Death of a Travelling Man

by Beaton, M. C.

  ‘Of course not. Why?’

  ‘Mr Patel kept shaking my hand and saying, “Congratulations.”‘

  ‘He probably knows you were there with me when we caught Cheryl,’ said Hamish.

  ‘That must be it,’ said Priscilla doubtfully.

  Nessie Currie erupted into the room and glared at her sister. ‘So this is where ye are!’ she cried. ‘And drinking champagne like the veriest whore. Shame on ye. Are ye not in enough trouble as it is? Are ye …?’

  Jessie smiled mistily at her sister over the rim of her champagne glass as Mrs Wellington interrupted Nessie’s tirade with a booming cry of ‘Hamish has burnt the video and you’ve got most of your money back.’

  Nessie sank down slowly into a chair and heard the whole story. ‘Oh, my,’ she said weakly, ‘and here’s me ranting and raving. And of course there’s every reason why we should be drinking champagne on this happy day, Miss Halburton-Smythe. Yes, I’ll hae a glass and drink to your health.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Priscilla in surprise.

  Angela smiled teasingly at Hamish. She already looked years younger. ‘John always said you’d never do it, Hamish, but I was sure you would.’

  ‘I’m surprised at Dr Brodie,’ said Hamish. ‘I haff solved the murders afore.’

  ‘Oh, not that. When is it to be?’

  ‘When’s what?’

  ‘Why, your wedding!’

  ‘What wedding?’ howled Hamish.

  ‘It’s in the Gazette this morning,’ said Angela, puzzled. ‘You and Priscilla.’

  ‘Oh, my poor father,’ said Priscilla weakly. ‘He’ll have a stroke.’

  ‘You mean,’ said Angela, her face falling, ‘that you haven’t … that you didn’t know anything about it?’

  ‘Not a thing.’

  The phone rang in the police station office. Hamish went to answer it. It was Superintendent Peter Daviot from Strathbane. ‘Well done, Hamish,’ he cried.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Hamish modestly. ‘I was just doing my job.’

  ‘Not your job, man, your engagement. Terrific news. My wife’s going out to look for an engagement present for you.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘Not another word, you sly dog!’

  And the superintendent rang off.

  ‘Don’t worry, Hamish,’ came Priscilla’s voice from next to him. ‘We’ll get the paper to print an apology.’

  He twisted his head and looked up at her. She looked amused, cool and beautiful … and distant.

  With one abrupt movement, he pushed back his chair, and reaching up an arm, jerked her down on to his knees and began to kiss her, dizzy with emotion, fatigue, whisky and champagne.

  The phone began to ring again but both ignored it. Willie walked in and picked it up. ‘Oh, it’s yerself, Mrs Macbeth,’ he said to Hamish’s mother. ‘Yes, that’s right. Well, himself is tied up at the moment. I’ll get him to ring back.’

  He shook his head over the entwined couple and went out.

  ‘Who was that?’ murmured Priscilla against Hamish’s lips.

  ‘Don’t know and don’t care. Kiss me again.’

  ‘Is this a proposal, Hamish?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Well, take your hand out of my brassiere and listen to me for a moment.’

  Hamish gave her a wounded look. ‘You’re not going to be sensible, are you?’

  ‘Yes, I am. I don’t think I trust you, Hamish. I love you but I don’t trust you. I think you’ve got too much of an eye for the ladies.’

  ‘But I’m proposing to you, Priscilla.’

  ‘Okay, but just an engagement, a long engagement.’

  ‘Anything you say.’

  ‘Do you love me?’

  ‘I’ve been trying not to for years.’

  ‘Now kiss me again.’

  Willie arrived back at the police station. It was as quiet as the grave. He walked into the living room and scowled at the mess of dirty glasses and empty champagne bottles. Then he saw a note addressed to himself pinned on Hamish’s bedroom door. He took it down and opened it. It said, ‘Tell everyone I have gone out. Must get some sleep. Hamish.’

  But Willie wanted to tell Hamish that he was leaving, so he gently opened Hamish’s bedroom door. Hamish and Priscilla were lying together on Hamish’s narrow bed. They were both fast asleep. They were lying on top of the bedclothes, fully dressed with all their clothes, and with Towser at their feet, but Willie blushed furiously and quickly shut the door again.

