by M C Beaton
Or simply rotted early?
—Ogden Nash
When Hamish finally got home to his police station, the rain had retun to a damp drizzle. He was immensely tired but he wanted to get in touch with Rosie’s agent before Blair did and he remembered that there had been a home phone number on the card Rosie had given him. Blair could not complain when he found out because he had said Hamish was now officially on the case.
He found the card and went into the police office and pulled the phone towards him. He dialled the home number. The agent’s name was Harriet Simmonds. It rang for a long time and then a sleepy voice answered.
“Miss Simmonds,” began Hamish. “This is the police in Lochdubh, Sutherland. I am afraid I have bad news about your author, Rosie Draly.”
“What? How?” demanded Miss Simmonds. And then, by the sharpening of her voice, he realized she had come fully awake. “Come again,” she said. “You are the police? From Lochdubh? That’s where Rosie lives.”
“Lived,” corrected Hamish gently. “She has been murdered.”
“Murdered? Is this some bad joke? Who are you?”
“My name is Hamish Macbeth, and I am the police constable in Lochdubh. If you do not believe me, I will give you a number to call back.” As he said it, he realized it was a bit silly, because there was only he himself.
“No, no,” said Miss Simmonds, “I’ve got myself together now. It’s the shock. Rosie. Murdered! Why would anyone murder Rosie? How was she murdered?”
“Someone, we don’t know who yet, stuck a knife in her back.”
“Good God! I was expecting to see her today.”
“There is another thing,” said Hamish. “Did she tell you that there had been a murder here?”
“Yes, she did. She said it was interesting because she was going to write a detective story. I tried to dissuade her.”
“Why?”
“It’s a crowded market. I suppose they all are. She was competent, but I didn’t think she could do it. But she said it would be faction.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s where an author takes a real-life story and fictionalizes it.”
“The trouble is,” said Hamish, “I think that’s what caused her death. Her discs and papers have been burnt, or rather, there’s evidence of that, and I think the murderer was destroying her evidence. Did she tell you anything about it?”
“No, but she was going to…today. I told her if she knew anything, she should tell the police. But she said it was her chance to make big money. She was tired of being a library author and earning peanuts.”
“What’s a library author?”
“It’s a writer who is well liked enough but never a bestseller. The books are bought by the libraries but hardly ever bought by the bookshops. Do you know there are a legion of writers in this country who never actually see their books on sale? And she was desperate for money.”
“Was she in trouble? In debt?”
“No, but she felt very frustrated every time she read about some writer making a fortune. She wanted to travel. I’m her fourth agent. You see, at first she blamed the agent for her lack of success. I mean, she was always published, but she didn’t earn much. She was always trying to bandwagon.”
“You’ll need to explain that as well.”
“If a certain genre became fashionable – science fiction, spy, the occult, World War Two, that sort of thing – Rosie would try to write whatever she thought would hit the big time. Now when even a competent author tries to write in a field that first of all they haven’t read much of and it isn’t their thing, the writing becomes very bad indeed. That’s what happened to Rosie. But she worked so hard! Always trying. She was so excited about this detective story.”
“I cannae envisage Rosie Draly getting excited about anything,” said Hamish. “She seemed so self-contained, almost colourless.”
“I suppose I’m the only person she ever talked to. She never referred to any friends.”
“Family? Lovers?”
“No lovers. She has a sister. I have the name and address.”
“Can you give it to me? She’ll need to be informed.”
“Wait a moment.”
After a few minutes she came back to the phone. “It’s a Mrs. Beck, 12 Jubilee Lane, Willesden.”
“Any phone number?”
“I don’t have that. But the police down here will no doubt get it.”
“Miss Simmonds, if there is anything you can think of, anything at all, that Rosie might have said about her life up here that might give us a clue to her murder, please let us know.”
“I will, of course. But Rosie liked secrets. Not that she ever seemed to have anything to be secretive about, but that’s the impression I got.”
