Death of a Poison Pen

by Beaton, M. C.

  There was a rustling in the heather beside Hamish. He felt Elspeth moving away and shot out an arm to stop her, but she had gone. He swore under his breath. He would need to confront the Robertses, but he wished he could get to that shotgun first.

  He thought the Robertses had really gone mad. He was sure Cyril Roberts would shoot them both and get rid of their bodies even if he told him that reinforcements were on their way.

  The Robertses dragged Jenny out and laid her on the heather. ‘Now, the thing is,’ said Cyril, ‘we roll her to the edge, cut off the ropes, rip off the gag, and push her over. Right?’

  ‘Right,’ said Mary. ‘Hurry up. I feel something here.’

  And then they both froze as a silvery, unearthly voice whispered across the heather. ‘You are wicked and I have come to take you away.’ Then there was an eerie laugh.

  Mary’s face, already bleached by the moonlight, was now as white as paper. ‘It’s the wee folk,’ she said through dry lips.

  ‘Pull yourself together, woman.’ Cyril picked up the shotgun and swung it to the left and the right.

  ‘You will suffer unbelievable torture,’ mocked the unearthly voice. Cyril fired to the right. Silence.

  Then from the left came the whispering, jeering voice again. ‘Bullets cannot hurt us.’

  Mary slumped down against the side of the car and began to cry with fright. Beside himself with rage and fear, Cyril stood straddling Jenny’s body where she lay on the heather, glaring around him.

  ‘Let her go,’ called the voice, and to the terrified Cyril it seemed to be coming from the sky above his head.

  He left Jenny and ran desperately this way and that, trying to find the source of the voice.

  ‘You are going to die,’ mocked the eldritch voice.

  ‘Mary,’ shouted Cyril, ‘come here and grab her and let’s get this over with.’

  Mary continued to sob, shivering and wrapping her arms around her body.

  Jenny summoned up all her energy and began to roll down the slope of the hill when Cyril went to his wife to try to get her to her feet.

  Despite the tussocks of heather, it was a steep slope away from the lip of the quarry, and she slowly gathered momentum until she bumped up against a rock and lost consciousness.

  Damn, he’s loading the shotgun again. I should have taken him, thought Hamish. I could even have chanced it while he was dealing with Mary.

  ‘Now untie her and ungag her,’ Cyril was ordering his wife. ‘She can scream all she likes. No one will hear her up here.’

  ‘What about the fairies?’ screeched Mary.

  ‘There’s no such damn thing as fairies. When we get rid of her, I’ll blast whoever that is playing tricks. Now get on with it!’

  Mary moved round to the back of the car and let out a scream. ‘She’s gone!’

  ‘What!’ The moon shone bravely down. Cyril joined her and stared down at where Jenny had so recently lain. Then he looked wildly around, swinging the shotgun this way and that.

  ‘We’ve taken her where you’ll never get her,’ cackled the unearthly voice.

  Mary Roberts said in a dull voice, ‘God have mercy on me.’ She ran to the edge of the quarry and jumped over.

  ‘Mary!’ shouted Cyril. He dropped the shotgun and ran to the edge of the cliff.

  Hamish rose to his feet and sprinted up behind him. He seized Cyril, threw him to the ground, and handcuffed him. In the distance came the wail of police sirens.

  ‘Elspeth!’ he shouted. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Down here,’ shouted Elspeth from somewhere behind him. ‘I’ve got Jenny. You keep an eye on him and I’ll look after her. Are you going after Mary?’

  ‘I’ll need to wait for help. If I went down there after her, there’s no way I could get both of us out again.’

  Hamish cautioned Cyril, who was crying so hard that he did not seem to hear him.

  Hamish took out his mobile phone and said he would need ropes, divers and an ambulance.

  Police cars with sirens wailing and blue lights flashing bumped up towards them.

  Jimmy Anderson was the first out. ‘What’s happening, Hamish?’

  ‘This is Cyril Roberts, who is guilty of kidnapping Jenny Ogilvie and trying to kill her. He is guilty of the other murders. His wife, Mary, has jumped into the quarry. See if you can get men down there. I don’t have any rope.’

