The Sunday Philosophy Club (19 page)

“Minty—” Isabel began, meaning to ask Paul Hogg about his fiancée, but she was interrupted.

“My fiancée,” he said. “Yes, she’s coming any moment. She was working a bit late, though not late by her standards. Sometimes she’s not back until eleven or twelve.”

“Oh,” said Isabel. “Let me guess. She’s a … a surgeon, yes, that’s what she is. She’s a surgeon or a … a fireman?”

Paul Hogg laughed. “Very unlikely. She probably lights more fires than she puts out.”

“What a nice thing to say about one’s fiancée!” said Isabel. “How passionate! I hope that you’d say that about your fiancée, Jamie.”

Paul Hogg shot a glance at Jamie, who scowled at Isabel, and then, as if reminded of duty, changed the scowl to a smile.

“Hah!” he said.

Isabel turned to Paul Hogg. “What does she do, then, that keeps her out so late at night?” She knew the answer to the question even as she asked it.

“Corporate finance,” said Paul Hogg. Isabel detected a note of resignation, almost a sigh, and she concluded that there was tension here. Minty Auchterlonie, whom they were shortly to meet, would not be a clinging-vine fiancée. She would not be a comfortable homemaker. She would be tough, and hard. She was the one with the money, who was busy buying these expensive paintings. And what is more, Isabel was convinced that these paintings were not being acquired for the love of art; they were a strategy.

They were standing near one of the two large front windows, next to the Cowie that was a Crosbie. Paul looked out and tapped the glass gently. “That’s her,” he said, pointing out into the street. “That’s Minty arriving now.” There was pride in his voice.

Isabel and Jamie looked out the window. Below them, directly outside the entrance to the flat, a small, raffish sports car was being manoeuvred into a parking space. It was painted in British racing green and had a distinctive chrome front grille. But it was not a make which Isabel, who took a mild interest in cars, could recognise; Italian perhaps, an unusual Alfa Romeo, an older Spider? The only good car to come out of Italy, ever, in Isabel’s opinion.

A few minutes later the door into the drawing room opened and Minty came in. Isabel noticed that Paul Hogg snapped to, like a soldier on the arrival of a senior officer. But he was smiling, and obviously delighted to see her. That always showed, she thought; people brightened when they were truly pleased to see somebody. It was unmistakeable.

She looked at Minty, whom Paul Hogg had crossed the room to embrace. She was a tall, rather angular woman in her late twenties; late enough twenties to require attention to makeup, which was heavily but skilfully applied. Attention had been paid to her clothes, too, which were clearly expensive and carefully structured. She kissed Paul Hogg perfunctorily on both cheeks, and then walked over towards them. She shook hands, her glance moving quickly from Isabel
(dismissed,
thought Isabel) to Jamie
(interested,
she noted). Isabel distrusted her immediately.

Y
OU ASKED HIM
nothing about Mark,” said Jamie heatedly as they closed the door at the bottom of the stair and stepped out into the evening street. “Not a single thing! What was the point of going there?”

Isabel linked her arm with Jamie’s and led him towards the Dundas Street intersection. “Now,” she said, “keep calm. It’s only eight o’clock and we have plenty of time for dinner. It’s on me tonight. There’s a very good Italian restaurant just round the corner and we can talk there. I’ll explain everything to you.”

“But I just don’t see the point,” said Jamie. “We sat there talking to Paul Hogg and that ghastly fiancée of his and the subject, from start to finish, was art. And it was mostly you and that Minty person. Paul Hogg sat there looking up at the ceiling. He was bored. I could see it.”

“She was bored too,” said Isabel. “I could see that.”

Jamie was silent, and Isabel gave his arm a squeeze. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll tell you over dinner. I would like a few moments to think just now.”

They walked up Dundas Street, crossing Queen Street, and along towards Thistle Street, where Isabel said they would find
the restaurant. The town was not busy, and there was no traffic in Thistle Street. So they walked a short distance in the road itself, their footsteps echoing against the walls on either side. Then, on the right, the discreet door of the restaurant.

