Death of an Outsider

by M C Beaton

  The restaurant she was in was crowded. It was society’s latest ‘find’. Priscilla did not like it one bit. It was full of Hooray Henrys and their Henriettas, all being familiar with the waiters, which had resulted in the Italian waiters’ being noisy and insolent, rather in the way that top hairdressers are encouraged to be insolent by that masochistic streak in the English upper class.

  Priscilla was helping a girlfriend to run a hat shop in the King’s Road in Chelsea. The girlfriend, Sarah Paterson, was convinced that hats were about to make a come-back. Priscilla had promised Sarah to help her out for six months. Now she was wishing she had never made such a promise. The shop was usually full of people giggling and trying on hats, but very few bought any, and some days their only sales seemed to be made to transvestites whose idea of fashion had stayed frozen in the fifties.

  I would be better off in Lochdubh minding Hamish’s sheep for him, Priscilla’s thoughts ran on. I wonder who he got to look after things? I’m surprised Blair allowed him near Cnothan. Maybe he was only there for the day. She had a sudden yearning to be in Hamish’s cluttered kitchen, to sit and gossip about local things while Towser snored at their feet and the wind howled down the loch. She realized her dinner date, Jeremy Tring-Gillingham, was speaking to her.

  ‘You made a great mistake in not having the lobster, Priscilla,’ said Jeremy. ‘Mario tells me he goes down to Billingsgate first thing to buy everything fresh. The taste is exquisite.’

  ‘Mmm,’ said Priscilla. ‘Have you been following that story, Jeremy, the one on the news this evening, about witchcraft in Sutherland?’

  ‘Oh, that,’ mumbled Jeremy, swallowing more lobster. ‘Sounds great, but you’ll find it was probably some medical students playing about.’

  Blair and Hamish were closeted in the police-station annexe. Hamish had insisted they be alone. The pair of false teeth and the little strand of scarlet wool lay on the desk between them.

  ‘So,’ said Blair savagely, when Hamish had finished, ‘instead o’ picking up the phone, you great gowk, you takes your doggie fur a walk back here to tell me. Jist keep out of it while I take MacNab and Anderson down there and arrest Ross.’

  ‘He wasnae there at the time, or as far as we know,’ said Hamish. ‘He was at his son’s wedding in Inverness. Mind you, we’ll need to make sure he was there the whole time. He’s got a powerful car. He may not have left it in the station car park like he said. You’ll look damned silly if you arrest him and then have to let him off, and a man like Jamie Ross would have you in court for causing him undue distress and everything else he could throw at you. And there’s one big thing you’d better think of before you tell anyone of this.’

  ‘Whit’s that, Sherlock?’ demanded Blair sarcastically.

  ‘Jamie Ross’s lobsters go to all the top places in London and even to the House of Commons dining room. Think about it! “Prime Minister a Cannibal.” Can’t you see the headlines? The scandal will be terrible, and someone’s head is going to have to roll for letting those lobsters go off to London. Oh, I know, there wasnae time to stop them, but the big ones will want a sacrifice, and they’re not going to take their temper out on a mere village copper. So that leaves you.’

  Blair, who had half-risen to his feet, sank back in his chair.

  ‘Get oot o’ here,’ he snarled, ‘and keep your mouth shut.’

  He picked up the phone and began to dial an Inverness number.

  Hamish strolled over to Jenny’s cottage and knocked on the door. ‘Come in,’ she said, answering it promptly. ‘Have you eaten?’

  ‘No, I’ve been ordered out the police station by Blair.’

  ‘Horrible man,’ said Jenny. ‘I can feed you and Towser. How’s the investigation going?’

  ‘Something pretty terrible’s come up,’ said Hamish. ‘It looks as if that skeleton was Mainwaring’s after all.’

  ‘But it can’t be!’ said Jenny. ‘How?’

  ‘I can’t tell ye,’ said Hamish. ‘It’s all very puzzling. Are you all right?’ he added sharply, for Jenny was very white.

  ‘I’m fine, fine.’ She sat down and looked at her hands.

  ‘Your sister’s death must still be troubling ye sore,’ said Hamish sympathetically.

  ‘I hated her,’ said Jenny fiercely.

