Death of a Maid

by Beaton, M. C.

  ‘I’m sorry about that. If I could just explain . . .’

  ‘Forget it. I’ll call you tomorrow.’

  Hamish showered and got into his pyjamas, lifted his grumbling pets off the bed, and got in himself. The cat leapt back on and lay beside him, and Lugs lay at his feet. He fell into a dreamless sleep, not waking until seven in the morning.

  Hamish left his pets at the police station and was getting into the Land Rover again when Mary Gannon came up behind him, making him jump.

  Hamish swung round. ‘Just off to Braikie,’ he said.

  ‘See you keep on the job. Do not speak to the press. I know you show great insight and intelligence, but it is necessary in a big case like this that we all work together, and that means following orders. Do you understand me?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘That’s the stuff,’ said Blair, coming up to join them. ‘That laddie needs a wumman’s firm touch.’

  ‘Mr Blair, if I want your advice, I’ll ask for it,’ snapped Mary.

  ‘Och, come on. It was just a wee joke. The way you females take on.’

  ‘Any more of that, and I’ll have you up before the board for sexual discrimination. Also for alcoholism. You stink of booze and at this time in the morning!’

  Hamish got into Angela’s car and sped off, leaving them to it.

  It was one of those grey misty days in the Highlands where all the colour is bleached out of the landscape and sounds are muffled. The mist grew thicker as he reached Braikie and parked at the end of the cul-de-sac.

  It was one of the few times when he regretted remaining a mere policeman. He was out of the loop, away from recent discoveries and statements from the suspects. Maybe he should have told the inspector about the possibility Shona had found out something about one of the suspects when she was working in London, but Mary would ask how he had come about such information and then would give him a row for discussing the case with a member of the hated press.

  He was just bemoaning the fact that he had forgotten to bring coffee and sandwiches with him when a police car drew alongside. He rolled down the window.

  ‘Driving licence and papers,’ snapped one, ‘and get out of the car.’

  Hamish uncoiled his length from Angela’s small car and pulled his police card out of his pocket, saying as he did so, ‘I’m PC Hamish Macbeth from Lochdubh. I’m here to watch the professor. Instructions from Inspector Gannon. What’s up?’

  ‘The neighbours have been complaining about a sinister-looking man – that’s you – casing the houses.’

  God bless them all, thought Hamish. He phoned headquarters and got patched through to Mary’s phone. When he finished explaining, she said impatiently, ‘It’s your fault for making yourself so obvious.’

  ‘It’s hard not to be obvious in a highland town,’ protested Hamish.

  ‘You’d better leave it. Get back and put your uniform on and go over to Styre. Mrs Barret-Wilkinson was not available when we called. Find out where she was the night before last.’

  Back to the police station, into uniform, picnic basket loaded up with people food and animal food, and off in the Land Rover with the dog and cat. Hamish whistled cheerfully. He was glad to get out of what had looked like a long and boring day.

  As he mounted the crest of the hill above Lochdubh, the mist rolled up the mountain sides, and soon the sun shone out. The landscape was a blaze of colour: yellow broom, purple heather, and rowan berries as red as blood.

  Mrs Barret-Wilkinson was not at home. Her car was gone. Hamish drove down to the beach and let the dog and cat out. He unpacked the picnic basket, spread a rug on the beach, and ate a leisurely brunch after feeding Lugs and Sonsie.

  The sea was calm with sunlight rippling on tiny waves plashing gently on the shingly beach. The air smelled of salt and peat smoke. From one of the little cottages of Styre came the sounds of a football match on the radio.

  How far it all was from the bustle and grime of the cities and the miseries of murder, thought Hamish. But unless the murders were solved, a dark stain of suspicion and dread would be left.

  Back to work. He packed everything up with a sigh. Time to see if Mrs Barret-Wilkinson had returned.

  When he went back to her house, he was in time to see her getting out of her car. She took a large suitcase out of the boot. Hamish approached her.

  ‘What now?’ she asked.

  ‘Do you know a television researcher called Shona Fraser was murdered in Lochdubh two nights ago?’

