Read Gently North-West for Free Online Page B

and made too sharp an angle with a broad forehead. But she had a finely-drawn jaw and a small, vulnerable mouth, and these, along with a full cheek and a flawless skin, gave her face distinction and interest. She had plentiful dark hair worn straight and long. She was rather under middle height. Her age was perhaps thirty.
    ‘They didn’t need to. They didn’t. They didn’t. Donnie wouldn’t have done them harm. Things might just have come and gone. At the worst . . . at the worst . . .’
    ‘We’re very sorry to intrude,’ Gently said quietly.
    She stared at him wildly through her tears. ‘Ay, you’re sorry,’ she said. ‘What would that cost you? It’s no grief to the lookers-on.’
    ‘We’d like to help—’
    ‘You can’t help. It’s all done, done, done.’
    ‘We may be able to help Inspector Blayne.’
    ‘Two English folk! Never!’
    But then she shrank a little from the rail, her eyes narrowing at Gently.
    ‘What is it you think you know?’ she said. ‘What can you know – about Donnie?’
    Gently shrugged. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘I never met Mr Dunglass.’
    ‘Then who is it about?’
    ‘Perhaps nobody.’
    ‘You can’t have any tales to tell about me!’
    Gently shook his head and said nothing. The woman’s eyes clung to his. The candle, which she was still grasping, trembled and spilled grease into the stick. Then she burst into sudden sobbing and ran back up the stairs and along the gallery. They heard a door open and slam, the creak of a spring, and silence.
    ‘Glory!’ Brenda exclaimed. ‘What do you know about that? They’ve got a pippin of a case here, George. It should make the Sundays. Do you think she did it?’
    ‘What do you think?’
    ‘She’d be top of my list. She was scared silly, you could see that. And half those tears were for your benefit.’
    A thin cough sounded behind them, making them turn quickly. A door had opened near the front of the hall and in the doorway stood a man.
    ‘Aweel,’ he said in a dry voice. ‘Alistair Blayne, at your service. If you’re through interviewin’ Mary Dunglass, perhaps we can get to your bit of business.’
    He coughed again and came out of the doorway.
    ‘The lady has been lately widowed,’ he said. ‘The doctor has given her a wee sedative, but it doesn’t seem to be doin’ its duty.’

CHAPTER FOUR
    I’se uphaud (him) for . . . the bitterest Jacobite in the haill shire.
    Rob Roy
, Sir Walter Scott
    I NSPECTOR BLAYNE LED them along a passage a little less gloomy than the hall and into a well-proportioned room furnished as a library and study. The walls had been regularly shelved with oak and red pine, the latter forming the frames of doors and cupboards and the panelling that ranged at the lowest levels, and the shelves exhibited a catholic bookscape that stretched from folios in sheepskin, through various degrees of calf, boards, cloths, to the jazzier outsides of the present day. Old estate maps in Hogarth frames hung at intervals of the shelving, and a small collection of printed maps was grouped above the wide hearth; a huge desk, a table, a print-stand, a globe, an orrery and half-a-dozen solid, leather-seated chairs completed the inventory.
    When they entered it was apparent that a search was in progress. Cupboard doors hung ajar and files and loose papers were strewn on the floor. At the desk, where an oil-lamp with a pearl-glass shade made some impression on the prevailing dim-out, a sharp-faced man with sleeked hair was flicking through the pages of a ledger.
    ‘A’richt, Purdy,’ Blayne said. ‘You may as well be off back to Balma’. Just do those one or two jobs we were talkin’ of – and give me a tinkle when you’re back, man. You can draw off a couple of men with you.’
    ‘Shall I take this buik, sir?’ Purdy asked, pointing to a folio bound in blue cloth, which lay on the desk.
    Blayne fingered his chin. ‘No, I think not. No, you can leave the buik with me.’
    Purdy left. Blayne, with