Call of Glengarron (9 page)

Craig McKinross had arrived at London airport and departed again on the very same day—the day Margo had died.

I let the passport drop and grabbed for the nearest support to steady myself.  So Craig had been in London the day Margo had died.

The discovery should not have rocked me. Surely I had been sufficiently prepared for it—even half expecting it. Yet whole minutes went by before I was calm enough to abandon my prop and bend to pick up the passport.

There was a chair by the window and I sat down. I needed to. It took an effort to force my eyes into focus so I could read the entries before and after that incriminating pair.

Craig had come from Beirut, and gone on to New York. In between, he had stopped off in London.

And in that brief time Margo had been killed ...

I pulled up my racing thoughts with a jerk. Margo had not been killed. The police said it was suicide.

But the police hadn’t known the whole truth. They hadn’t known that Lambert Nairn was with Margo during the evening. They hadn’t known that her husband had arrived in London, and gone to the flat to see her.

And Craig had immediately left the country and not come back again until the police’s enquiries had finished — until it was safe for him to come back. Even then he had avoided London, he had flown direct to Scotland, and demanded that his child be brought to him there.

Jamie ...  What was I to do about Jamie? I couldn’t go away and leave him in the hands of a ... well, if not a murderer, then at any rate a man who had driven his wife to take her own life. Had threatened and browbeaten her until she could stand up to him no longer.

What could that final dreadful quarrel have been about? Was it Jamie? Was Craig demanding custody of the little boy?

He loved his son—I felt sure of it. I’d seen his eyes, the hurt when Jamie had spurned him and turned to me. Craig wanted Jamie to love him, but could such a man possibly be a fit parent?

I could well understand the desperation Margo would have felt at the thought of losing Jamie. To pass him over to Craig, to have her child brought up in his father’s image must have been beyond bearing. It would be enough to explain why she might have killed herself.

It was too easy to suggest she could have fought for Jamie, easy to say that killing herself was merely to abandon him to Craig. It wouldn’t be fair to judge her so superficially. For Margo life had been a bitter business. Her marriage had collapsed in ruins, and left her disillusioned about men. Craig’s demands would have seemed like the final savage blow, harder than she could face up to.

In a bewildered way she might have worked out that Jamie would be safe with me. Despite losing her parents so early in life, despite the way she had organized things for me, Margo had never seemed to have a real grasp of practical matters. Maybe she’d imagined that as Jamie was staying with me at the time, his future would be secure.

Well, I was determined on one thing. I wouldn’t let my cousin down. I certainly wasn’t going to abandon Jamie to his father, or to anyone else.

Swiftly, I slipped Craig’s passport back, zipped up the case and pushed it into the wardrobe where I’d found it.

Everything was quiet outside in the gloomy corridor. I shut the door softly behind me and turned toward my own room a little way along on the other side.

As always the mirror on the far wall reflected the pool of light shed by the window at the head of the staircase. I was getting accustomed to seeing myself in silhouette as I walked toward my room. But this time, as once before, the image of a man’s figure stood beside mine in the mirror, the tall slim figure of a man. He was quite still, as if watching me.

I spun around quickly, but the man was gone. He had just disappeared, faded away. This was something that had happened before, too.

I went on to my own room feeling very disturbed. I was sure it must have been Mr. Lennox, come home sooner than I’d expected. Had he been standing there long? Had he seen me coming out of Craig’s bedroom? If so, what on earth would he be thinking?

Alistair Lennox would certainly never guess the truth. He might imagine I’d been in there to steal. Or—and my face flamed at the idea—he might jump to quite another conclusion. He might imagine I was no stranger to Craig’s bedroom, and had gone there to get something I’d left behind.

Miserably I hung about in my room, reluctant to go down and meet the censure in Alistair Lennox’s eyes.

Later—half an hour maybe, or more—I heard a car approaching the castle. I couldn’t see from this side, but I guessed it must be Craig, Fiona and Jamie arriving home.

Still I lingered. How could I face Craig knowing what I knew about him? How could I hope to act normally?

