He was just edging it out from the wall when a voice behind him demanded, “What are you doing?” He said this old woman had crept up behind him.
“I was just making a call,” he said.
Mrs. Harrison said, “I haven’t seen you around here before. Something fishy. I’m calling the police.” He shouted, “No, don’t!” and hit her hard with the tyre iron.
He thought he had just stunned her, but he had hit her harder than he had meant. He panicked and fled.
Hamish charged him with the murder of Mrs. Harrison and then phoned Inverness police.
Harry was now sobbing brokenly. Hamish had heard before that valuable antiques could drive people mad, but he’d never really believed it. Well, Morag would be able to go to Australia after all.
He heard police cars screech to a halt outside.
“On your feet,” he ordered Harry. He slid his hand inside Harry’s jacket, took out his wallet, and extracted a ten-pound note before putting the wallet back again.
“That’s for the petrol,” said Hamish. “I am not paying you for petrol to go and commit murder.”
Harry began to laugh hysterically and was still laughing when he was dragged out to the police car.
Look for Death of a Nurse, M. C. Beaton’s new mystery featuring Hamish MacBeth, Scotland’s most quick-witted and unambitious policeman.
Available in February 2016.
A preview follows.
Chapter One
I wish I loved the Human Race;
I wish I loved its silly face;
I wish I liked the way it walks;
I wish I liked the way it talks:
And when I’m introduced to one
I wish I thought What Jolly Fun!
—Sir Walter A. Raleigh
Police Sergeant Hamish Macbeth was in a sour mood, despite the sunny, windy weather. His new sidekick, policeman Charlie Carter, was giving him claustrophobia. Admittedly Charlie was kind and amiable and worked hard. But he was big, very big. Hamish was tall but Charlie was taller and broader, and he was clumsy. He fell over the furniture, he broke china and glass, and when Hamish shouted at him, he looked so miserable that Hamish immediately felt guilty.
Hamish’s odd-looking dog called Lugs walked at his heels as did his wild cat, Sonsie. Wild cats are an endangered species and Hamish was always afraid that Sonsie would be taken away. As if sensing his master’s bad mood, Lugs looked up at Hamish with his strange blue eyes.
The breeze sent sunny ripples dancing across the sea loch. The village of Lochdubh in Sutherland looked like a picture postcard with its row of small eighteenth-century whitewashed cottages facing the sea loch. Hamish was leaning on the seawall, thinking dark thoughts about getting Charlie transferred back to Strathbane, that ghastly town full of drugs and crime.
He turned away from the wall, and that was when he saw a vision. A nurse came tripping along with a shopping basket over her arm. From her jaunty cap to her candy-striped dress and her black stockings, she looked like a fantasy nurse. She went into Patel’s grocery store and Hamish followed. He waited outside until she emerged with a basket full of groceries over her arm. He swept off his cap. “May I carry your messages for you?”
She smiled up at him from a perfect oval of a face. Her large eyes were grey and fringed with heavy lashes. Her hair, under the cap, was fair and glossy.
“Thank you,” she said. “But my car is right there.”
“I’ll put them in the boot for you,” said Hamish. “Do you work near here?”
“Yes, I am a private nurse. I take care of old Mr. Harrison.”
“He lives in that old hunting lodge out on the Braikie road,” said Hamish. “But he had a nurse, a Miss Macduff.”
She laughed. “He fired her and employed me. So you’re the local copper.”
“Hamish Macbeth. And you are?”
“Gloria Dainty.”
He put her basket in the boot. She bent over the boot to arrange something and the frisky wind lifted the skirt of her dress, revealing that those stockings were held up with lacy suspenders.
“I’ll follow you,” said Hamish. “I haven’t said hullo to Mr. Harrison.” He had actually visited the old man, ignoring the fact that Mr. Harrison had said sourly that he did not want visitors. But he was determined to further his acquaintance with Gloria.
Charlie Carter knew in his bones that Hamish wanted rid of him. He could not bear the idea of leaving Lochdubh. He was trying to make a cup of tea without breaking or spilling anything when there was a knock at the door. When he opened it, he found Priscilla Halburton-Smythe smiling at him.
“I’m afraid Hamish is out,” said Charlie. “I’m about to make tea. Like some?”
“Yes, please.” Priscilla sat down at the kitchen table. Various pieces of china, recently mended, stood on a piece of newspaper. “Have you been breaking much?” she asked sympathetically.
“Hamish gets so mad at me,” said Charlie. “And that makes me worse. Fact is, it is a wee station and we’re two big men.” He poured tea carefully and then sat down gingerly opposite her. Even sitting down, his head was near the low ceiling. The kitchen chair creaked alarmingly under his weight. His normally pleasant face looked so miserable that Priscilla was touched. Because of her beauty, until Charlie came along, Priscilla had never been able to have a male friend.
“I’ve just remembered something,” she said. “In the basement at the castle, there’s a little apartment which used to be the butler’s place before we turned it into a hotel. It has high ceilings.”
Charlie brightened and then his face fell. “I’m supposed to live in police accommodation.”
“Nobody would know, apart from me and Hamish. Oh, maybe the villagers, but they won’t talk. Let’s go now and have a look.”
