Does Your Mother Know? (7 page)

The house was typical of what I’d seen so far of island houses: small and compact, with sand-coloured stucco walls and a grey slate roof. The trim on two second-floor windows was painted a dull brown. As we approached, a uniformed officer stepped out of the side porch.

“Hello, Fraser,” said Gillies.

“Afternoon, sir,” said the constable, a young, thin-faced fellow — new to the force, I thought, from his “I’ve-seen-something-nasty” expression. He hardly glanced at me, but pointed to the inside of the house.

“I sent for Dr. MacBeth. He’s upstairs. Mr. MacAulay’s grandson and his fiancée are out in the rear garden. So is Lisa MacKenzie. She found the body about an hour ago. She worked for Mr. MacAulay.”

“How is she doing?”

“She’s bearing up considering, but young Andy is what I’d call very distressed.”

The constable was another tongue chewer, and I could hardly understand him.

Gillies ushered me in ahead of him with a gallantry that was obviously second nature, but in this case I could have done without
it. The stench from the decaying corpse was powerful. The windows were wide open, but the fresh air didn’t stand a chance against the stink of a dead body.

CHAPTER NINE

The living room was drab, with too much dark wood trim and muted colour. A couch and matching armchair, upholstered in tartan, were grouped in front of the fireplace. The first impression was that the style hadn’t changed since the early 1950s, although French doors had been created at the far end of the room and I could see through to a walled-in patio area. To my surprise, sitting there on an iron bench were the same couple we had recently encountered at the protest at the airport. Her candy-cane appearance was unmistakable. The man had his back to me. He was bent over, holding his head in his hands, and she was in close, her arm around his shoulders. Even from where I was, the sound of his noisy sobs was audible. They were protected by a striped awning, but a second woman, dressed in a yellow raincoat, was standing a few feet away at the stone wall of the patio. She was unmoving, seemingly oblivious to the drizzle, staring out towards the inlet. Her spiky brown hair was dyed a brilliant burgundy at the tips, and I guessed she’d have numerous piercings.

Constable Fraser had followed us over the threshold.

“You said Lisa MacKenzie was the one who found the body?” Gillies asked.

“Aye, sir. She has a key, and when she let herself in this morning, she discovered Mr. MacAulay in the upstairs bedroom. She telephoned Dr. MacBeth and he told her to call us, which she did.”

“She didn’t call the police first?” I added my two cents’ worth. “I’d think that would be the first reaction for anybody finding a dead body.”

Fraser was surprised. “Perhaps in America it is, but here most people know each other and what’s going on. She knew Mr. MacAulay was Dr. MacBeth’s patient.”

This wasn’t the time to explain that, even though we share the same northern part of the continent and, to the Scottish ear, sound completely alike, Canada and the United States are two distinct countries.

“When did the other two get here?” asked Gillies. “They were doing a protest at the airport not too long ago.”

“They’ve been here about half an hour.” The young constable swallowed hard. “I had to tell Andy his grandfather was dead. He’s been crying ever since.” He glanced at me. “His fiancée is from America.”

“Does he live here?” I asked. “In the house, I mean.”

“No, Ma’am. But he visits his granddad on a regular basis.”

“We’ll talk to them later. Don’t let them leave just yet.” Gillies looked at me. “Let’s go and hear what the doctor has to say, shall we?”

He led the way up the stairs.

Like the first floor, the upper floor was dull in hue, and the landing was narrow and dark. A man, Dr. MacBeth, I assumed, emerged from the first room on the right. The force of his personality and appearance was like being hit by a gust of wind. I could almost feel my hair being blown back. The man was big. Not just tall, big. The impression of size was reinforced by the baggy tweed suit, full knickerbockers, and knee-high boots he was wearing. His grizzled mop of grey hair sprang off his head, and a full red beard jutted from his chin to mid-chest. He was sort of “Albert Schweitzer meets the Highlander.”

“Ah, Sergeant. Took you long enough.”

“Sorry, sir.”

I could have sworn that even Gillies was intimidated, or maybe he’d learned how to deal with the doctor.

“Who’s this?” asked MacBeth fixing on me.

“Detective Sergeant Christine Morris. She’s from Canada. She’s been attending a conference.”

