Hamish Macbeth Omnibus

by M C Beaton

  ‘You are the most terrible scrounger I have ever met,’ giggled Priscilla. ‘Still, it can’t have been nice for you having to deal with Blair again. What a brute of a man! Thank goodness it was an accident. Can you imagine if someone had bumped off the terrible captain what it would be like? All our faces splashed over the tabloids.’

  Hamish buried his nose in his cup. ‘Does it no’ surprise you,’ he said at last, ‘that it wasn’t a murder?’

  ‘Not really,’ said Priscilla, after a pause. ‘The world’s full of hateful people, but no one bumps them off. Too often the people murdered are innocent kids going home from school or old-age pensioners. Things are getting worse in the south, you know. Sutherland must be the last place on God’s earth where you don’t have to lock your door at night.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be too sure o’ that,’ said Hamish. ‘I’m troubled in my mind. I keep seeing him with his chest shot to hell, hanging over that wire fence like a bunch o’ rags. I knew of him afore this – the wild Captain Bartlett. Never to speak to, mind. I mean, I knew him by sight. He was full of life and not so bad when he hadn’t the drink taken. The fence wasn’t all that high. He had long legs on him. The way I see it, he would normally have pushed the wire down and stepped over.’

  ‘It’s an accident that’s happened before, even to good marksmen, Hamish.’

  ‘Aye, maybe.’

  ‘You’re not eating your food.’

  ‘I hate baked beans,’ said Hamish, loudly and forcibly. What he really meant was that he hated Priscilla’s being engaged to Henry Withering, and felt he must vent his feelings somehow.

  ‘Oh, wait a minute. I’ll be back soon,’ said Priscilla, exasperated.

  She returned five minutes later carrying a small parcel. ‘I knocked at the back door of the butcher’s. Mr MacPherson was still there and I got you two lamb chops. Go and get some potatoes out of the garden and I’ll fix you dinner.’

  Soon Hamish was sitting down to a meal of grilled lamb chops, fried potatoes, and lettuce from the garden.

  ‘It’s very kind of you, Priscilla,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to keep you. I thought you would be wanting to run back to Henry.’

  ‘I’ll see him at dinner,’ said Priscilla vaguely.

  Priscilla was filled with a sudden reluctance to leave the narrow, cluttered kitchen at the back of the police station. The back door was open, and homely smells of wood-smoke, kippers, and strong tea drifted in as the villagers of Lochdubh settled down for the evening. It was six-thirty, but very few people, apart from the Halburton-Smythes, ate as late as eight in the evening.

  Henry had kissed her very passionately and said he would join her in her bed that night. At the time, Priscilla had said nothing to put him off, feeling it ridiculous in this modern day and age to hang on to a virginity she was soon to lose anyway. But Hamish emitted an aura of an old-fashioned world of courting, walking home in the evening, and holding hands; a world where it was all right to remain a virgin until your wedding night.

  What would it be like, mused Priscilla, to be a policeman’s wife? Perhaps the sheer boredom of living in a tiny remote place like Lochdubh would make her nervous and restless. And yet she had said she would live there with Henry.

  ‘I had better go home,’ she said, collecting her handbag.

  ‘Aye,’ said Hamish sadly.

  They stood looking at each other for a long moment and then Priscilla gave an odd, jerky nod of her head and turned and left.

  Hamish sat for a long time staring into space. Then he got out the car, called Towser, and drove off in the direction of the Halburton-Smythes’ estate. He had driven halfway there when he saw the poacher, Angus MacGregor, walking along. He was not carrying his gun and had the dazed look of a man who has been asleep all day long.

  Stopping the car, Hamish called him over. ‘I should book you, Angus,’ he said.

  ‘Whit fur?’ demanded the poacher, his bloodshot eyes raised to the sky as if calling on heaven to witness this persecution at the hands of the law.

  ‘I found you dead-drunk down at the harbour this morning,’ said Hamish, ‘and in your back pocket was a brace o’ grouse. You’d been poaching on the Halburton-Smythes’ estate again, ye daft auld fool.’

  ‘Me!’ screeched Angus, beating his breast. He began to rock to and fro, keening in Gaelic, ‘Ochone, ochone.’

