Death of a Witch

by M C Beaton

  “When exactly did you go up to her cottage?”

  “The day before she was found. I swear tae God that’s the truth. You won’t be saying anything to the missus?”

  “No, on my word. Have you heard any talk about a brothel?”

  “No, but if you hear of one, let me know!”

  When Hamish entered the café in Strathbane, it was to find Mary Blair already waiting for him.

  “So what’s the news?” asked Hamish.

  “You know that woman that was murdered,” said Mary. “I think I met her.”

  “Where? When?”

  “I can’t remember exactly but it was about two years ago. There was this woman—I’m not giving you her name—and she was on the game. Would you believe it? She was a married woman and did it for a lark. Said her man was tight with money. She wasn’t on the streets like me. She had a wee flat that her husband didn’t know about. All high class. Advertised herself on the Internet. She liked to talk to us prossies—seemed to get a kick out of it. Well, one day she stops by me. She’d been crying and looked like a real mess. She said she was pregnant and since she hadn’t had sex with her husband in ages, he’d kill her if he found out.

  “So I said why didn’t she just go to the hospital and get an operation. Turns out her husband is a doctor and a member of the Rotary Club and the Freemasons and she said they all gossip and if she went for an abortion, it would get back to her husband. She said she’d heard of this woman who did abortions and she was going to her and she was right scared.

  “I was sorry for her and said I would go with her. Mind you, I tried to talk her out of it. Back-street abortions were dangerous, I said. Anyway, we went out to a wee house on the Drumlie Road. She wasn’t calling herself Catriona Beldame then. She was plain Mrs. McBride. The place was clean and nice and I hoped it would be all right. She took my lady off to the bedroom. When they came out, this Mrs. McBride said she would get her period like normal and abort and there would be no pain. I don’t know what that woman did to her but she was found on the street, dead, a week later. She’d bled to death.”

  “You should have gone to the police, Mary.”

  “Me, a prostitute, going to the police and saying a respectable doctor’s wife was on the game!”

  “You could have written an anonymous letter.”

  “And have forensics trace it back to me!”

  “I doubt it,” said Hamish cynically.

  “Anyway, I went back to that Mrs. McBride to tell her she was a murderer, but the place was closed up and she’d gone.”

  “Still, you’ve given me a starting point,” said Hamish, “and you’ve also given me a motive for murder. What was the number of the house on Drumlie Road?”

  “I can’t remember, but it was about halfway along and had a yellow privet hedge in front of it.”

  After promising Mary that he would not reveal where he had got his latest information from, Hamish left and phoned Jimmy Anderson.

  When he had finished speaking, Jimmy said, “I’ll meet you in the car park at police headquarters and we’ll go out to the Drumlie Road and see what we can find out.”

  They found the house with the yellow privet hedge in front. The door was answered by a small, neat-looking middle-aged man. He volunteered that he was a Mr. Southey and, yes, he had bought the house from Drummond’s, the estate agent. The previous owner had been a Mr. Tarrant.

  “Not a Mrs. McBride?” asked Hamish.

  “No,” said Mr. Southey. But he gathered that the house had been rented before he bought it.

  Hamish and Jimmy got the address of Mr. Tarrant from the estate agent. Mr. Tarrant, said his wife who answered the door, was a solicitor and at his office. She gave them directions. Scottish advocates and solicitors are often, surprisingly, clever and charming, but Mr. James Tarrant was like a lawyer out of Central Casting. He was plump and pompous with slightly protruding brown eyes and a pursed little mouth. His voice was high-pitched and querulous.

  “Yes, I rented the house to Mrs. McBride. Charming lady.”

  “Do you still have the paperwork, her credentials and all that?” asked Jimmy.

  He looked suddenly uncomfortable. “I got rid of it all when we arranged the house sale.”

  Hamish’s eyes bored into him. “You didn’t ask, did you? She charmed you and paid cash.”

