Cold, Lone and Still (15 page)

‘Did you yourself lend a hand to beauty in distress?’ said Dame Beatrice to Perth.

‘Oo aye, I did my share, but the going, in some places, was verra severe on a lassie wi’ sair feet, even if she wasna hampered wi’ her gear.’

‘Would you say that any one person in the party took a particular dislike to Carbridge?’ asked Dame Beatrice. Perth shook his head and answered that the nearest to that would be the two clerks, Tansy and Rhoda. For one thing, he said, Tansy in particular had an eye on Todd and found Carbridge, with his extreme mateyness and his determination to keep his flock together and permit no straying for purposes of dalliance, extremely frustrating and irritating.

‘Although I’m bound to tell ye,’ said Perth, ‘that the man Todd showed nae disposition to respond to her female wiles. Gin his een strayed ony place when Miss Camden wisna wi’ us, it would hae been that he lookit at the student Patsy Carlow.’

I said nothing, but I could have remarked that, if Todd’s thoughts were on Hera, he would hardly have looked twice at Tansy, anyway. Although, as I had thought when first I met her and Rhoda, Tansy was probably kind-hearted, she could scarcely be called glamorous. The forthcoming and much younger Patsy might be a different proposition.

‘The twa clerks left the party at Crianlarich,’ Perth went on. ‘They didna spend the night at the hostel, but went on to Fort William and there we met them again. Myself and the students spent three days in the hills and slept at the Crianlarich youth hostel, while the ither four — Todd, Carbridge and the Minches, went on. We were a wee thing hindered by mist, but guid work was done to the satisfaction o’ the students and we also took transport, as did the women Parks and Green, to get ourselves to Fort William.’

‘Did you do anything there apart from climbing the mountain?’ asked Laura.

‘Oo, aye. There are shops in the toon, ye’ll ken, and lassies always go wild when there are shops. Souvenirs were purchased and displayed, for, as we were all intending to take the train when we had put in three nights at the youth hostel at Fort William, there was little need to fash about a little extra weight in the packs and the students could leave everything at the hostel while we climbed the mountain.’

‘What kind of things did they buy?’ asked Laura.

‘Och, what you would expect. Rhoda had a tweed for a skirt, Patsy bought Todd a wee present of a knife and Tansy, also fu’ of improper thoughts about Todd, I’m thinking, purchased, at an awfu’ lang price — but, of course, she earned money in her job — she bought him a knife, too. It was a genuine antique. Patsy’s knife was an imitation of a
sgian dubh
.’

‘A
sgian dubh
, eh?’ said Laura.

‘Ye’ll be thinking on the murder,’ said Perth, ‘but gin ye think yon man Todd would stab a fellow creature in the back, as I am telled was done tae Carbridge, ye hae Todd summed up wrangly, Mistress Gavin.’

‘The stabbing, as I understand it, was only a
coup de grâce
in case the strangling hadn’t done the job completely,’ I reminded the company.

‘Oo, aye, verra like,’ agreed Perth. ‘I hae to tell ye, mistress,’ he added, addressing Laura again, ‘as I hae been speired at tae mention purchases, that Jane Minch made purchase of some beautiful notepaper wi’ headings o’ the Loch Ness monster and various flowers and birds and knights on horseback — verra fine indeed.’

‘From the Malin Workshop in Claggan Road,’ I said. ‘Hera bought some, too. Beautiful drawings. Hedderwick, I remember, is the artist’s name. Did anybody else purchase anything in the nature of a weapon?’

‘The maist o’ them made a purchase,‘ said Perth,’but naebody else bought a knife. There was the fake
sgian dubh
and the knife bought by the woman Tansy Parks. She had it frae a shop which sold antiques. I was wi’ her when she bought it and I wrestled vairbally wi’ the proprietor on her behalf tae hae the price reduced. “Ye’ll ne’er get your money for that bauble,” I was telling him. “A’ the visitors are requiring are souvenirs. Not by ony length is that knife a souvenir o’ a trip to Fort William. It’s no even o’ Scottish manufacture.” ’

‘So what sort of dagger was it?’ asked Laura.

