Death of a Kingfisher

by M C Beaton

  “Ferry’s Motors. Look, I have things to do so shove off!”

  He went in and slammed the door in Hamish’s face.

  Hamish drove as far as the car park in the glen. It was deserted. A cold wind was blowing from the north, sending discarded rubbish running across the gravel of the park. The half-finished gift shop looked bleak. Police tape fenced off the entrance to the glen.

  He took out his phone, got the number of Ferry’s Motors, and dialled. He asked to speak to the manager. After introducing himself, he said, “I believe a Mr. Ralph Palfour sold his Peugeot people carrier to you.”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “When was that?”

  “That would be on the twelfth.”

  Two days after Mary’s murder, thought Hamish. “Could you give me the address of the customer who bought it?”

  “Hold on.”

  Hamish waited. The wind rustled through the coloured leaves of the autumn trees in the glen, making a whispering sound. Hamish had an uneasy feeling of being watched.

  At last the manager’s voice came back on the phone. “The buyer was a Mr. James Petrie of The Loans, Glebe Street, Cnothan.”

  Hamish thanked him and rang off, relieved he would not have to go all the way to Dingwall. Cnothan was on his beat.

  As he drove in the direction of Cnothan, the wind had risen and was buffeting the car. He was driving through an expanse of moorland where a winding river already had angry little waves speeding across its surface.

  When he reached the village of Cnothan, he noticed angrily that double yellow lines had been painted down both sides of the main street to prevent parking. Why? he wondered. Why try to take away trade from the shops?

  He noticed a few cars were nonetheless parked in the main street, but he had no intention of ticketing anyone.

  Glebe Street, he remembered, was a narrow lane parallel to the road running alongside the loch.

  The Loans was a sandstone villa, Scottish Georgian from the look of it, and Hamish guessed it had once been a manse.

  He parked in the short drive, got out, and rang the bell. A haggard blonde woman answered the door. She was wearing a red sweater and jeans so tight they looked as if they had been pasted onto her thin, middle-aged figure.

  As soon as she saw Hamish, she said, “And about time!”

  “You mean you were expecting a visit from the police?”

  “Of course. You’ve come about our stolen car, haven’t you?”

  Hamish’s heart sank. He removed his cap. “May I come in? This is verra important.”

  She stood back to let him past and then ushered him into a soulless living room. A mushroom-coloured three-piece suite decorated with gold fringe stood on a mushroom-coloured fitted carpet. Two nests of tables were on either side of the sofa.

  A huge flat-screen TV dominated one wall and steel-framed pictures of angry-looking abstracts were hung on the others.

  “My work,” said Mrs. Petrie proudly, waving a hand with long French nails at the paintings.

  “Very fine,” said Hamish. “Now, about our car.”

  “It happened last night. We were having our dinner and the TV was on.”

  “In here?” asked Hamish.

  “Yes, those tables. We didn’t hear a thing. James went to put the cat out and found he was looking at an empty space where the new car had been. We reported the loss to the police.”

  “Did you tell them that the previous owner had been a Mr. Palfour?”

  “No. Why? Oh! You mean that man whose mother-in-law was murdered?”

  “The same.”

  “Are we in danger?”

  “I shouldn’t think so. I’ll get on it right away. Where is your husband?”

  “He was late for work because he did not get the courtesy car delivered from the insurance company until ten this morning. His company is along the waterfront. It’s called Shopmark Fashions. It’s doing grand. He got a good grant from the Highlands and Islands Board because we employ a lot of the local people.”

  “I’ll be off then.”

  As she walked him to the door, she hooked an arm through his and smiled up at him. Hamish marvelled that any woman could be bothered sticking on false eyelashes so early in the day. “Call anytime,” she murmured huskily, giving his arm a squeeze.

  “Aye, right,” said Hamish, gently disengaging himself.

  As he drove off, he felt a stab of pity for her. What a life, stuck in a grim highland village like Cnothan with winter on the threshold. All dressed up and nowhere to go.

