Hamish MacBeth 01 (1985) - Death of a Gossip

by M C Beaton

  Alice drew Hamish aside and showed him a silver and cairngorm ring she was wearing on a string around her neck. “Jeremy gave this to me,” she said. “He bought it at the gift shop this morning. I was going to put it on my finger, but he said to keep it secret for the moment.”

  “Why?” asked Hamish curiously. “It is not as if the man is married.”

  “Oh, you men are so secretive,” laughed Alice.

  “If I were to be married to the lady of my choice,” said Hamish slowly, “I would shout it from the mountain top.”

  But Alice only giggled happily and walked away. Hamish went to sit on a rock where he could get a view of everyone in the fishing school and there he stayed for the whole of the day. At last, at five o’clock, he walked up to Heather and said, “You are all expected in the hotel at six o’clock, Mrs Cartwright. They will want to wash and change. Mr Blair wants me to take your names and addresses, and myself will be having a bit of a word with you.”

  “All right,” said Heather, looking curiously at Hamish’s face. “I’ll get them together.”

  “I will go on,” said Hamish, “and make sure that no other guests are allowed in the lounge.”

  At the hotel, Hamish found Blair, MacNab and Anderson waiting for him. “They are coming,” said Hamish, “and will be in the lounge at six. I am just going to tell Mr Johnson to keep other guests out of the lounge. You see, I am going to find your murderer for you, Mr Blair.”

  MacNab sniggered, and Jimmy Anderson said, “You’ve been reading too many detective stories, Hamish. Great detective gathers suspects in the library and unmasks killer.”

  “Aye, chust so,” said Hamish, walking off.

  “He’s mad,” growled MacNab. “I’ll tell him to go home and have some black coffee.”

  “No,” said Blair. “Let him get on with it. I want him to make a right fool of himself. I’ll have him out of his cushy job in a week.”

  And so Hamish found Blair surprisingly mild and cooperative when he returned. Yes. Blair grinned. MacNab would guard the door and Anderson the window.

  At last, one by one, the members of the fishing party entered the lounge. Hamish stood with his back to the empty fireplace and waited until they were all seated.

  “Before I take down your addresses and send you on your way tomorrow,” he said, “there’s just a few things I have to say.” MacNab stifled a laugh.

  “It was a wee bit difficult for me to see at first which one of you had done the murder because you all seemed to have a motive.”

  “Get on with it.” Daphne Gore yawned. “I’m dying for a drink.”

  “John and Heather Cartwright,” went on Hamish, ignoring the interruption. “A bad press might have ruined your school, and there was no doubt that Lady Jane meant to give you a bad write-up. You had a letter from friends in Austria telling you how she had managed to ruin them. Mr Cartwright lives for this fishing school and Mrs Cartwright lives for her husband. Both could have committed the murder…or one of them.”

  “Marvin and Amy Roth…”

  “I’m not going to listen to any more of this,” said Heather. She half rose from her chair, her face flushed with distress, changed her mind, and sat down again, looking not at Hamish, but at her husband.

  “Marvin Roth,” said Hamish, “was involved in a scandal some years ago when he was charged with running sweatshops in the garment district of New York and employing illegal aliens. He did not want his past raked up just when he was set on entering politics, and he guessed from a remark Lady Jane made that she knew all about his past.”

  “Then Amy Roth. Always talking about being a Blanchard from Augusta, except you aren’t a Blanchard by birth. You married Tom Blanchard ten years ago and the marriage only lasted a few weeks, but you kept his name and background. Lady Jane must have known that.”

  Marvin polished the top of his bald head. “Look here,” he said desperately. “Amy didn’t say anything about being a Blanchard by birth, now did you, hon?”

  “Oh, yes, she did,” said Daphne. “Right down to the last mint julep.”

  “You misheard,” said Marvin, giving Daphne a cold, pale look.

  “Then we come to Major Peter Frame,” said Hamish.

  “Not again,” said the major, burying his face in his hands.

  “You care very much for your reputation as an officer and a gentleman,” said Hamish. “You have an excitable temper and you were heard to threaten Lady Jane’s life. You were never in the war, nor have you a particularly upper-class background. Lady Jane gave you a rough time.”

