Death of a Witch hm-25

by M C Beaton

  “I think I know what’s at the back of it,” said Hamish, “and yes, I can put a stop to it. Tomorrow is the Sabbath. Tell your man I want to borrow his pulpit to make an announcement.”

  “What about?”

  “I’d rather break the news all at once.”

  ♦

  After the opening hymn was sung on Sunday, the villagers looked in surprise as Hamish climbed up to the pulpit.

  “This may hardly seem a fit topic for a church,” said Hamish, “but as it is causing misery in the village, I want to give all the men of Lochdubh a warning. If you have been going to a Miss Beldame for a potion to help your sexual prowess, it is the firm belief of Dr. Brodie that what you have been taking is Spanish fly. This does not enhance your prowess. It swells the genitals and could cause damage to your kidneys. I will deal with Miss Beldame myself. None of you is to go near her.”

  Shocked faces stared up at him. He surrendered the pulpit to Mr. Wellington and went and sat in a pew at the back.

  At the end of the service, he slipped out of the church and went back to the police station. He planned to visit Catriona after he had eaten his lunch.

  But there was a knock at the kitchen door and then the Currie sisters walked in.

  “This is a bad business,” said Nessie.

  “Bad business,” echoed Jessie, who always repeated the end of her sister’s sentences.

  “I thought you pair would ha’ known about it before this,” said Hamish.

  “We did,” said Nessie. “But she’s a witch!”

  “A witch,” said Jessie.

  “Look here. There are no such things as witches.”

  “Keep your voice down,” hissed Nessie, looking furtively around.

  “Voice down,” came the Greek chorus.

  Hamish sighed. He knew the highlanders were deeply superstitious.

  “I’m going to deal with her,” he said firmly. “By tomorrow, you’ll have nothing to worry about. I’ll kill her if I have to. Don’t look like that. Just joking. Now, off with you.”

  ♦

  Hamish ate his lunch, fed his pets, told them to stay behind, and set off for Catriona Beldame’s cottage. A group of villagers followed him. He kept turning and shouting “Stay back!” and they would stop, but as soon as he moved on, they would follow again, keeping a discreet distance.

  He knocked at the door. Catriona answered his knock and stood there, one hand on the lintel. She was dressed in a long black velvet gown that made her look like the witch she was supposed to be.

  “Well?”

  “I am here to tell you,” said Hamish, “that if you continue to supply drugs to the people of this village, it will be the worse for you.”

  She gave a mocking laugh. “Couldn’t get your search warrant, could you?”

  He turned and looked at her Volvo, parked at the side of the cottage. He went over to it and shone his torch on it. “You need new tyres,” he said. “You cannot drive that car until you have them fitted. Your vehicle is not roadworthy.”

  She followed him. The wind had risen and was whipping her hair about her face.

  She pointed a long finger at him. “I cursed you, remember?” she said. “Black days are coming, Hamish Macbeth.”

  “Oh, go to hell,” shouted Hamish. “I’ll haff ye out o’ my village and on your broomstick if it’s the last thing I do. Catriona Beldame, indeed. What’s your real name, lassie? Tracy Smellie, Josie Clapp, something like that? I’ll find out, you know.”

  She flew at him, her hands clawing at his face.

  He gave her a hearty push and she went sprawling in the heather.

  Hamish went and stood over her. “Take my advice and leave by tomorrow.”

  He turned and strode away down the brae. The watchers had vanished.

  ♦

  The next day, a case of shoplifting took him over to Cnothan, his least favourite place. It turned out to be the theft of nothing more than chocolate bars. He identified the two culprits from the security camera, persuaded the angry shopkeeper not to press criminal charges, and went off to see the boys’ parents. He was damned if he was going to give two little boys a criminal record this early in their lives. It all took more time than he had expected between getting the boys, two brothers, from school, and taking them home to their shocked mother. Mother and boys were then taken to the shop, where they apologised while the mother paid for the stolen goods. After that, he stopped off to see some friends in Cnothan before heading home.

