Death of a Scriptwriter

by Beaton, M. C.

  ‘At around six in the morning on the day of the murder you were spotted by the tramp Sean Fitz, heading for Drim. I think you found by accident that other path up the mountain. You would want to avoid the main path, too many people coming and going.

  ‘Sound carries verra clearly up there. You heard the instruction to Penelope to stand on that outcrop of rock. You were hidden underneath. When you knew she was in position, you stood up and grasped her ankle and jerked her over your head, and she went flying down the mountain. You escaped in the thick mist, got in the car, drove around and finally went to the Sutherland Arms Hotel for lunch. Then you returned the car to Ludlow.’

  Lovelace opened his mouth to say something, but Daviot held up a warning finger. All looked at Patricia.

  ‘What a load of rubbish,’ she fluted. ‘Yes, I did borrow a car, but I was so dazed and unhappy, I did not know what I was doing that day. Yes, I may have gone near Drim, but I did not go up on that mountain.’ She spread her hands in an appealing gesture and looked at Lovelace. ‘Have I not endured enough?’

  She might get away with it, thought Hamish, and even if it cost him his job, she would not get away with it. He would need to confess about those two threads of cloth.

  He said instead, ‘You were seen going up the mountain on the day Jamie Gallagher was murdered. I chust found that out today. A crofter saw you and didn’t think anything of it at the time, thinking you were part of the TV crew.’

  ‘You’re lying,’ said Patricia flatly.

  Too right, thought Hamish dismally. But he looked straight at her and said evenly, ‘I am only glad you will not profit from your crimes because after you are charged with these murders, the sales of your books will be immense, and all over the world, too. You will be a truly famous writer, and that is a distinction you do not deserve.’

  Patricia stared at him.

  Lovelace stood up. ‘This is enough,’ he said. ‘I have heard about you, Macbeth, and your behaviour has been disgraceful. Breaking into this poor woman’s cottage –’

  ‘I did it,’ said Patricia.

  Everyone froze except Hamish, who felt himself go almost limp with relief.

  She gave a shrug and said in an almost merry voice, ‘It was justice, don’t you see? They were killing Lady Harriet, so they both had to go. I do not regret it. You are right. I did not mean to kill that Gallagher man. But I did not lurk around waiting until they all had left. I was late. I thought they were all still up there and that perhaps I could get them to change their minds. But there was no one there. I wandered about. And then I saw Jamie, sitting on the edge of the heather in front of the scree. After that I do not know what happened until he was dead at my feet and I was standing with a bloody rock in my hand. I hurled it away as hard as I could. I do not regret it.

  ‘Penelope Gates was everything I hated, crude and vulgar and vicious. She had to go. I do not regret her death, either.’

  ‘But two murders!’ exclaimed Daviot.

  ‘But they were guilty of infanticide,’ said Patricia with a sort of dreadful patience.

  ‘They killed my child. They were killing Lady Harriet.’

  Lovelace charged her with the murders. She kept looking at Hamish. When Lovelace had finished, she said, ‘Hamish, will I be really famous?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said sadly. ‘Very famous indeed.’

  ‘Then that’s all right,’ she said briskly, getting to her feet. ‘Shall we go?’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Hamish as she was being led out. ‘Patricia, why did you ask for my help to clear your name?’

  ‘Oh, I thought you were the only person I had to fear,’ said Patricia with a little smile. ‘These other gentlemen are so stupid. It worked for a bit, didn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it worked,’ said Hamish. ‘And did you really lose your memory?’

  ‘No, I did not. I simply became weary of the act and decided to find it again. I wrote about an amnesia case in one of my books and had read a great deal on the subject, enough to trick the psychiatrist. How did you guess it was me?’

  One more lie wouldn’t matter, thought Hamish. He hoped they would forget about that crofter he said had seen Patricia on the mountain.

  ‘It was Detective Jimmy Anderson who suggested that you might have used another car.’

  ‘How odd,’ said Patricia. ‘I would have thought him as stupid as the rest.’

  She was led out.

  Daviot remained behind with Hamish. ‘Good work,’ he said. ‘This lets Blair off the hook, and I’m glad of it. He’s a good man and probably thought she had done it all along.’

