by M C Beaton
What made it worse was that this female, this Mrs. Baird, had phoned the high-ups in Strathbane and accused them of deliberately encouraging crime in Lochdubh by taking away the village policeman and had threatened to write to The Times .
He drove through Lochdubh, remarking sourly to himself that it looked as sleepy as ever, and took the coast road to Maggie's bungalow.
The door was opened by a grim-looking housekeeper wearing a blue cotton dress with a white collar. MacGregor's heart sank. Anyone who could afford to employ a Scottish housekeeper these days and get her to wear a sort of uniform must be stinking rich, and stinking rich meant power, and power meant trouble.
Mrs. Baird was all he had feared and anticipated. She was a great, fat woman wearing a tweed suit and heavy brogues. Her thick hair was scraped back in an old-fashioned bun and she had the glacial accents of the upper class. With her on the chintz-covered sofa sat a dab of a woman, peering at him through thick-lensed glasses, whom Mrs. Baird introduced as 'my niece, Miss Kerr.'
"You took your time about getting here," said Maggie.
"Well, I have to come from Cnothan, which is a good wee bit away," said MacGregor with what he hoped was a placating smile.
"Stop grinning like a monkey and get your notebook out," ordered Maggie. The housekeeper brought in a tray with a coffee pot, cream, sugar, and only two cups. MacGregor was obviously not going to be offered any.
"When did you first notice the earrings were missing?" asked MacGregor.
"Last night. I've searched the house. Mrs. Todd, the housekeeper, is a local woman and above suspicion. But two suspicious-looking hikers were seen hanging about yesterday. They could have got in somehow and taken them."
"Description?" asked MacGregor, licking his pencil.
"Man and a girl, early twenties. The man had a straggly beard and the girl looked like one of those dreary intellectual types, rather like Miss Kerr here." Maggie laughed and Alison winced. "The man was wearing a camouflage jacket and jeans, and the girl, a red anorak and brown slacks. The man had on a ski cap and the girl was hatless. Her hair was mousy brown."
MacGregor eventually drove off in a more cheerful frame of mind. He had something concrete to go on. He telephoned from his Land-Rover to Strathbane and put out an alert for the hikers. That strange creature, Macbeth, who had had the temerity to solve a murder case in his, MacGregor's, absence, would soon find out his presence was not missed in Lochdubh.
He had only just reached home when a call came through from the chief constable. Colonel Halburton-Smythe demanded the presence of a policeman immediately. Poachers were netting salmon on his river. With a groan, MacGregor set out for Lochdubh again. The colonel insisted on taking the sergeant on a long walk across country to the river and haranguing him on the ineptitude of the police. MacGregor was tired and weary by the time he got back to Cnothan.
But fury gave him energy, fury generated by a call from Strathbane to say that Mrs. Baird had telephoned. She had found her lost earrings down the back of the sofa and what was MacGregor doing wasting the force's time by having them look for villainous hikers who did not exist?
Then a phone call came from the Lochdubh Hotel to say that a group of young people were creating a riot in the public bar. MacGregor appealed for back-up and took the road back to Lochdubh to find the public bar empty apart from a few shattered glasses and the owner of the hotel, who was unable to give a clear description of the young people.
By the time he finally got home to bed, he was nearly in tears of rage. Morning found him in a calmer frame of mind. Lochdubh would sink back into its usual peace and quiet.
And then the phone started to ring. A crofter in Lochdubh complained that five of his sheep had been stolen during the night, and a farmer reported that two of his prize cows were missing. The schoolteacher, Miss Monson, called to say that drugs had been found in a classroom.
Again MacGregor telephoned for help, only to be asked wearily why he couldn't handle things himself—that is, until he got to the tale of the drugs in the classroom. Detective Chief Inspector Blair and a team of detectives and forensic men were despatched from Strathbane only to find that the drugs in the classroom were packets of baking soda. "Silly me," said the giggling schoolteacher, and Blair took his anger out on MacGregor, who had no-one to take it out on except his wife, and he was afraid of her.
