Hamish Macbeth 14 (1999) - Death of a Scriptwriter

by M C Beaton

  “So how do they know he did it? What did he die of?”

  “We’re waiting for the pathology report, but it looks as if he got drunk and choked on his own vomit. He was lying up on the hill a little bit beside the road outside Drim. One of the locals found him.”

  “So how do they know it was him?” asked Hamish impatiently.

  “He had blood on his hands. They’ll need to check the DNA. But we’re pretty sure it’ll turn out to be Jamie’s blood.”

  “What’s the wife saying to this?”

  “She says he had a violent temper and that after the series was over, she was going to leave him.”

  “It’s all too convenient,” muttered Hamish. “What happens now with the TV series? Cancelled?”

  “No, I gather Harry Frame considers it all wonderful publicity. They’re all returning briefly to Glasgow to recoup, get another scriptwriter.”

  “Why another? Hadn’t Jamie written all the scripts?”

  “He’d written the first two and the bible—that’s the casting, story line, setting, all that—but they’ll need someone or several to work out the remaining scripts, or maybe change the first ones. That Fiona King says Jamie’s work was crap.”

  “So she’s still got her job?”

  “Didn’t know she had been fired.”

  “Aye, Jamie got her fired. An ambitious woman, I think.”

  “Och, we don’t need to worry about her or anyone else. Thank God it’s all tied up. Thon place, Drim, gies me the creeps.”

  Hamish looked at him thoughtfully. He had an uneasy feeling it was all too pat. Yet Josh had been found dead with blood on his hands. But why should he have blood on his hands? If he had struck Jamie on the back of the head with a rock or a bottle or anything else and he were close enough, blood might have spurted on his clothes, but not his hands.

  “Just supposing,” said Hamish slowly, “Josh came across Jamie’s body when the man was already dead. You’d think with that wound in the back of the head that he would be lying facedown in the heather. Josh wants to make sure he’s dead, so he turns him over on his back and that’s how he got the blood on his hands.”

  “Who cares?” Jimmy finished his whisky and put the glass down and rose to his feet. “It’s all over.”

  Soon Drim was emptied of television crew and actors and press. As if to mark their departure, the weather changed and a warm gust of wind blew rain in from the Atlantic and up the long sea loch of Drim. The tops of the mountains were shrouded in mist. Damp penetrated everything, and tempers in the village were frayed.

  Excitement and glamour had gone. Only two determined women attended Edie’s exercise class, and Alice’s front parlour, which she used as a hair salon, stood empty.

  Mr. Jessop, the minister, thought he should feel glad that the ‘foreign invasion’ had left, but he felt uneasy. Everyone seemed to be squabbling and discontented.

  He felt his wife was not much help in running the parish. Eileen Jessop, a small, faded woman, never interested herself in village affairs. It was her Christian duty, he thought sternly as he watched her knitting something lumpy in magenta wool, to do something to give the women of the village an interest.

  “What can I do?” asked Eileen, blinking at him myopically in the dim light of the manse living room. Mr. Jessop insisted she put only 40-watt bulbs in the sockets to save money.

  “You could organise some activity for them,” said the minister crossly. “Weaving or something.”

  “Why would they want to weave anything?” asked Eileen. “The women buy their clothes from Marks and Spencer. And I don’t know how to weave.”

  “Think of something. You never talk to any of the women except to say good morning and good evening. Get to know them.”

  Eileen stifled a sigh. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  It started more as a venture to keep her husband quiet. The next day Eileen plucked up her courage and went down to the general store, where Ailsa was leaning on the counter and filing her nails.

  “What can I do for you, Mrs. Jessop?” asked Ailsa.

  “I was wondering whether I could organize anything for the village women,” said Eileen timidly. “Perhaps Scottish country dancing, something like that.”

  “We all know fine how to dance,” said Ailsa. She gave a rueful laugh. “They were all hoping for parts in the fillum, that they were, and now they all feel flat.”

  And then Eileen found herself saying, “It’s a pity we couldn’t make a film of our own.”

