Hamish Macbeth 14 (1999) - Death of a Scriptwriter

by M C Beaton

  “Yes, it worked,” said Hamish. “And did you really lose your memory?”

  “No, I did not. I simply became weary of the act and decided to find it again. I wrote about an amnesia case in one of my books and had read a great deal on the subject, enough to trick the psychiatrist. How did you guess it was me?”

  One more lie wouldn’t matter, thought Hamish. He hoped they would forget about that crofter he said had seen Patricia on the mountain.

  “It was Detective Jimmy Anderson who suggested that you might have used another car.”

  “How odd,” said Patricia. “I would have thought him as stupid as the rest.”

  She was led out.

  Daviot remained behind with Hamish. “Good work,” he said. “This lets Blair off the hook, and I’m glad of it. He’s a good man and probably thought she had done it all along.”

  Hamish groaned inwardly, but better Blair than Lovelace.

  “I shall be glad to return Lovelace to Inverness,” went on Daviot. “He ruffled too many feathers at Strathbane, ordering policewomen to do his shopping for him. Not on, in these liberated days.”

  “I had best go and get an official statement from that man who lent her the car,” said Hamish.

  “Yes,” said Daviot absently. “This is all going to make us look a bunch of fools with the press.”

  “In what way, sir?”

  “Well, saying Josh Gates murdered Jamie Gallagher. Bad press, that.”

  “But the murders are solved, and you’ve got them off your back.”

  “True. You should consider a move to Strathbane, Hamish.” Hamish, not Macbeth. He was definitely in favour.

  “No, sir. I am quite happy where I am. It was Jimmy Anderson who put me on to it.”

  “Then why did he not do it himself?”

  “He might be frightened he would get into trouble with Lovelace. If you will forgive me for speaking freely, sir, that man does not like initiative.”

  “It will be good to have Blair back.”

  A man who disliked initiative just as much as Lovelace, thought Hamish.

  “We should not be sitting here,” said Daviot. “I’d best get the forensic team over here.”

  “Why don’t you go ahead, sir,” said Hamish. “The door was open, but I see there’s a key on the counter there. I’ll lock up and wait outside for the forensic team.”

  “Very well.”

  Hamish followed him out and stood waiting until Daviot’s car had roared off into the distance. Then he went into the bedroom and carefully took the tweed suit off the bed and hung it back in the wardrobe.

  Then he sat down to wait for the forensic team. He had plenty of time to reflect on his own stupidity. Patricia had initially got away with both murders through sheer luck. Different car or not, Ludlow could have come forward and told the police. But Hamish had not suspected her, something in Patricia’s loneliness of spirit striking a chord in his own. And he had been flattered when she had asked him to help her. She must have been very confident that, owing to the mist and the different car, no one would recognise her. But thanks to her rudeness to one tramp, which had made him remember her vividly, she had been recognised.

  He stretched and yawned. Sergeant MacGregor was welcome to Cnothan. What a dump!

  The forensic team arrived, and Hamish thankfully left. He went in to Cnothan and took a statement from Mr. Ludlow and then made his escape. As he drove down into Lochdubh, a shaft of sunlight was breaking through the grey clouds. Priscilla was coming home. The world was righting itself.

  At the police station, he typed up his reports, took off his uniform and put on casual clothes and went out for a stroll.

  Mrs. Wellington, the minister’s wife, bore down on him like a tweedy galleon under full sail. “Shocking news,” she boomed.

  “Yes, I wouldnae have believed a lady like Miss Martyn-Broyd could have committed two murders,” said Hamish.

  She looked at him in amazement. “What are you talking about?”

  “Miss Martyn-Broyd has confessed to the murders of Jamie Gallagher and Penelope Gates.”

  “Impossible!”

  “I am afraid it’s true. What are you talking about?”

  “Oh, that.” The minister’s wife pulled herself together with an effort. “We have just heard from poor Mr. Jessop over at Drim. He’s in such a taking. His wife has left him! He phoned to say she had left while he was actually over here visiting us.”

  “Neffer!”

