by M C Beaton
‘Here’s to you,’ said Anderson. ‘Round the wallies, round the gums, look out, stomach, here it comes.’
‘Chust so,’ said Hamish stolidly. He studied Anderson covertly. Anderson was a thin, restless man with oily fair hair and a discontented foxy face. Of the three, Blair, McNab, and Anderson, Hamish had, in the past, found Anderson the most approachable.
‘The last thing,’ said Anderson, ‘that I heard before I left was that forensics had taken a gun out of the gun room. It was a John Rigby. They’ve taken it back to Strathbane to doublecheck, but they’re sure as anything it was cleaned right after the murder. Could the murderer have switched cartridges, seeing as how Bartlett had a Purdey and he had a John Rigby?’
‘The Rigby’s a twelve-bore, isn’t it?’ asked Hamish.
Anderson nodded.
‘Any twelve-bore cartridge goes into any twelve-bore gun.’
‘How long would it take to clean a shotgun?’
‘About five minutes,’ said Hamish. ‘You put a little gun-cleaning fluid into each barrel and then you scrub the inside of each barrel with a phosphor-bronze brush. Then you put a patch on the jag – that’s a wee piece of flannelette on a rod sort of thing – and you push that through the barrels. If you’re doing the job properly, you finish it off with gun oil on a lamb’s-wool mop, go over the extractors with a toothbrush to remove any powder that may have got caught, and then go over the metal parts of the gun with an oily cloth. I suppose they’ve dusted the gun-cleaning equipment for prints?’
‘A set of gun-cleaning thingumajigs has gone, says the colonel. And it’ll not surprise you to learn there were no prints on the gun.’
‘Checked everyone’s clothes for oil?’
‘Not a sign of it. Even Pomfret’s clothes are clean, and you’d expect his shooting clothes would have some oil on them.’
‘I think our murderer must have been used to shooting,’ said Hamish cautiously.
‘Why? It doesn’t take much expertise to go right up to someone and blow a hole in his chest.’
‘Well,’ sighed Hamish, ‘here’s what I’m thinking. I don’t believe the murderer could have counted on the captain being conveniently at that fence and in the perfect position to fake a suicide. An amateur might just have loaded two cartridges into the gun before going out. A man used to shooting would automatically fill his pockets with cartridges. The murderer had enough cartridges with him to change his for the captain’s – I mean not only in the gun, but in the captain’s pockets as well. Anyway, we know how it was done. The question is – why? How well did they all know him?’
‘Oh, they all knew him, all right. Seems they’ve run into him at various house parties. Everyone very vague. Miss Smythe is the only one who’s definite in her statement. She said she met him two years ago when she and some of her friends went to the Highland Dragoons’ annual rifle shoot. She is also the only one who seems to have liked him.
‘Jessica Villiers and Diana Bryce came in to see Blair together. He told Jessica to go and Diana to stay. The girls exchanged sort of conspiratorial, warning looks. Diana starts patronizing Blair. “One meets the same people over and over again in our set, but I don’t suppose someone like you is aware of that” type of thing. Jessica is called in and says the same thing. Blair blows his top and starts bullying them and everyone else. Everyone clams up on the spot. Captain Bartlett could be offensive, they say, but not as offensive as some – meaning Blair, of course. Blair is also high-handed with the servants. Servants who might be the gossipy type clam up on the spot and play the old retainer bit.’
‘And who is the chief suspect?’ asked Hamish, rising and filling up Anderson’s glass.
‘Thanks. Well, the chief suspect is Jeremy Pomfret. He’s the one who had the bet with Bartlett.’
‘Dearie me,’ said Hamish. ‘Mr Pomfret has pots of money, and five thousand pounds to him would be like a five-pound note to me.’
‘Okay, Sherlock, who would you pick?’
