by M C Beaton
‘Hasn’t any power,’ corrected Jeremy automatically, and Alice hated him for that brief moment. ‘It’s just that I’m thinking of standing for Parliament and I’m very careful about avoiding enemies.’
‘You’d be marvellous,’ breathed Alice. Why, he could be Prime Minister! Maggie Thatcher couldn’t live forever.
‘You’re a funny, intense little thing,’ said Jeremy. He leaned forward and kissed her on the lips, a firm but schoolboyish embrace. ‘Now, let’s go fish.’ He grinned.
Alice waded dizzily into the Sheiling, her legs trembling, a sick feeling of excitement churning in her stomach. The future Prime Minister of Britain had just kissed her! ‘No comment,’ she said to the clamouring press as she swept into Number Ten. Where did Princess Di get her hats? She must find out.
Sunshine, physical exercise, and dreams of glory. Alice was often to look back on that afternoon as the last golden period of her existence.
The sun burned down behind the mountains, making them two-dimensional cardboard mountains from a stage set. The clear air was scented with thyme and sage and pine.
To Alice’s joy, Daphne had been suffering from mild sunstroke and had been taken back to the hotel by Heather. So she was allowed to ride home with Jeremy.
There is nothing more sensuous than a rich fast car driven by a rich slow man through a Highland evening.
Alice felt languorous and sexy. The setting sun flashed between the trees and bushes as they drove along with the pale gold brilliance of the far north.
The grass was so very green in this evening light, this gloaming. Green as the fairy stories, green and gold as Never-Never Land. Alice could well understand now why the Highlanders believed in fairies. Jeremy slowed the car outside the village as the tall blonde Alice had seen with Constable Macbeth came striding along the side of the road with two Irish wolfhounds on the leash.
‘That’s the love of Constable Macbeth’s life,’ said Alice, delighted to have a piece of gossip.
‘No hope there,’ said Jeremy, cheerfully and unconsciously quoting Lady Jane. ‘That’s Priscilla Halburton-Smythe, daughter of Colonel James Halburton-Smythe. Her photograph was in Country Life the other week. The Halburton-Smythes own most of the land around here.’
‘Oh,’ said Alice, feeling a certain kinship with the village constable. ‘Perhaps she loves him too.’
‘She wouldn’t be so silly,’ said Jeremy. ‘I wouldn’t even have a chance there.’
‘Do people’s backgrounds matter a great deal to you?’ asked Alice in a low voice.
Jeremy reminded himself of his future as a politician. ‘No,’ he said stoutly. ‘I think all that sort of thing is rot. A lady is a lady no matter what her background.’
Alice gave him a brilliant smile, and he smiled back, thinking she really was a very pretty little thing.
The sun disappeared as they plunged down to Lochdubh. Alice prayed that Jeremy would stop the car and kiss her again, but he seemed to have become immersed in his own thoughts.
When they arrived at the hotel, it was to find the rest of the fishing party surrounding Major Peter Frame. He was proudly holding up a large salmon while Heather took his photograph. Two more giants lay in plastic bags on the ground at his feet.
‘How on earth did you do it?’ said Jeremy, slapping the major on the back. ‘Hey, that fellow’s got a chunk out the side.’
‘’Fraid that’s where I wrenched the hook out, old man,’ said the major. ‘Got too excited.’
‘Gosh, I wish I had stayed with you,’ said Jeremy. ‘But I thought you went off somewhere else. Did you?’
The major laid his finger alongside his nose. ‘Mum’s the word, and talking about mum, the filthy Iron Curtain champers is on me tonight.’
‘Let’s take them to the scales and log your catch in the book,’ said John, his face radiant. The photograph would go to the local papers and the fishing magazines. He loved it when one of his pupils made a good catch. And no one had ever had such luck as this before.
They all were now looking forward to the evening, reminding themselves that that was the time when Lady Jane could be guaranteed to be at her best. They were to meet in the bar at eight to toast the major’s catch.
Alice slaved over her appearance. She had bought one good dinner gown at an elegant Help the Aged shop in Mayfair. Although the clothes were secondhand, most of them had barely been worn and the dinner gown was as good as new. It was made of black silk velvet, very severe, cut low in the front and slit up to mid-thigh on either side of the narrow skirt.
