Death of a Charming Man

∨ Death of a Charming Man ∧

9

Retired to their tea and scandal, according to their ancient custom.

—William Congreve

Heather was singing to herself and scrubbing the kitchen floor when Priscilla and Hamish arrived the following morning. She looked up and saw Priscilla and primmed her lips in disapproval.

“We are on the telephone,” she said, getting to her feet.

“We don’t like people chust dropping in. This is still a house of grief.”

“Just a few more questions,” said Hamish easily.

“Why?” demanded Heather, wiping soapy hands on her apron. “You’re supposed to be here on holiday.”

“I don’t suppose you believe that any more than anyone else,” said Hamish.

Heather’s eyes slanted at Priscilla. “What’s she doing here?”

“Manners!” said Hamish sharply.

Heather folded her arms. “It’s my house and I can say what I like.”

“I’ll go outside and take a look around,” said Priscilla quickly.

As soon as she had gone, Heather appeared to relax. “A coffee-or a cup of tea, Mr. Macbeth?” she asked in housewifely tones.

“Nothing at the moment,” said Hamish. “You’re a bit hard on Priscilla, Heather. What’s she ever done to you?”

“She’s, a woman,” said Heather curtly. “Don’t like women much. They’re cruel.”

“Will, there are some nice women around. Mrs. Duncan has been verra kind to you, surely.”

“Oh, aye. She’s the minister’s wife and it’s her duty to be nice to people. Do you know I am to play the part of the cat in the pantomime?”

“No,” said Hamish, that being a piece of news Priscilla had failed to tell him. “Will you like that?” She wrinkled her brow. “It might be fine.” She curled her small hands into imitation paws and pretended to wash her face. “Aye, I reckon I could do that verra well.”

“So,” said Hamish, pulling out a chair and sitting down, “yon go here and there about the village without anyone noticing you much. You must hear things. Do you know any woman who was…er…involved with Peter Hynd?” Her eyes were suddenly like cold steel. “You mean who wass he screwing? My ain mither, for one.”

“Heather, you’re verra young. How can you know that?”

“Because I followed her up to his cottage one night,” she said wearily. She sat down at the table opposite him and rested her small pointed chin on her hands.

“B-but how could you know?” asked Hamish, blushing a deep red.

“I heard them.”

“But not saw. You might have been mistaken. You’re only twelve.”

She jerked her head towards the television set in the corner.

“I see and hear it all on that.”

Oh, the lost days of youth, thought Hamish bitterly. Aloud he said, “It must have been hard for you.”

“Peter Hynd was an evil man,” she said. “Really evil. I’m glad he’s gone.”

“But you no longer think he was killed?”

“That wass chust a fancy.”

Hamish felt he should not be asking one so young the next question, but who else in this village was going to tell him?

“Heather,” he said, “do you know which of the others were sleeping with Peter Hynd?”

She held up a slim hand and ticked off the names on her fingers: “Nancy Macleod, Ailsa Kennedy, Alice MacQueen, and Edie Aubrey.”

“I cannae believe that! Edie! Come on, Heather.”

“The uglier they come, the harder they fall,” said Heather. “Now, Da will be back from the fishing and I’ve got to get his dinner on. I will speak to you again, Mr. Macbeth.”

“And I hope I’m strong enough to take it,” said Hamish after he had rejoined Priscilla and repeated what Heather had said. “What do you make of her?”

“I think she is a remarkably strong and self-disciplined little girl who is delighted to run the house and have her father to herself,” said Priscilla. “Of course, I may be wrong. It could all be a front. The child could be teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown for all I know. But those women she listed! And her own mother. I can hardly believe it of Edie.”

“There’s one way to find out,” Hamish pointed out. “I could ask Edie point-blank. All she has to do is to deny it.”

