A Double Death on the Black Isle (12 page)

She yawned. She stood. She stretched her arms wide. She rolled her shoulders. She walked back to the office, walked up the stairs, hadn't time to take off her coat before the phone rang.

“
Gazette
.” There was a pause on the line. “Patricia, I've been worried about you. Are you all right? What's happening? Where are you?”

“At the McLeans' house.” Patricia sounded far away, as though she were calling from another country.

“At my house,” Rob said as he came in.

“Of course I wouldn't mind,” Joanne reassured Patricia. “I'll do it later this afternoon. You look after yourself. Bye.”

“She has no need to look after
herself
,” Rob told Joanne. “She has everyone else looking after her.”

“Who does?” McAllister came in.

“Patricia, the grieving widow,” Rob told him. “She wanted me to bring the farm Land Rover into town. She left it at the Dores Inn after the
accident
.”

There was something in the way Rob said
accident
, something
in the way he waggled his head when he referred to Patricia that Joanne didn't like. “I told Madame Ord Mackenzie that I had work to do,” he continued, “but I bet she's inveigled Joanne into doing it.”

“I offered,” Joanne fibbed, although she had no idea how she could get to Dores and back and still be in time for the girls coming home from school.

“Both of you go now,” McAllister said. “Joanne, when you're there, see if you can interview the landlady. Rob, you talk to the men who found the body. Off with you, I need the stories by the end of the day.”

Joanne enjoyed the ride to Dores on the back of Rob's bike. For a short while, the shadows of uncertainty were blown away.

The road to the south side of Loch Ness followed the river out of town for a mile. It was a leafy journey through bright-green new growth and fern and roadside wildflowers. The trip was only fifteen miles, and she enjoyed every twist and turn.
It won't be such a nice journey back
, she thought,
driving an unsprung Land Rover instead of being a passenger on a shiny, red Triumph
.

At the small whitewashed inn, Joanne found the landlady and asked her if she would talk to the
Gazette
. The woman agreed, but she was in such a state of nerves, nothing she said made sense.

“It was terrible. That poor woman. On their honeymoon. The police. Terrible.” The landlady spoke in statements, not joined-up conversation, and very little of what she said constituted a usable quote.

“She had enough sense to make me pay for Patricia's phone calls though,” Joanne told Rob when they were back in the office, writing up their notes. “Since Dores is out of town, it came to four trunk calls. I can't exactly ask Patricia for my money back.”

At first, the landlady had wanted payment for three calls.

“I know it was an emergency, but I have a business to run,” the woman told Joanne. Then she remembered that Patricia had made a longer trunk call before she and Sandy had set off on the road to Foyers.

“The woman paid for their tea, but no the calls, so I'll have to charge ten shillings altogether.”

Joanne used the last of her week's housekeeping money.

Rob was equally frustrated. He went out to the edge of the loch to talk to the man who had retrieved the body from the falls. He could barely get a word out of the man.

“Aye” was all that the landlady's husband said to everything. Then he would step back, cast his rod, and continue staring out across Loch Ness.

“When did you hear about the accident?” Rob started.

The man shrugged.

“How did you retrieve the body?”

The man said nothing, staring at the water.

“He was dead when you got to him?”

“Aye.” Another cast into the loch.

“So you brought him back here?”

“Aye.”

“You didn't wait for the police to arrive before fishing out the body?”

That elicited a glare from the fisherman.

It was only later in the newsroom, when he and Joanne were exchanging stories, that Rob remembered.

“You know, the landlady's husband was no fisherman. Even I know it was the wrong type of rod for Loch Ness. I don't even know if there are fish in Loch Ness, the monster has probably eaten everything.”

“He was probably trying to escape from his wife,” she said. “She babbles on like a burn when the snow's melted, and makes as much sense.”

“That would explain why the man only grunts and shrugs.”

“Driving that rattletrap was really uncomfortable. You should have let me take the bike.”

“Someone from the farm should have picked up the Land Rover. But I suppose it was too much for Patricia to think of that.”

