by M C Beaton
“Oh, what’s the point,” said Willie wearily, but he went away and returned with a cloth and cleaned the plastic table-cloth. Hamish was then distracted by the arrival of Betty. She was wearing a white blouse with a deep V-neck and a black skirt under a loose coat and smelt of a strong, musky perfume. She had very fine eyes, he noticed, and a full, sensuous mourn.
“This is nice,” she said, hanging her coat over the back of the chair and sitting down. Hamish started to worry about Willie again. He usually took the diners’ coats and hung them up. Willie came up with the menus. There was a splash of candle-grease on the cover of the one he handed to Hamish.
Hamish looked at him in pained surprise. “I won’t have a first course,” said Betty. “I’m trying to slim.” She ordered an avocado salad and Hamish settled for lasagne and a bottle of Valpolieello.
“Priscilla all right?” asked Willie gloomily.
“She is just fine,” said Hamish crossly. His engagement to Priscilla was long over but no one in the village seemed prepared to accept the fact, and Willie always made Hamish feel guilty if he was dining with some other woman. “So how long have you worked in the bank?” asked Hamish. “Since I was seventeen.” She gave a husky laugh. “I’m not going to tell you how long ago that was. Mind if I smoke?”
“Go ahead,” said Hamish, stifling the irritation the reformed smoker always feels when confronted by the unreformed. She lit up a small cigar, puffed contentedly on it and then eyed him through the smoke. “So tell me all about policing. How’s the murder case going?”
“I wouldnae know,” said Hamish. “I’m just the local bobby. Strathbane’s handling it.”
“Don’t you feel left out?”
“Aye, I do, but that’s the way it goes.”
“So you just do local stuff?”
Hamish wondered whether to tell her about murder cases he had been on outside Lochdubh but decided against it. “I want a night off from police work,” he said. “Tell me about the bank.”
“Well, I’m just a teller. Whatever they might say about this age of women’s lib, it’s hard to get promotion. But I look forward to seeing some of my customers, and if the bank is quiet we can have a bit of a chat.” She told several amusing stories about her customers.
“So how did you get to know John Glover?” asked Hamish. “He was appointed bank manager from a branch in Motherwell, oh, about five years ago. We didn’t have much to do with each other until the Christmas party last year. We both got a bit drunk and started swapping stories about our unhappy marriages. We’re both divorced. And things just progressed from there.”
“If I may say so,” remarked Hamish, “neither of you looks like the kind of folks who would want to come to the Scottish Highlands for a holiday.”
“Why?”
“You’re a pretty sophisticated pair.”
“Why, thank you, sir. I don’t know what your friend Priscilla would think about that. You mean sophisticated people don’t holiday in Scotland?”
“I meant, I see the pair of you in some five-star Continental hotel with a beach.”
“Oh, we like the Highlands, John particularly. I think it was because his ex hated coming up here that he takes a particular delight in doing everything she would have disliked. Tell me about this village and what goes on, and you must have some views on the murder.”
“I was rather hoping it would turn out to be someone like your John.”
She threw back her head and gave a full belly laugh. “John! Why on earth would John want to kill anyone?” she said when she could. “Well, maybe some of the customers with huge overdrafts and no intention of ever paying them off. Why John? He’s the least murderous person I’ve ever met.”
“I want it to be someone outside of the village,” said Hamish. “These people are all my friends.”
“I see your point. But odd things happen in villages. I wouldn’t like to be up here in the winter, when it’s hardly ever light. What do you lot do for amusement? There’s no cinema or disco or anything.”
“Oh, the kirk organizes things. They show films in the church hall. Then we hae the television and Patel rents videos.”
She leaned forward and he smelt her perfume, heavy and exotic. Her eyes flirted with him. “Anything else, copper?”
She was exuding a strong air of sexuality. Hamish smiled. “Anything else is my business and that’s private.” Her voice when she next spoke was husky and intimate.
“I’ll soon be married. It’s not only men who want a fling before they’re hitched.”
