Hamish MacBeth 03 (1988) - Death of an Outsider

by M C Beaton

  “And dancing girls? You’re living it up. What are you going to get young Scan?”

  “A train set,” said Diarmuid dreamily, “wi’ wee houses and fields and tracks and all.”

  “Set you back a bit,” said Hamish. “Not to mention the price o’ a room at the Glen Abb.”

  “I’ve a good bittie put by,” said Diarmuid. “You jist book me the room for Friday night.”

  ♦

  After the crofter had left, Hamish drove over to Mrs. Mainwaring’s and asked for a photograph of her husband. He had a vague notion of sending it down to London to Rory Grant on the Daily Recorder. The riots in Paris were over and the journalist might be able to find something out about Mainwaring from the newspaper files. He stayed as short a time as possible. The house and Mrs. Mainwaring depressed him. Ashtrays were overflowing and dust had settled on everything, and Mrs. Mainwaring had been well and truly drunk.

  When he returned to the police station, he could see the lights shining from Jenny’s cottage. He wanted her again. A cynical voice in his head told him he could if he wanted.

  His conscience fought it down. Hamish did not believe in love without responsibility. One more night in her arms and then he really would have to propose to her.

  He settled down to read the Xeroxed papers thoroughly. Along with the statements, there were reports on Mainwaring’s background from the police in the south. Mainwaring’s brother, a lawyer, had said that Mainwaring had borrowed large sums of money from him over the years and had never paid them back. He had ended up refusing to see him or communicate with him. Mainwaring’s two sisters said pretty much the same thing. Mainwaring’s parents were dead. He had inherited a tidy sum from them when he was still a comparatively young man. He had bought an hotel in Devon, but had seemed to run it like a sort of ‘Fawlty Towers,’ insulting the regular customers. Three years later, he had declared himself bankrupt.

  Then came the surprise. Mainwaring had been married twice before. One wife, the daughter of a garage owner, had divorced him, and the other, an elderly lady, had died of a heart attack. A police comment said that Mainwaring had a reputation for having great success with the ladies.

  Hamish fished out the photograph of William Mainwaring and looked at it. The small prissy features set in the large round head looked out at him. Amazing, thought Hamish. No accounting for taste.

  ♦

  As the small train chugged out of Cnothan next morning, Hamish settled back in his seat and felt himself begin to relax. Cnothan and all its dark hates and enmities and Bible-bashing religion was losing its grip on him and he was journeying towards the light. That’s just what it was like, he thought. It was as if Cnothan were some science-fiction black mist that twisted and turned the minds of all who lived in it.

  The train crawled its way round the hillsides, stopping and starting, finally picking up speed until at last it clattered over the points into Lairg station, the first civilized outpost in Hamish’s mind. The sky was turning light and the birds were chirping in the trees. He leaned out of the window and watched the man in charge of Lairg station bustling about. Hamish knew him of old. He was like a station-master in a children’s book, rosy-cheeked, white hair, kindly eyes twinkling behind spectacles, unfailingly helpful, unfailingly good-humored.

  Now Lairg, as Hamish remembered, was very like Cnothan in size and design. It, too, was the centre of a crofting community. But it was a bustling, cheerful, welcoming place.

  The days were getting rapidly lighter. One long ray of sun struck the top of the station roof. There was a tinge of warmth in the air. That was the way of winter in the Highlands. It seduced you into thinking it had lost its grip and then came roaring back. The train moved off in a series of jerks, through Ardgay, Tain, Fearn, Invergordon, Dingwall, Muir of Ord, and on to Inverness.

  The restless sea-gulls of Inverness were screaming overhead when he got off at Inverness station. The Tannoy was belting out a Scottish country-dance tune. Hamish was tempted to spend a day going around the shops, tempted to forget about the investigation. What on earth could he find out at this late date that the Inverness police could not? He was not wearing his uniform, correctly guessing that Blair had not warned the Inverness Police Department of this intrusion into their territory.

  Inverness is the capital of the Highlands, crowded, busy, lively, and almost beautiful if you keep your eyes away from a big, grey, ugly modern concrete building that squats by the side of the River Ness and quite ruins the view of the castle.

