by M C Beaton
‘Aye, well, I have no doubt you would have had me out of my job as you were hoping to do. Now Amy had been a bit of a prostitute as well. I noticed that she was always restless. That’s the thing about prostitutes. They can cover up the past with a layer of ladylike veneer, but they never lose that hunted, fidgety air.’
‘You having great experience of the breed,’ said Blair sarcastically.
Hamish blushed. ‘No, no. But there was Jessie over in Aberdeen who married that man on the council . . . Then there was how Amy behaved at dinner. I couldnae help noticing that she would pour round the wine without waiting for the waiter or the men to do it.’
‘Must have been a shock for old Marvin.’
‘Aye, it was that. I first started to think it might be her when I looked at her wrists. They’re very strong for a woman. But it was her eyelids that clinched the matter.’
‘Her eyelids?’
‘They are strained a bit at the corners. I have always noticed that criminal-type women have this feature.’
‘Mr Roth has gone with her. He’s going to get some big-shot lawyer.’
‘Aye, love is a terrible thing,’ said Hamish mournfully.
‘I think you were damn lucky,’ said Blair sourly. ‘I can’t believe you’re not going to take any credit for this.’
Hamish turned and leaned his back against the harbour wall. ‘Oh, you can believe it. I have no mind to leave Lochdubh. But if you were to put a little something in your report about my hard-working, if unintelligent, help, that would be just fine.’
Blair smiled slowly and clapped Hamish on the shoulder.
‘I think we’ve time for a drink, Hamish,’ he said. ‘Let’s go into the bar.’
Epilogue
Sunday morning. All the survivors chattering and laughing over the breakfast table. Oh, the relief to have it all cleared up and be able to go home. Reporters and photographers waited outside the courtyard of the hotel. But it would be possible to drive straight past them. Only John Cartwright knew that the major had already been out to talk to them. The major was back on form, so much so that he could not bear to admit that the case had been solved by the village constable but merely paused in his bragging to say that he was jolly glad the police had cleared the matter up.
John sighed. The other guests, the new fishing school, would be arriving later in the day. Not one had cancelled. They would survive.
Alice smiled radiantly at Jeremy. He had not visited her last night, excusing himself by saying he was all washed up with all the drama of the arrest. She was wearing the ring he had given her on her engagement finger.
‘Hope to see you all again,’ said Major Peter Frame cheerfully. ‘Better be on my way.’
‘I’d better get my traps too,’ said Jeremy.
‘My suitcase is at the reception so I’ll have another cup of coffee and wait for you here,’ said Alice sunnily. Jeremy put a hand briefly on her shoulder.
‘Better get mine as well,’ said Daphne languidly, ‘and get my fish out of the freezer. Hope it’ll fit in the car.’
The Cartwrights said goodbye and went off to look at equipment for the new members of the fishing school.
Alice sat alone. It was a beautiful day and she sipped her coffee and looked happily out at the sun sparkling on the loch. Perhaps she and Jeremy would return on their honeymoon.
All of a sudden she stiffened. Daphne had said something about hoping her fish would fit in the car. Which car? There was really only room for two in Jeremy’s sportscar.
She rushed out to reception and grabbed her suitcase and ran out into the courtyard. Jeremy and Daphne were laughing as they tried to find room for Daphne’s enormous salmon.
‘Jeremy,’ cried Alice. ‘I though we were going back together.’
He strolled over to her. ‘No, it’s only fair I should give Daphne a lift back. After all, we did travel up together.’
‘But we’re engaged,’ shrieked Alice. ‘Look! I’m wearing your ring.’
‘It was only a present,’ mumbled Jeremy. ‘I mean, I didn’t ask you to marry me, did I?’
‘You slept with me,’ said Alice, beginning to sob. ‘I might be pregnant.’ She threw her arms around Jeremy’s neck.
‘Good God,’ he said. He jerked her arms down and ran for his car. Daphne was already sitting in the passenger seat.
Jeremy climbed in and slammed the door just as Alice ran up. Her hands scrabbled at the window as he let in the clutch. The smart red sports car gave a growl and swept off.