“Rob McLean.” Joanne leaned over and cuffed him on the shoulder, “Patricia's husband had just died. . . . And Fraser Munro . . .”

They looked at each other.

“As Don pointed out, two men from Achnafern Estate on the Black Isle died on the same day.” Rob started to bang out the words on his typewriter. “Maybe they will be buried on the same day too. It's a great story.” He grinned at Joanne.

She had to agree. Great story.

Mid-afternoon, and Detective Inspector Dunne was about to begin the formal interview with Patricia at the police station.

He was not in awe of Patricia Ord Mackenzie. At least he didn't think he was. He had allowed the initial interview to be held at the house of Angus McLean, the solicitor, because Patricia was pregnant. It had nothing to do with her father's friendship with the chief constable.

“We will be as brief as we can, Mrs. Skinner, but I need to cover all the details so I can finish my report to the procurator fiscal.”

Patricia had introduced herself as Ord Mackenzie. The inspector put that down to grief and addressed her as Mrs. Skinner.

“Of course. And I'd like the formalities over and done with so I can go home.”

“You and your husband left home early.”

She gave a watery smile, her nose red. But her eyes seemed untroubled. Or perhaps it was the light. “We went through this earlier.”

“Please bear with me, you were distressed. The sooner I get the sequence of events clear, the sooner the procurator fiscal can make his recommendation to the fatal accident inquiry.”

And I need answers before you retreat to the safety of your mother, father, solicitor, chief constable, and family name,
he thought.

“Of course. Sorry.” She brought her handkerchief up to her eyes.

WPC Ann McPherson was watching Patricia's every move,
as a good police officer should
, she told herself, and couldn't shake the feeling that this was all a performance.

“We left before dawn.” Patricia spoke slowly, making it easy for Ann and DI Dunne to make notes. “We were taking a delayed honeymoon. Being May Day, we stopped at the Clootie Well on the Black Isle. Sandy's idea.”

“There were people there who saw you?”

“Yes. But no one I know.” Patricia stopped. Sniffed. Started again. “We drove to town then, along the south side of the river towards Loch Ness. We stopped at the Dores Inn for tea, as I was feeling sick. After we left, we stopped near the Falls of Foyers because I was sick again. Sandy said since we were there anyway, he'd go and look at the Falls—he'd never seen them before.”

He went to look at the Falls because we'd been fighting and he couldn't stand the sight and sound of my retching,
Patricia remembered. But she was not going to mention that to anyone.

“I stayed in the car. I'm in a delicate condition, you know.” She smiled at him.

Inspector Dunne was annoyed by the way she was trying to gain sympathy and ignored this.

“When he didn't return, what did you do?”

“I told you, I went down the path, but only a few yards—it was so slippery and dangerous. So I went back and waited nearly an hour. By then, I was really worried, so I drove to Dores.”

“Why not get help in Foyers? Dores is a much longer drive.”

“I wasn't thinking clearly.” Patricia put a hand on her forehead. “I'm sorry. Could I have a glass of water, please?”

“Would you like some tea?” Ann McPherson offered.

“Oh, no,” Patricia replied. “I don't want to put you to any trouble.”

“You drove back to the Dores Inn, not to Foyers, which is nearer,” Inspector Dunne continued.

“I panicked. I had no idea in which direction I was driving.”

“What time did you arrive there?”

“I'm not sure. The people at the Inn will know. I told them I was worried, so the landlady's husband and another man went off to look for Sandy. When they came back, they told me Sandy was dead. He'd fallen into the falls, they said, and they found him in the pool at the bottom. He was caught up in a fallen tree.”

Good job too, they had told her, otherwise he might have been swept into the loch and may not have been found for weeks, if ever.

“Thank you, Mrs. Skinner. I will let you know when we need to speak to you again.” DI Dunne was polite and left no doubt as to who was in charge.

When they were alone the inspector asked, “Well, WPC McPherson, what do you think?”

She was startled. Never before, in five years as a policewoman, had any of her superiors asked her for her opinion.

“I . . .”

“How did she seem to you?”

“Calm, no, in charge.”

