The Winter Ground (35 page)

I had been gripping my hands so tightly against the edge of the ring fence that my arms were aching. Who was going to crack first? Who was going to look into the eyes of another and remember the angry words so recently spoken? Pa had Andrew and Tiny in amongst his horses’ hooves and at a whistle from him those huge hooves would rise up and come crashing down again. Charlie sent his hoops spinning inches past Kolya’s flashing legs; Kolya who had shouted at him as though he were a naughty child. Poor Bill had in his arms the little man who had trampled over his pride for all to see. And there was Tommy, Bill’s only son, the apple of his father’s eye, walking on his hands around the ring with only Zoya Prebrezhensky at his side, one hand out to save him if he fell.

I let go of the fence and sat back, blinking, watching the concentration behind the beaming smiles, watching the deft hands and steady feet, watching the great beast of the circus grip and release, flex and turn, all of its arms and legs and bodies working, and suddenly I could see what it was they had been telling me, every chance they got, from the very first day.

‘They would never have killed her,’ I said, out loud. ‘It’s not the circus way.’

‘What?’ said Alec, and Ina too turned towards me.

‘They might have hated her,’ I said. ‘She infuriated them, exasperated them, but she was one of them. They would never have hurt her. They would never have dreamed of it. They were telling me the truth all along.’

Alec turned uncertainly back to face the ring again but Ina Wilson remained looking at me.

‘You see?’ she said. ‘They are wonderful people, no matter what you say. They truly love one another.’

I nodded absently and then stopped nodding and frowned at her.

‘I never said they
weren’t
wonderful. And I should say it was something deeper than love of the individual which stopped them; I think they loathed Ana personally.’ Ina, silly romantic girl that she was, looked troubled at my cynicism and so I relented. ‘Very well then, they loved her. But Ina, my dear, you of all people should understand that one can love and hate at the same time.’

Ina turned her head away from me again and went back to watching the show.

‘I suppose you mean Albert,’ she said, ‘but I never loved Albert and I don’t hate him even now.’

‘Actually, I meant Robin,’ I said. ‘You have not chosen calm waters there, you know.’

‘Robin?’ said Ina, glancing at me again. ‘Robin Laurie? What?’

The spectacular had ended; the artistes were bounding out of the ring; Pa’s horses were bending their pretty hocks and bowing.

‘I thought …’ I began. Alec was staring at me again now. ‘You said you loved him. You were leaving Albert for him. Akilina Prebrezhensky
saw
you and him together.’

‘Robin Laurie?’ said Ina again. ‘She said she saw Robin Laurie and me?’

I thought back, trying to remember. ‘She said – well, she indicated that is, that she saw you together that night, the night of the show. The lady from the castle and the tall gentleman.’

In the ring Tiny was running up and down with Jinxie. The ring doors opened and into the doorway came Andrew Merryman, his hat tipped over one eye and his cane twirling so fast I could hear it whistle. Ina’s face broke into a great beaming grin when she saw him, and Alec and I gazed at each other with mouths open wide.

‘I think the little Prebrezhensky girl did see us once,’ Ina said. ‘In the woods. One of the first times we met by design. But she can’t have seen us that night. Andrew was in the ring. I crept out and went to leave a letter in his wagon. I had just decided to take the plunge. I was almost sure already but that dreadful dinner party made my mind up for me. I went to leave a letter for him and to look around – at my new home.’

‘But Robin seemed so keen to back up your word,’ I said. ‘Why would he? And how could you think it was wise to creep out when he was right there watching you? He could have followed you, or even drawn everyone’s attention to it.’

‘He did follow me out, but he won’t make trouble,’ said Ina, ‘because I could make even more for him. I wouldn’t, but he doesn’t know that.’

‘Robin followed you out?’ said Alec.

‘Oh!’ said Ina. ‘Do you suppose that’s where Akilina got the idea that we were meeting up?’

‘Did he speak to you?’ said Alec. ‘What did he say?’

‘No, no, no,’ said Ina. She was still gazing at Andrew. ‘I say he followed me, but really he just left after I did and he was back before me too.’

‘How long were you gone for?’ I said.

‘Five minutes perhaps,’ said Ina.

‘Where did he go?’ Alec said.

‘I’ve no idea,’ said Ina. ‘For a smoke? I tried not to think about it. It was most unfortunate that I saw him at all. I wish I hadn’t done. It almost spoiled the precious moment completely.’

