Murder at Midnight (12 page)

“Aye. Silly wee things, if you ask me.”

“Don’t you see? One may have been used to fire a dart.”

Dalgerry stared at him with bulging brown eyes. The kettle started whistling. The chief inspector ignored it. “You may be on to something,” he said at length. “But do you really think the killer used a party whistle to poison his victims?”

“One of the victims, anyway. It’s the perfect cover. Who would suspect something so innocuous?”

“Who brought these noisemakers?”

“Jason, John, can’t remember who else. Jason was blowing one just now in the hall.”

“They were strewn all over the place.” Dalgerry took the party blowout and rolled out the paper with his forefinger. “It’s sealed at the bottom,” he remarked. “I suppose the killer could have put a hole in it.”

Rex took it back and pulled off the paper tongue and metallic fringes, leaving the cardboard tube separate.

“Och, aye,” Dalgerry said. He walked back to the stove and silenced the screaming kettle.

“From a short distance I imagine it would work. Let’s find oot.” Rex took the shiny, colored tube to the library and, opening his box of trout casts, disassembled one from its hook. The bob fly, a Black Zulu for use on dull windy days, had a varnished nose, a body of seal’s fur, and a doubled red floss tail, and was designed to be tripped along the surface of a loch and mistaken by trout for a tasty insect struggling to take off from the water.

He was loath to destroy it, but needs must. He pulled out the plastic mouthpiece, inserted the artificial fly into the tube, replaced the mouthpiece, and blew with all his force. The simulated dart flew out the tube and landed undramatically a few feet away on the rug.

Dalgerry, who had joined him with a steaming mug of tea, scratched an ear. He spoke in a low voice so as not to wake Ace Weaver. In his excitement, Rex had forgotten all about the old man asleep on his daybed. “Well, technically it works, but would it really do the job?” the chief inspector asked.

“I’m sure more skill and finesse would be required. But, remember, we’re not using a real dart that would have proper lift. The trajectory of the dart may only have needed to be a few feet to kill Ken Fraser. He wouldn’t have seen it coming. And it would have avoided a struggle and the sound of one.”

“An interesting hypothesis,” the chief inspector allowed. “That one didn’t make much of a sound. But why all the bother with darts and pipes in the first place? That’s what stumps me.”

Rex held up the festive tube. “By this means, the killer avoids contact with the victim and doesn’t even need to be in the same room. Perhaps after the first killing the murderer got over his scruples and just jabbed Catriona’s thumb. The plaster concealed the point of entry. Another perfect cover. No need to shoot the dart in that instance when a better alternative presented itself.”

“Do we know for sure that Ken was killed first? The doctor couldn’t tell as yet.”

Rex shook his head slowly. “Not with absolute certainty.”

Dalgerry clapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t look so glum.” He pointed to the decorative tube. “That could be the other half of our murder weapon.” He set down his mug on Rex’s desk and consulted his notes. “The first dart was allegedly found by Vanessa Weaver under Catriona Fraser’s armchair, purposely hidden from view, or accidently kicked there and unrecoverable by the killer. The second dart was discovered in our imposter’s handbag. I’m re-interviewing the lady later today.”

“Where is she staying?”

“At a hotel near here. The Brambles.”

“I know it.” Rex recalled the ornate wrought-iron gate and profuse ivy clambering up the gray stone walls to the pigeon-walk balconies. A rather elegant establishment.

“Professor Cleverly is booked in there too. Separate rooms.”

“Humphrey went back to Edinburgh.”

“Abandoned the sinking ship, eh?”

“Was any tube that was missing its paper tongue taken away?” Rex asked. “And, if so, do you think you could have the lab test the mouthpiece for DNA? Whoever blew it may have left some on it.”

Dalgerry nodded assent.

Rex tried his experiment again, with similar results, except that this time when he blew, the tube emitted a sonorous tooting sound, like a horn, as had Jason’s. He tried blowing a couple more times and found that if he channeled his breath in a more upward
direction, it made the sound, otherwise it expelled air making only a rasping noise.

“Rex … What are you doing?” Helen asked from the doorway. “I heard noises from down the hall. You’ll wake Ace.”

“Och, he’s dead to the world.”

Helen gave her fiancé a quizzical look and then asked, “What’s that in your hand?”

“One of those party blow things. Or part of it.”

“Oh, I see,” Helen said approaching on tiptoe so as not to disturb the invalid. “It’s a makeshift blowpipe. Without the paper part, you’re left with a cardboard pipe and a plastic mouthpiece. And it blends in with the spirit of New Year’s Eve. Ingenious.”

“Indeed.”

“Does it work?”

“I had to use one of my trout flies as a substitute for a dart. They’re not meant to sail through the air.”

