Unpredictable Events
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About this ebook
This is the 13th book in the Pitkirtly Mystery series, set in a fictitious small town on the Fife coast in Scotland. Not a million miles from Culross, and yet rather different from it.
Christopher finds that going away on holiday is a lot more trouble than it's worth, while a wedding in the Cultural Centre isn't without its problems. Amaryllis tries to keep a low profile as she teases out secrets from the tangled threads of everyday life, and Christopher's sister Caroline allows obsession to lead her into danger.
Cecilia Peartree
Cecilia Peartree is the pen name of a writer from Edinburgh. She has dabbled in various genres so far, including science fiction and humour, but she keeps returning to a series of 'cosy' mysteries set in a small town in Fife.The first full length novel in the series, 'Crime in the Community', and the fifth 'Frozen in Crime are 'perma-free' on all outlets.The Quest series is set in the different Britain of the 1950s. The sixth novel in this series, 'Quest for a Father' was published in March 2017..As befits a cosy mystery writer, Cecilia Peartree lives in the leafy suburbs with her cats.
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Unpredictable Events - Cecilia Peartree
Unpredictable Events
Cecilia Peartree
Copyright Cecilia Peartree 2017
All rights reserved
Smashwords edition
Cover photograph: Ian Ogilvy Morrison
Contents
Chapter 1 The Watcher at the Harbour
Chapter 2 ‘I’m on the Train’
Chapter 3 Giving the Bride Away
Chapter 4 The Catering Crew
Chapter 5 Christopher at the End of his Tether
Chapter 6 Above and Beyond
Chapter 7 Riotous Impulses
Chapter 8 Wanted
Chapter 9 A Family Conference
Chapter 10 A Good Reason for Staying
Chapter 11 Another Longest Day
Chapter 12 Family Matters
Chapter 13 Crime Scene
Chapter 14 Caroline Reverts to Type
Chapter 15 Another mission for Kyle
Chapter 16 A Little Light Sleuthing
Chapter 17 Christopher Has Fun
Chapter 18 Domestic Problems
Chapter 19 The Hive Mind
Chapter 20 What Will We Do Today?
Chapter 21 A Busy Morning at Work
Chapter 22 Triple Trouble
Chapter 23 The Chase
Chapter 24 Entertaining Mrs Campbell
Chapter 25 Surprises for Two
Chapter 26 An Afternoon at the Movies
Chapter 27 Kyle stays out late
Chapter 28 Keep on Keeping on
Chapter 29 Caroline Goes to Sea
Chapter 30 Some Woman
Chapter 31 Partying on Down
About the Pitkirtly Mystery series
Chapter 1 The Watcher at the Harbour
There were two people arguing at the far end of the harbour wall. Their voices carried easily through the calm, quiet night air.
‘... nothing to do with anyone else!’
‘... sure there’s some rule...’
‘You’re not the guardian of the river! Why don’t you just go home and go to bed?’
‘... stopping you from doing something you’ll regret..’
‘The only thing I regret is that you’re still here. Just go away and let me get on with it.’
The woman’s voice was louder and more aggressive. She was the one the watcher in the shadows was most afraid of bumping into. Everybody in town knew she wouldn’t let things rest until she got to the bottom of them. And she was completely ruthless in her pursuit of people she didn’t like the look of, people she thought might harm somebody she knew.
The watcher shuddered. According to local reports, Amaryllis Peebles was more of a danger than the police were. But as for her friend Christopher Wilson, he was well-known as a pushover. It would be easy enough to pull the wool over his eyes, if it came to that.
‘Why don’t you go home and have a hot drink?’ he was saying now. He was clearly quite agitated, his words ringing out louder and louder across the water of the harbour. If he wasn’t careful he would wake up the man who lived on one of the old fishing-boats, and that would be a nuisance.
‘A hot drink?’ screamed Amaryllis. ‘Do you think every single problem in the world can be solved by having a nice cup of tea?’
‘All right, calm down,’ said Christopher. The watcher could almost picture him glancing round uneasily, as if worried that there were witnesses to this meltdown. If only he knew...
‘Calm down?’ Amaryllis shouted. ‘Christopher, there’s a time to calm down, and a time to get het up. A time to shout and a time to keep quiet. A time to refrain from – oh, whatever.’
‘I don’t think it says anything about shouting,’ said Christopher, his voice dropping to a level at which the watcher could only just make out the words.
