Death of a Nag hm-11

by M C Beaton

  “I never listen to other people’s conversations,” said Miss Gunnery repressively.

  “Ye couldnae miss hearing it,” pointed out Tracey. “First it was Bob giving Doris laldy, saying as how Andrew was a poofter. Then Hamish tells him to shut it and next thing I hears is Hamish saying he’ll kill him and the sound of a blow.”

  “I am amazed such as Bob Harris has managed to live this long,” said Miss Gunnery. “Mr Macbeth is a gentleman and no doubt the provocation was great. Do you not think so, Mr Biggar?”

  Andrew looked up from the book he was reading. “The man bores me,” he said shortly. “But, yes, he ought to be put down.”

  They fell silent as Bob Harris came in on his own. Cheryl and Tracey stared avidly at his swollen nose. Then Hamish entered, said a cheerful, “Good morning” all round and took his place at the table.

  He was just about to strike up a conversation with Miss Gunnery, mainly to ignore the glowering looks he was getting from Bob, when two policemen entered the dining room, and behind them came Doris, who slipped quietly into her chair.

  “Mr Harris?” asked the first policeman, looking around.

  “That’s me,” said Bob truculently.

  “I am Police Constable Paul Crick, and this is Police Constable Peter Emett. You phoned the station this morning?”

  “Yes.” Bob Harris got to his feet. “I want to charge this man, Hamish Macbeth, with assault.”

  “Which is Mr Macbeth?”

  Hamish stood up as well.

  “Well,” said Paul Crick, “if you two gentlemen will jist step outside.”

  “You can use the lounge,” said Mr Rogers.

  He ushered the small party across the hall.

  “Tell us what happened,” said Crick after he had closed the door of the lounge on Mr Rogers. “We’ll begin at the beginning. Your name is Mr Robert Harris, is it not?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your address?”

  “Elmlea, South Bewdley Road, Evesham.”

  “Aye, that would be in Worcestershire.”

  “Correct.”

  “Job?”

  “Double-glazing salesman.”

  Crick turned to Hamish. Hamish knew he would need to tell them he was a policeman.

  They would probably haul him off down to the station. The very idea that one of their own had been involved in any misdemeanor was enough to make them more harsh than they would be towards an ordinary member of the public.

  The door opened and Doris and Miss Gunnery stood there. “You must not listen to my husband,” said Doris. “Hamish was protecting himself. My husband attacked him.”

  “You bitch!” roared Bob Harris.

  “I heard the whole thing, as did the other residents,” declared Miss Gunnery. “Mr Harris had been keeping us awake by shouting at his wife.”

  Crick looked at Hamish. “Is this true?”

  “He tried to punch me,” said Hamish. “Yes, I was defending myself.” He knew this to be true. He had felt a great wave of satisfaction when his own punch had connected with Bob’s nose.

  Crick flicked his notebook closed and turned to Bob. “Before you go ahead with this complaint, sir,” he said, “you’re not going to get very far wi’ it if your ain wife is going to get up in the sheriff’s court and say it was your fault.”

  “And the rest of us,” said Miss Gunnery.

  “The hell with the lot of you,” roared Bob Harris. “You Scotch police are so damn lazy, you just don’t want to investigate anything.”

  “You’d better watch your mouth,” snapped Crick. “Do you want to proceed with this charge or not?”

  “Forget it, forget it.” Bob pushed his way roughly past his wife and Miss Gunnery and left the room.

  Crick and Emett turned to Hamish. They were remarkably alike, being quite small for policemen, and both with sandy hair and pale-grey eyes. “Don’t be so handy wi’ your fists in future, Mr Macbeth,” said Crick.

  They both left. “That was verra good of you,” said Hamish to Doris, “but he’ll never forgive you.”

  “Never forgive me, never forgive me,” said Doris tearfully. “Well, he can add it to the mile-long list of things he’s never going to forgive me for…breathing being one of them.”

  She buried her face in Miss Gunnery’s thin shoulder and began to sob.

  Hamish walked out quickly. He was weary of the people in the boarding-house and homesick for Lochdubh. He did not return to the breakfast room but collected Towser and headed along the beach, moodily throwing stones into the sea.

