Murder on the Moor (15 page)

“So you would recall the drowning incident here at Loch Lochy?”

“Aye, it were dreadful!” Phyllis turned on the ignition and started the wipers. “Poor Mrs. Allerdice were a wreck after that.”

“And Flora?”

“Och, she moped around for months waiting for a letter from her young man in America. Right scared she is she might turn into an old maid—at twenty-one! When yer friend Mr. Frazer stayed at the hotel, she perked up a wee bit. He took an interest in her watercolours.”

“Mr. Frazer is a kind and sensitive man.”

“He is that.” Hunched over the wheel, Phyllis drove with caution, looking left and right. “Can ye credit all this rain? And we were having such a lovely summer.”

“What can you tell me about Mr. Beardsley, the journalist?”

“Keeps to hisself. Doesna like to be disturbed when he’s working, so I only do his room when he’s oot.”

“Is he gone for long periods?”

“I dinna ken aboot that. I do ken he sometimes comes back wi’ mud on his boots. The guests are supposed to remove their wet shoes when they come in, but most of them don’t bother. Now, the Canadians always do because that’s their custom back home. ’Course, Donnie always forgets. But that lad isna right in the heed. Mental age of a bairn.”

The countryside passed them by in a showered succession of pine trees and sheep-populated meadows while Rex pumped Phyllis for information about her employers.

“You can drop me off here by the deer fence,” he said five minutes later.

“But ye’ll get soaked!”

“You wouldna be able to take me all the way anyway. This is a shortcut.”

“Well, off ye go, afore they miss ye over at the lodge. I’ll no say anything to the owners. Here, take my umbrella.”

“No need.” Rex pulled his hood over his head and, thanking her again, ducked out of the car.

As Phyllis drove off, Moira’s cell phone rang in his pocket. Seeking cover under a spreading oak, he fished it out and, flipping it open, saw it was a London number. “Hello?” he answered, cupping his hand over his other ear to hear against the sound of leaves dripping rain all around him. A bedraggled hare shot off into the wet undergrowth by his feet, startling him.

“Thaddeus here,” the caller announced. “I have some information I think you might find useful in relation to one of your guests.”

“Would that be a Rob Roy Beardsley?” Rex preempted. He listened attentively to what the young law clerk had managed to dig up.

Unfortunately, there was nothing to link Beardsley to Moira’s death more than the other guests at Gleneagle Lodge, so they all remained on the proverbial hook for now.

Rex jogged through the
sodden grass and down the other side of the glen. The old stone lodge in the valley breasted the rain against a smudged green backdrop of hill and forest. Loch Lown stretched before it, lurking with its secrets beneath a shroud of mist. Would he ever be able to view the loch again without seeing Moira’s body floating face down at the surface?

As he darted across the lawn, he was relieved to count all eight guests through the living room window. Helen, staring toward the loch, gave a sudden movement when she saw him. He shot a finger to his lips. He did not want to announce his presence to the others just yet.

Before entering the house, he took a detour to the stable to ensure Honey was safely inside and not roaming about wreaking more damage to his new plantings. Nor did he relish the prospect of rounding her up. A more ill-natured creature he had yet to encounter outside captivity. She only seemed content when she was munching on something—preferably something of his.

Recovering his breath after the sprint across the glen, he peered through the small window at the near end of the stable and managed to glimpse the pony’s honey-hued rump sticking out from the stall. About to turn away, a gaping white-washed space among the gardening equipment caught his eye. The scythe was missing.

Mr. Dean, the gardener from the village, did not come on weekends. Who then had taken it? Perhaps a logical and innocent explanation existed for the scythe’s disappearance. Instinct, however, told Rex otherwise.

Pulling open one of the double doors to the stable, he penetrated the murky gloom, guided by the snorting of the pony. The electricity had never been connected to the out buildings. On an overcast afternoon such as today, scant light filtered within, and he proceeded with caution. He felt his way between piled bales of hay bundled with twine—in the nick of time avoiding collision with a long curved blade dully gleaming in midair.

With a gasp of fear, he inched backward to the doors and unbolted the other side, admitting enough daylight to lay his hands on an electric torch suspended from a nail on the wall. Beaming it on the scythe, he saw it was resting across a bale, the blade sticking out into empty space. He listened out for another human presence. Honey whinnied and stamped her hoofs in the stall.

