I Saw Him Die Read online

  “I didn’t mean to… I was out shooting with Rufus… I saw a grouse—or thought I did,” he stammered, trying to catch his breath. It was difficult for him to get his words out. “I fired and…” He placed a hand against the door to support himself, then slumped to his knees. “He wasn’t supposed to be there. He wasn’t supposed to…”

  “What the hell have you done?” asked Mr. Peterson. “Who was there? Who was it?”

  “It was Robin—Uncle Robin—and I’ve killed him,” said James.

  TWO

  The confession served as a kind of explosion, sending shards of shock throughout the house. Mrs. Buchanan continued to wail, while Rufus Phillips comforted his friend. May and Isabella Frith-Stratton appeared pale and dumbfounded, and Vivienne Passerini was being comforted by Simon Peterson. Meanwhile, the servants—the butler, whose name I now knew to be Simkins, together with Mrs. Baillie and the couple of maids—had descended on the hall like carrion crows after spotting a fresh kill. In particular, there was something about the relish in Simkins’s eyes that unsettled me. Either he was one of those ghouls who simply enjoyed hearing about the murder and suffering of others—and I knew there were plenty of those about—or he was pleased to learn of his master’s death.

  “Are you sure he’s dead?” I asked. But James Kinmuir would not answer me. All color had drained from his face. “Mr. Kinmuir—James!” I touched his shoulder, but again he was unresponsive. I turned to his friend. “Mr. Phillips, is there any chance that Robin Kinmuir might be still alive? What state did you leave him in?”

  “He’s dead—I saw it happen,” said Rufus Phillips.

  “I was a nurse in the war,” I said. “Will you come with me and show me where to find him?”

  He nodded. “Will James be all right? He’s had a terrible shock.”

  “Yes, I’m sure he will.” I looked at Simkins and Mrs. Baillie. “Could you get some brandy for the young man? Make sure he stays here. And could someone please locate the doctor and tell him there’s been an accident? And please telephone the police, too.”

  I retrieved my coat and stepped outside. The gardens in front of the house—the expanse of lawn, the herbaceous borders, the monkey puzzle and majestic red cedars—were covered in a light mist, and the loch was swathed in a low-lying cloud, while the castle on the ridge above the lodge could not be seen.

  “A terrible morning for shooting,” I said as Rufus Phillips led me up a track that snaked up to the moor.

  “It wasn’t this bad when we first set out,” Phillips replied. “It seemed to descend on us the nearer we got to the top.”

  “And what about your guns? Where are they?”

  “When we… when we realized what James had done, we dropped them. We couldn’t bear to hold them any longer.”

  As I hurried through the damp heather, I began to get out of breath, but the young and fit Rufus seemed unaffected by the quick pace and the increased gradient.

  “How many shots did you fire?” I asked between gasps.

  “I’m not sure. It all happened so quickly. I think I said, ‘Look, there’s one!’ There was something that looked like a grouse in the distance. The next moment James fired. There was a scream, and that’s when we had the first awful realization that… that the thing he had hit was not a bird but something—someone—else.” He stopped for a moment and looked at me. “Do you think James will get into trouble?”

  The naivete of the question took me by surprise. “Well, that’s for the police to decide, I’m afraid.”

  “Yes, I can see that,” said Phillips.

  Eventually we came up to the ridge of moorland where James Kinmuir had shot his uncle, a man in fear for his life who had come to the agency for help. But we had failed him. I recalled that first conversation I had had with Davison about the case and the flippant remark I had made regarding the person I thought most likely to be Kinmuir’s potential murderer: his next of kin, the man who stood to benefit most from his death—his nephew. And so it had come to pass. I asked myself again: Where was Davison?

  I looked across the purple-tinged moor and into the distance. I could see a figure kneeling on the moor next to two black dogs, his head bowed.

  “Is that where it happened?” I asked Phillips.

  “Yes—but who’s that?”

  As we ran towards the lonely spot where Kinmuir had died, I realized that the kneeling figure was Davison. He had come to the man’s help.

