7 A Tasteful Crime (3 page)

‘No use either,’ said Charlotte. ‘The flash’ll reflect off all those glass cases. If we could get rid of them...’

‘No!’ said Christopher.

Oscar shook his head. ‘Isn’t looking good, Chris. We were promised facilities.’

‘Maybe if you’d given us a bit more notice...’

‘Some towns are falling over themselves to get featured on ‘Open Kitchen’. Some of them have even built whole new spaces to accommodate the team.’

‘Why did one of them drop out at the last minute, then, if they’re all so keen?’ snapped Christopher. He didn’t often snap at people, but he felt entitled to do so on this occasion. Seeing Deirdre again had set his teeth on edge.

‘Why didn’t somebody warn us what a godforsaken place this was before we came trekking all this way on a wild-goose chase?’ yelled Oscar. He had a huge voice for such a small man.

At this point Zak Johnstone, who had been standing still by the front door and who didn’t appear to have been paying attention, intervened.

‘You’ve only trekked from Glasgow, you pretentious git!’ he exclaimed, striding forward and leaning down towards Oscar. ‘Nobody’s going to co-operate if you start throwing your weight about the minute you get here. If you speak to Mr Wilson nicely, he’ll think of something. He always does.’

Christopher wasn’t sure if he was ready for the weight of responsibility Zak had so casually cast round his shoulders. He realised he had been hoping the whole television crew would decide Pitkirtly wasn’t good enough for them and just take themselves off again. He knew Jemima for one would be disappointed not to feature in ‘Open Kitchen’ but she would get over it. In time.

‘It’s all right, Zak,’ he said, trying
for a tone of calm authority again. ‘We’ll just have to see what we can do.’

Deirdre came out of the office. ‘Only two of them answered. One had forgotten it was this weekend and she’s arranged to go to North Berwick with her grandchildren, and the other one seemed to be in
the middle of some sort of anxiety attack. Lot of noise in the background. I did wonder if her house was getting burgled but when I offered to call the police she just laughed and said something about leeks being thrown.’

‘Leeks?’ said Christopher uneasily.

‘Leeks!’ shouted Zak. ‘My Mum’s cake had leeks in it.’

‘They’re all round at Jemima’s,’ said Christopher.
‘That must have been her on the phone.’

‘Cake?
But they aren’t meant to bake until tomorrow!’ said Maria sharply.

‘They’ve got to practise, love,’ said Oscar, patting her hand. She gave him a look which, if it hadn’t been the twenty-first century when women were assertive and didn’t need men to make them complete and so on, Christopher
might have thought of as a simper.

Deirdre sighed and rolled her eyes
unattractively.

‘My second husband and his third wife,’ she said to Christopher in an undertone. ‘Still on their honeymoon – that won’t last.’

‘Why on earth...?’ said Christopher. He had almost asked her why on earth she had ever married the man, but halfway through the sentence he realised he wasn’t interested in any possible reply. He changed tack. ‘Maybe we could do something with the foyer,’ he said to Oscar. ‘The desk can be moved out of the way.’

‘There’s Christopher’s office as well,’ said Deirdre. ‘It’s big enough to host a Primary Seven Prom.’

Oscar began to look a bit less despondent. Second husband or not, he soon had everybody dancing to his tune.

Chapter 3 Buttons meets his match

There was something furtive about the way the man came out of the Cultural Centre. He glanced nervously back over his shoulder as he stepped through the door, and as soon as he was out in the car park he took a pair of sunglasses out of his top pocket and put them on, although because it was September and it was Pitkirtly, the day was overcast with the looming threat of rain.

Amaryllis was naturally suspicious of furtive people, even after several years in a town where people might look furtive for any number of reasons, from having bought a magazine with a pull-out feature on model railways, to having just hit somebody on the head with an axe. Not that she had yet encountered an axe murderer in Pitkirtly. She knew it was only a matter of time, though.

