by M C Beaton
“And Angus didn’t approach you in any way?”
“No, he didn’t. But it was a vicious murder. Surely it was done by a man.”
“Any woman with something like a hammer could have done the job.”
She shuddered. “So there’s a murderer out there?”
“Let’s just hope that pilot was lying, but I’ve got to keep trying.”
§
He waited until evening, when he knew Josie would be home. “Where’s your mother?” he asked as he followed her into the living room.
“Working up at the hotel. She had to beg for her old job back.”
He sat down and told her that the murder of Angus was open again for investigation. Josie stared at him in open-mouthed dismay. “But what’s it got to do with me?”
“It could be that Fergus told Angus who he was blackmailing and Angus might have tried the same thing. He didn’t approach you?”
“No.” Although the living room was cold, there was a sheen of sweat on Josie’s face. She looked frightened to death. “It’ll all come out again,” she said.
“There’s nothing to come out that folks don’t know about,” said Hamish. “Think about it, Josie. You started cancelling the invitations after Fergus was murdered.”
“But Fergus was so pally with Angus. So maybe if someone murdered Angus, they’ll come looking for me.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“But don’t you see, there’s something about me that can drive men mad.”
Hamish looked at her in comical amazement. Then his eyes sharpened.
“Wait a bit, Josie. You said that Fergus was pally with Angus. How do you know that?”
“I just remembered it was one day last summer, I saw them laughing and chatting down by the harbour.”
“Josie, why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“It didn’t seem important.”
“If there’s any other little thing, you’ve got to let me know.”
“Sure.” She batted her heavily mascaraed eyelashes at him. “Would you like a drink?”
“No, thank you. I’ve got to get going.”
Hamish had a feeling of having escaped from something.
Somewhere in this village, he thought, was someone sitting on an important clue, and they didn’t even know it. The whole village of Lochdubh would just need to be interviewed again.
Jimmy Anderson sent three constables over to Lochdubh to help Hamish. They all plodded from house to house until, at the end of a month, there was a large folder of new reports, all containing nothing of any importance at all. “You’ll just need to face up to it, Hamish,” said Jimmy. “You can’t win them all. I thought you were onto something with Elspeth MacRae, but she seems pretty clear apart from withholding information.”
§
As the dark winter nights settled down over Lochdubh and the mountains turned white with snow, Hamish would sit in the police office at night, making notes, studying what people had said, hoping always to find something important he might have missed.
One afternoon the phone rang. It was Clarry. “The hotel’s closing down for a couple of weeks,” he said cheerfully. “Priscilla’s back.” Hamish’s heart gave a treacherous lurch. “And Martha and I were just thinking we hadn’t seen you for a bit. I asked Priscilla if she’d like to pop round for dinner tonight and she said yes, so I said I would try to get you as well.”
Hamish accepted with delight. When he replaced the receiver, he happily pushed away the reports he had been studying and went to prepare himself for the evening ahead.
When he went out fine snow was whipping down the waterfront. He was dressed in his one good suit, tie and clean white shirt. He decided to drive, and so he put Lugs in the passenger seat and set off.
Priscilla was already there when he arrived. The children gave Lugs a rapturous welcome. How different it all was, thought Hamish, looking around. There were pictures on the walls and the cherry red carpet from Angela on the floor. There was the exotic smell of good cooking coming from the kitchen. Martha had her hair cut in a new short style, which made her look years younger. Hamish flicked a quick glance at Priscilla’s hands. No rings.
While Clarry went to get them drinks, Priscilla said, “I hear you’re back investigating the murder. Do you still think Angus was murdered by someone else?”
“I don’t know,” said Hamish, taking a glass of whisky from Clarry. “I questioned everyone in the village all over again, and I can find nothing.”
“What will Kirsty do?” asked Martha. “She can’t go on running that croft single-handed, and with this snow, things are going to be rough for her.”
“The other crofters will help,” said Hamish. “And I think the bank’s probably going easy on the overdraft for the moment. How long are you here for, Priscilla?”
“I’ll be here over Christmas. It’s the one good thing about being a freelance computer programmer: When a contract finishes, I can take time off.”
“I’d better have another word with your father. Is he home? I’ve tried several times, but he’s always been away.”
“He’s here at the moment. Oh, he’ll be so furious if all that’s dragged up again.”
The conversation then became general, about village affairs. Clarry sat beaming all round, the baby on his knee.
When they were sitting round the dining table, which had to be cleared first of toys and paint books, and eating excellent roast beef, Martha said, “I might call on Kirsty.”
“I didn’t know you were friendly,” said Hamish.
“I wasn’t friendly. I mean, when Fergus was alive, I wasn’t friendly with anyone. But we had a lot in common.”
“How’s that? No, Lugs,” said Hamish severely, as the dog put a paw on his knee. “You’ve had your supper.”
“I’ve got a nice marrow bone for him,” said Clarry, getting to his feet. “I’ll get it for him now, and that’ll keep him quiet.”
Hamish turned his attention back to Martha. “What do you mean, you’ve got a lot in common?”
“Well, we had, rather.”
“Tell me about it.”
