Death of a Charming Man (10 page)

Dolan looked at her beautiful and implacable face and cringed. He believed every word she said. Like quite a lot of criminals, he thought he was often in prison because society was unfair, because ‘They’ had had it in for him since the day of his birth, ‘They’ being the establishment. He was sure this beautiful bitch would poison the sheriff’s mind.

‘And if I withdraw the complaint, will ye have a word in my favour with the sheriff?’ said Dolan.

‘Of course.’

‘Oh, well, I suppose,’ he grumbled.

‘Do it,’ hissed Priscilla.

Later that day, a surprised Hamish Macbeth received a call from Jimmy Anderson to tell him that not only had Miss Tabbet withdrawn her complaint against him not to mention her claim for a new frying-pan but that Dolan had withdrawn his complaint as well.

‘Thank heavens,’ said Hamish. ‘I wonder what came over them.’

‘Aye, it’s the grand day for you, Hamish, because when Dolan was pressed to say why he had made the complaint in the first place, he said Blair had talked him into it. So Blair’s on the carpet.’

Hamish decided to drive up to Tommel Castle and tell Priscilla about it and found her just arriving as he drove up.

After he had told her his news, he listened in amazement as she told him her part in it and then said in admiration, ‘Ye get more like me every day.’

‘Yes, I’m turning out to be a good liar,’ agreed Priscilla. ‘I’ll be poaching my father’s salmon next. But there’s something else.’ She told him about the mysterious Peter Hynd who had appeared at the estate agent’s muffled up to the eyebrows.

His hazel eyes gleamed. ‘I’d better get down to Inverness and see those lawyers. What was the name again? Ah, Brand and MacDougal in Castle Wynd. I’ll drive down tomorrow.’ They had walked into the hotel reception as they were speaking. ‘Would you care to come with me?’

‘I’d love to, but there’s a new party of guests arriving tomorrow.’

‘I’ll let you know how I get on. Free for dinner tonight?’

Her face took on a guarded look. ‘I’ve got to check the accounts with Mr Johnston, but if I get through it quickly enough, I’ll drive down and see you.’

He masked his disappointment and irritation with an effort. She had done sterling work in getting him off the hook with those complaints, and he fought down a feeling that he would gladly have faced any inquiry board in return for a warmer and less efficient fiancée.

Sophy’s cheek swelled up alarmingly that day. By evening she was complaining loudly about the pain and Priscilla reluctantly agreed that Sophy should have the following day off to visit the dentist.

So a happy Sophy drove off in the direction of Inverness in the morning, only stopping to take the lump of candle wax out of her cheek and toss it into the heather.

Hamish arrived in Inverness in a sour mood. Priscilla had failed to turn up the previous evening and he had been too proud to phone her. ‘A fine friend she is,’ he muttered to himself, forgetting that friends are one thing and people with whom one is emotionally involved quite something else. He would simply have phoned a friend and said, ‘Where the hell are you?’

An autumn chill was making the smoky Inverness air feel raw. He parked at the station and walked round to the Castle Wynd. Inverness as usual was packed with shoppers. Britain might be lurching along the bottom of a deep recession, but there was little evidence of it in Inverness. Sea-gulls wheeled overhead as shoppers crammed the pavements.

He found the lawyers’ brass plate and went up an old staircase of shallow stone stairs flanked by an iron-and-wood banister with brass spikes on the top, no doubt to stop happy clients from sliding down them.

He went into the hush of a Victorian office. Gloomy light filtered through the grimy windows. A tired-looking girl sat at a large wooden desk doing something with her nails.

‘Police,’ said Hamish. ‘I want to see one of the lawyers.’

She rose and went to an oak door, rapped on it, and put her head around it. ‘Polis to see you, Mr Brand.’ There was a mumbled answer and she jerked her head at Hamish. ‘You’re to go in.’

Hamish reflected that it was the lawyers, not the police, who were getting younger these days. Mr Brand was a slight young man with thick wavy hair and an ingenuous face. He was holding a collie pup on his lap when Hamish entered. He rose and put the dog in a basket in the corner of the room. ‘Great little fellow,’ he said. ‘Very good for the battered wives. Puts them at ease. Now how can I help you, Sergeant?’

Hamish explained about Peter Hynd and asked if he had signed the papers. ‘Yes, a delightful man. I gather from the estate agents that they might have a buyer already. Odd, that, with castles and mansions going for a song these days, and then a run-down croft house with unfinished drains comes on the market and it’s snapped up.’

‘What did he look like?’ asked Hamish.

‘Good-looking fellow. Fair. English. Upper class. Why all the questions?’

‘I just wondered if it might have been someone impersonating him,’ said Hamish, although, from the description, he wondered who on earth it could be. Neither Jock Kennedy nor Harry Baxter, say, could have been labelled either fair, English, or upper class by any stretch of the imagination.

‘I shouldn’t think so. I mean, when the money comes through, it’s to be paid into his bank in London. The City and London Bank in New Bond Street. What makes you think someone might have been impersonating him?’

