6 The Queen of Scots Mystery (11 page)

Chapter 19 Amaryllis Feels Left Out

It had been her own idea for Christopher to be the one to take Zak up to the police station. Amaryllis could have gone with them, but he didn’t need both of them along; they knew he wouldn’t have to be manhandled as he had made up his mind to go in and speak to them. The main thing was that it shouldn’t be Penelope who accompanied him in case she accidentally talked him out of it on the way instead of reinforcing his decision.

Now Penelope had gone off to see if she could catch Tricia and ask if she could stay with her at least for the night, until she knew what would happen to Zak. Charlie had gone off home with the dog to see if there was any post there. She knew what sort of post he expected, and thought of offering to go with him, but he of all people would object to having his hand held, no matter how much he wanted it.

Amaryllis had
the irrational feeling that she was deliberately being left out of things. If only she hadn’t been trapped in that cargo shed when everything started back here, she would have been in on it from the start and then she could have arranged the investigation her own way, instead of being one step behind all the time, relying on incomplete titbits from friendly policemen for information and unable to corral all the people involved in the case and get some sense out of them.

But she wasn’t going to sit at Christopher’s kitchen table for too long considering what might have been. Action was obviously the answer, as it was to almost every question she could think of. Action would stir things up, force people to make mistakes and help her to leap-frog over everyone else and get to the finishing-line first.

The question was, what action could she possibly take?

It had to be something she could do in daylight, otherwise the frustration of enforced inaction until sunset would cause her to explode. It mustn’t involve a visit to Aberdour Breweries, where even she realised it would be unwise to go again without a proper police escort and not just Charlie Smith and his dog.

Thinking about the breweries reminded her she had looked up their employees’ addresses online. She thought this over. Why had she done that? It was almost as if she had always intended to pay them a visit. What they had done to Jock McLean gave her conscience the way out that it always instinctively looked for before doing anything of dubious legality – or, as in this case, something indisputably illegal.

Both Bill and Andrea Lawson would surely be out at work at this time on a weekday... It was as if going
along to Aberdour and breaking into their house to look for evidence was something she was meant to do. She couldn’t fight against Fate. She was glad now that Charlie and the dog had disappeared. Charlie would certainly have tried to stop her, and she didn’t think he would have wanted to come out with her again either.

It was with a slightly uncomfortable feeling of
déjà vu, however, that she arrived at Aberdour station a couple of hours later. She imagined the breweries lorry driving past her along the main road, screeching to a halt as the driver saw her, and the two men getting out in order to resume their pursuit. But nothing like that happened. She walked briskly out of the station, along the road in the opposite direction from the brewery, turned into the cul de sac where she knew the Lawsons lived, and looked at the lie of the land. Ten minutes later she was sliding open a window on the ground floor of their house, and two minutes after that she was in their front hall, browsing through the correspondence they kept in a drawer. In her experience you could tell a lot about people from their bills and credit card statements.

A few minutes later again, and she began to doubt her own experience. The bills and credit card statements all seemed to demonstrate the same thing: that the Lawsons were about the most boring couple anyone could possibly imagine. They hardly spent anything except on home décor, and they paid their bills with relentless promptness. Glancing round, she could see where the money went. The house, although outwardly a fairly standard seventies semi-detached, was a palace inside. There was a chandelier in the living-room, and looking through to the kitchen she noticed granite worktops with sparkly bits, and a quarry tile floor. The room appeared to lead to a massive conservatory that must
take up at least half their garden space. No doubt their bedroom had a real antique four-poster bed with silken drapes, and the bathroom would contain a sunken bath with gold taps. She didn’t really want to know any more about them. This had been a terrible mistake.

Just how much of a mistake she discovered
ten minutes later when, after giving the other rooms a quick once-over, she stood in the kitchen, not suffering at all from granite envy.