  ‘You’re lucky,’ said Jimmy. ‘We still had the men in Braikie who were looking for Jenny’s body down the cliffs, so they have all the equipment.’ He walked away from Hamish and began to bark out orders.

  Hamish saw Elspeth and Jenny in the light from the police cars. ‘How is she?’ he asked.

  ‘Very weak. Don’t wait for the ambulance. Get someone to take her to hospital immediately.’

  ‘Right!’ Hamish arranged for a policeman and policewoman to drive Jenny to the hospital and to stay with her.

  When Jenny had been ushered into a police car, Hamish said to Elspeth, ‘You could have got yourself shot. What on earth possessed you to pretend you were a fairy?’

  ‘Anything to stop them throwing her over. And it worked.’

  ‘What if Mary Roberts didn’t believe in fairies?’

  ‘Most people up here will believe in fairies if their mind’s a bit overturned. Do you think Mary Roberts will still be alive?’

  ‘I doubt it. I think she wanted to die when she went over.’

  Cyril Roberts was being put into a police car just as Detective Chief Inspector Blair came roaring up.

  Hamish had to go through the whole story of how he had come to suspect the Robertses. When he had finished, Blair said, ‘You wait here to see if they get Mrs Roberts out alive. I’ll go with Cyril Roberts to Strathbane and question him.’

  ‘Sir,’ said Hamish, ‘I think as I solved the case, I should be there when he is questioned.’

  ‘You’ll stay here and do as you’re told,’ snarled Blair, already wondering how he could take all the credit himself.

  As Blair marched off, Jimmy whispered, ‘Don’t worry, Hamish, I’ll drop over tomorrow if I can manage and give you a full report of what Roberts said. And by the time that lassie of yours has finished her reports for the papers, everyone will know it was you and not Blair who solved the mystery.’

  The night had turned chilly. Hamish waited patiently until the lifeless body of Mary Roberts was brought up from the quarry.

  Then he wearily went back to join Elspeth, who was sitting in her car with the engine on and the heater blasting.

  ‘Get me to the office,’ she urged Hamish when he told her Mary Roberts was dead. ‘I’ve got to send a lot of stories over to the nationals and the agencies.’

  ‘Won’t it be locked?’

  ‘Sam gave me a set of keys.’

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘A bit sick. I was very frightened.’

  Hamish hugged her and then, involuntarily, he kissed her full on the lips. He emerged from the kiss with his pulse racing. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said hurriedly.

  ‘For what?’ demanded Elspeth crossly, and set off down the track.

  Before he went to bed, Hamish sat down at his computer and filed his report. He felt bone weary. He carefully skirted around his visits to Perth. After he had finished, he sat and scowled at the screen. The one piece of the jigsaw that was missing was why the Robertses had sent that video of the murder of Miss Beattie to the community centre film show. It just didn’t make sense. The trouble with dealing with amateurs, he thought, was that it was like dealing with madmen. It made them so hard to catch. He yawned and stretched. He wished now he hadn’t kissed Elspeth. It was time he had another girlfriend, but preferably someone outside the village, away from the gossiping tongues of Lochdubh.

  Jenny recovered quickly from her ordeal and, despite protests from hospital staff, insisted the press be allowed to interview her.

  And so, although Elspeth had gamely sent out stories praising the acumen of Hamish Macbeth
in solving the mystery, all that went by the board as far as the press were concerned. Jenny with her black curls and big brown eyes claimed to have worked out who the murderers were all by herself.

  She only felt a little pang of conscience as she described how by sheer female intuition she had arrived at the solution and then followed that up with a colourful description of her ordeal. She did not mention Elspeth’s ‘haunting’. Jenny had learned from the minister’s wife, Mrs Wellington, who had called to visit her, that Pat Mallone had simply taken off, even though he knew she was missing. So, feeling rebuffed and diminished, she had decided to get as much glory out of her kidnapping as possible.

  One reporter, less seduced by Jenny’s attractions than the rest, asked her, ‘Is it true that you were listening at the police station door whilst Hamish Macbeth was discussing the case and that’s how you found out about the Robertses?’

