Bitter End Part 20

The Menzies' pied-a-terre in Edinburgh was a three-storey Edwardian mansion in a conservation area a couple of miles from the city centre. It was set well back from the road behind a screen of cherry trees and sported an imposing entrance with a magnificent stained-gla.s.s door.

Annoyingly, there was a car blocking the driveway so Buchanan had to find a parking s.p.a.ce a good hundred yards down the road and walk back. As he waited for an answer to his ring, he checked out the rest of the street and estimated that a decent-sized bomb in this area would probably put Lloyds out of business. 124. The door was opened to them by a mature lady wearing a cheap plastic raincoat over a nurse's uniform.

'Mr Buchanan? Yes, do come in. Mr Menzies is expecting you.' She led them into a hallway and added, 'If you'll excuse me for a moment I'll just make sure Mr Menzies is ready to see you.'

Fizz watched her disappear through a doorway big enough for a horse and cart and muttered, 'It's like St Paul's Cathedral. How do people live in places like this?'

Buchanan moved away from her without answering and checked to see if a painting of a woman in a big hat was indeed by one of the Scottish colourists. It was. It was an original Fergusson and probably worth several thousand pounds. Not in a place of honour in the drawing room but tucked away in a gloomy corner, flanked by a faded strip of tapestry and a Turner print. As he was about to draw Fizz's attention to this indication of nonchalant affluence, the nurse's voice floated back to them.

'What's this, Mr Menzies?'

She was answered by an indistinct rumble, presumably from Mr Menzies.

'Aspirins? No, I don't think so, sir. An aspirin bottle, yes, but these are your sleeping tablets, aren't they? You've been saving them up again.'

'You know d.a.m.n well that one tablet's no use to me when my arthritis is bad!' quoth her patient, in a voice made just audible by irritation.

'You can talk to Doctor Russell about that when he comes in tomorrow and he'll probably prescribe something different. Two of these would knock you out for twelve hours, you know, and we can't have that.'

Her patient's voice dropped to a rumble again but they could hear the nurse speaking briskly to him as she tidied him up. Presently, she returned to the hallway smiling cheerfully.

'I hope you don't mind if I leave you in charge for a couple of minutes, Mr Buchanan. I'm just popping down 125. to the pillar box at the corner to post a letter that must catch the uplift at three-fifteen. I thought I could be there and back before you arrived but I think I can still make it.'

'No problem,' Buchanan said, and added as an afterthought, There's no probability of an emergency, I don't suppose?'

'No, no. Mr Menzies is in fine fettle apart from his arthritis,' she smiled, b.u.t.toning up her coat and flipping her hood up over her hair. 'You'll have no trouble, I promise you, and I'll be back before you know I'm gone.'

She pushed open the ma.s.sive door, ushered them through, and left them to make their own introductions.

The Menzies patriarch was big enough to have made four of his wife and at least two of his son, but he shared Niall's placid blue eyes and his air of geniality. He was ensconced in a long-legged chair by a coal fire and had been playing Free Cell Patience on one of those tables on wheels that can be pulled across the knees. He, or the nurse, had pushed the table aside but as he went through all the formalities of asking after Buchanan senior etc, his eyes kept flicking across to the unfinished game as though part of his mind were still at work on it.

'Yes, yes, Niall told me on the phone that he and his mother had had a visit from you during the week. Quite cheered Muriel up, he says. She's been on and on about your father ever since, seemingly, and reminiscing about the old days when we were just starting up the business.'

He shook his gaunt, balding head and smiled, one k.n.o.bbly fist incessantly ma.s.saging the other. 'Those were the good years, Tam. The years of struggle and worry and small triumphs. Not the years when we had made our packet and could rest on our laurels. No. It's better to travel than to arrive, you know. I never believed that when I was a young man like you, but it's true.'

Buchanan could hear the slam of the front door as the nurse returned, followed by the rustle of a plastic coat being briskly shaken. 126. 'Money doesn't make you happy, huh?' Fizz piped up from her perch on the window seat. 'But you have to admit it makes unhappiness a lot less uncomfortable.'

Menzies bent a look of avuncular affection on her urchin face. 'And what would a la.s.sie like you know about unhappiness, eh? Nothing in your head but boyfriends, at your age, and you'll have plenty of those, I've not the slightest doubt.'

Buchanan's breath caught in his throat but, luckily, Fizz was disposed to make allowances for his advanced age. She said, 'I'm unhappy about the sale of Lammerburn Estate, to tell you the truth.'

'Aye, well I'm not too happy about it myself,' he said frankly, wincing a little as he heaved himself round to see her better. 'Of all our houses, Lammerburn was my favourite but I'm told we have to be near a hospital -now

that we're old and decrepit! -in case my wife or I should need urgent attention and, unfortunately, my dear, when you get to my age, it's a lot easier just to go along with the experts.'

