Family Matters 1990
by Glenn Muir
Genre: Crime/Mystery
Swearwords: None.
Description: Artist Eck MacDermid answers a lonely hearts ad and becomes the second victim of the mysterious Estelle Degas, a skeleton from his mother's past who has returned to Scotland in vendetta mode.
Swearwords: None.
Description: Artist Eck MacDermid answers a lonely hearts ad and becomes the second victim of the mysterious Estelle Degas, a skeleton from his mother's past who has returned to Scotland in vendetta mode.
What poor sad souls, thought Eck, as he perused the lonely hearts column of the local rag. All these folk with v.g.s.o.h. looking for T.L.C. He would never in a thousand years have thought of advertising himself in this manner, reducing himself to the status of a second hand car. This did not deter him from having a good look at what was on offer. He was a free agent, was he not? His divorce from Carol had come through two years previously. It was amicable enough, no third party involved, she just could not hack all his trips abroad. She could have gone with him but she did not travel well. When Eck started to become better known, a celebrity in fact, her natural shyness kicked in bigtime and they drifted further and further apart.
One of the ads seemed to stick out, “Tall raven haired lady (n/s),nature lover ,seeks kind gentleman 30/40 as possible soulmate”. Being between projects and the boredom weighing him down, he decided to respond.
The meeting was arranged for the following Saturday afternoon at a wee café on the Royal Mile. She turned up on time and she was as described, tall and raven haired. Eck thought she looked a bit like Sophia Loren. Her age could have been anything from forty to fifty. Eck himself was forty two. The lady was in fact two years his senior. She told him her name was June, she had recently moved to Scotland from Canada. She had no friends in Scotland and decided that the lonely hearts column was a good place to start meeting folk. Eck told her that somebody with her looks had no need to resort to the lonely hearts column, he meant it too.
The time flew by, June expressed the desire for a subsequent meeting. They plumped for a meal out the following Saturday.
Eck spent the intervening week in a state of anticipation, he could not believe his luck and hoped that he was having a similar effect on June. Now there was something niggling at the back of Eck’s mind all through the week leading up to his date with June. He had this feeling that they had met before, the more he thought about her the stronger the feeling that there was something very familiar about June.
They had arranged to meet in a café again and then proceed to Singh’s for an Indian. They had only a short walk through the cobbled street, still wet from the recent rainfall. Once inside they were shown to a neat little table where June perused the menu. The waiter gave them a couple of minutes before coming for their order. Eck, a regular customer, said, “Jist the usual for me please, Sanjiv.”
Sanjiv smiled. “Ok Mr. MacDermid and what will you have, madam?”
June decided that she would try a Kashmiri Chicken Korma. Sanjiv headed in the direction of the kitchen.
Eck liked the cosy atmosphere in Singh’s, he loved the smell of the exotic spices and garlic that wafted throughout. Most of all he liked the many paintings of Indian fauna which were plastered on every wall. Only natural, I suppose, Eck’s recently acquired celebrity status was due to him being featured on the BBC in his capacity as a wildlife artist.
They chatted briefly about this and that as they waited to be served, June sipping red wine and Eck with his usual pint of Deuchars. As their meals arrived at the table, Eck excused himself and went to the toilet, he was very much a creature of habit and could not eat with a full bladder.
“Sorry about that…” Eck began but June just waved his apologies away.
“If you have to go, you have to go,” she smiled.
Eck set about eating his Lamb Pathia with gusto, it was his favourite and nobody made it better than Singh’s. Suddenly Eck began to feel really, really ill. He was sweating, his guts were aching and he was having severe breathing difficulties. The waiters and other diners quickly gathered around him. An ambulance was quickly called for but by the time it arrived Eck MacDermid was “broon breid”.
Meanwhile June had slipped out of the restaurant and vanished into the night, she had just committed a perfect murder. The peanut oil that she had furtively stirred into Eck’s curry was enough to trigger his allergic reaction. There was a short obituary on the BBC and some of the broadsheets. Eck had been about to front a major T.V. series following the life of the great American bird painter Audubon. His unexpected demise saw that this project was shelved (permanently, as it turned out).
The post mortem confirmed that Eck had died from a severe allergic reaction, probably due to his meal at Singh’s. The owners were adamant that they were well aware of Eck’s allergy and always prepared his meals with strictly no nuts. They mentioned Eck’s dining companion, of course. Who she was and where she had gone were total mysteries.