  “Yes, just gone and taken all her stuff. They were such a devoted couple.”

  “I got the impression he bullied that poor woman.”

  “Nonsense. I tell you what he thinks happened. It’s this television business. It’s driven all the women in Drim mad. They all think they were meant to be film stars. Mr. Jessop sees nothing but ruin for his poor wife. He says she’ll end on the streets.”

  “Oh, I shouldn’t think so. She wouldn’t make any money.”

  “And that’s just the sort of nasty callous thing I would expect from you. You haven’t been to church in ages. That’s what’s up with you, Hamish Macbeth.”

  “Maybe next Sunday,” said Hamish, sliding around her bulk.

  He thought of treating himself to dinner at the Napoli, then remembered that he had a date there with Sheila for the following evening. He bought himself some cold ham from Patel’s and went back to his garden and pulled and cleaned a lettuce to make a salad to go with it.

  He had an interrupted meal. The news of Patricia’s arrest had spread like wildfire, and locals kept coming to the kitchen door to ask for details. At last he settled down in front of the television. There was a good play on BBC I, so when he heard someone rapping at the kitchen door again, he debated whether to pretend he wasn’t at home. But the knocking grew more insistent. With a sigh he got up and opened the door.

  Jimmy Anderson stood there. “Gimme a whisky, for God’s sake, man. She isnae fit tae stand trial.”

  “Patricia? She’s acting again.” Hamish led him in and took the bottle of whisky out of the kitchen cupboard.

  “If she’s acting, it’s too good for anyone to break.”

  They went into the living room. Hamish lit the fire. “The nights are drawing in at last,” he said.

  “I came anyway to thank you for giving me the credit,” said Jimmy. “What put you on to her?”

  “She did,” said Hamish. “Would you believe it? She wanted me to clear her name and so I spent my spare time trying to find out where she was when Penelope was being murdered. And she was so confident I wouldn’t find out. I’m just glad it’s over. Blair’ll be happy.”

  “Aye, he’s poncing about saying as how he was victimised by a madwoman and that he knew she did it all along. He seems to forget he was the one who insisted Josh Gates murdered Jamie Gallagher.”

  “He aye had a convenient memory.”

  “Daviot said he thought you’d cracked Patricia by suggesting she would be world famous.”

  “It was a gamble, but it paid off. I’d nearly forgotten about her monumental vanity.”

  “So we settle back down to a peaceful life, you with your sheep and hens and me with the muggings and stabbings in Strathbane.” He raised his glass. “Here’s tae murder.”

  “No, no, man, here’s to peace and quiet.”

  “Peace and quiet,” said Jimmy solemnly.

  They both drank in silence, and then Hamish asked, “Do you think they’ll go ahead with filming the series after all this? There’s the relatives of the dead to remember.”

  “I think after a certain time has elapsed, they’ll run it. They’ve surely sunk too much money in it already to abandon the whole thing.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “My lady friend wants to be a writer,” said Jimmy. “I told her to forget it. They’re all mad, that’s what I said. Got a girl, Hamish?”

  “Maybe,” said Hamish, thinking of Sheila. “Maybe I have.”

  Down in her flat in Glasgow, Sheila an
d Eileen stared in amazement at the late night news on television. “It was that writer after all,” said Sheila.

  “Hamish must be glad it’s all over,” said Eileen.

  “Oh, the policeman? I think I was supposed to phone him or something, but with all this success about your film, I forget what it was. Oh, there’s something I forgot to tell you. Scottish Television wants to find out when they plan to screen the first episode of The Case of the Rising Tides and run your play against it, same evening, same time.”

  “But will that work?” asked Eileen. “I mean, there’ll be such a lot of interest in Harry’s thing, with the murders. No one will watch my play.”

  “They thought of that. They’re going to screen it in advance and get all the publicity they hope it will get and then run it again on the Sunday. We’re going to be big, Eileen. Right to the top!”

