Murder on the Moor - C. S. Challinor [12]
Moira had removed her coat and wore a becoming pale blue silk dress that draped her child-like frame.
“I need a drink,” Helen said, making a beeline for the cabinet.
Rex crossed over to the window seat to see how the young Allerdice siblings were doing. “Why so glum?” he asked Flora. “Are you not enjoying the party?”
She smiled weakly. “Your friend seems to be having fun,” she said with a nod in Moira’s direction, where Alistair was topping up her wine glass.
“I didn’t know she was coming. Did either of you want some sponge cake?”
“Aye, ta verra much,” the boy replied.
“I’ll get you some,” his sister told him, hopping off her perch.
Donnie beamed after her.
“Your sister takes good care of you.”
“That she does.”
“I see you figured out the Rubik. Well done, it’s the hardest one in my collection. It takes most people a lot longer.”
“Flora helped me—just a wee bit.”
Rex followed Donnie’s cross-eyed gaze to Moira, who was now absorbed in a conversation with Alistair by the window where the rain played a staccato accompaniment, drowning out their words. Her brown eyes held the seductiveness of smooth milk chocolate. She held her painted lips slightly parted in rapture at what he was saying.
Since when had she turned into such a Jezebel? Rex wondered. One thing was for sure—she was not the same woman since she had returned from Iraq. Did she know Alistair was gay? Moira could be a little naïve, as demonstrated when she had run off with the married photographer, who had subsequently returned to his wife in Sydney.
Rex looked around the room to see if anybody’s glass needed a refill. Allerdice and Farquharson were discussing hunting and how many kills they each had to their credit. Their wives were helping Helen clear the table. Rex wandered off to the front porch to smoke his pipe.
The rain fell in oblique sheets, isolating the lodge from the outside world. He lit the bowl of his pipe, filled with mellowy fragrant Clan tobacco, and stood leaning against the wall of the house, enjoying the fresh moisture-laden air.
The potholes in the driveway had filled to capacity. The road leading up to the village must have turned into a mudslide by now. A four-wheel drive might still manage to get up there, but the hotel van? Not a chance, he decided.
He began to resign himself to the fact that he would have a full house that night. The Farquharsons had the main guest room next to his on the side overlooking the loch. Moira could take Alistair’s room and possibly share with Flora. The Allerdice couple, if they had to stay over, could occupy the room with the leaky radiator at the top of the stairs. That left Rob Roy Beardsley and Donnie. There was a serviceable sofa in the living room for the journalist and a trundle bed in the stable equipped with blankets where the boy could sleep if he wished to stay with his pony. One or other of the McCallum brothers had slept there on occasion while work was progressing on the house.
Rex puffed on his pipe with satisfaction at having sorted out the logistics of the situation. There would be plenty for the guests to eat at breakfast. The only inconvenience, Rex supposed, might be the lack of bathrooms. He and Helen had one off their bedroom. A full guest bath with a ball-and-claw-footed Victorian tub occupied the upper landing. A cloakroom—or as the interior decorator had pretentiously described it, a “powder room”—was located downstairs off the hall.
Savoring the last of his pipe, he tapped the contents from the bowl into a flowerbed, with a final wish that all the guests could go home so he and Helen could salvage some time to themselves. When he returned inside, he found the center of the living room emptied of furniture.
“We’re having a ceilidh,” Shona Allerdice whispered to him conspiratorially.
Rex didn’t see the need for all the secrecy, until he saw her slide a surreptitious look in her daughter’s direction. Flora