Death of a Travelling Man hm-9

by M C Beaton

  “He said Sean looked like the very devil, those cat’s eyes of his glittering in the light, and Lucia, she was crying her eyes out. Giovanni said he was right glad he’d taken the meat cleaver with him.”

  Hamish suppressed a grin.

  “So Sean saw that cleaver and began to run and Giovanni went after him and chased him right back to that bus. Then he told me. So we all went to see him, me and Luigi and Giovanni, and we told Sean Gourlay that if he came near the restaurant or Lucia ever again, we would cut his balls off. So that’s it.”

  “You should have told me this before,” said Hamish.

  “Why?” demanded Mr Ferrari. “None of us killed him.”

  But Hamish left very worried. There was a field at the back of the restaurant and from the field it was possible to cut across the other fields and get to the one behind the manse. And yet how simple it would be for him if, say, Giovanni had done it. How he longed for an outsider. And yet, although Mr Ferrari and his relatives had only set up their restaurant a short time ago in the village, they had quickly become a valuable part of the local life. The small shack which served as a Catholic church was to be gradually replaced by a brick building, money supplied by Mr Ferrari. The restaurant had become a gathering place for local birthdays and wedding anniversaries.

  At the police station, he told Willie what had happened. “I should’ve been there,” said Willie. “Not that Lucia cannae protect herself.”

  “In what way?”

  “She told me she was walking home and one o’ the forestry lads grabbed her and tried to steal a kiss.”

  “And?”

  “She kicked him in the family silver.”

  “You mean jewels.”

  “Whatever.”

  Could Lucia have done it herself? wondered Hamish. She had been keen enough on Sean to beg Mr Ferrari to let her go out with him. Was she one of the women who had gone to the bus? Cheryl wouldn’t know, for Sean’s pursuit of Lucia had started after Cheryl had gone.

  He shook his head wearily. “Did Mr Ferrari blame me for reporting it?” asked Willie anxiously.

  Hamish shook his head. “As long as you go on neglecting your duties and giving him free labour, he won’t go off you.”

  “It’s not as if anything ever happens in Lochdubh,” said Willie sulkily.

  “Except murder,” said Hamish.

  ♦

  Hamish set out the next day to try to get his female suspects alone. He waited until he knew Dr Brodie would be at the surgery and went to call on Angela. He felt a pang of worry when he saw her. It was like that time when that woman had been murdered in Lochdubh, he thought, and Angela, who had been under her influence, had mentally gone off the rails. She looked now as she had then, thin and brittle.

  “Not more questions,” said Angela when she saw him.

  “I have to keep asking,” said Hamish patiently. “Can I come in?”

  “I suppose so.” Angela led the way into the kitchen. The table was covered in textbooks. She shovelled a clear space at one corner and sat down. Hamish sat opposite her.

  “I went to see Cheryl yesterday,” said Hamish. Angela pushed a tress of fine wispy hair out of her eyes. “And?” she demanded.

  “I gather that some evenings, Cheryl was sent out for a walk while Sean entertained some ladies. You were one of the ones mentioned. The previous times I’ve spoken to you, you’ve always said you went over with cakes and things when Sean and Cheryl originally came to the village, as a sort of welcome. You never said anything about spending any time with Sean alone.”

  “I didn’t want my husband to find out,” said Angela. “All that happened was that I went over one evening to talk about my studies because he had seemed interested, and John never listens to me. When I talk about anything to do with this Open University degree, he switches off. Cheryl went out when I arrived. I stayed and talked, had a few drinks and then left. I never went back again because I thought if John ever found out about it, it would…well…look odd.”

  “And that’s all there was to it?”

  “Yes, Hamish, what else could there have been?”

  “Sean didn’t ask you for money or…” Hamish looked at her in growing concern…“drugs?”

  “I thought you were a friend, Hamish. How can you say such things?” Angela covered her thin face with her thin hands and began to cry.

  “Now, now,” said Hamish awkwardly. “Dinnae greet. I haff to ask these questions, you know that. Haven’t you anything you’d like to get off your chest?”

  “I’d like you to get out of here, now,” yelled Angela, her tear-stained face contorted.

  Hamish rose to his feet and stood looking down at her. “I’ll go now,” he said heavily, “but I’ll have to be back.”

  Priscilla, he thought, as he stood outside the doctor’s house, I need Priscilla. He drove up to the hotel in time to catch her closing up the gift shop for lunch.

  “Hello, Hamish,” she said, “I’m just about to have lunch, coffee and sandwiches in the bar. You can join me, if you’d like.”

  When they were seated in a corner of the bar, Hamish having agreed to coffee and refused whisky because he was driving, much as he would have liked one, for he had found the interview with Angela harrowing, Priscilla looked at him and said, “This case is really getting you down. Want to talk about it?”

  So he told her all he knew from the beginning, outlining his fear that the murder had been committed by someone from the village.

  “I think we should write some of this down,” said Priscilla. She rose and went through to the reception desk and came back with several sheets of paper. “Now,” she said, “let’s sort it out. All the women who have visited Sean have become wrecks. Mrs Wellington is a shadow of her former self. Angela is on the twitch and spending far too much money on clothes, which is totally out of character. The Currie sisters plan to sell up and move. Sean dies. They take the sign down.”

