Bitter End Part 28

'When she did come,' Fizz said thoughtfully, 'did she make arrangements with you in advance?'

'Usually. Sometimes I have to go out with a tour -like

if we're short-staffed or somebody's off ill or suchlike.

Mrs Gra.s.sick knew that, so she'd almost always phone up a couple of days in advance and say she was planning a visit.'

'Did she do that last time?'

'Yes. She phoned -I think it was Tuesday or Wednesday -and said she'd be here Friday and Sat.u.r.day. We arranged her visit for Friday afternoon at five-fifteen because Sat.u.r.day is a no-no for me all day, even at this time of year. Ski trips, winter wonderland tours, Munro- baggers.

We're always kept going at weekends.'

Giles crossed his legs and pinched the crease in his trousers. He was still showing the signs of his earlier chagrin but it was clear that he, too, had hopes, albeit fragile hopes, of Cameron. He smiled as he said, 'It's 175. certainly a wonderful part of the country but I reckon, if I were coming north just once a year, I'd prefer to leave it till the summertime.'

Cameron nodded. 'Yes, you're right. We didn't usually see Mrs Gra.s.sick this early in the year. Our brochures for the coming season are already in production by the end of February so there's no reason for her to brave the elements.'

'Did she comment on the earliness of her visit?' Giles asked.

'No.' Cameron propped his chin on a fist and smiled thoughtfully to himself. 'She didn't refer to it and, I have to say, it never struck me as odd till this minute. Actually, I had a lot on my mind that day -staff problems! -and she didn't stay all that long. It was just a flying visit.'

The shine was beginning, just a little, to wear off Fizz's optimism. Why was it that people never thought to take note of salient facts? Why did they so rarely ask the right questions or view anyone with suspicion? Why did they take in so little of their surroundings and never remember conversations accurately and in full?

And, for that matter, why was it so difficult to ask the bull's-eye question: the question that would release an unexpected bonanza of information? You could talk to somebody for hours, hovering around that critical query, always within a hair's breadth of hitting the bingo b.u.t.ton, and go home, in the end, empty-handed. Always, always, always there was this gulf between the interviewer, who couldn't guess at the information the interviewee had in his possession, and the interviewee, who didn't realise that the insignificant fact that he considered not worth mentioning would form the missing link that led to the buried treasure.

With commendable doggedness Giles kept on pegging away, dwelling on Vanessa's evident state of mind, references to future plans, etc, the main thrust of his questions being to determine whether she might have displayed any signs of impending suicide. Cameron answered them all 176. patiently and as helpfully as could be desired, but he had clearly very little knowledge that would be of the slightest use.

"I suppose I didn't really know her at all,' he said, with some degree of surprised enlightenment. 'You see a person year after year, you sit and chat to them, have a coffee, tell them about your family and your hobbies, and you think of them almost as a friend. But when I think about Vanessa Gra.s.sick I realise that it was probably me who did all the talking. I know her husband was a lawyer... I know she went to the opera every chance she got. . . but I can't think of another personal detail she ever told me.'

'You think she was deliberately secretive or just reserved?' Giles asked.

'No, she wasn't deliberately secretive, but you couldn't call her reserved either,' Cameron decided after a moment's thought. 'She'd say things like, "Well, I'm off to see if I can find myself a smart pair of flatties. These shoes are killing my ankles," but she didn't go on about her home life. It was as if it wasn't at the centre of her universe, that's all.'

Giles uncrossed his legs and got his feet under him, preparatory to standing up. As he did so, he sighed and said in a tone that indicated this was his final question, 'Mrs Gra.s.sick was, I understand, here in Inverness for a few days but, although she has several customers here, she apparently saw only yourself and one other. Did she mention any other customers she might be calling on?'

'No. I'm pretty sure she didn't.' Cameron pursed his lips and thought for a moment. 'No. She wasn't seeing anyone else after she left me. Straight home to put her feet up, she said.'

'Home?' Fizz said sharply. 'She told you she was going straight home?'

Cameron gave a sheepish smile. 'That's what she said but, of course, she didn't mean "home to Edinburgh". She always tied in her trips to Inverness with visits to friends out at Gollanfield. She meant "home" to their place.' 177. 'Gollanfield?' Giles demanded, almost before the guy had finished speaking and before Fizz could process what he'd said. 'Where's Gollanfield?'

