by M C Beaton
Hamish looked at him. He should arrest the farmer and charge him with assaulting a police officer and all sorts of other fiddles. It meant paperwork. It meant a court case. It might mean Iain going to prison.
“Turn around,” he snapped.
He unlocked the handcuffs and tucked them away and then he took off his cap and threw it on the ground and put up his fists.
“Come on, Iain,” said Hamish. “We’ll settle this ourselves.”
Iain sized up Hamish’s thin, gangling form and began to smile. “OK, Hamish, but don’t blame me if ye get sore hurt.”
But Iain found it impossible to hit Hamish. The constable weaved and ducked, dancing lightly on his feet, diving under the farmer’s guard to land his punches. At last, Hamish said, “Let’s finish this,” and that was the last thing Iain heard for about ten minutes as a massive punch landed full on his jaw.
When he recovered consciousness. Hamish was kneeling beside him on the ground. “All right?” he asked anxiously.
“Man, ye’ve got a sore punch,” whispered the farmer.
“Well, now that the law in its way has been enforced,” said Hamish cheerfully, “can I hae your word that you’ll leave the bats alone?”
“Aye, you hae my word.”
Hamish helped him to his feet, gave him a swig of brandy from his flask and helped him back into his bulldozer and stood waiting while the bulldozer churned its way back over the soft ground.
He decided to go and pay a visit on old Mrs MacGowan and see if Trixie had managed to winkle anything valuable out of her. Perhaps it was simple greed which had caused the murder and Trixie had got hold of something worth killing for.
But as he drove into Lochdubh, he saw he was approaching Harry Drummond’s house and, in his usual, nosey, Highland way, decided to find out first what on earth had persuaded Mrs Drummond to divorce a sober and working man when she would not divorce the drunk.
Mrs Drummond was at home. She was a soft, shapeless, dyed blonde of a woman with a face covered in a layer of thick make-up and a sour little painted red mouth like a wound. “Whit’s he done?” she asked when she saw Hamish on the doorstep and he could swear there was a certain amount of hope in her eyes.
“Harry? Nothing,” said Hamish. “Can I come in a minute?”
She shrugged by way of an answer and led the way through to the living-room, removing a tattered pile of women’s magazines from a chair so that he could sit down.
Flies buzzed about the room and she seized a can of fly spray and sent a cloud of it up to the ceiling. Hamish sat in a gentle rain of insecticide and asked, “Why are you going to divorce Harry? He’s looking great and he’s got a good job.”
She lit a cigarette and took an enormous drag on it. “I’m in love wi’ somebody else,” she said.
“Who?”
“Buckie Graham, him over at Crask.”
“But Buckie Graham’s a terrible drunk with a nasty temper!” exclaimed Hamish.
“All he needs is someone to look after him,” said Mrs Drummond defiantly. “We’re getting married as soon as the divorce comes through.”
She offered Hamish a cup of tea in a half-hearted way and he refused. He spent several more minutes trying to persuade her of the folly of marrying Buckie, but she only became extremely angry.
“Women!” he thought, as he drove over to Mrs MacGowan’s on the other side of the loch.
The cottage was tucked away at the edge of the pine forest. Hamish climbed down from the Land Rover and took a deep breath of sweet pine-scented air. He knew that the inside of Mrs. MacGowan’s cottage was going to smell as horrible as usual.
“So you’ve finally decided to come and see me,” said the old woman when she opened the door.
She was bent and gnarled and twisted like an old willow tree but her black eyes sparkled with intelligence. Hamish edged his way into her small parlour. It was crammed with furniture and china and photographs, reminding him of Mrs Haggerty’s cottage. Dust lay everywhere and the awful smell of Mrs MacGowan pervaded the close atmosphere.
“I’ll just open the window,” said Hamish hopefully.
“Leave it be,” she said. “The flies just come in.”
“You seem to have caught plenty already,” said Hamish, looking up at the fly paper, black with dead flies, which dangled from the ceiling light. “Where do people get these things from?”