“Are you propositioning me?” asked Hamish. “It’s an idea.”
“It iss the very fascinating idea,” began Hamish, and then his eyes fell on dishevelled Willie, and again he felt a pang of alarm. “I dinnae like to go to bed on the first date,” he said.
“What about the second?”
Hamish felt his senses stirring. It had been a long time. He never wanted to go back to being in love with Priscilla. Betty had a strong, sensual body and he was sure her breasts would be magnificent. “Perhaps,” he said. “Wouldn’t John be verra hurt if he found out?”
“I’d make sure he wouldn’t.”
“Can I think about it a wee bit? You make me feel like a Victorian miss. This is so sudden.”
“Think all you like. What’s bothering you? You’re uneasy and it’s not me.”
“It’s the waiter, there, Willie Lament. He’s always so neat and clean and now he looks a miserable mess.”
“Probably had a row with the wife. Is he married?”
“Yes, to Lucia. She’s a relative of the owner. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll go along after dinner and hae a word with her.”
“Suit yourself. But wait until I have a coffee and brandy first!”
♦
Willie and Lucia lived in a cottage just before the humpbacked bridge at the end of the waterfront near to Annie’s.
Hamish made his way there after he had said goodnight to Betty. He found that as soon as he was out of her orbit, he was amazed that he had even considered going to bed with her. Banks must be terribly lecherous places, he thought naively. Maybe it was the monotony of the work.
Lucia answered the door to him. She had been crying recently. “It is time you came to see your namesake,” she said. Her son was called Hamish. Hamish followed her in. The baby was asleep in a small bedroom, already crammed with stuffed animals and all the signs of doting parents. Hamish made suitable, admiring noises over the cot and then followed Lucia back into the living-room.
“What’s up?” he asked abruptly.
She sat down heavily and looked up at a framed photograph of the Spanish Steps as if wishing she were back in Italy again. “Nothing’s up,” she said. “Would you like coffee?”
“I chust had some, at the restaurant. And there wass Willie, looking shabby and miserable.”
“Nothing’s up,” she repeated, looking mulish.
“Lucia, it iss verra hard to keep things quiet in a village like this. I’ll find out sooner or later.”
“No one must know,” she said, half to herself.
“Must know what?” demanded Hamish sharply.
“Go away,” she said, her eyes filling with tears. “I’m tired.”
“I don’t want to distress you further,” said Hamish, heading for the door. “I’ll always help you and Willie, you know that, Lucia.”
She turned her head away. Hamish went out into the night, feeling sad and worried. He had always considered Willie a bit of a joke but he hated to see him unhappy. He could not ask the restaurant owner what had gone wrong, for he was away. He went back to the police station and watched the clock until he decided that Willie would be closing up for the night and then made his way back to the restaurant. He peered in through the glass door. Willie, who hardly ever drank, was sitting alone at a table, his sad face illumined by a single candle. He was drinking wine. Hamish rapped on the glass. Willie looked up and waved a hand in dismissal. Hamish rappe
d again. Willie wearily got to his feet and went and unlocked the restaurant door.
“What is it, Hamish?” he asked. “Did you leave something?”
“Let me come in, Willie, I want to talk to you.”
“Suit yourself.” Willie returned to the table. Hamish followed and sat down opposite him.
“Come on, Willie. You know what friends are for. You look a mess. Out wi’ it, man, and get it off your chest.”
Willie, the normally abstemious Willie, took another swig of wine. “She’s adulterated,” he said.
“You mean Lucia’s been having an affair?”
Willie nodded gloomily.
“I cannae believe that. Did she tell you herself?”
“No, but I followed her and I kent.”
“Kent what?”
“That she was having the affair with Randy Duggan.”
Hamish felt a cold clutch of fear at his heart. But then reason took over. Lucia, who looked like Lollobrigida in the actress’s younger days, would hardly look at a man like Duggan.
“Havers!” he said roundly. “Chust not possible. Willie, Willie, Lucia is a bonny lassie and Duggan was an ape.”
