Highland Laddie Gone

by Sharyn McCrumb

  Well, he had planned for that contingency. He would thicken his burr to the consistency of creamed cheese, and vow that he had nae idea whatsoever what these bloodthirsty Americans could be getting up to in the name of clan rivalry. He considered claiming kinship with the Campbells on his mother’s side, but that might leak out, and it would be bad for business.

  Lachlan picked up his half-full can of shandy-it was closer to the woolens than he was used to putting it. This murder business was making him absentminded, he thought. Waving time-out to his customers, Lachlan took a swig of his drink, making his usual silent toast, the Cultoquhey litany: From the greed of the Campbells, From the ire of the Drummonds, From the pride of the Grahams, From the wind of the Murrays, Good Lord, deliver us.

  James Stuart McGowan turned up a few minutes later, looking less bored than usual. He elbowed his way past the browsers. “Sorry I’m late!” he called to Lachlan. “Something interesting happened!”

  “Oh, aye? Got your dad to give you power of attorney, did ye?”

  Jimmy grinned. “Nah! Nothing interesting ever happens with them. I did shake them up a bit when I ordered a shandy with lunch. I would have gotten away with it if the waiter hadn’t asked, ‘I suppose you want it without the beer, young man.’ ”

  Lachlan shook his head. “They’ll no be pleased, Jimmy.”

  “When we were coming back into the festival, though, guess what we saw? The sheriff arresting somebody!”

  Lachlan looked wary. “Oh, aye?”

  “Yep. He didn’t have on handcuffs, but they put him in the backseat of the squad car, where there aren’t any door handles. He had changed back into regular clothes to go to jail, but my dad recognized him anyway.”

  “Arrested? For the murder, do you mean?”

  “Of course. You wouldn’t do drug busts on an affluent crowd like this,” said Jimmy smugly. “Don’t you want to know who the collar was? Take a guess-I mean, with your ESP.”

  “For killing a Campbell?” Lachlan took a deep breath. “Would it by any chance be the president of the MacDonald clan?”

  Jimmy grinned. “You got it! Walter Hutcheson. What do you think of that?”

  “It grieves me,” said Lachlan Forsyth. “I was hoping to stay out of it.”

  “Of course, he’s a well-known surgeon, so he probably has a competent attorney on retainer, don’t you think? He’ll probably make bail on his standing in the community and be out of the slammer by six o’clock.”

  “What did you say, laddie?” murmured Lachlan. “I was thinking about something else.”

  In hushed and well-bred tones, the word spread quickly around the festival that Walter Hutcheson had been taken in for questioning in connection with Colin’s murder. Elizabeth, on duty at the Chattan tent, heard it from Betty Carson, who maintained that Walter had been acting strangely for some time now, and she wondered if he might be taking narcotics.

  “I wonder how Marge is taking this,” Elizabeth said to Cameron.

  “Is that his former wife?”

  “Yes. Oh, I see what you mean. But Cameron, they were married for ages, and Marge isn’t the sort of person who holds grudges. Why, I’ll bet she’ll even be speaking to Geoffrey again in a year or two. I think I should go and see how she’s doing. Will you watch Cluny for me?”

  “I’m not even in Highland dress,” Cameron protested. “Why should I have to mind him?”

  Elizabeth smiled. “Because you have a Ph.D. in biology, sir-I’ll be back soon!”

  She hurried down the path toward the practice meadow, and Cameron scratched Cluny’s ears and watched her go. “I only do seals and porpoises,” he said with a sigh of resignation.

  Somerled, the border collie, was on his chain in front of Marge’s tent, so Elizabeth knew that she had come to the right place. Marge was there. She wasn’t sure exactly what tone to adopt about this recent development, but perhaps she could take her cue from Marge’s behavior. If nothing else, Elizabeth could run errands or offer to look after Somerled.

  “Hello,” she said softly, peering into the tent. “What a reek of smoke!” she added, leaning back and coughing. “If you’re going to chain-smoke, you ought to do it out in the open where there’s oxygen to compensate.”