  It was past this architectural monstrosity that Hamish went, and then along Ness Bank to the Glen Abb Hotel.

  The hotel had been created out of two large Victorian villas. The clever owner had kept the cosy Victorian effect with large overstuffed armchairs and log fires. The chef was French and the prices as high as those in a West End London restaurant, but the owner, Simon Gaunt, knew there was a lot of money in and around Inverness and not too much to spend it on in the way of entertainment.

  He was in his office when Hamish arrived. He was a very thin, tall Englishman as gaunt as his name, wearing full Highland dress.

  “The tourists like it,” he said, fidgeting with the hem of his kilt, although Hamish had made no comment.

  Hamish explained that they were still trying to find out if Jamie Ross had been missing from the reception for enough length of time to get to Cnothan and back.

  Simon Gaunt shook his head. “Damn near impossible, I would say,” he said. “The police have already asked me the same question and interviewed the waiters and other members of the staff. He went out for about an hour. Mr. Ross said he had drunk too much and needed to clear his head. He said he walked up and down by the river for quite a while, until he felt sober enough to go back. But you know that. He evidently made a statement to that effect.”

  Mr. Gaunt poured himself a cup of coffee from a Thermos jug on his desk. Hamish sniffed the air and then looked at the hotel owner hopefully. The hotel owner stared back and put the top firmly back on the jug without offering Hamish any.

  Hamish sighed inwardly. That’s the English for you, he thought. He meant the southern English, the residents of Cumbria, Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Northumberland not really qualifying.

  He fished in the pocket of his sports jacket for his notebook. He might as well take down some notes and type up a report for Blair to show he had been working. The photograph of William Mainwaring, which had been tucked between the pages of his notebook, fell out and slid over the desk to land in front of Mr. Gaunt.

  “Oh, are you after Mr. Williams as well?” asked the manager, peering at the photograph.

  “That’s the dead man,” said Hamish sharply. “William Mainwaring.”

  Mr. Gaunt fished in his sporran and brought out a pair of spectacles that he popped on his nose. He picked up the photograph again and then grinned. “Well, I suppose Williams is better than Smith.”

  “You mean Mainwaring was calling himself Williams? Not Smith? You mean he had a woman with him?”

  “And what a woman,” said Mr. Gaunt. “I thought it was his daughter at first.”

  Hamish thought of Jenny and his heart lurched.

  “When was this?” he asked.

  “About a month ago. They checked in for one night.”

  “He was married,” said Hamish desperately. “How do you know it wasn’t Mrs. Mainwaring?”—although Hamish knew that no one would ever describe Mrs. Mainwaring as looking like her husband’s daughter.

  Simon Gaunt’s face took on a dreamy look. “She was like a Highland beauty dressed in Paris. Masses of shiny black hair falling to her shoulders, white skin, and the sort of mouth you dream about—full and sensual. She was wearing a cream wool dress with a white leather belt, black stockings, and scarlet high heels, those sandal-type with thin straps. They were in the dining-room for a long time. He was prosing on about something and she was looking at him with amusement, but she hardly said a word. I was in the dining-room myself that evening, for the
Laird of Crochty was in. The laird likes to dine here.”

  Hamish let out a little sigh of relief. Helen Ross. Not Jenny. He would worry about Helen Ross later, but right at that moment he was glad it hadn’t been Jenny.

  “Was that the only time they stayed here?” he asked.

  “Yes, definitely. I wouldn’t forget the likes of her in a hurry.”

  Hamish asked more questions and then said, “Oh, while I’m here, I would like to reserve one of your best rooms for Friday night for a Mr. Diarmuid Sinclair.”

  “And who’s he?” asked the manager. “I like to keep one of the best rooms free in case one of the laird’s friends wants to stay overnight. The laird is very fond of my hotel.”

  Hamish looked at the hotel owner in amazement. “You mean to say you haff never heard of Mr. Diarmuid Sinclair?”

  “No, I can’t say I have,” said Mr. Gaunt.

  Hamish laughed. “He’ll walk in here looking like an old crofter and sounding like an old crofter and no one would ever guess he made his millions as a young man in the South African gold mines.”

