Death of a Hussy

by Beaton, M. C.

  ‘Is this true?’ asked Donati.

  ‘Of course it’s not true,’ said Peter in a shrill voice. ‘I tell you, I can’t quite explain it but there was something odd about the sounds. Then I’m sure I heard a door slam, and I wondered if Alison had changed her mind and come home.’

  Donati sighed. ‘It’s a good thing the victim wasn’t Miss Kerr or you all might be under suspicion. I gather from PC Graham that both of you, Mr Frame and Mr Witherington, had tried to get money out of her. If she dies, you inherit, and when we get that car of hers up, I’m sure we’ll find the brakes were tampered with, that is, if this storm ever dies down.’

  There was a silence and all listened as the wind shrieked around the house.

  The door opened and Alison came in escorted by Mrs Todd. Alison moved like a sleepwalker. Peter rose to meet her and held out his arms but she shrank away from him.

  ‘Now,’ said Mrs Todd, folding her arms, ‘which one o’ ye has been using my good meat cleaver?’

  Hamish had a mad desire to laugh.

  ‘So it was your meat cleaver,’ said Donati. ‘Sit down, Mrs Todd, and I’ll get to you soon. I am going into the study and I’ll interview you one by one. MacNab, you stay on duty here. Anderson, come with me and bring your notebook.’ He turned to Hamish and said mildly, ‘No need for you to stay, Macbeth. The press will be back here in droves tomorrow and they’ll be at Mrs Baird’s funeral. I’ll need you then.’

  Hamish walked out of the bungalow. Well, it was what he’d decided, wasn’t it? Donati was highly competent and it was a messy murder. But as he drove back to Lochdubh, he could feel anger boiling up in him. Lochdubh was his patch. It was his responsibility to find out the murderer. He was being blinded by Donati’s efficiency. Also, it was almost as if Donati had assumed the mantle of Blair and had decided he didn’t want Hamish Macbeth on the case. So forget Donati and imagine the man in charge of the case to be Blair. If Blair were on the case, what then would he, Hamish, do?

  Keep it very simple, he thought.

  He went into the police station and made himself a cup of tea and sat down at the kitchen table. He longed for a cigarette and wondered if the longing would ever go away or whether he would be stuck with it for life.

  He went through to the office and got pen and paper and then sat down at the kitchen table again and began to make notes.

  He went back to the start of the case. Someone had rigged that Renault to make it burst into flames. Someone had bought a felt mat and spark plugs. The efficient Donati had covered every garage in Sutherland. It was odd that Strathbane should have two detective chief inspectors. It meant that Donati had been recently promoted and Blair should be a very worried man for surely he was due to be demoted so that the police headquarters should have just one of them in charge. Forget Donati. Garages. There might be one somewhere else. There was a shop in Dingwall in the county of Ross and Cromarty which sold motoring accessories. Forget it. Garages and shops in the counties adjoining Sutherland had probably been covered as well. Where else?

  Scrap yards. He threw down his pen. There was a sort of graveyard of old cars over at Brora. Anyone wanting cheap spare parts went there. But would four men from London know that?

  He picked up the pen again and went on making notes. Gradually his head sank lower. He put his head down on the kitchen table. Just five minutes sleep, that was all …

  He awoke with a start. Daylight was streaming in the kitchen window. He felt stiff and grimy. He bathed and changed and shaved and went out to feed the hens. Then he got into the Land Rover and drove towards Brora. The funeral was at ten that morning. He must make sure he was back in time for it.

  But when he got to the yard it was to find only a mechanic on duty who had recently started work there. The boss, he said, had taken the day off to see friends in Golspie. He’d be back that evening. Hamish stopped off at a phone box in Brora and called Priscilla.

  ‘Look,’ he said urgently, ‘I wonder if you could do something for me. Will you be at the funeral?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Priscilla. ‘Daddy’s not going. He’s getting worse. We still can’t find out what’s worrying him. What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Do you still have your Polaroid?’

  ‘Yes, it’s around here somewhere.’

  ‘I want you to get photographs at the funeral of the four guests and Alison and Mrs Todd.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Hamish!’ Priscilla sounded shocked. ‘The press will be there in droves and if I start taking pictures as well, they’ll think I’m some sort of ghoul.’

