Hamish Macbeth 19 (2003) - Death of a Village

by M C Beaton

  His curiosity sharpened, Mr. Jefferson went into the general store. He walked quickly behind a rack of groceries and stood there. If there was any gossip, someone would tell Mr. Patel. Then he heard a man’s voice saying, “That detective fellow was really drunk, and do you know what he was saying?”

  “I left early,” came Mr. Patel’s reply.

  “He was after saying that poor auld Mrs. Docherty was frightened to death.”

  “Never!”

  “I saw Macbeth heading off with that reporter lassie. Maybe he’ll find something.”

  Mr. Jefferson hurried up to the counter. He recognised Mungo Patterson, a forestry worker.

  “What was that you were saying about Annie being frightened to death?” he demanded.

  “I neffer said a word,” lied Mungo. “I was chust saying that the prices these days would frighten a man to death.”

  Mr. Jefferson clicked his false teeth in disgust and walked out. He would drive over to Stoyre. He was sure Hamish was there.

  Hamish and Elspeth stood on a beach of shingle and watched, mesmerised, the huge Atlantic waves rearing up and crashing at their feet. “Let’s look around,” shouted Hamish above the roar. “I think we might have come down at the wrong place. Can’t see any caves.”

  “There’s a cleft in the rock over there,” said Elspeth.

  “Might lead somewhere.”

  “We’d better hurry. The tide has turned.”

  They left the beach and clambered over the seaweed-slippery rocks. “Even if it leads somewhere,” shouted Hamish, “it won’t help us. Can’t get a boat in there.”

  Elspeth entered the cleft in the rock with Hamish after her. They found themselves in a large cave. They both took out torches and flashed them around. “Nothing,” said Hamish. “We’d better climb back up and try further along.”

  “Wait!” said Elspeth. “It goes far back. It might lead somewhere.”

  She set off and Hamish reluctantly followed. “It goes round the corner here at the end,” she shouted back. They walked on down a natural passage hollowed out over the centuries by the pounding of the waves.

  “I think we’d better turn back,” said Hamish. “We’ll be caught by the tide if we wait much longer.”

  “Just a bit further.”

  They turned another bend and heard the sound of the waves growing louder. The passage suddenly opened out into another cave, and in front of the open mouth of the cave, the waves rolled up a narrow beach.

  “Someone’s been here.” Elspeth stooped down and picked up a Coke can.

  “Could be the place,” said Hamish. “When the tide’s up, you could ride a boat in here. Tricky, but it could be done.”

  He walked to the mouth of the cave and looked out. “There are outcrops of rock on either side of the cave. Forms a sort of natural harbour. That’s why the waves aren’t so fierce here.”

  “Hamish!” called Elspeth. “Come here and look.”

  He went back into the cave to join her. She was holding up a bunch of seaweed. “It’s plastic,” she said triumphantly, “and it was covering that.”

  His eyes followed her pointing finger. Revealed was a mooring post painted black.

  “This is new,” said Hamish, his eyes gleaming. “We’d better get out of here and get back up that cliff and decide what to do.”

  Mr. Jefferson’s old legs were getting tired. He decided to go along the cliffs a little further and then turn back while he still had any energy left. He marched on, thinking, I’m doing this for you, Annie. Stay with me.

  At last he felt too tired to go any further and sank down into the heather.

  He lay on his back and looked up at the sky and at the wheeling birds. Maybe just a nap to recharge his batteries. He closed his eyes.

  Then, abruptly, he opened them again. Nearby, there was a scraping sound. He might not have heard it had he been upright, but lying as he was, buried in the heather, he could hear the sound as it travelled along the ground. He cautiously raised his head. Along the cliff top a man was crouched over something, scraping away. He was wearing a black anorak with the hood up, shielding his face.

  Mr. Jefferson sank down in the heather, his heart beating hard. There was something sinister about that figure. He lay there, listening, until the scraping stopped. Then he heard footsteps approaching him, passing him, and going on in the direction of the village. He waited ten minutes and eased himself up. Then he cautiously got to his feet and looked about. No one in sight.

