Death of a Kingfisher

by M C Beaton

  Hamish suddenly did not quite know how to begin. Well, he thought, may as well plunge right in.

  “It’s said you were heard threatening to kill Mary Leinster.”

  “What’s that to do with anything? She’s alive, isn’t she? Besides, everyone says ‘I could kill you’ at some time or another, but they don’t do it.”

  “The thing is,” said Hamish patiently, “that someone tried to sabotage the glen, and I can see you’re a dab hand at wielding a chain saw.”

  “I will be speaking to your superior,” she said. “How dare you insult me. Get out!”

  “I would nonetheless like to take a statement from you,” said Hamish stubbornly.

  “Don’t be silly. Get lost. There are some things I could tell you but I can’t be bothered.” She started up the chain saw again and began to attack another tree.

  Hamish decided he could not really put off seeing Mary any longer. He would need to get her side of the story. As he walked towards his Land Rover, he remembered that Dick had an amazing fund of gossip and phoned him.

  He could hear the dishwasher whirring away in the background. “Have you heard anything about the provost’s wife threatening to kill Mary?”

  “Aye, the Currie sisters said something about that the other day.”

  “For heffen’s sake, man, why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Och, you know the twins. Just malicious tittle-tattle most o’ the time.”

  “Gie me patience,” groaned Hamish. “What exactly did they say?”

  “It was a week ago and the provost and Mary had lunch at the pub in Braikie. When they came out, there was Gloria McQueen, evidently a right battle-axe. She calls Mary a whore and accuses her of trying to get off with her old man. Says she’ll kill her if she doesn’t leave him alone. McQueen starts to bleat it was only a business lunch. Gloria says, ‘Bollocks. I’ll see you when you get home.’ Next day the provost has a black eye.”

  “Dick! If she’s beating him up, it’s a police matter.”

  “Och, she probably just lost her rag the once,” said Dick.

  “See to it,” said Hamish grimly. “Get over to Braikie and ask the provost about the incident.”

  “Oh, sir, I amn’t that good wi’ the high and mighty.”

  “Then it’s time you learned,” said Hamish, and rang off.

  Mary was not in her office. He waited an hour outside until he saw her coming back. “I need to have a word with you,” said Hamish, avoiding those blue eyes.

  “Good. I’m just off to have lunch in the pub. Join me?”

  “It would be better and make it more official,” said Hamish stolidly, “if I were to interview you in your office.”

  “And go hungry?” She put a hand on his arm and smiled up at him. “Come along, silly. Lunch is on me.”

  What was it about her? wondered Hamish as he allowed himself to be gently led to the pub across the road. She emanated a sort of force field of sensuality and femininity. She was wearing a white blouse and a short pleated tartan skirt. Her tights were sheer black, and her shoes of patent leather had very high heels.

  Once seated in the pub, Mary gently insisted that they order their food before “business.” She chose steak and chips and a bottle of Côtes du Rhône. Hamish asked for a club sandwich and remarked, “No wine for me. I’m driving.”

  “Now,” she said, putting dimpled elbows on the table. “Fire away.”

  Hamish repeated what he had heard about the confrontation with Gloria McQueen.

  “Oh, that,” said Mary with a shrug. “Awful woman. She makes his life a hell. We were only discussing business.”

  “Do you know that she has, and can wield, a chain saw?”

  “Really? Do you think she might have sabotaged the bridge?”

  “It is possible. I’ve sent Dick to interview the provost. If she’s in the habit of beating her husband, it’s a police matter.”

  Mary gave a tinkling laugh. “Where’s your proof?”

  “He had a black eye the day after the confrontation.”

  “Oh, he’ll probably say he walked into a door.”

  “Did he say anything to you?”

  “Here’s our food,” said Mary. “Gosh, I’m hungry. Are you sure you won’t even have just the one glass of wine?”

  “No, I’ll stick to water,” said Hamish. “I repeat, did the provost say anything to you about his wife beating him?”

  “No, it was just business.”

