Gently North-West (5 page)

‘Ah me, but I’m a sucker for punishment,’ Brenda said. ‘Come on, George. Duty to death.’

With windscreen-wipers thrashing busily the Sceptre sluiced along the village street, turned left to cross the bridge, then right to Strathtudlem Lodge. At the gate to the track a constable was stationed, a dark, dripping, hunching figure, his raincoat supplemented by a cloak and a plastic cover over his chequered peak-cap.

‘Accident!’ Gently grunted, nodding at him. ‘Who do they think they’re kidding with that tale?’

‘Poor boy. I can feel the water trickling down his back.’

‘Likely enough he was off-duty when they grabbed him for this job.’

They drove through the Lodge gate and up a carriage-way of granite chippings. Three police cars were parked outside the house and a second constable guarded the porch. The Lodge was a tall, white-plastered house with clustering small gables and dormers; it had stone-framed and mullioned windows at ground-floor level and a pargetted crest above the porch.

‘The laird’s house,’ Brenda whispered. ‘We did get to visiting it after all.’

Gently ‘humphed’ – and parked the Sceptre as near the steps of the porch as it would go.

The constable came hastily down the steps.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘What’s your business? You canna come visitin’ here today – you’d best jist take that vehicle out o’ here.’

Gently wound down his window. ‘Is the officer in charge inside?’ he asked.

‘Ay, he is, but that’s no matter – you canna come in at any rate.’

‘Oh yes, I think so,’ Gently said. ‘What’s the officer’s rank and name?’

‘It’s Inspector Blayne, but I’m tellin’ you—’

‘Tell Inspector Blayne two people want to see him. A Mr Gently and a Miss Merryn. Tell him they have information for him.’

The constable, a man with a plump, freckled face, hesitated a moment, mouth open, eyes searching; then he turned to slam back up the steps and disappear into the house.

‘Phew!’ Brenda whistled. ‘Not exactly an open-arms welcome. Are you sure we still want to help the natives?’

‘The rain doesn’t help their tempers,’ Gently shrugged.

The constable returned. ‘A’richt,’ he said. ‘The Inspector will gi’e ye five minutes. But jist the same ye can take that vehicle and park it properly, like other folk.’

‘Oh, pull some rank,’ Brenda said.

‘I don’t have any rank,’ Gently grinned. ‘Get out here by the porch. It’ll save a belt through the rain.’

He parked the Sceptre by the police cars then they went on in. Beyond the massive front door, which was studded with bolt-heads, they stepped into a high, spacious hall. On their right a pine staircase, polished to a brilliance, rose to a gallery at first-floor level; and beneath the gallery, occupying most of that wall, was a mullioned window of stained glass. The floor was tiled black and white and covered in the centre with wool matting; and about the perimeter stood antique carved chairs, a carved chest and a huge carved cupboard. Swords, daggers, pistols and a pair of round shields hung in brackets on the walls, along with one or two vast, gloomy oil-paintings by Landseer or his imitators. Because of the weather only a dull light was issuing through the stained glass, so that when the constable slammed shut the outer door the hall was reduced to tinted twilight.

‘You’re to wait here,’ he told them surlily, and went out through a varnished door by the foot of the stairs.

They peered about them.

‘Gosh,’ Brenda murmured. ‘This is pretty lairdy, George. Just see those antlers hanging on the gallery – and that mossy bull leering out of the picture. Do they really have bulls like that somewhere, or is it a convention, like Chinese dragons?’

‘Probably a convention,’ Gently said. ‘Any real ones would be at stud in South America.’

‘Poor dears,’ Brenda said. ‘They’d so miss their peat-bogs, and those lovely little rocks for standing their front feet on. How he’s rolling his eyes, that big one. I wonder if he cut loose and chased the artist.’

Gently wandered over to a bracket of weapons. They were kept beautifully clean and oiled, he noticed. They were in no way fastened to the bracket and you could pluck out a sword or dagger at a second’s notice. He lifted his hand to make the experiment, but then dropped it again with a grunt.

‘Naughty,’ Brenda said. ‘I saw you do that.’

‘Perhaps I’d better not put my dabs on them,’ Gently grinned. ‘But they’re a lovely collection of murder weapons. I wouldn’t want them around at Elphinstone Road.’

‘Would the pistols work?’

‘My guess is yes. At least, they’re fitted out with flints.’

‘Gawd. They’d make a fair old hole in you.’

‘They’d do the trick. At short range.’

