A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h the last eight years or so, not in a big way, but supporting him nonetheless. He needs some money for an orthopaedic operation which he is having to wait a rather long time for on the national health service. He is in pain and can get it done privately more or less when he wants it. So I arranged for a couple of paintings to be sold.”
She glared at Isabel. “I had not imagined that somebody might make things difficult for us by concluding that the paintings were forgeries. They are not that.”
Walter Buie was staring at his mother, his lower lip quiver-ing. “You could have told me,” he said reproachfully. “You could have told me that he was alive. You said nothing. Yet you saw the painting.”
Her voice was sharp when she replied. “As I’ve said, I have always respected Andrew’s desire for privacy. And your trouble, Walter, is that you are rash. If you hadn’t backed Freddy like that, you wouldn’t be in this mess. John told you not to do it.
Remember? He spelled out the danger.”
“Freddy was my friend.
“Friendship and business are not always compatible,” she snapped back at him. Then, reaching up to finger a string of pearls around her neck, she turned to Isabel. “Is it too much to ask you to respect Andrew’s wishes? If you spread this and he is outed, as they say these days, then I can tell you one thing: I am quite sure that he will do something foolish.”
“Disappearing in the first place was rather foolish, I would have thought,” said Isabel.
“Don’t joke about it, Miss Dalhousie,” said Mrs. Buie. “Suicide is not a joke.”
T H E C A R E F U L U S E O F C O M P L I M E N T S
2 2 9
W H E N I S A B E L R E T U R N E D from the Buie house, she saw the light on the hall telephone blinking at her, signalling that a message had been left. There were two.
“May I come round for supper tonight?” asked Jamie. “I’ve got some fish that I could bring. Two pieces of halibut. They’re quite small, but they’ll taste really nice. I’ll cook them.”
And then, in the next message, before which a recorded voice said it would take twenty-two seconds to deliver, Cat said:
“Look, I’m sorry. I really am. I make a mess of everything and you’re always so nice about it. But that’s what you’re like. You’re kind and understanding and all the rest, and I’m just stupid.
Will you forgive me? Again? One more time?”
Isabel smiled at this. She had expected it, of course, but had not known exactly when, and how, it would come. She put down the handset and walked into the morning room, her head light with relief. It was late morning now and the sun was shining in through the skylight overhead, making a square of strong, buttery light on the faded red of the Turkish carpet, or Turkey carpet, as her father had called it. It was warm.
She went over in her mind what she had heard that morning; there would be a great deal to tell Jamie that evening, over their two pieces, small pieces, of halibut. So Andrew McInnes was alive; well, his body had never been found—she had been told that—and so she should have thought of the possibility that he was still alive. But she had not, however obvious it appeared with the judgement of hindsight. But then she thought: I have only Mrs. Buie’s word for that, and I barely know her. It could be that . . . She stopped and looked up through the skylight, into the empty blue. It was perfectly possible that Mrs. Buie and 2 3 0
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h Walter had made up the whole story in order to conceal their being party to forgery or to the attempted sale of a painting they had decided was forged. It would be a neat solution for them.
Walter might have suspected that Isabel had stumbled across the real reason for his try at a hasty sale. He might then have discussed it with his mother, who might have helped him con-coct the story of the failed management buyout and his friend’s desperate need for money. It was all too pat, all too neat. And she had swallowed it—even accepting Mrs. Buie’s melodra-matic warning of a suicide attempt by McInnes. That was a crude threat: the notion that somebody might take his life if we proceed with some course of action is a guaranteed way of stopping things in their tracks. And I fell for it, thought Isabel. I fell for it so very easily.
C H A P T E R N I N E T E E N
E
GRACE WOULD SNATCH any chance of time with Charlie, so she did not hesitate to agree to continue to look after him that afternoon while Isabel attended to what she described as
“urgent business.” She needed to go out of town, she explained, up to Perthshire, and might not be back until very late. Would Grace mind staying overnight?
The prospect of having unfettered possession of Charlie over so long a period clearly appealed. “Don’t you worry,” she said. “You go ahead. Take as long as you like. Charlie and I will go and see my friend Maggie. She’s been ill—nothing infectious, don’t worry—a gallstone, actually, and a visit will cheer her up. She hasn’t met Charlie yet, and she’ll love him. We might even have our dinner down there.”
Isabel tried to place her. Grace had many friends, whose exploits and affairs she occasionally narrated in detail to Isabel.
Now, who was Maggie?
“You remember Maggie, of course,” Grace went on. “I told you about her. She was a medium once, but she had a terrible fright and gave it up. She saw something unpleasant.”
“Like Ada Doom,” said Isabel. “Who saw something nasty in 2 3 2
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h the woodshed and never quite recovered.
It was very funny, but she did not think that Grace would find it so.
“No,” said Grace. “Not that. It’s nothing to do with woodsheds. But a very disturbing thing nonetheless. She
