Death of a Nag

by M C Beaton

  "Meaning Harris was up to something?" asked Hamish.

  "Aye, chust so. This Doris had tried tae make a stand and say as how she wouldnae go back and Harris shouted at her and said he had his reasons."

  "Oho! Anything else?"

  "That iss it so far. I'll keep in touch."

  Hamish thanked him and rang off.

  As soon as he returned to the kitchen, Maggie asked him sharply who had been on the phone. Hamish felt a stab of irritation. This was a Watson he did not want.

  Still, what was the harm in her knowing, apart from the fact that he did not like her very much.

  "That was a contact in Evesham," he said. He told her what he had found out.

  "This is interesting," said Maggie. "It looks as if Harris might have found out the Bretts were going and meant to be there to torment them."

  "If this was a detective story," said Hamish gloomily, "the least likely person would be the murderer, either Miss Gunnery or Andrew Biggar. But in real life it's always the obvious, and the obvious is either Doris or Dermott. Doris must have hated her husband, years of abuse building up in her, and Dermott admits he was terrified of his wife finding out. Ah, well, I'll need to wait in for any more calls. Why don't you take a walk around the village?"

  "I am here on duty," said Maggie, "and I have seen all of this village that I want to see."

  "Suit yourself," said Hamish. He went back into the office and firmly closed the door.

  Maggie stifled a yawn of boredom.

  The phone in the office rang again. She half got to her feet and then sat down angrily again. It was Hamish's job to tell her what he had found out.

  Hamish picked up the phone and heard the cheery voice of Mr. Johnson, the manager of the Tommel Castle Hotel. "I heard you were back," said Mr. Johnson. "How's things?"

  "I'm working on this murder over at Skag," said Hamish, "but I'm here so that I can use my own phone. Heard from Priscilla?"

  "Not for some time. She's still down south. At first she phoned almost every day, but, och, Hamish, there's nothing for her to worry about. Between you and me, it's easier to run the place without herself around. She worries so damn much. Coming up for a visit?"

  "I can't. I'm waiting for people to return calls and I've got a WPC wi' me, checking on everything I do."

  "Bring her up for dinner tonight. I'll give you both a meal on the house. The colonel and missis are away, so I've got the run o' the place to myself. All the Halburton-Smythes are a pain in the neck, if you ask me."

  "Priscilla's all right," said Hamish defensively.

  "Oh, aye, but I sometimes think that lassie makes work. See you the night?"

  "I'll bring my minder with me," said Hamish. "Can't verra well leave her behind."

  "Is she pretty?"

  "So-so."

  "Give you a bit o' light relief."

  "Not this one. She's staying at Archie's."

  "My, my. She'll be scrubbed to death. Come around eight if you're free."

  Hamish was reluctant to return to Maggie. He had letters to write to various far-flung relatives and so he settled down to the task. The day wore on. The phone stayed silent. Then, about four in the afternoon, it shrilled into life again. It was the stranger, Harry Dixon, from Essex.

  "Alice Brett works as a legal secretary. I had to follow her up to Lincoln's Inn Fields. I'm billing you for the petrol. Before I went, I talked to the neighbours. Listen to this. A week before the murder, she got a letter and she told her friend and neighbour, Mrs. Dibb, that she was going to Scotland because her husband had been cheating on her. I saw her in her office. She said Mrs. Dibb was talking rubbish and that she received no letter and knew nothing about it until she saw Dermott's name in the papers. Went back to Mrs. Dibb, who must have had a phone call from our Alice in the intervening time, for she shrieked at me that she had said nothing about any letter and slammed the door in my face."

  "Good work," said Hamish. "I'll get the police on to her."

  "I thought you were the police."

  "I am, I meant the southern police," said Hamish, feeling caught out because he sometimes thought of the police as them, as if he himself were on the other side of the law.

  Having a shrewd idea that if he told Maggie she might phone Deacon and claim the result as her own, he phoned Deacon himself and related what he had found out.

  "I should be pleased wi' you," said Deacon sourly, "but all this means is yet another suspect. Anyway, you're doing fine. We'll get after Alice Brett."