He passed on to another bracket, Brenda keeping close beside him. The hall had a quality of echoing silence that made one tread cautiously and speak low. In the darkest corner, a small recess in the same wall as the window, a helmet with chain cheek-guards stared emptily at them over a faintly gleaming cuirass.

‘Compulsory Sunday lairds’-wear,’ Brenda whispered.

‘Shh,’ Gently said. ‘Someone’s coming.’

Brenda listened. ‘It’s someone upstairs.’

‘Yes, but they may have to cross over the gallery.’

Brenda’s hand stole to his arm and they both stood quite still. Soft, regular, slouched footsteps were approaching the gallery from the left. There was little light at that level and details of the gallery were indistinct; against what might have been a panelled wall one saw only the silhouette of the balustrade and of gigantic antlers. The steps sounded nearer. A flickering glow began to shine on the gallery. Then a woman appeared, carrying a candle, and apparently muffled in a big dressing-gown.

‘God save us,’ Brenda breathed. ‘If she begins washing her hands, it’s Lady Macbeth.’

‘Quiet!’ Gently hissed.

But the woman had heard them and, with a violent start, turned to look down.

For a second she paused, her hand on the rail, the candle lighting her smooth, pale face; then she continued to the end of the gallery and took some steps down the stairs.

‘Who – who are you?’

Her voice was low, with the precise accent of an educated Scot.

‘Just two visitors,’ Gently explained apologetically. ‘We’re waiting to talk to Inspector Blayne.’

‘Inspector Blayne. Then you know something—’

‘We think we may know something about the accident.’

Her lips trembled. ‘But it wasn’t an accident.’

‘Then whatever it was.’

‘They murdered Donnie!’

Her mouth crumpled and tears began to overflow from her swollen eyes. She was not a beautiful woman. Her nose was too thin and made too sharp an angle with a broad forehead. But she had a finely-drawn jaw and a small, vulnerable mouth, and these, along with a full cheek and a flawless skin, gave her face distinction and interest. She had plentiful dark hair worn straight and long. She was rather under middle height. Her age was perhaps thirty.

‘They didn’t need to. They didn’t. They didn’t. Donnie wouldn’t have done them harm. Things might just have come and gone. At the worst . . . at the worst . . .’

‘We’re very sorry to intrude,’ Gently said quietly.

She stared at him wildly through her tears. ‘Ay, you’re sorry,’ she said. ‘What would that cost you? It’s no grief to the lookers-on.’

‘We’d like to help—’

‘You can’t help. It’s all done, done, done.’

‘We may be able to help Inspector Blayne.’

‘Two English folk! Never!’

But then she shrank a little from the rail, her eyes narrowing at Gently.

‘What is it you think you know?’ she said. ‘What can you know – about Donnie?’

Gently shrugged. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘I never met Mr Dunglass.’

‘Then who is it about?’

‘Perhaps nobody.’

‘You can’t have any tales to tell about me!’

Gently shook his head and said nothing. The woman’s eyes clung to his. The candle, which she was still grasping, trembled and spilled grease into the stick. Then she burst into sudden sobbing and ran back up the stairs and along the gallery. They heard a door open and slam, the creak of a spring, and silence.

‘Glory!’ Brenda exclaimed. ‘What do you know about that? They’ve got a pippin of a case here, George. It should make the Sundays. Do you think she did it?’

‘What do you think?’

‘She’d be top of my list. She was scared silly, you could see that. And half those tears were for your benefit.’

A thin cough sounded behind them, making them turn quickly. A door had opened near the front of the hall and in the doorway stood a man.

‘Aweel,’ he said in a dry voice. ‘Alistair Blayne, at your service. If you’re through interviewin’ Mary Dunglass, perhaps we can get to your bit of business.’

He coughed again and came out of the doorway.

‘The lady has been lately widowed,’ he said. ‘The doctor has given her a wee sedative, but it doesn’t seem to be doin’ its duty.’

I’se uphaud (him) for . . . the bitterest Jacobite in the haill shire.

Rob Roy
, Sir Walter Scott

I
NSPECTOR BLAYNE LED
them along a passage a little less gloomy than the hall and into a well-proportioned room furnished as a library and study. The walls had been regularly shelved with oak and red pine, the latter forming the frames of doors and cupboards and the panelling that ranged at the lowest levels, and the shelves exhibited a catholic bookscape that stretched from folios in sheepskin, through various degrees of calf, boards, cloths, to the jazzier outsides of the present day. Old estate maps in Hogarth frames hung at intervals of the shelving, and a small collection of printed maps was grouped above the wide hearth; a huge desk, a table, a print-stand, a globe, an orrery and half-a-dozen solid, leather-seated chairs completed the inventory.

