Murder on the Moor - C. S. Challinor [55]
“Could you be mistaken at all?” Shona asked, clutching at her wool collar.
Rex shook his head in apology. For once Hamish was silent. The others stared at Beardsley with their mouths agape.
“I could have picked that up off the mat at the hotel,” Beardsley objected, looking about him for support. “The other guests go on hikes.”
“I’d bet you also have incriminating souvenirs in your room back at the hotel. You seem pretty handy with a camera. I wonder … Did you take pictures of Melissa Bates and Kirsty MacClure so you could take them out when you needed to relive your depraved fantasies? They were wee angels and you sullied them with your disgusting hands—”
Beardsley lunged for him. Rex struck out with his right fist and sent him sprawling across the floor, rendering him unconscious when his forehead hit the stone hearth.
“Well done, Rex,” Helen exclaimed, eyes gleaming with pride. “Are you all right?”
The square contact with the side of Beardsley’s jaw had made a satisfying thwack, though as far as Rex could tell, his fist was unharmed.
“Couldna’ve done better myself,” Hamish approved. “I’d like to kick his head in.”
“That goes for me too,” Cuthbert said. “And I would, were it not for this blasted ankle.”
Shona burst into tears. “It’s all too much. I canna believe it!”
Flora flew to her mother’s side. The ever practical Estelle Farquharson, who had tucked her feet in, away from the body, proffered a white cotton hankie.
Bending over Beardsley, Rex peeled off the fake beard and removed the spectacles that had half fallen off his face. Peering through them, Rex saw they had clear, non-prescription lenses. “No wonder he got so riled when Donnie snatched them last night,” he said. “They were part of his disguise.”
“He looks younger,” Shona said, holding the handkerchief to her face. “I hardly recognize him.”
“You weren’t supposed to. This is how he looks when he’s on the prowl for his wee victims.” Posing as a cub scout leader.
“I thought the murderer would turn out to be a dirty old man.”
“Children are often afraid of beards,” Helen pointed out. “He does look much younger without it.” She stared at him in disgust.
“You know, I think he may have had a goatee before,” Hamish said.
“He did,” Rex replied, showing him the hotel photo where Beardsley posed in the dining room with a group of young men and a tall waiter with slicked-back dark hair.
“That’s Brad with Alfonso,” Flora said bitterly when Rex passed her the photograph. “These three are students from St. Andrews University. I remember him now,” she said, pointing to the man at the end. “He was by himself. Said he was hiking across the Great Glen. I wonder, was that just before the first wee lass, a redhead by the name of Lorna, disappeared?”
Rex remembered the raw pain of the auburn-haired mother as she appealed on national TV to the unknown abductor to release her daughter. The first of a series of distraught appeals …
“It must be a parent’s worst nightmare to have a child fall into the hands of a sexual predator,” Helen said in a voice trembling with emotion.
“The second victim was a bit older,” Shona recalled. “Eight years old. She wasn’t found for five weeks, by which time her body was so decomposed her own mother couldna identify her.”
The wail of approaching police sirens interrupted further discussion. All eyes reverted to the unconscious body by the fireplace where blood oozed from Beardsley’s forehead.
“About time,” Helen said, wrapping her cardigan about her chest and moving toward the living room door. “I really can’t bear being in the same room as that man. Thank God it