by M C Beaton
Priscilla had decided to visit Mrs Mackay, she of the green bottle and the bad leg. Henry had readily agreed to go with her. Putting thirty miles between himself and Tommel Castle seemed an excellent idea.
Despite the police investigation, Henry was in a high good humour. He had received a visit from several members of the local Crofters Commission who had formally asked him if he could still be counted on to hand out the prizes at the fair on the following day. They had been courteous and highly flattering. Henry had been made to feel like a local squire.
As Priscilla drove competently along the Highland roads, he looked out across the glittering windy landscape and thought it might be quite a good idea to buy a castle. There seemed to be castles all over Scotland for sale. It would be wonderful publicity. Somehow, he must manage to get himself a coat of arms. If he sold the film rights of Duchess Darling, they could film the whole thing in his castle. He had more than enough money to decorate it in style. Then, after his marriage, he would invite journalists from the Sunday newspaper colour supplements. Yes, a castle was a definite possibility.
Priscilla looked beautiful and happy. Just getting away from the gloomy atmosphere of death was enough to make both of them feel like schoolchildren at the beginning of the holidays.
Henry told her to stop when they were on a deserted stretch of road and then took her in his arms. She was passionate and responsive, and he felt a heady feeling of triumph as his hand slid up under her skirt for the first time. But his searching hand stopped short of its goal. He had a sudden prickling feeling at the back of his neck, a feeling he was being watched.
He released Priscilla and turned around. An elderly man was peering in the car at Henry’s side.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ shouted Henry.
‘I wass passing,’ said the old man in a quavery voice, ‘and I thought to myself, thought I, Those people are having the bad trouble with the steering. I saw you both fumbling away.’
‘Mr McPhee,’ said Priscilla, who had recognized the old man, ‘we were not having trouble with anything at all. Thank you for your concern.’
Mr McPhee smiled. ‘It is not any trouble at all, at all. Are you sure it is not your clutch that is wrong?’
‘No, not my clutch,’ said Priscilla, and giggled, and that giggle of hers made Henry even more furious.
‘Drive on,’ he said.
‘I haven’t introduced you,’ said Priscilla. ‘Mr McPhee, this is my fiancé, Henry Withering. Henry, Mr McPhee.’
‘Oh, of course, you are that playwright that everyone iss talking about,’ said Mr McPhee. ‘It iss a grand thing to have a way with the words. I mind my daughter Elsie’s youngest boy, David, was a fair hand with the words when he wass at the school.’
‘Priscilla, will you drive on or do I have to get out and walk?’ snapped Henry.
‘Goodbye, Mr McPhee,’ said Priscilla politely. ‘I am sorry we have to rush. Give my regards to the family.’
‘How on earth could you bear to be civil to that dirty old Peeping Tom!’ raged Henry, as soon as they had started moving.
‘He is not a Peeping Tom,’ said Priscilla. ‘His eyesight is bad. He is very old, but very kind and charming. Furthermore, that grandson of his, David, is now the drama correspondent of the Glasgow Bulletin. You ought to be nice to people while you’re on the way up, darling. You might meet them on the way down.’
‘I’m no longer “on the way up”,’ said Henry crossly. ‘I’ve already arrived!’
Priscilla drove on in a grim silence until they turned off the road and bumped up a heathery track to the Mackays’ little white croft house, which was perched on the side of a hill.
‘Now, do be nice,’ cautioned Priscilla.
‘Of course,’ said Henry sulkily, wondering whether to remind Priscilla that a leading London columnist had described him as ‘the most charming man in London’.
Henry brightened perceptibly as soon as they were inside the croft house. He was always on the look-out for things to add to his store of witty after-dinner conversation. He took one look around the Mackays’ living room and treasured up each bit of bad taste. The carpet was virulent green and ornamented with sugar-pink cabbage roses. The wallpaper was in an orange-and-black abstract pattern. There were horrible china ornaments everywhere: cats, dogs, little girls holding up their skirts. The tea-cosy was a doll in a crinoline gown. There was an enormous china wall-plaque above the fireplace depicting a cottage in shrieking reds and yellows and decorated with a dusting of tinsel, bearing the legend ‘My Grannie’s Hielan’ Home’.
