by M C Beaton
“I had been working for Sandford and Jones,” said Peter, naming one of the biggest advertising agencies. “I was thirty when a rich uncle died and left me quite a bit so I decided to go into business for myself. My firm is Jenkins Associates.”
“Doing well?”
“Very well. We’ve got the Barker Baby Food account, for example.”
“Barker was bought over by a Japanese company last year. Do they still retain your services?”
“Of course. Didn’t I just say so?”
Hamish sat back and surveyed Peter in silence.
Peter stared at him and then suddenly shrugged and said boyishly, “I shouldn’t lie. A vice of advertising men. Fact is, I had this friend working with me right from the beginning and he recently quit and took that account with him. I hope the Japanese dump him.”
“And what were you doing last night and this morning?”
“I was asleep the whole time. I heard Alison scream and rushed out.”
“And did you hear any explosion, any loud bang?”
“No, nothing, but there could have been one before Alison woke me with her screams. It was an accident.”
“Very well, Mr. Jenkins. That will be all for now. Send in Mr. Witherington.”
Crispin Witherington was very jovial and hearty. Then he obviously decided that jollity was out of place and became pompous.
He outlined the facts about his relationship with Maggie, where he was during the night and morning – in bed – his business, and his home address in a way that led Hamish to believe he had had dealings with the police before. Then he launched into a diatribe about the pub in Fern Bay and the attack on him.
“Why didn’t you report it?” asked Hamish.
“What’s the point,” said Crispin rudely. “You local yokels stick together.”
“Don’t be cheeky,” said Hamish mildly. “Did you want to marry Mrs. Baird?”
“Hadn’t made my mind up. I only came up for a giggle.”
“And yet you asked Miss Kerr for help?”
“That sneaky little drip would say anything. Look, if it is murder, you only have to look in that direction.”
“Are you saying you didn’t ask Miss Kerr for help?”
“I can’t remember every blasted word I’ve said.”
“I’ll be getting back to you. I’ll hae a word with Mr. Frame next.”
James Frame sidled in, smoothing down his already smooth hair with a nervous hand. Without prompting and with many “don’t you knows” and “I says,” he launched into his tale of how he had been asleep the whole time.
He had almost perfected the silly-ass manner, thought Hamish, but the man’s eyes behind a glaze of helpful and innocent goodwill were hard and watchful as if a smaller, meaner man were staring from behind thick glass. When he had met Maggie, he said, oh-so-long-ago, he had been doing a bit of this and a bit of that. Money in the family, don’t you know. All the while, Hamish made mental notes. Lower middle class. Accent assumed. Probably was a small-time crook.
“I believe Mrs. Baird was very expensive,” said Hamish.
“She wasn’t a whore,” said James indignantly. “We were very much in love. Of course, a chap helps out a bit with the rent and things like that, but a chap would do that for any girl.”
“What is the name of the gambling club where you work?”
“The Dinosaur in Half Moon Street. That’s Mayfair.”
“Yes, I know where Half Moon Street is. Do you own The Dinosaur?”
“Well, not exactly. Run it for a chap.”
“And the chap’s name?”
“Harry Fry.”
“Champagne Harry. Out of prison is he?”
James looked sulky.
Even Hamish had heard of Harry Fry. He was a con-artist. His last fling had been to ingratiate himself into the graces of a colonel who was a close friend of the royal family and who lived in a grace and favour house in Windsor, that is a rent-free house given by the Crown. The colonel had gone to the Middle East to raise money for one of his favourite charities, Save the Donkeys, and had left Harry alone in his house. Harry had sold the house for a vast sum to an Arab and had been caught just as he was about to board a plane to Brazil at London airport.
His sentence had been surprisingly lenient. He had great charm and had used it to good effect in court. He had paid back all the money he had gained for the house. Harry was reputed to be worth millions. He tricked and conned only because it was the breath of life to him.
At last Hamish sent James off and Steel Ironside took his place.
“Real name?” asked Hamish.
