by M C Beaton
‘It was. I’m grateful to Peta in a way because she has made the whole business of this dating or marital agency distasteful. I’m thinking of taking my law exams.’
John looked at her in sudden dislike. ‘And no doubt you will end up a judge. And do you know why?’
‘No.’
‘Because tokenism is slowly going to destroy the legal system of this country. Someone like you will be made a judge, not because of talent or brilliance or capability but simply because you are a woman. First it was the ethnic minorities, now it’s bloody women.’
‘I have not even started to study,’ said Jenny in a thin voice, ‘and yet you are prejudging my ability. Hardly a proper legal outlook.’
‘Tcha!’ said John and got up and walked angrily away.
Nasty man, thought Jenny, watching him go. Who is he to be so high and mighty? He was smarming around Peta at the theatre.
After a time, she rose and walked into the castle. Mr Johnson and Sean were standing by the reception. Sean was complaining that ‘the fat wumman’ had most certainly had breakfast; in fact, as far as he could tell, she had walked off with one of the castle picnic hampers and various goodies from the kitchen. Mr Johnson pointed out that Priscilla had packed and taken a picnic hamper, but Sean said he knew about that. She was probably off romancing that layabout of a policeman, he said.
Jenny walked on up to her room. So there was something between Priscilla and Hamish. And yet they must have known each other for some time and were not engaged.
She turned about and ran downstairs. Mr Johnson and Sean were still arguing. She interrupted them and asked Mr Johnson if she could take one of the castle cars.
‘Let me see,’ he said, ‘Priscilla’s got the Range Rover and Dougie borrowed the mini. The colonel’s got his car. The old Volvo should be out front. You can have that. The keys are in the ignition.’
‘I forgot to ask you before. Am I expected to pay for petrol?’
‘Not if it’s a short journey,’ said Mr Johnson. ‘But never leave the tank dry, always put back in what you use if you’ve been driving for a good distance. Have we got your driving-licence number?’
‘Priscilla took a note of it last time.’
‘That’ll be all right then. But I wouldn’t go too far today, if I were you. The weather looks bad.’
‘There isn’t a cloud in the sky!’
‘The forecast’s bad and there’s a purple haze on the hills and that means thunder.’
Jenny got into the car and opened all the windows and the sun-roof. She drove quickly down to the police station, but there was no sign of Hamish. So he probably had gone off with Priscilla. She drove on to the harbour and parked the car against the wall.
She was feeling hot and thirsty, so she went into the Lochdubh bar and ordered a gin and tonic and then wished she had not for the bar was full of men, not a woman in sight. ‘How much is that?’ she asked the barman.
‘The chap down the end o’ the bar’s paid fur it.’
Jenny looked flustered. ‘Who? What? I can’t really …’
A tall young man in working clothes walked towards her. ‘Sure, you looked as if you needed a drink,’ he said. He had an engaging smile and a mop of black curls and blue, blue eyes.
‘Did you pay for this?’ asked Jenny.
‘Yes, I always like to buy a pretty girl a drink. I’m working with Baxter’s Forestry on the other side of the loch but we’ve packed it in for the day. One of the fellows dropped with heat exhaustion.’
Jenny felt herself relax. He seemed inoffensive and friendly. She finished her drink as they talked and then she bought the next round and somehow they found themselves sitting at one of the rickety bar tables telling each other their life stories. She forgot about Hamish Macbeth.
Hamish and Priscilla were having a late lunch. Hamish belonged unexpectedly to that irritating breed who can never make up their minds where they want to choose to have a picnic, until Priscilla at last rebelled. She stopped after circling for quite some time round the narrow winding Highland roads at a spot on top of the moors where they could get a good view of both the castle and the surrounding countryside.
While they ate, Hamish went on and on about Peta’s leaving, turning over the whys and wherefores until Priscilla said sharply, ‘I’m bored with the very sound of that woman’s name. Leave the subject alone, Hamish.’
His eyes mocked her. ‘What would you like to talk about? Us?’
‘Don’t be silly.’
‘What’s so silly about it?’ he asked, suddenly hell-bent on mischief. ‘Here we are, a man and a woman, in the romantic Highlands of Scotland.’