  ‘Shut up and listen to me. I’ll not be taking you down to the police station. I hae something in mind for you,’ said Hamish, staring ahead, drumming his long fingers on the steering wheel.

  Then he said, ‘I want to see you the morn’s morn with that dog o’ yours, Angus. I’ve a bit o’ work for you.’

  ‘And what iss a man to get paid?’

  ‘A man gets nothing. A man does not get his fat head punched. Be at the police station at six, or I’ll come looking for you.’

  Hamish drove off. He drew to a halt again where he had seen the helicopter and got out with Towser at his heels.

  He walked until he had reached the scene of the captain’s death and then he said to Towser, ‘Fetch!’

  Towser was an indiscriminate fetcher. He brought everything he could find if asked. Hamish sat down on a clump of heather to wait.

  He looked up at the sky. Little feathery clouds, gold and tinged with pink, spread a broad band of beauty over the westerning sun. The colour of the heather deepened to dark purple. The fantastic mountains stood out sharply against the sky. As every Highlander knows, the ghosts and fairies come out at dusk. The huge boulders scattered over the moorland took on weird, dark, hunched shapes, like an army of trolls on the march.

  Hamish lay back in the heather, his hands behind his head, as Towser fetched and fetched. At last he sat up.

  There was a small stack of items at his feet. Five old rusty tin cans, a sock, an old boot, one of those cheap digital watches people throw away when the battery runs out, the charred remains of a travelling blanket, an old thermos, and a broken piece of fishing rod.

  Towser emerged, panting through the heather, dragging a piece of old tyre.

  ‘Enough, boy,’ said Hamish. ‘We’ll be back tomorrow. Maybe we’re searching too near.’

  ‘Not tonight, Henry,’ said Priscilla Halburton-Smythe. ‘It’s this terrible death. I think I’m feeling shocked. I simply don’t feel romantic. I’m awfully sorry.’

  ‘All right,’ said Henry sulkily. ‘If that’s the way you feel . . . Where did you vanish to early this evening?’

  ‘Just out. I felt I had to get out. Goodnight, darling. I’ll be back to normal tomorrow.’

  She gently closed her bedroom door in his face.

  Jenkins marched into the breakfast room in the morning and stood to attention before his master. ‘Sinclair has just been to report that Hamish Macbeth, that poacher MacGregor, and their dogs are out on our moors, sir.’

  ‘The devil they are,’ said the colonel, turning red. ‘Didn’t he tell them to hop it?’

  ‘Sinclair did, sir, but Macbeth said he was within his rights. He said he was looking for clues.’

  ‘The insolence of that man is beyond anything,’ said the colonel. ‘Phone Strathbane and tell Blair to come over here and give Macbeth the dressing down of his life, and if he doesn’t get over here sharpish, I shall report him to his superiors.’

  ‘Certainly, sir,’ said Jenkins with a satisfied smile.

  The guests looked at each other uneasily.

  ‘What is he doing?’ asked Diana. ‘I mean, it was an accident.’

  ‘He’s probably poaching,’ said Colonel Halburton-Smythe. ‘I know that man poaches. He’s only using this looking-for-clues nonsense to cover up the fact he’s a poacher himself. And what is he doing with that rascal MacGregor, if he’s not poaching?’

  Jenkins came back into the room. ‘Strathbane says that Mr Blair is already on his way here. He wanted to assure you personally that the procurator fiscal’s report tallied with his own. In fact, he should be here now.’

  ‘Goo
d,’ said the colonel. There was the sound of an arriving car scrunching on the gravel outside. ‘That’ll be him,’ said the colonel. ‘Show him in.’

  Blair could easily have phoned in the news, but he was still smarting over what he considered the Halburton-Smythes’ rudeness in not offering him tea and, like most thin-skinned people who have been snubbed, he could not leave the snubbers alone.

  His fury on learning that Hamish was supposedly looking for clues was tinged with satisfaction. He was in a vile temper and giving Hamish a bawling out appealed to him immensely.

  ‘I’ll go out and see him now,’ said Blair.

  Priscilla looked up and saw Hamish, with Angus MacGregor behind him, standing at the entrance to the breakfast room. She signalled wildly to him to escape, but Hamish stayed where he was, his face unusually set and grim.

