by M C Beaton
He took out his notebook and began to make rapid shorthand notes.
Then he was approached by a group of men and women—reporters from the Northern Times, Highland Times, Moray Firth Radio, and the Ross-shire Journal, all clamouring to know about witchcraft in Cnothan.
His heart sank. It was like a bad dream. He knew that the Glasgow and Edinburgh newspapers would soon follow, then the television teams, then the London newspaper and television reporters. But, worst of all—once more he would be working for Detective Chief Inspector Blair of Strathbane.
Ian Gibb had found his scoop at last.
FIVE
What makes life dreary is the want of motive.
—George Eliot
The circus came to town. All of it. The television crews with cables twisting like black snakes, the reporters, the feature writers, the photographers, the forensic team, squads of policemen to search for clues, and the fat, pompous figure of Chief Detective Inspector Blair among the lot.
Blair was determined to solve this case all on his own, without his thunder being stolen by that lanky village idiot, Hamish Macbeth, and so he told Hamish to ‘run along’ and keep the gentlemen of the press in order.
Hamish derived much bitter amusement from the spectacle of the press trying to winkle a comment out of the taciturn locals. It was Diarmuid Sinclair of all people who broke the ice. Driven out of Cnothan in the search of a friendlier interviewee, Grampian Television had come across Diarmuid in his fields. Since he had started to talk to Hamish Macbeth, there was no stopping Diarmuid. He talked and talked. He told fantastic Highland stories of witchcraft in Cnothan. He even said he believed there was a coven of witches in the town.
Diarmuid burst upon the six o’clock news and caused emerald-green jealousy in Cnothan. By evening the press were almost besieged by locals dying to be interviewed.
Hamish felt restless. Blair and his sidekicks, detectives Jimmy Anderson and Harry MacNab, were cluttering up the police station, and one of the forensic team had commandeered the Land Rover. Hamish put Towser on the leash and ambled down to The Clachan. He felt if he could find the whereabouts of Sandy Carmichael, he might find the whereabouts of William Mainwaring and the identity of the skeleton. Mrs. Mainwaring had tearfully confirmed her husband had false teeth, but it was hard to think of the means by which Mainwaring could have been reduced to bare bones so quickly.
It was pitch-black although it was only four in the afternoon, and the endless screaming wind of Sutherland was tearing at his clothes. The bar was closed but he could see a light inside and hammered on the door. After a wait of a few minutes, it was opened by Hector Gunn. “Mair questions,” he groaned when he saw Hamish. “If it isnae the press, it’s the polis. Come in.” Hamish went into the bar, which smelled of stale beer and strong disinfectant, with Towser at his heels.
“I want to know what happened when Sandy Carmichael was in here on Saturday evening,” said Hamish.
“Nothing happened. He drank himself stupid, that’s all.”
“The man is a known alcoholic. Didn’t you think buying him drinks was a form o’ murder?” said Hamish.
“Och, I wouldnae say he was an alcoholic. Jist ower-fond o’ his dram.”
Hamish looked at Hector Gunn in silence. Was there any point in saying that a man who had the DTs with remarkable regularity was obviously not a social drinker? He decided it would be a waste of time.
“Well,” said Hamish, “Let’s put it another way. Who was the keenest to buy Sandy drinks?”
“I wasnae watching, and I’ve got mair to dae with ma time,” said Hector huffily. “It was your job tae be doon here, seeing that none of them tried to drive when they had mair than enough. It was a noisy evening. Alistair Gunn, ma cousin, was in, and Dougie Macdonald. Something Mainwaring had said to Alistair was fair making him mad, although he wouldnae say what it was. He wanted a crowd of them to debag Mainwaring and throw him in the loch. They were all as fierce as lions and saying what they were going to do to Mainwaring when in he walks and they all fall silent and become sheepish and shuffle their feet and not a word is said to the man. John Sinclair and his wife, Mary, came in and Mainwaring joined them, although they didn’t want him to. Then that reporter, Ian Gibb, him from Dornoch, he was in, noisy and drunk, and Mainwaring leaves the Sinclairs and says something to him, and Gibb tries to punch him but falls on the floor. Then thae two crofters, Alec Birrell and Davey Macdonald, start shouting at Mainwaring that he’s stealing good croft land from the crofters and Mainwaring tells them to get stuffed. Then Harry Mackay puts his oar in and says Mainwaring bought those houses and left them empty out o’ spite, and Mainwaring says Mackay couldn’t get a fuck in a brothel, he was that weak. Mackay walks off in a temper. I had a lot of customers to serve but I was just about to go around the bar and stop the noise when Mainwaring left and everything quietened down after that and they were all laughing at Sandy, who was standing on his chair and trying to do an impersonation of Frank Sinatra. I asked him for his car keys but he said he didnae have his Land Rover with him.”
Hamish asked a few more questions and then went off into the blackness of late afternoon. He decided to go out to the Cnothan Game and Fish Company to see if Jamie had heard any news of Sandy. He let Towser off the leash as soon as he was clear of the town traffic, and then he ambled along, whistling in a kind of dreary way.
Towser plunged into the fields on either side of the road, looking for rabbits. Hamish kept calling him back, shining his powerful torch across the fields. It was just when Towser had been gone some time and Hamish was wondering whether the dog had been caught in a rabbit trap, that he at last saw Towser loping back towards the road, his eyes gleaming in the long beam thrown by the torch.
“It’s no use grinning at me like that,” grumbled Hamish, “I’ve had enough. Back on the leash you go.”
And then Towser’s absurd grin slipped and fell to the grass. Wondering, Hamish bent down and shone his torch on a set of false teeth. He took out a clean handkerchief and picked them up.
“Where did you get this, boy?” he whispered. “Over there? Come on. Show me!”
Towser obediently trotted off, stopping and turning every few yards to make sure his master was following him. “Fetch!” called Hamish when Towser finally stopped and pawed the ground. Towser scoured around, bringing back everything he could find, from rusty tin cans to old shoes. Hamish turned and looked back. There was a car going along the road, not far away. As he watched, the car window opened and something came hurtling out. He walked forward and looked. It was a crushed beer can.
He stood in the darkness, shivering in the wind, and thinking hard.
He shone his torch on the false teeth. They were stained with nicotine.
He wrapped them carefully in his handkerchief again and began to make his way back to the road. He put Towser back on the leash and headed on towards the Game and Fish Company.
As he reached the yard, Jamie cruised in in his white Mercedes with his wife. The floodlights in the yard were switched on and so Hamish was able to view Jamie’s wife clearly. She was a tall, slim Highland beauty with masses of jet-black hair, a creamy skin, and a luscious mouth. She was wearing a mink coat open over a white shirt blouse and jeans and black leather boots with very high stiletto heels.
Jamie introduced her, and then said, “We’ll be in the office, Helen, if you want me.”
His wife smiled vaguely and then swayed off in the direction of the house.
“Now, what can I do for you?” asked Jamie. “Found Sandy?”
“No,” said Hamish. “I was hoping you would have had some news.”
Jamie led the way into the office. “That’s a funny-looking police dog,” he said, looking at Towser.
“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 the 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 Italian waiters’ being noisy and insolent, rather in the way that top hairdressers ate 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 Roa
d 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 medic students playing about.”
♦
Blair and Hamish were closeted in the police-station annex. 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.”