  “There’s a common factor there, Hamish. You’re normally so acute. You’ve missed it although it’s been staring you in the face all the time because you’re praying for some outsider to turn out to be the murderer.”

  “And what’s the common factor?”

  Priscilla tapped the paper with her pen.

  “Money,” she said. “They all needed money. Perhaps not Mrs Wellington. But the rest badly needed money.”

  ∨ Death of a Travelling Man ∧

  7

  O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!

  —Shakespeare

  Hamish looked down at the paper, his mind scurrying this way and that, trying to find a road away from the three women.

  Then he gave a sigh and leaned back. “Aye, you’re maybe right. But Angela now, she was spending money on herself, not Sean.”

  Priscilla tapped the paper again. “Drugs, Hamish. The missing morphine. And there’s another thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I called on Angela. She was wearing a black dress. I complimented her on it although I thought it made her look like a waiflike widow and she said uneasily that it had cost an awful lot of money, that it was a Dior.”

  “So was it?”

  “Yes, I should think it was – but a secondhand Dior.”

  “How secondhand?”

  “There were worn patches under the arms and although it was a simple style, it’s very short in the skirt and I would guess it was about twenty years old.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “There are thrift shops in Inverness, Hamish, where a woman can buy a model dress for a few pounds and then tell her husband it cost a fortune.”

  Hamish looked at her miserably.

  “Now, Hamish, it may not be any of them, but you’ll never get to the bottom of it if you don’t start finding out why they all needed money. Sean must have been blackmailing them.”

  “And Sean is dead and they’re all still worried, although the Currie sisters have decided to stay in Lochdubh,” said H
amish. “And they are worried, which means they think perhaps Cheryl or someone might have got their hands on the blackmailing material. I’m going back for another look at that bus.”

  “I notice it’s still there,” said Priscilla. “Wasn’t there a mother or someone who was going to claim it?”

  “Yes. Mrs Gourlay. She said she would be up next week to take a few things. She asked if anyone would want to buy the bus and I suggested she try Ian Chisholm at the garage. I’d better start work right away.”

  “Could Willie help?”

  “I doubt it. He’s really lovesick now. Lucia’s walking out with Tim Queen.”

  “Oh, dear,” said Priscilla. Tim Queen was a handsome young man whose father owned the Lochdubh Bar.

  “Aye, Willie skulks around after them, looking like a whipped dog.”

  ♦

  Walking out was an old–fashioned pastime, but there was little else for a courting couple to do in Lochdubh. Lucia and Tim Queen were leaning over the bridge, looking down at the River Anstey. Lucia kept flicking little speculative looks at Tim from under her long lashes. He was tall and red-haired, with a square, pleasant freckled face. The Lochdubh Bar, once an extension of the Lochdubh Hotel, which was still awaiting a buyer, had been bought by Tim’s father in a separate sale and had been making a profit ever since.

  Tim looked down at Lucia’s small red hands, which were resting on the parapet of the bridge, and then covered one of them with his own. Lucia snatched her hand away.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Tim. “I was only holding your hand.”

  “I am ashamed of my hands,” said Lucia, putting them behind her back. “They are so red. I would like soft white hands.”

  “But that’s what I like about ye,” said Tim earnestly. “You’re an old–fashioned girl. I don’t like the young ones round here who slap paint all ower their faces and never do a day’s work and wouldnae know how to scrub a kitchen floor if you asked them.”

  Lucia’s beautiful eyes became clouded with sad thought. “So you like a woman who does the housework, Teem?”

  He slid an arm about her waist. “Yes, that’s my sort of girl. My friend, Johnny, over at Darquhart, just got married, and his wife, Darleen, well, she wanted a cleaning woman frae day one!”

  “What is so odd about that?”

  He laughed. “You silly wee thing, why should Johnny pay for a cleaning woman when he’s got a wife?”

  She slid out from his arm and looked about. “Why, there is Constable Lament,” she cried.

  She was looking at a stand of trees beside the river. Tim could not see anything.

  But Lucia waved and sure enough, Willie eased out from behind a tree. “Do not bother to walk back with me, Teem,” said Lucia gaily. “See, I am safe with my policeman.”

  And Tim never knew what he had said wrong.

  ♦

  Hamish collected the keys to the bus from the police station and then strode up to the field behind the manse. Sean’s presence still seemed to be around the place. He had a superstitious feeling that he was still in the bus and would laugh at him when he opened the door.

  The day was warm and overcast, with great clouds of midges dancing on the muggy air.

  He unlocked the door of the bus and climbed inside.

  Everything was as the forensic team had left it and as he had last seen it. He began to search methodically, but wondering all the time what he could find that an experienced forensic team had missed. He even opened packets of coffee and bags of sugar in the hope of discovering something hidden in them. He worked for hours and did not find one thing.