  Mr. Gaunt pretended to look carefully at the register. “Why!” he said, “we have our best suite free. It used to be a lounge but we turned it into our best suite with hall and bathroom. We have had royalty there.”

  “Is that a fact,” said Hamish. “Who?”

  “When this was a private house, the queen paid a visit to Mrs. Crummings, the then owner. Mrs. Crummings was a retired housekeeper from Storroch Castle. The queen took tea in that very bedroom, although, of course, it was not a bedroom then.”

  “My, my,” said Hamish. “Queen Elizabeth herself.”

  “Well, no,” said Mr. Gaunt. “Queen Mary.”

  “I’m thinking that would be long before you were born,” said Hamish.

  “Yes, yes,” said the hotel owner testily, “but nonetheless, do assure Mr. Sinclair that we have had royalty here.”

  Hamish was escorted out of the hotel by Mr. Gaunt, a friend of the famous Mr. Diarmuid Sinclair meriting such distinguished attention. He walked along the river bank. He wondered whether he should warn Diarmuid that he had lied about him but decided against it. The sun was still sparkling on the water, but the wind had become chill and the sky was turning a murky colour.

  He decided he would try to see Helen Ross alone before he said anything to Blair. Blair would not respect Jamie Ross’s feelings but would accuse Helen in front of her husband of having spent the night with Mainwaring. Hamish sat down on a bench and stared at the water. Now that he was away from the atmosphere of Cnothan, strong motives for murder leapt into his mind. Jamie, for all his pleasant personality, was a hard-nosed businessman and probably had a ruthless streak. In order to succeed in the Highlands and cope with the hellish bureaucracy of crofting laws, landlords, factors, environmentalists, and God knows how many obstructive quangos, you had to be ruthless. And how would such a ruthless man take the infidelity of his wife? By ruining his business? Hamish shook his head, and a passing woman gave him a clear berth. Then there was Mrs. Mainwaring. It was her money Mainwaring was using to wine and dine Helen Ross. Agatha Mainwaring was a powerful woman who drank too much. What if it was not a cold-blooded, premeditated crime, but done by someone who had found the incomer by the lobster tank, interfering as usual and poking his nose in where he had no right to be, and had struck him a blow that had broken his neck and toppled him into the tank? Maybe whoever it was did not know Mainwaring was dead but thought that a few nibbles by the lobsters would serve him right, and had run away, only to return later to find Mainwaring had turned into a skeleton. Had the call that had sent him rushing off thirty miles to the Angler’s Rest been made to keep him out of the way? Or had it been another practical joke to keep him from interfering with the locals’ Saturday-night drinking pleasures? The witchcraft scare had not been connected to the murder. Or had it?

  Land greed was a powerful force in the Highlands. The two crofters, Birrell and Macdonald, could have put their daughters up to the scare, roping in Watson’s daughter as well in order to confuse the issue.

  On the other hand, it could have been a practical joke that had gone wrong.

  Say Alistair Gunn, not knowing his own strength, had pushed Mainwaring, and Mainwaring had struck his head on the side of the tank and broken his neck.

  Or there was Harry Mackay. He had been grossly insulted by Mainwaring. “Couldn’t even get a fuck in a brothel,” or something like that, Mainwaring had said. Mackay had been furious. The insult to Mackay’s masculinity might refer to something in the past. Had Mackay been married, engaged, and had Mainwaring with his uncanny way with women taken some female away from Mackay?

  And Mrs. Struthers? What of her? It was all very well to laugh at the idea that a minister’s wife would turn to murder just because someone had humiliated her and jeered at her cooking skill. But Cnothan was such a dark and twisted sort of place, who knew what went on under the most respectable facade?

  Hamish looked at his watch. There was a train due to leave at noon. He walked in the direction of the station. A poster caught his eye. There was a rerun of Whisky Galore on at the cinema.

  Damn Cnothan and damn Blair, thought Hamish.

  He headed rapidly in the direction of the cinema.

