Murder at Midnight

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Murder at Midnight: A Rex Graves Mystery
© 2014
C. S. Challinor

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First e-book edition © 2014

E-book ISBN: 978-0-7387-4002-7

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dedication

For Eddie

author’s note

Liberty has been taken with the “disowned” Frasers, who were made up for fictional purposes and not meant in any way to impugn the illustrious Clan Fraser. I have adhered to British spelling in the dialogue and American spelling in the narrative, this edition being primarily destined for the US market.

NB. The poem I made up, but to this day Jacobite gold is believed to be buried at Loch Arkaig, a location not far from Rex’s retreat in the Scottish Highlands.

cast of main characters

Rex Graves
—Scottish barrister (advocate in Scotland) and amateur sleuth

Helen d’Arcy
—his devoted fiancée from Derby, England

Julie Brownley
—Helen’s single friend, a school teacher

Drew Harper
—bachelor and house agent with seduction to spare

Alistair Frazer
—Rex’s legal colleague at the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh

John Dunbar
—Alistair’s partner, a paramedic

Flora Allerdice
—a family friend from a previous case

Jason Short
—Flora’s boyfriend from art college

Catriona Fraser
—
gullible heiress to Gleneagle Castle

Kenneth Fraser
—Catriona’s windbag husband

Dr. Humphrey L. Cleverly
—professor of history at the University of Edinburgh

Margarita Delacruz
—the professor’s mysterious guest

Vanessa Weaver
—snobbish interior designer

Ace Weaver
—her older disabled husband, a WWII veteran

Zoe Weaver
—their actress daughter

Chief Inspector Dalgerry
—Police Scotland
detective at Lochaber, Skye, and Lochalsh Area Command

1
port in a storm

“The Allerdices are refurbishing
the Loch Lochy Hotel,” Vanessa Weaver info
rmed Rex.

“Aboot time,” he replied in his Lowland Scots burr, recalling with distaste the moldy inn and fake hunting theme decor. “Has business picked up for them, then?”

“It has. Ever since the notoriety over the Moor Murders. Ghoulish, I know, that tourists would want to stay under the same roof as a serial killer … But there you are. I told Shona and Hamish the place needed a makeover, and I’m pleased to say they listened.” Vanessa’s green eyes gloated amid her cloud of auburn hair.

“Well, no one can deny your talent and taste,” Rex said graciously, taking in the expensive cut of the interior designer’s purple velvet dress.

From across the living room came the sudden crash of breaking glass. Within the brief lull in conversation that followed, the speakers could be heard playing a plaintive Gaelic ballad over the gale blowing fiercely outside the lodge.

“That Fraser woman dropped a glass,” Vanessa muttered, re
ferring to a dumpy, middle-aged redhead, whose hair was a more muted shade than her own, though Vanessa’s could not have been a natural color at her age. “Now isn’t breaking a glass bad luck?” The interior designer didn’t wait for an answer. “It’s because you and Helen have thirteen guests, just mark my words.”

“I think that only applies to dinner parties,” Rex said, keeping an eye on proceedings across the room. “In that case, we’d be fifteen, including Helen and myself. And if you’re really worried aboot it, you could count Helen as a guest, which would make fourteen guests in total.”

Vanessa humphed and took a sip of wine. Rex was about to assist his clumsy guest when his fiancée, a shapely blonde in a form-fitting black dress, waved him back, indicating she would deal with the broken glass herself.

Vanessa shook her head in disapproval. “That’s why I never have parties in my home. Some people can’t hold their drink—literally. I hope nothing spilt on that oriental rug I acquired for you. Especially blood.”

Catriona Fraser had jumped up from removing shards of glass
from the carpet and was holding her left thumb to her mouth.
Alistair’s partner offered his white cotton handkerchief. Helen, who had returned with a dustpan and brush, left again when she saw Catriona had cut herself. Rex in turn excused himself from Vanessa in order to fetch Mrs. Fraser a fresh drink.

“You were drinking whisky, correct?”

“I was, but fortunately the glass was empty, so none got on your lovely carpet. I’m so sorry about the glass. It was such a pretty tumbler with those etched thistles around the rim. Can I replace it?”

“No need. I have loads,” Rex lied.

Helen returned with a cotton ball doused in disinfectant and a sticking plaster, and applied them to Catriona’s thumb.

“So clumsy of me. I misjudged the table when I was putting the glass down, and it caught the edge and hit the floor.”

Her husband put an arm around her thick waist. “Cat can hardly see out of her right eye, and has no depth perception,” he explained.