  He drove to the factory and was soon ensconced in James Petrie’s office. Mr. Petrie was a small, round, florid man. He could only repeat what his wife had said. “My car’s probably on its way to Bulgaria now,” he complained.

  When Hamish left him, he phoned Dick. “Neither o’ the maids has seen anything like a dressmaker’s dummy in the house,” said Dick. “And they havenae seen a motorbike, either.”

  Hamish then phoned Jimmy. “Damn!” said Jimmy. “Maybe I’ll see if I can get a forensic team over to the Petries’ house. I’ve got the registration number of the Palfours’ old car and I’ll put out an alert. We’re being blocked at every turn, Hamish. Get back to Ferry’s Motors and see if Palfour tried to sell a motorbike as well. If you’ve no luck there, phone all the motor sales places you can think of.”

  Hamish spent the rest of the day on the phone without success. He went out to shut his hens up for the night and check on his sheep when he noticed a saucer of milk outside the kitchen door. He went back inside, where Dick was once more in front of the television. Hamish switched it off. “Did you put that milk outside the door?”

  “Well, yes, but…”

  “The cat is not allowed milk. It gives her diarrhea.”

  “It’s no’ for the cat.” Dick’s face turned red.

  Hamish looked at him in amazement. “Neffer tell me it’s for the fairies!”

  “You see,” said Dick, “there just may be something in it. Better be safe. I thought you needed some help.”

  “Of all the superstitious twaddle…”

  Hamish stomped off to do his chores. The wind buffeted him on his way back to the police station.

  The saucer of milk was empty. “Hedgehog,” muttered Hamish.

  Beyond the shelter of the side of the police station, the wind screeched down the loch. Better get the candles out, thought Hamish. There’s bound to be a power cut if this storm goes on.

  The phone was ringing when he went in. He rushed to answer it. It was Nessie Currie. “Can you help me, Hamish?” she asked.

  “What’s up?”

  “It’s our dressmaker’s dummy. Mrs. Palfour lent it to us the other day but nobody wants to use it. She’s just phoned and wants it back but it won’t fit in our little car and…”

  “Don’t touch it!” shouted Hamish. “I’ll be right along.”

  Chapter Ten

  By fairy hands their knell is rung,

  By forms unseen their dirge is sung.

  —Wilkie Collins

  “Why are you so interested in our dummy?” asked Nessie. “Is it your feminine side? I read this article…”

  “No,” said Hamish. “I must take it with me.”

  “It’s in the front room.”

  Hamish went into the front room carrying a roll of plastic and tape. He proceeded to carefully cover it up and seal it.

  Then he dug out a receipt, filled it in, and gave it to Nessie. “Thanks,” he said.

  “But what do you want it for?” wailed Nessie.

  “I’ll let you know,” said Hamish, trundling the dummy on its wheels out of the door.

  Jessie came in and said to her sister, “Was that Hamish?”

  “Aye, the man’s mad keen to get that dummy.”

  “He’s not married,” said Jessie with a sly look at her sister.

  “Do you think he’s homosexual?”

  “Maybe. I mean a man his age and not wed.”

  They
settled down to a delicious and scurrilous gossip.

  Hamish phoned Jimmy with the news then set off to Strathbane. An excited Jimmy was outside police headquarters, waiting for him.

  “Don’t bring it out,” he said, when Hamish arrived. “Take it straight to the lab. “We’re getting an expert up from Glasgow to enhance that garage CCTV. Daviot’s right pleased with you.”

  “I noticed it had been sawn and then glued together again. They’d need to have done that to reduce the size and to make it look like a man.”

  The Currie sisters’ phone rang as Hamish Macbeth was driving back to Lochdubh.

  Fern Palfour’s voice came on the line. “Miss Currie,” she said, “I thought you were going to bring that dressmaker’s dummy back to me.”

  “I was that,” said Nessie. “I asked Hamish Macbeth for help with it because it’s too big to get in our wee car and he…Hullo! Hullo!

  “She’s rung off,” said Nessie to her sister. “Some folks! But that’s the English for you.”

