Beneath the Abbey Wall (29 page)

“Sorry,” she said as he put his arms around her, “I am exhausted, and these past weeks have been dreadful.”

“I hope that doesn't include me.”

“Oh no, of course not. It's just that Mrs. Smart's death . . . she was a good woman . . . ”

“So I keep hearing.”

“And Don McLeod is a friend.”

“You want me to use the back door?”

“Please.”

He leaned towards her to kiss her. She buried her face in his shoulder, the tweed scratching her nose, making her want to sneeze. She wanted to stay there safe and forever.
But there is no forever, to him I'm just a fling.

“Sorry, I'm exhausted.” She pushed him away. And if he sensed her distress, he didn't say.

She didn't hear the garden gate shut because she had oiled it in preparation for Neil's visit. She put out the milk bottles, locked the doors, put out the lights; she brushed her teeth; she went to put on the new nightgown, the new one she couldn't afford but had bought in the bridal department of Arnotts. She stuffed it back under the pillow and threw herself onto the mattress, pulling the eiderdown over her, and started to cry. She cried, she sobbed, she sat up, she told herself, speaking aloud, “This is ridiculous.” She lay down. Sleep did not come.

She waited. The alarm clock on the bedside table showed twenty past two.

She got up, went to the kitchen for water, saw the two mugs, two plates, one remaining slice of apple pie and she sobbed, great burns and rivers of tears streaming out of her eyes and
her nose. She washed the dishes, still sobbing. She wrapped the pie in waxed paper and put it in the pantry and went back to bed. When she picked up her library book and tried to read, she couldn't see the text.

She didn't register what she was saying, over and over the same phrase—she was saying, more a refrain than a conscious thought,
What have I done? What have I done?

*  *  *  

The next day wasn't any better. The day after deadline was usually a late start for Joanne, and she was glad of it.

“
Gazette.”

“How are you, Joanne? It's been ages since we had a get-together.” Margaret McLean had hoped to catch up with her on deadline night, but Rob had said Joanne was with Neil Stewart.

“I know. We're so short-staffed, I never seem to have a moment.”
Except for Neil,
she realized.

“Would you and the girls like to come over on Sunday afternoon?” Margaret asked. “We'd love to see you all.”

“I'm sorry, I can't, I'm busy.” The excuse sounded weak even to her own ears. She was not busy. But she would not commit to anything, in case Neil might want to be with her. The previous night was not forgotten, but the power of hope and illusion was formidable. “Once this case is over and Don is back, I'll have more time. Sorry.”

“Maybe tea or coffee on your lunch break . . . I'll call you.” Margaret was not upset when she hung up the telephone, only concerned. She knew an obsession when she saw one.

The next call followed the first by two minutes.

“Hello, stranger.”

“Elizabeth. I know, I am so sorry, things are not easy here.”

“Never mind. Stay for lunch after church on Sunday. We can catch up then.”

This lunch there was no avoiding. For Elizabeth, Joanne's sister, church was not optional, and Joanne had not attended in three weeks. Although in no way overbearing, nor critical, Elizabeth kept her eye on her sister. She did not know of Neil Stewart, but she would not approve if she did. That was what kept Joanne away—fear that her sister and her husband the Reverend Duncan Macdonald would guess her adultery.

Joanne slumped in her chair. It was almost midday. She had work to do. She needed to call Chiara, whom she hadn't spoken to all week. She had laundry to do, shopping. She needed a haircut; she needed to finish sewing a dress for next week's dance. She needed to sleep.

Neil might be at the library working. Dare she interrupt him when she changed her library books? He was irritable the one time she had interrupted him in the archives. Maybe he was at the guesthouse typing up his notes. Or at the home of one of the illustrious families of the Highlands, reading their family letters and documents, ferreting out their secrets, their skeletons. She wanted to run to fly to his side. This passion was burning her up. She needed to ask, to know.

She put her elbows on the table, her head in her hands, and addressed her absent friend and mentor. “Don McLeod, where are you when I need you?”

“In gaol,” McAllister answered.

She jumped. She let her hair fall forward to hide her face. Then looked up. They looked at each other. She saw how old he was looking. He saw how exhausted she was.

“Don and I, we used to talk. Nothing serious, he didn't do serious, but he had a knack of putting everything into perspective.”

McAllister listened. That was what he too missed most about Don.

“I'd tell him something that was bothering me, he'd say it wasn't worth the time of day.” What she didn't tell him was Don's exact phrase,
There's nothing worth getting your knickers in a twist over.
“I miss him.”

“Me too.”

They both hesitated. The moment passed.

“Right, I'll see you later,” McAllister said.

“Right, I'll finish this.” She gestured to the typewriter.

“Thanks for all the extra work you're doing.”

“Not at all.”

She started typing. He went into his office and shut the door.

And both of them, in their separate thoughts, in their separate lives, felt the loss of the closeness that could perhaps, so McAllister hoped, have become more.

W
hen Rob came in to work on Friday morning, the only person there was Hector. And he didn't count.

“Where is everyone?”

“Search me.” Hector didn't look up from his proof sheets.

Rob ran back downstairs. “Hello, it's Fiona, isn't it?”

Fiona, who had returned to the
Gazette,
dragged back by her mother, after quitting for a day, couldn't look at Rob. She was not terrified of him the way she was terrified of McAllister and her dad, but she thought Rob was a dreamboat, so could barely answer.

“I'm looking for Mrs. Buchanan.”

“I'm sorry, she's not here.” She was sorry she couldn't help Rob McLean, singer with the Meltdown Boys.

“McAllister?”

