by M C Beaton
Hamish bad never met Lord Farmers. He opened his mouth to say so and then shut it again. Priscilla, Priscilla most have interfered. Peter Daviot’s wife would do anything for Priscilla, and Priscilla must have lied about his friendship with the earl. Then he thought of Priscilla and John Glover, “tf ye’re looking for a suspect,” he said, “you might try checking up on thon John Glover.”
“We did,” sneered Blair. “He’s just who he says he is. And at the time of the murder, he was wining and dining with your sweetie-pie.”
“So you know exactly when Duggan was killed?”
Blair scowled horribly. The results of the autopsy were not through yet, or if they were, he hadn’t heard. Nor had he checked or John Glover, but he wasn’t going to tell Hamish n?
Wnen he had left without answering, Hamish went through to the office and picked up the phone. He was sure Blair hadn’t checked on John Glover. Why should he?
He asked directory inquiries for the number of the Scottish and General Bank in Renfrew Street, wrote it down and then dialled it. He asked to speak to John Glover, the manager, and was told he was on holiday. Because of Blair, Hamish did not want to say he was the police. He said he was a friend. Where was Mr. Glover holidaying? Somewhere in the Highlands, jame the secretary’s reply. Mr. Glover never left an address. He said he did not like to be bothered when he was on holiday, so that was that, thought Hamish, replacing the receiver. He tedded to settle down and read Rosie Draly’s book, but then le wondered if the report of the autopsy had reached Strathbane. After some hesitation, he got through to the Bthologist and, imitating Blair’s heavy Glaswegian accent, isked if there was any result yet. “I’ve just sent a report to Mr. Daviot,” said the pathologist crossly.
“I happen tae be the officer in charge o’ this case,” said Hamish in Blair’s heavy, brutal tones. “So will you kindly just give me the facts.”
“Oh, very well. Roughly it’s this. Because of the heat in the cottage, we’re not sure of the exact time of death.” Then followed a boring lecture on rigor mortis. Hamish stared at the rain until it was over. He straightened up as the pathologist said, “He was drugged before he was shot. That much we can establish.”
“Drugged with what?” demanded Hamish. “Is that Mr. Blair?” The pathologist’s voice was suddenly harp with suspicion.
Hamish cursed himself. “Aye, who else?” he demanded trubulently, adopting Blair’s voice again. “We must be careful,” came the pathologist’s prim voice. “Duggan was drugged with chloral hydrate, then tied up and shot.”
“And any idea at all about the time o’ death?”
“Between, say, seven in the evening and ten o’clock.”
“Thanks,” said Hamish and rang off. He picked up Rosie Draly’s book and looked at it thoughtfully. A woman could have killed Duggan. A woman could have drugged him, tied him up, and shot him at her leisure.
But he reminded himself sternly that he had better type out his report an the burglary at Cnothan.
He had just about finished it when John Glover came back into his head. Suppose, just suppose, a man had known that Glover was going on holiday and was pretending to be the banker. He phoned the gift shop and got Priscilla.
“How did Glover pay his bill?” he asked.
“Mr. Glover to you, copper, and he hasn’t paid his bill yet because he’s still here.”
“But when people make a hotel booking, they aye give a credit-card number.”
“Hamish! You should be looking for a murderer, not harassing a perfectly respectable banker.”
“Just checking. When he took you out for dinner, how did he pay?”
“By credit card.”
“You went to the Italian restaurant?”
“Yes, and Willie Lamont served us.” Willie, in the heady days when Hamish had actually been promoted to sergeant had been his constable. But Willie had married Lucia, a beautiful Italian relative of the owner, and had settled happily into the restaurant business.
“Right,” said Hamish. “Oh, and by the way, thanks for putting a word in for me with Daviot.”
“All part of the service, Hamish.”
♦
Hamish made his way along to the Italian restaurant, which was not only popular because of its good food but had a reputation for being the cleanest restaurant in the British Isles thanks to the efforts of Willie, who was a compulsive cleaner. He was down on his hands and knees as Hamish approached, scrubbing the restaurant steps.