  ‘Yes, I heard it on the radio when I was driving north. What’s it got to do with me?’

  ‘I have to take a statement from you,’ said Hamish soothingly. ‘Where were you the night before last?’

  ‘I was visiting a friend in Glasgow.’

  ‘I’ll need the name and address.’

  She sighed. ‘Come into the house, and I’ll write it down for you.’

  Hamish followed her into the faux country house living room.

  She went to a desk and wrote on a pad of paper and then tore a sheet off. ‘There you are. Bella will confirm that I was with her the night before last. And last night, I stopped at the Palace Hotel in Inverness.’ She opened her handbag and took out a receipt. ‘There is my hotel receipt. Now, I’d like to get on with unpacking.’

  That was that, he thought. He’d phone over the details, and Strathclyde police would check her alibi.

  ‘Just one thing,’ said Hamish. ‘Why did you choose to live in an isolated place like this?’

  ‘I wanted a quiet life. I like it here. I could afford a house this size in such a remote place where I could not afford it in the city. Now, if you don’t mind . . .’

  Hamish decided to drive to Lochdubh with this information rather than phone it over. That way, he might find out what else was going on.

  He was climbing into the Land Rover when his phone rang. It was Elspeth.

  ‘Good news, Hamish. Shona was working on the background of doctors who had been sued for malpractice, and one of the subjects was Dr Renfrew. He had told a woman that the rash on her breast was merely caused by an allergy to her bra. He prescribed ointments. This went on for months. It got worse. By the time the woman decided to get a second opinion, it was found she had invasive cancer and it was well advanced. The fact that she didn’t lose her life was a miracle, but she sued Dr Renfrew for malpractice. He was not struck off the medical register and he was heavily insured against malpractice suits, so he got away with it. He wouldn’t give an interview, but there were television shots of him leaving his house and shouting at the reporter. He came up to Braikie Hospital last year.’

  ‘Elspeth, I’ll go and talk to him. If I phone this in, they’ll send a detective and I’ll end up never getting an idea of who was guilty.’

  So Hamish phoned over a report of Mrs Barret-Wilkinson’s alibi to the mobile police unit, saying he would type it up and deliver it later with the receipt.

  The policeman who answered the phone said, ‘Wait a minute. The inspector’s just coming.’

  ‘Talk to her later,’ said Hamish, and rang off.

  Now for Dr Renfrew.

  At the hospital, he was told it was Dr Renfrew’s day off. He got his address, which was some way out of Braikie.

  The doctor’s home was a square Scottish Georgian house, a relic of the days when army officers were quartered in the Highlands after the Battle of Culloden.

  It looked a dark forbidding sort of place, and the garden was unkempt with a small square of shaggy lawn and straggly bushes.

  He rang the doorbell. It was answered by a harassed-looking woman.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  ‘Mrs Renfrew?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is your husband at home?’

  ‘Is this necessary? He’s already been interviewed by the police.’

  ‘Something else has come up. I would really like to speak to him.’

  ‘Don’t be long about it.’

  She tur
ned away, and Hamish followed her into a dark, stone-flagged hall. She pushed open a door and said, ‘Darling, it’s the police again.’

  Dr Renfrew was sitting in an armchair beside a smouldering fire. The day had turned warm, but the house was cold.

  The doctor threw down the newspaper he had been reading and got angrily to his feet. ‘This is too much. I shall put in a complaint.’

  Hamish turned round. Mrs Renfrew was standing in the doorway.

  ‘I think it would be better if we were alone, Dr Renfrew.’

  He hesitated only a moment and then said, ‘Elsie, go and do something or other and shut the door behind you.’

  Elsie shut the door with unnecessary force.

  ‘So what is it now?’ demanded Dr Renfrew. ‘I have already been asked to account for my movements the night that researcher was murdered, which, I may add, I consider the highest degree of impertinence.’

  ‘Did you tell the police you had met Shona Fraser before?’

  ‘What!’

  ‘When she was working as a researcher for a London-based television company, she must have interviewed you for their programme on medical malpractice.’

