4 Death at the Happiness Club (17 page)

'What did they want with you?' said Jemima.

So Maisie Sue had to go through the whole explanation again, this time adding a coda about perhaps seeing Zak's father there.

'Has anybody seen Mr Fraser and his sisters?' asked Jemima suddenly.

'I wouldn't know them if I saw them,' said Christopher. 'Maisie Sue?'

'I guess not. They weren't around yesterday when I went up with the form, and I didn't see any of them at the police station. Oh, my! Do you think they're OK?'

'They'll be in it up to their necks,' said Dave with satisfaction, taking a huge gulp of Old Pictish Brew. Maisie Sue made a mental note to try it some time. She didn't generally like British beer, but she should really try out some new things and not just settle into a groove.

Dave sounded quite fierce. Didn't he like Sean Fraser, Dilly and Dee?

'Why should they be?' said Christopher.

'Why shouldn't they be?' countered Dave. 'It's their operation - up to them to prove they had nothing to do with it.'

'It doesn't usually work like that,' said Christopher. 'But I see what you mean, though.'

After they finished the next round of drinks, Christopher agreed to go back to Jemima Stevenson's and say hello to Jock McLean, while Maisie Sue still planned to go round to the wool shop and see if Jan was there.

'Say hi to Mr McLean for me,' she said as she left them.

'We will,' Dave promised, laughing for no reason she could understand.

'Just a minute, dear,' said Jemima to her unexpectedly. She drew Maisie Sue aside. 'I've been meaning to ask you - do you know anything about your family history? Before your family moved to the States, that is?'

What was this about? Maisie Sue couldn't imagine, but she went along with it anyway.

'I guess I'm like a lot of Americans - some of my family were from Ireland and some from Scotland. I'm not sure how far back that goes. And I did have a German grandma. Oma. I'd have to look at my Mom's old albums. I have three of them in the closet.'

'I would have a good look if I were you,' said Jemima. ‘People with Scottish ancestry sometimes count as Scottish, you know.’

A few moments later, Maisie Sue found the wool-shop open. She hurried in to speak to Jan, who was bronzed and relaxed after her holiday on the Isle of Wight. Maisie Sue wished she could become bronzed and relaxed: even one of the two would be good.

Jan was interested in the Happiness Club story, but ambivalent about the Pitkirtly quilt idea. Maisie Sue could see how it might take some business away from the wool-shop, but if Jan showed some entrepreneurial spirit she could branch out into quilting materials and equipment. But then, Maisie Sue knew that if Pitkirtly people had any entrepreneurial flair they would have left Pitkirtly several generations before.

As she walked home afterwards, the cream Porsche swept past. She was slightly surprised that Zak's father had gotten out of the police station already: the grim look on Chief Inspector Smith's face had suggested he was there for a long spell. Maybe he had produced an unbreakable alibi or they had caught somebody else.

In any case, she didn't suppose the police would bother her again.

Chapter 21 Maisie Sue says Hi

‘Maisie Sue says Hi!’ said Dave, chuckling again, as they trooped into Jemima’s sitting-room. Jock McLean, lying a little awkwardly on the settee, frowned.

‘What’s all that about?’ he muttered.

‘Just a friendly greeting, that’s all,’ said Dave.

‘Yes, but why?’ he said suspiciously.

‘Because that’s the kind of person she is,’ said Christopher. ‘She can’t help being pleasant and friendly to people – it’s been programmed into her from a young age.’

Jock groaned. ‘Oh, God, you don’t fancy her, do you? What would Amaryllis say?’

‘No, I don’t, and it’s got nothing to do with Amaryllis,’ said Christopher firmly.

‘Ha! That’s a matter of opinion,’ said Jock. ‘And don’t forget the woman’s got a black belt in karate. It wouldn’t do to cross her.’

‘Amaryllis is a civilised adult,’ said Christopher, trying for a calm but fair tone, but conscious that he might come over as someone desperately attempting to hide his fear. ‘She only uses martial arts when she has to.’

‘What’s all this nonsense?’ said Jemima, bustling in from the kitchen, where knowing her she had almost certainly had time to put the kettle on, make a batch of scones and do all the ironing. ‘Would anybody like a sandwich?’

The usual round of discussions about what people fancied to eat followed. Christopher, having put in an early order for cheese sandwiches, no mayonnaise, no pickle, no salad, and a cup of coffee, sat on one of Jemima’s grandmother’s Victorian spoon chairs near the window, and considered the events of the last twenty-four hours, including the fact that Amaryllis had apparently got into trouble with the law yet again. It was only a matter of time before they recruited a whole new branch of West Fife police to deal with her activities.

