by M C Beaton
“Couldn’t he have saved it?”
“Whit fur?”
“Because teeth can be saved these days.”
Darleen stifled a yawn. “No shit, Sherlock.”
“Whit the hell are you asking questions about some poxy dentist when you’re supposed to be finding out who burgled my safe?” howled Macbean.
“I’m working on something else,” said Hamish.
Jimmy Anderson came out of the office. “Okay, I’ll take you one at a time. There’s no need for you any mair, Hamish. You can get back to your sheep dip papers or whatever exciting things you usually do in Lochdubh.”
Hamish went reluctantly. There was an odd smell of villainy about the hotel. “I’ll type up my notes for you,” he said stiffly to Jimmy.
“I wouldnae bother,” said Jimmy cheerfully. “When does that bar open?”
Hamish left. He drove back to Lochdubh but instead of going to the station, he stopped at the Tommel Castle Hotel just outside the village. The hotel was owned by Colonel Halburton-Smythe, Priscilla’s father, a landowner who, on Hamish’s suggestion, had turned his family home into a hotel when he was in danger of going bankrupt. The hotel had prospered, first through the efforts of Priscilla and then under the efficient management of Mr. Johnson, the manager. He went through to the hotel office where Mr. Johnson was rattling the keys of a computer. Hamish pulled up a chair to the desk and sat down opposite the manager. “Help yourself to coffee, Hamish,” said the manager, jerking his head in the direction of a coffee machine in the corner.
Hamish rose and helped himself to a mugful of coffee and sat down again. “That’s that,” said Mr. Johnson with a sigh. “I miss Priscilla. She’s a dab hand at the accounts. What brings you, Hamish, or are you just chasing a free cup of coffee?”
“There’s been a burglary over at The Scotsman.”
“Druggies from Inverness?”
“No, the safe was robbed. The bingo prize money. Two hundred and fifty thousand pounds.”
“Did they blow it?”
“No, Macbean got the safe on the cheap at an auction in Inverness. It had a wooden back.”
“I mind that safe. I was at that auction myself. That safe was made by a company nobody had ever heard of. I couldn’t believe that wooden back.”
“So what’s the gossip about Macbean?”
“Sour man with a slag of a wife and a drip of a daughter. Came here about two years ago. Somat Enterprises seem to have given him a free hand. It’s run by some Scottish Greek. Got lots of sleazy restaurants and dreary hotels. As far as I can gather, as long as The Scotsman showed a profit, he didn’t interfere. Macbean may have been creaming some of the profits, but he’d need to be smarter than I think he is, because Somat has a team of ferocious auditors who regularly check the books. Macbean thought up the bingo night and it’s been a big success. Do you know the colonel even had the stupidity to suggest we do the same thing? People come here for the fishing and shooting and the country house life, they don’t want a lot of peasants cluttering up the place.”
“What about the staff?”
“Don’t know. You know what it’s like trying to get staff up here, Hamish. No one’s anxious to check out references too closely.”
“Well it’s got nothing to do with me now.” Hamish sipped his coffee and winced as the hot liquid washed around his bad tooth. “Jimmy Anderson’s taken over. It’ll be a long slog – checking out Macbean’s past, checking out the staff’s past, checking out Macbean’s bankbook.”
“It’s more Blair’s line to keep you off a case, Hamish.”
“Aye, well, there been talk about Blair’s liver being a wee bit damaged and Jimmy Anderson aye goes through a personality change when he sniffs promotion.” He winced again.
“Toothache?”
“I’ve got an abscess. Dr. Brodie gave me a shot of antibiotic. I was going over to see Gilchrist. Oh, I forgot to say I wouldn’t be going.”
“I wouldn’t go near that butcher, Hamish. There was a bit of a scandal. Jock Mackay over at Braikie got a tooth pulled and Gilchrist broke his jaw. Jock had impacted roots and the tooth should have been sawn in half and then taken out a bit at a time. Turned out Gilchrist hadn’t even X-rayed him first. Folks told him to sue, but you know what it’s like. A lot of them are brought up to think that doctors, lawyers and dentists are little gods. They never seem to think that they’re just like the butcher or the baker. You get bad meat from the butcher, you find another butcher, but they’ll stick with a bad doctor or a bad dentist until the end of time.”