This particular man didn’t look as if he would have the strength even to pick up an axe. He was smallish and rather frail, with silver hair and small feet. Despite this, he did have a certain sort of presence about him. Was he with the television people Christopher had been meeting?

She gave him a hard stare. He flinched and turned his head aside.
Interesting. Amaryllis made up her mind to follow him for a while. She needed the practice anyway.

He didn’t do anything very interesting. He headed across the car park towards the supermarket,
and then swerved aside at the last minute, apparently alarmed by the sight of a group of elderly women with shopping bags who were outside chatting. She didn’t blame him for that. He went round the corner as if to go up the High Street, but when she followed him after a moment or two, he had disappeared. Leaving aside the possibility that he had gone into the fish shop, which she knew was a magnet for people of his age group, Amaryllis decided he must instead have ducked round behind the Cultural Centre where the back door was. There was nothing round there apart from dustbins, but perhaps he was searching for a way down to the harbour or something. She couldn’t remember ever seeing him in Pitkirtly before, so he probably didn’t know it was a dead end.

She cornered him by the bins.
He was smoking a cigar and taking swigs from a flask.

‘Are you following me or what
, pal?’ he said in a strong Glasgow accent.

‘I just wondered what you were up to,’ she told him. ‘This way doesn’t lead anywhere.’

‘I know that,’ he said.

‘Have you been here before?’

He took off the sunglasses. ‘Who do you think you are, asking all those questions?’

‘Just a concerned local resident,’ she said.
‘Who do you think you are?’

His shoulders sagged. ‘I was right,’ he said. ‘Nobody remembers me.
All those years of treading the boards – singing stupid songs – interacting with spotty kids. It’s all water under the bridge. A tale told by an idiot – signifying nothing.’

‘I thought it was unlucky to quote from Macbeth,’ said Amaryllis.

He growled. ‘That’s all havers. I’m not even a proper actor.’

‘But you are an actor?’ she said. This was better than she had expected. She decided to hang around with him for a while and try to find out what he was doing here.

‘Of sorts,’ he said. ‘I’ve done panto everywhere from Crail to Kincardine. I’m fated to play Buttons until the day I drop dead from boredom in front of a live audience while performing the opening number. Always Buttons, never Prince Charming.’

He executed a comedy bow.

‘What were you doing in the Cultural Centre?’

‘Oh, is that what you call it?’ He looked up at the back of the building and sniffed. ‘There won’t be much culture going on in there if that Oscar Ferguson has his way.’

‘Oscar Ferguson?’

He stared at her. ‘You don’t mean to tell me you don’t watch television as well as not going to the theatre?’

There were so many negatives in his question that she didn’t know whether to nod or shake her head. She compromised and said, ‘I’ve never had much time for that sort of thing.’

‘Ah, one of those,’ he said, nodding.

Amaryllis had been quite prepared to like him up to that point. She gave him one more chance. ‘I’ve been overseas a lot. For work.’

‘Ah. That’s different then.
Oscar Ferguson is the face of Open Kitchen. But that’s just his latest project. He’s also been the face of Sing for your Supper and Your Pet Can Dance Too and...’

‘I get the idea,’ said Amaryllis hastily.

‘Do you really? His was also the face my wife used to wake up to every morning.’

‘Um,’ said Amaryllis, who wasn’t all that interested in showbiz scandals.

‘They were married then. He was her second husband, of course. She was no spring chicken even then. It’s even worse now – I was the best she could find.’

His self-induced laughter turned into a coughing fit as two other people came round the corner.

‘Amaryllis,’ said Christopher with what sounded like an unlikely cross between relief and anxiety.

There was an unpleasantly lean, muscular woman by his side. She looked as if she had been left in the oven too long.

‘This is Deirdre,’ he continued. He turned to the woman. ‘What’s your latest married name?’

‘Oh, I’ve stuck with Ferguson,’ she said airily.
‘Couldn’t spell McLaughlin.’

