by M C Beaton
Betty wanted Elspeth’s job. She wanted everything that Elspeth had, from her flat down by the River Clyde to her status at the television station.
She knew Elspeth was worried about losing her job as a news presenter. Betty had overheard the head of news and current affairs saying that if Elspeth could make anything of the Pandora’s Box programme, then she would be an even bigger star. But she did not tell Elspeth this, constantly commiserating with her over the “loss” of her presenting job. To which Elspeth always snapped back that she had not lost it.
“So are we back off up to peasant land?” asked the soundman, Phil Green.
“Not yet. I want to go via London. I’ve got to see an old friend in the City. I wonder if these four men are as successful in business as they claim. Why are they so desperate to get their money back? Is it just because they were conned?”
“London it is,” said the cameraman, George Lennox, gloomily.
The four men waited a couple of days before venturing to visit Milly again. As they approached, they saw that all the shrubbery in front of the house had been cleared away so that anyone approaching from any angle could be clearly seen.
They got down from their vehicle and rang the bell. Ailsa Kennedy answered the door. “Whit?” she demanded.
“We are here to call on Mrs. Davenport.”
“If you want money out o’ her, forget it. We’ve phoned thae lawyers and you’ve no’ got one damn thing in writing to say you ever lent him the money. You’ll not come here again, pestering the poor woman.”
Her place was taken by a large man with big ears. “I’m Tam Tamworth from the Strathbane Journal,” he said. “This could be an interesting wee story for me. Are you all so broke that you’re all the way up here harassing a widow woman?”
“You write one word and we’ll sue!” said Charles Prosser.
“Go ahead.” Tam grinned. “You cannae stop me writing about your bothering the widow, now, can ye? Get lost.”
The four men looked at him. For one brief moment, Tam felt a spasm of fear. They looked strong and menacing.
“This was just a friendly call before we leave,” said Charles Prosser smoothly.
“Oh, aye? So leave.”
As they walked back to their vehicle, Tam decided to watch his back in future. If one of that lot was a murderer, someone who had murdered two men viciously, and then a woman, too, he would not hesitate at another.
By the time she got back to the Tommel Castle Hotel, Elspeth had a raging temperature. To her dismay, Dr. Brodie diagnosed swine flu and she was quarantined in her room. She tossed and turned, sometimes fretting over her job, sometimes wondering what had happened to the highland Elspeth of old who reported happily on flower shows and sheep sales for the Highland Times and was not eaten up with ambition.
Betty Close saw her chance. She would see what information she could get out of Hamish Macbeth and send a preliminary report to Glasgow. And perhaps it was one of the locals who had committed the murders.
She decided to walk down to the village. If she told George or Phil what she was up to, they might tell Elspeth. Not that anyone was allowed in her room except Dr. Brodie, who said he was sure he was immune to germs by now. But they could slip notes to her under the door. They had both done that already, wishing her a speedy recovery.
She met the manager, Mr. Johnson, on her way out. “And where are you off to?” he asked.
“Just going for a walk. I’ll maybe pick up some background for Elspeth.”
“I should think Miss Grant knows all the village background, but you could try the seer, Angus Macdonald. He picks up a lot of gossip.” He gave her directions. “Oh, you’d best drop by at Patel’s grocery store and take him a present. He aye expects something.”
Betty walked out into the clear swimming light of a late-spring morning. What a peculiar place to live, she thought as she walked down to the village, stopping briefly on the humpbacked bridge over the River Anstey. The peaty river was swollen with the melting snow from the mountains above. The loch was very still and clear away from the place where the river waters tumbled into it. The village had been built as a result of the highland clearances when the crofters had been driven off their land to make way for vast herds of sheep. Apart from a few Victorian villas and some council houses, the rest of the buildings were Georgian cottages, whitewashed and pretty. By the harbour was a crumbling large building which had once been a hotel. No one wanted to buy it so it lay abandoned, its empty windows staring out over the sea loch.
