Chapter 26
TWENTY-SIX
Wendy and the two girls came down for breakfast at nine o’clock again the next morning, but there was no sign of Patti.
‘She’s not feeling too good,’ Julie explained. ‘She’s been having tummy pains, so she’s staying in her room.’
‘I’ve got some tummy-settlers and painkillers, if that would help?’ Ally offered.
‘I gave her a painkiller earlier,’ Wendy said. ‘My guess is that she’s just exhausted with being in prison. I’ve got a bowl of muesli for her – she thinks she could manage that.’
‘Shall I take it up to her?’ Ally asked, keen to see how Patti was.
‘Yes, please,’ Wendy replied.
‘I think she’s just worn out with losing our daddy and everything that’s gone on since,’ Julie remarked.
Ally could well understand that. Not only had Patti lost her husband, but there was so much that had gone on since – not least losing her lover and ending up in jail.
She climbed the stairs and knocked gently on the door. ‘I’ve brought some muesli up for you,’ she called out.
‘Come in,’ Patti said. She was sitting up in bed, looking rather pale and frail. ‘Thanks so much, Ally. I’m sorry to be such a nuisance.’
‘Of course you’re not a nuisance,’ Ally exclaimed. ‘How are you feeling?’
Patti rolled her eyes. ‘Just under the weather generally. Let’s face it, I’ve been under a hell of a lot of stress, so I suppose it has to come out somehow. I’ll try to eat some of this because I know I should eat something.’
‘Well, I’ll be around if you need me,’ Ally said. ‘I’ll pop in later.’
Joel arrived as usual and, having ascertained that Patti was OK, the others all set off for a trip to Fort William. They hoped the clouds might lift to reveal the summit of Ben Nevis. They’d have lunch there and they might drive down through Glencoe.
‘Patti will be fine,’ Wendy said to Ally as she handed back the empty cereal bowl when they left. ‘She just needs a quiet day in bed to catch up with herself. I’ve made her a sandwich from some of your breakfast leftovers, just in case she feels hungry.’
‘I think you’re being very understanding, considering all that’s gone on,’ Ally said.
‘Well, she is suffering, and we have the girls to consider,’ Wendy replied. ‘I’ve been giving it a lot of thought and, let’s face it, Greg couldn’t have been innocent, could he?’
Ally refrained from commenting.
A little later, while Ally was loading the dishwasher and Ross was bringing in armfuls of logs for the stove, she said, ‘I’m concerned about Patti, you know. She’s very much under the weather, and I feel sorry for her being stuck upstairs on her own all day.’
‘Well, bear in mind that she wouldn’t have been able to go with them anyway,’ Ross reminded her, ‘because she’s under “village arrest”, is she not? Maybe that’s one reason why she opted to stay in bed.’
Later, Ally tiptoed upstairs to see if Patti was all right, but there was a Do Not Disturb on her door handle, so she tiptoed back downstairs again.
‘If Patti doesn’t feel better by tomorrow morning,’ Ally said to Ross, ‘I think we should call the doctor.’
Privately, Ally wondered if Patti had lost the will to live after everything that had happened. Perhaps she’d descended into some form of depression?
‘Yes, best wait until the morning,’ Ross agreed.
But Patti did not appear in the morning.
‘We’re getting quite worried about Mom,’ Julie said. ‘She doesn’t seem at all well.’
‘I think we should call the doctor,’ Ally said.
Wendy sighed loudly. ‘We really don’t want to make a fuss,’ she said.
‘She’s been unwell for two days now,’ Julie put in, ‘so I think Ally’s right.’
‘She did have some muesli,’ Wendy reminded her, ‘so she’s obviously got a tiny appetite.’
‘I still think we should call the doctor,’ Julie said.
Doctor Ian Baxter was comparatively new in the area, having finally been selected to succeed the retired Doctor Hayward, and Ally had not yet met him.
Fortunately, he was one of those GPs who chose to work on Saturdays, to ease the burden on the NHS.
But first she had to get past Edith Calder, who’d been the receptionist at the surgery for at least fifty years, and who devoted her life to interrogating every detail of someone’s symptoms before grudgingly granting them an appointment.
After much cajoling and after Miss Calder had aired her opinions on foreigners using ‘our National Health Service’, the receptionist finally conceded that Doctor Baxter might just be able to fit in a short visit around lunchtime.
In fact, Doctor Baxter appeared at twenty minutes after one. He was a short, stocky, red-haired man with crinkly blue eyes and probably in his thirties, Ally reckoned.
Both girls had been hovering around all morning, but Wendy was very much in charge.
