Hamish Macbeth Omnibus

by M C Beaton

  ‘Aye,’ said Hamish, not wanting to explain that Towser was a pet and not a trained bloodhound. He often felt half-ashamed of his affection for the animal.

  ‘It’s a funny business this,’ said Jamie. ‘The skeleton, I mean. It can’t be Sandy or Mainwaring. No acid, they say. Maybe the flesh was boiled off.’

  ‘The bones were too hard,’ said Hamish vaguely. ‘Let me see that lobster shed again, Jamie. I’d like to see if I can find any clue as to who left the whisky there. I was called out to the Angler’s Rest on Saturday evening and it turned out to be a hoax. It’s all connected. I tried to tell Blair, but he wouldnae listen.’

  ‘That man never listens to anyone,’ said Jamie. ‘Come on, and I’ll show you the shed again.’

  Hamish looked down into the centre lobster tank. It was empty and the water was still. ‘Be getting another load in soon,’ said Jamie, ‘but the weather’s terrible bad.’

  Taking out his torch, Hamish switched it on and began to search in the dark corners.

  ‘Look here, Hamish,’ said Jamie crossly. ‘I didn’t like Mainwaring, but if you think I bumped him off and fed him to the lobsters –’

  He broke off. Hamish straightened up and turned and looked at Jamie, his hazel eyes blank.

  ‘Aye, chust so,’ he said. And then he continued searching again.

  Jamie waited and fidgeted and then burst out with, ‘I’ve got more to do than stand here on a cold night watching you playing yourself, Hamish. I’m going to join the wife. Shut the shed door after you when you’re finished.’

  Hamish grunted. He was down on his hands and knees on the floor, the top of his peaked cap just visible over the concrete edge of the tank.

  Jamie snorted with disgust and went off. Hamish crawled around the tank, examining the edges and the floor, inch by inch. Towser kept leaping on him, thinking it was some sort of game, and Hamish kept having to push the dog away.

  On the far side of the tank, away from the door, there was a thin crack in the concrete side. In the crack was a limp, damp strand of red wool. Hamish fished in his pockets until he found a pair of tweezers. He carefully extracted the strand of wool and held it up to the light. Then he sat down suddenly on the floor with his back to the tank, his mind racing.

  He thought about the skeleton, about the newness of it, about the scratches and scores on the bone. He carefully tucked the strand away in a clean envelope. He got to his feet, noticing as he did so in a detached kind of way that his knees were trembling.

  He made his way out and over to Jamie’s house, a long, low bungalow that made up the south side of the square yard, the three sheds with the office alongside one of the sheds making up the other three sides.

  He rang the bell. The strains of ‘Loch Lomond’ chimed out into the night. Jamie answered the door. ‘Just away, are you, Hamish?’

  Hamish shook his head sadly. ‘No, I have to talk to ye.’

  ‘Well, come in, but leave that dog in the kitchen. The wife won’t thank you for muddy paws on her carpets.’

  He led the way through the kitchen and into the living-room. Kitchen or back doors are always used in the Highlands. The front door is used only for carrying out the coffin at funerals and for New Year’s Eve parties.

  The sitting-room was brilliantly lit by a chandelier on the low ceiling. It had been made for a much bigger room with a much higher ceiling, and Hamish ducked his head under it as he went to sit down on the edge of a white leather sofa. Helen Ross smiled at him vaguely and went back to turning the pages of a copy of Vogue. The carpet was white too, Hamish noticed. Despite his distress, he found himself wondering how old Helen Ross was. With a grown-up son, she was in her late thirties at least, but she seemed peculiarly ageless.

  ‘Now, what’s the trouble, man?’ said Jamie, sitting down on a white leather armchair opposite Hamish.

  ‘Where are all those lobsters that you had at the weekend?’ asked Hamish.

  Jamie looked surprised. ‘Let me see . . . the lads had just packed the trucks and were ready to drive off when I came back on Sunday night. I got the last train, five o’clock from Inverness, which got in about eight-thirty.’

  ‘Didn’t you take the car?’

  ‘No, I don’t like to drive all that way in winter. I left it at Cnothan station.’

  ‘And the lobsters will be sold by now?’

  ‘Sold, cooked, and eaten. They were in the market in Billingsgate first thing this morning.’

  ‘But there’ll be some in the shops?’ asked Hamish with a note of desperation in his voice.

