Maggie (16 page)

Ah, I hear a noise. His lordship must be finished with the gentlemen of the Press.”

The earl popped his head around the door. “Look here, Maggie,” he said. “They want a photograph of you. Do you think you can bear it? They’re really not bad fellows.”

Maggie hesitated and her eyes flew to Colonel Delaney. She already trusted him. The telling of her story to such a fascinated and sympathetic listener had made her feel as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders.

“It’s all right,” said that gentleman. “I’m an interfering old busybody, my dear. But it would be best if you saw them. Don’t say much. Just look the way you do now. Bewildered and innocent.”

Maggie smiled and moved towards the door. The earl found himself wishing she would smile more.

Her eyes lit up with a deep radiance like the sun on a Scottish loch.

“They’re in the study,” he said. “Chin up.”

He took her hand and raised it fleetingly to his lips. Then he tucked her arm through his and led her from the room. He glanced down at her out of the corner of one blue eye. Maggie Macleod looked every inch a lady, he reflected. She was wearing a fine wool jacket and a tailored skirt in a dull gold colour with a pale, leaf-green blouse with a high-boned collar.

Maggie flinched as they entered the study. All those staring curious eyes reminded her of her trial. The earl pressed her arm and she felt a warm glow spreading through her body.

There was a rattling of tripods and a shaking of magnesium powder.

She stood patiently beside the earl while magnesium flashes burst in her face and shutters clicked and anxious faces peered around black cloths exhorting her to “hold that pose”.

What an age it seemed to take one photograph! One dedicated photographer kept talking earnestly about twenty second exposures and began to count, “One Mississippi two Mississippi…” while Maggie and the earl waited, feeling the smiles freezing on their faces.

The reporters, while they were waiting for her, much softened by the earl’s hospitality and charm of manner, had elected the eldest of them to ask the questions, thereby saving her from having voices shouting at her from all over the room.

He was a large, florid man in an Inverness cape. His red-veined watery blue eyes looked kind enough as he began to question her.

“Tell me. Mrs. Macleod,” he said. “How do you feel about all this now? And do you often wonder who really murdered your husband?”

There was a silence while they all waited. The earl looked anxiously down at Maggie and opened his mouth to answer for her. But all of a sudden she began to speak.

“I wonder a lot,” said Maggie, her clear, soft voice carrying round the room. “At first I was too dazed and ill.”

Her voice grew stronger. “But with the help of the Earl of Strathairn, Colonel Delaney and Miss Rochester, I feel sure that the true criminal will be brought to justice. I am well aware now of the integrity of the Scottish Press. I have been told you gentlemen are hard-working and fearless. May you succeed in your efforts.” Her voice shook. “God bless you!”

There was a sympathetic clearing of throats.

“Well, she played that one very well,” the earl found himself thinking cynically. “Laid it on with a trowel, and just look how they’re eating it all up. Cunning little minx. I’ll never understand her. Who would have thought she would be so crafty. My God! Maybe she
did
kill her husband. I’ll never be sure.”

But he let none of his thoughts show on his face.

“Aye,” said the chief reporter, writing busily. “feel ye cannae have much faith in the police.”

“Och, no!” said Maggie, startled. “What else could they think, but that I was guilty? There was so much evidence against me.”

She bit her lip and stared at the faces confronting her and her expressive eyes slowly filled with horror.

“The evidence,” she whispered. “I’ve never thought of it until now. That woman who looked like me who bought the arsenic. Someone wanted me to hang for it. Oh, dear God, help me!”

“Curtain. Lights,” thought the earl.

She buried her face in her hands. The Press made sympathetic noises while they scribbled gleefully in their notebooks. This was sensation! This was jam! They were a hard-bitten lot, inured to tragedy. Too often they met with rebuffs from the people they were trying to interview. But the Earl of Strathairn and Maggie Macleod had posed for photographs and had given them a story that would make their dour editors sit up and take notice.

And so, in their hearts, they decided Maggie Macleod was not guilty, and each one began to dream of the marvellous story which would surely follow when the real murderer was unmasked.

They clustered around, eager for more, asking questions about Murdo Knight and his friendship with Inspector Macleod.

