6 The Queen of Scots Mystery (20 page)

‘I’ve always wondered how people do it,’ said Jemima, clicking away with her knitting needles. She had at least four of them this time, and just went round and round. Christopher
, half mesmerized, vaguely thought he should try and start up a traditional knitting class in the Folk Museum. He thought Jan from the wool shop might know how to do Fair Isle patterns.

‘… and then Liam Johnstone found out,’ Amaryllis was saying. She looked sternly at Christopher. For a moment he wondered if his inattention had been visible and whether she would ask him to repeat what she had said, like a school teacher.

‘But how did he know where to look?’ said Penelope, puzzled. Thank goodness I’m not the only one, thought Christopher.

‘He got to know Jackie Whitmore through Neil’s ex-wife,’ Charlie explained. ‘For some reason Jackie mentioned how they were recording the beer deliveries, and he got suspicious of their accounting methods.’

‘Liam was quite a good accountant in his time,’ said Penelope. ‘Before he got carried away with all that shooting and the other women.’

She sounded a bit
wistful, but not distraught. That was a relief. Christopher had wondered whether she should really be invited to their by now traditional deconstruction of the crime, or whether it might upset her too much.

‘So Liam let them know he was on to them, which was a big mistake,’ Amaryllis
continued. ‘Even then, they probably wouldn’t have killed him – they started off by paying him off but he kept coming back for more as blackmailers always do.’

‘Just like in the crime books,’ Jemima murmured, half to herself.

‘But unfortunately for Liam, one of his other weaknesses caught up with them. He had been having a fling with Andrea Lawson, Neil’s ex-wife, now married to Bill Lawson of Aberdour Breweries.’ Amaryllis seemed to be blushing at this point, although Christopher could hardly believe his eyes. He couldn’t recall very many – if any – other occasions when he had seen her blush or indeed show any sign of remorse for the way she had ridden roughshod over both legal and social niceties. But she continued after the tiniest of pauses, the colour gradually ebbing from her face. ‘He went to see Andrea, who worked in the brewery offices, first thing one morning. It happened to be the day of the delivery to Torryburn, Valleyfield and Pitkirtly. Bill Lawson and his co-driver turned up in the yard suddenly and gave Liam a scare. He hid on the beer lorry. That was about the stupidest thing he’s ever done.’

‘Out of a lot of very stupid things,’ said Penelope quietly.

‘He thought he would get off somewhere along the way, but the first stop was the Queen of Scots. He didn’t want Neil to see him hanging around there, and he had to get away from Bill Lawson, so he managed to dodge into the cellar without them seeing. It isn’t right underground. He wouldn’t have hurt himself jumping down through the trapdoor. Then Zak, who happened to be passing, followed him down there and they had a fight.’

‘It’s all right,’ said Charlie to Penelope,
who was frowning, perhaps because she hadn’t wanted this particular information to come out in the open. ‘Zak didn’t do him any harm. He was still alive when the boy left. Lying on the floor, but alive. And laughing, by all accounts.’

‘Such an evil man,’ said Penelope, shaking her head. Nobody around the table rushed to disagree.

‘It was around that time that Bill Lawson’s watch came undone and fell off. He and Andrea thought it was somewhere in the cellar, and that was why they went back later and looked for it – and bumped into Jock,’ said Amaryllis. ‘They didn’t know Neil had found it and hung on to it, we think in case he got the chance to incriminate Bill later on. It isn’t clear whether Bill knew all along that Liam had got into the cellar.’

‘
Anyway, Liam was still there when they locked the cellar up again,’ said Charlie. ‘Neil had seen him go in and watched Zak follow him. Jackie told the police.’

‘Neil went down to the cellar during the afternoon and had an argument with Liam.
It’s possible Neil hit him then,’ said Amaryllis. ‘Liam may have been unconscious for a while after that – until it was too late.’

Christopher wondered if she was just saying this to make things easier for Penelope, and for Zak, who had crept towards them and stood only feet away, listening to the story.

‘Somewhere along the line the canister casing became damaged,’ said Charlie. ‘There’s some doubt about whether it could have happened accidentally. Enough doubt to turn the charge against Neil from murder to culpable homicide. He hasn’t admitted anything. According to his account, Liam was still alive and fully conscious when he left the man there. He says he didn’t lock the cellar door and Liam could have got out at that point or a bit later without any harm being done. He didn’t deliberately disable the carbon dioxide alarm. It had been dodgy for weeks. Jackie Whitmore supported that. Said the alarm company had been out to check it over but it started to play up again.’

‘So it
could all have been a horrible accident,’ said Penelope. ‘Poor old Liam.’

She glanced up from her scrutiny of the table and met her son’s eyes. ‘Zak! What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be serving behind the bar?’

‘He certainly should be,’ said Charlie Smith. ‘I think you’ve heard enough, Zak. Speak to me later if you need to know any more.’

Zak scuttled away. Christopher breathed again. He had dreaded some sort of scene developing between Zak and his mother. Whether it had been sentimental or angry, it was a scene that nobody else should be forced to witness.

‘What about young Jackie Whitmore?’ said Jock McLean. ‘How much trouble is she in?’

‘Quite a lot,’ said Charlie.
‘She shared in the profits from Neil’s tax scam – that’s where she got the new bicycle. She helped him to get rid of the books and she took the computer into the shop for him to try and get its hard disc wiped clean. She guessed what he had done with Liam. We – they – think she was hoping he would take her to Spain with him. It was only because she started to realise he wouldn’t that she tried to push him into the fire, and attacked him in the hospital. She’ll be looking at a charge of abetting – art and part – at least, and possibly conspiracy.’

‘Art and part?’ said Amaryllis in delight. ‘Really?’

‘What about me?’ said Jock McLean. ‘Was it really Andrea and Bill Lawson who knocked me on the head in here, or was that Neil too?’

Charlie gave an evil smile. ‘I’m not sure that episode has been fully investigated. Do you really want to report it?’

Christopher could almost see Jock’s brain working on the question. Eventually he shook his head. ‘No point in stirring it up,’ he muttered, and drained the last dregs of his Old Pictish Brew.

Under the table, the dog stirred once and gave a faint growl. Impossible to tell whether it was one of warning or of pleasure at finding itself in such a congenial new home.

THE END

About the cover

To anyone who is puzzled by the dandelion on the cover: I discovered while assisting with a production of the play ‘Mary, Queen of Scots got her head chopped off’ (Liz
Lochhead) that there is a macabre children’s game associated with Mary which consists of flicking the petals off a dandelion. Right at the end of the play one of the characters pings the whole head off a dandelion to represent the execution.

After some experiments during rehearsal, we discarded the idea of using an actual dandelion for this as dandelions tend to go very droopy very quickly once they’ve been picked and the heads don’t ping very effectively. We used a small chrysanthemum as a substitute.

The dandelion was photographed by
the late Ian Ogilvy Morrison.

About Cecilia Peartree’s other novels

The following are the other novels in the
Pitkirtly series, in order:

Crime in the Community

Reunited in Death

A Reformed Character

Death at the Happiness Club

Frozen in Crime

The following are not in the
Pitkirtly series:

Murder in the Midi

The Lion and Unicorn Quest

Thank you for buying this ebook. You may also be interested in keeping up with news of my writing and other aspects of my life on one of my blogs:

http://mccallumogilvy.wordpress.com

http://ceciliapeartree.wordpress.com