Alice became aware of the press watching curiously from outside the courtyard and some of the hotel servants watching as well.
She picked up her case and, with her head held high, she walked back into the hotel.
Hamish and Charlie rowed slowly back to Lochdubh after an afternoon’s fishing. They had caught four mackerel and two ling. Charlie had lost his hard, calculating stare and was looking out at the world with dreamy pleasure.
‘There’s Mr Johnson waiting for you,’ he said as they approached the shore.
Hamish was sharply reminded of the time when they had last returned and Blair was waiting for them.
‘Where have you been?’ asked Mr Johnson as soon as Hamish landed on the beach. ‘I’ve been going out of my wits. That girl Alice Wilson had a scene with Mr Blythe and she’s disappeared. Her case is still at the reception and she hasn’t booked in for another night. The staff have been out searching for her.’
‘You run along home,’ said Hamish to the boy. ‘Don’t worry, Mr Johnson. I’ll find her.’
‘Where would she go?’ thought Hamish as he drove up the twisting road out of Lochdubh. ‘I suppose she might just keep on walking and walking.’
He drove on through the pale Highland twilight, his eyes searching from left to right of the road.
He was ten miles out of Lochdubh when his sharp eyes suddenly spied what looked like a black lump on a black rock. He drove on and parked the car around a bend in the road. Then he began to walk back to the rock, his shoes making no noise on the springy heather.
Alice sat on the rock, a picture of abject misery. She was not crying, having cried all day until she could cry no more, but she was hiccupping with dry sobs.
Hamish sat down beside her. ‘Only a fool would cry for someone who didn’t really want them.’
‘Go away,’ said Alice, turning red-rimmed eyes to his.
‘No, I will not go away. You are coming with me. You have caused enough worry and trouble this day. And all over some pipsqueak you didn’t even love.’
‘I love him,’ wailed Alice.
‘No, you don’t. Went to bed with him, didn’t you? Aye, I thought as much. So now you’ve got to pretend you love him. Och, lassie, it’s your pride that’s hurt, not your heart. There’s one silly woman charged with murder and all because of damned snobbery and here you are planning to jump in the nearest loch as soon as you get up the courage so as to make a rat like Blythe sorry.’
‘I . . . I didn’t . . . I wouldn’t.’
‘Look, I tried to tell you he was a snob. As soon as he decided Daphne was rich enough, he decided to settle for her. She’ll marry him. That kind always get what they want and they’ll have a dead-alive sort of marriage. You only wanted the dream, Alice. Be honest and admit it’s over.’
‘What if I’m pregnant?’
‘Face that when it comes. When’s your next period?’ asked Hamish.
‘Next week, I think.’
‘Well, you’ll maybe just be all right. Come along with me and I’ll get us a drink. You’re a pretty girl and you’re young.’
‘Do . . . do you think I’m pretty?’
‘Very,’ lied Hamish gallantly. ‘Smashing little thing, that’s what I thought when I first saw you.’
He helped her to her feet and put an arm about her shoulders and together they walked towards the road.
‘It’s a grand evening to be alive,’ said Hamish. ‘Just think about that.’
Down below them, the lights of the village twinkled in the half dark. The twilight was scented with thyme and pine and heather. A rocketing pheasant whirred up from a clump of heather at the other side of the road. Out in the loch, the fishing boats were chugging out to sea.
Hamish pulled Alice to the side of the road as he heard a car approaching. A Rolls, black and sleek, slowed. Inside sat Priscilla Halburton-Smythe. She was wearing a white evening dress and a diamond necklace sparkled against her breast. Beside her at the wheel was John Harrington. Priscilla looked at Hamish, at Hamish’s arm about Alice’s shoulders, shrugged, and said something to John, who looked across her at Hamish and Alice and laughed. Then the car sped away.
Alice took a deep breath of clean-scented air. She was feeling better already. Hamish’s arm was comforting. She glanced up at him. He really wasn’t bad-looking. His eyelashes were very long for a man and his hair was a fascinating colour of red. ‘You’re right,’ said Alice. ‘Only a fool would cry for someone who didn’t really want them.’