  He walked to where he had seen the man crouched down. A climbing rope had been tied round a rock, and Mr. Jefferson saw that just where the rope vanished over the cliff edge, it had been scraped and frayed until only a few strands were left.

  Frightened, he looked this way and that. Whoever was down there—and it could be Macbeth and Elspeth—someone had planned that the rope would snap. He pulled at the rope until he was past the frayed bit and began to wrap it securely round the rock.

  Then he went to the cliff edge and lay on his stomach and tried to look down. But the edge jutted out, obscuring his view of what was directly below him.

  He tried shouting but he knew helplessly that the tumult of waves, the wind, and the cries of sea birds were drowning his voice.

  “Something’s wrong,” said Hamish. “That rope was a few feet longer.”

  “Hamish, I’m sure it’s all right. We’ll need to chance it.”

  A huge wave swept over the shingle and crashed around her ankles. “Hurry!” she screamed.

  “You go first,” said Hamish. “I thought you had the professional climbing equipment, not chust one damn rope.”

  “It’s a good rope,” shouted Elspeth. “And the cliff is only about thirty feet high.”

  She seized the rope and began to climb. Hamish waited until she had disappeared over the top of the cliff and then grabbed the rope and lifted his feet just as a huge breaker swept under him.

  When he finally scrambled over the top of the cliff, it was to find Elspeth and Mr. Jefferson sitting together in the heather.

  “This is no place for you,” said Hamish angrily. “What brought you? How did you find us?”

  Hurriedly, before Mr. Jefferson could speak, Elspeth told Hamish about the frayed rope. Hamish bent down and examined it. “What did the man look like?”

  “I couldn’t see his face,” said Mr. Jefferson. “He was wearing a black anorak with the hood covering his head.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” said Hamish, untying the rope.

  “We’ll walk back through the village and be damned to them. The damage is done. How did you manage to find us?” he asked again.

  Mr. Jefferson told him about hearing that Mrs. Docherty had died of fright and how he had assumed they had gone north from the village and had walked until he had seen the man fraying the rope.

  They walked back slowly, letting the now exhausted Mr. Jefferson stop and rest from time to time. When they entered the village, no one was about. No curtains twitched as they passed.

  “Meet up with us at the police station,” said Hamish to Mr. Jefferson.

  “Aren’t you going to phone Strathbane?”

  “That’s what I want to discuss with both of you.”

  Once they were all in the kitchen of the police station, Hamish said, “It’s like this. If I phone Strathbane, they’ll send men out. They’ll find the mooring in the cave but they won’t find anything else. Whoever the villains are, they’ll lie low until the police disappear again. And they’ve terrified the villagers into silence.”

  “They’ve done something other than terrify them,” said Elspeth. “They don’t seem in the least terrified. They’re all in the grip of some spiritual experience. I wonder what it is. Do you think someone is trying to land a large consignment of drugs?”

  Hamish sat quietly for a moment. “They’ve no need to frighten or manipulate a whole village into silence. There are plenty of secret landing places in the north of Scotland, and that cave will ta
ke a very experienced boatman to pilot a boat in there.”

  “A wreck?” said Mr. Jefferson.

  “Now, there’s an idea,” said Hamish slowly. “What’s the law on wrecks?”

  “I’ve got my laptop in the car,” said Elspeth. “I’ll get it and look up wrecks.”

  She went out to her car and returned with her laptop and switched it on. “Let me see. Ah, here we are. Wrecks. It says here:

  The Protection of Wrecks Act 1973 confers powers on the Secretary of State with respect to any site in United Kingdom waters which is or may prove to be the site of a vessel lying wrecked on or in the sea bed which ought to be protected from unauthorised interference on account of the historical, archaeological or artistic importance of the vessel or of any objects contained or formerly contained in it which may be lying in or near the wreck.

  There!”

  “So how would someone go about getting permission?” asked Hamish.

