Death of a Maid

by Beaton, M. C.

  Hamish drove up to the burning villa. Elspeth saw him arrive and whipped out a camera and began to take photographs as Hamish helped the old lady out of the Land Rover.

  Blair came hurrying up. ‘Who’s this? I told you to get out there and interview folks.’

  ‘This is Mrs Samson,’ said Hamish. ‘She was fortunately out shopping when the fire started.’ Hamish turned to the old lady. ‘Mrs Samson, the solicitor gave you a packet of papers left you by Mrs Gillespie. Do you by any chance have them with you?’

  She shook her head. ‘I never even opened the packet. Mrs Gillespie told that solicitor it was just old mementoes – photos and letters. I thought I’d give them to her stepdaughter, Heather.’

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘I hadn’t the time. I left them on the table in the hall.’

  Hamish looked gloomily at the blazing house.

  ‘You!’ snapped Blair. ‘Stop standing there gawking like a loon. Get to work. We’ll look after Mrs Samson.’

  Behind Blair’s back, Jimmy mimed drinking motions which Hamish interpreted to mean that he would be over at Lochdubh at the end of the day.

  Most of the time, Hamish was used to the winds of Sutherland. But as he got out of the Land Rover in front of Mrs Barret-Wilkinson’s house, he felt the increasing strength of a gale and sighed. Calm days were a brief respite from the yelling and screech of the Sutherland winds, and this one was already beginning to howl like a banshee.

  He clutched at his cap as he rang the bell. He waited. No reply.

  He retreated and drove down to Mrs Beattie’s shop. ‘Have you seen Mrs Barret-Wilkinson this morning?’ he asked.

  ‘No, it’s been right quiet. Awful that, about Mrs Samson’s house.’

  ‘How did you hear? Do you know Mrs Samson?’

  ‘Never heard of her, but my niece in Braikie called me a minute ago. Burnt to a crisp, the old lady was,’ added Mrs Beattie with gloomy relish.

  ‘She’s fine. She was out when the fire started,’ said Hamish.

  ‘There’s a mercy. I see you looking at the sausage rolls. I just made them this morning.’

  ‘I’ll take six,’ said Hamish.

  Outside, he let the dog and cat out for a run and then fed them two sausage rolls each. He put them back in the Land Rover, climbed in himself, and settled down to have a lunch of sausage rolls and coffee. He had filled up a thermos flask before he left that morning. Rain smeared the windscreen. Outside, the waves were rising – sea loch waves – angrily racing in rapidly one after the other, while out in the Atlantic, the gigantic ones pounded the cliffs.

  He drove back to Mrs Barret-Wilkinson’s house and waited. He was just about to give up when she arrived in a four-wheel-drive vehicle. She looked startled to see him and then angry.

  ‘I have nothing more to say to you,’ she shouted against the wind.

  ‘I have something to say to you,’ said Hamish. ‘We’d better go indoors.’

  She reluctantly led the way

  ‘Now, what is it?’ she demanded, one hand on the mantelpiece. She was wearing a fishing hat and a waxed coat – suitable clothes, and yet they looked somehow odd on her.

  ‘Mrs Samson’s house has been burnt down.’

  ‘Who is Mrs Samson?’

  ‘A friend of the murdered Mrs Gillespie. I am asking everyone she cleaned for where they were this morning.’

  ‘I consider it an impertinence. Oh, very well, I was over in Strathbane, shopping.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Here and there.’

  ‘Did you buy anything? Have you any receipts?’

  ‘No, you tiresome man. I window-shopped. I did not see anything I liked.’

  ‘Did anyone see you? Did you meet anyone you know?’

  ‘No, no, and no! Now, leave me alone.’

  Hamish turned in the doorway. ‘The one good thing about it is that Mrs Samson is alive.’

  The wind gave a sudden eldritch scream. Had she turned pale? It was hard to tell in the gloom of the room.

  ‘Is she in the hospital?’

  ‘No, she was out shopping when her house went up.’

  ‘That’s good.’ As Hamish left, he turned once and saw her sinking down into a chair, her hat and coat still on.

  Hamish decided he would need to visit that solicitor before interviewing anyone else. Someone knew very quickly that a package had been given to Mrs Samson. He phoned Jimmy on his mobile and got the name and address of the solicitor.