A shape appeared behind the glass panel in the front door, and the bell rang loudly. She didn’t think she was imagining the official nature of the ring. It was the ring of someone who had every right, if the door wasn’t answered quickly enough, to burst in, using a battering ram if necessary, arrest everybody inside and ransack the contents. Surely it couldn’t be Inspector Armstrong and some of his sidekicks. She couldn’t be that unlucky.

She ducked down behind some kitchen cabinets just in case. She knew they would come round to the back of the house if they didn’t get a reply at the front. It seemed unlikely, on reflection, that they would break the door down, but if they had heard Jock McLean’s account of the events that had landed him in hospital, they would definitely want to find and question the Lawsons. Even if they didn’t know about Jock McLean’s experience they could well have found a reason to track down the couple as part of their investigation. Christopher had relayed Penelope’s story about Liam carrying on with Andrea Lawson, and that would give them reason enough to want to speak to the woman, and to her husband who would, after all, be the one with the prime motive for murder.

She strained her ears and heard the faint murmuring of voices. They were probably at the door of the conservatory, which was behind the kitchen. She fervently hoped Andrea and Bill always locked up securely before going out.

After a while the front doorbell rang again. Someone rattled the letter-box.

‘Mr Lawson! Are you in there? Mrs Lawson?
It’s Inspector Armstrong from Pitkirtly police station. I need to speak to you!’

Amaryllis slid right down to the kitchen floor and wondered what to do next. The police would wait outside in their car until the Lawsons arrived home.
She would have to get out before things got very much sillier.

She was still considering her options when she heard the sound of a key clicking into the front door lock.

Amaryllis got up and dived lithely into the conservatory, closing the door silently behind her. Thank goodness, the key was in the lock and she could get out to the garden.

‘Andrea?’ said a voice somewhere behind her as she dived out into the open air and flung the door closed. ‘Andrea – what are you doing home? Didn’t you have a late shift?
... Stop right where you are! I’m calling the police.’

Now it was déjà vu all over again as she raced for the garden fence, scrabbling over it and
racing across the next couple of gardens. In the third, she startled a man who was hanging the washing out.

She dashed past him, down the side of his house. Luckily there was a gate and she could get out to the street and away.
She didn’t look back towards the Lawsons’ house to see if there was indeed a police car outside. As she ran along the pavement she almost dislodged a cyclist from his bike, swore at him and kept going.

Up to the main road and along towards the station. There was a train standing at the platform – she didn’t care which way it was going. She could buy a ticket later.

The train turned out to be the non-stop service to Kirkcaldy. That was the wrong direction, but she wasn’t fussy at that point, and heading away from Pitkirtly might keep Inspector Armstrong guessing. Once in Kirkcaldy, she decided to make her way home by bus. By the time she changed buses for Pitkirtly she had missed tea-time. By the time she got off the second bus it was starting to get dark. But she had to see Christopher.

‘I’m never going near Aberdour again,’ she announced, stalking into his front room and flinging herself into
the nearest chair.

They all stared at her, wide-eyed. It wasn’t until she looked round properly that she realised how many people were in the room.
There were Penelope and Tricia Laidlaw sitting together on the settee, Charlie Smith standing behind it with a stern expression on his face, Christopher caught in the act of placing a tray of tea and biscuits on the coffee table, Jemima on a chair facing the other two women and Dave standing behind the chair. Not to mention the dog, which was stretched out flat, relaxed, right across the floor between the settee and the coffee table so that Penelope and Tricia had to sit with their legs bent uncomfortably to one side of him or the other.

It looked like a council of war.

Penelope broke the silence with a sigh. ‘I wish I didn’t have to either.’

‘What’s wrong with Aberdour all of a sudden?’ said Dave, puzzled. ‘It’s a really nice place. We used to go down to the beach at Silver Sands sometimes. You could get a good ice-cream at the kiosk there.’

‘You still can,’ said Penelope. ‘That isn’t why I never want to see the place again.’