‘I think there’s a lot of them with motives,’ said Hamish. ‘I was at a party at the castle the night before the shooting. One minute Vera Forbes-Grant was drooling over Bartlett, and the next, she’d flung her drink in his face. Jessica and Diana had their heads together and they were staring at the captain in hate and horror, as if they’d just learned something awful. Diana started to yak to me about how easy it is to die from an accident in the Highlands, and when I said I was the local bobby, she clammed up. I think Freddy Forbes-Grant knows his wife had an affair with Bartlett. I think Sir Humphrey Throgmorton has reason to hate Bartlett as well. The Helmsdales didn’t like him either. Henry Withering knew him. How well, I don’t know.
‘As for Jeremy Pomfret, he wanted me to come up to the castle and referee the shoot, but I had to tell him the colonel wouldnae stand for that. He didn’t trust Bartlett and he didn’t like him.’
‘What I don’t understand,’ said Anderson, ‘is that this house party is supposed to be so that the chosen few can meet the famous playwright. But most of them seem to have a grudge against Bartlett, and all seem to have known him. Weird that they should all end up at the same house party.’
‘Not really,’ said Hamish. ‘Diana was right about meeting the same people. These landed gentry only visit each other, you know, and there’s not that many folk this far north, so it stands to reason you’d end up running into the same people over and over again. I thought you would have known that.’
‘Not me,’ grinned Anderson. ‘You don’t often get crime in such elevated circles. The only highfalutin one I was ever on was that fishing one last year, but they were all visitors. I’m a town man, and there’s usually plenty in Strathbane to keep us busy, what with keeping an eye on thae Russians from the Eastern Bloc fleet and trying to smash the poaching gangs. We’ve got those big council estates and most of the folks are unemployed and as tight as ticks with booze from one week’s end to the other.’
‘What about the paraffin test?’ asked Hamish suddenly.
‘Oh, to see if anyone had fired a gun recently? They don’t use the paraffin test any more. They took swabs from everyone’s hands and they’ve taken them back to the lab for tests. But they’re pretty sure the murderer was wearing gloves.’
‘So you’re looking for the gloves?’
‘Everyone’s going to be up at dawn, combing the grounds,’ yawned Anderson. ‘Then we’re checking up on all the guests. We’ll soon be getting reports from all over. They’re a cagey lot. They must know we’ll find out all about them sooner or later, so you’d think they’d come clean.’
‘With someone like Chief Inspector Blair, it’s a pleasure not to help him in anything,’ said Hamish.
‘He’s not bad when you get to know him. He’s awf’y good at routine work. This is a bit out of his league.’
Hamish picked up the whisky bottle and put it away in a cupboard. Anderson cast a longing look after it before getting to his feet. ‘Will I pass on to Blair what you said about the motives?’ he asked.
Hamish thought of Blair, and then reminded himself severely there was a murderer at large. He shrugged. ‘Why not?’ he said.
‘I’ll drop along tomorrow evening,’ said Anderson, ‘and let you know how things are going.’
‘Aye, well, that would be grand,’ said Hamish reluctantly. He had a very human longing to leave Blair to his own devices and watch him make a muck of the case.
After Anderson had left, Hamish began to wonder if he would be any better than Blair at finding out who the murderer was. And the more he wondered, the more his curiosity took over from his hurt at Blair’s snub.
He went into his office. There would be no harm in making a few calls to various friends and relatives. Like many Highlanders, Hamish had relatives scattered all over the world, and he was thankful he still had a good few of the less ambitious ones in different parts of Scotland.
He walked over to the wall where there was a large faded map of the north of Scotland and gazed at the c
ounty of Caithness, finally pinpointing the Bryces’ and Villierses’ estates.
The nearest town to both was Lybster. He sat down at his desk and phoned his fourth cousin, Diarmuid Grant, who had a croft outside Lybster. The conversation took over an hour. Things could not be hurried. There was the weather to be discussed, the decline in the grouse population, the vagaries of tourists, the price of sheep at the Lairg sales, the welfare of Diarmuid’s large brood of children, before the backgrounds of Jessica Villiers and Diana Bryce could be gone into.
By the time he put down the phone, Hamish was conscious of a feeling of excitement. He may as well, he thought, put through a few more calls and find out what he could about the other members of the house party.
By eleven o’clock, he had only gone halfway down the list.
