by M C Beaton
O Village of Death, was his nought as he drove down and saw the huddle of villagers by the black loch, the forensic men in their boiler suits, the flashing blue lights of the police cars.
“Where the fuck were you, laddie?” demanded Blair when Hamish walked up. Hamish briefly explained about Peter Hynd.
“You had no right to go off yer patch an no’ give us a report,” howled Blair. “Start by asking some of these yokels if they know anything.”
Hamish turned his back on him and said to Blair’s sidekick, Jimmy Anderson, “Who’s dead?”
“Betty Baxter.”
“Where’s the child, Heather?”
“Being looked after at the manse. Mrs. Baxter was found face-down beside the loch, behind that clump of rock. It could be an accident. It looks as if she might have tripped and fallen so hard that she broke her neck.”
Hamish walked forward. The tent which had shielded the body had been taken away. The pathologist was stripping off his gloves and packing his bag. A police photographer was taking shots of the body.
Betty Baxter lay in an ungainly pose, diminished by death. Hamish noticed that her hair had been recently blonded, no dark roots, and that she was wearing those silly high heels.
“Accident?” he asked the pathologist.
He shook his head slowly. “I’ll have a better idea when I get the body back to the mortuary.” He bent over the body. “See here, she’s got a huge bruise on her forehead. Looks at first as if she tripped on those silly heels and fell heavily. She’s a big woman. But here at the back of the neck there’s a big bruise under the hair. Someone came up behind her and struck her hard, a powerful blow with something like a blackjack or lead pipe.”
“A man?”
“A woman could have done it with the right weapon.”
Hamish walked back to Jimmy Anderson. “No clues?”
“None so far. Ye cannae get footprints from the pebbles on thon beach.”
“What about the husband, Harry?”
“No time of death yet. But he was out at the fishing all night, and then this morning, which is when it was guessed she was killed, Harry was in the bar at Lochdubh, seen by God knows how many of your neighbours. We’ve been over to Lochdubh. Blair’s setting up interviews in the community hall. What do you know about the situation here, Hamish?”
Hamish rapidly told him about his seemingly unfounded suspicions about the absent Peter Hynd.
“Well, he cannae be a suspect,” said Anderson, “for no one’s seen hide nor hair of him since he left that note with Jock.”
“How do you know about the note he left with Jock?”
“I asked around if there had been any trouble in the village and some fellow told me that this Hynd and Jock had had a fight.” Blair called Anderson sharply.
Both men, followed by Blair’s other sidekick, MacNab, and several policemen, headed off to the community hall.
Hamish walked along to the manse. Annie Duncan answered the door. “I don’t want Heather pestered,” she said quickly. “Just a few words,” said Hamish soothingly. “Where’s Harry?”
“I gather her father is at home. Could you not leave it to another day? I don’t think Heather is up to this.”
The small figure of Heather materialized at Annie’s elbow. “I will speak to Mr. Macbeth,” she said.
Annie reluctantly stood back and Hamish followed them into the kitchen. Heather sat down at the table and Hamish sat opposite her. Annie stood behind the little girl, her hands on her shoulders.
“Do you know when your mother went out?” asked Hamish.
“I got up at seven,” said Heather, “and she’d left me a note on the kitchen table to say she had gone out and to get myself ready for school.”
“Have you got that note?”
“I threw it away.”
“Can you think of any reason why she might have gone out?”
Heather’s grey eyes surveyed him thoughtfully and then she said, “Yesterday morning, before Da came home, she got a phone call. I couldna’ hear what she said. But she went straight to the hairdresser. She neffer went to the hairdresser for my da.”
For a moment it was almost as if Peter Hynd were in the kitchen with them, his eyes dancing with mockery.
“Did you tell the other policemen this?”
“Thon big fat scunner came tae ask me questions. I didn’t like him so I told him nothing.” Heather got up from the table. “Thank you, Mrs. Duncan. I’ll be off home now.”
Annie looked distressed. “But you must stay here. My husband will be home shortly and he will want a word with you.”