Hamish watched the tail lights of the disappearing Rolls-Royce. ‘Did I say that?’ he asked, and then added in so low a voice that Alice could not hear what he was saying, ‘If I said that then I am a very great fool indeed.’
He helped Alice into his car but he sat for a few moments, staring straight ahead.
‘I’ve always wondered, Mr Macbeth,’ said Alice timidly. ‘What’s a FEB?’
Hamish let in the clutch. ‘Fucking English Bastard,’ he said. And with an angry screech of tyres he swung the car around and they plunged down into the heathery darkness of the road leading to Lochdubh.
DEATH
of a CAD
A Hamish Macbeth Murder Mystery
M. C. BEATON
ROBINSON
London
Chapter One
Land of brown heath and shaggy wood,
Land of the mountain and the flood.
– Sir Walter Scott
Henry Withering, playwright, slumped down in the passenger seat of the estate car after another bleak look out at the forbidding landscape.
‘Have we much farther to go, darling?’ he asked plaintively.
‘Oh, yes,’ said his fiancée, Priscilla Halburton-Smythe, cheerfully. ‘But we should be home before dark.’
Henry wondered whether to point out that, as they seemed to be surely approaching the land of the midnight sun after all those weary hours of travel, there was therefore very little hope of reaching their destination at all. He suddenly found himself too overpowered by the landscape and too depressed by the change it seemed to be creating in Priscilla to say anything, and so he decided to go to sleep instead. But although he determinedly closed his eyes and listened to the hypnotic swish of the windscreen wipers, sleep would not come. Scotland had murdered sleep.
It was not that he, an Englishman born and bred, had never visited Scotland, it was just that he had never journeyed so far north before.
‘It’s clearing up,’ came Priscilla’s cool, amused voice. ‘Do look. The scenery is magnificent.’
Henry reluctantly opened his eyes.
A watery sunlight was bathing the steep barren flanks of the towering mountains on either side. As the clouds rolled back, he found himself staring up at the awesome peaks and then around at the immediate prospect of damp sheep and bleak moorland.
The sun grew stronger and a wind arose. A river meandered beside the road, shining and glittering with red and gold lights. Then the scenery was blotted from view as they drove into a cutting. A waterfall hurtled down by the side of the road on Henry’s side of the car, a relentless torrent that roared in his ear as they sped past.
He glanced out of the corner of his eyes at Priscilla. There was something rather frightening about a woman who could drive so well. They had left London at dawn, and she had driven the 640 miles north, sitting back, her hands resting easily on the wheel. She was wearing beige corduroy trousers and a cream silk blouse. Her fair hair was tied back behind her ears by a tightly rolled Hermès scarf. She looked sophisticated and elegant. But it seemed to him that there was a certain buoyancy in her manner as she neared her Scottish home, an excited anticipation that had nothing to do with him. In London, he had been used to a graceful and pliant Priscilla. After they were married, he decided, he would insist he did all the driving and that she should never wear trousers again. For the first time, he wondered if she would turn out in later years to be one of those terrible county ladies who managed everyone in the neighbourhood and opened fêtes. He sulkily closed his eyes. She was not even thinking of him, of that he was sure.
In this, he was wrong.
During the journey, a great deal of Priscilla’s triumph at having secured a celebrity for a future husband had begun to ebb. She had told him to wear casual clothes, but he had turned up, impeccably dressed as usual, in white collar, striped shirt, old school tie, Savile Row suit, and shoes handmade by Lobb of St James’s. She wondered uneasily what he had packed in his suitcase, whether he planned to startle the Highlands of Scotland by parading the countryside attired like a tailor’s dummy.
When he had asked her to marry him, all she had felt was a giddy elation at having done the right thing at last; at having finally found someone who would please her parents. Colonel and Mrs Halburton-Smythe had complained for a year because she had become a journalist, although Priscilla had tried, without success, to tell them that a job as a fashion editor’s assistant hardly qualified her for the title. They had come on flying visits, always dragging some ‘suitable’ young man in tow. Priscilla realized uneasily she did not really know very much about Henry.
