Cold in the Earth (21 page)

Brett Mason’s expression, which had seemed frozen in a state of perpetual affront, changed to signal fury. She sat bolt upright, her bulky frame overflowing the small chair which was the only seating in her bedroom.

Forced to perch on the bed, DC Nisbet wasn’t happy. She was aware of having been offered up to this interview as a sort of sacrificial lamb and her position did nothing to uphold the majesty of the law which she felt she might be required to invoke at any moment. All she’d asked the woman was whether she’d been at Chapelton at the time Diana Warwick disappeared and you’d have thought she wanted to know her knicker size.

‘This is – this is outrageous!’ Brett declaimed. ‘Has it come to this – that I have to defend myself against a charge of
murder
?’

‘No, madam,’ Nisbet said patiently. ‘This, as I explained, is merely a preliminary enquiry to get as much background as we can.’

Somehow she managed to calm Brett down then lead her through the facts, with only the occasional exclamatory diversion. She even persuaded her to admit she remembered the weekend when Warwick had disappeared, if only because she’d had to start looking for another housekeeper, though she insisted she couldn’t remember who else of the household might have been there. Truth or expedient amnesia? Nisbet wasn’t quite sure.

It had gone better than she could have hoped so far. Now, unfortunately, she had to move on to the more delicate questions about relationships and personalities. ‘She was a very attractive girl, wasn’t she?’ she began, as she thought, uncontroversially, and was quite unprepared for the vehemence of the response.

‘Little tramp! A slut around the house – hadn’t the first idea about running a gentleman’s establishment, spent all her time throwing herself at anything in trousers.’ Tiny flecks of spittle appeared at the side of Brett’s mouth. ‘The number of times I spoke to my brother about her, wanted to sack her, but oh no! he wouldn’t hear of it. I even sacked her myself once and he actually overruled me! And of course, after that there was no holding that trollop, once she knew Jake had taken her part against me, his own sister—’

She stopped suddenly as if she had only just heard what she was saying. She produced a handkerchief to wipe her mouth but her eyes above it were wild and staring.

Nisbet tried not to make it obvious that she was measuring the distance to the door. The woman looked as if she might lose it completely at any moment, but this was useful stuff. She went on carefully, ‘Was there a relationship between her and your brother?’

Brett tossed her head and laughed unconvincingly. ‘My brother? Have a relationship with a woman of that sort? Certainly not, any more than my son would, for all that she did her best to ensnare him, flashing those big blue eyes, oh-so-innocent, getting him to help her, setting him to dancing to her tune! Oh, I had to put a stop to that, I can tell you!’ She was talking louder and louder, hectic colour appearing in her cheeks and her eyes becoming almost glazed.

Nisbet swallowed hard. ‘How did you do that, Mrs Mason?’ She put the question as gently and neutrally as she could, but the other woman reacted as if she had been brought to her senses by a slap in the face.

She looked confused for a moment. ‘What – what are you suggesting? Young woman, if you are taking my words to be some sort of admission of guilt . . . I spoke to her, that was all. Is that quite clear? Told her to leave my son, and my brother, alone. Told her she should go before she caused more trouble. And I was glad when she did. Glad! Why shouldn’t I be?’ She glared at the detective; the white foam had appeared again at the corners of her mouth and her impressive bosom had begun to heave.

‘I – I see.’ A storm was clearly about to break and Nisbet couldn’t see how she could avoid it. Oh well – two steps to the door, three at the most . . .

‘So you had a row with her, then?’

Brett crumpled dramatically in her seat, then burst into noisy sobs. ‘I won’t be bullied in this way! You invade my room, you insinuate the most dreadful things, you victimise a helpless woman! Oh, you’ll pay for this, I tell you.’

Despite the affecting sounds there were no tears. The handkerchief was wielded to great effect but this time the eyes were hard and spiteful. ‘My son is your superior officer – what do you think he’ll have to say to this? And your commanding officer too. You’ll be the one with questions to answer by the time I finish with you. Now, get out of my bedroom before I summon someone to have you thrown out.’

‘Yes, madam.’ Nisbet got up and went to the door. ‘I shall pass on your complaint to Detective Inspector Fleming.’

