by M C Beaton
He straightened his tie and went into the restaurant. There were various customers, some he recognised and some he did not. People came from far and wide to dine at the restaurant.
Willie appeared at his elbow. “I’ve put her at your usual table, over by the window.”
Hamish looked across. A squat middle-aged woman was sitting there. She had a greyish heavy face with a great wide mouth. Her large pale eyes had thick, fleshy lids. Her salt and pepper hair was secured at her neck with a black velvet bow. She looked like an eighteenth-century man from a Hogarth engraving.
“There’s some mistake,” hissed Hamish. “I’m meeting the new schoolteacher.”
“Well, that’s her.”
“You sure?”
“Introduced herself,” said Willie. “Said she was meeting you.”
The sun disappeared outside the restaurant windows and the sun set in Hamish’s heart. He cautiously approached the table.
“Mrs. Cartwright?”
She grinned up at him, exposing yellowing and irregular teeth. “Mr. Macbeth, how kind of you to entertain me on my first night.”
Hamish sat down opposite her. “We’re a friendly village. What would you like to drink?”
“Campari and soda, please.”
“So I gather you’ve just arrived,” said Hamish. “I saw the removal van. Come from far?”
“From Edinburgh. I hate moving. But I have a super-efficient niece, Flora. You fuss too much, Auntie, she said. Let me organise the whole thing.”
“You should have brought her with you,” said Hamish.
“Oh, she went straight back to Edinburgh. She’s an advocate, and she’s got a case coming up tomorrow.”
There was a silence while they studied the menu. When she had selected what she wanted, Hamish gave their order.
He thought of Priscilla and felt a weight of unhappiness settle on his stomach. He wasn’t still in love with her, he told himself, but somehow he didn’t want her to get married.
“Is it this murder?” he realised Moira Cartwright was asking him. “You look quite gloomy.”
“Yes, it is,” lied Hamish. “I’m hoping one of the locals didn’t lose their rag and hit him too hard.”
“Tell me about it.”
So Hamish did and found, as the meal progressed, that he was beginning to relax. She was that rare thing, an excellent listener.
“What puzzles me,” ended Hamish, “is why no one saw him.”
“I know this seems a bit way out, but if this Fergus got a phone call and went off without telling his wife who he was meeting…”
“That wouldn’t be unusual. The only communication Martha Macleod had with her husband was the occasional fist in her face.”
“I was going to say he might have been in disguise. But now you’ve told me about the wife, surely the answer’s obvious. She did it. Or someone close to her. You know, murder, like charity, usually begins at home.”
Hamish was about to say stoutly that when Martha hadn’t been with him she’d been with Clarry, but that was what he wanted to think. He had slept heavily that night. Clarry could have nipped out if it transpired that Martha really knew where Fergus had gone.
He had not told Moira about the blackmail. But that was one thing he could not keep to himself for much longer.
“What is it?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Nothing. I just wish it were all over.”
“Have you considered these Currie sisters as suspects?”
“What! That iss ridiculous. Neither of them would hurt a fly.”
“I find you think you know people just because they’re under your feet the whole time, so to speak. But there can be a lot of passions burning below the surface.”
“You speak from experience?”
“I was married once. I reverted to my maiden name after the divorce but I still use the ‘Mrs.’ Vanity! I don’t want to be thought a spinster.”
“What happened?”
“I had a very strict upbringing and John was a bit wild. That was what attracted me. My parents were against it. He turned out a bad lot. He stole cars. Then it was armed robbery. Finally he killed a night watchman. He’s out now. Isn’t it incredible that somewhere that murdering rat could be walking the streets?”
“Not the streets of Lochdubh, I hope.”
“He doesn’t know where I am. It all happened thirty years ago anyway. So what do you lot do for amusement round here when you’re not murdering each other?”
“There’s no theatre and no cinema, so the younger ones go down to Inverness or over to Strathbane. There’s the occasional dance or ceidlih, you know, where we dance and then everyone does something, sings or recites a poem, that sort of thing. Then there’s the television.”
