Brought to Book (34 page)

‘I gave it to his receptionist. She must have kept a note of it.'

‘Well, you're incommunicado now,' Lindsey said with satisfaction.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, sipping their drinks. Outside the window it was nearly dark, but neither of them made a move to switch on the lamps. Rona leaned her head back against the sofa, feeling herself start to relax, the tension easing in neck and shoulders. She hoped she'd be able to sleep tonight, without the benefit of pills.

‘Choose which video you'd like,' Lindsey invited, tossing them over.

‘Whichever requires the least concentration. Preferably a musical.'

‘Can't help you there, but this one's supposed to be a comedy.'

‘That'll do; some light relief would be very welcome.'

‘We'll watch it after supper, then.'

An appetizing smell was beginning to waft through the flat, and Rona realized that, for the first time since leaving Theo's study, she was hungry.

‘You know, it's odd,' she said suddenly. ‘I keep forgetting Meriel's dead, and thinking of things I must ask her.'

‘Only natural, when you've been working closely together.'

‘But it's horrible, Linz. God, if I hadn't agreed to do the bio—'

Lindsey put a hand quickly over hers. ‘You've no way of knowing that; it could be something entirely unconnected with you, something to do with her own past. She was married before, you said.'

‘Yes, and her husband's now happily remarried.'

‘Whatever. The main thing to get through your head is you're not to blame. You'll feel better with some food inside you. I'll go and see if it's ready.'

They ate at the little dining table, with the curtains drawn between them and the darkness outside. Lindsey, aware of her sister's ambivalence, kept up a stream of anecdotes and shared memories. The wine and food and the companionable warmth of the flat combined to dull some of Rona's brittleness, and she decided with relief that she probably would sleep after all.

They stacked the plates in the dishwasher, switched it on, and settled down with the video, glasses of port to hand. The film was amusing, and Rona, almost to her shame, found herself joining in the laughter. As their mother had foreseen, it was good for the two of them to spend time alone together. There hadn't been many opportunities lately.

They were laughing over the antics of one of the characters when a voice behind them said blandly, ‘What a cosy domestic scene!'

They both spun round, staring in shock at the man standing in the doorway. Rona saw, with total incomprehension, that it was Scott Mackintosh.

L
indsey stumbled to her feet.

‘Who the hell are you, and what are you doing in my house?'

Scott's eyes went from one stunned face to the other. ‘Like as two peas,' he commented, ‘just as Rick said.'

‘Rick?'

He looked sardonically at Rona. ‘I hear we almost met yesterday.'

A rattle of inanity came from the television. Lindsey reached for the remote control, and in the ensuing silence the humming of the dishwasher reached them from the adjacent kitchen.

Lindsey said haltingly, ‘Rona – do you know this man?'

Rona swallowed past the obstruction in her throat. ‘He's – a friend of Theo's. Scott Mackintosh.'

‘Ex-friend,' Scott corrected, coming into the room.

Lindsey's anger was growing. ‘How did you get in? I checked that the door was shut. Whoever you are, you've no right—'

‘Rick lent me his key.'

‘Rick who? I don't
know
—'

‘Sorry, I keep forgetting. You know him as Rob, but his name is really Richard Sinclair. He's my brother-in-law.'

Lindsey stared at him for a moment, then dropped back on to the sofa. Rona said ridiculously, ‘I thought you were in the States.'

‘I should have been, but you interfered with my plans.'

‘I did?'

‘Unfortunately you know more than is good for you, and you're on the verge of learning more. I'm sorry, but I can't allow that to happen.'

He came into the room and seated himself on an upright chair just inside the door, looking as suave and handsome as she remembered, but with an added quality about him that was infinitely dangerous.

‘What do you want?' Lindsey whispered.

He ignored her, his eyes on Rona. ‘I tried to warn you off,' he said, ‘but you were too stubborn to take the hint. A pity.'

Anger flared, overriding her fear. ‘You poisoned Gus!'

