by M C Beaton
‘At ten o’clock, or as near as damn.’
Hamish looked at his shorthand notes. ‘Why did you not report the matter to Sergeant MacGregor?’
Mainwaring laughed. It was a pleasant and charming laugh, at odds with the words that followed. ‘MacGregor is a fool, and I have had reason to complain about him to his superiors on two occasions. I knew you, his replacement, would be arriving today and decided I would be better with fresh blood. You do not appear particularly intelligent to me, but, with my guidance, I should think we might get somewhere. I have experience of this sort of thing.’
‘Witchcraft?’
‘No, no, man. Detective work. Did my bit in the army. Not supposed to talk about it, but the little grey men in Whitehall called me in from time to time to ask my help.’
‘And do you often talk to little grey men?’ asked Hamish, deliberately misunderstanding him.
‘God give me patience,’ cried Mainwaring, his face turning a mottled colour. ‘M.I.5, you fool!’
‘Is that a fact!’ exclaimed Hamish, his eyes round with wonder. ‘Aye, I can see we’ll have your witches in no time at all, at all, with a brain like yours to help with the work.’
‘You can start off with Mrs Struthers, the minister’s wife. She runs the local WRI,’ said Mainwaring.
‘How long have you been in Cnothan?’ asked Hamish.
‘Eight years.’
Hamish was not in the least surprised that someone who had been in Cnothan for eight years was still regarded as an outsider. ‘And why did you come here?’
‘My aunt was Scottish. She left me the house and the croft in her will. I like fishing and hill walking. I am a crofter, of course. I have two hundred Cheviots.’
Hamish stared blankly ahead. In his experience, incomers were often misguided romantics who thought they could get away from their troubles by leading a simple life in the Highlands of Scotland. They often took to drink. But there was no sign of the drinker about Mainwaring. Hamish wondered whether, as a retired army man in Chelmsford or somewhere like that in the south of England, he might have been considered very small beer. Mainwaring liked throwing his weight around and had probably, instead of selling his aunt’s house and croft, chosen to stay in this small pond to perform as a big fish.
‘I will call on you tomorrow,’ said Hamish, ‘and tell you how I got on. Address?’
‘Balmain. It’s about two miles outside the town on the Lochdubh road.’
Hamish wrote it down.
‘Goodbye, Constable,’ said Mainwaring. ‘But you will find the hostility is directed against my wife. She puts people’s backs up.’
‘I have found,’ said Hamish slowly, ‘that married people often don’t think much of each other. I mean, if the couple is popular, each one takes the credit. If unpopular, each assumes the other is to blame.’
Mainwaring turned in the doorway, his eyes bulging. ‘Are you aware of what you have just said?’ he shouted. ‘You are a cheeky blighter, and if I don’t get results from you by tomorrow, then I’ll have you out of Cnothan so fast, your feet won’t touch the ground!’
‘I wass thinking aloud,’ said Hamish sadly. ‘A bad, bad fault. Now don’t fash yourself, sir. Arresting the witches is part of my job.’
The crash of the door as Mainwaring slammed out was his only answer.
‘I shouldnae ha’ said that,’ mourned Hamish, fishing a packet of biscuits out of one of the shopping bags, opening it, and giving one to his dog. ‘But of a’ the conceited men!’
He helped himself to a biscuit and stared into space. There was something about Mainwaring that didn’t ring true. That ‘cheeky blighter’ was the sort of thing an ex-army man would say in a bad play.
He decided to go out and collect as much gossip about Mainwaring as he could before seeing the minister’s wife again.
He made himself dinner, walked Towser, and then set off down the main street, reflecting that there was no point in trying out MacGregor’s car until he had farther afield to go.
He went to the churchyard with his torch and poked about. Great Celtic crosses reared up against the night sky. Frost was already glittering on the gravel paths. They were raked smooth and there was not a sign of even one footstep. Deciding to have a word with Mrs Mainwaring the following day and persuade her to come with him and show him exactly where the witches had appeared, Hamish went back to the churchyard gate and let himself out.
