by M C Beaton
He drove back to the police station and phoned Jimmy Anderson. “Aye, Kylie’s back at her home,” said Jimmy. “What’s it about?”
“Are you on duty tonight?”
“For another two hours. Why?”
“Hang on mere, Jimmy, and wait for my call. I may have a murderer for you.”
“What?”
“Trust me.” Hamish rang off.
He went through to his living room and rummaged in a box under the table until he found a small tape recorder. He checked that it worked, put it in his pocket with the small microphone poking out.
Then he drove back to Braikie, to Kylie’s flat.
He was buzzed into the hall. Kylie opened the door. “Not you again,” she groaned.
“Yes, me,” said Hamish. “It’s truth time, Kylie. Let’s go inside.”
They sat down facing each other in Kylie’s messy living room. Clothes lay scattered everywhere, empty Coke cans and bottles, and a plate with the remains of supper.
Kylie’s face was scrubbed free of makeup, making her look very young. She was wearing a long T–shirt and nothing else as far as Hamish could see and her feet were bare.
“So shoot, copper,” said Kylie, affecting a nasal American voice.
Hamish surreptitiously switched on the tape recorder.
“I know who did the murders,” said Hamish.
“Who?”
“Your boss, Charles Cody.”
Her face went quite blank and then she gave a shrill laugh. “That’s havers. What proof d’ye have?”
“Would you believe it, Kylie, a bit o’ dog piss.”
She stared at him mulishly and waited.
“Aye, on the evening Fred Sutherland was murdered, your boss said he was innocently taking his wee dog for a walk. But there was dog urine in the passage leading to the stairs at Fred Sutherland’s address and that dog urine came from Cody’s dog. I’ve a soft spot for you, Kylie, and I thought I had better let you know that the game’s up. I’m on my way to arrest nun.”
Her eyes were dilated with fright. “It had nothing to do with me.”
“It had everything to do with you. He was having an affair with you, wasn’t he?”
“Yes,” she muttered.
“Louder,” commanded Hamish.
“Yes, yes, yes!”
“So you are an accessory to murder.”
“No,” Kylie screamed. “No! I told him about Gilchrist and the way he treated me, that was all. I’m no’ saying anything else!”
“You’ll be on television and all the newspapers,” said Hamish. “They’ll all want to talk to this lassie who drives men to murder.”
She sat staring at him, her mouth a little open. Then she shrugged, “It’s no’ my fault if the fellows go mad for me.” Hamish began to relax. Kylie’s enormous vanity was taking over.
“I’ll tell you,” she said, “but there’s just you and me here, so I’ll deny any knowledge of it.”
“True. Go on.”
“Well, Charlie—Mr. Cody—was always trying to feel me up in the shop. I mean, look at him. He’s old.” Fifty-something to Kylie was really old. “Then one day he says, ‘If you’re nice to me, Kylie, I’ll leave you this business in my will. And I’ll give you a wee bonus at the end of each month.’
“It’s a good business and I know the work as well as him. Not the pharmacy stuff but if I had the business then I could employ a pharmacist mysel’, some nice young man, not an old perv like him.”
“But he was a fit man. He could have lived for years.”
“I’m telling you, he’s old,” persisted Kylie with all the arrogance of youth. “The things he made me do, handcuffs, leather, all that. I made a mistake. I thought Gilchrist might be a better deal and I told him about Cody. Then when Gilchrist turned out to be a rat, I went and told Charlie. Charlie asked me if I had told Gilchrist about him and I said, yes, I had, and Gilchrist was a beast and I hadn’t wanted to go wi’ him but he had forced me. I mean, I’d come to rely on Charlie’s bonuses and I didn’t want them to stop. When I heard about the murder, I couldnae believe it. I wanted free o’ Charlie, but he said he had done it for me, and I was fair frightened of him.”
“You could have got rid of him by telling the police what you knew,” Hamish pointed out.
