“Weel, the sooner you answer our questions satisfacto-rily, the sooner ye can go—although you may be obliged to stay in Scotland for a few more days.” To his delight, it did not seem to have occurred to her that she could refuse to talk to him until she had a lawyer’s counsel, and as he had not actually charged her, he was not obliged to advise her of her rights.
Munro came back, his arrival silencing her protests for the moment. While Munro swabbed the table, Ross turned on the recorder, stated the date and time, and identified the participants.
“Can we get ye some more coffee, Mrs. Cavendish?”
he asked as he sat down. “Munro can fetch it from the machine—”
“No, please, I don’t want anything, except to go home.
I don’t understand why you’ve brought me here.”
“Ach, weel, why don’t we start at the beginning, then.
Tell me about your relationship with the deceased, Donald Brodie.”
She twisted her hands together in her lap but met his gaze directly. “We were close once, years ago, before I was married. But I hadn’t seen him in years.”
“Then how do you explain your row with him after Alison Grant came calling at the B&B last night?”
Her hands tightened, and he heard the small catch of breath in her throat. “You’re mistaken, Chief Inspector.
We didn’t argue.”
“Is that so?” He smiled at her. “Weel, I have it otherwise from a number of sources. How do you explain that, Mrs. Cavendish?”
“I—I don’t know.”
“You and Mr. Brodie went out together after dinner, and you were heard shouting. Now, I would call that a row, myself.”
“I—I was worried about the child. She had a child with her when she came to see him.”
“Alison Grant?”
Hazel nodded. “I was afraid he’d made promises to the woman—to Alison—that would hurt the child.”
“A very noble sentiment, Mrs. Cavendish. And it was that worry drove you to have sex in the woods with Mr.
Brodie?” Ross thought it worth the gamble that the DNA test on the semen sample found in the woods would give him a positive identification. He knew Hazel Cavendish had been there from the fiber match, and it seemed highly unlikely that she’d been meeting someone else.
Her eyes had widened. “Oh, God,” she whispered, covering her face with her hands.
“It will go easier for ye, lass, if you’ll just tell us the truth,” encouraged Ross at his most sympathetic.
“It wasn’t like that—what you said.” She dropped her
hands, gripping the table edge as if it might anchor her.
“He’d asked me to come. Donald. He wanted me to leave my husband. It wasn’t until I saw that woman and her child that it really hit me what damage we were contemplating. Not just my husband, my daughter, but this woman who cared about him, and her child, and then I saw that it would ripple outwards from there.
“We did argue. I was angry with him, but even angrier with myself. I told him it was never going to work out between us. What we did then . . . in the woods . . . I suppose it was a good-bye.”
“And this morning?”
“I couldn’t face seeing him again. I thought I’d just pack and leave, but there was no train. I decided I had to face up to things, so I came back. And that was when . . .
Gemma told me . . .” She lifted a hand to her mouth, pressing her fingers against quivering lips.
“Why didn’t you tell us this from the start?”
“I was so ashamed. And I suppose I was hoping it wouldn’t have to come out, that my husband wouldn’t have to know.”
That was it, thought Ross, feeling a firecracker fizz of inspiration. That was the reason that made the pieces fit.
Of course she hadn’t wanted her husband to find out, not if she’d made up her mind to go back to him.
“That’s all very plausible, Mrs. Cavendish,” he said.
“But I think that’s not quite how it happened. I think you met Mr. Brodie again this morning, and that when you told him you meant to go back to your husband, he threatened to expose you. Then you found some excuse to take the gun—no, wait.” Ross frowned, working out an even better scenario. “I think you told him last night, and he threatened you then. Was that why you argued? And the sex, you were placating him. Did
you invite him to meet you this morning, a romantic rendezvous? He would never have thought you meant to harm him—”
“No!” Hazel pushed away from the table and stood. “I would never have hurt Donald! How could you even think—”
“Sit ye down, Mrs. Cavendish,” soothed Ross. Having failed to shock her into a confession, he knew he had little hard evidence to support his theory. “If you’ll—”
There was a knock at the interview room door. Munro got up, and as he went out, Ross glimpsed one of the officers assigned to the Aviemore detail.
A moment later, Munro looked in again and said, “Sir, a word with ye . . .”
Ross switched off the tape recorder and joined him in the corridor.
“You’d better hear what P. C. Clarke has to say,”
Munro told him quietly, “before you go any further.”
The constable nodded at him. “Sir. Someone from the car hire office in the railway station recalls seeing a woman matching Mrs. Cavendish’s description early this morning.
He remembered because it was odd to see someone turn up, bags and all, two hours before the scheduled train. He said she sat in the waiting area for half an hour, then went out again.”
“Did he remember the time?” asked Ross, his heart sinking.
“Getting on for six o’clock, sir. He had come in to arrange an early car pickup.”
“All right,” Ross growled. “Get a statement. Then have him make a definite identification.” He turned away, swearing under his breath. That would make it just about the time Inspector James had reported hearing a gunshot, and he bloody well couldn’t make a case on the premise
that Hazel Cavendish had been in two places at the same time.
Gemma left Benvulin when the team arrived to search the offices. With a last glance back at the house, set like a jewel above the river, and the distinctive twin pagodas of the distillery, she got into the BMW and eased the car into the drive. When she reached the road, she hesitated a moment, then turned left, away from Innesfree.
Heather had said she’d bring Pascal back to the B&B
to collect his car later on, so Gemma had no reason to hurry. Nor was she sure the forensics team at the B&B
would have finished their search of the room she shared with Hazel, and the thought of being on the premises while someone went through her belongings made her skin crawl.
But there was more to her reluctance than that, she realized—she just wasn’t ready to face the others, to answer their questions about Hazel, to see those she had considered friends as suspects.
She drove on, absently watching the light and shadow play across the hills, through the hamlet of Nethy Bridge, and then across the Spey and into the planned Victorian town of Grantown-on-Spey. Finding a spot in the car park, she carefully locked the BMW and walked down to the High Street.
Most of the shops were closed, it being a Sunday afternoon, but the newsagents and pubs and cafés seemed to be doing a brisk business. There were people walking purposefully along the pavements, which suited Gemma—she felt the need to be near people doing ordinary things, but she didn’t want to speak to anyone.
“Wallpaper,” Kincaid would say accusingly to her when she got into such a mood. “You want human wallpaper.”
Imagining the sound of his voice made her throat tighten with longing, and she felt a wash of relief as she thought of his arrival tomorrow.
Damn her pride—she must have sounded an ungrateful cow on the phone earlier. Not that she had exactly protested, but he must have heard the reluctance in her voice. How could she have even considered letting her desire to do it all herself—and to get the better of Chief Inspector Ross—get in the way of anything that might help Hazel?