Death of a Nag hm-11

by M C Beaton

  He put his head around the dining room door when he went downstairs again. June was serving up bacon and eggs to everyone. “Mrs Rogers is at the police station,” she said.

  “Bacon all right?” asked Hamish.

  “Yes, I took it out of their own stores.”

  He retreated. Miss Gunnery came down the stairs. She was very much made up and her hair was brushed down on her shoulders. She was wearing a print dress and white shoes. He had an uneasy feeling the spinster was falling for him and wished he had not invited her out for dinner. He ransacked his mind for an excuse but found none. And then the door opened and Maggie Donald walked in. “You’re to come to the station, Hamish. Deacon wants to see you.”

  He felt relieved. Miss Gunnery looked bitterly disappointed and then she rallied. “I’ll wait for you, Hamish,” she said. “You can’t be all night.”

  “Why don’t we make it tomorrow night?” suggested Hamish. “That’ll be a firm date.”

  “All right,” said Miss Gunnery reluctantly. “I may as well get something in the dining room.”

  “So what does Deacon want to see me about?” asked Hamish as Maggie drove him to Skag.

  “I think he wants to talk to you about the case,” said Maggie. “He wouldn’t discuss it with a lowly WPC like me. And I thought you were taking me out for dinner tonight.”

  “I forgot,” mumbled Hamish.

  Maggie was feeling tired and her euphoria at being back among her ‘own people’ had quickly worn off. She had been excluded from all discussions of the case. Worse than that, she had tried to take full credit for the arrests of Rogers and Sinclair, but Deacon had had an account from the two of how Hamish had caught them red-handed at the kitchen door and so had said, “You’ll get nowhere in the force, Maggie, if you’re going to take credit for detective work done by someone else. I’m surprised at you. We could do wi’ a cup o’ tea. Hop to it.”

  When they got to the police station, Maggie said, “I’ll wait for you in the car. If I go in there, they’ll use me as a waitress, even though I’m off duty.”

  Hamish went in and was directed into a side room by the desk sergeant.

  Deacon was alone. “Where are Rogers and Sinclair?” asked Hamish.

  “Bound over to appear at the sheriff’s court in Dungarton. That was a good bit o’ work, Macbeth. Found out anything from thae folks at the boarding-house?”

  But Hamish was too tired to ‘betray’ Doris and Andrew and voice his suspicions about them. He shook his head. “Haven’t had a chance.”

  Deacon leaned back in his chair and pulled another one forward with his foot. “Sit down, laddie. I’ve been thinking. Say it wasnae the wife or the lying Bretts or Rogers, or the wife’s boyfriend. Have you thought o’ your friend, Miss Gunnery?”

  “Why her?”

  Deacon tapped the side of his nose. “Repressed spinster. All the guff about sleeping with you. I shouldnae believed it had she no’ got herself up like a tart.”

  “This is the nineties, not the nineteen hundreds,” said Hamish. “Spinsters are often regarded as clever career women who’ve avoided the perils of marriage and children. They’re not repressed or twisted, and as a matter of fact, statistics show that an unmarried woman is likely to have less illnesses and live longer. The only thing that might have sent them off their trolleys in the days before I wass born wass that society treated them as failures and freaks.”

  “Oh well, have it your way,” said Deacon moodily. “Did no one ever tell you in Strathbane to address your superiors as ‘sir’?”

  “I forgot, sir; I happen to haff this mad idea that I am supposed to be on holiday.”

  “Well, let’s forget about the holiday that never was. Despite your appearance, you have the reputation of being a shrewd man. Now, say this case was on your manor, how would you go about it?”

  “I would be among people I know well from the start. The Highlander is a different sort of animal.”

  “Aye, ye can say that again. But I’ve been checking up on your cases. Some of the murderers were English.”

  “Usually I would start by looking into the background of each suspect,” said Hamish. “I know you’ve done that, but I have various connections outside the police force that I would use. There’s only a pay phone in the boarding-house.” An idea struck him. “I could maybe help you if you could give me a couple of days at my station.”

  Deacon studied him for a moment and then said, “Aye, I think we can let you go. We’ve no real reason tae keep ye. Take Maggie Donald wi’ you.”