“Wouldn’t Jason’s empty Biro or Margarita’s cigarette holder work as well?”

“They went to be tested for trace evidence of poison,” Dalgerry informed her. “The lady’ll have to inhale her cigarettes direct or else get another one.”

“One of these would be more disposable,” Rex said holding up his tube. “And everyone was blowing them. But if you can get DNA off one that just has the tube, it might point us in the right direction,” he repeated to the chief inspector.

“Aye, that was a shrewd observation, Mr. Graves. We’ll see what turns up.”

“D’you have a suspect to match the DNA to?” Helen asked him.

“Not yet.”

“Vanessa and Zoe are settled upstairs,” she told Rex, going up to the daybed to check on Mr. Weaver, who, amazingly enough, had slept through the experiment.

“Well, I’ll leave you both to your rest now,” the chief inspector declared. “No sleep for me, I warrant!”

He thanked Helen for the tea and biscuits and set off after Detective Sergeant Milner, who informed his superior that he had been busy on the phone with HQ. Rex waved them off from the front door and then closed it with no small measure of relief.

The police and crime personnel had vacated the property leaving tape and fingerprint dust in their wake, as he saw when he toured the downstairs. The stone hearth had been swept clean, the ashes removed for sifting through for evidence.

“I’ll ask Maggie Kerr from the village to clean up this mess,”
he told Helen. “I think you should take Julie to my mother’s in the morning and wait for me there.”

“How long will you be?”

He could not say with any certainty. Dalgerry seemed to have gone from entertaining an intruder theory to championing an imposter
one. Rex felt he was only humoring him about the party blowout in order to keep his own cards close to his chest. He also felt he was missing a vital clue among the evidence. What was it that the chief inspector had said that might hold importance? Rex had not had time to write everything down. Yet, something had taken root in his brain and he was determined to weed it out.

“You look all in,” Helen said.

“I feel fine.”

“You’re so pale that the freckles are standing out on your face.” She managed to persuade him to get a few hours’ rest and he reluctantly agreed. Perhaps in the morning he would remember what he’d been missing.

1
3
evil tidings

At eleven o’ clock
the next morning, Rex and Helen sat at the breakfast nook. She had washed all the glasses by hand, and Rex insisted she leave the rest of the cleaning to Mrs. Kerr, who had been only too happy of the extra work, judging by her enthusiastic response when he had telephoned. No doubt her drunkard of a husband had blown through a big chunk of his laborer’s wages for Hogmanay and the additional income was welcome.

It had been cold enough during the power cut for the food not to spoil in the refrigerator. The Weavers had left half an hour previously, Ace having consumed a hearty breakfast and cheerfully reminisced about the earlier events of New Year’s Eve, his memory apparently having erased the later ones. Vanessa saw fit not to remind him. “It’ll only confuse him if I try to explain,” she had confided to Helen and Rex.

Julie was still asleep, and Rex predicted she would spend ages in the bathroom as usual and use up all the hot water. He didn’t expect the women’s departure until after lunch at this rate. He prodded at his scrambled eggs, disappointed not to have received a call from Dalgerry, but it was probably too soon for any news. The chief inspector would be speaking to Margarita Delacruz during the course of the day and to Jason, who was supposed to turn in his gold coin. All Rex could do was wait on events unless he had any further flashes of inspiration at his end, or else remembered the niggling but faceless memory that continued to elude him.

Was it too early to call Flora? Perhaps he should wait another half an hour. He fiddled with an intact party blowout, idly watching as his breath extended the paper tongue like an elephant rolling out its trunk, and mulled over why the murderer had picked his Hogmanay party to carry out his or her plan. He underlined one possibility in his notebook: Opportunity to approach the Frasers.

An intruder would have had to know about the guest list. However, rumor was rife in Gleneagle Village. He couldn’t post a letter without someone inquiring about the recipient and calculating how much time it would take to reach its destination, factoring in the vagaries of the weather, as though mail pigeons were the mode of transport in those parts. Outsiders, such as the villagers considered Rex to be, were a constant source of speculation and gossip. Perhaps Dalgerry was right about the significance of the van and the wool fragment.

“What are you going to do today?” Helen asked, pouring more tea for them both. “Other than scribble away in your notebook, I mean.”

“Hole myself up in the library and try to solve this case.”

“What are you going to do for food?”

“There’s loads left over. Don’t worry, I won’t starve. Perhaps you should take some of it back with you to Edinburgh.”

“We could stay, you know.” Helen sat back down at the table and sipped her tea out of one of the scalloped, rose-patterned cups.

“It won’t be much fun for Julie here. Perhaps you two could go shopping on Princes Street. There are bound to be some sales.”

Helen’s face brightened. Then she frowned. “Will the shops be open on New Year’s Day? I just don’t want you to get lonely here by yourself.”

