Death of a Dentist

∨ Death of a Dentist ∧

8

“Yes.” I answered you last night; “No,” this morning, sir, I say. Colours seen by candle-light Will not look the same by day.

—Robert Browning

Hamish drove out towards Braikie with Mrs. Wellington following in her Fiat. He hoped he was doing the right thing. If Kylie really had something important to tell him, she might not want to say anything in front of Mrs. Wellington. But he felt in his bones that Kylie had taken exception to his questions about her. Kylie was obviously used to thinking of herself as the glamour queen of Braikie, a sexy big fish in a very little pool. She did not know that her power came from her youth and when youth had gone, it would leave Kylie – like so many other Kylies he had known – a bitter and bad-tempered woman. He stopped at the end of the street where Kylie lived and Mrs. Wellington drew in behind him. He got out of the police Land Rover and walked back to the minister’s wife. “Why are we stopping here?” she asked.

“I don’t want her to get a look at you. Might scare her. Let me walk along first and follow me a few yards behind. Don’t let yourself be seen from the house. I’ll knock at the door. Then when I signal to you, you walk up quickly and go in first.”

“What is this? Are you expecting an armed ambush? It would be just like you to hide behind a woman. I’ve always said – ”

“Oh, shut up,” said Hamish crossly. “I am trying to help this wee lassie and you are the very person to do it. Like I said, I don’t want to frighten her off.”

“Very well,” said Mrs. Wellington, straightening another of her formidable felt hats. “But never again tell me to shut up, Hamish Macbeth. I don’t know what has happened to manners these days.”

Hamish sighed. “Now, now, I’m sorry. Come along.”

He walked in front of her past a silent row of villas, most of them divided up into flats.

He turned in at Kylie’s gate and flashed his torch at the name plates. Kylie Fraser was on the ground floor. He rang the bell. A buzzer went and he entered a hall. The door to Kylie’s flat was on the left. He knocked at it.

“Who is it?” came Kylie’s voice.

“Hamish Macbeth.”

“Just walk in. The door isn’t locked.”

Hamish darted to the street door and signalled frantically. The bulk of Mrs. Wellington appeared from around the shelter of a hedge. She hurried up the garden path and joined Hamish in the hall.

Hamish indicated Kylie’s door. “Go straight on in,” he whispered.

Mrs. Wellington squared her shoulders and opened the door and marched in.

Kylie and the minister’s wife stared at each other in horror.

Kylie was wearing nothing but a black lace teddy and scarlet high-heeled shoes.

Her mouth fell open.

“Who are you?” she screeched. “Where’s Hamish?”

“So this is what you’re up to,” said Mrs. Wellington belligerently, putting her large handbag down on a table. “Trying to seduce a policeman.”

“I never…”

Hamish appeared behind Mrs. Wellington and grinned at the sight of Kylie.

“So who’s hiding in here ready to rush out and cry Rape!?” he demanded.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Kylie, but her eyes flickered to a door at the other side of the room.

Hamish strode across the room and jerked that door open. Kylie’s friend, Tootsie, and two youths nearly fell into the room.

“Do you mean,” boomed Mrs. Wellington, “that this was meant to be some sort of entrapment?”

“I think Kylie was going to rip open the little she has on and scream and her witnesses would then swear I had attacked her,” said Hamish.

“If you knew this,” said Mrs. Wellington wrathfully, “then you should have brought in some backup.”

All these police series on television, thought Hamish, had everyone talking a sort of bastard police lingo.

“But as I am here,” said Mrs. Wellington, “I want you young people to sit down and listen to me. I am the minister’s wife and it is my Christian duty to bring the error of your ways to your attention. Sit down!”

They meekly sat down while she proceeded to lecture them on the lack of morals in the younger generation until Hamish interrupted her. “I think they get the message,” he said. “Now, Kylie, what was there between you and Gilchrist?”

“Nothing,” she said sulkily.

“And yet the very fact that I have been asking questions about you and Gilchrist is enough for you to try to get me charged with rape.”

“It was just a joke, that’s all,” said Kylie.

“It’s a joke I don’t like, so I am about to drive you to police headquarters where you will be charged with wasting police time, attempting to coerce an officer of the law and God knows what else.”