“You’re overdoing it as usual,” commented Hamish. “That’s never pipe clay you’re going to use. No one whitens the steps these days. Man, your customers’ll be leaving their footprints all over it in no time at all.”
“Not if I tell them to jump,” said Willie and Hamish thought he surely must be joking, but then Willie never joked about cleaning.
“I need your help in a quiet way,” said Hamish.
“And what would that be?”
“Thon John Glover paid by credit card the night o’ the murder, the night he was here with Priscilla. Any chance of finding out what card it was, what name, what number?”
“Of course. But if it’s to do with this murder, then it isn’t your case, Hamish.”
“Come on, Willie. Don’t be starchy.”
“I don’t want to purvey the course of justice.”
“Pervert,” corrected Hamish. “And you willnae be. Or can I put it this way. You find out those details or I’ll jump in that muddy puddle over there and then jump all over your nice clean steps.”
“You wouldnae!”
“Try me.”
“Oh, all right. But if I get in trouble with Blair, I’ll tell him you blackmailed me.”
“Some blackmail, Willie. It’s pissing down with rain and the pipe clay will get washed away in no time at all.”
“That it won’t. We have the new canopy.”
Hamish looked up and, sure enough, there, waiting to be unfurled over the doorway, was a red-and-white striped awning. “Anyway,” he said, “get me what I want, Willie.” He made to walk up the steps and into the restaurant, but Willie howled at him, “Jump!” And Hamish did, marvelling again at the madness of Willie’s cleaning. Once inside the restaurant, Willie went through to the back where the office was. In a short time he returned and said that John Glover had paid with his Scottish and General gold card; he gave Hamish the number and confirmed that the card had been in the name of John Glover, so that was that. Hamish admitted ruefully to himself that he had only been hoping to find out something suspicious about John Glover in order to pour cold water over Priscilla’s growing interest in the man. How odd, he thought, that jealousy should remain when love had gone.
♦
Priscilla felt relaxed over dinner that evening. She began to wonder if a much older man would, after all, make a suitable husband. And then John smiled at her in the candle-light and said, “Perhaps it’s just as well I didn’t get anywhere with you, Priscilla.”
She raised her eyebrows in query. He gave a self-conscious laugh. “As a matter of fact, I shouldn’t even be having dinner with you. My fiancée arrives this evening. I told Mr. Johnson, the manager, and booked a room for her.”
Priscilla suddenly felt a bit lost. It was not as if she were particularly attracted to John. But she did not want to remain a spinster and she did not like any of the ‘suitable’ young men her parents found for her; She had just been thinking that a comfortable older man might make a sort of undemanding husband. “Do you mean undemanding in bed?” jeered the voice of Hamish Macbeth in her head, for Hamish had accused her of being cold, and that was something she would not admit, even to herself.
“Shouldn’t we be getting back men?” she asked brightly, “ft would be terrible if she arrived to find you out with someone else.”
He looked at the heavy gold watch on his wrist. “She won’t be arriving until about eleven. She’s getting a cab from Inverness.”
“Were you ever married?”
“Ju
st the once,” said John. “It didn’t work out. We divorced some years ago. My fiancée, Betty, works in the bank as well.”
Hamish would enjoy this situation, thought Priscilla.
∨ Death of a Macho Man ∧
4
Our murder has been done three days ago,
The frost is over and done, the south wind laughs.
—Robert Browning
After they had jumped over Wilfie’s gleaming white steps and driven back to Tommel Castle Hotel, Priscilla wanted to go to her own quarters and leave John to greet Betty on her arrival. But John was most insistent that she stay to meet her. Guilty conscience, thought Priscilla, feeling sour. They sat in the bar and made desultory conversation. He certainly is getting very keyed up about her arrival, mused Priscilla, noticing the way the normally calm John started every time he heard a sound outside.
At last there was the crunch of car wheels on the gravel outside. “That should be her,” said John. He jumped up and straightened his tie at the bar-room mirror, smoothed his hair and turned and said to Priscilla, “Come along. You two should get on famously.”