There are hospitals quite close to Lammerburn,' Fizz insisted. 'And even here, you're not so near the Royal Infirmary as you used to be before it moved out to Little France. If it were me, and I didn't know how long I had left to me, I'd make darn sure I made the best of what I had. None of us is going to live for ever so, if you can't do anything about the length of your life, you can at least do something about the quality. What's the point of living another year or two if you're not living it to the full?'

His tender gaze lingered on her for a moment or two as though in wonder at such sagacity from one of (what he perceived to be) such tender years.

Buchanan cleared his throat and said, 'The only thing that worries me, Mr Menzies, is the effect of the sale on the local community. There are eight families in the cottages and if they have to move away, the impact on the village will be severe.' 127. 'Oh, yes. Someone said something about people complaining.'

Menzies dragged his eyes away from Fizz. 'Niall is supposed to be dealing with all that. Surely he can come to some arrangement?'

'He hasn't discussed it with you?' Buchanan asked, barely beating Fizz to the question.

'Not in great detail, no, but I know some woman was making trouble.' He straightened his big body and jutted his chin questioningly. 'Is there more?'

'I fear there is, sir,' Buchanan told him, and spent ten minutes putting him in the picture. Fizz, as usual, lost interest immediately and filled in the time by applying her mind to her host's game of Patience. Every time Buchanan glanced at her he could see her eyes flicking from card to card and from column to column, but he was aware that she had one ear on his presentation and he'd be getting marks out of ten for it on the drive home.

'Well, I don't have to tell you, I knew none of this,'

Menzies said when he'd heard everything. 'Come to think of it, I don't think my wife intended me to hear about Mrs Gra.s.sick's complaint either, but Niall was never very good about keeping secrets and he let it slip. It wasn't my intention to pa.s.s the reins into his hands, I don't mind telling you, but Muriel insisted it would be better for him to take some responsibility now, while we're still here to keep an eye on him.' He stared into the fire for a moment, smoothing swollen knuckles with twisted fingers. In the silence, rain rattled like gravel against the windows. 'Neither Niall or his mother had close ties with Lammerburn. Niall was away at school half the time and Muriel liked to be close to her friends up north -when she had friends, that is. Most of them are pus.h.i.+ng up the daisies by now, so she prefers Edinburgh to anywhere else. Not that it matters much where we live, these days. We're never out of the house.'

'You'd at least be out in the garden if you lived at Lammerburn,' Fizz nagged, so mercilessly that Buchanan squirmed in his chair: Menzies, however, showed every 128. sign of wanting to adopt her.

'Well, well, there's a lot of truth in what you say, la.s.sie.

I'll need to think about that,' he said, probably not meaning a word of it but humouring her just the same. His abrupt change of subject confirmed that suspicion. 'You're a Patience fan, I see, like myself.'

Fizz's pixie smile acknowledged a fair cop. "I used to be hooked on it when I travelled a lot. I spent hours -days,

sometimes -waiting for transport so I always carried a pack of cards in my pocket to pa.s.s the time.'

'You're familiar with Free Cell?'

'Oh, yes. It's on my computer at work.'

She had the grace to shoot a guilty glance in her boss's direction but, in fact, she was giving away nothing he didn't know already.

Menzies nodded at the game in progress. This one's a dead duck, I suspect.'

'No.' Fizz smiled an apology. 'You could put the nine in a cell and move the jack on to the queen, which would let you bring down the run of hearts. Then you'd have a s.p.a.ce for the nine and the eight, move the seven over, and you have a straight run home.'

Buchanan stood up and walked to the window as they bent over the table. The rain was las.h.i.+ng down now with such force that he could see it bouncing a foot off the tarmacked driveway. It eased his frustration at the loss of his round of golf but it was going to make their sprint back to the car a bit of a bind. He extricated Fizz from a discussion about the supernatural characteristics of Patience (what next?) and left Mr Menzies to digest the implications of selling his estate.

They let themselves out into the lancing rain and sprinted for the shelter of the Saab. Buchanan had his golf umbrella but sharing it with Fizz meant that he got soaked. 129.

Chapter Eleven.

Fizz had few friends with wheels. The chap downstairs had

a bike which he let her borrow from time to time and also

Buchanan was pretty good at giving her the occasional lift,

as long as she was pursuing an objective that had his

blessing. However, it was unlikely that he would give his

blessing to her housebreaking mission, so it looked like

Gurbachan would be drawing the short straw again. The High Street was thronged by the time Fizz completed her Sat.u.r.day ch.o.r.es and set forth to look for him.