by M C Beaton
“I’ll try the broth.”
“So will I. Next comes Truite a la Flora Macdonald, Poulet ficossais, and Gaelic Steak. What on earth is a Gaelic Steak?”
“A herring.”
“Seriously.”
“I havenae the faintest idea.”
“The menu,” said Priscilla, “has been approved by The Wee Touch O’ Scotia Society. Never heard of them.”
A pallid-faced waiter drifted up to them. “Are yiz ready?” he said.
“What’s a Gaelic steak?” asked Hamish.
“It’s fillet steak flambeed in whisky.”
Hamish looked across at Priscilla, who nodded. “Well done,” she said. “Mine’ll be the same,” said Hamish, “and we’ll have two broths to start. Where’s the wine list?”
“Back o’ the menu,” said the waiter.
Hamish turned over the menu. All the wines were from a place called the Clachan Winery. “Have you not got any French wine?” asked Hamish.
“No,” said the waiter.
“ ‘S all Sco’ish.”
“You from Glasgow?”
“Aye, ah’m working in ma holidays. Ah’m at the Polytechnic.”
“Well, here goes. We’ll try a bottle of the fine fruity burgundy of Cromarty.”
“S your funeral,” said the waiter, taking the menus and slouching off.
He poked his head back round the door a moment later to summon them to a dining room that smelled overwhelmingly of new paint. Various diners were sitting about talking about fishing in high, strangulated voices.
A grey mess of soup was put in front of each of them along with two half rolls.
“To take my mind off this,” said Hamish, “how’s Vera Forbes-Grant?”
“She came back just before I left and Mummy was looking after her. She’s awfully proud of Freddy. She even was prepared to see the press, but Henry…Henry thought it would be best if he saw them alone.”
“Chust so,” said Hamish, bending over his soup.
Priscilla flushed. “It’s not as if Henry’s hogging the press, it’s just he thought Vera might say something she shouldn’t and that wouldn’t help Freddy at his trial.”
“When are you thinking of getting married?”
“I don’t know,” said Priscilla miserably. “I suppose Mummy’11 organize all that.”
“Are yiz finished?” asked the waiter at Hamish’s elbow.
“Aye,” sighed Hamish, “you can take mine away.”
“And mine,” said Priscilla.
“Who’s going to be the first to taste the wine?” said Hamish.
“I notice he didn’t have the courage to let you try it first,” said Priscilla. “Let’s both drink at the same time. A toast! No more murder.”
“No more murder,” echoed Hamish, raising his glass.
Priscilla took a sip and wrinkled her nose. “Tastes a bit like turpentine.”
“I hope the steak’s all right. You can’t do much to ruin a fillet steak. I’m surprised you like yours well done as well. I thought everyone ate them rare these days.”
“Not any more.”
The waiter placed two plates of steak and vegetables down in front of them.
“Considering the prices they charge,” said Hamish, “you’ would think they’d put the vegetables on separate dishes.”
Priscilla sank her knife into her steak. Blood gushed out on to the plate.
“Here, laddie!” called Hamish. The waiter slouched up.
“We said well done,” protested Hamish. “These are raw.”
“Aye, weel, that’s the way a Gaelic steak’s cooked.”
“And what way is that supposed to be?”
The waiter drew himself up to his full height of five feet four inches, puffed out his chest, and declaimed, “It is put in the pan and the whisky is poured over it and then it is flambeed.”
“But it’s supposed to be cooked a bit before you set it on fire,” complained Hamish. “Take it away and cook it properly.”
“But you ordered a Gaelic steak and that’s what you got,” said the waiter.
“There is no such thing as a Gaelic steak,” said Hamish, exasperated. “It is a figment o’ your overheated brain.”
Hamish picked up both plates and stalked off to the kitchen.
“Won’t do him any good,” said the waiter gloomily.
The barman, the cook, the receptionist, the bookkeeper, and a maid were all sitting round a table in the kitchen eating fish and chips. They all shared a startling family likeness.
