by M C Beaton
“I’m glad I found you alone,” said Hamish, and then he plunged right in. “About a month ago, you and William Mainwaring booked into the Glen Abb Hotel in Inverness.”
Helen Ross lit a cigarette, blew out a cloud of smoke and squinted at Hamish through it.
“So you found out about that,” she said. It was not a question.
“Would you like to tell me about it?” Hamish waited while Helen placidly smoked. Her whole body appeared relaxed, and her long, long legs in the sheerest of black stockings were crossed at the ankle.
“Not really,” she sighed. “But, if I have the right of it, it’s either you or that pig Blair?”
Hamish nodded.
“Well, I’ll tell you how it came about. I get pretty lonely here. Jamie’s wrapped up in his work. I met him after I got my degree at St. Andrew’s University. I was doing summer work, waitressing at the Anstey Hotel. We fell in love and got married and struggled along, being very happy just trying to make ends meet. Then Jamie thought up the idea for this business. It was very exciting. He worked at it night and day, like a man possessed. Then it succeeded, then we got rich, and then I got bored. End of story.”
The gentle, lilting Highland voice fell silent.
Hamish cleared his throat. “So to relieve that boredom, you decided to have an affair with William Mainwaring?”
“No, it wasn’t like that at all. He got in the way of calling around when Jamie was over at the west coast. He talked about books, paintings, world affairs, all the sort of things I used to talk about to my friends at university. He made me feel young again. Of course, it was all intellectual crap, now I come to think of it, but it was heady stuff. The conversation up here is about sheep, the weather, the church, and sheep. I was easily talked into going to Inverness with him. Jamie was to be away at the Land Court in Edinburgh, fighting another battle. William said we would stay at the Glen Abb—separate rooms—and have a slap-up meal and we could talk and talk. That was what was so seductive. Well, we were out of Cnothan and there we were in Inverness, and William began to seem to me like a prosy bore who knew a little about everything and not much about anything. Then I found he had just booked the one room. I told him I was leaving. He said if I didn’t spend the night with him, he would tell Jamie. So I said, ‘Tell Jamie,’ and I walked out in the middle of the night and found myself another hotel.”
“Which one?” asked Hamish.
“Not really a hotel, a boarding-house near the station, Mrs. Parker’s”
“And what name did you check in under?”
“My own,” said Helen.
“And she will be able to vouch that you were there?”
“Of course she will. I was her only guest.”
“And did Mainwaring tell your husband about the trip to Inverness?”
“No.”
“How do you know?” asked Hamish curiously.
“Jamie’s got a violent temper. He’d have broken Mainwaring’s neck.”
“Then maybe he did.”
“He couldn’t have,” said Helen, raising thin eyebrows in amazement. “He was in Inverness with me at the wedding.”
“All the time?”
“No, he disappeared for a long time to sober up, but not long enough to get to Cnothan and back.”
“Is he often drunk?”
“He gets drunk on hogmanay and then maybe occasionally at a party. The rest of the time, he hardly drinks at all. He likes coffee more than anything.”
Hamish sat in silence, thinking. Helen Ross went to the drinks trolley and mixed herself a gin and tonic. “Sure you won’t have anything, Constable?”
“No, thank you. What are you going to do now?” asked Hamish. “I’ll need to put a report in to Blair. I can’t keep this quiet.”
“I suppose you must,” said Helen. She sat down and crossed her legs. Her skirt, Hamish realized for the first time, was slit up the side and now exposed an expanse of long smooth stocking-leg and black stocking-top. Hamish wondered whether the leg show was deliberate. He could not imagine Helen Ross not being aware at any time of one inch of her body or dress.
“How will Jamie react?”
“I’ll have to tell Jamie first. It might not be a bad thing. He’ll learn what boredom can drive me to do. I’ve begged him to let me get a job, but he says the locals would sneer at him and say he’s such a miser that he has to send his wife out to work.”
“I didn’t think he would care what they thought.”
“Not in general. But he likes me here in the house, waiting for him. He’ll be in such a rage. How boring.”