Betty walked into the grocery store. There were several women gossiping at the counter with the owner, but they fell silent when she entered. A large tweedy woman stepped forward. “I am Mrs. Wellington, the minister’s wife.”
“Betty Close,” said Betty. “I’m here with Elspeth Grant.”
“How is poor Miss Grant?”
“Still quite ill.”
“You must let us know when she is well enough to receive visitors. May we expect to see you at church this Sunday?”
“Sure,” said Betty, who had no intention of going.
Two small women looking exactly alike, from their rigidly permed white hair to their thick spectacles and camel-hair coats, stepped forward. “We are the Misses Currie,” said Nessie. “Do you need anything?”
“Need anything?” echoed the Greek chorus that was her sister, Jessie.
“As Miss Grant is unwell,” said Betty importantly, “and we are here to research the murders, I am taking over. Do you think the murderer could be local?”
Frosty eyes looked at her, and the women turned away.
Betty shrugged and looked through the items in the small supermarket until she found a discounted box of biscuits. When she went back to the counter, the women had gone. She paid for the biscuits, walked out of the shop, and set off in the direction of Angus Macdonald’s cottage.
She felt tired when she finally got there. It had been a long walk from the hotel, and Angus’s cottage was perched on top of a steep brae.
She knocked at the door. A tall old man with a long grey beard opened the door and stared down at her. “Come ben,” he said abruptly. “You will be thon lassie who is a sidekick to our Elspeth.”
“I’m in charge now,” said Betty importantly. She looked around curiously, at the peat fire in the hearth with a blackened kettle on a chain hung over it, at the Orkney chairs on one side of the hearth and the battered wing chair on the other.
She handed Angus the box of biscuits. “Cut price at Patel’s,” he said. “I thocht you lot would have had better expenses.”
Betty’s sallow face coloured up in embarrassment. “Sit down,” commanded Angus.
Betty made to sit down in the wing chair but Angus said, “That’s mine,” so she sat down on one of the Orkney chairs while he settled down and surveyed her with a gleam of amusement in his eyes.
“So you want to take Elspeth’s job away from her,” commented Angus.
“Not at all. I am making enquiries because she is ill.”
“I wouldnae pin your hopes on her being out o’ commission for long,” said Angus. “The swine flu comes bad but it can be quite short and she’s a healthy lass.”
“I’ve heard you see things,” said Betty gamely. “I think maybe we’re looking in the wrong place and the murders might have been committed by someone local.”
Angus studied her for a long moment. She wondered uneasily what he was thinking. Angus was not thinking about Betty. He was thinking maliciously about Hamish Macbeth.
He had overheard a tourist last summer asking about the “famous seer” and heard Hamish say with a laugh, “I think he relies more on local gossip than second sight.”
Angus was vain and had the highland habit of plotting revenge long after the event.
“Now, Elspeth got a lot of her information up here before,” he said, “from Hamish Macbeth. Very keen on Hamish is our Elspeth. We all thought at one time that they’d get married, but, och, he kept backi
ng off. Don’t interfere there, my girl, or you’ll really hurt Elspeth and she would not like you getting information that would put her in the shade.”
“I would do nothing to hurt Elspeth,” said Betty. “I must be on my way.”
Aye, and straight from here to the police station, thought Angus cynically.
He watched from the window as she hurried down the brae, and then he clutched at the sill. It seemed as if a dark shadow was creeping across the heather to engulf her. He shook his head and the vision disappeared.
But Hamish Macbeth was not at his police station. He was on his road to Inverness. He thought not enough had been done to investigate the woman who had helped to abduct Philomena.
He drove into the car park of the Dancing Scotsman, went into the bar, and asked to speak to the waitress who had previously been interviewed by the police. A plump waitress came forward wearing her uniform of frilly white blouse and Buchanan tartan pinafore dress.