“Victor Plummer,” said the pop singer in a sulky voice. But asked about his previous relationship with Maggie, he perked up and grew almost lyrical. He might have been describing a teenage romance: Maggie’s arrival on the scene, their first meeting at a party where she had shown no interest in him, the long tours, the sleazy hotels and theatrical digs, the sudden fame, the just-as-sudden falling in love and the start of the affair with Maggie, the walks in the park, the dog they had bought, the plans they had made.
“And why did she leave you?” asked Hamish.
Steel’s face darkened. “Someone else came along,” he said in his flat, nasal twang.
“Another pop singer?”
“No, Sir Benjamin Silver, head of Metropolitan Foods.”
“The multimillionaire?”
“Yes.”
“I see.”
“I didn’t at the time,” said Steel. “That was the thing about Maggie. She went through a mint of my money but I never thought of it as paying her. I mean, she wasn’t the kind you left the money on the bedside table for. I was in love and I thought she was. I thought she would come back to me.”
“Are you married?”
“Separated.”
“So how could you have married Mrs. Baird?”
“I’d have got a divorce. Never got around to it before.”
What a weak bunch of men, thought Hamish. He took some more notes and then braced himself to interview Mrs. Todd.
He took down Mrs. Todd’s account of her arrival on the scene of Maggie’s death and then began to ask questions. Why had Mrs. Todd not rushed to see if she could help instead of going straight to the house and dialling 999? What had led her to believe no one had yet dialled?
“I do not know,” she said primly. “It all happened that quick. They’re a useless bunch and wouldnae think o’ doing anything sensible.”
“Very well. Where were you last night and this morning?”
“I was at a meeting of the Women’s Rural Institute at the school hall, went tae my bed, and then collected some groceries in the village and drove up here.”
“Do you know where Mrs. Baird meant to go?”
“I don’t know. Herself usually didn’t move till the afternoon. Let me tell you this, Mr. Macbeth, you are making a lot of trouble over a mere accident. You are causing poor little Miss Kerr a lot o’ strain.”
Hamish ignored that and ploughed patiently on with his questions.
In the sitting room, Alison sat on the sofa with Peter Jenkins beside her. His arm was around her shoulders.
“So much for that helpful copper of yours,” said Peter. “I’ll have his guts for giving us all this trouble.”
“He wasn’t at all sympathetic,” sniffed Alison. “Sitting there like the Gestapo. I don’t know what’s come over him.”
“Power, that’s what. These local hick types love a chance to push their betters around.”
Alison leaned back and closed her eyes. She thought about her recent interview with Hamish. She and Hamish had been friends and yet he had asked her questions as if he had never known her. God! How she hated that study. She would have it turned into a breakfast room or a library. She hated the functional desk where she had typed so much filth.
She sat up a little, frowning.
“What’s the matter?” asked Peter.
“The manuscript,” s
aid Alison. “Maggie’s book. I don’t remember seeing it on the desk. I’d better tell Hamish about it.”
“She was in there last night,” said Peter. “She probably either took it to her room or put it in one of the drawers. But tell that dreary bobby if you like.”
The four guests had been looking forward to the arrival of Hamish Macbeth’s superior, and when he did arrive, Detective Chief Inspector Blair from Strathbane did not let them down. It was, he said, a clear case of accident. There was no need to use a squad of policemen to comb the area for clues. The car would be towed away to Strathbane and examined there. He was sure the wiring would prove to be faulty. He was so delighted at putting Hamish down before an audience that he was even nice to Steel Ironside, despite the fact that he remembered clearly that one of the pop singer’s hits in the early seventies had been “Burn the Fuzz.” Mrs. Todd served him coffee with cream and some of her scones. His two detectives, Jimmy Anderson and Harry MacNab, stood respectfully behind his chair. Alison, who told him about Maggie’s vicious treatment of the car, thought Blair a nice fatherly man. He was heavyset and spoke with a thick Glasgow accent and when not being nice to the company treated Hamish like a moron. And Hamish deserved it all, thought Alison fiercely. After all, Hamish was a Highlander and the Highlanders were another race entirely, sly and malicious and devious.
