A Kind of Grief (15 page)

“These three pictures, I like them.”

“Aye, that's those gadgies in the golf clubhouse. Not much good, really—unbalanced, too much light coming in from the window and not enough on the right-hand side.”

It was the men that interested McAllister. Calum had identified the sheriff and the senior policeman but didn't recognize the other man. Their guest, perhaps? They were certainly comfortable in each other's presence. Then again, he thought, men of their class always had something to connect them, mostly their former schools or a passion for grouse shooting.

One August, he had seen a party of men such as these alight from the London train. As resplendent as the birds in their tweed plus-four suits, with matching grouse-shooting hats and waistcoats, they had voices, used to commanding soldiers or the lower orders, that made him want to join the revolution—any revolution that would rid Scotland of the braying asses of privilege.
And you can relocate those bloody grouse to Hyde Park or Wimbledon Common.

The visitor was interesting in his ordinariness. A cultivated ordinariness, McAllister decided. Compared with the lined or unlined, the animated, or quiescent faces of the locals, his expression was blank, more mask than face. His suit, plain, unremarkable, had an air of money. McAllister was more intrigued than ever, but he would not share his fascination with his wife.

“Hiya.” Joanne came in with a blast of cold fresh air. “I'm here to meet my husband.” She gave him a peck on the cheek.

She nudged Rob with her shoulder. “Fit like?”

“Brawly guid,” he answered, echoing her east coast dialect.

She grinned at Don. “Don.”

“Lass.”

Seeing the prints spread out on the high table, she asked, “More genius pictures, Hec?”

“The auction sale,” Hec said, nodding in agreement to the point where his neck was in danger of dislocating. He too thought his work genius.

“Aye,” Don told her, “but nothing usable of the golf match.”

“These pictures from inside the clubhouse are good. Since it's so historical, maybe do a feature on the club?”

“So you'll write it up?”

“No, Don, you're not roping me in. Ask McAllister. He was there.”

McAllister was about to protest when he saw the photograph of the nineteenth hole. “Maybe I will. And we'll use this.” He pointed to the shot of the bar, where a collection of silver cups and shields was prominently displayed. On one side of the trophy cabinet were framed boards with the names of past champions listed in gold lettering. On the other side were the three gentlemen huddled together in conversation.

He was about to ask Hec to crop the men out of the shot, but there was something about them—the closed pose and what appeared to be a grave discussion whilst people all around were chatting, drinking, celebrating the home team's success. It was a clear picture of the club but not of the men; they were barely recognizable.

Unless you knew them.

Shake the tree, sees what falls
, he decided.

Joanne was leafing through the rest of Hec's prints and looking carefully at the contact sheets. “More or less the whole community was there.” She was talking to herself. “Probably everyone who was at her trial or involved in the case.”

“No doubt the sheriff and the fiscal and every worthy of the county are members of the golf club,” McAllister added.

“With our ridiculous licensing laws, there's nowhere else to get a drink outside of closing time, so who can blame them?” Don said. Like most men who worked unsociable hours, he was of the opinion that closing bars for the afternoon and shutting altogether at ten in the evening were a major infringement on his liberty.

McAllister suspected that the man had been the passenger in the car that had scared him on the blind bend, but with the speed of the moment, he wasn't entirely sure there
had
been someone in the backseat. And although he was curious, his overriding concern was Joanne. No more potential dramas, he'd vowed after seeing her lying in a hospital bed, head bandaged, unconscious, and with no certainty she would recover.

He left the photograph with Don, who was sizing up the dummy page with an em ruler, mentally composing a story on the golf club and the tournament for the sports section.

“Right, Mrs. McAllister, are you ready?” McAllister asked.

“Where are we going?”

“To choose curtains,” he said, turning once more to a contact sheet. “Hec, can I borrow these prints for a day or so?”

“Aye, no problem.”

Joanne was staring at her husband. “Since when are you interested in curtains?”

“You'll see.” He smiled at her. Patted his pockets for the car keys, put on his hat, and they went out, leaving Don and Hec staring at each other.

“Curtains?” Hec asked. “Is that a code word for . . . ?”

“I'll explain once you're safely married,” Don told him.

Joanne returned home with two large envelopes; one contained Hector's pictures, the other details of the house. McAllister went back to work after the property inspection, saying they'd talk about it when he came home. He could see how, after the initial surprise at the style of the building, she had begun to look at the rooms, particularly the summerhouse, with increasing enthusiasm.

“What are we doing here?” she had asked when they stopped on a street a short distance from where they lived.

“I promised when we married to find you a home that is ours, not mine. Now we are looking.”

She hadn't forgotten; but she'd not given the idea much thought, especially as their garden was now finally responding after years of indifference on McAllister's part. Not that she faulted him. He'd confessed that the garden had almost stopped him from buying the house. City men saw grass as useful only on a football pitch.

“It looks expensive,” she said as they turned into the driveway to an angular white building that looked more like a marooned ocean liner than a home. Joanne could not tell him that she was slightly intimidated by the house.