‘The Highlands of Scotland are only romantic to people who don’t live in them,’ said Priscilla, looking about for some way to change the subject. ‘Look at those buzzards.’
Hamish twisted his head and shaded his eyes as he looked up at the sky. A pair of buzzards were circling lazily overhead a little distance away.
‘Buzzards have the right idea,’ he said, ‘no marital agencies for them. Still thinking of joining Checkmate yourself, Priscilla?’
‘Of course not. What’s got into you, Hamish? There’s something … uncomfortable about you.’
‘If you want me to be comfortable, don’t go around agreeing to kisses.’
‘I only meant it to be a kiss on the cheek!’
‘Oh, Priscilla.’ He edged near her on the heather. She looked wide-eyed at him, her hands clenched. He put an arm about her shoulders and turned her face up to his.
A scream tore across the silence of the still landscape, a loud, frightened scream.
He jumped to his feet and stared around wildly. The scream was coming closer, now a thin whistling sound like an old-fashioned steam train heading for a tunnel.
Hamish ran out into the road. A small boy dragging a smaller boy behind him was running down the road, his mouth stretched by that horrible scream to its widest.
The boys collided into Hamish, the eldest throwing his arms round Hamish’s knees.
‘Quiet now,’ said Hamish sternly and the scream stopped abruptly and the boy began to cry. Hamish prised him loose and knelt down and held him by the shoulders. He recognized the children as Jamie Ferguson and his little brother, Bill.
‘Jamie, Jamie,’ he said. ‘It iss me. Hamish Macbeth. What iss it?’
‘She’s deid,’ yelled Jamie and began to sob again.
‘Where?’ Hamish gave him a little shake.
‘Ower there.’ The boy pointed back the way he had come, in the direction of the circling buzzards. Priscilla had come up to join them.
‘Look after this pair,’ said Hamish to her. ‘Give them some hot sweet tea. There’s some left in the flask.’
He set off down the road at a run.
He knew every inch of the countryside and remembered that round the next turn, under the circling birds of prey, was a disused quarry which formed a small amphitheatre beside the road.
Hamish hurtled into the quarry, looking wildly about. And then he saw a foot sticking out from behind a great boulder, a fat foot in a thin sandal, a foot with painted toenails.
He walked round the rock.
Peta Gore lay on her back, her sightless eyes staring up at the brassy sky. One large sandwich, half eaten, was clutched in one dead hand. But the most horrible thing, the ultimate indignity, was that a large red apple was crammed in her mouth.
He bent down and felt her pulse. He did it automatically, although he knew she was dead. He saw tyre tracks, faint in the dust of the quarry floor. Then he straightened and looked up at the sky. It was deepening in colour and a puff of damp breeze touched his cheek.
He ran back frantically to where Priscilla was comforting the boys. ‘It’s Peta. She’s dead,’ he said. ‘Get these boys down to Lochdubh, phone Strathbane, and then bring help back here. Get some of the men. Tell them to bring groundsheets and a tent. It’s going to be a storm soon. Hurry! Oh, damn. My uniform.’
He g
rabbed his uniform out of the back of the Range Rover, tore off his casual clothes and changed into it while Priscilla, with quick efficient movements, cleared up the picnic and coaxed the shivering boys into the car.
Hamish ran back to where the body was lying, but this time he stood on guard outside the quarry, not wanting to tread on any clues. He flapped his arms at the buzzards above, only glad that they had not descended for dinner before the body was found.
The sky was turning milky white. The storm would appear to come down, he knew from experience, rather than blowing in from the west. The sky would deepen to grey and then black and then the rain would bucket down, blotting out any clues and those car tracks unless the men arrived first with the groundsheets.
* * *
Jenny Trask missed all the excitement when Priscilla burst into the bar, for she had already left with her forestry worker, Brian Mulligan. They had drunk an awful lot and Jenny had taken him back to the castle bar, where they had drunk more. Looking through the door of the bar, Jenny had seen that the hall and reception desk were deserted, and so it had seemed like a good idea to slip Brian up to her room where eventually, between tangled sheets, the earth did seem to move for her as a most tremendous storm broke, rocking the castle to its foundations with peal after peal of thunder.