  He took his binoculars and went out onto the waterfront and focussed them on the ‘witch’s’ cottage. Her car was still there. He wondered what to do. He was sure that if he arrested her, they would now not find anything sinister in those bottles of hers. She would have destroyed anything incriminating. If he threatened her any more, he could be charged with police harassment.

  He returned to the station to find Jimmy Anderson waiting for him. “You’re going to be up on a disciplinary charge, Hamish, unless you can come up with a good explanation.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Your newcomer, Catriona Beldame, has reported you for assault.”

  “She tried to claw my face, I pushed her over, and I’ve got witnesses. Come ben and get your whisky and I’ll tell you all about it.”

  Seated at the kitchen table a few minutes later, Jimmy listened to Hamish’s story.

  When Hamish had finished, he said, “Why didn’t the bampots just order Viagra from the Internet?”

  “I don’t think they’d know how to,” said Hamish. “We’re still a superstitious lot here. I checked the police files under her daft name, but I couldn’t find anything. That woman is evil!”

  “What is it with women?” asked Jimmy. “You see all these magazines telling them how to enhance their sex life.”

  “I think you’ll find the complaining women all had children and were past the menopause. They’d rather read a romance or fantasise about a film star than have their old man fumbling again.”

  “Miserable old biddies. They should let the old man get his leg over occasionally.”

  “I hate it all,” said Hamish. “I’m telling you, Jimmy, the two biggest motives for murder are sex and money.”

  “Maybe she was supplying one and getting the other for services rendered,” suggested Jimmy.

  “There’s not that much money in Lochdubh.”

  “Come on, man! I bet there’s money hidden under some of the mattresses here. They’re a canny lot. Probably have been saving for years.”

  “I chust wish she would go away,” mourned Hamish. “The men know she made a fool of them.”

  ♦

  The following two days were quiet. No sign of the witch, and yet Hamish swore he could almost see a miasma of evil hanging over his beloved village.

  Then on the third morning, he received a visit from the milkman, Hughie Cromart. “The milk outside the Beldame woman’s cottage hasn’t been taken in,” he said. “You should get up there and see if anything has happened to her.”

  Hamish felt a spasm of black dread. The fear that one of the men in the village would do something to the ‘witch’ that had been lurking around his subconscious now came roaring up into his brain.

  “I’ll get up there right away,” he said.

  It was a crisp cold morning. There had been a thick frost during the night. The loch lay as still as a sheet of metal under a grey sky. The tops of the two mountains soaring above Lochdubh were covered in snow.

  Two buzzards sailed lazily above the cottage as Hamish approached.

  He knocked at the door and waited.

  No reply.

  He tried the handle but the door was locked. He then tried to peer into the two windows at the front of the cottage, but the curtains were drawn.

  Hamish wondered what to do. If he broke in and she was all right, she would add the charge of breaking and entering to the one of police harassment. He walked round to the back.

  There was one door
and one window at the back, but the door was locked and the curtains were tightly drawn across the window.

  He studied the lock. It was a simple Yale one. He took out a thin strip of metal and forced the lock.

  Hamish switched on the light. He found himself in the room where she kept all her potions, the room he had been in before. He went across the tiny hall and opened the door to the room opposite.

  It had been fitted up as a bedroom. He could see that in the dim light filtering through the curtains. There was a figure on the bed. He switched on the light and let out a gasp of dismay.

  Catriona was lying naked on the bed. Her throat had been slashed and there were stab wounds on her chest. Blood seemed to have spurted everywhere. He backed out slowly and made his way outside the way he came in.

  Hamish phoned police headquarters and stood there, looking down the brae to the village, wondering who the murderer was and praying it wasn’t one of the villagers.

  ∨ Death of a Witch ∧

  3

  Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attraction of others.

  – Oscar Wilde

  Hamish stood outside the cottage waiting for the police from Strathbane to arrive. A group of villagers had gathered down the brae and stood looking at him in silence. It was unnerving. No one approached him or called out to him asking what was wrong.

