Hamish MacBeth 03 (1988) - Death of an Outsider

by M C Beaton

  “Maybe it’s because you don’t understand the Highlander.”

  “I’m one myself.”

  “Of course you are,” giggled Jenny. “Silly of me. You mustn’t listen to all this rubbish about poor Agatha Mainwaring. She’s one of those women who deliberately goads her husband into being nasty so that she can play the martyr.”

  “That’s one way o’ looking at it,” said Hamish slowly.

  “Never mind the Mainwarings,” said Jenny. “Tell me about yourself. Married?”

  “No. Are you?”

  “I was. In Canada. It didn’t work out. He was jealous of my painting. He was an artist himself. At my first exhibition in Montreal, he waited until one minute before the show opened and then told me he had always thought my work was too chocolate-box and I wasn’t to be disappointed if the critics panned it. I never forgave him.”

  Hamish looked at her curiously. “I would never have guessed ye to be one of those Never-Forgive sort of people. Every husband or wife usually says something crashingly tactless they wouldn’t dream of saying to a friend.”

  “But not about my painting,” said Jenny fiercely. “I put my whole personality into my work. He was insulting me and everything I stood for. Can’t you see that?”

  “Yes, yes,” said Hamish soothingly, although one hazel eye slid to an oil painting on the kitchen wall. It was of a Highland cottage situated on a heathery hill: competent, colourful, and yet lifeless.

  “Anyway,” said Jenny, “we’re talking about me and I meant to find out about you.”

  Hamish settled back and began to describe his life in Lochdubh and told several very tall and very Highland stories that set Jenny giggling.

  “And what about your love life?” she suddenly asked.

  “Is there any more coffee?” Hamish held out his cup.

  “Meaning you won’t talk about it.” Jenny laughed. She went over to the Raeburn, where a glass coffee-pot had been placed to keep warm. Hamish eyed her appreciatively. She was everything Priscilla was not. Jenny was small and plumpish in all the right places, with that tousled hair. Priscilla was never tousled, always cool, slim, blonde, and efficient. Priscilla would never have a cluttered kitchen like this. And Priscilla would never spill hot coffee on her bare feet as Jenny had just done, for Priscilla never spilt anything and Priscilla would never go around on her bare feet. In fact, thought Hamish, feeling more cheerful than he had done in a long time, Priscilla is a pill.

  They chatted for some time until Hamish reluctantly said he’d better get back to the police station.

  “Come any time,” said Jenny.

  “I will,” said Hamish Macbeth. She held out her hand and he took it in his. The physical reaction of his own body amazed him. He looked down at her in surprise, holding her hand tightly.

  “Goodbye,” said Jenny, tugging her hand free.

  The snow had melted and great sheets of rain were whipping through the town, Hamish noticed in a bemused way. Towser watched him reproachfully as he entered. Hamish donned his waterproof cape and put the dog on the lead and went out to the shops.

  The butcher’s shop was a cheery, gossipy oasis in the desolation of Cnothan. The butcher, John Wilson, had heard all about the ducking of the ghillies and wanted the details firsthand. Hamish gossiped happily and came away with a bonus of two free lamb chops and a bag of bones for Towser. He went into the grocer’s next door and bought a bottle of wine, vaguely planning to ask Jenny to dinner as soon as possible. He then went into the hardware, which was farther up the street, to buy a corkscrew. He thought there might be one in the bar but did not want to poke around that horrible lounge of the MacGregors to look for it. “Get it yourself,” said the owner of the shop. “It’s over there on the left.” The accent was English but the manner was pure Cnothan. Hamish wondered if the outsiders became as rude as the locals in sheer self-defence.

  ♦

  In the Clachan, Alistair Gunn and Dougie Macdonald were suffering the taunts of William Mainwaring. “So your joke backfired,” jeered Mainwaring, “and the pair of you let that copper shove you in the loch.”

  “Weel, ye haff to go carefully when you’re dealing with a poofter,” growled Alistair Gunn.

  “What are you talking about?” demanded Mainwaring.

  “He means Macbeth,” said Dougie in his high singsong Highland whine. “The man is a fairy, a homosexual. You should have smelt him. He wass stinking of the perfume.”

