by M C Beaton
“Oh, do your duty, man.” Paul sniffed the air. “You’ve been drinking already. What is the name of your superior officer?”
He took a step back as Blair stood up and advanced on him. “See here,” said Blair. “Any mair reports agin the police and it’ll be the end of you.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“You report me, you scunner, and I will hae you for wasting police time.”
The door of Paul’s living room opened and Granny Dinwiddy walked in. “Will you be wanting coffee or tea?” she asked.
“No, but make sure you make a good job of cleaning the kitchen,” snapped Paul.
When the woman had left, Blair said, “Your maid’s too damn auld tae be a skivvy. Do you at least pay her the minimum wage?”
“That is my business,” said Paul, becoming flustered.
He tried to bar the way but Blair nipped round him and into the kitchen where he could be heard asking Granny Dinwiddy how much she was being paid. Now, Granny Dinwiddy was only being paid five pounds an hour and she knew it should be seven pounds, fifteen pence, but she was expert at thieving stuff from the kitchen so that Paul would never notice: a teabag or two, sugar cubes, siphon off a little bit of whisky, cuts of meat shaved off what Paul got from the butcher, and occasionally stealing a note out of his wallet when he had fallen asleep. So to Blair’s great disappointment, she said she was paid the minimum wage.
Paul overheard her and sighed with relief, but, he reflected, because of her age, people would think him a sort of slave driver, so as soon as Blair had stomped his way out, he told Granny Dinwiddy that her services were no longer needed.
“Yes, they are, or I will tell them what you are actually paying me,” she protested.
“I give you cash. You’ve no proof. Who are they going to believe? Me, or a senile old fool like you?”
She fished in her apron pocket and held up a small tape recorder. “They’ll believe this.”
He made to snatch it out of her hand but she seized a marble rolling pin and struck him on the nose. He reeled back, blood running down his face. “I’ll sue you,” he yelled. “I’m off to the doctor. Don’t be here when I get back.”
* * *
Hamish was leaning on the seawall that evening, looking dreamily at the loch, when he heard himself being hailed by Angela Brodie, the doctor’s wife.
“Someone gave Paul English a nasty dunt on the nose,” she said. “He claims he walked into a cupboard.”
“He’s insulted everyone I can think of,” said Hamish. “One of them was bound to crack. Has he insulted you?”
“Oh, yes, he came round with a book for me to sign. He said, ‘Put down: To Paul, with apologies for writing this brainless pap.’ So I wrote ‘To Brainless Paul’ and he cursed and yelled. There must be something really badly wrong with him. Do you think he’s one of those people who are too frightened to commit suicide so they try to goad someone into killing them?”
“Mr. Smug? No. Not for a moment. Actually, I am taking a run up there. I’m sure he’s underpaying Granny Dinwiddy. What on earth is the woman’s proper name?”
“It’s Maggie Dinwiddy and she’s as old as Methuselah.”
* * *
But when Hamish arrived at the cottage, Paul said that Mrs. Dinwiddy had gone home. His nose was taped and bandaged and he sounded like Kipling’s elephant. “Ah fyredd ’er,” he said.
“Fired her, did you? That means you were probably paying her cheap,” said Hamish. “I’ll go and ask her.”
Paul had pale-green eyes like sea-washed glass. A flicker of malice shot through them. “Good ’uck.”
Hamish drove down to the waterfront to a small cottage where he knew Maggie Dinwiddy lived with her daughter. But her daughter, a widow called Holly Bates, said her mother hadn’t come home. Hamish began to worry. Paul had looked so maliciously smug. Had he done something to her?
* * *
After two days, Hamish finally reported Maggie Dinwiddy as a missing person and said she may have come to harm. Paul seemed amused at all the police questions until it began to dawn on that brain of his, which was not one bit as intelligent as he thought it was, that he was suspected of murder. He reluctantly admitted he had paid for Maggie to go on a cruise. He supplied the name of the travel agency and the shipping line.