“What did they all do to pass the time in the winter before television?”
“They sat around each other’s peat fires and told stories. It’s an art that’s nearly gone. Not many young people stay in the Highlands. It’s a place where incomers choose to retire, but often they don’t last long. The dark winters usually get to them.”
“I’m not that much of a stranger to the Highlands. I taught over in Dingwall in Cromarty. Lively town, nice people. But I was much younger then, and I wanted to travel. I learned teaching English as a foreign language and then I taught in Italy for a bit, then Japan and then Thailand.”
“Dingwall?” said Hamish. “Exactly when would that have been?”
“Fifteen years ago.”
“So you wouldn’t have been that young.”
“Do you usually shell out compliments like that?”
“Sorry. Tell me more about Dingwall.”
“You know Dingwall. I can’t tell you much more. The police there are very good.”
“Have much to do with them?”
She laughed. “You’re beginning to suspect I have a murky past. No, it was nothing like that. Some nasty person sent me a blackmailing letter.”
Hamish sat up straight. “What about?”
“I was to leave two hundred pounds in ten-pound notes in a bag on a bench at Dingwall railway station at midnight, or the blackmailer would tell everyone that I had been married to a murderer. So I went straight to the police. They got a bag and stuffed it with paper and told me to leave it on the bench as instructed. They kept watch but no one turned up. I didn’t hear any more, but it soured Dingwall for me, so I got the job in Edinburgh.”
“Did you have an accountant in Dingwall?”
“What an odd question! No, I had no need of an accountant. I did my taxes myself. Still do.”
Hamish wanted to tell her that Fergus had worked as an accountant in Dingwall, but she would ask if he had continued as a blackmailer, if Fergus had been the one trying to blackmail her in Dingwall, and Hamish did not want to say anything that might betray anyone in Lochdubh.
But he did not believe in coincidences. Here was a schoolteacher who had once worked in Dingwall, who had been blackmailed. And she had moved to Lochdubh.
“Why?” he asked abruptly. “Why Lochdubh?”
“I was working in a large comprehensive in Edinburgh. I could have got a job in a private school with smaller classes, but I was still idealistic, thought I could bring my educational skills to those who were not so fortunate in their upbringing.” She sighed. “It was a nightmare. The pupils were rowdy and noisy. Big loutish boys and girls who had so many parts of their body pierced, they were like walking pin cushions. I stuck it out for quite a while. I didn’t make many friends because most of the teachers moved away quite quickly and found work elsewhere, or, after their brutal experiences, left teaching altogether. I became weary. I wanted a quiet life until my retirement. I saw the job was going here and applied for it and got it.”
Hamish thought hard. He wondered if they had dug into Fergus’s past properly. He would suggest to Jimmy that a trip to Dingwall might be a good idea.
“That was a lovely meal,” said Moira. “Next time it’s on me.”
>
“That would be grand,” said Hamish, calling for the bill. “Look, you might hear or notice something which might relate to the murder. If you hear anything that might be relevant, please let me know.”
♦
With Jimmy’s permission, Hamish drove off the following morning to Dingwall with Lugs beside him. The wind had shifted around to the east and it was a bright, cold day.
Dingwall is blessed with convenient car parks at the back of the main street. Hamish drove into one of them, told Lugs to wait, and climbed down from the Land Rover and walked through one of the narrow lanes which led from the car park to the main street.
It is a busy, Highland town with a good variety of small shops, mostly Victorian, grey granite; prosperous, decent and friendly.
Hamish stopped in the main street and took out a piece of paper on which he had noted the name of the firm for which Fergus had once worked: Leek & Baxter, chartered accountants.
The office proved to be above a bakery. He walked up the shallow stone stairs, redolent with the smell of hot bread and sugary buns, and opened a frosted-glass door on the first landing, which bore the legend LEEK & BAXTER in faded gold letters.
Inside, at a desk, an elderly lady was hammering away at an old Remington typewriter. She looked up as Hamish entered, sighed, and then stood up, saying, “I suppose you want tea.”
“Actually, I came to see one of the partners.”
