Death of a Laird by M. C. Beaton

Author:M. C. Beaton
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2022-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

The office sofa did not make a good bed for someone of Hamish’s length. He slouched with his upper body on the sofa and his feet on the chair, the blanket covering most of his long legs. Tired though he was, he knew he wouldn’t sleep. His mind was buzzing with thoughts of the murder. There were motives galore, but the dumping of the body meant that the murderer couldn’t be one of the women: None of them had the physical strength to have lifted Pringle into the back of his Range Rover. Of course, if more than one of them was involved, that changed everything. The women could have done it working as a team. Mrs. Patrick and Diana were supplying each other with alibis for their whereabouts when the murder happened, as were Corinne, Patricia, and Jamie. Lord Robert had no one to verify precisely where he was throughout because he was in the lounge alone. Likewise, Lady Catherine was upstairs alone and Paul Craigie was down in the boathouse. Thoughts whirled around in his head as if driven by the wind and rain that still besieged the house.

Everyone he had spoken to, with the possible exception of Lady Catherine, had pointed him in the direction of someone else. Almost all of them had either lied or given him only part of the truth. Who had lied the most? Was that a reasonable way to try to gauge whether someone was a killer? Being a liar with secrets to hide doesn’t necessarily make you a murderer.

There was one thought to which his mind kept returning. He put his hand in his pocket and felt the hard metal of the gun-room keys. Where was the other set? Dropped or thrown away somewhere outside? No. The murderer had used the rifle and, if feeling cornered, feeling like the net of suspicion was closing in, would want the option of using the firearms to make good an escape. So where were the keys? No one would be stupid enough to keep them on their person—a simple pat-down search would have revealed the bulky keys. Come on, Hamish, he scolded himself. Think! If you wanted to get at the keys and get into the gun room quickly, where would you hide them? He threw off the blanket and walked out into the hall. Suddenly everything fell into place. He knew where the keys were.

And he knew the identity of the murderer.

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