June’s real name was Estelle Degas, she had left Scotland with her father in 1946 when she was less than two years old. Henri Degas had come over with the Royal Canadian Airforce and had a whirlwind romance with a young war widow (Estelle’s mother, Morag). Things didn’t pan out, it transpired that Morag wasn’t a widow after all. The husband that the Ministry had told her had been killed in Burma had not.
When William MacDermid returned, Henri took Estelle and went back to Quebec. William and Morag never spoke about Henri or Estelle from that day forth and went on to have three kids of their own, Harriet, Eck and Gavin. Morag might not have spoken about Estelle but there was not a day went by that she did not think about her.
Back on the family farm in Quebec, they forgot the war, Scotland and their previous lives. Estelle only had Henri’s elder sister, Marianne, as a role model. She tried to treat Estelle kindly but she was not really the motherly type. When Estelle was ten years old, Marianne got hit by a truck when visiting a friend in Montreal and was killed instantly. This was a pivotal point in their lives, Henri started to sink into a pit o alcoholism and depression and this set events in motion that were to have tragic consequences on this side of the pond.
Estelle grew into a beautiful young woman, very similar in looks to her mother. Too much like her mother, in the eyes of Henri Degas they merged into one entity and one fateful day when Estelle was about seventeen, Henri forced himself upon her. The drink was a contributory factor, naturally, but it can and should never be an excuse.
Estelle was shocked by this turn of events and disgusted by her father’s lechery. It would not happen again, she would wait and watch, she would be ready. Less than a month later Henri was a dead man. A second attempted assault on his daughter resulted in her stabbing him fatally with a pair of scissors.
There was a whirlwind of publicity surrounding the case and it filtered its way into the U.K. tabloids. Estelle’s lawyer was able to get her off on grounds of self-defence.
Not long after the trial, Estelle received a letter from Morag, who had been following the coverage of the case. They corresponded on a regular basis from then on. Morag did not tell William, she felt that he still harboured a great deal of resentment about Henri and Estelle.
Morag collected her Canadian correspondence from the main Post Office in town, it was her secret. Morag should have let sleeping dogs lie, Estelle Degas was a bitter woman. She would have revenge and was willing to wait to get it, a dish best served cold indeed.
1990 saw Estelle back in Scotland and it was open season as far as MacDermids were concerned. A quarter century of correspondence with Morag had provided more than enough information to facilitate their downfall.
Estelle began to systematically to wipe out those she deemed had ruined her life. Morag, who had allowed Henri to take her away, was first on the list. They arranged a clandestine meeting in Edinburgh, Morag had been thrilled to hear that Estelle was back in Scotland. Estelle met Morag at Waverley, as she was arriving by train. They hugged briefly and made their way to a small café near Deacon Brodie’s. Estelle was a consummate actress and easily lulled Morag into a false sense of security. Shortly after leaving the café, Morag “walked” in front of a bus and was killed instantly. Estelle Degas smiled to herself, this was going to be easier than she thought.
Having crossed Morag off her list, she proceeded to bait a hook for Eck. In the interim, William MacDermid had been the victim of a hit and run driver as he made his way home from the bowling club. The words “Tragic Couple die within weeks of each other as the result of road traffic accidents” had hardly time to dry on the paper when Harriet’s bungalow was destroyed by a gas explosion , the resultant fire consumed most of her body .
By the time Eck had been crossed off Estelle’s list, it was “Four family members die, the curse of the MacDermids strikes again”.
The police are, as a rule, stupid but when four members of the same family die within the space of a month they will tend to ask a few questions. They mainly ask the wrong questions to the wrong person and that’s what happened on this occasion. They seemed to think that because Gavin MacDermid was the only one to profit from all the carnage, that he had to have something to do with it. An investigative reporter from one of the “Red Tops” had been prompting them but they could not make a case.
Billy “Scoop” Jackson still felt there was some mileage in the MacDermid story. He had a nose for these things, a gut instinct that had served him well in his forty year career as a news hound. He retraced his steps back to Singh’s where he got a detailed description of Eck MacDermid’s mystery dining companion. Sanjiv, the waiter, said something that caught his attention. It was maybe nothing but there again…
“Aye, efter Mr. MacDermid died there was pictures o him and his faimily in the papers. That wumman he wis wi looked awfie like a younger version o his mither.”