There was a rattle and a thud from somewhere – it was hard to tell what direction the sounds came from, distorted as they were by the water – and a third voice yelled, ‘Keep it down, guys, OK? Trying to sleep here.’
‘Sorry,’ called Christopher.
‘Try ear-plugs,’ advised Amaryllis.
That must have been the last straw for Christopher. He hunched up his shoulders and started walking away from her, back along the wall. The watcher huddled further into the shadow of the doorway. It didn’t look as if Christopher would come in this direction, but even so....
A faint pattering like raindrops falling on water was followed by a loud splash from the end of the harbour wall, at about the same time as another thud and a rattle. Presumably the man who had been trying to sleep was having another go.
The splash hadn’t been loud enough to be Amaryllis falling into the water, much though that outcome might have been wished for by some people, and indeed she was still there, perched right at the end of the wall, staring downwards.
The watcher stored up the moment for future reference. You never knew when these oddments of information might come in useful.
Chapter 2 ‘I’m on the Train’
Christopher wondered whether to close his eyes, but decided he had better stay alert for unexpected occurrences.
So far that day almost everything had been unexpected, from arriving at the station to discover that his niece Marina, previously the most sensible teenage girl in the world, had transformed herself almost overnight into a small-scale tyrant who seemed to spend every waking hour arguing with her mother, to the fact that their seat reservations had mysteriously moved into a different coach and they had had to evict a very old man in order to claim the table Caroline had insisted on.
In between times, there had been the lengthy wait for the train on a platform that turned out to have been the wrong platform all along, and the mad rush to the other side of the station with all the items of luggage that Marina and Caroline seemed to consider essential, plus Christopher’s own sensible holdall.
‘I’m on the train,’ Marina was saying into her phone, grimacing horribly. ‘Yes, we’ll be away for a whole week.’ She emphasised the last two words as if they referred to a unit of time similar in length to the last ice age.
Christopher had some sympathy with this, as he had a strong feeling that their holiday in Cornwall would almost certainly seem as long as that.
Caroline waved a plastic bag under his nose. ‘Cheese sandwiches? Or would you prefer ham? I made them myself. Marina doesn’t eat mayonnaise, so it’s the only option really.’
Marina frowned at her mother. ‘Ssh, Mum,’ she said, covering the phone with her hand temporarily.
‘Sorry,’ whispered Caroline. She turned back to Christopher. ‘Cheese or ham? Or would you like a doughnut? I’ve got some in my bag.’
‘I’ll just wait until the trolley comes round, thanks,’ said Christopher. ‘I could do with a coffee.’
Caroline’s face fell. ‘Oh, dear, I should have brought a flask... I never thought of that.’
‘It’s fine,’ said Christopher. Maybe he would have to close his eyes after all. They might think he was asleep then. He tried to stretch his legs out under the table, and kicked something.
‘Ow!’ said Marina loudly.
‘Be careful, Christopher,’ said Caroline. ‘Marina does ballet, you know. We don’t want anything happening to her legs.’
He closed his eyes.
The trouble with that was that if he stopped thinking about his immediate surroundings he would have no alternative but to think about what was happening at the Cultural Centre, and the only reason he had agreed to go on holiday with Caroline and Marina was that he wanted to forget about all that. By the time they got back it would all be over, and things would have returned to normal. That was the way he liked them.
At least Kyle would be there to keep an eye on the place and to make sure crazed wedding revellers didn’t burst into the office and disturb the McCallum Archive, which Christopher was only now beginning to get into some sort of order.
He couldn’t think why anybody would want to hold their wedding in the Folk Museum in the first place. When Mr Miller had told him the Council had put the building on their list of places where people could get married, he had just ignored this news, fondly imagining it was just a box-ticking exercise because nobody would dream of taking advantage of it. But of course the Prestonfield family, apart from Kyle, seemed to be collectively immune to reason and sense of appropriateness. It was just bad luck that one of El Presidente’s nieces had decided to get married in the quirkiest, most unlikely venue she could find.
Christopher wasn’t sure if he was still awake or dreaming as he began to picture the bride picking her way down the improvised aisle formed of Folk Museum display cases, with the assembled throng perching on those folding chairs that were so uncomfortable and so prone to folding themselves up again when the occupants least expected it. He hoped El Presidente himself had been able to find a proper chair to sit on. If he plummeted to the floor at a crucial moment, they would never hear the end of it. He would probably find a way to carry out his threat to close the place down.
Caroline nudged him awake. ‘Trolley’s coming.’