“You know,” said Priscilla, “we’re barking up me wrong tree. Let’s look at this another way around. Let’s assume Peter Hynd was murdered and Betty Baxter was murdered. Who had the best motive? Why, the husband, Harry. Harry finds out Betty has been unfaithful to him. He murders Peter Hynd and gets rid of Peter’s belongings. The place is full of peatbogs where stuff, including Peter’s body and Peter’s car, could be sunk without trace. The murder twists his brain further and so he calls Betty and somehow gets her to think he is Peter, don’t ask me how, follows her down to the beach, and breaks her neck. He tells Heather to back him up on the frozen-cod story and she, being happy to have her mother out of the way,-goes along with it.”

“Except for one thing,” Hamish pointed out. “Harry Baxter has a cast-iron alibi.”

“Does he?” asked Priscilla eagerly. “We assume Betty was killed about seven in the morning. What if it were earlier? A post-mortem cannot tell the exact time of death. The fishing boats often come in around six.”

“Thought about that. Harry Baxter went straight to the bar. The bar opens up for the fishermen.”

Priscilla frowned. “Lochdubh is a close-knit community. Gossip from Drim filters over there. Harry would be pitied by his cronies. Say he did not go out fishing or say he did not go to the bar, would his friends cover up for him to get him out of trouble?”

Hamish’s hazel eyes gleamed. “They might at that. They don’t like Blair – who does? – and as they would think that poor old Harry would never do such a thing in a hundred years, they just could have decided to give him an alibi.”

“There’s Archie Maclean’s wife,” said Priscilla. “She waits on the harbour for the boats to come in. Which boat is Harry on again?”

“The Silver Princess. Archie’s boat.”

“Let’s go to Lochdubh,” urged Priscilla. “We can get some sandwiches for lunch at the hotel. I never realized before how inconvenient this bed-and-breakfast-only arrangement is. How do the poor holiday-makers fare when its pouring wet?”

“Goodness knows,” said Hamish. “I suppose they just drive around looking at wet sheep and eating in cafes until it’s safe to return. Mrs. Wellington, the minister’s wife in Lochdubh, she ran bed-and-breakfast for a wee while, and her guests had to be out of the house at nine in the morning whatever the weather and were ordered not to return until eight-thirty in the evening.”

“Let’s go to Lochdubh anyway. It’ll be a relief to get out of here.”

It was a crisp, cold day. Both felt it amazing that two such villages as Lochdubh and Drim could exist in the north of Scotland, two such vastly different villages. Lochdubh as usual was full of the sounds of life.

“Let’s try Archie first,” suggested Hamish.

Mrs. Maclean was scrubbing the kitchen counters. Not for her the easy road of plastic or laminated surface. She attacked the pine wood with a scrubbing brush with tremendous ferocity and looked up in disapproval when Hamish popped his head around the door. “I’m busy,” she snapped.

Hamish strolled into the kitchen, with Priscilla after him. “Just a few questions,” he said.

“You’re not in uniform,” said Mrs. Maclean, throwing the scrubbing brush in the bucket and rubbing her red hands dry on a towel that looked as if it had been starched.

“This is unofficial. Where’s Archie? Asleep?”

“Drinking, as usual.”

“We’ll get round to him in a minute. Now, you go down to the harbour to see the boat come in, don’t you?”

She put her hands on her hips. “And what if I do? That’s no crime. Like to see my man come in safely.”

“Aye, well. The day Betty Baxter over at Drim was killed, can you remember if Harry Baxter was out on the boat the night before?”

She turned away and took the brush out of the bucket and fell to scrubbing again. “I cannae remember one morning from another,” she said.

“But that would be the morning the police came around asking the fishermen questions,” said Priscilla. “And as Archie is skipper of the boat Harry was supposed to be on, they must have called here. Surely you remember that?”

“I tell you, I’m too busy,” she said, scrubbing unabated.

“They didnae see me. They asked Archie.”

Hamish raised his eyes to heaven. “Come on, Priscilla,” he said. “We’d better ask Archie.”

He glanced back in the kitchen window as they walked through the garden. “She’s on the phone already,” he said. “Let’s get to the bar fast.”

The fishermen were divided into two groups, those who drank and those who did not drink at all, and the ones who drank could sink leg-fills of the stuff, and so most of them were still there. As they came in, Archie was just replacing the receiver on the phone on the bar.

“Hullo, Hamish,” he said sheepishly. “What are you having?”