But as if remembering at last that he, too, was a policeman, Blair became mindful of his dudes and told the four men to stay at the bungalow until the forensic report came through. In a quiet voice, Hamish told him of the missing manuscript and its contents. “Hot stuff, hey?” said Blair with a salacious leer. “I may as well hae a gander at it. Go and find it, Macbeth, and dae something useful fur a change.”
Hamish went off. He searched Maggie’s desk and then moved quietly upstairs to her bedroom and went carefully through all the drawers. But there was no sign of the manuscript and no sign either of any report from a detective agency.
At last Blair left, and the shaken guests and Alison settled down to have lunch in the kitchen.
James looked out of the window and muttered something and then got to his feet and went over and stared out. “Someone had better get onto Strathbane,” he said. “That local bobby’s making trouble.”
The others joined him at the window.
The rain had started to fall quite heavily, but Hamish Macbeth, accompanied by a large mongrel dog, was down on his hands and knees on the gravel in front of the garage, slowly going over every inch of ground.
“Oh, let him get on with it,” said Peter Jenkins impatiently. “He’s better out there than in here bothering us with a lot of questions.”
They all returned to the table but no one seemed to feel much like eating and at last with a clucking noise of impatience, Mrs. Todd removed the plates of unfinished food.
Hamish, oblivious to the rain, slowly edged backwards over the gravel, his nose almost on the ground. Then he moved over to the narrow strip of grass that bordered the right-hand side of the drive. He worked his way along, backing towards the two gateposts.
And then at the bottom of one of the gateposts he found a blackened piece of metal. He looked at it thoughtfully and then fished in his pocket for tweezers and plastic bag and popped it in.
He worked his way forward again while Towser let out a little whimper of dismay and shook himself violently, sending out a spray of water over Hamish’s back. Hamish was just about to give up his search when close by where the car had stood in the garage he found a tiny piece of charred material like felt. He put that in the bag with the metal and then decided to go and see Ian Chisholm.
“Bad business up at the bungalow,” said Ian. “Mind you, that car was a wreck. I hadnae seen it since I did the last repairs but it wisnae in very good shape then and that lassie, Alison, well, herself must hae driven it thousands o’ miles. I suppose it just all blew.”
“Maybe,” shivered Hamish, steaming gently in front of the black cylindrical wood-burning stove in a corner of the garage. “But just suppose, Ian, just suppose you wanted a car tae burst into flames, would this mean anything tae ye?” He extracted the piece of blackened metal and the little bit of cloth from the plastic bag, holding each item up by the tweezers.
Ian scratched his grey hair. “My, my, ye’re after another murder,” he said. “Well, let me hae a think, but it’ll cost ye.”
“Come on, Ian, I’m not asking a favour, I am asking ye to help the forces of law and order solve a murder.”
“A murder that Blair has decided is an accident?”
“Now how did you hear that?”
“Angie Burnside, him that did the garden for Mrs. Baird from time tae time, him was up at the house for he heard the siren and went for a look-see. He was still there when Blair and two fellows come out and he hears Blair say, ‘I’ll hae that Macbeth’s balls fur trying to call an accident murder.’”
“I forgot about Angie,” said Hamish. “I’d better hae a wee word with him. Anyway, use your brain, Ian.”
“I hae a Renault, same age as hers, over here,” said Ian. He went over to a corner of the garage where a battered Renault with a crushed side stood. He raised the bonnet and peered at the engine. Then he called Hamish over. “Let’s see that bit o’ metal again,” said Ian. Hamish took it out with a pair of tweezers and held it up. “Don’t touch!” he warned.
“Aye, that’s a sparking plug,” said Ian. “Look, it could just be done, Hamish, and here’s how.”
“Now, if someone removed the high-tension lead from a sparking plug, and stuck this lead onto another sparking plug and laid it on top of the engine, immediately someone tried to start the engine, a spark would ignite the fumes which could be coming from, say, a petrol-soaked that of felt resting on the engine, and, man, you’d get a bonny fire. But it still cannae be murder.”