  ‘I doubt it. Restaurants, big hotels, even the House of Commons. Maybe Harrods will have some, of course.’

  Hamish put his head in his hands and groaned.

  Jamie looked at him in silence and then he said slowly, ‘Are you trying to say that that skeleton was because of my lobsters?’

  ‘It looks like that, Jamie.’

  Jamie went white to the lips. ‘It cannae be. No, I won’t believe it.’

  ‘You know thae lobsters could clean a corpse of flesh and they’d have had the bones too if the skeleton hadn’t been fished out.’

  ‘Hamish,’ said Jamie. ‘This is a matter of life and death.’

  Helen Ross gave a delicate yawn and rustled the pages of the magazine.

  ‘It’s a case o’ murder,’ said Hamish Macbeth.

  ‘But this could ruin me. It will ruin me,’ cried Jamie. ‘Don’t you see? Those lobsters’ll be eaten by all the top people in London and it’ll be in the papers that Jamie Ross turned them all into cannibals! Hush it up, man. How much?’

  ‘Jamie, you’re no’ dreamin’ o’ bribing me!’ exclaimed Hamish.

  ‘Not you in particular. The police. They always want funds for something.’

  ‘It won’t do,’ said Hamish mournfully.

  Jamie raised his fists. ‘That bastard, Mainwaring. I don’t think it was murder at all. I think the bastard was poking about and fell in the tank and struck his head or something. Maybe he committed suicide to spite me.’

  ‘We don’t know yet that it was Mainwaring,’ said Hamish.

  ‘Who else would cause such trouble?’ said Jamie.

  Hamish rose to his feet and looked down at Jamie sadly. ‘I have to ask you to seal off that shed and not to use it until it’s had a thorough going-over.’

  ‘I’m ruined,’ whispered Jamie. ‘Ruined.’

  His wife rose to her feet in one elegant fluid movement. She went to a drinks trolley in the corner, poured a stiff whisky, and then handed the glass to her husband. Then she sat down again and picked up a gold cigarette case from a side table.

  She took out a cigarette and lit it with a solid gold lighter. Then she looked at her husband.

  ‘You’ll be as famous as Sweeney Todd,’ she said in a soft Highland voice. ‘Chust think of that!’ And then she laughed.

  Hamish trudged back into Cnothan with Towser at his heels. He should have used Jamie’s phone and summoned the police immediately. But he wanted to think. He would like to do something to save Jamie’s business. But Jamie might be a murderer. His thoughts went round and round and always came back to focus on Priscilla Halburton-Smythe. He had heard about addicts trying to give up drink or drugs who managed well for a bit and then some piece of worry or distress would set up the old craving again. And so Hamish Macbeth craved Priscilla.

  At that very moment, Priscilla was thinking about Hamish instead of paying attention to her date. She had been startled to see and hear the story of witchcraft in Cnothan on the six-o’clock news. There had been a brief shot of a group of policemen and detectives, and there, on the edge of the group, had stood Hamish Macbeth. He looked lost, ill at ease, and a bit silly. I hope Blair isn’t giving him a hard time, thought Priscilla.

  The restaurant she was in was crowded. It was society’s latest ‘find’. Priscilla did not like it one bit. It was full of Hooray Henrys and their Henriettas, all being familiar with the waiters, which had resulted in the Italia
n waiters’ being noisy and insolent, rather in the way that top hairdressers are encouraged to be insolent by that masochistic streak in the English upper class.

  Priscilla was helping a girlfriend to run a hat shop in the King’s Road in Chelsea. The girlfriend, Sarah Paterson, was convinced that hats were about to make a come-back. Priscilla had promised Sarah to help her out for six months. Now she was wishing she had never made such a promise. The shop was usually full of people giggling and trying on hats, but very few bought any, and some days their only sales seemed to be made to transvestites whose idea of fashion had stayed frozen in the fifties.

  I would be better off in Lochdubh minding Hamish’s sheep for him, Priscilla’s thoughts ran on. I wonder who he got to look after things? I’m surprised Blair allowed him near Cnothan. Maybe he was only there for the day. She had a sudden yearning to be in Hamish’s cluttered kitchen, to sit and gossip about local things while Towser snored at their feet and the wind howled down the loch. She realized her dinner date, Jeremy Tring-Gillingham, was speaking to her.