  His face turned a muddy colour. ‘I never saw her. Yes, they tried to interview me, but I either refused to answer the door or ran past them when I left the house or surgery. It was a genuine mistake. It’s all over now.’

  ‘Except,’ said Hamish slowly, ‘when Mrs Gillespie recognized you from the programme and blackmailed you. What did she want?’

  All the bluster had gone out of Dr Renfrew. He said in a low voice, ‘A bit of money, here and there, not much. And drugs.’

  ‘Drugs!’ exclaimed Hamish. What was happening in the Highlands, he marvelled, when middle-aged charwomen turned out to be drug addicts? ‘What was it? Cocaine? Heroin?’

  He gave a bleak smile. ‘No, nothing like that. Hyperex.’

  ‘What on earth is Hyperex?’

  ‘She had osteoarthritis. Hyperex was a drug for sufferers, but it was considered dangerous and we were told to withdraw all supplies. But we still had some at the hospital. She insisted it was the only thing that helped and said if I didn’t give it to her she would broadcast my malpractice suit all over Braikie. I’m glad she’s dead, but I didn’t kill her.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Hamish. ‘But I’ll need to ask you to come with me to make a statement.’

  He looked completely defeated. ‘I’ll get my jacket,’ he said.

  At the mobile police unit, Blair was nowhere in sight, but Inspector Gannon was there. Hamish briefly explained what he had found out, not mentioning Elspeth’s name but saying instead that he had remembered seeing the documentary on television.

  ‘Good work,’ she said. ‘There’s been a burglary at a croft on the Strathbane road. It’s just come in. I want you to get over there and do the initial interview, and I’ll send along some fingerprint men if we can spare them. Here’s the address. Off you go while I get down to getting a statement from the doctor.’

  Hamish opened his mouth to protest and then shut it again, quickly deciding any protest would be futile. But he felt very angry with her. He had given her the first real breakthrough in the case, and he was being sidetracked. They could easily have sent out a policeman from Strathbane.

  He walked to his Land Rover and looked at the name and address. Geordie McArthur, The Sheiling, Strathbane Road. It was several months since he had called on Geordie. He liked to occasionally check up on people in the outlying crofts.

  As he approached, Hamish reflected it was a typical croft house. Outside were two rusting cars, an old television set and a fridge.

  Other people might decorate the outside of their houses with flower gardens, but your true crofter used it as a dump for discarded machinery and household goods in the dim hope that some bits might come in handy some day.

  Geordie’s wife, a thin, leathery woman with a face set in perpetual lines of discontent, invited him in. She said Geordie was asleep and went to wake him.

  Sutherland boasts some of the tallest men in the British Isles. Geordie’s head scraped the low ceiling when he came into the living room.

  ‘So what was taken, Geordie?’ asked Hamish.

  ‘My Land Rover. Two nights ago.’

  ‘And you’ve only got around to reporting it now! I’ll need the registration number and a description.’

  ‘You can see for yourself. It’s parked round the back of the house.’

  ‘Geordie. This is right daft. It’s been stolen or it hasn’t been stolen.’

  ‘Look, I havenae used it for three days, right? Well, I checked the mileage, and there were miles on it that werenae there before. I always check the mileage because herself sometimes takes it out when I’m asleep.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t she?’ asked Hamish.

  ‘I don’t want herself flitting off tae Strathbane to flaunt herself in front of other men.’

  Hamish stared at the big man in amazement. Did he really see his downtrodden, weather-beaten wife as such an object of desire?

  ‘Let’s see the Land Rover, Geordie.’

  Geordie led the way round the back of the croft house to where the Land Rover was parked. There’s a full-blown murder case going on, Hamish thought, and here am I stuck with this loon.

  ‘See,’ said Geordie, ‘I leave the keys in it.’ He opened the driver’s door. ‘I’ve got this wee book. I aye take a note of the mileage. Well, it had gained twenty miles. What’s up with you, man? You look like you’ve been struck by the lightning.’

  For Hamish was suddenly standing stock-still, his eyes vague and his mouth open.

  ‘Give me a minute, Geordie,’ he said.

