by M C Beaton
♦
Nessie Currie twitched the slip of paper out of her sister Jessie’s trembling fingers.
“I’m ruined…ruined,” whispered Jessie.
“You’ll need to face up to him,” said Nessie. “I’ll come with you.”
“No, no. I’ll need to go on my own, on my own. Everyone will find out, find out. I cannae stay here.”
“You have sinned against the Lord,” said Nessie, “and you must take your punishment.” Then her face softened. “I’ll come along as well, Jessie. I’ll stand by you. We’ll face this together, and then we’ll sell up and go far down south, Inverness or somewhere like that.”
♦
Willie, delighted to have a morning off, had actually offered to take Towser for a walk. He had finally taken an odd liking to Hamish’s yellowish mongrel of a dog, mainly because Lucia liked Towser and Towser had developed a taste for pasta.
Hamish had borrowed a video recorder from Mr Patel, not wanting to borrow the one from the bus in case anyone saw him with it and asked him what he was doing. Angela, Mrs Wellington and the Currie sisters arrived together.
Hamish silently ushered them into the living room, where they sat down with jerky movements, and all stared mesmerized at the still blank television screen.
Hamish slid the cassette into the recorder. He ran the film. When it had finished, he looked at them. Angela and Mrs Wellington were sitting together on the sofa, and they were holding hands. Nessie had an arm around Jessie’s shoulders. But despite their distress and obvious strain, there was a faint air of surprised relief about them all. They were not alone, he realized, in their misery and shame, and that was the reason for the faint air of relief.
“The situation is this,” said Hamish. “I have found the money and the morphine, but I cannot do anything about returning it. I should be down in Strathbane showing this video at headquarters. The reason I have not done so should be obvious to all of you. For some reason you let this man trick you and blackmail you. The only way out of it is to try to find the murderer and get the case closed.”
“But if you find the murderer,” said Angela in a croaky voice, “it will all come out in court and the video will be shown as well.”
“Not necessarily. I am in as bad trouble as the rest of you, for I could easily lose my job for suppressing this evidence. If I find the murderer, it is possible I can do a deal. I will promise him or her not to mention the blackmailing so that charge will not be added on to the one of murder. But I’ll never find out who murdered Sean unless everyone here tells the truth.” He turned to Angela. “You first.”
She pushed her wispy hair back from her eyes. “It was a sort of madness,” she said. “He was so handsome. He made it clear that he had no interest in Cheryl, other than giving her a home, and I believed him. He was so interested in this degree I am studying for, the only person who has ever shown any interest.”
Except me, who pushed you into doing it, thought Hamish huffily.
“It was easy to forget Cheryl,” went on Angela, “because as soon as I arrived, she went out. I’d never even looked at any other man since I married John. Oh, I was flattered that such a young and good-looking man seemed to find me attractive. If he’d come on too strong at the beginning, I would have shied away, but I am very romantic and he used the romantic approach. He asked me to come one evening and said he had some films to show me. I told John I was going to see Mrs Wellington. Instead of any films, he produced a bottle of champagne. I’m not used to drinking – I had told him that – and I got drunk pretty quickly. We were sitting on that bench at the end of the bus. He began to kiss me and I…responded. And then I heard this whirring sound, very faint, and I looked down the bus and I could see the video camera propped on the table facing us and I realized it was running. I pushed him away and stumbled out of that bus and ran home and I vowed never to go near him again. I only thought he was weird because he was prepared to film our love-making without telling me.”
“He stopped me in the street a few days later. He said he would show the film to my husband unless I paid him. John and I have a joint account. I panicked and said I couldn’t. He laughed and told me to get him some morphine and then he would leave me alone.”
“I took the keys to the surgery that night when John was asleep and got the drugs. I thought that would be an end of it, but next week he was back, asking for money. I was frantic with worry. He said he didn’t want much. At first he asked for fifty, then it was a hundred, then another hundred, and so on. I pretended to John that I was buying expensive dresses in Inverness and paying cash for them when, in fact, I was buying them cheap from the thrift shops. I was so glad when I heard he was dead and then, when I realized the police would probably find that video, I was frightened to death all over again. Oh, Hamish, John must never find out.”