  ‘You made a great mistake in not having the lobster, Priscilla,’ said Jeremy. ‘Mario tells me he goes down to Billingsgate first thing to buy everything fresh. The taste is exquisite.’

  ‘Mmm,’ said Priscilla. ‘Have you been following that story, Jeremy, the one on the news this evening, about witchcraft in Sutherland?’

  ‘Oh, that,’ mumbled Jeremy, swallowing more lobster. ‘Sounds great, but you’ll find it was probably some medical students playing about.’

  Blair and Hamish were closeted in the policestation annexe. Hamish had insisted they be alone. The pair of false teeth and the little strand of scarlet wool lay on the desk between them.

  ‘So,’ said Blair savagely, when Hamish had finished, ‘instead o’ picking up the phone, you great gowk, you takes your doggie fur a walk back here to tell me. Jist keep out of it while I take MacNab and Anderson down there and arrest Ross.’

  ‘He wasnae there at the time, or as far as we know,’ said Hamish. ‘He was at his son’s wedding in Inverness. Mind you, we’ll need to make sure he was there the whole time. He’s got a powerful car. He may not have left it in the station car park like he said. You’ll look damned silly if you arrest him and then have to let him off, and a man like Jamie Ross would have you in court for causing him undue distress and everything else he could throw at you. And there’s one big thing you’d better think of before you tell anyone of this.’

  ‘Whit’s that, Sherlock?’ demanded Blair sarcastically.

  ‘Jamie Ross’s lobsters go to all the top places in London and even to the House of Commons dining room. Think about it! “Prime Minister a Cannibal.” Can’t you see the headlines? The scandal will be terrible, and someone’s head is going to have to roll for letting those lobsters go off to London. Oh, I know, there wasnae time to stop them, but the big ones will want a sacrifice, and they’re not going to take their temper out on a mere village copper. So that leaves you.’

  Blair, who had half-risen to his feet, sank back in his chair.

  ‘Get oot o’ here,’ he snarled, ‘and keep your mouth shut.’

  He picked up the phone and began to dial an Inverness number.

  Hamish strolled over to Jenny’s cottage and knocked on the door. ‘Come in,’ she said, answering it promptly. ‘Have you eaten?’

  ‘No, I’ve been ordered out the police station by Blair.’

  ‘Horrible man,’ said Jenny. ‘I can feed you and Towser. How’s the investigation going?’

  ‘Something pretty terrible’s come up,’ said Hamish. ‘It looks as if that skeleton was Mainwaring’s after all.’

  ‘But it can’t be!’ said Jenny. ‘How?’

  ‘I can’t tell ye,’ said Hamish. ‘It’s all very puzzling. Are you all right?’ he added sharply, for Jenny was very white.

  ‘I’m fine, fine.’ She sat down and looked at her hands.

  ‘Your sister’s death must still be troubling ye sore,’ said Hamish sympathetically.

  ‘I hated her,’ said Jenny fiercely.

  Embarrassed and not knowing quite how to react, Hamish began to speak aloud about the crime. ‘It’s the lack of a motive that puzzles me,’ he said half to himself. ‘A lot of people hated Mainwaring, but only enough to perpetrate some piece of spite. I wonder whether it was a practical joke that went wrong?’

  Jenny got to her feet and took two steaks out of the refrigerator. Towser placed a large yellow paw with ludicrous familiarity on her bottom. She shrugged and took out another steak and went to a small microwave oven in the corner.

  ‘How does your dog like his steak done?’ she asked over her shoulder.

  ‘Well done,’ said Hamish absent-mindedly, ‘and the same for me.’ He returned to musing aloud. ‘Yes, when you look at it first, there seem to be a lot of suspects, but not one of them the killer type. There chust isn’t a strong-enough motive. Not for this kind of killing. Not for all the wicked cruelty of it. Someone must have had nerves of steel to kill the man and then –’ He broke off. The lobsters must stay secret.

  ‘That’s enough about murder,’ he said. ‘Have you been painting?’

  ‘No, I haven’t been in the mood. Any news of Sandy?’

  ‘Not a word as far as I know. But then I’m being kept out o’ the investigation. Most of my day was taken up listening to residents’ complaints about the press.’

  ‘You’ve worked with Blair before, haven’t you? There were those two murders over in Lochdubh. You’re a sort of vulture, Hamish Macbeth. Murder follows you around wherever you go.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’ Hamish shuddered. ‘I suppose it will have been on the national news.’