  Marge did not look up. “I don’t know what to do,” she said.

  Elizabeth ventured in, fanning the air in front of her. “About Walter, you mean?”

  “Yes. It’s all so complicated.”

  “What does he want you to do?”

  In a halting voice, Marge told her about their encounter just before the arrest, and Walter’s list of instructions. “He had forgotten all about her,” said Marge. “Anyone could see that. And I don’t know what to do.”

  “I think you should do what’s best for Walter,” said Elizabeth, who felt that that was both a comforting and a neutral thing to say.

  Marge nodded and reached for the pack of cigarettes. “Yes. Perhaps I should.” After a few moments silence, she remarked, “Walter didn’t kill Colin, you know.”

  Elizabeth shook her head. “I don’t know anything about it. I’d heard they had a fight.”

  “Yes, but I have known Walter for most of his life, and I assure you that he is not a murderer.”

  “Well, I suppose they might let you testify as a character witness,” said Elizabeth kindly. She felt that such testimonials would be ridiculous as well as useless, but she meant to be soothing until Marge could get a grip on herself.

  “He did not do it.”

  “Then I’m sure that the sheriff’s investigations will turn up something in his favor, and everything will be all right.”

  “I wouldn’t count on that,” said Marge grimly. “They have that stupid real estate argument as motive, and they asked me about Walter’s skian dubh, so presumably that was the murder weapon. And I know they fingerprinted a bunch of us. The fact that they took Walter away must mean that they found his prints on it.”

  “That’s a pretty strong case,” Elizabeth admitted. “Maybe Walter has changed. I mean, he has been doing some strange things in the past few years, hasn’t he?”

  “You mean Heather?”

  “Well… maybe he’s going through some mid-life crisis, and-”

  “Walter’s beyond mid-life crisis,” snorted Marge. “He now qualifies as an old fool. But I don’t think he could change enough to start stabbing people.”

  Elizabeth was beginning to feel restless. There’s no reasoning with her, she thought. Women in love have one-track minds. I wonder what Cameron is doing?

  “What the sheriff needs is some new evidence. He won’t be looking for any more himself. He thinks he’s solved the case.” Marge sighed. “Of course, no one would believe me. I’m not objective. I doubt if anyone would tell me anything anyway.”

  Elizabeth’s heart sank. “I suppose that I could sort of ask around and see if I can come up with anything in Walter’s favor.”

  “Colin must have quarreled with lots of people at the festival,” Marge mused.

  “He had run-ins with Cameron and me, but we didn’t do it.”

  “Yes, but besides that.”

  Elizabeth thought about it. People had been discussing the case around her all afternoon, and occasional remarks had filtered through her thoughts about Cameron. She tried to remember what some of them were. “Betty Carson said something about Dr. Campbell wanting to call a committee meeting this morning.”

  “Oh? That could be important! Colin would only do that if he intended to launch a large-scale donnybrook. I wonder what he was up to?”

  “Something about embezzlement, I thought.”

  “Money? Nonsense. The committee has accountants coming out of their ears, and half of them are lawyers anyway. Are you sure she said embezzlement? It doesn’t matter. It was probably third hand anyway. Who would Betty have heard all this from?”

  “Dr. Carson, I imagine. He’s on the committee.”

  “Good. Talk to him.”

  Elizabeth si
ghed. “I wish I could talk to Colin.”

  “Yes, that would solve everything, wouldn’t it?”

  “Not about the murder. I was just thinking. Betty said that Dr. Campbell seemed to know a lot about Heather’s background. They were talking about a new baby in the family.”

  “Heather’s background?”

  Elizabeth nodded miserably. “I think she and Cameron knew each other back in Scotland. I’ll bet Dr. Campbell could have told me what was going on.”

  “I’ll bet he would’ve, too,” said Marge grimly. “That’s the trait that killed him.”