Alec was staring at her as though she had grown horns. I did my best to talk calmly.

‘Spoiled the … You didn’t think of telling the police?’

‘I don’t like thinking about Robin Laurie,’ she said. ‘I don’t like him. I could have made lots of trouble, but I just wanted him to go away and if the police had suspected him he might have had to stay longer. I’m very glad I’m leaving his sort behind.’

‘What trouble could you have made?’

‘I could have told the world what Nurse Currie told me,’ Ina said. ‘She made me promise not to, before I knew what it was, and that was most unfair of her. Telling me and making me have to think about it. It would serve her right.’

‘But what was it that she told you?’

‘I’ll say it once, but you mustn’t ask me questions and make me keep on about it,’ said Ina. Alec and I nodded impatiently. She took a deep breath. ‘Robin Laurie killed one of his brother’s children.’

‘What?’ We spoke in a chorus.

‘He tried to
save
one of his brother’s children,’ I said. ‘The last surviving one who jumped into the sea. Are you telling me he killed one of the others?’

‘No, no, that’s the one,’ said Ina. ‘He didn’t try to save her from drowning. He drowned her. Nurse Currie told me all about it, seven years ago. Which was very unkind of her.’

The clowns were finished now and left the ring, rather puzzled I think at our indifference to their antics. They were replaced by the four Prebrezhenskys, beaming and clapping their hands. I stood up and dragged Ina to her feet, hustling her out of her seat and away from the ring to the doorway where we would not be seen. Alec came after us, taking long angry strides.

‘Do you mean to tell me,’ I said, ‘that you saw Robin Laurie – a man you knew to have killed before – killed a young girl before – sneaking around the night another young girl was killed and you said nothing?’

‘I told you,’ said Ina, her voice high with wonder as though Alec and I were being unkind to her, ‘I don’t like him and I don’t like thinking about him. And anyway, why on earth would he kill Anastasia?’

‘What were you thinking of?’ I wanted to shake her.

Unbelievably I heard a sound halfway between a chuckle and a happy little sigh.

‘Andrew,’ she said. ‘Our future.’

Alec – quite without brusqueness (for he is the sweetest of men), but really rather firmly – pushed me aside and stood in front of Ina, actually taking her arms in her hands.

‘I have known Andrew Merryman for twenty years,’ he said, ‘and I shall do everything in my power to make sure he wakes up and sees you for the fool you are before you get your nasty little claws anywhere near him.’

Ina’s smile was replaced by a pout and she looked up at Alec from under her brows.

‘How horrid you are,’ she said. ‘How dare you speak to me that way.’

‘That’s nothing,’ I said to her. ‘Because circus or no, Christmas Eve or no, you are coming to Blairgowrie with us and I shall have the greatest satisfaction in seeing what Inspector Hutchinson makes of you.’

We were given the inspector’s address by a startled constable who came to the door of the police house in Blairgowrie in shirtsleeves and braces. Behind him a lively pack of small children in nightgowns were scampering up and down the stairs and his attempts to shush them only turned the row they were making from cheerful shouts into loud whispers and explosive giggling.

‘Begging your pardon, sir, madam,’ said the constable, ‘but there’s no settling them tonight.’ He gestured along the garden to the police station proper, its blue lamp gleaming out. ‘I can easy open the office for you.’

We assured him once again that it was his superior upon whom we had our sights and I – after a brainwave – added a firm promise that any possible repercussions arising from the inspector being disturbed on this of all evenings would lie with us alone. I had guessed correctly and, thus mollified, the constable wished us the compliments of the season and bade us goodnight.

‘You can drop us off and then get on your way, Alec,’ I said, as we hurried back to the motor car. ‘What time are you expected at Pess?’

‘Oh, I’ll telephone to them and apologise for dinner,’ Alec said, glancing distractedly at his watch. ‘There’s a crowd tonight, I shan’t be missed.’

Hutchinson, thankfully, seemed not at all disturbed by our sudden intrusion into his evening. He lived in a neat little stone villa on the Perth Road, two bay windows with a lit porch between, where the door was opened by an equally neat little wife, swathed in a white apron and smelling of spices.

‘You’ll be after Maynard,’ she said and, with a quick downward look which told us more clearly than a command that we should wipe our feet before entering, she led us into a sitting room.

‘Maynard,’ I mouthed to Alec as we followed her.