He set himself to please. He described famous people he had met and exotic countries he had been to. He punctuated his conversation with many ‘Of-course-this-will-come-as-a-surprise-to-you-buts’, until gradually he began to wonder if he had said something wrong.
Priscilla was very still and silent. The Mackays, at first courteous and animated, began to look at him stolidly.
Henry could not bear unpopularity. He began to ask them questions about themselves, which they answered in polite monosyllables.
When Priscilla stood up and said they must leave, it was a relief.
They drove off in silence, and then Priscilla said in a small voice, ‘Did you have to be so patronizing, Henry?’
‘I behaved very well,’ said Henry stiffly. ‘Good God, Priscilla, they’re not the easiest of people to talk to. They’re as thick as pig shit.’
‘They are not! They are very intelligent and very sensitive and they knew immediately you thought the things in their house were a hoot. You kept looking round at everything with a sort of unholy glee.’
‘You’ll be saying next I should admire their taste,’ scoffed Henry. ‘All those ghastly ornaments. And that carpet screaming at the wallpaper.’
‘It’s cosy,’ said Priscilla. ‘Look, if you’ve been brought up among old, old things that have been used for generations, you have a longing for things that are bright and new. The government grants have made a difference. They have some money for the first time in their lives. It’s only people who’ve been used to comfort who find domestic antiques beautiful. Mr Mackay’s son has an arts degree from Glasgow University. These people are different. And they often know what you’re thinking. What’s this big thing about good taste anyway? We went for dinner with those friends of yours before we left London, you know, those two raving queens in Pont Street. Everything was exquisite and the cooking was cordon bleu, but they were screeching and vulgar and petty. And in my opinion, anyone who puts funny junk in the loo is the absolute end.’
In the bathroom of Henry’s London flat was a framed series of mildly pornographic Victorian photographs.
‘Don’t preach to me!’ said Henry. ‘What about the glorious load of fakes in that home of yours? Fake armour, fake panelling – your father’s probably a fake colonel.’
Priscilla tightened her lips. If Henry had been a woman, he would have been damned as a bitch, she thought.
‘It’s no use talking to you,’ said Henry. ‘Look, this murder has put us all on edge.’
‘I am not on edge!’ Priscilla’s angry voice seemed to fill the car. ‘You did not have to talk about countries you had been to and then carefully explain where they were on the world map. When you were talking about Lawrence Olivier, you might have called him by his proper name instead of talking about “dear Larry”. And I can only assume “darling Maggie” is Princess Margaret, since, in your case, it could hardly have been Margaret Thatcher. I wonder the comrades ever put up with you. They must have loved being patronized. Were you one of those slobs who titillated the left with cosy stories of sodomy and beatings at Eton?’
‘Shut up!’ shouted Henry, because what Priscilla had said was true.
‘No, I won’t,’ said Priscilla. ‘It’s almost as if you had unlearned how to be a gentleman, and now you’ve started being a gentleman again, you’ve forgotten how to go about it. You even hold your knife and fork as if you’re holding
a couple of pencils. People like Mr Mackay and yes, even old Mr McPhee, are gentlemen.’
‘What do you know about anything, you bloodless little Sloane Ranger?’ howled Henry. ‘You with your “Not tonight, Henry” and your prissy little disinfected mind.’
‘We are definitely not suited,’ said Priscilla in a quiet voice.
‘You’re overwrought and talking rubbish,’ said Henry in a conciliatory tone. ‘Didn’t I get on well with those people from the Crofters Commission? Honestly, darling, I am a very popular fellow, or had you forgotten?’
‘That’s in London,’ said Priscilla darkly. ‘Everything’s different in London.’
Henry shrugged and fell silent. She was in a bad mood. He would talk her round when they got back to the castle.
The day had changed. Great black, ragged clouds were rushing in from the east, a reminder that autumn comes early in the Scottish Highlands. Small wizened trees creaked and swayed beside the road, and the tarns on the moors gleamed black under the looming shadows of the mountains. The Two Sisters, the mountains above Lochdubh, stood up against the sky, as sharply silhouetted as if they had been made out of black cardboard.