“He's not come in. Mrs. Ross neither.” Two sentences, one after the other—she was getting braver by the minute. “Mrs. Buchanan is with Mr. Beech sorting out office stuff.”

The telephone rang.

“
Highland Gazette,
can I help you?” With an unknown caller her confidence was high, her voice clear. That changed when she identified the voice. “Oh hello, Mr. Stewart. Yes, thank you, I'm fine. Yes, he's here.” She handed Rob the receiver and turned away to hide her crimson face and the unfortunate spot that had sprung up that morning, which she examined every five minutes in the lavatory mirror, leaving the phone unattended.

“Rehearsals? Yep, same time, same place.” He listened. “I can put the word around, but the best place to find the McPhees is the Ferry Inn. Right, see you then.” Rob put down the phone. “Thanks, Fiona. Hey, would you like two free tickets to the dance next Friday? Bring your boyfriend but don't forget to keep a dance for me.”

Crikey,
Rob thought,
she looks as though I've offered to strangle her not dance with her.

Listening to Rob running up to the reporters' room, her heart still racing at the thought of a dance with him, she ignored the phone. It stopped, rang again almost immediately. She picked it up but didn't have a chance to say anything. “Yes, Mrs. Ross. I'll let them know.” She wrote,
Mrs. Ross, not in until the afternoon
. Then a woman, dragging a three-year-old who kept kicking the counter, came in to place a classified, and Fiona forgot to pass on the note.

McAllister appeared at eleven thirty.

“Where is everyone?” He stood in his customary stance, filling the frame of the door to the reporters' room, but instead of reminding Rob of a watchful heron, he made him think of a scarecrow that crows were nesting in.

Rob took one sheet of paper out and put another into the machine, saying, “Hec was here. Now he's gone. Beech is working with Betsy, heaven help him. Joanne's not in yet.”

“Why not?”

“How should I know?”

There was no reply. Rob looked up, saw McAllister. He took in the shirt that needed ironing, the purple shadows under the eyes, the pasty skin, and although he would not swear to it, there seemed to be a tremor in the editor's right knee. “What's happened?”

“I was at the gaol.”

“Right.” Rob nodded. “Your office? A drink?”

“My house. I need to eat.”

“I need to get this off to Mr. Brodie, QC. Will it need an update?”

“Maybe. Wait until we've talked.”

“Give me an hour.”

When Rob arrived he walked straight through to the kitchen. He was carrying a bag of plums and some oranges.

“You look like you have scurvy, so I brought these.” He found a bowl and put the fruit on the table. “And you need a haircut. You're not your usual Paris Left Bank suave self.” He flung off his leather jacket.

McAllister immediately felt better. He liked Rob, appreciated his humor, and was dreading the day, which he saw as inevitable, when the young reporter would spread his wings and take off for parts foreign and south.

Lunch consisted of mutton pies, beans, HP Sauce, and sliced tomato garnished with parsley, a relic from McAllister's days on the newspaper in Glasgow—except for the tomato and parsley, as nothing uncooked would ever pass the lips of a Glaswegian.

When they finished, Rob started washing up, knowing it would be easier for McAllister to speak without the help of a drink if his audience had his back to him.

“Don's smaller.”

Rob didn't interrupt.

“Thinner, too.” McAllister took a long draw from his cigarette. “But he likes Brodie.”

“Mr. Brodie, QC,” Rob interjected.

“Aye. As Don tells it, the conversation was not long but made Don feel much better about his chances.”

*  *  *  

Don McLeod had searched his prodigious memory and could find only good things about the advocate Mr. William Brodie,
QC; he was not a Highlander but from the Carse of Moray, so almost. But Don had not expected the lawyer to bear a close physical resemblance to himself twenty years and many fewer drams ago.

“Brodie, QC.”

“No need for me to state my name.”

“Mr. Donal Dewar McLeod,” Mr. Brodie recited. “Let us begin. I know the background to your marriage and the subsequent events when Mrs. McLeod went to India.”

“Mrs. McLeod?”

“Is that not her legal name?”

“It is.” Don had never heard her called this, and it broke his heart.

“The news of Mrs. Smart not being legally Mrs. Smart will be momentous enough,” the advocate had explained. “The news of two elderly good folk of the town in bed together in the early hours of a Sunday evening? That will never do.”

It took a moment for Don to recover. All he could think was,
It would have pleased her so much to be Mrs. Donal McLeod, and I denied her that.

“Did Mrs. McLeod have her own keys to the house and gate?”

The questions came quickly.

“Aye, she did.”

“The keys? Her handbag? Did she have them when she left?”

“Of course.”

“Did Smart know about your marriage?”

“He did.”

“When?”

“He knew in India.”

“So why . . . ?”

“He wanted her money.”

“And why did she agree?”

“She didn't want to break her father's heart.” The lawyer stared, waiting. “Smart blackmailed her into it.”

Mr. Brodie stared again, waiting. “Blackmail?” he prompted. Then, seeing Don would say no more, he moved on. “If Smart
were
the murderer, was he capable of it? And how did he manage it? And why now?”

“He was well capable of it, and he's much more mobile than he lets on.” Don paused. “I've had plenty of time to think about it, but I just canny see him doing it—much as I'd like him locked up for the rest of his life.” He rubbed his chin. He needed a shave. Mr. Brodie knew that his client would have to look immaculate for the court, and he made a mental note to see to it.

“He knows where I live,” Don continued. “He's followed her often enough. Maybe he had a key to the back door of the church. He was a member there. But how did he know about my knife?”

“And what changed after all this time that would make him kill her now?” Even though his thoughts were not helpful, Brodie was pleased Don was talking.