“He won’t hurt you?” asked Hamish anxiously.
“Spoil the decoration he’s paid so much for?” Helen laughed. “I’m part of the show, along with those ghastly white leather chairs and the white Mercedes.”
“How do you mean, paid so much for?” asked Hamish sharply.
“The clothes, man, the clothes. This little number cost five hundred pounds and it’s only one of many. My only enjoyment in life is buying clothes, and Jamie gladly pays for anything I want. He gives me everything except sex and company.”
Hamish shifted uncomfortably. The room was suffocatingly hot and suddenly charged with a new atmosphere. His collar felt tight and his skin itched.
He rose to go. Helen Ross rose as well and came to stand in front of him. In her high heels, she was as tall as he.
“Stay a little and have a drink,” she murmured. One hand with its long red-painted finger-nails held the skirt of her dress open, her eyes dropping so that Hamish looked down as well.
“No, I have to be going,” said Hamish. His voice sounded strange in his own ears, all squeaky and afraid. She wound her arms round his neck and kissed him on the mouth. Hamish’s senses reeled. Before Jenny had come on the scene, he had been celibate for a long time. Now he dimly wondered how he had ever managed to survive.
Helen’s mouth had moved to his ear and she started nibbling the lobe. Her voice then whispered, “Me going to Inverness with William has nothing to do with the case. You’ll forget about it. Won’t you?”
Hamish pushed her away and straightened his tie. “No, Mrs. Ross,” he said. “I would like to help you, but I must put in my report.”
For one moment a flicker of…venom?…flashed in the depths of her eyes, and then it was gone.
When Hamish got outside a moment later, he gulped down great lungfuls of cold air. He set out to walk back to Cnothan.
♦
Jamie Ross arrived home an hour later.
Helen Ross poured him a drink and then said, “Hamish Macbeth was here. He has found out about me going to Inverness with Mainwaring.”
Jamie’s face darkened. “Is he going to put in a report?”
Helen shrugged. “He says he’ll have to.”
Jamie rounded on her. “Didn’t you try to shut him up, for Christ’s sake?”
“Oh, I tried,” said Helen. “Believe me, I tried. But he wasn’t buying any.”
“Damn Macbeth to hell,” said Jamie Ross.
EIGHT
Loaf, as I have loafed aforetime,
Through the streets with tranquil mind,
And a long-backed fancy-mongrel
Trailing casually behind.
—C. S. Calverley
Hamish awoke the next morning in his own bed with Towser beside him. “Anything would be better than you,” he said morosely, pushing the dog out of the bed. Towser usually lay across his master’s feet like a rug during the night, but had been recently banished from the bedroom.
Hamish could have stayed the night with Jenny if he had wanted, but he had made the excuse that he would have to sit up late, typing out a report for Blair. Although this was true, he also did not want to get further involved until he decided whether his intentions were honourable or not.
The weather forecast for the north of Scotland had been dreadful, but as if to prove the forecasters wrong, the sun blazed down outside.
An hour l
ater Hamish was about to descend on Blair with his report when the minister, Mr. Struthers, called.
At first Hamish was puzzled. Why should a minister call on a policeman at breakfast time to discuss the problem of AIDS? Hamish grew more uncomfortable as the minister’s pale eyes began to gleam with a hectic light as he went on to damn homosexuals. “Revenge is mine, saith the Lord,” ended Mr. Struthers.
“And a good thing too,” said Hamish cheerfully, trying to lighten the atmosphere. “Revenge is best left to God and justice. Look at this murder. That came about because someone decided to take the law into their own hands.”
Mr. Struthers leaned across the desk and seized Hamish’s wrist in a strong clasp and his eyes bored into those of the policeman. “Homosexuality is a form of murder,” he said.
Hamish picked up the minister’s hand and removed it. The light began to dawn. “It’s a pity,” said Hamish, “that you have not got the real-live homosexual in Cnothan to practise your lack of Christian compassion on. You’re a terrible man for the gossip, Mr. Struthers.”
“I never listen to gossip,” said the minister.
