by M C Beaton
11
We have learned to whittle the Eden Tree to the shape of a surplice peg,
We have learned to bottle our parents twain in the yolk of an addled egg,
We know that the tail must wag the dog, for the horse is drawn by the cart
But the Devil whoops, as he whooped of old: “It’s clever, but is it Art?”
—Rudyard Kipling
Hamish Macbeth was on sick leave – by orders. He was told lot to talk to the press. Strathbane was wondering what to do with this maverick policeman.
He was so tired, he did not care. He was also suffering from delayed shock. He knew that if he had shouted a warning to Jim, the man might have swung that gun away from Priscilla, but that had been a chance he had not been willing to take. He had killed a man who had murdered without concience, and yet the dead face of Gentleman Jim haunted his dreams.
There was a sign on the police-station door referring all calls to Cnothan, and yet the press, knowing that he was in there, rang the doorbell and telephoned constantly. He began to feel he was under siege. During the night, under cover of darkness – for the light nights of mid-summer were over – he put out food for his hens. Then, packing up a bag, he began to walk along the deserted waterfront. His police Land Rover would be delivered back to him the next day. He knew that he was shortly about to be tangled up in miles of red tape. He would need to explain why he had taken off for Glasgow on his own, why he had not told Strathbane what he was doing, why he had spoken to a reporter, and why and how he had shot a man, not with a gun issued by the police but with a deer rifle.
He still felt incredibly weary and his bones ached from al the running he had done. His dyed hair was showing glints of red at the roots and there was a sore mark on his face above in mouth where he had ripped off the moustache which Josie hat helped him to stick on so well.
He walked towards the humpbacked bridge. The cottage of Willie and Annie Ferguson were in darkness. He wondered if his friendship with Lucia and Willie would ever be the same again.
He stood for a moment on the bridge and stared down at the rushing waters of the river, swollen with all the recent rain.
For the first time, he wondered if he was really suited to the police force. His pig-headed desire to do things on his own was not what was expected of a good policeman. But it was a life he loved, a life he was used to. He turned and looked back at the sleeping village strung out along the waterfront. Had he been born with some sort of ambition by-pass? He had not travelled very much, had not really wanted to. He was an arm chair traveller, content to watch exotic countries from the comfort of his armchair. By modern-day standards, he was a failure, a drop-out.
He trudged on up the hill. Priscilla would not be awake, but there would be the night porter on duty and he would ask for a room for the night and be able to rest up away from the press, and gear himself up for the horrendous amount of paperwork that lay ahead of him.
♦
Priscilla awoke with a cry. In her dream, Jim was once more facing her with the gun, but this time he had shot her, and when she awoke, her heart thudding against her ribs, she could still feel the impact of that dream bullet.
She climbed out of bed and went and stood by the window, hugging her shivering body. As she looked down from the castle window, she saw the weary figure of Hamish Macbeth trudging up the drive.
She scrambled into a sweater and jeans and ran down the stairs to find Hamish arguing with the night porter, a surly individual, who was telling him he would need to return the next morning to get a room.
“Never mind him,” said Priscilla. “Come with me, Hamish. I’ll find you something. Would you like coffee or a drink?”
He ran his hand through his dyed hair. “I could murder a whisky.”
“Whisky it is.” Under the disapproving stare of the night porter, she reached under the counter and unhitched the key to the bar, went across to it and unlocked the grille. She poured two fine old malt whiskies. “Let’s sit down. Come to escape from the press?”
“Aye,” said Hamish, sinking gratefully into one of the large chintz-covered armchairs in the bar. “It’s a wee bittie late for me to start obeying orders, but I may as well try. I think I’d soon be out of a job.”
“You were very unorthodox,” said Priscilla. “But with all that media attention, I don’t think they would dare fire you.”
Hamish brightened. “I hadn’t thought o’ that.” Then his face fell. He took a gulp of whisky. “I was thinking on the road up here that maybe I am not suited to the force at all. Is there something badly wrong wi’ me that I don’t want promotion or travel or anything like that?”