  “Is he alive?” I shouted as I approached.

  “I’m afraid we’ve lost him,” said Davison, whose hands were covered in blood. “I did my best to try to save him, but it was too late. Move off, I say!” he shouted at the two Labrador dogs, who were whimpering by their master’s side, one of whom was insistent on licking a spot of blood from Kinmuir’s face. “Can you get these blasted dogs away from him?”

  Rufus Phillips dragged the dogs away.

  I stared down at the corpse. Kinmuir’s right hand, in his death throes, had clutched at a piece of heather, which now lay limp in his palm. His face looked contorted with pain, his mouth set in a horrible grimace.

  “Where was he hit?” I asked.

  “You can see a wound here in the right leg,” said Davison. “I tried to stem the flow of blood by ripping off a piece of my shirt and making a tourniquet. But I’m presuming he must have been hit somewhere else too, although I haven’t been able to locate the entry point.”

  “Oh, God,” said Rufus Phillips as he turned away and fell, retching, to the ground. “It’s all my fault. If I had not cried out that I had seen a grouse and pointed towards the spot, none of this would have happened.”

  “Have the people in the house called for Dr. Fitzpatrick?” asked Davison.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “And what about the police?” he added.

  “Let’s hope they are on their way, too,” I said. But before they arrived I needed to have a word with Davison in private. “Mr. Phillips, would you mind going back to the lodge to see that the police and the doctor have been called? We really do need to get the authorities here as soon as possible. And take these dogs back with you.”

  Rufus took another look at the gruesome sight on the ground and turned away. “Of course, yes, I’ll do that,” he said as he led the dogs back across the moor in the direction of the house.

  We waited until Rufus Phillips could no longer hear us before we started to talk. I didn’t want to accuse Davison of relinquishing his duties, yet I still needed to know what he had been doing when Kinmuir had been shot.

  “Did you see what happened?” I asked.

  “From a distance, yes,” he said. “I was following Kinmuir, but I didn’t want him to know. I watched him leave the house with his dogs and make for the moor, and I kept a certain distance behind. I could hear shots across the moor but didn’t think anything of it. Then something must have startled one of the dogs—or perhaps it saw a grouse fall—and the damn thing bolted, followed by the other one. Kinmuir took off, too. Of course I ran after him, but I didn’t want anyone to see that I was shadowing him. I heard another shot, saw Kinmuir fall. The two young men—Kinmuir junior and Phillips—looked distraught and dashed over to him. When they realized what they had done, they went straight back to the house. That’s when I ran over here to see if I could save him.”

  I looked across the bleak moor to locate the spot where the two young men had been standing when James Kinmuir fired.

  “And I presume there was no one else up here with a gun?” I asked.

  “Not that I could see,” said Davison. “What are you suggesting? That it might not have been James’s shot which killed him?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “But we have to keep an open mind. The shotguns—Phillips said they dropped them on the ground when they realized the awfulness of the situation. Presumably they are still there.”

  “Let’s look,” said Davison.

  We tramped across the moorland, our eyes fixed to the earth, until we ca
me across the spot where two shotguns were lying discarded on the ground. We bent down but did not touch anything.

  “What’s that there?” asked Davison, pointing towards the base of a clump of heather.

  I leant closer to see. “It looks like…”

  “Yes, a cartridge. And there’s another one here,” he said, taking out his penknife and using it to turn the cartridges over. “At some point we’ll have to give Hartford the bad news. God knows what he’s going to say when he hears that we’ve failed to protect Kinmuir.”

  Suddenly, London seemed an awfully long way away. In the distance I heard the screech of a buzzard. I gazed across the desolate moor, at the dark clouds gathering in the distance, and even though I was standing next to Davison, I felt terribly alone. There was something about the landscape here that was brutal, elemental. If only I could be back in my little mews house in Kensington, with Max by my side. I felt such a deep longing for him at that moment that I imagined leaving Davison there on the moor with the dead body, returning to the lodge, and taking a car to the hotel in Broadford, from where I would collect Rosalind and Carlo and her sister and travel on the first train. I could turn my back on all of this and be content.

