Page 28 of Death on a Scottish Train

“Aye,” he said.

Set back from the main part of town was a small row of townhomes. I pointed to the one where he lived. “Is that a replica of him standing on his porch?”

“Could be,” he said as we both squinted at the figure.

“I don’t see anyone chasing him with knives or guns. That might have been helpful,” I said.

Ewan grunted, probably to hide his laugh. He’d grown to understand my odd sense of humor. I don’t know if he appreciated it, but he understood. It helped to make jokes during dark times. Otherwise, life would be unacceptably dreary and sad.

“I wonder if his heirs would be willing to donate this set up. It would be great to have it at the train station. There’s that corner over to the right that’s sort of empty.”

When I looked up at Ewan, he gave me a perplexed look.

“What?”

“Do I have something on my face again.” I did a cursory wipe around my mouth.

“No, you look perfect. I just thought that was a grand idea. I’ll speak to his sister and lawyer.”

Did he say I looked perfect? I nearly snorted. That absolutely was not true.

The other side of the stairs was a library and office. Many of the books had to do with the history of trains, and the others were accounting books.

Who knew there were so many books about numbers?

“Is it OK if I sit in his chair and go through his desk?”

Ewan nodded. He was going through the bookshelves. “And the warrant gives us free rein to look at any client files he brought into the residence.”

“I’m curious about why the business is being investigated. Is the Scottish version like the SEC or IRS in the United States?”

“I’m not sure I could say, but they do not get involved unless they are certain a crime has been committed. I have a call out for when they get back into the office on Monday.”

There were a few client files neatly placed in a rack on the corner of the desk. I pulled out my notebook and wrote down the names on the files. I glanced through them, but numbers had never been my thing.

I mean, I could do math, I had to do a great deal of it as a doctor, but accounting was a different universe in that regard.

When I tried to open the desk drawers, they were locked.

“Can I borrow the key ring?” I asked.

Ewan crossed the room and then pulled the evidence bag from his pocket. He handed it to me.

“Thanks. Do you think it’s odd that he had client financial records out on his desk, but then locked the drawers?”

“That is odd,” he said. “Did you see anything that might need to be flagged?”

I shook my head. “Just rows of numbers with no context. You’ll need someone who is good at that sort of thing to look them over.”

“Aye.” He went back to searching through the shelves. I tried a couple of the smaller keys and finally found the one that worked.

There were some office supplies in the top drawers. It was odd that he locked those. Did he have a housekeeper? And was he worried that they might take something? The bottom ones held files. A couple I recognized as duplicates from the office.

While I didn’t know what that meant, it seemed unusual that he would have duplicates made when the others were a block away.

I pulled the files out of the bottom right drawer to put in evidence boxes. Anything out of the ordinary could be an important clue.

There was a pop-up lever at the bottom of the drawer. I tried to get it up with my nails, but it didn’t work. Then I pushed down on the lever, and the lid popped up.