This snippet of information was enough for “Scoop” to dig into Morag MacDermid’s past a bit more. Parish records yielded the information that she had been married briefly to one Henri Degas, a French Canadian and that they had a daughter called Estelle. Estelle Degas, Estelle Degas, why was that name strangely familiar? If these events had happened in the present day, “Scoop” would have just googled the name and come up with an instant answer. In 1990 there was no google so the name just rattled round inside his head.
He suddenly gave himself a theatrical slap to the forehead, of course! The Degas murder in Quebec had happened more than a quarter of a century previously, that’s why it did not instantly come to him.
The police were, to put it mildly, sceptical about whether Estelle Degas was tied in with the MacDermid deaths. However, on the off chance, they contacted their counterparts in Canada. According to them, Estelle Degas had spent several years in mental institutions but had been released a couple of years earlier, apparently psychosis free. She had recently left Canada for a new life in Scotland.
“Scoop” travelled over to visit Gavin MacDermid. He managed to get inside the house. There he produce copies of the parish records, confirming that Morag had had Estelle.
“This is weird,” Gavin said, “I have a half-sister than I didnae ken existed and you think that she bumped off Maw, Paw, Eck and Harriet?”
Scoop nodded. “Aye it does sound a bit flimsy but it seems too much of a coincidence that she moved tae Scotland just prior tae aa this happening.”
Gavin gave a barely audible sigh and shook his head .
Scoop continued, “If she is in Scotland and she is pursuing some sort of Vendetta against your faimily …….”
Gavin finished Scoop’s sentence, “Since I am the only yin left, I am likely tae be next on her list.”
“Great! That’s aa I need, some deranged homicidal tart oot tae get me, as if my life wisnae shite enough,” he added.
Just as Scoop was about to leave there was a knock at the door. It was the C.I.D. in the person of Inspector Joe Scrimgeour. Scrimgeour and Scoop were well known to each other, they had shared information now and again over the years to their mutual advantage.
“I see ye got here afore me, Scoop. Mr MacDermid, has Jackson filled ye in on the details?”
Gavin nodded. “Is it true then? Or whit?”
“Aye but ye dinnae have tae worry, Estelle Degas is deid, her body was found this morning. It seems that she was going tae torch your hoose, by the way. Her diary was found next to her corpse. It amounts tae a written confession tae all four murders. The post mortem hasnae been done yet but they seem tae think she had a brain haemorrhage.”
Gavin sighed again, loudly this time. “Will they release her body soon?”
This question drew baffled looks from the cop and the news man who looked at each other and each simultaneously shrugged their shoulders.
Scoop asked the inevitable question. “Why d’yae want tae ken for?”
Gavin’s answer seemed logical, well logical to him at any rate, “Weel, she wis family, wis’nt she?
One of the ads seemed to stick out, “Tall raven haired lady (n/s),nature lover ,seeks kind gentleman 30/40 as possible soulmate”. Being between projects and the boredom weighing him down, he decided to respond.
The meeting was arranged for the following Saturday afternoon at a wee café on the Royal Mile. She turned up on time and she was as described, tall and raven haired. Eck thought she looked a bit like Sophia Loren. Her age could have been anything from forty to fifty. Eck himself was forty two. The lady was in fact two years his senior. She told him her name was June, she had recently moved to Scotland from Canada. She had no friends in Scotland and decided that the lonely hearts column was a good place to start meeting folk. Eck told her that somebody with her looks had no need to resort to the lonely hearts column, he meant it too.
The time flew by, June expressed the desire for a subsequent meeting. They plumped for a meal out the following Saturday.
Eck spent the intervening week in a state of anticipation, he could not believe his luck and hoped that he was having a similar effect on June. Now there was something niggling at the back of Eck’s mind all through the week leading up to his date with June. He had this feeling that they had met before, the more he thought about her the stronger the feeling that there was something very familiar about June.
They had arranged to meet in a café again and then proceed to Singh’s for an Indian. They had only a short walk through the cobbled street, still wet from the recent rainfall. Once inside they were shown to a neat little table where June perused the menu. The waiter gave them a couple of minutes before coming for their order. Eck, a regular customer, said, “Jist the usual for me please, Sanjiv.”
Sanjiv smiled. “Ok Mr. MacDermid and what will you have, madam?”
June decided that she would try a Kashmiri Chicken Korma. Sanjiv headed in the direction of the kitchen.