  He sat down miserably on a bench at the side of the table and looked dully at the blank screen of the small television set. There were videos piled up in a heap at the end of the table. As a last hope, he slid them out of their packets. They were mostly of the brutal sex-and-violence kind, but nothing under the counter, nothing illegal. He sighed. Then suddenly a little picture came into his brain, a picture of Sean striding along the waterfront with that easy athletic pace of his, carrying a video camera. He looked wildly around. There was the television, there were the videos, there was the video recorder, but no camera. But Patel rented one out.

  The bus was still hitched up to the manse electricity. He switched on the television set and began to feed the videos into the machine, fast-forwarding them through a series of murders and rapes and general mayhem. The weather was clearing outside and yellow sunlight suddenly flooded the interior of the bus. Children’s voices drifted in along with the other homely sounds of the village, a different world from the misery of filth and violence which was flickering in front of him.

  He ejected the one he had scanned through and put in another called The Rage of the Mutants and pressed the fast-forward button. Then, with an exclamation, he ran it back to the beginning and began to play it at normal speed. With a sinking heart, he found himself looking at Mrs Wellington. She was smoking and giggling and drinking. Hamish stopped the film and peered hard at that cigarette. It was a reefer, hash, grass. “You do make me feel wicked,” Mrs Wellington burbled as he started the film again. Her eyes were glazing over. Sean’s voice was only a mumble in the background. Then there was a long blank and suddenly a couple in an amorous embrace leaped onto the screen. Angela Brodie and Sean. His mouth was clamped over hers and one hand was stroking her breast and she was moaning in his embrace. Angela suddenly pulled free and the film went blank again. It ran on towards the end and then Hamish blushed. For there was Jessie Currie, stark-naked, roaring and laughing and holding a glass of something. And then the film finished.

  Hamish sat back, sweating. It all fell into place: Mrs Wellington’s distress and the missing money from the Mothers’ Union, Angela and the secondhand dress and the missing morphine, Jessie and Nessie selling their house.

  He should phone Strathbane and send them the video and let them take it from there. But he could not. Even if none of them had murdered Sean, their reputations would be in rags. Dr Brodie and Mr Wellington would have to know what their wives had been up to.

  Hamish switched off the television set and put everything back in place, except the incriminating video, which he took with him. There must be some way round this. For a start, he would have to try to get the culprits alone.

  He let himself out of the bus and carefully locked the door. He stood blinking in the late sunshine. A brisk wind was blowing and the midges had gone.

  He had a sudden picture of Sean, smiling and lounging beside the bus, his hands thrust into his trouser pockets, and Hamish Macbeth felt that he could have murdered the man himself for wrecking such innocence. Hamish was sure Cheryl either did not know about the money or, if she had, had not been able to get any of it. If that was the case, it still had to be hidden somewhere. He looked slowly around. There was no outside toilet, and none on the bus. Sean had probably used one of the lavatories at the manse, the one situated just inside the back door. There was nothing outside except the packing case lying on its side, gaping empty, on which Sean and Cheryl had sat on the day he had come to search for morphine. He gave it a slight push and then peered inside. It was weighted down with rocks.

  He placed the video carefully on the grass and crawled inside the packing case and dragged out the rocks. Then he pushed it aside. A square patch of bleached grass was revealed. He examined it closely and noticed that the square was made up of squares of long-grassed turf. Excited, he started to haul them up; a difficult job, for they had begun to grow together. Finally he got the last one clear and smiled with satisfaction. Buried underneath was a plastic rubbish bag full of something. He pulled it up and opened it. It was heavy but proved to be weighted with stones. But inside as well was a square cash box. The box was locked. “Tampering with the evidence,” screamed a voice of warning in his head, but he shrugged it away and took out a set of skeleton keys from his pocket and got to work. It took some time and he was glad the bus screened him from the manse windows. Finally the lock cli
cked and he opened the lid. The box was stuffed with pound notes – fifties, twenties, tens and fives. Underneath lay four packets of morphine. He counted the money carefully. Just over a thousand pounds. Hardly blackmail on a grand scale. He carefully replaced everything and put the bag back in the hole and covered it over with the turf and the packing case and then crawled inside to replace the rocks. Once the rocks were pushed to the back, he realized that to the forensic team, they would not be visible and it would have simply looked to them like an empty packing case on its side, showing the world that there was nothing there.

  He consoled himself with the thought that he could always pretend to find the stuff later. Right now, he meant to confront the women on that video. But how to get them alone?

  ♦

  Two days later, Angela Brodie opened a thin envelope and stared mesmerized at the thin typewritten slip inside. It said, “Come to the police station at ten this morning. I have a film to show you. Hamish Macbeth.”

  “What’s that?” asked Dr Brodie. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Nothing,” said Angela. “I thought it was my exam results and got all upset, but it’s just a note from Mrs Wellington. There’s to be a meeting at the church hall to discuss raising funds.”

  “Hope nobody pinches them again,” said the doctor, losing interest.

  Mrs Wellington at that same moment was reading a note from Hamish Macbeth. She let out a squawk and her husband lowered his newspaper and looked at her impatiently. “Another bill?” he asked.

  “No, it’s nothing,” she said, crushing the envelope and slip of paper in her large hand. “Some Mothers’ Union business. I’ve got to go out this morning.”

  But the minister was once more reading his newspaper and did not seem to care.