He touched his forefinger to the blade. Sharp as a razor. Mr. Dean had sat on the old well in the courtyard just the other day honing it with a whetstone. The ringing scrape it made had almost driven Rex crazy.

A dangerous place to leave a scythe, he mused, right in somebody’s path to the stalls. An unsuspecting person might run into it, or risk decapitation by someone lying in wait. He buried the sickle under the loose hay and went about flushing out the dark corners and recesses of the stable with the glare from the flashlight. A sudden movement under a heap of dustsheets resolved into a hump-backed rodent skittering into the shadows, trailing a long skinny tail. The horse snorted. Then silence.

Without further delay, he closed the stable doors before the grim reaper could discover that his deadly ambush had been foiled—and try something else. With a renewed sense of urgency, Rex crossed to the house, reviewing the identity of the intended victim: A limited number considering the location; who came to the stable? And how did this link to Moira’s death?

Pulling off his boots and anorak in the hallway, he crept to the library and rummaged in one of the built-in cabinets where he kept his Ordnance Survey maps. The grids representing 1 km on the 1:25,000 Series made it easy to navigate in the remotest terrain.He found the location he was looking for along with the notes he had taken on his findings at the time, never realizing how important they would turn out to be.

The rare Dalradian limestone on Rannoch Moor, dating back 600 million years, yielded soil suited to northern felwort, bottle sedge, wild strawberry, and globe flower. Another plant, the Rannoch Rush was exclusive to the area, and he had culled a sample and preserved it in an envelope, even going so far as to mark the grid where he had found it. The plant was dried out now, but there was no mistaking the tri-clustered carpels and spiky, reddish flower. It was identical to the sample he had scraped off one of Beardsley’s hiking boots that morning.

“Rex? Is that you?” Helen appeared in the doorway to the library. “Did you find out anything?” she asked in a hushed voice.

“Aye. The police should be here shortly. How are our guests behaving?”

“All right. Just a bit weary and bored.”

“Well, what I’m aboot to tell them will perk things up a bit.”

“What have you got there?”

“Some interesting bits of scenery.”

“From your walk over to Loch Lochy?”

“No, from Rannoch Moor.”

Helen wrinkled her brow. “I don’t follow.”

“You will,” he assured her. “And stay within sight. I found something grisly in the stable.”

She gasped. “Honey? Is she …”

“No, the pony is fine.”

“Good. I had a vision out of
The Godfather
.”

“I doubt it was a horse’s head the killer was after.”

“Moira’s killer? Oh, Rex, you’re scaring me.” Helen melted into his arms.

He stood rocking her against him. “Nothing will happen to you, lass,” he assured her.

He strolled into the living room where the guests slouched on armchairs and sofas. Alistair set aside his newspaper. Flora, curled up on the loveseat, her dun-colored hair spread over the gold chenille cushions, slept soundlessly. Cuthbert Farquharson reclined in a chair with his sprained leg on a footstool, his hunting rifle propped up beside him. Estelle was in the process of wrapping a hot water bottle filled with crunching ice around his ankle.

Cuthbert waved a tumbler of liquor at Rex. “Hope you don’t mind, old chap, but I helped myself to your whisky to drown the pain.”

“I think I’ll have a wee dram myself. Hair of the dog.” Rex’s early morning headache had not amounted to much, but it was still there, gently pinching between his eyes.

“You’re soaked,” Shona exclaimed. “Sit here by the fire,” she fussed, patting a padded tapestry chair.

“Did you find the felled deer?” Hamish asked from a window seat, where he had been staring gloomily at the view over the narrow loch.

“I searched everywhere,” Rex lied. “In case it was wounded and had limped off somewhere. No luck.”

“My shot went nowhere near it,” Farquharson rejoined airily. “I fired into the air when I heard voices.”

“I had to be sure,” Rex said, scribbling in his pad.

Stand by. Need to detain R.R.B. until police arrive
.

He ripped out the page and folded it, then passed it to Alistair on his way to the drinks cabinet.

His colleague glanced up when he read the note and rose from the armchair. He hovered by the door under the pretext of refilling his tea cup. The others appeared too apathetic to take much notice. Estelle and Shona were stifling yawns over a pile of magazines sandwiched between them on the sofa by the fireplace. Beardsley and Donnie played backgammon on the floor at Flora’s feet.

