Death of a Hussy (15 page)

Jane sank down into an armchair and crossed her long legs.

‘The trouble,’ she said, suddenly leaning forward so that her blouse plunged alarmingly low at the front, ‘is that you are not going the right way about curing your cold. It is the common cold, isn’t it?’

Hamish, now in the armchair opposite, took out a handkerchief and blew his nose miserably by way of reply.

‘It is all in your mind,’ said Jane. ‘The weather has been very cold and so you began to feel you might get one and your mind conveyed that message to the rest of your body and so you got one. Put your index fingers on either side of your head, just at the temples, and repeat after me, concentrating all the while, “I have not got a cold. I am fit and well.”’

‘Havers,’ said Hamish crossly.

‘There you have it,’ said Jane triumphantly. ‘You have just told me what I had already guessed.’

‘That you were havering?’ commented Hamish rudely.

‘No, no. That you want to have a cold and make everyone feel sorry for you.’ She leaned back and uncrossed and crossed her legs. Embarrassed, Hamish looked at the ceiling.

‘What is the difficulty you’re in?’ Hamish asked the lampshade. He found those flashing legs and thighs unnerving.

‘I think someone might be trying to kill me.’

Hamish’s hazel eyes focused on her. ‘Did you tell someone else how to get rid of their cold?’

‘Do be serious. Oh, perhaps I am imagining it, but a rock did hurtle down last week close to my head, and then there was the bathroom heater. I had run my bath and was just about to step into it when the wall heater came tumbling down, right into the bath. I called in a local builder, but he said the heater had probably just come loose as the plaster was damp.’

‘Did you think of telling the local policeman?’

‘The local policeman is Sandy Ferguson. Have you heard of him?’

‘Yes,’ said Hamish, remembering the famous day in Strathbane when Sandy Ferguson, drunk as usual, had told Detective Chief Inspector Blair exactly what he thought of him and had been subsequently banished to the Hebrides. ‘Never say you’re living on Eileencraig!’

Jane nodded.

‘You’d better begin at the beginning,’ said Hamish.

Jane looked doubtfully at the thin, red-haired constable in the old dressing-gown and then made up her mind.

‘I run a health farm called The Happy Wanderer …’

‘Oh, my.’ Hamish winced.

‘Called The Happy Wanderer,’ went on Jane firmly, ‘on the island of Eileencraig. Part of the healthy regime is brisk walking. I decided to go into business for myself after my divorce two years ago. It had been pretty successful. Health farms are the coming thing. I not only teach people how to have a healthy body but how to get in touch with their innermost feelings. Do you read me?’

‘Sort of.’

‘Well, the islanders are a clannish lot and don’t like incomers, so I thought perhaps the rock thingie and the heater thingie were, well,
pranks
to scare me away. That was until I spoke to Mrs Bannerman at Skulag, the main village, and she read my tea-leaves and she saw death in them. Someone from far away was trying to kill me, she said. That’s when I began to worry about my guests.’

‘Paying guests?’

‘No, the health farm is closed for the winter. Friends.’

‘Who are these friends?’

‘People I invited to spend Christmas with me. There’s a Mr and Mrs Todd from Glasgow, he’s in real estate; then there’s Harriet Shaw, the writer.’

‘Haven’t heard of her,’ commented Hamish.

‘
You
wouldn’t. She writes cookery books. There’s Sheila and Ian Carpenter from Yorkshire – dear, dear people, he’s a farmer.’ Jane threw back her head and gave a merry laugh. She’s practised that laugh in front of the mirror, thought Hamish suddenly. ‘And,’ said Jane, suddenly looking solemn, ‘there’s my ex.’

‘Your ex-husband?’

‘Yes, John. He’s been working so hard. He does need a holiday.’

‘Who divorced whom?’

The large eyes opposite shifted away from him slightly. ‘Oh, we were very civilized about it. A mutual agreement. Well, there you are. What do you think?’

‘Are they still there?’

‘Oh, yes. After what Mrs Bannerman saw in the tea-leaves, I felt I had to get away to meditate and heard Priscilla had fallen on hard times and so I thought I would hop over for a couple of nights just to
think
. What do
you
think?’