“Nothing at the moment. Too early. Archie, as your wife has just told you, we’re checking up on Harry Baxter’s alibi.”

“And chust when did herself join the polis?” Archie jerked his head in Priscilla’s direction. He looked uncomfortable, but then Archie always looked uncomfortable. The locals swore his wife boiled his clothes. His pullover was riding up somewhere about his midriff and was so felted, it looked like cloth.

“Doa’t get cheeky with me,” said Hamish. “Come on, Archie, I’m going to keep after you and keep after you until I get at the truth.”

“And I’m telling you Harry wass out on the boat, chust like I told them great pudding, Blair.”

“And I’m telling you that I’m not only going to ask your crew but the other fishermen and the women who wait for them and everyone else in Lochdubh, and then I’ll have great pleasure in hauling you off to prison for impeding the police in their inquiries, bearing false witness, and downright lying.”

“Och, Hamish, ye wouldna.”

“That I would.”

Archie looked wildly around and then picked up his drink. “Come ower in the corner.”

They followed him over to a small rickety, beer-stained table in the corner and sat down.

“It iss like this,” wheedled Archie, “we all heard how this foreigner was playing fast and loose wi’ the wimmin o’ Drim. Harry did show up for the fishing. It wass a bad night and we decided to go home early. We got into harbour about five, and Harry, he went straight home. Och, he had told us about his missus going a bit off her head and dying her hair and whatnot. When wee Heather phoned us and said it would be better to say her da wass in the bar, we thocht it was all right.”

“Heather!”

“Herself said how her ma had been found dead on the beach wi’ her neck broke in a fall. She says how it wass the accident but that the polis haeing the nasty minds might say her da pushed Betty. She wass crying hard, and if a wee bitty lassie thinks her da didnae do it, it iss surely all right to protect the man.”

“I think we’d best be going back to have a word with wee Heather,” said Priscilla in a thin voice.

“Don’t be too hard on the lassie,” wheedled Archie. “Herself hass had a bad shock.”

“And so have I,” said Hamish grimly after he and Priscilla had had a brief lunch of sandwiches and coffee and were heading back to Drim. “Heather is beginning to appear quite the Lady Macbeth. Maybe she put her father up to it.”

“And maybe she’s just a frightened little girl doing her best to protect her father,” said Priscilla. “I’ll go over to the community hall when we get there and join the rehearsal. You had best see Heather on your own.”

“I’ll see Harry too,” said Hamish. “There’s no fishing tonight, so he’ll be up and about by now. He must have gone straight home this morning.”

As Hamish approached the Baxters’ cottage, Heather was standing outside and he knew all at once that she was waiting for him and cursed the invention of the telephone. Of course Archie would have phoned her as soon as they had left the bar.

“Come in, Mr. Macbeth,” she said formally. “Da’s in the kitchen.”

Hamish ducked his head and went inside. “Now, Harry,” he said, “this is the bad business. Don’t you see how it looks?”

Harry Baxter was sitting with a mug of coffee between his gnarled hands. “I didnae know rightly what I wass doing, Hamish,” he said. “Heather told me what she had done and it seemed safest to go along with it. But what does it matter? It’s all over now. It wass the accident. Can’t you see how bad it is for me, for Heather, for you to go over it and over it, keeping it green?”

“Tell me about the phone call Betty got,” said Hamish.

“I heard her go to the phone. She chust said ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ and then, “I’ll see you.” When she came back in, her face was all lit up. She said it was Edie. I lost ma rag and started to shout. When I woke up later, she had her hair all blonded up again. That’s when I struck her. I said I knew that Peter Hynd had come back and had arranged to meet her. She paid me no heed. She said if I ever raised my hand to her again, she would leave me for good.”

“You came straight back from the fishing. Did you go looking for her?” asked Hamish.

“No,” he mumbled. “I wass that fed up, I chust went to my bed and went to sleep. The next thing I knew, the neighbours were round saying kids had found her body on the beach.”

“It’s no use me asking Heather to confirm your story,” said Hamish wearily. “Look, answer this honestly. Did any of the locals see anything of Peter Hynd around the village the day your wife died or the day before?”

