Rights and Wrongs

Rights and Wrongs

Max Falconer Mysteries 4

Cecilia Peartree

Copyright Cecilia Peartree 2023

All rights reserved

Smashwords edition

No amphibians or voles were knowingly harmed during the writing of this novel.

CONTENTS

Chapter 1 Howard’s End – or is it?

Chapter 2 Amanda and the Meet-Cute

Chapter 3 Niagara

Chapter 4 A False Sense of Security

Chapter 5 Repercussions

Chapter 6 A New Direction

Chapter 7 A Disturbing Development

Chapter 8 A Shock in the Dark

Chapter 9 Following Up

Chapter 10 Scene of the Crime

Chapter 11 Grilled

Chapter 12 An Uncertain Future

Chapter 13 Knowing too Much

Chapter 14 Reappearances

Chapter 15 Popping in

Chapter 16 Sleuthing

Chapter 17 Crisis Point

Chapter 18 Dilemmas

Chapter 19 Dinner Guest

Chapter 20 Mouse Traps

Chapter 21 A Day Out with George

Chapter 22 Surveillance for Beginners

Chapter 23 Professor Ferrier Swoops

Chapter 24 Electric Shock

Chapter 25 Talking Frogs

Chapter 26 Revisiting the Coffee Shop

Chapter 27 Confrontation

Chapter 28 Unravelling

Chapter 29 Besieged

Chapter 30 Breaking the News

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Chapter 1 Howard’s End – or is it?

‘She’s – a woman,’ Howard gasped.

His face took on an unhealthily mottled red and blue colour. Max glanced round to see if there were any hospital staff in sight. The door of Howard’s room opened on to the area by the nurses’ station, which was surely a bad sign in itself, but there didn’t appear to be any nurses actually stationed there at this moment.

‘A woman? Do we know her name?’

‘F-F-Ferrier!’

‘Ferrier? Mrs Ferrier?’

‘Professor.’

‘Ah. Well, I suppose all she’ll do is monitor the situation from a safe distance until you’re well enough to come back to work.’

Howard seemed to want to shake his head, which was a mistake. His jaw worked as if he were trying to swallow something unwelcome, possibly an eel or a pineapple chunk.

‘Look – try not to worry about it, anyway,’ Max added hastily. ‘Amanda and I can liaise with Mrs – Dr – Professor Ferrier. I’m sure we’ll be all right.’

‘No – Amanda..’

‘Do you mean Amanda’s to take charge? Or me?’

A nurse appeared from nowhere, marching into the room as if she had detected something of Howard’s struggles before even looking at him.

‘Now, now, Mr Fullerton’ She glanced across at Max and frowned. ‘I hope you haven’t been getting him all agitated.’

‘I think the neck brace is bothering him a bit,’ said Max defensively.

‘Is it bothering you, Mr Fullerton.’

‘Not – not,’ said Howard. ‘It’s – professor.’

‘Maybe you’d better leave now,’ said the nurse, addressing Max. ‘I suppose you’ve been talking about work. It’s no use expecting him to think about that just now. He’s meant to be resting.’

Considering that Max had only visited Howard in order to deliver a get-well card and a pot-plant on behalf of the rest of the staff, he felt indignant about this. It had been Howard himself who’d insisted on talking about work, at least to the extent he was able. Still, he smiled at the nurse and then at Howard, and took his leave in a dignified manner only marred by the fact that he turned in the wrong direction just outside the door of the room and almost collided with a cleaner who steered him away from the wet floor she’d just been mopping in time to avert catastrophe, or at least a highly embarrassing fall.

The sooner he escaped from this place, the better.

A similar thought crossed Max’s mind an hour or so later as he crossed the threshold of the museum, to be met by Colin the caretaker in an all too familiar state of extreme agitation.

‘She’s here,’ Colin stammered.

‘Who’s here? Amanda? Doesn’t she usually come in on a Tuesday?’

‘Not Dr Urquhart. Professor Ferrier. She’s gone upstairs. Wants to see you.’

‘Professor Ferrier,’ said Max. It seemed he would have to liaise with the woman a bit sooner than expected. ‘I see.’