Priscilla looked at him with a sudden rush of affection, “Oh, Hamish, the number of times I’ve wished you’d get off your Highland arse and do something with your life! But maybe you’ve got something the rest of us could be doing with. Who was it said that a truly happy man is the one who accepts and enjoys what he has?”
“It would be grand to think I was like that. But this last case has shaken me. I suppose I should have given Jim a warning.”
“If you’d followed correct police procedure, I’d probably be dead,” said Priscilla. “Every time I think of giving your career a push, I’ll think of that.”
There was a companionable silence and then Priscilla said, “I wonder what Mrs. Beck is thinking now. That her husband was so obsessed with Rosie and hated her, his wife, so much that he was prepared to hurt her further by admitting to a murder he did not commit?”
“I think she’ll get over the shock pretty quickly. She’ll probably sell her story to a tabloid and it’ll appear with screaming headlines after the murder trial and she’ll begin to enjoy the notoriety. Then she’ll marry again, some poor sod who actually likes being bullied, and live happily ever after. She won’t suffer long. Think of the selfishness of keeping a man tied to you even though you know he hates your guts. Maybe if she’s that selfish, she pretended the hatred wasn’t there.”
“And Lucia! She used to be so fond of you, named the baby after you; how could she go around spreading nasty stories about you?”
“Och, the silly lassie thought Willie had done it and it wouldn’t amaze me if I found out that Willie thought she had done it. That’s the terrible thing about murder in a small community, it turns one against the other and everyone starts suspecting everyone else. In the city, where people often don’t know their own neighbours, it would be different, I think. Mind you, sometimes I wonder what it would be like to live in a place and be completely anonymous. I love Lochdubh, but sometimes I feel I’m living under a magnifying glass.”
“Yes,” she said drily, “being found in bed with a woman wouldn’t be such a topic of gossip. Do you know she told me she had done that on instructions from Jim? It was to keep your mind off them?”
“The thing that kept my mind on them was I desperately wanted it to be the fake John Glover. I didnae want it to be one of the villagers.” His hazel eyes gleamed with malice. “You must be feeling better, Priscilla. You enjoyed telling me that.”
“I’ll get us another drink,” said Priscilla quickly, picking up his now empty glass and walking over to the bar, “and then I’ll find you a bed. Oh, something good’s come out of it all – or rather, I suppose it’s good news.”
“What’s that?”
She filled their two glasses with a generous measure and walked back to join him and sat down.
“Geordie Mackenzie and Annie Ferguson are an item.”
“Well, well, hardly love’s young dream, but nice all the same. Has he been married before?”
“Don’t think so. There’s something else…”
“What? This whisky is grand.”
“Archie Maclean has rebelled. The worm has turned.”
“Never! What did he do? Throw his wife in the washtub?”
“She found out about his visiting Rosie Draly and called him a silly fool. The thing that evidently hurt Archie most was that she did not think for a m
oment he had been having an affair with Rosie. So he told her he had just as she was about to hit him with the potato masher. The yells were so loud that a lot of the villagers were crowded at the kitchen door to listen, which is why I got hold of all this. But I think what Archie did next was more shocking in her eyes than any affair.”
“Go on. The mind boggles.”
“He pushed through the people watching and ran into the garden and he jumped up and down in the garden until his boots were well and truly muddy and then he rushed back into the kitchen and pranced all over the floor to cheers from the crowd, shouting, “Take that, you auld bitch.” And that’s not all.”
“She must have gone mad,” marvelled Hamish. “That woman would consider mud on her kitchen floor worse than rape.”
“Well, you know how Mrs. Maclean always boils and cleans his clothes so they’re tight and shrunken? He rushed over to Patel’s store and bought a pair of loose jogging trousers, a T-shirt, and a bright-red polyester jacket with a skull on the back. Everyone had followed him over. He stripped off down to his underwear right in the middle of the shop and put on his new clothes, then he smiled all round and went off to the bar.”