  On Wednesday evening, Hamish Macbeth sat in the Napoli and waited for Sheila—and waited. At first he had this really splendid dream, that Priscilla Halburton-Smythe would return to Lochdubh to find him with a brand-new, pretty girlfriend, but as the evening dragged past and she did not come, the dream faded and died.

  EPILOGUE

  It doesn’t much signify whom one marries, for one is sure to find next morning that it was someone else.

  —Samuel Rogers

  Now that the murders had been solved and he had made all his statements, Hamish Macbeth moved back into his usual undemanding routine. In anticipation of Priscilla’s arrival, he had bought a new pair of shoes to go with his suit, although he convinced himself that he had only bought them because he urgently needed them.

  On the day she was due to arrive home, he was suddenly summoned to Strathbane. It transpired that Patricia Martyn-Broyd was evidently genuinely mad as a hatter, but Daviot had suggested that Hamish should try to speak to her, try to see if she were really insane or faking it, as she had so cleverly faked amnesia.

  He drove down to Strathbane and to the secure unit of a psychiatric hospital. It was an old Victorian building, sinister in the mist which had rolled in from the oily, polluted sea around Strathbane.

  “What’s she like?” he asked the grim-faced woman with keys jangling at her waist who conducted him along the long corridors. “In a straitjacket?”

  “No, herself is quiet. No trouble at all.”

  She unlocked a door. Hamish walked in and the door was locked behind him.

  Patricia was sitting on the floor, rocking back and forth and crooning to herself.

  Hamish sat down on the floor beside her. “Patricia,” he said gently, “do you know me?”

  She stopped rocking and her eyes stared at him and then she started rocking again.

  “Are you pretending to be mad, Patricia? It won’t do if you are. You don’t want to stay in a place like this for the rest o’ your life. If you stood trial and went to prison, they would let you have something to write on. You’d be able to sell new books.”

  The rocking continued.

  “It wass a bad thing you did, Patricia, taking two lives. But if you are acting, you are going to haff to go on like this till the end.”

  But she rocked and crooned, seemingly oblivious to his presence.

  He gave a little sigh. “I would ha’ thought a lady like yourself would have had more courage. In prison, they have a library and you’d be able to see your books, maybe give talks to the other prisoners.”

  No response.

  His voice grew harder. “Did you know what Jamie Gallagher looked like when I found him? The crows had pecked his eyes out. Did you know that Penelope had maybe had a pretty harsh upbringing? And there she lay, crushed and dying of pain on the side o’ the mountain. Do you know the horror you caused?”

  But she rocked and rocked.

  He gave up. He got to his feet. The woman looked through a small square of glass window and promptly unlocked and opened the door.

  Hamish walked out and the door was locked behind him.

  He went along the corridor. Suddenly he said, “Excuse me a minute.” He darted silently back along the corridor and looked through the window into Patricia’s room.

  She was standing by the window with her hands on her hips, looking out. He signalled to the woman urgently to open the door. She came running up and unlocked it.

  But when he rushed in, Patricia was once more on the floor, rocking and moaning and crooning.

  Hamish stood over her. “It iss my belief you’re a fake. But if you want to stay here with the insane, that’s your lookout.”

  He waited, but she did not cease her rocking.

  He gave an exclamation of disgust and walked out. What should he do? he wondered as he drove to police headquarters. He though of her stance at the window. Even though her back had been turned to him, it had somehow been the posture of a normal woman.

  At police headquarters, he had to wait. Jimmy Anderson told him that Daviot wanted to see him. He waited patiently outside Daviot’s room under the grim eye of the secretary, who detested him.

  At last he was ushered in. “This is the psychiatrist, Dr. Lodge,” said Daviot. “He has been working with our prisoner.”

  Hamish said that he had a shrewd idea that Patricia was acting. “That is not the view of Dr. Lodge here,” said Daviot.

  Hamish had to listen then to a long lecture from Dr. Lodge on Patricia’s condition. It became clear to Hamish that the psychiatrist had made up his mind that Patricia was mad and he was angry that a village policeman should have been produced to argue with his expert diagnosis.

  “It is just that Macbeth here knew the woman,” said Daviot placatingly.