  “Why?” demanded Hamish sharply. “To keep tabs on me?”

  “No, no,” said Deacon soothingly. “We’re giving you a helper, see? She’s got good shorthand and typing. Can do any reports for you.”

  Hamish did not want to take Maggie to Lochdubh, but, on the other hand, he was suddenly anxious to get away from Skag again. “You’ll need to let her pay for room and board if we stay overnight,” he said. “Can’t stay wi’ me at the station.”

  “Right. Where is she?”

  “Out waiting in the car.”

  “Off you go then, laddie, and keep in touch. Send Maggie in.”

  Hamish went out to the car and told Maggie that Deacon wanted to see her.

  Hoping that she was going to be given more important duties than tea-making, Maggie went eagerly in to see Deacon. When she heard she was to go with Hamish to Lochdubh ‘and report back on everything he does’, her face was almost comical in its dismay. “Oh, not that hick place again,” she wailed. “They’re all weird. Do you know when Hamish buried his dog, the whole village turned up, just as if it were a real funeral, and they had a wake!”

  “Aye, well, that’s Highlanders for ye. Make sure you keep a close check on what he does and who he talks to. He’s going back to use his own phone and get information from his own contacts.”

  “What contacts can he have that we don’t?”

  “I don’t know. All I know is that his methods, Watson, seem to hae worked for him in the past.”

  When Maggie went back out to the car, Hamish said, “Now, if you’re to help me, do one thing for me.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Go back in there and get the home addresses of all the suspects.”

  “Easily done.”

  Hamish sat and waited. He glanced at his watch. It hadn’t taken long. He’d better get back and see if Miss Gunnery had eaten, and if not, take her out for dinner. As if his mind had conjured her up, a car drew alongside Maggie’s and Miss Gunnery stepped out. Hamish got out as well.

  “I came to see if you were all right,” said Miss Gunnery. “I didn’t want to find out you had been arrested again.”

  Maggie came out. “That’s all set, Hamish,” she said. “I’ve got the addresses you wanted. I’ll pick you up at seven in the morning. Now what about that dinner you owe me?”

  “I’ve a date wi’ Miss Gunnery,” said Hamish. Both women stared at each other. I am a regular Don Juan, thought Hamish cynically. I get the pick o’ the crop fighting ower me – one retired schoolteacher and one WPC so hard you could strike matches on her.

  “Where are you going?” asked Maggie brightly.

  “Hamish is taking me to some curry house in Dungarton,” said Miss Gunnery. “He says it’s good.”

  “Oh, I can vouch for it,” said Maggie sweetly. “I took him there myself.”

  “Let’s be off, then.” Hamish got into Miss Gunnery’s car, fed up with both of them and with the whole of Skag and the murder case.

  “Where are you off to tomorrow?” asked Miss Gunnery as they drove off.

  “Back to Lochdubh. I have things to see to.”

  “Are you coming back?”

  “Of course. In a way, I suppose I’m still a suspect.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “I’d still have that in the back of my mind if I were Deacon. In a murder case, everyone is a suspect.”

  “Even me.”

  “Even you.�
�

  “I loathed that man, Harris, and yes, I could have done it,” said Miss Gunnery, “but I didn’t. I would say good luck to whoever did, but the repercussions are so awful. Poor Doris. Why can’t she go off with her Andrew and be happy?”

  “I don’t think either of them can be happy until the murderer is found. They may even suspect each other.”

  “But that’s ridiculous!”

  “Not entirely. Don’t you often look round at the rest of them and wonder which one of them it was?”

  Miss Gunnery gave a little shiver. “I keep hoping it will turn out to be some wandering maniac who just biffed Harris on the head to brighten up the day.”

  “If it’s a madman, then we’re sunk. There’s nothing worse than a motiveless crime.”

  When they reached the restaurant and were seated, Hamish said, “Can we talk about something else? I’m tired o’ murder. Why did you retire so early? You don’t look old enough to be at retirement age.”