  "This should work both ways," said Hamish, "Phone me with anything you've got on Alice Brett. And I'll be getting a petrol bill from my contact in Essex. I'll pass it on to you."

  "Right. Can I hae a word wi' Maggie?"

  Hamish fetched her. In retaliation to Hamish's behaviour, Maggie shut the door of the office on him.

  She was annoyed to find out that there was nothing new she could tell Deacon, Hamish having told him more than she knew. "Can't see much point in me being in this dead-alive place," said Maggie.

  "You just help Macbeth," said Deacon sharply. "That's what you're there for."

  The phone rang almost as soon as she had put it down. She picked it up quickly. "Hamish?" demanded a voice. Maggie was just beginning to say, "This is WPC Donald. I will take any messages for PC Macbeth," when Hamish strode in and snatched the phone from her. "Hullo, Rory," she heard him say. Maggie sat down in a chair in the office, determined to hear this call. What Rory was actually reporting was that he had found nothing on the files about any of the suspects, but all Maggie could hear from her end was Hamish's grunts of disappointment. Hamish replaced the receiver and said to Maggie, "What about a cup of coffee?"

  "You're as bad as the rest of them," said Maggie, slamming out.

  The phone rang again. It was the editor of the newspaper in Worcester. He said he had found a few cuttings on Andrew Biggar; he had judged a dog show last year, ridden in one of the local point-to-points, lived with his mother in a large house outside Worcester on the Wyre Piddle road; nothing else.

  Hamish thanked him, rang off and stared in frustration at the phone.

  He went back into the kitchen. Maggie was looking depressed. "Forget the coffee," he said abruptly. "We'll go and call on Angela, the doctor's wife, instead. Get you out a bit. And I'm taking you for dinner to the Tommel Castle Hotel tonight."

  Her face lit up. "Oh, Hamish, how kind! That will cost you a lot."

  "Don't worry about it," he said grandly, having no intention of telling her that the meal was to be free.

  Feeling suddenly pleased with him, Maggie followed him out and they walked towards the doctor's house, leaning against the screaming wind. Waves curled and smashed down on the pebbles of the beach. A plastic dustbin rolled crazily past them. Children ran before the wind on the beach, screaming like sea-gulls. Hamish and Maggie walked round the side of the doctor's house and Hamish knocked at the kitchen door.

  Angela answered it and invited them in. Maggie looked curiously around the kitchen. Books everywhere: on the kitchen table, on the chairs, and on the floor. Two cats promenaded lazily across the books on the table and two dogs snored under it.

  "Clear a space for yourselves, Hamish," said Angela. "You know the drill in this house."

  While she prepared a jug of coffee, Angela said over one thin shoulder, "So how's the case going, Hamish, and why here and not in Skag?"

  "I wanted the use of my own office," said Hamish. "How's life in the village?"

  "Much the same. No dramas. Jessie Currie has gone back to being an ordinary lady. Whatever Angus told her seemed to do the trick, although she looked quite sad for a few days. There's a cake sale up at the church hall tomorrow and I tried my best, but my cakes never rise. We've had various visitors looking at the Lochdubh Hotel." She turned round and said to Maggie, "It's been up for sale for some time. But they always go away again. There was even a consortium of Japanese business men, but the minute they saw the hills and mountains and found there
was no way of attaching a golf course to it, they left again. Oh, yes, there was a drama last week. Didn't you hear about it at the manse?" Hamish shook his head. "There were plans to make it into a sort of approved school for young offenders. I think everyone in the village wrote to their MP to protest."

  "It is a fine building and right on the harbour," said Hamish. "You would think someone would want it."

  "If the Tommel Castle Hotel had not come into being, then someone might have bought it, but no one wants to start up in an area where there's such a powerful rival."

  "Any sign of the colonel turning it back into his family home?" asked Hamish. "He must be as rich as anything now."

  "He got such a fright when he went broke last time," said Angela, setting a jug of coffee on top of a pile of books on the table. "He won't contemplate it. Johnson's a good manager." She poured two mugs of coffee. "Heard from Priscilla?" asked Angela.

  "No," said Hamish curtly, his face set.

  "Oh, well," said Angela quickly, "tell me about this case."

