by M C Beaton
Hamish grinned. If they thought they had got their man, they would not want Hamish Macbeth there to share in any part of the glory.
‘What’s all the commotion?’ asked Jenny when he entered the kitchen. ‘Your steak’s getting cold.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Hamish innocently. ‘Here’s the wine.’
They had a companionable meal. Hamish washed the dishes and then politely took Jenny’s hand to thank her for the meal and say good night. He didn’t know quite how it happened, but the next moment she was pressed against him and a moment after that he was kissing her passionately.
Towser watched in amazement as the trail of clothes up the stairs to Jenny’s bedroom lengthened. A pair of regulation police trousers sailed down from the top and landed on Towser’s nose. He snuffled at them dismally and then curled up on the trousers and went to sleep.
At midnight, Blair knocked furiously on the door. Towser raised his head and sniffed the air, and then lowered it on to Hamish’s trousers and went back to sleep. He knew Blair as well as his master did.
Chapter Six
Jenny kissed me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in:
Say I’m weary, say I’m sad,
Say that health and wealth have missed me,
Say I’m growing old, but add,
Jenny kissed me.
– James Henry Leigh Hunt
Hamish awoke at dawn the next morning, dazed, bewildered, and happy. He would have liked to cuddle up to Jenny and spend the lazy morning in bed, but he did not want her to become the butt of Blair’s coarse remarks, and so he dressed quickly, picking up items of clothing from the stairs, and finally rescuing his trousers from under Towser.
He made his way quietly over to the police station and was just emerging innocent from his own bedroom when Blair came looking for him.
‘Where was ye last night?’ howled Blair. ‘Getting your leg over that artist bint?’
‘I wass out looking for clues,’ said Hamish. ‘Miss Lovelace is a highly respectable lady. I am furthermore quite prepared to put my job on the line if you make any more filthy remarks about her by sinking ma fist right into your mouth.’
Blair backed before the fury in Hamish’s eyes. ‘Cannae ye take a joke?’ he said. ‘Me and the others are off to stay at the Anstey Hotel doon the road. The bigwigs are comin’ up from Inverness and Edinburgh to see what we can do about keeping thae lobsters quiet. In the meantime, you take those false teeth down to Mrs Mainwaring and let’s hear what she says.’
Blair walked into the lounge as he talked. Hamish looked around the room in dismay. The ashtrays were overflowing, and there were greasy fish-and-chip papers on the coffee table.
‘And what am I supposed to do about this mess?’ asked Hamish.
‘Oh, get a wumman in tae clean the place and put the bill through the expenses as something else.’
Furious as he was at the state of the place, Hamish was only too glad to get rid of Blair and his detectives. It meant he would have the phone to himself again.
He got into the police Land Rover and drove off before Blair could commandeer it. It would be just like Blair to expect him to walk the miles to Mrs Mainwaring’s.
And before he even reached Mrs Mainwaring, he had to quieten his conscience by looking for Sandy Carmichael. The moors were covered with searching policemen, but there might be something he, Hamish Macbeth, could find that they could not. He could not in his heart believe Sandy responsible for the murder. He called at Sandy’s cottage after scouring the highways and byways, only to retreat quickly as Blair’s furious face appeared at the window.
On his way to Mrs Mainwaring, Hamish dropped in to see Diarmuid Sinclair. He nearly didn’t recognize him, for Diarmuid had shaved off his long beard. ‘Why the new image?’ asked Hamish. ‘Doing it for your public?’
‘Aye, did you see me on the television?’ said Diarmuid. ‘Grand, that was. John took a video o’ it and showed it to me and I thought I looked that old. Forbye, I’m off to Inverness soon to buy wee Sean a present for his birthday.’ Sean was Diarmuid’s grandson. ‘Have ye any idea what I should get?’
‘How old is he?’
‘Eight.’
‘Well,’ said Hamish, ‘I would just buy the bairn something you would like to play with yourself.’
He then drove on to the Mainwaring bungalow.