Colonel Delaney popped into the room. “Enough gentlemen!” he cried. “Let Mrs. Macleod have a rest. I’ll take over now. Have another dram and write up your notes by the fire, and then I feel sure you would like to get back to town.”

The earl drew Maggie out into the hall and closed the study door. “I’m beginning to like Delaney,” he said. “A bit bumptious, but he seems to know what he’s doing. Are you
all right?” he asked, as Maggie swayed a little. He put a comforting arm about her shoulders and for one brief moment Maggie allowed herself the luxury of leaning against him. “Yes,” she said. “They were much kinder than I expected.” She smiled up at the earl and her smile slowly faded. He had an odd expression on his face. His eyes looked hard, calculating.

“Did I say something wrong?” she asked anxiously.

The earl removed his arm and thrust his hands into his pockets. “Oh, no,” he said. “You did splendidly. A marvellous performance.”

“I was not giving a performance,” said Maggie, pink colour rushing into her cheeks.

“Oh, my dear, dear girl! All that codswallop about the fearless gentlemen of the Press.”

“I meant it,” said Maggie, clenching her fists at her sides.

“They were so much kinder than I had expected.”

The love of her life still had a nasty, cynical look in his eyes, but he shrugged and pushed open the door of the breakfast room.

Miss Rochester looked at them anxiously. A couple had left the room and now two antagonists had returned.

“Sit down and have some tea, Maggie,” she said. “Was it too, too awful?”

“Not at all,” said Maggie in a thin, little voice. “My lord tells me I gave a most creditable performance.”

“Peter!”

“Well, she did,” muttered the earl, kicking a log in the fire.

Miss Rochester’s eyes flew from one to the other. “I wonder what the murderer will do when he reads the newspapers tomorrow,” she said. “There’s going to be a very worried man somewhere.”

“Or woman,” said the earl over his shoulder.

“Meaning me?” said Maggie, getting to her feet.

“This is all too much,” remarked the earl conversationally to the fireplace. “If the cap fits, by all means wear it.”

“I can’t believe this,” said Maggie, eyes blazing. “You of all people to turn against me now. I think you’re callow and horrible.”

“Callow and horrible, am I?” said Lord Strathairn, mimicking her Scottish accent. “I think I have done a great deal for you. It’s not everyone who would…”

“Give a murderess houseroom,” said Maggie savagely.

“Peter!” said Miss Rochester. “You are behaving like a cad. Apologize to Maggie immediately.”

The earl suddenly sat down at the table and gave Maggie a rueful smile.

“I’m sorry,” he said, running his hands through his hair.

“I’m tired and worried and I don’t know what came over me. Please sit down, Maggie. I’m afraid my nerves are not as strong as I thought they were.”

Maggie hesitated. He was smiling up at her, but the smile did not meet his eyes. All the fight went out of her and she sat slowly down again in her chair.

“Thank goodness that tiff’s over,” said Miss Rochester bracingly. “We’ll never get anywhere sniping at each other. I must say, Maggie, it did my heart good to see you standing up for yourself. I don’t think you’ve ever done such a thing before.”

But Maggie was still too hurt to answer.

The earl looked at her bent head and suddenly felt sorry for her. He did not trust the strong sexual emotions she roused in him and ruefully admitted he was all too ready to believe the worst of her.

“I rather like Colonel Delaney,” he said lightly, wishing now that Maggie could lose mat stricken look. “But I think we’ve given him enough entertainment for one day. He’ll probably leave with the Press.”

But no sooner had the group of photographers and reporters made their way down the drive than the colonel erupted into the room, all set, it seemed, to continue eating breakfast.

The earl pulled his half hunter from his pocket and looked at it pointedly. “Wouldn’t you like to stay to lunch?” he asked the colonel who had walked to the sideboard and was lifting the covers of various dishes.

“Very kind of you, old boy,” said the colonel, apparently deaf to sarcasm, “but there’s masses here and it’s a pity to waste it, and we’ll all need a good tuck-in before we go to Glasgow.”

“Glasgow!” said three dismayed voices behind him.

“Of course!” The colonel’s little shoe button eyes were opened to their widest with surprise. “I’ve got to see young Robey and Ashton, and you’ve got to take Mrs. Macleod back to that home of hers in Park Terrace and ferret about and see what you can discover.”