  ‘It’s awfy important,’ pleaded Hamish. ‘Tell Alison and anyone else that you are taking the pictures as a memento. Tell them it’s an old Highland custom. Tell them anything. Please, Priscilla.’

  ‘Oh, all right,’ said Priscilla crossly. ‘But if I get into any trouble, I’ll blame you.’

  The wind had died down and a warm drizzle was falling as Maggie Baird’s coffin was lowered into the grave. All the villagers were there as they were at any funeral in Lochdubh. It seemed to Hamish that they were nearly outnumbered by the press. Television vans stood outside the graveyard, photographers perched on the top of tombstones, and reporters in black ties stood respectfully around, although questioning everyone they could get hold of in hushed whispers.

  The funeral reception was to be held in the village hall, Mrs Todd and the minister’s wife, Mrs Wellington, having decided Alison would not be able to manage the funeral baked meats on her own. Hamish reflected that it might have been better if the organisation of the reception had been left to Alison. She looked very frail and she had nothing to take her mind off her fears.

  Priscilla was discreetly taking photographs but there were so many press photographers around that no one seemed to notice.

  At the funeral reception, she handed Hamish the photographs. ‘When this is all over,’ said Hamish, ‘let’s you and me go off somewhere and talk. You’re not looking your usual bonny self these days.’

  ‘I’m worried about Daddy,’ said Priscilla. ‘Yes, I’d like that. The atmosphere at home is all gloom and doom. Did you see Daddy at the funeral? Why on earth did he decide to come along? Thank goodness he didn’t stay for the reception. There is so much whisky on offer here and Daddy’s been sinking quite a lot of it recently. Look at this photograph. He’s standing with Mrs Todd and Alison. See how swollen his face is? He’s all bloated up. He won’t go to Dr Brodie anymore either.’

  Hamish wondered whether to tell Donati where he was going. But Donati would simply phone the police at Brora and tell Hamish sharply to leave the case alone. Something made Hamish approach Donati and say earnestly, ‘I’ve got some ideas about the case I would like to put to you, sir.’

  Donati frowned. ‘I haven’t time to listen to you at the moment,’ he said. ‘The press are all over the place. The wind has died down so we’ve got a chance of getting that car up out of the sea. Just stand by for the moment until I give you your orders.’

  Hamish humbly touched his cap and strolled away. He obeyed orders for the rest of the day and even the news that he was to guard the bungalow from the press in the company of PC Graham didn’t seem to ruffle him. He stood by one gatepost and PC Graham stood at the other, flashing him an occasional venomous glance. At six o’clock, Hamish looked at his watch and then began to walk off down the drive.

  ‘Hey, you!’ yelled Mary Graham. ‘Where dae ye think you’re going?’

  But Hamish did not even turn around.

  As he was driving along the waterfront, he saw the gnarled figure of the gardener, Angus Burnside, leaning over the sea wall and drew up.

  Angus turned round. ‘Ach, what is it noo, Hamish?’ he asked crossly. ‘I’ve been answering the polis’s questions fur days.’

  ‘Well, humour me, Angus,’ said Hamish. ‘When you were working around that bungalow, did you see anyone go into that garage apart from Miss Kerr and Mrs Baird?’

  ‘That wee greaser wi’ the uppity ma
nner.’

  ‘Which could apply to all of them,’ said Hamish patiently. ‘Which one was it?’

  ‘The smarmy one, him called Witherington. It wass about twa days afore the death o’ Mrs Baird. “Whit d’ye want?” I went and asked him, and he got very hoity-toity. “Go back to your gardening, my good fellow,” he says. Damp English. They should all stay on the other side o’ the border.’

  ‘Anyone else apart from him?’

  ‘Naw, no one but that daftie, Miss Kerr. D’ye ken, she used tae go and talk tae that car!’

  Hamish thanked him and drove off on the long road to Brora again. It was still high summer and in the north of Scotland it hardly ever gets dark. There was a blazing sunset as he arrived at the scrap yard. The derelict cars lay about in various stages of rust and decay. The purple flowers of the willow herb bloomed amongst the heaps of twentieth-century junk and long sour grass sprouted through shattered doors and windows of the less popular models – less popular for their spare parts. The whole thing was like a graveyard, a monument, a tombstone to death on the roads. That Ford over there, thought Hamish, had anyone survived that crash? The whole front was smashed and buckled.