  Mainwaring looked amazed. “Aye,” said Alistair, enjoying startling the Englishman. “He’s wan o’ them. I can always tell.”

  Mainwaring suddenly burst out laughing and slapped Alistair on the back. “Well, old chap,” he said, “it takes one to know one.” And, still laughing, he went off.

  Alistair stood there stupidly, mulling over that ‘it takes one to know one.’ Then a slow feeling of outrage started somewhere in the pit of his stomach and spread throughout his whole body.

  “I’ll kill that man,” he howled.

  Later that evening, Mrs. Struthers, the minister’s wife, was just finishing a lecture on microwave cooking to the Mothers’ Meeting in the church hall. The dishes she had prepared were proudly laid out on a table in front of her.

  William Mainwaring walked in, his eyes roving about the room, obviously looking for his wife. Mrs. Struthers was glad Agatha had not put in an appearance and prayed that Mr. Mainwaring would leave as soon as possible.

  “And that concludes my lecture,” she said. “I now have some paper plates and knives and forks here and I would like you ladies to sample my cooking.”

  Her mouth gave a nervous twitch as Mainwaring approached the table. “What a strange selection,” he said in a wondering voice. “ What’s that cup of goo?”

  “It’s a sweet-and-sour sauce,” said Mrs. Struthers.

  “And what’s it made of?”

  “Pineapple juice and marmalade and a spoonful of vinegar.”

  “Yech!” said Mainwaring. “ And look at that baked potato. It doesn’t look cooked.”

  He seized a fork. Mrs. Struthers made a sort of dismal bleating sound like a lamb lost on a dark hillside. She knew that potato hadn’t been in long enough, and she had been hoping to slide it away to the side.

  “Hard as hell,” cried Mainwaring triumphantly. “ Look, if you want to know about microwave cookery, it’s all very simple.” He moved round the table and began a lecture.

  Woman eyed each other uneasily, and then, with that peculiar Highland talent for disappearing from an awkward situation, the audience gradually melted away.

  Mrs. Struthers fought back tears as she looked at her cooking. There were some splendid dishes there. “I’d better be off, then,” said Mainwaring, abruptly cutting short his lecture when he realized he was addressing an empty room.

  When the door had closed behind him, Mrs. Struthers sat down and began to cry. She picked up a bottle of British sherry she had used for cooking and took a gulp from it.

  For the first time in her blameless life, she knew what it was to want to kill someone.

  Mainwaring returned to The Clachan. When he had finished tormenting someone, he immediately had to find another victim. His eyes fell on Harry Mackay, sitting over in a corner. He went to join him.

  “Business must be bad these days,” said Mainwaring cheerfully.

  “What makes you say that?’” asked Harry Mackay sourly.

  “Just that no one seems to want property these days and you spend most of your time in here.”

  “Like yourself,” said the estate agent nastily.

  “I wonder what your employers in Edinburgh would think if they knew exactly how little work you do,” said Mainwaring.

  “You wouldn’t…” gasped Harry Mackay.

  “I just might,” laughed Mainwaring. “You know me.”

  “Oh, I know you, all right,” said the estate agent bitterly. “We all know you.”

  ♦

  William Mainwaring at last returned home to see if he
could rile his wife to round off the evening. She always claimed she never drank. He searched and searched for the empty bottle but could not find it because Agatha had buried it in the garden. It had been a whole bottle of the cheapest wine possible, called Dream of the Highlands, made by a local winery. She could not risk anything more expensive out of the housekeeping money. She had claimed Hamish had drunk a lot of whisky to explain the low level in the decanter earlier in the day, but there had been no further callers she could use as an excuse and so she had been driven out to buy the bottle of cheap wine.

  For once, she was armoured against her husband’s gibes. Full of Dream of the Highlands, and lost in a rosy fantasy, she barely heard him. She had read an article in the newspapers about the poisoning of an Iraqi businessman in London using a slow-acting rat poison containing thallium, banned in Britain, but available on the Continent. It had a delayed effect and only started to work a week after it was administered. She imagined manufacturing an excuse to visit her sister in Kent. Instead, she would go to Paris and buy the rat poison. Then she would return to Cnochan and poison her husband and promptly set off again, so that when he died, she would be far away from the scene of the crime. A local bobby would not suspect anything. She would start to tell everyone that William had a bad heart.