‘I am not convairsant wi’ the history o’ dirks, but, according tae the man, it was Spanish-made in about 1878, and to my mind there was naething so verra special aboot it. It was not what I would ca’ an object o’ distinction, but the lassie fancied it. It was broadish and the blade would ha’ been, in my reckoning, aboot seven inches in length and the knife overall aboot fifteen inches, but there wasna a sheath wi’ it. He had anither, a verra superior specimen, wi’ a tortoiseshell and mother o’ pearl handle, but the price was quite inordinate, so she took the first ane.’

‘What made her choose such an object?’ asked Dame Beatrice.

‘She said she wanted to mak’ a gift of it, but she didna then say to whom. As I telled ye, my thought upon it was that she intended to gift it to Todd.’

‘What you tell us is of the greatest interest,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Do the police know about all this?’

‘I dinna ken.’

We learned later what had happened to Patsy’s knife. Chagrined to find her gift redundant when she discovered the destination of Tansy’s purchase, she had raffled it when the students got back and it had been won by Freddie Brown.

T
he warden had the address of the women students’ hall of residence and Dame Beatrice obtained it from him before she left. He would be glad, he said, to have the mystery of Carbridge’s death cleared up before the new term began, if that were possible. He added that the police were making heavy weather of their investigations and that it was very hard on those students who had done such good work in Scotland during their summer vacation that they should be under harassment when they were all completely innocent.

Privately, I think, Dame Beatrice was keeping an open mind about their guilt or innocence, but she could hardly tell this to anybody in the warden’s position. I walked round to Hera’s flat when the goodnights had been said and found her, as I had expected, awaiting me and alone. Whether Todd had been quite as good as his word I did not know, but, at any rate, he was not in her flat when I arrived.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘how did things go? Did Dame Beatrice extort a confession of guilt from anybody?’

‘As you would expect, some useful information emerged. Perth was particularly enlightening.’

‘That man has eyes and ears everywhere. I suppose both were necessary in the job he had to do on the tour. It can’t have been easy with that little horror Patsy Carlow in the party.’

‘He made two interesting disclosures which may or may not have some bearing on Carbridge’s death and he also let a few other cats out of bags which, so far as I can see, have nothing to do with murder, but which highlight what I may call the love interest.’

‘Oh, Lord!’

‘Yes, indeed.’

‘Well, out with it, if you’ve come here to make a scene.’

‘Why should I do that?’

‘Oh, that’s all right, then. What happened? What was said?’

‘It’s getting late. Let’s leave it until tomorrow. It may turn out to be a long story.’

So we arranged that I should take her out to dinner the next evening and then that we should return to her flat for our talk. When the appointed time arrived, she came straight to the point which concerned the two of us most closely.

‘I suppose Perth told you about Todd and me,’ she said.

It staggered me that she should refer to Todd so openly and in so calm a manner. I was nonplussed by her frankness and said feebly, ‘Well, yes, sort of, yes, he did.’

‘The snooping old cub-leader! What did he tell you?’

‘That Todd slept at the Inverbeg hotel on the same night as we did.’

‘Yes, he did. He pushed on ahead of the others and, although you didn’t see him, he crossed on the ferry when we did, but if Perth told you I slept with him, it’s not true.’

‘No?’

‘No. I didn’t mean for this to come out just yet, Comrie, but I would have told you all about it later, when things were settled.’

‘What about Glasgow?’

‘Perth couldn’t have told you about Glasgow. He knew nothing about what happened at the airport hotel. Oh, dear! I wish he hadn’t taken the bull by the horns, the wretched man! Anyway, he did, so I must make the best of it. You had the impression, when I met Todd on the train and again at the airport hotel, that he was a stranger to me. I tried to give you a hint that this was not the case, but you were too thick to catch on.’

‘Oh, was I? But I have a trusting nature, you see.’

‘Don’t you remember that crack of mine about people with two left feet?’

‘Vividly. I have seldom felt more embarrassed.’

‘You surely didn’t think I would say a thing like that to somebody I had only just met?’

‘It seemed out of character, I admit, but I thought you were annoyed by his attempting to pick you up.’