  “You are probably not interested in my opinion, Dr. Lodge.” said Hamish. “I not only think her sane, I think she will take her own life. At first she did not mind, thinking only of the publicity the trial would bring her books. But she obviously does not want to stand trial now and go to prison, nor will she want to remain in a psychiatric unit for the rest of her life.”

  Another long and tedious lecture, which all boiled down to the fact that Dr. Lodge considered it impossible that Patricia would commit suicide. Daviot was obviously impressed as some Scots are by esoteric lectures of which they do not understand one word.

  “Thank you, nonetheless, for your input,” said Daviot finally. “You may go.”

  Hamish went into the detectives’ room. Blair was back at his desk. “Here he comes,” said Blair. “The village idiot. Didn’t I say that wumman had done it? If they hadnae taken me off the case, I’d have had it wrapped up.”

  “Chust as you had the murder of Jamie Gallagher wrapped up?” asked Hamish.

  “Get oot o’ here!” roared Blair.

  Hamish grinned and walked off. Blair was back and things were back to normal.

  As he drove back to Lochdubh, he thought of seeing Priscilla Halburton-Smythe again with a rising feeling of excitement. Once at the police station, he changed into his new suit and good shoes. He drove up to the Tommel Castle Hotel and went into reception. Mr. Johnson stopped when he saw him. “Looking very chic, Hamish. What’s the occasion?”

  “No occasion,” said Hamish, colouring. “Priscilla arrived?”

  “Oh, didn’t you know? She phoned to say she had been delayed in London and doesn’t know when she’ll get up.”

  “Aye, well, thanks for telling me.”

  “Did you come hoping to see her?”

  “No,” lied Hamish, and improvising wildly. “Is Fiona King around?”

  Mr. Johnson looked past him through the open door to the car park. “I think that’s her just arriving.”

  Hamish went out to meet Fiona. “Everything going all right?” he asked.

  “Right as rain,” said Fiona.

  “Is Sheila around?”

  “She got fired and took off ages ago. Don’t know where she is. Glasgow, I suppose.”

  “Something’s been puzzling me,” said Hamish. “Did you ever go to Angus Macdonald?”

  “The seer? W
ell, yes, I did. A lot of us went over to have our fortunes told.”

  She must have said something nasty about Penelope to give the seer the idea that she had killed her, thought Hamish.

  He got into the police Land Rover and drove into Lochdubh. Then he thought, surely Priscilla would have phoned, left a message for him.

  He ran into the police office and played his answering machine. Nothing, nothing at all. Sheila had gone off without saying goodbye, Priscilla could not come home and yet had not considered him worth even a message.

  His gloomy thoughts turned back to the case. He supposed he would always regard it as one of his failures, for surely the evidence that Patricia had committed the murder lay right there in her character. He discounted the fact that Blair had said he knew it was her all along, for Blair crashed through every case, accusing everyone. Misery loves company. He would go over to Drim and see the minister, Colin Jessop.

  The minister led him into his study. “What brings you, Macbeth?”

  “I wondered if you had any news from your wife. I wondered if you had heard from her or wanted her traced.”

  “I have not heard from her, nor do I want her traced.”

  “Why did she take off?”

  “It was this TV business. It turned her into a silly woman.”

  “Perhaps when she’s had a bit of time away, she’ll come back home,” said Hamish soothingly.

  “In that case,” said the minister waspishly, “she’ll have the door slammed in her face.”

  The study door opened and a hard-faced middle-aged blond woman came in, carrying a tray. “Time for your tea, dear,” she cooed.

  “If that’s all, Constable,” said the minister impatiently.

  Hamish left, pushing back his cap and scratching his fiery red hair in bewilderment. What a nasty wee man that minister was, yet it had taken him no time at all to find a replacement for his wife. What was up with one Hamish Macbeth? No one wanted him.

  He went down to the general store to buy some groceries. Ailsa Kennedy was behind the counter.

  “It is yourself, Hamish,” she said.

  “I see the minister’s got a new woman,” said Hamish, leaning on the counter.