  At Strathbane the next morning, Hamish found to his disappointment that the CCTV images couldn’t be enhanced enough to give any proof that it was a dummy and not a man in the car sitting next to Fern Palfour. The lab, however, reported that both Fern and Ralph Palfour’s fingerprints were on the dummy. There were also traces of glue at the neck showing where something could have been stuck on.

  “Where’s Jimmy?” Hamish asked Annie Williams.

  “He’s gone with Blair to pull the Palfours in for questioning.”

  Hamish felt uneasy. They could of course say that it was natural that their fingerprints were on it as they had both carried it to the car when they were delivering it to the Currie sisters.

  Daviot would eventually cave in and let them have their high-powered lawyer and that would be that.

  And that was that, as Jimmy confirmed later. “Nothing to hold them on,” he said gloomily. “Thon pair were the height of hurt and furious respectability. Daviot let them have their lawyer in and everything was over bar Blair’s shouting.”

  When he had rung off, Hamish went into his living room, prised the remote control from Dick’s fingers, and switched off the television.

  “Dick, when you questioned the maids about that dummy, are you sure they said it was nowhere in the house? What about the attics?”

  “They said that they were asked when they started the job to clean the place from top to bottom, attics and all.”

  Hamish went into the police office and sat down and stared into space.

  If it wasn’t anywhere in the house, he suddenly thought, maybe they bought it. But where? Then he remembered the auction rooms in Inverness.

  He phoned up and asked to speak to Mr. Simon, one of the auctioneers. “Do you remember selling an old-fashioned tailor’s dummy?” he asked.

  “I’ll need to check the records. Can you wait?”

  Hamish waited impatiently. The man seemed to be gone a long time. Then he came back on the line and said, “Yes, it was sold with a lot of junk a few days ago.”

  “Who bought it?”

  “A Mr. Hamish Macbeth. Was that you?”

  “No, it wasn’t. What address?”

  “The police station, Lochdubh. That is you.”

  “No it’s not, I can assure you. Do you have CCTV in the auction room?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you still have the old disks?”

  “Yes, we keep them for three months.”

  “I’ll be down there as soon as I can,” said Hamish.

  Hamish set off with the siren wailing and the blue light flashing, breaking the speed limit to Inverness. He collected the CCTV disk which covered the day of the sale of the dummy and then headed full speed to Strathbane after phoning Jimmy.

  “I hope you’ve got something,” grumbled Jimmy. “Let’s have a look.”

  He slotted the disk into the computer. “Go forward to the tenth September at eleven in the morning,” urged Hamish.

  “Here we are. No sound but, by all that’s holy, there’s the dummy on top of a box of stuff.”

  The camera panned over the auction room. “There!” said Hamish. “Freeze it!”

  At the back of the auction room, his catalogue raised to place a bid, was Ralph Palfour.

  “Gotcha!” shouted Jimmy.

  Blair suddenly appeared. “Whit’s going on?”

  Jimmy told him.

  “Take some men and bring them in,” said Blair. “Take Annie Williams with you in case the children are there. I want her tae stay wi’ them. Right?”

  “Right, sir,” said Jimmy. “Aren’t you coming, sir?”

  “No, I’ll just tell Mr. Daviot.”

  When Hamish and Jimmy had left, Blair went outside to the car park. If this proved to be successful, then all the kudos would go to Hamish Macbeth and he felt he couldn’t bear that. He phoned Ralph Palfour from a public phone box and said, “Just to let you know, Mr. Palfour, that I have sent men to arrest you. We have proof that the dummy was bought by you at the auction house in Inverness.”

  Then he rang off.

  Hamish Macbeth was puzzled as he drove back to Lochdubh. He was sure that they were on the edge of solving the murders, and yet he felt uneasy. The Palfours should have burned that dummy. Their arrogance in thinking they could get rid of it by giving it to the Currie sisters was nearly beyond belief. But Hamish knew from experience that villains were always arrogant. That probably explained why Ralph Palfour had been stupid enough to use a policeman’s name in the auction room.

