by M C Beaton
“Aye, but he always liked the lords and ladies.”
“I suppose he always will. Hated being associated with trade.”
“What about if the Earl of Strawban issued an invitation? That would get him out on the road for a bit.”
“Could you wangle that?”
“I’ve still got that silver cup I won at his clay pigeon shoot. The winner is supposed to keep it but he wants it back. I’ll tell him he can have it if he invites George.”
* * *
It was as if the fund-raising to save Sonsie had lifted the bad feeling from the village. Hamish was delighted to hear that it looked as if Larry would make a complete recovery although it would take some time.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The best laid schemes o’ mice and men,
Gang aft a-gley.
—Robert Burns
The nights were beginning to draw in and the mountains blazed purple with heather. Hamish heard that Priscilla was at Tommel Castle and made his way there. He found her helping in the gift shop. “Up for long?” he asked. She looked as perfect as ever with the smooth bell of her blonde hair and her slim figure in a cashmere blue jersey and skirt.
“Just the weekend. Mother’s a bit upset.”
“What’s up?”
“Well, she thought Pa was over in Uist haunting Charlie and drove over but Charlie said he’d gone back to the mainland and Mother said that Charlie and Annie looked decidedly shifty. She’s looking through the stuff on his desk to see if he left a clue as to where he was going. You look stricken. Know anything about this?”
“Me? No. I’ll just be having a word with Mr. Johnson.”
* * *
Hamish found the manager in his office. “Do you know where the boss has gone?” he asked.
“No, but he was stinking of Tiger Balm aftershave—you know, that stuff teenage boys put on because they think it attracts the lassies.”
Hamish had a sinking feeling. He was suddenly sure that George had taken the widow and her boobs to the earl’s home.
“When did he leave?”
“Yesterday.”
He was just leaving the hotel when Mrs. Halburton-Smythe hailed him. She held out a letter. “Do you know anything about this? It’s an invitation to Strawban’s place but George never said a word.”
“He maybe thought you were still away.”
“Don’t be silly. He’s the one that’s always away, playing a sort of Robinson Crusoe over in Uist. I’ll phone Emily and ask her what the hell is going on.”
Hamish headed for the door. “Wait a moment, Hamish,” she called. “I may need your help.”
She rang and Hamish heard her side of the conversation. “George is there with his secretary? Indeed? This must be a new venture. Yes, I’ll be there around early evening. Oh, she does, does she. Well, I’ll bring Macbeth as well.”
When she rang off, Mrs. Halburton-Smythe fixed Hamish with a gimlet stare. “George is parading some female as his secretary and she says she is your cousin.”
“Not guilty,” said Hamish.
“Really? Well, you’re coming with me to sort this out. Who is she?”
“She’s a widow called Fran Mackay who has set her cap at your husband. He’s probably flattered. I’ll get rid of her for you.”
* * *
It was worse than Hamish could have thought. Instead of being spurned as a common interloper, Fran Mackay appeared to have charmed the Strawbans.
She had a great head of straw-coloured hair, rosy cheeks, and two magnificent white breasts partly exposed by a low-necklined blouse. Her voice had the musical lilt of the isles. She had just been showing Lady Strawban an intricate knitting stitch, and Lady Strawban—who was an avid knitter—was hanging on her every word. The earl was gazing at those bosoms with a silly smile on his face. Only George looked stricken and miserable at the sight of his wife.
Hamish and Mrs. Halburton-Smythe stayed for tea and then she surprised Hamish by saying casually that she would see her husband sometime or another.
As they walked out to her car, Mrs. Halburton-Smythe said, “George really doesn’t have much fun. He won’t actually do anything. I mean, he’s never been unfaithful to me. You young people, it’s all romance with you. But for us it was a business arrangement. People think that girls marrying for money belongs to the dark ages, but in my day you owed it to your parents.”
“What’s really the trouble with Priscilla?” asked Hamish abruptly.
“You will need to ask her.”
