by M C Beaton
♦
Hamish Macbeth heard the news of John’s death later in the day. He thought sourly that all the inquiries that would be buzzing about Strathbane, first the wrongful arrest of Mary French, and now this, would keep everyone too busy to think about his promotion or landing some young constable in his home.
He decided to go up to the castle and see how Priscilla was.
Priscilla was dealing with the home-coming of her parents. They had arrived bringing their Caithness hosts, Mr and Mrs Turnbull, with them, along with Jamie Turnbull, their son, who was home on leave from his regiment. It was typical of her father not to phone to find out if there were any spare rooms, thought Priscilla furiously. Actually there were, for all had left, with the exception of Jenny Trask and her mother, a small capable woman who said they would have a few days’ rest after ‘little’ Jenny’s ordeal before travelling south. But the phone had been ringing steadily with bookings as the news of the arrest and subsequent death of the murderer got out. A murderer at large was bad for business. A murder solved gave the hotel an interesting cachet, particularly as the murderer had not turned out to be one of those dreadful common people.
“I am glad to see you, Mr and Mrs Turnbull and Jamie,” said Priscilla firmly, “but you can only stay a few days. Our books are getting full again.”
“What is this?” demanded the colonel, bristling. “May I remind you, dear girl, that this is my hotel, a hotel which I started and made prosper?”
Hamish strolled in to hear that last sentence. Priscilla stood facing her father, cool and calm as usual, and then suddenly she cracked. “You’ve done bloody nothing to get this hotel off the ground. Nothing! I’ve worked and slaved, and so has Mother, while you strut around annoying the guests and then we have to soothe them down. You didn’t even bother to come back to help me when you knew there had been a murder committed. The attack on Deborah didn’t even move you. Oh, no! I’ve got to stay here and cope with the lot, me and Mr Johnson. I’m tired of your poncing, your vanity, and your bullying. Get stuffed, Daddy dear!”
She stormed off. The colonel stood, his mouth opening and shutting. “Why don’t we all go into the bar?” said Mrs Halburton-Smythe brightly. “I’m sure we could all do with a drink.” And propelling her husband in front of her and Mr and Mrs Turnbull, she shooed them toward the bar like a fussy mother hen shepherding her chicks.
Jamie Turnbull found Priscilla in the kitchen. “You’ve had a hard time,” he said. He was a tall, pleasant-looking young man. “Believe me, I tried to get your father to go home, but he wouldn’t budge.”
“It’s all right now,” said Priscilla weakly. “I wish I hadn’t lost my temper.”
“He needed a telling off. Look, you’re frazzled to bits. Why don’t you come with me and we’ll go off for a drive, have dinner somewhere and keep away from this workhouse.”
“Oh, I’d love that,” said Priscilla. “Once Daddy’s recovered from the shock, he’ll be raging about the place all day.”
The kitchen door opened and Hamish Macbeth looked in. “All right, Priscilla?” he asked. “I wass wondering if you felt like a bite to eat at that new Italian place this evening?”
Suddenly Priscilla remembered looking down from the castle and seeing Jenny kissing him. “I already have a dinner date, Hamish,” she said coldly. “But if you’re at a loose end, your little friend Jenny’s still about.”
Hamish retreated and banged the kitchen door. He walked moodily out to the Land Rover and stood beside it, kicking the gravel in the drive. He had seen Priscilla come to life. She had been magnificent when she had given that old scunner of a father of hers the dressing down he so much deserved. And he had been looking forward to telling her about the case. But all she wanted to do was go off with Jamie Turnbull, Jamie Turnbull who, as Hamish knew, was rich, popular and a captain in a Highland regiment. Jenny, indeed! He was not interested in Jenny.
And then there was Jenny herself, walking towards him with a grey-haired woman who, he guessed, was probably her mother.
“Hamish,” cried Jenny. “I was coming to see you. You have been so awfully clever. Do tell Mummy and me how you solved the case.”
“I haven’t the time at the moment,” said Hamish.
“Maybe later,” urged Jenny.