‘She says she’s fine, Doctor,’ she said, ‘but Mrs McKinley insisted we call you out.’ She led the way upstairs.
Twenty minutes later, the doctor emerged, followed by Wendy, who was still fussing about wasting the doctor’s time.
‘No, you have not wasted my time,’ Doctor Baxter said. ‘It’s always best to be safe.’
Ally waylaid him in the hallway.
He shook his head and frowned. ‘Bit of a mystery this, Mrs McKinley,’ he said, ‘and I can only assume she might be allergic to something perhaps or caught some nasty bug. I understand Mrs Armstrong’s been through some great trauma, so this may well be a delayed reaction.
I’ve left a prescription with her daughter, but be sure to get in touch if you become worried about her condition again. ’
After he’d gone, Ally asked the girls to see if their mother wanted anything because Morag hadn’t got in there for a couple of days and she might need fresh towels and bedding. Or goodies for the tea tray.
As Julie took herself upstairs to find out, Janey said, ‘We’re both really worried about Mom, but Auntie Wendy’s gone to the chemist to get the prescription so hopefully that’ll do the trick.’
Ally sincerely hoped that it would and could only hope that tomorrow would bring a noticeable improvement.
It didn’t.
Later, Ally would always remember the next day as The Day from Hell.
First of all, there was panic at breakfast time with both girls in tears because their mother now seemed to be semi-conscious.
On top of that, there was no sign of Morag. Then the phone rang. ‘I’m sorry, Ally, but I’m feelin’ bloody awful – all shivery like – and I’m thinkin’ I might have the flu or somethin’ because it’s goin’ round at the moment…’
‘I’m so sorry, Morag. Just take it easy and get well.’
Ally sighed as she came off the phone. For a brief moment, she didn’t know which way to turn, until Ross took matters into his own hands.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘Let me phone Amir first and ask if we should get an ambulance or what the system is when a suspect is ill. Then I’ll tidy up down here if you concentrate on the bedrooms.’
It was on days like this that Ally loved Ross more than ever because he never lost his cool.
She went into the dining room to see if anyone wanted anything and found only the two girls in there. ‘Where’s Wendy?’ she asked.
‘Oh, she and Joel have gone off somewhere,’ Julie replied, ‘but we wanted to stay with Mom.’
‘I think your mum should probably be in hospital,’ Ally said, ‘but we’ll see how she is as the day goes on. So try not to worry too much. I shall be doing the bedrooms this morning because Morag’s not well.’
‘We’ve tried to keep our room tidy,’ Janey said, rolling her eyes at her sister.
‘Let me worry about that,’ Ally replied.
Back in the kitchen, Ross had phoned Amir, who’d said to contact him immediately if they thought it was necessary to call an ambulance. And so she set off to do the bedrooms.
Aware that the girls were in the sitting room downstairs, she decided to clean their room first. It wasn’t nearly as messy as she’d feared, and apart from wiping the shower and replacing towels, she was soon finished.
She was finding it all exhausting though, no doubt down to her age, and she sincerely hoped Morag’s flu wouldn’t last long.
Wendy’s room was neat and orderly, and Ally got it done fairly quickly.
As Ally dusted down the bedside cabinet, she noticed the top drawer wouldn’t close properly.
She opened it to see what was causing the obstruction and discovered it was a toiletry bag.
She tried to adjust it so that the drawer would close, but there was a small plastic box in the way.
Intrigued, Ally picked up the box and took off the lid. It contained some sort of seeds.
Ally stared at it all for several minutes, trying to work out why it all seemed strangely familiar. Then she remembered.
Back in the days when she’d been a TV researcher, one of her jobs had been to work out which poisons might be used to kill off the protagonist in a crime drama.
She’d had to study all manner of poisons to come up with some answer for what, in the programme, was to be revealed in the coroner’s report.
Ally remembered these. They were laburnum seeds, highly poisonous and easily available. There were no laburnums in the malthouse garden, but there were several in Desdemona’s. Could Wendy possibly have taken them from Desdemona’s garden?
As she put the box back into the drawer, her fingers brushed a crumpled, torn scrap of paper. There was something vaguely familiar about it as Ally unravelled it.
…at the Borgue Boulder, the big rock half a mile from Loch Soular on the path to Locharran Castle.
Ally read the note three times before she realised what it was.
This had to be the other half of the note she’d found by Greg’s body and given to Amir.
Why was it in Wendy’s possession? Could she have possibly been blackmailing her own husband?
And did he know he was being blackmailed by her?
Surely he had no idea, or he wouldn’t have set off for that particular rendezvous when he could sort it all out with her face to face in this very room.