“Is that the only key?”
“No. My wife has a copy. Louise usually hangs her keys on the hook by the scullery door when she’s at home.”
“So you leave the key to the gun cabinet in plain sight, in the same room?”
Flushing, Innes said, “This is the country, for God’s sake. We run a guesthouse. We’d never have done that in Edinburgh, but here, you don’t think—”
“You are legally responsible for the security of your weapons, Mr. Innes. Do you understand that you can be prosecuted? Or at the very least, fined?” Ross persisted,
but wearily. The man had a Highland accent; he had probably grown up in a household where guns were kept as casually as dogs.
“Tell me, Mr. Innes, who had access to the gun cabinet?”
“Access? The guests normally go in and out through the front, but I hold my cookery classes in the kitchen, and there’s nothing to stop anyone going in and out as they please.” He rubbed his fingers across the stubble on his chin, the rasping clear in the quiet room. “But surely you don’t think Donald was shot with my gun?”
“I think it beggars coincidence that a man was found shot dead on your property on the same day as your gun turns up missing.”
Innes’s sallow skin blanched. “But you can’t think it was one of my guests! Someone could have come in and taken the gun—you’ve just said so. What if I did leave the cabinet unlocked, and some tramp saw his chance—”
“And why would a tramp be shooting Mr. Donald Brodie in your field in the wee hours of this morning?”
asked Ross, giving free rein to his sarcasm.
Innes went quiet at that. When his protest came, it was feeble. “I don’t know, do I? But it is possible.”
“Aye. The Loch Ness Monster is possible. But it’s not verra likely, is it, Mr. Innes? Are you telling me now that you left your cabinet unlocked?”
“No!” A film of sweat had appeared on Innes’s brow.
“I’m sure I locked it. I just meant it’s a habit, the sort of thing you don’t really think about doing.”
“Have you seen anyone in the household near the gun cabinet?”
“If you mean have I seen anyone lurking suspiciously in the scullery, no. But the entire class was in the kitchen much of yesterday.”
Ross considered what he had learned so far. “Mr.
Innes, were you aware of a special relationship between Mr. Brodie and Hazel Cavendish?”
“No!” The response was too quick, too emphatic. “I mean, I knew they were friends, Louise and Hazel and Donald, from a long time ago. It was meant to be a sort of reunion, this cookery weekend, a surprise for Hazel.”
“Do you mean that Hazel didn’t know Donald would be here?” asked Ross, deliberately using their Christian names.
“I—I’m not sure. It was Louise who arranged it.”
“And what about this other woman who turned up with her child to see Donald yesterday evening? What can you tell me about that?”
“I’ve no idea who she was. I didn’t see her. It was Louise who answered the door.”
“You didn’t look out the window?” Ross asked with a hint of disbelief.
“No. I was in the kitchen, getting the meal ready.” The uncertainty that had characterized Innes’s earlier answers seemed to have vanished, and Ross suspected he was telling the truth.
“But Hazel and Donald had a row about this woman, during dinner, was it?”
“I don’t know anything about that. I was in the kitchen, and serving the food.”
“I understand they went out together, after the meal.”
“Neither of them came into the sitting room for coffee, that’s all I can tell you. I didn’t see them go out.”
“You didn’t hear them arguing?”
“No.”
Ross sat back with a sigh. Innes’s answers had become not only firm, but mulish. Was it Hazel Cavendish the man was protecting? And if so, why? “I think that’s all
for now, Mr. Innes,” he said. “A constable will take your statement.”
“I’m free to go?” Innes sounded as if he’d expected to be hauled off to the nick.
“For the moment, unless you’ve something else to tell me?”
“No. I— Is it all right if I fix the breakfast now?”
Ross’s stomach rumbled in response to the thought of food, and he thought regretfully of the breakfast he had forgone early that morning in favor of gardening.
“This is aye a murder inquiry, Mr. Innes,” he said testily, “and there are more important matters to attend to than food.” Ross sensed Munro’s suppressed smile behind him, which made him all the more irritable. Munro knew, from long experience, that he got cross when he was hungry.
“I’m sorry.” Innes looked abashed. “God knows I didn’t mean any disrespect to Donald. But I thought it might help, you know, with the shock, if everyone had something to eat. It’s my remedy for all ills, cooking.”
The man was right, Ross had to admit. It never failed to amaze him that, in the midst of tragedy, the human body kept on demanding food and drink and sleep—even sex, often enough. “The constable is taking statements in the kitchen,” he said a bit more kindly. “You’ll have to wait until she’s finished, and your scullery will remain off limits for the time being.”
When Innes had left the room, Ross said to Munro,
“That wee mannie is hiding something, but I’ll be damned if I know whether it has anything to do with the murder.”
“Do you want to see the wife next, Chief?” asked Munro, rising.
“No. I think we’ll have a word with Miss Heather Urquhart.”
*
She would be a striking woman under other circumstances, thought Ross, with the contrast between her pale skin and her mass of long, dark hair. But now the hair was carelessly matted, the rims of her eyelids red from weeping. They had established that she had worked for Donald Brodie for ten years, beginning as his personal assistant and working her way up to distillery manager, and throughout the questioning she had been tightly abrupt, as if she didn’t dare give rein to her emotions.
Now Ross said thoughtfully, “Miss Urquhart, was your relationship with Donald Brodie romantic in nature?”
She stared at him with an expression of intense dislike.
“That’s none of your business.”
“Oh, but I’m afraid it is.” He leaned forward, saw her instinctive recoil. “Your employer, Miss Urquhart, was brutally murdered, and that makes everything about Donald Brodie my business. Have you ever seen a shotgun wound?” he added, deliberately cruel, meaning to shake her cold self-possession. “Not a pretty sight—”
Her hands flew to her face, as if she could shield herself from his words with her long, pale fingers. “Stop, please,” she said shakily. “No. The answer is no. Donald and I were friends—good friends—but that’s all.”
“Then maybe you can explain the woman who called on him last night, the one with the child.”
Nodding, Heather lowered her hands to her lap again, but not before he saw the tremor. “Her name is Alison Grant. That was her little girl, Chrissy. She’s a cripple.” Her voice held a faint distaste, as if the child had displayed bad table manners. “Donald had seen Alison a few times, but I think lately he’d been trying to avoid her.”
“So she came looking for him?”
“I don’t know how she’d have known he was here,”
said Heather, sounding puzzled. “I don’t think he’d have told her. I certainly didn’t.”
“Do you know where can we find Alison Grant?”
“She has a flat in Aviemore; I don’t know the address.
But she works in the gift shop on the main road, just down from the railway station.”