  ‘Good morning, Chief Inspector,’ said Hamish.

  Blair swung about, his piggy eyes gleaming. He opened his mouth to yell.

  ‘It was murder,’ said Hamish Macbeth. ‘Captain Peter Bartlett was murdered. And I hae the proof o’ it right here.’

  Blair’s mouth dropped open and he stared stupidly. A heavy shocked silence fell on the room.

  Into that silence came again the soft Highland voice of PC Macbeth.

  ‘Och, aye,’ he said. ‘It was nearly the perfect murder.’

  Chapter Six

  You may kill or you may miss,

  But at all times think of this –

  ‘All the pheasants ever bred

  Won’t repay for one man dead.’

  – Mark Beaufoy

  Hamish walked into the room and placed a red-and-white plastic shopping bag on a small table by the window. He rummaged in the bag, then turned around, holding up to the stunned gathering two spent shotgun cartridges.

  ‘These,’ he said, ‘are number seven shot, not number six.’

  There was a puzzled silence, finally broken by Blair. ‘What the devil are you talking about, you great gowk?’ he cried furiously. ‘What has all this nonsense got to do with murder?’

  ‘I think these belonged to Captain Bartlett, and I think he used them yesterday,’ said Hamish, unperturbed.

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Blair. ‘Anyone could have fired them.’

  ‘But the captain was the only one out shooting,’ replied Hamish, inwardly sending an apology up to heaven for the lie when he thought of Angus the poacher’s brace of grouse. But Angus had just assured him they had been shot miles from where the captain died, although still on the estate, and Hamish had years of experience of knowing when the poacher was telling the truth and when he was lying. ‘Besides, the season just began yesterday.’

  ‘Then they were from last season,’ said Blair with a pitying smile.

  ‘Och, no,’ said Hamish. ‘The last season’s shooting ended in December, eight months ago. They haven’t been lying out on the moor all that time, in all that rain and snow.’

  Lord Helmsdale nodded in agreement. Blair saw that nod and felt his lovely neat accident verdict beginning to slip away. ‘Get on with it, then,’ he snarled.

  Hamish turned back to the plastic bag and produced two grouse. He held them up.

  ‘I found these hidden in the heather, not very far from where the captain was murdered. Angus’s dog found them. I think we shall find that they were killed with number seven shot, with these –’ he held up the two spent cartridges – ‘and that the captain had bagged them before he was killed.’

  ‘Oh, aye?’ sneered Blair. ‘Your poacher friend found them, did he? Maybe that was because he bagged them and he hid them away.’

  ‘Well, he was up on the moor on the morning of the murder,’ admitted Hamish.

  ‘And what number of shot does he use?’

  ‘Number six,’ said Hamish.

  ‘Bartlett was shot with number six, so, if it was murder, then, you great pillock, your friend did it!’

  ‘Och, but he couldn’t have . . .’ Hamish began, but Blair started to interrupt. He was silenced by Lord Helmsdale.

  ‘Let Macbeth speak,’ said Lord Helmsdale crossly. ‘When it comes to guns and shooting, he knows what he’s talking about.’

  Blair looked about to protest, but then he nodded to Hamish to continue.

  ‘The time of the shooting was put at around seven in the morning,’ said Hamish. ‘I was down at the harbour at seven and there was Angus, sleeping like a pig. So he didn’t murder the captain.’

  There was a restless stirring among the small audience. I didn’t know Hamish could look so cold and hard, thought Priscilla illogically. She glanced round at the others. All were staring fixedly at Blair, as if willing the detective to prove Hamish wrong.

  ‘How did you come to this ridiculous conclusion?’ scoffed Colonel Halburton-Smythe. ‘Murder, indeed! Those grouse and cartridges don’t mean a thing.’

  ‘Well,’ said Hamish, ‘you remember when we found the captain, he had been climbing over the fence when he was shot.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said the colonel testily.

  Hamish glanced quickly at the others who had come with them to the scene of the shooting – Henry, Freddy and Lord Helmsdale. They all nodded.

