Death of an Honest Man

by M C Beaton

  “Havers,” said Hamish. “It’s Blair. He wanted to kill Charlie before. Now he’ll really try. But the pair are off to Uist the morn’s morn.” Elspeth was wondering whether to offer to stay the night when Priscilla walked in and Elspeth wondered how on earth Hamish could still light up at the very sight of her. Priscilla’s present was a fine ram which she said was waiting at the hotel for Charlie. The colonel had said he would drive it to Uist in the horse trailer.

  Oh, well, thought Elspeth. I’d be better off back in Glasgow anyway. But something made her say to Priscilla, “Have you taken a good look at that wild cat?”

  “I popped into the vet’s. Looks like Sonsie. Why?”

  “I think there’s something not right about it. I think it’s someone who’s come back.”

  “You don’t believe that stuff, do you?” asked Priscilla. “I know some of the villagers think that the seals were people at one time.”

  Elspeth shrugged. “Just a bad feeling.”

  * * *

  Hamish would have liked to stick closely to Charlie and Annie until he saw them off on the road to Uist the next day, but he knew he had better see Alison at eight in the evening and hope it wasn’t another fantasy.

  He dropped in to see the wild cat but it was still unconscious. He could not keep paying to keep it alive forever. Sooner or later, he must make up his mind to let it die.

  As he walked along the waterfront, it was such a beautiful evening that he was reluctant to spoil it. The sea loch was like violet glass edged with pink in the setting sun. Little feathery clouds stretched across the sky. The forestry trees deepened to dark green and the heather on the flanks of the mountains became a softer purple. The villagers didn’t have dinner in the evening: they had high tea consisting of one dish, scones, and cakes. The air still smelled of sugar and strong tea. Television sets flickered in parlours.

  He approached Mrs. Mackenzie’s boardinghouse, angry at Alison because he was sure she had nothing really interesting to tell him.

  He rang the doorbell and waited. There was no reply. He was surprised because he knew Mrs. Mackenzie was nearly always home at this time of the evening. Callers were placed in a grim living room on the ground floor to wait. He tried the handle and found the door unlocked.

  He walked in. The living room, or waiting room as he often thought of it, was empty. He could hear the faint sounds of a television set coming from a room off the hall: Mrs. Mackenzie’s sanctum, as she liked to call it.

  He recognised the back of Mrs. Mackenzie’s head as she was sitting in a low-backed armchair. Midsomer Murders was showing.

  “Mrs. Mackenzie!” called Hamish. No response. He went round and stood in front of her. Her eyes were closed and her breathing heavy. He felt her neck. There was a strong pulse. On a bamboo table beside her chair was a half-full glass of wine. He sniffed it cautiously. He tried to wake her without success. He phoned for an ambulance and then slowly mounted the stairs. A man in one of the rooms volunteered that Alison had the room at the end next to the fire escape. Hamish went along. No answer to his knock and her door was locked. He ran back to the kitchen where he knew the spare keys were up on a board and found the one to Alison’s room. He ran back up and unlocked the door. Empty. Strong smell of cheap scent.

  He went out and examined the fire escape and wished he had done so earlier because it was opened just a little, enough to let someone get back in. He would need to wait for the ambulance and put in a police report as well. He phoned Jimmy, who said the old girl was probably drunk but to let him know if it looked serious. The ambulance men arrived. Hamish bagged up the bottle for evidence and, having seen Mrs. Mackenzie borne off, went back up to the fire escape and studied the steps down. At the bottom there was still a damp patch of earth, and he saw the imprint of high heels in it. There was another patch by a gate in the hedge. Something had made Alison decide not to meet him.

  A damp gust of wind blew against his cheek. He noticed choppy waves on the loch and black streamers of cloud like long grasping arms stretching in from the Atlantic.

  * * *

  Peter, the vet, thought he heard a movement from the surgery and went in before packing up for the night. But the cat lay still in its network of tubes.