Down on the waterfront was a bar called The Clachan. Hamish pushed open the door and went in. It was a dreary smoke-filled room with a juke-box blaring melancholy country-and-western songs from a corner. It was a Monday night and so few of the regulars were in, having spent all their money on the Saturday. Hamish ordered a bottle of beer and took it over to a table by the window and sat down.
The cowboy on the juke-box, who had been complaining that his son called another man Daddy, wailed off into silence.
The door opened and a tall, slim man walked in. Hamish observed him curiously. He had carefully waved hair, horn-rimmed glasses, a sallow skin, and buck-teeth. He was wearing a city suit of charcoal-grey worsted with a checked shirt, and tight waistcoat under a camel-hair coat.
He ordered a gin and tonic and then turned and faced the room. His eyes fell on Hamish. He hesitated and then walked over. Incomer, thought Hamish. No local would approach a strange policeman. The minister’s wife, who felt such gestures to be her duty, did not count.
‘You’re Macbeth,’ he said. ‘I’m Harry Mackay.’
‘You don’t look as if you belong here,’ said Hamish.
‘Oh, I was brought up here, but I spent a good part of my life in Edinburgh,’ said Mackay.
‘And what brought you back?’
‘I’m an estate agent. I work for Queen and Earl.’
‘I didn’t pass your office in the main street,’ said Hamish.
‘No, you wouldn’t,’ said Mackay. ‘Estate agents are regarded with suspicion. My office is on the other side of the loch, among the council houses.’
‘You can’t do much business in this part of Sutherland,’ said Hamish, watching as the estate agent lit a cigarette with a gold Dunhill lighter.
‘Oh, it would surprise you, Macbeth. Do you know Baran Castle?’
‘Aye, it’s that big place over to the west. Bought by an American last year.’
‘Well, I sold that,’ said Mackay proudly. ‘It’s not the locals who give me the business, but the foreigners and expatriots. I sold that castle for over a million pounds. And Kringstein, the local big cheese, bought Strachan House and the estates from me as well. So, how’s crime getting on in Cnothan?’
‘I have the case of witchcraft already,’ said Hamish.
‘The haunting of the Mainwarings? Someone wants that pillock out of here and I can’t blame them. Stuck-up bastard.’
‘He hasn’t crossed you, has he?’
‘I thought he meant to,’ said Mackay with a grin. ‘He’s bought two more houses and crofts outside town. Why, nobody knows. He uses the crofts, but the houses just stand empty. His own place is decrofted, and he got the land at the other two decrofted as well. That would be about six years ago. I thought he was going to compete with me by putting them on the market, but not him. Crofts are a pain in the neck to an estate agent anyway.’
There was a short silence while both contemplated the peculiarities of crofting. The word ‘croft’ comes from the Gaelic coirtean, meaning a small enclosed field. In early times in the crofting counties of Shetland, Orkney, Caithness, Sutherland, Ross and Cromarty, Inverness, and Argyll, there was a belief that lengthy tenancy gave right to a ‘kindness’, or permanency of settlement. But the Highland Clearances of the last century, when the crofters were driven off their hill farms to turn Sutherland into one large sheep ranch, had caused bitter hardship. The Crofting Act was passed to ensure security of tenure; this ended landlord absolutism. Once a crofter had tenancy of his croft or hill farm, he could be sure of no interference from the landlord
and he no longer had any fear of being driven off. The crofter could also get the land decrofted – that is, buy it from the landowner at a reasonable price – but few crofters did this. Most were fearful of change, preferring to hang on to their small uneconomical croft units and collect the government grants. Sometimes unscrupulous estate agents let their clients who were buying an old croft house as a holiday home believe that the croft land went along with it. This practice left the buyers to find out for themselves that crofting land must be worked all the year round or the tenancy is refused by the Crofters Commission, and the assignation of the croft can be blocked by the neighbours anyway, who put up objections to any incomer simply as a matter of habit.
Hamish broke the silence first. ‘Was there no objection to him getting the other two crofts when he had one already?’ he asked.
‘People didn’t dislike him as much then as they do now. The two crofts are adjoining the one he inherited from his aunt. But they’re surrounded by moors for miles. There are no other crofters near enough to him to put up a fight. Most of the crofts are to the other side of Cnothan. Besides, it’s happening all over. Some of these crofters have enough land to make up a good-sized farm. Of course, unlike Mainwaring, they don’t bother decrofting it, for they’re afraid of losing the government grants if they do.’
