“He could have put the gun in the car earlier—perhaps during the night.”
“You are surely joking, Chief Inspector,” Louise said flatly, as if she would not have it be otherwise. “Even if it were possible that John could do such a thing, how could he have known that Donald would be walking in the meadow this morning? How could anyone have known?”
Ross wasn’t sure what he had expected, from what he had heard of Hazel Cavendish—a glamorous woman, perhaps, sophisticated in the manner of her cousin Heather Urquhart.
Instead, he found himself facing a slight woman with an appealing heart-shaped face made more striking by her dark eyes and curly dark hair. She wore a yellow, fuzzy pullover, and her face was swollen from weeping.
Resisting an unexpected urge towards gentleness, he said, “Mrs. Cavendish, were you having an affair with Donald Brodie?”
“No.” The word was a whisper. “No,” she repeated more firmly, with obvious effort.
“But you had been lovers?”
“That was a long time ago, Chief Inspector.” She sounded weary beyond bearing. “It was another life.”
“But Donald hoped to renew your relationship, isn’t that right?” When she didn’t answer, he went on. “Is that why ye argued with him last night?”
Her eyes widened. “I— He—he brought up some old issues between us. It wasn’t an argument. It can’t have had anything to do with Donald’s death.”
“Aye, well, I canna be so sure about that, now can I? I had the idea you were angry over the wee lassie who called on him before dinner.”
“I don’t know anything about that.” Her mouth was set in a stubborn line.
“And what about this morning, Mrs. Cavendish? Can you tell me where ye went in the car?”
She swallowed and took a sharp little breath, as if readying something rehearsed. “I drove to Aviemore. I was worried about my daughter. I’d never left her for so long, before this weekend, and I thought I should go home. But there was no train that early. So I came back.”
She hadn’t had much practice at lying, thought Ross, and she did it remarkably badly. “What time did you leave the house?”
“I’m not sure. It was light. Before five, I think.”
“And yet you returned at”—he checked his notes—
“around half six, according to Mrs. Innes. The drive to Aviemore takes only a few minutes.”
“I sat at the station for a while, deciding whether to wait for a train.”
“Did anyone see you?”
“I—I don’t know. The ticket office was closed. I didn’t speak to—”
There was a tap at the door, and the duty constable came in. “Sorry to interrupt, sir, but one of the crime scene technicians thought you’d want to see this.”
Ross stood up and took the clear evidence envelope by its corner.
“He said they found this in the trampled area in the wood,” the constable continued, “along with traces of semen.”
“Thank you, Constable.” Ross looked at the wisp of pale yellow yarn he held in his hand, then at Hazel Cavendish.
“You’re not serious.” Gemma faced Constable Mackenzie across the work island in the Inneses’ kitchen. “You want to do a metal trace test on me?” Her voice rose in a squeak
of outrage in spite of her attempt to control it. Having given her statement to another constable seated in the corner, she had then been passed on to Mackenzie.
“I’m sorry, ma’am.” Mackenzie’s brow was furrowed with distress. “It’s orders from the chief inspector. Everyone in the household, he said, no exceptions. I’m to take a footprint, as well.”
“The bastard,” swore Gemma under her breath. Feeling her face flush with telltale warmth, she turned away for a moment, trying to master her temper. Would Ross have treated Kincaid this way, she wondered, or would Kincaid have been respected as a fellow officer—even deferred to?
Of course, there was the matter of rank, she told herself, attempting to be fair, but even that didn’t excuse Ross’s behavior.
Nor was it Kincaid’s fault that he was male and automatically a member of the club, she reminded herself, curbing the unjustified flash of anger she felt towards him. In its place, she felt a sudden longing for him so acute that it caught at her chest like a vise.
He’d have Ross wrapped round his finger in no time, and she—she wouldn’t feel so afraid. The law had always been her friend, her protector, and now she found herself on the other side of the wall.
Damn Ross. Well, if he wouldn’t work with her, she saw no reason why she should cooperate more than regulation demanded. But that, at least, she would have to do. Summoning a smile for Mackenzie, she turned back and held out her hand. “Right, then. Let’s get on with it.”
As Mackenzie swabbed each of her fingers in turn, Gemma gazed out the window. The rain had come on, softening the outline of shrubs, drive, and barn. God, what a mess. She should be glad this wasn’t her scene,
her case, her responsibility, she told herself. And so she might be, if she could just rid herself of the nagging uncertainty she felt over Hazel.
A movement in the drive caught her eye. Two uniformed officers had emerged from around the corner of the house, a third figure between them. As Gemma watched, one constable opened the door of a marked car and eased the third person into the back, protecting the top of the dark, curly-haired head from the doorframe with a large hand.
Gemma jerked her hand away from Mackenzie, reaching out as if she could stop the car door closing over Hazel’s white, frightened face.
Chapter Eleven
I wave the quantum o’ the sin, The hazard of concealing;
But och; it hardens a’ within, And petrifies the feelin!
robert burns, “First Epistle to John Lapraik”
Carnmore, April
It was only after Charles had been buried in the Chapeltown churchyard that Livvy began to realize all griefs were unique.
She had lost her mother at sixteen, to a lingering respi-ratory illness that not even her physician father had been able to cure. Livvy’s grieving had been wild and hot, punctuated by racking sobs and waves of such hollowness that she thought surely her body must collapse into this interior abyss.
But with Charles’s death, she’d felt a surprised numbness, and a cold that grew daily, settling into bone and flesh like the weight of the snow that lay across the Braes.
She felt dull, diminished, as if her soul had become a hard, heavy thing inside her.
And secreted inside that brittle shell, a kernel of guilt; for Livvy knew Charles’s death to be her fault.
She had not loved him enough. She had liked him, respected him, admired him even, and between them had grown a comfortable intimacy and dependence. But there had been no passion on her part, and it was that missing bond that might have held him tethered, to her and to Will. Had he seen her failure, when he’d looked in her eyes for the last time?
In late March, the snow turned to rain. The already saturated ground became spongy with moisture; water seeped and trickled down the hillsides into the fast-flowing Crombie Burn. The village children came out to play, like rabbits emerging from their burrows, and the men began to talk about the spring planting.