“I think Mrs. Macleod has had quite enough for one day,” said the earl wrathfully, but to his extreme irritation, Maggie spoke up.

“I think I would like to go,” she said. “I have more courage now. Miss Rochester and you, Colonel Delaney, have given me that courage.” Maggie did not look at the earl. She went on, “Miss Rochester always has the knack of making even the worst situations seem quite ordinary.”

“That’s because she’s a remarkable woman,” said the colonel, smiling into Miss Rochester’s eyes, and Miss Rochester gave a shy smile and privately vowed to wax her face again that very evening, no matter how much it hurt.

A gust of wind rattled the windows and howled in the chimney.

The earl was hurt—yes, hurt—that that ungrateful little cat, Maggie Macleod, had so pointedly left him out of her catalogue of the people who had given her courage.

It was downright indecent the emotions kindled in him by the very sight of her pliant, curvaceous feminine figure. The hem of her skirt had caught on the chair and one delectable ankle was bared to his gaze. She was probably doing it deliberately.

All that breathless, meek innocence was a front. She was a siren who stole people’s hearts as easily as she poisoned their tea.

He realized three pairs of eyes were fastened upon him. The colonel’s eagerly, Miss Rochester’s, puzzled, and Maggie’s wide, unfathomable pools.

He shrugged.

“Glasgow it is,” he said.

And then he felt himself shiver with a sudden, irrational feeling of doom.

Glasgow!

Although it was midsummer, great black clouds hurtled across the twisted chimneys of the city, sending slashing rain driving across the gleaming black cobbles and against the sodden walls of the black tenements. Even that famous shopping centre, Sauchiehall Street, looked bleak and forlorn, the flower sellers in their tartan shawls huddling in doorways, trying to protect their blooms from the force of the gale. One brave orange seller stood at the corner of Wellington Street, calling in a high, shrill voice, “Sweet Sevilles, and nane o’ yer foreign rubbish.”

“She probably thinks Seville is somewhere on the Clyde,” muttered the earl as the carriage bearing himself, Miss Rochester and Maggie clattered along Sauchiehall Street towards Charing Cross.

The cross winds at Charing Cross made the carriage sway alarmingly. A square automobile chugged past at a dangerous twenty-five miles per hour.

From Charing Cross they began the winding climb up to Park Terrace, set on a ridge above the city.

Colonel Delaney had left them at the station to go in search of Lord Robey and Alistair Ashton.

A servant had been sent in advance to warn the housekeeper, Flora Meikle, of their arrival, and there she was, the same as ever, mouth perpetually drawn down in
disapproval, her wrinkled hands clasped tightly in front of the black bombazine of her dress as she stood on the front step, the wind sending her black skirts swirling about her high buttoned boots.

“Welcome home, Mistress,” she said with a tight grimace, which was all she could ever manage in the way of a smile.

The earl looked about him with interest.

The tall house was one-sided, that is, all the rooms led off on the right-hand side of the hall and staircase.

Flora led the way upstairs to the drawing-room which was on the first floor, and then left them to go and fetch tea.

Maggie sat down at the table and looked about her. She felt she had grown much older in the past months. Another Maggie had sat here in the evenings, furtively watching her beefy husband, dreading the moment he would run his fat tongue over his fat lips and say, “It’s time for your duties. Off to bed.” He never described the sexual act as anything other than Maggie’s duty. The new Maggie felt she would now have fought back, would not have allowed such bullying.

How terribly rich and grand and imposing Inspector Macleod’s house had seemed to her naive, unsophisticated eyes, and how dull and dowdy and old-fashioned it looked now.

The drawing-room was depressing to say the least. The mahogany furniture was massive. Sepia pictures of Highland moors and Highland cattle adorned the walls.

The room was dominated by a heavy square table, polished to a high shine and ornamented with one long plush runner down the middle on which stood, right in the centre, a large aspidistra in a brass bowl.

The housekeeper returned followed by the parlour-maid, Jessie, pushing a laden trolley.

First the plant and the runner had to be removed and the table covered with American cloth and then with a felt cloth,
and then with a plush monstrosity with large bobbles round the hem, and then a lace cloth was finally placed on top of all that.