by M C Beaton
“Go ahead. Her cases are in the bedroom.”
He sipped his whisky, calling himself all kinds of fool, aware the whole time of that passport lurking at the bottom of the stove.
Angela came back in. “It’s very odd, Hamish. Didn’t you notice her clothes?”
“Not particularly.”
“They are very, very expensive. For example, there are a couple of Versace dresses and an Armani jacket.”
“Maybe her family are wealthy. I’ve a bad feeling about this. Why didn’t she take her clothes? Why did Mrs. Gentle who wanted to fire her suddenly decide to give her a wedding reception and pay her ten thousand pounds?”
“I don’t believe she’s gone,” said Angela. “No woman would leave behind clothes like that, not to mention ten thousand pounds. She’ll turn up.”
“I hope to God I never see her again,” said Hamish bitterly.
“Poor Hamish, you have no luck with women. It’s cold in here. I’ll light the stove for you.”
“No!” yelled Hamish.
Angela, who had half risen to her feet, looked at him in surprise. “I’m sorry,” said Hamish quickly. “It’s been a bad day.”
“I’ll leave you. Don’t get plastered. You’ll only wake up in the morning with a hangover.”
♦
Hamish awoke the next morning with a feeling of bleak emptiness. Never before in his life had he felt such a fool. If there was anything sinister about the disappearance of Ayesha, then he had compromised the investigation by lying about her and hiding that passport. But if the police ever got their hands on that passport and sent it away from the incompetent forensic department at Strathbane to Glasgow, say, some eagle-eyed boffin might recognise Peter’s handiwork. He had been allowed two weeks’ holiday for his honeymoon. Because of Ayesha turning out to be such a blackmailer, he had cancelled any idea of it.
Blackmailer!
Had the girl found out something about Mrs. Gentle and been blackmailing her?
Hamish decided to get out of Lochdubh for the day, away from sympathetic callers. He loaded up the Land Rover with his fishing tackle along with his dog and cat and set off for the River Anstey. He didn’t have a fishing permit but knew that the water bailiff was lazy; he was sure he wouldn’t be discovered.
He returned in the evening with eight trout to find Jimmy Anderson pacing up and down outside the police station.
“Where have you been?” howled Jimmy. “It’s a murder hunt!”
♦
In the kitchen, Jimmy explained what had happened. Mr. Tahir had been located in Turkey, and yes, he had a daughter called Ayesha. But his Ayesha was married and living right there in Izmir. And she wasn’t the girl in the photo that had been wired to him. Mr. Tahir had shown the real Ayesha this picture, and she had recognized the woman.
This was her story. A few years before, the Tahir family had been dining at Istanbul’s Pera Palace Hotel. Ayesha had completed her studies at Istanbul and had just received her visa to go to London for her PhD. She had been celebrating with her family. At the next table was a party of thuggish-looking Russians, along with the girl from Hamish’s photograph. The Tahirs had been sure that these Russians were mafia, and they were sorry for the girl who, said Ayesha, was being treated like dirt. They thought she was a Natasha, the slang name for a Russian or Eastern European prostitute.
When the Tahirs returned to Izmir, Ayesha realised that her passport was not in her handbag. She thought it must have fallen out somewhere, but while applying for a new one and facing up to all the formalities of getting the visa again, she had fallen in love with a local man and decided to get married instead of furthering her education. So she put the passport right out of her mind.
The police now believed that the fake Ayesha had stolen the passport and run away from whoever was keeping her. Because of the Tahirs’ conviction that the men with her back then had looked like Russian mafia and had been talking in Russian, and because she had now left her clothes behind, it looked as if she might have been snatched – or murdered. Her photograph would appear in the local Turkish papers. Istanbul police had a copy and were checking at the Pera Palace Hotel to see if anyone knew anything about the missing girl.
“I think she was blackmailing Mrs. Gentle,” said Hamish.
“Why?”
“Mrs. Gentle gave her ten thousand pounds cash as a wedding present, she said. Now, one minute Ayesha’s sitting here weeping and telling me that Mrs. Gentle has given her notice, and the next minute she’s telling me that Mrs. Gentle is not only giving her money but hosting the reception.”
