by M C Beaton
"Hey, you!" yelled Mary Graham. "Where dae ye think you're going?"
But Hamish did not even turn around.
As he was driving along the waterfront, he saw the gnarled figure of the gardener, Angus Burnside, leaning over the sea wall and drew up.
Angus turned round. "Ach, what is it noo, Hamish?" he asked crossly. "I've been answering the polis's questions fur days."
"Well, humour me, Angie," said Hamish. "When you were working around that bungalow, did you see anyone go into that garage apart from Miss Kerr and Mrs. Baird?"
"That wee greaser wi' the uppity manner."
"Which could apply to all of them," said Hamish patiently. "Which one was it."
"The smarmy one, him called Witherington. It wass about twa days afore the death o' Mrs. Baird. 'Whit d'ye want?' I went and asked him, and he got very hoity-toity. 'Go back to your gardening, my good fellow,' he says. Dampt English. They should all stay on the other side o' the border."
"Anyone else apart from him?"
"Naw, no-one but that daftie, Miss Kerr. D'ye ken, she used tae go and talk tae that car!"
Hamish thanked him and drove off on the long road to Brora again. It was still high summer and in the north of Scotland it hardly ever gets dark. There was a blazing sunset as he arrived at the scrap yard. The derelict cars lay about in various stages of rust and decay. The purple flowers of the willow herb bloomed amongst the heaps of twentieth-century junk and long sour grass sprouted through shattered doors and windows of the less popular models—less popular for their spare parts. The whole thing was like a graveyard, a monument, a tombstone to death on the roads. That Ford over there, thought Hamish, had anyone survived that crash? The whole front was smashed and buckled.
Somewhere a dog howled dismally and the wind whistled through the rusty cars and swaying grass. At least the rain has stopped, thought Hamish, picking his way round the muddy puddles to a hut in the middle of the yard.
Cars, he thought. This case is all about cars. Forget the meat cleaver for the moment. Cars. Crispin knew about cars. James Frame once worked for him. The others probably knew a bit about car engines. Alison's obsession with driving. What an odd girl she was. Pity she seemed to have taken an aversion to Jenkins. A weak man to look after was just what she needed to stiffen her spine.
There was no-one in the hut. Hamish sighed impatiently and sat down in a battered armchair beside the hut door to wait. He was very tired. Poor Priscilla. What on earth could be bothering that father of hers? He couldn't help there. The colonel loathed him. His eyes began to close. Then he heard the sound of a car approaching and straightened up.
The owner of the scrap yard, a small greying man in blue overalls, drove up.
"What do ye want?" he demanded as he approached Hamish. "There's not one stolen car here."
Hamish got to his feet. "I'm not here about stolen cars," he said. "I want to show you some photos and I want you to look at the folk in the photos and tell me if one of them called at your yard and asked for an old felt mat like the kind you see under the bonnets of some engines and two sparking plugs."
He looked at the man without hope. It was too long a shot. "Funny that," said the owner slowly. "I call to mind someone asking me for thae things."
Hamish held out the photographs.
The man took them and led the way into the hut. He switched on the light and then with maddening slowness took a pair of glasses from his overall pocket and put them on his nose. He peered at the photographs.
"Aye," he said. "That's who ye want."
Hamish looked down. His finger was almost covering one face.
"My God!" said Hamish. "Are ye sure? Ye have to be awf'y sure. If it's that one, man, I couldnae for the life o' me think why."
"Of course I'm sure," he said testily. "I can call tae mind every sod that comes in here. Came and asked fur sparking plugs and then fur the felt tae line the bonnet o' a car. A Renault it was."
Hamish took out a form he had brought with him and took down a statement and got the scrap yard owner to sign it. As he drove off, the sun was slipping below the horizon and the perpetual twilight of a northern summer lay across the countryside.
He drove a little way and pulled off the road and sat, thinking hard. Why?
And then, after an hour, all the little bits and pieces fell into place and he was looking at an almost complete picture. There was only one large piece missing and that was the reason for the death of Steel Ironside.