“I expect that's her upbringing.”

“Yes.” Ann McPherson looked at her notes. “I'm not sure I got the time sequence right.”

“No. I don't think Patricia Ord Mackenzie, as she prefers to be known, did either.” DI Dunne waited, wanting to hear more.

The policewoman hesitated, not sure if she should venture the obvious question, then asked, “Why did she drive all the way back to Dores, probably twenty minutes away, when Foyers is less than a mile?”

“Yes. That is the question, isn't it?” His grey eyes looked thoughtful. “So far, there is only one witness—the widow. Unless anyone comes forward, there is only her version.”

They were silent for a moment.

“Type up the notes. We'll talk again later.”

As she left, Ann felt the thrill of being involved in a real case, not just sent out to comfort the bereaved, break up domestic disputes, and make tea for the lads.

“He's treating me like a real policeman.”

Rob volunteered to babysit her girls so Joanne could visit Patricia. He did not say it, but he was pleased to get out of the house.

There was an air of jollity when Joanne came into the sitting room. Margaret McLean had been liberal with the gin and tonic, and Patricia was flushed, laughing at some remark of Margaret's.

“Look who's here,” a more than slightly sloshed Patricia greeted her. “Perfect mother and now star reporter as well.”

“Why thank you,” Joanne laughed and curtsyed. The remark was said jokingly she knew, but it hurt. “How are you? Exhausted, I'm sure.”

Patricia remembered her manners. “Yes, I am. The reality hasn't sunk in. And I've just been told the news about Fraser Munro. Poor Mrs. M.” She turned to Margaret. “Thank you so
much for offering me a bed for the night, I don't think I could manage the drive home.”

“Absolutely no need to thank us,” Margaret said. “Anyone would have done the same.”

“Not that I've noticed,” Patricia replied.

Margaret, who knew Janet Ord Mackenzie, did not contradict her.

Joanne was not surprised that Mrs. Ord Mackenzie had not come to comfort her daughter, but she was shocked that Patricia had been left to drive herself home.

I will never judge her harshly again,
she vowed.

When they had been at boarding school, she and Joanne compared parents. It was almost a competition to see which of them had the coldest mother and the most distant father. They swapped stories of epic silences, of disdain and disapproval, and gothic tales of being left alone to sleep in unlit, unheated bedrooms, down dark hallways, far distant from their parents' rooms. All this for five-year-olds. No wonder they both enjoyed the escape to boarding school.

“Would you excuse me?” Patricia looked at Joanne. “It's been a dreadfully long day, I really need to lie down.”

“Do you need anything?” Joanne asked as she rose to leave.

“Thanks, Joanne. You're a true friend. I'm exhausted. I shall sleep like the . . . God! How awful. I was going to say ‘sleep like the dead.' This is still so unreal.”

“Of course.”

“I remind myself of the baby. He needs me. That will get me through. You know, the really terrible part of it all is that I wished Sandy dead—only for a moment or so when he was rowing with Mummy. And now he is.” She stopped, sobbed a strange, dry, deep, half-sob, half-gasp.

Joanne came over and sat on the sofa next to Patricia, taking
her hand, stroking it as she would if Wee Jean had fallen over or if Annie had had a bad dream. Margaret McLean saw it was time to leave the friends to themselves.

“It took only a few days to discover he was a liar, that he had only married me because he thought he could get his hands on my family's money. The marriage would have been a nightmare.” Patricia spoke quietly, her voice flat-tired, emotion-drained. “For years I had been determined not to make the same mistakes as you. Then I found myself in exactly your situation.”

Joanne couldn't see the connection, apart from them both being pregnant before the wedding.

Patricia rambled on. “When I found out you had to get married, I was amazed. You were always so in control. Always so certain of the path your life would take. School, university, you wanted to be a teacher, make a respectable marriage, maybe a wife of the Kirk like your sister. When I heard the news of you marrying beneath you, marrying a soldier, and with a baby on the way, I laughed. I was pleased that you had found a way out. Pleased that you had managed to spit in the eye of all those respectable Presbyterian expectations.”