  “A grand idea, Mrs. Jessop, but—”

  “Eileen.”

  “Eileen, then. A grand idea, but what do any of us know about filming?”

  “My husband has a camcorder,” said Eileen, “and I could get some books and maybe write a script. I was in my university dramatic society, and I wrote a couple of Scottish plays.”

  Ailsa looked in surprise at the minister’s wife, at her grey hair and glasses and at the jumble of shapeless clothes she wore. “Funny,” she said, “I cannae imagine you being in any amateur dramatic society.”

  “That was before I married Mr. Jessop, of course,” said Eileen, thinking treacherously of how marriage to a bad-tempered and domineering man had crushed the life out of her over the years. “What do you say, Ailsa? Mr. Jessop is going to Inverness this evening. We could have a meeting in the manse if you could round up some people who might be interested. There are some crowd scenes in the play. We could end up using everyone in the village.”

  Ailsa suddenly smiled, and her blue eyes sparkled. “You know, that would be the grand thing. What time?”

  “Seven o’clock?”

  “Fine, I’ll see you then.”

  Mr. Jessop looked amazed and then gratified when his wife told him she was going to make an amateur film using the people of the village as actors.

  “I’m glad to see you are taking your parish duties seriously at last,” he said waspishly. He never believed in praising anyone. It caused vanity.

  A few weeks after the murder, Hamish Macbeth suddenly decided to call on Patricia. He put on the suit she had admired, Savile Row, bought from a thrift shop in Strathbane, and drove over to Cnothan and up to Patricia’s cottage.

  A light was shining in her living room, and as he approached the low door of her cottage, he could hear the busy clatter of the typewriter.

  He knocked on the door and waited. At last, Patricia opened the door.

  “Yes?” she demanded.

  “Just a social call,” said Hamish.

  “Come in, but not for long. I am writing.” She led him into the living room and sat down again behind the typewriter and looked at him enquiringly.

  “I wondered how you were getting on,” said Hamish.

  “Fine,” retorted Patricia, her fingers hovering impatiently over the keys.

  “I gather from Major Neal that they’re getting another scriptwriter and going ahead with the series.”

  “It is no longer of any interest to me,” said Patricia. “As you see, I am writing again, and that is more important than anything.”

  Hamish leaned back in his chair and surveyed her. “And yet you got a good bit of publicity out of the murder. I saw you interviewed on television several times.”

  “I thought I came over very well,” said Patricia complacently.

  Hamish privately thought Patricia had come over as cold and snobbish and patronising.

  “So what are you writing?” he asked.

  “I don’t want to talk about it until it’s finished. I feel it’s bad luck to talk about it.”

  “Good luck to you anyway.”

  “Thank you. Is there anything else?”

  “No, no, just came for a chat.”

  “Most kind of you, but I would really like to get on.”

  Hamish left, feeling snubbed. He wondered why he had ever felt sorry for Patricia. The woman was as hard as nails!

  Six scriptwriters were seated around the conference table at Strathclyde Televis
ion. The main scriptwriter was an Englishman, David Devery, thin, caustic and clever. Harry Frame did not like him but had to admit that he had put a lot of wit and humour into Jamie’s scripts. The part of Lady Harriet had come to life. The commune had been written out. But Lady Harriet was to remain blond and voluptuous Penelope Gates, and she still seduced the chief inspector.

  “We need to get all this rehearsed and get back up there as quickly as possible,” said Harry.

  Sheila, filling cups over by the coffee machine, looked over her shoulder at Fiona. Fiona’s normally hard-bitten face looked radiant. It was all going her way now, thought Sheila. With Jamie out of the way, the atmosphere of purpose and ambition had done wonders for Fiona.

  And Jamie was more than dead. He was disgraced. Because of the publicity engendered by the murder, two people from Jamie’s scriptwriting class had surfaced to say that Stuart had shown them that script of Football Fever and said he was going to give it to Jamie, that Jamie had cruelly trashed it, and Stuart had felt so low about it, he had said he would never write again.