“I’ll have Mrs. Kerr for company if I get desperate. I hope they haven’t heard aboot the murders in the village. But I don’t think she would have agreed to come if she knew.”

“She’ll see the tape and fingerprint dust.”

“I’ll tell her the Landseer was stolen.”

“It’s only a copy. Tell her some valuable law books went missing. That won’t incite much interest in the village.”

“Good idea, but it’s only a matter of time until the truth gets oot.”

Rex put his napkin on the table and rose from his chair. “I’ll be in the library making some calls.” He thanked her for breakfast and bent to kiss her full on the lips.

“I’m sure you’ll solve this case,” she said. “If Julie weren’t here, I’d be glad to help.”

Rex did a double-take. Helen actually looked a little regretful. “I’ll keep you posted,” he promised.

In the library, Rex dialed the Loch Lochy Hotel on his old-
fashioned desk phone. Flora answered on the third ring in a business-like tone, stating the name of the establishment.

“Oh, hello, Rex,” she said after he announced himself. “My mum’s got me answering the phone in case it’s reporters or nosy locals.”

“Did you get any sleep, lass?”

“A little.”

“What aboot Jason?”

“Oh, he left after dropping me off last night. I mean, early this morning. He had to drive to Inverness to get that French coin. He has to go down to the station today.”

“Listen, Flora. I called to ask aboot that scarf. The one Jason lost. It may not be important. I just wanted to know when he lost it.”

“Back in October, the day he found that coin, actually. Why do you ask?”

“And did you knit him another purple and white scarf just like the first?”

“No, why? He shouldn’t have been so careless.” Flora sounded quite cross. “Did you find it?”

Rex hesitated. The scarf, if it was the same one, had become entangled in the tree in the autumn and could not have anything to do with the murders in the night. After all, why would Jason have said he lost it unless it was to cover up the fact it had been torn? But losing a scarf did seem more careless than accidentally damaging it. The lad might have been on that deer trail more recently, perhaps to metal-detect more of the gold.

“Not exactly,” Rex said in answer to the question of whether the scarf had been found. The chief inspector might get upset with him for discussing it, even if Flora had been the one to divulge the particulars. “I’m sure it isn’t important,” he reiterated.

“I won’t mention any of this to Jason,” Flora said. “He might get angry at me for bringing it up again. It took me forever to forgive him. Do you want to speak to my parents?”

Rex didn’t and made a polite excuse about having to see Helen and Julie off. He promised to call back as soon as he heard anything to do with the case. No sooner had he hung up than his cell phone rang out the choral notes of “The Bonnie Banks o’ Loch Lomond.”

“Bad news, I’m afraid,” Dalgerry told him. “Maighread Fraser, to use her given name, was found dead of an overdose in her hotel room this morning.”

Rex hunched over the phone. “What did she overdose on?”

“We don’t know yet. Maid service knocked on the door and went in when there was no answer. The girl found her in her nightdress dead under the covers. A small enamel pill box was on the bedside table.”

“She had such a pill box in her handbag. The pills looked like aspirin.”

“That’s why we didn’t take them last night. She said she needed them. She swore aspirin and carbonated fruit juice at bedtime did the trick for a hangover. Personally, I prefer a greasy fried breakfast. One moment …,” Dalgerry apologized.

Rex waited while he spoke away from the phone to a respectful male voice in the background.

“I never heard of anyone fatally overdosing on aspirin,” Rex said doubtfully when the chief inspector got back on the line. “And I only noticed eight or so pills in the box.”

“Perhaps she had an allergic reaction. Dr. Carmichael is looking into it.”

The pathologist was having a busy start to the new year, Rex mused. Three deaths, and all guests at his party!

“According to Drew Harper, who dropped her off at the hotel, she was going to stay a few more days to make funeral arrangements for Ken and Catriona, being next of kin,” Dalgerry informed him. “She said she would use a car service. Appears she was not contemplating suicide then.”

“Did Drew take her up to her room?”

“No, left her at the front door to the hotel. It’s still possible she committed suicide. She must have known she was a suspect: Her nearest kin were murdered, she had come all the way from Venezuela to see them incognito, and a poison dart was found in her bag. She knew I wanted to question her today.”

“Aye, it didn’t look good for her,” Rex concurred. “Even if she did lie only by omission and used her married name.”

“Perhaps her nerve failed her. And she said she was ‘unhinged’ by her husband’s death. Or his murder,” Dalgerry said darkly. “DS Milner is trying without much success to get through to her hometown in Venezuela to track down Carlos Delacruz’s death certificate and get more information. Of course, it’s the first day of the year all over the world and people are not exactly busy at their desks.”

“Or at the lab, I suppose.” The second of January was also a bank holiday in Scotland.