Eck liked the cosy atmosphere in Singh’s, he loved the smell of the exotic spices and garlic that wafted throughout. Most of all he liked the many paintings of Indian fauna which were plastered on every wall. Only natural, I suppose, Eck’s recently acquired celebrity status was due to him being featured on the BBC in his capacity as a wildlife artist.
They chatted briefly about this and that as they waited to be served, June sipping red wine and Eck with his usual pint of Deuchars. As their meals arrived at the table, Eck excused himself and went to the toilet, he was very much a creature of habit and could not eat with a full bladder.
“Sorry about that…” Eck began but June just waved his apologies away.
“If you have to go, you have to go,” she smiled.
Eck set about eating his Lamb Pathia with gusto, it was his favourite and nobody made it better than Singh’s. Suddenly Eck began to feel really, really ill. He was sweating, his guts were aching and he was having severe breathing difficulties. The waiters and other diners quickly gathered around him. An ambulance was quickly called for but by the time it arrived Eck MacDermid was “broon breid”.
Meanwhile June had slipped out of the restaurant and vanished into the night, she had just committed a perfect murder. The peanut oil that she had furtively stirred into Eck’s curry was enough to trigger his allergic reaction. There was a short obituary on the BBC and some of the broadsheets. Eck had been about to front a major T.V. series following the life of the great American bird painter Audubon. His unexpected demise saw that this project was shelved (permanently, as it turned out).
The post mortem confirmed that Eck had died from a severe allergic reaction, probably due to his meal at Singh’s. The owners were adamant that they were well aware of Eck’s allergy and always prepared his meals with strictly no nuts. They mentioned Eck’s dining companion, of course. Who she was and where she had gone were total mysteries.
June’s real name was Estelle Degas, she had left Scotland with her father in 1946 when she was less than two years old. Henri Degas had come over with the Royal Canadian Airforce and had a whirlwind romance with a young war widow (Estelle’s mother, Morag). Things didn’t pan out, it transpired that Morag wasn’t a widow after all. The husband that the Ministry had told her had been killed in Burma had not.
When William MacDermid returned, Henri took Estelle and went back to Quebec. William and Morag never spoke about Henri or Estelle from that day forth and went on to have three kids of their own, Harriet, Eck and Gavin. Morag might not have spoken about Estelle but there was not a day went by that she did not think about her.
Back on the family farm in Quebec, they forgot the war, Scotland and their previous lives. Estelle only had Henri’s elder sister, Marianne, as a role model. She tried to treat Estelle kindly but she was not really the motherly type. When Estelle was ten years old, Marianne got hit by a truck when visiting a friend in Montreal and was killed instantly. This was a pivotal point in their lives, Henri started to sink into a pit o alcoholism and depression and this set events in motion that were to have tragic consequences on this side of the pond.
Estelle grew into a beautiful young woman, very similar in looks to her mother. Too much like her mother, in the eyes of Henri Degas they merged into one entity and one fateful day when Estelle was about seventeen, Henri forced himself upon her. The drink was a contributory factor, naturally, but it can and should never be an excuse.
Estelle was shocked by this turn of events and disgusted by her father’s lechery. It would not happen again, she would wait and watch, she would be ready. Less than a month later Henri was a dead man. A second attempted assault on his daughter resulted in her stabbing him fatally with a pair of scissors.
There was a whirlwind of publicity surrounding the case and it filtered its way into the U.K. tabloids. Estelle’s lawyer was able to get her off on grounds of self-defence.
Not long after the trial, Estelle received a letter from Morag, who had been following the coverage of the case. They corresponded on a regular basis from then on. Morag did not tell William, she felt that he still harboured a great deal of resentment about Henri and Estelle.
Morag collected her Canadian correspondence from the main Post Office in town, it was her secret. Morag should have let sleeping dogs lie, Estelle Degas was a bitter woman. She would have revenge and was willing to wait to get it, a dish best served cold indeed.
1990 saw Estelle back in Scotland and it was open season as far as MacDermids were concerned. A quarter century of correspondence with Morag had provided more than enough information to facilitate their downfall.
Estelle began to systematically to wipe out those she deemed had ruined her life. Morag, who had allowed Henri to take her away, was first on the list. They arranged a clandestine meeting in Edinburgh, Morag had been thrilled to hear that Estelle was back in Scotland. Estelle met Morag at Waverley, as she was arriving by train. They hugged briefly and made their way to a small café near Deacon Brodie’s. Estelle was a consummate actress and easily lulled Morag into a false sense of security. Shortly after leaving the café, Morag “walked” in front of a bus and was killed instantly. Estelle Degas smiled to herself, this was going to be easier than she thought.