“She had been acting strange. I followed her one night when she thought I was in the restaurant and I saw her go into his cottage.”
“But this was before the murder. You were as neat as a pin a few days ago. Why the sudden disintegration?”
“Och, it got to me, the poison seeping in and seeping in.”
“So what did she say when you asked her about it?”
“She began to cry and said it was none of my business. She kept on saying I had to trust her. I was going to kill him, Duggan, but some kind soul got there first and I hope you never find out who did it.”
Hamish shook his head as if to clear his brain. Then he said, “You’re to stop drinking and you’re coming home wi’ me and we’re both going to talk to Lucia if I haff to drag you there.”
Willie protested and clutched the wine bottle fiercely, as if that would anchor him to the table. Hamish gave an exclamation of disgust, twisted Willie’s arm up his back and marched the protesting man out of the restaurant and along the waterfront towards the cottage by the bridge.
He opened the door and thrust Willie inside and into the living-room. Lucia saw them and began to cry.
“Enough!” shouted Hamish, torn between exasperation and fear. “Now we’ll sit down and you will tell us what you were doing with Randy Duggan, Lucia.”
She mopped her streaming eyes with an already sodden handkerchief and said fiercely, “No! If my own husband can’t trust me…”
“Och, lassie, if you were married to me and I saw you go to another man’s house, a man like Duggan, I’d want to know the reason why. Think o’ your bairn. It’s bad for a child to hae an atmosphere like this in the house. You’d better tell us, Lucia, or I’ll sit here all night. Don’t you know I ought to report your visit to Blair?”
“You wouldn’t,” said Lucia, looking appalled.
Hamish saw his advantage and took it. “Oh, yes, I would. So out wi’ it!”
Lucia found another handkerchief in her handbag, blew her little nose and stared at them both defiantly. Then she said, “It is Willie’s birthday in a week’s time.”
Hamish looked puzzled. “So?”
“So when I was serving in the restaurant one night – we were busy and Mrs. Mulligan was baby-sitting for me – Randy came in for dinner. He was wearing a Rolex watch and I admired it. He said he could get me one, cheap. I thought it would make a good present for Willie. I told him to go ahead but to keep it a secret. He phoned me a week later and said that he had the watch. I went to his cottage. The watch was a copy, not the real thing. There are many like it in Italy. I told him it was a fake and he tried to make a pass at me. I slapped his face.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this?” howled Willie.
“Because you should trust me,” shouted Lucia. “There should be trust between a husband and wife!” Willie began to cry, hiccuping drunken sobs. “I thocht I had lost ye,” he said between sobs.
Lucia crossed the room and knelt in front of him. “Oh, I Willie, I did not know I had made you suffer so much. Oh, Willie.” She began to kiss him. Hamish quietly left the room and, once outside, mopped his brow. Thank God that’s over, he thought, but the nagging fear that Willie, believing Lucia was unfaithful to him, had murdered Randy, would not go away.
♦
Hamish rose the next morning, his mind still full of worries. He felt he had to do something and so he decided to call on Annie again and try to find out why she had lied to him without letting her know he had searched her house.
Annie Ferguson answered the door to him. She looked delighted to see him and Hamish wondered whether she might have been telling the truth and that, although she considered it allright for herself to wear sexy underwear, she considered it indecent to wear it for love-making.
He refused an offer of tea and scones and sat down.
“Annie,” he said, “I am worried about you.”
“Oh, there is nothing to worry about,” she said cheerfully. “I told Blair what you told me to tell him and – ”
“I think there’s more to it man that,” interrupted Hamish. “Annie,” he lied, “you are a sophisticated woman of the world and well-travelled. I believe you have even been as far as Glasgow.”
“I have that,” she said, preening. “I’ve seen the world.”
Hamish reflected that Glasgow was hardly an exotic place and that one trip to the south of Scotland hardly turned anyone into a world traveller, but he pressed on. “I really cannae see you being shocked by Randy’s suggestion.”