The day became a sequence of recurring scenes: buying a coffee from the trolley, spilling half of it, apologising to people, listening to the clicking of Marina’s fingers as she presumably communicated with friends on her phone, refusing Caroline’s increasingly desperate offers of food, being afraid to stretch his legs in case he kicked somebody, half-dozing off so that imaginary pictures of wedding guests destroying the Cultural Centre were superimposed on the reality of the train interior.
He woke up with a start.
‘Bristol,’ said Caroline, nodding in apparent satisfaction. ‘Nearly there.’
Christopher wondered if his sister had ever looked at a map of Britain. As far as he could recall, it was quite a long way from Bristol to – wherever they were going. Somewhere in Cornwall.
‘Where are we going again?’ he enquired, stifling a yawn.
‘Cornwall,’ said Caroline.
‘Yes, but whereabouts in Cornwall? The south coast? The north coast? Somewhere in between?’
‘It’s near Penzance,’ she said. ‘Just a village, really. On the coast.’
He stared at her. ‘What made you think of going there?’
He heard Marina muttering something. It sounded a bit like ‘Alzheimer’s’ but he was almost sure it couldn’t have been that.
Caroline blushed.
‘I read a book about the place, and it sounded really nice,’ she said at last.
Well, there was nothing to be ashamed about in reading a book, Christopher thought.
‘Was it Rebecca? Or one of the Poldark series?’
‘No.’
‘Go on, show him,’ said Marina. She sounded as if she was trying not to laugh.
‘Oh, all right!’ exclaimed Caroline crossly. ‘There’s no point in trying to have a private wee read with you around, is there?’
Marina went back to prodding the buttons on her phone, while Caroline delved into her bag and brought out a slim pink case with a picture of a very fluffy cat on it. Christopher blinked. He had expected to see a paperback book.
She took something out of the case and switched it on, handing him the thing as it sprang to life.
‘It’s an e-reader,’ she said. ‘I’ve got three hundred books on it.’
Christopher was impressed. He had never thought of Caroline as a great reader.
‘I think Jemima’s got one of those too,’ he commented.
‘Look, click there and you’ll see all the books,’ she told him.
‘It’s in colour,’ he said, feeling stupid as a selection of brightly coloured book covers appeared on the screen. He peered at them. Most of them seemed to show pictures of blue skies, sometimes with a scattering of unthreatening white clouds, above yellow sand and impossibly blue seas. He could understand why Caroline liked them. The images were about as far from the reality of a Scottish summer as you could get.
‘That’s the one, there.’ She pointed to one of the covers, which was almost identical to the others except that there was some sort of a golf course in the foreground instead of the gift shops and cafés that occupied that space on the others.
‘The Little Putting Green Near the Beach,’ he read. ‘A Feel-Good Heart-Warming Story about the Kind of People You’d Like to Have as Friends.’
At the other side of the table, Marina’s face contorted in what might have been disgust but what, Christopher thought, was probably suppressed hilarity.
‘The little putting-green?’ he said blankly. He glanced at a few of the other titles. The word ‘little’ featured in quite a few of them. And sometimes ‘girl’.
‘It’s a really nice story,’ said Caroline. ‘This girl inherits a derelict putting-green from her long-lost father and goes to Cornwall to get it up and running again... I thought we could have a go at playing on the actual putting-green from the story,’ she added wistfully. ‘I haven’t been putting for years.’
‘Are you sure it’s really there?’ said Christopher after a pause during which he weighed up the potential pitfalls of saying nothing and experiencing one of Caroline’s massive tantrums when she discovered the famous putting-green was purely fictitious, as against breaking the news to her in easy stages and perhaps starting the holiday with her in a bit of a huff.
‘Well, I think so,’ said Caroline. She thought about it for a moment and then shrugged her shoulders. ‘Oh, well, even if it isn’t, I’m sure the village is really nice.’
Interesting. Maybe that therapy she had been through last winter was starting to pay off. Or maybe she had been forced to relinquish her role as family drama queen to Marina. Either way, Christopher felt as if he might be able to relax a little on this holiday. He gave the thing back to Caroline, sat back and closed his eyes.
The bride was in tears as she barged through the narrow aisle between the display cases and approached the groom, who was standing with a glaikit expression on his face that made him resemble the inexpertly stuffed seal just above the Folk Museum door.
Suddenly, the roof began to fall in on them, and the whole building lurched to one side. There was screaming and wailing.