Priscilla followed him into the reception hall. Mr. Johnson had gone to open the door. Betty arrived in a gust of damp wind and rain. She was small and dark and plump and aged about forty.
John kissed her on the cheek. “Good journey?”
“Rotten,” she said.
“Priscilla, my fiancée, Betty John. Betty, Priscilla Halburton-Smythe. Her father owns this place.”
“Any hope of a drink?” asked Betty, as the porter struggled in with five pieces of matching luggage. “Of course,” said Priscilla. “The bar is still open to residents.”
Betty, like John, had a Glasgow accent, quite light, not as broad as Blair’s, say. She had black hair and large black eyes and quite a swarthy complexion. She was wearing a well-cut; tweed suit and silk blouse. She exuded strong vitality and sexiness. Although she could not be described as beautiful or even pretty, she made Priscilla feel colourless.
“If you’ll both excuse me,” said Priscilla after Betty had been served with a large whisky, “I really must go to bed now. I have an early start in the morning.”
But Betty had begun to tell John about the iniquities of British Rail and neither seemed aware of her going.
♦
Hamish stretched his long legs and put down Rosie’s book; with a sigh. The plot had been simple. Viscount finds girl, viscount loses girl, viscount finds girl. There was nothing in it to betray anything about Rosie’s character. It was written in a mannered style, competent, literate and strangely lifeless. Hamish, on the occasions when he had been trapped in Highland hotels and boarding-houses, had, during the course of reading anything to hand, read several romances. Some were badly written but they had all been romances, in that the scenes of passion had conveyed something of the author’s personality and energy. Rosie’s love scenes, even allowing for the fact that the genre hardly called for bodice-ripping and lust, were strangely flat. Perhaps she hid her personality in her books as effectively as she hid it in real life. He decided to have a further talk with Archie in the morning.
♦
The small population of Lochdubh awoke in amazement to a sunny day with a fresh, drying breeze. The forensic men still combing Duggan’s cottage whistled as they worked and even Blair was seen to smile.
Hamish Macbeth dressed and washed and went outside to enjoy the glory of the day. There were cheerful cries and shouts from the harbour, where the fishing boats were unloading their catch. The twin mountains behind Lochdubh showed their peaks against a clear blue sky for the first time in weeks. Heather blazed on the hillsides, and the rowan trees were already beginning to show scarlet berries. Gorse grew in clumps on the lower slopes of the mountains, acid yellow, adding colour to what had been for too long a dreary rain-washed scene.
And then Hamish saw the tall figure of Detective Jimmy Anderson strolling along. He hailed him. “Too early in the day for a dram?” called Hamish, knowing that whisky could draw information from this sidekick of Blair’s.
“Never too early,” said Jimmy cheerfully. “Lead me to it.”
Hamish went into the police office and took a bottle of Scotch from the bottom drawer of his desk and poured a good measure into a tumbler.
“Cheers,” said Jimmy. “Did you hear that Duggan was drugged before he died?”
“I did hear something like that.”
“Blair’s furious wi’ the pathologist. The man kept saying to Blair, “I told you the other day.” Blair swears he didn’t. You were lucky not to fight Duggan.”
“Why?”
“Found a nasty pair of brass-knuckle dusters in his cot.”
“I thought that might be the case,” said Hamish, remembering how Andy had told him that Duggan had worn gloves. “Its the great pity we have to find the murderer of such a man.”
“Aye. Man, this whisky’s the grand stuff. Blair’s going mad wi’ all the suspects.” Hamish’s hazel eyes sharpened. “Who, for instance?”
“Well, wee Archie Maclean was heard threatening him, and then Duggan had a fight with some forestry worker called MacTavish.”
Blair had been busy, thought Hamish.
“Anyone else?”
“A woman.”
“Which one?” Hamish waited for the name ‘Rosie Draly,’ but Andersen’s next words surprised him.
“A widow. Mrs. Annie Ferguson.”
“Oh, come on! Our Annie?”
“He’d been getting his leg over there.”
“Who says?”
