by M C Beaton
“So you’ve decided at last it was murder,” said Priscilla.
“Never mind what I’ve decided,” grumbled her father. “I’ll expect you here in half an hour.”
Priscilla was glad of an excuse to cut short her visit, for she did not like Mrs Wellington, the minister’s wife, a bossy, tweedy woman who bullied her husband.
When they took their leave, Prisrilla told Hamish he was expected to drive her home.
“I would have done that anyway,” said Hamish seriously. “And I want you to lock your bedroom door.”
Priscilla shivered.
“It’s funny,” mused Hamish, as they drove up the winding hill that led to the castle, “Captain Bartlett had a word wi’ me when I left the party. He was outside on the drive. He had a premonition something was about to happen to him. There was something took place at that party to give him the feeling he was in danger.”
“I wish it were all over,” sighed Priscilla.
“Henry will look after you,” said Hamish, flashing her a quick sideways look.
“Yes,” said Priscilla with a brittle laugh. “Aren’t I lucky?”
Hamish drove up through the side road to the castle, although he was sure the gentlemen of the press would have packed it in for the night.
He pulled up outside the looming dark bulk of the castle, got out, and held open the door for Priscilla.
“Are you coming in?” she asked.
Hamish shook his head.
“I enjoyed this evening,” said Hamish politely. “It is a pity you are engaged, for I had it in mind to try that new hotel up the Crask road tomorrow night.”
“The Laughing Trout? I haven’t heard very good reports of it, Hamish, but it’s only been open a few weeks. Do you mean you thought of taking me there for dinner?”
“Yes. I aye hae a wee bit o’ a celebration after the crofters’ fair.”
Priscilla turned and looked at the castle. Henry would be wondering what had happened to her. Tomorrow would be a long day. The press would turn up at the fair, and Henry would expect her to pose for photographs.
“It seems a bit odd, but we’re old friends, Hamish, and, yes, I would like to go for dinner with you.”
“I am most honoured,” said Hamish courteously. As she turned away, he added sharply, “Be careful, Priscilla.”
She gave a choked little sob and flung herself into his arms.
He patted her clumsily on the back, murmuring, “There, there. It iss all right. Hamish will look after you.”
She finally drew back and dried her eyes. “Sorry, Hamish,” she mumbled. “See you tomorrow.”
Hamish watched until she had gone inside the castle. He drove sedately to the gates and out on to the road. Then he turned on the police siren full blast and raced down to Lochdubh.
“That policeman’s drunk,” said Mrs Cunningham, peeping through her lace curtains. Two of her boarders joined her at her window. “Did you ever?” said Mrs Cunningham. “Blasting that police siren when there’s no need at all and now he’s doing cart-wheels up the side of the house to his back door.”
∨ Death of a Cad ∧
10
A crofter’s son once defined a croft as a small area of land entirely surrounded by regulations.
—katharine stewart.
Summer returned for the day of the crofters’ fair. Hamish rose early and unstopped Mrs Cunningham’s drainpipe. He was interrupted by the superintendent, demanding to know why PC Macbeth had been sounding his police siren. Hamish said he had been testing it out, as he did periodically, because you never knew when it would come in handy, to which Chalmers replied, “Well, go easy on the booze, son.”
As all the members of the house party were to attend the crofters’ fair, Chalmers said he had got Colonel Halburton-Smythe to agree to a further search of all the rooms in the castle. He ordered Hamish to attend the fair and to see if he could elicit any further information from the guests.
Hamish tactfully did not point out that he had promised to attend anyway and that the police car was being used to transport cakes and scones to the fair.
The school kitchens were being used for last–minute baking. When Hamish arrived there shortly after nine o’clock, it was to find all the members of the house party helping out. Even old Sir Humphrey Throgmorton appeared to be completely recovered and was beating batter in a bowl with a gingham apron tied round his waist.
Lady Helmsdale advanced on Hamish with a bowlful of raisin-spotted batter. “Be a good man,” she boomed, “and give that a stir while I get on with something else.”
“I’m surprised to see you all here so early,” said Hamish. “I thought you wouldn’t turn up until this afternoon.”
