by M C Beaton
The day was warm and sweaty, and although the rain had stopped, there was a thick mist everywhere and the midges were out in clouds. Hamish took a stick of repellent out of his tunic pocket and rubbed his face and neck with it.
When he reached the Marag, it was to find the fishing school diligently at work, looking like some old army-jungle movie, as each one had a mosquito net shrouding the face.
Hamish scanned the anonymous figures, picked out Heather and John by virtue of their expert casting rather than their appearance, and Charlie because of his size and because his mother was sitting on a rock nearby, flapping away the mosquitoes and watching her son as if expecting him to be dragged off to prison at any moment. Hamish went to join her.
‘I think this is ridiculous,’ she burst out as soon as she saw him. ‘It’s horrible weather and the whole school should be broken up and sent home.’
‘They seem quite happy,’ said Hamish.
‘I don’t understand it,’ wailed Mrs Baxter. ‘Those Cartwrights suggested the school should try to go on as if nothing has happened, and they all leapt at it when just a moment before they had been threatening to ask for their money back. I told my Charlie he was coming straight home with me, and he defied me. Just like his father.’ Two large tears of self-pity formed in Mrs Baxter’s eyes and she dabbed at them furiously with a tissue. ‘I knew I should never have let Charlie come all the way up here. The minute I got his letter, I was on the train.’
‘Aye, and when did you arrive?’
‘I told the police. I got to Lochdubh just after the terrible murder.’
‘Then how is it that Mrs MacPherson down at the bakery saw you the night before?’
‘It wasn’t me. It must have been someone else.’
‘Blair will check the buses and so on, you know,’ said Hamish. ‘It’s always better to tell the truth. If you don’t, it looks as if you might have something to hide. Did you know Lady Jane was a newspaperwoman?’
Mrs Baxter sat in silence, twisting the damp tissue in her fingers. Rain dripped from her soutwester. ‘She’s been around the neighbourhood asking questions,’ said Mrs Baxter at last in a low voice. ‘I’ve never got on with my neighbours and I know they told her all about the divorce. But what’s divorce? Half the population of Britain get divorced every year. I’ve nothing to be ashamed of and that I told her.’
‘You told Lady Jane?’
‘Well, I phoned her before I got on the train,’ said Mrs Baxter miserably, ‘and I said if she wrote anything about my Charlie I would . . .’
‘Kill her?’
‘People say all sorts of things they don’t mean when they’re angry,’ said Mrs Baxter defiantly. ‘This is a wretched business. Do you know that detective, MacNab, was round at the house last night asking for Charlie’s leader?’
‘No, I did not. I’m shocked.’
‘So you should be. Suspecting a mere child.’
‘It is not that that shocks me but the fact that they did not immediately check all the leaders earlier in the day. Was anyone’s leader missing?’
‘I don’t know. You should know. They fingerprinted everyone as well.’
Out of the corner of his eye, Hamish saw a white police car moving slowly round the edge of the loch.
He moved quickly out of sight behind a stand of trees and made his way silently along a rabbit track that led back down to the village. Jeremy would have to wait. Hamish went straight to the hotel and asked the manager, Mr Johnson, where the press had disappeared to, since he would have expected them to be up at the loch, photographing the school.
‘There’s a big Jack the Ripper sort of murder broken in London,’ said Mr Johnson, ‘and that’s sent most of them scampering back home. The nationals anyway. This is small beer by comparison. Also, Blair got the water bailiffs to block the private road to the Marag. He hates the press. Going to solve the murder for us, Mr Macbeth?’
‘Aye, maybe.’ Hamish grinned. ‘Any hope of a wee shufty at Lady Jane’s room?’
‘Blair had it locked, of course. No one’s to go in. Police commandment.’
‘I’m the police, so there’ll be no harm in letting me in.’
‘I suppose. Come along then. But I think you’d better try to leave things as they are. I’ve a feeling that Blair doesn’t like you.’