‘And there’s another of those letters here,’ said Colin. ‘It’s the same as the one that came before – before the incident.’

Max already knew that Colin had now mentally divided the whole of recorded time into the period leading up to what he persisted in calling ‘the incident’ and the week or two since then. It must have been the most traumatic thing that had ever happened to him. Not that it had actually happened to him. He hadn’t been the one to be blown across the courtyard by the blast from an explosive device. His part in it had been merely to call the emergency services and eventually watch Howard’s departure by ambulance through the gate at the other side of the courtyard that they never used. Max found himself alternating between thinking it was about time the man pulled himself together and thanking God that he himself hadn’t been present at the scene.

‘The same?’ said Max.

Colin nodded. ‘The words cut out of newspapers… the threats… it isn’t safe for any of us to be here. They should move us out of the building until this whole thing’s sorted out.’

Max would have been happy to remain if only Colin had been moved out of the building, but it seemed unlikely any of them would have been allowed to stay without the caretaker to keep the place clean in addition to getting under everybody’s feet. There must be some health and safety rule too that mean the building would close if the support staff, currently comprising Colin and the two cleaners, withdrew their labour. Unless the rest of the staff staged a sit-in and camped there, in which case they would end up in serious trouble with the university authorities, and quite probably with the police too.

‘I’ll let Professor Ferrier know. Give me the letter so that she can assess the situation for herself.’

He held out his hand for the envelope, only at the last minute realising they should have put it in a plastic bag and passed it straight on to the police. Still, Professor Ferrier could deal with that too.

It was with increasing optimism that he climbed the stairs to the next floor. He saw himself passing all such annoying issues on to Professor Ferrier, and himself unexpectedly free to spend some quality time at his desk catching up with the Vole Monthly backlog that had been building up in the corner of his office for some months.

The reality didn’t meet his expectations, however.

‘I suppose you’ll have your hands full with all this,’ said Professor Ferrier, handing the envelope back to him. ‘Pity, because I was hoping to be able to delegate another task to you while Howard’s away.’

‘Another task?’

She waved a hand vaguely.

‘You know Howard had been roped into a series of meetings with a government official? Something to do with rights. Human rights versus animal rights or whatnot.’

‘Global conflict, animal rights and climate change,’ said Max, who was only too familiar with Howard’s meetings at Holyrood, since Howard had been complaining to him for months now about having to attend them, and using Max as a sounding-board about the stance he should be taking there. It would all be political, of course, and the last thing he wanted was to get embroiled in that kind of thing. Again. He still woke up in the night occasionally in a panic about the Museum of Trees, even now that it had been converted into a Museum of the Roman Occupation, which had put the ball in someone else’s court as far as he was concerned.

‘Ah, good,’ said Professor Ferrier. ‘You seem to have a handle on it already. I was hoping somebody did.’

‘I don’t exactly…’

‘That’s settled, then. I’ll get them to send you the papers. Do you know if Dr Urquhart’s in the building? I’d better have a word with her too.’

‘Amanda’s usually in on Tuesdays,’ said Max. ‘Shall I go and find her? Come to think of it, perhaps you should ask her if she’d be interested in going to these meetings of Howard’s. She might welcome the opportunity.’

‘That’s all right – I’ll give her a call.’

He took it that he’d been dismissed from Professor Ferrier’s presence, which was a relief despite her failure to take the threatening note off his hands. He supposed he’d better contact the police about that before settling down to address the vole magazines backlog.

Half an hour later Max and William were having a quick coffee in his office when Amanda burst in on them.

‘I’ve just seen Professor Ferrier!’ she exclaimed. ‘And what do you think?’

‘What do you want us to think?’ enquired William.

Amanda ignored him, and addressed Max.

‘She’s asked me to take over the day-to-day management of the museum from Howard, while he’s away… You don’t mind, do you Max?’

‘I certainly don’t!’ said Max. He could think of nothing more tedious than having to manage the place. Especially as it had always seemed to him that the only member of staff who required actual managing was Colin the caretaker. He shuddered. ‘Best of luck with that,’ he added.

