Beneath the Abbey Wall by A. D. Scott Read Free Book Online Page B

He hadn’t known she was wealthy. He hadn’t known she had lived in India. There was much he hadn’t known. But he agreed with the many people who’d said, “She was a good woman.” Such an old-fashioned phrase that, he thought, and in Joyce Smart’s case, absolutely true.
    He had reached the Gazette without being aware he was there. Climbing the staircase, he thought, Jenny McPhee is right, there’s trouble brewing.

C HAPTER 4

    O nce more, settled in his armchair with the fire blazing and the wireless playing Mozart, McAllister was startled out of a good book and a good malt by a late-night visitor. This time it was Saturday, but again the thought came to him, It’s almost the Sabbath, who on earth is about in this town, this late at night? Again, he knew it would not be good news.
    The visitor was Sergeant Patience, a man whom all considered most inappropriately named.
    â€œMr. McAllister, sir, you’re needed down the station,” the policeman told him.
    â€œNothing serious, I hope?”
    A big barreled bulk of a policeman, the sergeant was not always popular but had lately formed an odd alliance with Rob McLean over motorbikes.
    â€œIt’s Donnie McLeod and it’s no’ serious—yet,” the sergeant said, “but if he carries on like this much longer, there’s no saying what might happen.”
    â€œI’ll get my coat and meet you at the station.”
    *  *  *  
    Don was in a cell, but the door was open. The smell of drink and vomit and stale urine was nasty, but what really appalled McAllister was the state of the man; he looked like one of those lost souls who had suffered in either or both of the wars, wandering the country, living a half-life, surviving on the kindness of strangers and the Salvation Army.
    â€œAre you charging him?” McAllister asked.
    â€œNo’ this time,” Sergeant Patience told him, “but it’s no’ always me who finds him and I canny vouch for some o’ the other police officers who don’t know him like I do.”
    â€œWould you help me get him to my car?”
    â€œNae bother.”
    On the short ride home, McAllister worried Don might vomit. He wasn’t scared for his car, just afraid Don would choke. One death at the Gazette is enough .
    It took McAllister much more effort than it had the policeman to get Don out of the car, down the garden path, and inside the house. At the doorstep, while McAllister was fiddling with his keys, Don leaned against the porch door, then slid to the checkerboard tiles, and collapsed in the middle like a sad Victorian sponge cake. All the while Don was muttering, arguing with himself, in Gaelic. To McAllister, who knew no Gaelic, the words washed over him like a Highland burn, running to the sea.
    Getting Don upstairs to bed was beyond him. Getting him to the bathroom was difficult, but McAllister managed. Stripping off trousers, jacket, and shirt that had been slept in since the day of the reading of the will, a week ago, was relatively easy, as Don was snoring on the kitchen floor; getting him into the sitting room and onto the sofa was achieved without putting McAllister’s back out. He tucked a blanket around his deputy; then, in case of accidents, he spread old newspapers around the floor near Don’s head before retreating to his armchair to sit the night out, on watch for the man he admired and cared for sleep the sleep of the unready.
    The ringing of his doorbell awoke McAllister.
    â€œNot again,” he muttered as he massaged the crick in his neck from sleeping in the armchair. He had slept in fits and starts, hadwoken in the grey dawn—which was not that early this time of year—to help Don to the bathroom, had made a cup of tea, then dozed off again. By the sound of various church bells, from a simple toll to a full peal from the cathedral, he knew it was now mid-morning.
    â€œGood morning, Mr.