  “From the secretary of state, but it says here only to persons who appear to him ‘to be competent and properly equipped to carry out salvage operations in a manner appropriate to the historical, archaeological or artistic importance.’ Even if anyone gets permission, then anything they find must be reported to the receiver of wrecks, who must advertise that the wreck has been found in order to inform potential claimants of the find.”

  “Well, that’s a start,” said Hamish. “I’ll get on to the secretary of state’s office to see if anyone has applied for permission to salvage anything up here. If not, I’ll get a list of wrecks and take it from there. Mr. Jefferson, it was grand you came along at the right time but don’t go near Stoyre again. Promise?”

  “I promise,” said Mr. Jefferson, and crossed his fingers behind his back.

  When Elspeth and Mr. Jefferson had left, Hamish walked over to Angela’s to fetch Lugs. “Come in and sit down,” said Angela after Lugs had exhausted himself by barking and leaping around Hamish. “Lugs has been quite depressed. He hasn’t even bothered my cats. Coffee?”

  “That would be grand. I’ll just be taking it black,” added Hamish quickly, noticing that one of the cats had its head in the milk jug.

  “So what’s going on?” asked Angela. “Or are you dating that pretty reporter?”

  “No, I am not. Is she pretty?”

  “If you haven’t noticed, you’re the only one who hasn’t. Mary Bisset is telling everyone that the pair of you are an item.”

  “I only told her that to keep her away from me.”

  “So what were the pair of you doing?”

  “Nosing around Stoyre.”

  “Find anything?” she asked, placing a mug of coffee in front of him. He removed a cat hair from the edge of the mug and wondered if Angela would notice if he didn’t drink it.

  “Not a thing,” said Hamish. Although he usually confided in Angela, he didn’t want anyone else from Lochdubh taking it into their heads to play detective. “Apart from Harry Bain, is there anyone else in Lochdubh who once lived in Stoyre?”

  “There’s old Mr. Gorrie out on the Drim road.”

  “I’ll be having a word with him.”

  “Why?”

  “Just curious about something.”

  “Like what?”

  “Dinnae nag me, Angela. I don’t feel like talking at the moment.”

  Hamish drove out the following morning to see Mr. Gorrie. He supposed Mr. Gorrie was pretty old. But it was hard to tell in the Highlands, where whisky and the often ferocious weather made people look older than they were.

  Mr. Gorrie answered the door. His face was seamed and cracked and criss-crossed with many wrinkles. But he still had a straight back, although his head had shrunk down onto his shoulders. He smelled strongly of peat smoke and cigarette smoke.

  “Come in, Hamish,” he said. “It’s been a while since you’ve called.”

  Hamish felt guilty. He usually made a point of calling on all the old people on his beat who lived alone to make sure they were all right. Somehow he had forgotten about Mr. Gorrie.

  Hamish did not want to launch immediately into enquiries about Stoyre, so they chatted about the weather and the fall in sheep prices. At last Hamish said as casually as he could, “You used to live in Stoyre, didn’t you?”

  “Aye, when my Jeannie was still alive, bless her. We had a bit cottage on the waterfront. But after two huge storms which had the waves battering right at our door, Jeannie said she didn’t want to be near the sea any more, and I had retired from the fishing, so we got the cottage here. Poor Jeannie. She’s been dead this twenty years. There was a long while when all I wanted to do was join her, but the good Lord wouldn’t be having it so here I am. I still drive but it’s getting to be a fair nuisance. Every time I’ve got to renew my license I have to send in a long doctor’s report to say I’m fit.”

  “Do you keep in touch with anyone in Stoyre?”

  “No, I’ve no family there and I only drive into Drim now to get groceries.”

  “When you lived in Stoyre, did you hear anything about a shipwreck near there?”

  “No, not a one. Wait a bit, though. Away back at the beginning of the war…”

  “World War II?”

  “Aye, that’s the one. I mind the days when you talked about the war and everyone knew which one you were talking about. After I was demobbed and came back, my father told me two Germans were found on the beach near the harbour. One was dead and the other didn’t live long. The one that lived a bit wouldn’t say whether he was off a ship or what.”

  “And when would this be?”