‘First of all,’ said Hamish, ‘I believe Eileen-craig is a weird enough place to give anyone the jitters. You’re right. They hate incomers. I think the heater and the rock were plain and simple accidents. But when the villagers heard you were going to visit Mrs Bannerman to get your fortune told, they must have put her up to giving you a fright. That, in my opinion, is all there is to it.’

She leaned forward and the blouse plunged alarmingly again. ‘Do you know,’ said Jane in that breathy, sexy voice of hers, ‘you are a
most
intelligent man.’ She threw back her head and gave that practised merry laugh of hers again. ‘I was so edgy that when Priscilla told me about you, I was going to invite you to come back with me for Christmas and bribe you with the promise of an old-fashioned dinner of turkey and mince pies.’

Hamish sat stricken. Then he said carefully, ‘On the other hand, I cannot help thinking about my Aunt Hannah, her that lives in San Francisco.’

‘Yes?’

‘She always swore she would neffer set foot in Scotland again, but a wee woman in the Chinese quarter told her fortune and said she would soon be going on a long journey to her native land. She forgot all about it, until one day she found she had booked a plane flight home to Scotland. Then there wass ma cousin Jamie …’

Jane’s mouth fell a little open as she gazed at him.

‘Yes, Jamie,’ said Hamish in a crooning voice. ‘He was at this game fair and a gypsy woman had a caravan there. Jamie and his friends had a wee bit too much to drink and they urged Jamie to have his tea-leaves read. Into that black caravan he went, laughing something awful and telling that gypsy woman it was all a load of rubbish. But she read the leaves.’

‘And?’ urged Jane, who was goggling at him.

‘And the gypsy woman said, “Laugh ye may, but look out for your life. Next week, someone is going to try to kill you.” Well, Jamie, he thought she was trying to get revenge because he had laughed at her, but the very next week –’ Hamish lowered his voice to a whisper – ‘he wass in Aberdeen, looking for work on the rigs and someone mugged him.’

‘No!’

‘Oh, yes, and stuck a knife in his side. He’s lucky to be alive.’

‘I have never jeered at the paranormal,’ said Jane. ‘You may think me foolish, Hamish, but I am begging you now to come with me. Can you get any leave?’

‘I happen to be on leave as from tomorrow,’ said Hamish, ‘but with this cold …’

‘I have very good central heating,’ said Jane, ‘and you will be looked after like a king.’

‘Seeing as how you are a friend of Priscilla’s, I’ll force myself to go,’ said Hamish.

When Priscilla arrived to pick Jane up, she looked amazed to hear that Hamish intended to travel to Eileencraig with Jane and stay there for Christmas. ‘I’ll talk to you later,’ said Priscilla.

Jane’s eyes fell on Towser. ‘No dogs,’ she said.

‘Perhaps I can take Towser.’ Priscilla looked doubtful. ‘But I’ll talk to you later, Hamish.’

After they had gone, Hamish poured himself a celebratory whisky. He had nearly blown it. If he had not invented those tales about his relatives and the tea-leaves, he might not have had a comfortable Christmas to look forward to.

Priscilla arrived that evening, looking cross. ‘What on earth are you up to, Hamish Macbeth? Jane told me some rubbish about tea-leaves and I was leaving it to you to talk her out of it. Besides, what will your family think?’

‘They don’t want me,’ said Hamish. ‘Aunt Hannah’s coming over from the States and that means I have to stay away. She cannae stand me. Och, I forgot the presents for the family. I was supposed to take them over at the end of the week.’

He looked at Priscilla pleadingly.

‘All right! All right!’ she said impatiently. ‘I’ll take Towser
and
the presents over to Rogart. In fact, I’ll do it tomorrow and get it over with. There’s bad weather forecast. The wind’s turned to the east and all that slush is beginning to freeze like mad. I can’t help feeling guilty about letting you trick Jane into that invitation, but seeing as how you’ve got a holiday and nowhere else to go, and seeing as how Jane is simply loaded, I suppose it should be all right.’

‘You’re always rushing.’ Hamish tried to take her coat. ‘Sit down for a bit.’

‘No, no, I daren’t. We’ve got a party of Spanish aristocrats. They speak perfect English, which is something Daddy refuses to understand, so he shouts at them and thinks if he puts
h
in front of everything, he’s speaking Spanish. You should hear him roaring, ‘H’everything h’OK?’

She threw her arms about him and gave him an impulsive hug. ‘Be good, Hamish. Have a merry Christmas.’

