Page 13 of A Very Bookish Murder
At that moment, Ally spotted the husband, Murdo, with his shiny bald head and prolific white moustache. He had just pulled up outside in his little red van.
‘Murdo’s arrived,’ Ally said.
‘Oh, tell him to come in,’ Morag said eagerly, plainly desperate to impart this latest piece of information.
Murdo didn’t need much persuading because he often stopped for a cup of tea on his postal rounds.
‘Phew! It’s warm today,’ he exclaimed as he came into the kitchen and handed a bunch of letters to Ally. He looked at his wife. ‘Ye’re still here then?’
‘Ye wait until ye hear what I have to tell ye, Murdo McConnachie,’ Morag shouted at him. ‘We’ve had a visit from thenew detective!’
‘Oh aye? I heard all about some woman bein’ killed and that Rigby was in hospital. So, what’s he like?’ Murdo accepted his mug of tea and helped himself to a chocolate biscuit, completely unfazed by Morag’s excitement.
‘Mygoodness, he’s an awful lot younger and better lookin’ than Rigby,’ proclaimed Morag triumphantly. ‘And he cannae be more than twenty-somethin’.’
Ally sighed. ‘Morag, I think he must be in his forties, but he is very good-looking.’
‘And he’s callin’ herAlly!’ Morag continued. ‘And she’s callin’ himAmour! I thought that meant “love”.’
‘Amir,’ Ally corrected. ‘He’s a charming man who’s taken over from Rigby for the moment.’
‘Well I never!’ said Murdo, gulping down his tea and obviously eager to be off to spread this gem all around the village. ‘Well I never!’
As soon as Morag and Murdo had departed, Ally decided she needed to have a look in Room 1 while the house was empty and to see what Brigitte had been looking at. She made her way upstairs.
There was no sign of the diary. Had Amir taken it? She looked around and then moved the chest of drawers slightly forward. And there was the diary! It had slipped down the back of the chest, so Amir had obviously missed it.
On picking it up, Ally realised that it was marked by a ribbon for this particular week, but the page for the first four days had been torn out. Why? On closer inspection, she could see the indent of Jodi’s heavy-handed writing on the previous page. She could just decipher ‘meeting with Brigitte’. So, Jodi should have been having a meeting with Brigitte on that very day! Why would she be doing that? And had Jodi torn the pages out herself for some reason, or had Brigitte done so? What did it mean?
Ally wondered for a moment what to do. Then, slipping the diary into her pocket, she decided to hang on to it and show it to Amir when she next saw him.
Locharran Village Post Office and General Stores was run by two elderly spinster sisters, Queenie and Bessie MacDougall. They’d taken over from their parents fifty years ago, and, by the look of things, not a great deal had changed since.
Ally had no doubt that this would have been Murdo’s first port of call because, Queenie, in particular, was the centre of all village gossip. She spent her time permanently hunched across the counter in an effort to see and hear everything that could be going on and that might otherwise escape her notice.
So when Ally arrived in the shop later that day to buy some milk, she found Queenie typically misinformed.
‘I hear they’re havin’ to bring thepollis in fromIndianow!’ Queenie said, by way of greeting.
‘I’d hazard a guess that he’s come all the way from Glasgow,’ Ally said. ‘And he’s extremely nice. I’ll take two pints of milk, if you please, Queenie.’
‘Milk fer Mrs McKinley,’ Queenie bawled at Bessie who, as usual, was unpacking boxes and stocking shelves. ‘And what about this poor woman at the Craigmonie?’ she continued. ‘Strangled when she went for a pee! Ye canna go anywhere and be safe thae days.’ She looked hard at Ally. ‘And it wiz yersel’ what found her!’
‘I’m afraid so,’ Ally admitted.
‘Well, well, well!’ said Queenie, plainly momentarily at a loss for words. ‘And I’m hearin’ that ye’re right pally with him and callin’ himAmour! What’s yer boyfriend goin’ to think of that, eh?’
‘Amir,’ Ally corrected. ‘Amir.Nothing whatsoever to do with love!’ Although, she thought privately, hewasextremely dishy.
‘Yer milk, Mrs McKinley,’ said Bessie, who was clad in her normal uniform of ancient jumper and droopy skirt that barely concealed her billowing underwear. Ally had often wondered who bought these old-fashioned knickers, elasticated just above the knee. Now she knew.
Ally had just got home when she had another visitor. She wasn’t surprised to see Desdemona arrive because she had called her the previous evening to tell her of the death of her friend but hadn’t been able to get through. And it was too delicate a subject to impart in a voicemail.
‘What the hell’s going on?’ Desdemona asked as, without preamble, she marched in through the door. ‘I heard it on thenews! My friend Jodi!’
Desdemona was a little odd, no two ways about that, but she was a brilliant painter. Then again, her entire family had been a little odd, according to local legend. Her father had been a professor of English, her mother an actress. Nobody knew what had brought them and their two daughters – Desdemona and Ophelia – up from London to this remote highland region, to the isolated house on the side of Loch Trioch. The professor had constructed a large, walled garden, where Desdemona, now the only survivor of the family, still grew exotic herbs, spices and vegetables, which she sold in the village from time to time.
Now she plonked herself down on a kitchen chair, in a colourful flurry of violently patterned kaftan with purple beads and purple leggings, and patted an enthusiastically welcoming Flora.