  “Flatterer. Near enough. I just got tired of school-teaching. I ended up teaching at a boys’ school outside Cheltenham. I taught geography to a bunch of spoilt little brats who couldn’t care less where anything in the world was situated. It’s one of those public schools, not like Eton or Westminster or Winchester, but with very high fees. The boys who are sent there are usually ones who failed the Common Entrance exam, but their parents want them to go somewhere posh with expensive facilities. The pay was good, but training morons is always a strain. I thought of transferring to a girls’ school and then decided to retire and enjoy myself.”

  “And are you enjoying yourself?”

  “I was, until this murder happened. It all seemed so gentle and safe, the idea of a cheap holiday in Scotland.”

  “Back to the murder,” said Hamish ruefully.

  “Then why don’t you tell me some stories about your life, any that don’t involve mayhem and murder.”

  Hamish settled down to tell tales of Lochdubh, all his old affection for the place and the people coming back in force. How kind they had all been over Towser’s death. He talked on and Miss Gunnery settled back to listen, her intelligent eyes twinkling with pleasure behind her glasses.

  As they drove back to the boarding-house, Hamish realized with surprise that he had enjoyed his evening out with Miss Gunnery immensely.

  But when the Victorian bulk of the boarding-house seemed to rear into view in the twilight, over sand dunes shaggy with spiked razor-grass, he felt his heart sink and wondered whether he should really be going away to Lochdubh, leaving a dangerous murderer on the loose in Skag.

  ∨ Death of a Nag ∧

  7

  I fled, and cried out, Death;

  Hell trembled at the hideous name, and sigh’d

  From all her caves, and back resounded, Death.

  —John Milton

  Lochdubh, again. Shafts of sun slanting down from the stormy heavens on the black waters of the loch. Fishing boats swinging at anchor. Clothes flapping and flying on clothes-lines like the loose sails of a distressed square-rigger.

  Maggie, climbing out of the car at the police station, bent against the force of the warm Atlantic gale and followed Hamish into the kitchen. She had to sit and wait while Hamish lit the stove and checked on his livestock. He popped his head around the kitchen door and said, “Why don’t you run along to the manse and find out if you can get a bed in case we have to stay overnight?”

  She hesitated. She was supposed to listen in to whoever it was he meant to phone. As if reading her thoughts, Hamish said amiably, “I’ve got my chores to do. I won’t be settling down to police work for about an hour.”

  Maggie went off. Hamish grinned and went through to the police office. He took the list of names and addresses Maggie had given him. He phoned up his cousin, Rory Grant, a newspaper reporter in London, and after the pleasantries were over, he said, “I’m in another murder case, Rory. The one in Skag. Heard about it?”

  “Where the man got biffed on the head and pushed into the sea?”

  “That one. Not the sea, though, the river. Anyway, if I give you the names and addresses of the suspects, can you see if there’s anything on the files about them?”

  “It’s a dreary, parochial murder, Hamish. I mean, what’s in it for me?”

  “First crack at it if I find the murderer.”

  “Not interested.”

  “I was thinking of going down to Glasgow as part o’ my research. Might call on your mother and tell her how you’re getting on.”

  “You wouldn’t!” Rory knew Hamish was referring to his dissipated life of night-clubbing and womanizing.

  “She’ll be that anxious for news of you.”

  “All right, you blackmailing pillock. Let’s have them.”

  Hamish read out the list of names and addresses. Having finished with Rory, he stared at the phone and at the addresses, phoned the police station in Cheltenham and asked them for the name of an expensive boys’ school on the outskirts where the fees were high and the academic qualifications of its pupils low. They came up with the name and phone number of St Charles.

  He telephoned the school and asked to speak to the headmaster, a Mr Partridge, who said testily he had already been interviewed by the police and had nothing more to add. Miss Gunnery had worked for them for several years as a quiet and efficient teacher. Her decision to take early retirement had certainly come as a surprise. Yes, she had lived in the school and had now, he believed, a flat in Montpelier Street.