Heather suddenly looked as old as the hills. “To pray ower me? There is no God. Mr. Macbeth, perhaps you will come with me?”
“Yes,” said Hamish. He looked at Annie. “I think she will find out what’s best for herself.”
“My da will need me now,” said Heather. “I’ll get my stuff.”
“She is in shock,” said Annie, distressed. “If only she would break down and cry and get it over with. I feel so helpless.”
“I’ll keep an eye on her,” said Hamish. “I wonder if that was Peter Hynd on the phone. Had Betty been dressed up since he left?”
“No, like the rest of the women, she had begun to let herself go. But Mr. Hynd, Peter, was – is – a very sophisticated young man, and although it amused him to flirt with the village women, he would hardly creep back from wherever he’s gone to meet Betty Baxter. Nor would he murder her.”
“What makes you so sure of that?”
“He was too easygoing.”
“So who do you think did it?”
“It’s usually the husband, isn’t it?”
“But Harry Baxter evidently has a cast-iron alibi for the time of the murder.”
She gave a weary shrug, “It could yet turn out to be an unfortunate accident. Passions can run high in this village. But murder! Probably some mad hiker came across her.”
“And the phone call?”
“I would be careful about believing anything Heather says at the moment. She is in shock.”
At that moment Heather walked into the kitchen carrying a duffle bag over one thin shoulder. She and Hamish said goodbye to the minister’s wife and walked out and along the side of the loch, which lay black and silent and still. Then they cut off up the hill, both avoiding looking along the shore where the white suits of the forensic team gleamed in the twilight.
“Nights are drawing in,” said Hamish. “It seems to get verra dark all at once.”
This ae nighte, this ae nighte,
Every nighte and alle,
Fire and fleet and candle-lighte,
And Christe receive thy saule.
Her childish voice piping the words of the old Lyke-Wake Dirge gave Hamish a shudder. “Read much?” he asked.
“All the time,” said Heather. “Books are better’n people any day.”
“What have you read recently?”
“I read all Walter Scott’s novels this summer.”
Hamish was amazed to hear that anyone read Walter Scott’s novels in this day and age. “I’ll see if I can bring you over some books tomorrow,” he said.
At Harry Baxter’s house, there was a policeman on duty outside. “Harry home?” asked Hamish.
“Aye, he’s in there. Blair’s coming back to see him.”
Hamish and Heather went inside. Harry was slumped at the kitchen table, his face grey. A glass of whisky stood in front of him.
“That will not do, Da,” said Heather, dropping her bag to the floor. “Food and sweet tea is what you need.” She picked up the glass of whisky and tipped the contents down the sink.
Hamish sat down next to Harry. “Bad business,” he said.
Harry shook his head from side to side. “Who waud have done sich a thing?”
“You’ll need to brace up for Heather’s sake,” said Hamish.
“I’ll manage if you keep that bastard, Blair, away from me,” said Harry wearil
y.
Heather had put a frying-pan on the stove and was frying bacon and eggs.
There was a knock at the door. “I’ll get it,” said Heather quickly.
Then they could hear Blair’s heavy voice, “I’m just going to have another word with your faither.”
“Begone!” said Heather. “This is a house of mourning and you are harassing and tormenting a poor child.”
“Aw, come on, it’s your da I want tae see.”
“I see the gentleman of the press have arrived,” came Heather’s voice, “and I will be telling them how you victimized a child of twelve!”
“Och, I’ll be back.” Blair’s voice, thick with disgust and anger. “Hamish Macbeth’s in there.”
“Mr. Macbeth is a friend.” Then came the slamming of the door. Heather returned sedately to the cooker and flipped the eggs.
“I think I’d better be going, Harry. You’d best get one of the women to help you with Heather.”
“I don’t need anyone,” said Heather, “Da and I are best left alone.”
Hamish went out, puzzled. He had never met anyone like Heather before. He wondered if Priscilla could make anything of her.