“My daughter tells me there’s a good Italian restaurant in the village,” said Mrs Trask. “We would be honoured if you would join us for dinner tonight. I owe you a great debt of thanks. If it had not been for your intelligence and capability, my poor daughter might still be under suspicion of murder.”
“She was never that,” said Hamish, although her words were balm to his soul so recently wounded by Priscilla.
Priscilla came out of the castle with Jamie. They got into Jamie’s Jaguar and roared off.
Hamish watched them go with bleak eyes.
“So please say you will come,” urged Mrs Trask.
“Yes, I’d be delighted,” said Hamish finally.
“Good, we’ll meet you there at seven o’clock.”
Hamish drove back to the village. The village spinsters, Jessie and Nessie Currie, were waiting for him outside the police station.
“Just imagine!” cried Jessie. “A lawyer being involved in drug smuggling! In drug smuggling!”
“And it’s just said on the radio that he took his own life,” said Nessie. “Did he inject himself with crack?”
“No,” said Hamish crossly. “He was a madman who killed by mistake. Had he lived, the charge would probably have been reduced from murder to culpable homicide.”
“You said it was the drugs,” said Jessie, disappointed. “Not much of a policeman, are you? Not much of a policeman.”
“Run along, ladies,” said Hamish. “I have work to do.”
He went into the police station by the kitchen door at the back. His dog, Towser, who had been feeling neglected during the case, stared at him accusingly. He had had no walks, only let out into the field at the back, and, worse man that, Hamish had been feeding him dog food, and Towser liked people food. “I sometimes think you’re the only friend I’ve got, Towser,” said Hamish. The yellowish mongrel turned his back on him as if to remind him that even that was in doubt.
Hamish looked at the kitchen. The sink was piled high with dirty dishes. He sighed and went back out to the butcher’s, where he bought a pound of liver. He returned and cooked it and then, when it was cool, cut it up and gave it to Towser. Then he washed the dishes while the dog ate and then cleaned the rest of the kitchen. He moved to the remainder of the house, changing the sheets on the bed, washing them by hand because he had not yet got a washing machine and hanging them out in the back garden to dry. He then took Towser for a long walk. A stiff breeze was sending choppy angry little waves splashing on the beach, but it gradually entered his soul that murder had left Lochdubh, that everything was back to normal, and he had a pleasant dinner to look forward to…and sod Priscilla.
By evening, he felt it had all been some sort of nightmare. The police station was clean, and warm from the fire in the kitchen stove. Towser was happily stretched out before it. He phoned his cousin in London to tell him about the case and then he bathed and dressed in a clean shirt and tie and his one pair of good trousers.
Jenny and her mother were already there and waiting for him when he arrived at the restaurant. As soon as the pre-dinner drinks had been served, he was pressed to tell them all about it.
“It was the madness of it all,” said Hamish. “That was the clue. Your daughter helped a lot, Mrs Trask.”
“She’s a bright girl,” said Mrs Trask fondly and patted her daughter’s hand. “But how did she help?”
“She said she was upset because she sensed one of them was mad. I found myself thinking about that. Then my cousin, Rory, who works for a newspaper, said the religious correspondent had been taken off to a mental asylum. I talked to him again before coming here, and he was saying how odd it was that in newspapers, the church, law, or various
other places which house eccentrics, that someone can be going quite mad and yet all that happens for a long time is that they build up the reputation of being a ‘great old character’. Now John Taylor had punched a policeman in the face outside the Old Bailey for trying to stop him parking on a double-yellow line. You would have thought that would have been the end of Mr Taylor’s career, but not a bit of it. The policeman did not press charges, but it got in the newspapers and John Taylor received very affectionate comments from various columnists.”
“For attacking a policeman!” exclaimed Mrs Trask.
“My cousin, Rory, said that journalists and readers are fed up with the strict parking laws in London. So Mr Taylor’s mad behaviour was treated as that of a great old character who had simply done what a great deal of the public and press feel like doing when accused of a parking offence.” Warming to his subject under their admiring gaze, Hamish went on to tell them about the light bulb.
