by M C Beaton
There came the clump of official boots and voices from the hall.
“Not again,” groaned Lady Helmsdale. “I’ve made so many statements, I’ve given fingerprints, I’ve watched coppers searching my undies—I feel like shooting the lot of them.”
The door opened, and Chalmers came in. Behind him came Blair, Anderson, and MacNab, who took up positions round the room. Then came Hamish Macbeth, followed by what looked like a shorter, squatter version of himself—Rory Grant.
Priscilla wondered if Hamish was ill. A thin sheen of sweat filmed his face, and his eyes were hard and fixed.
“Go ahead, Macbeth,” said Chalmers quietly.
Hamish knows the identity of the murderer, thought Priscilla hysterically. “He hasn’t once looked at the teapot.”
“It’s been a difficult case,” said Hamish quietly. “So many of you had reason to want Bartlett dead. But only one of you had the nerve, the lack of morals, and the sheer cunning to kill not only Bartlett but Mrs Forbes-Grant as well. And one of you had exceptional luck. These crimes were the work of a gifted amateur.”
He fumbled in a pocket of his tweed sports jacket and brought out a notebook and glanced down at one of the pages.
Priscilla looked around the room. Every face was tense and strained. Who did it?
“I was not absolutely sure of the identity of the killer until last night,” said Hamish.
Diana’s voice rang out, high and sharp. “You don’t know at all! You haven’t a clue. You’re watching us to see if anyone looks guilty. You’ve been watching too many films, just like that stupid maid.”
“No,” said Hamish. “I know who did it. It was you…Henry Withering.”
There was a stunned silence.
Then Henry said in an amused voice, “This is better than the theatre. Do go on. Why on earth should I kill Bartlett?”
“Because Captain Peter Bartlett wrote Duchess Darling. Not you.”
“Rubbish,” said Henry calmly. “It’s had reviews in all the papers. It’s a box-office smash. He would have said something.”
“You probably changed the title. Captain Bartlett said he only read the racing papers. He knew you had a success. He’d heard that. He did not know it was his play until the night of the party I attended. Miss Smythe quoted a line from the play. Captain Bartlett looked highly amused. You were very angry and told Miss Smythe to shut up. This is how I think it happened:
“Captain Bartlett’s aunt, Mrs Frobisher, said the captain had a magpie mind. He was always adopting other people’s enthusiasms and hobbies. He even started collecting china after he had been to Sir Humphrey Throgmorton’s.”
“What!” exclaimed Sir Humphrey, evidently more shocked by this revelation than by the identity of the murderer.
“He was living with you, Henry Withering, for a short while. You wrote plays. He decided to write one. You made out you had ‘written down’ when you wrote Duchess Darling. You said you had produced something silly and trite because that was what the West End theatres wanted. I saw the play in London. I didn’t think much about it until afterwards. Whoever wrote that play believed in every silly line. If I looked at it another way round and thought of the personality of Captain Bartlett, then it all made sense.”
“You’re talking rot,” said Henry. No-one shrank from him, not even Priscilla. It was obvious that everyone in the room thought Hamish was talking rubbish as well.
“Captain Bartlett left the play behind when he quit your flat and you found it After a time, dawned on you that this might just be what th public wanted. You must have enjoyed trickin them. Anyway, I think Captain Bartlett, who wa a notorious gambler and sponger, confronted yoi with it after the party. I think he would have exposed you at the party in front of everyone—anc thereby saved his life—if he had wanted to take the credit. I suggest he told you you could keep the fame so long as you passed all the money over to him. There was something about you, all the same, that made even the bold captain worried. He told me he was sure someone was out to get him. So, as insurance, he told Vera Forbes-Grant. Miss Smythe overheard Vera saying ‘You can’t have. I don’t believe it. Not you of all people.’ ”
Hamish turned to Freddy. “Did your wife have any money of her own, Mr Forbes-Grant?”
“No,” said Freddy dismally. “Not a penny. I gave her a generous allowance. But not too much. She would have left me if I had given her more. She thought I was stupid, that I didn’t know she’d had an affair with Bartlett. I didn’t want to lose her. I loved her.” He began to cry in a helpless, dreary way.
