Page 33 of Death at a Scottish Halloween

“Sounds like we’re alone,” I whispered.

“Someone has been here,” he said. There were ashes in the fireplace. And someone had swept the floor. The bothies tended to get dusty with all the hikers tracking in mud on their boots. There was a list of rules by the door, that included picking up after oneself and leaving it clean for others.

Firewood had also been brought in and stacked by the hearth. It was the only source of heat in the bothie.

I moved from behind him and checked out the side room. Before, there had only been a well-worn cot, now it was outfitted with two sets of bunkbeds, each with thin mattresses, meant for a hiker to use with their sleeping bag. There was a backpack on one of the beds.

“Do you think that might be his?”

Ewan popped in the doorway. “Let me go through it,” he said. “That way, if it isn’t, it’s police business.”

“You’re wearing gloves but be careful. He may have touched something with hemlock in it or on it.”

“Understood.”

He took the pack and moved to the small dining table in the main room. We sat down in the wooden chairs. He dumped the contents out so we could look at everything at once.

When a wallet fell out, he picked it up. “It’s his,” he said. He shook his head.

“What?”

“Your instincts. Maybe you picked the wrong profession.”

“I keep telling you, an emergency doctor has to be part detective. We have to figure things out on the go and look at all the evidence presented to make a diagnosis. But it’s a far cry from what you do. I only thought of this place because it’s free and close by. If he were visiting estate sales, he could stuff what he buys in his car, wherever that is, and trek down here with just his backpack.”

I frowned.

“What?”

“He was clean when we found him. I mean, he’d recently showered and there was a scent of aftershave. So he hadn’t done that here. And why was he dressed in a costume?”

“And why did he end up on your doorstep?”

“Maybe he had planned to go to one of our events. Everyone was dressed up at the haunted house and in the pub. Or he could have been hiding from someone? I only say that because of the adrenaline, as if he’d been frightened. The costume would give him some cover.”

“OK. We have no proof of any of that, but I see where you’re going. And he ended up at yours …”

“He didn’t feel well. It could be the hemlock took a bit to work. He could have been at a party or something and on his way back to the bothie, stopped for help at my place.” I still felt bad about that. “People have been running around in costumes for the last two weeks. The only thing that doesn’t fit are the ligature marks on his wrists.”

“True. So he was restrained at some point. He could have been having an affair. Is there any way of knowing when those appeared?”

“They were light, I’d say hours before death. Nothing in this case adds up. I don’t see a phone.”

He checked the pockets of the backpack. “There isn’t one.”

“That’s suspicious, right? We’re all addicted to our phones these days. He would need his to look up items on the internet, I’m certain. I don’t know that much about antique dealers, but it seems like he would. That and to keep in touch with his family. He called his daughter every night.”

“Which according to his wife, he hadn’t done since Monday. And we know he was alive until last night.”

“Maybe he lost it. His phone. I did that once at a farmer’s market in Seattle. I set it down to pick something up, and then when I went back it was gone. Same sort of thing could havehappened to him. And phones aren’t cheap, so he could have been waiting until he went home to replace it.”

“Still, he could have contacted his family somehow to make sure they wouldn’t worry. Do you see anything here that might hold the hemlock you mentioned?”

“No.” I picked up a small puzzle box. I pushed and pulled, and a drawer popped out.

“How did you do that?”

“My grandmother gave me a puzzle box when I was a kid. I’ve always loved them.” Inside the drawer was a velvet pouch. “Wow.”