Cold, Lone and Still

‘Well, I’m not flattered,’ she said, ‘by the way you’ve taken news which I thought would stun you. Anyway, you asked what I didn’t like about Barney. Looking back, I don’t really know. He was tall, handsome, free with his money, a most satisfactory escort and I suppose that, in a way, I liked him very much. The trouble was that I wanted a career for myself and it was because of my insistence on this that we fell out. After our honeymoon I refused to sleep with him until he gave up trying to turn me into a good wife and mother, so he picked up a girl and we parted.’

‘And I got you on the rebound.’

‘Heavens, no! You mustn’t think that, Comrie. I’m very fond of you and had you taken me into partnership —’

‘That business on the train,’ I said, cutting in before she could get into her stride. ‘Was it pre-arranged?’

‘No, it wasn’t, but the meeting at the airport hotel was. Todd had had no intention of walking The Way until I told him in the train corridor of our plans, yours and mine, to test ourselves and find out how well we could get along with one another under primitive conditions.’

‘Oh, come now! When we met him again at the Glasgow youth hostel, he was all equipped for a walking tour. He must have had it planned.’

‘Plenty of shops in Glasgow where he could have bought the gear he needed and he had all the time in the world to equip himself while you were dragging me around the main features of the city.’

I stuck to my guns and said, ‘You can’t just walk into a youth hostel and ask for accommodation.’

‘He had had a hosteller’s card for years. He wasn’t always as prosperous as he was when he married me.’

‘Suppose the hostel had been full?’

‘Well, it wasn’t, was it?’ she said impatiently. ‘I expect that, after he had shown up at the airport hotel and got his key, he went straight out again to wedge himself in at the hostel for the following night so as to coincide with our arrival there. Do you remember that I would not stay a second night at the hotel?’

‘So you slept with him at the airport hotel on the only night we were all three there!’

‘I did nothing of the kind, or at Inverbeg, either. Believe what you please, but that is the truth. I went to his room, not he to mine, and we had a business conversation, that’s all.’

‘Did you, so to speak, get anything fixed up about a divorce?’ I asked sardonically.

She replied in all seriousness, ‘Not at the time. Now tell me about Perth and the discussion in the warden’s lodgings.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me you were married to Todd?’

‘Do you want the truth or a nice coat of veneer?’

‘Come on! Out with it, please. I’ve a right to know.’

‘Oh, you men and your rights! I didn’t tell you at first because I wanted to marry you and I thought it might not come off if you knew too soon that I had to get a divorce before I could take you on a permanent basis, and I had no intention of getting run in for committing bigamy, I assure you. I have never lost touch with Barney, but meeting him like that on the train to Glasgow was entirely a surprise.’

‘Would you be mortally offended if I said I do not believe you?’

‘No, I shouldn’t be offended, but you must admit that coincidences do occur. You, of all people, have to accept that they do. What about your two dead bodies?’

‘I’ve thought a lot about them, naturally, and I don’t believe there was coincidence. I have come to the conclusion that the death of Carbridge was a copy-cat murder.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Ask yourself. Strangulation is a method of murdering people. Right?’

‘Certainly.’

‘Stabbing people in the back is another but a very dissimilar method.’

‘Agreed and I suppose I see what you mean.’

‘Yes. When the two methods are used on a second body within a matter of weeks, one tends to suppose either that the same murderer has repeated his method or that somebody else has copied it.’

‘You haven’t really proved your point, but I agree with you that it does provide food for thought. Would you have broken our engagement if you had known earlier about Barney and me?’

‘If I had known you were waiting for a divorce before I could marry you, I doubt whether we should ever have been engaged to one another at all.’

‘Well, that’s straight from the shoulder, anyway. Now will you tell me about Dame Beatrice and what you were told at the warden’s lodgings?’

I was at last prepared to change the subject.

‘Perth was our chief spokesman,’ I said. ‘That is why he was invited to the dinner, of course. He voiced the opinion that Carbridge was a fool.’

‘Well, that wasn’t a very original thought. Everybody knew Carbridge was a fool and a tiresomely boring fool at that. Even Tansy and Rhoda thought so.’

‘Perth gave me the impression that Carbridge was killed because he was a fool.’

‘I suppose there have been less valid reasons for killing people. One aspect of Carbridge’s foolishness was that one couldn’t trust him not to babble, but I suppose the same could be said of young James Minch. What else was there?’