“Can I use your phone? I might go over myself tomorrow, now that I’ve got the excuse. What does Gilchrist look like?”
“White.”
“I didn’t think he was African or Indian.”
“No, I mean, very white, big white face, big white hands like uncooked pork sausages, very pale eyes, thick white hair, white eyebrows, white coat like the ones the American dentists wear.”
“Age?”
“Fifties, at a guess. Bit of a ladies’ man, by all accounts. Use the phone by all means, but only ask for a checkup or that man will have the pliers out and all your teeth out.”
Hamish dialled the dentist’s number. Maggie Bane answered the phone. He had never met her any more than he had ever met the dentist although he knew her name and had heard of her. Her voice on the phone was sharp and peremptory and he imagined a middle-aged woman with a tight perm, flashing glasses and a thin, bony figure. “This is Mr. Macbeth,” he said, appalled to hear his own voice sounding cringing and apologetic. “I won’t be over today after all. I couldn’t call you earlier because I was on a case.”
“We’ve got enough to do here,” snapped Maggie, “without having to cope with people cancelling appointments. I just wish that folk would tell the truth and say they’re scared.”
“I am not scared,” howled Hamish. “Listen here. I haff the abscess in my tooth and the doctor says I will need to wait until the antibiotic works before seeing the dentist.”
Maggie’s voice was heavy with sarcasm. “Oh, and when is that likely to be?”
Hamish took a deep breath. He was suddenly determined to see this dentist with the unsavoury reputation and this horrible receptionist. “Tomorrow,” he said firmly.
“There’s a Miss Nessie Currie has cancelled at three. You can have her appointment.”
“Thank you.” Hamish slammed down the phone.
Nessie Currie and her sister, Jessie, were the village spinsters. It was their fussy, gossipy manner which damned them as spinsters in a country like Scotland where women who had escaped marriage were sometimes considered fortunate, a hangover from the days when marriage meant domestic slavery and a string of children.
He decided to go and call on Nessie.
Nessie and Jessie were working in their small patch of front garden where narrow beds of regimented plants stood to attention bordering a square of lawn. A rowan tree, heavy with scarlet berries, stood beside the gate as it did outside many Highland homes as a charm to keep the fairies, witches, and evil spirits away.
“There’s that Hamish Macbeth,” said Jessie. “Hamish Macbeth.” She had an irritating habit of repeating everything.
Nessie straightened up and pulled off her gardening gloves, the sunlight glinting on her glasses. “We heard there was the burglary over at The Scotsman,” she said. “Why aren’t you over there?”
“Over there,” echoed Jessie, pulling a weed.
“I’m working on it. Why did you cancel your dentist’s appointment, Nessie?”
“It is not the criminal offence.”
“Criminal offence,” echoed the Greek chorus from the flower bed.
“Chust curiosity,” said Hamish testily, his Highland accent becoming more pronounced as it always did when he was irritated or upset.
“I don’t see it’s any business of yours, but the fact is, Mr. Gilchrist has a reputation of being a philanderer and I was going to have the gas, but goodness knows,
he might interfere with my person.”
“Interfere with my person,” said Jessie, sotto voce.
Hamish looked at Nessie’s elderly and flat-chested body and reflected that this Gilchrist must indeed have one hell of a reputation.
He touched his cap and walked off. The sun was slanting over the loch and soon the early northern night would begin. He felt suddenly lonely and wished he could speak to Priscilla and immediately after that thought had a sudden sharp longing for a cigarette although he had given up smoking some years before.
“You’re looking pretty down in the mourn.” The doctor’s wife, Angela, stopped in front of him. “Tooth still hurting?”
“No, it’s fine at the moment. I was wishing Priscilla was back. We aye talked things over. Then the damnedest thing. I wanted a cigarette.”
Angela smiled, her thin face lighting up. “Why is it everything you let go of, Hamish, ends up with your claw marks on it?”