He decided that instead of going to the community hall to interview the villagers himself, he would start off with the hairdresser, Alice MacQueen, and find out if Betty had said anything. Alice MacQueen had already suffered being interviewed by Blair and it took Hamish some time to soothe her ruffled feathers. She was a faded woman with small features and a pinched mouth. Her dark-brown hair was worn in the old–fashioned chrysanthemum style she inflicted on her customers and highlighted with streaks of silver.
Her ‘shop’ was in her converted front-room and smelled of chemicals and hot hair. “What I am trying to find out from you, you being obviously a verra sensitive and noticing sort of lady, is if Betty Baxter, when she had her hair done, seemed any different from usual.”
“Well, she talked a lot, but then she always did.” Alice wrinkled her brow. “But she looked…triumphant. She looked as if there was some secret she was hugging. Maybe found herself another fellow.”
“Not Peter Hynd?”
She snorted. “Him? He’s long gone. Anyway, he wasn’t interested in Betty. She ran after him like a great cow.”
Hamish asked more questions and then gave up. The one satisfaction he had was that this murder investigation would lead to finding out where Peter Hynd was. Although he had left the village, the police would want to ask him if he had any idea who might have killed Betty.
He was about to go up to Jimmy Macleod’s house when Jimmy Anderson came running up just as Hamish was leaving the hairdresser’s. “Looks like an accident after all,” he said.
“What? What about that bruise on her neck?”
“Blair’s jist got that out o’ her man. That wee Heather tells Blair her father has something to say. Seems Harry skelped her one with a half-frozen cod on the back of the neck yesterday when he saw she’d been back to the hairdresser to get blonded.”
“But what broke her neck then?”
“It was a freak accident. It was the way she fell among the rocks. She’s got a broken arm as well. Pathologist made a second examination before they took the body away.”
“Has he gone? I want a word with him.”
“He’s gone and everyone else is packing up.”
“Just like that? Okay, so Harry hit her with a cod, but couldn’t someone have pushed her – deliberately pushed her hard onto the rocks?”
“No use trying to talk me into seeing it as murder. I jist want tae get to the pub afore they close. Try Blair.”
“Have better success talking to Harry’s cod.”
Hamish went up to the row of police cars; Blair was laughing uproariously at something one of the policewomen lad said. His piggy eyes fastened on Hamish and he scowled. “Jist as well it was an accident, Hamish, or there’d be an inquiry about why ye were neglecting your duties and had the radio switched off.”
“You mean like Donan’s inquiry?”
“None of your lip!”
“Look,” said Hamish earnestly, “why are you all so eager to accept the diagnosis of accident? The woman was obviously going to meet someone. She had a phone call, she got her hair bleached, and she was all dressed up.”
“Och, who can tell what goes on in the crazy minds of these teuchters,” said Blair, who hailed from Glasgow and considered all Highlanders barbarians. “I’m telling ye, it was an accident plain and simple.”
“At least find out where Peter Hynd went and ask him some questions.”
“The case is closed. It’s different fur you layabouts. We’ve got murder and mayhem daily in Strathbane.”
Hamish made a disgusted sound and went back to the Baxters’ house. The press had gone, the policeman had gone. He knocked at the door. It was opened a crack and Heather’s grey eyes peered out. She saw Hamish and opened the door wide. “Da’s gone to bed,” she said.
“Heather, I don’t want to distress you further, but what’s all this about your father hitting your mother with a codfish?”
“It wass yesterday,” she said in a singsong voice, and he was forcibly reminded of a good child reciting poetry at a school function. “She wass standing by the cooker and they had a quarrel. That’s when it happened.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“Da thought he would get into trouble, but I told him it wass better to tell the truth.”
Hamish eyed her narrowly. “You wouldn’t make up a story to protect your father, would you, Heather, and find you were protecting a murderer instead?”
“I don’t lie,” she said fiercely.
Hamish went back to the police Land Rover and sat in it, moodily staring down at the loch. He felt that if he did not investigate this case further, it would nag at him until the day he died. Yes, he was lazy, but the taking of human life was the ultimate crime and he could not believe Betty’s death had been an accident.