  ♦

  Ian Gibb went down to meet the evening train in the hope that Hamish might be on it. He was smarting with humiliation. The Daily Recorder in London had asked him for a story and he had duly sent one. It had appeared on the front page but under someone else’s name. When he had phoned the news editor to complain, the news editor had pointed out that the reporter who had been blessed with a byline had deserved it, for he had had quite a job translating Ian’s prose. Ian had hotly demanded an example. “Well,” the news editor had said, “take this line, for instance. Said forty-eight-year-old electrician, Mr. Joseph Noble, of 22 Main Street, Cnothan, yesterday laughingly, but with tears behind the laughter, “This place will never be the same.” For God’s sake, sonny, you’re not sending stuff to the local rag, you know.”

  Ian had slammed down the phone. What had been up with that bit about Mr. Noble? They hadn’t even used it. He thirsted for another scoop…something that would make them sit up. Blair was hiding something. Forensic had been crawling all over Jamie Ross’s place. Was that where Mainwaring had been last seen? But how had Mainwaring been reduced to a skeleton? And why did Blair get so red-faced and violent every time he asked if they had discovered the reason? Hamish might know.

  Also, Ian smelled a cover-up somewhere. If it hadn’t been for that bomb in Downing Street, the media would still be asking questions and more questions.

  The train pulled in. Ian saw Hamish descending from a carriage at the end and ran to meet him.

  “Not another murder?” asked Hamish.

  “No, it’s just that…” Ian launched into a long and bitter complaint against the Daily Recorder and the way one of the biggest murder mysteries of the century was being passed over.

  Hamish thought hard as Ian talked. The lobster death could not be hushed up forever. Sharp interest would return and that interest would never fade. Television crews even a year later would return to do documentaries of what had happened to Mainwaring. So what if the upper classes of London had a fright? It would make screaming headlines, but at least it might mean a murderer did not remain at large. If the press became pushy again, then Blair would be made to work.

  “There is a story,” said Hamish cautiously, “and you’ve just been talking about it.”

  “What?” asked Ian eagerly.

  “Well, the fact that this is a dreadful and grotesque murder and there’s an uncanny silence about it. Blair sits around the Anstey Hotel watching television when he ought to be interviewing people again and again. Go round the locals and gossip to them and get them to voice outrage.”

  A slow smile dawned on Ian’s face. “Thanks, Hamish. I’ll start right away.”

  “Another word of advice,” said H
amish. “When you’re writing for a paper like, say, the Daily Recorder, read a copy o’ the damn thing first and carefully copy the style. It’s no use writing a piece in the style of The Scotsman, say, when you want it in one of the tabloids. And it’s no use writing a piece for the tabloids as if you are writing for a local paper. Have you got your car?”

  “Yes,” said Ian, waving towards a hand-painted primrose-yellow Morris Minor with a 1950s licence plate.

  “Then drop me off at Cnothan Game.”

  Only half listening to the reporter as they drove along, Hamish tried to think of ways to get Helen Ross on her own. He knew his own liking and admiration of Jamie Ross were not allowing him to think clearly. But if there were more achievers like Jamie in the Highlands of Scotland, then the population figures might rise again. As it was, the young people drifted away to the cities, the houses and cottages stood empty, occasionally filled by an influx of underachieves who chattered on about the quality of life, by which they meant they could live on the dole while persuading themselves they were pioneers in the outback of the British Isles.

  Ian dropped him in the yard of Cnothan Game and Fish Companyand drove off. Hamish walked up to the door of the bungalow and rang the bell.

  Helen Ross herself answered the door. She was wearing a black wool dress with enormous shoulder pads and jet-embroidered lapels, the sort of forties style worn by Joan Collins. Heavy antique earrings of Whitby jet emphasized the startling whiteness of her skin.

  “Come in,” she said, and swayed off in front of him. He followed her into the sitting-room, automatically ducking his head as he walked under the chandelier.

  “Jamie not at home?” asked Hamish.

  “No, he’s over on the west coast, seeing to the catch. Sit down. Would you like a drink?”

  “Perhaps later,” Hamish sat down in one of the white leather armchairs and looked at Helen Ross curiously. She gave him a vaguely inquiring smile.