“So the difficulty in solving the case,” said Mrs Trask shrewdly, “was because the murder was done by a rank amateur?”
“A lucky one, too,” said Hamish.
The door of the restaurant opened and Priscilla came in with Jamie. They sat at a table by the window that had just been vacated. Priscilla was wearing a short scarlet wool dress with a black patent-leather belt. Jamie had changed into a dark, beautifully tailored suit for dinner. He looked smooth and rugged at the same time, like a man in an aftershave-lotion advertisement.
“It is interesting,” Mrs Trask was saying, “because the murder was solved in such an amateur way.”
“What?” said Hamish, wrenching his eyes away from Priscilla.
“Mummy!” protested Jenny.
“Well, one could hardly expect you to be an expert,” said Mrs Trask in a kindly voice. “You’re only a village policeman. But it is amusing, when you think of it; an amateur murder which could only probably have been solved by another amateur.”
“Mummy, you’d better explain,” said Jenny in an agonized voice. “You’re being quite rude.”
Jamie was talking away but Priscilla was not listening to him. She was listening instead to Mrs Trask, who had a carrying voice.
“I mean…” Mrs Trask rolled linguine neatly round her fork and popped it in her mouth before going on, “if that girl at the hotel hadn’t discovered about the light bulbs, you would have had nothing other to go on but some trumped-up evidence that would have fallen on its face if you ever got the case to court.”
“Who said it was trumped-up evidence?” demanded Hamish stiffly.
“Jenny said two local men were called into the library to give evidence. They were not even taken off to Strathbane to make statements, which they surely should have been if they were witnesses and telling the truth. Jenny met them waiting at reception and one of them told her that they were witnesses to the murder. But it was in the newspapers, on radio and on television, and surely every detail of the case was chewed over in this little village, and yet two locals did not come forward at the time! Do you know what I think?”
“No,” said Hamish crossly.
“I think you got them to say they saw something to startle John Taylor into an admission of guilt.” She shook her head and gave a patronizing laugh. “So Highland. So amateur.”
“I really cannot be bothered arguing with you,” said Hamish.
“Oh, Mummy, Hamish is the one who persuaded me to sit for my bar exams.”
“I’m not surprised. You are not married, are you, Mr Macbeth?”
“No.”
“Well, I hold old-fashioned views. A young girl like Jenny should be thinking of marriage and not a career. If I had known of this dating agency, I would have stopped it. Jenny’s going to come home to live with her parents for a bit.”
“You never said anything about that,” gasped Jenny, thinking of her little flat in South Kensington and her freedom.
“I’ve made up my mind. There are plenty of suitable men in Haywards Heath, and law offices there, too, if you want to go on earning pocket money.”
“But Mummy.”
“Now, all this murder business has quite turned your head. You’ll see sense when you get home.”
Jenny grasped the edge of the table firmly with both hands. “I’m taking my law exams and that’s that!”
“I’m not going to support you in this folly, and neither is Daddy.”
“Then I’ll get a grant. You can’t stop me.”
“Well, now,” said Mrs Trask smoothly, “I think we should save these family rows for a less public place, Jenny. You should not have put such a silly idea into her head, Mr Macbeth.”
“I don’t think it silly,” said Hamish. “Time she grew up.”
Mrs Trask finished the last of her linguine and then stood up. “I am leaving. Come along, Jenny.”
“No,” said Jenny stubbornly.
“I shall see you later, young miss, and talk some sense into your head.”
She walked out, without, Hamish noticed gloomily, paying the bill.
Priscilla came up to their table. “Mind if we join you?”
Hamish looked up at her with relief in his eyes. “Not at all.”
“So you’re the bobby that solved the case,” said Jamie.
“Aye, but I don’t want to talk about it.”
Jenny, however, burst into speech, about how unfair it all was that her mother would not let her take a law degree. Hamish sat in stony silence, Priscilla looked preoccupied, so good-natured Jamie turned a friendly ear to Jenny’s complaints and soon they were talking like old friends.
