Murder on the Moor (14 page)

“I don’t think so, but I’ll hurt the person who fired. Sounds like the shot came from over there. Keep your head down.”

Shielding Helen, he plunged into the bracken.

They walked several paces
, the wet branches cracking dully beneath their feet and seeming to echo among the tall pine trees, making it impossible to conceal their whereabouts. Fallen logs and tangled tussocks of undergrowth conspired to trip them up at every turn.

“Over here!” called a weak male voice. “I’m hurt.”

Rex and Helen picked up speed and found Cuthbert in a clearing slumped against a gnarled tree stump.

“What happened?” Rex demanded.

Cuthbert raised his head. “I sprained my ankle when I fell into a blasted bog. I’ve been stuck here waiting for a search party. Where the devil have you been? I need to get this ankle on ice before it puffs up.”

“Did you shoot at that stag?” Rex asked, quite willing to leave Cuthbert in his misery for a while longer.

“I did not. I heard voices in the forest and fired off a shot to alert you as to where I was. I haven’t seen any bloody deer all day.”

“Have you seen Donnie?”

“No, now get me up and out of here. Please.”

Rex appraised Cuthbert’s small, if dense size. The path back to the lodge led over diverse terrain and was too uneven for the three of them to walk abreast supporting Cuthbert between them.

“It won’t be easy,” Rex said, thinking about sending Helen back to the house for Hamish and bringing some sort of makeshift stretcher.

However, he didn’t like the idea of Helen roaming about the hills by herself, nor did he much like the idea of leaving her here while he went back. All the same, he knew the way better and Cuthbert had the gun in case he and Helen were confronted by a wild boar or other threat. Rex had read in
The Times
that wild boar, extinct before the seventeenth century, were being reintroduced into the Highlands in a forestry regeneration project and, while he applauded this environmental effort, he still wouldn’t want to come face to snout with one of these large, hairy beasts.

“Helen, I should go and get help from the house. I’ll be as quick as I can. Will—”

He was interrupted by a loud crashing of disturbed branches and the stomp of feet approaching through the bracken. Pine twigs quivered, wet ferns parted, and Donnie stepped into the clearing with Honey in tow.

“Lad, am I pleased to see you,” Rex said over the thumping of his heart. “We have a minor emergency. Cuthbert is lame and needs a ride back to the lodge.”

“I heard the shot,” Donnie said. “Did ye shoot yerself in the foot, Mr. Farquharson?”

“I did not!”

“He just sprained it,” Rex informed him.

“Where were you, boy?” Cuthbert demanded. “I’ll die of hypothermia if I sit out here any longer.”

“Och, it’s not that cold,” Rex told him.

“It’s damp. I can feel it in my bones.”

“Well, let’s get you onto the pony.”

“There’s no saddle,” Cuthbert objected. “And no stirrups. How will I keep my balance? I can’t risk falling on this bum ankle.”

“What a baby,” Helen murmured to Rex.

“If you’d stayed at the lodge, like I asked you, this would never have happened.” Rex pulled him to his feet—or, more specifically, to his one good foot.

“Estelle was driving me bonkers. I had to get out of there. We have separate wings at our castle in Fife.”

“We’ll lay him across the pony,” Donnie suggested. “Jist like a trussed deer.”

“What, on my stomach?” Cuthbert protested.

“It’s safest.”

Rex trusted the lad’s judgment in this matter. The position had the added advantage of making it hard for Cuthbert to speak. Mr. Farquharson hobbled over to the sturdy animal, which snorted and shook its head and neck with vigor. Donnie held the reins firmly and coaxed her with soft words in Gaelic.

“Over you go, Mr. Farquharson,” he instructed. “Honey is plenty shaggy under the belly. Jist hold on tight.”

Rex took Helen aside. “We’re aboot halfway to the Loch Lochy Hotel. I shall press on.” He had questions for Cuthbert regarding his conversation with Moira last night, but they would have to wait until he got back to the lodge.

“Can I come?” Helen pleaded.

“Not this time, lass. I can make it faster on my own. Don’t tell the others where I’m going. Tell them I went to see if the stag fell in the woods.”

