Murder at the Open Read online

  “H’m.” Big Sam rubbed his chin, which by now had a thick dark stubble on it. “Looks a reasonably clear case to me.”

  “I agree,” said Aidan. “It explains his opposition to the merger and his unofficial approach to Miss Garson about its prospects after the murder. If the accountants hadn’t been called in, he could possibly have got away with it — for a time at any rate.”

  High finance wasn’t in my line — it never is in the line of a freelance writer. I was more interested in Bill Ferguson. The present discussion, even though it concerned him closely, seemed to be passing over his head. I guessed he was thinking about Debbie.

  And I was right. Suddenly — out of the blue — he said: “Can anyone tell me what I’ve done to Debbie? Did you see her just now? She looked through me, as if I wasn’t there!”

  His dark and rugged face had always struck me as belonging to a man of quick decision and even quicker temper. Now he looked — and sounded — like a bewildered small boy.

  I felt embarrassed. So did Big Sam, I suspected.

  But as usual Aidan was uninhibited. “You may have got it wrong,” he said. “The question could be, what has Debbie done to you?”

  “Done to me? She’s done nothing, dammit! Well, of course, she has done something in a way, but she’s always been so kind, so careful not to hurt anyone, that now I can’t understand — ”

  “Bill,” interrupted Aidan, quietly, “when you put another human being on a pedestal you make it rough for the human being concerned. The really happy people are those who recognise and tolerate in one another the guilt which underlies all innocence.”

  “What the blazes d’you mean by that?”

  “I’m not sure. When G. K. Chesterton talked in paradoxes, he seldom knew exactly what he meant either.”

  Bill glowered. Then he shrugged the riddle aside and returned to the main stream of his thoughts. “I can’t get Debbie out of my mind,” he confessed, sitting forward, elbows on knees, chin on his hands. “She suddenly appears to be a different person. If only I could get through to her”

  “It won’t be long now, Bill.” For once Aidan’s voice was sympathetic, “But when it happens, you may find you won’t like it.”

  His words hung in the silence like the acrid smoke from a suddenly blown-out candle.

  *

  In the morning Aidan and I saw none of the golfing drama on the Old Course. We were involved in another drama in the town itself.

  We had breakfast with the Inspector at half-past seven. As we started on our bacon and eggs a policeman reported that a man answering Gordon Cunningham’s description had been trying — unsuccessfully — to hire one of the skiffs in the harbour. As we finished our toast and marmalade another message came in. The same man had just been seen lurking in Gregory Place, near the pier.

  “Right,” said Big Sam, rising. “Let’s go get him. My men are thin on ground, Professor. Would you and Mr MacVicar care to help?”

  We knew what was on his mind. The watch on Debbie Lingstrom and the others had to be maintained, at all costs. We agreed, therefore, to take part in the search; and Aidan — he’d once commanded a company in a Territorial battalion of the Royal Highland Fusiliers — suggested a few valuable modifications to the Inspector’s plan, the purpose of which was to winkle out and corner Cunningham in the sea-backed area of the harbour.

  In its final shape, the plan was simple enough. The police, like beaters in a wood, were to move in on one side from the Scores, North Street, Market Street and South Street and on the other from Queen’s Terrace, Greenside Place and St Mary’s Street. Meanwhile Aidan and I were to patrol the Abbey Walk. This was the key position, because the quarry might try to run for cover under the High Precinct Wall, and it was allotted to us because we knew Cunningham well by sight.

  The morning was clear, but the north-west wind was gusting freshly as we made our way towards the Abbey Walk. Near the A.A. Car Park in North Street a newspaper board was lifted from a shop-front and came clattering towards us along the pavement. I retrieved it, put it back inside the shop and received the grateful thanks of the owner. The poster it displayed was slightly torn, but its message remained clear, if somewhat ambiguous:

  Also Tony Lema Writes on Golf for the Express

  I rejoined Aidan and looked at my watch. It was just ten past eight. Only a few hundred yards away, the first two competitors would be examining the lines of their putts on the first green. In about twenty minutes, Christy O’Connor and Bobby Locke would be driving off. I tried to forget the long-anticipated pleasure I was missing and to concentrate on the job in hand.

