by M C Beaton
The living room was designed in what he privately thought of as Scottish Modern: stripped pine furniture, lots of green plants, and prints by modern artists on the walls.
“Now Mrs. Gilchrist,” said Hamish, “the death of your husband must have come as a great shock to you.”
“Not really. I suppose the shock will hit me later.”
“Did you divorce him or did he divorce you?”
“I divorced him.”
“On what grounds?”
“I didn’t like him,” she said airily.
“Why?”
A look of irritation marred her pretty face. “It happens, you know. Little things begin to annoy and then they assume major proportions.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t see what this has to do with his possible murder.”
Hamish sighed. “I’m trying to get a picture of your husband.”
She echoed his sigh and then said, “I’ll do my best. I was working in the council offices when I met him. He came in with some question about council tax. He asked me out for dinner, just like that. He seemed a very strong, definite person who knew where he was going and what he was doing and I was tired of being single. He was a lot older than I, fifteen years older, but that was part of the attraction. We got married a few weeks later. It became gradually clear to me that he was a petulant, arrogant man. Things that annoyed me? Oh, reading the newspaper aloud at the breakfast table and tutting over it and explaining how he could have managed the world better, criticising my clothes—he liked short skirts, high heels, little blouses, things like that. I said I would wear what I liked and the verbal abuse started. I began to feel demoralised. I had kept my job, thank God, and so I moved out to this place, and then got a divorce after two years’ separation had passed.”
“How old was he?”
“Fifty.”
“Hadn’t he been married before?”
“Yes, I think he had. But he was secretive about things. I just got a feeling he had.”
“Where did he come from originally?”
“Dumfries.”
Hamish studied her for a moment. Then he asked, “But just suppose this should turn out to be murder and I think it’s bound to turn out that way, doesn’t the idea startle you and shock you?”
“You must realise,” she said gently, “that I came to hate him like poison. It stands to reason that some other woman would feel the same.”
“I don’t see that a woman would have the strength to watch him die, pick him up, put him in the dentist’s chair, drill all his teeth and—”
“What!”
“Oh, dear, I thought the police that were here might have told you. But that’s what seems to have happened.”
“There must be some maniac on the loose.”
“A very cold-blooded maniac. The surgery, I think, had been cleaned up.”
“Do you mind leaving?” she said suddenly. “I don’t think I can take any more at the moment.”
Hamish walked to the door. Then he turned around. “Where were you this morning? Shouldn’t you be at work?”
“I took the day off. Woman’s troubles. Nothing too bad but my job bores me. No, I have no witnesses but I’ve been here all day till now.”
As he drove off, the full enormity of the strange murder hit Hamish. There were so many questions he would like answers to. Why had Maggie Bane stayed away so long? What if someone like himself with an aching tooth had just decided to drop in? That CLOSED sign. He had handled it himself. Damn! What if the murderer had entered and just hung the sign outside the way he had done himself?
He drove straight to Braikie and parked on the outskirts of the town and then began to make his way on foot towards the dentist’s surgery. A Strathbane policeman approached him. “Blair was going ballistic looking for you.”
“I have been making the enquiries all over the town,” said Hamish. “That man usually wants me off the case.”
“Well, he said if I found you, you were to go straight to Strathbane. And he said to get your uniform on.”
Hamish drove to Lochdubh, changed into his uniform, made a sandwich and cup of coffee and then set out at a sedate pace for Strathbane. He did not like Blair. He did not like his anger or his bluster or the way he had of accusing the easiest person as a murderer. But when it came to everyday Strathbane crime, Hamish knew Blair to be good at his job. He kept his ear to the ground and knew all the villains.
The Land Rover crested a heathery rise and there below him lay Strathbane like the City of Dreadful Night. Black ragged clouds were racing across a windy sky and a fitful gleam of watery sunlight lit up the windows of the dreary tower blocks on the outskirts of the town.
Why such an excrescence should pollute the landscape of Sutherland, Hamish did not know. There had once been a lot of industry back in the fifties, paper mills, brick works, electronics factories, and the tower blocks had been thrown up to house the influx of workers from cities like Glasgow and Edinburgh. But the workers had brought their love of strikes north with them and gradually the following generations had preferred to live on the dole and not even pretend to work. Factories had closed down and the winds of Sutherland whipped through their shattered windows and fireweed grew in vacant lots. It was like one of those science-fiction movies about the twenty-first century where anarchy rules and gangs roam the streets. The last industry to go was the fishing industry, killed off by the European Union with its stringent fishing quotas and restrictions which only the British seemed to obey, and local lethargy. And then there were drugs. Drugs had crept north up the snaking new motorways which cut through the mountains: drugs like a plague, drugs causing crime; drugs breeding new white-faced malnourished children, AIDS from dirty shared needles, and death.
His jaw was beginning to ache from the punishment it had received at the dentist. He suddenly wished he had begged Mrs. Gilchrist not to mention his visit to the Inverness police, for if Blair heard about it, he would treat it as a case of insubordination.
Hamish entered the gloomy building where the smells of food from the police canteen always seemed to permeate the stale air.