Hamish eyed him shrewdly. “And so this wee visit has nothing at all to do with Alistair Gunn believing me to be gay?”
The minister flushed angrily. “A certain parishioner came to me in great distress. He did not want to see AIDS in Cnothan.”
Hamish looked at the minister in disgust. “You should be ashamed of yourself, Mr. Struthers, listening to rubbish from that malicious man.”
“If I am mistaken, then I apologize,” said the minister. “But where I find evil in my parish, I shall strike it down.”
“Would you say William Mainwaring was evil?” asked Hamish curiously.
The minister shifted uneasily. “He has suffered the wrath of God.”
“Mainwaring suffered at the hands of a very evil human being, and if you want to spend your time striking out evil in your parish, then it is better you look for the murderer,” said Hamish furiously. “Push off, there’s a good minister, and close the door behind you.”
“Daft,” muttered Hamish after the minister had left. “They’re all plain daft.”
He walked down the main street in the sunshine, wishing it were all over, wishing the murder solved and himself back in Lochdubh.
He met Diarmuid Sinclair and told him about the room having been booked for him at the Glen Abb Hotel, and continued on down the hill. A car slowed to a halt beside him, and Harry Mackay, the estate agent, popped his head out.
“Like to come back to the office with me for a coffee?” he called.
Hamish hesitated only a minute. Blair could wait. Harry Mackay might throw some light on the mystery.
The estate office was in a Victorian villa in the middle of the council houses. The office was in what used to be the front and back parlours on the ground floor. Harry Mackay led the way upstairs to his living-room, which was above the shop.
When he went off to make coffee, Hamish studied the bookshelves.
He turned round as the estate agent came back in carrying a tray with coffee and biscuits.
“This is very kind of you,” said Hamish.
Harry Mackay grinned. “I’m hoping to find out how our murder’s going. Blair won’t tell anyone anything.”
“It’s not going anywhere,” said Hamish gloomily. “Sandy Carmichael is the prime suspect and he hasn’t been found.” Hamish then sat still, the coffee-cup half raised to his lips and his mouth open. He remembered sitting by the river in Inverness, thinking about all the suspects, and yet he had never once thought of Sandy Carmichael. Why? Surely it followed that the nosy Mainwaring had called round to bait Sandy and Sandy had struck him and shoved him in the pool. The very fact that Blair kept insisting it was Sandy had made him, Hamish Macbeth, discount the whole idea. There was the question of the clothes. Someone had got rid of the clothes. Surely the lobsters hadn’t eaten clothes, wallet, credit cards, watch, and all the other indestructible bits without leaving a trace. Teams of policemen had combed the area for miles around, looking for any sort of fragment, and they hadn’t come up with so much as a button. But there were peatbogs where a parcel of clothes would sink without a trace. Sandy’s cottage had been gone over. There had been evidence in the garden at the back that a fire had recently been lit, but there had been no ash to sift through. The Land Rover had been scrubbed and hosed down. When had Sandy ever bothered to clean his Rover before?
Hamish felt like a fool.
“What’s the matter?” asked Harry Mackay. “You look as if you’ve just been struck by lightning.”
“Nothing,” mumbled Hamish. He pulled himself together. “How’s business?”
“Not very good. There’s only one strange thing, Mrs. Mainwaring called to see me. As soon as all the legal formalities are over, she wants me to buy the crofts and houses. I have a client for them in Edinburgh. Interested in holiday homes.”
Hamish’s eyes sharpened. “But not her own? She’ll be staying on there?”
“Yes, her own as well. I warned her I can’t get her much. I may get six thousand pounds apiece for the crofts if I’m lucky, but the houses are in a worse state than when Mainwaring bought them.”
“But Mrs. Mainwaring has always said she liked Cnothan.”
“Well, she told me she’ll be glad to get out. Wants to go back and live in Maidstone. And I’ll tell you another thing: she was stone-cold sober. I used to wonder how on earth she put up with Mainwaring, but she told me he held the purse-strings and if she had left him, she wouldn’t have got anything.”