'So,' said Jock McLean, leaning back and looking slightly more relaxed after asking Jemima for some impossible combination of sandwich fillings, sulking because she didn't have any dill pickle, and perking up again when she offered sliced venison. Jemima and Dave had both retired to the kitchen to sort out the wish list. 'What's been going on up at the Happiness Club, then?'

'Hmph, you may well ask,' said Christopher. He felt slightly left out, since so many people he knew were round at the police station helping the police with their enquiries. Or did they only use that wording if you were the chief suspect and they didn't want to say you'd been arrested? And Maisie Sue, who didn't even belong in Pitkirtly, had been questioned by the police twice about the incident, whatever it was.

'A mystery, eh? Well, what do we know so far?'

Jock must be bored to distraction, Christopher realised. It wasn't like him to show this kind of unprompted interest in local events. Usually he just went along for the ride, following Amaryllis on her night-time excursions, or annoying Christopher in some way. He summarized the known facts for Jock.

'As far as I can see, there was a shot fired, a neighbour reported it and the police came round and found bloodstains, and that's about it.'

'For heaven's sake, man, you must know more than that!' exclaimed Jock. He took his pipe out of his pocket and examined it with a look of indignation. Jemima definitely wouldn't let him smoke in her house, and he couldn't very easily get up and go outside at the moment, although two crutches were propped against the end of the settee.

'Amaryllis probably knows a bit more,' Christopher admitted, 'but she's round at the police station. I don't know why.'

'This is ridiculous! The two of you make a good team. You should be pooling your resources.'

'I'm not so sure about making a good team,' said Christopher. 'She has her own ideas about that. I was always last to be picked for teams at school, so there could be several other people ahead of me in the queue… Charlie Smith, for example.'

'Charlie Smith? Hmph! You get in there and stake a claim before it's too late, that's my advice.'

The idea of Jock McLean giving him romantic advice was so silly that Christopher started to laugh. He had to pretend he had seen something funny outside the window, then Jock insisted on struggling to his feet to see what it was, lurching into the coffee table and upsetting a couple of pot plants in the process.

Christopher was picking up the debris when Dave came back.

'Mind and be careful with that,' he said, glowering and looming over Christopher. 'It belonged to Jemima's granny.'

'Her granny?' said Christopher. 'I didn't know pot plants ever lived that long.'

'It's a Christmas cactus,' said Dave. 'Bursts out with pink flowers every so often.'

A piece of the cactus came off  in Christopher's fingers, and the spines dug into him. He tried to throw it under the table, but it overshot and landed at Jemima's feet as she brought in a tray of drinks.

'What's that?' she said, peering down at her feet.

'Sorry,' said Christopher. 'It slipped out of my hand.'

Dave frowned at him censoriously, but obviously judged it best not to confess the whole thing to Jemima.

'Have you boys solved the whole mystery then?' said Jemima, setting out the drinks on another coffee table.

'It's so mysterious we don't even know what the mystery is,' said Christopher.

'A gunshot… lots of blood… could be a murder,' said Jock. 'Is there anything in the paper?'

'We shouldn't have to wait to see things in the paper,' said Christopher, knowing as he said it he was going to sound querulous but unable to stop himself.

'It's better that way, dear,' said Jemima firmly. She returned to the kitchen and came back with another tray. It seemed to take forever for her to serve everyone, and then she found she had forgotten to get herself something, so Dave went off to make up her order.

He brought the local paper back with him too.

Jock, who had already wolfed down his venison and piccalilli sandwich, grabbed it and scanned the pages quickly.

'Nothing there.' He flung in down on the floor. All the pages separated out and spread all over the space between him and Christopher, who temporarily abandoned his cheese sandwich to pick them up and reassemble the whole thing.

'Wait a minute,' he said, staring at the bottom of a column. 'Look at this!'

He held up the page. Three pairs of eyes peered at it.

'I can't see it from over here,' said Dave reasonably.

'You could if you gave in and got glasses,' said Jemima.

'But you can't see it either,' he pointed out to her.

'But these are different glasses,' she said. 'They're for family history work.'

'Read it out, for God's sake,' growled Jock McLean.

'Following an incident at the eastern end of Pitkirtly High Street on Friday, a spokesman for West Fife Constabulary issued a statement that police enquiries were ongoing.'

There was a pause while everyone digested this.

'They don't know what happened but they're trying to find out,' Christopher translated. 'So they're in the same boat as us.'