  ‘Bound to be,’ said Jenny. ‘Nothing else is happening, although the networks don’t seem to have caught on to the fact that the great British public has really no interest in foreign news whatsoever. They probably gave it two minutes after a long speech from Reagan, a longer one from Gorbachev, and practically a whole fifteen minutes on the riots in Paris.’

  ‘So people in London would see it,’ said Hamish. Had she seen it? And would it prompt her to return?

  ‘So who’s in London that you want to remind of your existence?’ said Jenny, her slate-coloured eyes suddenly shrewd.

  Hamish blushed and looked away. ‘Ma cousin Rory. He’s a reporter.’

  ‘On Fleet Street?’

  ‘I don’t think there’s a reporter left in Fleet Street,’ said Hamish. ‘Rory has moved to Docklands like everyone else. I was hoping he would be up. I would have phoned him, but Blair’s crouched over the police phone like a great toad.’

  ‘Go and use mine,’ said Jenny, tossing salad in a bowl. ‘You’ll find it through in the living-room.’

  The living-room was actually the gallery. There were easy chairs and a coffee-table. Jenny hardly ever used it herself except when working or entertaining prospective customers. There was a painting, a view of Clachan Mohr, on an easel. Hamish recognized that odd cliff which he had climbed when Alistair and Dougie had played that trick on him. That he recognized it did not surprise him. All Jenny’s paintings were representational. But it was the power in the picture, the black and boiling sky above the sinister cliff, the stark trees and bleak landscape beyond. He lightly touched the paint with his finger. Wet. And yet she’d said she had not been painting. And she had never painted with such power and ferocity before.

  He phoned his cousin on the Daily Recorder, marvelling, not for the first time, how long it took the newspaper’s switchboard to answer the call. He was told that Rory was in Paris, covering the riots.

  ‘Is that a fact,’ said Hamish cosily. He was addicted to gossipy long-distance calls. ‘And why is it your Paris office isn’t covering it?’

  ‘The Paris office was closed down last year,’ said the reporter at the other end. ‘Who is calling?’

  ‘This is Police Constable Macbeth. Rory’s cousin.’

  ‘Oh, you’re the one in the Highlands. Hold on
a minute, till I switch on the recorder. I’d better have a word with you about this witchcraft murder.’

  ‘I cannae say anything. Phone Chief Detective Inspector Blair at Cnothan 252,’ said Hamish and dropped the receiver.

  ‘Your steak’s ready,’ said Jenny when he returned to the kitchen. ‘What do I do about Towser? Does he like a knife and fork?’

  ‘I spoil him,’ said Hamish awkwardly. ‘Put his steak beside me and I’ll cut it up for him.’

  ‘I haven’t any wine,’ said Jenny apologetically.

  ‘I hae a bottle in the station,’ said Hamish. ‘I’ll be back in a minute if I can get it without Blair seeing me.’

  He ran out and across the road, keeping to the grass at the side of the short driveway so that his boots would not crunch on the gravel. He peered into the lounge. Blair, MacNab, and Anderson were sitting there, talking earnestly, their feet up on the glass table.

  Hamish crept into the kitchen and opened the cupboard where he had put the bottle of wine. He was just about to escape when he heard Blair’s voice approaching. He jumped into the broom cupboard and closed the door behind him.

  He could hear the noise of the fridge door being opened and then a hiss as Blair opened a can of beer. My beer, thought Hamish furiously.

  ‘While we sort this thing out and wait for instructions from Inverness,’ Blair shouted through to his sidekicks, ‘we’ll send Macbeth down to Mrs Mainwaring with thae teeth.’

  ‘Where is he?’ Anderson’s voice came faintly.

  ‘Bonking that artist over the road.’

  Blair’s voice faded as he went back into the lounge and closed the door.

  Hamish got out of the cupboard and out of the kitchen as fast as he could. He was determined his evening with Jenny Lovelace was not going to be spoiled. He ran into Jenny’s living-room and seized the phone and dialled the police-station number. After a few moments, Detective Jimmy Anderson answered it.

  ‘Murder!’ screamed Hamish in a high falsetto voice. ‘Sandy Carmichael is attacking me with the meat cleaver. Murder! Oh, help. This is Jeannie at the Angler’s Rest.’

  He put down the phone and went to the window. Blair, Anderson, and MacNab rushed out and climbed into the Land Rover and shot off with the siren blaring.