  “Alice Wilson.” Alice smiled tremulously at Jeremy, who frowned and looked at the door. “You got into minor trouble as a child and it’s plagued you ever since. There was a big reason why you did not want the matter to get out. Perhaps you might have killed because of it.”

  Nobody moved, but they seemed to shrink away from Alice.

  “I wouldn’t,” gasped Alice. “Jeremy, please…”

  “Charlie Baxter,” went on Hamish. “Well, you had a bad time with her ladyship, and boys of your age can do terrible things under stress.”

  “Jeremy Blythe. I think you are a ruthless, ambitious, selfish man. You messed up two women in your Oxford days and God knows how many more. You want to be elected a member of the Conservative party, and Lady Jane’s story, had it appeared, would have meant the end of your ambitions.”

  “This is cruel,” thought Alice wildly. “He could have taken us aside one at a time. It’s like some horrible game of truths, bringing all our skeletons out of the closet,” She looked angrily at Hamish, who was consulting a sheaf of notes. He raised his eyes and looked around the room. “He doesn’t know who did it!” thought Alice with a sudden flash of intuition. “He’s looking for some sign that will betray the murderer.”

  “Daphne Gore. Lady Jane knew all about you. I won’t go into the details of your background that landed you under psychiatric care, but I think you are unbalanced enough to kill someone, given enough stress.”

  There was a shocked silence. “If your little game is over, Macbeth,” said Blair, “we’ll get those addresses and…”

  Hamish ignored him.

  “Now we had one clue, a torn corner of a photograph with part of the legend BUY BRIT—in one corner. At first I thought it might be part of an old Buy British poster. The fragment also shows the top of a head with something sparkly on it like a tiara. I made a lot of phone calls and found out at last what the legend really read.”

  “It runs BUY BRITTELS BEER—a kind of beer that is sold in America.”

  “Never heard of it,” said Marvin Roth.

  “Not many people have,” said Hamish. “It was made locally by a small firm controlled by the Mafia in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn. It was so strong the locals said it was made out of all the bodies that didn’t end up in the East River. It was a bit of luck I found that out. Mrs Roth had muttered something about Red Hook, but at the time, I thought she must be talking about something to do with the fishing. It was only later I remembered Red Hook was a district in Brooklyn. I have a cousin, Erchie, who lives in Red Hook and I phoned him up. He said it was sold in small Mafia gambling clubs.

  “He neffer heard of Amy Blanchard or Amy Roth, but he had heard of an Amy a whiles back who was a stripper, Amy not being a usual name in the Italian section. Now Lady Jane had been in the States, no doubt digging up what dirt she could. Lady Jane was content to wait until her column appeared to see the rest of you suffering or to imagine your suffering. But Amy caught her on the raw. She arranged to meet Mrs Roth in the woods. There she showed her a photograph of Amy the stripper, wearing very little except a spangled headdress. You, Mrs Roth, have very little in the way of a conscience. This is something I feel about you, rather than something I definitely know. It came on me bit by bit. The look in the back of your eyes always had a certain steady calculating hardness no matter what you were saying. So you strangled her and then you dragged the body to the pool. You wanted
something to weight the body and so you went down to the beach and found some old rusty chain. As soon as you had pushed her into the pool, you felt safe. You then returned to her room and destroyed all her notes and papers. Your husband would never know you were a Brooklyn stripper who sold her favours.”

  Good God, thought Heather Cartwright wildly. Do people still talk about women selling their favours?

  Amy Roth sat very still, her eyes lowered.

  Marvin lumbered up and sat on the arm of his wife’s chair and put a hand on her shoulder and gave it a comforting squeeze.

  “You’re talking shit,” grated Marvin. “I won’t believe what you said about Amy. I’ll tell you something else. She knows I love her. She knows that I wouldn’t give a damn about her past. Mine ain’t so lily white. Where’s your proof?”

  “She was seen,” said Hamish. “There is this poacher, Angus MacGregor…”

  His voice trailed away as Amy raised her eyes and looked at him. Her eyes had lost their soft, cow-like expression. They were as flat and as hard as two stones.