  At last he returned. He saw, as he approached, the small figure of Doris Harris hurrying off in the direction of the village. When he went in, the boarding-house was silent. Not a sound. He settled Towser in the bedroom with a bowl of food and a bowl of fresh water and went out again, this time towards Skag, but keeping a wary eye out for any of the other residents so that he could avoid them.

  Outside a musty shop that sold second-hand goods of the kind that no antique dealer would want was a wooden stand filled with paperbacks. He selected a couple and walked out of the village to a grassy bank at a bend of the river, sat with his back against the sun-warmed wall of a shed and began to read to fight down a feeling of dread. There was every reason to be afraid that something nasty was going to happen at that boarding-house containing such combustible material. The day was sunny and pleasant and he concentrated on his reading to such good effect that he had finished two books by tea-time. Reluctant to return to the boarding-house for another nasty high tea, he went to the fish-and-chips shop and, armed with a paper packet of fish and chips, he walked to the harbour jetty and ate placidly, relaxed now, beginning to think about his dog and realizing he should really return and give Towser a walk.

  He crumpled up his fish-supper paper and threw it in a rubbish bin and strolled to the edge of the jetty and looked down into the receding waters. The harbour jetty thrust out into the river Skag just below a point where it flowed into the North Sea. The tide was ebbing fast. At low tide, the foot of the jetty was left dry, with the river running between sandbanks to the sea.

  He stared idly down into the receding water. It was a lovely, calm late afternoon, with a sky like pearl. Children’s voices sounded on the still air and seagulls cruised lazily overhead.

  Bob Harris came suddenly back into Hamish’s mind and he felt all his old dread returning.

  And then, as he looked over the edge of the jetty, a distorted face stared back up at Hamish. He had been thinking about Bob Harris, cursing Bob Harris, so that at first he thought that the dreadful man had stamped his image on his mind. Then, as the water sank lower, he saw lank hair rising and falling like seaweed, he saw the way pale bulbous eyes stared up at him with an expression of outrage.

  He climbed down the ladder attached to the wooden jetty and dragged the body clear of the water. Although he desperately tried every means of artificial respiration, he knew as he worked that it was hopeless. Bob Harris was very dead and had probably been dead for some hours.

  A man peered over the jetty and shouted to him. Hamish told him to fetch the police.

  Hamish turned the body gently over and parted the damp hair. Someone had struck Bob a savage blow on the back of the head. He sat down on the wet sand and stared bleakly out at the receding water. There was surely no hope that Bob had got drunk and fallen into the water. This was murder. But still, he thought suddenly, he could be wrong. Perhaps Bob had fallen over and struck his head on something. But there were no rocks and no sign of blood on the piers of the jetty. Of course, it depended on the time he had fallen in. If the tide was high and he had struck his head on some part of the jetty structure, then any blood and hair would have been washed away.

  He heard the approaching wail of a police siren. There would be no hope now of concealing his profession.

  Soon he was surrounded by policemen and then forensic men and then arrived Detective Inspector Sandy Deacon, a small, ferrety man with suspicious eyes. Hamis
h patiently answered questions about the finding of the body, of what he knew about Bob Harris, which was very little. Yes, he was the man who had punched Harris in self-defence.

  “Odd behaviour for a police constable,” said Deacon sourly. Hamish requested that he be allowed to return to the boarding-house, as his dog needed a walk.

  “No, you don’t, laddie,” said Deacon. “Policeman or not, you’re our prime suspect!”

  ♦

  Deacon, who came from the nearest town, Dungarton, had found out after one phone call to Superintendent Daviot that Hamish Macbeth had recently been demoted from sergeant, had also recently broken off his engagement to a fine and beautiful lady, and was rather weird.

  So Hamish sat and fretted. An office in the village police station had been turned over to the murder inquiry as his ‘prison’. He had to sit there, patiently answering questions fired at him by Deacon and a detective sergeant called Johnny Clay. He repeated over and over again that he had spent a solitary day, and no, he did not have any witnesses.