“Your wife may have had a soft spot for the captain,” said Hamish, “but she loved money more than anything or anybody. She knew now what the captain had known. Henry was awake that night after the party, watching and waiting. Perhaps he planned to follow Bartlett when the captain went out as planned with Mr Pomfret, wait until they separated, shoot Bartlett, and throw the blame on Mr Pomfret. But he happened to see the captain going out long before the appointed time. Having rigged it to look like suicide, he returned and went to bed, confident he would never be found out. Luck had been on his side. No-one else had been awake when the captain went out.
“Then Vera told him she knew Bartlett was the author of the play. I think Henry agreed to pay her while waiting his chance. As in the first murder, he waited for the right opportunity and seized it. He took a can of roach powder from the cupboard under the sink in the school kitchen, poured it into a bowl of cake mix, and then baked that batch of cakes himself. It was easily done. Everyone was milling about, beating up cake mix and putting cakes in the oven.”
“But Vera couldn’t have suspected Henry,” cried Priscilla. “She believed Freddy had done it. She was proud of him.”
“She wanted to think Freddy had done it. It made her into the femme fatale she’d always wanted to be. It removed any fear of Henry. Henry must have denied he murdered Bartlett. He wouldn’t have wanted Vera to know that as well. She would have asked for double the money. Henry put the gloves into Freddy’s room, a clumsy trick, but it paid off. Freddy thought Vera had murdered Bartlett, and so he confessed.
“I took a lot of the baking to the fair myself. But other people were going up and carrying stuff as well. Henry and Priscilla arrived with Mr and Mrs Wellington. They had boxes of cakes in the car. All Henry had to do was extract his box and put it with all the things he’d bought at the fair.
“I don’t think he even needed to give Vera the cakes. He knew her passion for sweet stuff. All he had to do was put them in her room. He had nothing to do with that dummy strung up over her bed. The Chief Superintendent here already knows that was a particularly nasty trick played by Jessica Villiers and Diana Bryce.”
Jessica began to cry, but Diana looked defiantly round the room.
“You can’t arrest us for a trick,” she said. “We didn’t murder Peter.”
“But Henry Withering did,” said Hamish flatly.
Henry leaned his head against the back of his chair. He appeared very relaxed and amused.
“You’re guessing and you know it,” he said. “You haven’t a shred of proof.”
Hamish went out to the hall and came back in carrying a large box.
“After the supposed suicide of Bartlett had been discovered to be murder, you gave this parcel to Charles French of London Television News. You told him it was some clothes you didnae want and he was to leave it at their reception desk in London and you would pick it up when you went back south. French didn’t think anything about it. You are a famous playwright. Perhaps you gave him some exclusive background.”
Hamish opened the box. “In here,” he said, “we have cleaning equipment from the gun room, and a pair of thin plastic gloves like the kind women wear when they’re bleaching their hair. In the bathroom cabinet in your room, there was a clutter of stuff left by previous occupants, including a hairdressing product for bleaching the hair. There is also a raincoat stained with gun oil. It was clever of you. The post office w
ould have told us if anyone from the castle had posted a parcel.” He nodded to Anderson and MacNab.
“Wait a bit,” said Colonel Halburton-Smythe. “You cannot arrest Mr Withering. He’s my daughter’s fiance!”
“All right,” said Henry. “Now you’ve got that parcel, there’s no point in me pretending any longer. But why couldn’t it have been anyone other than you, Macbeth? To be found out by the local yokel!” He gave a harsh laugh. “But it was the way you described it. Peter was sharing my flat. You’re right about him adopting other people’s enthusiasms. I was working on a play, Animal Firm, and he said he never went to the theatre because you couldn’t see jolly plays any more. Then he said he would write one. God, how I laughed. But he had tremendous energy and could do without sleep and he worked day and night. Before he could send it to anyone, he started pursuing some girl, I forget her name. He forgot all about the play. Anyway, he wasn’t paying any rent, and I told him to leave.