He opened the door of the CID room and peered through the haze of cigarette smoke. Jimmy Anderson was alone, puffing at a cigarette, sitting with his feet up on his desk.
“Oh, Hamish, man, you are in deep shite,” he hailed him.
“Where’s Blair?”
“Still interviewing Maggie Bane, suspect number one.”
Hamish sat down opposite him. “Can I borrow this computer? I’d best start on my report.”
“Help yourself. Where were you?”
“I was around Braikie, asking questions, and then went back to Lochdubh to change into my uniform,” said Hamish, switching on the computer and then beginning to type his report of finding the body of Gilchrist.
“It looks as if you were right about one thing,” said Jimmy laconically. “They guess there was poison in his morning coffee, he writhed and vomited, and fell on the floor. There were vomit stains on the back of his coat as if he had rolled in his ain sick. Someone cleaned him up as best they could, hoisted him into that chair, drilled his teeth, then cold-bloodedly washed the floor. There were traces of vomit in the cracks in the linoleum.”
Hamish paused, his fingers hovering over the keys. “Why would anyone go to all that trouble?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, anyone with half a brain would have known we would have found the drilled teeth and the residue of vomit on the floor.”
“Maybe the murderer was filled with blind hatred. Maybe he was so mad with rage, he didn’t care whether he was interrupted or not.”
Hamish shook his head.
“It took a steady hand to drill one neat hole in each o’ his teeth. Anyone in a mad rage would have smashed all his teeth and then smashed the surgery.”
“Could be. But the strength that it all took! That lets Maggie Bane out, I think.”
“Unless,”
said Hamish, “she had an accomplice.”
Chapter Three
Bold and erect the Caledonian stood, Old was his mutton and his claret good; Let him drink port, the English statesman cried—He drank the poison and his spirit died.
—John Home
Hamish typed away busily at his report. He remembered the day when computers were a deep and dark mystery to him. Now it was easier than a typewriter.
The door crashed open and Blair lumbered in. He loomed over Hamish. “Where were you?”
“I was interviewing townspeople,” said Hamish, “and then I went to change into my uniform before reporting here.” The printer rattled out the final page of his report. He bundled the pages together and handed them to Blair. “There’s my report.”
Blair took it and stood glaring. “Get to your feet, man, when a senior officer addresses you.”
Hamish obediently stood up.
Blair suddenly sighed and slumped down in a chair. “Oh, sit down, Macbeth,” he grumbled, “and stop standing there looking as useless as you are.”
Hamish sat down again. Jimmy sniggered.
“Where’s Maggie Bane?” asked Hamish.
“Had to send her home,” replied Blair with a surly scowl. “I’ll swear that lassie had something to dae with it, but she sticks to her story.”
“She said she was out shopping,” said Hamish, “but she had no bags of shopping with her when she returned to the surgery.”
“Oh, she had an explanation for that one. Says she went home and left the stuff there. We checked at the shops she said she went to and it all matches up. She went to the grocers and bought stuff, paid the rental on her telly, borrowed two videos from the video library and changed her books at the public library. It all checks out.”
“But why this morning?” asked Hamish. “Did she usually take an hour off?”
“She sticks to her story that it was a quiet morning and she took advantage of it. She said she asked Gilchrist’s permission and he said it was all right. Och, the number of people that need tae be interviewed. We’ve got tae see all his patients. Thon Mrs. Harrison wasn’t at home earlier. You can make yourself useful and drop in on her and get a statement, and get one from that fisherman, Archie Macleod.”
“I thought the CID took statements in a murder enquiry,” said Hamish.
This was indeed the case, but Blair, despite his insults, secretly valued the lanky Highland policeman’s intelligence. All Blair’s wits were usually put to using Hamish and at the same time making it look as if any flashes of insight were his own.
“Was Gilchrist in debt, by any chance?” Hamish asked when Blair’s answer to his previous question had only been a belch.
“He wisnae robbed,” howled Blair, his accent thickening as he grew more truculent. “Why d’ye ask?”
“Just an idea,” said Hamish, heading for the door.
Night was falling on unlovely Strathbane as he left police headquarters. The orange sodium lights were staining the Highland sky where dirty seagulls who never seemed to sleep wheeled and screeched.
As he pulled up at a red light, a pinched-faced youth staggered and then gave the police Land Rover a vicious kick.
The light turned green and Hamish drove on, reflecting that if he arrested every yob in Strathbane who kicked a police car or spat on it it would mean he’d never have time for anything else.
The erratic wind of Sutherland had died. Frost was already beginning to sparkle on the road ahead. When he got to Lochdubh he drove straight through it and out onto the Braikie road where Mrs. Harrison lived. She would certainly have heard of the murder by now. The Highland tom-toms would have been beating from Sutherland to Caithness, to Inverness-shire and Ross and Cromarty.
He drew up outside a small, low croft house. There was a light shining from the window and a battered old Vauxhall parked outside. It looked as if Mrs. Harrison was at home. He hesitated, his hand on the gate. With Mrs. Harrison’s reputation, they should have sent a woman.