“Why are you going to the hotel?”

“Less you know, the better. You may inadvertently give something away.”

“We’re ready, Mr. Graves,” the lad called out.

Cuthbert, arranged like a stuffed saddlebag across the horse’s back, moaned and groaned pitifully, complaining that he would never be able to get his boot off with all the swelling. Honey swished her long tail against the swarm of midges, lashing her human burden in the process.

Rex managed not to laugh, but had a hard time controlling a grin. He would have loved to take a picture on the cell phone to show Alistair. However, he did not wish to advertise the fact that he was in possession of a phone. He reminded Helen not to mention it.

“Rex, you didn’t tell me what the other thing was,” she whispered anxiously. “You know—when you said the murder could have been committed by any one of the guests, except for perhaps two things.”

“If you look closely, you’ll see it,” he said enigmatically. “You best get going now. They’re waiting for you.”

“You’re impossible,” she said in quiet exasperation.

“See you in a short while,” he called out, waving them off.

Donnie led the procession. Cuthbert’s winded protestations grew progressively muted as Rex continued in the opposite direction, bound for the Loch Lochy Hotel. What exactly he expected to find there, he could not say, but that was where five of his guests resided, and the others, with the exception of Helen, had spent time there at one point or another.

He had all but exhausted the leads at the lodge. The hotel might hold the key.

By the time Rex
stumbled to within sight of the Loch Lochy Hotel, he was weary, dirty, and dying of thirst after his second and longest trek of the day through dense wood and steep corries.

The valley that harbored the hotel would have produced a pretty postcard had the sky been less cloudy and gray. The wide loch, situated ten miles southwest of Loch Ness along the Great Glen Way, stretched almost that same length again. It made his own loch look like a puddle.

At the northernmost end, the two-story, white-washed hotel squatted on a grassy shelf above the water’s edge. The building looked in dire need of a new coat of paint, the black letters of the hotel peeling off the façade. A pair of weather-bleached antlers heralded the front entrance, approached by a gravel forecourt and reached by a shallow flight of steps.

Slipping unobserved through the front door, Rex cast an eye around the lobby carpeted in olive tartan, relieved to encounter no one, although a medley of voices sounded from somewhere down the corridor. A pungent aroma of leek and carrot assailed his nostrils, spiking his hunger and serving to remind him that he had missed tea.

With an agility that belied his bulk, he darted to reception where a sprinkling of keys dangled from pigeon holes aligned on the wall behind the desk. Grabbing hold of the thick guest register, he thumbed backward until he found the entries from June of two summers ago, whereupon he tore out the relevant pages. Fully intending to return them to Mr. and Mrs. Allerdice in due course, he stuffed them into his anorak.

One of the pigeonholes contained a letter addressed to Mr. R. R. Beardsley, which he also pocketed. Swiping the corresponding key off its hook, he crept up the plaid-covered stairs and made his way along a narrow corridor, decorated with Victorian hunting scenes in cheap frames and grizzled deer heads staring at him through marble eyes. He stopped at room number nine.

With a glance over his shoulder, he unlocked the door and stepped into a room papered with faded roses and crammed with mismatched furniture that had seen better days two decades ago. The window afforded a view over the shawl of brown sand and shingle beach by the loch. An assortment of small pleasure craft roped to a short jetty bobbed over the sullen waves. Rex closed the curtains that suggested the dingy pink hue of garments run through too many wash cycles with non-like colors, and turned on the central ceiling lamp.

Beneath the window, a wooden kneehole chest of drawers with a chair drawn up to it served as a desk for a battered laptop. A pile of dictionaries, encyclopedias, and nature books, along with a stack of personal mail, towered pell-mell beside it. Rex unfolded the first letter, forwarded to the hotel from a Glasgow address two weeks before and originating from an editor at the
Inverness News-Press.

Dear Mr. Beardsley:

Thank you for your recent submission for an article on the Loch Lochy Monster. Unfortunately, we are not currently accepting ideas for stories on that subject, but wish you success in placing your article elsewhere.

Yours sincerely . . .