Outside, she sagged against the wall of the corridor. Complaints were always a nuisance though in this context she reckoned she could rely on Big Marge to sort it out.

But that woman really was something else! Were her admissions naïve or was she so totally unbalanced she didn’t know what she was saying? There was one thing certain – the next interview would have to be conducted in controlled surroundings. And she’d taken her punishment; someone else’s turn next time.

Tam MacNee was interviewing too, in the back corner of the dining-room away from the cameras of the Press gathered outside. Screens had been put around one of the Tudor-style dining-room tables though these couldn’t, of course, filter out the constant noise of telephones and conversations.

Across from him, sitting on one of the imitation wheel-back chairs, Scott Thomson’s face was pale under the flaming red hair and his disabled arm lay awkwardly across his knees, but he was leaning back in a pantomime of ease, his lip curled in a sneer. ‘It’s aye the same with you lot – something happens, do you lean on the toffs in the big house? Not a chance. You’re away to pin it on the farmhand who has to work for his living.’

MacNee surveyed him without enthusiasm. It was four o’clock in the afternoon and the man had been at the whisky; he could smell it on his breath and hear it in the faint slurring of words and see it, too, in the cocky attitude of the man. Oh well, drunks were never a problem, you just got your retaliation in first.

He leaned across the table, sticking his chin out aggressively. ‘See, you, let’s get this straight. A girl’s dead. Are you saying we shouldn’t try to find the bastard that killed her? Or do you just want us to lock folk up because they’ve got money and you’re pouring the money you’ve got straight over your throat?’

Assailed by raw belligerence, Thomson recoiled, then sat up in his chair. ‘I didn’t – I wasn’t—’ he stammered.

‘Right. You didn’t. You weren’t. Let’s start again. You were stockman at Chapelton when Diana Warwick came to work there?’

‘Aye.’

‘What was she like?’

‘Just a lassie.’ He shifted uncomfortably. ‘It was years ago, right? She wasn’t there long anyway.’

‘Where did she stay? In the big house?’

MacNee saw the man hesitate, as if trying to calculate what would be made of his reply. ‘Come on, come on. It’s not that difficult,’ he hustled him.

‘No. There’s a flat the housekeepers live in.’

‘Whereabouts?’

Again the hesitation. ‘Above one of the steadings.’

‘And where did you stay?’

He licked dry lips. ‘Stockman’s flat.’

‘Don’t waste my time. Next door, was it? Neighbours? Were you married then?’

‘So what if I wasn’t?’

‘Good friends, maybe?’

‘What are you getting at?’

MacNee could see he was nervous. That was the easy part – he’d done his best to make him nervous, after all. Working out if there were other reasons too was the hard part and getting him to open up about them if there were was the hardest of all. Intimidation had worked so far. It usually did.

He leaned forward again. ‘Will you not take a telling? I’m here to find out about Diana Warwick and the more you jink about trying not to give me the answers the more suspicious I get. Next step’s having you in for questioning under caution.’

It was amazing how fear could sober you up. There was no slurring of the words now. ‘OK, OK. She was – trouble. There were always kind of –’ he searched for the word – ‘goings-on around her. She had something—’

‘Sex?’ MacNee suggested brutally.

Thomson gave a short laugh. ‘Oh aye, sex right enough. But it wasn’t just that. She kind of – dodged people, if you get me. Drove them daft, not knowing where they were. There were always quarrels.’

‘Who was she sleeping with?’

‘Everybody. Nobody. You tell me.’

‘You?’

Again he laughed harshly. ‘Me? Her and me? See my hands?’ He turned his good hand palm uppermost to show the scars of outdoor labouring. ‘You think a woman like that would so much as let me touch her – even when both of them worked? His mouth twisted in bitterness. ‘But them up at the big house—’

‘Jake? Max? Conrad?’

He shrugged.

‘Were there comings and goings to the flat at night?’

‘Not that I ever saw.’

But.
He didn’t quite say it; the word hung on the air, though. ‘What were you going to say?’

‘Say? I said it.’

MacNee changed tack. ‘What did you think when you knew who Laura Harvey was?’

He was taken by surprise. ‘Think? Well, nothing.’

