Hamish Macbeth 22 (2006) - Death of a Dreamer

by M C Beaton

  Hamish Macbeth watched it until it was out of sight.

  In Brighton, businessman George Bentinck had just returned from working in South Africa. He was expected to attend a Rotary Club dinner, and he wanted a female companion to take along. His wife was dead, and he didn’t want to sit at the table where all the other men would be flanked by their wives or companions.

  He phoned various lady friends, but all said they were too busy. He looked through his address book again. Then he saw the name Effie Garrard. He remembered her as a plain little woman he had met at a gallery opening. She had insisted on him writing down her mobile phone number. He had been too busy in South Africa to read any newspapers and was blissfully unaware of murder in the north of Scodand.

  He dialled.

  Deep in the heather, protected from the elements, down below Geordie’s Cleft, Effie’s phone, which she had charged up on the night she met her death, began to ring.

  Like a faint cry for help, it shrilled tinnily out into the soft clear highland light.

  But there was no one to hear it.

  Not even the ghost of a dreamer.

  THE END