by M C Beaton
‘It’s dandelion coffee. Mrs Thomas showed me how to make it.’
Hamish sadly pushed his mug away.
‘You see what I mean?’ said the minister. ‘Why not stay for lunch? We’re having nettle soup.’
Hamish ignored him. ‘The rat poison,’ he said. ‘You bought some from Patel about a year ago. You had the mice.’
‘So we did,’ called Mrs Wellington over one large tweed shoulder. She was scrubbing dishes in the sink with ferocious energy. ‘Not very good. I think the mice just left of their own accord.’
‘Have you any of the stuff left?’ asked Hamish patiently.
‘No, I threw it out months ago.’
‘You are sure?’
Mrs Wellington turned around and put her soapy hands on her hips. ‘I am not in the habit of lying, Mr Macbeth.’
‘I’d better go and try somewhere else,’ said Hamish, getting to his feet.
‘Oh, but you haven’t had your coffee,’ said the minister sweetly.
‘It’s all rush.’ Hamish picked up his hat and headed for the kitchen door. The minister followed him outside. ‘When is it all going to end?’ he asked mournfully. ‘I dream of large T-bone steaks and mounds of fried potatoes. You know, Mr Macbeth, I think all that wretched Thomas woman did was give the women of Lochdubh an opportunity to persecute their husbands. There’s a strong bullying streak in women, lying down in there, always waiting to be tapped.’
‘Perhaps when the murder is solved, they’ll all go back to normal,’ said Hamish. ‘When’s the funeral?’
‘It’s today, at three this afternoon.’
‘It surprises me to know Mrs Thomas was a member of the Church of Scotland.’
‘She wasn’t,’ said the minister. ‘She wasn’t a member of anything. But her husband wants her to have a Christian burial.’
‘Are any of her family from England going to be present?’
‘No. That’s the odd thing. Her parents are dead and she had no sisters or brothers, but usually someone has some sort of aunt or uncle or friend who would like to come along. Perhaps she was unpopular.’
‘Yes,’ said Hamish slowly. ‘I think if she had lived, she would have gradually become very unpopular here. Mind you, someone hated her enough to murder her. Did she get any furniture from you, any ornaments?’
‘Yes,’ said Mr Wellington, growing angry. ‘We had a Victorian ewer and basin that belonged to my grandparents. My wife gave her that. I was furious. Those things are valuable these days.’
Hamish stood for a moment, looking across the rain-pocked loch. ‘While I’m searching for rat poison,’ he said, ‘I may as well try to find out if she got her hands on anything really valuable.’
‘An as yet unrecognized Rembrandt?’ said the minister. ‘It was amazing what she got out of people when you consider that the dealers are always calling around those old croft houses and village houses in the hope of a bargain. Why, old Mrs MacGowan on the other side had been plagued by dealers for years but she’s too crafty to let anything go. Mrs Thomas was going to call on her. I wonder whether she was successful or not?’
Hamish had not called on Mrs MacGowan for some time. She was a lonely, crusty old woman and he did not enjoy visiting her, but felt it his duty to call in on her from time to time and make sure she was well. She could easily drop dead one of these days, he reflected, and no one would know.
‘I’d better be on my way,’ Hamish said, taking out a stick of repellent and wiping his face with it, ‘before the midges make a meal of me. Blair will be in a bad temper. The attempted murder of Angus Macdonald is bound to bring the press in hordes.’
‘I wouldn’t be too sure of that,’ said the minister. ‘Angus was interviewed by television and several newspapers before the last election for his prediction. He got it all wrong and since then no one outside Lochdubh has shown any interest in him. Do you think he really saw something?’
‘Yes,’ said Hamish. ‘For once in his lying life, I think he must have actually had some sort of forewarning.’
He made several more calls in his search for rat poison and then at ten o’clock, he made his way to The Laurels. Paul was chopping logs. He was fatter, his stomach hanging over his trouser belt as he bent to his work. When Hamish said he was going to take a look at John Parker’s room but did not want the writer to know, Paul answered with an indifferent shrug and went on with his work.
Hamish climbed the uncarpeted staircase to John Parker’s room. In Victorian times when the villa had been built the stairs would have been thickly carpeted and the rooms over-furnished. There was a bleak air about it now, a smell of pine and disinfectant and wood smoke and cheap soap, rather like a youth hostel.