Outside, the Volvo, with windows open and sun-roof open, stood in the downpour and rain cascaded in, flooding the interior of the car.
Hamish stood in the pouring rain, shivering miserably. A tent had been erected over Peta’s body and groundsheets covered a good deal of the floor of the quarry. Dr Brodie had examined the body and said he thought she had crammed the whole apple greedily into her mouth and had died of suffocation. Hamish shook his head slowly and said he’d be interested in what the police pathologist had to say.
Men from the village sat out in the road in their cars, passing round half-bottles of whisky and chatting excitedly.
And then the contingent from police headquarters arrived just as the storm clouds were rolling away and a bleak hellish light was beginning to illuminate the depressing scene.
To Hamish’s dismay, first out of the cars was Detective Police Inspector Blair with his sidekicks, Harry MacNab and Jimmy Anderson.
Hamish stared at him stupidly. ‘I thought you were in Spain!’
‘Aye, well, ah’m back,’ growled Blair. ‘Stand aside, laddie, and let the experts get to it.’
The forensic team in white boiler suits were standing ready. The police pathologist went into the tent. Then he poked his head out of the flap and called, ‘The rain’s stopped. You can remove this.’
Several policemen removed the tent. A shaft of watery sunlight shone down, lighting up Peta’s dead face.
‘Jist like a roast pig,’ said Blair with a laugh.
Dr Brodie moved forward. ‘I was just saying to Macbeth here,’ he said to the police pathologist, ‘that this lady had the reputation of being a glutton. It was all over the village. She came here for a picnic and crammed an apple into her mouth and died of suffocation.’
‘She died of suffocation all right,’ said the pathologist, kneeling down by the body again.
To Blair’s irritation, Hamish moved forward. He pointed a long finger to Peta’s nostrils. ‘See those little bruises,’ said Hamish. ‘I think someone rammed the apple in her mouth and pinched her nostrils tight so that she would suffocate. It’s a clear case of murder. She’s lying on a patch of gravel but you can see where it’s churned up about her feet where she writhed about.’
‘Oh, for hivven’s sakes,’ moaned Blair. ‘Waud ye leave the diagnosis tae the experts, you bampot.’ The pathologist looked brightly up at Hamish, like an inquisitive bird. ‘You know this woman, Macbeth?’
‘Yes, Peta Gore is her name. She was partner in a marital agency called Checkmate who brought a party of their clients to Tommel Castle Hotel, where they still are. Although she’s a partner, the firm is really run by a woman called Maria Worth, who had tried to keep the visit secret from Peta. Peta left a note this morning saying she was leaving, that she was walking down to catch the bus. But where are her clothes, where’s her luggage? And she’s a long way from the bus stop.’
The pathologist bent over the body again. ‘You could be right,’ he said. ‘I mean, come to think of it, if she’d started to choke, she would have pulled the apple out of her mouth. If it’s murder, it’s a peculiarly vicious one. And I’ll tell you something else. It isn’t always possible to tell the exact time of death, but I would hazard a guess and say she died sometime last night.’
The groundsheets were being tenderly removed and a photographer was taking pictures of the tyre tracks. ‘Very faint,’ he said. ‘Lucky you were here to get them covered, Macbeth.’
Blair glared at Hamish. Certainly Hamish had solved murders in the past and let Blair take the credit, but when Blair had been leaving headquarters, his super had said, ‘Oh, well, if it’s a murder, I’m sure Hamish will soon have an idea who did it.’
That had rankled. Worse, the super had referred to Macbeth as Hamish, a familiarity which Blair did not like.
Blair threw an arm around Hamish’s shoulders. ‘You’re wet through, laddie,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you run along to that polis station of yours an’ dry off. Anderson here will run you down. Where’s your car, by the way?’
Hamish had no intention of telling Blair that he had been picnicking on the moors with Priscilla when he was supposed to be on duty – not yet anyway.
‘Two wee boys found the body,’ he said. ‘I got someone to drive them back.’
‘Off you go wi’ Anderson then. We’ll call you when we need you.’
‘You’d better,’ said Hamish, ‘or I’ll need to put an independent report into Strathbane.’ He walked off with Jimmy Anderson and left Blair staring after him.