The amazing thing about British policewomen is that a surprising proportion of them are attractive. And so PC Hamish Macbeth could not help wondering why he had the ill luck to be saddled with such a creature as Mary Graham on his beat. PC Graham, he reflected, looked like one of those women you see in German war films. Not only was there the dyed blond hair, but she had staring ice-blue eyes, a mouth like a trap, and an impeccable uniform with a short tailored skirt which showed strong muscular legs encased in black tights—not fine sheer tights worn by some of the younger policewomen, but thick wool ones, and her shoes were like black polished glass.
It was a sunny day as they walked side by side along the waterfront, past closed bars smelling of last night's drunks; past shuttered warehouses falling into ruin, relics of the days when Strathbane was a small busy port; past blocks of houses thrown up in the fifties during that period when all architects seem to have sold their souls to Stalin, and had erected towers of concrete very like their counterparts in Moscow. The balconies had once been painted jolly primary colours, but now long trails of rust ran down the cracked concrete of the buildings in which elevators had long since died, and rubbish lay in heaps on the sour earth of what was originally intended to be a communal garden.
"I always keep ma eyes and ears open," Mary was saying. She had a whining singsong voice. "I hae noticed, Macbeth, you're apt to turn a blind eye tae too many things."
"Such as?" asked Hamish while in his mind he picked her up and threw her over the sea wall and then watched her sink slowly beneath the oily surface of the rising tide.
"Two days ago there were these two drunks fighting outside The Glen bar. All you did was separate them and send them off home. I wanted to arrest them and would hae done had I not seen that wee boy acting suspiciously over at the supermarket."
Hamish sighed. There was no point replying. Mary saw villains everywhere. But her next words nearly roused him to a fury, and it took a great deal to rouse Hamish Macbeth. "I felt it was ma duty to put in a report about you," she said. "It is cramping my style to have to walk the beat wi' a Highland layabout. The trouble wi' you Highlanders is you just want to lie on your backs all day long. You know whit they say, mañana is too urgent a word for you." Mary laughed merrily at her own wit. "So I said I would never rise in the force, having to patrol wi' a deadbeat like you, and asked for a change."
"That would be nice," said Hamish.
Mary threw him a startled look. "I'm surprised you're taking it so well."
"Of course I am taking it well. Ye dinnae think I enjoy walking along on a fine day wi' a sour-faced bitch like you," said Hamish in a light pleasant voice, although Priscilla, for example, would have recognized, by the sudden sibilancy of it, that Hamish was furious. "Wass I not saying chust the other day," said Hamish dreamily, "that it was sore luck getting landed wi' you instead of someone like Pat Macleod." Pat Macleod was a curvaceous brunette of a policewoman who wore sheer stockings instead of tights. Every policeman who had seen her flashing her thighs in the canteen as she deliberately hitched up her short skirt to sit down could bear witness to that.
Mary could hardly believe her ears. She would never for a moment have dreamt that PC Macbeth would even think of insulting her. She did not know that her contempt for him was largely based on jealousy. Macbeth, in a short time, had made himself popular on the beat and householders preferred to bring their troubles to him rather than to Mary.
"I have never been so insulted in all my life," she said.
"Oh, come now, wi' a face and manner like yours, you must have been," said Hamish who, like all normally polite and kind people, was relish
ing the rarity of being truly and thoroughly rude.
"You're jist mad because Blair winkled ye oot o' your cosy number in Lochdubh," sneered Mary. "And you claim to have solved them murders! You! You're no' a man. I could beat the living daylights oot o' you any day."
"Try it," said Hamish.
She squared up to him. "I warn ye. I'm a black belt in karate."
"Behave yourself, woman," said Hamish, suddenly sick to death of her.
With amazing speed, he moved in under her guard, swept her up in his lanky arms, dumped her head first in an enormous plastic rubbish bin, and, deaf to her cries, strolled off.
That's that, he thought with gloomy satisfaction, I may as well go back to the police station and resign.
The desk sergeant looked up as Hamish ambled in. "Upstairs, Macbeth. The super's screaming for you."
"So soon?" said Hamish, surprised. "Did PC Graham fly in on her broomstick? Never mind. Better get it over with."