  She’s lying, thought Hamish. Why do I find her so attractive when I don’t trust her one inch?

  “Well, well, well,” said a fake hearty voice. Hamish looked up and then got to his feet. “Mr. McQueen,” said Hamish. “We were just talking about you.”

  McQueen was a small round man, like Tweedledum. His face glistened with sweat. Out of the corner of his eye, Hamish saw Mary give an infinitesimal shake of her head. She’s telling him she hasn’t said anything, he thought.

  McQueen drew up a chair and sat down. Hamish sat down again next to him. “I have just suffered a visit from your constable,” said McQueen. “He dared to suggest that my wife beats me.”

  “And does she?” asked Hamish baldly.

  “My dear fellow, don’t be silly.”

  “Yes, let’s have a pleasant lunch,” said Mary. While McQueen ordered food and drank some of her bottle of wine, Mary began to talk to him in “councilese” about diversity targets and meaningful interfaces with this or that person.

  Hamish stopped listening, and his thoughts turned to Gloria McQueen. A woman who could so ruthlessly destroy those silver birches could well have attempted to sabotage the glen.

  Then he started to listen again because McQueen was talking about his wife. “Instead of working her up the wrong way, Macbeth—aye, she told me you’d been to see her—she said she might have been able to give you some information. She was over at Drim just before the murders.”

  “What did she see or hear?” demanded Hamish sharply.

  “I forget what it was now,” said McQueen. “This is grand wine, Mary.”

  Hamish stood up abruptly. “I’ve got to go,” he said.

  “But you haven’t even finished your sandwich!” cried Mary.

  “Thanks for lunch. Mr. McQueen, I might call on you later.”

  Hamish drove back up to the McQueens’ villa. There was no sound of the chain saw that he could hear. He rang the doorbell and, after waiting for a few minutes, decided to walk round to the garden at the back. It was a beautiful day, and he wished with all his heart that the murder could be solved and that he would be once more free to laze around and enjoy the beauty of the countryside.

  Once in the back garden, he froze with horror, barely able to believe the sight that met his eyes.

  Gloria McQueen’s dead head had been placed on the bole of one of the fallen silver birches. Her body lay some feet away. There was blood sprayed everywhere, turning the leaves on the fallen trees into a macabre travesty of autumn.

  He backed away carefully so as not to compromise the crime scene and phoned Jimmy. Then he phoned Dick and went out to the front of the house to wait.

  What had Gloria seen over at Drim? She must have phoned someone as soon as he had left. He guessed she enjoyed power, and meeting him must have jolted her memory.

  Like the murder of Mrs. Colchester, he was sure this was a hate crime.

  Chapter Seven

  Nature is not a temple, but a workshop, and man’s the workman in it.

  —Ivan Turgenev

  Jimmy Anderson, for once, behaved almost as badly as his superior, Detective Chief Inspector Blair. He rounded on Hamish in a fury after getting the details of his meeting with Gloria.

  “Thon dead woman was obviously killed because she had important information,” he raged, “and all you could do was stand there like a tumshie and ask her if she’d been beating her husband. I checked the phone in the house. She hadn’t received any calls but she must have phoned someone.”

 
“She may not have used the phone in the house,” said Hamish. “I’ve a feeling she didn’t move from the garden. She may have used her mobile.”

  Jimmy strode over to the tent that had been erected over the crime scene and asked if a mobile phone had been found. There was a long silence and then a voice shouted, “No.”

  “Everyone’s got one nowadays,” said Hamish. “Ask the husband.”

  “It sounds as if he’s arrived,” said Jimmy as a great wail coming from the front of the house filled the air. “I’ll see to it. Get back to your police station and type out a report about your interview with Gloria. I’ll find out where the husband was.”

  “I left him in the pub with Mary,” said Hamish. He quickly described how, following Jimmy’s instructions, he had agreed to have lunch with Mary and then the provost had joined them.