“Did you like her?”
There was a startled silence and then she said cautiously, “I don’t want to speak ill of the dead…”
“Oh, please do,” urged Hamish.
“Well, I didn’t like her, and that’s a fact. She had a way of watching me out of the corner of her eye, as if seeing something in me that caused amused contempt. It rattled me. She also kept implying, without actually putting it into exact words, that I was a failure as an agent, although after her failures with her previous agents she must have known that wasn’t true. I feel awful talking about her like this. It seems such a lurid death. What kind of knife?”
“An ordinary big kitchen knife.”
“Oh, poor Rosie! It might at least have been a mysterious South American dagger or something. Still, I suppose the press will all be there and she’ll get the publicity she always craved, but hardly in a way she ever dreamt of getting it. Give me your number. I promise to call you if I think of anything.”
“There’s just one more thing. Rosie had been chatting up the locals for a bit of colour. Two of them seem to have been quite entranced with her.”
“You lot must be stuck for women up there. I am being bitchy. Sorry. But I swear to God, Rosie wasn’t interested in men. I always thought she was a lesbian.”
“Now there’s something. Anything concrete on that?”
“Nothing, I’m afraid. Just an impression. I used to spend as little time with Rosie as was decently possible.”
Hamish felt he had got as much out of her as he possibly could for the time being. He said goodbye and rang off. Then he sat down to type out a statement of what she had said. He had just finished and was looking forward to going to bed when there was a knock at the kitchen door. He went through and answered it.
Betty John stood there, her large black eyes gleaming with excitement. “What a thrilling place this has turned out to be!” she said. “Another murder. Tell me about it.”
“I can’t now,” said Hamish. “I’ve been up all night and now I’m going to bed.”
She pouted. “I was hoping for a cup of coffee.”
“There’s instant in the kitchen. Help yourself, but chust let me go to bed. I’m weary.”
He went into the bathroom, stripped off and washed down, put on his pyjamas, and then, stretching and yawning, went through to his bedroom and climbed into bed. What had Rosie found out? he wondered sleepily. The silly woman must have found out something from Randy. Randy’s plastic surgery pointed to a high-level criminal. He dozed off. Then he awoke with a start. Someone was in the bed with him, someone’s body was pressed against his own. He twisted round on the pillow and found himself looking straight into the lecherous black eyes of Betty John.
“For heffen’s sakes, woman,” groaned Hamish. “What do you think you are doing?”
“This,” she said with a throaty laugh, and her hands became busy under the bedclothes.
Hamish was half drugged with sleep, but he had been celibate a long time. Making love to Betty John seemed part of an exotic dream. When he finally fell completely asleep, she buried her head on his chest and fell asleep as well.
♦
Priscilla headed down to the police station at lunch-ti
me with a basket of food from the hotel kitchen beside her on the seat. She was surprised that she had recovered so quickly from the sight of Rosie’s dead body, but reflected that had Rosie been blasted to death or battered to death, it would have taken her considerably longer to get over it. There had been something so unreal, so theatrical, about that naked body with the knife sticking out of its back.
She planned to make Hamish lunch and discuss the case. As she parked the car and climbed out, she was hailed by the Currie sisters, Nessie and Jessie, and then immediately joined by Mrs. Wellington, the minister’s wife. While the spinster sisters exclaimed about the murder and wondered volubly what had happened to the normally tranquil life of the Scottish Highlands, Mrs. Wellington boomed, “I want to see Hamish Macbeth and find out just what he is doing about this. This place is getting like New York!”
“He’s probably very tired,” said Priscilla. “He was up all night.”
“It’s his job to be up all night,” said Mrs. Wellington, marching towards the kitchen door, which stood open. The Currie sisters followed, glasses gleaming, rigidly permed hair shining with raindrops. Priscilla reluctantly followed.
Mrs. Wellington looked around the kitchen and then went through to the police office. “Still in bed, the lazy man,”she snorted. “Time he was up.”