“I came across his stupid play one evening after Animal Firm, the best thing I’d ever written, had been rejected by the National Theatre. Peter’s play was so awful, it was priceless. I was about to throw it away when I thought suddenly that if I polished it up a bit and changed the title, it might appeal to all the Peter Bartletts of this world who wanted something that wouldn’t strain their brains. I gave it to an impresario who thought up the idea of having it expensively dressed and bringing back some of the famous lords and dames of the theatre.
When it took off, I thought I’d better square Peter, but I couldn’t find him. I didn’t know he’d gone back to the army. When all the publicity began to appear and Peter didn’t get in touch with me, I thought I was safe. The title was different and a good lot of the lines were mine—or rather, I’d polished up Peter’s lines.
“When I saw him here, I felt sick. But it dawned on me very quickly he hadn’t a clue I’d used his play. I didn’t think he’d be likely to see it. It was ages since he’d been to the theatre. Then Pruney started quoting from it. He came to my room that night. I told him he had no way of proving it was his play, but he said he could dig up some old friends he had told at the time about it, and that he would make enough of a stink to cast doubts on the authorship. Then he said I could have the fame if he could have the money—all of it. I agreed, but I knew I’d have to kill him. Sooner or later, he’d tell someone. He was proud it had been put on and thought it a famous joke. He wouldn’t have kept it secret long, not with the way he drank.” Henry fell silent. Anderson and MacNab moved towards him, but stopped as he began to speak again.
“I didn’t think of shooting him. Not at first. I stayed up all night, keeping a watch on his door. I saw Vera go in and Pruney listening, but I couldn’t get nearer to hear what was said. I thought if he came out to go on the prowl, I’d push him down the stairs or something like that. I nearly fell asleep, nearly was asleep when he came out with his shooting togs on. The rest was as you described. I put the cleaning stuff and a raincoat in that box and hid it in a bush behind one of those pillars at the gates. I knew I had to move the box because sooner or later the police would find it. Funny, if I’d just wiped my fingerprints off everything and dumped it…Still, I can’t think of everything,” said Henry with a ghastly social smile. “I gave the parcel to that journalist. He never thought anything odd about it. I was lucky all along. Yes, Vera blackmailed me. I had to make love to her to convince her I was a gentle, caring soul and not a murderer. I promised to pay her to keep quiet about the play. But I knew I’d have to get rid of her as well.” He turned in his chair towards Priscilla, who shrank away from him. “No publicity is bad publicity. Isn’t that right, darling?” As Anderson and MacNab came up on either side of him, he rose to his feet. “You should see your stupid faces,” he said. And then he began to laugh. He was still laughing as they led him from the room.
The trial of Henry Withering, with all its attendant publicity, was over at last. Priscilla Halburton-Smythe, who had vague thoughts of returning to her job, stayed on at Tommel Castle instead. Winter was settling down on the Sutherland mountains.
Colonel and Mrs Halburton-Smythe had been shocked and shaken over Henry Withering’s arrest. Their shock had not improved their attitude to their daughter. Fear of what might have happened to her made them treat her more like a fragile blossom than ever. They kept begging her not to return to London, to stay in Sutherland where it was ‘safe’ from doubtful suitors such as Henry.
It was when they said they had invited Jeremy Pomfret to dinner and made it obvious they had begun to look on him in the light of a possible son-in-law that Priscilla decided to make her escape back to London.
Jeremy, who had sworn not to stay at Tommel Castle again, had nonetheless accepted the invitation. He had enjoyed all the publicity surrounding the murder trial and seeing his picture iri the newspapers, and so the cold castle had become endowed with a certain glamour in his eyes. It was small comfort to Priscilla that that glamour obviously did not extend to herself. She had not seen Hamish since the day Henry had been accused of murder. Her parents were, irrationally, furious with Hamish, blaming him obscurely for all the notoriety that had descended on their home.
Priscilla thought Hamish might have gone to Strathbane, for surely the solving of two murders would be enough to give a village constable instant promotion. She was surprised one morning to hear Jenkins complaining that Hamish Macbeth was becoming lazier and ruder every day.