  He and Jimmy walked round to the front of the house. Blair had just arrived with Superintendent Daviot. McQueen was being comforted by Mary.

  Jimmy, suddenly diminished by having his superiors on the scene, said in a quiet voice to Hamish, “You run along. I’ll phone you later. When you’ve done your report, start checking alibis, Mary’s brothers for a start, and then see what the wardens were doing.”

  Dick joined Hamish, who quickly told him what had happened and then said, “I’ve got to type up my report. Get over to the glen and get the brothers’ alibis, though mind you, we’ll be tripping over policemen all day long. There’ll be so many coppers checking alibis, you might find they’ve been there before you.”

  Back at the police station, Hamish sat down in front of the computer and sighed. He had chosen to remain a humble village copper. So it was all his fault if he was once more removed from the heart of any investigation. He began to type, starting off by explaining the reason for his visit. He vividly remembered the felled silver birches and Gloria’s flushed face. An easy woman to hate. But to be killed in such a way! Someone even had the nerve to display the severed head on the tree bole.

  And what were the “some things” she had been referring to?

  He sent over his report, collected his dog and cat, and got back into his Land Rover. He decided to call on the Palfours. Was it possible they could have killed Mrs. Colchester? But why? Had they known about the will all along? But if they had, it would have been more in their interest to keep the old woman alive and try to cajole her into changing her will.

  Ralph Palfour answered the door. “What is it now?” he demanded.

  “Have you already had a visit from the police?” asked Hamish.

  “No. Your superiors have had the decency to leave us alone.”

  “There’s been a new and horrible development,” said Hamish. “May I come in?”

  “If you must. The hall here will do. What is this new development?”

  Hamish told him of the gruesome murder of Gloria McQueen.

  He clutched onto a chair back. “There’s a maniac on the loose,” he gasped.

  “You must understand,” said Hamish, “that we have to eliminate people from our enquiries. Where were you this lunchtime?”

  “My wife and I were returning from Inverness. An auctioneer is coming up to look at the furniture. Let me see. Lunchtime? We’d be back here.”

  “Is there anyone who can vouch for that?” asked Hamish. “Your cleaners?”

  “It’s their day off.”

  “And the children?”

  “At school. They’re settling down. The school takes boarders. We may board them when we sell this place and leave for London.”

  “Did you receive any phone calls since you came back?”

  “Only one, from Sotheby’s. We’re selling off a lot of the contents of the strong room.”

  “I would like to take a statement from your wife.”

  “She’s lying down at the moment.”

  “I will come back later then,” said Hamish doggedly.

  Instead of going to the glen to see how Dick was getting on, Hamish, after he had left the hunting box, parked up a heathery farm track. He wanted peace and quiet to think.

  The press would be soon descending in hordes, bringing the outside world to Sutherland. Hamish’s hatred of the murderer or murderers grew. Sutherland stretches over much of Scotland’s far north and is one of the most sparsely populated areas of Britain—and perhaps, the most beautiful. It usually has a sense of peace because it is too remote to be blighted by crowds of tourists. Giant monolithic mountains are reflected in blue lochs. In fact, it contains all the charm and beauty that kept Hamish Macbeth determined to stay anchored to his police station.

  Surely it had all started with the shattering of that peace the moment the glen was turned into a tourist attraction, a sort of Pandora’s box which had been opened to let the gawking sightseers in. When he was out of Mary’s orbit, Hamish found he rather disliked her and yes, there was something vulgar about her. True, she had brought much-needed business into the town, but at what cost?

  And the Palfours with their peculiarly shuttered air and their emotionally damaged children. What of them? They were a sort of canker on the place. He got down from the Land Rover and let the dog and cat out to run and play. Then he opened cans of food and fed them before getting them back into the vehicle and driving off.

  As he arrived at the entrance to the glen, he saw, as he got down from the Land Rover, an unmarked police car heading towards the hunting box. There would be no need to go back for Fern Palfour’s statement, he thought ruefully. Bullying Blair was on the job.