“We should have started back to the hotel when there was a lull in the rain,” Hamish groused.

“In those shoes?” Rex indicated his leather loafers.

“Aye, well it’s pointless staying here. No sign of the police or the tow truck. Services around here are a joke.”

Rex poured out a measure of whisky from the cut-glass decanter. “Well, it’s an exceptional set of circumstances. The police are busy with the murder of Melissa Bates and the rain has no doubt deterred the owner of the tow truck from venturing out.”

“Isn’t that what they’re supposed to do?” Estelle riposted.

“Quite right, dear,” Cuthbert advisably agreed with his wife’s loud bleating.

“This afternoon,” Rex told the group, “I continued on to the Loch Lochy Hotel, since I was already half way there when we found Cuthbert in the woods.”

“How were the guests?” Shona asked, sitting upright on the sofa. “Is everything under control?”

Not for long, Rex thought. Once word was out about their journalist friend, pandemonium would reign at the Loch Lochy Hotel. “I did not see any of the guests, but everything seemed to be running smoothly. Your maid Phyllis kindly let me use the phone at reception. And I have your cell phone right here, Shona. You can call the hotel yourself.”

“Did I leave it there? I was so sure I had brought it here. How silly of me.”

Rex glanced around for reactions from the guests, but none were visible. Only Hamish responded.

“You really are soft in the head,” he upbraided his wife.

“Did you try the tow truck company again?” Flora asked sleepily, raising her head from the sofa cushions.

“I did not,” Rex replied. “I called the police about an imposter staying at the hotel.”

Rob Roy’s back stiffened at the mention of police, all interest or feigned interest in the game of backgammon abandoned. If Chief Inspector Dalgerry got to the lodge before Rex managed to extract a confession from Beardsley, the journalist might clam up as soon as he was recited the caution. He resembled the terrified hare Rex had seen in the woods. Or the rat in the stable. For Beardsley, however, there was nowhere to hide.

Rex checked to make sure Alistair was guarding the door.

Rex addressed Mr. and
Mrs. Allerdice. “There was a guest at the hotel two summers ago who checked in under an assumed name, and who had not undergone his current transformation.”

“How do you mean?” Hamish asked.

“It was at the time the wee girl drowned in your loch. She wanted to see the mystical sea dragon. I wonder who put that idea in her head …”

Shona snapped her attention to Beardsley and stared at him with a look of incredulity. “You? Amy was obsessed with the idea of a creature living in our loch,” she began haltingly. “She would run to the window at breakfast and say, ‘Good Morning, Lizzie Monster, shall ye come oot and play wi’ me today?’ You were staying there then?” she asked the hotel guest. He would not meet her gaze. “No, it’s impossible. I would remember you.”

“Aye,” Rex answered for him. “Your guest Rob Roy Beardsley told me he had not visited Loch Lochy before. This turns out not to be true. Apparently, the lure of revisiting your hotel proved too great. He also lied aboot his writing assignment on Lizzie. The
Inverness News-Press
flatly rejected his query—weeks ago. I have the letter right here.” He waved it in the air. “He couldn’t get any publication in the land to print his story. He has no real writing credentials.”

“Damn you to hell!” Beardsley cried.

“You first,” Rex told him.

Hamish snatched the letter out of his hand and read it. “We’ve been had,” he snarled at Beardsley. “You wee sponger—”

“Wait, Hamish, there’s more,” Rex told him. “Sit back down a moment.”

Allerdice did so with a rude arm gesture at Beardsley and chucked the letter on the floor.

“He also lied aboot not having been to Rannoch Moor. But you have, haven’t you, Beardsley? At least four times?”

This got everyone’s unblinking attention. Rex sensed a collective suspension of breath. “You could get to Rannoch Moor in under an hour and a half by car from the hotel, taking the A9 toward Blair Atholl and Pitlochry, and turning off on the 847 or 8019.”

“I don’t have a car.”

“A van, then.” Rex read out the license plate number that the law clerk had unearthed along with Beardsley’s various aliases. “Dark green. Verra handy for hiding out in the woods and generally blending in with the landscape.”

“You’ll find I have no vehicle parked at the Loch Lochy Hotel.”

“Well, I know that. But I’m sure I’d find it near a train station around here.”

