Adrian McKinty - I Hear the Sirens in the Street

“It isn’t the Bible, since you ask.”

“The Bible was on my mind. Someone called me up and asked me to meet them and when I went there they had left a note,” I explained, leaving out the chase scene.

“That sounds like fun,” she said. “What did the note say?”

“It was a Bible verse.”

“And?”

“‘Now I see through a glass darkly.’”

“What does that mean?”

“I have no idea.”

She grinned and slapped her thigh. “Oh, I get it. You thought I was reading the Bible and that maybe I was the person who left you the note, is that it?”

“It was a woman on the phone. But it was an English woman.”

“Maybe I was disguising my voice.”

“Maybe you were.”

“I didn’t call you and I didn’t leave you a note. How would I get your number anyway?”

“I’m in the book.”

“Oh.”

“And I went to see your brother-in-law.”

“Why?”

“Just to be nosey.”

“And what did you find out?”

“His cars are in a bad way.”

“His cars?”

“The Bentley and the Roller. Beautiful machines sadly gone to pot. He should at least keep them in a garage.”

“Are you aware of the Japanese concept of mono no aware , the bitter sweetness of things?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“The Japanese sages say the best way to appreciate beauty is to focus on its transient, fragile and fleeting nature.”

I nodded. “Is that what your brother-in-law’s doing? I thought he was just a careless fucker.”

“And what else did you learn from your visit to Red Hall?” she asked.

“He’s a knight. It’s Sir Harry McAlpine. He’s been to see the Queen. Somebody gave him a knighthood.”

She shook her head. “Nobody gave him a knighthood. He’s a baronet.”

“What’s a baronet when it’s at home?”

“It’s the lowest order of peerage.”

I must have looked blank because she elaborated. “It goes Prince, Duke, Marquis, Earl, Viscount, Baron, Baronet. It’s hereditary. It goes to the eldest son. Harry is the third Baronet. It means very little.”

“I wouldn’t say that. He’s got a title and he’s got money.”

“Money!” she laughed. “He’s as poor as a church mouse.”

“He’s got that big house, all this land …”

“Heavens, Inspector. This land? Well, yes, he owns everything from here to the sea and I’m a tenant and there are half a dozen farms on the other side of the hill, but none of that matters: it’s all bogland, it’s practically worthless and that big house is a shambles. The top floor is shut up, the walls are crumbling …”

“The house isn’t in great nick, but with all this property he’s hardly a candidate for the poor house, is he?”

“That’s where you’re wrong again. Red Hall is entailed. He can’t touch the freehold or sell it or lease it out. It’s all going to his eldest son.”

“He has kids?”

“Two.”

“One of each?”

“Two boys. They live with their mother. Actually they’re both at Harrow.”

“Harrow over the water?” I asked stupidly.

“Do you know any other Harrow?”

“He’s divorced, then.”

“You really are a detective. A regular Poirot,” she said, with a sweet teasing smile that got her back into my good books. She snugged her legs up underneath her body. Riding horses had given her powerful thighs and done wonders for her complexion.

“I’ll take that,” she said, holding my wrist and removing the empty tea cup. I’ve known judo instructors with a less impressive grip. And that assurance, too. This was no blushing, weeping widow. Not now.

“What about you? How are you doing for money?” I asked.

“Since my husband’s murder, you mean? Is this also part of your investigation? Could I be compelled to answer?”

“Perhaps.”

“Don’t you find question and answer a rather tedious form of discourse? Wouldn’t you rather have a conversation?”

“When time is a factor there’s really no other way, I’m afraid.”

“Is time a factor here? My husband was killed in December. It’s April.”

“Time is always a factor in police work, Mrs McAlpine.”

She sighed. “I live on Martin’s army pension of seventy-five pounds a week. I pay twenty-five pounds of that to Harry. For rent.”

I nodded. “And how much does the land bring in?”

She laughed. “Are you serious?”

“Aye.”

“I have forty sheep. Shorn, I’ll get perhaps three pounds a fleece; come lambing season, perhaps another five pounds a lamb. This year I may make two hundred pounds from the entire acreage.”

“Can’t you grow something? I’m always hearing things about the high cost of wheat.”

“No arable crops will grow here. It’s a marsh. This whole part of Islandmagee is one enormous swamp.”

“Where were you last night, Mrs McAlpine?” I asked, abruptly changing tack.

“When Dougherty was killed, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“I was at home. Reading. In other words, I have no alibi.”

“What were you reading?”

“ Middlemarch .”

“I see.”

“George Eliot.”

“I know … Is that what you’re reading now?”

“Yes.”

She passed me the book. I flipped through it and gave it back.

“Why would I kill poor Inspector Dougherty?” she asked while I was thinking of my next question.

“Why indeed?”

“No, let’s not play that game. Why do you think I may have done it? What possible motive could I have had?”

I was looking for a little more outrage from her: How dare you accuse me of such a terrible thing! Not that that would have had much probative value one way or the other. Maybe she just wasn’t the demonstrative type.

“Because I got him all riled up about your husband’s murder. Because I put a seed of doubt in his head that maybe you weren’t telling everything you knew and because he came barging down there to ask you a whole bunch of questions,” I said.

She smiled. “Then I got a gun from heaven knows where, found out where he lived and shot him?”

And then dumped the weapon, drove to a phone box and claimed the hit on behalf of the IRA using a recognised IRA code word .

“The assumption, naturally, is that I killed my husband for whatever reason and I was worried that Dougherty was getting close to discovering that I had done it and so he had to go too. Is that it?”

“I suppose so,” I agreed.

“Let me dissect this theory of yours a little … if I may.”

“Be my guest.”

“First of all, I didn’t kill Martin. Everything I’ve told you about his murder is completely true. I loved him. He loved me. We rarely argued. And what possible motive could I have had to do it? Fiduciary? For the pathetic lump sum I’ll get years from now from the compensation board? For the army pension? We had no life insurance—”

“Why didn’t he take out life insurance?”

“The weekly rates for a serving army officer are astronomical.”

“Of course.”

“Let me continue … So, no life insurance, a pathetic pension and then there’s the farm. What’s to stop Harry from kicking me out once Martin’s dead? I lose my husband, his income and my house? For what?”

“There are other motives.”

“Like what?”

“Like the oldest motive in the world.”

“Martin wasn’t having an affair.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Quite sure, he wasn’t the type.”

“All women think that about their husbands right up to the moment when they receive undeniable proof and quite often after they receive undeniable proof.”