Murder on the Moor (10 page)

Installed on the upright seat, Rex manually rolled down his window to get rid of the stench and pressed the switch for the headlights. His knees embraced the wooden steering wheel in the cramped space, rendering it almost unnecessary to use his hands. Forcing the rickety gear shift in first, they wobbled off down the road. “This is right embarrassing,” he muttered, imagining the villagers laughing their heads off behind their net curtains.

Helen opened the window on her side and stuck her face out for air. “What a ponk! But at least we don’t have to walk.”

“I’m verra grateful for the transportation, Helen, but was there really nothing else on offer?”

“We’re lucky to get this. Seriously. They’re a suspicious lot at the Gleneagle Arms. The looks I got! I suppose they don’t get many visitors. They were still gossiping about a man who came in last night, who was ‘not from around these parts.’” Helen mimicked the Highland accent, instilling the words with distrust and foreboding.

Rex’s ears pricked right up. “What else did they say?”

“Well, I knew you’d be interested, so I asked the barman. He told me the man came in asking for directions to Gleneagle Lodge.”

“Did you get a description?”

“Average height, around forty, and wearing something on his head. He seemed in a bad mood, apparently. Oh, and he was foreign.”

“Around here that could mean he’s from Inverness. Did the barman say what time the man came in?”

“About nine o’clock. And that’s all he could tell me. Most of the regulars were in, he said, and he was busy serving, so he didn’t pay much attention.”

Rex concentrated on the slippery road as best he could while he assimilated this new piece of information.

Half a mile out of the village, the blare of a siren assailed them, followed by the persistent sound of a horn. Rex spotted the flashing ambulance in his rearview mirror and rolled onto the grass shoulder out of its way. The back end of the ambulance thundered into the distance.

“They’ll get there before we do,” Helen remarked.

“By a long chalk,” Rex added, gunning the accelerator from a standstill as the single front wheel spun uselessly. “We are stuck in the mud.”

By the time Rex
and Helen arrived back at Gleneagle Lodge in the three-wheeler, both of them mud-splattered from head to foot, the ambulance had left.

“It’s all taken care of,” Alistair said, coming out of the house to meet them. “The medics took the body to the morgue. Here’s the number.” He eyed the yellow van. “Um, may I ask … ?”

“It’s all we had available to get us back here,” Rex told him. “No one in the village wanted to venture out in this weather. The ambulance ran us off the road and we got stuck in the mud.”

“I need to go and change,” Helen said, starting toward the house.

“What about the police?” Rex asked Alistair.

“No show. And the ambulance had to dash off and respond to another call. I gave the medics all the information. They couldn’t wait around for the police.”

“So, what’s new here? How are the guests bearing up?”

“The Allerdices are insisting they have to get back to their hotel. I persuaded them to wait until you returned. Shona is busy throwing together some lunch. Estelle and Flora are helping out.”

“And the men?”

“Watching the soccer. All except Cuthbert, who stalked off somewhere in his hunting gear.”

“Did he now?” Rex said tersely. “I asked him to keep an eye on things at the house.”

“I couldn’t stop him. He promised he wouldn’t leave the property.”

“Did he take his rifle?”

“Aye. He said to tell you not to worry as he didn’t intend to kill anything.”

This was not very reassuring. “What aboot you, Alistair? Are you okay?” His friend, hunched in his jacket against the wet weather, looked deathly pale. “You’re soaked through.”

“It was a wee bit emotional seeing that poor woman being carried off in a bag. I’m glad you were not here to witness it.”

“Did the medics find anything unusual?”

“Nothing beyond the obvious. They were reluctant to move the body before the police arrived, but I told them we had fished it out of the loch hours ago and there was a chance it might start to decompose. It is, after all, summer. Not that you’d notice.” Suddenly, Alistair grimaced. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to sound callous. I forgot you two had been close.”

“That’s all right. It was awhile ago. And don’t go believing everything Moira might have told you.” Rex still couldn’t altogether absorb the fact she was dead. “I’m just worried that removing the body prematurely might compromise eventual legal proceedings, in spite of the notes and photographs I took. Still, it’s one less thing to worry about, I suppose. Now I can concentrate on the guests and try to find out who murdered her.”

“I hope you’re wrong about that. I still think it could have been an intruder. I mean, do you honestly think one of them could have done it?” Alistair thumbed toward the lodge.

“Killers come in all guises.” Rex reached back into the van. “I brought you a paper. All available bobbies and brass are working on the Melissa Bates case. I was told the police would respond to our emergency when they could.”

“I have no doubt you’ll figure it out by yourself.” Alistair gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder and directed him under the porch.

“I don’t have much to go on. Most of the evidence will have been washed away in the rain. I don’t suppose anyone came to fix the phone in my absence so I can call the coroner?”

“No visitors except for the medics.”

“There’s not one mobile to be had in the village. Helen inquired at the pub. Too much to hope that Shona found hers … ?”

“She searched everywhere.”

Rex sighed in despair. “I arranged for the local mechanic to come. Until then,” he said, pointing to the Reliant, “this is our only set of wheels.”

“I wouldn’t be seen dead in it,” Alistair declared. “The good news is I doubt anybody will bother sabotaging it.”

“I should lock it in the stable, just in case—though I doubt it would make it up the hill in the mud. It barely managed the other side on a proper road. Perhaps I should have left it at the top of the hill, but I thought I should keep an eye on it since it’s on loan.”

“Are you going to keep everyone here?” Alistair asked.