“Got to keep these people on the move,” said Lady Helmsdale. “Can’t have them moping around the castle being badgered by those scribe-chappies and nosy coppers and dosing themselves with tranquillizers. Tranquillizers, pah! Lot of muck, if you ask me. In my mother’s day, a good dose of castor oil put an end to stupid fancies. People are getting murdered every day. Can’t take this one too seriously. Fact is, the world’s a better place without that cad.”
“You cannae expect me to approve of people taking the law into their own hands,” said Hamish.
“Why not?”
“That’s anarchy.”
“Nonsense, Bartlett was a cockroach. Someone stepped on him. Jolly good for someone, is all I can say.”
She moved off to make sure everyone was working.
Hamish noticed Priscilla and Henry were working together at a table over in the corner. They seemed to be enjoying themselves. Hamish thought they might have had some sort of reconciliation after a quarrel. They were being playful and giggling a lot, rather like a couple trying to show the world how really happy they were, reflected Hamish, feeling sour with jealousy.
Carrying the bowl, he moved over to join Diana and Jessica.
“Can’t we ever get away from the police?” said Diana nastily.
“I’m not policing at the moment,” said Hamish mildly. “I’m beating cake mixture.”
“I don’t mind you joining us,” said Jessica. “Unlike Diana, I don’t have a guilty conscience.”
“I’m tired of your bitching, Jessica,” said Diana. “Some friend you’ve turned out to be. You’re so jealous of me, you can’t resist making a crack at every opportunity.”
“Why on earth should I be jealous of you?” demanded Jessica.
Diana ticked off the items on her fingers. “I have looks, and you don’t. I attract men, and you don’t. Peter was wild about me and he thought you were a joke. He said it was rather like screwing the old grey mare who ain’t what she used to be.”
Jessica picked up a bowl of batter and slammed it full into Diana’s face.
“Now, now,” bleated the Reverend Tobias Wellington, bustling forward. “Christian charity, girls! Christian charity!”
“Oh, piss off, you old fruit,” said Diana, clawing batter from her face.
Mrs Wellington brushed her husband aside and strong-armed both the girls out of the kitchen into the school-yard where her voice could subsequently be heard berating both with magnificent force and energy.
“I do wish she wouldn’t go on and on,” said Pruney Smythe, appearing at Hamish’s elbow. “It reminds me of my school-days.”
“Serves them both right,” said Vera Forbes-Grant, with her mouth full of freshly baked cake. “This stuff’s delicious.”
“Leave some of it for the fair,” said Lady Helms-dale. “You’ve eaten half a chocolate sponge cake already.”
Diana and Jessica came back, looking chastened. Now that they were both under attack, their odd friendship had resurfaced.
“Ghastly old trout,” muttered Diana. “I bet she wears tweed knickers.”
“I’ve a good mind to put a dose of rat poison in her bloody cake,” said Jessica. “Let’s clear off and find a pub. Thank God, they don’t have licensing hours in Scotland.”
&n
bsp; “Exit Goneril and Regan,” murmured Sir Humphrey.
“Goodness, did someone say something about gonorrhoea?” asked Lady Helmsdale.
Sir Humphrey flushed. “No, no, dear lady. I was referring to the daughters in King Lear. Shakespeare, you know.”
“Oh, him.” sniffed Lady Helmsdale. “Can’t stand the man. Awful bore.”
With the absence of Diana and Jessica, the cooking party became very merry. Even Freddy Forbes-Grant, who had been mooning around his wife, suddenly brightened up and began to help with the preparations. Jeremy Pomfret, who had been in the grip of an almost perpetual hangover since the murder, drank a glass of Alka Seltzer and began to look almost human again.
Hamish waited around even after the first batch of cakes was ready, hoping Priscilla would look at him or smile at him, or show in some way she had not forgotten their dinner date. But Mrs Wellington sharply ordered him to get a move on, and so he set out with the police car loaded up with boxes of cakes, pies, and scones for the fair, which was to be held on a sloping field at the back of the village.