“It was that Mrs Thomas. Herself got Patel, that wee Pakistani…”
“He’s Indian.”
“Oh, well, what does it matter. She starts on about this ozone layer, whateffer that might be in the name o’ creation, and says these sticky ones are better than spray cans and the wee Indian got some from somewhere.”
“I want to ask you about Mrs Thomas. Did she call on you often?”
“Oh, aye, herself came a lot.”
“What for?”
“She said she wass sorry for me and brought me cakes and scones. But I knew what she wass after.”
“That being?” prompted Hamish.
She nodded her head towards a Welsh dresser. “That.”
“The dresser?”
“That platter wi’ the three women and the man on it.”
Hamish went over and examined it. It had a gold edge and a painted scene showing three ladies in eighteenth-century dress surrounding a courtier. The colours were exquisite.
“Offer you any money?” asked Hamish.
“Och, aye,” she cackled with laughter, “A fiver.”
“I would say it’s worth a lot more than that.”
“When I saw her getting that keen on having it and trying no’ to look it, I got Andy, the postie, to bring round his Polaroid and take a picture. I sent the picture tae the Art Galleries in Glasgow and they sent me a wee note. It’s up on the shelf above it.” Hamish took down the dusty letter and opened it. The museum had pleasure in informing Mrs MacGowan that her platter appeared to be Meissen, around 1745, with a scene painted after Watteau, but they could not be sure until they examined the platter themselves.
Hamish whistled silently. “And did you tell her?”
“Not me. I jist kept her coming round wi’ the cakes and biscuits and hinting I wass ready to give it awav to her.”
“You know you could get a lot of money for that?”
“Aye, but I’ll leave it to my great grand-daughter in my will. She can sell it if she wants.”
“So she didn’t get anything out of you?” asked Hamish.
“Not a thing, although it wasnae for the want o’ trying.”
Hamish asked after her health, made her a pot of tea, presented her with a packet of chocolate biscuits, and got up to leave. He looked in distaste at the fly paper with its load of dead flies.
“If you’ve got another of these things, I’ll hang up a fresh one for you,” he said.
“No, I hivnae. I don’t like them anyway. I liked the good old–fashioned kind. Herself was going to get me some. Not from Patel. He could only get the sticky ones. The flies did not stick to the old–fashioned ones. They jist smelled it and dropped dead.”
Hamish got out of the cottage with the usual feeling of relief at finding himself back in the fresh air. He drove slowly back to Lochdubh, wondering what to do next. A movement to the side of the road caught his eye. It was almost as if someone had ducked down when they saw the car.
He stopped and jumped down and walked back a bit. A small bottom was sticking out from behind a bush.
“Come out,” ordered Hamish.
The little figure backed out. Susan Kennedy, the evil-eyed child from The Laurels.
“I thought you were going home today,” said Hamish.
“I’m no’ going,” said the child. “I want tae stay here.”
“Well, you can’t. You have to go back to school. Come on. I’ll give you a lift back. I’ve got some sweeties in the car.”
“What kind?”
“Chocolate fudge.”
“OK.” She walked back with him
and climbed into the passenger seat. Hamish fished in the box of sweets he kept handy for the local children and handed her a small bag.
“I love sweeties,” she said, putting two in her mouth at once. “Im o is bid assem.”
“What?”
She swallowed and then said clearly. “I’m no’ as bad as them.”
“Who?”
“The Thomases. I tried to tell ye about what they got up to in the bedrooms.”
Hamish eyed her cautiously. “Is this about sweets?”
“Aye. She wouldnae let him have any, so he bought cakes and hid them in a box under his bed in his ain bedroom. She wud wait till he was oot, then she would sneak in and steal some. She was greedier than him any day. He shouted at me and told me I was pinching them and she gave me a bar o’ chocolate to shut up.”
Hamish drove her to where Mrs Kennedy was standing at the bus stop with the rest of her brood and a large canvas suitcase. She did not seem either glad or surprised at the return of her missing child. Hamish drove up to The Laurels, wondering whether Mrs Kennedy had even noticed the child was missing.