  “I can’t remember exactly, but it was sometime at the beginning of the war.”

  Hamish sighed. He would need to wait for a report from the secretary of state’s office. He had put in his request that morning before he had left to visit Mr. Gorrie. He hoped the government office would send the reports directly to him as requested and not send them to Strathbane.—

  He realised with a start that Mr. Gorrie was talking. “…like Napoleon,” he said.

  “I’m sorry,” said Hamish. “I suddenly thought of something else. What about Napoleon?”

  “Russia. I hate to think what would have happened if Russia had stayed allied to Germany. But they didn’t, and it was Hitler deciding to attack Russia that weakened him. Napoleon did the same, see? Lost thousands of men. Man, there’s nothing in the world can fight a battle better than a Russian winter.”

  They talked some more about general things and Hamish promised to call on him more regularly.

  You might end up like that, he told himself. One day you might be old and living on your own. He remembered his rosy dreams of marrying Priscilla and starting a family. And now Priscilla would be marrying someone else. Why? he wondered. She was never much interested in sex. Maybe her fiancé had lit some spark in her that he had been unable to do.

  His mind turned back to Stoyre. All those years ago, two sailors had been washed ashore, one dead and one dying. They must have come from somewhere, some vessel.

  Well, there was nothing he could do but wait for that report.

  EIGHT

  From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggety beasties

  And things that go bump in the night,

  Good Lord deliver us!

  —Old Scottish prayer

  Two days later Hamish received a long fax from the secretary of state’s office. He grabbed it out of the fax machine and read it eagerly, then threw it down in disgust. “Nothing!” he said to Lugs. “Not a thing. No record of a wreck near Stoyre at any time in history. Now what?”

  If there had been a report of some wreck containing a possibly valuable cargo, then he could have reopened the case with Strathbane.

  He phoned Elspeth and told her about the report. “What now?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Hamish, feeling helpless. “I swear something or someone frightened poor Annie Docherty to death. It would have been dark when she got there. I wonder if they would try to frighten me.�
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  “They’ve tried to kill you twice before. They might not bother leaping out of the bushes and saying boo, or whatever it was they did to Mrs. Docherty. I think you ought to tell Strathbane about that cave and the new mooring.”

  “And what happens when they find there is no mooring? They may have moved on. Then if I do get some proof, the police will be reluctant to do anything about it.”

  Mr. Jefferson sat in Annie’s cottage and stared blindly through a haze of cigarette smoke. There must be something he could do. If something had prompted this odd spiritual revival in Stoyre, then there might be a clue in the manse. He could wait until they were all in the church and break into the manse.

  He phoned Hamish Macbeth. “What’s the name of the man who runs the pub in Stoyre?”

  “Andy Crummack. Why?”

  “That’s the name. I might have run into him before.”

  “Look here, Mr. Jefferson, I think Stoyre is a very dangerous place. You are not to go there.”

  “Of course not,” said Mr. Jefferson. “I gave you my promise, didn’t I?”

  He said goodbye and rang off and then looked up the number of the Fisherman’s Arms in the phone book and dialled. A man answered and Mr. Jefferson asked, “Is that Andy Crummack?”

  “Yes, who are you?”

  “Just a tourist. I wanted to have a look at your church. When is the next service?”

  “Tomorrow at eleven.”

  Mr. Jefferson thanked him and rang off. If they were prepared to give the time of the service to an outsider, then nothing was going on inside the church itself that they were worried about anyone finding out about.

  He would arrive in Stoyre in the morning, just when he was sure they were all in the church, and get into the manse and see what he could find out. He owed it to Annie.

  Mr. Jefferson set out the following morning, feeling excited and rejuvenated to be doing something at last. He timed his arrival in the village to ten minutes past eleven. The place looked deserted. He hurried up to the manse and went round to the kitchen door at the back. He tried the door and found it was open. He walked inside and went through the kitchen, looking for the minister’s study. He came to a locked door and took out his skeleton keys and opened it. Eagerly he hurried in and went straight to the desk. He began to riffle through the papers.