Fortunately, Dr. MacBeth accepted this scant explanation, but I had the impression that, if he chose to, we could have stood for a long time while he questioned me. He flapped his hand.

“He’s in here.”

He turned around and went back into the room. Gillies followed and this time didn’t step aside to let me in first.

The room was tiny, and a double bed took up most of the space, leaving just enough room for a side table, a wardrobe, and an old-fashioned desk underneath the window.

Mr. MacAulay was lying on his back on the bed, his arms straight by his side. A yellow chequered coverlet was across his legs, and his position might have suggested a peaceful death, except that near his head, on his left, a towel was heavily stained with blood, as was his white T-shirt and blue terry-cloth dressing gown. It was hard to tell from what orifice the blood had flowed, because his skin was by now badly discoloured.

“What was the cause of death, Doctor?” Gillies asked.

“I’m attributing it to a pulmonary hemorrhage. Tormod had been suffering from advanced liver disease for a wee while now.” For my benefit, although he didn’t look at me, he added, “One of the side effects is that the veins of the esophagus swell and burst.”

Gillies tuned right in. “Would death have been immediate? There was no call to emergency that we’ve recorded.”

“I kenna say for certain, seeing as I wasna here, but the likelihood is that it was not a fast death. But he could quite possibly have been asleep when the hemorrhage started.”

I interjected, probably foolishly. “But he would have woken up choking, wouldn’t he? Was there any indication he tried to get to the telephone?”

MacBeth scowled. “The Lord was overseeing him, lassie, not me, so I don’t know. Moreover the telephone set is downstairs, which he knew.”

I was getting irked in my turn with Dr. MacBeth brandishing his claymore in my direction. And maybe in Scottish “lassie” was a common way to talk to women. To my ear, however, it sounded exactly like “little girl.”

“So, he doesn’t seem to have made the attempt and died on the bed as you found him.”

“Precisely so.”

I wasn’t going to argue with the man but that made no sense to me. For one thing, the bed was close to the far wall and to get to the door, and presumably either to the bathroom or to the telephone, MacAulay would have been turning to the other side — to his right, which was not where the towel was or the spatter of blood on the sheet. When I was on the beat, I’d been called to an apartment where a woman had died in suspicious circumstances. It turned out she had choked to death on her own vomit after a three-day binge of Johnny Walker’s cheapest. She was lying half off the couch, where she’d passed out, her head touching the ground, because the instinct to bend over and get rid of whatever was choking up the airwaves was a powerful one. Surely, Tormod MacAulay would have struggled against the red tide of blood surging up from his lungs to drown him.

“Was there blood anywhere else? The bathroom for instance?” Dr. MacBeth stared at me. “I didna look. This isna Chicago, lass. It’s no a gangland shooting. This man was a patient of mine and he died from natural causes.”

He was being so preposterous, I didn’t have much recourse. I was a visitor after all, and getting all huffy and challenging the man wasn’t going to get me very far.

“When did you last see him, Doctor?” Gillies got in smoothly.

“About a month ago.”

“What was the state of his health then?”

MacBeth wasn’t budging an inch. “Bad. The only thing that was going to save him was a new liver, and you know how unlikely that was.”

I couldn’t tell if the doctor was so prehistoric he’d never heard of transplants or if he was referring to MacAulay’s eligibility.

Gillies continued, which made things easier. “I take it there was no sign of trauma, Sir?”

“None.”

“Will there be an autopsy?” I butted in.

Another scowl from the doctor. “There is no need to waste good taxpayers’ money when the death is not unexpected.”

“But it was sudden, wasn’t it?”

I assumed the Scottish criminal code was the same as the Canadian, in which any unexpected or sudden death must be reported to the coroner.

I could see on his face that MacBeth was having a little war within. He couldn’t bear to concede my point, but he was still a physician.

“I suppose you could say that. Although, I repeat, given his condition, this was always a possibility.” He turned back to Gillies, dismissing me. “I’ll sign the death certificate when I go downstairs. And unless the immediate family requests it, his mortal remains will be undisturbed and he will be buried intact.”

So there, foreign lassie.

“Have the ambulance bring him to the morgue. Andy will be making funeral arrangements.”

Again Gillies did something utterly wonderful.

“While I have you, Sir, I wonder if I might ask you a question on another matter. You just finished the post mortem on the accident victim, Mrs. Sarah MacDonald, didn’t you?”