“Mr. Leek is busy and Mr. Baxter is out. Mr. Leek will be free in ten minutes so you’d better have tea.”
“Thank you.” Hamish sat down on a leather-covered chair. She walked to a kettle in the corner and plugged it in. He watched, amused, as she carefully prepared tea – tea leaves, not bags – and then arranged a small pot, milk jug, sugar bowl and plate with two Fig Newtons on a tray and carried the lot over to him and placed the tray on a low table in front of him.
“Thank you,” said Hamish again.
Her sad old face looked even sadder as she resumed her seat behind the typewriter. “I missed out,” she said.
“On what?”
“On women’s lib, that’s what. You won’t get the young things these days to make tea.”
“Then you shouldnae do it if you don’t want to,” Hamish pointed out.
“I can’t stop. I’m the generation that makes tea for men.” She sighed again. Then she said, “What brings you?”
“Fergus Macleod. Did you know him?”
“Yes, I was here in his day.”
“And what did you make of him?”
“I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead.”
“Try.”
“He was a wee scunner and that’s a fact. Always complaining and bullying. I got my own back, though.”
“How?”
“He had terrible hangovers, see, and when he had one, I’d wait till he got level with my desk and drop something noisy and make him jump and clutch his head.”
“Why did he get fired? He did get fired, didn’t he?”
“It was the drink. He was getting worse, and some days he wouldn’t even turn up.”
“Not fiddling the books, was he?”
Her face took on a closed look. “I wouldn’t be knowing about that,” she said. “If you don’t mind, I’ll get back to my typing.”
“Why don’t you have a computer?”
“I asked them, but they said no, that if they got me a computer they would need to send me on a course, and they couldn’t afford to let me have the time off.”
She started to bang away at the keys again. Hamish drank tea and ate biscuits. The door to an inner office opened, and a man came out. He nodded to the secretary, looked curiously at Hamish, and then made his way out. The secretary rose and went into the inner office and closed the door behind her. Hamish could hear the murmur of voices. Outside, somewhere at the back of the building, children were playing, their voices shrill and excited. The fruit crop was late this year, so the children were being allowed extra holidays to help with the picking.
The secretary emerged. “You’re to go in,” she said.
Mr. Leek was as old as his secretary, small and stooped with grey hair and gold-rimmed glasses. “Sit down,” he said. “I do not know what more I can tell you than I told that detective from Strathbane.”
“I am just trying to build up a picture of Fergus Macleod,” said Hamish patiently.
“He was good enough when we took him on, or rather, he seemed good enough. Then he began to get a reputation as a drunk and then there were too many absences from work, and we had to let him go.”
“That doesn’t give me much of a picture of the man. What, for example, did he say when you told him he was fired?”
“Nothing, at that time. He just went.”
“But later?” prompted Hamish.
“He came back a week later, very drunk, and started cursing and threatening and throwing things about the office. I called the police, and he was taken away. But we did not press charges.”
“Was there anything else?”
“Like what?”
“Like fiddling the books?”
“No, nothing like that.”
“Like blackmail?”
There was a silence. “It’s mine, it’s mine,” screamed a child from below the window.
Then Mr. Leek said slowly, “Who told you that?”
“Chust an educated guess,” said Hamish, beginning to feel a buzz of excitement.
“I wouldn’t want the poor woman to be bothered.”
“I’ll be discreet. But it is important, and you cannae be withholding information from the police.”
“Very well. Her name is Mrs. Annie Robinson. He had been having an affair with her, and she was one of our clients. She ended the affair and thought that was that. But he said if she didn’t pay him, he would go to her husband and tell him of the affair. She came straight to us. It was enough. We fired him.”
“Did her husband ever find out? Did Fergus get revenge on her?”
“No, he didn’t tell her husband. Her husband was a big powerful man. I told Mrs. Robinson that Fergus would not dare tell her husband, but she did not believe me, so she told him herself. He divorced her.”
“And where will I find this Mrs. Robinson?”