“No, nothing yet, except that the charred fragment of paper from your fireplace belonged to a roll-out whistle like the one you blew on. It still had the red metallic fringes attached.”

“The other part of the tube used to shoot the dart.” Good news indeed, Rex thought.

“It may be days, even weeks before I hear anything more,” Dalgerry stated. “Depends on the backlog.”

“Is the late Margarita Delacruz your prime suspect at this point?”

“Everything points to her. I can’t trust an old man’s memory, Mr. Graves, no matter how credible his story sounded and how adamant he was. And now her suicide, if suicide it is. Pity she didn’t leave a note.”

“That is strange, especially as she has a daughter. One whom she’d wanted to know about her Scottish heritage.”

“DS Milner is attempting to contact her as we speak with his limited Spanish. He goes to the Costa del Sol every summer. Well, I best get on.”

Rex entreated the chief inspector to call as soon as he heard anything further and ended the call reflectively.

_____

Twas there that we perted in yon shady glen

On the steep, steep sides o’ Ben Lomon’

Whaur in purple hue, the hielan hills we view

An’ the moon comin’ oot in the gloamin’.

Rex could not rid his mind of the words to the song. They kept returning insidiously, again and again. The ballad told of a woman grieving for her Jacobite lover taken to London for execution, and her sorrowful return to Scotland taking the low road used by commoners, while his head was displayed on a pike, one of many beheaded rebels, along the highway to Glasgow.

Sad that Maighread Fraser should return to the Highlands after so many years and meet a tragic end. Death from aspirin poisoning, either acute or chronic, was relatively rare, Rex discovered upon researching the subject online. And it seemed she was an habitual user of aspirin to cure hangovers, and therefore unlikely to have suffered a sudden allergic reaction to it.

His brain worked feverishly. What if some other drug had been substituted? Something that looked like aspirin but was stronger? Then, just before bed, the unsuspecting victim had taken her “cure” and was dead by morning.

He retrieved the jar of resolutions, which had been left on the living room shelf. He placed the fifteen pieces of paper face down on his library desk with the names on the back showing, and began to arrange them according to where he thought the guests had been standing when the knock at the door sounded shortly after midnight. None of the three Frasers’ resolutions would ever reach fruition now, he realized with a cold feeling at the pit of his stomach.

The papers were about the size of business cards, cream in color. He had divided two sheets of Gleneagle notepaper into sixteen pieces: one for each person and one left over. Most of the guests had only written their first names. Jason had added his last name, as had Zoe. Alistair had scrawled his unmistakable signature with customary flourish. Professor Cleverly had merely written his initials, H.L.C.

One piece of paper was blank on one side, where part of the watermark showed. Rex turned it over and saw spidery black letters. The message in Spanish contained the name Margarita and the word “amor.” As far as Rex could fathom, it had something to do with the coming year bringing love and good health. Comparing the writing to the others, he found it to be in Cleverly’s hand. The professor had written two resolutions, silly old beggar! That meant a resolution was missing from one of the other guests.

Glancing at the names, he quickly deduced it was Margarita’s that was absent. Her resolution, he recalled, had been to take up painting. There had been no necessity that he could see for not leaving it with the others. Had she in fact written it down? Of that he was less sure. The fact remained there were fifteen pieces of paper, two of which were from Humphrey. And there was no blank.

Rex contemplated the array of cards before him. Had she taken her own life out of fear of prosecution, guilt for her actions, or compounded grief over her husband’s death? Was she in fact responsible for his death, as Dalgerry had suggested? Rex placed the blank-backed card to his far right on the desk in his re-enactment of where the fireplace would be and where Ace Weaver had insisted Margarita had been standing at the time of the knocking at the door. Cleverly’s second piece of paper he positioned to the left, near where the living room door would be.

It occurred to him he should inform Cleverly of the news; if the police hadn’t contacted him first. He called the number of the professor’s Edinburgh flat and listened to the phone ring endlessly. Cleverly would have had a long drive home. He might still be asleep.

“Hello,” a voice answered groggily at last.

“Humphrey, Rex here. Sorry to disturb you. Glad you got home all right.”

“Easy enough drive in spite of the weather. Hardly any traffic except for police cars on the prowl for drunk drivers. Any news?”

“Aye, and it’s sad news, I’m afraid. Another death. Chief Inspector Dalgerry informed me just now that Margarita succumbed this morning to an overdose.” Rex heard a gasp and waited for the professor to collect himself.

“When I asked for news, I meant … I never imagined … Margarita! Dead? Are you sure? I cannot believe it. She was fine when I said goodbye to her last night at your door. Concerned aboot the investigation, of course, and upset over the death of her relations. She said she had a bad headache but would take her aspirin. I said I’d call today to see how she was. Oh, dear,” Cleverly said in distress.