The tiny, star-shaped blossoms of the lobelia were a brilliant blue against the pale pink of the compact azaleas just coming into bloom behind them. A few feet farther along the border, a stand of magnificent white iris were just showing their tightly furled buds.
Although it was still early on Sunday morning, the sun soaked into his back like warm honey, and a light breeze cooled the sweat above his collar. The sound of bells came faintly over the garden wall, and in his mind’s eye he saw his tidy terraced house and square of garden as the
jewel in Inverness’s crown, and from it the tiered streets dropping down to St. Andrew’s Cathedral on Ness Walk.
As a child, he had attended services there, and he imagined his mother’s dismay if she could see him now, slacking on a Sunday morning. But this was his idea of heaven—why should he look any further?
Not that his wife had agreed with him, mind you—his ex-wife, he should say. She was married now to a fertil-izer salesman who liked to dance.
It had served Ross right, according to his daughter, Amanda, who had told him he should have taken her mum out a bit more. But then his daughter sometimes seemed to him as incomprehensible as an alien species—and how could he have explained to either of them that the last thing he’d wanted after a day on the job was to go out.
What he wanted was his own small universe, house and garden, a world he could control, an order he could impose. He came home; if it was fine enough he would work in the garden—there was always something needed doing—and if not, he did his chores round the house, then he would settle by the fire with his gardening books and catalogs and his dram of whisky.
Now his routine was undisturbed by anyone’s nagging, and he liked it just fine, thank you very much. He had seen his ex-wife not long ago, walking along Ness Bank.
She’d looked like a tart, hair newly bouffant, makeup too heavy, skirt too tight and too short. He’d been cordial enough to her and her paunchy, balding husband, but he’d been glad to make his escape—and if he’d felt a stirring of the old desire, he’d quickly banished it.
Now, setting the last of the lobelias into its new bed, he stretched in anticipation of a well-deserved break. He’d make himself a cup of tea from the kettle he’d left simmering on the kitchen hob, then he’d sit in his gazebo and
have a browse through the Sunday newspaper while the bees hummed beside him in the lavender.
But as he dusted off his knees at the kitchen door, he heard the phone ringing.
His heart sank. No one called him for a friendly chat at this hour of a Sunday morning. Looking out, he saw that the light in the garden had faded as suddenly as if someone had thrown a blanket across the sun. With a sigh of resignation, he crossed the room and lifted the phone from its cradle.
He should have known. He’d been a policeman too long to believe in such a thing as a perfect day.
The call came as Kincaid was trying to grind beans for coffee and butter Toby’s toast simultaneously, a feat he had not quite mastered. Nor was his multitasking helped by the fact that both dogs were beneath his feet, barking madly at the grinder, while Sid, the cat, hissed and batted at them from his perch on the kitchen table.
He switched off the grinder, shouted at the dogs, slid Toby’s plate precariously across the table, and grabbed the phone without glancing at the ubiquitous caller ID.
“This had better be good,” he snapped, assuming the caller was Doug Cullen, his sergeant.
There was a silence on the other end of the line, then Gemma’s voice, sounding more than taken aback.
“Duncan?”
“Oh, sorry, love. I thought you were Cullen, ringing to nag me for the umpteenth time—”
“I’ve been trying to reach you all weekend. Either the phone’s been engaged, or you haven’t answered, and your mobile is going straight to voice mail.” She sounded unexpectedly distressed.
“Doug’s been bending my ear all weekend over this re-
port I left with him,” Kincaid explained. It was fudging the truth a bit, but he didn’t want to discuss Kit over the telephone, especially when the boy might appear at any moment. The fact that Kit had not come downstairs after all the canine commotion was a clear sign that he was still shutting out Kincaid—and Toby.
When he was a boy Kincaid’s mother would have called it “a fit of the sulks”—the description a little harsh considering Kit’s circumstances. But Kincaid was beginning to find the behavior a bit aggravating.
“—and I left the spare battery for the mobile at the Yard,” he continued to Gemma. “Why didn’t you leave a message? I’d have rung you back.”
“I didn’t want to talk to the bloody machine,” Gemma said, her voice rising in an uncharacteristic quaver.
“Gemma, what’s wrong? Are you all right?”
“Yes. No. Not really. It’s Hazel.”
“Is she ill? What’s happened?”
“There’s been a death, a shooting, early this morning.
I found the body. His name was Donald Brodie, and he and Hazel were lovers before she was married. She was thinking of leaving Tim—”
“Good God.” Kincaid dumped Sid unceremoniously from the kitchen chair and sank into it. “She was having an affair with this Brodie?”
“Not exactly. At least, not until— The thing is, I don’t know what happened last night, and now I can’t talk to her. The police have everyone else sequestered in the house with a constable until the investigative team gets here from Inverness.”
“And you?”
“They’ve let me stay in the barn conversion—that’s where Hazel and I were sleeping. But she left sometime in the night, and only came back after I’d found him—
Donald.” Gemma’s voice broke, and Kincaid waited while she made an effort to get it under control. “If I’d just talked to her before the police arrived, then—”
“Gemma, I’m sure you did all you could. Look, I’ll get the next train—or the next flight to Inverness—”
“What about the children?”
“I could get Wes to come, or take them to your parents—”
“No. Just wait. But could you see Tim Cavendish? Tell him what’s happened? I don’t mean about Hazel and Donald,” she amended quickly, “just that there’s been a death, so he’ll be prepared.”
“Gemma—surely you don’t think Hazel could have shot this bloke?”
“No,” she said sharply. “Of course not. But—if there’s some connection—what if Hazel is in danger, too?”
Chapter Nine
So you are happed and gone, and there you’re lying, Far from the glen, deep down the slope of seas, Out of the stormy night, the grey sleet flying, And never again for you the Hebrides!
We need not keep the peat and cruise glowing, The goodwife may put by her ale and bread, For you, who kept the crack so blithely going, Now sleep at last, silent and comforted.
neil munro, “The Story Teller” (written on the death of Robert Louis Stevenson) From the Diary of Helen Brodie, Benvulin,
December
This morning’s post brought the news of the death of Charles Urquhart at Carnmore from a virulent fever, contracted on his return from Edinburgh a fortnight ago. Poor Charles! His constitution was never strong, as I recall, and he was caught out in the blizzard that has isolated us here at Benvulin. My heart aches for his poor wife and son. What a loss, a needless loss, of a man in his prime.