  And so Agatha Mainwaring, with a half-smile on her face, dreamt on, while her husband’s voice buzzed and hammered like a wasp against the glass protection of her fantasy.

  ♦

  “Now, promise me you won’t take a dram,” said Jamie Ross, after showing Sandy Carmichael round the premises.

  Sandy shuddered. “I’ll neffer touch the stuff again.”

  Jamie looked at him uneasily. It would just be like Sandy to go and get drunk and prove Mainwaring right. But Jamie was soft-hearted and knew Sandy needed some money badly, and more than money, he needed the self-respect of being trusted with a job.

  Sandy was a tall, thin man in his forties. His face had an unhealthy, bleached look about it, but the hands now holding one of Jamie ‘s coffee-cups were steady. Jamie remembered having to hold Sandy’s hands so he could get the coffee down him.

  Nothing could really go wrong, Jamie reassured himself.

  There had never been a burglary in Cnothan. No one even bothered to lock his car.

  He wondered whether to ask that policeman to drop in over the weekend just to see that things were all right. But that would show a lack of trust in Sandy, and Sandy certainly, did look on the road to recovery.

  Hamish found himself surprisingly busy. A sharp phone call from police headquarters in Strathbane told him what MacGregor had not—that he had to patrol a much wider area of surrounding countryside than he had expected. He still found time to call on Diarmuid Sinclair and persuade the crofter to see his family. But to his disappointment, there were no more relaxed coffee sessions with Jenny, who was either painting furiously or not at home. She’d said she went walking to clear her brain. Hamish had offered to go with her, but she said she liked to be alone. Once more, his three months’ stay in Cnothan stretched out into an eternity of winter days.

  FOUR

  Ah! Who has seen the mailed lobster rise.

  —JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE

  Sandy Carmichael arrived at the Cnothan Game and Fish Company late on Saturday afternoon. Rain had fallen earlier in the day and had now frozen, and the wheels of his old Land Rover crunched over the ice in the yard. Jamie had given him a spare key to the office, where the keys to the sheds hung on a board on the wall.

  The office was warm and quiet. Sandy pulled a tattered romance, The Laird’s Passion, from his pocket, and began to read. Unfortunately, it turned out the laird was a bit of a rake, ripe for reform by the heroine, and in the intial pages, he drank large quantities. Sandy put down the book and stared into space. He hadn’t really thought about drinking this past week, the memory of his last bout of the horrors being still fresh in his mind. But now whisky seemed like a golden friend he had harshly misjudged. He could feel the taste of it on his tongue and the warmth of it coiling around his stomach.

  He began to fidget, picking up pencils and putting them down. He thought about his last binge. How ill he had been!

  But he had bought that fish supper from the fish-and-chip-shop and some said Murray’s fish and chips were cooked in old grease. Maybe it had been food poisoning. Maybe it had been somthing he had eaten. Or just maybe he was allergic to whisky and he should try drinking wine. Jamie had paid him his wages in advance and the money was there in his pocket, and in Sandy’s mind, money and whisky went together.

  But he was proud of the fact that Jamie had trusted him and he would not let Jamie down. He would go and patrol the sheds, just like a real watchman.

  How eerie the sheds were at night. The fluorescent light still left the corners in darkness. The deer carcasses hung motionless and sad. He moved on to the lobster shed. The water gurgled monotonously in the three tanks.

  And then, there, right on the edge of the centre tank, he saw it. A full glass of whisky.

  He stared at it, wondering if he were hallucinating. He advanced cautiously, picked it up, and sniffed it. Malt whisky! And, by the smell of it, one of the best malts.

  Well, it was only one drink, he reasoned, and stuck out here, he couldn’t get any more. One drink never did anyone any harm.

  He picked up the glass and took a sip. He took another, larger, sip and the tension of the past week began to leave his body. He’d soon finished the glassful. He felt happy and warm and confident. A few more wouldn’t matter. It was Saturday night. The Clachan would be warm and full of company and noise. And he had money.

