“This was Saturday?”
Tim nodded. “I know I watched the house all that day, and as it began to get dark, I saw the gun cabinet through the open scullery door.” Tim met Kincaid’s gaze, his eyes red-rimmed. “I don’t know what possessed me. I could see them moving about, and when the kitchen was empty, I walked into the house. The gun cabinet was unlocked, and I took the first one to hand.”
Kincaid felt cold in the pit of his stomach. He found that no amount of forewarning had really prepared him for this. Dear God, how could he charge his friend with murder?
“I went back to my hiding place,” Tim went on, “and I watched her come out with him after dinner. I heard them arguing, and later . . .” He swallowed. “I thought I would shoot him. I thought perhaps I would shoot them both.
“But when they came out of the wood, I found I was paralyzed. I’d never shot a gun. I didn’t know how to do it, or how far it would shoot. I think it was then that I began to realize the absurdity of it—that I was actually contemplating harming another human being. Then he—
Donald—went into the house, and I had missed my chance.
“Hazel stood there in the moonlight, looking after him . . . and then suddenly she dropped her face into her hands and began to sob as if her heart would break.” Tim
fell silent, and it took all Kincaid’s patience not to prompt him.
“I almost went to her,” Tim said at last. “But then how would I have explained myself? What she had done was human, and forgivable. What I had done . . . what I had contemplated doing . . . was truly terrible . . . inexcusable by any standard I had ever held. Can you understand that?”
Kincaid nodded. Hardly daring to hope, he said quietly, “Tim, what did you do then?”
Tim had sunk back in his chair, as if he had come to the end of the part of the story that mattered to him. “She went inside. I stood there with this thing in my hands, this gun, trying to figure out what to do with it. It didn’t seem right to just set it down on the ground and walk away.
After a bit, I tried the scullery door. It was locked, so there was no way I could put the gun back.
“Then I noticed the garden shed. I went inside, and put the gun on the potting bench. Even then I remember seeing the irony in it. Life and death.”
“And then?”
“I walked to my car and drove back to London. I stopped and slept in a lay-by for a few hours near dawn; I’m not sure where. That day was a blur. I didn’t want to go home on Sunday—I didn’t see how I was going to face Hazel the next day. There’s no going back from something like that.
“And then, when I heard Donald Brodie had been shot, I wondered if I’d done something I couldn’t remember, if I had completely lost my reason. I went over and over things, trying to find a gap. I’ve never been so terrified. You can see why I didn’t want to talk to anyone else; it all sounds utterly mad.”
“Tim, are you telling me that you didn’t shoot Donald Brodie?”
“I’m only guilty of intent, and that, in my book, is bad enough.”
“Not in the eyes of the law.” Kincaid’s mind raced. If Tim had left the gun in the garden shed, what had happened to it? Louise was the gardener, but if she’d found it, why hadn’t she said so? Unless . . . Shock fizzed in Kincaid’s veins. Unless it was Louise Innes who had shot Donald.
Gemma drove south on the A, pushing the posted speed limit. She’d left a message for Chief Inspector Ross, asking him to meet her at Benvulin. It was time for a conference, even though it meant confessing to trespassing on Ross’s turf as far as Callum MacGillivray was concerned.
Callum had told her he’d seen Louise from a distance on Sunday morning, walking across the river meadow with a shotgun. He hadn’t thought she’d seen him, but he had begun to wonder when she’d come calling on Sunday afternoon.
Gemma remembered Louise making an excuse to go out, shortly after the police had finished their interviews that day. And then yesterday, when Louise had been out gathering boughs, had she slipped into Callum’s cottage with Pascal’s tablets? It was Louise who did the rooms in the B&B, Louise who would naturally have seen the bottle of painkillers, Louise who could have pocketed it so easily.
Drops of rain began to spatter against the windscreen, and Gemma slowed, swearing. Rain after a dry spell always made driving conditions particularly hazardous, and she couldn’t afford an accident. Moving over into the center lane, she resumed her musing.
Louise, then, had had the means and the opportunity, but why would she have shot Donald Brodie? And where
did Tim Cavendish come into it? Reaching for her phone, she speed dialed Kincaid, but the call went directly to voice mail. He was probably still in the air, she thought, glancing at the dashboard clock, but he should be landing soon. She hung up without leaving a message; she would talk to Ross first.
But if Louise had used the shotgun, why had residue not shown up in the swab results? It took more than scrubbing with soap and water to remove nitrate traces.
An image came back to her—Louise arranging the boughs she had cut, her hands scratched and dirty, a nail broken. She’d guessed Louise normally wore gloves when she gardened, but what if Louise had been wearing her gloves when she fired the gun, and they had protected her hands? She could have found some way to dispose of the gloves, but then she wouldn’t have wanted to call attention to their absence by getting a new pair.
Was there any physical evidence to support Callum’s statement? Callum could be easily discredited in court, given his demonstrated grudge against Donald over Alison Grant. Without motive or forensics evidence, the case would be difficult to prove. Nor did it help to go into an interrogation blind, without some idea of the reason behind the crime.
If anyone might understand Louise’s motives, Gemma realized as she exited the motorway, it was Hazel.
The rain stopped, then started again, drumming against the windscreen in volleys. As Gemma turned into Benvulin’s drive, she saw a figure sprint from the house to the distillery office. The woman was recognizable even at a distance, in the rain, by the fall of long, dark hair.
Gemma parked the car, grabbed her anorak from the backseat, and held it over her head as she ran for the office herself. The temperature had plunged in the half hour
since she’d left Inverness, and a biting wind plucked at her clothes.
She found Heather already at her desk, the phone to her ear. When Heather looked up at her entrance and covered the mouthpiece, Gemma said softly, “Hazel? Is she still in the house?”
Heather shook her head, frowning. “No. She left a few minutes ago.”
“Left?” Gemma repeated blankly. What could have possessed Hazel to leave without news of Tim?
“She borrowed my car. She said she wanted to go to Carnmore. I think it was—” Heather’s attention shifted back to the phone. “Yes, I’m still holding,” she said into the mouthpiece, then covered it again as she looked back up at Gemma. “I’m sorry, Gemma. I’ve got to take this call. It’s the chairman of the board.”
Gemma was debating whether to wait for her to finish her call or to go on to the Inneses’, when Heather added, “Oh, by the way, Louise rang a few minutes ago.
She was looking for Hazel as well.”
Chapter Twenty
Fair the fall of songs
When the singer sings them.
Still they are caroled and said—
On wings they are carried—
After the singer is dead