It was not large—about eight tables in all, and there were only two other diners. Isabel recognised the couple and nodded. They smiled, and then looked down at the tablecloth, with discretion, of course, but they were interested.

“Well,” said Jamie, as they sat down. “Tell me.”

Isabel arranged her table napkin on her lap and picked up the menu. “You can take the credit,” she began. “Or part of it.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. You said to me in the Vincent that I should be prepared to find out that Paul Hogg was the person we were after. That’s what you said. And that made me think.”

“So you decided that it was him,” said Jamie.

“No,” said Isabel. “It’s her. Minty Auchterlonie.”

“Hard-faced cow,” muttered Jamie.

Isabel smiled. “You could say that. I might not use those exact words, but I wouldn’t disagree with you.”

“I disliked her the moment she came into the room,” said Jamie.

“Which is odd, because I think that she liked you. In fact, I’m pretty sure that she … how shall I put it? She
noticed
you.”

Her remark seemed to embarrass Jamie, who looked down at the menu which the waiter had placed before him. “I didn’t see—” he began.

“Of course you didn’t,” said Isabel. “Only another woman would pick it up. But she took an interest in you. Not that it stopped her getting bored with both of us after a while.”

“I don’t know,” said Jamie. “Anyway, she’s a type that I just can’t stand. I really can’t.”

Isabel looked thoughtful. “I wonder what it is that made us—both of us—take a bizz against her.” The old Scots word “bizz,” like so many Scots terms, could only be roughly translated. A bizz was a feeling of antipathy, but it had subtle nuances. A bizz was often irrational or unjustified.

“It’s what she represents,” Jamie offered. “It’s a sort of mixture, isn’t it, of ambition and ruthlessness and materialism and—”

“Yes,” Isabel interrupted him. “Quite. It may be difficult to define, but I think we both know exactly what it is. And the interesting thing is that she had it and he didn’t. Would you agree with that?”

Jamie nodded. “I quite liked him. I wouldn’t choose him as a particularly close friend, but he seemed friendly enough.”

“Exactly,” said Isabel. “Unexceptionable, and unexceptional.”

“And not somebody who would ruthlessly remove somebody who threatened to expose him.”

Isabel shook her head. “Definitely not.”

“Whereas she …”

“Lady Macbeth,” Isabel said firmly. “There should be a syndrome named after her. Perhaps there is. Like the Othello syndrome.”

“What’s that?” asked Jamie.

Isabel took up a bread roll and broke it on her side plate. She would not use a knife on a roll, of course, although Jamie did. In Germany it once was considered inappropriate to use a knife on a potato, a curious custom which she had never understood. An enquiry she had made of a German friend had received a strange explanation, which she could only assume had not been serious. “A nineteenth-century custom,” he had explained. “Perhaps the emperor had a face like a potato and it was considered disrespectful.” She had laughed, but when she later saw a portrait of
the emperor, she thought it might just be true. He did look like a potato, just as Quintin Hogg, Lord Hailsham, had looked slightly porcine. She imagined him at breakfast, being served bacon, and laying down his knife and fork and sighing, regretfully, “I just can’t …”

“The Othello syndrome is pathological jealousy,” said Isabel, reaching for the glass of gassy mineral water which the attentive waiter had now poured her. “It afflicts men, usually, and it makes them believe that their wife or partner is being unfaithful to them. They become obsessed with the thought, and nothing, nothing can persuade them otherwise. They may eventually end up being violent.”

Jamie, she noticed, was listening very carefully to her as she spoke, and the thought occurred to her:
He sees something there.
Was he jealous of Cat? Of course he was. But then Cat was having an affair with somebody else, in his view at least.

“Don’t worry,” she said reassuringly. “You’re not the sort to be pathologically jealous.”

“Of course not,” he said, too hurriedly, she thought. Then he added, “Where can one read about it? Have you read something about it?”