  Then he brightened as he turned and looked around the messy room. He would give the police station one last good clean-up.

  Mr Wellington returned home that evening after a round of visits to the old and sick in the parish. He expected his wife to be asleep. He had complained to Dr Brodie about the number of sleeping pills she was taking, but Dr Brodie said that she must be getting them from another doctor, possibly in Strathbane. To his surprise, he smelled cooking, delicious cooking. It seemed he had been having squalid cold meals for ages.

  ‘Ah, there you are,’ said his wife briskly as he entered the large manse kitchen. ‘Sit down. Dinner’s nearly ready. Steak-and-kidney pie, mashed potatoes and Brussels sprouts, and make sure you eat all your greens, dear. You’ve been looking peaky of late.’

  ‘Yes, my love,’ said the minister happily.

  ‘Oh, by the way, that money that was missing from the Mothers’ Union turned up again. It was left in the church hall on the kitchen counter … no note, no anything. We’re all quite sure it was a passing tramp or someone like that who had a fit of conscience and put it back.’

  Mrs Wellington briskly and efficiently took a golden-crusted steak-and-kidney pie out of the oven.

  Mr Wellington clasped his hands and bowed his head. ‘Thank you, God,’ he said.

  ‘Why, you’re praying,’ cried Mrs Wellington.

  ‘Why, so I am,’ said the minister.

  Dr Brodie could not quite put his finger on it but he knew that things had changed the minute he opened the door and walked into his house. He went into the kitchen. His wife was sitting behind a pile of textbooks as usual, but there seemed to be a lightness in the very air.

  ‘I feel a bit daft,’ he said, sitting down. ‘I was checking the drugs cabinet and I found those missing packets of morphine. They’d got stuck inside a packet of something else. I should call Hamish.’

  Angela smiled at him. ‘Leave it till tomorrow. I thought we would eat out tonight. I’ve booked a table at the Napoli.’

  ‘Great idea. Why don’t you wear one of your new dresses?’

  ‘I haven’t got them.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘I sold them down in Inverness. That’s where I’ve been today,’ lied Angela. ‘I got most of the money back.’

  ‘Well, good for you. I didn’t know you could get any money at all for second-hand clothes.’

  ‘These were models.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about women’s clothes, but if it means dinner at the Napoli, then that’s grand.’

  Hamish woke early in the evening and stretched out and felt around for Priscilla. But she had gone. He groaned and sat up and went through to the police office. There was a long string of messages and demands to call back. He began to work his way through them, starting with his mother, and so down to Jimmy Anderson.

  ‘Thought you’d like to know,’ said Anderson, ‘that we got that pop band to crack and they admitted covering up for Cheryl.’

  ‘That’s grand.’

  ‘The bad news is that I visited Blair in hospital. He’s made a complete recovery, but he’s been told to stay off the booze and go to Alcoholics Anonymous.’

  ‘God grant them the serenity when Blair turns up, cursing and blinding, at one o’ their meetings,’ said Hamish with feeling.

  ‘Can you imagine what he’ll be like sober?’ demanded Anderson peevishly. ‘The only time that man’s human is when he’s drunk. Talking about getting drunk, are you celebrating your engagement?’r />
  ‘I plan to. I’ve lost her for the moment.’

  ‘Good luck tae ye. Her father’s probably taking a horsewhip to her right now. What d’ye think o’ Willie leaving the force?’

  ‘I didn’t know. He didn’t tell me.’

  ‘He’s going into the restaurant business. The trouble is we cannae find a copper at the moment to replace him, so you’re on your own again.’

  Bliss, thought Hamish, after he had rung off. Sheer bliss.

  He picked up the phone again and rang the castle and with bad luck got Priscilla’s father on the other end. In a mild voice, he asked to speak to Priscilla.

  ‘Before I get my daughter,’ said the colonel in a low, quiet voice, quite unlike his usual blustering tones, ‘if you think you are going to marry her, you’ve got another think coming. She will never marry you, Hamish Macbeth, and I will do my best to stop you. I am warning you.’

  ‘So I’m warned,’ snapped Hamish. ‘Just get her.’