  He did a detour to Lochdubh and left his animals in the police station.

  He negotiated the shore road into Braikie without any trouble because it was low tide.

  The solicitor, James Bennet, had an office above a men’s outfitters in the main street.

  Hamish climbed the stone stairs, opened a frosted-panelled glass door and went inside. A small girl was typing busily at a computer.

  ‘You’re to go right in,’ she said without looking up.

  Hamish walked into the inner office. James Bennet looked up in surprise. ‘I’m expecting a Mrs Withers. Didn’t Eileen tell you?’

  ‘If you mean the wee lassie outside, she didn’t even look up,’ said Hamish. ‘But I’ve a few questions to ask you. If Mrs Gillespie left a package in her will for Mrs Samson, why did you let her have it before this murder case is solved?’

  Mr Bennet was a fairly young man with what Hamish’s mother would call ‘a nice wide-open face’. He was wearing a well-tailored Harris tweed suit. His black hair was neatly barbered, and he was wearing spectacles. Hamish wondered if the lenses were plain glass to give the young man an air of authority, because he could spot no magnification.

  James Bennet sighed. ‘I did not give away anything mentioned in the will. I already told the police this. The morning she was found murdered, Mrs Gillespie called and said she wanted me to give the package to Mrs Samson. I told her to give it to the woman herself, but she said time was running out and she was rushed. I phoned Mrs Samson and asked her whether I should put it in the post, but she said she would come round and collect it. She arrived the morning of the fire in a taxi, which she kept waiting, picked up the package, and went off again.’

  Hamish sat down slowly in the visitor’s chair. ‘It seems to me,’ he said, ‘as if Mrs Gillespie thought her life might be in danger.’

  ‘Och, she was a weird woman, always hinting at things, the sort of “if you knew what I know” sort of thing without ever saying anything specific.’

  Hamish suddenly struck his forehead. The young solicitor looked at him in surprise.

  ‘There wasnae a scrap of paper in her house,’ said Hamish, his accent thickening as it always did when he was angry or excited. ‘I mean, bank books, house deeds, bills, things like that. Do you have them?’

  James looked around his cluttered office. ‘Oh, yes, they’re all here somewhere.’

  I’m losing my touch, thought Hamish. But he said angrily, ‘Why didn’t you inform the police?’

  ‘They didn’t ask me.’

  ‘I’ll need to take them with me.’

  ‘Have you a warrant?’

  ‘Don’t be daft, laddie, and waste my time. Hand them over.’

  ‘I’ll need a receipt.’

  ‘Of course, you’ll get a receipt.’

  ‘Eileen!’ called James.

  His secretary came in. Her hair was gelled into spikes, and she wore a low-cut blouse exposing an area of freckled bosom. Although she was young, her face was already set in a sullen look. Her make-up was as thick as a papier-mâché carnival mask.

  ‘Get the box with Mrs Gillespie’s papers.’

  ‘Okey-dokey.’

  Hamish waited anxiously. The wind rattled the window-panes, and a smouldering coal fire in an old Victorian fireplace suddenly burst into flame.

  At last, Eileen returned with a large deed box.

  ‘I think you’ll find everything is in there,’ said James.

  ‘Did she have an accountant?’ asked Hamish.

/>   ‘Not as far as I know. She wouldn’t need one. She probably never paid taxes. She must have earned very little cleaning houses.’

  ‘She had a tidy sum of money. Didn’t you look?’

  ‘No, why should I? As far as I was concerned, she was eccentric, and if she wanted to go on paying me to keep all her papers, I was quite happy.’

  Hamish wrote out a receipt, thanked him and left, clutching the box. He decided to look at the contents first before turning them over to police headquarters.

  Elspeth and Luke had begged the use of a desk in the Highland Times, the local newspaper with an office in Lochdubh, and were busy filing a joint story.

  ‘Are you sweet on that copper?’ asked Luke when they finished.

  ‘Of course not,’ said Elspeth. ‘I knew him when I used to work up here.’

  Luke studied the smoke rising up from his cigarette and drifting over the No Smoking sign on the wall. ‘I thought you were. There was a sort of atmosphere.’

  ‘Get this straight,’ said Elspeth angrily. ‘Hamish Macbeth was once engaged to Priscilla Halburton-Smythe. Her parents own the hotel we’re staying at. He never got over her.’