  * * *

  Hamish decided to have one look at the peat bog before calling for a search party. Alison had wanted to tell him something and now she was missing. He began to run although his legs were still aching from the day’s event. There lay the bog, the livid green moss surrounding it shining like emeralds in the encroaching gloom. And at the far edge, a weak movement. He took out his phone and called for the fire brigade and for backup. Then he lay on his stomach down beside the top of a head and sank his long arms down into the sludge of the bog. But he could not move her. The fire brigade had fortunately been called out on a false alarm in Lochdubh and so they arrived after only a few minutes, taking over just as the rain began to come down in sheets. This had the effect of loosening the body and they were able to drag it out. Alison’s chalk-white face stared up at the tumbling clouds above, and rain washed the mud from her face. “She’s got a wee bit o’ a pulse,” shouted a fireman. “Gie us the oxygen quick, Jimmy.”

  Hamish prayed all the way to the hospital.

  CHAPTER SIX

  And come he slow, or come he fast,

  It is but Death who comes at last.

  —Sir Walter Scott

  By the time Hamish got back to the police station, he was shivering with cold, soaked to the skin. The initial report on Alison’s condition was not good. Her nose and mouth had been blocked by the bog, and brain damage was feared. They had found her mobile phone in her pocket but it looked ruined and the forensic department sent it to a specialist in Glasgow in the hope of getting some information out of it. Mrs. Mackenzie was good news. She had woken in the hospital, furious. She had been taking sleeping pills because she had not been sleeping well.

  He had a hot shower and scrubbed himself down with a rough towel. Then he made himself a cup of strong tea and settled himself on his battered sofa in his pyjamas and dressing gown, flicking through the channels in the hope of finding something on television that would take his mind off the murder. An advertisement crooned, “Why not leave your worries behind? Relax on one of our famous cruise ships…”

  Hamish sat up straight. Why had Granny Dinwiddy, a self-centred old biddy if there ever was one, decided to throw herself overboard? And anyway, the steep fall from the ship would have killed her. She was blackmailing Paul English and Hamish was suddenly sure she was blackmailing other people as well. And what of this Mrs. Merriweather, the rich American? Had Granny Dinwiddy pushed her over and then taken her identity? The captain said they could sound alike, but that could have been part of the plot. If, say, Holly, the daughter, had murdered Paul, then he must have known something that had made them afraid.

  Hamish felt he could not rest. He got dressed and drove over to police headquarters to demand the files on Granny Dinwiddy’s suicide. The reports were thorough and painstaking. There was even an attached photo of the dead body and it could have been Granny Dinwiddy although the fish and the immersion in seawater had made a right mess of the body. There was a long statement from Mrs. Merriweather about how they had become close friends. Hamish leaned back, his hands clasped behind his head. So they had become close. That meant old Mrs. Dinwiddy would have been in and out of Mrs. Merriweather’s cabin. Being a blackmailer, she probably automatically searched for incriminating letters. Or maybe she had thieved some jewellery and Mrs. Merriweather had caught her in the act. But there was certainly something fishy about the whole business. Mrs. Merriweather’s third husband had died the year before, leaving her even richer than she had been made by the deaths of the previous two. Say she had staged the drowning to oblige Mrs. Dinwiddy. Could such an old lady survive the plunge from the deck? Not to mention the long swim to shore. Some corpse would have to be found but to a rich woman it would be easy enough to bribe someone a
t the morgue to find a homeless woman. He knew he was beginning to wander into the realms of fantasy but the Dinwiddys, mother and daughter, had proved to be blackmailers.

  Of course he could get into trouble if he made an expensive phone call to the Houston police, but he was itching to get something, anything, to go on. In the morning he would get the daughter to explain where she was when Alison was attacked.

  He expected to have to go in for long explanations but to his surprise he was put through to a Captain Dexter who said he had been suspicious of Mrs. Merriweather’s late husbands’ deaths. But the widow was protected by wealth and connections on all sides. He listened carefully to Hamish’s suspicions and then said, “I’ll get there now. You want to know if she’s got a Scotch companion? And if she has, she could have helped her fake her suicide? Right. On it.”