  Sheila found she was looking forward to going back to the Highlands. A picture of Hamish Macbeth rose in her mind. She wondered what he had really thought about Jamie’s murder. Penelope Gates, who had not seemed to mourn her husband one bit, had nonetheless told Sheila that she was puzzled by the murder. Josh, said Penelope, might have beaten her up, but murder Jamie? Never!

  If Hamish were in a book like one of Patricia’s, she thought dreamily, he would prove that Fiona had done it to keep her job. But Hamish was only the village bobby, and—

  “What about that coffee, girl?” demanded Harry.

  Sheila sighed. Harry called himself a feminist but never seemed to practice what he preached.

  She put cups on a tray and carried them to the table. Her mind wandered back to the murder. BBC Scotland had agreed to pay royalties for Football Fever to Stuart’s estate, which meant that Angus Harris had come into quite a bit of money. He had even sold several of Stuart’s manuscripts to a publisher.

  How neat it would be if Angus had done the murder. But no one had really been asked to produce an alibi. Josh had done it. Case closed.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  It almost makes me cry to tell

  What foolish Harriet befell.

  —Heinnch Hoffman

  Eileen Jessop watched the return of the television film crew with heavy eyes. Who would be interested in her amateur efforts now? It had all been going so well. The women had liked the Scottish comedy she had written so many years ago. She had felt important and popular for the first time in ages.

  She wearily trudged down to the general store. Ailsa once more had her sixties hairstyle, and from the community hall came the thump, thump, thump of the music from Edie’s exercise class.

  “It’s yourself, Eileen,” Ailsa hailed her. “Going to get a part in the movies?”

  Eileen shook her head.

  “Och, you’ll be following the camera crew around, getting tips.”

  “I don’t suppose any of the women will be interested in my little amateur venture anymore,” said Eileen sadly.

  “Don’t say that! It’s the best fun we’ve had in ages. I bet we could knock spots off this lot.”

  Eileen blinked myopically. “You mean you all want to go on?”

  “Sure.” Ailsa leaned her freckled arms on the counter. “See here, we always do our filming in the evening, and that’s when this lot pack up. Of course we’ll go on.”

  Eileen gave her a blinding smile. “That’s wonderful. Mr. Jessop doesn’t mind the rehearsals and the filming at all.”

  “Neither he should,” said Ailsa with a grin. “We don’t film on the Sabbath and there aren’t any nude women in it.”

  “I hope they all keep their clothes on in this television thing,” said Eileen anxiously. “Mr. Jessop’s blood pressure is quite high.”

  “Do you always call him Mr. Jessop? Sounds like one o’ thae Victorian novels.”

  “I mean Colin. He likes me to call him Mr. Jessop when talking about him.”

  “Funny. But that’s men for you.”

  After the filming of The Case of the Rising Tides got well under way, Sheila Burford found herself increasingly reluctant to return to the Tommel Castle Hotel in the evenings with the rest of them to talk endless shop. She was becoming more and more disenchanted with the television world and was beginning to wonder if she had gotten into it because it made her mother so proud of her and all her friends seemed to think she had an exciting job. Sometimes she felt like some sort of maid, fetching and carrying and serving drinks and coffee.

  After the first week, she drove to the police station.

  “There’s that blonde calling on Hamish Macbeth,” said Jessie Currie to her sister, Nessie. “He can’t keep his hands off them.”

  Sheila, all too aware of two pairs of eyes scrutinising her from behind thick glasses, knocked at the kitchen door of the police station.

  “Come in,” said Hamish Macbeth cheerfully. “Nothing wrong, is there?”

  “No, I just got bored with television chatter.”

  She followed him into the kitchen.

  “Filming going all right?” asked Hamish.

  “Oh, like clockwork, good script, everyone pulling together. It’s as if Jamie had never existed.”

  Hamish put a battered old kettle on top of the wood-burning stove. “It’s a warm evening,” said Sheila, who was wearing a T·shirt with the Strathclyde Television logo and a pair of cut-off jeans and large boots. “Do you always have that burning?”