It was large, on huge grounds, and in a style of architecture she had only seen in magazines; deep inside, she felt it was too grand for someone like her. The words, the put-downs—
who does she think she is?
—were always there to ground any woman who seemed to be living “above their station,” a phrase that she equally delighted in and detested.

Standing in the empty sitting room, seeing the sun streaming through the windows, even this late in autumn, giving the room a warm light glow, she began to feel the possibilities of the house. Almost Mediterranean, she thought, not that I know what Mediterranean light feels like. But she had read of it in magazines and decided it was a style she could make her own.

McAllister had read the contract and the details of the house, had checked it from the outside, but this was the first time he'd seen the interior. And he liked it. Walking around, checking out the rooms, ignoring the kitchen, he examined the sitting room in approval, and ditto the four bedrooms. Standing in the study, he liked the warm honey of the parquet floor, the built-in bookcases, the French doors leading out into the garden.

He was not a practical man; poking about in plumbing and electric wiring, checking for dry rot or woodworm or whatever else could be wrong with a building, was not his forte. But the light, the spaciousness, the clean white lines, inside and out, with nothing to remind him of Scottish baronial architecture, of damp, of mean wee rooms, there was a sense of future to the place.

Joanne went into the garden to inspect the summerhouse. It felt perfect. She could see herself there, at a desk, pen in hand, notebook spread open, a comfortable armchair in the corner, pictures on the one solid wall, a rag rug. She shivered, imagining what Alice would have done with the empty space.
Alice. What made her so desperate she'd abandon her retreat?

“I like it.” McAllister returned from a stroll around the property's perimeter walls. “The garden is a bit big. The bedrooms are nice . . .” He tried to think of what else to say about places he had barely glimpsed, like the kitchen. “The study is grand. And since you're working at home, it's just right for you.”

She laughed. “McAllister. Don't. You know, and I know, that is your room. I'll even knit a
PRIVATE
sign for the door. No.” She looked out of another set of French doors leading to a stone terrace and summerhouse beyond. “Out there, that wee place in the garden, that's my—”

He wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Room of one's own,” he finished, knowing how much Joanne enjoyed the Virginia Woolf book.

“I hadn't thought of it that way, but yes.”

“Do you want to think about it and come back again?”

“I want to think how we could live in a place this big. None of your, our furniture or curtains would fit the style of this place. Then we'd need a new cooker, rugs . . .”

“That's your department.” He was remembering Angus MacLean the solicitor's opinion that as the house was so unusual, there might not be a great deal of interest. Most people prefer traditional stone-built houses, he'd said, and the size of the grounds might attract a builder who'd tear the house down and subdivide for two, possibly three new homes.

McAllister hated the idea of moving and saw nothing wrong with their present home. Yet he would suffer the catastrophe of packing and unpacking and decorating and spending months trying to remember where everything was stored, if it made Joanne happy. The possibility that his wife might become distracted and drop the Alice Ramsay obsession was also a motive for moving.

“I need to get back to work,” he told Joanne. “Can you pop in and see Angus and arrange another viewing?”

As he drove down the hill to the Castle car park, she said, “I kept thinking about Alice Ramsay—how she set up her own house, was in the midst of renovating the byre, planting fruit trees and bushes. The book she was working on was almost finished, so she said.” Joanne saw the question from his eyebrows. “Nurse Ogilvie, the landlady at the hotel, Elaine, they all said people liked her. The old people in the home too.”

“Then the court case came along.”

“Alice hated that. But at the same time found it amusing. It was a local scandal, nothing more, she said. Then I . . .” She flushed at the memory of her complicity. “That traitor Forsythe used me. He published her name, her location, exposing her . . . Sorry, I just can't see . . .” But she could. At the auction in the barn, seeing the solid beams cut to last a hundred or more years, she had imagined Alice up there, swinging.

“Alice killed herself. There is no evidence of anything or anyone . . .”

“It's just so hard to believe.”

“I know.” He parked the car, wanting the subject over, finished, done with. “So, do you like the house?”

“It's a lovely house.”
But
 . . . she was thinking and didn't say.

“Good. I like it too. Don't get your hopes up, though—you never know how many other possible buyers are out there—but fingers crossed, yes?”

“Thank you.” She smiled. “I'll try not to be too excited, but that house would be fun, a new beginning.”

And a new obsession, he was wise enough not to say.

“How did it go at the solicitor's office?” He kissed the top of her head, breathing in the smell of shampoo and Joanne. Being a Thursday, the usual quiet-after-publication day, McAllister was home early.

“Interesting. I've an appointment to look at the house again tomorrow, so let's hope it's raining; then I can really see what it would be like to live there. And I've asked Chiara to come with me.”

“Good idea.” McAllister felt that Joanne's best friend, Chiara, being Italian, would love the light in the house.

“So what did Angus MacLean say?” He was watching her, her glasses perched on the end of her nose, her hair falling forwards as she reached for her notebook.