Kylie began to cry, her vamp makeup running down her cheeks.

“Och, I’ll tell you,” said Tootsie, “if you promise not to charge her.”

“I can’t promise anything,” said Hamish. “But if you are open and honest with me, I’ll think about it.”

Mrs. Wellington snapped open her capacious handbag and produced a packet of tissues which she handed to Kylie.

“Go on, Kylie,” urged Tootsie. “Tell him, or I will.”

Kylie blew her nose and then scrubbed at her face. Clean of makeup, her face looked much younger and almost vulnerable.

“Mr. Gilchrist took me out to Inverness a few times, posh restaurants. It was a bit o’ a laugh. Then the last time – ”

“When was that?” asked Hamish sharply.

“A month ago. He stopped the car on the road back from Inverness and he was all over me. He said I had cost him enough and it was time to pay back. I told him to get stuffed and he slapped me across the face – hard. I said I would tell everyone in Braikie and he seemed to get frightened. He says to me, he says, that if I kept my mouth shut, he would buy me a car.”

And where did he plan to get the money for that, wondered Hamish.

“So I kept quiet, but when I called on him and I says, ‘Well, where’s the car?’ he told me, ‘What car,’ so I said I would tell everyone and he said I was the town tart and no one would believe me.”

“So why didn’t you just tell me this?” demanded Hamish. “Why go in for this stupid trick?”

Kylie and her friends, stared at him in mulish silence.

“You should charge them,” said Mrs. Wellington.

“I don’t think there’s any need for that, Mrs. Wellington,” said Hamish. “But these young people are in need of spiritual guidance, so I’ll just be waiting outside while you give them some.”

Mrs. Wellington snapped open her huge handbag again and drew out a Bible. As Hamish left, he could hear her voice booming away.

He stood outside the gate and looked up at the burning, bright Sutherland stars.

Gilchrist had been a philanderer. Therefore it followed, it could have been a crime of passion, perhaps committed by some furious husband or lover. Could Kylie have got some of the local youth to do it for her? Hardly. They would have beat him up and spray-painted the walls of his surgery, that was more their style.

He thought again about the Smiley brothers. Whether their still had been used to make nicotine poison was something to be considered. After he escorted Mrs. Wellington home, he would drive back to the Smileys’ croft and see if there was any sign of activity.

After some time, Mrs. Wellington emerged. “I think I have talked some sense into their immoral heads. But how did you guess, Hamish, what she had planned for you?”

“Just a feeling,” said Hamish.

After he had followed her to the manse and seen her safely indoors, he went back to the police station and changed into a black sweater and black trousers and then set out on the Braikie road again.

He parked the Land Rover some way away from the Smileys’ property and continued on foot.

The night was very quiet. He went along the side of the new extension and stopped at the door. He flicked his pencil torch at the padlock. It was open. He quietly opened the door and let himself into the darkness of the shed. He flashed the torch around. It looked just as it had been before, but mis time he began to search the place inch by inch, pausing every so often to cock his head and listen in case he heard some movement from outside. He had almost given up when he impatiently kicked aside the straw in a pen in the comer. A large new-looking trapdoor was revealed underneath.

With a smile of triumph, he lifted the heavy hasp and swung the trapdoor open. A flight of wooden steps led downwards. He went quietly down the stairs, stood at the bottom and flashed the light around.

A huge still occupied one corner, pipes and vats and barrels and a whole bottling plant.

Got you, thought Hamish.

His torch flicked over the size of the still. It seemed too huge an apparatus to make a little nicotine poison.

Satisfied, he backed towards the trapdoor. This could not wait until the morning. He would return to the police station and get a squad over from Strathbane.

And then just as he had nearly reached the stairs, there was an almighty crash as the trapdoor was slammed down.

He darted up the stairs. “Stourie! Pete!” he yelled. “Open this door at once!”

But the only answer was the sound of retreating footsteps.

He went up the stairs and pushed at the trapdoor above his head but he could not even budge it an inch. He shouted and yelled and banged. There was nothing now but silence.

Hamish was suddenly frightened. Did the Smileys plan to leave him down here to rot? There was the police Land Rover parked down the road, but what if they knew how to hot-wire it to get it started. And no one knew where he was.