  “She paid six months’ cash in advance and I was glad to rent it.”

  “When did she tell you she was leaving?” asked Jimmy.

  “Well . . . er . . . she didn’t. After the six months and there was no more rent, I called and found the place closed up.”

  “Another dead end,” mourned Jimmy. “You get back to Lochdubh and question the folks there and I’ll go back to Drumlie Road and see if the neighbours know anything.”

  Chapter Four

  I expect that woman will be the last thing to be civilised by man.

  —George Meredith

  A small sun was shining through a thin veil of mist when Hamish returned to Lochdubh, creating that odd white light so typical of the north of Scotland. He could never quite get used to the mercurial changes of weather in his home county. It was hard to believe that a wind had ever blown across the still landscape. Everything was hushed and frozen as he got out of the Land Rover in front of the police station. No bird sang. There wasn’t even anyone on the waterfront.

  Hamish wondered where all the press had gone and why there was not even one sign of Blair and his policemen.

  Then as he stood there, he realised how bitterly, bitingly cold it had become. He decided to collect his pets and set off to see the forestry worker before the mist became any thicker. He drove round the end of the loch, round to the other side, and stopped outside the forestry foreman’s office. Hamish blessed the invention of mobile phones when the foreman rang Timmy Teviot and told him to come down to the office. It saved him from driving up the tracks, trying to find the man.

  Timmy Teviot was small, thin, and wiry with grizzled hair and a weather-beaten face. “Let’s step outside the office,” said Hamish. “I’ve a few questions to ask you.”

  Timmy followed him outside and lit up a cigarette. Hamish had a sudden sharp longing for one. He found it hard to believe that he had given up smoking some time ago.

  “It’s about Catriona Beldame, the murdered woman,” Hamish began.

  “And what has that got to do with me?” demanded Timmy. His voice was soft and lilting.

  “I believe you went to the woman for one of her potions.”

  “Who’s the wee gossip then?” demanded Timmy. “I’ll bet it was yon blabbermouth Willie Lamont.”

  “Never you mind. I want to know what happened when you went to see her.”

  “I went to see her for the indigestion . . .”

  “Not again,” said Hamish. “Out with it. What did you really go and see her for?”

  Timmy sighed and sat down on a tree stump. “I heard talk that she could make you like a stallion. But it didnae work and all I got was a visit to the doctor. I went back up there and asked for my money back. She laughed at me. Well, I’ll be honest wi’ ye, Hamish. I threatened her. She looked at me peculiar and said she’d put a curse on me. I’m telling you, I ran for my life. But I didn’t kill her. I cannae stand up in court and give any evidence. If anyone got to hear of it, they’d laugh their heads off.”

  “Do you know of anyone else who threatened her?”

  “None of them want to talk about it. You don’t when someone’s made a right fool of ye.”

  “Do you know anything about a brothel?”

  “I wouldn’t know about such things.”

  Hamish dressed carefully that evening in his one good suit for his date with Lesley Seaton. He left in plenty of time, for the mist had thickened. As he drove slowly and cautiously towards Braikie, he began to worry about Lesley, motoring in this weather and maybe not being familiar with the road. He wished he’d taken a note of her mobile phone number.

  By
the time he arrived at the hotel, thick white frost had formed on the leaves of the rhododendrons on either side of the drive.

  He was ushered into the hotel lounge to wait. A log fire was crackling up the chimney. To his relief, Lesley arrived five minutes later. She took off her heavy coat, revealing a plain black wool sweater and black corduroy trousers and serviceable boots. Her face was free of any make-up. Not hopeful signs, thought Hamish, who was always on the lookout for a new romance.

  “So, any more news?” he asked as they walked into the dining room.

  “Nothing much apart from a furious bollocking from Blair. He really does hate you. She had been viciously stabbed by someone in a rage. It’s hard to pinpoint the exact time of death but from the report of the contents of her stomach, or rather what they could guess the contents were from a charred body, I guess it was sometime during the night and when she was asleep. There are no defensive wounds. I think it was the first stab that killed her, right in the heart.”