But a sudden alarming thought sent me hurrying downstairs.

Whatever Alistair Lennox had concluded about my visit to Craig’s room, he might well mention it. He might think it was his duty to warn his nephew about me. And then there would be real trouble. If I waited around until an accusation was made, my story might sound like a frantic attempt to confuse the issue.

The passport. That was proof—definite proof that Craig had been in London on the day Margo was killed. I was a fool not to have pocketed it while I had the chance. Once Craig knew I’d been to his room, he’d guess that I suspected something. It would be too easy then for him to destroy the incriminating document, and wipe out the evidence of his short stopover in England.

He could easily get a replacement passport, but I could never duplicate those telltale rubber stamps.

I found the whole party gathered in the small sitting room. I was greeted quite normally, though Alistair Lennox’s gaze lingered on my face a shade too long for comfort.

“Ah, Miss Calvert,” said his wife. “I’m glad you’ve ... Duncan is just...”

Duncan finished the sentence for her by arriving at that moment with a tea tray.

Craig was his usual sullen self. Fiona, as nearly as she could, simply ignored me. Jamie had come running over at once, full of enthusiasm about the toys of the children he had met.

“A castle with a drawbridge that works by ‘lectricity,” he informed me, his eyes round with amazement. He turned to Craig suddenly. “Why don’t we have a real drawbridge, Daddy?”

He’d said “we.” Wasn’t that acknowledging the castle as his home? And quite spontaneously he’d called Craig “Daddy”. These were things I’d been hoping for, working for. Yet now I heard them with a heavy feeling of dread.

The significance of little Jamie’s words had registered with his father, too. I saw Craig’s pleased smile.

“There was a drawbridge at Glengarron once upon a time, Jamie. But when all the battles and sieges were over, our ancestors did away with it.”

As we had tea, Isabel Lennox presiding with her usual painful uncertainty, I was conscious of no new tension in the room. Indeed, after Jamie’s gratifying remarks, Craig even managed to smile at me once or twice. There was no suggestion of anger or fear.

So Alistair Lennox hadn’t told Craig yet. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t. I had to seek—to make—an opportunity of talking with Craig as soon as possible. I had to tax him with what I’d discovered, and watch his reaction carefully.

I could never be happy now until I knew the truth.

There had not yet been any mention of finding a governess for Jamie. Mrs. Lennox, I felt sure, would never get around to arranging anything so practical. Fiona clearly wasn’t interested, for all her gushing over Jamie on occasion. But surely Craig himself could see the necessity. While I continued doing so much for his son the chances of Jamie growing away from me and settling down here were that much less.

But for the time being this lack of action suited me. I didn’t want to leave Glengarron Castle—not yet.

It was an hour before dinner when I got an opportunity to confront Craig. I had put Jamie to bed, and gone straight to my own room to change. As I stepped out into the corridor, Craig was just about to go into his bedroom. Curiously, it was the first time I had met him upstairs. I seized my chance.

“Could I have a word with you, please?” I asked quickly.

In the poor light I couldn’t read his expression. His face seemed to show a complicated mixture of emotions, superimposed one upon the other.

He spoke in a rather tight voice. “Does this mean you wish to be leaving Glengarron?”

“No, no.” My denial was too quick and emphatic, it betrayed my anxiety. I made myself speak slowly. “No, it’s not that. There’s something I want to ask you.”

He nodded, and motioned me to go downstairs with him. But I hung back, shaking my head. “It’s very private. If you don’t mind, I want to talk to you alone.”

He turned to the door of his room, throwing it open. “Will this do then? Or would you rather we went somewhere else?”

His bedroom—the scene of my crime. I stammered, “No, that’s all right.”

He shut the door behind us and stood leaning back against it. I walked a few steps toward the window, and swung around to face him. I still hadn’t the faintest idea of what I was going to say.

The words sprang out. “You were with Margo on the night she died.”

It emerged as a statement, not a question. A flat statement of fact. An accusation.

Craig was stunned, there could be no doubt about his expression now. He was so completely astonished that at first he did nothing but gape at me. Then he straightened up and took a couple of quick steps toward me.