  Somewhere a dog howled dismally and the wind whistled through the rusty cars and swaying grass. At least the rain has stopped, thought Hamish, picking his way round the muddy puddles to a hut in the middle of the yard.

  Cars, he thought. This case is all about cars. Forget the meat cleaver for the moment. Cars. Crispin knew about cars. James Frame once worked for him. The others probably knew a bit about car engines. Alison’s obsession with driving. What an odd girl she was. Pity she seemed to have taken an aversion to Jenkins. A weak man to look after was just what she needed to stiffen her spine.

  There was no one in the hut. Hamish sighed impatiently and sat down in a battered armchair beside the hut door to wait. He was very tired. Poor Priscilla. What on earth could be bothering that father of hers? He couldn’t help there. The colonel loathed him. His eyes began to close. Then he heard the sound of a car approaching and straightened up.

  The owner of the scrap yard, a small greying man in blue overalls, drove up.

  ‘What do ye want?’ he demanded as he approached Hamish. ‘There’s not one stolen car here.’

  Hamish got to his feet. ‘I’m not here about stolen cars,’ he said. ‘I want to show you some photos and I want you to look at the folk in the photos and tell me if one of them called at your yard and asked for an old felt mat, like the kind you see under the bonnets of some engines, and two spark plugs.’

  He looked at the man without hope. It was too long a shot. ‘Funny that,’ said the owner slowly. ‘I call to mind someone asking me for thae things.’

  Hamish held out the photographs.

  The man took them and led the way into the hut. He switched on the light and then with maddening slowness took a pair of glasses from his overall pocket and put them on his nose. He peered at the photographs.

  ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘That’s who ye want.’

  Hamish looked down. His finger was almost covering one face.

  ‘My God!’ said Hamish. ‘Are ye sure? Ye have to be awfy sure. If it’s that one, man, I couldnae for the life o’ me think why.’

  ‘Of course I’m sure,’ he said testily. ‘I can call tae mind every sod that comes in here. Came and asked fur spark plugs and then fur the felt tae line the bonnet o’ a car. A Renault it was.’

  Hamish took out a form he had brought with him and took down a statement and got the scrap yard owner to sign it. As he drove off, the sun was slipping below the horizon and the perpetual twilight of a northern summer lay across the countryside.

  He drove a little way and pulled off the road and sat, thinking hard. Why?

  And then, after an hour, all the little bits and pieces fell into place and he was looking at an almost complete picture. There was only one large piece missing and that was the reason for the death of Steel Ironside.

  He called first at Dr Brodie’s, then at the minister’s, back to the police station to make a few phone calls, and then made his way to the bungalow. PC Graham was still on duty. ‘You’re going to cop it frae Donati,’ she jeered, ‘and I’m coming in tae watch.’

  Hamish ignored her and went on into the house. Mrs Todd was busy at the kitchen sink. ‘They’re all in the sitting room,’ she said.

  Hamish walked into the sitting room. Crispin, Peter, and James were sitting together on the sofa. Alison was curled up in an armchair. Donati was sitting on a hard chair in the middle. MacNab and Anderson were over by the window.

  Donati looked up briefly and his face hardened. ‘I’ll deal with you later, Macbeth,’ he said. ‘Get outside and make sure no press get as far as the house.’

  ‘But –’ began Hamish.

  ‘I said, get outside!’

  PC Graham sniggered and took up a position against the wall, anxious to stay and watch the interrogation. Hamish could stand guard on his own.

  Hamish did not go outside. He went into the kitchen and pulled out a kitchen chair and sat down.

  In his usual lazy, companionable way, he said, ‘Aye, it was a grand funeral. A fitting funeral for a lady like Mrs Baird.’

  Mrs Todd said nothing but continued to scrub pots with ferocious energy.

  ‘She was a verra good woman as well,’ Hamish went on.

  Mrs Todd swung round. ‘Maggie Baird was a whore,’ she said viciously.

  Hamish gave a little sigh and said quietly, ‘And you are the instrument of God.’