  It transpired from a pathologist’s preliminary report that Bob Harris had been struck on the head, possibly with a piece of driftwood, for scraps of sea-washed wood had been found embedded in the wound in his scalp. He had been last seen by the boatman who had hired the fishing tackle to the boarding-house party. Bob Harris had been standing on the edge of the jetty, looking out over the water. Before that, he had been seen drinking heavily in the local pub. The boatman, Jamie MacPherson, had also provided the police with the interesting news that all the residents of The Friendly House had been plotting Bob’s murder.

  Hamish tried to keep his temper. It was an odd and frustrating feeling to experience what it was like to be on the wrong side of the law. He was also worried about Towser, locked up in the boarding-house bedroom. Towser, for all his mongrel faults, was a clean animal and must be suffering agonies rather than foul the room.

  Hamish had given up smoking some time ago but now he passionately longed for a cigarette. He was just beginning to think that they meant to keep him in the police station all night when Crick put his head round the door and summoned Deacon from the room.

  Deacon switched off the tape recorder and went outside. Clay, the detective sergeant, stared stolidly at Hamish. Then the door opened and Deacon said nastily, “Get out o’ here, Macbeth, and next time ye try to protect a lady’s name, don’t waste police time doing it!”

  Hamish left the interview room, wondering about his remarkable release. At first he did not recognize Miss Gunnery, who was waiting for him with Towser.

  She was wearing a smart dress and her hair was down on her shoulders as it had been on the evening of the dance. She was very heavily made up and wearing high heels.

  “What happened? What are you doing here?” asked Hamish.

  “Oh, do come along, darling,” she said in a simpering voice, quite unlike her usual forthright tones. “Towser wants his walkies.”

  Hamish headed for the front door of the police station but she whispered, “No, through the back. The press are outside. My car’s there.”

  A policeman held a door open for them and they went down a short corridor and out into a small yard. “In the car,” urged Miss Gunnery. “I’ll tell you about it as we drive home.”

  She drove out at speed. Flashlights from press cameras nearly blinded her, reporters hammered at the car windows, but soon they were out on the road. “They’re outside the boarding-house as well,” said Miss Gunnery.

  “So why was I released so soon?” asked Hamish.

  “I knew you didn’t do it, and I found out when they questioned me that the murder was supposed to have taken place in the middle of the afternoon, so I…don’t get mad…I told them you had spent the afternoon in bed with me.”

  “Oh, my God,” wailed Hamish. “There wass no need for that, no need at all. They would have gone on giving me a hard time, but then they would haff had to let me go.”

  “I thought you would be pleased,” she said in a small voice. “You…you won’t tell them I lied?”

  “No, I won’t do that. But don’t effer do such a thing again. How did you get Towser?”

  “I borrowed the spare key from Rogers.”

  “But the others will know that you weren’t with me!”

  “No, they were all out somewhere, all of them, even the Rogerses. They all turned up at tea-time to find the police waiting. While I was waiting my turn to be questioned, I got the key and took poor Towser out for a walk.”

  “And they let you do it?”

  “I didn’t ask permission. I returned just when they were questioning Andrew. When it was my turn, I said I would tell them where I had been if they would tell me where you were, for Doris had been interviewed first and told me you had found the body. They said you were ‘helping the police with their inquiries’ and I panicked, thinking that because Bob had called in the police only this morning, that they would arrest you. So I quickly thought up the lie. I hope none of it gets in the papers, or you might lose your job in the Civil Service.”

  “I’m not in the Civil Service. I’m a policeman from Lochdubh in Sutherland, where I’m the local bobby.”

  She stopped the car a little way away from the boarding-house and turned to him, the lights from the dashboard shining on her glasses, which she had put on to drive. “You’re a WHAT?”

  “A policeman.”

  “But you’re not like any policeman I’ve ever met.”

  “Have you met many?”

  “No, but…”

  “We come in all shapes and sizes.”

  “So there was no need for me to lie?”

  “Well, the fact that I am a policeman and I’m not in favour at the moment with my superiors might have made them keep me in all night. But honesty is always the best policy in a police investigation,” said Hamish, piously righting down memories of the many times he had been economical with the truth. Miss Gunnery let in the clutch and moved off. “The press are outside,” she said as a small group at the boarding-house gate appeared in the headlamps.