“What on earth did Mrs. Maclean do?”
“She rushed round to Dr. Brodie, screaming her husband had gone mad and demanding men in white coats with a strait-jacket. But Dr. Brodie sat her down, evidently, and told her a few home truths, including the fact that he had gleaned from the police that Rosie Draly had probably been a lesbian.”
“And what did she say to that?”
“She said, “Thae Greeks hae no morals.””
Hamish laughed. “She’ll win in the end. She’ll get these new clothes off Archie’s back soon enough and shrink them.”
Then he stifled a yawn.
“Drink up,” said Priscilla, “and I’ll show you your bed. I don’t suppose you really meant to pay for the room, but in case you did, you don’t have to. It’s comfortable enough, but it’s not being let to any guests until we get it redecorated.”
She led the way upstairs to the top of the castle. “It’s along from mine.” She pushed open a door. “The bed’s made up. All you’ve got to do is fall asleep.”
He kissed her cheek. “Thanks,” he said gruffly. “I’ll need all my strength to cope with the wrath o’ police headquarters.”
“Don’t worry,” she said, “you won’t be alone. I suppose Blair will be in more trouble than he’s ever been in the whole of his life!”
♦
Another day dawned sunny and clear with just a hint of early-morning frost in the air. The bracken on the hillsides was beginning to turn golden and the rowan trees were heavy with scarlet berries. Most of the cottages had a rowan tree at the gate. It was supposed to keep the fairies away, and although all would scornfully say that they didn’t believe in fairies, all privately thought it was a good idea to have a rowan tree outside the house…well, just in case.
Mrs. Wellington was standing on the waterfront outside Patel’s store with the Currie sisters when Detective Jimmy Anderson sloped along. “Day, ladies,” he said. “Where’s Hamish?”
“He’s probably asleep,” snorted the minister’s wife. “That man must be the laziest policeman on the beat.”
“Not to say the most immoral…most immoral,” said Jessie Currie.
“Well, I shouldn’t think you’ll have to put up with him for much longer,” said Jimmy, lighting a cigarette and puffing the smoke in the direction of Mrs. Wellington, who coughed stagily and flapped the air with her hand.
“What d’you mean?” asked Nessie.
“Our Hamish is all set for the high jump.”
“Do you mean the games over at Lochinver?” asked Nessie, looking puzzled.
“No, fired, sacked, given the boot, that’s what.”
“Wait a minute,” boomed Mrs. Wellington. “He solved the case, he killed that murderer, he saved Miss Halburton-Smythe’s life; why on earth should he be given the sack?”
“For talking to a reporter,” said Jimmy, ticking off the offences on his fingers, “for investigating on his own and not reporting in when his photo was in the papers and calls on the radio, for hiring a car with a dead man’s driving license, for having driven a police vehicle to Glasgow without permission, for having borrowed a gun and shot someone without permission, and I think all that’s just for starters.”
“But if he had done everything by the book,” said Mrs. Wellington, “you’d never have caught this Gentleman Jim; in fact, you’d probably never have known who he was!”
“Could be, but tell that to Strathbane.”
“This is dreadful, dreadful,” said Jessie, as much for Hamish now as she had so recently been against him. “Something must be done.”
Customers coming out of the shop were hailed and told the bad news about Hamish and by lunch-time everyone in the village knew that Hamish Macbeth was due for the chop. Feelings began to run high. Hamish was their policeman, and no one from the ‘big city’ was going to dictate to them whom they should or should not have.
At three o’clock that afternoon, Superintendent Peter Daviot was hosting an emergency meeting of all senior police officers in the Highlands.
“So you see,” he said, after reading out a list of Hamish’s iniquities, “although we are very glad to have this case wrapped up, we cannot possibly have a police constable who goes on like a Wild West sheriff. I think we should wait until the fuss has died down and then quietly tell him to leave the force. I have quite a good fellow lined up for the job in Lochdubh, PC Trevor Campbell.”