“I suppose I am obliged to tell you. She lives in Cromarty Road, number ten, Invergordon. It’s just near the station. She’s going to be so upset.”
“I think for Mrs. Robinson’s sake,” said Hamish cautiously, “that we should for the moment keep this blackmail matter between ourselves. I will only tell Strathbane if I think it’s relevant.”
The interview was over. Hamish shook hands with Mr. Leek and made his way out. The secretary was now dusting bookshelves. “Have you noticed something else about women of my generation?” she said. “We’ve aye got a duster or cloth in our hands. Wipe, wipe, wipe, like a nervous tic.”
“You could always change,” pointed out Hamish.
“What? At my age?”
He left her to her dusting and made his way back to the car park. Lugs eyed him sourly when he climbed in.
“Don’t look at me like that,” said Hamish severely. “You’ll get a walk after I’ve finished wi’ my business in Invergordon and not before.”
The Land Rover door had been open as he addressed Lugs. A child was standing outside. She then ran away shouting to her mother, “Mither, there’s a daft polisman talking to his dog.”
Hamish reddened and drove off, past where the child was now clutching her mother’s skirts.
He found the address in Invergordon, and once more leaving his sulky dog in the vehicle, he knocked at Annie Robinson’s door.
A middle-aged woman with one of those faded, pretty faces and no-colour hair opened the door to him. “Mrs. Robinson?”
“I read about his death in the newspapers,” she said, “and I was frightened you would come.”
“I don’t think it’s relevant to the case, Mrs. Robinson. I’m just trying to build up a pictu
re of Fergus Macleod.”
“You’d best come in.”
The living room was small and dark and very clean. It had a sparse look about it, as if Mrs. Robinson could not afford much in the way of the comforts of life.
Hamish removed his cap and sat down.
“Now, then, Mrs. Robinson…”
“You can call me Annie, everyone does.”
“Right, Annie it is. I am Sergeant Hamish Macbeth. Tell me about the blackmailing business.”
“I’m not…I wasn’t…the sort of woman to have an affair,” she said. “It’s just I didn’t know much about men or marriage. My husband, Nigel, always seemed to be complaining. You know. The washing machine would break down, and he would blame me. Everything was always my fault. I know now that men are like that and that’s marriage, but I’d grown up on romances. They still pump romance into girls’ heads, you know. Nothing about the realities of life. Nothing about men still being aggressive and bullying and faultfinding. Nothing about little facts like when men get a cold, it’s flu, when women get a cold it’s nothing but a damn cold and what are you whining about? Nothing about being taken for granted. Nothing about the new age for women meaning you have to work and be a slave at home and a tart in the bedroom. Nothing like that.”
“We’re not all like that,” said Hamish defensively.
“Are you married?”
“No.”
“Well, there you are. Anyway, I was made redundant from my job. I worked in a dress shop which closed down. Nigel said until I got another one, I could make myself useful and sort out the accounts and take them to the accountants. I met Fergus. He flattered me and flirted with me. He suggested we meet for lunch to discuss the accounts. He encouraged me to complain about my husband and exclaimed in horror over Nigel’s treatment. One thing led to another, and we started to have an affair. But I grew tired of the secrecy and the shame. Also, Fergus had hinted that he would marry me, but after I started sleeping with him, he dropped the hints, and I knew he never would. I told him the affair was over. He said he would tell Nigel unless I paid him. I couldn’t believe it. I was frightened to death. I told his bosses. I had a letter he had written to me, a threatening letter demanding money. I showed that to them. They were very kind. They said my husband would never know, but I was sure Fergus would tell him. Mr. Leek said Fergus would never dare tell Nigel, but I thought Fergus might write to him. I watched the post every morning, dreading the arrival of that letter. It never came but I couldn’t stand the shame, the fright, the waiting, and so I told Nigel. He said he had always known I was a slut and started divorce proceedings. It was only after the divorce – I’d agreed not to contest it because he said if I did, he’d tell everyone about the affair, and that meant no settlement, no money. So I was on my own, trying to meet the bills, looking for another job. I should never have broken up my marriage.”