‘You always have been a myopic old soul where I am concerned. Don’t you remember my calling him
Sweeney
Todd later? That would have been another frightful liberty if we hadn’t known one another very well. Anyway, thanks to that idiotic Carbridge and your own fixations, Glasgow and Inverbeg were the only chances Barney and I had to get together and talk over our plans for a divorce.’

‘What
!’

‘Yes. I married him when I was — well, a whole lot younger than I am now. It didn’t work out very well, and we separated, but nothing legal was involved. It wasn’t even a judicial separation. We agreed to go our separate ways and then, when the legal period of irreparable breakdown of the marriage was over, to arrange for a divorce.’

‘What didn’t you like about him?’

‘He was a male chauvinist pig,’ she said lightly.

‘Expound, as Dame Beatrice would say.’ (Strange to say, the shock her disclosure had given me was already dying away.)

‘You know,’ said Hera, ‘you’re taking this very calmly. I thought you would rant and roar.’

‘That is only done by true British sailors and even then, according to the song, they need to be on the high seas.’ To be truthful, my calmness in the face of her confession surprised nobody more than myself. I touched the pocket in which I still had her engagement ring. The little circlet seemed to have turned into some sort of talisman. I found comfort in the realisation that it was in my possession and not on her finger.

‘Well, I’m not flattered,’ she said, ‘by the way you’ve taken news which I thought would stun you. Anyway, you asked what I didn’t like about Barney. Looking back, I don’t really know. He was tall, handsome, free with his money, a most satisfactory escort and I suppose that, in a way, I liked him very much. The trouble was that I wanted a career for myself and it was because of my insistence on this that we fell out. After our honeymoon I refused to sleep with him until he gave up trying to turn me into a good wife and mother, so he picked up a girl and we parted.’

‘And I got you on the rebound.’

‘Heavens, no! You mustn’t think that, Comrie. I’m very fond of you and had you taken me into partnership —’

‘That business on the train,’ I said, cutting in before she could get into her stride. ‘Was it pre-arranged?’

‘No, it wasn’t, but the meeting at the airport hotel was. Todd had had no intention of walking The Way until I told him in the train corridor of our plans, yours and mine, to test ourselves and find out how well we could get along with one another under primitive conditions.’

‘Oh, come now! When we met him again at the Glasgow youth hostel, he was all equipped for a walking tour. He must have had it planned.’

‘Plenty of shops in Glasgow where he could have bought the gear he needed and he had all the time in the world to equip himself while you were dragging me around the main features of the city.’

I stuck to my guns and said, ‘You can’t just walk into a youth hostel and ask for accommodation.’

‘He had had a hosteller’s card for years. He wasn’t always as prosperous as he was when he married me.’

‘Suppose the hostel had been full?’

‘Well, it wasn’t, was it?’ she said impatiently. ‘I expect that, after he had shown up at the airport hotel and got his key, he went straight out again to wedge himself in at the hostel for the following night so as to coincide with our arrival there. Do you remember that I would not stay a second night at the hotel?’

‘So you slept with him at the airport hotel on the only night we were all three there!’

‘I did nothing of the kind, or at Inverbeg, either. Believe what you please, but that is the truth. I went to his room, not he to mine, and we had a business conversation, that’s all.’

‘Did you, so to speak, get anything fixed up about a divorce?’ I asked sardonically.

She replied in all seriousness, ‘Not at the time. Now tell me about Perth and the discussion in the warden’s lodgings.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me you were married to Todd?’

‘Do you want the truth or a nice coat of veneer?’

‘Come on! Out with it, please. I’ve a right to know.’

‘Oh, you men and your rights! I didn’t tell you at first because I wanted to marry you and I thought it might not come off if you knew too soon that I had to get a divorce before I could take you on a permanent basis, and I had no intention of getting run in for committing bigamy, I assure you. I have never lost touch with Barney, but meeting him like that on the train to Glasgow was entirely a surprise.’

‘Would you be mortally offended if I said I do not believe you?’

‘No, I shouldn’t be offended, but you must admit that coincidences do occur. You, of all people, have to accept that they do. What about your two dead bodies?’

‘I’ve thought a lot about them, naturally, and I don’t believe there was coincidence. I have come to the conclusion that the death of Carbridge was a copy-cat murder.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Ask yourself. Strangulation is a method of murdering people. Right?’