Similar rejections accounted for most of the mail. The letter in his pocket was no exception. Beardsley must have inundated the national and local papers with queries. He had no reason for presuming on the Allerdices’ hospitality if he could not reasonably hope to sell the Lizzie story and generate some publicity for the hotel. The man was a fraud.

Crossing the fitted brown carpet marred by a spattering of dark stains, Rex extended his search to the wardrobe, which swung open with a disconcertingly loud
creak
. A collection of clothes drooped from their hangers, most of them creased and giving off a whiff of damp and mold. One garment wrapped in plastic immediately incited his interest.

Pulling it out, he discovered a crisp scout leader uniform beneath the protective sheathing. His heart beating faster, he examined the tan-colored uniform.

He dove into the mound of sweaters and scarves on the top shelf, his fingers encountering, right at the back, a hard slimy surface. As he extracted a child’s red plastic case, contents shifted inside. He drew a deep breath and, using a handkerchief from his pocket, set the case on the quilted floral bedspread. The catch sprang open with a few jiggles of the top of a wire hanger. He raised the lid.

His responses and reactions froze, suspended in shock as he gazed into the red plastic case. With the aid of the hanger, he flipped through the photographs. One in particular caught his eye. Kirsty MacClure lay in a bed of ferns, a bewildered expression captured on her cherubic face as she stared into the camera lens.

On the reverse side of the photo, in black ink, was written the name Jackie. “Beth” appeared on the back of Melissa Bates’ likeness. Why had Beardsley used different names? Surely he could not hope to fool someone who came across them by chance.

In a corner of the case, he found a lock of flaxen hair bound by a pink ribbon, the same shade of blond as Kirsty’s. Other mementos—strands of dark, light brown, and auburn hair, and bright trinkets of jewelry such as a child might wear—were stowed beneath the photos. Retrieving Moira’s phone from his pocket and stilling the tremor in his hands, Rex photographed each picture with grim precision.

He closed the case and hid it behind the pile of clothes on the top shelf, where Beardsley had presumably thought maid service would never look. He bent the hanger back into shape and smoothed down the bedspread. No need to dally. He already had more than he had bargained for and more than he ever would have wished to see.

With an ear to the door, he eased it open and locked it behind him. He approached the stairs leading to the top floor where Shona Allerdice had mentioned the family lived. A purple velvet cord displaying a “Private” sign blocked off the steps. Rex stepped over it.

The first room he came to clearly belonged to Flora. A photograph of her and Alistair stood on the dressing table, the mirror reflecting back at him his mud-besmirched clothing and unshaven face. He returned his attention back to the photo. As he was studying it, a light tap at the door spun him around, and an elderly maid in a white cap and apron entered, and shrieked. The same woman had made up his room when he stayed at the hotel.

Rex held out his hand in appeasement. “Don’t worry. I’m no a burglar,” he assured her.

“Mr. Graves? Ye gave me such a turn! I hardly recognized ye,” she said in a homey Scottish burr. “Have ye come from Gleneagle Lodge in the rain?”

“Aye, I walked all the way.”

“Are the family still wi’ ye? We expected them back last night or this morning, after the worst of the weather had passed. Did Flora send ye to fetch some things?” The woman looked confused by his presence in the young woman’s room.

Rex lowered his voice. “They’re all at the lodge. We had an accident last night, and what with one thing and another—”

“An accident!”

“The Allerdices are fine but, now that you’ve found me out, perhaps you can help me.”

“Best come away from the private quarters then, else they’ll have my guts for garters—unless they sent ye up here fer something in particular?”

“I was just snooping.”

“Are ye on a case, Mr. Graves?” the maid asked, curiosity burning in her bulging green eyes. “I keep up wi’ all yer cases. Och, the one aboot that beautiful French actress on that exotic island—”

“The Sabine Durand case.”

“Aye, and the Christmas mystery at—where was it noo?”

“I need to make an important call without further delay,” Rex cut in. “I was hoping to find a phone up here where I could talk in private.”

“Come downstairs before someone sees ye. I get off in twenty minutes. Can I give ye a lift back to Gleneagle Lodge? It’s not far oot of my way.”

“I wouldna say no, Mrs … ?”

“Phyllis. Phyllis McIntyre.”