Mrs Mainwaring was packing clothes, boxes and boxes of them. There were no men’s clothes among the piles lying ready for packing, but Hamish recognized the blue-and-white sailor dress. She was obviously getting rid of all the clothes her husband had chosen for her. Mrs Mainwaring believed her husband was dead.
‘What can I do for you, officer?’ she asked, as she competently went on with her packing, a cigarette drooping from her lips.
‘Can you identify these? Don’t touch them.’ Hamish took out the false teeth, enclosed in a polythene bag. She went very still. She took the cigarette from her mouth and tossed it into the fire.
‘They’re William’s,’ she said flatly. ‘He had them specially made, complete with nicotine stains, so they would not look too white and too false.’ She sat down, her baggy tweed skirt rucked up, displaying large areas of muscled thigh.
‘I’ll take a statement from ye,’ said Hamish gently. ‘And then maybe you could call by later in the day at the police station and sign it.’
She nodded. ‘Where did you find them?’
‘My dog found them in that patch of scrub at the turn of the road outside Cnothan as you go out toward Cnothan Game.’
‘I knew he was dead,’ she said dully. ‘I felt it. He wouldn’t have left me alone this long. He liked tormenting me too much. Poor William.’
‘Mrs Mainwaring, if that skeleton is your husband’s, have you any idea what might have happened to him?’
‘No. I don’t like to think about it. It can’t be his. I don’t think it’s anything to do with him. It was put there for a bad joke.’
Hamish looked at her curiously. She seemed quite calm, but shock affected people in strange ways.
‘Would it upset you to talk to me about him?’ he asked gently. ‘Tell me about his army career. He said he had something to do with MI5.’
‘Told you that one, did he?’ Mrs Mainwaring lit another cigarette. ‘He liked to play the retired army man, part of his act. He was a captain when he did his National Service. He was never a career officer. He just got drafted along with everyone else.’
‘And how did he make his money?’
She gave a horrible kind of laugh. ‘He married me,’ she said. ‘I was living in Maidstone in Kent with my mother, who was on her last legs. No man had ever proposed to me or looked at me, and then William came along.’ Her eyes grew dreamy. ‘He was selling cars. Mother used to make nasty jokes about car salesmen and said he was only after my money. I didn’t believe her. He had very great charm. But I should have seen through him then. I told him Mother held the purse-strings and after that I didn’t see him for a week. At the end of that week, Mother died of a heart attack, the death was published in the local paper, and William came back again, just in time for the funeral. He was very supportive. He said he had inherited an estate in Scotland. We would be married and go and live there.
‘Mother left me the house in Maidstone and quite a bit of money. I was tired. I was old-fashioned. I had been led to believe that women did not have heads for business. William said if I transferred everything to him, he would arrange for the sale of the house and take care of everything.’
‘That was verra trusting of you,’ said Hamish awkwardly.
She went on as if he had not spoken. ‘So I did, and we got married, and came up here to live. I know a lot of incomers don’t like Cnothan, but I loved it, and I still do. The women were so pleasant and gentle and friendly. Old-fashioned, just like me. But William changed. I forgave him for lyi
ng, you know. This place is hardly an estate. He started nagging me and nagging me from morning till night. He hated this place, and he began to enjoy people hating him. It made him feel important. I couldn’t walk out. He had control of the money.
‘You’ve heard of the Duke of Sutherland, the one in the last century, who was responsible for the Highland Clearances – the one who had his factors drive the crofters out of their houses so he could turn the whole of the north into a sheep ranch?’
‘Of course,’ said Hamish.
‘Well, you know how they still hate the duke in Sutherland. He had that statue of himself erected above Golspie and his memory is still so hated that people can’t bear to look at it. That tickled William. He liked going for long walks. He would often walk to the top of Clachan Mohr. He used to say that one day he would get a statue of himself put up there.’
‘And what is his family background?’
‘Surprisingly good. Went to Marlborough, then New College, although he left after only two years without getting his degree. Went to work for a family friend in the City as a stockbroker after he did his National Service. After that, I don’t know. He was always vague about it. But something happened. His family didn’t come to the wedding. He has two sisters and a brother living. They won’t have anything to do with him.’
