricia Laidlaw along, but there was no sign of her. As far as he knew Penelope Johnstone was safely back at home in Aberdour.

‘Hello,’ said Jan from the wool-shop shyly, coming into the bar
as if she were afraid of anybody noticing her. ‘Evening, Charlie.’

‘Jan! Good to see you,’ said Charlie Smith with a smile. ‘If you want to take a seat, I’ll bring your order over to you.’

‘That’s all right. I can wait here,’ said Jan. Had she just fluttered her eyelashes at Charlie? Christopher leaned forward so that he could see past Deirdre and evaluate the situation.

Charlie gave an almost inaudible sigh, and moved further along the bar to fetch Christopher’s pint of Old Pictish Brew. ‘What are your plans now?’ he asked Deirdre as he handed the glass to Christopher. ‘Do you fancy staying in Pitkirtly?’

‘Is that an invitation?’ said Deirdre, with a sideways glance at Jan.

‘No!’ said Charlie, then, perhaps realising he had spoken too sharply, added, ‘Not exactly.’

‘Hmm,’ said Deirdre. ‘If I could stand living here again, I might take the time to work out what you meant by that, Mr Smith.’

Christopher relaxed. He hadn’t for a moment imagined Deirdre settling back down here – she hadn’t exactly settled down the last time – but he had felt a tiny twinge of fear as she spoke. The thought of
an infinity of sparring between her and Amaryllis was enough to make any sensible man head for the hills. And he could think of at least twenty-three more things he wouldn’t like about Deirdre’s being in close proximity.

Jan was glaring at Deirdre.

Charlie seemed to be trying to make signals with his eyebrows. Christopher hadn’t a clue what they meant. In the end he said to both women, ‘Why don’t we go over and join the others?’

‘Others?’ said Deirdre. She glanced over to the table where Jock, Dave and Jemima were all now wearing almost identical expressions of impending doom. ‘Oh, yes! There’s Jock McLean.
Such a character.’

Christopher suppressed his mirth and escorted them to the table.

‘Better get some more chairs, then,’ said Dave with resignation, getting to his feet.

‘I only need one,’ said Deirdre.

‘You haven’t started talking about the murders without us, have you?’ said Christopher anxiously.

‘Talking about – is that what you usually do?’ said Deirdre. ‘I’m not sure I want to be part of this. I still miss Eric, you know.’

‘But don’t you want to know what really happened?’ said Christopher.

‘We can only work it
all out if we put our heads together,’ said Jemima, nodding encouragement. ‘We haven’t started yet though – we’re waiting for Amaryllis.’

‘She’s bringing Zak and Giancarlo,’ said Dave, setting down the two chairs he had scavenged from another table.

‘Bringing them?’ said Christopher. ‘Can’t they get here on their own?’

‘She said she would go and collect them,’ said Jock.
‘In a taxi. Giancarlo’s still on crutches.’

There was a disturbance at the door, and Amaryllis burst into the bar, laughing and holding on to Zak and Giancarlo, one at each side of her.

Once they had all got their drinks and pulled up extra chairs, and all the women had had a turn at fussing over Giancarlo, Christopher noticed everybody looking at him expectantly.

‘I don’t know any more
about this than the rest of you,’ he said.

‘Yes, you do,’ said Deirdre. ‘You know much more than I do, for a start. Who’s this nice young man, for instance? And why have I never met him before?’

She put her hand on Giancarlo’s arm and looked up into his big brown eyes. He smiled at her as if she were the only other person in the world. Christopher frowned. He saw that Amaryllis didn’t seem too happy either. He shouldn’t have let Deirdre down her gin and tonic so quickly. He shouldn’t have...

No, he told himself firmly. Deirdre wasn’t his responsibility. It wasn’t his fault that she had returned to Pitkirtly, or that her husband had met his death
here, or that she was still here now after all the other television people had gone. Even if she had decided to home in on Giancarlo as a possible fourth husband, it still wasn’t his responsibility to stop her. In any case he thought the boy could probably look after himself.

He gave Amaryllis a huge grin. She blinked in surprise.

‘Where will we start?’ he said.

‘We could start with their father,’ suggested Jemima.

‘Yes. Charlotte and Ken’s father. Mr Campbell,’ said Christopher. ‘Would you like to tell us about him, Jock?’

He swung round and confronted Jock, who had been sitting peacefully with his pint glass in his hand, quite prepared to listen as if Christopher were telling them all a bedtime story.

‘Who, me?’

‘You’re the one who did the research,’ said Christopher.

‘And rescued me,’ added Amaryllis.

‘That was mostly Giancarlo,’
muttered Jock. ‘Oh, all right. The father was the one who built up the television company from a wee radio station. He just wanted to keep it going as a local thing, delivering its own programmes within its own area. He created the cooking programme – Open Kitchen – to try and highlight local produce and traditional baking, that kind of thing.’

‘There wasn’t any of this newfangled healthy eating in th
e old days,’ said Jemima. ‘It was just good plain food.’

‘Some people think old-fashioned porridge is the healthiest thing you can eat,’ said Deirdre. She laughed. ‘Or put on your face.’

‘Porridge on your face?’ said Jemima, baffled. ‘What would be the point of that?’

‘Anyway,’ said Jock, raising his voice slightly, ‘Open Kitchen was his own idea and he liked to supervise it himself all the way through the stages of production. But there were forces working against him.’

‘Eric,’ said Deirdre, swirling what was left of her drink round the glass. ‘Who’s going to get me a re-fill?’