She was whiter in the face than she had been the last time Amaryllis saw her, but she had a redoubtable look about her now, as if she
had geared up for battle. What had happened to Zak at the police station? Was she preparing to rush to the rescue? Amaryllis approved of the change, certainly. She had never been very good at dealing with tears, whether her own or anybody else’s.

‘What have you been up to?’ said Dave, grinning.

‘Nothing,’ said Amaryllis. ‘Well,’ she amended, ‘nothing that Charlie needs to hear, anyway.’

‘You’d better not tell us then,’ said Christopher. ‘Will I bring an extra cup, or do you need something stronger?’

She relaxed. He was right: it was better not to tell them about her silly and pointless escapade. Better if they thought of her as invincible, and dangerous, and all these qualities that had seemed so essential in her previous life and were now so useless.

‘An extra cup’s fine,’ she said.

He brought a cup in from the kitchen. ‘Charlie’s got to go for interview tomorrow, in Dunfermline,’ he said. ‘It’s part of the enquiry.’

She looked up at Charlie. That was what the grim face was for. Of course, he had known this would happen before too long, but he must have pushed it to the back of his mind and hoped it would be forgotten about or something.

‘Do you have to take the dog with you too?’ she asked. ‘As evidence?’

He shook his head. ‘It’s better not to. I expect they can picture the dog. Anyway, they might take him away if he’s with me. I don’t want to risk that.’

He was probably keeping his face set in grim lines so that he didn’t become emotional, thought Amaryllis. She approved of his self-restraint.

‘I could look after the dog tomorrow, if you like,’ she offered, trying to sound casual. ‘I can kidnap him and hide him if necessary.’

‘That would be good,’ said Charlie. ‘Keep him on the lead in case he runs off. Thanks for the other offer too. I’ll certainly bear that in mind if the need arises. ’

‘Good,’ said Jemima. ‘That’s
that settled then.’

‘Anything else happening?’ said Amaryllis, feeling slightly less useless than before.

‘Zak’s being kept at the police station overnight,’ said Penelope.

‘Oh.’

‘Yes,’ said Christopher. ‘But we more or less knew that would happen as soon as they knew he was on the scene, and had a fight with Liam. It’ll all get sorted out.’

They all seemed quite calm about it. But then Penelope looked as if she had got to the stage where everything was so bad that anything more just washed over her. The eye of the storm
perhaps.

‘Well, it’s past my bedtime,’ said Jemima and stood up. She and Dave left. Amaryllis glanced at her watch and found it was eight-thirty. She couldn’t imagine being old enough to want to go to bed at eight-thirty, but with luck she supposed she might live that long.

But only if she stayed away from Aberdour.

Chapter 20 A Day Off

Christopher wondered if he was being over-protective in taking a day off work to go to Dunfermline with Charlie. It wasn’t as if he thought the other man would make a run for it on the way and flee the country; it was more that he didn’t want Charlie to be alone afterwards and sit in
the bus station café feeling miserable. And then there was the fact that if he hadn’t made this offer Dave would quite likely have suggested he drive Charlie over, and that would have left him a nervous wreck in advance of his interview. Of course Christopher couldn’t go into the interview with him, and in any case Charlie would have a union rep at his side. Maybe they would want to talk in private later and Christopher would be redundant.

But as they left the bus station in Dunfermline, Charlie turned to him and said,  a bit awkwardly,

‘Thanks for coming with me today. And for all the support. It’s been great. Thanks for putting up with the dog all this time as well.’

‘It’s fine,’ muttered Christopher, getting embarrassed. ‘The dog’s been no trouble.’

‘When you first met me – I was at the end of my tether,’ said Charlie.

Christopher wished he would shut up now. As far as he was concerned, there was no more to be said on the subject, and he would prefer not to be reminded about how sick Charlie had been when they had met outside the Queen of Scots and how miserable he and the dog had looked.