Hamish followed the manager upstairs and along the corridors of the hotel. ‘They took a plan of all the hotel rooms,’ said Mr Johnson over his shoulder. ‘I don’t know what they expect to learn from that because it’s said she was strangled up on the hillside in the middle of the night, not far from where she was shoved in the pool. They’ve found a bittie of a photograph, and Blair got everybody down to the last chambermaid fingerprinted. No fingerprints on the photo, of course, and none on those chains that were around her legs, as if there would be anything worthwhile after that time of churning and bashing about that pool. But Mr Blair likes to throw his weight around. Here we are.’
He put the key in the lock and opened the door. Lady Jane had occupied a suite with a good view of the loch. ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ said Mr Johnson cheerfully. ‘I can’t feel sad about this murder. It’s turned out good for business. Every lunch and dinner is booked up solid for the next few weeks. They’re coming from as far as Aberdeen, but then these oil people have more money than sense.’
Left alone, Hamish stood in the middle of the bedroom and looked around. Surely it must have dawned on Blair before anything else that Lady Jane would have brought notes of some kind. Yes, of course it had. Fingerprint dust lay like grey snow on every surface. Well, they would hardly come back for more fingerprints. Hamish began his search. The suite consisted of a small entrance hall with a side table and one chair, a tiny sitting room with a writing desk, television set and two easy chairs, and a bedroom with a bathroom leading off it.
There was a typewriter open on the writing desk with a pile of hotel writing paper beside it. He diligently searched the top of the desk and drawers. There was not a single piece of paper with any writing on it whatsoever. Perhaps Blair had taken away what there was.
He turned his attention to the bedroom. He slid open drawers of frivolous underwear – Lady Jane’s taste in that direction was rather startling – and rummaged underneath. Nothing. If she had had a handbag, then Blair must have taken it away. Two suitcases lay on a luggage rack at the foot of the bed. Locked.
He took a large ring of keys out of his tunic pocket and got to work, listening all the while in case Blair should choose that moment to return for another search. At last the first case sprang open. There was a lavender sachet, two detective stories, a box of heated rollers, and a hair dryer. No paper of any kind. The next suitcase was completely empty.
He looked under the bed, under the mattress, down the sides of the chairs, even in the toilet tank and the bathroom cupboard, but not one scrap of paper did he find.
The manager had left the keys in the door. Hamish carefully locked the room and deposited the keys in the manager’s office.
He decided to go back to the Marag to see if the field was clear. But as he was making his way out of the hotel, he heard voices from the interviewing room and noticed Alice sitting nervously in the lounge outside.
‘He’s got Jeremy in there,’ said Alice. ‘Will this never end? He’s going to see me next and then call in the others one by one. I told Jeremy about that court thing and he didn’t mind, so you were wrong.’
‘Is that a fact?’ said Hamish, looking down at her curiously.
Alice jerked her head to one side to avoid the policeman’s gaze. Jeremy had been offhand all day, to say the least.
Hamish left quickly, deciding to try to find out a bit about the background of the others. He had in his tunic a list of the names and addresses of the members of the school. Perhaps he should start by trying to find out something about the Roths. But he could not use the telephone at the police station because Blair had set up headquarters there, and although he was busy interviewi
ng Jeremy, no doubt his team of officers would be in the office.
Hamish’s car was parked outside his house. He decided to take a run up to the Halburton- Smythes. The rain had stopped falling and a light breeze had sprung up. But everything was wet and sodden and grey. Mist shrouded the mountains, and wet, long-haired sheep scampered across the road in front of the car on their spindly black legs like startled fur-coated schoolmarms.
He swung off the main road and up the narrower one which led through acres of grouse moor to the Halburton-Smythes’ home. Home was a mock castle, built by a beer baron in the nineteenth century when Queen Victoria made the Highlands fashionable. It had pinnacles, turrets and battlements and a multitude of small, cold, dark rooms.
Hamish pushed open the massive, brass-studded front door and walked into the stone-flagged gloom of the hall. He made his way through to the estate office, expecting to find Mr Halburton-Smythe’s secretary, Lucy Hanson, there, but the room was deserted and the bright red telephone sitting on the polished mahogany desk seemed to beg Hamish to reach out and use it.