“I tripped down the steps at the bar at the Glenspean Lodge hotel in Roy Bridge one time. I hadn’t even had a drink. It was horribly embarrassing.”

“Happens to the best of us,” Rex assured her, handing her a new glass filled with single malt and plenty of ice. She hadn’t consumed more alcohol than anyone else, as far as he knew, but he decided to play it safe all the same.

His fiancée in her efficient way swept up the debris.

“Thank you, Helen,” Catriona said, holding up her thumb wrapped in sticking plaster. “Sorry to be such a nuisance.”

“Oh, nonsense,” Helen replied with a warm smile. “It’s nothing!”

Nothing compared to what had happened at his last party, Rex thought. He took the dustpan from Helen’s hands. “You’ve done more than enough, lass.” He planted a kiss on her neck and went to dispose of the shards in the kitchen.

The wind whistled at the window, wailing a banshee lament, pelting sleet against the glass with a vengeance. As Rex recalled, the keening fairy women in Scottish Gaelic mythology were tasked with washing the blood from the garments of those about to die. He gave an involuntary shudder at his reflection and turned away from the storm.

_____

Back in the living room he continued his rounds with a cut-glass decanter of Glenlivet in one hand and a bottle of white wine in the other. His fiancée offered the guests a box of chocolates that someone had brought as a gift.

“Your Hogmanay party is a resounding success,” she announced, glancing around the room where a dozen animated guests and one old man in a wheelchair sat around the roaring fire while the gale gathered in force outside. “Let’s hope it doesn’t all end in murder like last time,” she added glibly, waving her wine glass.

Rex smiled at her. “Not like you to be such a pessimist.” All the same, he felt a quiver of apprehension. His summer housewarming to celebrate the acquisition of his new retreat in the Highlands had ended in tragedy. He could only hope his New Year’s Eve party would serve to sweep out the ghosts of the past and usher in a brighter future.

Two guests from the housewarming event were present: Alistair Frazer, his colleague at the High Court of Justiciary; and Flora Allerdice, the daughter of the owners of the Loch Lochy Hotel, in whom Rex had taken an avuncular interest. He knew Alistair would have the delicacy not to refer to the murder at Gleneagle Lodge, and Flora certainly wouldn’t, since it continued to be a painful memory for her.

The girl’s looks had much improved since he first knew her.
When he bought the lodge, she had been secretly in love with
Alistair, not realizing that his attentions had been merely courteous. Properly in love at present, now that her developmentally disabled brother required less of her attention, she had come into her own.

“It’s wonderful to see her so happy,” Helen said, as so often giving voice to his thoughts. “And Jason seems like a nice, steady boy.” She looked over to where the young couple occupied a window seat in a bay window watching the sleet through the rattling panes. In the dark, Loch Lown was invisible, though on a clear day it took up the whole view.

“Flora told me they met at art college.”

“That they did,” Rex said. “She deserves some happiness after what she’s been through in her short life. Fortunately, her parents don’t know she’s here or I’d have had to invite them as well.”

“Hamish Allerdice can’t keep his hands to himself. Just think what he would have tried on with Julie.”

Helen’s friend was dressed to kill in a short plaid skirt and black leather boots. A gym-toned bleached blonde in her mid-forties, her attention was directed at Drew Harper. She had met him on a previous visit to the Highlands with Helen, and Rex had been at great pains to convince him to come to the party at both women’s insistence. A man like Drew had no doubt been assailed by invitations from several females eager to snag that special New Year’s Eve kiss, but Rex had prevailed.

The jade marble clock on the mantelpiece had just struck nine and the party was in full swing. Over the baying of the wind and the notes of a haunting melody arose the burble of conversation interjected by peals of laughter. The buffet prepared by Helen and Julie had been picked clean, and Scotch whisky flowed freely. The guests had brought shortbread and fruit cake, as well as streamers and noisemakers. These horns, whistles, and metallic fringed blowouts lay ready for midnight on the buffet table, lit by a ring-shaped iron candelabra holding twenty-four electric candles. Rex anticipated a loud and messy culmination to the festivities. However, it was Hogmanay, after all, and he hoped to make it a night to remember.

The living room, decked with scented candles and sprigs of holly and mistletoe, exuded an aroma of vanilla and pinewood smoke. Many guests had complimented him on the old-fashioned décor, and he had given Julie and Helen due credit for their part, once again. Mellowed by whisky, he began to truly enjoy himself and feel all would end well, after all.