“I’ve tried.”
“Then leave my daughter alone and find someone else. Everyone expects you to marry Elspeth Grant. Why don’t you?”
“She won’t move back here and I don’t want to go to Glasgow.”
“How’s your cat?”
“Still the same.”
“Some of the villagers are saying it isn’t Sonsie.”
“Rubbish. I know my own cat.”
“The older people think it is lying there, emanating evil.”
Hamish shrugged. “Half o’ them still believe in fairies.”
* * *
The colonel returned to the hotel that evening, looking sheepish. It turned out that Fran had been asked to stay on with the Strawbans. George seemed surprised at this. Being English he could never quite accustom himself to the democratic views of the Scottish aristocracy.
On impulse Hamish asked him to visit the police station and look at some murder case notes. George was thrilled. He longed to play Poirot. He sat in the office carefully scrutinising Hamish’s notes and at the end of several hours said, “Well, it is all very simple.”
Hamish looked amused. “Well, O Great Detective. Tell me who done it so we can get to bed.”
“It’s the forestry workers,” said George. “They attacked him. They went back and chucked him in the bog when you weren’t there. Simple.”
“I’d like to think so,” said Hamish cautiously. “But I am sure he phoned someone. It may have been someone he had been having an affair with that he didn’t want anyone else to know about, and he had a throwaway phone.”
“I think you’re wrong,” said George stubbornly. “I am sure Charlie would agree with me.”
Hamish suddenly wished Charlie had not left to get married. He missed his easy-going company. George said he was going to Uist the following day because he had supplies to take to Charlie. “I wish I could go with you,” said Hamish, “but I’ve a mind to go round the hospital again. I wonder if the police looked at any CCTV cameras from the streets near the hospital.”
* * *
When Hamish entered police headquarters the first person he saw was Blair. To his amazement, Blair merely nodded to him and walked away. The detective had also slimmed down considerably and his face was free of the marks of heavy drinking. In any other man, Hamish would believe some rehab had worked its magic, but in Blair’s case it was almost as if, without him knowing it, he was sobering up for something. All Hamish could hope was that the something wasn’t an attack on Charlie.
A policewoman dug out CCTV tapes that had been collected and placed them on a desk for him to view. Solve the murder of Alison, thought Hamish. And then I’ll know who killed Paul English.
The tapes were old and grainy and showed all the signs of having been reused over and over again. But at least when Alison was murdered, the summer nights were still light with that odd violet gloaming. Would the murderer have calmly walked in the front entrance? Very few people came and went, mostly staff standing outside smoking, despite a large notice which warned that no smoking was permitted on the hospital grounds. There were no cameras at the sides or back of the hospital. Hamish put in a tape for Glebe Street, the broad street that ran along the outside of the hospital. An ambulance raced up; a body was lifted out, the face covered by an oxygen mask. Hamish stifled a yawn as he continued to watch. Then he suddenly wound back the tape. A shadowy figure slid out of the hospital and disappeared up the side into the tree-covered shadows.
Could be either a man or a woman, he thought. He froze the picture and leaned back in his chair, his hands clasped behind his head. “If I wanted to get right into the hospital,” he said aloud, “I might fake a heart attack. When they had put me in some bed to wait for a doctor, I’d simply get up and find where Alison was, which they made easy on the final attempt, with the policeman outside. So that’s how it might have been done,” he concluded. “Fake a heart attack and get an ambulance to take you in.”
He was unaware that Blair had been standing behind him. The detective went upstairs and into Daviot’s office. He told him that he had been studying the CCTV footage and he thought that the murderer might have faked a heart attack to get carried in. After the first attempt on Alison, everyone would have been alerted.
“Good work, Blair,” said Daviot. “Keep at it!”
* * *
Blair went back downstairs and told Hamish that Daviot had heard he was in headquarters and had ordered that he return to his beat. “Sorry about that, old son,” said Blair. “Leave the videos and I’ll get someone to put them away.”