“Her passport?” asked Jimmy. “Did you find it?”
Hamish rose and took a bottle of whisky down from a cupboard. With his back to Jimmy, he said, “No.”
“You know,” said Jimmy, “I wouldnae mind a black coffee with my whisky.”
“The electric kettle’s broken,” said Hamish.
“You never used it. Light the stove. It’s cold in here.”
Hamish blushed. “Can’t. The chimney’s blocked. The sweep’s coming the morrow. Help yourself to whisky. I’ll chust put some o’ these trout out in the freezer. You’ll stay for dinner?”
“No, I’d best be getting back.”
Hamish went out to the shed where he kept the chest freezer. As soon as he had gone, Jimmy took the cleat and lifted the lid of the stove. He felt inside. His hand touched something. He lifted it out. Ayesha’s passport. “Oh, Hamish,” he muttered. “What have you done?”
Hamish came back and stiffened when he saw the passport lying on the table.
“Sit down, laddie,” said Jimmy grimly, “and spit it out. No lies this time.”
Suddenly weary and ashamed, Hamish sat down at the table and began to tell his story, leaving nothing out.
“You see,” he said finally, “they’ll examine that visa and check with the authorities. They’ll realise it’s a forgery and start looking around for highland forgers. They’ll get to Peter, and he’ll sing like a canary to shorten his prison sentence. Not only will my police station go, but my job as well.”
“But why, Hamish? Why did you do it?”
“It was a quixotic gesture. She was so beautiful that all I could think about besides saving my home and animals was letting folk know I wasn’t a failure in love. What a mess. I suppose you’d better do your duty.”
Jimmy took a gulp of whisky.
Then he rose and took the passport. He lifted the lid of the stove and dropped it in. He picked up a packet of firelighters, extracted one, ignited it with his lighter, and dropped it in on top of the passport.
“Now we’re partners in crime.”
“Thanks, Jimmy. I don’t know how…”
“Forget it. Let’s suppose she had something on Ma Gentle. So Gentle kills the girl. What does she do with the body? Ayesha, or whoever she is, is a great big girl. Mrs. Gentle is a wee old woman. Say she hit her hard. With the reception and the house full of people, it would need to be down in the cellar or in one of the upper rooms. Look, I’m off-duty tomorrow. Put me up for the night and we’ll go over, all innocent like, and ask if we can see her room. Mrs. Gentle can hardly refuse. If she follows us around and looks nervous, say, we might get an idea she’s guilty of something.”
♦
Mrs. Gentle opened the door to them the next morning, looking flustered. “What is it? You can’t come in. I’ve got some women from Braikie clearing up the mess.”
“We’ve found out that Ayesha had stolen someone’s identity,” said Jimmy. “We would just like to look in her room to see if we can find any clues to who she really is.”
“Oh, very well. Follow me.” The sounds of energetic cleaning met their ears. “I’ll be glad when the house is clean again. I spent all day yesterday recruiting women to do the job.” Mrs. Gentle walked up the stairs ahead of them, her back erect. A faint smell of lavender perfume drifted back to them.
Mrs. Gentle pushed open a door at the top of the house. “This
was her room,” she said.
“Was?” repeated Hamish. “Do you think she’s dead?”
“Of course not. If you remember, she was to leave here for good on the day of her wedding.”
Hamish and Jimmy walked in. Jimmy turned round to where Mrs. Gentle was hovering in the doorway. “You can leave us,” he said.
She hesitated a moment and then went slowly away down the stairs.
It was a turret room. Very little furniture. A narrow bed stood against one wall, an old-fashioned wardrobe against another. There was a round table at the window with three hard-backed chairs; on the table was a small television set. No books, no pictures, and no framed photographs.
Hamish opened the wardrobe. There was only one garment, a black fur coat. “Jimmy, is this mink, would ye say?”
Jimmy felt the fur. “Aye, it is that. Imagine leaving that…maybe she was frightened of animal rights people.”