  “You did it, didn’t you?” said Hamish.

  Amy Roth moistened her lips.

  “Yes,” she said flatly.

  “And when you said you thought your husband had done it and you were frightened he had left something incriminating behind, you were really frightened you had left something.”

  “Yes,” said Amy again in that dreadful flat voice.

  Marvin’s face was white and working with emotion. Tears started to his eyes. “You’re making her say all this,” There was a long silence. “Amy,” pleaded Marvin, “if you did it, you did it for me. Well, the hell with politics. I wasn’t ever sold on the idea anyway.”

  “That was not the reason, was it, Amy?” said Hamish.

  “I guess not,” she said in a dull voice. She stretched her fingers and looked at them thoughtfully. “She messed with me, that’s all. I don’t like no one messing with me.”

  And as Anderson and MacNab closed in on her, she gave her husband an apologetic little smile.

  ♦

  Hamish leaned on the harbour wall, keeping his eyes fixed on the sea. He felt immeasurably tired. He did not want to see Amy dragged out to the police car. She would be taken to the women’s prison at Strathbane.

  He waited a long time while cars came and went. Then he heard Blair’s voice behind him. “That was a neat bit of work, Constable. I suppose you’re laughing your head off. MacNab and Anderson have taken her to Strathbane with the rest of my men. I’m just about to follow. Fine reading it will make for my superiors. Case solved by the village bobby.”

  “Och, no,” said Hamish soothingly. “It was yourself that pointed the way. I will not be taking any credit.”

  “Why did you keep this poacher witness up your sleeve? It worked the trick.”

  “I chust made that up,” said Hamish, lighting a cigarette. “It was all guesswork.”

  “What!”

  “Aye. I just took a chance. You see, Erchie told me that the only Amy he had ever heard of around the Mafia clubs away back was a young stripper. He was not sure it was the same person, at all, at all. I just thought I would chance it.”

  “But what if you had been wrong?”

  “Aye, well, I have no doubt you would have had me out of my job as you were hoping to do. Now Amy had been a bit of a prostitute as well. I noticed that she was always restless. That’s the thing about prostitutes. They can cover up the past with a layer of ladylike veneer, but they never lose that hunted, fidgety air.”

  “You having great experience of the breed,” said Blair sarcastically.

  Hamish blushed. “No, no. But there was Jessie over in Aberdeen who married that man on the council…Then there was how Amy behaved at dinner. I couldnae help noticing that she would pour round the wine without waiting for the waiter or the men to do it.”

  “Must have been a shock for old Marvin.”

  “Aye, it was that. I first started to think it might be her when I looked at her wrists. They’re very strong for a woman. But it was her eyelids that clinched the matter.”

  “Her eyelids?”

  “They are strained a bit at the corners. I have always noticed that criminal-type women have this feature.”

  “Mr Roth has gone with her. He’s going to get some big-shot lawyer.”

  “Aye, love is a terrible thing,” said Hamish mournfully.

  “I think you were damn lucky,” said Blair sourly. “I can’t believe you’re not going to take any credit for this.”

  Hamish turned and leaned his back against the harbour wall. “Oh, you can believe it. I have no mind to leave Lochdubh. But if you were to put a little something in your report about my hard-working, if unintelligent, help, that would be just fine.”

  Blair smiled slowly and clapped Hamish on the shoulder.

  “I think we’ve time for a drink, Hamish,” he said. “Let’s go into the bar.”

  Epilogue

  Sunday morning. All the survivors chattering and laughing over the breakfast table. Oh, the relief to have it all cleared up and be able to go home. Reporters and photographers waited outside the courtyard of the hotel. But it would be possible to drive straight past them. Only John Cartwright knew that the major had already been out to talk to them. The major was back on form, so much so that he could not bear to admit that the case had been solved by the village constable but merely paused in his bragging to say that he was jolly glad the police had cleared the matter up.

  John sighed. The other guests, the new fishing school, would be arriving later in the day. Not one had cancelled. They would survive.