“I’ll do my best,” said Hamish heavily. He faced Jessie. “Now you.”
Jessie sobbed and stumbled over the words and repeated everything, but the sad story slowly emerged. She, too, had been flattered by the attentions of this young man. She had gone to the bus. He gave her something to drink and she didn’t remember a thing after that until somehow she was in her own bed at home and Nessie was sitting next to her.
“He must have put something in her drink,” said Nessie, “for she was raving and seeing things. I didnae call the doctor, thank the Lord for that, for I thought she maybe had the DTs and that would have been a shame and disgrace. When she told me she had had one drink and didn’t remember anything after that, I didnae believe her. Then Sean Gourlay called, as bold as brass. He asked to see her alone. After he had gone, I could see she was frightened to death and so I got it out of her. He wanted twenty pounds. That’s a lot for us. Dad left us the house and a bit in the bank, but just enough for us to get by on if we watch carefully. I told Jessie to give him the twenty but warned her he would probably be back. And so he was. So I said to Jessie we should sell up and get out of Lochdubh where he could never find us…” Her voice trailed off and she sat in dumb misery.
Oh, may you burn in hell, Sean Gourlay, thought Hamish. Jessie was probably, at the age of fifty-something, still a virgin. She and Nessie were staunch church-goers. No one would ever think, looking at the pair of them, that there would ever be anything about either of them to blackmail. They both had brown hair, permed ferociously into small tight curls, and thick glittering glasses and thin spare figures.
“Now, Mrs Wellington,” he said, “what is your story?”
“He said they were Turkish cigarettes,” said Mrs Wellington bitterly. “And how would I know any different? He made me feel young and reckless and I had never felt young or reckless before. I haven’t even any children.”
Hamish did not feel like asking her what she meant by that. “I married a suitable man and settled down to do good works. I was tired of good works,” she said, tears starting to her eyes, “and now look what my wickedness has brought me to. I’m a silly old fool. I, like Mrs Brodie, have a joint account, and Mr Wellington checks it every week!” Hamish had always considered it odd that Mrs Wellington always referred to her husband as ‘Mr Wellington’, like a Victorian lady. “I was so desperate, I thought if I gave him a big sum, he would go away. He promised to go away. I stole the money from the Mothers’ Union. But he came back for more. I sold some of my jewellery to keep him quiet. When he died, I was so glad it was all over.”
“And did any of you kill him?” asked Hamish.
“No,” said Mrs Wellington.
“No,” squeaked Jessie.
“I wanted to,” said Angela heavily. “I dreamt about it every day. But I didn’t kill him. What happens now, Hamish?”
“I’ll need to keep this evidence here, in my room where Willie won’t find it, and then try to see Cheryl again. She must have known about the blackmailing. She knew what she was doing when she went out for those walks and left Sean alone with one or other of you.”
“Surely she murdered him,”
said Angela.
“I would like to think that,” sighed Hamish. “But at the time of the murder she was performing with a pop group in front of witnesses, and I canrtae break her alibi. Keep quiet, all of you, and we might come out of this. But if I find one of you killed Sean Gourlay, then there will be no more covering anything up. I’ve got a week. In a week’s time, Sean’s mother comes up here to take away a few things and try to sell the bus. Of course, I could always put the video with the other things I found,” he added half to himself.
“You mean you found the missing drugs?” asked Angela eagerly.
“And the money?” put in Mrs Wellington.
“Yes.”
“Where?” asked Angela. “Can’t we have the money back, and the drugs?”
“No, I’m sorry. They’ll have to stay where they are for now.”
When the women had gone, Hamish went through to the office and made notes, writing down what he knew, but without seeing any glimmer of hope.