He decided to leave the rest until the morning.
The next day was calm and quiet, ‘a nice soft day’ as they say in Scotland, which means a warm and weeping drizzle.
There was no news from the castle. Even Jessie failed to appear in the village. Hamish politely dealt with any members of the press who turned up. He considered ‘No comment’ too rude a form of dismissal for his Highland taste, served anyone who arrived at the police station with strong tea and biscuits, and sent them on their way to Tommel Castle, turning a deaf ear to their complaints that they had already been there and had been turned away at the gates.
He called in at the grocers-cum-hardware-cum-post-office-cum-off-licence for a bottle of good whisky in anticipation of Anderson’s promised evening visit. He made various phone calls to friends and relatives around Scotland and then to Rory Grant on the Daily Chronicle in London. Satisfied he had collected enough to open up several new angles in the case, he settled down to wait for Anderson.
But the long quiet day dripped its way into darkness and there was no sign of the detective.
Again, Hamish felt anger rising up inside him. A proper superior officer would at least have had him out searching the moors for clues instead of leaving him in such isolation.
He tried to forget about the case, but his mind kept turning over what he had heard on the phone and what he had overheard at the party.
Hamish usually preferred warm bottled beer as a drink, but that evening he found himself opening up the bottle he had bought to entertain Anderson and pouring himself a hefty measure.
Soothed at last by the spirit, he was able to convince himself he was better off out of the case. Surely Blair, with the whole forensic team and two detectives to help him, would produce something.
But the next morning he awoke to a day of wind and glitter. A warm gale was blowing in from the Gulf Stream, carrying snatches of voices and strains of radio music from the nearby houses. The sun sparkled on the choppy waters of Lochdubh, hurting Hamish’s eyes as he struggled out to feed the hens and geese. A sea-gull floated with insolent ease near his head, eyeing the buckets of feed with one prehistoric eye. In the field behind the police station, rabbits scampered for shelter, and up against the blinding blue of the sky, rooks were being tossed by buffets of wind like bundles of black rags. It was a day of false spring, a day of anticipation, a day when you felt that if something did not happen soon, you would burst. Streams of peat-smoke rushed down from the chimney, to be shredded by the minor gales blowing around the corner of the station. Hamish, like most of the villagers, kept the kitchen fire going winter and summer because the hot water was supplied from a boiler at the back of the hearth.
The one nagging fact that there was a murderer on the loose and that he was not being allowed to do anything about it returned to plague him.
Hamish collected the eggs from the hen-house and returned to the kitchen. Someone was knocking loudly on the door of the police station.
Expecting a hung-over member of the press, Hamish went to open it.
Anderson stood on the step, a wide grin on his face.
‘You’re to come with me, Macbeth,’ he said.
‘Where?’ asked Hamish.
‘To the castle. Blair’s been deposed.’
‘Come in and wait till I put my uniform on,’ said Hamish. ‘What happened?’
Anderson followed him into the bedroom.
‘Well, you ken how Blair’s been oiling and creeping around the colonel . . .’
‘I didn’t,’ said Hamish. ‘You just said he’d turned creepy.’
‘Aye, well, he’s been touching his forelock to the colonel while snapping and bullying the guests. I told him what you had said, and he lost his temper and insisted on keeping them all up half the night. Turns out the colonel roused the Chief Constable out of his bed and read the riot act and the Chief roused the Super at Strathbane out of his bed and read the dot act, so at dawn Chief Superintendent John Chalmers arrives and rouses us up out of our beds. Why had Blair subjected possibly innocent people to such a grilling? Because, says Blair, of vital new evidence. Where did said evidence come from? From the local bobby, chips in I. Where is said local bobby? Dismissed from the case, says Miss Priscilla Halburton-Smythe, appearing in a dressing gown, because Hamish Macbeth is too highly intelligent a man for Inspector Blair, she says nastily, and if you ask her opinion, Blair wants said Macbeth off said murder in case said Macbeth solves it. Get Macbeth, says the Super, and sends Blair out to join the common bobbies who are ploughing through the heather still looking for that gun-cleaning outfit. So here I am.’