“At least until I’ve spoken to the coroner. Perhaps he can shed some light on events.”

“It’s a she. Dr. Sheila Macleod. I impressed upon the medic how urgent this was. In fact, I even got his number.” The look of complicit satisfaction on Alistair’s face left Rex in no doubt as to his meaning.

“What happened to your solicitor friend? The one who arranged the sale of this house? I’m assuming you and he … ”

“We had a tiff. I left Edinburgh without my phone on purpose. I hoped—childishly—that he would call and wonder where I was, and I didn’t want to be constantly checking my messages in the hope that he had.”

“I see.”

“Sorry about that. However, to redeem myself, I begged a favour off the young medic—John. His aunt just so happens to be Dr. Macleod. He’ll tell her to get right on it, and she’ll contact the procurator fiscal if she determines the death suspicious.”

“I’m glad something is working to our advantage at last.” Rex glanced at the house. “I’ll join you inside in just a minute. I want to take a quick look around first.”

He found the pony grazing among his dripping flowerbeds, in the spot where he had left the ladder. Donnie must have let her out of the stable. He could at least have put her in the meadow, Rex fumed to himself.

“Off with you! Shoo!” he exclaimed, waving his arms at the Shetland, without venturing too close in case she decided to take a bite out of him with her big ivory teeth—the size of piano keys.

Strolling off, she started nonchalantly nibbling on a rhododendron bush. Rex, though incensed, attended to the more urgent matter of examining the ground beneath the bathroom window. Horse hooves had churned up the soil and grass around the feet of the ladder. No other prints had survived the downpour. However, a thorny vine growing up the wall had been flattened where it grew out of the soil. Moira’s body must have landed there. Unless that, too, was the horse’s doing. Rex regretted not having taken a look before he left for the village, but he had expected the police to arrive.

He followed the most direct route across the lawn to the jetty where the boat was moored. Rid of its tarpaulin, the bottom had filled with rainwater. Rex looked back toward the house. A distance of not more than thirty feet, but no one looking from a window would have seen anything through the deluge the previous night.

All the perpetrator had to do was transport the body to the loch, dump it in the boat, and row out as far as possible before dispatching it into the chilly depths. In the low visibility, that person may not have noticed the islet where the corpse was ultimately washed up among the reeds.

Mulling over his meager findings, Rex entered the house and added his boots to those in the hallway. He compared the samples of soil and plant debris from the flowerbed on his to the mud on the guests’ footwear, and found something of botanical interest. Subdued male voices emanated from the library. Upon walking into the room, he saw that the television was switched on to the news. The newspaper photograph of seven-year-old Melissa Bates filled the screen, her dark hair braided on either side of a heart-shaped face.

Alistair, standing in the middle of the room, muted the sound when he saw Rex. “Nothing new,” he reported.

“It’s si—sick,” Donnie stuttered from the sofa where he sat beside his dad. “Who’d want to hurt a wee girl?”

“I hope they got the sadistic bastard this time,” Hamish replied.

Rex noticed that the men had all helped themselves to his stock of Guinness. Cans littered the end tables. Rob Roy sat in his leather wing armchair, a beer clasped in his lap.

“I pray this time they did,” Alistair concurred. “I hope they checked out Collins’ alibi thoroughly first. It’s funny how he always seems to have a good one available.”

“If it’s not Collins after all, you can’t go on blaming yourself for his acquittal,” Rex pointed out.

“I know when someone is lying. He’d have to prove he was more than a hundred miles from Rannoch Moor yesterday before I’d believe him, and it would have to be God vouching for him.”

“Rannoch Moor is a vast stretch of wasteland,” Hamish said, slurring his speech and causing Rex to wonder exactly how many beers he had consumed. “I visited there once and remember thinking I’d never want to break down in a lonely
pla
sh
like that. They cut down most of the trees, you know, to prevent villains from lurking in the fore
sh
. Have you ever been there, Rob?”

“Can’t say that I have.”

“I know it quite well,” Rex told them. “I used to hike across Rannoch Moor, precisely because of the solitude. There’s a lot of wildlife, as you’d expect in such an unpopulated area.”

Rex actually knew the area better than most. Surrounded by mountains, Rannoch Moor brooded across fifty square miles, rising to over one thousand feet above sea level, the whole substratum of granite gouged by glens, slashed by rivers, and pitted with lochs. Gnarled roots of old pine trees from the ancient Caledonian forest beckoned from the peat. No road connected the moor from east to west, where deep bog swallowed everything put in its path.

By virtue of being so desolate, it provided a haven for all sorts of bird, animal, and plant life, which he had duly noted on his hikes. The shores and islets of trout-filled lochs attracted goosander, black-throated diver, and red-breasted merganser, while curlew and grouse haunted the heathery slopes. Golden eagles and osprey circled the rocky summits where hare and roe deer roamed undisturbed for the most part. Fragrant myrtle abounded in the bogs and a particular plant grew exclusively in the region, which was indeed a treasure trove for the observant nature lover.

“No sign of Cuthbert?” he asked in a casual tone.

“He went off in his daft hat after the ambulan
sh
left,” Hamish told him. “He said your advocate friend Alistair could take over.”

“Trust that aristocratic twit to shirk his duties,” Alistair remarked.

Rex could not agree more. The investigation of Moira’s death was not proceeding as anticipated, but he was on one right track. He could feel it in the tingle at the back of his neck—a sure sign he was onto something important.