  He stopped off in the village to buy groceries.

  When he returned to the police station, the phone was ringing. Dick had the sound on the television up so high, he did not hear it. Hamish ran into the office and answered it. It was Jimmy, his voice high and angry with frustration.

  “They’ve gone, Hamish, the kids as well.”

  “They may just be out for the day.”

  “Mrs. McColl, the maid, said they packed up a lot of stuff including the remaining stuff they hadn’t already sold from the strong room and took off. They said they were going abroad on holiday. We’re checking their bank accounts. We hope to put a freeze on them but they may have got there before us. There are no CCTV cameras north o’ Strathbane. They could be anywhere. We’ve set up roadblocks.”

  “Scotland Yard should be keeping an eye on the movements of that Russian,” said Hamish. “Jimmy, it was unlike Blair not to want to be with you.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “What if the auld scunner tipped them off?”

  “Och, come on, Hamish. He can be daft at times but not that daft. I’ll keep you posted.”

  A week went by. The Palfours seem to have disappeared into thin air. If this Russian were behind the whole thing, thought Hamish gloomily, they might even be dead.

  A hard frost settled on the Highlands. It was so cold that slivers of ice began to appear along the shore of the sea loch. The Fairy Glen was deserted. White trees with a few remaining leaves studied their reflections in the pool.

  The mountains loomed up against a pale blue sky. Smoke from peat fires rose straight up into the air from cottage chimneys.

  During the week, Hamish had questioned as many people as he could in Braikie, hoping someone might have seen the Palfours, but without success.

  He was awakened on Saturday morning with a ferocious banging at the door and Archie Maclean, the fisherman, shouting, “There’s a woman drowning in the loch, Hamish! I’ll get the boat out.”

  Something made Hamish pause to strap his skean dhu on his ankle. He was afterwards to put it down to a sixth sense of fear.

  In his vest and underpants, he ran out of the police station, vaulted over the seawall, and waded into the icy waters of the loch, gasping at the cold as he swam out to where a figure was struggling. As he swam near, he recognised the features of Fern Palfour. He had almost reached her when he was seized by the ankles and dragged down into the icy black depths.


  A black figure with a light on its head and scuba diving equipment was below him. He drew his dagger and sliced the air pipe, feeling his ankles released. He gave the figure as hard a kick on the head as he could manage.

  He shot to the surface, dropping the skean dhu to the bottom of the loch, then swam to Fern, grabbed her, and began to pull her to the shore. Villagers were waiting with blankets. Fern was a deathly colour. Hamish crouched down by Fern, performing every lifesaving technique he could remember, until water gushed from her mouth. She recovered consciousness for a moment and whispered “They made me” before relapsing.

  “An ambulance is coming,” said Mrs. Wellington. “Here’s Dr. Brodie.”

  “Help me get her along to the surgery,” said Dr. Brodie, “and send the ambulance there. Hamish, you come, too. It’s a wonder you aren’t dead.”

  “There’s a man in the loch, a scuba diver, who tried to pull me down,” said Hamish. “Get a boat out to Archie and tell him to search around. I’ll need to phone Strathbane.”

  He returned to the police station, wrapped in blankets. His teeth were beginning to chatter as the adrenaline that had fuelled his rescue began to ebb.

  “I’ve run you a hot bath,” said Dick. “Get in it and I’ll bring you some tea.”

  “Got to phone first.”

  “I’ve done that,” said Dick. “Off you go. I’ll put two hot-water bottles in your bed.”

  Hamish did not go to bed. Relieved to find he had stopped shivering, meaning that any hypothermia he was suffering must be mild, Hamish dressed in a flannel shirt and sweater and his thickest trousers, socks, and boots. He took the two hot-water bottles out of the bed and clutched them to him.

  “I’ve made you a glass of toddy,” fussed Dick. “Nothing like whisky, sugar, and lemon wi’ a wee drop o’ water to get you on your feet again. Then you havenae had any breakfast. A plate of porridge is what you need.”