‘Have you their addresses?’
Mrs Mainwaring went over to a desk and fished out an address book. She copied out three addresses on to a slip of paper and handed it to Hamish.
‘Can you put those bloody teeth away?’ she said sharply.
Hamish put the polythene bag back in his pocket.
‘You will inherit his money if he is dead, will you not?’ asked Hamish.
‘I’ll get my own money back, if that’s what you mean,’ said Mrs Mainwaring drily.
‘Now about those houses and crofts he bought,’ said Hamish. ‘What did he plan to do with them?’
‘If you ask me, he planned to go on using the land for his sheep and let the houses rot. I pointed out time and again that he could sell the houses and keep the croft land, but he enjoyed the locals’ fury. They hated him for letting two good houses stand there decaying. Somehow, he had led them to believe he hadn’t much money. He worked hard in the beginning at getting everyone to like him. He wasn’t a complete stranger. He had been up on visits before; this aunt was the only member of the family who still liked him. And so they accepted him as a crofter without question.’
‘Now, Mrs Mainwaring, it takes a very strong motive to kill a man, that is, if your husband has been killed. Have you any idea who might have done it?’
‘It could have been pretty much anybody,’ she said. ‘I can’t help you there.’
Hamish asked several more questions, got the address in Edinburgh of the dentist who had supplied the false teeth, and then took his leave.
Mrs Mainwaring shook hands with him, waved goodbye, and as soon as the police Land Rover was out of sight, she sank down in a chair, holding her large body in her arms to stop the uncontrollable shaking.
As Hamish drove up to the Cnothan Game and Fish Company, he was stopped a few yards before he reached it by a police barrier behind which swarms of press were being held at bay. The barrier was raised to let him through. He saw the yard was full of plainclothes officers. Blair and several high-ranking policemen were watching the operations.
Blair saw Hamish approaching and went to meet him as Hamish’s lanky figure descended from the Land Rover. Hamish grinned. Blair was determined that Hamish Macbeth should not meet any of the top brass.
‘Did she recognize the teeth?’ demanded Blair.
‘Aye,’ said Hamish. ‘They’re Mainwaring’s all right. How’s the big hush-up going?’
‘It’s going jist fine. Nobody’s going to talk, least of all Jamie Ross.’
Hamish pushed back his cap and scratched his head thoughtfully. ‘Have ye thought what’s going to happen when you get your man, or woman, and he or she appears in the dock? What about the evidence? There’ll be an even bigger scandal in the press if they find out you’ve been suppressing vital evidence.’
Blair went scarlet. His mind hadn’t worked as far in advance as that.
‘Don’t you worry, sonny,’ he growled. ‘Leave important matters like that to the high-ups. Now, get back to that station and type up Mrs Mainwaring’s statement.’
But instead of going to the station, Hamish drove back to Sandy’s cottage. There was a strange policeman on duty. He shrugged when Hamish said he wanted to look around and said, ‘Help yourself.’
Hamish pushed open the door and went in. Nothing, he reflected sadly, is more bleak than the home of a drunk. Unwashed dishes were piled high in the greasy sink. The wood-burning stove was black with old grease. The floor was covered with food and drink stains, the bedroom smelled appallingly. He poked about through closets, through piles of romances, through hidden stacks of empty bottles, but there was no clue to where Sandy could have gone. There were no personal papers, no clue to relatives – unless Blair had taken them away. He went out past the policeman and round to the back. The garden was a tip of old rubbish, old tyres, broken cups, more empty bottles, a shattered hen coop, and a large oil drum with holes bored in the side for burning refuse. Hamish tipped up the oil drum and looked inside. It was empty, but no doubt Forensic had taken away the contents to examine them. He was about to turn away when he noticed a blacker patch on the earth at his feet. He bent down and poked a finger into the soil. The ground was soft, as if it had recently been turned over and raked. He stood up and pushed his cap on the back of his head and thought hard. If Sandy had burnt something in the garden recently, something so important that he had taken the ashes and raked the ground, it followed that Sandy Carmichael could be the murderer. But Hamish still could not believe it.