Paul was out but he could hear the clatter of the typewriter from upstairs. He made his way up to John Parker’s room.
“Where’s Paul?” he asked the writer. “Out, I suppose.”
“Tell me, did Mrs Thomas have a sweet tooth?” John Parker laughed. “It was like a drug with her. She was like a binge drinker, you know, who can leave the stuff alone for weeks and then goes out and gets stoned. She tried to stop Paul from eating the stuff, but she was as bad as he was.”
“It’s a wonder she didn’t get fat.” “I think she burnt it up in nervous energy.” A fly buzzed furiously against the window. Hamish stared at it and then to the writer’s surprise, he got up and left the room. He went downstairs to the sitting-room and gazed up at the fly paper. Then he stood on a chair and lifted it down. Back at the police station he sat down and put a call through to the forensic department at Strathbane.
In answer to his question, they said they would find out and call him back.
He sat at his desk and thought and thought, pieces of conversation buzzing around in his head the way that fly had buzzed in John Parker’s room.
Trixie had liked cakes. Trixie had had no time for John Parker after he had come off drugs and got on his feet. Mrs Drummond wanted a divorce from Harry now that he was sober. Lord Glenbader saying arsenic was the Victorian’s DDT. Trixie holding hands with Archie Maclean. Dr Brodie singing about killing Trixie. Angela Brodie quoting Oscar Wilde up on the mountain. John Parker and The Amazon Women of Zar. Mrs MacGowan saying Trixie had promised to bring the good old–fashioned kind. The flies just smelled it and dropped dead. Dead…dead…dead. And so his thoughts went on and on.
Would the phone never ring? It was quiet, except for the howl of the Sutherland wind that had sprung up out of nowhere.
Then the phone rang, loud and harsh.
He jumped nervously and picked it up. He listened intently and then slowly put it down. His face was pale and set. He should tell Blair. But this was one arrest he was going to make by himself.
He walked to The Laurels and mounted the stairs towards the sound of that chattering typewriter. He opened the door.
“Where’s Paul Thomas?” he asked.
“Went rushing off,” said the writer. “I said you’d been around asking about his Trixie’s sweet tooth, and he rushes off like a bat out of hell.”
Hamish ran out of the room and down the stairs. John Parker shrugged and began to type again.
Hamish ran towards the police station, stopping everyone he could on the way, asking for news of Paul. He had been seen heading out through the village and last seen going along the long promontory which divided the loch from the sea.
There was no road along the promontory. Hamish started to run harder. The wind screamed and tore at his clothes. He ran round the side of the hotel and out along the promontory. Jimmy Anderson stood at the hotel window and watched him go. He turned around. “Something’s up,” he said to Blair who was slouched in an armchair watching television. “Macbeth’s just gone running past.”
“Probably the water bailiffs after him.” said Blair, keeping his eyes on the screen.
The promontory ended on the Atlantic side in a small cliff. Silhouetted above the tumbling clouds and right at the edge of the cliff, Hamish saw Paul Thomas. He slowed his frantic pace and walked slowly up to the man and stood beside him. Down below, waves as high as houses, cold and green and stained with the black of sea wrack, crashed on to the rocks below.
“Don’t do it,” said Hamish quietly. “She wasnae worth it.”
Paul sat down suddenly and Hamish sat down beside him on the springy turf.
“How did you know?” he asked.
“I think this is what happened,” said Hamish. “You were getting on your feet and controlling your overeating with Trixie’s help. You came up here to start a new life. You liked doing things, painting the house and working in the garden. But Trixie did not like you doing things and showing any independence whateffer and so she undermined you by taking over and doing them better. You began to eat cakes on the quiet again and she knew that and at last you found out she knew where you hid them and thieved a few for herself. But you loved her, so something bad must have happened. It didn’t need to be a man. Maybe she wasn’t all that interested in sex. A woman would do for interest. She had Angela Brodie to take over and the rest of the women. She didn’t need you any longer. Perhaps she might have guessed that when the novelty wore off, people would like you and not her. So she asked for a divorce.”