“It was one day, a couple of months before Fergus was murdered, I was down at Patel’s. I had a black eye, and people had given up asking me about things like that, because I always said things like I had walked into the door. But Kirsty followed me out and said, ‘My marks don’t show. He’s too clever for that.’
“I pretended not to know what she meant because being secretive had become a way of life. But she rolled up her sleeves and there was a great burn on her arm. “He did that with the iron,” she said. So it might help if I talked to her. Because even though her man is dead, it takes a while to get over things like that. Clarry came up behind me in the kitchen only a month ago, and he raised his arm to get something down from the shelf, and I screamed and threw up my hands to cover my face.”
Hamish slowly laid down his knife and fork. “Martha, along with everyone else in this village, I’ve been asking and asking if anyone had any information that might shed light on Angus’s murder, and all you did was shake your head.”
“I didn’t think,” said Martha nervously. “I mean, there’s a sort of freemasonry among battered wives. You don’t talk about it. I mean, she’s the victim. What has that to do with murder?”
“I’d better see her in the morning if the snow allows me to get up there.”
Clarry, who had given Lugs the bone, looked anxiously at Martha’s strained face. “Can we talk about something else at the moment, Hamish? I don’t like her reminded of the bad times.”
Priscilla promptly weighed in, telling funny stories about awkward guests they had suffered at the hotel. Hamish forced himself to put the case out of his mind and the evening ended pleasantly.
When Priscilla and Hamish walked out, the snow had stopped. “Will you get home all right?” said Hamish.
“I’ve got snow tyres on the car,” said the ever-efficient Priscilla.
“I heard the weather forecast.”
“When will I see you?” asked Hamish. His breath came out in the cold air like smoke and hung between them.
“I’ll take you for dinner tomorrow night,” said Priscilla. “The Italian’s. Eight o’clock?”
Hamish grinned. “I’ll be there.”
§
In the morning he checked on his sheep, checked on his hens, and returned to put on his uniform and then go and talk to Kirsty. He opened the kitchen door and found the banker’s wife, Fiona McClellan, standing on the doorstep.
“There’s something’s come up you should know about,” she said.
“Come in. Have the roads been gritted?”
“Yes, as I came along the gritter was going along the waterfront.”
“So what have you got for me?”
“It’s only a little thing, and my husband would be furious if he knew I had been discussing bank business.”
“Go on.”
“He never tells me anything about people or their accounts, but I’ve been thinking and thinking about Angus’s murder, and I said last night, “That poor crofter’s wife, Kirsty. I gather she’s in financial trouble.” And he snorted and said, “She could buy and sell us.” So I asked him what he meant, and he said, “She’s just deposited a cheque for two hundred and fifty thousand pounds.””
“Where did she get that sum of money?” asked Hamish. “I’ve got to know.”
“He said her premium bonds had come up. He said she had only a hundred pounds of premium bonds, and we have ten thousand, and yet we never win anything like that.”
“Thank you,” said Hamish. “I’m glad the poor woman got the money. All her troubles will be over. I don’t see what help it can be in this case…”
“There’s one odd thing.”
“What’s that?”
“She’s only just banked the cheque. It was sent to her last July.”
Hamish stared at her. “I’ll look into it,” he said slowly. “Was the cheque made out to her or Angus?”
“To her.”
She clutched his sleeve. “You musn’t let my husband know I told you!”
“It’s all right. I’ll get her bank account checked. Angus’s account was checked after his murder.”
When she had left, Hamish went into the office to phone Jimmy. Then he decided to see it through himself. There might be a perfectly innocent explanation.
The fields around Kirsty’s croft house were white and bleak under a lowering sky. As he switched off the engine, the eerie total silence of the countryside surrounded him. No dog barked and no bird sang.
He went almost reluctantly to the door and knocked. There was no reply. He stood there with his head cocked to one side, listening, and then he sniffed the air. He smelled something like cooking stew. Of course, she could have placed a pot of stew or lamb on a low heat before she went out. He stepped back and looked at the cottage. He sensed she was in there, waiting for him to go away.
He stepped back and tried the door handle. The door was not locked. He opened it and went in.
“Kirsty!” he shouted. “Police! Where are you?”
A pot simmered on the stove. The clock ticked on the wall. He heard a short, shallow breath. There was a battered sofa over to one side. He walked across and leaned over it.
Kirsty was crouched down behind it.
She looked up at him with the eyes of a hunted animal.
“Come out of there, Kirsty,” said Hamish heavily, suddenly knowing the truth. “Come out, and tell me how you killed Angus.”
She stood up and edged around the sofa. She went and sat down at the kitchen table and put her head in her hands.
Hamish removed his peak cap, laid it carefully on the table as if it were a precious object, and sat down next to her. “It was the money, wasn’t it?”
“Will I go to prison?”
“I’m afraid so. What happened?”
“Did you know he beat me?”
“I chust learned that yesterday.” He took her hand in his. “Tell me, Kirsty.”
She started to speak in a flat, emotionless voice, as if giving evidence in court. With a flash of intuition, Hamish realised she must have lived in dread of this moment, had rehearsed what she must say.