  We dodged across Market Street, which already was full of cars and pedestrians. Visitors — and the St Andrews folk themselves — were out shopping early so that later in the day they’d be free to watch the golf. Tartan caps, lightweight waterproofs and golfing umbrellas splashed the cobbled street and old grey buildings with vivid colour.

  South Street, dominated by the towers of Holy Trinity Church and St Mary’s College, was more spacious and quiet, though the wind seemed even stronger here, and its whine could be heard above the more muted traffic sounds, I wondered how the masters would fare against the Old Lady of Fife in such a wind. She was difficult enough to deal with in a flat calm.

  Then we turned into Abbey Street, dark and narrow and dingy with age, and the atmosphere of bustling life faded into comparative silence and sombreness. As we passed the Byre Theatre, the entrance to which still looked exactly like a small, bedraggled farmyard, the buildings seemed to lean in and threaten us with ancient evil. People passed on the rickety pavements. They seemed to glance at us furtively, and I have no doubt we looked equally furtive. It was as if we had entered a dark jungle, where the law of the hunter and hunted came cruelly into its own.

  I felt sorry for Bill Ferguson’s lawyer, alone and frightened, with the forces of rectitude massively gathering in around him. The hunting down of a man — or of an animal — by superior numbers is an exercise that has never appealed to me. But when I said as much, Aidan put the situation into perspective with a flash of his ‘deductive logic’.

  “He’s a wrong’un, Angus. I sensed it from the beginning — so did you, if only you’d admit it — and now Bill Ferguson confirms it. When a man sins against society, society has a right to hunt him down.”

  Morally I agreed with him; but in certain circumstances the awareness of what constitutes morality can be an unpleasant companion.

  When we reached it, the Abbey Walk was practically deserted. Nobody loitered in this dark corner of the town when the Open was in progress. The Precinct Wall loomed high on our left, like the palisade of a medieval prison. But I knew there was nothing behind it except trees and grass and the ruins of a few old buildings connected with the Cathedral.

  On our right we passed the Convalescent Children’s Home and the Burgh School, catching glimpses of the open ground in the Abbey Park beyond. Near the Cottage Hospital we turned and made our way back slowly, under the curve of the great wall. We could hear the wind howling above it and, in the near distance, the dull roar of the sea outside the harbour.

  The police would have begun to move in from the north. Anytime now we might catch a glimpse of the unfortunate creature who had to be flushed out and captured.

  Two girls and two young men on bicycles came pedalling down the Walk, laughing and chattering, probably on their way to a picnic on the Kinkell Braes or in some quiet spot farther along the coast. The girls were wearing jeans and polo-necked jerseys, the young men shorts and sweatshirts, and in spite of their fashionably long lank hair, they all looked happily healthy, worried neither about murder nor about golf. I envied them and felt my stodgy age. Aidan was talking — as only he can — on the subject of feminine psychology, with particular reference to Debbie Lingstrom; but I wasn’t listening. His words of wisdom floated away from me, like the white gulls planing high on the wind.

  After about half-an-hour we were approaching the entrance t
o the Cottage Hospital for the third time, when suddenly a man came running towards us, round the corner of Balfour Place. It was Cunningham.

  He was hatless. His dark suit was grubby, as if he’d tried to sleep in it in some dark alley. He looked pale and tired and desperate, like a fox nearing the end of his run.

  “Cunningham!” shouted Aidan.

  He was still wearing his pince-nez, but he was so shortsighted that I doubt if he actually recognised us. He knew at once, however, that we were his enemies, because now everyone was his enemy. He stopped quickly in his tracks, then turned and ran left, back along The Shore.

  We sprinted after him, clattering across the tarmac in Balfour Place. We saw him fifty yards ahead, stumbling as he ran along the narrow sweep of The Shore. We were only vaguely aware that on our right a number of housewives had stopped chatting outside their front doors and were curiously watching.