Paul Thomas remained silent. A huge wave rolled in, the wind whipping the white spray back from the top of it.
Hamish’s voice was low and clear and Paul could hear every word despite the tumult of the wind and water.
“You knew if you said you had a toothache and were frightened of the dentist then she would make you go. You had probably been nursing a bad tooth on the quiet for weeks. Before you left, you put the cakes in the box under the bed. But before you did that, you took some of the old fly papers Trixie had brought back from Mrs Haggerty’s cottage. I saw that one hanging up in your sitting room and wondered why it wasn’t sticky. It was impregnated with arsenic. Trixie told you that. You soaked them in a jug of water and then evaporated the water and got enough arsenic crystals to kill her. Maybe you had read of that Victorian poisoning case where someone did the same thing. Forensic at Strathbane told me about it. I began to remember all sorts of things about the use of arsenic in the last century. It was believed that Napoleon died because of the arsenic in the wallpaper paste in his bedroom. Arsenic was also used widely to keep down bugs. Trixie found that bundle of fly papers. An ordinary person would have found them smooth and decided they were no use and thrown them away. But not Trixie. There had to be a use for everything. She was acquisitive. And so she found out that the old fly papers were covered in arsenic, told you, put the papers away maybe intending to take them over to old Mrs MacGowan some time, and probably forgot about them for the time being. But you didn’t. You put arsenic in the cakes under the bed, or perhaps just one cake, to make sure. It’s a wonder that Kennedy girl didn’t eat it by mistake. And so you murdered her.”
“And now I’m going to kill myself,” said Paul, wiping his eyes with his sleeves. “I hated her so much for wanting rid of me. The house was in her name. She wasn’t going to let me have a thing. I was so fat and down and miserable before she came along. No-one had ever cared for me so much, not even my own mother. She married me and kept me on a diet. I would have done anything for her. We were, going to be so happy here. I laughed about her flirting with Archie Maclean, but I knew she had done it to spite me. She was finished with me and she was out to destroy me. But when she died, I was left with the same mess. Myself. I can’t go on living, Hamish. Life hurts, people hurt, I’ll just kill myself with food.”
“Now, now, man, isn’t prison just the answ
er?” said Hamish bracingly. “Think o’ it, man. Locked away from cakes. Good exercise, lots of reading, no cruel world to cope with. Better than a health farm any day.”
Can I really be saying all this, wondered Hamish wildly.
“I don’t deserve to live,” said Paul.
“Maybe not. But prison will be a hard enough life to make you feel you’re atoning for your sins. Discipline. Told what to do from morning to night. What on earth possessed you to try and poison auld Macdonald? You’re not a Highlander. You didn’t believe he could guess the murderer?”
“I thought she might have told him about the divorce. She didn’t want to tell anyone in the village because she wanted to appear the perfect wife until the last minute before the divorce. I heard he was going about saying he could solve the case. I panicked.”
“You’re a bad man, Paul,” said Hamish severely. “Prison’s just the place for you. You’ll be looked after.”
“Will you come and see me?” Paul sounded like a lost child.
“Aye, I might at that. Come along, man, and get it over with. Now, I’ll jist put these nice handcuffs on you to make it all official.” And talking to the big man as if he were a child, Hamish led him back along the promontory out of the sound of the sea.
Mr Daviot, the police superintendent, had made another surprise call on Blair. He was demanding a rundown on the progress of the Thomas poisoning when Anderson, from his post at the window, turned around with a grin on his face and said, “Here’s Macbeth, bringing in his man.”
“Caught a poacher?” said Blair, getting to his feet, while inside he prayed, “Look God, please do not let it turn out that Macbeth has found the murderer. Jist dae that for me and I’ll never swear again.”
Detectives MacNab and Anderson, Blair and Daviot all crowded at the window watching as Hamish led Paul Thomas down towards the hotel. The constable was talking the whole time and Paul Thomas had tears running down his face. Hamish stopped and took out a handkerchief and wiped the man’s tears away and got him to blow his nose.