'Not quite the same boat,' said Jock McLean. 'They've got witnesses, and forensics, and evidence.'

'What about suspects, though?' said Christopher.

'Well, has anybody seen the Frasers since this happened?' countered Jock. 'That Sean Fraser has a villainous look about him. The sisters aren't much better either. I never liked the look of any of them.'

Since Jock almost never liked the look of anyone, this wasn't getting them anywhere. But his point about seeing the Frasers was a good one, Christopher decided.

'Either they're in custody or they've gone,' said Dave. 'There's been no sign of them in town.'

'And Maisie Sue didn't see them when she went up to the Happiness Club,' added Jemima.

'They've maybe all shot each other in a multiple suicide, and the police know that but aren't telling,' said Jock.

'But if they'd done that, Maisie Sue would have seen the bodies in the office, and there wasn't even any blood when she was there,' Jemima persisted.

‘According to her,’ said Jock darkly. ‘We can’t take Maisie Sue’s word for it. She’s got her own problems. Maybe she just went berserk with a gun in there and mowed them all down herself.’

‘And what did she do with the bodies?’ said Dave scornfully. ‘She bumped into Penelope on the way down the road – that wouldn’t have given her very long to dispose of three bodies, would it?’

‘There’s Penelope too,’ said Jock. ‘I wouldn’t trust her as far as I would throw her.’

‘Aye, and that wouldn’t be very far,’ said Dave. ‘She’s a well-built woman.’

‘You could move a body easily enough if you had a car,’ said Jemima, sipping daintily from her tea-cup. ‘Didn’t she say there were some white vans in the yard behind the Happiness Club?’

‘And a Porsche,’ said Dave, sheer envy apparent in his tone. Christopher doubted if he would want to trade in his scary pick-up truck, though, even for a Porsche. ‘But you wouldn’t want to spoil the upholstery moving a body in that, though.’

‘You might if you were desperate,’ said Christopher, realising it was time he added something to the discussion instead of just sitting there as if he were watching Wimbledon on television, his head going from side to side as the subject was batted backwards and forwards. He wished Amaryllis would hurry up and appear, the way she always did in the end. He didn’t like the idea of her spending all that time with ‘Charlie’ Smith, even if she had spent hours in the past trying to find new ways of annoying him and had once compared him to a moth-eaten blood-hound.  Amaryllis would almost certainly know what they could do to find out more. Although in some ways it was more relaxing being on the outside of an investigation than in the middle, as had happened before.

The door-bell rang and made them all jump.

'What if it's the police?' said Dave, looking guilty.

'What's wrong?' said Christopher, mystified. 'What have you got to worry about?'

'Ah, there's always something,' said Dave as Jemima got up to go to the door. 'If there isn't anything, they make something up.'

'It's the police,' Jemima announced. 'They want to speak to Jock.'

'We'd like a word with Mr McLean in private if that's possible,' said the large policeman in the doorway. He stared at them all with equal amounts of suspicion. Christopher began to understand Dave's viewpoint. In contrast to Mr Smith, who looked and behaved as if he was spectacularly incompetent and was therefore more or less normal in Christopher's eyes, this man had the expression of someone who had seen it all before, knew and disapproved of all the evil hidden in his fellow human's hearts inside out, and wouldn't believe a word anyone said unless they had a letter signed by their mother to back it up.

 'Inspector Forrester, West Fife Constabulary,' added the policeman, waiting for Jemima, Dave and Christopher to move. 'This won't take long, Mr McLean. I can see you're not a hundred per cent.'

That was perceptive of him, considering Jock was lying on the settee with one leg in plaster. What percentage did that make? Seventy?

Jemima shooed him and Dave into the kitchen at that point. Christopher wondered what Amaryllis would have done. She would at the very least have had a listening device of some kind concealed on her person, and been able to eavesdrop on the interview. But more likely, she would have hidden behind the curtains and listened in the old-fashioned low-tech way.

They sat down, arranging themselves round the kitchen table where Jemima had once initiated Dave and Christopher into the mysteries of tablet making.

Christopher found he was still holding the local paper. He began to leaf through the pages absent-mindedly without really paying attention.

'Can I see that page again, Christopher?' said Jemima suddenly, apparently reading upside-down.

'Have the whole thing if you like.' He passed it over the table to her. She grabbed it eagerly and scanned a page which was composed entirely of adverts for local services. Maybe she was looking for a plumber.

'Look, Dave!' she said, pausing halfway down the page. 'Steam trains. They're bringing one here soon. Look what it says there.'

Dave looked obediently, nodded and said gruffly, 'Interesting.'