He woke up again to find Caroline’s hand crushing his arm. He realised that he had unconsciously tensed up to avoid sliding to one side and off the seat altogether.
The train had come to a standstill, but at an odd angle. Caroline had slipped towards him a little, and Marina, her mouth open in surprise, had fallen across the empty seat next to her at the other side of the table. Caroline’s e-reader and Marina’s phone slid past him and fell on to the carriage floor as he watched.
‘Something’s happened,’ said Caroline.
Christopher leaned down to pick up the two gadgets and return them to their owners. Marina pulled herself upright again.
The screaming and wailing, which had somehow escaped from Christopher’s dream and migrated into real life, became more muted, to be replaced with a babble of talk. There was an electronic crackle and somebody spoke on the announcement system.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, we would like to apologise for this incident. I can assure you that there is no immediate danger, but you must remain in your seats until we can...’
The rest of the announcement was completely inaudible as people began to collect their belongings and barge down the central aisle towards the doors.
So much for being able to relax, thought Christopher. He hoped the wedding wasn’t going as badly as this.
Chapter 3 Giving the Bride Away
‘Tiffany’s in tears in the biography section,’ said Kyle’s father urgently. ‘We’ll have to do something, or the whole thing will be a fiasco.’
‘More than it already is, you mean,’ remarked Kyle’s mother. She fiddled with the clasp on her handbag. ‘I suppose I’d better go and speak to her.’
‘What’s the problem?’ said Kyle, wondering, not for the first time that day, what they expected him to do about it. For some reason his rather indeterminate status as an intern at the Cultural Centre had landed him with far more responsibility for the success of this wedding than he had bargained for. He hoped his mother didn’t go and speak to his sister. That would be all she needed at the moment.
‘It’s young Lee’s father,’ said Douglas Prestonfield. He pulled at his tie and succeeded in making it ride up above the ridiculous winged collar. Marie Prestonfield tutted and put a hand up to try and tug it back into place.
‘What’s wrong with him?’ enquired Kyle.
‘Hmph!’ said Douglas, taking a step back out of his wife’s reach. ‘Probably lying drunk in some doorway.’
‘He wouldn’t do that on a day like this,’ said a voice from just behind them.
Lee Campbell stood there in the doorway of the research room, dressed like the other men in kilt and accoutrements. He didn’t look quite as silly as Kyle felt, but it was a close thing.
‘He hasn’t turned up yet,’ Lee continued. ‘My Mum’s just texting him now.’
‘Where was he staying?’ said Kyle. ‘Maybe one of us should go round there. In case he’s slept in.’
‘Oh, no, you don’t,’ said Douglas as Kyle took a step towards the door. ‘We don’t want to lose track of you too.’
‘He and his girl-friend were renting a cottage along the coast,’ said Lee. ‘I’m not sure where exactly. But we’ve got his mobile number.’
‘We’ll be running late in a minute!’ said Marie Prestonfield. She glared at her husband. ‘Douglas, can’t we do something?’
‘We’ll go and speak to Tiffany,’ said Douglas.
They made their exit, leaving Kyle and Lee together in an uneasy silence.
‘So you work here now, do you?’ said Lee, tapping his fingers on one of the computer keyboards.
‘Sort of,’ said Kyle.
At this moment he wished fervently that he didn’t work here. Not only did he know Christopher was trusting him to make sure nothing terrible happened to the building and its contents during the wedding, but his parents seemed to think he would be able to iron out any problems with the ceremony itself. There was nothing he could do, however, about Lee’s father’s absence. He wished it were a normal day at work, with Zak Johnstone casting evil glances at him from behind the local shells display, Jemima and Dave popping in at lunchtime with unhealthy snacks, and the portrait of his uncle, now known even to him as El Presidente, glowering down the corridor at everybody.
As if he had conjured up the man just by thinking about him, there was a noise in the corridor and Kyle’s uncle stepped into the room.
‘What’s the hold-up, then?’ he boomed. ‘We’re all waiting in the Folk Museum. The catering arrangements will fall apart if we start running late.’
It seemed that he too held Kyle responsible for the success of the event.
‘It’s Tiffany,’ said Kyle.
‘No, it isn’t Tiffany,’ snapped Lee. ‘It’s my Dad.’
El Presidente, resplendent in full tartan regalia – Kyle wouldn’t have been surprised to see a ceremonial sword hanging by his side – drew himself up to his full height and said, ‘That’s not good enough, is