Having seen to Beatrice, Mrs Brodie noticed the stranger standing to the side of the doorway and said, sounding slightly irritated, ‘I am sorry, I didn’t notice you there. Can I help you?’
‘Well, I’d like to speak to you…’ the inspector began, but was cut short in imperious tones.
‘Could you possibly come back tomorrow? We’re just about to play a four at Bridge…’
As she was still speaking, the two remaining elderly ladies shuffled past Manson, beaming at him benignly as they did so, and starting to ease off their jackets with arthritic fingers.
‘No,’ Eric Manson answered, more forcefully than he had intended, but feeling the need to regain control of the situation. This was a police matter after all, it had priority over any social engagement.
‘No? No?’ Mrs Brodie repeated coldly, taken aback by the man’s persistence. Whatever charity he was collecting for had just lost its donation. Unless it was the lifeboats, then she would just have to grit her teeth and pay up. Those brave men battling the waves in their sou’westers deserved every penny they got.
‘I’m sorry,’ the man tried again, ‘I should have told you immediately. I’m from Lothian & Borders Police, and I need to speak to you now. It’s about your son, Gavin Brodie. We need to find…’
He stopped speaking, noticing a trio of powdery faces clustered behind the woman’s shoulder like benevolent barn owls, each fixing him with unblinking, curious eyes, nodding, eager for him to continue.
Sensing their presence behind her, Erica Brodie turned to face her bridge partners and said, with distinct testiness, ‘Beatrice, perhaps you could show Honor and Marigold to the drawing room, and then close the door. I’ve laid the tea things out and the fire is lit. Just help yourselves. I need to speak to… er… this gentleman, on a private matter.’
Obediently the old ladies turned away. To the sound of a stick clacking on bare floorboards, they began their stately progress down a narrow corridor as directed.
‘What about Gavin?’ Erica Brodie asked, her brows furrowed and her gnarled thumbs flicking in and out of her clenched fists.
‘It might be better if I could talk to you inside, in the warmth, where there’s a seat for you. This may take a little time,’ Eric Manson said firmly, conscious of her great age, moving towards the woman as if to follow her inside. But she remained immobile, blocking the doorway, so that their bodies came closer together than either would have chosen. Manson leant back on his heels slightly and Erica Brodie began to speak.
‘No, thank you. I would prefer that things remained private. Marigold will eavesdrop if she possibly can, and my legs are quite steady, I can assure you.’
So he questioned her where they stood, his exhaled breath snowy white in the cold, marvelling as she spoke at her composure. Occasionally the slightest change in her voice betrayed her distress, together with the incessant movement of her thumbs, and when once, instinctively, he moved towards her again, arm outstretched to comfort her, she responded by backing away from him, as if his touch might weaken her.
‘So, you think it unlikely that he could take his medicine without help?’ he continued.
‘Very unlikely,’ she replied in her plummy voice. ‘In fact, I’d go so far as to say completely impossible. He could do almost nothing for himself… just like his father before him.’ She added, in a tired tone, ‘Is that it?’
‘Almost. I’m sorry to ask you – but did your son want to die?’
‘Of course he did. Just as I do. Now, is that it?’
‘Yes,’ he said, impressed by her fortitude, recognising someone of the old school and finding himself strangely touched by her. She was like a little, fluffed-up robin redbreast, bold and unafraid, prepared to take on anyone within her own territory.
She turned to go in, but then stopped and asked him, ‘And Heather, the “grieving” widow – how is she coping?’
‘I’m not sure,’ he answered truthfully, surprised by her new, unmistakeably sarcastic tone.
‘Well, I’m sure everyone’s rallied round. Particularly her new man.’
‘Her new man?’ he asked, puzzled. ‘How do you mean, her new man? Who is her new man?’
‘I don’t know his name, or his address. Still, I’m doing better than you chaps. At least I’m aware of his existence.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘I thought,’ she replied serenely, ‘that you might want to know.’
‘How do you know about him? Have you seen them together, or did she tell you about it or what?’
‘It is not, Inspector,’ the woman said, with a look of exaggerated disbelief, ‘the sort of thing my daughter-in-law would be likely to tell me, now is it? Nor have I caught her with the other man.’
‘So, then, how do you know?’
‘Because, antediluvian remnant that I am, I still have all my senses. In the last few months her hair has miraculously turned back from grey to auburn, she’s wearing new clothes, the bathroom is filled with different potions, scents, lotions. If she had a scarlet letter ‘A’ for adulteress tattooed on her cheek it couldn’t have been much clearer…’ she hesitated, ‘to a woman.’
‘So you’re sure, quite sure, about this new man?’ Manson asked numbly, apparently still talking about Heather Brodie, but in his mind, in fact, drifting back to Margaret. Talking about Margaret. If this old woman had any doubts about her daughter-in-law, could even change her mind, then he would be alright. They would be alright. He and Margaret.
‘Absolutely. I’m not in the habit of spreading false rumours – even about Heather,’ she replied bitterly, limping through her front door and thereby informing her uninvited caller that he was dismissed.
Chugging back to the office along the old A1, Manson turned the wipers off, their noisy swishing too intrusive and distracting for him to bear. Then the undimmed headlights of an approaching car caught the raindrops on his windscreen, nearly blinding him, and he hastily switched them back on again.
In his dark mood, the village of Tranent seemed like the end of the earth, metal shutters barricading its tawdry shops, dirty water stagnant in its gutters and the only pedestrians about being drunks, shambling from doorway to doorway on its sodden, litter-strewn pavements. The place was no more than a fucking midden, he said to himself, as he accelerated along its main street, ignoring the speed limit and swinging wildly round a bend in his haste to leave.
The ‘Honest Toun’ appeared little better, the firth beyond Fisherrow not sparkling as it sometimes did, but looking like thick brown soup under a grey, lifeless sky. The two solid colours merged on the horizon. Even the bungalows lining the Milton Road seemed squat and misshapen. And now, thanks to Heather Brodie and her shenanigans, he would get home later than ever. The woman would have to be challenged by him, in person, in her den – well, her sister’s den. He would have to be the one to confront her with the old woman’s suspicions. Not a hint of any affair from Thomas Riddell, of course – the inefficient git! And it was exactly the sort of thing he should have been burrowing about to discover. What else was he for?
Out of habit, he lit another cigar, but after the first drag he felt slightly sick, persevering only in order to calm his frayed nerves, comforted by its familiar orange glow in the darkness. As he reached the traffic lights by the King’s Theatre he rolled down his window and chucked the stub out, the ashtray inside already overflowing with his dog ends.
Sitting at her dining room table, Pippa Mitchelson felt distinctly uneasy as she began to wrap a pink teddy bear in Christmas paper, the prickly feeling at the back of her neck telling her that every movement was under the unblinking scrutiny of the morose man seated opposite her. All her attempts to engage him in conversation had failed, and now, with every second that passed, she felt more awkward and anxious, intimidated by his fixed gaze and silent, oppressive presence. Realising that if she wrote on the gift tag she would have to use her spectacles, she dithered, unwilling to put them on in front of him. Maybe she should just wait until he had gone before she put pen to paper? And soon, please God, Heather would return and the man’s attention would shift away from her and on to her sister. That was who he had come to see, after all, that was what he had said. So it must be true.