She was ready at last, half an hour too early. This was one time Alice was determined to make an appearance. Her high-heeled black sandals with thin straps gave her extra height and extra confidence. In the shaded light of the hotel room, her reflection looked poised and sophisticated.
Alice was just turning away from the mirror when all the barbed remarks Lady Jane had made seemed to clamour in her brain. It was no use pretending otherwise; Lady Jane had set out to find out something about each one of them. Jeremy must never know. The future Prime Minister of Britain could not have a wife with a criminal record. But then, Lady Jane knew something about Jeremy. Had he seduced a servant? But that was an upper-class sin and therefore forgivable, thought Alice miserably. She sat down on the edge of the bed and looked about her with bleak eyes.
How perfectly splendid it would be to go back to Mr Patterson-James and hand in her notice, and say she was going to be married to Jeremy Blythe – ‘one of the Somerset Blythes, you know.’ There was Mum and Dad in Liverpool to cope with. Alice thought of her small, poky, shabby, comfortable home. Jeremy must never be allowed to go there. Mum and Dad would just have to travel to London for the wedding.
But between Alice and all those dreams stood Lady Jane. A wave of hate for Jane Winters engulfed Alice; primitive, naked hate.
Ten past eight! Alice leapt to her feet with an anguished look at her travel alarm.
The bar was crowded when she made her entrance. ‘Dear me, the Merry Widow,’ remarked Lady Jane, casting a pale look over Alice’s black velvet gown. The fishing party had taken a table by the window where the major was cheerfully dispensing champagne. Alice’s entrance had fallen flat because the major was describing how he had landed his first salmon, and everyone was hanging on his every word. ‘It’s almost a good enough story to be true,’ said Lady Jane.
‘Well, obviously it’s true,’ said the major, his good humour unimpaired. ‘Here I am and there are my fish, all waiting in the hotel freezer to be smoked. By the way, Alice, your trout’s still there. You forgot to have it for breakfast.’
‘You and Alice have a lot in common,’ said Lady Jane sweetly. ‘I can see that by the end of the week that hotel freezer will be packed with fish that neither of you caught.’
The rest of the group tried to ignore Lady Jane’s remark. ‘Tell us where exactly you caught those salmon, Major,’ asked Jeremy.
‘Yes, do tell,’ echoed Daphne. ‘It isn’t fair to keep such a prize place to yourself.’
The major laughed and shook his head.
‘Oh, I’ll tell you,’ said Lady Jane. She was wearing a sort of flowered pyjama suit of the type that used to be in vogue in the thirties. Vermillion lipstick accentuated the petulant droop of her mouth. ‘I was talking to Ian Morrison, the ghillie, a little while ago and the dear man was in his cups and told me exactly how you caught them.’
An awful silence fell on the group. The major stood with a bottle of champagne in one hand and a glass in the other and a silly smile pasted on his face.
‘I think we should go in to dinner,’ said Heather loudly and clearly.
‘I say, yes, let’s,’ said the major eagerly.
They all rose to their feet. Lady Jane remained seated, a gilt sandal swinging from one plump foot as she looked up at them.
‘Major Frame didn’t catch those fish at all,’ she said with hideous clarity. ‘Ian Morrison took him up to the high pools on the Anstey. I
n one of those pools, three salmon had been trapped because of the river dwindling suddenly in the heat. They were dying from lack of oxygen. One was half out of the water and a seagull had torn a gash in its side, not the dear major’s fictitious hook!’
One by one they filed into the dining room, not looking at each other, not looking at the major. Alice couldn’t bear it any longer. She took a seat by the major. ‘I don’t believe a word of it,’ she said, patting his hand. ‘That terrible woman made it all up.’
The major smiled at her in a rigid sort of way and drank steadily from his champagne glass.
Charlie Baxter had been invited to join them for dinner. He had not been in the bar and therefore did not know about the major’s humiliation. But he looked from face to face and then settled down to eat his food so that he could escape as quickly as possible.
Lady Jane launched into her usual evening flow of anecdotes while the rest stared at her with hate-filled eyes.