  Walter Hutcheson’s present wife was sitting alone in the camper, trying to decide what to do. Walter had shouted a lot of instructions at her as they were leading him away, something about telephoning a lot of people. But he hadn’t left her any phone numbers, and the address book was back at the house. She supposed she could leave the festival and drive home. She’d never driven the camper, though, and it would be like maneuvering a great bloody aircraft carrier on the two-lane roads. She might get herself killed.

  Heather had not been crying, but she was tense and afraid. What if things didn’t turn out all right? Sod the stupid police anyway for arresting Walter. She looked at the half-empty bottle of Glenlivet in front of her. Better not have another-not that she was too keen on the taste of the stuff anyway. This was not a time to be losing control. The police would be back along asking questions of her, she was sure. When did you last see your husband’s skian dubh? What time did he leave the camper? Was there any blood about him?

  Heather twisted a strand of hair and tried to decide if she ought to do anything. Walter would call his own lawyer from the police station, wouldn’t he? And like as not, they’d arrange the bail, and then he could come and drive her home. She didn’t like to ask anyone for help just now; she wanted to be alone. It would all work out, she thought. It had to. Cameron Dawson reminded her of why she had left Scotland, and why she didn’t want to go back. Americans-and Walter in particular-were a bit simple, but she was enjoying herself, and she wasn’t going to see it spoiled. Cameron Dawson… In spite of her worries, Heather giggled remembering the look on the little brunette’s face when they’d talked about him… Silly git.

  She wondered what Walter’s former wife was doing. She was the Maggie Thatcher type, all right. If it had been her here as the defendant’s wife, she’d have already called the President and organized a league of Friends of Walter Hutcheson. A geriatric Girl Guide was Marge.

  She started at the sound of the knock on the camper door. Not the bloody cops already! Heather opened the door cautiously, ready to slam it if she caught sight of a camera. “Oh,” she said. “It’s you, Jimmy. If you don’t give me any of that Your Ladyship rubbish, you can come in.”

  Questioning people at the Highland games wasn’t going to be as easy as Marge seemed to think. Elizabeth knew that elderly Virginians were the last people in the world to take a young girl seriously-and if they did, they would resent her. She had wasted a good bit of her social life having to be wide-eyed and respectful while pompous old bores held forth on their pet subjects. The liberal-arts types were the worst. They always managed to steer the conversation to the inch-wide sea of whatever their specialty was and to dismiss anything else as not worth knowing. That’s why I fall for scientists, Elizabeth thought: I give them credit for being brilliant because they can do things that I can’t-and they’re not given to talking about it over dinner.

  She had been unable to find Andy Carson to ask him about Dr. Campbell’s proposed committee meeting, but another member of the group, Hughie MacDuffie, was all too evident. Elizabeth hesitated. Was she really desperate enough to commit herself to a conversation with MacDuffie? Conversation was hardly the word for it, though: a few utterances of “Oh, really?” were the most that Hughie would permit in the way of participation in his monologue. He taught ancient history at a military academy, and was given to telling jokes with the punch line in Latin.

  I might as well get it over with, thought Elizabeth, gritting her teeth. “Hello, Dr. MacDuffie, how nice to see you!” she said aloud.

  Hughie MacDuffie’s victim, who had been subjected to a lecture on Tacitus’s opinion of the Scots, took advantage of the momentary distraction and fled. The professor looked over his black-rimmed glasses at Elizabeth, either trying to place her or mentally flipping through his list of conversational harangues.

  “MacPherson, isn’t it?” he said, eyeing her sash.

  “Yes, sir. Maid of the Cat this year.” I may as well volunteer it, she thought; we’re not going to get anywhere until I do. “My parents are Douglas and Margaret MacPherson, and my older brother Bill is a law student.”

  “Any kin to David MacPherson of the Upperville Hunt Club?”

  “No. My mother is one of the North Georgia Chandlers. Timber.”

  “Ah! Splendid weather we’re having for the festival, isn’t it?”

  Elizabeth sighed. It was a science, after all, communicating with this bunch. Seals and porpoises couldn’t be any trickier. She spent another few minutes making the correct noises before launching her chosen topic of conversation.

  “Isn’t it shocking about poor Dr. Campbell?”