‘And no objection from the landowner?’
‘Kringstein. Couldn’t care less. You know he hardly gets any rents to speak of from the croft land. Besides, the crofter has more power in the matter than the landowner. The landowner’s got to sell to the crofter if asked and at a ridiculously low price, too. Mainwaring’s not short of a bob, and I could have got the owners of these houses a lot more money. He went along with cash and they sold cheap.
‘Speak of the devil,’ said Mackay, twisting his head round. ‘Here he comes.’
Mainwaring had just entered and walked up to the bar. He was followed by two enormous Sutherland men, both well over six feet in height.
‘And who are his companions?’ asked Hamish, feeling he should escape before Mainwaring saw him, but being held to his seat by curiosity.
‘Alistair Gunn is the one with the leather hat on,’ said Mackay. ‘He works for the Forestry Commission and makes money on the side by working as a ghillie when the toffs come up from London. His friend, Dougie Macdonald, is a ghillie when he’s not collecting his dole and sleeping.’
Hamish had heard that the local landowner, Mr Kringstein, a toilet-roll manufacturer, ran his home and estates in the time-honoured way. Contrary to gloomy expectations, he went on much as the aristocrat he had bought the land and estates from had done. The ghillies, or Highland servants, made their money when Kringstein had a house party. They went out on the river with the guests and showed them, if necessary, how to fish, and carried their tackle and rowed them up and down.
It was obvious to Hamish that the two ghillies wanted to get away from Mainwaring, but were kept by his side because they had accepted his self-appointed role as laird, much as they resented it. ‘Do ye know what happened to my aunt the other day?’ said Alistair Gunn. ‘She was on the bus to Golspie and wearing her new fur coat and she could hear this bairn behind her, chattering to its mither, and then she smelt oranges, and the next thing she knew, she could feel something rubbing at the back of her new fur coat.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ said Mainwaring testily, ‘that happened to everyone’s aunt, and the story is as old as the hills. You were about to say that the next thing your aunt heard was the kid’s mother saying, “Don’t do that, dear. You’ll get fur all over your orange.”’
‘I wass not about to say that,’ said Alistair Gunn. ‘Not at all. It was a different thing entirely.’
‘Then what was it?’ asked Mainwaring, his voice full of amused contempt.
‘Well, I am not going to tell you, because you are not going to listen,’ said Alistair huffily.
‘You mean you can’t tell me,’ jeered Mainwaring. ‘The trouble with you chaps is that you hear an old story or a joke on the radio and immediately you decide it’s something funny that happened to your aunt or uncle.’
The pub door opened and two other men came in. Alistair and his friend hailed them with relief.
‘Dearie me,’ said Hamish. ‘Does he always go on like that?’
‘Always,’ said Mackay gloomily. ‘He’s spotted you. Here he comes.’
Mackay reflected he had never seen anyone move with such speed. One minute, the constable was sitting at his ease; the next, he had darted out of the door.
Mainwaring dived after him. ‘Macbeth!’ he called. But there was no movement in the darkness.
Hamish, who had run around the side of the pub, waited a few moments, and then started to walk towards the manse.
But there was no friendly welcome from Mrs Struthers. The minister was there, and so, with many nervous looks at her husband, Mrs Struthers said there was no one at the Women’s Rural Institute who would behave in such a way, and no one in Cnothan had any reason to wish the Mainwarings ill.
Hamish went sadly back to the police station. He felt homesick. He did not switch on the lights when he got to the police station, but sat on the floor of the kitchen with the curtains drawn and the little television set on the floor in front of him.
After fifteen minutes, he heard the bell at the police-station end resounding furiously through the house, followed a few minutes later by knocking on the kitchen door.
Towser let out a low growl and Hamish shushed the dog into silence.
After a while, he could hear footsteps crunching away over the gravel, and then there was silence. Mr Mainwaring had gone home.
Hamish switched on the lights, put the television set on the table, and made himself a cup of coffee. A female newscaster with flat, pale eyes was talking about famine in Ethiopia and making Hamish feel he was personally responsible for it. He switched channels. There was a programme about wildlife in the Galapagos Islands. He settled down to watch.