But he shrugged and marched up to the low door and rang the doorbell. The door opened suddenly and a small woman looked up at him. Her hair was dyed black, that dead lifeless black, and her wrinkled skin was yellowish. Her dark eyes somewhere between black and brown glittered out over heavy pouches. Her thin, old, disappointed mouth was permanently turned down at the corners. She was wearing a dress which looked as if she had bought it from Mrs. Edwardson, and over it, a Fair Isle cardigan.
“It’s the police, is it? It’s about time you got here,” she said. “Why aren’t you in plain clothes?”
“Because I’m a policeman. May we go inside?”
“No, we may not. I have my reputation to think of.”
Frost glittered on the branches of the rowan tree beside the door. Rowan trees were planted to keep the witches and fairies away, thought Hamish. Hadn’t done its job with this house.
“Then you will need to accompany me to the station,” he said severely. “You should not be obstructing the police in their enquiries.”
“I’m too old to be cavorting about the countryside at this time o’ night. You can come in.”
He followed her into a living room cum kitchen. A peat fire burned in a black old-fashioned range along one wall. There was a table in the middle of the floor covered with a plastic cloth. Four hard upright chairs surrounded it. An oak sideboard stood against the wall opposite the fire containing photographs in silver frames. A picture of Billy Graham hung over the sideboard. There was no carpet on the stone-flagged floor.
He took off his peaked cap and placed it on the table and took out his notebook.
“Now, Mrs. Harrison,” he began, “may I have your full name?”
“Mrs. Mabel Harrison.”
“Age?”
“None of your business, young man.”
“I need your age.”
“I don’t see why. Oh, well, fifty.”
Probably nearer seventy, thought Hamish. Let it go for the moment.
“You went to see Mr. Gilchrist this morning and had a tooth drawn. Why did you go to Mr. Gilchrist? I believe you complained at one time that you suspected he had sexually assaulted you.”
She gave him a coy look. “He didn’t actually assault me. But he fancied me something bad.”
“He made overtures to you?”
“There was the time I knew he was about to ask me out, but she came in and sat there and she wouldn’t go away.”
“Maggie Bane?”
“Calls herself a nurse and she’s nothing more than a receptionist. She’s jealous of me.”
Why did I take this job, thought Hamish wearily. Why am I sitting in this cold kitchen listening to a madwoman?
“What was Mr. Gilchrist’s manner like?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did he seem worried, frightened, hurried, anything like that?”
“No, he was the same.”
“I do not think I can understand either you or the dentist,” said Hamish. “You did put about stories that he had molested you because they were all over Lochdubh. He must have heard them. Why did you go, and why did he continue to treat you?”
“Can’t you understand plain English?” she demanded nastily. “I’ve told you already. He fancied me.”
“Suppose that to be the case, you did not notice anything odd in his manner?”
“No, he was the same and herself just sat there, reading a magazine.”
“In the surgery?”
“Yes, the whole time I was there. Jealous bitch!”
“And did Maggie Bane say anything to Mr. Gilchrist or did Mr. Gilchrist say anything to Maggie Bane?”
“No…Wait a bit. He was just finished and he said to her, “You can take yourself off when you see Mrs. Harrison out.””
“And that was all?”
“Apart from the usual stuff, open wider, that sort of thing.”
Hamish closed his notebook. “There will probably be a detective along to take another stateme
nt. Do not leave the country.”
“Why did you say that, do not leave the country?”
“I always wanted to,” mumbled Hamish, wondering in that moment whether he were not sometimes as deranged as Mrs. Harrison.
“Just drop back if there’s anything else you want to know.” She flashed a smile at him and he backed towards the door. Most of her teeth were missing. Had she needed all those teeth pulled or had the besotted old harridan used tooth pulling as a way to keep seeing a rapacious and I greedy dentist? Extractions were less work than fillings and dentists could claim more from the National Health for them.
He turned in the doorway. “Just one more thing. You are a widow?”
“My Bill died twenty years ago almost to the day.”
She walked to the sideboard and picked up a photograph. “That’s me and Bill on holiday at Button’s in Ayr.”
A handsome young man with a pretty girl on his arm stared out of the frame. It was hard to believe that Mrs. Harrison had ever been as attractive as the girl in the picture. “What did your husband die of?” he asked, handing it back.
“A heart attack.”
“Aye, well, I’d best be on my way.”
He went back to the door and touched his cap and escaped out into the night where he stood for a moment at the gate and took in a deep breath of cold fresh air. The one curious thing about Mrs. Harrison’s statement was the dentist telling Maggie she could go. Innocent enough, of course, if she had asked permission. Still…
He drove thoughtfully back to Lochdubh and parked outside the police station and then went down to the harbour where the fishing boats were preparing to set sail. Archie Macleod was possibly, because of his terrifying wife, the only fisherman ever to go to sea with a tight suit and a collar and tie under his overalls.
“It’s yersel, Hamish,” he said gloomily. “I thought you’d be along. It’s about thon dentist?”
“Aye, why did you cancel, Archie?”
“Och, the pain wasnae that bad after all.”
“Why Gilchrist, Archie? I mean, it seems the man doesn’t have that much of a reputation.”