She pushed open the bedroom door and then let out a squawk of horror. The Currie sisters peered around her tweedy bulk and Priscilla, taller than the rest, looked over them. The naked bodies of Hamish Macbeth and Betty John lay tangled on the bed.
Hamish awoke, as if conscious of all the horrified stares directed at him. “Get out of here!” he shouted.
“Disgraceful,” said the sisters in unison. They looked absolutely delighted.
The women retreated to the kitchen. “That man is not only immoral, he is amoral, Priscilla,” said Mrs. Wellington. “Priscilla?”
But the slamming of the kitchen door was the only reply.
♦
Hamish, in a most unloverlike way, told Betty to get lost. She took it with good humour, unselfconsciously pulling her discarded clothes over her sturdy, naked body. When she had left he turned his face into the pillow and groaned aloud. What a disgrace! That he had been found in bed with Betty would be all over Lochdubh. He waited until he heard Mrs. Wellington and the Currie sisters, exclaiming their way out of the police station. And Priscilla! What did that chilly lassie expect him to do? Live like a monk?
He gloomily took a scalding bath, reflecting that he was behaving like a girl who had just lost her virginity.
He had just dressed in his uniform when Jimmy Anderson arrived. “How’s the Don Joon o’ the hills?” he greeted Hamish, a leer on his foxy features.
“You heard already?”
“Man, if you stick your nose out o’ the police-station door, you’ll see wee groups of people all along the waterfront and they’re talking about nothing else.”
“Damn this place,” said Hamish savagely. “There’s been two brutal murders and all they’ve got to gossip about is my private life!”
“Well, next time, lock your doors. Blair wants your report and your presence.”
“He’ll get both. Where is he?”
“Up at the mobile unit. Any whisky?”
“How you can drink at this time of day beats me.”
“Come on, Hamish. The sun is over the poop deck, or whatever.”
“You know where the bottle is. Help yourself.” Jimmy scurried off into the police office, rubbing his hands. Hamish followed him in. “And don’t take all day about it.”
Jimmy took bottle and glass out of the bottom drawer and examined the bottle with a critical eye. “Getting low,” he commented, pouring a large slug. “You’ll need to get more.”
“I’ll see,” said Hamish. “So what’s the latest on Rosie?”
“Dead. Knife in the back. Won’t know about chloral hydrate till the results of the autopsy are through, but she certainly didn’t have a peaceful expression on her face when she died.”
“And what’s happening down in Glasgow, for God’s sake? They’re looking through the mug shots, aren’t they?”
“Sure. But the man had plastic surgery and we’re pretty sure he changed his name.”
“I would like to get down there and hae a look myself.”
“Blair won’t let you go and you must have run out of fictitious dead relatives.”
“I’ll think of something. You’ve just finished that bottle, so why don’t you go off and keep Blair quiet while I see what I can dig up.”
When Jimmy had left, Hamish plugged in the electric kettle and made himself a quick cup of coffee. He took a mouthful of it and shuddered. It was called Kenyan Delight and was being sold very cheaply at Patel’s. Now he knew why it was being sold cheaply. He poured the rest down the sink. His stomach rumbled but he could not face the idea of making anything to eat. He straightened his peaked cap, braced his thin shoulders, and marched out to face the population of Lochdubh.
To his amazement and relief the waterfront was deserted, apart from a harassed tourist mother dragging along a screaming child and shouting, “I brung you here tae enjoy yourself, and enjoy yourself you will!”
Amazing, thought Hamish. Parents always say the same stupid things. He stopped by the woman and said mildly, “Don’t be too hard on the wean, missis. It’s all this rain.”
“I wish I’d gone tae Spain,” said the woman. She was fat and blowsy, with raindrops shining in the black roots of her bleached hair. Hamish crouched down in front of the screaming child, a small boy with a red nose and streaming eyes. The child stopped screaming and stared at him. “Now, laddie,” said Hamish, “what’s the matter? You can tell me. I’m the police and you’ve got to tell me the truth.”