  “I’ve been thinking about the fire,” said Hamish. “At first I thought it was done in a last-minute panic to cover up any forensic evidence, but now I wonder. Potassium nitrate isn’t just lying around. Someone had to have ordered it. Someone had to have got a key to the place somehow. I don’t want it to turn out to be one of the villagers, but a lot of people still leave a key in the gutter above the door. I do myself. Maybe someone knew about a spare key. Catriona was a stranger. She wouldn’t think of searching in the gutter. Anyway, her name, last known was a Mrs. McBride. She performed an illegal abortion on a woman who subsequently bled to death.”

  “There’s no need for back-street abortions these days,” said Lesley. “Shall we order? The waiter’s hovering and we’re the only customers.”

  It was a set menu. They ordered game soup, followed by roast rabbit and a bottle of Merlot.

  When the waiter had left, Hamish said, “It was evidently a doctor’s wife who went on the game to make a bit of extra money. She was afraid her husband would find out, him being in the Freemasons and the Rotary Club. But it’s a good motive for murder.”

  “So you’d better find out who this doctor is.”

  “Jimmy’s working on it,” said Hamish.

  He had to admit that she looked quite pretty in the soft lighting of the dining room. He wondered if she had a boyfriend. Maybe she was married! He judged her to be about the same thirty-something age as himself.

  She was not wearing any rings but that might not mean anything. She would not wear rings when she was working.

  “I just hope it doesn’t turn out to be someone in the village,” said Hamish. “Maybe she was married. Are you married yourself?”

  “Was. Not now. The food here is very good.”

  Recognising a no-go area, Hamish ate steadily and then returned to discussing the case. “It was really meant to look like a hate murder. And the fire . . . I wonder if someone really cold and calculating, and knowing about the superstition of the villagers, staged that fire when it would have the most effect.”

  “You mean the wrath of God?”

  “Or the devil come up from hell to take her home.”

  “How can you live in such a place?”

  “You are not a highlander, are you?” asked Hamish.

  Those large blue eyes stared at him. “What’s that to do with it? I’m from Perth, actually.”

  “Strange things do happen up here. I think it’s to do with the rock. It’s some of the oldest in the world and the soil on top is very thin. I sometimes think the ground in some places records strong feelings. You can go up some of the remote glens and get an overwhelming feeling of tragedy and then you find out that glen was the scene of a massacre after Culloden when the Duke of Cumberland’s troops were not just routing the last of Prince Charlie’s supporters but killing indiscriminately.”

  “Fanciful,” she said briskly, “but hard to believe.”

  “Oh, it helps to keep an open mind. How are you getting on in your job?”

  “Well. I don’t drink to excess and I don’t play rugby and I’m a female. They play silly tricks on me and it’s getting wearisome. I’d like to see this case through to the end and then I think I’ll get a transfer to Strathclyde.”

  “Anything that could be described as sexual harassment?”

  “Lots.”

  “There you have them, lassie. Simply tell the lot of them that you are thinking of bringing a case of sexual harassment against them, and it’ll amaze you how they back off.”

  “I’ll try that. Thanks. One thing puzzles me about the case. I would have thought it impossible to move about a village at any time of night without someone noticing.”

  “I thought about that. Whoever it was could have approached the cottage from the back through the communal grazing ground.”

  “Tell me a little about yourself,” said Lesley. “Why aren’t you married?”

  “I’m choosy,” said Hamish. “Let’s talk about something else.”

  Somehow the conversation became stilted after that. Hamish had been about to suggest they take their coffee through to the lounge in front of the fire but he suddenly missed the love of his life, Priscilla, with such a sharp pang that it amazed him. To Lesley’s surprise, he quickly drank his coffee and called for the bill.