She made it sound as if it would be some sort of an honour, thought Christopher incredulously. She was even looking straight at Giancarlo. As if he was in a fit state to jump up and do her bidding!

Zak intercepted the glass she held out, and went off with it.

‘Eric was working against the television company?’ said Jan.

‘And Oscar,’ said Deirdre.

‘But why on earth should they do that?’ said Jan.

‘Eric hated Bob Campbell. He hated Open Kitchen,’ said Deirdre. ‘He wanted to sabotage it so that he didn’t have to do it any more. So he and Oscar got together to invent a place to use as back-up when Blair Atholl fell through – they knew it would, because they had got at the chair of the local committee that was pushing it forward.’

‘Have you known this all along?’ said Christopher accusingly.

‘Oscar told me about it the day before yesterday,’ said Deirdre. ‘After the police let him go. He said he felt guilty about not telling me before. He didn’t want to show up Eric in a bad light after what had happened. But I made him tell me... If Open Kitchen was cancelled, Eric would get a pay-off, you see. There was insurance – business liability. If he just left, he wouldn’t. Eric always liked to look after the pennies.’

‘A bit more than pennies, surely?’ said Christopher.

‘A little bit more,’ said Deirdre, smiling. She accepted her next drink from Zak and sipped at it a little more cautiously this time.

‘What about Charlotte and Ken?’ said Jemima. ‘Why did they have to do something so drastic? Couldn’t they just have talked it through with Eric?’

‘They weren’t like that,’ said Deirdre.  ‘And they blamed Eric for their father’s death – although that was nonsense, of course. Bob Campbell was just a weakling – his time had been and gone. If he hadn’t gone to jail he could have still been running the show, but he was like a fatally wounded beast. Somebody had to put him out of his misery.’

Christopher glanced at her suspiciously. Had she been drinking even before they had arrived at the Queen of Scots? Or had she just recovered her flair for melodrama?

‘Charlotte and Ken wanted revenge, ‘ Deirdre continued. ‘They knew Oscar had been involved in the Glasswearie fiasco too. Poisoning Eric got rid of him and warned Oscar at the same time. Killing two birds with one stone.’

‘But how did they do it? Was it in the apple?’ said Jemima.

Christopher glanced at her and knew she was still nervous about the possibility that Eric had after all been poisoned in her own kitchen.

‘Poisoned apple!
Ha!’ said Deirdre, shaking with laughter and spilling gin and tonic on Jock McLean’s shoe. ‘That would have been tragic irony – or something.’

‘It was in the lip
balm,’ said Jock McLean, taking advantage of Deirdre’s pause for laughter to wrest control of the story back from her. ‘Amaryllis sussed it out first, and then Charlie told me it was true – he heard it from Keith Burnet. That’s all top secret, of course. Charlotte knew Eric always used lip balm just before he went on air. She swapped the jar out for a poisoned one after they’d finished with Penelope and were on the way to Tricia’s, then just waited for him to use it.’

‘So why did they kill Maria too? Was that another warning to Oscar?’ said Zak.

‘No,’ said Jock. ‘That was an accident. Maria must have picked up the pot of lip balm when she was in Tricia’s kitchen. When they all rushed up there to see what had happened to Eric.’

‘I saw her picking up something and putting it in her pocket,’ said Christopher. ‘I did wonder if I should mention it to Keith Burnet, in case she was removing vital evidence from the crime scene – I could have saved her life.’

‘That happens,’ said Deirdre, apparently unconcerned.

‘
When they found her in the library,’ Jock continued, ‘she had used it and died almost instantly, but they arranged things to look as if she’d been attacked.’

‘I don’t know why she had to be in the library that evening in the first place,’ said Christopher crossly. ‘She could have waited until the next day, and by then maybe she would have realised she should hand the lip
balm over to the police.’

‘Oh, I asked her to pop down there,’ said Deirdre airily. ‘I thought I’d left my scarf there in all the commotion. I thought she wouldn’t mind. It was just one of the things she did.’

They all stared at her.

‘What,
tidying up after you?’ said Christopher. ‘Doesn’t that make you feel a bit like – well, royalty or something?’

‘Not really,’ said Deirdre. ‘It was just part of her job description.’

Zak got back with Deirdre’s drink, handed it over and gazed at the silent group round the table. ‘You didn’t need to wait for me,’ he said uncertainly. ‘You could have gone on with the story – I know most of it anyway.’

‘It’s all right, Zak,’ said Amaryllis. ‘We’re all just temporarily struck dumb by some people’s arrogance.’

Deirdre glared at Amaryllis, who glared back.

‘What were Ken and Charlotte doing there, then?’ said Christopher. ‘I don’t suppose you sent them down to collect your handbag, Deirdre?’

Deirdre began to laugh again. She must have been drinking for hours. People didn’t get into this sort of state in a few minutes. Christopher gave her a disapproving stare, but he didn’t think she saw it as she was still holding Amaryllis’s gaze.

‘Ken had to go and check on the equipment. He was worried about the others having used it.’

Christopher remembered the two taciturn men who had been operating the cameras, along with Maria. He wondered if Ken had gone to the Cultural Centre soon after Maria deliberately or whether it had been coincidence. None of the people sitting round the table here would probably ever know the answer to that.

‘So if she died of poison like Eric,’ Jemima prompted, fixing Jock with a stare, ‘why did they have to pretend she’d been attacked?’

‘And why was there so much blood?’ said Dave. ‘People don’t bleed all over the place once they’re dead – do they?’

Jemima elbowed him in the ribs.

‘Well, they don’t, do they?’ said Dave. ‘I’m only stating a fact here, Jemima.’