Harry shook his head. “I asked and asked,” he said. “But no one’s seen hide nor hair of the man since he left.”

“And did anyone actually see him leave?”

Again Harry shook his head. “And I asked about that as well,” he said. “God, I wanted more than anything in the world to make sure that wass the last o’ him. He’d gone all right, but no one saw him leave.”

Hamish felt as if his brain were full of cobwebs when he left. If he stood back from the case and considered the fact that Peter Hynd might just have packed up and left…There was all the evidence for that. He had put his house on the market before he had disappeared. Betty, having got a taste for extra-marital affairs, could have gone out to meet someone else, someone from the village, and she could have tripped and fallen onto the rocks. Hamish frowned. But she hadn’t been carrying a handbag, nor had her hands been in her pockets, so why hadn’t she put out her hands to save herself? He should have reprimanded Heather, but somehow he could not bring himself to do so. He wished briefly he were a policeman like Blair and in Drim officially and he could harass the suspects without worrying about their feelings. Blair would have no difficulty, say, in approaching Edie and saying something tactful like; “So ye let Hynd get his leg over?”

He sighed and went down to the community hall. To his surprise when he entered, he saw the small figure of Heather.

She must have cut across the fields in her usual quick and silent way to get ahead of him. A massive woman was sitting at the piano. Nancy began to sing like Priscilla, Hamish was amazed at the purity and beauty of her voice. Annie Duncan joined her and began to sing as well, her voice deeper than Nancy’s. A spattering of applause from the women greeted the end of the song and Hamish, looking around, could see no sign of the bitter animosity that must lurk under each bosom. But then, that was the Highland way. He sat down next to Priscilla. “Going well?” he asked. “On the face of it,” said Priscilla. “Annie got the script this morning and went over to Strathbane and got it photocopied. She’s a good organizer. They might not like her choices, but it’s my belief they’ll all knuckle down and do what she says. Oh, one piece of gossip from the woman at the piano, Mrs. Denby, who cleans the manse. She says that the minister is dead set against theatricals and told Annie she was to drop the idea and Annie told him she would do no such thing. Mrs. Denby says she’s never heard them having rows before, but they’re having them almost every day now. Seems like Callum Duncan is the kind who likes his wife to be a sort of glorified servant, and ‘Yes, sir, no sir,’ and suddenly Annie’s having none of it and is rebelling at the slighest thing, telling him to make his own bloody tea when he summons her to the study and tells her to fetch him a cup, things like that.”

“That would only be of use if the minister murdered his wife,” said Hamish. Heather was now up on the stage getting her instructions, listening intently, holding the script, her eyes shining.

“And the villagers say Heather hasn’t shed a tear,” went on Priscilla. “Something wrong there, Hamish. It’s unnatural. I wish she would crack and break down and cry.”

“I’ve never seen a child further from tears,” said Hamish cynically.

Annie Duncan’s voice could be heard suggesting they all now read their parts in the first act. “And just here, after the first scene,” she said to Nancy, “you exit left where the steps go down to the dressing-rooms.”

“Dressing-rooms?” queried Hamish. “In a community hall?”

“Oh, this place is quite well-appointed,” said Priscilla. “One of those projects built quite recently by the Highland and Islands Development Board. There’s even a star dressing-room. Wonder who’s got that. Nancy, probably.”

In the first act, Nancy, the alderman’s daughter dreaming of the famous man who would one day marry her, sang an Andrew Lloyd Webber song. “Heavy royalties, that,” murmured Hamish.

“Why?” asked Priscilla. “Do you think they’re going to tell him, or that he’ll ever find out?”

The chorus of women backed Nancy and then exited right, leaving her alone on the stage. At the end of the song Nancy sailed off the stage with all the aplomb of a diva, but before the scene could switch to Dick Whittington and his cat, there was a scream from off-stage and the sound of a heavy fall.

Hamish ran forward, leaped on the stage, and ran to the exit stairs where Nancy had gone down. Nancy was lying at the foot of the stairs, her face contorted with pain.

“Don’t move,” he called.