Maggie was contacted and said that—God bless the man—he had paid for this holiday out of the goodness of his heart, and that was all they could get out of her. Only Hamish guessed that Paul had been blackmailed by the cunning old fright.
All his smugness and confidence restored, Paul beamed on the police. That was until Detective Chief Inspector Blair charged him with perverting the course of justice and had him driven to police headquarters and dumped in a cell. Only after twenty-four miserable hours was he able to hire a lawyer who promptly got him out on bail, said he would defend him in court, then mentioned his fee and Paul, ever the cheapskate, spluttered that he would defend himself.
* * *
Hamish felt uneasy. There was something nasty about the whole thing. Paul had probably paid Maggie in cash so it would be only his word against hers. He decided to pay another visit to her daughter, Holly. Why hadn’t Holly said anything about the cruise? Surely her mother would have told her.
But Holly stoutly said that her mother had said nothing about a cruise and all her clothes were in the wardrobe so what else was she supposed to think? Hamish asked to see the clothes and sure enough, the admittedly meagre wardrobe seemed to be intact. The phone rang and Holly went through to the living room to answer it. Hamish began to search through the pockets of the clothes, hoping for some clue, until his hands closed on the little tape recorder. He heard Holly coming back and put the recorder in his own pocket.
He was to curse himself afterwards and wish that he had simply given Holly a receipt for it.
Back at the police station, he was about to switch it on when Charlie came lumbering in, tripped over Lugs, and crashed down on the table, sending cups and plates flying.
Hamish helped him up and together they cleaned up the mess. “Now,” said Hamish, “sit yourself down, take a deep breath, and tell me what’s bothering you.”
Charlie carried forward a stout oak chair, especially kept for him, and eased his bulk into it.
“I’m not enjoying being a policeman any mair, Hamish.”
“Has anything happened?”
“It’s thon scunner, Blair. Yesterday, you mind, you sent me back to Maggie’s daughter but Blair was there and he was making her cry, shouting and yelling. So I picked him up and put him outside of the front door and locked it. So I’m to be charged with laying hands on a superior officer.”
“It’s all right, Charlie. I’ll go and see Holly Bates. She’ll say Blair frightened her and she’ll stand up for you.”
“No, she won’t, Hamish.”
“Whit?”
“Aye. I thought o’ that and went back when the coast was clear and she point-blank refused to help me. Said she’d take Blair to court for police harassment and get money out o’ the police to shut her up.”
“There’s something awfy fishy about thon pair. Wait! I took a tape recorder out o’ one o’ Maggie’s pockets. She had left all her clothes behind, which means she not only got a cruise out o’ Paul but new clothes as well. Help yourself to a dram and pour me one and we’ll hae a listen.”
“That’s not even the minimum wage,” came Maggie’s voice.
Paul: “Like it or lump it.”
Maggie: “I need the money and that’s a fact.”
“Is that all?” asked Charlie.
“Maybe there’s something later on,” said Hamish. “Oh, here we are!”
Maggie’s jeering voice: “Get on all right at the doctor?”
“Why are you still here?”
Maggie: “I thocht we might come to an agreement afore I go to the police.”
Paul: “What agreement, you old hag. No, get back. I’ll listen.”
Maggie: “I want new clothes and a two-week cruise to the Norwegian fjords and I want it now. Take me to the travel agency in Strathbane now or off I go to the polis. Or I’ll maybe break yer heid the next time.”
“I’ll take this to Blair,” said Hamish. “This gets him off the hook. What a pair! Oh, crivens. I just lifted this recorder. Now I have to go back and pretend to find it. And I’ll bet she asks for a search warrant.”
But to Hamish’s relief, Holly smiled and let him look through the clothes again, but she let out a sharp exclamation when he held out the recorder and said he would give her a receipt for it.
“That’s private property,” she yelled. But Hamish merely smiled as he wrote out a receipt.
* * *
On board the Norwegian cruise ship, Maggie received a frantic call from her daughter about the tape recorder. Her companion on deck, an equally elderly lady, listened as Maggie shouted, “Get rid of him somehow.”