  Embarrassed and not knowing quite how to react, Hamish began to speak aloud about the crime. ‘It’s the lack of a motive that puzzles me,’ he said half to himself. ‘A lot of people hated Mainwaring, but only enough to perpetrate some piece of spite. I wonder whether it was a practical joke that went wrong?’

  Jenny got to her feet and took two steaks out of the refrigerator. Towser placed a large yellow paw with ludicrous familiarity on her bottom. She shrugged and took out another steak and went to a small microwave oven in the corner.

  ‘How does your dog like his steak done?’ she asked over her shoulder.

  ‘Well done,’ said Hamish absent-mindedly, ‘and the same for me.’ He returned to musing aloud. ‘Yes, when you look at it first, there seem to be a lot of suspects, but not one of them the killer type. There chust isn’t a strong-enough motive. Not for this kind of killing. Not for all the wicked cruelty of it. Someone must have had nerves of steel to kill the man and then –’ He broke off. The lobsters must stay secret.

  ‘That’s enough about murder,’ he said. ‘Have you been painting?’

  ‘No, I haven’t been in the mood. Any news of Sandy?’

  ‘Not a word as far as I know. But then I’m being kept out o’ the investigation. Most of my day was taken up listening to residents’ complaints about the press.’

  ‘You’ve worked with Blair before, haven’t you? There were those two murders over in Lochdubh. You’re a sort of vulture, Hamish Macbeth. Murder follows you around wherever you go.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’ Hamish shuddered. ‘I suppose it will have been on the national news.’

  ‘Bound to be,’ said Jenny. ‘Nothing else is happening, although the networks don’t seem to have caught on to the fact that the great British public has really no interest in foreign news whatsoever. They probably gave it two minutes after a long speech from Reagan, a longer one from Gorbachev, and practically a whole fifteen minutes on the riots in Paris.’

  ‘So people in London would see it,’ said Hamish. Had she seen it? And would it prompt her to return?

  ‘So who’s in London that you want to remind of your existence?’ said Jenny, her slate-coloured eyes suddenly shrewd.

  Hamish blushed and looked away. ‘Ma cousin Rory. He’s a reporter.’

  ‘On Fleet Street?’

  ‘I don’t think there’s a reporter left in Fleet Street,’ said Hamish. ‘Rory has moved to Docklands like everyone else. I was hoping he would be up. I would have phoned him, but Blair’s crouched over the police phone like a great toad.’

  ‘Go and use mine,’ said Jenny, tossing salad in a bowl. ‘You’ll find it through in the living-room.’

  The living-room was actually the gallery. There were easy chairs and a coffee-table. Jenny hardly ever used it herself except when working or entertaining prospective customers. There was a painting, a view of Clachan Mohr, on an easel. Hamish recognized that odd cliff which he had climbed when Alistair and Dougie had played that trick on him. That he recognized it did not surprise him. All Jenny’s paintings were representational. But it was the power in the picture, the black and boiling sky above the sinister cliff, the stark trees and bleak landscape beyond. He lightly touched the paint with his finger. Wet. And yet she’d said she had not been painting. And she had never painted with such power and ferocity before.

  He phoned his cousin on the Daily Recorder, marvelling, not for the first time, how long it took the newspaper’s switchboard to answer the call. He was told that Rory was in Paris, covering the riots.

  ‘Is that a fact,’ said Hamish cosily. He was addicted to gossipy long-distance calls. ‘And why is it your Paris office isn’t covering it?’

 
‘The Paris office was closed down last year,’ said the reporter at the other end. ‘Who is calling?’

  ‘This is Police Constable Macbeth. Rory’s cousin.’

  ‘Oh, you’re the one in the Highlands. Hold on a minute, till I switch on the recorder. I’d better have a word with you about this witchcraft murder.’

  ‘I cannae say anything. Phone Chief Detective Inspector Blair at Cnothan 252,’ said Hamish and dropped the receiver.

  ‘Your steak’s ready,’ said Jenny when he returned to the kitchen. ‘What do I do about Towser? Does he like a knife and fork?’

  ‘I spoil him,’ said Hamish awkwardly. ‘Put his steak beside me and I’ll cut it up for him.’

  ‘I haven’t any wine,’ said Jenny apologetically.

  ‘I hae a bottle in the station,’ said Hamish. ‘I’ll be back in a minute if I can get it without Blair seeing me.’