  “Mostly local chaps,” commented Hamish, casting an expert eye over them.

  “How can you tell?”

  “The way they dress. Here goes. Just say ‘No comment yet’ in as nice a voice as possible.”

  They ran the press gauntlet. Emett, the policeman, was on guard outside the door. He stood aside and let them pass, his cold eyes fastening on Hamish as he did so.

  They looked in the lounge but the rest had apparently gone to their rooms.

  Hamish was suddenly weary. What a holiday! He said a firm goodnight to Miss Gunnery and shut the door of his room on her with a feeling of relief.

  He sat down on the bed and started to remove his shoes. It was then, with one shoe half off, that he suddenly realized that although Miss Gunnery had given him an alibi, by accepting her lie and going along with it, he had supplied her with a cast-iron alibi.

  And he was convinced someone in this boarding-house had murdered Bob Harris.

  ♦

  When he went down to the dining room in the morning, Cheryl and Tracey were there, both heavily made up and both wearing those short leather skirts and plunging tops.

  “Going to a party?” asked Hamish.

  Cheryl shrugged. “Thon policeman says we werenae tae speak tae the press but Tracey and me want our photos in the papers. The minute we’ve had our breakfasts, we’re goin’t oot there.”

  Andrew came into the room at that moment. He had dark shadows under his eyes, as if he had slept badly. He had just sat down when Doris arrived. She looked around the room with bleak, empty eyes and then, after a little hesitation, went and joined Andrew at his table. Then came the Brett family, the children wide-eyed and subdued.

  “You’re a policeman,” said Dermott, stopping at Hamish’s table. It was a statement, not a question.

  “That Crick told me,” Dermott went on. “So what are you going to do about this?”

  “I’m on
holiday,” said Hamish, “and I’m still a suspect myself, so I can’t interfere.”

  Mr and Mrs Rogers came into the dining room carrying plates of fried haggis and watery eggs. “Has it occurred to you,” pursued Dermott, “that one of us might have done it?”

  Mrs Rogers was carrying three plates. She dropped them with a crash.

  “Look,” said Hamish, “that was the first thought about it I had. But just think. Which one of us here had a reason to murder Bob Harris?” All eyes slid to Doris.

  “Yes, I know the wife’s the first suspect, but can anyone see Doris actually killing anyone?”

  Andrew’s voice was hard. “Drop it, Hamish. Doris has enough to bear without having to listen to all this.”

  Hamish and Dermott murmured apologies. Dermott joined June and the children. Mrs Rogers scurried about cleaning up the mess. “Some of you will just have to do without haggis,” said Mr Rogers.

  “I think we could all do with a decent breakfast.” Hamish got to his feet. “I’ll cook it.”

  “No one is allowed in the kitchen this morning,” exclaimed Mr Rogers, barring the doorway.

  “Then it’s time they were,” said Miss Gunnery. “Come along, Hamish. I’ll help you.”

  Despite the Rogerses’ protests, they collected up the plates that had been served, and walked through to the kitchen, where they scraped the contents into the rubbish bin. Hamish picked up a pot and took it over to the sink and washed it thoroughly. He began to scramble eggs while Miss Gunnery made piles of toast.

  It was voted the best breakfast they had ever had and was eaten deaf to the speech made by Mr Rogers that they would all have to pay for the extra eggs.

  “Put on the radio over there,” said Dermott, “and let’s hear the news.”

  Hamish looked anxiously at Doris. “Do you think you can stand it?”

  She nodded. Andrew reached across the table and took her hand and pressed it.

  Hamish switched on an old–fashioned radio in the corner, the kind featured in old war documentaries with families listening to Churchill talking about fighting them on the beaches. It crackled into life in time for the nine o’clock news. “Police have discovered the remains of three bodies in the garden of a house in Tanwill Road, Perth,” said the announcer. “The house belongs to a builder, Frank Duffy, The area has been cordoned off and police are appealing to the public to stay away. We will bring you an update as soon as we have further news. An IRA attack on Heathrow Airport was foiled when…” And so the news went on without a single mention of Bob Harris.