  Hamish groaned inwardly, but better Blair than Lovelace.

  ‘I shall be glad to return Lovelace to Inverness,’ went on Daviot. ‘He ruffled too many feathers at Strathbane, ordering policewomen to do his shopping for him. Not on, in these liberated days.’

  ‘I had best go and get an official statement from that man who lent her the car,’ said Hamish.

  ‘Yes,’ said Daviot absently. ‘This is all going to make us look a bunch of fools with the press.’

  ‘In what way, sir?’

  ‘Well, saying Josh Gates murdered Jamie Gallagher. Bad press, that.’

  ‘But the murders are solved, and you’ve got them off your back.’

  ‘True. You should consider a move to Strathbane, Hamish.’ Hamish, not Macbeth. He was definitely in favour.

  ‘No, sir. I am quite happy where I am. It was Jimmy Anderson who put me on to it.’

  ‘Then why did he not do it himself?’

  ‘He might be frightened he would get into trouble with Lovelace. If you will forgive me for speaking freely, Sir, that man does not like initiative.’

  ‘It will be good to have Blair back.’

  A man who disliked initiative just as much as Lovelace, thought Hamish.

  ‘We should not be sitting here,’ said Daviot. ‘I’d best get the forensic team over here.’

  ‘Why don’t you go ahead, sir,’ said Hamish. ‘The door was open, but I see there’s a key on the counter there. I’ll lock up and wait outside for the forensic team.’

  ‘Very well.’

  Hamish followed him out and stood waiting until Daviot’s car had roared off into the distance. Then he went into the bedroom and carefully took the tweed suit off the bed and hung it back in the wardrobe.

  Then he sat down to wait for the forensic team. He had plenty of time to reflect on his own stupidity. Patricia had initially got away with both murders through sheer luck. Different car or not, Ludlow could have come forward and told the police. But Hamish had not suspected her, something in Patricia’s loneliness of spirit striking a chord in his own. And he had been flattered when she had asked him to help her. She must have been very confident that, owing to the mist and the different car, no one would recognize her. But thanks to her rudeness to one tramp, which had made him remember her vividly, she had been recognized.

  He stretched and yawned. Sergeant Mac-Gregor was welcome to Cnothan. What a dump!

  The forensic team arrived, and Hamish thankfully left. He went in to Cnothan and took a statement from Mr Ludlow and then made his escape. As he drove down into Lochdubh, a shaft of sunlight was breaking through the grey clouds. Priscilla was coming home. The world was righting itself.

  At the police station, he typed up his reports, took off his uniform and put on casual clothes and went out for a stroll.

  Mrs Wellington, the minister’s wife, bore down on him like a tweedy galleon under full sail. ‘Shocking news,’ she boomed.

  ‘Yes, I wouldnae have believed a lady like Miss Martyn-Broyd could have committed two murders,’ said Hamish.

  She looked at him in amazement. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Miss Martyn-Broyd has confessed to the murders of Jamie Gallagher and Penelope Gates.’

  ‘Impossible!’

  ‘I am afraid it’s true. What are you talking about?’

  ‘Oh, that.’ The minister’s wife pulled h
erself together with an effort. ‘We have just heard from poor Mr Jessop over at Drim. He’s in such a taking. His wife has left him! He phoned to say she had left while he was actually over here visiting us.’

  ‘Neffer!’

  ‘Yes, just gone and taken all her stuff. They were such a devoted couple.’

  ‘I got the impression he bullied that poor woman.’

  ‘Nonsense. I tell you what he thinks happened. It’s this television business. It’s driven all the women in Drim mad. They all think they were meant to be film stars. Mr Jessop sees nothing but ruin for his poor wife. He says she’ll end up on the streets.’

  ‘Oh, I shouldn’t think so. She wouldn’t make any money.’

  ‘And that’s just the sort of nasty callous thing I would expect from you. You haven’t been to church in ages. That’s what’s up with you, Hamish Macbeth.’

  ‘Maybe next Sunday,’ said Hamish, sliding around her bulk.