He was thirty-eight years of age, small, neat-featured, with smooth black hair and brown eyes that were almost black. His skin was sallow, and his legs were rather thin, but he had great charm and appeared to be universally popular.
Over the years, he had had various plays produced at experimental theatres, usually savage satires against the church and state. He was beloved by the Communists, Trotskyites, Marxists, and Liberals. To them, he was what they wanted most, a genuine ex-Eton schoolboy, son of a landed family who had opted to join the class war. He wore faded jeans and black sweaters and rather dirty sneakers.
And then his play Duchess Darling had opened in London. No one could understand what on earth had happened to Henry Withering. For it was a drawing room comedy of the type that opens with the butler and the cockney housemaid discussing their betters. It had every cliché. Infidelity among the aristocracy, a silly-ass guardee, a gorgeous débutante, a stately duchess, and a bumbling duke. But the clothes were haute couture and it had a star-studded cast.
A clever impresario had decided that a London weary of inner-city riots, rape and politics might be in the mood for nostalgia. The left-wing papers stoutly gave it good reviews, convinced that Henry had written a very clever satire that they could not quite understand but were afraid to say so. The right-wing press were hesitant to damn it when the cast contained so many famous names who had been brought out of mothballs. The public loved it. It was frivolous, silly, trite, and beautifully presented. They flocked in droves. After all, it was like going to a royal wedding. No one expected the stars to be clever, only to look very grand and rich. Henry’s success was sealed when the left wing at last found out their darling had betrayed them and the Young Communists staged a protest outside the theatre during which five policemen were sent to hospital and a member of the Royal family was seen to frown. Henry’s name appeared on the front page of every major newspaper the next day.
Priscilla’s work as a fashion editor’s assistant had mostly been arranging fashion photographs, sitting around studios, shoving models in and out of fashions that were a cross between those of a medieval page and a Japanese labourer, and wondering whether the blue-rinsed lady she worked for was ever going to allow her a chance to write. She had finally been sent to write a report on the fashions in the play. She had gone backstage and had been introduced to Henry, who had promptly
invited her out for dinner. One week later he had proposed. Now, one week after that, they were on the road to Priscilla’s Scottish home at the express invitation of Priscilla’s rapturously delighted parents, who were organizing a house party in honour of the new fiancé. Priscilla, at the age of twenty-three, was still a virgin. Henry had kissed her five times, and that had been the sum total of his love-making to date. She knew what he looked like in shorts because he had been photographed in tennis whites for a society magazine. But she had never seen him in person dressed other than as he was at that moment. It was odd that a man of his background should always look as if he were dressed for church, thought Priscilla, not knowing that Henry’s clothes were a sort of costume to enhance his new darling-of-society image.
Beside her, Henry sat moodily listening to the rumbling of his stomach. They had stopped for a horrible lunch hours ago at a motorway café. He wanted his dinner. He wanted this nightmare journey to end.
Priscilla slowed to a stop and he looked up impatiently.
A shepherd was driving a flock of sheep down the centre of the road. He moved with an easy slow pace and did not look at the car. With an impatient grunt, Henry leaned across and honked the horn loudly. The sheep panicked and scattered.
‘You awful fool,’ snapped Priscilla. She rolled down the window. ‘I’m very sorry, Mr Mackay,’ she called. ‘An accident.’
The shepherd came up and leaned in the car window. ‘It’s yerself, Miss Halburton-Smythe,’ he said. ‘Now, you should know better than to startle a man’s sheep.’
‘Sorry,’ said Priscilla again. ‘How’s Mrs Mackay’s leg?’
‘Better, she says. We got a new doctor, Dr Brodie. He’s given her the green bottle. She says it’s awf’y good.’
‘Are we going to sit here all day?’ growled Henry.
The shepherd looked at him with mild surprise.
‘My friend is tired,’ said Priscilla. ‘Must get on. Tell Mrs Mackay I shall call on her in a few days.’