  “Is that…?” asked Davison.

  The question woke me from my dream of escape.

  “Yes, I think it’s Dr. Fitzpatrick’s car; he must have returned from visiting that sick child,” he added. “If I stay up here with Kinmuir,” he said, looking back towards the spot where the dead man lay on the ground, “would you mind going to fetch the doctor? He’s going to take it badly, I fear: the two men were great friends, I believe.”

  I did not respond.

  “Agatha? Are you all right?”

  Despite the temptation to take flight—an almost physical desire to run away from the bloody scene—I knew that I could do no such thing. There was something rotten at Dallach Lodge, and it needed to be rooted out.

  * * *

  When I walked into the house, Dr. Fitzpatrick was calling upon every last ounce of his professional reserve as he tried to make sense of his friend’s death. His face, already lined with wrinkles, looked even older and completely drained. “But I just don’t understand how it could have happened,” he said, swallowing the anger that threatened to unsteady his voice.

  James Kinmuir and Rufus Phillips sat before him in the hall, tartan blankets draped around their shoulders, looking like broken men.

  “You’re quite certain he’s dead?” asked the doctor, running his hand over his bald head.

  The two young men nodded. James had tears in his bloodshot eyes and nursed a large tumbler of brandy.

  “Yes, I’m afraid he is,” I said as gently as I could.

  “Well, I’d better see for myself,” said Dr. Fitzpatrick. “Mrs. Christie, you say Mr. Davison is with him now?”

  “Yes,” I said. “He was up on the moor when it happened and saw something of the accident from a distance. I can take you to the place… the place where…”

  “Good idea, and you two,” he said, gesturing towards James Kinmuir and Rufus Phillips, “you need to come with us.”

  We walked up to the moor without talking. The purple heather seemed to stretch on forever. There were few distinguishing features—no abandoned cottages, no trees, no stone walls—and if the mist came down, it would be easy to lose oneself, to stumble into a bog and never be seen again. As we climbed, the air seemed to get damper. My old brown brogues had started to let in a little water and my feet felt wet and cold. I immediately chastised myself: How could I worry about my own comfort when a man’s life had been taken from him?

  Finally we approached the spot where Davison stood waiting by the body of Robin Kinmuir. Dr. Fitzpatrick knelt down by his friend and checked his pulse. He held Kinmuir’s wrist for longer than normal, perhaps hoping against hope for some sign of life. When the doctor knew for sure that Kinmuir was dead, he turned his face away from us to hide his evident emotion.

  All of us stood back to give the doctor some time to grieve before James Kinmuir walked forwards and said, “You’ve got to believe it was an accident. I would never have done anything to hurt my uncle.” There was desperation in his voice. “He only ever showed me kindness. He took me in when my parents died.” He looked at the body on the ground and made a dash towards it, as if in an effort to try to embrace his uncle for one last time, but was held back by Davison.

  “Steady, now.” Davison’s hands still bore traces of the dead man’s blood. “That’s right, step away.”

  “Davison, is it correct that you saw something of what happened here?” asked Dr. Fitzpatrick.

  “Well, I saw it from a distance and then, when I got to him, I did everything I could to save his life,” replied Davison.

  “Can you tell me exactly what happened?” Dr. Fitzpatrick persisted. “Everything you saw and noticed, even if it seems inconsequential.”

  After Davison reiterated what he had already told me, the doctor asked the two friends to repeat their stories. I listened out for any inconsistencies or oddities.

  “It had all started so well—the day, I mean,” said James. “All the guests seemed to be in a good mood, apart from that little misunderstanding that occurred at breakfast between Mrs. Buchanan and Miss Passerini. My uncle had set out for his usual walk after breakfast with the dogs. The weather was a bit gloomy, but the mist hadn’t come down yet. We went to get our things together, and the… equipment.”

  “You mean the guns?” asked the doctor.

  “Yes, that’s right. The guns. Rufus has done some shooting before but has never tried his hand at grouse. As we walked up onto the moors I explained a little about the birds. They fly fast, you see, and can be difficult to spot.”

