The Wild Wood Enquiry (18 page)

IN A SMALL café in a narrow backstreet of Aberdeen, with grey granite buildings looming all around them, Gus and Katherine sat drinking scalding coffee. He had found her easily, first asking the housekeeper if she was a guest and then being led straight into the baronial Hall. There Katherine had jumped up and hugged him and begged him to take her away from all this. She had hopped onto the back of the bike with glee and had ridden back into Aberdeen, arms around Gus’s waist, laughing and shouting in high spirits.

Now they were talking seriously about the theft of valuable jewellery from their London flat, and Katherine had said she was convinced the thief was Sebastian Ulph. She felt a bit of a fool about her brief and impulsive search in Barrington woods and had already decided to keep it to herself.

Gus was a little sorry for Katherine, but more than that,
most of the jewellery had belonged to his mother, and it had held many warm memories for him. Katherine, typically, had seldom worn any, saying it was old-fashioned, and anyway she did not like wearing a dead woman’s jewellery.

“It was a terrific surprise when you appeared this morning,” she said now. “How did you know where I was?”

“Guesswork,” Gus said. “I remembered you were sweet on Hamish Granfield before we were married. I thought he was going to carry you off before I could screw up enough courage to pop the question myself. I know his wife left him a couple of years ago, and I knew you often came up to commiserate.”

Kath was silent for a minute and then said she had become something of a rolling stone and had thought a lot lately about settling down into a more steady way of life. Gus heard alarm bells ringing and said hastily that he had more or less done that himself and had decided he was happier living alone. “Some people should never marry, don’t you think?” he said hopefully.

“Depends
who
they marry,” Katherine said sadly. “But you’re right, Gus, I reckon I am not the marrying kind. Living with you was the nearest I got to being a faithful wifey but not near enough.”

“So,” replied Gus, relief palpable in his voice, “having got that out of the way, how did you know Ulph was in Oakbridge, and what do you propose to do about him? He’s a slippery fish, and having said he was going to France, he clearly remained locally, turning up only when I accidentally ran into him at a friend’s swimming pool.”

“The lovely Deirdre? Was she the friend?” asked Katherine, ignoring his questions.

“None of your business. What matters is what exactly
Ulph is doing hanging around Oakbridge and Barrington. I know he had a job with Sid and His Swingers, but now he’s resigned from that, ostensibly to go abroad. He turned up at my friend’s house, asking for help getting a place in the town band. Before she had a chance to do anything about it, he appeared again, asking to use her pool, pleading a damaged leg. What is he up to, Kath? You know him better than I do. In fact, very well. Isn’t that so?”

He had debated whether to tell her about Ivy’s encounter with a man sounding very like Ulph, lurking in the woods and apparently burying somebody or something under the trees. But this, and the pearl earring, was Enquire Within business, and confidentiality was important. After all, that man could have been a poacher, burying game until he was able to fetch it safely. Or a desperate farmer, convinced badgers were spreading tuberculosis amongst his cattle, or even a badger baiter sussing out territory. And he was not keen for Kath to claim the earring until he was ready.

“Yoo-hoo! Where have you gone?” Katherine asked, snapping her fingers in front of him.

“Sorry. Thinking. So, anyway, why did you say you think he’s still around?” He reminded himself that he could not rely on Katherine’s telling him the truth about anything.

“He’ll have hidden it—the jewellery, I mean—and is aiming to sell it through some local contact. The fact is, Gus, he has got me over a barrel. He knows I have had one or two not entirely straight insurance claims and is using this to get me to hand over some cash in return for giving back the jewellery. Unfortunately, I am somewhat strapped for cash at the moment. On the good side, I do have some information about his dealings, which he would not like spread abroad.”

“But what brought him to Barrington? I know his father
was a friend of Theo Roussel’s up at the Hall, but it’s a pretty tenuous connection.”