What the major had done was not so bad. Alice thought he had been very clever. She herself, she was sure, would have sworn blind she had caught them.
Heather Cartwright was miserable. She had already posted off the photographs, developed quickly by John in their own darkroom, to the local papers and fishing magazines. Heather didn’t know which one she wanted to kill – Lady Jane or the major. When it had seemed as if the major had landed that splendid catch, Heather and John had heaved a sigh of relief. Surely nothing Lady Jane said could touch them now. It was the most marvellous piece of publicity for the fishing school. But the silly, vain major had now played right into Lady Jane’s hands. Well I can just about bear it, thought Heather, but if anything happens to this fishing school, it will kill John.
‘I always think those silly beanpole women who model clothes are a hoot,’ Lady Jane was saying. ‘I remember going to Hartnell’s collection and there were the usual pan-faced lot of mannequins modelling clothes for the Season and the salon was so hot and stuffy and we were all half asleep. They were marching on saying in those awful sort of Putney deb voices, “For Goodwood, For Ascot”, and things like that, and then this one marches on and says, “For Cowes”, and we all laughed fit to burst.’ Lady Jane herself laughed in a fat, jolly way.
Marvin Roth was gloomily longing for the appearance of that village constable with the red hair. No one else seemed to have the courage to be rude to Lady Jane. If she did know something about him, Marvin Roth, then good luck to her. But that remark of hers to the constable about ‘having power’ was worrying. What sort of power?
Blackmail, thought Marvin Roth suddenly. That’s it. And there was nothing he could do about it. Had they been in New York, then things might have been different. There was always someone who could be hired to clear away people like Lady Jane . . . although he had heard that even in old New York things were not what they were in the early seventies, say, when a thousand dollars to the local Mafia could get someone wasted. If only he could do it himself. Maybe he should just try to pay her off before she approached him. Amy must never know. Amy was the prize. In order to get divorced from that little whore of a first wife, he had paid an arm and a leg, but gaining Amy Blanchard had been worth it. He knew Amy hoped he would make it big on the political scene. Of course, Amy either knew or had guessed about his unsavoury past, but any approach to Lady Jane must be kept secret. There was a vein of steel running through Amy, and he was sure she would despise him for trying to conciliate Lady Jane.
Marvin polished his bald head with his hand and looked sideways at Lady Jane. No ma’am, he thought, the day I let a broad like you screw up my act, well, you can kiss my ass in Macy’s window.
At last the horrible dinner was over. Alice smoothed down the velvet of her gown with a nervous hand and smiled hopefully at Jeremy. He looked at her vaguely and turned abruptly to Daphne Gore. ‘Come on,’ he said to Daphne. ‘We’ve got to talk.’
Alice’s eyes filmed over with tears. She was dreadfully tired. She felt alien, foreign, alone. When she passed the bar, it was full of people drinking and laughing, the other guests who did not belong to the fishing school. She hesitated, longing for the courage to go in and join them, longing for just one compliment on her gown to make some of her misery go away.
Constable Hamish Macbeth leaned on his garden gate and gazed across the loch to the lights of the hotel. He had fed the chickens and geese; his dog lay at his feet, stretched across his boots like a carriage rug, snoring peacefully.
Hamish lit a cigarette and pushed his cap back on his head. He was not happy, which was a fairly unusual state of mind for him. This was usually the time of the day he liked best.
He had to admit to himself he had let Lady Jane get under his skin. He did not like the idea of that fat woman ferreting out details of his family life, even if there was nothing shameful to ferret out.
It was true that Hamish Macbeth had six brothers and sisters to support. He had been born one year after his parents had been married. After that there had been a long gap and then Mr and Mrs Macbeth had produced three boys and three girls in as quick a succession as was physically possible. As in many Celtic families, it was taken for granted that the eldest son would remain a bachelor until such time as the next in line were able to support themselves. Hamish had deliberately chosen the unambitious career of village constable because it enabled him to send most of his pay home. He was a skilful poacher and presents of venison and salmon found their way regularly to his parents’ croft in Ross and Cromarty. The little egg money he got from his poultry was sent home as well. Then there was the annual prize money for best hill runner at the Strathbane Highland games. Hamish had taken the prize five years in a row.