  Alice smiled radiantly at Jeremy. He had not visited her last night, excusing himself by saying he was all washed up with all the drama of the arrest. She was wearing the ring he had given her on her engagement finger.

  “Hope to see you all again,” said Major Peter Frame cheerfully. “Better be on my way.”

  “I’d better get my traps too,” said Jeremy.

  “My suitcase is at the reception so I’ll have another cup of coffee and wait for you here,” said Alice sunnily. Jeremy put a hand briefly on her shoulder.

  “Better get mine as well,” said Daphne languidly, “and get my fish out of the freezer. Hope it’ll fit in the car.”

  The Cartwrights said goodbye and went off to look at equipment for the new members of the fishing school.

  Alice sat alone. It was a beautiful day and she sipped her coffee and looked happily out at the sun sparkling on the loch. Perhaps she and Jeremy would return on their honeymoon.

  All of a sudden she stiffened. Daphne had said something about hoping her fish would fit in the car. Which car? There was really only room for two in Jeremy’s sportscar.

  She rushed out to reception and grabbed her suitcase and ran out into the courtyard. Jeremy and Daphne were laughing as they tried to find room for Daphne’s enormous salmon.

  “Jeremy,” cried Alice. “I though we were going back together.”

  He strolled over to her. “No, it’s only fair I should give Daphne a lift back. After all, we did travel up together.”

  “But we’re engaged,” shrieked Alice. “Look! I’m wearing your ring.”

  “It was only a present,” mumbled Jeremy. “I mean, I didn’t ask you to marry me, did I?”

  “You slept with me,” said Alice, beginning to sob. “I might be pregnant.” She threw her arms around Jeremy’s neck.

  “Good God,” he said. He jerked her arms down and ran for his car. Daphne was already sitting in the passenger seat.

  Jeremy climbed in and slammed the door just as Alice ran up. Her hands scrabbled at the window as he let in the clutch. The smart red sports car gave a growl and swept off.

  Alice became aware of the press watching curiously from outside the courtyard and some of the hotel servants watching as well.

  She picked up her case and, with her head held high, she walked back into the hotel.

  ♦
/>   Hamish and Charlie rowed slowly back to Lochdubh after an afternoon’s fishing. They had caught four mackerel and two ling. Charlie had lost his hard, calculating stare and was looking out at the world with dreamy pleasure.

  “There’s Mr Johnson waiting for you,” he said as they approached the shore.

  Hamish was sharply reminded of the time when they had last returned and Blair was waiting for them.

  “Where have you been?” asked Mr Johnson as soon as Hamish landed on the beach. “I’ve been going out of my wits. That girl Alice Wilson had a scene with Mr Blythe and she’s disappeared. Her case is still at the reception and she hasn’t booked in for another night. The staff have been out searching for her.”

  “You run along home,” said Hamish to the boy. “Don’t worry, Mr Johnson. I’ll find her.”

  “Where would she go?” thought Hamish as he drove up the twisting road out of Lochdubh. “I suppose she might just keep on walking and walking.”

  He drove on through the pale Highland twilight, his eyes searching from left to right of the road.

  He was ten miles out of Lochdubh when his sharp eyes suddenly spied what looked like a black lump on a black rock. He drove on and parked the car around a bend in the road. Then he began to walk back to the rock, his shoes making no noise on the springy heather.

  Alice sat on the rock, a picture of abject misery. She was not crying, having cried all day until she could cry no more, but she was hiccupping with dry sobs.

  Hamish sat down beside her. “Only a fool would cry for someone who didn’t really want them.”

  “Go away,” said Alice, turning red-rimmed eyes to his.

  “No, I will not go away. You are coming with me. You have caused enough worry and trouble this day. And all over some pipsqueak you didn’t even love.”

  “I love him,” wailed Alice.

  “No, you don’t. Went to bed with him, didn’t you? Aye, I thought as much. So now you’ve got to pretend you love him. Och, lassie, it’s your pride that’s hurt, not your heart. There’s one silly woman charged with murder and all because of damned snobbery and here you are planning to jump in the nearest loch as soon as you get up the courage so as to make a rat like Blythe sorry.”