“He said if I ever told anyone, he’d kill me,” said Kylie. “But you know how it is, you have to tell someone, so I told Tootsie, not about the murder but how I was having an affair with Charlie and what a perv he was. She said we should get some of the boys in the pub to sort him out, but panicked and said nobody must know. But the silly bitch told her grandfather, old Joe Gibbon. Joe Gibbon goes to the Old Timers and he must have told Fred Sutherland, because Fred dropped a note through my door. He said he’d found out about my affair with Charlie Cody and that he was going to tell the police. The old fool said he was a private investigator and if I came to see him first, he would take me to the police and make things easy for me.”
“So you told Mr. Cody.”
She nodded. “He said, “Don’t worry. I’ll see to it.””
“Look here, lassie,” said Hamish wrathfully, “you’re as bad as Lady Macbeth. Did it no’ dawn on you that you were inciting the man to murder?”
Her face hardened. “I wanted that business. That business should have been mine. You know what my mother does? She’s a brass nail.”
“She may be a prostitute,” said Hamish heavily, “but she does it for money. She doesnae get men to murder for her.”
“Did I tell that old fool, Cody, to murder for me?” screeched Kylie.
“Look, what I don’t understand,” said Hamish, “is how you managed to keep it quiet in a place like this.”
“Two of the flats here are empty and there’s two elderly people in the others who go to bed early. You cannae really see who’s going up to the house because of all the bushes and trees. He’d slip something in his wife’s cocoa to make her sleep and then he’d join me, but most it was in the back of the shop after hours. If I hadnae told Tootsie, he wouldn’t have gone for old Fred.”
Hamish stood up. “We’ll be back for you, Kylie.”
“Aye, well, I’ll deny everything I’ve said to you.” Hamish went out into the cold evening and took several gulps of fresh air. He drove to the nearest phone box instead of using the radio and talked rapidly to Jimmy Anderson, finishing with, “I’ll wait for you outside Cody’s.”
Hamish waited patiently until he saw the cars arriving, Jimmy with his sidekick, Harry MacNab, in the first car, and four policemen in the second. Hamish, who had parked round the corner from the house, got down and said, “No Blair?”
Jimmy grinned. “Shame to disturb his beauty sleep. Do we drag the bugger straight to Strathbane?”
“No, he’ll get in that lawyer I’m sure he got for Kylie and we’ll have hard going. We take this tape in and play it to him.”
“Right, it’s your show, Hamish. Lead the way.”
They all crowded on the doorstep while Hamish rang the bell. Cody had obviously not drugged his wife’s cocoa that night, for after a few moments, she opened the door, wearing a dressing gown over her nightgown. “What is all this?” she demanded furiously.
“Get your husband—now,” ordered Hamish. She stared at him, and then at the detectives and police behind him. She turned away and went upstairs. They all crowded into the hall.
Charles Cody came down in his pyjamas. “I’ve had enough of this,” he said. “What on earth do you want with me now?”
“Let’s chust go into the living room,” said Hamish. “There’s something we want you to listen to.”
He led the way. The two detectives and Hamish followed. The policemen waited in the hall.
Hamish solemnly cautioned the pharmacist and charged him with the murders of Gilchrist and Sutherland. A sheen of sweat covered the pharmacist’s face. Mrs. Cody could be heard out in the hall demanding to know why she could not join her husband.
Hamish placed the tape recorder on the table. Gody buried his face in his hands as the tape began to turn and Kylie’s voice sounded out loud and clear.
When it finished, he said in a dull voice, “You tricked her, Macbeth, you bastard. There was no proof. I remembered the dog taking a leak at the foot of the stairs and went and scrubbed it clean, just in case. You bastard. She called me a perv! I thought she loved me.” His voice broke. He wailed, “She loved me! She said she loved me!” Then he began to sob.
They led him out to the car. Lights were on in all the neighbouring houses, people stood out on their steps, staring at the police, at the small figure of Cody being taken to the cars. Mrs. Cody joined her husband. As she got in the car, she said, “If by any chance you get off, Charles’, I’ll kill you myself. We were always so respectable.”