The phone beside him rang. It was a tearful woman calling to say a truck had crashed into her car up on the moors. He drove off to deal with that but all the while his mind was turning over what he knew and worrying in case one of the three women was a murderess.
It was during that evening when the light began to fade and Willie was whistling to himself in the kitchen as he prepared the supper that Hamish, with a sudden lurch in his stomach, wondered if either of the three might go to the bus to try to find the money or drugs.
He shouted to Willie that he had to go out and to keep his dinner warm and made his way up to the manse field. The bus stood dark and forlorn. Hamish crouched down behind the packing case, deciding to give it an hour or so. Mrs Wellington and Angela, if they wanted to make a move, would do so before bedtime so as not to rouse their husbands’ suspicions by getting up and going out in the middle of the night.
By eleven o’clock he was beginning to shiver, for the night was getting cold. He rose stiffly up from behind the packing case and then crouched down again. Three shadowy figures were at the edge of the field. He waited a moment and then switched on the large torch he was carrying, stood up and shone it straight at the bus. Angela, Mrs Wellington and Jessie Currie swung round and stood hypnotized in the light like startled rabbits.
Hamish walked towards them. Angela was carrying a hammer, no doubt to break the lock.
“I know what you’re after,” said Hamish severely, “and you’re not getting it. Now, I’m going out on a limb and putting my job on the line for the lot of ye. The least you can all do iss not to try to tamper wi’ the evidence more than it’s been tampered with already. Off tae your beds, ladies, and if I see just one of you near this bus again I’ll take the whole lot, video and all, and let Strathbane see it.”
They shuffled off silently, without a word.
Hamish followed them just as slowly. He was haunted by the sight of Angela holding that hammer. You think you know people so well, and when something like murder happens you realize you really don’t know much about them at all. Angela had previously proved herself to be unstable, but the circumstances had been stressful. Mrs Wellington he had believed to be the sort of character of a Good Woman that she presented to the world, and Jessie and Nessie he had regarded affectionately as a couple of jokes. He must try Cheryl again.
♦
Next morning, he told Willie he wanted the day off and asked him to look after things. Hamish cynically noticed his dog, who would normally have been scrabbling at the Land Rover, was happy to be left behind. Towser had been seduced by Willie’s cooking.
He took Willie’s battered Ford instead of the police car, not wanting to advertise his presence in Strathbane to anyone from headquarters.
The farther he drove from Lochdubh, the more he felt like an irresponsible fool. He should never have become so involved with the locals in a murder inquiry. He should have phoned Strathbane, told them about the new evidence, and let them take it from there. For all he knew of them, Mrs Wellington, Angela, or even Jessie Currie might be capable of murder.
If only Cheryl hadn’t so many witnesses. He would no doubt find her again and she would swear and curse and he would get nothing more out of her. He could not tell her about the video without risking exposing the three women.
It was all so hopeless.
He was approaching Mullen’s Roadhouse. He slowed down. A large new poster was pinned up on the window. Top of the bill was Johnny Rankin and the Stotters. He stopped the car and climbed out. They were due to perform that evening.
He decided to phone Willie and say he would be in Strathbane until very late. He had to see that performance and judge if there was any way Cheryl might have managed to slip out. She had that scooter. But it would take about two hours surely to get to Lochdubh, park the scooter outside the village, go to the bus on foot, murder Sean, and then get back.
He was turning the problem over in his mind when a slim figure on a scooter shot past. Under the crash helmet he could see the driver had bright orange hair.
Cheryl!
He set off in pursuit, wishing he were in the Land Rover, wishing he could switch on the siren. The scooter had been painted bright pink and the licence plate was obscured by dirt, but there could not be more than one person in the Highlands with that colour of hair. The figure on the scooter glanced back and then simply swerved off the road on a forestry track and sped through the tall thin pine trees. Hamish swung the car off the road, but after only half a mile the track disappeared and ahead he could see that orange hair flitting off through the darkness of the trees.