  Jenny blushed but said, ‘I went to see Hamish, yes, but all I heard was someone with him, so I went away. You see, I had already worked things out for myself and I had been going to tell him. But when I heard he had someone with him, I decided to investigate for myself.’ She fluttered her eyelashes at the reporter. ‘It was silly of me, I know, but at that time it was just an idea.’

  Chapter Eleven

  In winter, when the dismal rain

  Came down in slanting lines,

  And Wind, that grand old harper, smote

  His thunder-harp of pines.

  – Alexander Smith

  The following day, Hamish received a phone call from Priscilla. ‘What’s all this?’ asked Priscilla. ‘Jenny’s over the front page of every newspaper saying she solved the murders.’

  ‘She was listening at the kitchen door when I was discussing the case with Elspeth. That’s how she found out.’

  ‘Elspeth? Oh, that little reporter. That your latest squeeze?’

  ‘Elspeth Grant is a friend of mine and has been a great help to me.’

  There was a silence and then Priscilla said, ‘So can’t Elspeth put the papers right?’

  ‘The papers have got their heroine and they are not going to change their story and say it was some boring Highland copper. Are you coming up soon?’

  ‘I thought of flying up to see Jenny, but I am too cross with her to bother now. She shouldn’t have snatched the glory from you.’

  ‘Well, the lassie’s probably done me a favour. Anytime I have even a wee bit of success, Peter Daviot starts mumbling about moving me to Strathbane.’

  ‘But he surely knows it was you who solved the murders?’

  ‘Aye, but he’s driven by the press. What gets in the press is only what interests Daviot. Another thing: I am perfectly sure Blair backed up Jenny’s story so that I would get as little credit as possible.’

  ‘Jenny’s parents phoned me today,’ said Priscilla. ‘They are now speeding north to take their daughter home, so she’ll soon be out of your hair.’

  Hamish wanted to ask her how her love life was getting on and whether she was about to get married soon, but he dreaded what the answer might be. So instead, he talked about the locals, about how he had to woo back his dog’s affections because Lugs had spent so much time with Angela that he seemed to prefer going there, and how pleasant it was to settle back down to a less demanding life.

  ‘Why did the Robertses do it?’ asked Priscilla.

  ‘Because their child wasn’t their own.’

  ‘I know that. But to commit two murders!’

  ‘I’ll find out and let you know,’ said Hamish. ‘Jimmy Anderson is going to call and let me see a transcript of the interview.’

  When she rang off, Hamish went out to feed his hens and check on his sheep. The air was cold and damp and the wind had shifted round to the northeast. The long Highland winter was howling on the threshold.

  By faking references, Pat Mallone had managed to get a job on the Dublin Mercury as a junior reporter. On his way to work, he stopped by a shop to buy cigarettes, a habit he had taken up after his flight from the Highlands. Although he was perfectly sure the Scottish police would not go to the trouble to extradite anyone on such a minor charge, he still felt uneasy. The shop sold the British newspapers, and there was Jenny’s face smiling up at him from the front pages. He bought several and then, after buying his cigarettes as well, stood on Grafton Street and read the stories.

  If only he had stayed, he thought bitterly, he could have basked in some reflected glory. Of course, none of what had happened to him was really his fault. It had all been just bad luck.

  After another two days, Hamish was just beginning to think that Jimmy had forgotten about him when the man himself appeared in the evening, carrying a bottle of whisky.

  ‘Come ben,’ said Hamish. ‘It is not like you to be providing the whisky.’

  ‘I feel you deserve it, laddie. I was getting damn sick o’ Braikie. How you can bear living up here fair beats me.’ As if in answer to him, the wind howled around the police station like an Irish banshee.

  ‘Sit yourself down,’ said Hamish, putting two glasses on the kitchen table. ‘Did Cyril Roberts confess?’

  ‘Aye,’ said Jimmy, pouring a large whisky for himself and a small one for Hamish. He tugged several pieces of paper out of his jacket pocket. ‘Read that.’

  Hamish spread the papers on the table and began to read.