“There’s a book in my library,” said Isabel. “It’s called
Unusual Psychiatric Syndromes
and it has some wonderful ones in it. For example, cargo cults. That’s where whole groups of people believe that somebody is going to come and drop supplies to them. Cargo. Manna. The same thing. There have been remarkable cases in the South Seas. Islands where people believed that eventually the Americans would come and drop boxes of food, if only they waited long enough.”

“And others?”

“The syndrome where you imagine that you recognise people.
You think you know them, but you don’t. It’s neurological. That couple over there, for example, I’m sure I know them, but I probably don’t. Maybe I’ve got it.” She laughed.

“Paul Hogg’s got that too,” said Jamie. “He said he’d seen me. It was the first thing he said.”

“But he probably had. People notice you.”

“I don’t think they do. Why would they?”

Isabel looked at him. How charming it was that he did not know. And perhaps it was best that he should not. That might spoil him. So she said nothing, but smiled. Misguided Cat!

“So what has Lady Macbeth got to do with it?” asked Jamie.

Isabel leaned forward in her chair.

“Murderess,” she whispered. “A cunning, manipulative murderess.”

Jamie sat quite still. The light, bantering tone of the conversation had come to an abrupt end. He felt cold. “Her?”

Isabel did not smile. Her tone was serious. “I realised pretty quickly that the paintings in that room were not his, but hers. The invitations from the galleries were for her. He knew nothing about the paintings. She was the one who was buying all those expensive daubs.”

“So? She may have money.”

“Yes, she has money, all right. But don’t you see, if you have large amounts of money which you may not want to leave lying about the place in bank accounts, then buying pictures is a very good way of investing. You can pay cash, if you like, and then you have an appreciating, very portable asset. As long as you know what you’re doing, which she does.”

“But I don’t see what this has got to do with Mark Fraser. Paul Hogg is the one who worked with him, not Minty.”

“Minty Auchterlonie is a hard-faced cow—as you so perceptively
call her—who works in corporate finance in a merchant bank. Paul Hogg comes home from work and she says: ‘What are you doing at the office today, Paul?’ Paul says this and that, and tells her, because she’s in the same line as he is. Some of this information is pretty sensitive, but pillow talk, you know, has to be frank if it’s to be at all interesting, and she picks it all up. She goes off and buys the shares in her name—or possibly using some sort of front—and lo and behold the large profit is made, all on the basis of inside information. She takes the profit and puts it into pictures, which leave less of a trail. Or alternatively, she has an arrangement with an art dealer. He gets the information from her and makes the purchase. There’s no way of linking him to her. He pays her in paintings, taking his cut, one assumes, and the paintings are simply not officially sold, so there’s no record in his books of a taxable profit being made.”

Jamie sat openmouthed. “You worked all this out this evening? On the way up here?”

Isabel laughed. “It’s nothing elaborate. Once I realised it was not him, and once we had actually met her, then it all fell into place. Of course it’s only a hypothesis, but I think it might be true.”

It may have been clear thus far to Jamie, but it was not clear to him why Minty should have tried to get rid of Mark. Isabel now explained this. Minty was ambitious. Marriage to Paul Hogg, who was clearly going somewhere in McDowell’s, would suit her well. He was a pleasant, compliant man, and she probably felt lucky to have him as her fiancé. Stronger, more dominating men would have found Minty too difficult to take, too much competition. So Paul Hogg suited her very well. But if it came out that Paul Hogg had passed on information to her—even if innocently—then that would cost him his job. He would not have been the insider trader, but she would. And if it came out that she
had done this, then not only would she lose her own job, but she would be unemployable in corporate finance. It would be the end of her world, and if such an outcome could be averted only by arranging for something tragic to happen, then so be it. People like Minty Auchterlonie had no particular conscience. They had no idea of a life beyond this one, of any assessment, and without that, the only thing that stood between her and murder was an internal sense of right and wrong. And in that respect, Isabel said, one did not have to look particularly closely to realise that Minty Auchterlonie was deficient.