Priscilla drove straight past the castle gates, where a group of shivering journalists and cameramen were huddled. She stopped about a mile along the road at a disused lodge.
‘It’s only a little walk,’ she said, ‘and it will bring you out in front of the castle.’
‘And where are you going?’
‘Somewhere,’ said Priscilla, tight-lipped.
Henry muttered something under his breath and climbed out.
After Priscilla had roared off, he turned about to walk back to the main gates of the castle. Why should he let the chance of a lot of glorious free publicity slip past? And he had seen a London television unit when they had driven past. When he arrived, the press hailed him with delight.
Hamish was back at the police station in Lochdubh. Detective Chief Superintendent Chalmers was staying at the Lochdubh Hotel. Blair, Anderson, and MacNab had been transferred to a boarding-house at the other end of the waterfront.
He was interrupted during his evening chores by two American tourists whose car battery had gone dead. Hamish jump-started it and then invited the tourists in for tea. They were a pleasant couple from Michigan. Hamish, like most Highlanders, felt more at home with Americans than he did with the English. He chatted away happily for an hour and then sent them on their way, telling them to call at the garage when it opened at nine the following morning, and promising to see them at the crofters’ fair.
He had noticed while he was entertaining them that the kitchen floor was sorely in need of a scrub. He changed out of his uniform into his old clothes, got a pail of soapy water and a scrubbing brush, and got to work, fending off Towser, who thought it was some sort of game.
He was aware of being watched, and looked up. The evening was growing dark and he had not yet switched on the electric light in the kitchen, but he recognized the slim figure lurking in the doorway.
‘Come in, Priscilla,’ he said. ‘I’ve just finished.’
‘You’d better put down newspapers, Hamish, until the floor dries,’ said Priscilla, ‘or Towser will ruin your good work.’
‘There’s a pile on the chair over there,’ said Hamish. ‘Pass them over.’
‘I’ll put them down for you,’ said Priscilla, switching on the light.
Hamish looked sharply at her, but she quickly bent her head, her thick hair falling forward to shield her face.
‘I was just about to have my supper,’ said Hamish. ‘I would ask you to join me, but I suppose you’ll soon be getting back to the castle for your dinner.’
‘I would like to stay,’ said Priscilla in an uncharacteristically small voice.
‘Aye, well, you’d better go ben to the office and call your parents and tell them where you are or they’ll be worried.’
‘I don’t want to tell them I’m here,’ said Priscilla.
‘No, well, chust tell them you are going round to the Church of Scotland to discuss the arrangements for the White Elephant stall. We’ll go along afterwards and that’ll make it all right.’
‘All right, Hamish,’ said Priscilla meekly. She left the kitchen and he looked curiously after her.
He thought gloomily of the two mutton pies he had bought at the bakery on his road home. Then he shouted, ‘I’m stepping out. Back in a minute.’
He ran into his back garden and cleared the fence with one lanky leap. He knocked on his neighbour’s door.
Mrs Cunningham, a faded English lady who ran a bed-and-breakfast, answered the back door.
‘I hae a guest for supper,’ said Hamish breathlessly, ‘and I’ve only got mutton pies and I cannae be offering her those.’
Mrs Cunningham folded her thin arms over her scrawny bosom.
‘Constable Macbeth,’ she said severely, ‘you promised to unstop that drain-pipe of mine.’
‘Tomorrow,’ said Hamish. ‘I’ll be round in the morn wi’ ma ladder.’
‘Promise?’
‘Aye, cross ma heart and hope to die.’
‘Well, Mrs Wellington, her up at the church, gave me a venison casserole because I promised to help her out, baking the cakes and scones for the fair. I can’t stand venison. You can have it.’
‘Thanks,’ said Hamish.
Soon he was back in his kitchen. The sound of running water came from the bathroom. Priscilla had decided to wash her face and put on fresh make-up.
Hamish put the casserole in the oven and pulled the cork on a bottle of red Bulgarian wine that one of the fishermen had bought in Ullapool from a member of the Eastern Bloc fishing fleet and had passed on to Hamish.