  ‘Amy Beattie,’ Cyril Roberts had written, ‘came to us as a cleaner sixteen years ago. My wife, Mary, found her crying in the kitchen one day and asked her what was troubling her. Amy said she was pregnant. She said she would have to have the child and then give it up for adoption. Now, Mary and I couldn’t have children. We’d always longed for one. We’d thought of adoption, but the adoption societies are so difficult. So when Mary told me, we hit upon a plan. We’ve got a holiday cottage over in Caithness, just north of Helmsdale. Amy would go and live there when her time was near. Meanwhile, Mary would tell everyone she was pregnant. Then when Amy was due, we’d go over there. Mary used to be a nurse so she would deliver the baby. She would come back with it as our own.

  ‘We doted on Penny as she grew up. Have you seen her? Have you ever seen anything more beautiful? Amy seemed to have started a new life for herself. We’d given her a large sum of money and she bought the post office. We’d inherited a lot of money after Mary pushed her own mother down the stairs.’

  ‘I remember,’ said Hamish, ‘that Mary said her mother had Alzheimer’s and died a week before she married Cyril.’ He went back to reading.

  ‘And then one day Amy Beattie turned up. She said she wanted Penny to know the identity of her real mother. We couldn’t be having that. We threatened her and we thought that would keep her quiet. But she went to Miss McAndrew. Miss McAndrew was hot for Penny to go to university and Penny wanted a career in television. Miss McAndrew told us that if we did not make sure Penny went to the university, then she would tell everyone in Braikie that Penny was not our child. Then the anonymous letter arrived, addressed to Penny. The post was late that morning and it arrived after Penny had left for school. We opened and read it and we were pretty sure it was from Miss McAndrew.

  ‘Mary said no one was going to take our precious child away. We told Amy that we had decided to let her tell Penny but we would like to discuss it with her first. We went round to her flat. Mary put a strong sleeping draught in her tea and when she was unconscious, we hanged her and left that anonymous letter, knowing that Miss McAndrew would read about it in the papers and take it as a warning. Just to be sure, we took a bit of video film and sent it to her as a further warning. No, I don’t know who sent it to the community centre. We thought that was an end to it. Then Miss McAndrew phoned up soon afterwards and said she had been wrestling with her conscience. She said she would have to go to the police and tell them everything. It was late at night and Mary said she wouldn’t go to the police that night and had to be silenced. I said that one killing was enough and Mary said she would kill me if I didn’t help her. She said
she would do it. Now, Penny had keys to Miss McAndrew’s house. I begged Mary not to do it, just to frighten Miss McAndrew, and Mary said all right. We let ourselves in and crept up to the bedroom and then Mary produced this knife and began to stab and stab and stab.

  ‘And we thought for a while we’d got clean away with both murders. We were even able to go on as normal. We adore Penny. And then that girl Jenny called. Mary hit her on the head. I wish we had just bluffed our way out of it because she didn’t really know anything. But once it was done, we shut her up in a cupboard bound and gagged. I got rid of the car. If only I had put Jenny in it. That was a big mistake. So it had to be the quarry.’

  Hamish looked up from his reading. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘What doesn’t make sense?’ asked Jimmy.

  ‘That a perfectly respectable Highland couple should resort to such mad violence.’

  ‘Ah, that’s where you’re wrong,’ said Jimmy. ‘You don’t know everything, Sherlock.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Mary Roberts was at one time in her early life sectioned for psychopathy. Cyril Roberts used to be in the Royal Marines and spent a long time in the glasshouse and then got a dishonourable discharge for nearly beating an officer to death.’

  ‘We never thought to dig up their backgrounds,’ mourned Hamish. ‘What about Penny? How’s she taking it?’

  ‘Last heard, she’s selling her story to the Sun. She may end up on television after all.’

  ‘That video turning up at the film show at the community centre: That bothers me. Roberts didn’t mention anyone else being in on it?’

  ‘No. He said he was frightened and puzzled because it couldn’t have been Miss McAndrew. She was already dead.’

  ‘It’s a loose end, and I don’t like loose ends. Go easy on the whisky, Jimmy. I shouldnae even let you drive.’

  ‘I’ll be just fine.’

  Hamish studied the statement again. ‘I see Cyril Roberts says nothing about fairies.’

  ‘You mean he was gay?’