“We got married when we were both eighteen. Too young. Maybe children might have made a difference. No, that’s wrong. I’m glad we didn’t have children, seeing the way it worked out. The work on the croft got harder. Every time he made some money from the sheep at the sales, he would start out on another idea. First it was the goats. Well, they kept breaking out, and they are very destructive animals. He sold them at a loss. Then it was the deer. But he wouldn’t build a proper deer fence, so the beasts just disappeared one night.
“Like all Highlanders, he liked his dram, but it got more and more. The first time he hit me, he was that remorseful after, I thought he would never raise his hand to me again. But he did, over and over. He liked Fergus because Fergus was a drunk, and Angus had become one, too.”
“He didn’t have a reputation of being one,” said Hamish.
“Oh, he would never get drunk in the village. He would sit in the evenings, drinking steadily, and watching me, watching me, enjoying my fear. He never knew about that hundred pounds worth of premium bonds. I kept them hidden. I dreamed of winning. He thought if we had money, everything would be all right.
“Then I won. And the cheque arrived. Like a fool I told him. It was immediately his money. He said he’d take it down to the bank and put it in our joint account. He said he was tired of the rough weather in Sutherland, and we would buy a nice farm down in Perthshire, and I saw that he would spend all the money on this farm, he would mismanage it, and the beating would go on. He had been putting up a shelf in the kitchen. The phone rang and he went to answer it. While he was on the phone, I picked up the hammer and hefted it in my hand. I can’t say for sure what happened immediately after that, but he came back and sat down and picked up the cheque and said, ‘Get my coat. I’m off to the bank.’
“I snatched the cheque out of his hands and said, ‘It’s mine.’ He swung round and his face was mad with fury. Then he turned back and stared straight ahead and said, “Give me that cheque, or you know what’ll happen to you.”
“Everything went blank, and when I came out of it, I was standing there with the bloody hammer in my hand, and he was lying dead on the floor. I took the cheque and hid it up in the rafters. Then I cleaned every surface. I’d forgotten that they’d expect to find my fingerprints everywhere, this being my home. I took a cloth and swept the floor towards the door. Then I went out and stuffed the cloth somewhere. I can’t remember. Then I went in and phoned and then took his bloody head in my hands and waited. I felt nothing. It was only after that the horror came.”
“What about the whisky bottle on the table and the two glasses?”
“I did that. I wanted it to look as if he was expecting someone from outside.”
Hamish released her hand and took out his mobile phone, called Strathbane and requested escort for a prisoner, giving them the address and directions.
“Did Angus ever hit you so hard you had to go to the doctor?”
“Yes, he broke two of my ribs one night. He was clever. He never hit me where it would show. I went to Dr. Brodie, who sent me to hospital.”
“What did you tell Dr. Brodie?”
“I said I had fallen.”
“And he believed you?”
“No. I had been to him the year before with a broken arm. I said I must be accident prone. But he was looking at the bruises on my arms. He said, “You’d better stop lying and report that husband of yours to the police.””
“So why didn’t you?”
“It had been going on so long…so long. I kept making excuses for him. I couldn’t begin to think how to manage on my own. I felt lost.” She began to cry in a dreary, helpless way. Angus Ettrik, thought Hamish, if you were alive today, I might be tempted
to kill you myself.
He rose and took the pot off the stove and put on the kettle. He went into the bedroom to get Kirsty’s coat. Two suitcases were lying packed on the bed. She must have been planning to go away somewhere.
He picked up her wool coat and walked back into the kitchen and placed it on a chair. He waited until the kettle had boiled and made a pot of tea. He put a mug of hot, sweet tea in front of Kirsty and handed her a clean handkerchief ‘Drink that,’ he ordered. ‘You’ll need a good lawyer, Kirsty. You can afford it now.’
“Won’t they freeze my money?”
“The money’s yours. You didn’t get it as the result of a crime. Do you want me to get you a good lawyer?”
She nodded. He took out his phone and dialled a number in Inverness. He outlined the case rapidly and told the lawyer to make all haste to police headquarters in Strathbane.
Then he waited and waited. The snow started to fall gently, great white lacy flakes. At last, he heard the sound of the police siren.
When the police arrived, he turned and charged Kirsty Ettrik with the murder of her husband, Angus. He waited until she was led to the police car. He watched until the flashing blue light disappeared into the snow.
With a heavy heart, he got into the police Land Rover and drove back to Lochdubh.
EPILOGUE
Lord, Lord, how this world is given to lying!
—William Shakespeare
It was once more a sunny summer’s day in Lochdubh. Hamish Macbeth and Detective Jimmy Anderson sat out in deck chairs in the police station front garden. The sky above was as blue as the eyes that shone in Jimmy’s foxy face. Hamish often marvelled that a man who drank so much could remain looking so fit and healthy.
“So she got off,” marvelled Jimmy again. “I couldnae believe it. Kirsty Ettrik got off! Mind you, it was thanks to about every villager here going down to the High Court and swearing blind that she had been tormented and beaten near to death by that husband of hers. Took the shine out of your case, Hamish. Daviot wonders how you could have possibly not known what was going on when everyone else in the village did.”