“Weren’t we just,” he said savagely. “You with your ugly body and your respectable knickers. You make me sick.”
“Are they bringing in Kylie?” asked Hamish when they reached Strathbane.
Jimmy nodded. “And she’s in for a shock when she hears that tape. We’ll need to wait for that lawyer. Cody insists on that. Want a cup of tea afore he arrives? They’ve gone to get him out of bed.”
“Aye, that would be grand,” said Hamish.
They went up to the canteen. “Good work, Hamish,” said Jimmy. “You did well and no cowboy tactics. This’ll mean promotion for you.”
Hamish looked at him thoughtfully. “Unless you say the whole thing was your idea.”
“What?”
“Think about it, Jimmy. A feather in your cap. Promotion would mean Strathbane for me.”
“I don’t want to do a Blair on you, Hamish, but I’d be right glad to take the credit. What do you want?”
Hamish grinned. “Peace and quiet.”
“Well, here’s to you,” said Jimmy, raising his teacup.
Hamish suddenly stiffened. “They’d get Cody to turn out his pockets, wouldn’t they?”
“Aye, that’s the form. What are you thinking of, Hamish?”
“I’m thinking of poison. I hope they took any pills off him.”
Jimmy stared at Hamish wide-eyed. “Unless the bugger said they were heart pills or something and being a pharmacist, whatever would be in the right bottle.”
They both ran for the door.
“Of course we got him to turn out his pockets,” said the desk sergeant contemptuously. Cody had been allowed to dress before they had taken him from his home. “He had nothing on him but a handkerchief and his house keys and car keys.”
“No medicine?”
“He had his asthma pills.”
“But you kept them?”
“No. It seemed all right to—”
“Which cell is he in?” shouted Jimmy.
“Number five. But—”
“Open it now!”
Looking sulky, the desk sergeant went and unlocked cell number five. Mr. Charles Cody lay as dead as a doornail on the floor.
“So it all ended up a right mess,” said Hamish on the phone to Priscilla the following day. “Of course Blair arrived in the morning and tried to sabotage Jimmy’s catch by saying if he’d have been called out, Cody would still have been alive.”
“So what happens to Kylie?”
“She’ll appear in court charged with accessory to murder and incitement to murder and impeding the police in their enquiries. But that expensive lawyer’s probably going to defend her for free. He likes the publicity. He’ll make mincemeat of me at the trial and Kylie will probably walk free and sell her story to the newspaper that pays the most and live a happy selfish life forever after.” There was a little silence and then Hamish said with affected casualness, “I didn’t know Sarah was married.”
“Yes, she had a bust-up with her husband. Didn’t I tell you? Oh, no, I remember, we didn’t mention Sarah.”
“She might have told me,” said Hamish.
“Why should she?” demanded Priscilla sharply.
“Well, we had dinner a few times. I thought she might have mentioned it.”
“If she was hurting,” said Priscilla, her voice now heavy with suspicion, “she would hardly tell a village policeman she barely knew.”
Hamish decided it was time to change the subject. “The only thing that puzzles me is that hour that Maggie Bane took the morning of the murder. I think I’ll go and ask her before she leaves.”
“I must say all this ferocious murder and passion in a place like Braikie comes as a surprise.”
“I suppose any passion would come as a surprise to you, Priscilla.”
“Goodbye, Hamish.”
There was a click as she rang off. Hamish swore furiously. Why had he said that? It wasn’t as if he cared for Priscilla anymore.
Did he?
Maggie Bane answered the door to him, looking relaxed and cheerful for the first time. “Come in,” she said. “I was just about to have a cup of coffee. Join me?”
Hamish nodded.
“You’ll need to sit on the floor. The furniture’s gone off to storage.”
Hamish sat down on the floor and looked around the empty room. After a few minutes, Maggie came in with a tray with two mugs of coffee on it. She placed it on the floor between them.
“The nightmare’s over,” she said.
“Did you suspect Cody?”