  Maggie listened carefully as Hamish succinctly outlined the facts of the murder case and described the suspects.

  Angela sat down with them as Hamish talked. "Well," she said when he had finished, "you'll probably find it's this Dermott Brett."

  Hamish thought of Dermott and June and the children. "I don't want it to be," he commented. "What about Dermott's wife, Alice?"

  Angela frowned and pushed a wisp of hair out of her eyes. "I'd like to know a bit more about her," she said. "I mean, a legal secretary doesn't actually sound like the hysterical type, but this Dermott obviously loves his June and yet was frightened to ask for a divorce in case his wife topped herself."

  "I wish I could be in about five places at once," said Hamish. "This business of Andrew Biggar and Doris bothers me. Evesham and Worcester are not that far apart. Do you believe in love at first sight, Maggie?"

  Maggie, having never been in love, shook her head.

  "And yet I sometimes think there was something between them afore they met up. Andrew Biggar lives in a big house outside Worcester, he apparently leads the life of a gentleman, and yet who comes to a low-class boarding-house in an inferior Scottish resort for a holiday. Damn. I'd like to get down there and question people."

  "Or it could be Miss Gunnery," said Angela.

  Hamish looked at her in surprise. "Why?"

  "By saying she had slept with you, she gave herself a cast-iron alibi and she does not sound like a stupid woman."

  "But there's nothing about her to suggest the murderess," said Hamish, exasperated. "A blameless schoolteacher who appears to have led a blameless life."

  Angela sighed. "None of us has led a blameless life, Hamish. We all have some sort of skeleton in the closet. But then you might find out it's this Cheryl and Tracey; have you thought of that?"

  "I haven't really considered them. Their nasty young lives are so well documented, what with prison records and probation records."

  "But," said Angela eagerly, "that's just it. You've been concentrating on a lot of respectable people trying to find a murderer. But here you have two young girls with criminal records and one of them has been found guilty of violence. You say they were overheard saying they would like to kill someone for kicks. It might be as simple as that. You are looking for someone with the sort of character that would kill. Cheryl and Tracey fit the bill."

  "They're awfy young," said Hamish.

  "But very young children commit dreadful murders these days," put in Maggie, who was beginning to feel she had been forgotten.

  "I'll check up on them myself," said Hamish. "I hae a lot o' contacts in Glasgow."

  "The way I see it," said Angela dreamily, "is that it was a murder of savage impulse, no poisoning or shooting or stabbing, just a sudden blow to the head. Whoever it was may not even have contemplated murder. Just bashed the horrible Harris on the head in a fit of rage. Harris tips over into the river and assailant rushes off without waiting to see the result of the blow. It was death by drowning, wasn't it?"

  "Yes," said Hamish slowly.

  "So we get back to the respectable section of the boarding-house party," said Angela eagerly. "Instead of looking for a murderer, look for someone who might just be capable of a fit of rage. Oh, and there's something else."

  Maggie looked at the doctor's wife in irritation. It should have been she, Maggie, who should have been enthralling Hamish Macbeth with her speculations.

  "What else?" asked Hamish.

  "Harris seemed to like having things on people, like tormenting Dermott. And what if Harris knew about the bad food from the old folks' home? What of that? This Rogers. Now there's a criminal for you."

  "Aye, you've given me a lot to think about," said Hamish. "That business about Rogers now, I think Deacon should get on to it."

  Maggie got to her feet. "Don't worry. I'll phone him, Hamish."

  "Oh, there's no need to go back to the police station," said Angela to Maggie's fury. "Use the phone over there, Hamish."

  So Maggie had to sit, feeling useless, as Hamish outlined his suspicions about Rogers to Deacon. The fact that she herself had not really had one good insight into the case did not occur to her. She felt she was being left out as usual.

  When Hamish returned, he looked shrewdly at Maggie's sulky face and said, "Why don't you run along and get changed for dinner and make your own way up to the hotel. I've a few calls to make."

  Maggie did not want to go, but on the other hand could think of no reason for staying, but as she walked along to Mrs. Maclean's she was cheered by the fact that Hamish Macbeth thought enough of her to buy her an expensive dinner.