“Aye. All done with.”

“I haven’t had an opportunity to read your report yet. What were your conclusions?”

MacBeth snorted derisively. “What do you expect? Drunkness killed her. Sarah MacDonald was an alcoholic for years. She was, in common parlance, ‘staggering drunk’ — or ‘completely pissed’ as they say in America. Apparently she picked up some drinking companion at the hotel and they got hickey together.”

“Did Mrs. MacDonald die from alcohol poisoning?” I asked.

“Of course not. The direct cause of death was the severance of the second cervical vertebrae when her car went over a cliff and
smashed itself on the rocks. She was a foolish woman.”

“Is that a description in common parlance or a medical opinion, Dr. MacBeth?”

“Eh?”

“Miss Morris is from Canada, Dr. MacBeth,” interjected the sergeant. “She has a different kind of experience from us. I’ve told her, in this part of the world everybody knows everybody else.”

“Quite so.”

I couldn’t resist the opportunity to push.

“I suppose there’s no doubt that Mrs. MacDonald was the driver of the car? Given the nature of her injuries, I wonder if that is something you could determine”

He frowned. “That’s more a question for the sergeant here than for me. All I know is she broke her bloody neck when she was flung out of the car.” He addressed Gillies. “Have you found the other woman yet?”

“No, we haven’t.”

“If you ask me she’s at the bottom of the sea. She’ll wash up at the Butt one of these days. They usually do.”

Of course he had no inkling of who I actually was, but the brutality of his words were like an assault. Gillies couldn’t let it go any further.

“Actually, doctor, Miss Morris is here because the missing woman is her mother.”

“What? I thought you said she was a police officer.”

“I am. Both. The daughter of the missing woman and a police officer from Canada.”

He stared at me, hardly abashed. “Well, I’m sorry for your loss.” This remark could not be pursued because there was a call from downstairs.

“The ambulance is here, Sir.”

“Will you see to the removal, Gillies? I’ll go on ahead to Stornoway.”

“Yes, Sir.”

The doctor paused in the doorway. “You should put a fresh steak on that eye,” he said to Gillies.

A fresh steak! I’d expect him to bring out the leeches.

He left and Gillies touched my hand.

“Take a deep breath.”

“I don’t think so,” I said ungraciously. “Not in here.”

“Will you take care of Andy and his girl then? They might get upset seeing the body brought out. I’d better stay here.”

“Okay.” I paused. “Would you mind if I checked out the bathroom?”

“There’s a toilet downstairs to the right of the front door.”

“No, I meant this one. I’d like to see if there’s any blood in there.”

His expression was kind. “Why don’t we both have a look round after they’ve all left. Set your mind at rest.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

I made my way downstairs, aware my legs were shaky.

CHAPTER TEN

I walked out to the patio. The rain had stopped and high, dry stone walls gave protection from the prevailing wind, so that the corner was pleasantly warm.

“Hello, everybody. Sergeant Gillies has asked me to let you know that the ambulance men will be removing Mr. MacAulay’s body. They will take him to the morgue at Stornoway.”

Andy MacAulay looked up, wiping his eyes with a handkerchief.

“Thank you.”

You can’t fake the kind of distress he was experiencing, and my heart went out to him. His fiancée jerked her head in my direction. “Andy’s had a dreadful shock. I hope you’re not expecting him to say anything.” I recognized the accent now — there was an American northeastern clip. His hand was locked in hers, and she had the fierce look of a woman who is ready to stand by her man no matter what: aggressive, ready to throw me out bodily if necessary.

She frowned. “Didn’t we see you at the airport?”

“Yes, you did. My name is Morris. Christine Morris. I’m with the Canadian police force.”

“Well this is Andy MacAulay, and I’m his fiancée, Coral-Lyn Pitchers. That’s Coral as in reef — not Carol — and Pitchers as in baseball.” She reeled it off as if I were officially taking notes. I had the impression she was accustomed to being interviewed, perhaps
because of her involvement with the Lord’s Day Observance Society. But I’d guess that even earlier than that, she’d had to divert lewd jokes from the male population. Her dress wasn’t tight-fitting at all, but she was snugly belted at the waist, and she couldn’t hide the size of her unusually ample breasts.