‘It can’t be all that hard, if Howard does it, I suppose,’ said William with a shrug.

Surely William hadn’t expected to be put in charge?

‘Thanks for the ringing endorsements,’ said Amanda wryly. ‘I’ve got to move into Howard’s office for the duration… I suppose that means answering his phone and so on.’

‘You could just ignore it,’ suggested Max, who was a world authority on ignoring the sound of phones ringing. Or chirping, or whatever other way they found to express the unsettling fact that there was someone who wished to make contact.

‘Anyway, at least they won’t be parachuting anybody in from outside to do it,’ said Amanda. ‘Except that Professor Ferrier’s going to be making any strategic decisions, of course.’

‘Let’s hope nothing happens that needs strategy, then,’ said William.

‘Hmm,’ said Max, his mind immediately flooding with all the worst possibilities it could conjure up on the spur of the moment.

Of these, he supposed another attack from the animal rights people was the most likely. He cheered up a little as he realised he could probably palm off their latest threat on to Amanda.

‘Professor Ferrier says you’re dealing with one or two things of Howard’s,’ Amanda said, addressing him again. ‘I’ve offered to go to these meetings Howard was having at Holyrood, so you don’t have to bother about that after all. But she says you’re going to cope with the animal rights people’s latest threat. So all that leaves for me is opening letters and reading emails. And answering the phone – if I choose to do so. I’ll be able to get on with my research in peace.’

So much for palming off the animal rights threat.

‘You’ll have to try and manage Colin,’ said William.

‘Oh, hell,’ said Amanda. Suddenly she didn’t look quite so smug about being able to lock herself in Howard’s office and get on with some real work. She moved a small heap of assorted post off the spare office chair and flopped into it. ‘Maybe I’d better have a coffee or two before I get started.’

Feeling charitable again, Max made her a large mug of coffee, and fetched the biscuit tin from the kitchen too. She stared into it gloomily.

‘I’ll get some more at lunchtime,’ said William.

‘I don’t feel like a biscuit anyway,’ said Amanda.

‘So what’s in the latest threat?’ asked William. ‘Is it the usual kind of thing?’

‘I think it’s similar to the last one. And we know what happened after that.’

‘Howard being blown across the courtyard, you mean? They won’t do the same thing again surely? After all, it didn’t achieve anything. It didn’t even kill Howard.’

Max stared at his colleague, not exactly in disbelief, for he had already had experience of William sharing his insensitive opinions at various inopportune moments. Perhaps it was that he had always hoped the man might notice other people’s reactions once in a while and learn from them. Still, it was no use holding his breath and waiting for the man to change.

‘They were just lucky it didn’t,’ he said after a pause. ‘I don’t think any of us would want to be in hospital in a neck brace and with several limbs in plaster. Not to mention the cracked ribs… I’m going to have to call the police about this latest threat. I apologise in advance for any inconvenience.’

‘There’s a school party due in the day after tomorrow,’ said William.

Max fixed him with a hard stare. ‘All the more reason to take this seriously.’

‘I suppose so,’ said William. ‘I don’t suppose there’s a chance the police will have finished by then?’

‘I very much doubt if they’ll have made any arrests, if that’s what you mean,’ said Max.

Amanda was still staring into the biscuit tin, as if hypnotised by the neat array of the little shortbread rounds that were inevitably the only ones left. She glanced up at last.

‘Arrests? School parties? Do I need to do anything about all this?’

‘Not right now,’ said Max.

He resisted the temptation to pat her on the head and tell her to run along and play with her feathered friends – her main responsibility was to look after the gallery of Living Things of the Air. Although he had never witnessed her physically attacking anyone, as she usually preferred to skewer them verbally, he had a feeling that she might be hovering on the brink of losing it today. He wasn’t going to be the one to push her over the edge.

Chapter 2 Amanda and the Meet-Cute

Amanda’s excitement about being put in charge of the museum – which might yet turn out to be a poisoned chalice, of course – had mostly evaporated by the time she opened the garden gate and began to walk up the path to the front door. The door opened before she reached it, and one of the carers emerged.