He went down and crouched over her. “Easy now. Where does it hurt?”

“All over,” groaned Nancy.

“Here.” He put an arm behind her shoulders and eased her up. “Move your arms.” She cautiously did as she was told. “Now your legs, right and then left. That seems all right. Now, I’m going to help you up. Take it easy.”

He lifted Nancy to her feet. “There, you’re all right,” he said with relief, “although I’m sure you’ll have some bruises. What happened?”

“Something seemed to catch at my ankles,” she said, bewildered, “and over I went.”

“Come to the dressing-room and sit down,” said Annie Duncan. “I’ve got a flask of tea. Ailsa, tell the rest we’ll leave the rehearsals until the same time tomorrow.”

“Right,” said Ailsa, and Hamish saw her give a mock Gestapo salute behind Annie’s back.

Priscilla, ever efficient, had appeared to help Nancy along to the dressing-room. The rest of the women disappeared and Hamish was left alone.

He crawled up the stairs on his hands and knees, examining every inch. No sign of any string having been tied across the stab’s, nothing on the thin iron banister.

He went back down and stood to one side of the staircase and reached through. Yes, someone could have stood here easily and caught at Nancy’s ankles. The chorus had gone off to the right. But one of the women could easily have nipped round under the stage and waited for Nancy to come down. Another accident? Spite? Had Nancy broken a leg, she would have been out of the production. He felt a sudden fury against the inhabitants of Drim. And then he saw it, lying in a dark corner. It was one of those old–fashioned window-poles with a hook at the end for reaching the catch of windows high up in a church or a hall.

Now that, he thought, thrust through the banisters as Nancy came down, could have sent her flying. He longed for it to be an official case. He would even have gladly put up with Blair in order to get a forensic team to go over that pole for fingerprints.

Priscilla appeared behind him, making him jump. “You don’t think it was an accident, do you, Hamish?”

“Maybe. I think someone could have taken this pole and thrust it across the staircase just as Nancy came down. Who could it be?”

“Well, Nancy was alone on the stage apart from the pianist Let’s go back and ask Edie if she saw anything.”

Edie, when appealed to, looked startled. The women, she said, had sort of bunched together off the stage. Some had remained standing at the top at the right, watching Nancy, but she couldn’t be sure which ones. She herself had gone down to the large dressing-room shared by the chorus to put on some powder. Oh, and she had seen Jock Kennedy.

“And what was himself doing there?” asked Hamish.

“Annie had asked him to call in to help with the props. We haven’t any scenery yet, but she wanted to go over the lighting and stuff with him.”

“But he wasn’t anywhere in the hall,” exclaimed Priscilla. “I would have noticed!”

“There’s a door at the back which leads under the stage,” said Edie. “Anyone can come in that way.”

Anyone, thought Hamish bleakly, anyone in the whole of Drim, including Nancy’s husband. But it would have to be someone who had been there, who knew that Nancy would come down the stairs at exactly that time.

“What’s all this anyway?” demanded Edie, a trifle huffily. “It was just another accident.”

“Another one too many,” said Hamish grimly.

He surveyed Edie. Who, looking at her, could imagine her having an affair with a young man? Had Heather made up that list of names to throw him off the scent?

“Edie,” he began, “how close were you to Peter?”

Her face took on a guarded look. “We were friends,” she said cautiously. “He said I was the only one he could talk to.”

“And did you have an affair with him?”

Edie blushed painfully and her eyes filled with tears.

“Don’t be embarrassed,” said Priscilla. “Everyone has affairs these days.” Hamish glared at her. Except you, he thought.

Edie nodded wordlessly. There was an awkward silence.

“I don’t want to upset you,” said Hamish gently, “but you must have known you weren’t the only one.”