  As he passed the Pends Road, a uniformed policeman appeared under the ancient archway of the Mill Port. It took the young, fresh-faced constable only about a couple of seconds to take in the situation. Then he joined in the chase a few yards ahead of us. The thudding of his heavy boots was like a bass motif against the lighter sound pattern of our speeding shoes.

  The Shore widened out into the harbour area. Skiffs lay close in against the street. Nets were hanging on rails to dry. Fishermen at work in their boats looked up as we passed, and out of the corner of my eye I saw some of the younger ones begin scrambling ashore, as if determined to discover the source of the excitement.

  Hereabouts we felt the wind again. It blew hard against our hot faces, and I noticed showers of spray flying up against the long stone pier in front.

  By now we had gained so much on Cunningham that we could hear his harsh sobbing as he fought for breath. But he still drove himself forward, long legs shambling, in a last-ditch effort to avoid capture.

  Beyond the ruins of the Lady Chapel another policeman — an older man with a black moustache — came in sight. Cunningham saw him and swerved away from him on to the pier. But Aidan and I and the other constable were close behind, and he realised at once that he’d made an error. Now he was trapped between us and the sea.

  He stumbled against a bollard and paused, gasping for breath, like an animal in dumb pain. He peered in our direction, saw us coming, then ran on again.

  “It’s all over, Cunningham! Call it a day!” panted Aidan.

  But desperation made him deaf and blind. On buckling legs he reached the end of the pier. He stopped and turned, in an agony of mind and spirit. Spray flew up against his haggard face, mingling with the sweat on it.

  We slowed to a halt. He tried to say something, and to wave us away, but he was so exhausted that no sound came from his gaping mouth, and his arms, hanging down, merely twitched and went limp again.

  The constable with the black moustache went forward, his trousers flapping against his legs. “Now then, take it easy, man! You’re wanted for questioning!”

  Finding a last reserve of strength, Cunningham uttered an animal scream and struck at him with a thin arm. Then, while we all watched in astonishment, he sprang to the inner edge of the pier and leapt sideways into the sea.

  The policeman hesitated only for a heart-beat. Then, flinging off his cap, he dived in after him. I made a dash for a lifebelt I’d noticed hanging on the windward wall of the pier.

  With the help of the half-dozen curious young fishermen, who by this time had reached the pier from the harbour, we managed to pull them out. Cunningham was on the verge of losing consciousness, and the younger constable ran to phone for an ambulance; but Aidan said he was sure he wasn’t seriously harmed.

  The black-moustached policeman stood dripping on the pier, looking down at his inert captive. He was swearing. When he had exhausted the English language, he started all over again in the Gaelic.

  *

  Two hours later, in the upstairs lounge, Aidan and I had a short conference with Big Sam over cups of coffee. I’d just heard that Garialde of France had done a 71 and was at this stage leading the field in the Open. Weetman had done a 72. What about the Americans? I was wondering. They’d have to be good to beat a 71, with the wind growing even stronger. Lema had been the first of their shock troops to go out; but he wasn’t due to hand in his card for some time yet.

  I dragged my thoughts away from golf and listened to what the Inspector was saying.

  “Cunningham’s in hospital. Nothing much wrong with him, except maybe a touch of nervous shock, and they say he’ll probably be fit enough to be discharged tomorrow. He’s made a clean breast of it. He’d been cooking the books of Ferguson & Son to cover his own losses on the Stock Exchange. He swears he meant to pay everything back — the usual guff! — but the proposed merger with Golf Products caught him short. When the accountants were called in, his goose was cooked. With the daft idea that he might be able to hire a boat and escape to the Continent, he made a run for it — and spent most of the night, I gather, holed up in the Cathedral graveyard. The rest you know.”

  “He had nothing to do with the murder?” I said.

  “I don’t think so,” replied Big Sam, stolidly. “For one thing, he didn’t have a key to the shed where the golf-clubs are kept. For another, he had no interest in golf, and I very much doubt if the idea of using a golf-club as a murder-weapon would ever occur to him.”