“We don’t get them up here,” said Hamish. There were three drawers at the foot of the wardrobe. He knelt down and opened them. In one he found three sweaters and in another silk underwear, not of the sexy type but knitted silk, the kind used by sportsmen and -women when they were out shooting on the moors. The bottom drawer was empty. “It probably got cold up here,” he said. “I noticed that there isn’t any central heating. She’s got money, our Mrs. Gentle, but it’d take an awful lot to get central heating into this folly. The fireplace is blocked up.
“I tell you, Jimmy, it’s weird. There’s nothing personal either here or in her suitcases. I mean, no letters, no jewellery, no photographs.”
“If she turns out to be some sort of Russian tart,” said Jimmy, “it stands to reason she wouldnae have anything like that.”
“But even tarts have friends, family, someone,” said Hamish. A buffet of wind rattled the windowpanes. He crossed to the window and looked down. “It must have been like an icebox up here last winter,” he said. “Why did she stay? Why wasn’t she down in one of the cities looking for a rich protector?”
“Probably because of that stolen passport,” said Jimmy. “And if she was a dolly for the Russian mafia, she might have been scared of a dose of radiation in her tea.”
“I shouldnae think they’d bother,” said Hamish moodily. “Whoever her protector was, he’d just move on to the next good-looking girl. Now, if anyone wanted to get rid of a body around this castle, where would they dump it?”
“Easy. Over the cliff she goes.”
“I was afraid you’d say that. I’d best get back and pick up my climbing gear.”
♦
As they drove back, Jimmy said, “You shouldnae be hoping to find a body, my friend.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know what’s happened to your wits these days. You’d be first suspect.”
“Not me. I was with you and then at the registry office in Inverness.”
“Aye, but if the procurator fiscal got evidence that she’d been killed during the night, where would that leave you?”
“Maybe Mrs. Gentle got rid of her. There’s something not right about that woman.”
“Havers! That wee woman?”
“Do you know, I ran her name through the police computer. Nothing. I wonder what her maiden name is.”
“Can you see an elderly lady taking on a big strapping Russian lassie? And then getting the body out of the castle and over the cliffs?”
“Look at it this way. Maybe our Russian went out for a walk and was standing on the cliffs. What with the noise of the sea and the wind, she wouldn’t hear anyone creeping up behind her. One good shove and down she goes.”
♦
Later when Hamish was stowing his climbing gear in the Land Rover along with his dog and cat, Jimmy complained, “Do you need to take thae beasties with ye? That wild cat of yours fair gives me the creeps.”
“She’s harmless,” said Hamish. Sonsie had been found injured up on the moors, and Hamish had adopted the animal. Despite dire predictions that a wild cat could not be domesticated, she had settled in and, even stranger, formed a bond with Hamish’s dog.
Jimmy sat on the top of the cliffs as Hamish began his slow descent. He looked over once and then shrank back. He pulled a flask out of his pocket and took a swig of whisky. Seagulls sailed overhead, screeching and diving.
A few puffins, like fussy little men in tailcoats, came out of their burrows and stared at him.
At last, Hamish came back. “It’s high tide,” he said. “I’ll wait for low tide and go back down.”
“And when’s low tide?”
“Two hours’ time.”
“I hope you don’t except me to sit here on this draughty hilltop for four hours.”
“We’ll go into Braikie and get something to eat.”
♦
In Braikie, Jimmy looked around The Highlanders Arms in amazement. “It’s the spirit o’ John Knox,” he said. “If you’re going to drink, you are not going to enjoy yourself. I didnae know places like this still existed.”
It was a dimly lit establishment with tables scarred with old cigarette burns. The floor was covered in dark green greasy linoleum. The bar and the shelves behind looked as if they had not been cleaned in a long time.
“Eat your pie and peas.”
“I might get salmonella.”
“The pies come from the bakery. They’re all right.”
“I still don’t know how you let yourself nearly get trapped into marriage,” said Jimmy.
“I told you,” said Hamish huffily. “I thought I was going to have to leave the force in order to keep my dog and cat. I thought I was doing a grand thing. Anyway, she told me she was a lesbian.”