He sat down beside the desk and after some thought phoned Rory Grant at the Daily Recorder in Fleet Street. Rory sounded exasperated when he came on the line. ‘What’s the use of having a bobby for a relative if I can’t get an exclusive on a nice juicy murder? I had my bags packed and was going to set out on the road north when the Libyans decided to put a bomb in Selfridges and some Jack the Ripper started cutting up brass nails in Brixton, so I’m kept here. No one cares about your bloody murder now, but you might have given me a buzz. I called the police station several times, and some copper told me each time to piss off.’
‘It would still be news if I found the murderer, Rory,’ cajoled Hamish. ‘You know the people who are at the fishing school. The names have been in all the papers. See if you can find out a bit more about them than has appeared. Oh, and while I’m on the phone, if I wanted to find out about someone from New York who might have been in trouble, or someone from Augusta, Georgia, what would I do?’
‘You phone the FBI, don’t you, you great Highland berk.’
‘I think Detective Chief Inspector Blair will have done that and I would not want to go treading on any toes.’
‘You can phone the newspapers, then, but you’ll need to wait until I go and get names from the foreign desk. You are a pest, Hamish.’
Hamish held the line patiently until Rory returned with the information.
He thanked the reporter and, after listening to the silence of the castle for a few moments, dialled New York. He was in luck. The reporter Rory had recommended said cheerfully it was a slack day and did Hamish want him to call back. ‘No, I will chust wait,’ said Hamish, comfortably aware that he was not paying for the call.
After some time the reporter came back with the information on Marvin Roth. ‘All old history,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Seems that back around 1970, he was in trouble over running sweatshops in the garment district. Employing illegal aliens and paying them peanuts. Big stink. Never got to trial. Bribed his way out of it. Wants to go into politics. Big man in town now. Donates to charities, fashionable pinko, ban the bomb and clean up the environment. No one’s going to rake up his past. Got a nasty way of hitting back. Knows all the big names and he’s a buddy of my editor’s, so don’t say where you got the information from, for Chrissake.’
‘Do you mean to tell me that you cannot print the facts?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘It is all very strange,’ said Hamish, shaking his head. ‘I have never been to New York. What is the weather like at the moment?’
They chatted amiably for five more minutes at Mr Halburton-Smythe’s expense before Hamish remembered the BUY BRIT— on the section of photograph. It seemed that it must be Buy British, but could it perhaps be an American advertisement?
‘Never heard of anything like it,’ said the American reporter cheerfully, ‘but I’ll ask around.’ Hamish gave him the Halburton-Smythes’ phone number and told the reporter to give any information to Priscilla.
Then he phoned Augusta, Georgia. Here he was unlucky. The reporter sounded cross and harried. No, he didn’t know anything about Amy Roth, née Blanchard, off the top of his head. Yes, he would phone back, but he couldn’t promise.
Hamish put down the telephone and sighed.
He heard the sound of heavy footsteps in the corridor and jumped to his feet. Colonel Halburton-Smythe erupted into the room. He was a small, thin, choleric man in his late fifties. Hamish marvelled anew that the fair Priscilla could have such an awful father.
‘What are you doing here, Officer?’ barked the colonel, looking suspiciously at the phone.
‘I was waiting for your good self,’ said Hamish. ‘Miss Halburton-Smythe told me you were still having trouble with the poachers.’
‘I’ve just been down to your wretched station. Fat chappie told me he was in the middle of a murder investigation. Told him one of my deer had been shot in the leg last night. Gave me a wall-eyed stare. Useless, the lot of you. What are you going to do about it?’
‘I will look into the matter,’ said Hamish soothingly.
‘See that you do, and while we’re on the subject of poaching, I believe you’ve been squiring my daughter to the local flea pit. It’s got to stop.’
‘It was not a den of vice,’ said Hamish patiently. ‘And I would say Miss Halburton-Smythe is old enough to know her own mind.’
‘If I find you sniffing around my daughter again,’ said the colonel rudely, ‘I’ll report you to your superiors.’
‘You should not let yourself be getting in the bad temper,’ said Hamish soothingly. ‘Why, I can see the wee red veins breaking out all over your eyeballs. A terrible thing is the high blood pressure. Why, I mind . . .’