All at once Priscilla wanted to see Hamish, to talk about the murder, to talk as much of it out of her brain as possible. It was a forbidden subject at Tommel Castle.
She drove down to Lochdubh, hearing her car tyres crackle over puddles of ice in the road, seeing the snow-capped mountains glittering against a pale blue sky.
The police station looked deserted and, for a moment, she thought Jenkins might have been mistaken and Hamish had left.
She made her way round the back of the station.
Hamish was just climbing over the fence into his garden from the croft at the back, two empty feed pails in his hands. His red hair flamed in the sunlight and his tall, lanky figure looked safe and reassuring.
He stood for a moment watching Priscilla, and then he walked forward.
“I didn’t think you were going to speak to me again,” he said.
Priscilla smiled. “I’ve been upset and shocked, Hamish. But I’ve got over it now. I’m thinking of leaving for London next week.”
“Aye, going back to the same job?”
“No, I’ve lost that. It was a silly little job anyway with a miserable pay. I think I might train for something—computers or something.”
“Come into the kitchen and I’ll make us some tea.”
Priscilla followed Hamish into the kitchen and sat down at the table. Towser put his head in her lap and gazed up at her soulfully.
“I thought you would have been promoted,” said Priscilla, stroking Towser’s head and watching Hamish as he got the tea-things out of the cupboard.
“Didn’t you hear?” said Hamish. “Poor Mr Chalmers. He died of a heart attack. Blair took the credit for everything. Didn’t you read about it in the reports of the trial?”
“I wasn’t called as a witness,” said Priscilla, “and Mummy and Daddy told the servants to stop delivery of the newspapers.”
“I thought Jeremy Pomfret might have told you,” said Hamish, giving her a sidelong look.
“Jessie’s been gossiping,” said Priscilla.
“Sounded to me like you were going to be Mrs Pomfret.”
“Let’s not talk about Jeremy. Didn’t either of those two detectives tell anyone it was you who was responsible for solving the murder?”
“No, they have to work with Blair.”
“But Rory Grant wrote a dramatic exclusive about how you solved the murder.”
“It was an exclusive. The other papers, and some of them with much bigger circulations, carried Blair’s version. Nobody could write anything until after the trial. S
ub judice. By that time Chalmers was dead. I’m glad in a way. I like it here.”
“Yes,” said Priscilla, wondering not for the first time why Hamish’s homely, cluttered police station always seemed a safer, cosier, and more welcome place than Tommel Castle.
He put a cup of tea in front of her. “Bring it through to the living room,” he said. “I’ve been making some improvements.”
Priscilla obediently walked through to the living room and then stood and looked around. There was a new carpet on the floor, a warm red shaggy carpet. The walls had been newly papered and two pretty chintz-covered armchairs were placed in front of the fire.
“This is lovely, Hamish,” said Priscilla. “How on earth could you afford all this? I know you send every penny home.”
Hamish grinned. “I kept a wee bit o’ the grouse money back for myself.”
“The grouse money?”
“Aye, it was the morning of the murder. I found Angus, the poacher, dead-drunk down at the harbour with a brace o’ grouse in his back pocket. I was going to return them to your father. Well, there was the murder and all. That helicopter was standing by, and after I had taken down the pilot’s statement, I remembered Captain Bartlett telling me the pilot had instructions to hand over two thousand pounds for the first brace. So I went to my car where I’d left Angus’s birds and took them and handed them over.”
He beamed at her proudly.
Priscilla carefully put down her cup and got to her feet. “A man had been shot, his chest blown away,” she said in a thin voice, “and all you could think of, you great moocher, was how to turn it to your advantage!”
She turned and ran from the house.
Hamish stood for a moment, staring at the spot where she had been.
Then he sprinted out of the room, out of the house and into the garden.
Priscilla was standing by her car, leaning her head on the roof. Her shoulders were shaking.
He came cautiously up behind her. “Dinnae take it so hard,” he pleaded. “It iss not me who’s the murderer.”
She turned round and buried her face on his shoulder.
