by M C Beaton
Hamish stood up. ‘I’ll make us all some more coffee and then I’ll be on my way.’
He smiled indulgently down at Jenny and Diarmuid, who were as excited as children. And then he stared down at the miniature landscape, the coffee-pot in one hand, his mouth hanging foolishly open.
He rushed to the kitchen cupboard and took out a packet of soap powder and ripped open the top and then let the soap granules drift down on to the toy railway landscape like snow.
‘Here, ye daft gowk!’ roared Diarmuid. ‘Whit dae ye think ye’re daein’?’
‘Stop it, Hamish!’ screamed Jenny. ‘You’re ruining Diarmuid’s present.’
Hamish dropped the soap packet and pulled on his oilskin cape. ‘Tell Blair I’ll be away for a wee while,’ he said.
Diarmuid and Jenny stared at each other in amazement as Hamish hurtled out of the kitchen door. The Land Rover had been returned by Anderson. They heard a roar as it started up and skidded off down the drive.
‘Don’t worry, Mr Sinclair,’ said Jenny. ‘I’ll get the vacuum and take the top off and get all that soap up. I’m not telling Blair anything. He’ll just roar at me and say Hamish is mad and I won’t be able to disagree with him!’
The train that had brought Diarmuid Sinclair back to Cnothan had also brought the day’s supply of papers. Perhaps because he had not had time to think up any choice nuggets of flowery prose, Ian Gibb had jumped from amateur reporter to professional in one bound. The Daily Recorder carried the story of the new murder on the front page and a feature by Ian, headlined HIGHLAND POLICE COVER-UP? in the inside centre pages.
Blair’s fury now knew no bounds. He received several very nasty phone calls from his superiors. He had tried to get the pathologist to lie and say that Sandy’s murder had been suicide and the pathologist had duly reported this in his report.
The Detective Chief Inspector saw his job at risk. He went to the police station to take his fright and temper out on Hamish Macbeth and nearly had a fit when he found no Hamish but a crofter and that artist, playing with toy trains on the kitchen floor.
As the day wore on and there was no sign of Hamish, Blair sat down to compose a report. If he got any satisfaction out of this mess, it would be the satisfaction of getting Hamish Macbeth fired.
Two days went by. The blizzard was over and the roads were clear and the press were gathering like vultures. Blair’s Chief Superintendent in Strathbane had read his report on the iniquities of Hamish Macbeth, had asked a colleague what it was all about, and the colleague had said laconically that the village copper was rumoured to be the one who had solved two previous murders in Sutherland although Blair had taken the credit, and so Blair’s report was probably spite.
The Chief Superintendent had phoned Blair and had told him acidly not to waste time writing stupid nonsense about a local bobby but to get on with solving the crime. ‘What about the lobsters?’ Blair had wailed. He was told that the matter of the lobsters would be coped with when and if Blair got his murderer.
He tossed and turned all night. Hamish had not run off for fun, he decided. Hamish Macbeth had found an important clue and wasn’t sharing it. If he solved this crime, there would be no chance of Blair’s getting the credit. Hamish had had a taste of filling a police sergeant’s boots. He had probably become power-mad. Not, thought Blair, as the pale dawn crept into the hotel bedroom, that Hamish had shown any great flair for detective work in the past. It had been all luck. In each case, Hamish had all the suspects together and had confronted them and the guilty one had cracked.
Blair sat up suddenly. That was it! He would round up everyone he could think of who might have had a grudge against Mainwaring and hold a meeting in The Clachan. He would keep them there and sweat them for as long as the law allowed until something gave.
He picked a half bottle of whisky up from the bedside table and drank a hearty swallow. As the spirit shot from his stomach to his brain, he became more convinced that his plan would work.
When Hamish Macbeth came gangling back, he would find the case solved.
Chapter Nine
Truth will come to light; murder cannot be hid long.
– William Shakespeare
They had all been cooped up together in The Clachan, on and off for two days now. Tempers were wearing thin, and several of the people present now had their lawyers in attendance.