“What do you mean?” he demanded.

It was strange that while my legs were trembling so weakly, my voice could sound so cool.

“I mean exactly what I say. You were with your wife the night she died.”

“Are you suggesting ... ?”

“I’m not suggesting anything, Mr. McKinross.”

But I was. I was suggesting a lot. I was suggesting that even if he hadn’t actually killed Margo, the responsibility for her death was just as certainly his. I was suggesting that he had driven her to taking her own life.

He tried to bluff. “This is absolute nonsense.”

“No, it isn’t nonsense. It’s not a bit of good denying it, because I know for a fact you were there.”

“How...?”

“So you admit it.”

“I want to know why you think so.”

“That’s something I won’t tell you.” I met his eye challengingly until he looked away. “But I could prove it, if necessary.”

“You could prove I was with Margo?”

I tried to keep myself from looking at the wardrobe. Why had I been such a fool as to leave the passport there?

“Yes,” I said deliberately. “I have definite evidence.”

Even now that he was cornered, Craig’s pride didn’t desert him, and I found myself admiring that. He swung his eyes back to me and stared at me boldly.

“Since you know so much, Miss Calvert, it might be as well if you knew everything.”

“That’s just what I’m asking.”

“I suppose Margo phoned you, is that it? After I left she phoned you and went all dramatic?”

I shook my head. “Margo phoned me earlier in the evening to ask if I could take Jamie for the night. She brought him over to my flat soon after six. That was the last contact I had with her. The next morning I was informed by a cable from Margo’s father that she’d been found ... gassed.”

His manner was still coldly sarcastic. “I will try to give you my own account of that evening just as succinctly. I was on my way through from Beirut to U.N. headquarters in New York. I arrived at London airport at about eight. My flight out was scheduled for just before midnight. I got a cab into town, phoned Margo and said I was coming round right away. I reached her flat at a few minutes past nine-thirty, and was gone again by ten.”

He was admitting he’d been with Margo for nearly half an hour that night. Not long, but long enough for him to— I must have been staring at him with suspicion plain in my face.

Craig broke into an incredulous laugh. “My God! Surely you don’t imagine ...
?”

I didn’t answer.

“Of course you do. You think I killed her, don’t you?” He raised an arm and ran distracted fingers through his hair. “This is absolutely fantastic. I’m supposed to have sealed off her room and turned on the gas and walked out, while she sat and watched me. Is that it?”

“There are ways,” I said miserably. “The postmortem showed she had been drinking heavily.”

“Huh! Is that any better? In the space of half an hour I got Margo into a drunken stupor and still had time to carry out my evil plan. You must think I’m a very fast worker.”

It was agony to be taunted by Craig. “But I didn’t say I thought you had ... had ...”

“You didn’t have to say it.”

“I didn’t mean it, either,” I protested.

I didn’t know what I meant. Why had I ever tackled Craig like this? What had I hoped to achieve? He wouldn’t admit anything, that was obvious.

He insisted coldly: “You’d better tell me exactly what you did mean, then.”

He had me cornered. I’d started all this, and now I couldn’t back out.

Wildly I flung accusation at his head, my heart beating too fast, my voice too high-pitched.

“You drove her to it—that’s what I meant. You drove Margo away from you by your selfish, egotistical attitude. You never considered what she might have wanted. And that night you made her so desperate that she took her own life.” I was getting caught up in a torrent of words, convinced by my own vehemence. “I call that being responsible for her death.”

He took another quick step toward me. I backed away, thinking he was going to strike me. But if that was his intention, he recollected himself in time. When he spoke it was in the same ironic manner.

“If any part of that were true, I’d agree with you. I certainly would be responsible for Margo’s death.”

“Do you deny that you quarreled with her that night, then?”

“I’ll not deny that
she
quarreled with
me.”

“What’s the difference?” I said impatiently.

“There’s a hell of a difference. I went to see her with the most sweetly reasonable intentions. All I got for my pains was a stream of abuse.”