“I think I should tell the boss that I need more time. I mean, Braikie is on my beat.”
Something unlovely suddenly peered out of Blair’s eyes. “Do as you are ordered, sonny,” he said.
* * *
Hamish raced for Braikie with the siren blaring. He wanted to get there before Blair because Blair would be keen to follow up that lead. He found out the name of the ambulance driver who had brought in the heart attack. He was in their office, having a break.
To Hamish’s questions, he said, “Aye, it was a wee man. We gave him oxygen and rushed him off.”
“Name and address?” asked Hamish eagerly.
“Got it in the book. Here we are. John Clarke, number five, Orchard Road. Nurse says she went to move him to a bed and he had disappeared.”
“Was he in the house or out in the garden when you called?” asked Hamish.
“He was hanging ower the garden gate.”
Hamish felt excited. This so-called John Clarke possibly had found an empty house and pretended it was his own by waiting in the garden and then faking a heart attack.
He said, “Be careful. There’s a man pretending to be a detective chief inspector called Blair. Don’t tell him anything.”
* * *
Hamish raced to Orchard Road. The house was a villa with a large front garden full of thick bushes and trees. He went up to the front door and rang the bell. The door was answered by a small man with grey hair. “Mr. Clarke?”
“The same. What’s up?”
“Did you call an ambulance recently?”
“Aye, I was in the garden, weeding, and I came over faint. But they left me lying in a hard bed and I thought, och, I’m okay. So I just walked home.”
Dead end, thought Hamish gloomily. But he said, “You’ll have heard about the murder and the attack on that poor policeman. Did you see anyone suspicious?”
“No, not a soul. As I walked out, I could hear a lot of screaming.”
“Look, a man pretending to be a detective will call soon. Don’t tell him anything.”
“Look, mac, I won’t even answer the door.”
* * *
Shortly after Hamish had left, Blair arrived. He could see Clarke inside but the man made no attempt to answer the door. Guilty as hell, thought Blair. He called for backup and when it arrived told the man with the battering ram to break in.
That was when Mr. Clarke had a genuine heart attack through sheer fright and had to be taken off in an ambulance. The ambulance men asked the detective if his name was Blair and, getting the affirmative, threw Blair to the ground and handcuffed him with his own handcuffs. It took some time from members of the backup team to convince them that Blair was the genuine article.
Blair was about to put in a report that all this misery had been caused by Hamish Macbeth—but if he did that, Hamish would reveal that it was his idea that Clarke might be the murderer.
He longed to go to the pub but knew he would not leave until he was well and truly drunk, and he thirsted for revenge on Hamish. He was no longer obsessed with Annie since he had thrown away those madness-inducing pills. But Hamish was another matter. He nursed all the humiliations he had experienced at Hamish’s hands. All he needed to do was manufacture a simple accident. He wistfully remembered the days before the booze had taken over his life. He had been a good detective.
He suddenly had a mad brain wave. He would go over every note on the murders and find out the name of the killer, and then he would do a deal: I will not arrest you if you kill Hamish Macbeth. Just don’t murder anyone else. Foolproof!
Mary Blair became uneasy about her husband. Not only was he sober but he was bringing work home. She was used to expertly handling a drunk, but this sober Blair who barked orders at her she found scary.
One morning she headed over to the police station in Lochdubh and found Hamish drinking coffee in the kitchen, reading the local paper. “Pull up a chair and have some coffee,” said Hamish. “What brings you? Is he drunk again?”
“I wish he were,” said Mary. “He’s scary-sober and works in the evenings going over all the notes about the murders.”
Hamish’s hazel eyes sharpened. “Does he now. Ambition rears its ugly head at last. You know, he hasnae tried to get back to South Uist. Any sign he’s still obsessed wi’ Annie?”
“No, he said a lassie in love with a moron like Charlie isnae worth bothering about.”
“Sour grapes?”