  She found a sudden interest in this constable whom she had a few moments ago been privately damning as a local hick. He certainly was attractive looking with his flaming-red hair and hazel eyes. And he must be well over six feet tall.

  When they emerged from the hotel, it was to find the fog had lifted and an icy wind was blowing down from the mountains.

  “My turn next time,” said Lesley.

  “Aye, well, maybe when all this is over,” said Hamish. He walked her to her car, shook hands with her, and said good night.

  Once back in the police station, he phoned Jimmy. “Any news of that doctor?”

  “Aye, we found him all right. We traced him through a report in the paper about his wife being found dead in the street. Reason for the death was all hushed up. He’s a Dr. Wilkinson, a general practitioner, and, get this, a friend of Daviot’s.”

  “Oh, my.”

  “So we had to handle him with kid gloves. No getting him down to headquarters for a grilling. Daviot insists on handling it personally. But it seems to be a dead end. The doctor was off at a medical convention in Glasgow during the whole week covering the time she was murdered.”

  “You can skip out of those conventions without anyone noticing,” said Hamish.

  “Aye, well try telling that to Daviot. As far as he’s concerned, the investigation into Wilkinson is finished and crawly Blair is going along with it.”

  “I think it’s got something to do with frustrated men,” said Hamish. “Hear any talk about a brothel?”

  “Just the usual ones in Strathbane.”

  “I cannae see any of the villagers going to one of those,” said Hamish.

  “Sometimes,” said Jimmy, “a woman’ll set up on her own. Do it on the quiet. Just a few customers.”

  “If it’s anywhere near Lochdubh, it’d need to be somewhere not overlooked,” said Hamish. “Gossip would have spread around if a lot of different men were seen coming and going from a house.”

  “Why are you so interested in a brothel, Hamish? It’s got nothing to do with the case.”

  “Unless it was someone to do with McBride or whatever her real name is. Also, I don’t want to find one of those places where girls are tricked into coming over here from Eastern Europe and forced into prostitution.”

  “Come on! They’d hardly set up shop in a godforsaken place like Sutherland.”

  “Maybe.”

  Hamish, going out to give his sheep their winter feed in the morning, found the ground covered with a light coating of snow. This was unusual, even for November. Because of the proximity of the Gulf Stream, Sutherland often escaped the harsher winters of central Scotland. Everything was still, grey, and quiet.


  He suddenly heard the phone ringing in the police station, breaking the silence of the morning. He paused for a moment, the feed bucket in his hand. Then he shrugged. He would check his messages in a moment. It was probably only Blair nagging him about something.

  When he had finished feeding his sheep, he let his hens out of the henhouse and fed them as well.

  Then he returned to the police station and made himself a cup of coffee before ambling through to the office to check his messages. Timmy Teviot’s agitated voice sounded in the room. “Hamish, it’s me, Timmy. I’ve decided to tell you something I think you ought to know. I don’t want anyone to see me talking to you. Could you ring me on my mobile?” He left Hamish the number and rang off.

  Hamish rang immediately. In the past he had received calls from someone saying they had important information for him and that someone had ended up dead. But after a few rings Timmy answered. “Could you meet me at my place out at the forestry?”

  “Can’t you tell me now?” asked Hamish.

  “No, later. At six o’clock when folks will be indoors having their tea.”

  As he went out on his rounds, Hamish was relieved to see that a good number of the press had left. He decided to take a break from the case and call on some of the elderly residents in croft houses up in the hills to make sure they were all right, but all the time he was wondering what Timmy had to tell him.

  Mr. Patel, owner of the general store, was enjoying a quiet afternoon. The morning had been very busy but the fog had come down again, thick and clinging, and the villagers appeared to be staying at home. He had been up since dawn unloading and packing goods. He knew that to compete with the big supermarkets in Strathbane, he had to keep a large stock. He also allowed people on benefits to pay for their groceries at the end of each month when they received their government payments. He never threw away damaged goods but gave them away to pensioners.