“That figures. A lot of tarts are. She could hae been lying, of course. Didn’t fancy you.”
“Oh, shut up.”
♦
When they arrived back at the clifftop, Jimmy elected to stay in the Land Rover. The rising wind buffeted the car. His eyes began to droop, and soon he was fast asleep.
He awoke with a start. Hamish had wrenched open the door. “I’ve got to phone air-sea rescue,” he shouted. “Body at the foot of the cliffs.”
“Is it her?”
“No. It’s Mrs. Gentle.”
∨ Death of a Gentle Lady ∧
3
I waive the quantum o’the sin,
The hazard of concealing;
But och! It hardens a’ within,
And petrifies the feeling!
—Robert Burns
Great gusts of rain blew in from the Atlantic on the grisly scene as the body of Mrs. Gentle was brought up the cliff face. Blair had arrived and was marching about over the heather on the clifftop.
“He’s wiping out any clues,” muttered Jimmy.
“There won’t be any footprints on this heather,” said Hamish. “Here’s the pathologist.”
Dr. Forsythe arrived while a tent was being set up over the body. The men struggled with it for some time as the wind whipped it around until at last they got it firmly anchored.
Blair approached Hamish and Jimmy. His choleric eyes fell on Jimmy. “What were you doing up here?”
“Day off, sir,” said Jimmy. “Thought I’d help Macbeth look for his missing fiancée.”
“And whit made ye look ower the cliff?”
“I thought she might have been killed,” said Hamish.
“More likely to hae committed suicide at the thought o’ being wed to a loon like you,” said Blair.
They all looked at the tent where, in the strong lights that had been rigged up, the shadow of the pathologist could be seen bending over the body.
Blair retreated to his car. Hamish waited anxiously. Dr. Forsythe at last emerged. She went straight up to Hamish.
“It’s murder, plain as day,” she said. “She was strangled before she was thrown over the cliff.”
“What this?” demanded Blair, lumbering up. “You should report first to me.”
Dr. Forsythe looked at him with dis
like. “It’s a murder. Mrs. Gentle was strangled and thrown over.”
“The women cleaning the house might have seen something,” said Hamish.
“Whit women?” growled Blair.
“She had hired women from Braikie to clean up the mess after the reception. I called on her earlier today to have a look at Ayesha’s room and see if she had left any clues. There was nothing. All she had is in the two suitcases she left at the police station. In one suitcase is ten thousand pounds given to her by Mrs. Gentle. When Jimmy and I were here this morning, we could hear the women cleaning.”
“We’ll need those suitcases. Was her passport in one of them?”
“No,” said Hamish. “No passport.”
“Looks as if she strangled her employer and ran for it. She must have got that passport picture doctored somehow.”
Hamish stiffened. “Why?”
“Why? Because we got a photo of the real Ayesha wired over, and she’s fair but small. Get into Braikie, Macbeth. I’ll send some other men as well. We’ve got to find thae maids.”
♦
Hamish drove into Braikie. He stopped at a fish-and-chip shop and bought a fish for Sonsie and a meat pie for Lugs, watched while they ate, and then drove off to the council estate. He remembered that Bessie, who used to do the cleaning at the Tommel Castle Hotel, had moved to Braikie. What was her married name? Hunter, that was it. He took out his laptop and brought up the Highlands and Islands telephone directory. There were only two Hunters on the estate, a J. Hunter and an A. Hunter. He could not remember the first name of Bessie’s husband, so he tried the address of A. Hunter. Bessie herself answered the door.
“Why, Hamish!” she said, looking alarmed. “What’s up?”
“Nothing to do with your family,” said Hamish. “Can I come in?”
She stood back and he walked into Bessie’s cheerful living room. “Where’s your man?” he asked.
“Andy’s doing late shift at the paper works in Strathbane.”
Hamish removed his cap. “Sit down, Bessie. This is about Mrs. Gentle. She’s been found murdered.”
“Oh, my God! How? Where?”
“Someone strangled her and threw her over the cliff. Now, were you working for her?”