Colonel Halburton-Smythe and his wife had gone on ahead and were already there, loading up a mass of junk on to a table that constituted the White Elephant stand. It was a sort of recycling of junk. People bought it one year and then handed it back the next. Fat little ponies cropped the grass, their tiny owners strutting about, brandishing large riding crops.
Some gypsies were setting up side-shows. Hamish wandered over. “I’ll be keeping an eye on you lot,” he said. “No bent rifle sights this year, no glued-down coconuts, and no brick-hard dart-boards which no dart could possibly stick in.”
“We’ve got to make a living,” whined one.
“But you’ve begun to cheat all the time,” complained Hamish. “It fair breaks my heart to see the children wasting their pocket money and not even winning a goldfish for their pains.” He picked up a rifle from the rifle range and held it up to his eye. “Deary me,” he said mildly. “Bent again. Fix those sights, or get out.”
He wandered off, followed by a volley of Romany curses.
On the other side of the field, Mrs Mackay was setting up her spinning wheel, preparatory to giving her annual demonstration. “This is the last time ever, Hamish,” she said. “I feel such an old phoney, me that buys all my clothes from Marks and Spencer.”
“Aye, well, the tourists like it,” said Hamish. “How’s your leg?”
“Better. As long as I don’t walk about too much, I’ll be all right.”
“I hear you had the royal visit?”
“Oh, Miss Halburton-Smythe and her fellow. Aye. Talk the hind leg off a donkey, he would.”
“I’d better be getting back for the next load,” said Hamish. “There’s the stuff to collect from St Mary’s after I’ve done with the Church of Scotland.”
Like most Highland fairs, the crofters’ one ditjiered along in a chaotic mess until two in the afternoon, when everything suddenly took shape. Henry Withering was right there in the swing of things, buying a sheepskin rug, a Fair Isle sweater, and a bottle opener with a deer-horn handle.
The sun was high in a cloudless sky, and the field where the fair was being held commanded a good view of the loch. The village of Lochdubh looked down at its mirrored reflection. Surprised and delighted children were winning prizes at the fairground stands. The cakes, scones, and home-made jam were disappearing fast.
Priscilla had spoken courteously to the press about the murder, about her forthcoming marriage, about her ideas on modern womanhood.
Hamish thought she was doing very well. She was wearing a simple blue cotton shirtwaister and she looked cool and fresh.
Hamish did not know that Priscilla was hating every moment of it. The morning had started well with all the fun in the school kitchen. She had promised to be nice to the press for Henry’s sake, but after she had given serveral very lengthy interviews, she told Henry she had talked enough. Taking her arm, he silently piloted her straight into another press interview, this time with a raddled female columnist who smelled of whisky and whose perpetually angry eyes were always on the lookout for another victim to tear to pieces. Normally, she specialized in savagely criticizing Princess Diana’s clothes or Prince Charles’s speeches, that ruse of the inferior woman journalist who tries to put herself on a par with the famous by putting them down.
Between interviews, Henry had found time to tell Priscilla of his dream of buying a castle and entertaining all the trendy Chelsea set, along with magazine writers and journalists from the Sunday colour supplements. Priscilla felt a lump rising in her throat. Life was beginning to stretch out in front of her in a series of exhausting press interviews. Henry found the Lochdubh community funny and quaint, something to exhibit to his London friends. Priscilla looked around the pleasant, old–fashioned scene, the purple mountains, the tranquil loch, the friendly, innocent faces of the crofters and felt Henry was turning her into a stranger in her own community.
But when it came to the prize-giving, Henry was superb. He made a warm, funny, amusing speech. He presented the first prize – pony racing – to a small child in jodhpurs. He picked her up in his arms and beamed at the cameras. “He’s going to kiss her,” thought Priscilla wildly, and Henry did.
He presented the prize for the best home-made jam and insisted on tasting it, rolling his eyes ecstatically. The crofters were delighted with him. They appreciated hard work, and Henry was working hard to make every prize recipient feel special.
“I suppose our date is off,” said a gloomy voice in Priscilla’s ear.