‘Oh! There you are, Miss Urquhart. I’ve got to rush now, but I’m glad to have caught you.’

Amanda wanted to groan aloud. Actually, she wanted to turn round and make a run for it. She’d thought about this before. She could probably make it to the bus stop before the carer caught up with her, and then if a bus came right away… Although what were the chances of that happening? More likely the carer would catch her, and then she would have to make up some story about having dropped her phone or her purse at the bus stop and having to run back for it.

Instead she smiled as warmly as she could manage and said,

‘Is everything all right?’

The carer frowned and shook her head. ‘I’m afraid she’s been hoarding her food again. I found another stash today. Behind some books on the shelf this time. She’s getting craftier by the day.’

‘Thank you for telling me. I’ll see if I can talk to her about it.’

‘When I tried to talk to her she hid her head under the bedclothes,’ said the carer doubtfully, ‘but you’re welcome to try… There’s my bus coming!’

She took off at an enviable speed and Amanda saw that she had stuck out her hand to stop the bus before it even got to the stop. The driver would probably be furious. Or maybe not. Amanda knew that bus drivers’ rules differed from one person to another.

She hurried to make a quick meal for them both – only scrambled egg on toast, but her mother didn’t have a big appetite these days and she herself didn’t care much what she ate. She was carrying it all upstairs on a tray when she heard her mother’s voice, uncertain and quavery now, calling from her room.

‘Is that you, Angus?’

‘It’s Amanda.’

She hoped she wouldn’t have to remind her mother yet again that Angus was dead. The scrambled egg might go flying across the room, and she didn’t really have the energy to clean it up, but if the morning carer saw it she would use Amanda’s emergency phone number to castigate her for letting the room descend into a squalid state overnight. Amanda wished she hadn’t had to give them a phone number at all. Now that she was in her new elevated role it was going to be particularly embarrassing if they used it to call her at work. It might interrupt all kinds of important meetings. The kinds she had always wanted to take part in, with ministers in the Scottish government and the people who ran the university. This was her chance, maybe her only chance, to make a name for herself.

All these thoughts went through her mind before she got to the top of the stairs. She paused on the landing to brace herself for entering the room.

‘Angus? Oh, it’s you.’

Always that note of disappointment.

‘I’ve brought you scrambled egg on toast.’

‘You haven’t used up all the eggs, have you? You know he likes bacon and egg for his breakfast.’

‘There are plenty of eggs,’ said Amanda, placing the tray on the bedside table before swinging it round so that her mother could reach the plate. She removed her own plate and sat in the chair near the bed in case any help was required.

‘That woman was here just now,’ said her mother. ‘I don’t like her much. I hope she won’t come to see me again.’

With luck, by tomorrow her mother would have forgotten all about her dislike of the woman. Amanda didn’t like her much either, but you couldn’t pick and choose the carers. Maybe it would be worth trying to source somebody privately instead of relying on the Council.

‘Your Dad’s a bit late, isn’t he? I suppose he’s been held up at work.’

Amanda made a non-committal sound. She was trying to get through the scrambled egg before any kind of crisis developed.

‘Is it time for my programme yet?’ Her mother twisted a little to try and see the television, on its bracket on the wall. ‘Give me the remote control.’

Once the quiz programme had started, it was safe to take away the remains of the meal and go downstairs. Sometimes Amanda’s mother liked her to be there to watch television with her, but Amanda tended to get cross and start shouting at the quiz contestants, so it was generally better to creep away in the hope of being able to shut herself in the room she thought of as her study, although it had once been the formal dining-room, and do some work on her research project. The project had been going on for some years, and Amanda had almost given up hope of ever publishing her findings. She wondered if being in charge of the museum would improve her chances of doing so – or would it impede them? It might depend on factors outside her control, such as whether the animal rights people managed to blow the whole place up with one of William’s groups of school kids inside, or whether one of them offended a government official too many during Howard’s enforced absence.

She tried to focus on the behaviour of magpies in situations of rapid climate change, but it didn’t grab her attention, for some reason. Instead she found her eyes straying towards the little television she had installed, against her better judgement, in the corner of the room. She could stick to one episode of