  He ran out and across the road, keeping to the grass at the side of the short driveway so that his boots would not crunch on the gravel. He peered into the lounge. Blair, MacNab, and Anderson were sitting there, talking earnestly, their feet up on the glass table.

  Hamish crept into the kitchen and opened the cupboard where he had put the bottle of wine. He was just about to escape when he heard Blair’s voice approaching. He jumped into the broom cupboard and closed the door behind him.

  He could hear the noise of the fridge door being opened and then a hiss as Blair opened a can of beer. My beer, thought Hamish furiously.

  ‘While we sort this thing out and wait for instructions from Inverness,’ Blair shouted through to his sidekicks, ‘we’ll send Macbeth down to Mrs Mainwaring with thae teeth.’

  ‘Where is he?’ Anderson’s voice came faintly.

  ‘Bonking that artist over the road.’

  Blair’s voice faded as he went back into the lounge and closed the door.

  Hamish got out of the cupboard and out of the kitchen as fast as he could. He was determined his evening with Jenny Lovelace was not going to be spoiled. He ran into Jenny’s living-room and seized the phone and dialled the police-station number. After a few moments, Detective Jimmy Anderson answered it.

  ‘Murder!’ screamed Hamish in a high falsetto voice. ‘Sandy Carmichael is attacking me with the meat cleaver. Murder! Oh, help. This is Jeannie at the Angler’s Rest.’

  He put down the phone and went to the window. Blair, Anderson, and MacNab rushed out and climbed into the Land Rover and shot off with the siren blaring.

  Hamish grinned. If they thought they had got their man, they would not want Hamish Macbeth there to share in any part of the glory.

  ‘What’s all the commotion?’ asked Jenny when he entered the kitchen. ‘Your steak’s getting cold.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Hamish innocently. ‘Here’s the wine.’

  They had a companionable meal. Hamish washed the dishes and then politely took Jenny’s hand to thank her for the meal and say good night. He didn’t know quite how it happened, but the next moment she was pressed against him and a moment after that he was kissing her passionately.

  Towser watched in amazement as the trail of clothes up the stairs to Jenny’s bedroom lengthened. A pair of regulation police trousers sailed down from the top and landed on Towser’s nose. He snuffled at them dismally and then curled up on the trousers and went to sleep.

  At midnight, Blair knocked furiously on the door. Towser raised his head and sniffed the air, and then lowered it on to Hamish’s trousers and went back to sleep. He knew Blair as well as his master did.

  Chapter Six

  Jenny kissed me when we met,

  Jumping from the chair she sat in;

  Time, you thief who love to get

  Sweets into your list, put that in:

  Say I’m weary, say I’m sad,

  Say that health and wealth have missed me,

  Say I’m growing old, but add,

  Jenny kissed me.

  – James Henry Leigh Hunt

  Hamish awoke at dawn the next morning, dazed, bewildered, and happy. He would have liked to cuddle up to Jenny and spend the lazy morning in bed, but he did not want her to become the butt of Blair’s coarse remarks, and so he dressed quickly, picking up items of clothing from the stairs, and finally rescuing his trousers from under Towser.

  He made his way quietly over to the police station and was just emerging innocent from his own bedroom when Blair came looking for him.

  ‘Where was ye last night?’ howled Blair. ‘Getting your leg over that artist bint?’

  ‘I wass out looking for clues,’ said Hamish. ‘Miss Lovelace is a highly respectable lady. I am furthermore quite prepared to put my job on the line if you make any more filthy remarks about her by sinking ma fist right into your mouth.’

  Blair backed before the fury in Hamish’s eyes. ‘Cannae ye take a joke?’ he said. ‘Me and the others are off to stay at the Anstey Hotel doon the road. The bigwigs are comin’ up from Inverness and Edinburgh to see what we can do about keeping thae lobsters quiet. In the meantime, you take those false teeth down to Mrs Mainwaring and let’s hear what she says.’

  Blair walked into the lounge as he talked. Hamish looked around the room in dismay. The ashtrays were overflowing, and there were greasy fish-and-chip papers on the coffee table.

  ‘And what am I supposed to do about this mess?’ asked Hamish.

  ‘Oh, get a wumman in tae clean the place and put the bill through the expenses as something else.’

