Peacock’s Alibi
By Stuart David
Welcome to our regular feature showcasing the talents of the nation’s best writers.
Most days, I wouldn’t be over the moon to find a detective inspector standing on my doorstep – especially one who’d come round to drill down into the finer points of my whereabouts on the night Dougie Dowds was murdered. But this afternoon, when my old pal Detective Inspector Mcfadgen turned up at the front door with that specific aim in mind, it came as something of a welcome relief. It got me away from the bedlam that was playing itself out in the living room, the pandemonium that had peaked about half an hour earlier, and stayed right up there, with no obvious signs of abating. And for that much, at least, I was eternally grateful to the boy Mcfadgen. Here’s what had been going down . . . The wife had a full-length mirror propped up against the back of the couch, and she was standing looking into it – in tears – all trussed up in the elaborate pink bridesmaid’s dress she was meant to wear at her daft pal’s upcoming wedding.
‘I look like a meringue,’ the wife moaned. ‘Look at me. Wilma must have lost her mind. How can she possibly be expecting me to go out in public wearing this?’
Meanwhile, the wife’s mother was sitting across the room in an armchair – but rather than offering any of the emotional support you might expect under the circumstances, she was using the subject of the upcoming wedding to put forward her own agenda, an agenda that was never very far from the forefront of her concerns, no matter what other events might be going on round about her.
‘Wasn’t Wilma married once already?’ she said, and the wife nodded silently, the wee shoulders moving up and down as she sobbed away to herself. ‘Well, there you go,’ the mother said. ‘It’s just like I’m always telling you, Beverley – marriage doesn’t have to be for life nowadays. Just make sure you try and catch the bouquet at this wedding, and let fate take care of the rest. You could be shot of this idiot here by the end of the year. Who knows, you might even meet a nice young man at the wedding itself. It was at a wedding Marianne met her husband.’
I shot the mother-in-law a look, but she stared straight back at me, totally nonplussed.
‘This is probably the sort of stuff you’re meant to keep for behind my back, Mrs Cuthbertson,’ I said. ‘An air of frosty disapproval in my company would be enough to get your point across.’