She swung about and looked up into the hazel eyes of PC Macbeth.
“Why?”
Hamish shuffled his feet. “Well, the pair of you seem to be doing just grand. And it now seems odd to have asked out another man’s girl.”
“Yes,” said Priscilla bleakly.
“I thought you would be up there with him.”
“I felt I’d had enough exposure to the press for one day,” said Priscilla. “And it’s Henry’s show.”
“It is that,” said Hamish admiringly. “If his plays ever flop again, he’d make his fortune as an actor.”
“I doubt it,” said Priscilla. “Ham actors are out of fashion.” She blushed hotly. “I didn’t mean that. It’s the heat.”
“So we are not going out for dinner?”
“I think I could still manage to go,” said Priscilla, not looking at him. “I mean, it’s not as if I can drop in on you any more once I am married. I’ll make some excuse and meet you at the police station at seven.”
Hamish looked over her head, his eyes sharpening. The crowd were laughing at one of Henry’s jokes. At the back of the crowd loomed the bowler-hatted head of Detective Chief Superintendent Chalmers. Behind him came Blair, Anderson, MacNab, and six uniformed officers.
“Something’s up,” said Hamish.
Chalmers and the rest shouldered their way through the crowd to where Freddy Forbes-Grant was standing.
“Excuse me,” muttered Hamish, making off in the same direction. He arrived in time to hear Chalmers saying softly, “We would like you to come with us, Mr Forbes-Grant.”
“What?” demanded Freddy, turning red with anger. “Push off. You’re spoiling the fun.”
“We do not want to make a public scene,” said Chalmers. “Think of your wife.”
“What is all this?” demanded Vera.
A silence had fallen on the crowd. Henry’s voice from the platform tailed off. Old Mr Lewis, who had won the prize for the best marrow, stood with the huge vegetable in his arms and stared open-mouthed.
“Come along,” said Chalmers, taking Freddy by the arm.
“Keep your hands to yourself,” shouted Freddy, jerking his arm free.
Chalmers sighed. “You leave me no alternative. Frederick Forbes-Grant, I hereby charge you with the wilful murder of Captain Peter Bartlett and would like to caution you that anything you say may be taken down and used in evidence against you.”
“You’re mad,” said Freddy, tugging at his handlebar moustache.
A great silence had fallen on the crowd.
Then Vera whispered, “Oh, no. Look, there’s something I’ve got to tell you…”
“Oh, what’s the use. I did it,” said Freddy loudly. “Put on the manacles.”
“Just come along quietly,” said Chalmers.
The police crowded around Freddy and they all began to move away towards the cars.
Hamish caught up with Chalmers. “Are you sure?” he asked.
“Pretty sure. A pair of thick gloves was found stuffed down the side of a chair in his bedroom. We can’t say anything definite until the lab has a look at them, but it certainly appears as if they’ve been used in the murder. There’s a smear of oil on them.”
“But the rooms were searched thoroughly by Blair!”
“Oh, Blair.” The superintendent shrugged.
“He may not be all that bright,” said Hamish, “but I’m sure when it comes to routine police work, he’s pretty thorough.”
“Meaning someone else put them there? But Mr Forbes-Grant has just admitted to the murder.”
“Aye.” Hamish pushed back his cap and scratched his head. “Do you want me to come along?”
“I don’t think there’s any need. You stick to your duties here. I’ll telephone you when we get a statement and let you know what he said.”
Vera Forbes-Grant was being ushered into a car behind the one that was taking her husband to Strathbane. She looked shocked and excited at the same time.
A buzz of voices rose as the police cars drove away. The press were tumbling out of the beer tent, the less experienced rushing for their cars, the older hacks staying to collect eyewitness accounts of the arrest.
Henry’s voice, coming over the loudspeaker system, startled them all. “I think, for the sake of all the people of Lochdubh who have worked to make this fair a success,” he said, “we should go on and not let this terrible murder spoil our day. There is nothing we can do. If Mr Lewis will bring that splendid marrow of his back up to the platform, he will receive his prize. Now, Mr Lewis, tell the folks how you managed to achieve this giant.”