‘Certainly.’

‘Stabbing people in the back is another but a very dissimilar method.’

‘Agreed and I suppose I see what you mean.’

‘Yes. When the two methods are used on a second body within a matter of weeks, one tends to suppose either that the same murderer has repeated his method or that somebody else has copied it.’

‘You haven’t really proved your point, but I agree with you that it does provide food for thought. Would you have broken our engagement if you had known earlier about Barney and me?’

‘If I had known you were waiting for a divorce before I could marry you, I doubt whether we should ever have been engaged to one another at all.’

‘Well, that’s straight from the shoulder, anyway.
Now
will you tell me about Dame Beatrice and what you were told at the warden’s lodgings?’

I was at last prepared to change the subject.

‘Perth was our chief spokesman,’ I said. ‘That is why he was invited to the dinner, of course. He voiced the opinion that Carbridge was a fool.’

‘Well, that wasn’t a very original thought. Everybody knew Carbridge was a fool and a tiresomely boring fool at that. Even Tansy and Rhoda thought so.’

‘Perth gave me the impression that Carbridge was killed
because
he was a fool.’

‘I suppose there have been less valid reasons for killing people. One aspect of Carbridge’s foolishness was that one couldn’t trust him not to babble, but I suppose the same could be said of young James Minch. What else was there?’

‘Oh, that people bought souvenirs in Fort William.’

‘People do buy souvenirs when they’re on holiday, so there’s nothing surprising in that.’

‘Two of the souvenirs appear to have been of a lethal nature. They were daggers. One was bought by Tansy and the other by Patsy.’

‘Has anybody told that to Bingley?’

‘I have no idea. The trouble is that the people who bought them didn’t keep them. As far as we know, one was given to Todd and young Freddie Brown won the other in a raffle. It, too, was meant as a gift to Todd, but Patsy changed her mind when she heard about Tansy’s present. I don’t suppose Todd wanted to accept a gift from either of the women.’

‘Thank goodness for that! I shouldn’t like to think I was married to a murderer.’

I ignored what I thought was a flippant remark.

‘Is our engagement off for good?’ I asked.

‘You made that very clear a short while ago, didn’t you?’

‘It was you who broke things up in the first place.’

‘Oh, my dear Comrie, I’ve been doubtful about us for a long time. The tour only crystallised my ideas.’

‘We got on all right on the tour.’

‘When you were rabbit enough to accept my rulings? No intimacy for a fortnight? I want a man, not a mouse.’

‘Well, I’m damned!’

‘Yes, with faint praise for behaving like a gentleman when what I wanted was to see the wolf emerge from the sheep’s clothing. Do you remember the gypsy at Inverarnan?’

‘You wouldn’t tell me what she said.’

‘I couldn’t, at the time, because I had not finally made up my mind about you, but I can tell you now. She said that the man I was with was not the man for me. She was right, Comrie. I have no use for a man I can dominate.’

‘You might have seen a different side of me when we were married. You did not get your own way about joining my firm.’

‘Oh, that was Sandy, not you. I could have overruled you easily enough if there had been nobody else to contend with. Anyway, neither of you need have insulted me by taking that woman Elsa Moore into partnership.’

‘Let’s not argue about that. To make Elsa a partner was a necessity if we wanted to keep her.’

‘Only marriage to one of you would make absolutely sure of that.’

‘It’s up to Sandy, then,’ I said laughingly.

‘Are you going to tell Bingley about the souvenir daggers?’

‘Not I. It is none of my business. Dame Beatrice was present and I’m sure she’ll take the necessary steps.’

When I got back to my flat, I took out what had been the engagement ring, reflected somewhat ruefully on what I had had to pay for it, packed it up very carefully and wrote a covering note.

‘Please do me the honour of keeping our ring. I don’t want any other woman to wear it. It will fit your right hand as a dress ring and Todd won’t worry that I gave it to you. I have the feeling that, as soon as this dreadful business about poor Carbridge is cleared up, you will go back to your Barney. Anyway, the very best of luck to you both.’ I ended with a quotation from John Donne which seemed appropriate under the circumstances: