by M C Beaton
“Where did Gilchrist live?” asked Sarah.
“This end of the town—Culloden Road. Here we are.” The Land Rover rolled to a stop after he had made a right turn. “And here we stay.” The road was blocked by drifts. “You’d best stay here, Sarah, while I make my way to the house on foot.”
“I’ll be all right. The snow is so cold and powdery, I won’t get wet.”
They climbed down. Hamish went ahead, forging a way through the drifts. There was no one on duty outside Gilchrist’s house. He correctly guessed that the roads around Strathbane would still be blocked. The further one got from the towns, the better the road-clearing services. It was a Victorian villa of the kind that line so many of the roads in Scotland’s towns. After Queen Victoria made the Highlands fashionable, even the lowliest tried to emulate her and so all these villas with grand names like Mount Pleasant, The Pines, The Firs and The Laurels had sprung up. Gilchrist’s house was called Culloden House, no doubt allowing anyone who had not seen the villa but only the address on his stationery to envisage a country mansion.
Hamish ploughed his way up the short drive. “Now what are we going to do?” he said, half to himself.
“Let’s go round the back,” urged Sarah. “There might be something open.”
They went round the side of the house, which had been sheltered from the blizzard and so the path was relatively clear.
Hamish rattled the back door. “Of course it’s locked and sealed,” he grumbled. “And we’ll have been seen from the houses around.”
“You could say you were investigating a break-in,” said Sarah.
He looked down at her and suddenly smiled. “So I could,” he remarked cheerfully. He took a short truncheon out of his coat pocket and with one brisk blow smashed the glass panel of the back door, leaned in and unfastened the lock. “So there’s the break-in,” said Hamish, “and here am I investigating it. And we’re shielded from the other houses by the trees and bushes and that high fence. No one will have seen us and och, the sound of glass could have chust been us clearing up the pieces.”
They entered the house and found themselves in a modern kitchen. The air was very cold and stale.
“Let’s try the living room first.”
Hamish walked through to the living room and stood looking around. There was an expensive, white, fitted carpet under his feet. A three-piece suite covered in white leather looked as frozen in all its glacial pristine newness as the snow outside. There was a coffee table with old coins let into the surface. A wall unit contained a stereo, a television set, a few paperbacks and a selection of videos.
A bad oil painting of a Highland scene hung over the fireplace, which had been blocked off and was now fronted by an electric fire with fake logs. There was a desk over at the window. Hamish substituted his thick leather gloves for a pair of thin plastic ones which he had drawn from his pocket and put on. “Don’t touch anything without gloves on,” he ordered Sarah. He gently drew open the drawers of the desk. There were various letters and bills. The letters were from uninteresting bodies such as the local Rotary Club and from drug suppliers.
He searched on, carefully replacing everything exactly as he found it. “That’s odd,” he muttered, “no bankbooks, no statements, no credit card records.”
“Try the bedroom,” whispered Sarah. “Sometimes people keep that sort of stuff beside the bed in a drawer or maybe in a suitcase under the bed.”
They went quietly upstairs. One bedroom proved to be a spare one, but the other, containing a large double bed covered with a shiny green silk quilt, had an inhabited look. Hamish opened the wardrobe. Yes, there were the suits and shirts itemised in the report. He turned his attention to the bedside table. He slid open the drawer. There was a Gideon Bible and, underneath it, a few pornographic magazines and a sealed packet of condoms, blackberry flavour.
“They have to be somewhere. Let’s see if there’s a box room or something like that,” said Hamish.
“Don’t be long,” urged Sarah. “If one of the neighbours heard the breaking glass, we’ll soon be in trouble.”
Hamish went back out onto the small landing. There were two doors he had not tried.
One proved to be the bathroom and the other, yet another bedroom.
He scratched his fiery hair.
“Wouldn’t there be a cellar in a house like this?” asked Sarah behind him.
“Aye, let’s go and look. But bank statements and things like that would hardly be put away in a basement.”
They went back down to the kitchen and then into the hall. There was a low door under the stairs. Hamish opened it. A narrow wooden staircase led downwards. He made his way down, followed by Sarah.
The detectives for some reason had not thought to write down that in the basement was a well-equipped gym full of expensive weightlifting and exercise equipment. And what was more important, an old-fashioned rolltop desk in one corner.
Hamish made a beeline for it. “Here we are at last,” he said. “Accounts, credit card statements, bankbooks.” He sat down in front of it. Sarah waited nervously, expecting to hear the wail of a police siren at any moment.
“Now here’s a thing,” said Hamish after what Sarah felt to be an agonisingly long time. “The man was in debt and bad debt at that. He’s got an overdraft of fifty-five thousand pounds at the National Highland, and twenty-five thousand with Tay General. His credit card bills, Visa and Access, are high. I’ll just note down which restaurants he went to and maybe we can call there and see who it was he was entertaining. Well, well, well, last o’ the big spenders.”
“Hamish,” pleaded Sarah, “if you’ve found out what you want, let’s get out of here.”
“Aye, we’d better move. But I’d better get a glazier to fix thon door.”
“But getting a glazier without telling the police first will let them know when they learn of it that you were the one who broke in.”
“The man I’m going to ask won’t talk. And if he’s caught, he can say I broke in because I thought I saw someone moving about inside.”
Sarah was glad when they left the house and ploughed their way back to the Land Rover. Hamish drove off and then stopped at a cottage on the outskirts. “You wait here and I’ll tell the glazier what to do. Keep the engine and heater running.”
After some time he rejoined her. “He’ll fix it. He says it was on the radio that all the roads about Strathbane are still blocked so he should have plenty of time.”
“Now what?”
“Maggie Bane, I think. That’s if the lassie hasnae been arrested.”
Maggie Bane answered the door to them. She was dressed in a black sweater and skirt and her face was puffy with crying. Hamish had wondered whether to leave Sarah in the Land Rover, but had decided to take her with him. If Maggie objected to her presence, he could tell Sarah to wait outside.
“I was passing,” said Hamish in his light, pleasant Highland accent, “and I wondered how you were getting on. This is not really a police call, more in the way of a friendly call.”
“Come in.” She led the way to her sterile living room. “Sit down,” she said wearily.
Sarah studied Maggie’s beautiful face. How on earth could such a good-looking girl become involved with a middle-aged dentist in a bleak Highland town?
“Did you have a hard time at police headquarters?” asked Hamish.
“It was terrible. That brute Blair shouted and yelled at me. I tried to tell him that I had been trying to protect my reputation. This isn’t Glasgow or London. This is the Highlands of Scotland.”
“If it doesn’t distress you too much, could you tell me what the attraction was?” Hamish leaned forward, looking the picture of sympathy.
“He was glamorous.”
“A middle-aged dentist?”
“You didn’t know him,” she said wearily. “I met him in St. Andrews. I was just finishing at university, had just passed my finals. I’m…I’m not good at making friends. I went off to a b
ar to have a drink to celebrate. He was at the bar and we fell into conversation. Then he suddenly said, ‘I’m going to Paris tomorrow. Come with me. I’ll get your air ticket’
“And I said, ‘Yes,’ just like that and it was wonderful. We stayed at the George V and we walked along the quays and looked at the bookshops and he insisted on buying me a hat covered with artificial flowers at the Galerie Lafayette, although I told him no one wore hats anymore.” She gave a choked little sob. “I’ve still got that hat.”
There was a silence. Outside, the frozen branch of a tree rapped against the window with monotonous regularity, like an impatient finger.
“And why did your relationship with him break up?”
“We went on holiday to Provence, to Agde and Sete and along that coast. It rained every day. The clouds were so low they seemed to lie on the sea. We were staying at some old château which had been turned into a hotel. It was very expensive but the roof leaked and everything smelled of damp. He became irritable and tetchy and began to pick quarrels. We were meant to be away on holiday for three weeks, but he suddenly cut the holiday short after a week. I cried and cried, but he wouldn’t listen to me.”
Hamish took a deep breath. “Did it no’ dawn on you, lassie,” he said gently, “that Mr. Gilchrist might be worried about money?”
Her amazement seemed genuine. “But he earned a very good pay as a dentist. He always had the latest car, dined at the best restaurants.”
“Was there another woman?”
“I think there was. I took to following him. Oh, it was silly. He found out right away and said if I didn’t give him space, he would have to get rid of me. He went down to Inverness a lot. I’m sure there was someone there.”
“If you can think of anything at all,” said Hamish, “just phone me. I’ll come over right away.”
Maggie sniffed miserably. “You’re very kind, not like those dreadful policemen in Strathbane.”
“Have the press been bothering you?”
“Yes, but this weather will keep them away, and they seem to have lost interest anyway.”
“Did Mr. Gilchrist have any particular friends?”
“No, for a time there was just me. Neither of us had any friends up here. We were all we needed.”
“And relatives? I mean, as far as I know, no relative has come forward.”
“He said he was an only child and that his parents were dead.”
“Odd that. You would think there would be a cousin or someone.” Wedding photographs; thought Hamish. Jeannie Gilchrist would have wedding photographs. Must see her.
He rose and said goodbye. He was grateful that Maggie had not commented on Sarah’s presence.
Once back in the Land Rover, he said, “I’ll drop you back at the hotel and go to Inverness. I want to talk to Gilchrist’s ex-wife again.”
“Take me with you,” said Sarah. “I’m not doing anything else.”
Hamish looked out at the steel grey sky. “The wind’s rising,” he said. “It might be a hairy journey.”
“Then let’s be hairy together.”
Hamish smiled at her suddenly. “Inverness it is.”
Chapter Seven
“Well, now that we have seen each other,” said the Unicorn, “if you’ll believe in me, I’ll believe in you. Is that a bargain?”
—Lewis Carroll
“There’s coffee in that thermos on the floor beside you,” said Hamish as they drove slowly along. “It’s got milk and sugar in it because I meant to use it to make any policeman on guard outside Gilchrist’s a bit friendlier towards me.”
“I don’t take sugar, but I may be driven to it if we’re trapped in this snow.”
“We’ll go over by Dornoch and take the bridge,” said Hamish, peering out into the gloom. “I think the snow’s getting a bit wetter.”
By the time they reached the long bridge over the Dornoch Firth, Hamish’s eyes felt tired and gritty with the strain of peering ahead. As they made their way over the bridge, Hamish could see a yellowish light at the end and wondered what it was.
He soon found out.
On the other side was a different world. They drove straight out of the swirling snow and blackness and into brilliant sunshine. Hamish looked back in his driving mirror in amazement at the black wall of bad weather behind him. “Let’s just hope the storm stays where it is,” he said, “and doesn’t follow us into Inverness.”
“I will never get used to this weird climate. What do you hope to find out from Mrs. Gilchrist?” asked Sarah.
“I want to find out all I can about the man. She surely knew him better than anyone else.”
“What about Maggie Bane?”
“She was just having the affair with him. Marriage fair brings out the beast in people.”
“Yes, it does,” she said sadly.
He glanced sharply at the hunched figure in the passenger seat. “What would you know about it?”
“Observation,” she said, “just like you.”
When they reached Anstrumer Road in Inverness, Hamish climbed down from the Land Rover and looked up at the sky. Long ragged trails of black cloud were streaming out from the west, the fingers of the storm clawing eastward.
Jeannie Gilchrist was not at home. “Of course, she’ll be back at work,” said Hamish. “Let’s go into Inverness and get something to eat and then we’ll try the council offices.”
They found a self-service café. Sarah had a salad and Hamish, a Scotch pie and chips.
“You don’t worry about your cholesterol level, I see,” remarked Sarah.
“It’s comfort food,” said Hamish. “Salad makes me tetchy.”