He was due a three weeks’ holiday. His bank account was showing a modest sum of money. He had planned to take Priscilla on holiday. He struck the steering wheel. But what would the fair Priscilla say when he asked her? What would she think as a vision of the intimacy of a hotel bedroom rose in her cold mind? But he made up his mind. He would drive back and ask her. If she refused, then he would use the holiday to find Peter Hynd.
He drove out of Drim and straight to the Tommel Castle Hotel. There had been a special reception and dinner for the new guests. When he went in, they were in the bar, Priscilla among them in a flame-coloured silk dress, laughing and talking with two of the men. The men were worldly, expensive-and sophisticated-looking in their evening dress. He felt suddenly gawky and ill at ease. Priscilla looked up and saw him, and the laughter left her face and her eyes took on a guarded look. She walked up to him. “Hamish?”
“Can we talk?”
“I’m very busy,” she said coolly. “Oh, come into the office.”
They walked into the hotel office. “Now, Hamish,” said Priscilla briskly.
“It iss not the business meeting,” retorted Hamish huffily. “I’ve decided to take a three weeks’ holiday, and I thought we could just pack up and go somewhere.”
“Just like that?”
“Why not?”
“What were you doing driving Sophy Bisset back from Inverness? And I gather you had a splendid time having lunch and going to watch a dirty movie.”
“Priscilla, I told you I was going to Inverness. I happened to run into Sophy, that was all. Then I heard about the death at Drim and dropped her at the bus stop at Bonar Bridge. No doubt the Currie sisters reported it all.”
“Not to mention Sophy herself.”
“I’m telling you, there wass nothing to it.” His Highland accent was becoming more sibilant, a sign that he was upset. “Let’s not quarrel. Let’s talk about this holiday.”
“I cannot possibly go off on holiday now. We are too busy.”
&n
bsp; “Priscilla, you’ll need to chuck the hotel work when we’re married.”
“Why? We’ll need the money,” she said brutally. “Have you any idea what a dress like this costs?” Priscilla knew she was behaving badly, and like most hurt people was taking a vindictive pleasure in it. “When we are married, if we are married, then I shall get Pa to pay me a salary. I do the work of two, sometimes more. Then there’s the gift shop to run.”
“I have no intention of living off my wife’s earnings,” said Hamish stiffly.
“Why am I so different?” she asked sweetly. “You mooch off everyone else in Lochdubh.”
He looked at her with sudden hatred. “You,” he said evenly, “are a thoroughly nasty bitch!”
Hamish turned on his heel and walked out.
Priscilla stood for a long moment after he had gone and then sat down at the desk and burst into tears.
♦
“Hamish! Hamish!” He turned round in the car-park. Sophy came running towards him. “Everything all right?” she asked. He looked at her with loathing. “Go and jump in the loch,” he said rudely. “Women! They should all be strangled at birth!”
He climbed into the Land Rover and drove off, gravel spurting out from under his wheels.
It was only when he was back in his own kitchen with only the company of Towser that he began to calm down. He could not go over and over what Priscilla had said, picking away at the hurt like a scab. In the morning he would go to Strathbane and make arrangements for his holiday.
And then he would set out to find Peter Hynd.
♦
He went down to Strathbane the next day and obtained permission to take leave. Sergeant Macgregor over at Cnothan would cover Hamish’s beat as well as his own. That finished, Hamish returned to Lochdubh, collected Towser and took the dog over to his parents’ home in Rogart, where he shrugged off questions about his wedding date with, he thought, very clever answers. His mother sadly watched him driving off and said to her husband, “I don’t think our Hamish is going to marry Priscilla or anyone. He always was a picky boy.”
Hamish then returned to Lochdubh and arranged with a neighbour to take care of his hens and sheep. He had already made up his mind to go to London and see if he could trace the origins of Peter Hynd. First he would need some money. As he walked to the bank, he suddenly realized that Peter Hynd must have had some local bank he drew money from. There was no bank in Drim.