  Furious as he was at the state of the place, Hamish was only too glad to get rid of Blair and his detectives. It meant he would have the phone to himself again.

  He got into the police Land Rover and drove off before Blair could commandeer it. It would be just like Blair to expect him to walk the miles to Mrs Mainwaring’s.

  And before he even reached Mrs Main-waring, he had to quieten his conscience by looking for Sandy Carmichael. The moors were covered with searching policemen, but there might be something he, Hamish Macbeth, could find that they could not. He could not in his heart believe Sandy responsible for the murder. He called at Sandy’s cottage after scouring the highways and byways, only to retreat quickly as Blair’s furious face appeared at the window.

  On his way to Mrs Mainwaring, Hamish dropped in to see Diarmuid Sinclair. He nearly didn’t recognize him, for Diarmuid had shaved off his long beard. ‘Why the new image?’ asked Hamish. ‘Doing it for your public?’

  ‘Aye, did you see me on the television?’ said Diarmuid. ‘Grand, that was. John took a video o’ it and showed it to me and I thought I looked that old. Forbye, I’m off to Inverness soon to buy wee Sean a present for his birthday.’ Sean was Diarmuid’s grandson. ‘Have ye any idea what I should get?’

  ‘How old is he?’

  ‘Eight.’

  ‘Well,’ said Hamish, ‘I would just buy the bairn something you would like to play with yourself.’

  He then drove on to the Mainwaring bungalow.

  Mrs Mainwaring was packing clothes, boxes and boxes of them. There were no men’s clothes among the piles lying ready for packing, but Hamish recognized the blue-and-white sailor dress. She was obviously getting rid of all the clothes her husband had chosen for her. Mrs Mainwaring believed her husband was dead.

  ‘What can I do for you, officer?’ she asked, as she competently went on with her packing, a cigarette drooping from her lips.

  ‘Can you identify these? Don’t touch them.’ Hamish took out the false teeth, enclosed in a polythene bag. She went very still. She took the cigarette from her mouth and tossed it into the fire.

  ‘They’re William’s,’ she said flatly. ‘He had them specially made, complete with nicotine stains, so they would not look too white and too false.’ She sat down, her baggy tweed skirt rucked up, displaying large areas of muscled thigh.

  ‘I’ll take a statement from ye,’ said Hamish gently. ‘And then maybe you could call by later in the day at the police station and sign it.’

 
She nodded. ‘Where did you find them?’

  ‘My dog found them in that patch of scrub at the turn of the road outside Cnothan as you go out toward Cnothan Game.’

  ‘I knew he was dead,’ she said dully. ‘I felt it. He wouldn’t have left me alone this long. He liked tormenting me too much. Poor William.’

  ‘Mrs Mainwaring, if that skeleton is your husband’s, have you any idea what might have happened to him?’

  ‘No. I don’t like to think about it. It can’t be his. I don’t think it’s anything to do with him. It was put there for a bad joke.’

  Hamish looked at her curiously. She seemed quite calm, but shock affected people in strange ways.

  ‘Would it upset you to talk to me about him?’ he asked gently. ‘Tell me about his army career. He said he had something to do with MI5.’

  ‘Told you that one, did he?’ Mrs Main-waring lit another cigarette. ‘He liked to play the retired army man, part of his act. He was a captain when he did his National Service. He was never a career officer. He just got drafted along with everyone else.’

  ‘And how did he make his money?’

  She gave a horrible kind of laugh. ‘He married me,’ she said. ‘I was living in Maidstone in Kent with my mother, who was on her last legs. No man had ever proposed to me or looked at me, and then William came along.’ Her eyes grew dreamy. ‘He was selling cars. Mother used to make nasty jokes about car salesmen and said he was only after my money. I didn’t believe her. He had very great charm. But I should have seen through him then. I told him Mother held the purse-strings and after that I didn’t see him for a week. At the end of that week, Mother died of a heart attack, the death was published in the local paper, and William came back again, just in time for the funeral. He was very supportive. He said he had inherited an estate in Scotland. We would be married and go and live there.

  ‘Mother left me the house in Maidstone and quite a bit of money. I was tired. I was old-fashioned. I had been led to believe that women did not have heads for business. William said if I transferred everything to him, he would arrange for the sale of the house and take care of everything.’