And then there was a knock at the kitchen door again.
He cocked his head to one side and listened. Whoever it was had chosen to come straight to the kitchen door rather than go to the policestation end.
He softly approached the door and listened again. He felt sure if Mainwaring had returned, then he would feel the man’s anger through the door.
He suddenly opened it. A couple stood on the step, blinking in the light.
‘Constable Macbeth?’ said the man. ‘I am John Sinclair, and this is my wife, Mary. We’re in need of a bit of help.’
‘Come in,’ said Hamish, leading the way into the kitchen. He pulled out chairs for them and switched on the electric kettle and took cups and saucers down from the cupboard.
‘And what can I do for you, Mr Sinclair?’ said Hamish, measuring tea-leaves into the teapot.
‘We’re friends of Mr Johnson, the hotel manager, over at Lochdubh.’
‘Aye, I know him well.’
‘He told us you might be able to help us. We wass over in Lochdubh the other day. My brother, Angus, has the fishing boat there.’
‘I know Angus. No trouble in Lochdubh, is there?’ asked Hamish sharply.
‘No, none whateffer,’ said John Sinclair. He took off his tweed cap and twisted it round and round in his fingers. His wife, Mary, lit up a cigarette and Hamish sniffed the air longingly. He had given up smoking two months ago and wondered if the sharp desire for nicotine would ever leave him. Priscilla Halburton-Smythe disapproved of smoking.
Hamish filled the teapot with boiling water and tipped some of the biscuits from the packet on the table on to a plate. He sat down beside them, poured tea, cast an anguished look at Mary Sinclair’s cigarette, and then said, ‘What’s it about?’
‘It’s like this,’ said John Sinclair. ‘My faither lives outside the town on the road to Lochdubh, not far, about a mile up the road, say. He’s got a bit croft and a cottage. My mither died two years ago, and since then Faither’s shut himse
lf up. He won’t see me or Mary or his wee grandson or anyone.’
‘And what is it I can do?’ asked Hamish.
‘Mr Johnson told us you had the gift o’ the gab,’ said John Sinclair. ‘We wass hoping you could go out and see Faither and have a blether with him, and see if you can cheer him up.’
Hamish began to feel cheered up himself. This was just the sort of family problem he was often asked to deal with in Lochdubh, where the policeman doubled as local psychiatrist.
‘I’ve got business out that way with Mr Mainwaring,’ said Hamish. ‘I’ll drop by to see your father in the morning.’
John Sinclair had a typically Sutherland type of face, high cheek-bones and intense blue eyes that slanted at the corners in an almost oriental way. Those eyes went blank.
‘Och, I wouldnae bother yourself with the crabbit auld man,’ said Mary Sinclair, speaking for the first time. She was a small, fat woman with dyed blonde hair cut in what Hamish was already beginning to think of as the Cnothan cut, short and chrysanthemum-like, a style which had been fashionable in the fifties. ‘Thanks for the tea. We’d best be on our way.’
‘I am not a friend of Mr Mainwaring’s,’ said Hamish, correctly interpreting the reason for the sudden coolness in the air. ‘I am investigating the attack on his wife.’
‘Attack!’ Mary Sinclair looked amazed.
‘Three people dressed as witches jumped out at her last night,’ said Hamish.
‘Oh, that.’ Mary shrugged. ‘They didnae hurt her, jist gave her the wee fright.’
Hamish looked at her sharply. ‘You don’t seem very shocked. And anyway, why Mrs Mainwaring? Why not Mr Mainwaring, who seems to be the one nobody likes?’
‘I don’t know a thing about it,’ said Mary quickly, ‘but if you ask me, you could poison that man, and he’d still be in Cnothan in the morning. Nothing would get rid of him.’
‘And so the vulnerable one is attacked? Nasty,’ said Hamish. ‘I mean, the weaker one,’ he added in reply to Mary’s blank look.
‘I don’t know a thing about it,’ she said again. She dragged on her cigarette. Hamish waited for the smoke to appear but it did not. He wondered where it went, or if Mary Sinclair went around with fog-bound lungs.