“Let me see the report on him,” said a chief constable. Mr. Daviot reluctantly handed a folder over.
“Dear me,” said the chief constable and Mr. Daviot looked at him impatiently. The man had a fat, round, red face above a tight shirt collar. Mr. Daviot thought it looked like a face painted on a balloon.
“Campbell seems to be accident-prone, to say the least. Added to that, he barely reaches regulation height and he just scraped through his exams.”
“We don’t exactly need anyone brilliant to police a Highland village,” said another.
A thin man with a clever face raised his voice. “What you must realize,” he said, “is that we are all sitting round this table deciding to get rid of a constable who, by his own initiative, caught Scotland’s biggest and most wanted criminal. I say, let’s keep him and promote him. If you don’t want him, I’ll take him back to Glasgow with me.”
“We have thought of promoting Hamish Macbeth before,” said Mr. Daviot wearily. “He was actually promoted to sergeant.”
“Oh, big, fat, hairy deal,” commented the thin man.
“And,” continued Mr. Daviot, “we had to demote him over that business of Pictish man. Macbeth caught the murderer, yes, by confronting her with a dead body. But it was the wrong body, if you remember. A fine example of Pictish man, and we were under fire from every professor and archaeological buff in the country over disturbing a rate corpse and removing it from its burial site. But the main difficulty, and I think this explains why Macbeth is such maverick, is that he has no ambition to be other than a village policeman.”
There was a startled silence while a roomful of men who had clawed their way to the top digested that bit of information.
“No, I say,” said Mr. Daviot, “that we simply wait until the fuss has died down and then get rid of him.”
“On what pretext?” demanded the thin man.
“I’ll think of something,” snapped Mr. Daviot.
“It won’t answer,” said his tormentor. “You cannot dismiss a policeman without a full inquiry, which would bring Macbeth back to the attention of the press. This detective, Blair, now, who appears to have been motivated by a certain degree of stupid spite – what has happened to him?”
“Nothing,” said Mr. Daviot. “He did his job. He had a confession from Beck. The man was most convincing. If he was prepared to stand up in court and plead guilty to both murd
ers. We need good, obedient detectives like Blair-on the force. He may be a bit truculent at times, but surely, gentlemen, you must admit that Macbeth’s methods are enough to try the patience of a saint. I suggest we have discussed this long enough. I shall put it to the vote. You will find paper in front of you. Helen will go round with the box and collect the results and then I will count them.” His efficient secretary waited until they had all scribbled on pieces of paper and folded them, and then she went round with a square wooden box with a slot in the top, collected them and placed the box in front of Mr. Daviot, who opened it. He separated the ‘For’ and ‘Against’ into neat piles. His secretary watched avidly. She loathed Hamish.
“That’s that,” said Mr. Daviot finally. “Macbeth is to be dismissed at a convenient moment.”
Helen slipped out of the room. Blair and several others were waiting at the end of the corridor outside. Helen grinned at them and turned her thumb downwards.
“Oh, happy day,” said Blair. “The drinks are on me.” But the others shuffled off with long faces, leaving him standing glaring after them.
Inside the conference room, the men moved on to other business until at last Mr. Daviot said, “That’s that.” He rose to his feet. “Refreshments in the adjoining room, gentlemen. A drink before you leave.”
They all rose and followed him through to a room where a long table of drinks and canapes was laid out. Soon the air was thick with smoke and conversation.
Helen opened a window to let some of the cigarette smoke out. The day was sunny, the rain had stopped at last, and she felt happy. No more would Hamish Macbeth look at her with that mocking glint in his eye as if he found her somewhat ridiculous.
Bertie Laver, a detective chief inspector from Caithness, cocked an ear. He was an old friend of Daviot’s. “Is that the pipes I hear?” he asked. “Got a parade today?”
“Not that I know of,” said Mr. Daviot. “Helen, has any group asked for permission to hold a parade?”
“No, sir.”
The skirl of the pipes sounded nearer, followed by the sound of a band. Men began to move to the windows.