‘So what brought that old scunner back from Spain?’ asked Hamish as Jimmy drove down into Lochdubh. The sky was clearing but a brisk wind had sprung up, ruffling the surface of the loch. The golden days were over and someone had murdered Peta.
‘He got drunk in a bar in one o’ thae places on the Costa Brava and picked a fight wi’ a Spaniard and ended up thumping him one. The Spaniard calls the police. Turns out the Spaniard is head honcho in the town. Blair protests he’s a policeman, Spanish police say in that case he’s more of a disgrace and if he disnae want to be booked, then he’d better get the next plane out.’
‘Why, oh why didn’t they arrest him?’ mourned Hamish.
Mr Johnson, emerging from the castle after the storm, found the soaked Volvo. He got two of the maids and told them to dry and polish the soaked interior and then went to the reception desk where he noticed Jenny’s key was missing, which meant she must be in her room.
He went upstairs and knocked loudly on her door. Jenny struggled awake, forgot there was someone in bed with her, and called, ‘Come in!’
Mr Johnson walked into the hotel bedroom and stopped short. Beside Jenny on the bed, a man was struggling up with a sheepish look on his face. The free and easy days of liberated sex had not yet reached as far north as Tommel Castle. Couples sharing rooms were expected to be married, or at least to have the decency to pretend to be.
‘When you are ready, Miss Trask,’ he said severely, ‘I would like to see you in my office.’
He turned and walked out, slamming the door behind him.
‘You’d better go,’ said Jenny.
‘Aw, come on, darlin’,’ said Brian, ‘you’re not afraid of that old toffee-nose.’
‘No, no, you must go,’ said Jenny almost hysterically. He got up and stretched lazily and put his clothes on while Jenny snatched up her own clothes and fled into the bathroom, her face red with shame. Once dressed, she stood there for a long time, hoping Brian would leave.
At last she opened the door. He was sitting on the bed and stood up when he saw her.
‘Get out,’ she said in a thin voice.
He grinned at her and winked.
<
br /> She walked to the bedroom door and held it open. He gave her a slap on the bottom and then strolled out, whistling jauntily.
Jenny sank down into a chair. Her mouth felt dry and her head ached. How could she have done such a thing and with such a lout? How was it he had seemed so attractive, so interesting?
To him, she had been an easy lay, a pick-up, and now she had to face the manager.
But she didn’t move. She just sat there, staring into space, and wishing, like Peta, she, too, could run away.
Hamish changed into dry clothes and went to the Ferguson’s home to interview the two boys. Their father owned the Lochdubh Bakery and the family lived in a flat over the shop. He met Dr Brodie on the stairs. ‘I’ve just given the children tranquillizers, Hamish,’ said the doctor. ‘Actually, I gave them a couple of indigestion tablets, but the parents think they’re tranquillizers and that’s all that matters. The trouble with people is that they always expect some drug.’
Hamish went up and knocked at the door, which was opened by Mrs Ferguson, a thin waif of a woman except for her hands, which were large and strong and red.
‘Och, Hamish,’ she said when she saw him. ‘Do you haff to speak to the weans now?’
‘Only take a minute,’ said Hamish. ‘Where are they?’
‘Watchin’ the telly.’
Hamish went into the small cluttered living room. The boys were in their dressing-gowns and pyjamas, watching a showing of ‘Murder on Elm Street’ on television. Hamish switched the set off. ‘That’ll not do you any good, boys.’
‘We’ve had the pills,’ said Jamie proudly. ‘Dr Brodie said they wass anti-fright pills.’
‘Nonetheless, you don’t want to have nightmares when the effect wears off,’ said Hamish. ‘Read a comic instead.’ He picked one up from a pile on the sofa beside them. On the lurid cover a woman with her dress half off was about to be raped by a green alien. It was called Revenge of Zork. He put it down with a shudder. ‘Maybe not. Now, boys –’ he took out his notebook – ‘tell me how you found the body. Jamie, you’d better do it.’
‘We wass up in the hills for a walk,’ said Jamie, ‘and Bill and me wanted tae look at the auld quarry. Then we saw her. She was awful. Great staring eyes.’ He gulped.