  Hamish looked down the fields to the Strathbane road. Twenty miles would cover the round trip to Lochdubh. Could someone who didn’t want their car recognized have stolen the Land Rover for the sole purpose of killing Shona Fraser?

  ‘Are you sure it wasn’t your wife?’

  ‘Sure as sure. I keep an eye on her.’

  Hamish thought, I’ll need to come back when this is all over and see what I can do for Mrs McArthur.

  ‘There’s another thing,’ said Geordie. ‘Whoever took it gave it a fair cleaning.’

  ‘Right,’ said Hamish. ‘Stand away from it now, Geordie, and don’t touch it again. I’ll get a forensic team out.’

  ‘I neffer thought you’d take it this serious.’

  Hamish phoned and got through to Inspector Gannon by saying it was urgent and in connection with the murder of Shona. She listened to him and said she would send a forensic team out right away.

  Hamish did not ask her for further instructions. He wanted time to think.

  Chapter Eight

  I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.

  – Samuel Butler

  Hamish waited patiently for the forensic team to arrive. Geordie lit a cigarette, and Hamish sniffed the air longingly. He wondered if the occasional craving for a cigarette would ever leave him.

  ‘Geordie,’ he said, ‘I was going to leave this until later, but I’ll need to have a wee talk with you about the treatment of your wife.’

  ‘Whit!’

  ‘As far as I can see, you keep her a sort of prisoner. Why shouldn’t she take the car and go shopping if she feels like it?’

  ‘She’ll meet ither men. She’ll waste my money on baubles.’

  ‘Church-goer, are you?’ asked Hamish.

  ‘I am a staunch member of the Free Presbyterians.’

  ‘I might have thought you a member of the Taliban. Your wife’s a decent middle-aged woman. The way you’ve ruined her looks is enough to put any man off.’

  ‘What are you talking about? I treat that woman fair and decent. She gets three meals a day.’

  ‘You’re out o’ the Dark Ages, that’s what you are,’ said Hamish bitterly. ‘And you need some sort of therapy. I’ll be having a word with your minister.’

  ‘Be damned to ye! Ye are an emissary of Satan.’
Geordie swung a punch at Hamish, who dodged it neatly.

  ‘Try that again,’ said Hamish, ‘and I’ll arrest you for assaulting a police officer. I’m telling you, Geordie, you’ve been stuck up here for so long wi’ nothing but your sheep and that poor wife of yours that it’s fair turned your brain. Here come the forensics.’

  Mary was with them. As they got to work, she looked suspiciously at Hamish. ‘I don’t trust you, Macbeth,’ she said. ‘I think you are holding back information.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t believe in coincidence. You happen to be in a restaurant in Strathbane when Dr Renfrew and Mrs Fleming are having a row. You happen suddenly to remember a television programme on malpractice, and now you suddenly discover that this man’s Land Rover could have been driven on the night of Shona Fraser’s murder.’

  ‘I didnae know anything about this Land Rover. You told me there had been a burglary and sent me off to investigate,’ said Hamish.

  ‘Maybe you’re just lucky. Get along with you. Write up your reports at the police station and leave them for me at the mobile unit.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’ Hamish touched his cap and headed off to his own vehicle.

  As he was driving into Lochdubh, he saw the long, low Presbyterian church and stopped abruptly. The minister’s house was at the side of it, a modern bungalow with plaster gnomes in the garden. Hamish wondered why plaster gnomes were not considered too frivolous.

  The door was opened by a pretty young woman. She had rosy cheeks and a mop of glossy brown curls.

  ‘I saw you admiring the gnomes,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Aren’t they awful? One of the parishioners gave them to Murdo, so we have to display them. You’re Hamish Macbeth. We met last year at Jaunty Sinclair’s wedding.’

  ‘Of course! You’re the minister’s wife.’

  ‘That’s me. Murdo’s out on his rounds. Can I help you?’

  ‘You might be the very person.’

  ‘Come in. I was just about to have a cup of coffee.’

  Hamish followed her into a bright living room. ‘Sit yourself down,’ she said, ‘and I’ll bring you a cup. Scones?’