Free Death of Yesterday by M. C. Beaton Page A

fault. I should have given Stacey her notice on my return. That’s why Mr. Gilchrist felt obliged to give the lassie some sort of payoff.”
    “Does he have a new secretary?”
    “I’m still looking around.”
    “So what does he do for a secretary in the meantime?”
    “We rotate girls from the typing pool.”
    “Do you still have a typing pool in these computer days?”
    “Och, it’s just an old-fashioned name that’s stuck.” He glanced at his watch and affected a stagey look of surprise. “Goodness! Is that the time? Got to rush. Sorry I couldn’t be of more help.”
    Elspeth left the factory and sat down on a bench outside. She had become used to people asking for her autograph, but as she had walked back through the factory, heads were bent and eyes averted from her.
    There must be one person in Cnothan who might tell her what was going on. She thought back to her local reporting days and remembered the minister of the Church of Scotland in Cnothan as being an amiable man.
    She drove up to the manse and knocked at the door. The minister, John Gordon, answered the door himself and looked at her in surprise. “Is it yourself, Elspeth? Come in.”
    He was a tall, cadaverous man with thinning grey hair and stooped shoulders. He led the way into his study, a gloomy room lined with old books.
    “Have a seat,” he said. “Tea?”
    “Nothing for me,” said Elspeth. “Mr. Gordon, what’s going on in Cnothan? No one seems to want to talk to me at that factory. It’s like being in Soviet Russia. Are people afraid to talk about the murder?”
    “I think it’s because of the recession,” said Mr. Gordon.
    “What’s the recession got to do with murder?”
    “It’s been a sink of unemployment up here. Gilchrist opens the factory and suddenly, it seems, there are jobs for lots of people. So if folks are told not to talk to anyone about the late Morag Merrilea, they won’t, for fear of being back on the dole.”
    “Do you think Gilchrist has something to hide?”
    “I shouldn’t think so. He’s a good member of my church and seems to be a devout man. But the factory is his baby. He doesn’t want any adverse publicity.”
    “Yet the whole business of hiring Morag Merrilea seems odd. The poor secretary she replaced was not told she was losing her job until a day after Morag arrived. She was given a payoff of five hundred pounds.”
    “Gilchrist is an ambitious man. I gather, from such gossip as I’ve heard, that the late Morag was super-efficient. He told me he could now go on business trips knowing that everything would be run like clockwork while he was away.”
    “Did you hear that Morag had been having an affair with Freda Crichton?”
    “Never! A lesbian affair?”
    “Yes, according to poor Freda. But Morag was pregnant, you heard that?”
    “Yes, I did. This place is a den of iniquity. I must call on Freda and bring her to the light.”
    “I wouldn’t do that, Mr. Gordon. She is in a state and someone like you attacking her sexuality as something abnormal might tip her over the edge. She needs kindness and support. Is she a member of your congregation?”
    “No, but . . .”
    “Then leave her alone,” said Elspeth sharply.
    “Don’t you find her . . .er . . .orientation abnormal?”
    “I don’t. She has all my sympathy. She was very deeply in love and I think the wretched Morag manipulated her to satisfy her own vanity.”
    “Well, I must take your advice because it is something I know nothing about. Besides, I believe Freda to be a Roman Catholic. Maybe that explains it.”
    “I don’t see what it has to do with it.”
    “The Catholic Church seems to be riddled with sexual abuse these days.”
    Elspeth repressed a sigh. She remembered a friend from Glasgow travelling up with her to Sutherland and saying cynically, “Set your watch back one hundred years.”
    “Can you think of anyone who might commit murder?”
    “I think you will find,” said the minister, “that it was