“What?”
She swallowed and then said clearly. “I’m no’ as bad as them.”
“Who?”
“The Thomases. I tried to tell ye about what they got up to in the bedrooms.”
Hamish eyed her cautiously. “Is this about sweets?”
“Aye. She wouldnae let him have any, so he bought cakes and hid them in a box under his bed in his ain bedroom. She wud wait till he was oot, then she would sneak in and steal some. She was greedier than him any day. He shouted at me and told me I was pinching them and she gave me a bar o’ chocolate to shut up.”
Hamish drove her to where Mrs Kennedy was standing at the bus stop with the rest of her brood and a large canvas suitcase. She did not seem either glad or surprised at the return of her missing child. Hamish drove up to The Laurels, wondering whether Mrs Kennedy had even noticed the child was missing.
Paul was out but he could hear the clatter of the typewriter from upstairs. He made his way up to John Parker’s room.
“Where’s Paul?” he asked the writer. “Out, I suppose.”
“Tell me, did Mrs Thomas have a sweet tooth?” John Parker laughed. “It was like a drug with her. She was like a binge drinker, you know, who can leave the stuff alone for weeks and then goes out and gets stoned. She tried to stop Paul from eating the stuff, but she was as bad as he was.”
“It’s a wonder she didn’t get fat.” “I think she burnt it up in nervous energy.” A fly buzzed furiously against the window. Hamish stared at it and then to the writer’s surprise, he got up and left the room. He went downstairs to the sitting-room and gazed up at the fly paper. Then he stood on a chair and lifted it down. Back at the police station he sat down and put a call through to the forensic department at Strathbane.
In answer to his question, they said they would find out and call him back.
He sat at his desk and thought and thought, pieces of conversation buzzing around in his head the way that fly had buzzed in John Parker’s room.
Trixie had liked cakes. Trixie had had no time for John Parker after he had come off drugs and got on his feet. Mrs Drummond wanted a divorce from Harry now that he was sober. Lord Glenbader saying arsenic was the Victorian’s DDT. Trixie holding hands with Archie Maclean. Dr Brodie singing about killing Trixie. Angela Brodie quoting Oscar Wilde up on the mountain. John Parker and The Amazon Women of Zar. Mrs MacGowan saying Trixie had promised to bring the good old–fashioned kind. The flies just smelled it and dropped dead. Dead…dead…dead. And so his thoughts went on and on.
Would the phone never ring? It was quiet, except for the howl of the Sutherland wind that had sprung up out of nowhere.
Then the phone rang, loud and harsh.
He jumped nervously and picked it up. He listened intently and then slowly put it down. His face was pale and set. He should tell Blair. But this was one arrest he was going to make by himself.
He walked to The Laurels and mounted the stairs towards the sound of that chattering typewriter. He opened the door.
“Where’s Paul Thomas?” he asked.
“Went rushing off,” said the writer. “I said you’d been around asking about his Trixie’s sweet tooth, and he rushes off like a bat out of hell.”
Hamish ran out of the room and down the stairs. John Parker shrugged and began to type again.
Hamish ran towards the police station, stopping everyone he could on the way, asking for news of Paul. He had been seen heading out through the village and last seen going along the long promontory which divided the loch from the sea.
There was no road along the promontory. Hamish started to run harder. The wind screamed and tore at his clothes. He ran round the side of the hotel and out along the promontory. Jimmy Anderson stood at the hotel window and watched him go. He turned around. “Something’s up,” he said to Blair who was slouched in an armchair watching television. “Macbeth’s just gone running past.”
“Probably the water bailiffs after him.” said Blair, keeping his eyes on the screen.
The promontory ended on the Atlantic side in a small cliff. Silhouetted above the tumbling clouds and right at the edge of the cliff, Hamish saw Paul Thomas. He slowed his frantic pace and walked slowly up to the man and stood beside him. Down below, waves as high as houses, cold and green and stained with the black of sea wrack, crashed on to the rocks below.
“Don’t do it,” said Hamish quietly. “She wasnae worth it.”
Paul sat down suddenly and Hamish sat down beside him on the springy turf.
“How did you know?” he asked.
“I think this is what happened,” said Hamish. “You were getting on your feet and controlling your overeating with Trixie’s help. You came up here to start a new life. You liked doing things, painting the house and working in the garden. But Trixie did not like you doing things and showing any independence whateffer and so she undermined you by taking over and doing them better. You began to eat cakes on the quiet again and she knew that and at last you found out she knew where you hid them and thieved a few for herself. But you loved her, so something bad must have happened. It didn’t need to be a man. Maybe she wasn’t all that interested in sex. A woman would do for interest. She had Angela Brodie to take over and the rest of the women. She didn’t need you any longer. Perhaps she might have guessed that when the novelty wore off, people would like you and not her. So she asked for a divorce.”
Paul Thomas remained silent. A huge wave rolled in, the wind whipping the white spray back from the top of it.
Hamish’s voice was low and clear and Paul could hear every word despite the tumult of the wind and water.
“You knew if you said you had a toothache and were frightened of the dentist then she would make you go. You had probably been nursing a bad tooth on the quiet for weeks. Before you left, you put the cakes in the box under the bed. But before you did that, you took some of the old fly papers Trixie had brought back from Mrs Haggerty’s cottage. I saw that one hanging up in your sitting room and wondered why it wasn’t sticky. It was impregnated with arsenic. Trixie told you that. You soaked them in a jug of water and then evaporated the water and got enough arsenic crystals to kill her. Maybe you had read of that Victorian poisoning case where someone did the same thing. Forensic at Strathbane told me about it. I began to remember all sorts of things about the use of arsenic in the last century. It was believed that Napoleon died because of the arsenic in the wallpaper paste in his bedroom. Arsenic was also used widely to keep down bugs. Trixie found that bundle of fly papers. An ordinary person would have found them smooth and decided they were no use and thrown them away. But not Trixie. There had to be a use for everything. She was acquisitive. And so she found out that the old fly papers were covered in arsenic, told you, put the papers away maybe intending to take them over to old Mrs MacGowan some time, and probably forgot about them for the time being. But you didn’t. You put arsenic in the cakes under the bed, or perhaps just one cake, to make sure. It’s a wonder that Kennedy girl didn’t eat it by mistake. And so you murdered her.”
“And now I’m going to kill myself,” said Paul, wiping his eyes with his sleeves. “I hated her so much for wanting rid of me. The house was in her name. She wasn’t going to let me have a thing. I was so fat and down and miserable before she came along. No-one had ever cared for me so much, not even my own mother. She married me and kept me on a diet. I would have done anything for her. We were, going to be so happy here. I laughed about her flirting with Archie Maclean, but I knew she had done it to spite me. She was finished with me and she was out to destroy me. But when she died, I was left with the same mess. Myself. I can’t go on living, Hamish. Life hurts, people hurt, I’ll just kill myself with food.”