  As he heard the sirens in the distance, there was a sudden gasp from the crowd. He heard behind him a sinister crackling sound and swung round in alarm. The red glare of flames could be seen at the bedroom window where the dead body lay.

  Hamish ran into the cottage. At least the body must be saved for the autopsy. But when he opened the bedroom door, he reeled back before a crackling wall of flame. He ran out again and round the back of the cottage. There was no sign of anyone. He called the fire brigade in Braikie and then ran down to the crowd, crying to them to fetch water. Deaf to his pleas, they turned as one person and began to walk away.

  By the time the first police car arrived carrying Blair and Jimmy Anderson, the cottage was a roaring inferno.

  “Whit the hell’s going on here?” yelled Blair.

  “It’s Catriona Beldame,” said Hamish. “Someone murdered her and then the cottage was set on fire.”

  Hamish realised, in that moment, that the murderer had probably been lurking in the cottage and set fire to the place as soon as he had walked outside. What had happened to his usual highland sixth sense? He could have sworn he was alone in the place.

  “So,” said Blair, “how do ye know she was murdered?”

  “There was a report from the milkman that she hadn’t been taking in her milk. I went in through the back and found her in bed. Her throat had been slashed and there were stab wounds on her body. I went outside and phoned headquarters and waited. Then the cottage began to burn. I tried to at least get the body out of the bedroom for forensic analysis but the fire was too much for me.”

  “You stupid loon,” raged Blair. “The murderer must have still been in the house.”

  “I saw and heard nobody,” said Hamish, wondering if he looked as stupid as he felt.

  “Just you wait, laddie, until the boss hears about this.” Blair chuckled evilly. “You’ll be the first one who’ll be suspected.”

  ♦

  To Hamish’s horror, as the day wore on, a case seemed to be building up against him. There had been a tourist in the bar when Archie had talked about Hamish going to kill the witch, and he had told the police what he had overheard.

  But despite Blair’s pleas to Superintendent Daviot to arrest Hamish, he was blocked by the fact that Daviot descended on Lochdubh himself and began to interview the villagers. The milkman swore that he had called at the police station to report that Catriona’s milk was lying outside his door and that he had followed Hamish a little way and was soon joined by other villagers. Hamish had emerged from the cottage after a few minutes and they had seen him phoning. Then the fire had started. Hamish had rushed into the cottage but then had run out calling to the crowd to fetch water.

  “Did anyone fetch water?” Daviot asked.

  Hughie, the milkman, hung his head and mumbled that they thought it a fitting end for the ‘witch.’

  So Daviot told Blair testily that Hamish had nothing to do with it and it seemed to him as if a bunch of superstitious villagers had ganged together to murder Catriona Beldame.

  If the atmosphere in the village had been bad before, now it was worse with everyone feeling they were under suspicion.

  Hamish worried and worried over the fact that he had not searched the cottage for anyone – had not even sensed the presence of anyone.

  He phoned Jimmy. “I’ve got nothing that can help you at the moment,” said Jimmy. “Forensics have been working all day on what’s left o’ the place. There’s one ray of sunshine.”

  “What’s that?”

  “There’s a new wee lassie on the forensic team. Keen as mustard. She’s having an uphill battle wi’ her beer-swilling, rugby-fanatical colleagues. But if there’s anything to find, she’ll find it.”

  “Can you give me her name and home address?”

  “Och, Hamish. Can’t you just wait? It’s just not the thing to call on a body at her home.”

  “I cannae wait,” said Hamish. “I feel like such an idiot.”

  “I don’t want to give her address. Try up at the witch’s cottage. She might be still there.”

  ♦

  Hamish set out for the cottage. A great wind was tossing grey clouds over the sky. Buzzards wheeled above and a heron, its strong wings able to cope with the gale, sailed down and settled on a rock by the water.

  Two television vans were already down on the waterfront, and he could see Blair’s posse of policemen going door-to-door.

  One policeman was on guard outside the cottage, hunched against the wind.