He called first at Dr Brodie's, then at the minister's, back to the police station to make a few phone calls, and then made his way to the bungalow. PC Graham was still on duty. "You're going to cop it frae Donati," she jeered, "and I'm coming in tae watch."
Hamish ignored her and went on into the house. Mrs. Todd was busy at the kitchen sink. "They're all in the sitting room," she said.
Hamish walked into the sitting room. Crispin, Peter, and James were sitting together on the sofa. Alison was curled up in an armchair. Donati was sitting on a hard chair in the middle. MacNab and Anderson were over by the window.
Donati looked up briefly and his face hardened. "I'll deal with you later, Macbeth," he said. "Get outside and make sure no press get as far as the house."
"But—" began Hamish.
"I said, get outside!"
PC Graham sniggered and took up a position against the wall, anxious to stay and watch the interrogation. Hamish could stand guard on his own.
Hamish did not go outside. He went into the kitchen and pulled out a kitchen chair and sat down.
In his usual lazy, companionable way, he said, "Aye, it was a grand funeral. A fitting funeral for a lady like Mrs. Baird."
Mrs. Todd said nothing but continued to scrub pots with ferocious energy.
"She was a verra good woman as well," Hamish went on.
Mrs. Todd swung round. "Maggie Baird was a whore," she said viciously.
Hamish gave a little sigh and said quietly, "And you are the instrument of God."
She wiped her hands on her apron and slowly came and sat down opposite him. Hamish clasped his hands behind his head and looked dreamily at the ceiling. "It was those photographs of you in the army. You were in the army during the war and would know a lot about car engines. You were a chauffeur to a Colonel Wilson in the Royal Artillery, or so the village gossip goes. You burned that book of Maggie's. You read it and you burned it. I gather from Alison it was pretty hot stuff. Enough to turn that daft mind o' yours.
"Your husband took to the drink and you joined the Temperance Society and you neffer gave the man a day's peace till he drank himself to death. You asked Brodie to put 'heart attack' on the death certificate because you thought alcohol poisoning was a disgrace. He refused, but it was what else Brodie told you that shocked you. He told you your husband had venereal disease. Brodie told me that Mr. Todd had confessed to going with prostitutes from time to time in Aberdeen because he had had nothing in that line from you since your wedding night. Then I remembered the case of Mary MacTavish. She had an illegitimate child and Mr. Wellington said you made that lassie's life such hell she had to leave the village. When the minister reproached you for your lack of charity, you said you were doing God's work.
"Now, we come to Alison Kerr.
"She was a girl after your own heart, quiet and shy. But I gather you can hear everything in this house and so you listened at her bedroom door and that way you found out she was in bed with Peter Jenkins. You had committed murder once. And to my mind it was murder. You knew Maggie Baird had a weak heart. So you tampered with the brakes of Alison's car. She had become unclean and had to go. But when you managed to poison her mind against Peter Jenkins ... oh, I'm sure that rubbish Alison was talking about that a man would never respect you after you had slept with him came from you ... I think you decided to give her a reprieve. Then the pop singer. You didn't use the car but you could easily have cycled out or walked."
"You can't prove a thing," said Mrs. Todd.
&nbs
p; "Oh, but I can," said Hamish, straightening up, his eyes hard and implacable and cold. "You went to the scrap yard at Brora and got the sparking plugs and the bit o' felt and the man there identified you from your photograph."
Mrs. Todd rose and went back to the sink and started scrubbing pots again.
"I'll tell you something else," said Hamish. "You're like Maggie Baird."
Mrs. Todd stopped scrubbing. "Never!" she said passionately.
"Yes, in a way. You see, when Maggie was all fat and tweedy and playing the county lady, I had an odd feeling that there was a pretty, flirtatious woman locked up inside all that fat, ready to come out like a butterfly coming out of a chrysalis. Inside that motherly outside of yours, Mrs. Todd, I see another woman: a thin, sharp, bitter, murderous woman."
"Havers," said Mrs. Todd calmly and opened a kitchen drawer.