“I haff let go,” said Hamish crossly. “I wass chust thinking…”
“And I’m thinking you could do with a cup of tea and some scones. Come along, I’m on my way home.”
As Hamish walked beside her, he suddenly remembered that Angela’s home-baked scones were always as hard as bricks and his diseased tooth gave an anticipatory twinge.
The scones that Angela produced and put on the kitchen table looked light and buttery. “A present from Mrs. Wellington,” she said.
Hamish brightened. Mrs. Wellington, the minister’s wife, was a good cook.
He had two scones and butter and two cups of tea. But disaster struck when Angela produced a pot of blackberry jam and urged him to try another. Hamish buttered another scone, covered it liberally in jam, and sank his teeth into it. A red-hot pain seemed to shoot up right through the top of his head. He let out a yelp.
“I say, that tooth is hurting,” said Angela. “Probably the jam. There’s a lot of acid in blackberries. Here.” She rummaged in a kitchen drawer and drew out a handful of new toothbrushes and handed him one. “Go to the bathroom and clean your teeth and rinse out your mouth well. Then come back and I’ll give you a couple of aspirin.”
Hamish grabbed the toothbrush and went into the long narrow bathroom. Two cats slept in the bath and another was curled up on top of the toilet seat. He ripped the wrappings off the toothbrush, brushed his teeth, found a mouth-wash in the cabinet and rinsed out his mouth. By the time he returned to the kitchen, the pain was down to a dull ache. He gratefully swallowed two aspirin. “I thought you would be over at The Scotsman Hotel,” said Angela.
The cats had followed Hamish from the bathroom. One began to affectionately sharpen its claws on his trouser leg and he resisted an impulse to knock it across the kitchen. Angela was very fond of her cats and Hamish was fond of Angela.
“Jimmy Anderson is on the case so I’m off it. Blair’s liver is playing up so Jimmy has dreams of glory.” Angela cradled her cup of tea between her thin fingers. “I’m surprised you haven’t been called to that hotel before.”
“Why?”
“I suppose I shouldn’t be telling you this, but I heard a rumour that Macbean beats his wife.”
“Neffer!”
“I think he does. She had bruised cheeks two months ago as if he’d given her a couple of backhanders.”
Hamish leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head. “Now there’s a thing. A battered wife and two hundred and fifty thousand pounds missing from the safe. She could get a long way away from him on that.”
“Battered wives don’t usually have the guts to do anything to escape. Not unless there’s another man.”
Hamish thought of the acidulous Mrs. Macbean with her thin, lipsticked mouth and hair in pink rollers and sighed. “No, I don’t think it can be anything to do with her. Thanks for the tea and everything, Angela. I’d best get back to the station.”
Jimmy Anderson was waiting for him. “Typed up your notes yet on that burglary?”
“You said you didn’t want them.”
“Well, I would like them now.” Jimmy followed Hamish into the police station and through to the police office. “Got any whisky?”
Seeing that Jimmy was restored to something like his normal self, Hamish said, “Aye, there’s a bottle in the bottom drawer. I’ll get you a glass.”
“What about yourself?”
“Not me,” said Hamish with a shudder. “I have the tooth-ache.”
“Get them all pulled out, Hamish. That’s what I did. I got a rare pair of dentures. I even got the dentist to stain them a bit wi’ nicotine so they look like the real thing.”
He bared an evil-looking set of false teeth.
Hamish got a glass and poured Jimmy a generous measure of whisky.
“So what’s happening with the burglary?”
Jimmy looked sour. “Nothing. We’ll need to wait for the reports on Macbean and the staff to see if any of them has a criminal background.”
“I hear Macbean beats his wife.”
“This is the Highlands, man. What else do they do on the long winter nights?”
“Just thought I’d tell you, which is very generous of me, considering you sent me away wi’ a flea in my ear. You had a touch of Blairitis.”
“You’d best keep your ear to the ground, Hamish, or we’ll have that pillock, Blair, poking his nose in.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Maybe you’d best go back there tomorrow.”