He cursed under his breath, turned and went back to the road. He would go on to the campsite and confront Cheryl when she arrived.
When he drove into the campsite, that woman was still there, still stirring the pot. As he was not in a police car or in uniform, no one ran away at his arrival. There were fewer old buses and caravans this time, but the bright-blue one belonging to the Stoddarts was still there. He went up and knocked at the door. Again the thin bearded man answered it.
“I would like to wait until Cheryl Higgins returns, Mr Stoddart,” said Hamish.
“Why wait?” he asked amiably and then stood aside. “Help yourself. Herself’s in bed as usual.”
∨ Death of a Travelling Man ∧
8
What will not woman, gentle woman dare,
When strong affection stirs her spirit up?
—Robert Southey
The Stoddarts were again watching television. Hamish thought, as he leant over Cheryl to wake her, that he would have expected the Stoddarts to be weaving cloth, painting pictures or doing something artistic rather than watching an Australian soap. They did not seem in the least troubled by his presence.
Cheryl came awake, and as soon as she saw who her visitor was, began her usual litany of oaths and curses. Once he could get a word in, Hamish asked, “Where’s your scooter?”
“Whit?”
“You heard.”
“I sold it,” she said sulkily.
“Who to?”
“Some fella I met in a bar.”
“What’s his name?”
“I dinnae ken,” said Cheryl, shifting restlessly among the frowsty bedclothes. “He gied me cash, I gied him the papers.”
“What did he look like?”
“Wee man wi’ a leather jacket and black hair.”
“Why don’t I believe you?” demanded Hamish plaintively. “Were you out this morning?”
“No, I was here in ma bed.”
Hamish stood up and approached the Stoddarts. “Was Cheryl out this morning?”
Wayne Stoddart wrenched his eyes from the television screen. “Don’t ask me, man,” he said. “Only just got up.”
Bunty Stoddart, whose face was hidden under a tangled mass of hair, continued to watch and listen avidly to the Australian soap, a vision of sanitized life in the antipodean middle class.
Hamish returned to Cheryl. “I think it was you I chased t
his morning. There can’t be more than two of you in the Highlands with that colour of hair.”
Cheryl gave a contemptuous yawn.
Hamish gave up and went outside and began to search around for the scooter. The wind was howling through the piles of refuse and old cars which dotted the field among the buses and caravans. A dismal scene. But there was no sign of the scooter.
He began to experience a pressing nagging fear that he was in the wrong place, that the clue to the murder lay back in Lochdubh, buried among the inhabitants. But he stubbornly decided to wait in Strathbane until evening and see Johnny Rankin and the Stotters. It was no use questioning Cheryl again. He would not get anything out of her.
He drove into Strathbane, a misery of a place with tall concrete blocks of flats and an air of failure. Nothing had changed. The seagulls here seemed dirtier than anywhere else and the oily sea sucked at the rubbish-strewn shore, heaving in on long rolling slow waves, as if exhausted by pollution. He went to the Glen Bar, which he had once frequented when he had been briefly stationed in the town, ordered an orange juice and then sat in a corner and took out a notebook and began to write anything that came into his head about the case.
It slowly dawned on him that he had let his feelings become involved in a dangerous way. Not only was he protecting the three women, he had not questioned Mr Ferrari thoroughly enough, having let his partiality for hardworking Scottish Italians sway his judgement. Then there was the minister. There was no doubt that the normally scholarly and gentle Mr Wellington had gone temporarily mad, and the murder had definitely been done by someone in the grip of a murderous rage. Had Mr Wellington considered himself to be the hammer of God?
He had half a mind to call at headquarters and report the finding of the money, drugs and video and then ask for leave so that he could get away from the village and leave the Strathbane police to do their work.
But perhaps, just perhaps, he might find a clue during the performance of the pop group.
It was a long dreary day and he was glad when evening arrived and he drove to Mullen’s Roadhouse, anxious to get it over with.