When he left the cottage, he went on to where Clachan Mohr reared up against a milky-blue sky. It had turned mild, and a soft wind brought hope of spring. He suddenly remembered how Jenny’s lips had felt pressed against his own and smiled. And yet to Hamish’s old-fashioned way of thinking, there was something slightly sad about bed before courtship. He might have fallen in love with her. Not that he was a prude or thought that Jenny’s morals were lax in any way. But in affairs, it was sometimes better to travel slowly than arrive too quickly. Instant gratification certainly knocked the spiritual side out of romance, no matter how much the modern mind tried to shout down the primitive emotions.
He parked the Land Rover and walked around a track at the foot of the cliff that led to the easy way up at the back. He walked steadily up the twisting track. At the top, a magnificent stag raised its head and stared at him with sad, wary eyes, like a schoolmaster surveying a tormenting schoolboy. Then it dipped its antlers and began to move off with that characteristically odd jerking start which quickly changed into the supple speed of a full gallop.
Hamish suddenly felt deliriously happy. The warm day, the stag, Jenny, the springy heather, Jenny, the sun on his neck, Jenny – all crowded together and sky-rocketed in his brain. He did several cartwheels across the springy heather and then fell on his back, laughing helplessly. His sadness about sleeping with Jenny had gone. He felt sure he loved her.
And then he longed for a cigarette. The Americans would call it the reward syndrome, he thought. Something good happens, and you deserve a treat. Surely the cleverest advertising slogan man ever created was ‘Have Some Cadbury’s, You Deserve It’.
He was clambering to his feet, reminding himself he was supposed to be looking for clues, when he saw a glimmer of white down under deep clumps of heather. He fished out two crumpled paper cups.
He turned them round and round in his hands. There was a smear of lipstick on one. He looked closer. No, it was not a smear of lipstick, it was a smudged fingerprint. Paint. Oil paint.
He sat down and put the cups carefully on the grass and looked at them.
A cloud swept across the sun and he shivered.
Pain
t.
Jenny.
Paint + paper cup = Jenny.
But it could have been a schoolchild.
There were traces of coffee in the bottom of the cup. Children these days did not drink tea or coffee. They drank Coke or 7-Up or Dr Pepper or a Scottish soda called Barr’s Irn Bru, ‘made from girders’.
He clutched his head. Time. Think about time. Jenny had been crying on – when was it? Sunday. Her sister had died. She had received a letter. Funny, that. The police were usually informed. Wait a bit! Jenny could have been here with someone else. It need not have been Mainwaring. Oh God, let it not be Jenny.
He searched further under the heather clumps and came up with a pipe. Mainwaring had smoked a pipe.
He picked up the cups and put them in a bag along with the pipe and carried them down from Clachan Mohr. He drove carefully back to the police station and then crossed the road to Jenny’s cottage.
He did not even have time to knock. She opened the door even as he was raising his hand to the knocker. Her black hair was endearingly tousled and her lips were still slightly swollen from love-making.
‘Hamish!’ she cried. And then the light slowly left her eyes as she looked into his face. He silently held up the plastic bag containing the two crumpled cups and the pipe.
‘I found these up on Clachan Mohr,’ he said.
He brushed past her into the cottage. She followed him into the kitchen. ‘Where’s Towser?’ she asked with a laugh that sounded false.
He sat down at the kitchen table and placed the bag with the cups in front of him.
‘Now, Jenny,’ he said quietly. ‘For a start, let’s see that letter from Canada. The one telling you about your sister’s death.’
Jenny slid on to his knee and wrapped her arms around his neck. ‘Hamish!’ she said. ‘Don’t turn detective on me.’
‘The letter, Jenny,’ said Hamish, his hazel eyes hard and bleak.
He lifted her up like a child and placed her on a seat next to his own.