It was this communal, brutal interrogation that was infuriating them all. Jenny’s walks with Mainwaring and his criticism of her painting were out in the open, as was Helen Ross’s visit to Inverness. Jamie Ross tried to punch Blair and was held back by his lawyer. The lawyer explained that Mrs Ross had never intended to have an affair with Mainwaring but had gone with him, with her husband’s full knowledge, to find out what he was up to. Mr Ross had suspected Mainwaring of being about to start up a rival business.
Jenny was then accused of having an affair with Mainwaring. When she hotly protested, she was told bluntly that as she was sleeping with the local bobby, it followed her morals were questionable. Jenny promptly crossed the room and hired the services of the Rosses’ lawyer, and Blair glared at her in baffled fury.
He was just getting his teeth into Agatha Mainwaring again when the door of The Clachan swung open and Hamish Macbeth strode in. He tugged off his oilskin cape and looked sadly around the assembled group. Mrs Struthers was crying quietly and her husband was comforting her. Helen Ross had lost all her usual poise and was lighting one cigarette from the butt of another. Hamish could smell Alistair Gunn’s fear from across the room. Davey Macdonald, Alec Birrell, and the mechanic, Jimmy Watson, were all there with their wives and daughters. Mrs MacNeill was there, too. Harry Mackay was sitting next to the Rosses, almost hidden behind a cloud of blue cigarette smoke. All eyes turned in Hamish’s direction.
‘You can all go home,’ said Hamish Macbeth wearily. ‘Except for Harry Mackay. He’s the murderer.’
There was a terrific uproar. Ignoring Blair’s blustering and roaring, Hamish Macbeth walked across the room and stood over the estate agent. In a clear voice he charged him with murdering both William Mainwaring and Sandy Carmichael.
‘I’m in charge o’ this case,’ shouted Blair, making himself heard at last. ‘Mackay’s got no motive.’
Hamish drew up a chair in front of the estate agent and, not taking his eyes off him, he said, ‘He had a very strong motive.’ Harry Mackay sat very still, a forgotten cigarette smouldering between his fingers and a half-smile on his face.
‘This is what happened,’ said Hamish, still looking steadily at Mackay.
‘I had no idea and went down to Edinburgh to the head office of the estate agents. I was told you had indeed got a client for Mrs Mainwaring’s property. His name is Paul Anstruther, formerly of Cnothan, and he’s a general contractor, or listed as that. I went to see him and he told me he was thinking of turning them into holiday cottages and letting them out. I pointed out that people weren’t going to pay much for a holiday cottage in the wilds of Scotland when they could get the let of one in Spain and get sunshine as well. He just laughed and said there were plenty of people interested.
‘I went from there to the offices of the Scottish Telegraph and asked about the railway. I remembered hearing there were plans to alter it. An obliging reporter told me that once the Dornoch Firth railbridge idea was scrapped, the government still wanted to show they weren’t neglecting Scotland and so they’d decided on a cheaper compromise, that of cutting off that great loop before it gets to Cnothan and replacing it with a straight line of track. That track would go right through Mainwaring’s three crofts. Now, the compensation that would be paid for the loss of crofting land would be immense. I noticed when I was flying over Cnothan that the geographical lie of the land along through Mainwaring’s crofts would make an ideal railroad track. I went to the police and found Mr Anstruther was part owner of a gambling club. I visited the club, and by bribing one of the staff to look at the books, I found that Harry Mackay owed Anstrut
her a considerable amount of money.
‘When Anstruther learned he might be involved in a murder case, he caved in. The deal would have gone through the estate agent’s books in the normal way. When Anstruther got the compensation from the government, he would wipe out Mackay’s debt and still have a fortune. It is my belief that if Mackay had not moved to wipe out that debt, then Anstruther would have had him wiped out. The police tell me there’s been bad stories about the ways he copes with people who don’t pay up. Anstruther was brought up on the croft next to Mainwaring’s. He felt that Mainwaring must have known about the railway and had conned his relatives into selling the croft cheap. Anstruther planned to set up as a crofter until the compensation came through. As the son of a crofter and having been brought up on the croft, he would have no difficulty with the Crofters Commission.