  She sat in her room and read, occasionally glancing with pleasure at her newly laundered clothes, which had been laid out on the bed. The cotton dress she planned to wear was white, with great splashes of red roses. She knew it flattered her figure. Finally she went to the Macleans' minuscule bathroom and had a bath in one of those modern plastic baths which had about as much space as a coffin.

  It was when she started to put her clean clothes on that she realized the sheer folly of having agreed to Mrs. Maclean's laundering her clothes. Mrs. Maclean must have boiled everything. The dress was cotton, the bra and panties of a cotton-and-acrylic mixture, as were the petticoat and tights. Everything had shrunk. The dress was up above her knees and strained painfully across her bosom. Her bra and panties felt tight and uncomfortable. She glanced at the clock. It would have to do. But she would give Mrs. Maclean a piece of her mind on her way out.

  But when she went into the kitchen, Mrs. Maclean turned round from the steaming copper. Her face was flushed and red and her eyes very hard. Maggie's courage ran out. She simply walked past her and out of the door.

  There had been no mirror in either Maggie's room or in the bathroom—how the husband shaved, she didn't know—and she had made up her face using the hand mirror in her compact.

  As soon as she walked into the reception area of the hotel, she was faced by a reflection of herself in a long mirror on the opposite wall. She wanted to turn and run. Her large breasts, cut by the brassiere underneath and constrained by the shrunken dress, bulged over the low neckline like those of an eighteenth-century tart.

  And then Hamish approached her, Hamish in a dinner jacket, looking very smooth and relaxed. "I see you let Mrs. Maclean wash your clothes," he said sympathetically. "Mistake. You can't eat in that dress. The food'll stick in your neck. Go and sit in the bar and I'll see what I can do."

  Maggie went and took a seat in the corner of the bar. As she walked across it, a group of men with gin-and-sauna-flushed faces watched her with amusement. One said with disastrous clarity, "Must be the local tart."

  She sat there feeling naked and very alone. Hamish reappeared with Mr. Johnson in tow. "My, my," said Mr. Johnson, staring at Maggie in admiration. "When Mrs. Maclean washes, she really washes."

  "Come with me, Maggie," said Hamish. "I've got something for ye."

&n
bsp; He led her upstairs and along a corridor and took a key out of his pocket and opened the door. "This is Mrs. Halburton-Smythe's quarters. We'll find you something here, but don't spill anything on what you wear, or we'll all be in trouble. Here, what about this thing?"

  He took out a caftan, a purple silk one embroidered with gold.

  "Oh, that'll do," said Maggie, looking at the gown's generous folds.

  "The bathroom's through there," said Hamish, "I'll wait for you."

  Maggie, in the bathroom, removed the hellishly tight dress and underwear and slipped the loose caftan over her naked body. She left her discarded clothes in the bathroom so that she could change back into them when the evening was over.

  When she came out, she asked, "Is there a stole or a wrap or anything to put over this?"

  "Bound to be," said Hamish, searching through female garments. "Oh, here's the very thing." He handed her a black cashmere shawl, which Maggie gratefully put around her shoulders.

  As they walked downstairs together to the dining-room, Maggie stole sharp little glances at her companion. He seemed transformed by the dinner jacket. He looked as if he had been dining in expensive restaurants all his life. Maggie did not know that Hamish was blessed with the Highlander's vanity of feeling that he belonged anywhere he happened to be and so always fitted in.

  Although Maggie enjoyed her dinner, she could not find any ideas to top those of the doctor's wife. Hamish did not exactly discuss the case with her, he seemed to be thinking aloud, almost forgetting she was there. In fact, thought Maggie, he did not seem to be aware she was a woman at all. Fortunately for Hamish, her self-consciousness stopped her from noticing that the waiter did not present him with any bill at the end of the meal.

  When she had finally changed back into those dreadfully tight clothes, she felt quite demoralized. She knew she would not even have the courage to give Mrs. Maclean a lecture. The rest of her small stock of clothes was probably just as tight. She would need to wash what she had taken off that day in the handbasin in her room and dry everything in front of the two-bar heater in her room.

  They were just leaving the hotel when Mr. Johnson came running after them.