Fortunately they had a rendezvous planned with Charlie’s union rep in a café, and even more fortunately they saw a familiar face as they were going into the place.

‘Morning, Neil!’ said Christopher, greeting the landlord with more enthusiasm than usual because he
had now had enough of being on his own with Charlie. ‘What are you doing in town?’

Neil shrugged. ‘Just browsing.’

Christopher had an idea he was hiding something, but he knew he would never get anything out of Neil. He decided he should have looked after the dog for the day and Amaryllis should have come to keep Charlie company. She was much better at these friendly interrogations.

He thought Neil
hadn’t been pleased to see them and would wander off somewhere, but instead he followed them into the café. They were a bit early for the union rep but Christopher bought them all coffee and a scone, which didn’t compare well with Jemima’s baking, famous in Pitkirtly and environs.

‘I’m not browsing anywhere,’ Neil confessed, his tongue loosened either by the faint hint of cinnamon in the scone or by the watery coffee. ‘I’m looking at emigrating.’

‘Emigrating?’ Christopher almost choked on a crumb. ‘But what about the Queen of Scots?’

Neil shrugged his shoulders. ‘Nothing to keep me here.’

‘Where would you go?’ asked Charlie, almost as if he was thinking of doing the same. Christopher choked again, more violently than before, and he heard Charlie asking the waitress for a glass of water for him.

‘Somewhere warmer than here,’ said Neil. ‘A pal of mine has a bar in Benidorm. That’s the kind of place.’

‘So you came into Dunfermline to find out about it?’ said Charlie, sounding more and more interested. ‘How does that work? Is there an office or something here?’

‘No, not an office. I came over to talk to another friend who knows about that kind of thing.
Are you interested?’

For one moment Christopher couldn’t stop himself from envisaging the two
men skipping hand in hand together into a Spanish sunset. Then reality returned.

‘No,’ said Charlie. ‘I
was wondering how you would do something like that. I’ve got my job here, though. I wouldn’t want to live anywhere outside Scotland.’

‘Neither would I,’ said Christopher. ‘But if we got another winter like the one just past, I might change my mind.’

He was saying that, of course, to make Neil feel better and not so disloyal.

‘It isn’t the weather,’ said Neil. ‘Not
only the weather,’ he amended quickly. ‘It’s just that now I’ve had a bit of a break from the Queen of Scots, even for a few days, I don’t know if I want to go back to it.’

‘Is it because of what happened in the cellar?’ enquired Christopher.

Neil frowned. ‘Well, I suppose people might have died in the pub before. Over the centuries, I mean. It’s quite old. But I can’t help feeling it was my fault. Or that I should have done something to stop it happening. Not for Liam. For Penelope. She didn’t deserve it. Neither did Zak. I don’t see how I can get over feeling like that.’

The union rep arrived then, and he and Charlie went into
a huddle in the corner, evidently working out what to say at the interview. Christopher didn’t want to seem as if he was interrogating Neil so he changed the subject and they talked about the scones, the décor in the café and the scandalous reduction in bus frequencies for a while, and when Charlie and the union rep went off to the police station Christopher and Neil left the café too.

‘I’m going to go and speak to somebody at the library while I’m waiting for Charlie,’ said Christopher. ‘Are you going straight back to Pitkirtly?’

‘Yes, I’ll go up to the bus station now.’

They walked up the road together a little way, not speaking at all. Christopher sensed that Neil
had said more than he meant to, and now regretted it. He searched his mind for something to say that didn’t have to do with the weather. He was still searching when he almost bumped into someone coming out of a shop. She wasn’t looking where she was going either. All her attention seemed to be focussed on the bag she carried.

‘Jackie!’ said Neil, sounding vaguely surprised. ‘What are you up to?’

The girl – she could have been any age because she looked sixteen going on forty, Christopher thought – blushed, glancing down at the bag, which could have been a laptop case.

‘Nothing,’ she said.