  She wiped her hands on her apron and slowly came and sat down opposite him. Hamish clasped his hands behind his head and looked dreamily at the ceiling. ‘It was those photographs of you in the army. You were in the army during the war and would know a lot about car engines. You were a chauffeur to a Colonel Wilson in the Royal Artillery, or so the village gossip goes. You burned that book of Maggie’s. You read it and you burned it. I gather from Alison it was pretty hot stuff. Enough to turn that daft mind o’ yours.

  ‘Your husband took to the drink and you joined the Temperance Society and you neffer gave the man a day’s peace till he drank himself to death. You asked Brodie to put “heart attack” on the death certificate because you thought alcohol poisoning was a disgrace. He refused, but it was what else Brodie told you that shocked you. He told you your husband had venereal disease. Brodie told me that Mr Todd had confessed to going with prostitutes from time to time in Aberdeen because he had had nothing in that line from you since your wedding night. Then I remembered the case of Mary MacTavish. She had an illegitimate child and Mr Wellington said you made that lassie’s life such hell she had to leave the village. When the minister reproached you for your lack of charity, you said you were doing God’s work.

  ‘Now, we come to Alison Kerr.

  ‘She was a girl after your own heart, quiet and shy. But I gather you can hear everything in this house and so you listened at her bedroom door and that way you found out she was in bed with Peter Jenkins. You had committed murder once. And to my mind it was murder. You knew Maggie Baird had a weak heart. So you tampered with the brakes of Alison’s car. She had become unclean and had to go. But when you managed to poison her mind against Peter Jenkins … oh, I’m sure that rubbish Alison was talking about that a man would never respect you after you had slept with him came from you … I think you decided to give her a reprieve. Then the pop singer. You didn’t use the car but you could easily have cycled out or walked.’

  ‘You can’t prove a thing,’ said Mrs Todd.

  ‘Oh, but I can,’ said Hamish, straightening up, his eyes hard and implacable and cold. ‘You went to the scrap yard at Brora and got the spark plugs and the bit o’ felt and the man there identified you from your photograph.’

  Mrs Todd rose and went back to the sink and started scrubbing pots again.

  ‘I’ll tell you something else,’ said Hamish. ‘You’re like Maggie Baird.’

  Mrs Todd stopped scrubbing. ‘Never!�
�� she said passionately.

  ‘Yes, in a way. You see, when Maggie was all fat and tweedy and playing the county lady, I had an odd feeling that there was a pretty, flirtatious woman locked up inside all that fat, ready to come out like a butterfly coming out of a chrysalis. Inside that motherly outside of yours, Mrs Todd, I see another woman: a thin, sharp, bitter, murderous woman.’

  ‘Havers,’ said Mrs Todd calmly and opened a kitchen drawer.

  Detective Jimmy Anderson was to say long afterwards that the biggest shock he ever had in his career was when Hamish Macbeth erupted from that kitchen and dived over the sofa and the three men sitting on it, pursued by Mrs Todd who was waving a glittering bread knife. Galvanized into action, MacNab and Anderson and Donati grabbed hold of her while PC Graham twisted the bread knife out of her hand. She struggled and cursed, trying to escape, her eyes bulging with hate as she surveyed the lanky length of Hamish Macbeth rising from behind the sofa.

  As they put the handcuffs on her, Hamish charged her with the attempted murder of Mrs Margaret Baird. Then he said, ‘Why Steel Ironside? Why the pop singer?’

  ‘Dirty man!’ Mrs Todd spat out the words. ‘He wore his shirts open the whole time showing all that nasty, nasty hair. Yes, I burned that book of hers. I knew men were filth but I never realized how filthy till I read it. Wallowing in filth. Filth!’ she screamed, and she was still screaming while they led her outside.

  ‘She’s mad,’ whispered Alison.

  ‘Yes,’ said Hamish wearily. ‘Barking mad and I never even noticed.’

  ‘Yaas,’ said James in his fake upper-class voice. ‘Of course, one never really looks at servants. I say, Alison, what about drinks all round? Thank God it’s all over.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Alison, a little colour beginning to come into her pale face. ‘Yes, it’s over and I’m safe.’ She flung her arms around Hamish. ‘Oh, thank you!’

  Hamish looked across her head to Peter Jenkins and signalled with his eyes and Peter came up. Hamish pushed Alison gently into Peter’s arms. ‘I’d best be off,’ he said.