Margarita Delacruz, a chic woman of indeterminate age, ebony hair pulled back in a chignon, placed her black sequined handbag among the pile by the party favors. She presented an exotic figure, her willowy form dressed from head to toe in black, a cashmere shawl thrown artfully over one shoulder, strands of amber beads and matching earrings adorning her person.

“I tried to engage her in conversation,” Helen remarked. “From
the little response I got, I think I detected the trace of a foreign ac
cent.”

“She’s from South America, I believe. Perhaps she doesn’t speak very good English. I’ll take a crack at her later.”

“Good luck. She and Professor Cleverly make a rather odd pair, don’t you think?”

They had arrived together in his car. Humphrey Cleverly was now engaged in conversation with the debonair Alistair, a contrast in fashion and looks, the professor’s gaunt frame clothed in a crumpled jacket, jeans, and an untidily knotted cravat, his head bald but for a closely shaved perimeter around the skull. And yet Rex knew better than to be fooled by his frumpy attire and awkward ways. The professor’s intellect was as sharp as a razor blade.

“He and Margarita are just old friends, I gather. Humphrey dedicates most of his time to his dusty old books. He may have met her on his travels abroad.” Cleverly’s passion was socio-cultural anthropology, although he taught history at the University of Edinburgh. Rex continued his rounds, catching snatches of conversation.

“Six people called to say they felt unequal to braving the gale,” Alistair was telling the professor in a less pronounced Scottish accent than the other men at the party, having been schooled at Eton. “I’m surprised so many actually managed to get here.”

One couple had reported to Rex on the phone that they had made it as far as his entrance. The road then descended treacherously into the valley, where the lodge nestled by the almost frozen loch. They had, however, decided to turn back before their car skidded on ice.

Hogmanay festivities in Scotland went on well into the wee
hours, and he decided he would worry about what to do with his guests then, if the storm did not abate. He had enough rooms and plenty of food. Nor was there a shortage of firewood from the giant Scots pine uprooted in a previous gale, which he had chopped up and stored in the woodshed.

Julie, he saw, had managed to corner Drew. Absorbed in one another, they did not notice at first when Rex offered to refill their glasses. Perhaps Helen’s match-making scheme would pay off after all, and Julie would conquer the seductive and soulful bachelor, who was the quintessential tall, dark, and handsome hero of romantic novels. Certainly, they had been inseparable the week of Julie’s previous visit.

Less than three hours to go until midnight, he reflected, and
presumably anybody who was going to come was already here.

“Thirteen guests, if this is all that’s coming. Very unlucky,” Vanessa Weaver repeated in her gentrified Scots while Rex replenished her wine glass.

The Scots were a superstitious lot. Part of “redding” the house for the New Year entailed whisking a broom around the rooms, burning cleansing juniper in the fireplace, and strewing mistletoe, hazel, and yew throughout to ward off evil spirits.

“Not much I can do aboot the unlucky number, Vanessa,” he apologized, giving up on reasoning with her. Perhaps if she hadn’t brought her daughter, whom he didn’t remember inviting. Then there would have been twelve guests, excluding Helen. Vanessa had gushed earlier that night that Zoe was an actress and had recently auditioned for the part of a star-crossed lover in a television soap opera.

Zoe certainly looked tragic enough, brooding by the stone fireplace, obviously less than thrilled to be at the party, if not downright bored. Truth be told, there were no eligible men present, except for Drew Harper, and Julie had her claws well and truly into him, judging by the flirting going on between the pair at the far corner of the room. Still, if Rex were not mistaken, the house agent was not blind to Zoe’s charms, and from time to time cast surreptitious looks in her direction. In her twenties, she possessed an arresting face and a tangle of reddish gold curls trailing down her bare-backed gown of emerald chiffon.

“Some guests were simply unable to make it in this weather,” Rex explained to her mother. He wished Vanessa had been one of them. He had only invited her because she had designed the interior of his lodge, and he had run into her in the village off-license. It had been obvious from the crates of liquor that he was preparing for a New Year’s Eve party, and he had felt duty-bound to extend an invitation, thinking she would decline. She had an older invalid husband at home, a fact she had divulged when working on Gleneagle Lodge.

Miraculously, where others had failed, Ace Weaver had beaten the odds and, with the aid of a cane, had walked with excruciatingly slow steps down the frosty path to the door, where icicles dangled from the stone porch roof. Vanessa had brought his wheelchair from their station wagon and unfolded it by the fire, where he now dozed.

He had been an ace fighter pilot in the Second World War—hence the nickname—and perhaps it was this drive and spirit that had seen him through the inclement weather that showed no signs of abating.