“What is it, honey?” she asked when Maggie rang off.
“Oh, jist family,” said Maggie.
“Oh, aren’t they always just such a problem, honey,” said her American companion, old Mrs. Merriweather. “Why, I do but mind…”
Maggie tuned her out. Oh, to be able to disappear! But as Mrs. Merriweather droned on about how too terribly sad it was to outlive your family, punctuating each sentence with a wave of her diamond-encrusted fingers, Maggie began to listen and look. People never really look at the very old, she thought. I mean, the number of times on this cruise the captain’s called me by her name must be about fifty.
* * *
“She’s what?” shouted Hamish two days later.
Holly’s voice choked with sobs came over the line. “She jumped overboard and it’s because I told her about the police harassment.”
While she sobbed and accused, Hamish thought of crocodile tears and when he estimated she had wept a whole set of luggage, he simply put the phone down.
He whistled to his pets and drove up to the Tommel Castle Hotel to call on his sidekick in his flat in the basement. Charlie listened to Hamish’s complaint and said, “You know what’s been bothering me. If Maggie was blackmailing Paul, well, look at it this way, I’ve a feeling she and that daughter of hers must have done something like it before. There’s another thing that’s been bothering me. I don’t think cheating auld Granny out o’ the minimum wage was enough for a new wardrobe of clothes and a cruise. I think she and her daughter had something else on him.”
“I wish we could get a search warrant.”
“Maybe we could do it like this,” said Charlie. “They’re bound to find the body—well, let’s hope they find the body. It’ll be shipped back and there’ll be a funeral. You go and I’ll break in and have a wee keek.”
Hamish looked at him with affection. Charlie was a policeman after his own heart.
CHAPTER TWO
She was poor but she was honest,
Victim of a rich man’s game.
First he loved her, then he left her,
And she lost her maiden name.
It’s the same the whole world over,
It’s the poor wot gets the blame,
It’s the rich wot gets the gravy.
Ain’t it all a bleedin’ shame!
—Military song, First World War
Paul English did not know it was to be his last night on earth. He never thought of the people at the receiving end of his much-prided honesty as victims. He told himself he was “putting them straight.” He had led a pretty isolated life after Maggie had biffed him with the rolling pin and blackmailed him into that cruise. But the news that she had jumped overboard acted on his spirits like a bottle of the best wine.
He decided to run over to Lochdubh and find out if that stupid policeman had any news of Maggie’s body being found. The locals all knew that the front door of the police station had been sealed shut with damp for ages and they all knew to use the kitchen door so Hamish, hearing a thunderous knocking at the front door, wondered who it could be. Had Paul remained quiet, then Hamish would have opened the door, but Paul shouted, “Come on, man. I haven’t all night.”
Charlie had developed a great affection for the poodle and had taken Sally off with him to the Tommel Castle Hotel. So Hamish quietly opened the kitchen window and lifted Lugs out onto the grass at the back and then squeezed his lanky frame out the window as well. He walked Lugs up through his small herd of sheep and on up to the peat stacks where he finally sat down and gazed up at the blazing stars overhead. Under his feet and under the peat still to be cut lay some of the oldest rock in the world. That and the combination of some Neolithic ruins to one side and the pitiless stars above gave him a superstitious shiver. There was nothing like the county of Sutherland for reminding petty humans that they were only renters on this planet and Landlord Earth could evict them anytime it chose.
He patted Lugs on the head, wondering why the dog did not seem to miss the poodle. Lugs had shown no sign of missing Sonsie, the wild cat, either. “Maybe you’re a wee chauvinist pig,” said Hamish.
“Who are ye calling a pig, ye daft gowk.”
Hamish stared at his dog in alarm. “Did you just speak?”
“Aye, and you’d better get on down tae the pub. They’re going to give thon Mr. English a ducking in the harbour.”
“Who’s there?” said Hamish.
“It’s me, Willie Gordon.”
“What are you doing up here, Willie?”
“Escaping from the wife.”