“I thought I was,” said Edie piteously. “He let me think I was. “Don’t come to the cottage unless I ask you to, Edie,” he said, but then he stopped inviting me and I…I got all dressed up one night. I couldn’t believe he had gone off me, after all that he had said, after all we had done.” She choked and then regained some composure. “I should have knocked. Like the fool I was, I thought I would surprise him, I’d been into Strathbane that day to buy a bottle of champagne and I had it under my arm. I opened the door, it wasn’t locked, and went in. The ladder was there, up to the bedroom. I climbed up. And then I heard them. Betty Baxter and Peter. I couldn’t believe it. I went on up. Well, they were fortunately too busy to see me. I crawled back down the ladder and left as quietly as I could. I was so wretched I felt like killing myself. Betty Baxter! If it had been someone like her” – she jerked a thumb at Priscilla – “I could have borne it better.”

“But when I asked you about Peter, you were quite’…er…kindly about him,” said Hamish.

“When he left,” said Edie, “and the days passed and he did not return, I built up a dream about him. I put that awful night out of my head. I talked myself into thinking I was the only one. I remembered all the nice things he had said to me. It was easy with him not being here. It’s better to dream, it’s safer to dream.”

Hamish looked at her bleakly, thinking in that moment that he had been happier when he had only dreamed about Priscilla, for now that she was engaged to him, however unofficially, she seemed more remote than she had ever been.

“And was there anyone else that you know of?” asked Priscilla quietly.

“Not for sure, but jealousy makes the senses awfully sharp. I began to notice that Ailsa was beginning to look triumphant and that Betty’s eyes were often red with crying.”

“But how could Ailsa get a chance to have an affair?” asked Hamish. “Aren’t she and Jock together all day?”

“When Jock has his cronies in for a drink in the evening,” said Edie, “Ailsa often goes out to visit some of the women in the village. Alice MacQueen was her friend for a while, but that is finished. Oh, they still talk, but in a funny sort of cold way.”

“Did you ever confront Peter with the fact that you knew he had been sleeping with Betty Baxter?” asked Priscilla.

Edie shook her head. “I couldn’t. I couldn’t bear to hear him admit it. What’s the point in all this? He’s gone, and he’s never coming back.”

“Why do you say that?” asked Hamish quickly. “Do you think he’s dead?”

“Dead?” Her surprise appeared totally genuine. “Why would Peter be dead?”

“Why not?” put in Priscilla. “Don’t you think with the way he’s been going on, that some irate husband might not have bumped him off and that’s why no one saw him leave?”

“Oh, no.” Edie shook her head. “We may have our difficulties in Drim, but there’s no one here who would do a thing like that.”

“But Drim had never been subjected to such as Peter Hynd before,” said Hamish bitterly. “Sorry to have upset you, Edie. Come along, Priscilla. We have a call to make.”

“Where are we going?” asked Priscilla when they were outside.

“I think we’ll try Alice MacQueen, and then I’ll tackle Jock Kennedy and Jimmy Macleod on my own.”

“I hate this,” said Priscilla as they walked side by side to the hairdresser’s.

“Then don’t come.” Hamish slanted a look at her. “All this unbridled passion must be foreign to you.”

“Don’t get at me, Hamish.”

“Maybe you’d best leave Alice to me. Why not visit Annie Duncan yourself, Priscilla? She must have known what was going on. Goodness knows, she was there when I tried to warn the minister.”

“Yes, sir,” said Priscilla and turned and walked off in the direction of the manse. He stood for a moment watching her go, debating whether to run after her and give her a good shake. Then he shrugged and went on his way.

♦

Alice MacQueen opened the door to him. “I was just about to watch a show on the telly,” she said defensively. “I’ve come about Peter Hynd.”

She backed away from him, her hand to her mouth. “So he’s been found,” she said. Hamish followed her in. “What do you mean by that?”

She sat down in one of the hairdressing chairs. “I meant, has he come back?”

“Now why do I think that wass not what you meant at all?” said Hamish, his voice suddenly sibilant. “What would you be saying if I told you that the body of Peter Hynd had been found in a peatbog?”

“He can’t be dead,” wailed Alice.

Hamish relented. “No, he hasn’t been found.”

She goggled at him and then said furiously, “Why are you playing nasty games with me?”

Hamish sat down. “I want to get at the truth, Alice. Some thing’s wrong in Drim. Peter Hynd leaves and no one sees him go. Betty Baxter meets her death on the beach after she went out to meet someone, and someone tried to injure Nancy Macleod today.”