  “I was just about to put on my dinner. Want to join me? It’s only chicken casserole.”

  “If you’re sure…That would be nice.”

  “All right. We’ll have coffee first…So Jamie’s conveniently dead and everyone is happy. Fiona’s kept her job and Angus Harris has come into money and Penelope Gates has lost a husband she didn’t much like anyway. How’s Penelope bearing up?”

  “Remarkably well,” said Sheila dryly. “In fact, she’s becoming a bit starry.”

  “Meaning?”

  “She’s beginning to queen about a bit. It’s odd, that. When Jamie was alive, she was very pleasant and subdued and only really came to life on the set. A hardworking actress, not all that great, but she has the looks. Now she seems to fly off the handle over every little thing and has to be coaxed back into a good temper.”

  There was a silence while the kettle boiled. Hamish put instant coffee in two mugs and then carried them to the table and sat down next to Sheila.

  “So were you surprised when you found out the murderer was Josh?” he asked.

  Sheila took a sip of coffee and wrinkled her smooth brow. She was a very pretty girl, reflected Hamish, and almost immediately, Down, Hamish, you’ve had enough rejections to last you a lifetime!

  “I was,” said Sheila. “Just a feeling.”

  “Why?” asked Hamish curiously.

  “Well, the only proof it was Josh was the blood on his hands.”

  “I thought of that,” said Hamish. “He could have been skulking about up on the mountain and found Jamie dead. The body had been turned over.”

  “Did they ever find out what struck him?”

  “A rock. They found infinitesimal traces of rock in his skull. But all the murderer had to do was throw it away. Just below that bit of heather where he was lying is a whole expanse of scree. If the rock had been hurled down there, well, it could be anywhere.”

  “Did they look?”

  “Yes, they had a team o’ coppers crawling over the mountain like ants.” Hamish suddenly froze, his mouth a little open.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Sheila sharply.

  “I’ve chust remembered something,” he muttered. He could feel sweat trickling down from under his armpits. “Excuse me,” he said.

  He went through to the bathroom and stripped off his shirt and sponged himself down, then went through to the bedroom and put on a clean shirt. W
hat sort of policeman was he? He had put all the bits and pieces he had picked up off the heather into his backpack and, after finding the body, had forgotten all about them. The plastic bag he had put them in and the cellophane packet with those two threads of cloth were still in the backpack, which he had thrown in the bottom of the wardrobe. When Jimmy had called to tell him that the case was all wrapped up, he had forgotten all about them. He should have handed them over to the forensic team when he left the mountain.

  He returned to the kitchen. “I’ll chust put the casserole in the oven and we’ll move to the living room. It’s hot in here.”

  Sheila looked curiously at him as she sat down in the living room. “Are you sure you haven’t had a shock?” she asked. “Was it something I said?”

  “No, no, I chust remembered I had a report to type up.”

  “Am I holding you back?”

  “Och, I can do it tomorrow.”

  There was a knock at the kitchen door. Hamish went to answer it. The Currie sisters pushed past him and went straight through to the living room.

  “We didn’t know anyone was here, didn’t know anyone was here,” said Jessie, who had an irritating habit of repeating everything. “We dropped by to bring you a lettuce from the garden, the garden. And this is…?”

  “Miss Sheila Burford, who is with the television company,” said Hamish. “Sheila, the Misses Currie, Nessie and Jessie.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” said Sheila, recognising the two who had stared at her so fiercely on her arrival at the police station.

  “Is there any trouble at Drim?” asked Nessie.

  “Trouble at Drim,” echoed Jessie.

  “No, this is just a social call.”

  “Is there any news of Miss Halburton-Smythe coming up here soon?” asked Nessie.

  “I have not heard from Miss Halburton-Smythe,” said Hamish stiffly.

  “Such a beautiful girl,” said Nessie.

  “Beautiful,” said Jessie.

  “Was engaged to Hamish here, but he didnae appreciate her.”

  “Appreciate her.”

  “And went to foreign parts.”

  “Foreign parts.”

  “To hide a broken heart.”