John Parker’s room was not locked. Hamish opened the door and went inside. There was no sign of that suitcase but he found it eventually on top of the wardrobe and lifted it down. He opened it and took out the pile of manuscript. He sat down on the bed and started to skim quickly through ‘The Amazon Women of Zar’.
Hamish reflected he had read some silly stories in the past, but this took the biscuit. The men were the slaves of the women and there were several colourful purple passages about how the men were called in each night of the full moons – Zar had five moons – and made to have sex with the women. He yawned and read on. Then the hero, Luke Jensen, who, like the Luke Mulligan of the Western, also had a craggy face, got hold of the rare and forbidden plant, Xytha, which was guarded by a three-headed monster, Zilka, and brewed a poison from it which killed the leader of the Amazon women, whereupon her bossy acolytes turned into nubile blonde bimbos, cooing over the men, and thanking Luke for having turned them back into ‘real women’ again.
Hamish put down the manuscript. Had Trixie been John’s Amazon woman? The leader of the women bore a startling resemblance to Trixie although she wore a brass brassière and chain and leather loincloth instead of unbleached linen smock, blue jeans and sneakers.
He carefully returned the manuscript to the suitcase and the suitcase to the top of the wardrobe and went downstairs. Mrs Kennedy was in the kitchen with her pallid children.
‘I thought you would have been allowed home by now,’ said Hamish.
‘Aye, we’re going in a couple o’ days,’ said Mrs Kennedy. ‘I decided tae stay on. I’m no’ payin’ rent and the fresh air’s good for the bairns.’
‘I’m sure you’ve told the CID this already,’ said Hamish. ‘But what brought you here? I know Mrs Thomas advertised in the Glasgow Herald.’
‘I phoned up the Sutherland tourist board,’ said Mrs Kennedy, ‘and they telt me this new place wus cheap.’
‘What does your husband do, Mrs Kennedy?’
‘I hivnae got one,’ she said cheerfully.
‘Then, what does the father of your children do?’
‘Which father?’ she said with a coarse laugh. ‘I cannae remember them all.’
‘You shouldn’t say such things in front o’ the children,’ said Hamish furiously.
‘Ach, take yersel’ off, ye damp soda scone,’ jeered Mrs Kennedy.
And Hamish did that, cursing himself for having wasted his time trying to appeal to the finer feelings of what was surely a Glaswegian prostitute. Despite the regeneration of that city, Glasgow still had some of the ugliest prostitutes in the world, and Mrs Kennedy probably shoved her bulk into a corset on Saturday nights and her swollen feet into high heels and trawled the pubs looking for someone blind drunk enough to buy her services.
He decided to drive up to Tommel Castle and get the key to Mrs Haggerty’s cottage and try to find out if Trixie had found anything valuable. It was only when he drove up and parked in the front of the castle that he realized with amazement and with a sharp sense of loss that his mind was totally on the case and he was not hoping for a meeting with Priscilla.
But Colonel Halburton-Smythe did not know that. He said with obvious relish that Priscilla was out in the grounds somewhere with Mr Parker, and handed over the cottage key.
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Hamish hesitated. ‘I would like to ask you again – what was your opinion of Mrs Thomas?’ he asked.
‘I’ve already told your superior officers all I know,’ snapped the colonel and turned away.
Hamish went out and drove over to Mrs Haggerty’s cottage. It had an abandoned, lost air about it. He unlocked the door and went in. There was an old-fashioned kitchen with a box bed in a recess, a small dark hall, a living room crammed with furniture and knickknacks and photographs, and a toilet. No bathroom. Although he knew very little about antiques, Hamish was sure there was nothing of value left in the crowded living room. There were sepia photographs on the walls and on the tables of men with walrus moustaches and women in enormous hats. Mrs Haggerty had died at the age of ninety-eight and had not left a surviving relative behind, or any that anyone knew of. Still, the colonel should not have allowed Trixie to take anything until it became absolutely sure that no one was left to inherit the bits and pieces. And there were many of those. Mrs Haggerty had obviously found it hard to throw anything away. There were cupboards full of old Christmas cards and magazines and recipes and jam jars and bottles.