  That unsatisfactory call being over, Hamish then phoned a fourth cousin who worked at a garden centre in the Cotswolds and despatched him into Evesham to find out what he could about the Harrises. Hamish could have phoned the Evesham police, but Deacon would already have done that, and he knew his Highland relatives were better at digging up useful gossip than any policeman. The Bretts, or rather June and Dermott, lived in Hammersmith. With any luck, Rory might find something out about them. His pen hovered over the name of Dermott’s real wife, Alice.

  He sat back, his brow furrowed in thought. Now there was an unknown quantity. Would it be too far-fetched to assume that Harris had actually written to the wife, that she knew about her husband’s double life before the murder? Had she come up before the murder, found Harris and knocked him on the head in a fit of rage? Married people could well turn savagely against the bearer of bad news. There was an address in Grays, Essex.

  Rory had once introduced him to a newspaper stringer from Chelmsford in Essex. He fished in his desk and took out a large notebook. Hamish logged every name and address and phone number of anyone who might be useful that he met on his travels. Here it was. Harry Dixon. He phoned up and having got Dixon on the phone, outlined the case and asked if it would be possible to find out anything about the recent movements of Alice Brett. Dixon at first protested that he was getting old and didn’t like working for nothing, and the inside story of a murder in the north of Scotland would hardly earn him anything. But Hamish said that he would see Rory’s newspaper sent some work his way and so Dixon said he would do it.

  Andrew Biggar had an address in Worcester. Hamish got out a road atlas and traced the road from Evesham to Worcester. Sixteen miles. Not far. Could Andrew and Doris possibly have met before? How irritating to be so far away. He telephoned the editor of a newspaper in Worcester and asked him to check up on the files and see if Andrew’s name came up. Tracey and Cheryl, he would leave to the police. Their criminal young lives were well-documented on police files and probation reports.

  ♦

  Maggie did not go to the manse. She decided she would rather pay for bed and breakfast than be beholden to the rather terrifying minister’s wife. She saw a white board advertising bed and breakfast outside a cottage near the harbour and went and knocked at the door. It was opened by Mrs Maclean, Archie the fisherman’s wife.

  “Have you a room for a night?” asked Maggie. “I’m – ”

  “I know fine who you are,” said Mrs Maclean. “You
’re thon policewoman. I’m right glad to see Hamish is showing some sign o’ decency at last. Come in. I’ll show it to you.”

  Maggie walked in through a kitchen filled with steam which came from a large copper pan full of boiling sheets on a stove in the corner. The air was full of the smell of bleach and washing soda. She was led upstairs and Mrs Maclean pushed open a low bedroom door. Maggie was small for a policewoman, but she instinctively ducked her head as she entered the room. It contained a narrow bed with glittering white sheets and a fluffy white coverlet. There was a wash-hand basin and a basket chair and a narrow wardrobe.

  “How much?” asked Maggie.

  “Ten pounds.”

  “Very well. I’ll take it. Of course, we may finish our work today.”

  Mrs Maclean folded her red arms across her pinafore. “It must be a firm arrangement,” she said.

  Maggie wanted to say she would look elsewhere, but had a feeling that in this close-knit village, word of her refusal to stay at Mrs Maclean’s would spread like lightning and no one would want to put her up. And she was billing the police for her accommodation anyway.

  “Very well,” she said, “I’ll go and get my overnight bag.”

  “If ye have anything ye need washed, jist give it tae me. I aye wash the folks’ clothes that stay here.”

  The few clothes in Maggie’s bag were clean but she was impressed by this offer of village laundry. It would be nice to have everything thoroughly cleaned and pressed. She had put in one pretty dress in the hope that she and Hamish could go out for dinner somewhere. She was not particularly attracted to Hamish Macbeth, but he was a man and the only way she knew how to deal with the opposite sex was to try to get them sexually interested in her.

  She got her bag from the car and returned to Mrs Maclean’s with it and then returned to the police station. There was no sign of Hamish. She walked up the back of the police station and saw Hamish silhouetted against the windy sky. He was standing looking down on Towser’s grave.

  Maggie retreated back to the police station, feeling as if she had been conned. This was a useless journey. Deacon had overestimated Hamish’s abilities. He was just one mad copper who had dragged her all the way here so that he could stand by his dog’s graveside and mourn. She looked in the kitchen cupboards and the fridge. No food.