‘He had caused a lot of ill feeling in the village of Drim and then he disappeared, and no one seems to have seen him go. He left a note with Jock Kennedy at the general store and he had been involved in a fight with Kennedy. The minister would have been a more believable choice. But if, as you say, he signed the papers …’

‘Well, we can easily check that. I’ll fax his signature to his bank and ask for confirmation.’

Hamish, looking around the dusty, gloomy old-fashioned office, was amazed that it contained such a modern item as a fax machine, but Mr Brand went to a file and brought out the papers. ‘There’s his signature … there and there. I’ll take this sheet and get Jenny out there to send it with a wee note. Care for a dram while we’re waiting? I’ve got to walk the dog.’

Jenny having been given her instructions, they went to a bar in the Castle Wynd and drank whisky and chatted amiably about various cases. ‘Drink up,’ said Mr Brand at last. ‘Should be a reply by now.’

They went back to the office, where the laconic Jenny produced a fax from the bank confirming the fact that the signature was genuine. Hamish felt he should have been pleased and relieved that Peter Hynd was obviously alive and kicking, but he felt strangely let down. He went back out into the street and stood irresolute.

‘Hello there!’ He found Sophy Bisset smiling up at him.

‘What brings you to Inverness?’ asked Hamish.

‘I had to go to the dentist. Had the most awful toothache,’ said Sophy. ‘What about you?’

Hamish remembered walking into the hotel reception with Priscilla and telling her where he was going while Sophy had leaned on the reception desk, listening to every word, but he said briefly he had been investigating something.

‘I was thinking of making a day of it and having lunch and going to a movie,’ said Sophy. ‘Care to join me?’

Hamish hesitated. He had not told Strath-bane he was going to Inverness, but he was hardly ever called on the car radio and he had left the answering machine switched on at the police station.

He was suddenly weary of the awkward situation with Priscilla. ‘All right,’ he said.

They had lunch in a self-service restaurant and then went round to the small cinema. The film,
Blood and Lust
, was violent and pornographic. There was nothing, reflected Hamish, like a really pornographic film for making a man feel that celibacy was a good idea. Who liked watching other people making love, apart from perverts? He voiced this thought aloud to Sophy, who burst out laughing and told him he belonged in the Dark Ages. But Hamish felt jaded and grimy. It transpired that Sophy had arrived by bus and train, so he politely offered her a lift home although he longed to be by himself.

As he drove out of Inverness, he switched on the police radio. The crackling voices reminded him of his professional status and he was aware that he should not have been carrying a passenger. Then he heard his own name. A peremptory voice told him to get over to Drim, where a death had been reported.

Cursing, he switched on the siren and headed for the Struie Pass and hurtled over the hairpin bends and down into Sutherland. At Bonar Bridge he saw the local bus, which would eventually call at Lochdubh, and skidded to a halt. ‘You’ll need to take the bus, Sophy,’ he said. ‘I’m going to be in trouble as it is.’

Again she kissed him on the cheek and Hamish was aware of watching eyes from the bus as he recognized the startled faces of the Currie sisters.

He swung off on the road that would take him over the hills to Drim.

O Village of Death, was his thought as he drove down and saw the huddle of villagers by the black loch, the forensic men in their boiler suits, the flashing blue lights of the police cars.

‘Where the fuck were you, laddie?’ demanded Blair when Hamish walked up. Hamish briefly explained about Peter Hynd.

‘You had no right to go off yer patch an no’ give us a report,’ howled Blair. ‘Start by asking some of these yokels if they know anything.’

Hamish turned his back on him and said to Blair’s sidekick, Jimmy Anderson, ‘Who’s dead?’

‘Betty Baxter.’

‘Where’s the child, Heather?’

‘Being looked after at the manse. Mrs Baxter was found face-down beside the loch, behind that clump of rock. It could be an accident. It looks as if she might have tripped and fallen so hard that she broke her neck.’

Hamish walked forward. The tent which had shielded the body had been taken away. The pathologist was stripping off his gloves and packing his bag. A police photographer was taking shots of the body.

Betty Baxter lay in an ungainly pose, diminished by death. Hamish noticed that her hair had been recently blonded, no dark roots, and that she was wearing those silly high heels.

‘Accident?’ he asked the pathologist.

He shook his head slowly. ‘I’ll have a better idea when I get the body back to the mortuary.’ He bent over the body. ‘See here, she’s got a huge bruise on her forehead. Looks at first as if she tripped on those silly heels and fell heavily. She’s a big woman. But here at the back of the neck there’s a big bruise under the hair. Someone came up behind her and struck her hard, a powerful blow with something like a blackjack or lead pipe.’

‘A man?’

‘A woman could have done it with the right weapon.’

Hamish walked back to Jimmy Anderson. ‘No clues?’

‘None so far. Ye cannae get footprints from the pebbles on thon beach.’

‘What about the husband, Harry?’

‘No time of death yet. But he was out at the fishing all night, and then this morning, which is when it was guessed she was killed, Harry was in the bar at Lochdubh, seen by God knows how many of your neighbours. We’ve been over to Lochdubh. Blair’s setting up interviews in the community hall. What do you know about the situation here, Hamish?’

Hamish rapidly told him about his seemingly unfounded suspicions about the absent Peter Hynd.

‘Well, he cannae be a suspect,’ said Anderson, ‘for no one’s seen hide nor hair of him since he left that note with Jock.’

‘How do you know about the note he left with Jock?’

‘I asked around if there had been any trouble in the village and some fellow told me that this Hynd and Jock had had a fight.’ Blair called Anderson sharply.

Both men, followed by Blair’s other sidekick, MacNab, and several policemen, headed off to the community hall.

Hamish walked along to the manse. Annie Duncan answered the door. ‘I don’t want Heather pestered,’ she said quickly. ‘Just a few words,’ said Hamish soothingly. ‘Where’s Harry?’

‘I gather her father is at home. Could you not leave it to another day? I don’t think Heather is up to this.’

The small figure of Heather materialized at Annie’s elbow. ‘I will speak to Mr Macbeth,’ she said.

Annie reluctantly stood back and Hamish followed them into the kitchen. Heather sat down at the table and Hamish sat opposite her. Annie stood behind the little girl, her hands on her shoulders.

‘Do you know when your mother went out?’ asked Hamish.

‘I got up at seven,’ said Heather, ‘and she’d left me a note on the kitchen table to say she had gone out and to get myself ready for school.’

‘Have you got that note?’

‘I threw it away.’

‘Can you think of any reason why she might have gone out?’

Heather’s grey eyes surveyed him thoughtfully and then she said, ‘Yesterday morning, before Da came home, she got a phone call. I couldna’ hear what she said. But she went straight to the hairdresser. She neffer went to the hairdresser for my da.’

For a moment it was almost as if Peter Hynd was in the kitchen with them, his eyes dancing with mockery.

‘Did you tell the other policemen this?’

‘Thon big fat scunner came tae ask me questions. I didn’t like him so I told him nothing.’ Heather got up from the table. ‘Thank you, Mrs Duncan. I’ll be off home now.’

Annie looked distressed. ‘But you must stay here. My husband will be home shortly and he will want a word with you.’

Heather suddenly looked as old as the hills. ‘To pray ower me? There is no God. Mr Macbeth, perhaps you will come with me?’

‘Yes,’ said Hamish. He looked at Annie. ‘I think she will find out what’s best for herself.’

‘My da will need me now,’ said Heather. ‘I’ll get my stuff.’

‘She is in shock,’ said Annie, distressed. ‘If only she would break down and cry and get it over with. I feel so helpless.’

‘I’ll keep an eye on her,’ said Hamish. ‘I wonder if that was Peter Hynd on the phone. Had Betty been dressed up since he left?’

‘No, like the rest of the women, she had begun to let herself go. But Mr Hynd, Peter, was – is – a very sophisticated young man, and although it amused him to flirt with the village women, he would hardly creep back from wherever he’s gone to meet Betty Baxter. Nor would he murder her.’

‘What makes you so sure of that?’

‘He was too easygoing.’

‘So who do you think did it?’

‘It’s usually the husband, isn’t it?’

‘But Harry Baxter evidently has a cast-iron alibi for the time of the murder.’

She gave a weary shrug, ‘It could yet turn out to be an unfortunate accident. Passions can run high in this village. But murder! Probably some mad hiker came across her.’

‘And the phone call?’

‘I would be careful about believing anything Heather says at the moment. She is in shock.’

At that moment Heather walked into the kitchen carrying a duffle bag over one thin shoulder.

She and Hamish said goodbye to the minis-ter’s wife and walked out and along the side of the loch, which lay black and silent and still. Then they cut off up the hill, both avoiding looking along the shore where the white suits of the forensic team gleamed in the twilight.

‘Nights are drawing in,’ said Hamish. ‘It seems to get verra dark all at once.’   

Her childish voice piping the words of the old Lyke-Wake Dirge gave Hamish a shudder. ‘Read much?’ he asked.

‘All the time,’ said Heather. ‘Books are better’n people any day.’

‘What have you read recently?’

‘I read all Walter Scott’s novels this summer.’

Hamish was amazed to hear that anyone read Walter Scott’s novels in this day and age. ‘I’ll see if I can bring you over some books tomorrow,’ he said.

At Harry Baxter’s house, there was a policeman on duty outside. ‘Harry home?’ asked Hamish.

‘Aye, he’s in there. Blair’s coming back to see him.’

Hamish and Heather went inside. Harry was slumped at the kitchen table, his face grey. A glass of whisky stood in front of him.

‘That will not do, Da,’ said Heather, dropping her bag to the floor. ‘Food and sweet tea is what you need.’ She picked up the glass of whisky and tipped the contents down the sink.

Hamish sat down next to Harry. ‘Bad business,’ he said.

Harry shook his head from side to side. ‘Who waud have done sich a thing?’

‘You’ll need to brace up for Heather’s sake,’ said Hamish.

‘I’ll manage if you keep that bastard, Blair, away from me,’ said Harry wearily.