There was even a bundle of fly papers, brown and smooth to the touch. He wondered whether their stickiness had vanished with age.
He heard a sound outside and then the door of the living room opened and Priscilla walked in. She looked cool and neat in a white silk blouse and tweed skirt, sheer tights, and polished brogues. As usual, her bright hair fell in a smooth curve to her shoulders and the calm oval of her face was luminous in the gloom of the cottage parlour.
‘Thank goodness Parker has left,’ she said. ‘Gave me the creeps. Oily little man.’
Hamish looked at her with interest. ‘I thought he was quite ordinary and pleasant. What’s up with him?’
‘Oh, he’s perfectly polite, but too polite, if you know what I mean. Kept thanking me and thanking me and saying what a lot of trouble he must be putting me to until I felt like smacking him, like a fly, splat!’
‘You should read about the strong silent men in his books,’ said Hamish, ‘with their whipcord muscles and their craggy faces softening with tenderness.’
‘Inside every weak man there’s a macho man who only gets out on paper?’ said Priscilla with a laugh. ‘I know a woman in London who writes romances and hasn’t got one romantic thought in her mind off paper. Oh, look at this old photograph. What splendid hats the women wore then.’
Did Priscilla ever have any romantic thoughts, Hamish wondered, studying her as she bent her head over the framed photograph she had picked up. And yet, she had had an inner glow when John Burlington had been around.
‘Heard from that Burlington fellow?’ he asked.
‘Mmm? Oh, yes, he writes and phones regularly. He seems to be making tons of money.’
‘And you like that?’
‘I admire successful people, and talking about success, how’s the case going, Sherlock?’
‘I’m still groping about in the dark,’ said Hamish mournfully.
‘Suspects,’ said Priscilla briskly. ‘There’s the husband, Paul. All that shattering grief could be an act.’
‘Aye, and then there’s Parker. Sneaky and weak enough to use poison. Who else?’
‘Well, there’s poor Dr Brodie. He’s been drinking a lot recently. Looks miserable. Says he feels his wife has been taken over by a creature from another planet.’
‘Archie Maclean or Mrs Maclean,’ said Hamish. ‘Trixie Thomas ruined that marriage.’
‘And there’s Iain Gunn.’
‘What, over a lot o’ wee bats?’
‘The bats are no more. You should have servants, Hamish. An endless source of useful gossip. It fell down last night, Gunn says.’
‘Then he probably did it himself and I’ll hae the devil of a job proving it,’ said Hamish. ‘But he wouldn’t kill just to get a wee bit more land.’
‘Oh, yes he would. Or rather, that’s the gossip. He craves land and more land. You know what land greed’s like.’
‘Fair enough, but I thought all that talk about Gunn’s greed was jist caused by jealousy. May-be they could be right. Either there’s someone else we haven’t thought of or that’s the lot o’ suspects.’
‘Has Mrs Kennedy’s background been gone into?’
‘It would have been and if there had been anything there, Anderson would have told me.’
‘Well, there’s Angus Macdonald.’
‘Why him?’
‘Look at it this way.’ Priscilla leaned forward eagerly and he caught a whiff of French perfume. ‘He lost face over that wrong prediction about the general election. He could have poisoned that whisky himself.’
‘And killed Trixie Thomas first? Come on, Priscilla.’
‘I suppose it is rather far-fetched. But he could still have poisoned that whisky. I mean, Hamish, you don’t believe in the second sight, do you?’
‘Yes, I do. I think there’s a handful of people who get a brief insight about something that’s going to happen about once in their lives. It’s hard to prove. So many people say after a disaster or a death that they had a premonition.’
‘Where are you off to now?’ asked Priscilla in surprise as Hamish made for the door.
‘I’m off to continue to look for cans of rat poison called Dead-O. Could you ask the housekeeper if she ever bought any? Here’s the key for the cottage.’
He raised his hand in farewell and walked out. Priscilla crossed to the window and watched him go. She felt a little sad that Hamish did not seem to show the old eagerness to be in her company.
Hamish drove into the village and parked outside the Brodies’ house.
Angela was in the kitchen, sitting at the table, reading something. He brightened, thinking she had returned to her old ways until he saw she was reading a recipe for vegetarian lasagne.