Hamish, as he followed Gloria into the dark hall of the hunting lodge, remembered again that Mr. Harrison was a nasty old man who had sneered at him when Hamish had visited. He carried the shopping basket into a cavernous kitchen. “Just put the basket on the table,” said Gloria, “and come through to the drawing room and say hullo.”
“Isn’t there a housekeeper to do the shopping?” asked Hamish.
“Yes, but this stuff is for me. Mr. Harrison has a Latvian couple to look after him, Juris and Inga Janson. I prefer to cook my own food. Must look after my figure.”
Oh, let me look after it for you, thought Hamish dreamily.
“Come along,” she said briskly.
As he followed her through a dark stone-flagged passage and across the shadowy hall where only weak light filtered through the mullioned windows, Hamish reflected that the hunting box had probably been built at the end of the nineteenth century when there was a craze for Gothic architecture. Stuffed animals’ heads looked down from the thick stone walls. A stone staircase with a stone banister led upwards.
Gloria pushed open a heavy oak door, stood aside, and called, “Here is our local bobby to see you, Mr. Harrison.”
An old man with his knees covered in a tartan rug was seated in a wheelchair by a French window overlooking a terrace where a few dead leaves skittered along in the breeze.
He swung his chair round. “He’s already said hullo. Where the hell are the Jansons? I want a drink.”
“I’ll get it,” said Gloria. “Your usual whisky and soda? What about you, Hamish?”
“Too early for me,” said Hamish.
“Sanctimonious prick,” commented Mr. Harrison.
He had a thick head of hair and bushy eyebrows. His eyes were small and black.
“You see this copper here, Gloria?” he demanded. “This is just the sort of chap you want to avoid. If he had any guts or ambition, he would have risen in the ranks instead of being stuck in the back of nowhere.”
“Like you,” said Hamish.
“Here’s your drink, my dear,” said Gloria soothingly. “Aren’t we a bit cross this morning?”
Mr. Harrison took the glass from her and his face softened. “What
would I do without you? Push off, copper.”
Hamish smiled. “If you ever need my help, forget it.”
“I’ll see you out,” said Gloria.
Hamish hesitated at the front door. “Any chance of taking you out for dinner one evening? There’s a very good restaurant in Lochdubh.”
“I’m allowed a day off a week. Every Sunday. Maybe that would be nice.”
“What about next Sunday? I’ll drive so you can have a drink.”
“If Mr. Harrison saw you, I don’t think he would approve. I’ll get Juris to run me there. What time?”
“Say eight o’clock?”
“Fine.”
“You’re not going to bring those creepy animals with you, are you?”
“No, not at all,” said Hamish, her attractions dimming a little like a faulty lightbulb. “See you there.”
He climbed into the police Land Rover. Sonsie was in the passenger seat and Lugs in the back. “You’re not creepy, are you?” he said. Sonsie gave a rumbling purr.
Copyright © 2016 by Marion Chesney
More Hamish Macbeth Mysteries by M. C. Beaton
Death of a Liar
Death of a Policeman
Death of Yesterday
Death of a Kingfisher
Death of a Chimney Sweep
Death of a Valentine
Death of a Witch
Death of a Gentle Lady
Death of a Maid
Death of a Dreamer
Death of a Bore
Death of a Poison Pen
Death of a Village
Death of a Celebrity
Death of a Dustman
Death of an Addict
Death of a Scriptwriter
Death of a Dentist
Death of a Macho Man
Death of a Nag
Death of a Charming Man
Death of a Travelling Man
Death of a Greedy Woman
Death of a Prankster
Death of a Snob
Death of a Hussy
Death of a Perfect Wife
Death of an Outsider
Death of a Cad
Death of a Gossip
A Highland Christmas
About the Author
M. C. Beaton has won international acclaim for her bestselling Hamish Macbeth mysteries, and the BBC has aired twenty-four episodes based on the series. Also the author of the Agatha Raisin series, M. C. Beaton lives in a Cotswold cottage with her husband. For more information, you can visit MCBeaton.com.
Thank you for buying this ebook, published by Hachette Digital.
To receive special offers, bonus content, and news about our latest ebooks and apps, sign up for our newsletters.
Sign Up
Or visit us at hachettebookgroup.com/newsletters
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Knock, Knock, You're Dead!
A Preview of The Death of a Nurse
More Hamish Macbeth Mysteries by M. C. Beaton
About the Author
Newsletters
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2006 by Marion Chesney
Cover illustration by Stanley Martucci
Cover copyright © 2016 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
Grand Central Publishing
Hachette Book Group
1290 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10104
grandcentralpublishing.com
twitter.com/grandcentralpub
Originally published in The Strand Magazine
First Edition: February 2016
Grand Central Publishing is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
The Grand Central Publishing name and logo is a trademark of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
The Hachette Speakers Bureau provides a wide range of authors for speaking events. To find out more, go to www.hachettespeakersbureau.com or call (866) 376-6591.
ISBNs: 978-1-4555-4058-7
E3
Knock, Knock, You're Dead!: A Hamish Macbeth Short Story Page 2