‘Getting yourself a computer, were you?’ persisted Neil, looking towards the shop. It was a small electronics shop, evidently not part of a larger chain. There were adverts for printer cartridges and various cables in the window. It was exactly the kind of shop Christopher always steered well clear of, in case he had to speak to a member of staff and reveal his deep-seated hatred of and ineptitude around anything electronic.

‘It’s only a reconditioned one,’ she muttered.

‘What are you going to do with that, then?’ said Neil. ‘Games? Angry Birds? Sonic the Hedgehog?’

‘
It’s my accounting course,’ said Jackie. ‘I need it for that.’

‘Very good,’ said Neil, still speaking in that over-hearty way, as if he were the girl’s grandfather playing Santa Claus.

‘What’s she doing here?’ said Jackie, staring over their shoulders, presumably at someone standing behind them.

Christopher turned and came almost face to face with Jan from the wool-shop, who was standing in the middle of the pavement staring back at them. Her face reddened as he watched. She opened her mouth as if she were about to speak, then closed it again, plunged across the road without looking again as she had done in Pitkirtly, and vanished into a shopping arcade.

When he turned back towards Neil and Jackie, he intercepted an odd look that seemed to be just passing between them. Once again he really wished Amaryllis had come with them. She would have known what to make of it. He didn’t have a clue. Were they – um – involved with each other? Christopher was embarrassed even thinking the thought in the privacy of his own mind. It was ridiculous anyway. Jackie, even if she were a bit older than she looked, must be nearly young enough to be Neil’s daughter.

‘Bye then,’ said Jackie
a moment later, scurrying off down the road. Christopher saw her cast one uneasy glance over her shoulder at them before she darted into another shop. He didn’t really understand younger woman at all. But it was safer that way, he told himself.

‘I don’t know where they get the money these days,’ said Neil, half to himself as they walked on.
‘She’s got a brand new bike too – I saw it at the paper shop.’

‘Doesn’t she work at the Queen of Scots?’ said Christopher. ‘Maybe you’re paying her too much.’

‘Not at the moment I’m not,’ said Neil.

‘Maybe she’s got a rich uncle,’ said Christopher. They had come to the turning he needed to take to get to the library. ‘Well, see you later then. Are you all right at Jock’s? He should be allowed out tomorrow, if only he can remember who the prime minister is and make himself a cup of tea.’

‘Prime minister, eh?’ said Neil. ‘That’s a tricky one.’

Before Christopher could decide whether the pub landlord was joking or not, Neil had gone off up the hill towards the bus station without a backward glance.

An hour later, on the way home in the bus with Charlie, who had come out of his interview sombre and inclined to kick everything in sight, a tendency Christopher hoped would wear off before he got back to the dog, they talked about the weather again.

‘Do you think Neil Macrae really will go to Spain?’ said Charlie.

Christopher seized on this sign that Charlie wasn’t too down-hearted.

‘He seems to like the idea,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what his barmaid would do if the place closed down though. She seems to have an expensive lifestyle.’

He told Charlie about the computer and the bike.

‘Hmm,’ said Charlie. ‘I know her father – he runs the paper shop in the High Street. Lots of dodgy characters about there. She’s maybe getting some of the stuff from them.’

‘Dodgy characters?’

‘Only just the right side of the law,’ said Charlie. ‘Wouldn’t go near any goods they’ve handled. Didn’t you ever wonder how that shop stayed in business, with people able to get their papers anywhere they like? Or read them online for free if they can?’

Christopher dismissed this as police paranoia. They saw crime everywhere. He knew Jemima and Dave bought a paper at that shop nearly every day. Surely they wouldn’t patronise a dodgy business? But how would they know any different? Was there any point in even thinking about this for any longer than it took to cheer Charlie up?

‘I hope Amaryllis hasn’t done anything stupid while we’ve been out,’ he said.

‘As long as she hasn’t got my dog into any trouble,’ said Charlie with feeling.