  When Priscilla answered, she said hurriedly, ‘Meet me at the Napoli in about ten minutes. I’ve got to get out of here.’

  ‘That bad?’

  ‘Worse. He’s gone all quiet and sinister and Mummy keeps crying and saying I’m ruining my life.’

  ‘They’ll get used to it,’ said Hamish heartlessly.

  The Napoli was crowded. Willie and Lucia were seated at the best table with Mr Ferrari, all toasting each other with Asti Spumanti. Before Hamish could join Priscilla, Mr Ferrari waved him over. ‘So what do you think about Willie managing this business for me?’

  ‘Grand,’ said Hamish, shaking Willie’s hand. ‘Just grand. All the best.’

  Mr Ferrari gave him a baffled look. ‘You are pleased to be losing such a good officer?’

  ‘I’m pleased because he’s happy,’ said Hamish.

  Mr Ferrari gave a sudden amused shrug. ‘You are a man of many surprises, Hamish.’

  Hamish threaded his way through the tables towards Priscilla, accepting the congratulations of the locals.

  She was wearing a slim low-cut silk dress with a delicate necklace of small emeralds set in gold. Her face was calm and beautiful.

  He felt a momentary pang of unease. This was the beauty he was going to share his policestation life with! It seemed incredible.

  ‘I know,’ said Priscilla sympathetically, although he had not spoken, ‘it takes some getting used to.’

  ‘It’s been quite a day,’ said Hamish awkwardly. He felt desperately shy of her for the first time.

  He fought to find a topic of conversation and then remembered that Sean’s mother was due to arrive on the following day and that Ian Chisholm at the garage had promised to make her an offer for the bus. When he had exhausted that topic of conversation and ordered the meal, he sat in a miserable silence.

  Priscilla stood up with one graceful fluid movement, came round the table and kissed him full on the mouth.

  ‘Better?’ she asked as she sat down again.

  Hamish’s face suddenly lit up with sheer happiness.

  ‘Better? I’m in heaven!’

  The next day dawned fine and warm. Hamish dealt with the painful business of Mrs Gourlay, who turned out to be a small, quiet, faded lady, not in the least like her flamboyant son.

  When it was all over, he went to the henhouse and dragged an old deck-chair out, cleaned it and put it on the patch of grass in front of the police station and stretched out on it.

  ‘Quite like old times. I say quite like old times,’ came a familiar voice from the hedge.

  Hamish straightened up and found the Currie sisters looking at him. But suddenly, as he looked at Jessie, he had an embarrassing picture of how she had looked naked on that video and somehow that picture seemed to have transferred itself in that moment from his mind to Jessie’s.

  She blushed deep red, gave a strangled squawk, and sped off, dragging her sister after her.

  Hamish lay back in his deck-chair and grinned.

  If you enjoyed Death of a Travelling Man, read on for the first chapter of the next book in the Hamish Macbeth series …

  Chapter One

  The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the

  Monstrous Regiment of Women.

  – John Knox

  Hamish Macbeth opened the curtains of his bedroom window, scratched his chest lazily and looked out at the loch. It was a bleached sort of day, the high milky-white cloud with the sun behind it draining colour from the loch, from the surrounding hills, as if the village of Lochdubh were in some art film, changing from colour to black and white. He opened the window and a gust of warm damp air blew in along with a cloud of stinging midges, those Highland mosquitoes. He slammed the window again and turned and looked at his rumpled bed. There had been no crime for months, no villains to engage the attentions of Police Sergeant Macbeth. There was, therefore, no reason why he could not crawl back into that bed and dream another hour away.

  And then he heard it … faint sounds of scrubbing from the kitchen.

  Priscilla!

  The sweetness of his unofficial engagement to Priscilla Halburton-Smythe, daughter of a local hotelier and landowner, was fast fading. Cool Priscilla would never deliver herself of such a trite saying as ‘I am making a man of you, Hamish Macbeth,’ but that, thought Hamish gloomily, was what she was trying to do. He did not want to be made a man of, he wanted to slouch around the village, gossiping, poaching, and free-loading as he had always done in the tranquil days before his engagement.