"Come in, come in, Hamish," said Superintendent Peter Daviot. "Sit down, man. Tea?"
"Yes, thank you," said Hamish, sitting down on a chair facing the desk and putting his peaked cap on his knees.
"It seems, Hamish, that there's been a bit of a crime wave in Lochdubh and Sergeant MacGregor's being run ragged."
"Is he now?" asked Hamish with a smile. He did not like MacGregor.
"Milk and sugar? Right. Here you are. Yes, on due consideration, we have decided you should finish up the week here and return to Lochdubh. Here are the keys to the station."
"Thank you." Hamish felt suddenly bleak. Why had he risen to that stupid Graham woman's insults?
The door opened and Detective Chief Inspector Blair heaved his large bulk into the room. "Oh, you're here, are you?" he said nastily when he saw Hamish.
"Yes," said Mr. Daviot. "It seems you made a bad mistake in suggesting that Hamish be taken away from Lochdubh. There's been nothing but crime for the past few days."
"I know," said Blair heavily. "I've been there on a drugs report. Baking soda, it turned oot tae be." His Glasgow accent grew stronger in his irritation. "Dae ye know what I think? I think them dampt villagers are making up crimes so as tae get this pillock back."
The superintendent's face froze. "Mind your language in front of me, Mr. Blair," he said. "Are you questioning the word of Colonel Halburton-Smythe, for example?"
"No, no," said Blair hurriedly. "But it did look a bit suspicious, ye ken, considering nothing happens there from the one year's end tae the other."
"Except murder," put in Hamish.
"Do not forget Hamish solved that woman's murder," said the superintendent. "I am just telling him he must go back and take up his duties there."
"Uh-uh!" said Blair, his face creased into an unlovely smile. "Why I came up, Mr. Daviot, is to tell you we might be discussing Macbeth's dismissal from the force."
"What! Why?"
"He assaulted PC Graham."
"You assaulted a policewoman, Hamish?"
"It was self-defence, sir."
"Haw! Haw! Haw!" roared Blair.
"Will you stop cackling, Blair, and give me an outline of the complaint?"
"PC Graham has just come into the station. She said she was patrolling the beat when Macbeth here suddenly picked her up and threw her in a rubbish bin."
"Is this true, Macbeth?" No more 'Hamish.'
"She said she could beat me up and approached me in a threatening manner," said Hamish. "I was fed up wi' her. I chust picked up the lassie and dumped her in wi' the garbage."
"I can hardly ... this is very serious ... very serious indeed. Oh, what is it, Sergeant?"
The desk sergeant had just entered. "It's three women and a man frae the tower blocks," he said. "They say they've come to defend Macbeth here. They say they saw Graham attacking him and Macbeth being forced to defend himself. They say when they helped Graham out of the bin, she said she was going to get Macbeth charged with assault and they say if that's the case they will all go to court as witnesses for Macbeth's defence."
"We must not let this get into the newspapers," said the superintendent horrified. "Get rid of these people, Sergeant, and say that Macbeth is not being charged. Shut Graham up at all costs. Good heavens, just think what the tabloids could make of this. Macbeth, I suggest you go back to your quarters and pack and leave for Lochdubh in the morning. Blair, I am surprised at you! In a situation as potentially explosive and damaging to the police as this you should get your facts right. Macbeth, wipe that smile off your face and get going!"
2
And with the morn those angel faces smile,
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile.
—CARDINAL JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
At a new roundabout on the outskirts of Strathbane stood Hamish Macbeth, a suitcase in one hand. In the other, he held a rope as a leash for Towser, whose own had mysteriously disappeared in the kennels. Towser, a yellowish mongrel, was subdued. He had been kennelled with police dogs, large nasty-looking German shepherds, and had lived for a short time in a state of terror.
There was no reason for Hamish to be standing in a fine drizzle trying to hitch a lift. A police car would have driven him to Lochdubh in the afternoon, but Hamish felt he could not wait that long.
One car after another slowed at the roundabout and then drove past the solitary figure with the battered suitcase and dog. Many people firmly believed you had to have a death wish to give a lift to a stranger these days.