‘When I was in your house a few days ago, Mackay,’ said Hamish. ‘I noticed you had a lot of books on your shelf on alcoholism. You knew if you left that drink for Sandy Carmichael on the lobster tank that he would drink it and then want more. That would get him out of the way. You phoned me and got me to drive out to the Angler’s Rest. You knew Mainwaring had advised Ross not to employ Sandy and would come around, poking his nose in, sooner or later. Mind you, it was a gamble, but then you are a gambler.’
Harry Mackay found his voice. It came out as a croak. He cleared his throat and said, ‘It’s all a load of rubbish, Macbeth. Okay, so I owed Anstruther money, but he’s your man. He had every reason to hate Mainwaring. He knew Mainwaring had pulled a fast one. And those books on alcoholism were for my sister. She was down in Inverness in the alcoholic unit and I sent away for them, but by the time I got them, she had disappeared.’ His lips trembled and he took out a handkerchief and wiped his mouth. ‘I had nothing to do with it. Nothing. And you can’t prove it.’
Hamish kept his eyes fixed on Mackay. ‘Two deaths,’ he said in a gentle, lilting voice. ‘Sandy knew what you’d done and so you killed him. Two deaths, and all for nothing. But there’s one thing you didn’t tell your friend Anstruther, and that was that the whole railway project was scrapped a month ago, and if he found you had bought him three worthless properties . . . We don’t have the death penalty – yet – but Anstruther would have been glad in that case to act as our executioner. He may very well yet, for I had great pleasure in telling him about the collapse of the scheme. The bailie he had bribed to give him information from the first secret meeting about the railway had resigned by the time of the second secret meeting, which cancelled the project.
‘So what’s it to be, Mackay? A nice safe police cell or Anstruther’s boys after you?’
There was a long silence. No one spoke, no one moved. The rising wind moaned around The Clachan and snow pattered on the window panes.
‘It wasn’t planned,’ said Mackay in a tired voice. ‘I followed him. He was going to report me to my head office. They would have fired me. I daren’t lose my job. I didn’t think Mainwaring really knew about the railway project. I thought he was just buying up cheap property in the hope it would rise in value one day. He never had a good head for business.
‘He insulted me in The Clachan. I left and then waited for him to leave. I followed him to Cnothan Game. I found a bit of rusty pipe by the road and put it in my pocket. But, man, man, I still didn’t mean to kill him. He poked around and tried the office door but it was locked. I followed him into the lobster shed. He sat on the edge of the main tank and took out a notebook and began to write. There was an empty glass by the side of the tank. He put the note down by the tank. I knew it was a note for Jamie saying something about Sandy abandoning his post. Mainwaring never thought Sandy would return. All my hatred for the man boiled up in me and at the same time I realized in a flash that with him gone, Mrs Mainwaring might sell and then I would be safe from Anstruther. I struck him hard, and he fell into . . .’
But Blair moved like lightning. He thrust Hamish aside and clapped a large beefy hand over Harry Mackay’s mouth.
‘Enough o’ this,’ he shouted. ‘Anderson! MacNab! Take him off tae Strathbane and book him.’
‘And so,’ said Hamish Macbeth that evening to Jenny Lovelace, ‘I don’t know why Blair shut him up at that point.’ But Hamish did know. Blair had seen the bit about the lobsters coming up.
Hamish wondered how on earth Blair would suppress the evidence.
Jenny looked at his drawn face and said quietly, ‘Want to be left alone tonight?’
Hamish most definitely did not want to be left alone, but he felt he had been using Jenny in a way. Proposal first. Bed later.
He nodded bleakly and Jenny kissed him gently on the cheek, patted Towser, and went out.
Just then, the phone rang and he went to answer it. It was Jimmy Anderson, phoning from Strathbane. ‘We’ve got the full confession,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Like to hear the rest?’
‘Go ahead,’ said Hamish.
‘Well, to take the story up from where Mackay left off, he just smacked him on the back of the neck and Mainwaring toppled over into the tank. Mackay fled, taking the note with him. When he heard about the skeleton, he knew whose it was and how it got to be one, but he didn’t know who had taken it out of the tank and cleaned up, see. He prayed that it might be some friendly local trying to cover up for the murderer, some local who wanted Mainwaring dead. Then Sandy turned up. Mackay had dropped his gold pen out of his jacket pocket when he’d bent over the tank as Mainwaring sank. Sandy had taken the clothes and all the other bits and burned the things that would burn, chucked the false teeth on the moor, and thrown the watch in Loch Cnothan. He’d even shovelled up all the ash, put it in a sack with a brick, and sunk it in a peat bog.