‘The dog? Not personally; I owe that to Rick. He was on the spot, you see; I was up in Edinburgh. We worked as a team, until he got cold feet and went squeamish on me.'

‘I don't understand,' Lindsey said faintly.

‘Then let me elucidate. We heard in a roundabout way that Meriel was commissioning a biography of Theo, which, for various reasons, I was unhappy about. Rick had some leave owing to him, and we decided he should come down and scout out the land. Convenient, the way it's worked out; his leave expires this weekend.' He glanced at his watch. ‘In fact, he'll be flying back to Edinburgh as we speak.'

‘It can't be the same person,' Lindsey interrupted. ‘Rob is a conference organizer. And he wasn't on leave, he's been working all the time.'

‘Correction: he's an electrical engineer. The conference business doesn't exist – it was simply a cover to explain his presence.'

He turned back to Rona. ‘To continue: he kept a watch on Meriel's house for a day or two, and sure enough, you turned up. And as luck would have it, there'd been a picture of you only the day before in the local paper, so he'd no trouble recognizing you. He hung around till you left, and followed you. Fortuitously enough, you drove straight here.'

He regarded their still faces quizzically.
‘So
– he parked farther down the road and waited till he heard your door open and voices outside, whereupon he jumped out of the car and concealed himself behind the bush at the gate. You were talking about going to the theatre the following Tuesday, and – well, you can guess the rest. Then, when you met, your sister here referred to her ex-husband, which seemed to give him a clear field and he took advantage of it. It proved an ideal way to keep tabs on you.'

His eyes flicked briefly to Lindsey, noting the tears sliding silently down her cheeks. ‘Incidentally, he has three children and a loving wife.'

‘Your sister?' Rona asked aridly, reaching for Lindsey's hand and finding no comfort in the confirmation of her suspicions.

‘No, the relationship is through my late wife; he's her brother.'

There was a silence, which neither of the sisters dared break. When Scott resumed speaking his voice had changed, become flat and unemotional, which made the words he spoke somehow more disturbing.

‘I'd had any woman I wanted all my life. It was a game; I never imagined for a moment that I should fall in love, but I was proved wrong. My wife meant the entire world to me. It's not an overstatement to say I worshipped her, and since she was eighteen years younger than I, there was a strong element of protection involved. I would have killed anyone who hurt her without a second thought.'

His eyes focused on the bottle of port on the coffee table. ‘Is there another glass?' he asked abruptly. Lindsey nodded towards the cabinet where they were kept. He got up, took out a glass and poured himself a measure. Then he returned to his chair. Neither of them had moved.

‘We had a child,' he went on, ‘a boy. The birth nearly killed her, and we were told there must be no more. Sheena was unable, for medical reasons, to take the pill, and in any case she was a Catholic and disliked being responsible for birth control. So I had a vasectomy, and we thought we were safe.'

He was silent, staring down into his glass. Then, with a sigh, he continued. ‘A year or so later, I was offered a sabbatical at Johnson Chemicals in Chilswood. And since it wasn't too far from my old friend Theo Harvey, I contacted him, God help me, to tell him we were coming. His wife invited us to dinner.'

He sipped his port. ‘And that, as far as I was concerned, was that. For the rest of our stay, Theo was closeted during the week at his country cottage, I was working, and Sheena was tied up with the child. Then one day, in floods of tears, she told me she was pregnant. I was dumbstruck; we'd taken all the precautions we could, and I sent off a strongly worded letter to my surgeon, threatening legal action.' He smiled bitterly. ‘I was informed that the operation's not a hundred per cent foolproof, and since I'd been warned of this at the time, he could not be held responsible.

‘The devil of it was that if she'd had an abortion straight away it might have saved her life, albeit at the baby's expense, and she wouldn't hear of it. I wanted to go straight back to Edinburgh, to the doctor who'd attended her before, and who I hoped would be able to persuade her. However, she refused point-blank, insisting I see out my sabbatical. In the end, we returned three weeks earlier than scheduled, and ten days later Sheena lost the baby and her own life into the bargain.'

There was a gasp from Lindsey, who hadn't known the story.