A flush mounted to her face, mottling her neck and leaving patches of red on her cheeks.
Very much the outraged matron, she said, “I took you into my confidence and you doubt my word! Me, who told the minister’s wife, too!”
Hamish sighed. “Annie, lies in a murder investigation are dangerous things. The innocent have nothing to fear.” Except with someone like Blair around, he thought gloomily. “I am trying to do my best for you and I will protect you if you are innocent, but when I thought about your story, och, it didnae make sense. Come on, Annie. The truth.”
“You’re all the same. Men,” she muttered. “Take you. Look what you did to that lovely girl, Priscilla. She was better than someone like you deserved and you jilted her.”
“We came to an agreement to separate. I didnae jilt her.”
Isaid Hamish furiously. Then his face cleared. “That’s it! He jilted you. Thon ape jilted you.” She stayed mulishly silent, looking at the carpet, a faded Wilton covered in cabbage roses. “Yes, that’s the way it was,” said Hamish, his voice suddenly gentle. “And you despised him, too. That’s what made the rejection so bitter. You were ashamed of your affair with him. Did he say why he’d dropped you?”
She gave a dry little sob. “He told me he had found better.”
“Who?” demanded Hamish with again that clutch of fear at the heart.
“That slut, Lucia Lamont.”
“Lucia is not a slut and you know it, Annie. That’s the jeal-ousy talking. Lucia would have nothing to do with him.”
“Then why was she seen going into his cottage?” Hamish groaned inwardly. There were few secrets in a village. Sooner or later, Blair might get to hear of it. Of course, the villagers were united against such as Blair, but some of the policemen combing the heather around Randy’s cottage for clues were another matter. They drank in the pub in the evening. They might hear gossip and relay it to Blair.
“Randy had promised Lucia that he could get her a cheap Rolex watch for Willie’s birthday. She went to collect it and found it a fake. He made a pass at her and she slapped his face. That’s all there was to it. A man of his vanity probably thought he could get lucky.”
“So what are you going to do?” asked Annie, suddenly frightened. “If you tell them I lied, that Blair will arrest me.” H
amish sat silent for a few moments, thinking hard. By not telling Blair what he knew, he was obstructing a police investigation. And yet Blair would come down on him like a ton of bricks for having held back information. At last he said, “Did you kill him, Annie?”
“No,” she said. “But I wanted to.”
“We’ll leave it there, Annie, and hopefully none of this will need to come out. But unless I find the real murderer fast, then both you and Lucia are going to be in trouble!”
∨ Death of a Macho Man ∧
6
Never make a defence of apology before you be accused.
—King Charles
Priscilla was closing up the gift shop at lunch-time the following day when John Glover suddenly appeared. “Back from your travels?” she said, feeling awkward because she felt that he might at least have told her he was engaged when he first took her out for dinner.
“Just got back, and pretty hungry.”
Priscilla looked at her watch. “They’ll be serving lunch in the dining-room.”
“I don’t want lunch in the dining-room and it’s actually sunny. Come with me and we’ll drive someplace.”
“And what is Betty doing?”
“I don’t know. She told me she had dinner with that copper friend of yours last night and then she disappeared.”
“I suppose I could go,” said Priscilla. That is, if Betty wouldn’t mind.”
“Oh, she won’t mind. I told her we were friends.”
Priscilla knew she should not go with him, but if Hamish had become friendly with Betty, then Hamish would get to hear of it, and she suddenly wanted Hamish to know that other men wanted her company.
“If you tell me where we’re going, I’ll leave a message at reception.”
“I was hoping you’d suggest somewhere.”
“There’s a hotel in Crask which serves quite good food in the bar and it’s not too far. I have to be back here by two o’clock.”
“Crask it is.”
Priscilla left a message in reception that she could be contacted in Crask.
♦
Hamish Macbeth opened the door to a thirsty-looking Jimmy Anderson. The detective sighed with pleasure as he downed his first whisky of the day and then smiled at Hamish. “I’ve a wee bit o’ news that might make you sit up, Hamish.”