“That was the accident,” panted Alice. “She’s too heavy and she looks ridiculous playing the lead.”

“Well, let’s begin at the beginning. Let’s have a talk about Peter Hynd. Did you haff the affair wi’ him?”

She shook her head. “You’re sure about that?”

Her eyes flashed. “It was nothing like that. It was innocent. A boy-and-girl thing.”

How old was Alice? wondered Hamish. There was a puffiness under the eyes and little wrinkles radiated out from around her mouth. Fifty-five?

“Describe this boy-and-girl thing.”

“You wouldn’t understand,” she said, suddenly weary. “We talked a lot and went for walks on the moors. He…held my hand. He said he could talk to me. He said I wasn’t like I the otter women. He said…he said he had never met anyone like me. And then Betty Baxter with her great gross body took him away.”

“You mean she had an affair wi’ him?”

“She took away his innocence,” said Alice, all mad logic. “But herself always was a slut. It’s Ailsa I can’t forgive.”

“Ailsa?”

“We were friends. I began to guess what was happening when Jock asked me one day, casual-like, if the video had been any good. I said, ‘What video?’ – ‘Oh,’ he says, ‘the one you were watching last night with Ailsa.’ I realized I had to cover for her for some reason, so I said it was great I waited until I saw Ailsa next and asked her what it was about. She came home with me. She said she had a great secret to tell me. She was all excited. I should have known then what it was, but she was so excited and happy, I thought maybe she’d had a win on the football pools. She told me she had been with Peter…in bed. I was hurt and horrified. I said I had told her about my romance with Peter and how could she do such a thing? ‘Romance,’ she jeered. ‘What romance? Wandering about the heather holding hands? Grow up, Alice,’ she said. ‘I’m a real woman to him.’

“I told her he would betray her as he had betrayed me, but she went on laughing and laughing. And when he went away, she wanted to be friends again, and what could I do? You know what a small village is like, it’s not like the city. You have to get on with people. But Ailsa and I, we can’t be friends anymore like in the old days. In fact there were the five of us, Betty, Nancy, Ailsa, Edie, and me. We were close. We had a lot of laughs: When Peter Hynd first came, well, that was a laugh, too. They’d come to get their hair done and Edie’s exercise classes were a big success and we competed with each other to see who had talked to Peter last, but it was all friendly, all joshing. Then it all turned sour. I don’t really think I can go on living here.”

Not for the first time did Hamish Macbeth curse Peter Hynd under his breath. “Alice, did Peter know that you were all the best of friends?”

“Oh, yes. I used to tell him how lucky I was.”

And Peter promptly set out to turn one against the other, thought Hamish. He felt suddenly tired. If only Peter Hynd were alive and well so that he could punch him on the nose!

♦

Priscilla wondered, as she sat in the manse, if Hamish Macbeth would one day float away on a sea of tea and coffee. Every house one went into in the Highlands, one was offered some form of refreshment, and to refuse would be saying that one did not like one’s host. She was glad the minister had left them alone. For some reason she could not fathom, Priscilla had found herself disliking him intensely. When the minister left, Priscilla felt the rather chilly air of the manse parlour lightening perceptibly. “We’ll have some more coal on that fire for a start,” said Annie, rising and suiting the action to the words. “I hate the way Callum rations it. I sometimes wish we had one of those new council houses, the ones with the central heating.”

Priscilla studied her hostess. She looked much younger than her years, she must be at least fifty, but with her long hair worn down her back and her well-spaced features she could easily have been taken for a woman in her thirties, and early thirties at that. Her figure was slim and well-shaped. Her dress was surprisingly Bohemian for a minister’s wife, Bohemian in a sort of old–fashioned way. She wore a white ‘peasant’ blouse with patchwork skirt and fringed calfskin boots.

“Do you think the pantomime will be a success?” asked Priscilla.

“Oh, I think so. It doesn’t look much like it at the moment. I’m borrowing costumes from the theatre in Strathbane. Once they see the costumes, they’ll get excited. Fortunately the girl who played the lead in the same pantomime in Strathbane last Christmas was on the heavy side, so there shouldn’t be that much of an alteration to get Nancy into it.”