Hamish took one look at their pinched cockney faces and headed for the stove. “Don’t ask me what I’m doing,” he said, over his shoulder, “for if I hear one more word about Gaelic steaks, I might forget myself and tell ye what to do with them.”
“He’s the police,” said the barman gloomily. They all stared stolidly as Hamish melted butter in a pan and proceeded to fry the steaks.
“Just go on eating as if he wasn’t here,” said the barman.
“What’s this?” demanded Hamish suddenly, looking at a rack of good French claret.
“We keep that for special customers,” said the cook.
Hamish finished frying the steaks in grim silence. He put them back on the plates, tucked a bottle of claret under his arm, and made his way back to the dining room.
“I would hae been better to have cooked you a meal back at the police station,” he said to Priscilla. “It makes me sick the way the Scottish Tourist Board moans on and on about the decline o’ tourists. If they checked up on places like this, they might get them to come back.”
“Never mind, Hamish. It tastes lovely now and you’ve got us some decent wine.”
“I was silly to bring you here,” said Hamish. “We could have gone to the Lochdubh Hotel. The only reason I didn’t want to go there was because your father would have heard all about it before we’d even sat down. I thought if we came here, he might not find out until tomorrow.”
“As it is, it’s a wonder he hasn’t phoned already,” said Priscilla. “Mrs Wellington will surely have told him by now.”
“But not where we’ve gone,” pointed out Hamish.
The other guests had left. They were alone in the dining room.
“Who do you think murdered Bartlett?” asked Hamish after a brief silence. “You must have thought about it.”
“I didn’t really. I was pretty sure it must have been someone from outside. I know Mummy’s guests are pretty obnoxious, but…”
“Yes, why are they obnoxious? I mean, why ask those particular people?”
“A lot of people were pressing for invitations to meet Henry. Mummy just chose the first and most pressing requests. We owed the Helmsdales and Sir Humphrey hospitality. Pruney’s all right. Mummy thought, for some hare-brained reason, that Diana and Jessica were friends of mine. Jeremy had already been invited anyway. It just happened, that’s all.”
“What were the Helmsdales like when you stayed with them?”
“I never really thought about it. Their place is comfortable, the food is appalling, and the guests usually entertain themselves. We stayed there for a week last October. I travelled up from London. I’ve known both of them since I was a child. Lady Helmsdale is always so massive and booming that one never thinks of her as a woman with normal jealousies and weaknesses and that sort of thing. Helmsdale himself is a caricature of the Scottish landed aristocracy. I don’t really believe he thinks deeply on any subject.”
“Odd, when you think of it,” said Hamish. “They, the Helmsdales, I mean, must have been in love at one time.”
“Oh, I shouldn’t think so,” said Priscilla, surprised. “One always marries someone suitable, you know, if one is like them. She was a Tarrison, you know, the big flour company, and he had a title and needed money. That’s the way it’s done.”
“And what about your case? You wouldn’t marry someone just to please your parents?”
“It’s not so strange. I mean the whole idea of
having a Season is to meet the right sort of bloke.”
“But the Season’s finished. You don’t get presented to the Queen any more or anything like that.”
“No, the court presentations went out a long time ago. They tried to replace the ritual by having the debs curtsy to a cake at the Grosvenor House Hotel, but that began to seem pretty damned silly after a bit. But it still goes on—quieter, maybe. One’s parents throw a cocktail party to tell people one’s Out, and then bung one into secretarial college while one lives in squalid digs with a lot of other debs. But one still goes to Ascot, Henley, and Goodwood and all that. The pas and mas are very much in the background but they ferret out who has money and who hasn’t, and who’s pretending to be one of the upper set, but isn’t.”
“Amazing,” said Hamish. “Here we are, rushing towards the end of the twentieth century, and here am I, a respectable bobby who has to take you out in secret, just as if I were the footman in Victorian times.”
“It’s all my fault,” said Priscilla miserably. “I should stand up for myself. I’m all Daddy and Mummy have got and I can’t bear to disappoint them.”
“By going about with someone like me? You’re awf’y young, Priscilla.”