“Oh, no, he meant it. I said I was taking a run over to Lochdubh because Patel has some special deals, and he said I was to get into the police station. If you had any notes on the murders, I was to swipe them and bring them back with me.”
“What’s he about? He knows I never take the credit. He wishes I were dead. He…”
Hamish’s mouth fell open and he stared blankly at Mary.
She waved a hand in front of his face. “Planet Earth to Hamish Macbeth. Come in please.”
Hamish blinked and then said, “Mention me much, does he?”
“Mutters under his breath. ‘That’ll fix that red-haired bastard. I wonder if I could be there.’ Things like that.”
“Now, the only place your man would want to be with me there would be if I were dying. Try this, Mary. He finds out the murderer and does a deal: You off Hamish Macbeth and I won’t charge you.”
“That’s mad.”
“Aye but this is your husband we’re talking about. His brain hasnae recovered from those damn pills.”
“Oh, I could cope when he was just your old-fashioned drunk,” moaned Mary. “I knew how to handle him.”
“Couldn’t you have a word with Mrs. Daviot?”
“Then I think I’d be the one that’d end up dead.”
“I’ll give you a copy of some of the notes,” said Hamish. “You’d better start giving me a daily report. Your man used to be a good detective, and I could do wi’ all the help I can get.”
* * *
After Mary had left, Hamish reflected on the odd situation and thought that Blair was rather like a rabid dog. But he was relieved that Blair’s obsession with Annie had fizzled out. Who would headquarters send to replace him? Then he thought, Blair will try to get some creature to do his bidding, someone who will report if I have any progress in solving the murders. In any case, it’ll be some awful creep.
* * *
Because Larry would not be returning, the policeman Blair was determined would replace Charlie was a small man called Silas Dunbar. He looked too small to be a policeman but he had just scraped past the regulation height; it was his cringing air that made him seem smaller. He had sandy hair and pale-green eyes which peered out at the world with a furtive look. His nose was sharp and curved and his mouth small and tucked in at the corners. He lived with his mother in a flat in Strathbane. He could not remember his father, who died when Silas was two years old.
His mother was large a
nd bosomy and domineering. It was she who decided that Silas must become a policeman. To make sure she knew what he was up to at all times, she waylaid Blair one day and explained who she was and what her concerns were. Blair immediately saw the possibility of having someone spy on Macbeth and persuaded her that Silas’s road to promotion could be through Lochdubh. Normally Mrs. Edith Dunbar would not have relished the idea of her son having any freedom at all, but she had lately joined a country dancing class and had her eyes on a widower and a sudden yen to get married again.
And so one sunny morning Silas drove his old Ford over the hills and moors and cruised down into Lochdubh. Reluctant to spoil the day by reporting immediately to the police station, Silas parked on the waterfront and got out and looked around. Little white clouds like feathers covered the sky and were reflected in the mirror surface of the sea loch. The small whitewashed cottages with their flower-filled gardens formed a curve, and at the harbour tourists were getting ready to board Archie’s fishing boat. He wished he had never joined the police force and had become a crofter or a forestry worker and lived free of shackles in a place like this. He had his firm instructions to spy on Macbeth and put in a report at the end of each week.
He reluctantly got back into his car and drove to the police station, parking it outside behind the Land Rover.
He opened the garden gate and knocked on the door under the blue lamp, almost hidden under a cascade of red rambling roses.
“Kitchen door at the side,” a voice shouted.
Silas made his way around the side of the building to the kitchen door, which was standing open. Hamish was in civilian clothes. “So you’re Dunbar,” he said. “We’ll deal with your bags later. I’m hungry and it’s lunchtime so I’ll treat you to a meal at the Italian’s. Come on, Lugs.”
Bemused, Silas followed the tall red-haired sergeant and his odd-looking blue-eyed dog. “The murders are, of course, top priority,” Hamish said. “But we still have a lot of irritating wee cases and the whole o’ Sutherland to patrol.”