  The evening drifted on. Hamish sat with his hands clasped behind his head and wondered where Blair was and hoped Charlie was safe.

  * * *

  At that moment Priscilla was phoning her mother from London. “How’s Pa?” she asked.

  “He’s on South Uist, darling, doing something with sheep.”

  “I hope you’re not lonely.”

  “It’s rather peaceful, you know. Poor George was always fretting. Now he doesn’t.”

  “Is Hamish’s cat still alive?”

  “Last heard, it was. I took a look at the vet’s the other day. Doesn’t look like Sonsie to me.”

  “Nor me. I’ve a bad feeling about it.”

  “Oh, don’t you start to go Highland on me. Your father will be believing in fairies soon. He’s even taking lessons in Gaelic.”

  * * *

  The phone on Hamish’s desk rang shrilly, making him jump. It was the captain from Houston. “Well whaddya know?” he cried down the line.

  “Tell me,” urged Hamish.

  “I call up with some talk about housebreakers and Mrs. Merriweather’s there all right. I see a movement through in the kitchen so I say, ‘I’ll get a glass of water, ma’am.’ She tried to stop me but she’s overweight and in the kitchen here’s this old woman and a younger one. I starts asking them if they’re friends. Mrs. Merriweather’s shouting to leave the staff alone. The one starts to talk with what she thinks is an American accent and ain’t it Mrs. Dinwiddy. I’d dug up an old photo I got wired over on the supposed drowned woman and the old one is her to the life. I have a woman cop with me and we handcuff the pair and charge them while Merriweather is screaming that they forced her to do it. Took ’em all in.”

  Hamish begged him to e-mail a full report. Then after he had rung off, he realised the daughter couldn’t have been murdering Alison if she was in Houston. He sighed and began to write out a full report. Jimmy came and sat beside him and goggled at the screen. “Good work, laddie,” he exclaimed. “How did ye work all that out?”

  “Because I never believed thon old biddy would take her own life. Who’s guarding Alison at the hospital?”

  “Blessed if I know. Blair took over.”

  “I’d better get over there. What was in the last report?”

  “In a coma. But enough oxygen was cut off to damage her brain. They think if she does come out of the coma, she’ll be a vegetable. Think she was blackmailing the murderer?”

  “She’s silly enough. Maybe she didn’t know it was the murderer but someone she had seen that evening. Oh, well, I’m getting back to Lochdubh. I’m tired.”

  Jimmy watched him go. Then he erased Hamish’s name from the report and put his own in instead.

  He quickly switched off the computer as he saw Blair lumbering in and made his escape. Blair thought he could smell guilt. He switched on the computer, and the report now with Jimmy’s name on it flashed up on the screen. Blair read it carefully. He dialled Houston police and got through to the captain who confirmed that a “smart cop,” one Hamish Macbeth, had done a great bit of work.

  Blair had been alarmed when it had looked as if Jimmy was in line to replace him, and so Blair phoned Daviot at home and—putting on a ponderous more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger voice—told his superior about Jimmy Anderson trying to gain undeserved credit. Having put the boot in for Jimmy tugged at Blair’s reward syndrome. He deserved a drink. He rummaged through the desks until he found a quarter bottle of whisky and took one great slug of it, feeling his old friend coursing through his veins and demanding more. Out to the nearest pub and three doubles later, his mind was full of Annie. Soon would be the wedding and that must be stopped. Charlie must be made to have an accident. That shooting idea had been crazy: all the fault of those weird drugs. He’d stick to whisky from now on. He was wafted off on dreams of Annie. They would get married and he would lead a decent life, a life worthy of her. He never stopped for a moment to wonder what he was supposed to do about his wife, Mary. He decided to go to Uist the following day and see what damage he could do.

  * * *

  Hamish had a sudden feeling that he should go to Braikie and check on Alison but it was three in the morning and his muscles were aching from the running and he was exhausted.