Katherine pounced. “There you are, then!” she said. “It’s obvious!
That’s
why he came to Oakbridge. He left me ridiculous Boy Scout messages in what amounted to a code for finding him, which I have cracked a lot sooner than he would have expected. Suffolk, he said. Blowing his own trumpet, he said.
Hunt
the
ball
was his last instruction! I mean, I ask you, when is he going to grow up? I reckon he’s hidden the jewellery—and there was a lot of mine as well as your mother’s—somewhere on the Roussel estate, and if I don’t agree to do what he wants, the squire will help him to get rid of it. On commission, most likely. Another impoverished aristocrat there, I imagine.”

Gus gazed at her in astonishment. “You aren’t serious, are you?” he said. “I am sure you couldn’t be further from the truth. Theo may be a bit of a fool, but he’s straight as a die. I am sure of that.” How am I so sure? he asked himself. Because Deirdre is sharp as a pin and would not associate with anyone she suspected of being a crook.

But now he began to think again of the man digging in the badger sett. Possibly hiding something. And the missing hand? He looked across at Katherine. Well, at least it wasn’t hers. She was using two perfectly good hands to eat a large toasted bun.

THEO ROUSSEL, BLISSFULLY unaware that he was suspected of receiving stolen goods, felt his mobile phone vibrate in his pocket. He was not far out of Aberdeen, having just boarded a train heading south.

“Hello? Who is that? You’ll have to speak up. I’m on the train.”

“It’s me. Deirdre.”

“
Deirdre
? Is that you?”

“I just said it was. Can’t you hear me?”

“I can now. What can I do for you, my dear? I’m on my way home. Fed up with wet feet and cold hands. Heading for home.”

“Oh, that’s great! Just wanted to know when you’d be back. Are you coming straight on to Barrington? I could go and put some flowers in the hall, ready for your return.”

“Yes, I’ll be back late this evening. Never mind about flowers. Why don’t you come along and warm up my bed?”

“No chance. I’ll be up to see you tomorrow, anyway. I want to ask you some questions. No, nothing alarming! And I’ll put a hot water bottle in your bed this evening. You won’t be back until the wee small hours. Bye, you old weakling!”

Theo grinned fondly and looked happily out of the window at the receding empty landscape, stretching out as far as the eye could see.

“DO YOU THINK Gus will let us know if he finds Katherine?” Ivy said.

“I am sure he will tell us, if he has time, my love,” said Roy. “We have his mobile number, if you want to ring him. But I don’t advise it. He may be concentrating hard on picking up a scent. Aberdeen, did he say? Cold place. Very forbidding, with all that granite.”

“Doesn’t sound a likely place for our Katherine, then! But you never know. If you ask me, she’s stuffed in a cupboard somewhere, minus her left hand. Her sort usually end up dead. Playing one man off against another, I shouldn’t wonder. Well, we shall see.”

She and Roy were sitting in her room, drinking hot chocolate and eating half a digestive biscuit each. “Not a good idea to eat too much before bedtime,” Ivy had pronounced.

“I think I might risk another half,” Roy said, helping himself. “And by the way, have you had any more jolly thoughts about when we shall be leaping into one large bed together? Sometimes I think of nothing else.”

“Naughty old thing!” said Ivy. “Of course I’ve given it thought. Sometime next spring, do you think?”

“How about next week?” said Roy.

“THE THING IS, Kath,” said Gus, as they perched on bar stools in the city’s best hotel, “I really do need a few days’ break. Finding you so soon has been a bonus, but I left Barrington walking wounded. Misunderstandings with my colleagues, false accusations, all of that.

“What colleagues?”

“You know perfectly well. My fellow investigators in Enquire Within.”

“Well, I don’t see that it’s any business of theirs where you go and what you do in what I thought was a week’s holiday. Holidays are for getting away from everyday life, aren’t they?”

“This is not a holiday. I had an assignment. My purpose in coming to Scotland was to find a missing piece in a jigsaw.”

“What missing piece?”

“You.”

Katherine was silent. “I had no idea I was part of a jigsaw,” she said finally. “Are you still nosing about with—what was it?—Enquire Within? Honestly, Gus, I never thought to see you wasting time with a couple of old fogies and a merry widow! After all the things you have done!”