  “Yes, I know,” said Dr. Fitzpatrick. “It’s something Robin and I like—sorry: used to like to do together.”

  James coughed uneasily. “I talked about ways of flushing them out and about some of the great shoots we have seen on the estate in the past. I remember we laughed because I tried to do a rather bad impersonation of the bird’s call, a kind of chut! chut! chut! chut! Rufus started to rib me pretty badly.” James tried to smile, but at the memory of this moment of happiness his face contorted in an awful mask of pain. He bit his lip as he tried to prevent himself from crying. “From the top of the moor we saw… it was getting more misty, but I think it was Mrs. Buchanan walking on the hill opposite, the one that leads towards the castle behind the house.”

  Dr. Fitzpatrick looked at the young man with suspicion. “And then what?”

  “We chose our spot on the moor and I flushed out a few birds for Rufus. They flew up from the heather and we started shooting,” he said. “In the beginning I held back as I tried to help Rufus, since some of his early efforts were wide of the mark. Then we had a break for a flask of coffee.”

  “Was there anything in the coffee?” the doctor asked. “Whisky, for instance?”

  “Oh, yes, but only a dash to keep us warm,” said Rufus Phillips.

  “So, not enough to impair your senses?” asked Dr. Fitzpatrick.

  “Certainly not,” said James, clearly offended. It was almost as though, to a gentleman such as he, an accusation of drunkenness was worse than that of murder. “My hand was as steady as ever. It was my turn to shoot, and I got a few brace within the first five minutes or so. Then we had to wait for what seemed like simply ages and we sat there quietly, trying not to speak.”

  It was Davison’s turn to ask a question. “So you didn’t see the dogs running towards you, followed by your uncle?”

  “No… no, we didn’t,” said James. “We must have been looking out over a different area of the moor. That or the mist. Obviously, if we had seen him then…” His voice trailed off.

  “And what happened next?” continued Dr. Fitzpatrick.

  “Rufus pointed at something in the distance in the heather and whispered that he thought he had seen a bird,” said James. “I steadied myself, pointed, and, as
I thought it was taking flight, shot at it. That’s when… when we heard that terrible cry and we saw what we—what I—had done.”

  “And what were his injuries, do you know?” Dr. Fitzpatrick looked from one young man to the other, but James Kinmuir had been silenced again by the shock of the memory.

  “There was just so much blood,” said Rufus Phillips, looking down at the nasty stains on his clothes.

  Davison gestured towards the visible wound to Kinmuir’s leg from where he had lost a great deal of blood. He wondered whether the man may have died from hemorrhaging or perhaps even a heart attack.

  “We’ll see soon enough,” said Dr. Fitzpatrick. “I’m right in saying that the police have been informed?”

  “Yes, they have,” I said. On returning to the house earlier, Simkins, the butler, had told me that a policeman was on his way.

  “I suspect it will be too big a job for Maclehose,” said the doctor, referring to the local policeman on Skye. “Not only is he nearly deaf, but he’s never dealt with anything more serious than a case of poaching or the odd theft in the whole of his career.” He addressed the group once more. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they send someone from the mainland to deal with this.”

  James Kinmuir squared his shoulders, lifted up his chin, and nodded to himself a couple of times as if to convince himself that what he was about to do was the correct form of behavior. He presented himself like a naughty schoolboy who had willingly delivered himself to his headmaster’s office, ready to be punished.

  “I don’t mind telling you, I’m ready to be locked up for what I’ve done,” he said.

  Rufus Phillips tried to stop him from saying anything else. “It was an accident, James, you know that,” he said.

  But James Kinmuir—proud of the sense of honor he felt ran through to his very marrow—had made up his mind. “I know I’ve got to face up to it and take the punishment, whatever that may be, like a man,” he said. In that moment, as the awful realization sank in—that the sentence for murder was more than a long stretch in prison—he looked petrified. “When the police arrive, tell them that I’m the guilty one,” he said bravely. “I killed my uncle. And if I have to hang for it, then so be it.”