“I’m old enough to know my own mind and to know that I should not be creeping around having dinner with you at some tatty restaurant when I’m newly engaged.”
“Yes, why did you come out this evening?”
“I forget,” said Priscilla, tears standing out in her eyes.
“I shouldnae be grilling you,” said Hamish gently. “It’s all none o’ my business, after all. Did you hear what happened to Peter Fisher, him that went down to Ullapool to see if he could defect to Russia?”
Priscilla shook her head and Hamish leaned back in his chair and proceeded to tell a long and extremely Highland story about the adventures of Peter Fisher until Priscilla began to laugh.
Then he got Priscilla to tell him some of her adventures as a fashion editor’s assistant.
It was beginning to get dark outside, and suddenly Hamish became aware that they had been sitting in the deserted dining room for some time.
“I’d better get the bill,” he said regretfully. He crossed to the wall and pressed a bell.
After some time, the waiter appeared, minus his white jacket.
“Ah thocht ye’d be awa’ name tae yer beds,” he said.
“I could hardly do that without paying the bill,” said Hamish.
The waiter jerked his thumb in the direction of the kitchen. “He says it’s on the house.”
“If by ‘he’ you mean the barman who’s probably the manager as well, go and tell him from me that I know this place is owned by the Belmont Catering Company, and there is no reason to cheat them further. Get my bill.”
The waiter went off and eventually slouched back with the bill. Hamish noticed he had not been charged for the bottle of claret, but felt he could not bear any more argument. He paid the bill, and when the waiter had left, he looked sadly at Priscilla.
“In a way, this is goodbye, Priscilla,” he said. “As you say, you will not be able to drop in at the police station when you’re a married woman.”
He held out his hand, and Priscilla slipped her own into it. She looked into his eyes, wanting to tell him all her worries about Henry, about the engagement, and yet feeling it would be disloyal to Henry to discuss him with another man.
“Sorry to interrupt,” came a sarcastic voice from the dining-room door.
Hamish dropped Priscilla’s hand as if it were a hot brick and turned about.
Anderson was standing in the doorway.
“Chalmers sent me to get you,” he said. “There’s been another murder.”
“There can’t be,” gasped Priscilla. “Did Freddy escape?”
“It wasn’t Freddy,” said Anderson heavily. “Mr Forbes-Grant’s secure in prison in Strathbane. His wife’s been murdered.”
“Vera!” cried Priscilla, hanging on to the table. “How?”
“Poison. Someone poisoned her.”
TWELVE
Thou shall not kill, but needs not strive,
Officiously to keep alive.
—arthur clough.
This gets more like a Hammer horror movie every day,” grumbled Henry Withering.
No-one answered him. They were all huddled in the drawing room, listening to the footsteps of the police moving about upstairs in Vera’s bedroom.
“How do they know it’s poison?” whispered Priscilla in Henry’s ear.
“Don’t ask me. Suppose you’ve only got to look at her. The whole thing’s awful. There was a body hanging in the room as well.”
“A body!” squeaked Priscilla.
“Not a real one. Someone had made a pretty lifelike dummy and even embellished it with a handlebar moustache and strung it up over Vera’s bed.”
Pruney, who had been crying off and on since Priscilla’s return home, started to sob again, an irritating snuffly sound.
“Let’s go outside,” said Henry. “They can fetch us for statements when they need us.”
Outside the castle, a wind was rushing through the rhododendrons that bordered the drive. A small moon sailed high above through black ragged clouds.
“I have to ask you this,” said Henry. “I know there’s been another murder, and we’re all shocked and all that…but what the hell were you doing dining out with that copper and all dolled up in heels and a party gown?”
“I had to get away,” said Priscilla. “You don’t understand, Henry. I said I would meet Hamish for dinner because he’s, well, an old friend and comfortable to be with. I knew it wasn’t the thing to do and I was going to cancel the evening, but then you came out with this press-conference business, and I couldn’t bear it. I just wanted to run away. Henry, how can you go on forcing me on the press, just to see a few more grainy photos of yourself and me on the front page?”