“I’ve peed my pants,” said the boy dismally, wiping his nose on his sleeve.
“Why didn’t you tell your ma?”
“She’d wallop me.”
Hamish straightened up and looked at the woman severely. “You heard that,” he said, “and you will not be hitting the boy.”
The woman looked frightened. “Och, you’ll no’ be reporting me to the Social.”
“Take him away and let him get changed.” Hamish fished a fifty-pee piece out of his pocket. “Here, laddie, buy yourself an ice-cream.”
He stood and watched them as they went off, the woman now cooing affectionately to her small son and flashing nervous little smiles back at Hamish.
He walked along, turning over the names of the suspects in his head. He decided to have another talk to Annie Ferguson.
She greeted him with, “Oh, Hamish. It’s yourself. I don’t think you should come here. I shouldn’t be seen talking to you.”
“Why?” he demanded crossly.
“I’ve my reputation to consider, and after what you’ve been up to – ”
“Look here,” said Hamish furiously, “I am here officially on a murder inquiry, and everyone in the village knows that.”
“Everyone in the village knows something else about you now,” said Annie with a flash of pure Highland malice. “Och, come ben.”
He went into her parlour, took off his cap, placed it on the coffee-table and sat down. She sat down opposite him, tugging her skirt firmly over her sturdy knees in case the sight of them would drive this lecherous policeman into some mad act of passion.
“Now,” began Hamish, “I want you to think carefully about any conversation you had with Randy. Did he mention anywhere in the States in particular?”
“I think he seemed to have been just about everywhere. New York, New Orleans, Los Angeles, places like that.”
“Did he mention friends, any he might have known?”
She shook her head. “We didn’t talk much,” she said with a sudden roguish look, quite awful to behold.
“Did you know he had had plastic surgery?”
Her amazement looked genuine.
“Why would he do that? I mean, it’s the women who g
o in for that. Although you wouldn’t catch me getting any of that.”
“We believe he was a criminal who had gone to great lengths to conceal his real identity.”
“A criminal! Oh, you must be mistaken. I wouldn’t have had anything to do with anyone like that!”
“But you didn’t know he was a criminal,” said Hamish patiently.
“And you don’t either. You’re just clutching at straws.”
“Annie, try to be a bit less defensive. Think. What money did he have?”
“He always had wads of the stuff,” said Annie. “You must have heard that. And he was always flashing it about in the bar.”
Hamish asked her several more questions but could learn nothing of importance. He left and went up to the mobile unit and read the reports. The whole wrestling fraternity of America and Britain had been rigorously interviewed without success. Police artists in Glasgow were working on pictures of what Randy might have looked like before plastic surgery. Rosie’s sister, Mrs. Beck, had been contacted and was travelling up to Lochdubh. The rain was still falling, and through the smeared and misted-up windows of the mobile home, Hamish could see groups of pressmen huddled together. Some tourists were also standing about, as if waiting for another murder to happen to enliven the tedium of a rain soaked Scottish holiday.
Mrs. Beck, he learned, was due to arrive from Inverness around five o’clock. She would be staying in Mrs. McCartney’s bed and breakfast in the village. Blair was all set to interview her and Hamish wanted to be present at that interview. He knew that if he asked Blair he would be sent about his business and so he decided to wait until she arrived and just turn up.
He left and went to question Archie Maclean, Geordie Mackenzie, and then the barman, Pete Queen. The trouble turned out to be that all had accepted Randy’s hospitality without paying any attention to what he had said. Randy had arrived among them, Randy had bragged, Randy had been murdered, and that was the end of it. When he returned to the police station, bending his bead against the now wind-driven rain, he felt tired and dirty and miserable. He wanted to phone Priscilla and explain how he had happened to be in bed with Betty, but could think of no explanation which would appeal in any way.