  He would lock up the office, but there was no need to lock the sheds. Jamie never locked them; he was more worried about his filters packing up than he was about crime. Half an hour at The Clachan and then he would come back and settle down and read that romance. A gust of wind howled around the buildings like a banshee. He thought briefly of the haunting of the Mainwarings. That new copper had been questioning an awful lot of people in that innocent-seeming, I-have-just-dropped-by-for-a-gossip way of his, but whoever had frightened Mrs. Mainwaring, it hadn’t been criminals. The Mainwarings deserved to be driven out of Cnothan—well, him, anyway.

  Feeling better than he had in a long time, Sandy drove carefully down into Cnothan. He decided that if Hamish Macbeth was in the bar, then he would buy a packet of cigarettes and take himself off. It was still early evening. There were only a few youths in the bar, all looking remarkably Dickensian in their skin-tight trousers and short jackets. They had pinched white faces and lank hair. Most of them were drunk already, and the giant of a barman, Hector Dunn, was wondering whether that new policeman knew it was part of his duties to turn up at The Clachan on Saturday nights and remove the car keys of anyone who had drunk over the limit.

  He tried phoning the police station, but there was no reply. He phoned Jenny Lovelace in case Hamish was there, the gossip about Hamish’s visit and attempted visits having spread around the town like wildfire, but she said she hadn’t seen him. Her voice sounded funny, as if she were crying.

  Hamish was, at that very moment, speeding fast out of Cnothan. A report of an assault on one of the customers at a fishing hotel some thirty miles out of town had just come in.

  Sandy drank up a double whisky and ordered another. He immediately became sentimental. When Hector asked him why he wasn’t ‘minding the store,’ Sandy said that Jamie Ross knew nothing would happen, and hadn’t Jamie in the kindness of his heart left a glass of good whisky on the edge of one of the tanks in the lobster shed for Sandy? It all went to show Jamie knew he, Sandy, could handle his liquor. He put some of his change in the jukebox and selected a Frank Sinatra record and sat down. ‘I did it my way,’ sang the famous voice. How wise, thought Sandy, nodding his head up and down. Story of my life, he thought.

  He began to sing along with the record. The youths jeered and catcalled and Hector threw them out.

  The bar
began to fill up with the locals, men at first, and then later their wives, come to curb the expense of a Saturday night’s drinking.

  Faces swam in front of Sandy, and voices offered to buy him a drink. The locals were violently jealous of Jamie Ross. Not only did he make a great deal of money, but he did not hide the fact. His new white Mercedes had caused a great deal of heart-burning. To a number of the locals, it seemed like a good joke to get Sandy drunk. Nothing would happen to Jamie’s business, of course, but he would be furious when he got back to find his watchman away sleeping off another drinking bout.

  Sandy became dimly aware that Hector was demanding his car keys, and with the cunning of the drunk, he said he had walked and did not have his Land Rover with him. Then Hector was calling ‘Time!’ and Sandy was aware of the sharp cold outside the pub, of people laughing and teasing him.

  He climbed into his rusty Land Rover and then his mind went blank. He drove home in a total drunken blackout.

  Sandy Carmichael awoke at noon the following day. His mouth felt like the bottom of a parrot’s cage. He drank great gulps of cold water and splashed his face. It was then he remembered his job.

  He was still wearing the clothes he had worn the night before. He scrambled out and drove to the Cnothan Game and Fish Company.

  His mind worked feverishly. Jamie and his family would be back on the last train. He must get the second half of his wages from Jamie, before Jamie learned, as he surely would, that he had been drinking in The Clachan on Saturday night.

  He unlocked the office and then began to calm down. Of course, everything was just as he had left it. He went over to the lobster shed and looked around. The whisky glass was still there. He slipped it into his pocket. He sat down on the edge of the main tank and sighed with relief.

  Then he blinked. The water seemed to have a strange pinkish tinge. He slowly scooped a handful of water into the palm of his hand.

  Pink.

  Then, as he stared at the tank, a piece of torn and shredded jacket slowly rose to the surface and turned over and over in the bubbling water.