  “Then his statements in connection with the murder are very likely true?”

  “Very likely. But I’m afraid I don’t follow.”

  “He told you he was with Bill Ferguson — in Bill’s room — during the time in which the murder was committed. This lets Bill out, wouldn’t you say?”

  He and Aidan glanced at one another.

  “He catches on, doesn’t he!” remarked my friend. “Which means that O’Donnel, Cunningham and Ferguson are now all cleared of suspicion.” I paused to study the effect.

  Big Sam nodded. “So it would seem,” he agreed.

  Ugly, unwilling thoughts had been creeping in my mind; but now Aidan cut into them. “Inspector,” he said, elbowing aside further consideration of my amateur theories, “you have something else to tell us?”

  “Yes.” Big Sam looked down at his papers — but not before I’d noticed a flicker of excitement in his eyes. “I’ve just had the two reports I was waiting for. From the handwriting expert and from the lab.”

  “Well?” Aidan’s authoritative monosyllable made it plain that he expected no police secrets to be kept from him.

  Big Sam said, slowly: “Our man in Edinburgh is convinced that the writing on the scrap of paper found in the dead man’s hand is Miss Lingstrom’s. It’s not quite as mature as her handwriting is today — he’s of the opinion that the note was written a number of years ago — but the style is characteristic, he says.”

  “He’s prepared to give evidence to that effect?”

  “Certainly.”

  I felt hurt and somehow unbelieving. Debbie Lingstrom’s beauty and friendly charm remained strong in my mind. Aidan went on, “What about the 4-iron?”

  “About the club,” replied Big Sam, “there can be no controversy whatever. It appeared to be clean — and, in fact, it had been cleaned thoroughly with a damp cloth — but the tests revealed traces of blood in the grooves and incised lettering on the blade. Blood corresponding to Lingstrom’s blood-group.”

  “No fingerprints?”

  “Unfortunately, no.”

  I knew now that events had begun to march. The murderer was being winkled out as coldly and efficiently as Cunningham had been, earlier that morning.

  *

  That afternoon, the body of Conrad J. Lingstrom was laid to rest in the ancient burying-ground of St Andrews. Aidan and I were at the graveside service with Bill Ferguson.

  The only others to take part in it, besides the minister and the undertaker’s men, were Debbie Lingstrom, Erica Garson and Cliff O’Donnel; though at the main gate, close to where the big Cadillac was parked alongsi
de the hearse and the undertaker’s cars, two plain-clothes men were doing their best to appear inconspicuous.

  Both women wore black. The strange thing was that while Debbie’s black suit and black-veiled little hat made her look slimmer and younger than she actually was, the same sort of dark clothes made the secretary look older — almost matronly, in fact.

  At the head of the open grave Debbie kept hold of her companion’s arm, as if desperately in need of comfort and reassurance. I couldn’t help wondering if sorrow at the death of her uncle were the sole cause of her uncharacteristic distress.

  Behind the ladies, peaked cap in hand, lean figure clad in well-fitting blue serge, O’Donnel stood alone, erect and still, his face a mask of brooding lines. There was a wariness in his eyes, however, which puzzled me.

  I was almost as sorry for Bill Ferguson as I was for Debbie. The more you got to know him, the better you liked him. His dark moods and bouts of public school aloofness were unrelated to his real character, which was warm and kind. The funeral service was plainly an ordeal for him; but he had made up his mind to go through with it, not only in tribute to the memory of a respected business acquaintance but also for Debbie’s sake, in case she might need him.

  Debbie showed no sign of needing anyone, however — except Erica Garson, who kept whispering words of encouragement before and after the service began.

  Aidan was all eyes and ears, soaking up impressions like a sponge, and I don’t think he was troubled by sentimental considerations of any kind. His scanty hair wisped about his bald patch; the look on his face was blank and relaxed, but somehow dangerous.

  In the lee of the grey walls of the Cathedral, we were sheltered from the wind, though the robes worn by the solid, square-faced young minister were occasionally stirred by quick eddies rebounding from St Rule’s Tower.