When Priscilla appeared, he suggested they should go into the living room and have a drink until dinner was ready. Hamish felt that venison casserole merited the title of dinner.
‘Have a dram,’ he said, producing the bottle he had bought to entertain Anderson.
‘Going in for the hard stuff?’ asked Priscilla. ‘I thought you always drank beer.’
‘So I do, but I can tell you this, Priscilla – sometimes there are things that happen that call for a good stiff belt o’ the cratur.’
‘Yes,’ said Priscilla gloomily. ‘I’ll have a stiff one.’
‘Now, what’s the matter?’ asked Hamish, when they were both seated.
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ said Priscilla. ‘Tell me about the case.’
‘We had a rough afternoon,’ said Hamish, settling back in his chair. ‘Sir Humphrey received us in his bedroom, muttered about two sentences, and fell asleep. Then that Diana was flouncing and bitching all over the place. You didnae tell me she had been engaged to Bartlett.’
‘I thought you knew.’
‘I know now. But she says she ditched Bartlett, not the other way round. She was seen approaching Bartlett’s bedroom on the night of the murder. She said she was on her way down to the kitchens. Screamed she hadn’t slept with him, and when we said we knew the brave captain had had Vera, Jessica, and Diana all on the same night, she broke down and yelled that Vera had done it … the murder, I mean. Jessica was worse. She said Diana was an expert shot …’
‘You mean Peter slept with all three of them? That man is disgusting.’
‘Maybe. Maybe the ladies are chust as disgusting. Then came the Helmsdales. We couldn’t separate them. Bartlett had nearly burnt down their home and Helmsdale had tried to shoot him and Lady Helmsdale had broken his jaw. When taxed with it, they told us we were lying. We couldnae get a bit o’ sense out the pair of them. It was like trying to get a statement from Tweedledum and Tweedledee.’
‘Don’t you think it might have been someone outside the castle?’
‘It could well be, but something in my bones tells me it’s one of them up at Tommel. Where did you go today?’
‘Henry and I went to call on the Mackays.’
‘How’s her leg?’
‘It
’s better. But she needs an operation on her varicose veins.’
‘If she needs an operation, why is Brodie giving her medicine?’
‘Because he knows and she knows what the matter is. But she’s frightened of hospitals and she belongs to the old school and expects the doctor to give her some medicine when he calls. I shouldn’t think there’s much in her green bottle of medicine but coloured water.’
‘Aye, he’s terrible against the pills and bottles, is Dr Brodie. I was surprised he gave Sir Humphrey tranquillizers.’
‘Probably nothing more than Milk of Magnesia. He says if people think they’re getting tranquillizers’ they calm down amazingly.’
‘Captain Bartlett once broke a valuable piece of china at Sir Humphrey’s.’
‘That was terrible,’ said Priscilla. ‘He’s a fanatical collector.’
They drank more whisky and then moved through to the kitchen for dinner. The venison casserole was excellent, and Hamish accepted Priscilla’s compliments on his cooking without a blush. They giggled over the nastiness of the Bulgarian wine, and then, after supper, went along to the Church of Scotland manse.
Priscilla had drunk so much, she was a little unsteady on her feet, and Hamish took her arm. The sky had cleared, the weather making another of its mercurial changes. The cold wind had dropped, although angry little waves smacked against the shingle of the beach.
‘I had two American tourists in for tea,’ said Hamish.
‘That’ll be the Goldfingers from Michigan,’ said Priscilla. ‘They’re staying at the Lochdubh Hotel.’
‘And how did you learn that?’
‘I saw Jessie in the village when I was coming to see you. She told me all about them. She was on her way to see if she could catch a glimpse of them.’
‘But why? There’s nothing odd about them.’
‘It’s the name, silly. She thinks they’re out of a James Bond movie.’
Priscilla reached the manse just in time. She had only been in the door two minutes before the phone rang and it was her father, his voice sharp with anxiety, demanding to know when she would be home.
‘I won’t be much longer, Daddy,’ said Priscilla.
