“And she says, ‘Oh, please, can I borrow your shotgun? I need to kill somebody’?” said Ross, with practiced sarcasm.
Munro was undaunted. “Maybe they were in it together. MacGillivray says, according to this”—he waved the paper—“that he drove to Ballindalloch yesterday morning, but he didn’t arrive there until well after Brodie was killed.”
“That’s verra neat,” Ross said with a smile. “She gets rid of her unfaithful lover; he gets rid of his rival—two birds with one stone, so to speak. I’m beginning to think you’ve got conspiracies on the brain.”
“I suppose it is a wee bit far-fetched.” Munro folded
himself back into the spindly desk chair, his face creased with disappointment.
Ross relented. “We’ll have another word with the lassie. And with Callum MacGillivray. But in the meantime”—Ross pulled the reports towards him again and thumbed through them—“I’m curious about Mr. Innes.”
After Innes’s wife had told them during their initial interview that her husband had been out when Brodie’s body was found, Munro had talked to him again. John Innes had confirmed his visit to the farm shop on a neighboring estate but added that he wasn’t sure exactly what time he’d left the B&B. Ross now saw, however, that when an inquiry team had questioned the clerk at the shop, she’d told them Innes had not come in until almost seven o’clock.
Yesterday Ross had not taken the man too seriously as a suspect, but then he’d had Hazel Cavendish in his sights.
Meditatively, he said, “We know John Innes left the house some time before the body was discovered, because Mrs.
Innes had been working in her garden when Inspector James told her the news. Why did it take him so long to run to the farm shop?”
“Did he do something else, maybe dispose of the gun?” Munro suggested. “If he stopped along the road and approached Brodie through the wood, he could have put the gun back in the car and got rid of it anywhere.”
“Wipe the smile off your face, man,” Ross said crossly.
“That’s a dismal prospect. We canna search the whole of Invernesshire.”
“Aye. Except that, since Brodie was shot at such close quarters, some blood or tissue might have transferred itself to the barrel of the gun—”
“And from there to the car,” agreed Ross. Trust Munro to see the bright side. “It’s worth getting a warrant to
have forensics go over Innes’s Land Rover. But why would John Innes want to kill Donald Brodie?” Inspector James had said she thought the Inneses might have cultivated Brodie for his connections, which matched Ross’s own impression. “Is there some way the Inneses could benefit from Brodie’s leaving the distillery to Hazel Cavendish?”
“That I canna tell ye. But I thought yesterday that the man was nervous about more than the discomfort of his guests.”
“Aye,” Ross said, remembering John Innes’s sweaty agitation, and his insistence on getting back into his kitchen. That, in turn, reminded Ross of his own empty stomach. It was getting on past teatime, and he had begun to think longingly of his dinner and a dram, not necessarily in that order, when another report caught his eye.
“Well, I’ll be buggered,” he said, skimming the page.
“It seems John Innes’s wee brother has a record. Why didna someone point this out to me yesterday?”
He had fixed a beady gaze on Munro when one of the female constables appeared at his elbow. Mackenzie, he thought her name was. She had been first on the scene.
“Sir.”
“What is it, lass?” Ross prompted when she didn’t continue. “I havena got all day.”
“It’s the gun, sir. They found a gun in the river, and it matches the description of Mr. Innes’s Purdy.”
Chapter Fifteen
Hunger lives here, alone with larks and sheep.
Sweet spot, sweet spot.
—robert louis stevenson,
letter to Sidney Colvin
John Innes came out to greet them, and when he had been introduced to Kincaid, led them into the kitchen through the scullery. The police, he explained, had finished with their tests earlier that afternoon.
Gemma noticed Kincaid’s interested glance at the gun cabinet as they passed through, but he made no comment.
Turning back, she saw that the hook above the back door, where Louise had been in the habit of leaving her keys, was now empty. A bit late for instituting safety precautions, she thought, a classic case of locking the barn door after the horse had escaped.
“Come in,” John urged them as they filed into the kitchen. “I’ll put the kettle on.” He bustled about, filling the kettle, pulling two stools out from a little nook under the work island. There were two chairs at the small table under the window where Gemma assumed John and Louise took their own meals.
“Nice kitchen,” Kincaid said with a whistle. To Gemma’s amusement, since he’d refinished the kitchen in his Hampstead flat, he had become a connoisseur of cabinets and cookers.
“Functional,” John agreed. “Although I have to admit I miss the old oil-fired cooker. We lived with it for about a year while we were doing the refurbishing. Cozy, but not practical for the cookery class—besides the fact that cooking on the bloody thing is a challenge in itself.”
Gemma was about to agree, for the much-prized Aga in their Notting Hill kitchen drove her to distraction, when she thought of all the help and encouragement Hazel had given her as she tried to master the cooker. Following her miscarriage, it had provided an excuse for the comforting time spent visiting in the kitchen with her friend. Swallowing, she searched for a change of subject.
“Where’s Louise?” she asked, looking round.
“Gone for a walk,” John told her. “She should be back soon. What about Hazel and Heather? Will they be joining us?” His eyes flicked towards the barn, so Gemma guessed he’d been watching from the window.
“I don’t know,” she said honestly, and saw Kincaid and Pascal Benoit look at her sharply. “They’ve—they’ve some catching up to do.” It wasn’t her business to break the news to anyone about Hazel’s inheritance; Hazel and Heather could share that information when they were ready.
Kincaid slid onto a stool with the graceful economy of movement Gemma always found surprising in a man his height. “Something smells wonderful,” he said, sniffing, and Gemma focused on the cooking aromas that had been tickling the edge of her awareness . . . onions, floury potatoes, smoky fish.
“It’s Cullen Skink.” John chuckled at her startled ex-
pression. “That’s not as bad as it sounds, believe me. It’s a Scottish fish soup or stew, made with smoked haddock, potatoes, and milk. Martin and I drove to the east coast this morning to get a real Finnan haddock. There are several small smokehouses that still prepare the fish in the traditional way; that’s a slow, cold smoking with no artifi-cial colorings or flavorings added. We bought fresh mus-sels as well; they’ll go into the pot at the last minute, along with butter, fresh parsley, and pepper.” The electric kettle had come to a boil, and as he spoke, John spooned loose tea into a large crockery teapot.
“You’ve gone to a great deal of trouble for us,” Kincaid said. “All this must be hard for you.”
John had his back to them, reaching for the mugs hanging on a rack. He hesitated for a moment, hand in the air. Then he seemed to collect himself and, lifting down a mug, said without turning, “Yes. Donald was a good friend. I still can’t believe he’s gone.” He busied himself with the tea things. “Have ye any idea when they’ll release his . . . body . . . for the funeral? Christ—I never even thought—did Donald go to church?”