Hamish laughed. ‘I’d love to see Blair’s face. But will he no’ make life a misery for you when this case is over?’
‘No,’ said Anderson. ‘I’m a bigger creep than Blair, and I’ll toady so much, he’ll forget about the whole thing.’
‘Nearly ready,’ said Hamish, buttoning his tunic.
‘What about a bit o’ breakfast?’ wheedled Anderson. ‘They’re not going to give us time to have any when we get to the castle.’
Hamish made bacon-and-egg baps and tea, eating his own breakfast in record time and then standing impatiently over Anderson until the detective had finished.
He agreed to go in Anderson’s car, leaving Towser to roam the garden.
‘Find out anything more?’ asked Anderson.
‘Aye,’ said Hamish. ‘A lot more. I tell you this, Jimmy Anderson, it’s a fair wonder someone waited this long to murder Bartlett!’
Chapter Eight
Boundless intemperance
In nature is a tyranny, it hath been
The untimely emptying of the happy throne,
And the fall of many kings.
– Shakespeare
Superintendent John Chalmers looked like an ageing bank clerk. He was tall and thin, with grey hair and watery blue eyes that peered warily out at the world as if expecting another onslaught of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. He had a small black moustache like a postage stamp above a rabbity mouth. His ears stuck out like jug handles, as if God had specially made them that way to support his bowler hat.
He had been out in the grounds somewhere and was returning to the castle when Hamish and the detective arrived.
He greeted Hamish courteously and asked him to accompany him into the castle.
The colonel had given up his study to the police. It was a dim little room filled with the clutter of a man who had lost interest in field sports some years ago. Dusty game bags were thrown in one corner under shelves of Badminton Library books on hunting, shooting and fishing. A pair of green wellington boots held a selection of fishing rods.
There was an unusual stuffed fox in a glass case. It was lying down on its side, looking as if it had been sleeping peacefully at the time it was shot. The superintendent looked down at it sadly for several moments before taking off his bowler hat, polishing it with his sleeve and hanging it on one of the fishing rods.
He sat down behind a battered wooden desk, waved Hamish into a chair opposite, and said to Anderson, who was hovering in the doorway, ‘Go down to the kitchens and question the servants again. See if you can get them to like you. Pe
ople will not talk if you put their backs up.’
When Anderson had gone, he turned to Macbeth. ‘Now, Constable,’ he said, ‘it looks as if we’ll need to start again from the beginning. The people at this house party are very upset and claim they have been treated badly. I do not know if that is true or not, but we’ll soon find out. I gather from Anderson that you know a little about the guests?’
‘I know quite a lot more now,’ said Hamish. ‘I made various phone calls to find out about their backgrounds.’
‘We now have several reports coming in from different police stations. Ah, here is PC Macpherson, who will take the shorthand notes. Now, the first one who’s agreed to be interviewed all over again is Colonel Halburton-Smythe. Having dragged me into the case, he is naturally now anxious to be as helpful as possible. You listen closely to my line of questioning, and if there’s something you know that we don’t know, I shall expect you to step in and put in your own questions. Take that chair over by the window and look as unobtrusive as possible.’
Macpherson went to fetch the colonel, who soon came bustling in. He looked taken aback to see Hamish there, but after a little hesitation he sat down and faced the superintendent.
The colonel appeared pleased to answer the series of polite and simple questions. He said the party had gone on much later than they had expected – until two in the morning. No one had therefore been up and about around the time the captain was supposed to have gone out on the moors. Yes, he had known about the bet with Pomfret, but not about Bartlett’s deal with the Arabs. The guns in the gun room had not been used since last season. This August, Bartlett and Pomfret had brought their own guns.
Hamish remained quietly in his chair, looking out of the window, which faced on to the front of the castle.
The colonel ended by saying that Henry Withering and his daughter wanted to be interviewed next, as they were going out for the day.
The colonel went out and Henry Withering came in. He was wearing a lovat green sweater over a checked shirt and cavalry-twill trousers. He seemed composed and anxious to be helpful.