Having crossed Morag off her list, she proceeded to bait a hook for Eck. In the interim, William MacDermid had been the victim of a hit and run driver as he made his way home from the bowling club. The words “Tragic Couple die within weeks of each other as the result of road traffic accidents” had hardly time to dry on the paper when Harriet’s bungalow was destroyed by a gas explosion , the resultant fire consumed most of her body .
By the time Eck had been crossed off Estelle’s list, it was “Four family members die, the curse of the MacDermids strikes again”.
The police are, as a rule, stupid but when four members of the same family die within the space of a month they will tend to ask a few questions. They mainly ask the wrong questions to the wrong person and that’s what happened on this occasion. They seemed to think that because Gavin MacDermid was the only one to profit from all the carnage, that he had to have something to do with it. An investigative reporter from one of the “Red Tops” had been prompting them but they could not make a case.
Billy “Scoop” Jackson still felt there was some mileage in the MacDermid story. He had a nose for these things, a gut instinct that had served him well in his forty year career as a news hound. He retraced his steps back to Singh’s where he got a detailed description of Eck MacDermid’s mystery dining companion. Sanjiv, the waiter, said something that caught his attention. It was maybe nothing but there again…
“Aye, efter Mr. MacDermid died there was pictures o him and his faimily in the papers. That wumman he wis wi looked awfie like a younger version o his mither.”
This snippet of information was enough for “Scoop” to dig into Morag MacDermid’s past a bit more. Parish records yielded the information that she had been married briefly to one Henri Degas, a French Canadian and that they had a daughter called Estelle. Estelle Degas, Estelle Degas, why was that name strangely familiar? If these events had happened in the present day, “Scoop” would have just googled the name and come up with an instant answer. In 1990 there was no google so the name just rattled round inside his head.
He suddenly gave himself a theatrical slap to the forehead, of course! The Degas murder in Quebec had happened more than a quarter of a century previously, that’s why it did not instantly come to him.
The police were, to put it mildly, sceptical about whether Estelle Degas was tied in with the MacDermid deaths. However, on the off chance, they contacted their counterparts in Canada. According to them, Estelle Degas had spent several years in mental institutions but had been released a couple of years earlier, apparently psychosis free. She had recently left Canada for a new life in Scotland.
“Scoop” travelled over to visit Gavin MacDermid. He managed to get inside the house. There he produce copies of the parish records, confirming that Morag had had Estelle.
“This is weird,” Gavin said, “I have a half-sister than I didnae ken existed and you think that she bumped off Maw, Paw, Eck and Harriet?”
Scoop nodded. “Aye it does sound a bit flimsy but it seems too much of a coincidence that she moved tae Scotland just prior tae aa this happening.”
Gavin gave a barely audible sigh and shook his head .
Scoop continued, “If she is in Scotland and she is pursuing some sort of Vendetta against your faimily …….”
Gavin finished Scoop’s sentence, “Since I am the only yin left, I am likely tae be next on her list.”
“Great! That’s aa I need, some deranged homicidal tart oot tae get me, as if my life wisnae shite enough,” he added.
Just as Scoop was about to leave there was a knock at the door. It was the C.I.D. in the person of Inspector Joe Scrimgeour. Scrimgeour and Scoop were well known to each other, they had shared information now and again over the years to their mutual advantage.
“I see ye got here afore me, Scoop. Mr MacDermid, has Jackson filled ye in on the details?”
Gavin nodded. “Is it true then? Or whit?”
“Aye but ye dinnae have tae worry, Estelle Degas is deid, her body was found this morning. It seems that she was going tae torch your hoose, by the way. Her diary was found next to her corpse. It amounts tae a written confession tae all four murders. The post mortem hasnae been done yet but they seem tae think she had a brain haemorrhage.”
Gavin sighed again, loudly this time. “Will they release her body soon?”
This question drew baffled looks from the cop and the news man who looked at each other and each simultaneously shrugged their shoulders.
Scoop asked the inevitable question. “Why d’yae want tae ken for?”
Gavin’s answer seemed logical, well logical to him at any rate, “Weel, she wis family, wis’nt she?
About the Author
West Lothian-born Glenn Muir is a fiftysomething postman working in Linlithgow. Previously a member of the West Lothian Song Writers Group, he is now with Quill, a poetry and writing group based in Bathgate.