His father was a crofter but could not make nearly enough to support all six younger children. Hamish had accepted his lot as he accepted most things, with easy-going good nature.
But of late, he had found himself wishing he had a little bit more money in his pocket and yet he would not admit to himself the reason for this.
What he could admit to himself was that he was very worried about the fishing class. Crime in Hamish’s parish usually ran to things like bigamy or the occasional drunk on a Saturday night. Most village wrangles were settled out of court, so to speak, by the diplomatic Hamish. He was not plagued with the savage violence of poaching gangs, although he felt sure that would come. A new housing estate was being built outside the village; one of those mad schemes where the worst of the welfare cases were wrenched out of the cosy clamour of the city slums and transported to the awesome bleakness of the Highlands. To Hamish, these housing estates were the breeding grounds of poaching gangs who dynamited the salmon to the surface and fought each other with razors and sharpened bicycle chains.
Something in his bones seemed to tell him that trouble was going to come from this fishing class. He decided it was time to find out a little more about Lady Jane.
He sifted through the filing cabinet of his mind, which was filled with the names and addresses and telephone numbers of various friends and relatives. Like most Highlanders, Hamish had relatives scattered all over the world.
Then he remembered his second cousin, Rory Grant, who worked for the Daily Recorder in Fleet Street. Hamish ambled indoors and put through a collect call. ‘This is Constable Macbeth of Lochdubh with a verra important story for Rory Grant,’ said Hamish when the newspaper switchboard showed signs of being reluctant to pay for the call. When he was at last put through to Rory, Hamish gave a description of Lady Jane Winters and asked for details about her.
‘I’ll need to go through to the library and look at her cuttings,’ said Rory. ‘It might take a bit of time. I’ll call you back.’
‘Och, no,’ said Hamish comfortably, ‘I am not paying for the call, so I will just hold on and have a beer while you are looking.’
‘Suit yourself,’ said Rory. Hamish tucked the phone under one ear and fished a bottle of beer out of his bottom drawer. He did not like cold beer and, in any case, Hamish had grown u
p on American movies where the hero had fished a bottle out of his desk drawer, and had never got over the thrill of being able to do the same thing, even though it was warm beer and not bourbon.
He had left the police office door open, and a curious hen came hopping in, flew up on top of the typewriter, and stared at him with curious, beady eyes.
Priscilla Halburton-Smythe suddenly appeared in the doorway, a brace of grouse dangling from one hand, and smiled at the sight of Hamish with his huge boots on the desk, bottle of beer in one hand, phone in the other and hen in front.
‘I see you’re interviewing one of the village criminals,’ said Priscilla.
‘Not I,’ said Hamish. ‘I am waiting for my cousin in London to come back to the telephone with some vital information.’
‘I meant the hen, silly. Joke. I’ve brought you some grouse.’
‘Have they been hung?’
‘No, I shot them today. Why do you ask?’
‘Oh, nothing, nothing. It is verra kind of you, Miss Halburton-Smythe.’
Since Hamish’s family did not like grouse, the policeman was calculating how soon he could manage to get into Ullapool, where he would no doubt get a good price for the brace from one of the butchers. If they were fresh, that would give him a few days. Hamish did not possess a freezer except the small compartment in his refrigerator, which was full of TV dinners.
Hamish stood up, startling the hen, who flew off with a squawk, and pulled out a chair for Priscilla. He studied her as she sat down. She was wearing a beige silk blouse tucked into cord breeches. Her waist was small and her breasts high and firm. The pale oval of her face, framed by the pale gold of her hair, was saved from being insipid by a pair of bright blue eyes fringed with sooty lashes. He cleared his throat. ‘I cannot leave the telephone. But you will find a bottle of beer in the refrigerator in the kitchen.’
‘I thought you didn’t like cold beer,’ called Priscilla over her shoulder as she made her way across the tiny hall to the kitchen. ‘I aye keep one for the guests,’ called Hamish, thinking wistfully that he had kept a cold bottle of beer especially for her since that golden day she had first dropped in to see him about a minor poaching matter four whole months ago.