  He thought of treating himself to dinner at the Napoli, then remembered that he had a date there with Sheila for the following evening. He bought himself some cold ham from Patel’s and went back to his garden and pulled and cleaned a lettuce to make a salad to go with it.

  He had an interrupted meal. The news of Patricia’s arrest had spread like wildfire, and locals kept coming to the kitchen door to ask for details. At last he settled down in front of the television. There was a good play on BBC 1, so when he heard someone rapping at the kitchen door again, he debated whether to pretend he wasn’t at home. But the knocking grew more insistent. With a sigh he got up and opened the door.

  Jimmy Anderson stood there. ‘Gimme a whisky, for God’s sake, man. She isnae fit tae stand trial.’

  ‘Patricia? She’s acting again.’ Hamish led him in and took the bottle of whisky out of the kitchen cupboard.

  ‘If she’s acting, it’s too good for anyone to break.’

  They went into the living room. Hamish lit the fire. ‘The nights are drawing in at last,’ he said.

  ‘I came anyway to thank you for giving me the credit,’ said Jimmy. ‘What put you on to her?’

  ‘She did,’ said Hamish. ‘Would you believe it? She wanted me to clear her name and so I spent my spare time trying to find out where she was when Penelope was being murdered. And she was so confident I wouldn’t find out. I’m just glad it’s over. Blair’ll be happy.’

  ‘Aye, he’s poncing about saying as how he was victimized by a madwoman and that he knew she did it all along. He seems to forget he was the one who insisted Josh Gates murdered Jamie Gallagher.’

  ‘He aye had a convenient memory.’

  ‘Daviot said he thought you’d cracked Patricia by suggesting she would be world famous.’

  ‘It was a gamble, but it paid off. I’d nearly forgotten about her monumental vanity.’

  ‘So we settle back down to a peaceful life, you with your sheep and hens and me with the muggings and stabbings in Strathbane.’ He raised his glass. ‘Here’s tae murder.’

  ‘No, no, man, here’s to peace and quiet.’

  ‘Peace and quiet,’ said Jimmy solemnly.

  They both drank in silence, and then Hamish asked, ‘Do you think they’ll go ahead with filming the series after all this? There’s the relatives of the dead to remember.’

  ‘I think after a certain time has elapsed, they’ll run it. They’ve surely sunk too much money in it already to abandon the whole thing.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘My lady friend wants to be a writer,’ said Jimmy. ‘I told her to forget it. They’re all mad, that’s what I said. Got a girl, Hamish?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Hamish, thinking of Sheila. ‘Maybe I have.’

  Down in her flat in Glasgow, Sheila and Eileen stared in amazement at the late night news on television. ‘It was that writer after all,’ said Sheila.

  ‘Hamish must be glad it’s all over,’ said Eileen.

  ‘Oh, the policeman? I think I was supposed to phone him or something, but with all this success about your film, I forget what it was. Oh, there’s something I forgot to tell you. Scottish Television wants to find out when they plan to screen the first episode of The Case of the Rising Tides and run your play against it, same evening, same time.’

  ‘But will that work?’ asked Eileen. ‘I mean, there’ll be such a lot of interest in Harry’s thing, with the murders. No one will watch my play.’

  ‘They thought of that. They’re going to screen it in advance and get all the publicity they hope it will get and then run it again on the Sunday. We’re going to be big, Eileen. Right to the top!’

  On Wednesday evening, Hamish Macbeth sat in the Napoli and waited for Sheila – and waited. At first he had this really splendid dream, that Priscilla Halburton-Smythe would return to Lochdubh to find him with a brand-new, pretty girlfriend, but as the evening dragged past and she did not come, the dream faded and died.

  Epilogue

  It doesn’t much signify whom one marries, for one is sure to find next morning that it was someone else.

  – Samuel Rogers

  Now that the murders had been solved and he had made all his statements, Hamish Macbeth moved back into his usual undemanding routine. In anticipation of Priscilla’s arrival, he had bought a new pair of shoes to go with his suit, although he convinced himself that he had only bought them because he urgently needed them.