‘For a while, I didn't think I'd survive, either. Without her, nothing seemed to have any purpose, but I managed somehow to keep going and gradually, with a nanny for Dougal and so on, a new routine was established.'

He finished his port, refilled his glass, and sat down again. ‘But I continued to blame myself for Sheena's death until about six months ago.'

‘Then what happened?' Rona asked, caught up in the story.

‘Rick was out one night with the husband of the woman who'd been Sheena's best friend. They both had a fair bit to drink, Sheena's name came up, and this man blurted out that just before she died, she'd told his wife that she'd had an affair while we were in Chilswood, and the child she was carrying was her lover's.' He paused and added sardonically, ‘I didn't need to be a rocket scientist to work out who that must have been.'

‘So you killed him,' Rona said flatly, and heard Lindsey's sharp intake of breath.

‘Of course I killed him. He'd killed my wife.' He sipped his port unhurriedly, aware of their riveted attention. ‘I remembered that he went home at weekends, so the next Saturday I flew down, hired a car, and drove to Spindlebury to check out the lie of the land. There was a pub not far from the cottage, and knowing Theo, I reckoned he'd have been a regular patron. There was also a convenient stream running alongside the road. If I played my cards right, it would be assumed he'd stumbled into it on his way home, the worse for drink.

‘So, a few days later, I came down again.' He gave a short laugh, remembering. ‘By a lucky chance he was actually standing there on the pavement when I drove into the village. Stranded without transport, seemingly – so it was only natural I should give him a lift. He couldn't get over the coincidence of my being there, but I spun a yarn about being in the area and it seemed to satisfy him. He'd obviously no inkling that I knew about him and Sheena.

‘Back at the cottage, I produced a bottle of malt and we drank steadily. Or Theo did; I was careful to pace myself. When he could barely stand, I suggested we could do with some air, and he came out all unsuspecting, too befuddled even to pull the door to behind him. But as we reached the spot I'd selected, I decided he had the right to know why he was dying; so I told him I knew the truth, and that the time had come to pay. The shock went a long way towards sobering him. I'll never forget the look on his face as he went into the water, knocking his head on the rock I'd placed in exactly the right position. I waited until I was sure he wasn't coming out, then I went back to the cottage – it was late by this time – rinsed out my glass, wiped everything I'd touched, and left.'

He met their eyes challengingly. ‘It was not murder,' he said, ‘it was an execution, though I appreciated that others wouldn't view it in that light. I also guessed that Theo, an obsessive diarist, would have written about the affair, and the story was likely to come out in any future biography of him. That could have turned the spotlight on me, and might possibly have pointed to a desire for revenge.

‘However, not all celebrities have their biographies written, and though I intended at some stage to acquire the diaries, I assumed there was no rush. I certainly didn't expect Meriel to instigate one so soon; hence my urgent recruitment of Rick.'

He smiled slightly. ‘Obviously, you, Ms Parish, were the main cause of my concern. Initially I'd hoped you wouldn't track me down, and your letter came as a shock; which is why I promptly phoned to head you off. But you wouldn't be dissuaded, and since you insisted it was Theo's youth that interested you, I decided it would be as well to find out how much you knew. After our meeting, I concluded it was not much and, rightly or wrongly, felt reassured.'

With a whir and a rush of water, the dishwasher embarked on its rinse cycle. Rona said expressionlessly, ‘And Meriel?'

‘Meriel's death wasn't planned, and I regret it. But I was after those diaries, and as you'd told me she was staying with her cousin, I expected the house to be empty. I'd just broken in when she came into the room and, of course, recognized me, thereby sealing her fate. I told her what I'd come for, but she said you had the diaries and had been going through them with your husband. Which was exactly what I'd feared.'

His eyes held Rona's. ‘Would I have been in time, or did you already know about Sheena? As I said, you'd given no hint of it.'

‘I didn't know when I visited you; my husband found the relevant passages that same evening.'

He sighed. ‘Such a small margin. I should tell you, incidentally, that the diaries have been destroyed.'