As coffee was about to be served, Hamish said abruptly, “I’m tired. I think I’ll go home.”
“I’ll walk along with you. I want to tell you something,” said Priscilla. “Be back in a minute, Jamie.”
They went outside and walked in silence along to the police station. “Coffee here?” suggested Hamish. “You havenae told me yet what it wass you wanted tae talk to me about.”
“Yes, all right,” said Priscilla, following him in. “I didn’t want to say anything in particular, Hamish. But I did hear what that horrible Trask woman was saying about you being an amateur and thought you might need soothing. Besides, you left Jamie with the bill that Mrs Trask did not pay – ”
“So I did,” said Hamish with a slow smile. “I didn’t think of that. Towser, get your paws off Priscilla.”
“Leave the dog alone,” said Priscilla. “He doesn’t bother me.”
Hamish made two mugs of coffee and then sat down.
He told her all about the case and then about his promotion to sergeant and ended with, “That Trask woman did hurt. She was right, you know. I could have made a terrible mistake. A rank amateur, that’s me.”
“You’ve always relied on your intuition before, Hamish. You’re to be congratulated.”
“Well, my intuition’s not doing me much good at the moment,” he said, studying her. “Why were you so mad at me?”
Priscilla opened her mouth to lie, to say it was because she had been wrought up after the row with her father, but she found herself saying, “I saw Jenny kissing you.”
“Oh, thon. Well, Priscilla, she wass kissing me, I wasnae kissing her.”
“Silly of me. But you really do encourage that sort of weak female.”
He smiled into her eyes. “I’d rather be kissing a strong one.”
He leaned towards her. Priscilla closed her eyes. The kitchen was warm and cosy with the stove crackling and the smell of coffee.
And then there was a hammering at the door.
“Damn. That’s probably Jenny and Jamie,” said Hamish. “Wait here. I’ll get rid of them.”
He opened the door. A policeman stood there, a very clean, neat, precise-looking policeman with light eyes, a thin narrow mouth and a very pointed nose.
He removed his cap, revealing short greased hair. “Constable Willie Lamont,” he said. “My stuff’s in the car. Will I bring it in, sir?”
“What stuff?” said Hamish in dismay.
“I am moving in, Sergeant Macbeth. I am your new constable.”
“It’s all right,” said Priscilla with a rueful laugh. “I’m going. Can I borrow your car, Hamish? I’ll send one of the hotel staff back with it.”
“Not the police car!” said Willie Lamont.
“Yes, the police car,” retorted Hamish crossly.
“Civilians are not allowed to drive police vehicles at any time,” said Willie primly. “In the rule book, page nine, paragraph five, it says – ”
“Take the car, Priscilla,” ordered Hamish.
“Don’t worry. Jamie’s probably looking for me.”
Priscilla went out into the twilight. Poor Hamish! What an awful copper he’d got saddled with. Probably Blair’s choice, she thought, not knowing it was Daviot’s.
Mrs Wellington, the minister’s wife, drove up and stopped beside Priscilla. “Can I give you a lift?” she asked.
Priscilla hesitated. Jamie’s Jaguar was still parked outside the restaurant, but she did not feel like going back to join him. Besides, he appeared delighted with Jenny.
“Thanks, Mrs Wellington,” she said, climbing into the battered station wagon.
♦
Inside the restaurant, Jamie and Jenny were down to the end of their second bottle of wine. He was really deliciously handsome, thought Jenny, and they had so much in common.
“What about a brandy for the road?” asked Jamie.
Jenny smiled. “I’d love that. Do you know, I just realized one marvellous thing. I get money from a family trust and Mummy can’t stop that, so I can take my law exams.”
“Forget about the brandy,” said Jamie. “This calls for champagne!”
Jenny giggled. He was really quite divine. And then a nasty voice in her head reminded her that Brian Mulligan had seemed really divine and then Matthew Cowper. She mentally jumped on that voice. Jamie was really wonderful. So strong, so masterful.
She wondered what it would be like to be a captain’s wife.
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