‘McLaughlin? You mean...?’
Christopher’s voice tailed off as if he couldn’t quite accept the scenario he had just constructed in his head.

‘Yes, I’m married to this clown,’ said the woman named Deirdre, glaring at Buttons. ‘What are you doing skulking round the back, Eric? You’re needed in makeup.’

‘I didn’t know we’d brought any makeup with us,’ he said sulkily.
‘As long as I’ve got my lip balm, that’s all I’m bothered about.’

‘Charlotte’s
on the case. Come on.’

He heaved himself upright, stubbed out the cigar and followed her back round the building. Amaryllis stared accusingly at Christopher.

‘I didn’t know she was going to turn up,’ he said.

‘Who is she?’

‘Deirdre – you know.’

‘I don’t think I do know.’

‘Haven’t I mentioned her before? We used to be married once – ages ago. I’d almost forgotten. She’s had two more husbands since then.’

‘Oscar,’ said Amaryllis. ‘And now Buttons.’

‘Buttons? Oh, I see.’

‘Well, what happens next?’

‘What do you mean, what happens next?’ said Christopher.

‘Where do we go from here?’
said Amaryllis.

‘Where do we go?’

‘I mean, are you needed in the Cultural Centre? And if so, can I come with you? If not, why don’t we go round to the Queen of Scots?’

He glanced at his watch. ‘A bit early for that, isn’t it? Anyway, I’ve got to keep an eye on things. They’re moving tables around and so on. I don’t want the librarians to come in on Monday morning and find books in a heap on the floor. There’d be hell to pay.’

‘Can I come and watch? Not the librarians, I mean, just to see television people at work.’

‘It isn’t pretty,’ he warned her. ‘But you’d be welcome, as far as I’m concerned... No spying though,’ he added hastily.

‘As if!’ she said

They walked slowly back round the building.

‘Nice boots,’ she remarked, glancing at his feet. ‘Why did you marry her in the first place?’ she added as an afterthought.

‘She was younger then,’ he said evasively.

‘I see.’

Chapter 4 Jock and the Giant Apple

After the food fight in Jemima’s kitchen they dispersed, Amaryllis heading for the Cultural Centre, where she claimed she was going to engage in hostage negotiations with the television crew until they let Christopher go, and Penelope walking round to the bus stop to catch the late afternoon service to Dunfermline. Jock suggested to Jemima and Tricia that they should all go down to the Queen of Scots to make sure Dave and Charlie were coping all right. It was a pleasant walk, the sun having finally broken through the clouds.

‘So how is Penelope going to take part if her kitchen’s in Aberdour and they’re filming in Pitkirtly?’ said Jock. In his opinion Penelope shouldn’t be allowed to take part in any
thing culinary, based on today’s performance, but he was now curious about how the whole thing worked. Maybe he should have entered the competition too: after all he had been cooking for himself for some years and nobody had died in his kitchen yet either.

‘She’s borrowing Christopher’s,’ said Jemima. ‘He can’t use it himself because he’s part of the production team. It’s against the rules.’

‘They have rules, do they?’ said Jock.

‘Pages of them,’ said Jemima. ‘We’ve all had to have our kitchens inspected by food hygiene people.’

Jock realised his kitchen would never have passed this test. He was surprised Christopher’s had, particularly after Charlie Smith’s dog’s stay in the house a few months before.

‘When did all this happen?’ he said. He was still miffed by his failure to know all about it before Christopher did. It was against nature.

‘I think it was when you were away. In the Highlands, wasn’t it?’ said Tricia. ‘During that very wet spell in July.’

‘Yes, that was it,’ Jock nodded. ‘It was wet all right.’

They had got through the lunchtime rush at the Queen of Scots, and now Dave sat at a table with his pint of Old Pictish Brew and Charlie Smith stood behind the bar drying glasses as if he had been born to this life instead of coming to it only a short time ago in an unexpected way.