Murder on the Moor - C. S. Challinor [23]
“Down by the loch.”
Rex took his tea and bacon sandwich into the garden and walked down the wet flagstone path to the loch that was edged with bright yellow gorse bushes. The rain had stopped for the moment. A stunned group stood huddled on the muddy bank, their eyes fixed on the wooden boat as Rob Roy and Cuthbert rowed feverishly through the mist toward them. Surely they had not actually had a close encounter with Bessie?
“Will she be all right?” Shona cried out.
“She’s not breathing,” the journalist called back. “Call an ambulance!”
“An ambulance?” Rex asked in surprise. Did you transport sea monsters in ambulances? “What’s wrong with her?”
Hamish Allerdice turned to face him. “It looks like your ex-girlfriend drowned in the loch.”
“Moira?” Was this some kind of joke?
“She’s in the boat. I’m verra sorry for your loss. We thought it was a sighting of Bessie, but it turned out to be …”
Rex waded into the water, straining to see. In the bottom of the boat lay the naked form of Moira wrapped in a tarpaulin, her limbs stiff and blue, her hair entangled with weeds, eyes staring and glassy. There could be no doubt she was dead.
Drowned, in his loch.
“I’m sorry, Rex,” Cuthbert said, hopping out of the boat and securing the line to a rusty stake in the rocks. “Rob Roy performed CPR. I’d say she’s been dead for hours.”
The two men lifted the dripping body from the boat, careful to keep the tarpaulin in place around her torso. Slimy reeds clung to her pale arms and streaming dark hair. Shona emitted a horrified gasp and turned away from the body. Flora draped an arm around her mother’s heaving shoulders. The rest of the group offered Rex their condolences.
Helen ran down to the bank. “Moira!” she exclaimed upon seeing the corpse. “What happened? What was she doing in the loch? Did she go for a swim?”
“In this weather?” Estelle said with a dismissive humph, restored to normality in a tartan skirt and a chunky ivory wool sweater. Rid of her clay mask and curlers, she looked almost human. “She’d have had to be out of her mind.”
Rex and Helen exchanged a look. Moira had attempted suicide in the spring following her return from Iraq when she had gone to Florida to try to reconcile with Rex, who was visiting his son. The doctor at the hospital where she’d been admitted had said she was suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as a result of her bombing experience in Baghdad.
It appeared she had not fully recovered …
“The only reason she didn’t sink,” Rob Roy explained as he and Cuthbert made toward the house with the body, “was that she got caught up in the reeds.”
“Why would she have gone swimming, Rex?” Shona pleaded. “Is this something you would have expected of her?”
“She announced she was going to have a bath, remember?” Estelle told the group following the pallbearers. “That’s why we asked to use your bathroom, Rex.”
“That would explain why she had no clothes on,” Hamish remarked, barely able to disguise his prurient interest. “But how did she end up in the loch?”
“If it were me, I’d go for a swim first,” Shona pointed out with a shudder. “Then I’d have a bath to warm up. Doing it the other way round makes no sense.”
Rex had to agree that nothing about Moira’s apparent drowning made sense so far.
“When’s the ambulance getting here?” Alistair asked, wiping the rain from his eyes. “Should we bring her into the house?”
“Let’s take her into the stable,” Cuthbert suggested. “All right with you, old man?” he asked Rex.
Rex nodded. He felt slightly superstitious about dead bodies in the house. In any case, the ambulance would be here soon. Rob Roy and Cuthbert conveyed Moira to the stable, where Rex instructed them to set her down on the trundle bed.
Donnie, who had just risen and was straightening his clothes, stared at her as at a ghost. “Is she deed?” he asked in heavily accented Scottish.
“Aye, Donnie, she is. She’s at peace.” His sister took his hand. “Come away, now. I’ll make you some breakfast. May I, Helen?”
“Of course. Make yourselves at home. There’s some porridge in