“She says.”
“Neffer!”
“Fact. She went to Blair and said he would find out soon enough.”
“I’m slipping,” said Hamish ruefully. “I havenae been paying a bit o’ attention to the gossip in this village and forgetting that it should be part of my job.” He thought rapidly. Annie Ferguson, trim, respectable, late forties, church-goer – and Randy!
“Okay, she had a fling with him,” said Hamish, “but why did she think she had to tell Blair about it? You would think a respectable body like her would want to keep quiet I mean, no one would have gossiped to Blair about it.”
“She didn’t exactly say she had an affair with him, come to think of it. Blair’s nasty mind jaloused that. She said she chased Duggan out of her cottage a week ago and threw several pots and pans after him. She shouted that she would kill him.”
“She said he asked her to do something nasty, something that no man should ask a woman to do.”
“The mind boggles. What was it?”
“That she willnae say. She just sobs and cries and says she cannae utter the dirty words.”
Hamish’s Highland curiosity was rampant. He suddenly wanted shot of Jimmy so that he could go and question Annie.
“You know Blair,” Jimmy was saying. “It’s a wonder he didn’t arrest her on the spot, he’s that keen to wrap up this case.”
“Hamish Macbeth!” called an imperious voice from the kitchen.
“That’s Mrs. Wellington, the minister’s wife,” said Hamish. “You’d best be off.”
“Can I take the bottle with me?”
“No, you can’t,” said Hamish, seizing it and putting it firmly back in the bottom drawer. If Jimmy wanted more free whisky, then Jimmy would be back again and hopefully with more interesting information.
Having got rid of the detective, he went through to his kitchen and faced the tweedy bulk of the minister’s wife.
“What I want to know,” said Mrs. Wellington pugnaciously, “is what you’re doing about it.”
“The murder? There’s not much I can do, Mrs. Wellington. I’ve been told to keep off the case.”
“It hasn’t stopped you before I can’t stand that man Blair. You must go and see Annie Ferguson. He has reduced that poor woman to a shaking wreck. That beast, Duggan, seduced her and took her good name away.”
Hamish blinked. “I didn’t think in these free and easy da
ys that women had any good name to take away at all.”
“I’ll have none of your cynical remarks. She sent me to get you. She feels if she does not get help soon, then Blair will arrest her.”
“I’m on my way,” said Hamish, delighted to have an invitation to see the very woman he was interested in interviewing.
“And if that pig Blair says anything to you,” said Mrs. Wellington, “tell him I sent you to see her.”
“Right,” said Hamish. He ushered her out and then set off along the waterfront towards Annie’s little cottage, which was situated just before the humpbacked bridge which led out of Locbdubh.
It was amazing, he marvelled, as he surveyed Annie when she opened the door to him, that you could think you knew someone quite well and then discover that you must hardly have known them at all. But who would think that Annie of all people, with her corseted figure and rigidly permed grey hair, would indulge in passion with a bit of rough like Duggan? “Come in,” said Annie. “I don’t know what to do.” Her voice trembled.
She led Hamish into a neat living-room filled with bits of highly polished furniture and bedecked with photographs in steel frames. There was an old-fashioned upright piano against one wall, with a quilted front and brackets for candles.
Lace curtains fluttered at the open cottage windows, and from outside came all the little snatches of sound of the normal everyday life of Lochdubh – people talking, children playing, bursts of music from radios, and cars driving past along the sunny road.
“So what’s been going on, Annie?” asked Hamish.
“Sit down,” she urged, “and I’ll make us a nice cup of tea and I have baked scones. You aye liked my scones, Hamish.”
Hamish was so anxious to hear what she had to say that despite his mooching ways, he would, for once, have gladly dispensed with the tea and scones, but one could not refuse hospitality in a Highland home. He waited impatiently as she fussed about, bringing in the tea-tray with the fat, rose-decorated china teapot, matching cups, cream jug and lump sugar. Then the golden scones, warm and oozing butter.
Hamish dutifully drank one cup of tea and ate two scones and then said, “So tell me about it.”