Detective Jimmy Anderson was to say long afterwards that the biggest shock he ever had in his career was when Hamish Macbeth erupted from that kitchen and dived over the sofa and the three men sitting on it, pursued by Mrs. Todd who was waving a glittering bread knife. Galvanized into action, MacNab and Anderson and Donati grabbed hold of her while PC Graham twisted the bread knife out of her hand. She struggled and cursed, trying to escape, her eyes bulging with hate as she surveyed the lanky length of Hamish Macbeth rising from behind the sofa.
As they put the handcuffs on her, Hamish charged her with the manslaughter of Mrs. Margaret Baird. Then he said, "Why Steel Ironside? Why the pop singer?"
"Dirty man!" Mrs. Todd spat out the words. "He wore his shirts open the whole time showing all that nasty, nasty hair. Yes, I burned that book of hers. I knew men were filth but I never realized how filthy till I read it. Wallowing in filth. Filth!" she screamed, and she was still screaming while they led her outside.
"She's mad," whispered Alison.
"Yes," said Hamish wearily. "Barking mad and I never even noticed."
"Yaws," said James in his fake upper-class voice. "Of course, one never really looks at servants. I say, Alison, what about drinks all round? Thank God it's all over."
"Yes," said Alison, a little colour beginning to come into her pale face. "Yes, it's over and I'm safe." She flung her arms around Hamish. "Oh, thank you!"
Hamish looked across her head to Peter Jenkins and signalled with his eyes and Peter came up. Hamish pushed Alison gently into Peter's arms. "I'd best be off," he said.
He had parked his Land-Rover on the road outside. The press had disappeared for the moment but he knew they would soon be back. PC Graham was standing morosely on duty.
"I suppose you think you're damned clever," she sneered.
Hamish looked at her, at the thin mouth and at the dislike in her eyes.
"You look beautiful when you're angry," he said. He jerked her into his arms and kissed her on the mouth. Then he walked off whistling.
Her voice followed him. "Why, Hamish! I never knew ... I never guessed. Hamish, darling ..."
Hamish threw one horrified look behind him and then ran to his Land-Rover and drove off, breaking the speed limit all the way to Lochdubh.
At the police station, he fed Towser, locked up the hens for what was left of the night, and started to make himself some supper. And then the bell at the police station door sounded.
He walked up to it and shouted, "No comment" through the letter box.
"It's me, Donati," said a voice.
Hamish opened the door.
Donati walked past him and into the police office. "I'll need your notes, Macbeth. Was it a lucky guess?"
"No, I hae proof." Hamish fished in his pocket and brought out the statement by the owner of the scrap yard along with the photographs. Then he outlined what he had found out about Mrs. Todd's background.
"I should say 'good work,'" said Donati crisply, "but we could have found all this out much sooner if you had confided in me."
"But I only got the proof this evening," said Hamish.
"So you say. Well, type up your notes and let me have them along with this statement and the photographs. I shall be at the hotel until lunchtime tomorrow."
"Very well," said Hamish.
"Very well, what?"
"Very well, sir ," said Hamish, resisting a longing to tell Donati exactly what he thought of him. But Donati might make things hot for him at headquarters in Strathbane and they might close down the police station again.
After Donati had left, he typed up his notes and put everything in an envelope.
The next morning, Donati simply took the envelope without a word of thanks. "We are now leaving for Strathbane," said Donati. "They will be raising that mini today. The divers will be along, but Anderson here will be in charge of that so there is nothing to take you away from your village duties."
Jimmy Anderson gave Hamish a sympathetic wink.
Hamish left the hotel and walked along the waterfront. The day was sunny and mild. Terror and murder had left the village. Mrs. Todd had been among them all for so long and yet none of them had realized she was unbalanced. But there were so many oddities in any village and no-one ever stopped to wonder overmuch about them. There were at least four religious maniacs in Lochdubh apart from Mrs. Todd, and that was a small number for the Highlands where old-fashioned Calvinists still abounded and nothing moved on a Sunday for fear of incurring the wrath of God.
He took a deck chair out into the garden, stretched out in the sun, and fell asleep.
PC Macbeth had returned to his normal village duties.