“Death is death, wherever you find it. And there is a possibility that all the apparently unconnected things we have discovered actually add up to a death, could be a murder.”

“So was I the possible victim? The missing jigsaw piece? Just because I left Barrington without telling anybody?” Not telling was Katherine’s speciality, and among other things, she had no intention of mentioning her morning’s search before she left, nor her realisation that to have any chance of success in finding her jewels, she would need to search a great deal longer. It was all her fault, all that cloak-and-dagger rubbish, pretending to Gus that she was in danger. She had come to her senses and decided to get right away and do some constructive thinking about what to do next. Retrieving old Jack had been the perfect excuse. “So do I fit the puzzle?” she asked.

“Got it in one,” said Gus, smiling at her. “Would you care to join the team?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. But now there has been no murder nor any other kind of violence, I still don’t see why we can’t have a few days back in your cottage, reminiscing about good times. We should stay in touch, anyway. It would be nice to be friends.”

It was Gus’s turn to be silent. He could not deny he had enjoyed the few hours he had just spent with Kath, riding about on the motorbike, walking the streets of Aberdeen and admiring the grandeur of the place. She was cheerful and affectionate, and he was reminded that when in this
mood, she could be irresistible. He weakened but reminded himself that it would be better for him if he kept her away from Barrington at all costs.

“Supposing we check in somewhere along the coast, a small fishing village, maybe, and spend a couple of days walking and talking or just doing nothing?”

“Sounds a good compromise,” said Katherine. “And then I promise to go back to London and try dealing with my stolen jewellery from there. Funds are a bit short at the moment, but the insurance on the stuff—if I can’t find it—would be very useful.”

Gus, only too familiar with her promises, did not believe a word of it.

EARDPORT WAS A tiny village not far from Aberdeen, with a few houses, a school, a church and an excellent pub with fish restaurant, perched on steep cliffs which dropped down to a rocky beach and a noisy colony of seals.

Gus and Kath were welcomed warmly and, without questions asked, given a double room. It was perfectly private and, they agreed, exactly what they wanted.

“Double bed,” said Gus, looking around.

“Naturally. We signed in as man and wife.”

“Oh well.”

“Come on, Augustus,” said Kath, laughing, “cheer up! I’m not going to seduce you against your will.”

“You won’t have to try very hard,” Gus said gloomily, looking at her across the bed. She was glowing with the excitement of an adventure.

“If anyone had told me I would be hiding in a small village in the north of Scotland with my miserable ex-husband, I would not have believed them.” Katherine walked across to
Gus and planted a quick kiss on his cheek. “Let’s go roaming in the gloaming,” she said. “It’s a lovely evening, and we can look at the seals and then come back for a drink and supper. And after that, well, we’ll take a vote.”

NEXT MORNING, DEIRDRE awoke from another dream about Gus. He was missing, and she was desperately trying to wade through a sea of treacle to rescue him from a sinking ship, when she was woken by her telephone ringing persistently on her bedside table. She reached sleepily across and lifted the receiver.

“Gus? Is that you?”

“Certainly not!” said a deep voice.

“Theo! You silly old sod! It’s very early, and I was fast asleep. Aren’t you exhausted by your long journey?”

“No, just disappointed to find only a hot water bottle in my bed.”

“Oh, for God’s sake! It’s much too early for that silliness. Can I ring you back in an hour or three?”

“Of course. Just wanted to thank you for the flowers. Lovely welcome to a weary traveller. May I take you out to lunch? So much to tell. About twelve? Sleep on, then, lovely Deirdre.”

In spite of herself, Deirdre smiled. She had been worrying about Gus and now remembered he was hundreds of miles away. Never mind, Theo was a good substitute, and usually found a pleasant place to eat. Perhaps they would go to Foxley Park, a beautiful Elizabeth mansion, now a luxury hotel. I was born to be rich, Deirdre thought, and thanks to dear old Bert, I am in my rightful element.