  * * *

  A silent figure crept along the deserted nighttime corridors of Braikie hospital. No guard on Alison’s room. The door quietly opened and a shadowy figure slipped in and reached for the tubes connected to Alison’s body. But approaching footsteps sounded and the figure hid behind a screen and then decided to escape. Try again the next day.

  * * *

  Jimmy was already on the carpet for having tried to thieve Hamish’s detective work. He was protesting that Blair had done it himself in order to discredit Hamish. Daviot tugged his grey hair and felt he should be a tougher man and appoint Hamish up the ranks. Creeps such as Blair kept weak men like himself in power, as he realised in his odd moment of self-introspection. Hamish Macbeth was a truly unambitious man, and such men were almost impossible to understand. What was the point of having flashes of brilliance and not using them to further one’s career? And why had Blair chosen this day of all days to go missing?

  * * *

  Blair was on the ferry from Oban to South Uist, feeling like some mediaeval knight. Annie should be saved from a cloth-headed lump like Charlie Carter. He planned to lure Charlie out of the caravan after dark, forgetting it was still high summer and the nights never got dark.

  Inside his little caravan, George got ready for bed. He considered himself a very lucky man and was well aware that most newly engaged women would not have tolerated his presence. But Annie was as friendly and laid-back as her husband. That his wife did not seem to mind his absence did not give him a moment’s thought. He was well aware the marriage was arranged because of his money, and after the miracle of Priscilla’s birth they had lived together more as brother and sister.

  Blair had the plot clear in his head. He would set fire to the couple’s van. Shoot Charlie when he emerged and he would say…he would say…

  It was as if a great tide of madness suddenly rolled from his brain, leaving him sober and very afraid. He clearly saw the investigation that would follow. His car had been seen on the ferry. He had bought petrol at the local garage.

  * * *

  “Hamish’s cat is dead,” said the vet to his assistant. “Right glad I am, too. You would think there was something nasty emanating from it. I swear that isnae Sonsie, but Hamish won’t listen to me.”

  Suddenly the cat twitched and opened a slit of yellow in one eye. “Oh, the damn thing’s come back to the land of the living. I should pull out the tubes and save Hamish some money, but I havenae killed an animal yet and I don’t mean to start.”

  * * *

  Hamish went to Braikie hospital the following day, phoned headquarters for a guard on Alison, and was told to guard her himself, as they were short of men. He settled in a chair outside and wondered if they planned to send relief.

  A sympathetic nurse brought him coffee and a newspaper. It was sunny outside and the air in the corridor was soporific. His eyelids began to droop. Soon he was f
ast asleep.

  He was awoken five minutes later by a voice demanding, “How is the patient?”

  A policeman was standing in front of him, questioning an Asian doctor. “So far, so good,” said the doctor. “I mean, she’s still alive, but whether her brain will ever function again properly is another question.”

  He walked off and Hamish and the policeman surveyed each other. “I’m your new assistant,” said the policeman. “Larry Coomb.”

  Hamish reflected that Larry looked about fourteen years old with his rosy cheeks and mop of curly brown hair. “Are you moving into the police station?” asked Hamish. “Because I’ll need to finish clearing out the spare bedroom for you.”

  “I’ll live in that B and B along by the bridge where Alison lived until you’re ready for me.”

  “Grand,” said Hamish. “Off you go. Come back and do a late shift for me, say midnight to six, and then I’ll take over again.”

  Hamish felt the day drag on and wished he had asked Larry to come back earlier. The library trolley came round and so he selected War and Peace, that book that sooner or later most of the reading population vows they will finish. He was just considering why the Russians didn’t make it easier by sticking to one name when Larry came back, carrying a container of coffee and a Danish. “I’m all set,” Larry remarked. “I’ll phone if there’s anything.” His voice was lowland Scots.

  “Where are you from?” asked Hamish.

  “Montrose.”

  “Pretty down there.”

  “Aye, but I got lassie trouble. She says I was going to marry her and I said nothing of the kind so I opted to get as far away as possible.”

  “Don’t mess with the locals,” said Hamish. “It’s a small world up here. I’ll be back at six in the morning.”