Rob Roy did not move. “A green van proves nothing. I was at the hotel yesterday when Melissa Bates went missing.”

“So you say. Shona packed a lunch for your alleged ten-mile hike to the far end of the loch. But you actually went to Rannoch Moor. That’s why you were late getting back and coming here. You did not even have time to change out of your walking boots. I found a rare species of plant stuck to the soil on your boot. The Rannoch Rush grows exclusively on that moor. In fact, due to its rarity, its habitat is designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest. I would recognize it anywhere, unfortunately for you. I even marked on my map precisely where I had found it on one of my hikes, and it just so happens to be in the area where Melissa Bates was found dead.”

“Could you be mistaken at all?” Shona asked, clutching at her wool collar.

Rex shook his head in apology. For once Hamish was silent. The others stared at Beardsley with their mouths agape.

“I could have picked that up off the mat at the hotel,” Beardsley objected, looking about him for support. “The other guests go on hikes.”

“I’d bet you also have incriminating souvenirs in your room back at the hotel. You seem pretty handy with a camera. I wonder … Did you take pictures of Melissa Bates and Kirsty MacClure so you could take them out when you needed to relive your depraved fantasies? They were wee angels and you sullied them with your disgusting hands—”

Beardsley lunged for him. Rex struck out with his right fist and sent him sprawling across the floor, rendering him unconscious when his forehead hit the stone hearth.

“Well done, Rex,” Helen exclaimed, eyes gleaming with pride. “Are you all right?”

The square contact with the side of Beardsley’s jaw had made a satisfying
thwack
, though as far as Rex could tell, his fist was unharmed.

“Couldna’ve done better myself,” Hamish approved. “I’d like to kick his head in.”

“That goes for me too,” Cuthbert said. “And I would, were it not for this blasted ankle.”

Shona burst into tears. “It’s all too much. I canna believe it!”

Flora flew to her mother’s side. The ever practical Estelle Farquharson, who had tucked her feet in, away from the body, proffered a white cotton hankie.

Bending over Beardsley, Rex peeled off the fake beard and removed the spectacles that had half fallen off his face. Peering through them, Rex saw they had clear, non-prescription lenses. “No wonder he got so riled when Donnie snatched them last night,” he said. “They were part of his disguise.”

“He looks younger,” Shona said, holding the handkerchief to her face. “I hardly recognize him.”

“You weren’t supposed to. This is how he looks when he’s on the prowl for his wee victims.” Posing as a cub scout leader.

“I thought the murderer would turn out to be a dirty old man.”

“Children are often afraid of beards,” Helen pointed out. “He does look much younger without it.” She stared at him in disgust.

“You know, I think he may have had a goatee before,” Hamish said.

“He did,” Rex replied, showing him the hotel photo where Beardsley posed in the dining room with a group of young men and a tall waiter with slicked-back dark hair.

“That’s Brad with Alfonso,” Flora said bitterly when Rex passed her the photograph. “These three are students from St. Andrews University. I remember him now,” she said, pointing to the man at the end. “He was by himself. Said he was hiking across the Great Glen. I wonder, was that just before the first wee lass, a redhead by the name of Lorna, disappeared?”

Rex remembered the raw pain of the auburn-haired mother as she appealed on national TV to the unknown abductor to release her daughter. The first of a series of distraught appeals …

“It must be a parent’s worst nightmare to have a child fall into the hands of a sexual predator,” Helen said in a voice trembling with emotion.

“The second victim was a bit older,” Shona recalled. “Eight years old. She wasn’t found for five weeks, by which time her body was so decomposed her own mother couldna identify her.”

The wail of approaching police sirens interrupted further discussion. All eyes reverted to the unconscious body by the fireplace where blood oozed from Beardsley’s forehead.

“About time,” Helen said, wrapping her cardigan about her chest and moving toward the living room door. “I really can’t bear being in the same room as that man. Thank God it’s over,” she murmured.

Rex thought otherwise. Everyone assumed the serial child killer must have murdered Moira, but what was the motive? Why attract attention to himself when he had tried so hard to escape detection? Rex bid the guests remain where they were and to make sure Beardsley did not escape.

“No chance of that,” Alistair said, snatching up Cuthbert’s rifle and pointing it at the prone form of the pedophile as though nothing would make him happier than to put an end to his despicable existence.