“Why not?”
“Well, although the engine would burst into flames, herself would still hae time to open the door and get clear. She’d only get a fright.”
“And if that someone knew she had a bad heart?” “Aye, man, well in that case you’d have a murder.”
∨ Death of a Hussy ∧
6
I am a conscientious man, when I throw rocks at sea-birds I leave no tern unstoned.
—OCDEN NASH
NOW, THOUGHT HAMISH MACBETH, IF I PHONE BLAIR AS A good copper should, Blair will tell me I’m talking rubbish and then slide along to the super and put it in as his own idea. If I am as unambitious as I keep telling Priscilla I am, then why should I bother? But damn it, I do bother.
He went into the police station office and pulled forward the typewriter and began to type out a report. When it was finished, he drove to the hotel, and despite Mr. Johnson’s caustic remarks about mooching scroungers, he ran off three copies of the report on the hotel’s photocopying machine. Then he headed out towards Strathbane.
He found, as he drove into the town, that he was experiencing a slight feeling of dread, as if he would never escape again. He was glad he had left Towser behind in Lochdubh. The poor animal would probably think he was going back to the police kennels.
He drove to the police headquarters and left three of the reports plus the plastic bag with the sparking plug and scrap of felt at the desk: one of the reports to go to Detective Chief Inspector Blair, one to Superintendent Peter Daviot, and one plus the bag to go to the forensic department. Then he went back out into the night.
He decided to celebrate with a drink before returning to Lochdubh. He cast his mind back over his busy day. He had not had anything to drink so he could indulge in a small glass of whisky without being in any danger of being over the limit.
Soon Hamish was standing at the bar of an unlovely pub called The Glen, which he had recently patrolled on his beat.
It still reflected the Calvinistic days when drinking was a sin and the only point in going to a pub was to get drunk. There was a bar along the end of a small room. The floor was covered with brown linoleum.
There were two tables, a bat tered upright piano, a juke box, and a fruit machine. The whole place smelled of beer, disinfectant, damp clothes, and unwashed bodies, the habitues of The Glen dating from the days when a bath was something you had before you went to see the doctor.
“Evening, Hamish,” said the barman. It had been a source of great irritation to P.C. Mary Graham that the locals on the beat all called Hamish by his first name. “Hivnae seen yiz for a long while.”
“I’m back in Lochdubh,” said Hamish. “I’ll hae a dram.”
“This one’s on the hoose,” said the barman. “Ye’re sore missed, Hamish. That blond scunner’s aye poking her nose in here, looking for trouble.”
Correctly identifying the ‘blond scunner’ as P.C. Graham, Hamish thanked him and then turned and looked around the busy bar. Several of the locals called greetings to him and he nodded cheerfully back. The customers were not working class, rather they were underclass, the denizens of the dole world who lived from one drink to the next. The juke box fell silent. A local who rejoiced in the nickname of Smelly MacCrystal lumbered to the piano. It was rumoured he had once been a concert pianist, but Hamish took that with a pinch of salt. All the habitue’s of The Glen claimed to have been something important at one time, from professors of English literature to jet pilots. But when only half drunk as he was that evening, Smelly could play well and he played all the old and favourite Scottish songs.
“Comeon, Hamish,” shouted someone. “Gieusasong.”
Hamish turned red with embarrassment. He had drunk far too much on the evening of that wonderful day when he was told he could go back home and he had celebrated in The Glen by entertaining the surprised locals to a concert. He shook his head but found himself being propelled towards the piano. He shrugged and gave in.
P.C. Mary Graham quietly pushed open the door of the pub, hoping, as usual, to catch someone breaking the law. She stood there amazed.
Hamish Macbeth was standing by the piano, his fiery hair gleaming in the harsh neon lights of the pub. He was singing “My Love Is Like a Red, Red Rose.” Hamish was blessed with a good voice, that kind of voice which is often affectionately described as an Irish parlour tenor. But Mary noticed only that Hamish Macbeth was leaning on the piano, singing, and surrounded by a group of dirty drunks, and he was not in uniform.