  Dick and the brothers were seated on camp chairs drinking tea. Dick hailed him with, “They’ve been here all the time and that Mrs. Timoty over by the turnstile can vouch for them.”

  “Where are the wardens?”

  “They’ll be patrolling the glen,” said Brad Brooke.

  Two tour buses were parked outside as well as many cars. “There’re lots o’ polis in the glen,” said Brad cheerfully. “They’re seeing if one of the tourists could be a mad psycho. In fact, they’d already had statements from us before your man here arrived.”

  “No use us going over the same ground, Dick,” said Hamish. “Walk with me for a bit until I think what to do.”

  He led Dick over to where he had parked the Land Rover. “To tell the truth,” said Hamish, “I don’t know where to begin. I don’t want to interview people who have already been interviewed. Gloria’s neighbours, for example. The police will already have questioned them. Maybe her death has nothing to do with any of the other stuff. Maybe McQueen had had enough and nipped back home and took the chain saw to her. But she’d be too powerful for him and I can’t see that he would have had the time. Anyway, whoever killed her would be covered in blood.

  “And who stole the stuff out of the strong room? You would think it would have to be the Palfours, but they did seem genuinely shocked and furious over the missing items.”

  “I happen to know from a friend in Strathbane that the cleaners’ houses were searched from top to bottom and even their gardens were dug up,” said Dick, “so it doesn’t look as if it could be one o’ them.”

  “I’m going back to Lochdubh to go through my notes,” said Hamish. “All that’ll happen today, Dick, is that we’ll be tripping over policemen and all of us asking the same questions.”

  Back at the police station, Hamish went into his office and patiently began to read piles of notes, marking down all the likely suspects, his mind searching all the time for clues.

  By late afternoon, he decided to take the dog and cat out for a breath of fresh air before Jimmy arrived.

  His friend Angela Brodie, the doctor’s wife, joined him on the waterfront. “It’s a black day for the neighbourhood, Hamish,” she said. “It’s scary. Out there is some homicidal maniac. I got a call from a friend in Braikie and the whole place is swarming with police and press. Will Elspeth be back?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Have you seen Priscilla?”

  “She interrupted my dinner with Mary
the other night.” Hamish realised with a little shock that he had not thought of her once since then. “Jimmy is coming over the night to see me. I might take a run up to the hotel afterwards.”

  Hamish saw Jimmy’s car driving up to the police station and hurried back to meet him.

  “I’m fair exhausted,” said Jimmy. “Got any whisky?”

  “Aye, sit yourself down and I’ll get the bottle and a glass.”

  “Where’s your sidekick?”

  “I don’t know,” said Hamish.

  “Isn’t that a note on the dishwasher?”

  “So it is.” Hamish unfolded a piece of notepaper. It was only a brief message. “Gone to Aberdeen. Back late. Dick.”

  “What on earth has he gone all the way to Aberdeen for?” asked Hamish.

  Jimmy grinned. “I think I know. There’s a quiz programme on Grampian TV tonight. The prize is a flat-screen TV.”

  “If he wins, I’ll neffer get any work out of the man,” moaned Hamish. “Any new developments?”

  “Nothing but plod, plod, plod, checking alibis down to the last minute. Blair’s pawing the ground like an enraged bull, desperate to arrest anyone at all. Daviot had to stop him from hauling in the provost. The fact that you seem to be the provost’s alibi just made him worse. I’m beginning to wonder if it’s all because of the old woman’s will or if there really is some schizo out on the loose we don’t know about.”

  “Was she hit on the head or drugged?”

  “Bashed on the head. How did you guess?”

  “Easy. There were no signs of a desperate struggle and she had no defensive wounds. I was going over my notes and there is just one thing. There are these two boys, Callum and Rory Macgregor. They were down at the pool during the night, having slipped out. They said they saw the fairies—dancing lights and a voice telling them to go away. I’d like another word with them. It’ll get them in bad with their parents but I’m clutching at straws. I might just call this evening. I have their address.”