She took him down the back stairs and into a large modernized kitchen, empty of staff and redolent of the vegetables he had noticed before, stewing in a large pot on the industrial-size stove in readiness for dinner. By that time, they would be pulverized beyond recognition of their original form, as experienced during one of his meals there. Trays of dirty tea plates were stacked on the counter next to the serving hatch.

“Ye look like ye could do with a cup o’ tea,” Phyllis said, drying red-roughened hands on her apron.

“Och, you’re a godsend. Could I use the phone at reception? I don’t know how long my mobile will hold oot.”

“Aye, go ahead. Nobody’ll bother ye. Most of the guests went oot after tea now that the rain has let up.”

Rex made his way back to the lobby and deftly replaced Mr. Beardsley’s key on its hook. He then dialed the number for Chief Inspector Dalgerry, who was heading up the Moor murders investigation. He had met the dour Scotsman on one occasion in the course of his work. Dalgerry was like a dog with a bone when it came to pursuing a lead, often loath to give up one favorite bone while other leads went ignored. It could prove difficult to persuade him that the traveling salesman in his custody might not be the child abductor after all.

Refusing to leave a message with a subordinate, Rex finally got through to Dalgerry’s voicemail. “This is Rex Graves, QC,” he informed the chief inspector. “I may have an important break in the Kirsty MacClure and Melissa Bates cases, and enough evidence to secure a search warrant for one Rob Roy Beardsley, that’s
e-y
, from Glasgow, currently staying at the Loch Lochy Hotel.” Rex left his local address, directions, and phone numbers at which to reach him.

The chief inspector might even argue that the photos Rex found had been posted by his detainee and downloaded from the Internet. Yet, DNA testing of the locks of hair would prove a physical link to the victims if Beardsley was the culprit. Rex had evidence too that put Beardsley in the vicinity of Melissa Bates’ murder, but he was saving that information for his grand finale.

When he returned to the hotel kitchen, a cup of tea and two buttered scones, split in two and filled with lumpy strawberry jam, were awaiting on a Formica-topped table. He thanked Phyllis profusely as she cleared the trays on the counter and loaded the dishwasher.

“I was surprised to see a photo of a colleague of mine in Flora’s room,” he said between mouthfuls. “An advocate by the name of Alistair Frazer.”

Phyllis glanced at him over her shoulder. “Handsome gentleman. Stayed here in early spring wi’ his solicitor friend. Flora took a shine to him. I think that photo in her room was taken at a wine and cheese event at the hotel. Mrs. Allerdice likes to photograph the guests for the hotel book.”

Rex gulped back the last of his tea as Phyllis put on her coat. “Where does she keep the book?” he inquired, getting up from the table.

“Now, now, Mr. Graves. Ye’ll get me in trouble fer sure.”

“I won’t. In fact, if you help solve this important case, I’ll make sure you get some of the credit.”

“Oh, aye? I’d be famous then.” Phyllis hastened to tell him that the book was kept in the office and unlocked the door for him.

After what seemed like an eternity, he finally put his hands on the photo he was looking for. When he came out of the room, Phyllis was anxiously waiting for him in the hall, hopping from one foot to the other in her black lace-up shoes.

“There ye are at last,” she said, knotting a head scarf under her double chin. “I’ll be off, then,” she called into a room off the hall. Sports commentary punctuated by loud exhortations in a foreign language escaped through the partially open door.

“There’s only the cook and the waiter in charge here until the Allerdices get back,” Phyllis told Rex. “The waiter is from Portugal and doesn’t speak verra good English. But he manages to communicate fine wi’ the ladies, if ye ken what I mean. Portugal’s playing today. That’s what my old man will be watching.”

“I’d be watching the soccer too, if I could,” Rex said with regret.

“My Vic tapes all the games. I could get a video to you.”

“That’s verra kind, but it’s not the same as watching it in real time, is it?”

“I don’t see why,” Phyllis replied, closing the main door to the hotel behind them. “I catch up on my soaps after work that way.”

“How long have you been working here?” he asked as they crossed the parking lot, reaching her Morris Minor in time for a renewed onslaught of rain.

“Four years, ever since my husband went on disability.”