“I’m sure I cannae tell ye more than I’ve already told the police afore,” she said.
“Maybe we could just sit down and have a wee chat,” suggested Hamish. The waitress, whose name was Rose Cameron, looked around the near-empty bar.
“Won’t do any harm. It’s fair quiet.”
“I know you’ve been through all this before and I’ve read the reports. But if you could just be describing her to me again.”
Hamish was in plainclothes and was driving an old car borrowed from the garage in Lochdubh, not wanting to alert Inverness police that he was poaching on their patch.
Rose was quite old for the job. Her face was wrinkled, and her sagging mouth showed that she had lost all her teeth some time ago. “Let’s see,” she said. “She was a bit on the fat side, dressed in a suede jacket and trousers. Her hair was hidden under one of those tweed fishing hats.”
“Face?”
“Roundish. Maybe she’d been to the dentist because she had a wee bittie difficulty speaking, as if her mouth was still frozen.”
“What kind of accent?”
“Posh. Lowlands. She came up to the bar for her first drink afore she joined that dead woman and I heard her telling the barman she was from Edinburgh.”
Hamish brightened. He now had one fact that the police had missed.
“And she didn’t pay by credit card?”
“No, cash. We were busy at the time so I didn’t take much notice.”
“Did the Inverness police examine the tape from the security cameras?”
“They tried. But the boss is a bit mean ower small things and there wasn’t any tape in there.”
“She surely wasn’t wearing gloves. There must have been some fingerprints.”
“By the time they got around to asking, her glass had been washed and the table she sat at wiped clean.”
Hamish asked a few more questions and then returned to his hired car, deep in thought. Would a ruthless murderer want a woman around who could identify him? Maybe blackmail him?
The wives of his four suspects were all in Guildford at the time of Philomena’s abduction and murder with plenty of witnesses. He frowned as he remembered the police reports.
The four men had pretty much alibied one another. But it would take only one of them to be the murderer with his mates covering up for him.
He drove back to Lochdubh as fast as the old banger of a car he had rented would let him.
Sonsie and Lugs were waiting outside the police station for him. He had forgotten to feed them before he left but he was pretty sure the pair of them would have gone along to the kitchen door of the Italian restaurant, where the staff spoiled them. They could come and go by a large cat flap in the kitchen door of the police station.
“They’ve been fed,” said a voice behind him.
He swung round. Angela Brodie, the doctor’s wife, stood there, her soft wispy hair blowing around her thin face. “They were eating like pigs outside the Italian restaurant. Lugs is particularly fond of osso buco.”
“I’ll make us some coffee,” said Hamish.
“How’s the case going?” asked Angela when they were seated at the kitchen table.
“Not well.”
“Been to see Elspeth? She’ll soon be past the infectious stage.”
“I’ll head up there later. What should I take her?”
“I think she would like something easy to read.”
“I’ll look for something. I’d better check that those four bastards have left the area.”
“Do you suspect one of them?”
“Yes, I do.”
“But why? I gather Davenport owed them all money, but they all seem to be pretty well off.”
“I think I’m dealing with a psychopath with an overweening vanity.”
When Angela had left, Hamish went through to the police office and called Jimmy Anderson.
“Jimmy, this is one hell of a long shot. It’s about that woman who helped our murderer abduct Philomena.”
“What about her?”
“I think she was in disguise.”
“Stands to reason.”
“I mean I think she had stuffed her face and body to make herself look fatter. The waitress said she spoke as if she’d just been to the dentist. And she said she was from Edinburgh.”
“What are you getting at?”
“Could you do me a favour? Could you get on to Edinburgh police and give them, say, the day after Philomena’s murder, or the day after that, and ask if there were any suspicious deaths in Edinburgh?”
“The damn city’s probably got a long list. Okay, I’ll let you know.”
“I’m going out to take my beasts for a walk.”