  “Abiit ad plures,” said Hughie solemnly.

  “I’m sure he’ll be greatly missed. Such a busy man! You were on the committee with him, weren’t you?”

  “I like to think that, like the second Triumvirate…”

  Elizabeth ignored the gambit. If I let him get started on Rome, we’ll be here for days, she thought. “Had you talked to Dr. Campbell lately?” she asked.

  Hughie MacDuffie cocked his head, trying to recall the faces of his conversational victims. “Colin Campbell… yes… because I remember saying to him: tantum religio potuit…” “What was he talking about?”

  “Campbell? He wanted to get the committee together this morning. He didn’t though. Never turned up.”

  “He was dead,” Elizabeth reminded him. “Now, did he say what the meeting was about?”

  “Fraud. I remember, because I said-”

  “Fraud? You’re sure it wasn’t embezzlement.”

  “No, my dear. The two things can be very different. For example, when the fire department of Rome was run by-”

  “Did he say who the fraud concerned?”

  “Oh, someone here at the games, I believe. Something about… what did he tell me?… I’m afraid I wasn’t listening as attentively as I might-Colin was such an old bore. Of course, had I known that he would be killed, I would certainly have paid attention. I think a dentist was asking him about tartan patterns. But that doesn’t make sense, does it? Unless it’s like the Oracle of Delphi. Have you heard the story about the fellow who went to the Oracle… Let’s see, it was…”

  There was no formal registration for the Highland games. People paid their admission at the gate without signing anything. New members could, if they wished, put themselves on a mailing list at one of the clan tents, but even then occupation was not listed on the form. Anyway, with more than fifty clan tents, it would take days to track down the information, with very little chance of finding the right one. How do you find a dentist in a haystack, Elizabeth wondered. The only solution that occurred to her was more drastic than she cared to undertake. Clearly, it was a job for Geoffrey.

  She found him in the Keith tent, sharing a bottle of Dewars and the plot of Brigadoon with two of the clan officers.

  “And then he goes back to New York, right? So…”

  “Geoffrey!”

  “Hello, Elizabeth. How odd to find you Scot-free. As I was saying-”

  “Geoffrey, I have a part for you in a small drama.”

  Geoffrey, noting her serious expression, set down his plastic cup with a sigh of regret. “Once more unto the breach, dear friends…”

  When she had steered him out of earshot of the Keith contingent, she said, “I suppose you want to know what this is all about.”

  “I’ll t
ell you what it had better not be about,” said Geoffrey menacingly. “If you have had some kind of altercation with your Highland laddie and are expecting me to play Friar Laurence in any way whatsoever…”

  “It isn’t that. I have to find a dentist.”

  Geoffrey raised his eyebrows. “Wouldn’t it be easier to ask Cameron his age? You could sneak a look at his passport.”

  “Shut up. This has nothing to do with Cameron. I’ve been looking into the business about Dr. Campbell, and it turns out that he wanted to call a committee meeting this morning because of some fraud connected with the games. One of the committee members says that he found out about the fraud from a dentist.”

  “Why are you playing sleuth, dear cousin? Shouldn’t you be at the library checking out books on seals and porpoises?”

  Elizabeth blushed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Anyway, the sheriff has arrested Dr. Hutcheson, and he didn’t do it, so I’m going to try to uncover some new evidence.”

  “How do you know he didn’t do it?”

  “Marge is convinced of it. She’s such a saint. You wouldn’t catch me being that worried about a man who had left me for someone else.”

  “No, my dear. Beneath your little pixie face lies the soul of Clytemnestra.” Seeing her look of bewilderment, he explained, “Wife of Agamemnon. When her husband came home from the Trojan War with a pretty little captive, she took a knife to both of them.”

  Elizabeth thought about Heather, but her better nature refused even to consider the fantasy. “I don’t need another classics lesson,” she snapped, remembering Hughie MacDuffie. “I’m doing my good deed by trying to clear Walter Hutcheson-if he is innocent. And my only lead so far is the dentist who talked to Colin Campbell about fraud.”