‘Merry Christmas,’ echoed Hamish as she hurtled out of the door and banged it behind her. He could still feel the warmth of her thin body for a few moments after she had gone, and into his mind came slight, sad, bittersweet memories of the days when he had loved her so much.

The sun came up at ten in the morning to shine over a glittering icy landscape, a glaring yellow sun which forecast high gales to come. True to her promise, Priscilla collected Towser and the presents and set out on the long road to Rogart while Hamish climbed into Jane’s Range Rover and headed down the coast. Jane said that a fishing boat would take them out to the island, as no passenger ferry was due there for another week. She was wearing a short leather jerkin over another short skirt and a pair of black leather thigh-boots. She discoursed at length on her innermost feelings as she drove competently down the winding twisty roads beside the glittering sea. If anyone ever issued a press handout about innermost feelings, it would read rather like Jane’s conversation, reflected Hamish. She suffered, she said, from low self-esteem and a perpetual feeling of insecurity, and Hamish wondered if she really felt anything much at all. She seemed to be reciting something she had read about someone else rather than talking about herself. He wished suddenly he had not taken her up on her invitation. It would have been fun if he could have gone to his parents’ instead with Priscilla. He had not seen much of Priscilla of late. She was always busy, always rushing.

Priscilla drove under the shadow of the towering Sutherland mountains. Great gusts of wind tore at the car and then the snow began to fall. She switched on her headlights and leaned forward, peering through the driving snow, watching the road in front uneasily as it became whiter and whiter. She heaved a sigh of relief when at last she saw the orange street lights of Lairg ahead. Not far to go.

The road from Lairg to Rogart is quite a good one, although it seemed, that afternoon, to be disappearing rapidly under the snow. Priscilla stopped outside Rogart and studied a map Hamish had drawn for her. The Macbeths’ house was above the village, up on the hills.

She was feeling tired with the strain of driving so long in the howling blizzard. She crawled up the hill road at the back of Rogart, peering anxiously in front of her. And then, with great relief, she saw the telephone-box that Hamish had drawn at a crossroads on his map. The entrance to the croft was a few yards up on the left. The car groaned and chugged its way along. She had almost decided she would need to stop and get out and walk when she dimly saw the low shape of a white croft house. Hoping she was not driving across the front garden, she drew up outside the door and sat for a moment, rubbing her tired eyes.

The kitchen door opened and the small round figure of Hamish’s mother appeared. ‘It’s yourself, Priscilla,’ she cried in amazement. ‘And the dog! Where’s Hamish?’

‘It’s a long story,’ said Priscilla, climbing out of the car and walking with Towser into the welcoming warmth of the house. There seemed to be Macbeths everywhere, both large and small, and all with Hamish’s flaming-red hair.

‘I’ll just leave Towser and the presents from Hamish, and then I’d better get back,’ said Priscilla, after explaining where Hamish was.

‘Nonsense,’ said Mrs Macbeth. ‘Sit yourself down, lassie. You’re no’ going anywhere tonight.’

She was hustled into the living-room and pressed down into a battered armchair by the fire. A glass of whisky was put into her hand. Priscilla realized for the first time in months that she was tired, bone-tired. Her eyes began to droop and the empty glass was gently removed from her hand. Soon she was fast asleep.

‘Did ye ever see such a mess o’ skin and bone?’ said Mrs Macbeth, looking down at Priscilla. ‘It’s fattening up that lassie needs. She cannae go anywhere until the roads are clear. And it’s just as well. Hamish said that faither o’ hers was a slave-driver, horrible wee man that he is. I think we’ll keep her here for a bit until she gets some rest.’

Mr Macbeth smiled at her vaguely and retreated behind his newspaper. He had given up arguing with his wife exactly two weeks after they were married.

‘I do rely on Priscilla for advice,’ Jane was saying as she drove competently along a stone jetty. ‘We’ll just wait in the car until we see the boat coming, Hamish, and then I’ll garage it in that lock-up over there. Yes, Priscilla. So cool. Such a relaxing girl. Oh, there’s the boat.’

Hamish climbed out of the warmth of the Range Rover and shivered on the jetty. Small pellets of snow were beginning to blow through the rising wind. He looked over the sea and experienced a slight feeling of uneasiness, almost dread, and wished he had not come.   

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