“Hamish, I probably won’t get back to you until this evening.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
Hamish put down the phone. He felt a draught on the back of his neck and went into the kitchen. The door was slightly open. He frowned. He was sure he had shut it. Sonsie and Lugs were nowhere in sight. He decided to go out and look for them. He locked the kitchen door, put the key up in the gutter above the door, and set off.
Betty crept out from behind the henhouse, where she had fled when she had heard Hamish put down the phone.
She quickly nipped up to the kitchen door, took the key down from the gutter, and let herself in.
Inside the police station office, Betty took a small, powerful tape recorder out of her bag and searched for a place to hide it. There was a shelf of files above the desk. She set it up there and let herself out, heading off up the back way, through Hamish’s grazing flock of sheep and made her way by a roundabout route back to the hotel.
She had read about Hamish in the Glasgow office. With any luck he might be on to something and she could steal the show from Elspeth.
Hamish found Lugs and Sonsie along the waterfront, took them back to the police station, and loaded them into the Land Rover. He collected a pile of old paperbacks and headed off for the Tommel Castle Hotel.
He was met by Dr. Brodie, who told him that it might be an idea to leave Elspeth alone for another couple of days although she appeared to be much better. Hamish handed him the pile of books and asked him to take them up to her.
He drove off towards the police station. Rain was smearing the windscreen. For once the wind of Sutherland had deserted the county. The waters of the loch lay still and dark, and the pine forest opposite was obscured by mist.
He parked at the police station. Lugs and Sonsie followed him in. Lugs gave a sharp bark, and the fur on Sonsie’s back was raised. Hamish stood inside the door, listening, waiting, and sniffing the air. There was a faint smell of perfume. He went back out to the Land Rover and collected his forensic kit. He sprinkled powder on the entrance to the kitchen and then carefully dusted it. Footprints. Not his. Small and neat. He sat back on his heels. He went to the police station office on his knees, powdering and dusting as he went. The footprints stopped in front of his desk. He fingerprinted in his office until he found the powerful little tape rec
order hidden behind the files. Hamish carefully fingerprinted it as well. He went out and back to the waterfront. Toddling through the mist came the Currie sisters.
“Nice soft day,” said Nessie.
“Soft day,” murmured her sister.
“Press been bothering you?” asked Hamish.
“They’ve mostly gone,” said Nessie.
“Gone,” echoed Jessie dolefully.
“Excepting that wee lassie, her that came up wi’ Elspeth,” said Nessie as Hamish tuned out the echo that was Jessie. “I think she tried to call on you but you were away. I saw her near the police station.”
Hamish returned to the station. Putting on a pair of latex gloves, he turned on the recorder, listened to the noise of his search, and erased it. Then he put the recorder on his desk, dialled Strathbane headquarters, and cut off the call before anyone could answer so that there would only be the sound on the tape recorder of the dialling beeps. He pretended to be speaking to Jimmy Anderson. “Jimmy, this is Hamish,” he said, his voice full of excitement. “I think I’ve got our man. He’s camping on the beach at Durness. I’m off up there for a recce. Don’t send the troops yet, I’ll phone you from there.”
He turned to his pets, who were studying him.
“Come along. I know ye don’t like the siren but we’re going to blast out o’ this village.”
On the waterfront, Betty swung round as Hamish’s Land Rover sped past with the siren going and the lights flashing. She made her way by a roundabout route to the police station. Once inside, she eased the tape recorder out from behind the files where Hamish had replaced it and switched it on. Her eyes grew wide with excitement. She went out quickly up to the back fields and called the soundman and the cameraman. “Big break on the story,” she said. “Pick me up in Lochdubh. I’ll be outside the shop on the waterfront.”
“We’ll tell Elspeth,” said George Lennox, the cameraman.
“Don’t do that,” said Betty quickly. “She’s too ill. May come to nothing.”
She went to Patel’s grocery store and waited impatiently outside until the large television Winnebago hove into view.