  ‘Dumped him, did she?’

  ‘No, strange to say, he dumped her.’

  ‘So why . . .?’

  ‘Leave it, Luke.’

  In the police station office, Hamish opened the box and began to go through the contents. He found the deeds to the house, electricity and gas bills up to the previous month, and a bank book showing the amount of money he already knew about from the printout. But no blackmailing material.

  He phoned Jimmy and told him of the find and said he would deliver the box to police headquarters. ‘Don’t bother,’ said Jimmy. ‘I’ll come over and collect it. If I don’t get some time away from Blair, I’ll strangle him.’

  Hamish went along to the general store and bought a bottle of whisky. Angela Brodie, the doctor’s wife, was buying cat food.

  Her thin face lit up when she saw Hamish. ‘How are things going, Hamish? We hardly see you these days – that is, unless you want to offload your animals on to me.’

  ‘Sorry I’ll be round soon. How’s the writing going?’

  ‘Slowly and painfully’ Angela had won a literary award for her first novel. ‘Getting that award didn’t give me confidence. It did the opposite. I feel I can’t match up to the first book. If this murder case you’re on ever gets solved, would you read some of it for me? Tell me what you think?’

  ‘I’m no literary critic.’

  ‘But you’re a reader.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘What’s the whisky for?’

  ‘Jimmy Anderson,’ said Hamish. ‘I’d better feed him as well.’

  ‘I wouldn’t bother,’ said Angela, who knew Jimmy of old. ‘Whisky is food as well as drink to that man.’

  Hamish returned to the police station, where he cooked up some venison liver for the dog and cat before making himself a sandwich and a cup of tea. He had just finished eating when Jimmy arrived, cursing the solicitor for not having told them about the papers he was holding.

  ‘And he gave me the impression that the package was left for Mrs Samson in the will. Anything blackmailable in there?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing. Sit down and I’ll get you a dram. The bank book’s interesting. The cash payments started two years ago – at first just a few modest payments in her current account, then they begin to increase. Maybe she hinted at something and one of them cracked and paid her money and she realized she was on to a good little earner. I think she was blackmailing more than one person. I think she was blackmailing several. We’ll need to dig into the backgrounds of everyone she cleaned for.’ Hamish poured a measure of whisky into a glass and put it on the kitchen table next to Jimmy.

  A particularly thunderous roar of wind shook the police station. ‘I don’t know how you can bear that wind,’ grumbled Jimmy. ‘We’re protected by the surrounding buildings in Strathbane, but up here, the noise wears a man down.’

  ‘The gales are getting worse,’ said Hamish. ‘And the waves are getting higher. I hope I don’t live to see Lochdubh washed away.’

  ‘Dead-alive hole,’ said Jimmy callously. ‘Wouldn’t be any great loss. Now, let’s start with Professor Sander.’

  ‘What did you make of him?’ asked Hamish.

  ‘Prissy little man. Furious with us for asking questions.’

  ‘What’s he a professor of?’

  ‘Was. Retired. English was his subject. He produced a popular biog called Byron: The Tortured Years. Did well. Hasn’t done anything since. Never married.’

  ‘Might be an idea to check the Sex Offenders Register.’

  ‘We screwed up in Scotland, remember? About six thousand sex offenders before 1997 weren’t put on the list. Still, it’s worth a look.’

  ‘Which university was he at?’

  ‘Strathbane.’

  ‘Hardly an academic place. I believe they even give degrees in car maintenance these days.’

  ‘Blair’s got a team of coppers out ferreting around. No one saw anyone near Mrs Samson’s house before it went up in flames. But the fire chief thinks the fire started at the back door, and anyone could get to that over the fields.’

  ‘Arson?’

  ‘Not sure yet. Takes ages.’

  ‘Where’s Mrs Samson going to stay?’

  ‘They’re putting her up at the old folks’ home, High Haven, for the moment. She can’t buy anything else until she gets the insurance money.’

  ‘I forgot to ask the solicitor how large the package was,’ said Hamish. ‘She was carrying a large handbag. If she’s still got the stuff and if it contains blackmail material, her life could be in danger.’

  ‘Why worry?’ asked Jimmy. ‘One blackmailer less would please me.’