9
Poverty is an anomaly to rich people. It is very
difficult to make out why people who want
dinner do not ring the bell.
—WALTER BAGEHOT
As the shadows of violent murder withdrew from the village of Lochdubh, the weather took a turn for the better and long, lazy, hot days sent mist curling up from the sea loch and the mountains stood out stark and awesome against the bluest of skies. Purple heather blazed in all its glory on the hillsides and moorland, and children collected wild raspberries from the hedgerows. The whole world seemed to have slowed almost to a halt as the sleepy village sank into a sunlit torpor.
Hamish was happy. Two whole weeks had passed since the murder and already it was fading from his mind. He had heard that Crispin and James had left the bungalow but that Peter Jenkins had stayed on, which explained, thought Hamish, why he had not been pestered by Alison. He had caught a fleeting glimpse of her when Peter had driven her through the village. He would have expected Alison to have bought another car, but perhaps the obsession for motoring had left her.
And then into this idyllic peace and quiet came Detective Chief Inspector Blair. Hamish was weeding the garden when the bulky shadow of Blair fell across him.
He straightened up, waiting for the inevitable remarks about lazy coppers but Blair surprised him by saying mildly, "Care tae come along tae the hotel for a drink, Hamish?"
"Sure," said Hamish, surprised. "I'll be with you in a tick. Just got to wash my hands."
He went indoors and quickly washed and scrambled into his uniform. Blair must be on a case. He could hardly have come all the way from Strathbane to pass the time of day.
They walked along together to the hotel, but Blair seemed to be reluctant to get to the point of his visit. He asked questions about the fishing and was it any good and then barely seemed to hear Hamish's replies. Once they were seated in a corner of the hotel bar, Hamish said, "Well, what's the case?"
"What? Oh, ah, I amnae on a case, Hamish. Fine day. Jist popped over to hae a wee chat."
"About what?" asked Hamish suspiciously.
"That nasty bugger, Donati."
"Oh, him," said Hamish. "What about him?"
"Well, I had it frae Anderson and MacNab that it was you that solved the murder case."
"You would get that from Donati's report," said Hamish sharply.
"Not a bit o' it."
"I saw the newspapers crediting him with solving the murd
er," said Hamish, "but I didn't think a man like Donati would take all the credit back at headquarters."
Blair gave him a long, bleak look.
Hamish shifted uncomfortably. "Now I come to think of it, that's what he would do."
"Aye, I got a look at his report. He said he had sent an officer, no name mentioned, to a scrap yard in Brora with photographs o' the suspects and thereby had obtained proof o' the Todd woman's guilt. When Anderson and MacNab finally told me, I felt it my duty to go to the super."
Hamish grinned. "It must hae choked ye to give me any praise."
"I'm a fair man," said Blair huffily. "But the super said that Donati's success had given him the transfer to Glasgow CID that he'd been angling after and it would rock the boat to start accusations flying around at this late date. So that scunner, Donati, went off south yesterday. Made my life a misery while he was in Strathbane. When they made him detective chief inspector, too, I knew it would only be a matter o' time before they demoted me."
"Then it's all to the good," said Hamish. "It's one way of getting rid of him. Thanks for telling me, anyway."
"I put the super's back up, ye see, because o' that Graham woman. The bitch. I really thought you'd gone off your trolley, Hamish, and assaulted her."
His voice was wheedling and conciliatory. Hamish looked at him sharply. Blair had been plotting his downfall for years. What was behind it all?
"So I hae been thinking ... another drink, Hamish?"
"Yes, thank you. Whisky again, please."
Blair came back, carrying two doubles. Hamish blinked at this unusual generosity.
"So you didn't come all this way to tell me what you could hae told me on the phone," said Hamish. "What do you want?"
"It's like this." Blair hitched his chair closer to Hamish. "Ye seem tae attract murder. Now, say you get another big crime up here, I would be obliged if you could ask Strathbane for me."
"Oh." Hamish leaned back and studied Blair thoughtfully. "Why should I do that? At least Donati let me in on most of the case. You always send me off wi' a flea in my ear."