“Why Nancy?” asked Priscilla curiously. “She’s hardly sweet sixteen.”

“She’s got a beautiful voice and that’s all that matters. People get irritated when the lead has a tinny voice. Look at those huge opera singers. No one bothers about their size when they start to sing.”

“But,” said Priscilla tentatively, “your choice of Nancy seems to have caused a certain amount of animosity. I mean, someone could have caused her to fall down those stairs.”

“Oh, believe me, I have survived here by never paying any attention to the squabbles of the village women.”

And in that sentence, thought Priscilla, Annie had betrayed that she looked on the women of the village as some strange tribe of aborigines whose jealousies and feuds had nothing to do with a civilized being. How could she have lived here so long, marvelled Priscilla, and maintained that attitude? Priscilla knew most of the women in Lochdubh and liked quite a few of them.

“Did you know this Peter Hynd who started all the trouble?” asked Priscilla.

“Yes, he was a frequent visitor to the manse. We both liked him.”

“He seems to have been a very manipulative young man, setting one woman against the other, and quite deliberately, too.”

Annie looked amused. “Your fiancé is cursed with a Highland imagination. Your Highlander is an incurable romantic. Peter caused a bit of a flutter, that was all.”

“I think there was more to it than that. No, no more tea for me, thank you. I gather he had affairs with at least five of them – Betty Baxter, Ailsa Kennedy, Nancy Macleod, Edie Aubrey, and Alice MacOueen.”

“Now, I really must take you to task, Priscilla. I may call you Priscilla, may I not? No one is formal these days. You have been listening to wild gossip and perhaps stupid bragging on the part of these women. Do you know who you are dealing with here? They believe in fairies in this village. Nancy Macleod leaves a saucer of milk outside the door every night for the fairies.”

“And do they drink it?” asked Priscilla, momentarily diverted.

“They don’t, but a fat hedgehog does.”

Priscilla returned to the subject of Peter Hynd but could not seem to get anywhere. In fact, the minister’s wife’s manner grew somewhat supercilious, as if Annie Duncan had decided that Priscilla Halburton-Smythe was a sort of peasant in couture clothing. Perhaps it was the suddenly dying fire – the coal was poor quality – but a frost seemed to be settling on the room. When Priscilla stood up to leave, Annie barely managed to disguise her relief.

“One of the troubles about being a minister’s wife,” said Annie brightly, as she showed Priscilla out, “is that people will drop in unannounced. Do phone next time to say you are coming.”

“And so I left with a flea in both ears,” said Priscilla to Hamish when she arrived back at Edie’s. “Where is Edie?”

“Gone to bed.”

“And how did you get on, Hamish?”

“It was pretty awful,” said Hamish. “Before Peter came to this village, Nancy, Betty, Edie, Alice, and Ailsa were all the best of friends. Peter knew that and set out, I am convinced, quite deliberately, to put one against the other. Alice swears she didn’t have an affair with Peter. A boy-girl romance, she said, poor soul. Och, I’m tired.” He stood up and walked round the kitchen table and put his hands on her shoulders, feeling them stiffen at his touch. He bent down and placed a swift kiss on her cheek. “I’ll need to tackle Jock Kennedy tomorrow,” he said.

“Next to Harry Baxter, he must be prime suspect,” said Priscilla. “Peter beats him in a fight in a particularly nasty way and Peter lays his wife. It’s funny, usually you can’t cough in a Highland village during the night without everyone next day asking you if you’ve caught a cold, and yet Peter went off, car, papers, bags, and baggage without anyone hearing a thing.”

“There are times of the night when no one notices anything,” said Hamish, thinking of his own poaching forays. “Round about three in the morning until five, everything’s as dead as the grave. Are you coming?”

“I’ll just wash up these cups for Edie,” said Priscilla evasively. Hamish looked down sadly at the back of her smooth bright head. He’d tell her tomorrow that the engagement that never was, or whatever it had been, was at an end. He could not spend another day with all the unspoken words lying between them.