‘He wanted money. Mackay arranged to meet him up the river and when Sandy got there, Mackay waited until he had counted the money and put it in his jacket and then took out his trusty rusty pipe and clobbered Sandy the way he had clobbered Mainwaring and then he stuffed the body under a bush. Then he remembered the money. He wanted to go back and retrieve it, but found he couldn’t bring himself to go near the corpse.’
‘How are you going to keep it quiet about the lobsters?’ asked Hamish.
‘I don’t know. Maybe Blair’ll try to pervert the course of justice by saying, “Look, laddie, shut up about the lobsters and I’ll see you get a lenient sentence,” but I don’t know. Who was the reporter who told you about the railway? That one in London?’
‘It wasnae really a reporter,’ said Hamish. ‘It was my second cousin, who’s a cleaning woman on the Scottish Telegraph. She reads everything she finds in the wastepaper buckets. She told me last year and I forgot about it until the other day. So Mainwaring in a way brought about his own death by deciding to interfere in Jamie’s life. He left that glass of whisky on the tank, and Mackay got him when he went back to retrieve it. So it wasn’t a cold-bloodedly planned murder; Mackay didn’t leave the whisky for Sandy. The witchcraft had nothing to do with it . . . och, I suppose you’ll be telling me next that that hoax call which got me out of the way was also made by someone else.’
‘Aye. Mackay swears blind it wasnae him.’
‘Alistair Gunn,’ said Hamish suddenly. ‘I’ll bet it was Alistair Gunn. He was stinking o’ fear when I arrived at The Clachan. He probably thought if the call was traced to him, then he would be charged with the murder. I gather they’ve released what’s left of Mainwaring and the funeral’s tomorrow.’
‘Aye, are you going?’
‘No,’ said Hamish. ‘I think I’ll spend the day in bed. I found your murderer and I think I deserve a break.’
‘You’ve got the luck o’ the devil,’ said Anderson. ‘Cheery bye. Save me some whisky for your next murder.’
The shrilling of the telephone at seven the following morning dragged Hamish from his bed. He stumbled through to the office and picked it up. Blair’s voice at the other end sounded almost obscenely cheerful.
‘Great news, laddie,’ he crowed. ‘All our troubles a
re over.’
‘What happened?’ asked Hamish.
‘Mackay hanged hisself in his cell last night. He can’t talk and we can say what we like aboot the death.’
‘So what’s the official line?’ asked Hamish.
‘Oh, something like he cut off the flesh and threw it in the loch and then when he put the skeleton on the moor, the crows and buzzards and little wee foxes cleaned the rest – hence the scores on the bones. Sandy and the lobsters hasnae been mentioned.’
‘Are ye sure it wass the suicide?’ Hamish’s voice was sharp.
There was a long silence and then Blair’s voice sounded again, low and menacing this time. ‘Jist you keep your long Highland nose oot o’ this case. It’s no longer got anything else to dae wi’ you.’ And then he banged down the receiver.
Hamish went through to get dressed. He felt sick. He kept seeing pictures in his head of a midnight visit to a cell and a prisoner being forcibly strung up.
When the phone rang again, he waited for a long time before going through and answering it. It was Jimmy Anderson.
‘I’ve heard the news,’ said Hamish bleakly.
‘Aye, that’s why I’m calling. Cheer up. He really did commit suicide. The pathologist confirmed it and he hates Blair and would have given anything to make it out to be murder if there had been the slightest doubt.’
Hamish let out a long sigh of relief. ‘Thanks. Thanks a lot.’
Anderson chuckled. ‘I know how much you love Blair and guessed what ye might be thinking. Ta-ta.’
Hamish Macbeth went straight back to bed and slept until noon.
Towser awoke him by tugging at his sleeve. ‘Want a walk, boy?’ mumbled Hamish. He had gone to bed the second time fully dressed. He got up and peered out of the window and found himself staring straight into a wall of snow.
Hamish groaned. ‘I’d better dig a tunnel if I’m to get you out.’