  There came a grinding of wheels outside, the slamming of doors, and then Priscilla’s voice, ‘Oh, good. Bring it right in here.’

  Bring what?

  He opened the bedroom door and ambled into the kitchen. Where his wood-burning stove had stood, there was a blank space. Two men in uniforms of the Hydro-Electric Board were carrying in a gleaming new electric cooker.

  ‘Whit’s this?’ demanded Hamish sharply.

  Priscilla flashed him a smile. ‘Oh, Hamish, you lazy thing. It was to be a surprise. I’ve got rid of that nasty old cooker of yours and bought a new electric one. Surprise!’

  Hampered by Highland politeness, Hamish stifled his cry that he wanted his old stove back and mumbled, ‘Thank you. You should-nae hae done it.’

  ‘Miss Halburton-Smythe!’ boomed a voice from the doorway and in lumbered the tweedy figure of Mrs Wellington, the minister’s wife. ‘I came to see the new cooker,’ she said. ‘My, isn’t that grand. You’re a lucky man, Hamish Macbeth.’

  Hamish gave a smile which was more like a rictus and backed off. ‘Aye, chust grand. If you ladies will excuse me, I’ll wash and shave.’

  He went into the newly painted bathroom and looked bleakly at the shower unit over the bath. ‘Much more hygenic, Hamish. You spend too much time wallowing in the bath,’ echoed Priscilla’s voice in his head.

  He washed and shaved at the handbasin, taking a childish pleasure in deciding to have neither shower nor bath. He went back to the bedroom and put on his regulation shirt and trousers and cap. Then he opened the bedroom window and climbed out, feeling a guilty sense of freedom. Towser, his mongrel dog, came bounding around the side of the house to join him. He set off along the waterfront with the dog at his heels. He had forgotten his stick of repellent but was reluctant to go back and fetch it, so he went into Patel’s, the general store, and bought a stick. Jessie and Nessie Currie, the spinster sisters, were buying groceries.

  ‘I heard you had the new cooker,’ said Jessie. ‘The new cooker.’ She had an irritating habit of repeating everything.

  ‘You’re the lucky man,’ said Nessie. ‘We wass just saying the other day, a fine young woman like Miss Halburton-Smythe is mair than you deserve.’

  ‘Be the making of you, the making of you,’ said Jessie.

  Hamish smiled weakly and retreated.

  He went along and sat on the harbour wall and watched the fishing boats bobbing at anchor. There was something about him, he decided, pushing back his cap and scratching his red
hair, which brought out the cleaning beast in people. He had successfully rid himself of Willie Lamont, his police constable, now working at the Italian restaurant, after Willie had nearly driven him mad with his cleaning. The first few heady days of his unofficial engagement to Priscilla had not lasted very long. At first it seemed right that she should start to reorganize the police station, considering she was going to live there. It had to be admitted that the station did need a good clean. But every day? And then she had decided he was not eating properly, and to Hamish’s mind nourishing meals meant boring meals, and the more nourishing meals he received from Priscilla’s fair hands, the more he thought of going down to Inverness for the day and stuffing himself with junk food. He felt disloyal, but he could not also help feeling rather wistful as he remembered the days when his life had been his own. He remembered reading a letter in an agony column from a ‘distressed’ housewife in which she had complained her husband did not give her enough ‘space’ and he had thought then, cynically, that the woman had little to complain about. Now he knew what she felt. For not only was Priscilla always underfoot, banging pots and pans, but the ladies of the village had taken to calling, and the police station was full of the sound of female voices, all praising Priscilla’s improvements. He was sure the police station would be full of them for the rest of the day. A new electric cooker in Lochdubh was the equivalent of a guest appearance by Madonna anywhere else.

  He slid down off the wall and headed back along the waterfront and up out of the village, with Towser loping at his heels. Hamish had decided to go to the Tommel Castle Hotel, now run by Priscilla’s father, to see if Mr Johnston, the manager, would give him a cup of coffee. Priscilla’s home seemed to be the one place these days where he was sure he would not run into her.

  Mr Johnston was in his office. He smiled when he saw Hamish and nodded towards the coffee percolator in the corner. ‘Help yourself, Hamish. It’s a long time since you’ve come mooching around. Where’s Priscilla?’