'Out towards Culloden,' Cameron said. 'Not far.'

'Do you know her friends' name?' Fizz got out, hope springing, if not eternally, at least for the time being.

'Sorry, no. I don't think she ever mentioned it. They own a farm, though, that's all I know.'

It's enough, Fizz wanted to say, but resisted the impulse.

Cameron's information might not produce any breakthrough evidence but at least it opened a further line of inquiry and it renewed her faith in the possibility of asking the bingo question sooner or later. 178.

Chapter Fifteen.

Cantraymuir Farm (you couldn't miss it) was about a

mile-and-a-half past Culloden. Fizz was loath to pa.s.s up a

brief pilgrimage to the battlefield where Bonnie Prince

Charlie -and Scotland -had been brought low by the

armies of the Butcher c.u.mberland. She had visited it

often enough before but she wanted Giles to experience

the atmosphere of doom that still hung around the scene

some two hundred and fifty years after the event. She was

far from susceptible to the ambience of places like that but

she got a sensation in the back of her neck, not unlike

being poked by a stag's antler, every time she pa.s.sed

among the graves of the clans. Giles manifested a convincing interest as she pointed out landmarks to him and filled in the gaps in his scanty knowledge of the battle but he didn't take his foot off the accelerator as they sped past. Fizz was, however, just as impatient as he to hunt down the farmers who were, quite possibly, the last people to see Vanessa alive, other than Jamie Ford, deceased. These were the people who would know when, and why, Vanessa had changed her mind about staying the night and had left -surely so precipitately -to hurry back to Brora Lodge.

The building that revealed itself to them as they rounded the last bend was no farmhouse but a hodgepodge of stone structures that were partly residential, partly storage for farm implements and partly falling down. The main bit of the building was what looked to 179. Fizz like a thirteenth-century keep with arrow slits, a studded door and a crenellated tower. Cobbled on to this was a long two-storey building of some later date, but still very old, and at the far side, a row of arched bays that might, at some time, have held carriages or carts but had since been gla.s.sed in to provide more modern living s.p.a.ce.

Giles got out of the car and looked uncertainly at the studded door as if he felt the need of a sword hilt to drum on it and summon the nearest va.s.sal. There was, however, an iron bell-pull close by and he used this instead. After a minute, Fizz heard a window open some distance above their heads and a youngish woman leaned out.

'h.e.l.lo there,' she called, a sweep of dark brown hair slithering, Rapunzel-like, over one shoulder. 'Is it me you're looking for?'

'Yes,' called Fizz. She could have been addressing the au pair, she realised, or the mad woman in the attic for that matter, but they could discuss that later.

'Hang around, then. I'm on my way.' The window slammed shut and Giles raised his eyebrows in silent comment. 'Right,' Fizz agreed, looking about her at the lichened stone walls and windows of thick imperfect gla.s.s.

This should be interesting.'

They could hear no sound of approaching feet beyond the door but a couple of minutes later it opened to reveal the dark young woman smiling out at them and panting slightly.

'Sorry about that. Do come in.' She looked at them closely. 'I don't know you, do I?'

Fizz stepped into a stone-flagged hallway lit only by electric light and a single ray of sunshine that emerged from a window that was out of sight around the bend of a spiral staircase on their left. The walls of the square area were lined with weapons: long-barrelled pistols, dirks, broadswords and targes, a crossbow and a dusty, dark-red banner that was more holes than fabric. Everything smelled of dust and rising damp and, for some reason, 180. Fizz was uncomfortably conscious of the weight of masonry above her, supported, one imagined, only by the barrelled ceiling and the exceedingly rotten-looking stone.

Giles, meanwhile, was explaining their purpose there with his inimitable charm at full stretch and the young woman's response was all he could have wished.

'Let's go down to the kitchen and have some coffee. It's warmer in there.'

The half-dozen or so steps leading down towards the back of the building, which was evidently built on a sloping site, were almost the full width of the hallway and the doorway they led to was set in a wooden screen that had been constructed to fill in a much wider opening.

They pa.s.sed through into a huge sunny room that was what would now be called a family kitchen. It was three times the size of any family kitchen Fizz had ever seen and, in spite of the modern appliances and the bright red Aga, you could still imagine it with a sheep turning on a spit in the fireplace.