Henry sighed. “You’re very young, Priscilla,” he said, unconsciously echoing Hamish. How could she know, he wondered, about the long years of wanting to be recognized, of knowing you could write and seeing the fame go to lesser people? She treated his experiences with the Communists with tolerant amusement, as if his interest in them had been some sort of fashionable fad. But they had cared for him and they had believed in his work, thought Henry, with a sudden longing for the old days of cold rehearsals and chipped teacups in draughty halls. He was famous now, but he missed the camaraderie of the experimental theatre groups and the occasional mothering laced with unselfish love from intense young girls who were prepared to die on the barricades to change the world.
He sighed again. Sometimes it was hard to know what was the real world. For a moment at the crofters’ fair, he had felt sure he had found his niche in life at last. He had felt he belonged. Now, it all seemed as if he had been taking part in some brightly coloured sort of Brigadoon.
Instead he said, “You’ve got to stop running around with that copper, Priscilla. Do you want to break our engagement?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know,” said Priscilla wretchedly. “Mummy and Daddy were so pleased.”
“Do you mean to say you only got engaged to me because you thought I was suitable? You’ll be wearing a crinoline next.”
“I can’t explain, Henry,” said Priscilla. “Right at this moment I don’t know what I think. Who on earth killed Vera?”
“She might have done it herself.”
“It doesn’t seem possible. She was actually proud of what she thought Freddy had done.”
“Meaning you don’t think Freddy did it?”
“Well, Hamish doesn’t.”
Henry drew a deep breath.
“Until you make up your mind to break the engagement, do me a favour and keep that man’s name out of our conversation.”
“It happened quite early on in the evening,” Chalmers was saying to Hamish at that moment as they both stood in Vera’s bedroom. The body had been taken off to Strathbane.
“It seems she went up to her room about seven and started screaming the place down. Everyone rushed up. Vera was gabbling and pointing at that dummy strung up over the bed. She rounded on the others and accused them all of playing a nasty trick, ordered them out, and locked herself in. About eight o’clock, that Diana went up to her room and passed Vera’s on the way. She said she heard scrabblings and choking noises. Asked why she didn’t call for help, she said she just thought Vera was carrying on to get attention. The guests and the Halburton-Smythes are now convinced she took her own life. I can’t look at it that way. I think we’ve got the wrong man in prison in Strathbane, and that someone else killed Bartlett and then killed Vera because she knew something.”
“Maybe she did,” said Hamish. “She liked money. Maybe she was blackmailing the murderer. What was she eating or drinking?”
“Tea and cakes. There was nothing left on the cake plate but crumbs, and those and the dregs from the teapot have been taken away for analysis.”
“She had a terrible sweet tooth,” said Hamish. “If anyone wanted to poison some cakes—well, we were all down in the school kitchens baking like mad and passing round bowls of stuff to be beaten and putting trays in the ovens.”
“We’d better get down there and have a look and hope they’ve left the cleaning up until the morning.”
Hamish and Chalmers hurried out to the police cars. Henry was just coming in with Priscilla. He had an arm about her waist. Priscilla avoided looking at Hamish.
The headmistress of the primary school refused to open her door, claiming they were only masquerading as policemen and she had read about thugs like them.
“It’s me, Mrs Mackenzie,” called Hamish. “Macbeth! Take a look through the letter-box.”
The letter-box was cautiously poked open. Chalmers flicked a lighter under Hamish’s face.
There was a squeak of alarm and the metal flap of the letter-box dropped. “Hamish Macbeth,” came Mrs Mackenzie’s shaky voice, “does not own a dinner jacket.”
“Mrs Wellington’s got a spare key,” said Hamish. “We’ll try the manse.”
Mrs Wellington was wearing a voluminous flannel nightgown when she answered the door. Hamish was glad Mr Wellington had found God, because it certainly looked as if he would need to wait until he got to heaven to get his reward. She went back in and emerged wrapped in a large tweed coat, produced the key, and insisted on accompanying them.