“I cannot imagine you getting tetchy,” said Sarah. “You seem much too laid-back.”
He smiled at her. “I have the vicious temper.”
“I don’t believe that. Look at all the people inside and out. Where do they all come from? I was amazed to find Inverness such a busy place.”
“Aye, it’s grown out o’ recognition. There’s something suddenly bothering me.”
“And what’s that?”
“Thon still o’ the Smiley brothers. I keep thinking of that long shed. I mean a few bottles here and there for the locals is all right. What if they were into big production?”
“You keep saying it’s hard to keep anything quiet in the Highlands. Someone would have told you. I mean, you said that Kylie girl in the chemists knew about them.”
“I suppose that’s true. Well, murder comes before illegal hooch.”
After their meal, they went to the council offices and found Jeannie Gilchrist. She led them into a side room. Hamish introduced Sarah, saying she was a friend he had met in Inverness and that she could wait outside if Jeannie objected to her presence. Jeannie shrugged. “I’ve no secrets. I will have to cope with Frederick’s funeral after the procurator fiscal releases the body.”
“That’s why I’m here. He had no wedding photographs or photographs of any kind in his house. There must have been some relatives at the wedding.”
“Oh, that’s easily explained. He hated photographs of himself. I think he carried a glamorised picture of himself in his head and didn’t like to look at the reality. He was very vain. There were no relatives at the wedding. He was actually adopted from an orphanage. The couple who adopted him are long dead. He had a few colleagues at the wedding.”
“You said something to me about thinking he might have been married before. Surely that would have come out in his papers when you were making the wedding arrangements.”
“He handled all that. No, I suppose he was never married before if there’s no evidence of it. It was just a feeling, an intuition that one time he had been heavily involved with someone and that no one else was ever going to match up.”
Hamish sighed. “Every time I think I’ve found something mysterious and significant, it’s all explained neatly away. I happen to know he was heavily in debt.”
“Finally caught up with him, did it
?”
“What?”
“He liked to show off, big car, best restaurants, that kind of man.”
“Did you know he was having an affair with his receptionist, Maggie Bane?”
“I did not. But then I never saw or heard from him.”
“Mrs. Gilchrist, someone hated him enough to kill him in a savage way. Can you guess what he might have got into?”
She shook her head. “He was a braggart and a show-off but he was never involved in anything criminal.”
“Why do you assume that the murderer or murderers were criminals?”
“The drilling the teeth. That could have been a form of revenge.”
“Yes,” said Hamish slowly. “So it could.”
He could not think of anything else to ask her and so they took their leave. Once outside, he said, “That still is bothering me. I’ll drop you back at the hotel. No, I can’t take you with me. The Smiley brothers can be nasty.” He cocked his head to one side. “The Inverness seagulls have stopped screaming overhead and the sky is black. I wonder if we can make it back.”
They crossed the suspension bridge over the Black Isle and took the A9 north. Snowflakes began to whirl about them and the road in front was becoming whiter by the minute.
“This is hopeless,” said Hamish. “I think I’ll take the road over to Dingwall and find us a place to stay.”
“All right,” said Sarah.
Traffic had slowed to a crawl. They seemed to inch their way towards the town of Dingwall through the thickening, driving sheets of snow. Hamish finally drove up to the Station Hotel and parked.
At reception, he asked for two rooms. “Two,” said the receptionist, peering over the desk at Sarah’s wrists.
She grinned. “No handcuffs. I am a friend of Mr. Macbeth, not a prisoner.”
After they had been shown to adjoining rooms, Sarah insisted on battling out in the storm to a nearby chemists to buy makeup and a toothbrush and toothpaste. They also bought paperbacks and then retreated to the hotel lounge. But while Sarah read, Hamish looked idly out at the driving snow and turned all that he knew about the case over in his mind. Who was the most likely suspect? Maggie Bane. But how could Maggie Bane lift a man as heavy as the dentist and put him in the chair?