‘I came to ask you if you bought some rat poison called Dead-O about a year ago,’ said Hamish.
‘No, we’ve never had rats. Wait a bit. We had mice and I bought some rat poison.’
‘Have you still got it?’
‘Come out to the shed and we’ll have a look.’
He followed her into the garden. The shed was scrubbed and clean. All the cans of pesticide on the shelf above the door were gleaming, and forks and hoes and spades were all polished as well.
‘I’m proud of this,’ said Angela. ‘I gave it a good clean out only the other day.’
Hamish took out a handkerchief and gently lifted down a can of Dead-O. He twisted open the top. It was half full.
‘You used a lot,’ he said.
‘I hate mice. Nasty things. Of course, I was so slapdash then, I never read the instructions, just put down saucers of the stuff all over the place. It certainly got rid of the mice. Now, is there anything else? I’m very busy.’
‘You’ll be going to the funeral,’ said Hamish.
‘Yes, of . . . of course.’
Hamish touched his cap. ‘I’ll see you there.’
Everyone had turned out for Trixie Thomas’s funeral, even Mrs Kennedy and her brood. The church was noisy with the sound of women weeping as Mr Wellington read the service and grew louder as the congregation followed the coffin to the graveside in the churchyard on the hill above the church.
Paul Thomas was being supported by two of the men from the village and looked on the point of collapse. Dr Brodie was standing beside Hamish. ‘I’d better give that man a sedative and put him to bed as soon as this is over,’ he said.
‘I’d look to your wife as well,’ said Hamish. ‘She’s in a bad way.’
The doctor’s face hardened. ‘Silly bitch,’ he said viciously and Hamish wondered whether he meant Trixie Thomas or his wife.
After the graveside service was over, everyone went to The Laurels where Mrs Wellington was presiding over the funeral baked meats. Whisky was poured out all round and gradually the atmosphere began to lighten. One man told a joke, another capped it, and soon the gatherin
g began to sound like a party.
The men of the village were glad that Trixie Thomas had been laid to rest.
Hamish saw Iain Gunn and went over to join him. ‘I’m surprised to see you here,’ said Hamish.
‘I never miss a funeral,’ said Iain, taking another glass of whisky from a selection of full glasses on a table.
‘I hear that old building of yours mysteriously fell down,’ said Hamish.
‘Aye, providential that. I’ll hae no more trouble from the bird people.’
‘But you’ll have trouble from me,’ said Hamish. ‘I have to investigate that building and make sure you didn’t do anything to it to make it collapse.’
‘Wouldn’t ye be better off finding the murderer than harassing a poor farmer over some flying rats?’ sneered Iain. ‘But you’ll find nothing, I can assure ye o’ that.’
‘Did a good job on it, did you?’ said Hamish cynically.
Blair came rolling up, a glass in one meaty hand. ‘Listen, copper,’ he snarled, ‘hae ye got all these cans o’ rat poison yet?’
‘No, I’m still looking.’
‘In the bottom o’ a glass? Hop to it, sonny.’
Iain Gunn sniggered as Hamish left.
Hamish walked around The Laurels and went in the door at the back. The small Kennedy child called Susie was eating a huge lump of cake.
‘Bad for your teeth,’ said Hamish.
‘Get lost,’ said the child, her voice muffled by the cake. He made for the door and she said, ‘or give me some money for sweeties.’
‘No,’ said Hamish. ‘Not a penny will you get. Didn’t Mrs Thomas put you all on a vegetarian diet?’
‘Naw, only her man. She couldnae risk scaring off her lodgers wi’ that rubbishy stuff, my maw says. Went on and on aboot sugar bein’ bad and stuffing her face wi’ cakes the whole time when she thought naebody was looking.’ Her sharp face took on an evil, gloating look. ‘Want tae know what she and her man got up to in the bedroom?’
‘No, I do not,’ said Hamish roundly and made his way through the door from the kitchen that led into the main body of the house. He edged back into the sitting room where the funeral reception was being held in time to see Blair taking his leave. He waited a moment and then edged his way into the room and called loudly for silence. They all turned to face him. Priscilla was there, he noticed. Of course, she would be. It was expected of her. She was wearing a black dress and a small black hat.