‘Now you’ll have to excuse me,’ said Mrs Hutchinson when she had installed us and turned up the gas, ‘but I’m cooking for the morn’s morn as you can imagine and my daughter will be here any minute with the bairns, so I’d best get on.’

Alec, Ina and I waited like schoolchildren in the headmaster’s study, glancing around ourselves at the lace cover on the piano, the shining leaves of the potted palms and the brush marks on the thick carpet, evidence of a recent fierce sweeping. I wondered how Inspector Hutchinson managed to maintain his dishevelment in a household where not a single palm frond nor tassel was out of place, or alternatively how the housewife who had scoured those ridges into the nap of her good carpet could bear the dull shoes and crumpled trousers of her mate.

‘Well, well, well,’ said Hutchinson, bursting in on my thoughts. He stood in the doorway exuding welcome, pipe tobacco and whisky, and a close look at him showed that his face, always mottled, was this evening as decorative as some kind of rare orchid, in purple and yellow patches. I began to wish we at least had been a little more temperate, perhaps telephoning to Hutchinson after Boxing Day; suddenly the great rush of discovery was looking a little threadbare as I gathered myself for my report.

I should not have worried. Inspector Hutchinson listened with as much avidity as I had ever seen in him, sitting forward and fastening his gaze upon me as I spoke. Of course, if it had been Sergeant McClennan the avid effect would have been the more impressive (Hutchinson’s keenest look was still more reminiscent of an elderly bloodhound waiting for table scraps than of a terrier snapping and raring to go).

‘No whiff of a motive,’ he said, sitting back once I had finished, which was a quelling start, ‘but opportunity and something of a track record.’ He clapped his hands together and then smacked them down on to his knees, making his feet jump. ‘With opportunity and a history of mischief, I think even my super is going to have to listen to me.’

‘And don’t forget the witness,’ Ina said, simpering. Inspector Hutchinson turned his pouchy eyes upon her, and Alec and I, who had seen the like of what was coming once before, drew back to remove ourselves from the line of fire.

‘A witness?’ he said. ‘Now, you see, madam, a witness – to my way of thinking – is not just “a buddy that saw what happened”. No, a witness is a person of sound understanding and good character who can come through cross-examination making sense and looking as pure as the driven snow. What we have in this case is an informant, a very useful type of creature, of course, but we have no witness. Ah well, we’ll manage without one.’

Ina took at least half of this speech to begin to comprehend it, for the inspector’s avuncular look and respectful tone were most misleading, but when she did she sat back reddening and with her mouth slightly open.

‘In fact, I’ll not keep you hanging about much longer, Mrs Wilson,’ said Hutchinson, ‘but I wonder if you can inform me on one last point? Would you have an address for this nurse?’

Ina shook her head.

‘Aye well, I suppose she could hardly keep up a correspondence with every Tom, Dick and Harry,’ he said. ‘We’ll find her. Now, I’m going to ring up my sergeant to get you a lift home and you can wait for him in the wee room across the way. You’ll not be in anyone’s road there.’

‘You could surely have taken her, Alec,’ I said, when they had left the room. ‘It would get you started on your way. You’re going to be terribly late as it is.’

‘I rather think that Pess will have to do without me after all,’ said Alec. ‘It would take more than the delights it has on offer to tear me away from this now.’

‘They’ll never forgive you,’ I said. ‘You’re burning your boats.’

How perverse that just when he was turning from the prospect I finally began to urge him towards it.

‘Some boats are best burnt,’ Alec said.

The inspector returned to us within minutes and Mrs Hutchinson, her cooking evidently in hand, unbent enough to bring a tray of cocoa and biscuits although she gave a marked look at both the biscuits and her carpet and left me in no doubt that food in the parlour was a great concession and I should be very careful (as Nanny used to say at nursery suppers) to eat over my plate.

‘Now, it would take more of a man than me to knock up the super tonight,’ said the inspector. ‘He’ll be at the kirk till gone twelve – it’s a big night for the choir – and he’ll be there all day tomorrow, of course. Anyway, I need to speak to the brother first to firm up this earlier crime – there’s no motive there either when you look at it front on, since it was a lass he’s done away with and not a son and heir – but I’m not for bothering him on Christmas Day, are you, madam? No, Boxing Day’s a good day for visiting. So you and me and your man there can just bide our time – have a wee dram and a good chow at the plum pudding – and day after tomorrow I’ll hitch a lift north with you.’