  “Is there anyone from forensics still inside?” asked Hamish.

  “Aye, there’s a wee lassie from forensic.”

  “I’ll just be having a word with her.”

  The policeman barred his way. “Chief Detective Inspector Blair said nobody was to go in.”

  “Aye, but he meant the press or the villagers,” said Hamish. He sidestepped round the policeman and went in, realising suddenly that as he was visiting the scene of a crime, he should have been wearing his blue coveralls. He retreated to just inside the doorway and called out, “Anybody here?”

  A female voice called, “I’m out the back.”

  Hamish went out and walked around to the back of the cottage. He had a sudden vision of the type of female forensic investigator he had seen on American TV programmes – slim and tall with long hair and high cheekbones. So it came as something of a disappointment to see a small dumpy figure, covered in a white suit, white hood, and white boots. She was searching diligently in the heather.

  “Find anything?” asked Hamish. She stood up and pushed her hood back a little, revealing springy gold and red curls. Her cheeks were plump and rosy and she had large very blue eyes.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “Hamish Macbeth. I’m the local bobby. And you are…?”

  “Lesley Seaton, forensics.”

  “I came up here,” said Hamish, “in the hope you might have found some reason for the cottage going up in flames. I found the body and then stood outside waiting for them from Strathbane to arrive. Then the cottage started to burn. What puzzles me is that I didnae sense anyone in the cottage.”

  “I think I’ve found the reason for that,” said Lesley. “I’ve found faint ash traces in the heather going a bit back. Some of the roots are scorched. It’s my belief that someone lit a fuse.”

  “Thank goodness for that,” said Hamish. “I thought I was slipping. Wait a bit. I didnae smell petrol or anything like that.”

  “I think – mind you, this is only a preliminary investigation – that the fuse ran into a plastic bucket of wastepaper placed under th
e wooden kitchen cupboards. I think the kitchen wall was soaked in some sort of cooking oil. I’ve only traces of things, mind you. Oil had been poured under the bed. The flames must have shot through the kitchen wall into the bedroom. There was a paraffin heater in the kitchen. That would add to the blaze, and then there was one in the bedroom as well.”

  “Any idea when she was killed?”

  “I’ll need to wait for a report from the procurator fiscal,” said Lesley. “It’ll be hard to tell with the body being so badly burnt. But evidently there were two days’ uncollected milk on the step, so maybe she was killed two days ago.”

  “What I cannae understand,” said Hamish, “is why then did the murderer wait so long to torch the place?”

  “Maybe the murderer is some amateur who, once having murdered the woman, panicked. People see so many forensic programmes these days that they think someone will hold up a bit of hair a day later and say, “Aha, that’s the DNA of Jock McHaggis,” or whatever.” She sighed. “Little do they know.”

  “Where are the rest of your team?”

  Her face hardened. “They’re playing Braikie at rugby tonight so they’ve all gone off to get ready. I’ve got most of my samples so I think I’ll pack it in for tonight.” Her blue eyes twinkled. “Am I wrong in thinking that Mr. Blair is going to hate me when I produce evidence for this fuse? He’s chortling and rubbing his hands and telling everyone who’ll listen how Hamish Macbeth let a murderer get away from under his nose.”

  “No, you’re not wrong. I hope it was a long fuse.”

  “Not very long. With this springy heather, it’s hard to tell where it started but fortunately the back here is sheltered a bit from the wind. But farther away, the wind’s whipped off any traces and I can’t find anymore scorched heather roots.”

  “Let me go back and see if I can see anything.” Hamish got down on his knees and, starting at the point where she said she had found the ash, began to crawl off through the heather. To his relief, the wind suddenly dropped in that erratic way it has in Sutherland. He crawled past the markers she had laid out to map the track of the fuse and carried on after the markers had run out. The clouds were still racing across the sky. A fitful gleam of sunshine sparkled on something ahead of him in the heather. He crawled forwards and gently parted the heather. He found himself looking at two metal clothes pegs and a squashed glue stick. “Come ower here and look at this,” he called.