Hamish looked around. There was a thick stand of bushes behind him. He walked into their shelter, opened his case, took out his policeman's tunic, and after tugging off his old sweater, put it on. He was already wearing his regulation trousers. He also fished out his peaked hat and knocked it back into shape and put it on his head.
"I told you, you shouldn't be driving without a licence," said Mrs. Mary Webb to her husband, Bert, as the tall, thin figure of a policeman stepped out into the road just before the roundabout and held up his hand. Bert Webb slowed to a halt, his heart hammering. "Whatever happens, keep your mouth shut," he hissed to his wife.
He rolled down the window. "Good day, Officer," he said with an ingratiating leer. "What can we do for you?"
"I was wondering if you were travelling anywhere near the village of Lochdubh," said Hamish.
"We are going farther north," said Bert uneasily. "The nearest we get to Lochdubh is the Ardest crossroads."
"That would do me just fine," said Hamish. "I can walk from there easily."
A look of relief wiped the worry from Bert's face. "You mean you want a lift?"
"If you would be so kind."
Relief made Bert hearty. "Jump in the back," he said.
"Thank you very much," said Hamish with a sweet smile. "I will just be getting my dog." And he disappeared back into the bushes beside the road where he had left Towser.
"Dog!" exclaimed Mary Webb. "And us with our new seat covers." She twisted her head and looked at the back seat which was covered in imitation fur fabric of a leopard skin pattern.
"Shut up!" snapped Bert, uneasy again. "It may be some sort of trick."
His wife looked at him in alarm but had no time to say anything, for the back door of the car opened and PC Macbeth and a wet Towser climbed inside, Hamish pulling his suitcase in after him.
Hamish tried to make conversation but found it very hard going. Mary Webb was thinking furiously, Perhaps it isn't Bert's licence, perhaps it's those library books I never took back. Then there was that restaurant. They forgot to charge Bert for the drinks and he never said a word ...
Bert was thinking of the young girl with whom he had enjoyed a brief fling down in Worcester three months ago. He was a shop fitter and travelled around the country. The girl had looked awfully young. What if she was under sixteen?
Hamish finally fell silent. His thoughts turned to Lochdubh. He was still saddened by the way in which all his friends had taken his banishment without any fuss. He had phoned the hotel the night be
fore and had told Mr Johnson, the manager, of his imminent return and Johnson had taken it calmly, almost coolly, in fact.
"Here we are, Officer!" said Bert with forced joviality. "The Ardest turning."
Hamish thanked them and climbed out with suitcase and dog. He touched his cap as the Webbs drove off, the Webbs who were now full of indignant rage at having been forced to give a lift to what had turned out to be nothing more sinister than a scrounging copper.
Towser turned slowly in the direction of Lochdubh, rather like an overstuffed armchair turning around on its castors. He sniffed the air and slowly his tail curved over his back.
A shaft of sunlight struck through the grey clouds, a William Blake shaft of sunlight. All it lacked were the angels. The wind was from the west holding an underlying touch of warmth. Above the shaggy heath of Sutherland soared the mountains, rising up to heaven, away and beyond the antlike machinations of the police force.
Hamish took the rope from around Towser's neck and the dog surged forward down the road to Lochdubh, stopping every now and then to look back and make sure his master was following.
Hoisting his suitcase up onto his shoulder, Hamish stepped out smartly and the sky above grew brighter and brighter and the wind in the heather sang a welcome home.
"Thank goodness the sun is shining," said Priscilla. "Are you sure he said he would be here sometime this morning, Mr Johnson?"
"That's what he said," remarked the hotel manager. "Said he couldn't wait and he would hitch a lift."
"Maybe he can't get a lift," worried Priscilla. "One of us should have gone and collected him."
"And spoil the surprise? No, better this way. Dougie, the gamekeeper, is posted up on the hill and he'll wave a flag when he sees him coming."
Priscilla shook her head doubtfully, having visions of lazy Hamish stretched out asleep in the back seat of some limousine and unable to be spotted by even such an eagle eye as Dougie's. "Everything's ready anyway," she said looking around.