“No, and that’s the funny thing. He called in to the surgery a week before the murder and Mr. Gilchrist put his head round the surgery door and ordered me to go for a walk. Said they had something private to discuss.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” demanded Hamish.
“He was the pharmacist. He supplied our drugs. I didn’t think anything of it.”
“Clear up one other thing for me,” said Hamish. “That hour off you took on the day of the murder. Was there more to that than you told me?”
She looked at him for a long time in silence and then gave a little shrug. “The fact is we’d had a blazing row the night before. I went in at ten and gave him his coffee. He usually left it until it got nearly cold. I suppose that’s what gave Cody the opportunity to put poison in it. I told him I was leaving him. I was putting on my coat and just walking out. He could find another receptionist. I went round the shops, did all those things I’d told you I did, and then I thought I may as well go back and pick up the few things I’d left in the surgery.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I thought if I did you’d suspect me of the murder. But surely Cody took a great risk. I could have just walked in. Anyone could have seen him going up the stairs to the surgery.”
“We got it out of Kylie during the night when she finally broke. He had told her he was so mad with rage and passion, he didn’t care if anyone found him. At first he just meant to poison Gilchrist and walk away. He’d been up at the surgery before and knew when Gilchrist had his coffee and how he left it to get nearly cold. He said when he was finally dead, his rage would not go away and that’s why he hauled him into the chair and drilled his teeth. It was only afterwards when he realised how lucky he had been, that he began to relax. Besides Kylie said it gave him an extra hold over her. She was frightened if she told anyone, he would kill her. And with him dead, there’s no one to contradict her story. Her lawyer will get her dressed up like an innocent schoolgirl for the trial and she’ll sob and say he threatened her into silence and everyone will believe her. You obviously know Cody’s dead.”
“Yes, it was on the radio this morning.”
“They’ve got a mole at headquarters. The papers aye get something the moment it happens. Which reminds me. There’s something I’ve got to do.”
Hamish said goodbye to her and drove to the Old Timers Club where he found Tarn.
“I’m going to give you the name o’ a nice reporter on the Inverness Daily,” said Hamish. “Do you have a photo of Fred?”
“Aye,” said Tarn.
“Give it to the reporter with a story about Fred Sutherland,
detective, about how he broke the case. I think Fred would have liked that.”
“Oh, my,” said Tarn, “he would hae been in seventh heaven.”
“I’ll write out what I want you to say,” said Hamish, “and bring it back to you.”
Hamish then went back to the dress shop and confronted Mrs. Edwardson. “Do you know that it was Charles Cody who murdered Mr. Gilchrist and Fred Sutherland?”
“Yes, I heard it on the breakfast news. Who would have thought it? Such a pillar of the community and always a pleasant word for everyone. I mean, when I saw him that morning, I didn’t think anything of it.”
“What morning?” shouted Hamish.
“There’s no need to take that tone of voice with me, officer.” She flushed a mottled red. “If you must know, he passed the shop window on the morning of the murder and I think I heard him go up the stairs.”
“You stupid auld bitch,” roared Hamish. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“One doesn’t think. I mean such a respectable man. I mean…”
“Fred Sutherland would have been alive if it hadn’t been for you,” said Hamish bleakly. He went out and slammed the door of the shop behind him.
And that, he thought, as he drove off, was what had contrived to make the case so baffling—a mixture of snobbery, amateurism and sheer luck. Cody must have thought the gods were on his side when he wasn’t accused of the murder of Gilchrist. But what passion Kylie must have fired in that respectable middle-aged bosom!
Lochdubh began to prepare for Christmas. Fairy lights were strung from the cottages to the standard lamps on the waterfront. Christmas trees appeared in cottage windows, fake Christmas trees. There were fir trees all over the surrounding hills but the housewives of Lochdubh did not want the business of vacuuming pine needles from their carpets and so there were plastic trees of silver and gold and of an improbable green.
Archie Macleod had a bright green plastic tree in his garden and was decorating it with Christmas lights as Hamish stopped for a chat.