When they entered it was apparent that a search was in progress. Cupboard doors hung ajar and files and loose papers were strewn on the floor. At the desk, where an oil-lamp with a pearl-glass shade made some impression on the prevailing dim-out, a sharp-faced man with sleeked hair was flicking through the pages of a ledger.

‘A’richt, Purdy,’ Blayne said. ‘You may as well be off back to Balma’. Just do those one or two jobs we were talkin’ of – and give me a tinkle when you’re back, man. You can draw off a couple of men with you.’

‘Shall I take this buik, sir?’ Purdy asked, pointing to a folio bound in blue cloth, which lay on the desk.

Blayne fingered his chin. ‘No, I think not. No, you can leave the buik with me.’

Purdy left. Blayne, with his own hands, dragged two of the chairs up to front the desk, flicked the seats with his handkerchief and waved his visitors to them. He was a tall, lean, gangling man who threw a stoop into all his movements, and whose very large hands, with very long fingers, fluttered vaguely when he spoke. He had a long skull and a longer jaw and lank, colourless cheeks, and his hair, bushy but cut short, was a curious pepper-and-salt mixture. Though he was probably younger than Gently his face suggested he was far older; yet his odd, springy motions had an air incongruously youthful. He took the seat Purdy had vacated.

‘Well,’ he said, laying his palms together. ‘First, an apology about the lighting. I hear the line is down at Glen Liffin, so we’re gettin’ no current this side of the river. There’s been a deal of rain, you ken – sometimes it starts the rocks movin’.’ He gave Gently a sly glance. ‘Ay,’ he said. ‘Well, that’s that. Now we come to your own business. What were those two names, again?’

Gently repeated them and Blayne wrote them down, his large fingers travelling slowly; then he added their London addresses and the address of the cottage. When he’d finished writing he remained staring at the paper.

‘Ay,’ he said. ‘Miss Brenda Merryn – a bonnie name. And
Mr
Gently.’

‘That’s correct,’ Gently said.

‘Oh, correct right enough,’ Blayne agreed hastily. ‘A proper modesty becomes a man – there’s no two opinions about that – and in a manner you were leaving Rome behind you when you set foot across the Wall. Ay,
Mr
Gently I have it down here. It’ll be so on the record.’

Gently chuckled. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I was just stressing I was on holiday.’

‘And you’ve a perfect right, man,’ Blayne said. ‘You won’t want to be concerned in our up-the-glen affairs. But well, we’re not all that remote here from the likes o’ papers and the telly and what with one thing and t’ other – I knew fine who you were.’

‘Ah, fame,’ Brenda said.

‘It makes no difference,’ Gently said. ‘As you said, I’ve left Rome behind me. I’m just a private citizen in Strathtudlem.’

‘No, no, not quite that either,’ Blayne said, sawing his hands. ‘You can’t stop bein’ who you are, man, by changin’ banks at the Tweed. And here am I with a wee bit homicide, and you come knockin’ at the door – you can’t just be
Mr
Gently – a whiff of the Yard must step in with you.’

‘Then it’ll be a small whiff,’ Gently said. ‘I’m here merely with information.’

‘Ay, and that’s a rare enough item,’ Blayne said. ‘I’m obliged to you – obliged. But I’ll put it this way: holiday or no – north of the Border or no – the likes of you will be for havin’ the facts of any wee murder you run against. You’ll be seein’, thinkin’, wonderin’ where a private citizen won’t – and coming up with your own notions – how far am I out?’

‘You’re not out at all,’ Brenda said. ‘That’s a perfect picture of George on holiday.’

‘So I’m thinkin’,’ Blayne said. ‘I was listenin’ to him talkin’ to Mary Dunglass. And now he’ll be half-way into the case, just by hearin’ her rant for a couple of minutes – and if you ken she has guilty knowledge, man,’ he said to Gently, ‘there’s information I’d be glad to have from you.’

Gently hunched a shoulder. ‘I couldn’t tell that. I don’t have details of the affair. She implied there was more than one killer and that she understood the motive.’

‘Ay, that’s no’ new,’ Blayne said, sounding disappointed. ‘That’s just what the lady’s inclined to believe. And if it’s the fact of the matter – I don’t ken – there’ll be small credit for Alistair Blayne. But if the lady was involved, now—’