“He had a rare way with the ladies, I gather,” said Hamish.
“Not that I ever noticed,” said Harry Mackay.
“Didn’t interfere in your love life?” asked Hamish.
“What love life?” countered Harry Mackay. “There’s only two lookers around here. One’s that artist and the other’s Helen Ross.”
“And no success there?”
“No. I took Jenny Lovelace out for dinner a couple of times, but no go, and Helen Ross’s come-hither eye doesn’t mean a thing.”
“Who do you think did it?” asked Hamish. “The murder, I mean.”
“Oh, don’t ask me. This place is getting me down. They’re all sick and twisted and narrow-minded and malicious.”
“I thought you were a Cnothan man yourself?”
“Aye, but I’ve been away from it for a long time, and I haven’t been able to settle since I came back.”
Hamish took his leave and went to the Anstey Hotel, where he found Blair half asleep in the television lounge,
A children’s show flickered on the screen.
“Do you usually watch ‘Postman Pat’?” asked Hamish.
Blair came fully awake with a grunt. “I was thinking about clues,” he said huffily. “Got something for me?”
Hamish sat down and began to read his report on Helen Ross.
“Fancy whore,” said Blair when Hamish had finished. “Ah’ll go and see her maself and have some fun.”
“Don’t have too much fun,” warned Hamish, “or Ja-mie’ll have his lawyer breathing down your neck.”
“‘Get oot o’ here,’” snarled Blair, “and don’t tell me what tae do. Bugger off.”
Hamish went off out into the soft sunlight. It was a mellow day, too good a day for one constable to be fuming over a pill of a detective inspector.
All at once, he decided to go fishing. He had a telescopic rod in his luggage. He would go to the upper reaches of the Cnothan River and if the water bailiffs caught him, he could swear blind he was looking for clues. He needed peace and quiet to think.
He kept on his uniform—proof to any water bailiffs that he was on duty—and ambled off with Towser loping at his heels. He had strapped the collapsible rod onto his back under his waterproof cape.
As he strolled along beside the foaming river, he wished he had not worn his cape. The sun was quite warm, although clouds were massing to the west and the wi
nd was becoming chill.
It struck him that he had not thought of Priscilla for some time and he wondered whether he was cured.
♦
Priscilla Halburton-Smythe sat in a chair in the hat shop in the King’s Road and searched the newspapers for some mention of Cnothan. But the papers were still full of the aftermath of the Downing Street bombing.
The shop door opened and her friend, Sarah Paterson, who owned the shop and shared a flat with Priscilla, came in. Priscilla’s eyes slid to the clock. Eleven in the morning! Sarah was always late.
“I brought you a letter,” said Sarah. “Arrived after you left.”
Priscilla took the letter and opened it. It was from her father. Her eye skimmed down it, looking for some mention of Hamish. Ah, here it was. Colonel Halburton-Smythe was incensed that Hamish Macbeth was still absent from Loch-dubh. He had written to the Chief Constable to complain. It was an insult, leaving Lochdubh without a policeman, even though Hamish Macbeth was a gangling, useless lout. Priscilla’s father thought his daughter was too friendly with the village policeman and never missed an opportunity to malign Hamish.
It dawned on Priscilla all at once that London was a very boring place compared to the Highlands of Scotland. “Nothing ever happens here,” she said aloud.
“Oh, but darling, it does!” trilled Sarah. “I met Peter Twist at a divine party last night and he’s going to buy this white elephant of a shop from me.”
“You might have warned me you were thinking of selling,” said Priscilla angrily.
“Don’t be cross, sweetie. You won’t be out of a job. He’s going to have all these divine fashions. All black leather, you know. The shop’s going to be called Champers Campers and we’re to stand around in his creations.”
“I don’t think so, Sarah darling,” said Priscilla. “I’m getting out. I mean I’m going north.”
“What? Leave London for the sticks just when everything’s happening? I know what it is—you’ve got a fellow tucked away up there.”
“Don’t be silly,” said Priscilla coolly. “Look, there’s two women about to come in. Let’s see if we can sell something for a change.”
♦