Hamish set off running with great loping strides. He ran round the side of the police station and out onto the waterfront in time to hear Paul screaming, “Put me down.”
Hamish usually had a soft lilting highland voice but it was a stentorian yell that sounded along the waterfront. “Police. Put him down now!”
Four men dropped Paul and disappeared into the blackness. Paul struggled to his feet and started to berate Hamish for not having arrested his assaulters. To his fury, Hamish twisted his own arm up his back and marched him back into the pub where he asked the barman, “How much did Mr. English have to drink?”
“Four double malts,” said the barman.
“I am taking your car keys, Mr. English,” said Hamish.
“Over my dead body.”
Hamish kicked Paul’s legs from under him, twisted him over and put handcuffs on him, dragged him to his feet, and fished in his pockets until he found Paul’s car keys.
“I am taking you to the station,” said Hamish, “where you will be locked in a cell until I consider you sober enough to drive. But first you will wait quietly here until I fetch a breathalyser and then take a statement from the barman, Forfar Timson. Keep an eye on him, Forfar.”
In the station, Hamish suddenly could not remember where he had stacked the breathalysers until he remembered they were in a chest behind the freezer in the henhouse. He at last secured a kit and made his way back to the pub. Forfar, nicknamed Furry, was holding a towel to his bleeding nose and of Paul, there was no sign.
“What happened?” demanded Hamish.
Furry removed a blood-soaked towel and said, “Didnae the cheil gie me a dunt on the nose? Then he laughs in my face and walks off.”
“With the handcuffs still on?”
“Aye.”
Hamish set off at a run. Paul’s car was still outside the pub.
There is no pollution in the far north of Scotland and so the combination of starlight and bright moonlight lit up the empty road ahead. Hamish roused Charlie to help in the search. They got into Charlie’s old car and set out in the direction of Cnothan. They ranged the countryside until the sky paled, and when the sun rose at four in the morning, there was no sign of Paul and his house appeared to be empty.
* * *
His eyes gritty with lack of sleep, Hamish had to inform headquarters, and soon reinforcements had arrived.
Had Paul lived in any other highland village but Cnothan, Hamish would have had a list of every
one he knew and everyone he had talked to. But Cnothan was closed and secretive. He knew from past experience that a succession of slammed doors was all he was likely to get. He and Charlie met at a café in the main street.
“They call places like this greasy spoons in America,” said Hamish, “but usually they turn out to be smart diners whereas this dump deserves the name. I gather you’ve had no luck?”
“I may have one thing,” said Charlie. “If you are no’ going to eat that bun, I’ll have it.”
“Go ahead,” said Hamish, pushing his plate over.
“Slike ’is,” mumbled Charlie.
“For heffen’s sake, man, chew, swallow, and then speak.”
Charlie gulped down a piece of bun and said, “A wee birdie telt me that himself had a mistress.”
“Paul! What demented female did he lure into his bed?”
“Maisie Walters.”
“The only Maisie Walters I know of is the Reverend Maisie Walters and she’s the minister at the kirk here.”
“Must be nonsense then,” said Charlie gloomily. “It was a wee lassie that telt me. Only about nine years old. Fairy McSporran. Probably laughing about it wi’ her horrible wee friends.”
“Describe what she told you,” ordered Hamish.
“I was going up to the kirk because I thought there might be some ladies there, cleaning the brass or whatever the volunteers do. But there was just this wee girl, kneeling and praying.”
“In a kirk! She’ll be damned as a papist if anyone catches her. Oh, I know. That film The Passionate Nun is showing at the community hall. I suppose all the lassies will want to be nuns until the next movie.”
“Fairy heard me and got to her feet. She says, ‘You must help me. Mrs. Walters is going to hell.’ So I says, ‘Why?’ And she says that Mrs. Walters has had ‘carnival knowledge’ of Mr. English. I guessed she meant carnal knowledge and I said, ‘You mustn’t tell stories.’” Charlie took another bite of bun and gazed dreamily out at the main street. Hamish stared at him in amazement. How could the man drift off like that when he might have a hard bit of information?