  ‘Aye, but it would be another murder to solve. Did you interview any of the folk she cleaned for?’

  ‘Apart from the professor, I went with Blair to interview Mrs Fleming. Blair was all over her. He told me afterwards she was like a fairy.’

  ‘She’s a fairy who threw a vase at me,’ said Hamish. ‘She lives quite near. She could have nipped over the garden fence and poured petrol through the back door.’

  ‘Then there’s Mrs Styles, the one that Blair fell foul of. What about your Mrs Wellington?’

  ‘Mrs Gillespie found out that the minister delivered an old sermon one Sunday and hinted that it would be awful if folks found out. Got nowhere with that. Mrs Barret-Wilkinson, now. She interests me. I’ve a feeling she’s playing the country lady. But she’s the one that lives furthest away.’

  ‘We’ve run a police check already on all of them,’ said Jimmy, reaching for the whisky bottle. ‘Nothing there.’

  ‘I wonder if any of them got into the local newspaper over anything,’ said Hamish. ‘Maybe I’ll walk along and have a look. No, you are not getting any more whisky, Jimmy, and take that box of stuff over to police headquarters.’

  ‘Here’s lover boy,’ said Luke.

  Elspeth looked up and flushed slightly as Hamish walked into the newspaper office.

  ‘I need your help,’ said Hamish.

  ‘And we need yours.’ Luke was sitting next to Elspeth, and he draped a long arm around her shoulders. ‘We just filed a story, but it’s very thin.’

  ‘You’ll get what I’ve got when I get it,’ said Hamish. ‘Elspeth knows that. All right. It’ll soon come out, so you can have this, only don’t quote me. Mrs Samson collected a packet from the solicitor. Mrs Gillespie had left it with him, saying she wanted it posted to Mrs Samson. The solicitor phoned Mrs Samson, who took a cab round on the day of the fire and picked up the package herself. Now, if Mrs Gillespie was a blackmailer – and that’s sheer speculation, although she had more in her bank account than a cleaner should have – someone might have thought Mrs Samson now had incriminating papers and set her house on fire. The solicitor is a Mr James Bennet. I’ll give you his phone number. Phone hi
m for confirmation, and then about the blackmail business put it down to “sources” in Braikie. Oh, and ask the solicitor what size the package was. Mrs Samson says she never even looked at it and it was in the house when it burned down, but she could be lying and it could be in the large handbag she was carrying.’

  ‘Great stuff,’ said Luke. ‘I’ll get on to it, Elspeth, if you help the copper here with what he wants.’

  ‘What is it you want, Hamish?’ asked Elspeth, shrugging Luke’s arm off her shoulders.

  ‘I want to check the newspaper files to see if any of the suspects ever did anything worth a mention.’

  ‘You don’t need me,’ said Elspeth. ‘You need Terry the Geek. Terry!’

  A thin young man with a bad case of acne and hair as red as Hamish’s came to join them from the back of the office.

  ‘This is Terry,’ said Elspeth. ‘Mrs MacKay’s boy. He’s organized the whole system.’

  ‘I didn’t recognize you,’ said Hamish. ‘It seems the last time I saw you, you were just a lad.’

  Terry grinned sheepishly. ‘How can I help you?’

  ‘I’ve some names I want you to look up,’ said Hamish. ‘I want to see if any of them appeared in the newspaper at any time.’

  ‘Come over to my computer, and I’ll search for you.’

  ‘I can’t see how it can work,’ said Hamish. ‘I mean, won’t it be a long job of trawling through paper after paper?’

  ‘Not a bit of it,’ said Terry proudly. ‘I’ve organized it by names, places and subject.’

  ‘Let’s start.’ Hamish sat down beside him in front of a computer. ‘Mrs Fiona Fleming, formerly Mrs Bernie Fleming.’

  Terry’s long bony fingers flicked over the keys. ‘Do you mind being called Terry the Geek?’ asked Hamish. ‘Highland nicknames can be a bit cruel.’

  ‘I take it as a compliment. Anyway, this lot in Lochdubh couldn’t tell one end of a computer from another.’

  ‘Some of them got computers when they were all trying to write books.’

  ‘Aye, but the novelty soon wore off and highland lethargy settled in. Here we are. Her husband fell downstairs. Verdict: accidental death.’

  ‘I know that one. Anything else?’