♦
And Hamish would have definitely gone straight to The Scotsman Hotel in the morning but for one thing. After he had typed out his notes for Jimmy, he found the whole side of his face was burning and throbbing with pain. He decided to go straight to Gilchrist and ask him to pull the tooth. He could make time between appointments. There was just so much pain a man could bear. He got into the police Land Rover and set out on the narrow one-track road which led to Braikie. The weather was milder, which meant a thin drizzle was misting the windscreen and the cloud was low on the flanks of the Sutherland mountains.
Braikie was one of those small Scottish towns where Calvinism seems to seep out of the very walls of the dark grey houses. There was one main street with a hotel at one end and a grim-looking church at the other. Small shops selling limp dresses and food of the frozen fish fingers variety were dotted here and there. The police station had been closed down, Braikie having some time ago been considered near enough for Hamish Macbeth to patrol.
But he hardly ever went there and had no reason to.
Braikie might be a dismal place, but he could not rememher a crime ever being committed there.
He asked a local where the dentist’s surgery was and was told it was next to the church. It was situated above a dress shop where dowdy frocks at outrageous prices were displayed in the window, which was covered in yellow cellophane to protect the precious goods from sunlight, even though the dreary day was becoming blacker by the minute. The entrance to the dentist’s surgery was a stone staircase by the side of the shop. He mounted; slowly, holding his jaw although the pain had suddenly ceased in that mysterious way that toothache has of disappearing the minute you are heading for the dentist’s chair.
He stopped on the landing and cocked his head to one side. It was quiet. No sound seemed to filter from inside.
A frosted-glass door with Gilchrist’s name on it faced him. It was the only door on the landing.
With a little sigh, he pushed it open. The waiting room was empty, the receptionist’s desk was empty. The silence was absolute. A tank of fish ornamented one comer, but the fish were dead and floating belly up. A table with very, old copies of Scottish Field was in the centre of the room. Hard upright chairs lined the walls.
His tooth gave another sharp wrench of pain, and stifling a moan, he pushed open the surgery door.
A man was sitting in the dentist’s chair, his back to Hamish. “Hullo,” said Hamish tentatively. “Where’s the dentist?”
Silence.
He strode around the front of the chair.
From the white hair and white coat, he realised he was looking at Mr. Gilchrist.
But his face was not white. It was horribly discoloured and distorted.
Hamish felt for a pulse at the wrist and then at the neck.
Mr. Gilchrist was dead.
∨ Death of a Dentist ∧
2
My name is Death: the last best friend am I.
—Robert Soutfiey
Hamish stood for a moment, shocked. And then the heavy stillness was broken, almost as if the whole of the small town had been waiting for him to find the body.
A dog barked in the street below, its master called it in an angry voice, an old car coughed and spluttered its way, and high heels sounded on the stone staircase outside.
He heard the outside door opening as the high heels clacked their way in. He opened the door of the surgery. A beautiful girl was hanging her coat on a hatstand in the corner. She had glossy jet black hair, a white clear complexion and large blue eyes. She was of medium height with a curvaceous figure and excellent legs. “What do you want?” she snapped, and, oh, the voice did not match the face or figure. But the voice was undoubtedly that of the receptionist, Maggie Bane.
“Who are you?” she went on. Hamish was not in uniform.
“Hamish Macbeth.”
“Well, Mr. Macbeth, Mr. Gilchrist has his coffee at this time in the morning and does not like to be disturbed.”
“He’s dead.”
She did not seem to hear him. She detached a white coat from the coat rack and put it on. “In any case,” she went; on, “your appointment is for three o’clock this afternoon. Not eleven o’clock this morning.”
“He’s dead!” howled Hamish. “Mr. Gilchrist is dead and it looks like poison to me.”
Those wide blue eyes dilated. She suddenly ran past him into the surgery. She stared down at the dead body of the dentist. She stood there in silence. She looked as if she might never move again. “Miss Bane!” said Hamish sharply. “I am a police officer. Do not touch anything. I’ll need to phone police headquarters.”
He walked forward and took her by the shoulders and guided her back to her desk. “Sit down and don’t move,” he ordered.