‘Don’t muck me about. You were rattled, weren’t you? Giving her funny looks?’

‘Who told you that? I – I was just interested, that’s all.’ He had started to sweat.

MacNee moved in for the kill. ‘Look, Scott, I’m not wanting to get you in trouble. Did you have a thing going with her?’

‘I told you! I’ll swear on the Bible . . .’

MacNee laughed. ‘You may have to, at that. Your best bet’s not to try to be too smart.’

‘I know that—’

‘So what was it you didn’t say just now?’

The man groaned. ‘If I tell you, will you believe what I say’s all there was to it?’

‘I’m not in the guarantees business. Sook it and see.’

‘I saw her going out of her flat once or twice, late, just in her pyjamas.’

‘Pyjamas? This was – what, December, January? Where did she go?’

‘I never saw. It wasn’t long – she’d head down towards that old maze then be back just a wee while later. Ten minutes, maybe.’

‘On her own? Just in her pyjamas? No coat?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And you never went out to speak to her?’

He shook his head violently. ‘So help me God, I never.’

‘A pretty lassie, outside alone in her night-things and you never went near her?’

‘I knew I should have kept my gob shut!’ he cried. ‘That’s what you’ve been at the whole time, trying to bloody trap me. I never touched her. But you’ll not believe me, will you?’

MacNee’s smile was mirthless. ‘Oh, don’t let it get to you, laddie. We don’t believe anyone at this stage in the game.’

Laura stood to one side of her window, screened by the curtains. The car park and the little garden in front of the inn were thronged with cars and people, some police but mostly Press and photographers. She felt, as the inspector had said, under siege.

On the advice of the police Press Officer, she had faced the battery of flashing, rattling cameras – an ordeal in itself – and read out the banal form of words which had been suggested to her. She had even handed over the photo of Dizzy – laughing, vivid – which she’d brought with her to jog memories, when she was still so hopeful of finding her.

‘They’ll maybe leave you alone after that,’ the Press Officer had said, though not hopefully, and of course they hadn’t.

It was partly the fact that all the chief actors in the drama were cooped up in this one place, and the crime scene was still off-limits, although there was a rumour that by tomorrow Chapelton would be declared free of infection and the Masons would be allowed back home, which might take some of the heat off. Only some, of course; the police operation would be based at the inn for an indefinite time, and from the questions the journalists had shouted to her – which Laura hadn’t stayed to answer – they wouldn’t be satisfied until they had some sort of ‘human story’ on her too.

One way and another, living in the hotel had become something of an ordeal. Despite the pressure Lisa Thomson was under she’d been very good about bringing meals up to Laura so that she needn’t come downstairs, but the little bedroom was beginning to seem like a prison.

For Lisa, though, it was clear things had taken a turn for the better. She was looking years younger than she had at the beginning of the week.

‘I’m real sorry about your sister,’ she said to Laura when she came up with her supper tray, ‘but I have to say this is just a godsend for us. I’ve been that worried about the money but this’ll see us through.’

Laura seized the opportunity. ‘I’m glad about that. You work so hard to make us all comfortable. I hope you won’t mind, but with all this I’ve been thinking of looking for somewhere else.’

Lisa nodded understandingly. ‘If you’re having to stay on a bit there’s some nice holiday cottages with no one in them a couple of miles down the road. Quiet, you know – you’d be private and none of that lot,’ she jerked her head dismissively towards the window, ‘would know where you were. I know the owners – they’d be glad to have you. I could give them a call if you like.’

It looked like the answer to her problems. Laura didn’t want to leave the neighbourhood before she knew more about what had happened to her sister and she had a job to do, too; she’d already got some good material to form the basis of her article. But it would be wonderful to have her own private space where she wouldn’t have to spend her time dodging the press and rebuffing Max. He was becoming very tiresome, over-attentive and solicitous in a way that made her uncomfortable.

His latest suggestion was that the Minotaur, as he persisted in calling his father, had killed his own mother, then Dizzy: a convenient theory, since the man couldn’t speak up in his own defence. It seemed the police were working on those lines, though: according to Lisa and the new waitress, they hadn’t stopped digging up the field.