  ‘Good,’ said Hamish. ‘We’re all agreed. Now, it is obvious Bartlett was coming in this direction, away from the moor. So, that could only mean, as his game bag was empty and his gun still loaded, that he had been unable to bag his brace and was giving up and heading back here. He should have unloaded the gun, but people are careless sometimes, and that’s how they shoot themselves accidentally.’

  ‘Just like Bartlett did,’ said Blair, looking triumphantly around the room, but Hamish continued as if he had not heard him.

  ‘But I stepped easily over that fence, and the captain’s legs are – were – as long as mine, so there was no need for him to use the gun to help himself over. That’s what made me suspicious in the first place.

  ‘So I checked the game bag again and it wasn’t empty.’ There was a sharp intake of breath from someone in the room. Hamish turned and dipped again into the plastic bag. From it, he produced a small box for carrying fishing hooks. He took something out and held it up. They craned forward to see. It was a tiny feather, a greyish feather with a brown tip. ‘A breast feather from a grouse,’ said Hamish. ‘And there was another one.’ He held it up. ‘It was lying on the ground near the body.

  ‘It looked to me as if the captain had bagged his brace before he died. So that would mean he was on his way back here. And it would also mean he would not have needed to reload the gun. It meant, too, that someone had removed the grouse from the bag, and that someone –’ he looked slowly round the room – ‘is the one who murdered him.’

  ‘Look, laddie,’ said Blair heavily, ‘say Bartlett was going to cheat and get his grouse before the agreed time, then why wouldn’t he have been the one who hid them in the heather, ready to be picked up quickly and get them first to the castle to win the bet, and then to the helicopter to ship them to London?’ Everyone knew by this time what the helicopter had been doing there.

  Hamish’s soft voice went inexorably on. ‘The captain was too experienced on the moors. He would know there would be a great likelihood of a fox picking them up. And if not, the crows would have found them. There was already a crow picking at this pair when we got to them. They wouldn’t have been in any fit state to go to London.’

  ‘This is all very well,’ said Diana in a strained voice. ‘But I don’t quite understand what you’re getting at. How did the murderer go about it?’

  ‘This is how I think it happened,’ said Hamish. ‘I believe that the murderer intended to kill the captain sometime during their stay here. If the captain had gone out at nine o’clock as agreed, he couldn’t have managed it, what with people up and awake. He would have waited for another opportunity.

  ‘But the captain decided to cheat and left at dawn. The murderer must have seen him, realized what he was up to, and saw his opportunity to kill him without a witnes
s. He followed him out to the moor, taking a gun and cartridges with him.

  ‘It wouldn’t have been easy to find him in the poor light, but when the captain got his brace, the murderer followed the sound of the shots. He met the captain on his way back here to the castle and they came face-to-face as the captain stepped over that fence.

  ‘The murderer fired both barrels at pointblank range. What he did next shows he is a very clever man indeed. He opened the captain’s gun and found it unloaded. He checked the game bag and found the grouse, so he knew the gun had been fired. He took the spent cartridges from his own gun, the ones that had killed the captain, and put them in the captain’s gun, closed it again, then carefully tangled it in the gorse bush. Now it looked like an accident.

  ‘But our murderer was more than just clever. He examined the captain’s pockets and came across a handful of unused cartridges. They were number seven shot, and the captain was killed with number six shot. So the murderer took the number sevens and replaced them with the number sixes he had brought with him.

  ‘Then he had to get rid of the grouse, otherwise the police would wonder why his gun was still loaded after the captain had got his brace. He took them from the bag and hid them in the heather. He should have hidden them farther away, but maybe he wanted to rush back and get into his bed before the household was awake.

  ‘What the police found was a dead man full of number six shot, two spent number six cartridges in his gun, and more number sixes in his pocket. The murderer was sure everyone would think it was accidental death. It should have been the perfect murder.’ He glanced sharply at the faces turned towards him, faces that were no longer looking to Blair for help. They all looked shocked and strained.

  ‘But the fence and the feather in the game bag made me suspicious, so I arranged with Angus and our dogs to do a bit of tracking this morning. We backtracked over the captain’s trail, in the direction away from the castle and, sure enough, we found the freshly used cartridges, number sevens. It took us a couple of hours, tracking in increasing circles away from the spot where the body was found, to find the grouse.