‘Get out!’
‘Very well.’ Hamish sauntered off with maddening slowness.
Once out in the drive, however, he could not resist loitering and looking around for a glimpse of Priscilla.
‘If you think you’re going to see my daughter,’ barked the colonel behind him, ‘have another think. She’s gone out for the day with John Harrington, Lord Harrington’s son, and for your further information, she is shortly going to become engaged to him.’
Hamish realized with some amazement that hearts actually did ache. Without replying, he walked to his car, climbed in and, without once looking at the colonel again, he drove off.
When he arrived at the police station, it was to find Blair and MacNab were still at the hotel and the suspicious-eyed detective, Jimmy Anderson, was sitting behind the desk in the office.
Hamish noticed a woman’s handbag on the desk. ‘Would that be Lady Jane’s?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ grunted the detective without looking up.
‘And would she maybe have a diary or anything with notes?’
‘No, she did not,’ said Jimmy Anderson. ‘Deil a piece o’ paper or a note. Her money’s there and her credit cards and cheque-book.’
‘And it was in her room?’
‘Aye, and Mr Blair still thinks someone killed her to stop her publishing something.’
‘What have you got on them, just by way of a wee gossip?’ Hamish reached a hand into a vase and produced a bottle of Scotch. ‘You’ll be having a dram, of course.’
‘That’s very kind of you,’ said Anderson, visibly thawing. ‘Don’t see any harm in telling you, only don’t tell Blair. Cheers. Right, now. We’re waiting to hear about the Roths. Blair’s keen on them all of a sudden despite that Buy British thing. He thinks there’s a chance Roth might have Mafia connections and Lady Jane might have been on to it. Would damage his career.’
‘Would it now,’ said Hamish, pouring himself a whisky. ‘Mind you, it doesn’t seem to have got in the way of an American politician’s career before. What about Amy Roth?’
‘We’re trying to find a bit on her too.’
‘But Lady Jane would not have had the time to find out about the Roths. I mean, i
f it’s that difficult.’
‘All these bookings were made at least eight months ago and that’s when Lady Jane got the list. She’s been in the States since then.’
‘She certainly worked hard for her living,’ said Hamish. ‘A little more to warm you, Mr Anderson?’
‘Thank you. Call me Jimmy. As to the rest, Jeremy Blythe’s got an interest in politics as well. He was supposed to be sent down from Oxford for having an affair with the wife of one of the dons, but there’s more to it than that. While he was having an affair with her, he also found time to get one of the local barmaids pregnant, and her husband raised a stink at the college. That way the don’s wife found out and made a stink. Then he owed money all over the place although Daddy’s rich. Wasn’t studying. Sent down and finished his degree at London University. Became respectable but is still paying for the upkeep of the barmaid’s kid. Her husband settled for that out of court. Daddy bought him a partnership, but he’s been making rumblings of becoming the next Conservative candidate. At a party last year, old friend from Oxford started ribbing him about the barmaid and this Jeremy punched him rotten. Police called in but no charges. Filthy temper, he has.
‘Alice Wilson chucked a brick through a neighbour’s window when she was a kid and ended up in court. Not much there.
‘Daphne Gore comes from a rich family. Caused a scandal by running off with a Spanish waiter who, it turned out, had no intention of marrying her but had to be bought off by Daphne’s parents. Girl went into a depression and was in a psychiatric clinic for a few months. Could be a bit of insanity still around.
‘Heather and John Cartwright. Very suspicious. Owned up they knew Lady Jane was out to get the school and they’re both fishing mad. Not a sport with them, more a religion.
‘Charlie Baxter. You can never tell with kids of that age, but I’m sure he’s out of it. The mother, on the other hand, is an hysterical type.’
‘And the major?’ prompted Hamish. ‘He was more humiliated by Lady Jane than any of them.’
‘Oh, the fishing and all that. We heard about how he’d threatened to kill her. Don’t think there’s anything to worry about there. Fine old soldier. Blair likes him. But we’re waiting for a full report.’