  On the day she was due to arrive home, he was suddenly summoned to Strathbane. It transpired that Patricia Martyn-Broyd was evidently genuinely mad as a hatter, but Daviot had suggested that Hamish should try to speak to her, try to see if she were really insane or faking it, as she had so cleverly faked amnesia.

  He drove down to Strathbane and to the secure unit of a psychiatric hospital. It was an old Victorian building, sinister in the mist which had rolled in from the oily, polluted sea around Strathbane.

  ‘What’s she like?’ he asked the grim-faced woman with keys jangling at her waist who conducted him along the long corridors. ‘In a straitjacket?’

  ‘No, herself is quiet. No trouble at all.’

  She unlocked a door. Hamish walked in and the door was locked behind him.

  Patricia was sitting on the floor, rocking back and forth and crooning to herself.

  Hamish sat down on the floor beside her. ‘Patricia,’ he said gently, ‘do you know me?’

  She stopped rocking and her eyes stared at him and then she started rocking again.

  ‘Are you pretending to be mad, Patricia? It won’t do if you are. You don’t want to stay in a place like this for the rest o’ your life. If you stood trial and went to prison, they would let you have something to write on. You’d be able to sell new books.’

  The rocking continued.

  ‘It wass a bad thing you did, Patricia, taking two lives. But if you are acting, you are going to haff to go on like this till the end.’

  But she rocked and crooned, seemingly oblivious to his presence.

  He gave a little sigh. ‘I would ha’ thought a lady like yourself would have had more courage. In prison, they have a library and you’d be able to see your books, maybe give talks to the other prisoners.’

  No response.

  His voice grew harder. ‘Did you know what Jamie Gallagher looked like when I found him? The crows had pecked his eyes out. Did you know that Penelope had maybe had a pretty harsh upbringing? And there she lay, crushed and dying of pain on the side o’ the mountain. Do you know the horror you caused?’

  But she rocked and rocked.

  He gave up. He got to his feet. The woman looked through a small square of glass window and promptly unlocked and opened the door.

  Hamish walked out and the door was locked behind him.

  He went along the corridor. Suddenly he said, ‘Excuse me a minute.’ He darted silently back along the corridor and looked through the window into Patricia’s room.

  She was standing by the window with her hands on her hips, looking out. He signalled to the woman urgently
to open the door. She came running up and unlocked it.

  But when he rushed in, Patricia was once more on the floor, rocking and moaning and crooning.

  Hamish stood over her. ‘It iss my belief you’re a fake. But if you want to stay here with the insane, that’s your lookout.’

  He waited, but she did not cease her rocking.

  He gave an exclamation of disgust and walked out. What should he do? he wondered as he drove to police headquarters. He thought of her stance at the window. Even though her back had been turned to him, it had somehow been the posture of a normal woman.

  At police headquarters, he had to wait. Jimmy Anderson told him that Daviot wanted to see him. He waited patiently outside Daviot’s room under the grim eye of the secretary, who detested him.

  At last he was ushered in. ‘This is the psychiatrist, Dr Lodge,’ said Daviot. ‘He has been working with our prisoner.’

  Hamish said that he had a shrewd idea that Patricia was acting. ‘That is not the view of Dr Lodge here,’ said Daviot.

  Hamish had to listen then to a long lecture from Dr Lodge on Patricia’s condition. It became clear to Hamish that the psychiatrist had made up his mind that Patricia was mad and he was angry that a village policeman should have been produced to argue with his expert diagnosis.

  ‘It is just that Macbeth here knew the woman,’ said Daviot placatingly.

  ‘You are probably not interested in my opinion, Dr Lodge,’ said Hamish. ‘I not only think her sane, I think she will take her own life. At first she did not mind, thinking only of the publicity the trial would bring her books. But she obviously does not want to stand trial now and go to prison, nor will she want to remain in a psychiatric unit for the rest of her life.’

  Another long and tedious lecture, which all boiled down to the fact that Dr Lodge considered it impossible that Patricia would commit suicide. Daviot was obviously impressed as some Scots are by esoteric lectures of which they do not understand one word.

  ‘Thank you, nonetheless, for your input,’ said Daviot finally. ‘You may go.’