♦

Sarah Hudson banged on the door of the police station and then went round and knocked on Hamish’s bedroom window. She had been unable to sleep. She had felt that she had treated Hamish Macbeth very badly and had decided that as the night was cold but fine that she would go down and wake him up and take matters from there. But there was no reply and the police station had that empty atmosphere any building has when the resident is away from home.

Feeling dejected, she turned and began to walk along the waterfront, keeping to the shadow of the cottages, for she suddenly wondered what any local might think of her, if she was seen.

She heard the sound of a vehicle approaching and pressed back into the Currie sisters’ privet hedge.

The police Land Rover passed her followed by a truck. So Hamish wasn’t alone.

She waited in the darkness of the hedge. Then the truck, this time with two men in it, came past her.

She watched it disappear and then headed back to the police station. The Land Rover stood at the side of the building. But there were no lights on in the police station. Surely Hamish wasn’t creeping off to bed in the dark.

She went to the kitchen door and knocked. Silence.

She stood mere, her hand to her mouth. What was going on? Was Hamish off on some secret assignment? Had two fellow officers driven the Land Rover back for him?

She tried the handle of the kitchen door. Locked.

But someone as easygoing as Hamish was the type of man who probably usually forgot his keys. Had he left one around under a flower pot or in the gutter the way country people often still did?

She stood on tiptoe and ran her hand along the guttering on the low roof but found nothing. She dropped to her knees and peered around in the darkness and then lifted away the doormat and felt the ground underneath with her fingers.

Those fingers closed on a key. “Now let’s see if I can find out what’s going on,” she muttered.

She unlocked the door, went in and shouted, “Hamish!” at the top of her voice. No answer. She searched through the small station, ending up in the office and looking through the papers and notes on the desk for some clue.

And then all at once she remembered Hamish saying he wanted to find out about the Smiley brothers and saying they could be dangerous.

She then stared at the phone. “I hope I’m doing the right thing,” she said aloud, “or Hamish will never forgive me.” She looked up the phone number of police headquarters at Strathbane and began to dial.

She was put through to a tired Jimmy Anderson, who was on night duty. He listened carefully to her story about the suspected still, the Smiley brothers, and then how two men had driven the Land Rover, parked outside the police station and left.

“I’ll see to it,” said Jimmy. “Why didn’t the silly fool tell us about this?”

“He said that with the noise you lot made arriving from Strathbane, the Smiley brothers would get to hear of it before you even left.”

“Aye, he had a point there,” said Jimmy. “But we’ll be careful.”

“Be quick,” urged Sarah. “He may be in danger.”

♦

Hamish had fallen into an uneasy sleep when he suddenly awoke. Someone was opening the trapdoor. He made a dash for the stairs, A shotgun was being pointed straight at him through the trapdoor.

“Back off, Hamish,” came Stourie’s voice, “or I’ll blast your head off.” He pressed a switch by the stairs and the cellar was flooded with harsh light.

Stourie eased his way down the stairs followed by Pete, “Tie him up and gag him,” Stourie instructed his brother.

“People know I’m here,” said Hamish desperately.

“Aye, well, if they knew you were here, where are they?” sneered Smiley. “We all know you fancy yoursel’ as the Lone Ranger. Tie him up, Pete.”

Hamish was trussed up, and a broad piece of sticking plaster was pasted over his mouth.

“That’s him dealt with,” said Pete. “What do we do now?”

“Wait till the fuss dies down and make sure no one comes here looking for him and then we’ll drop the cratur in the nearest peat bog.”

“Aye, that’ll do fine,” said Pete. He stretched and yawned. “I’m dead tired. Let’s get some sleep.” He gave the trussed Hamish a vicious kick in the ribs.

Then both brothers went up the stairs, switching off the light and leaving Hamish Macbeth lying on the floor, helpless in the darkness.

It was dawn before police and detectives began to spread out over the moors outside the Smileys’ croft.

Blair roused from his bed was in a foul mood. “Close in,” he said. “That girlfriend o’ Macbeth’s said it was that shed he was interested in.”

Inside the croft house, a dog began to bark furiously. “That’s it!” shouted Blair. “Go for it! Fast!”

Men smashed in the door of the shed, just as the Smileys erupted from their house. “What the hell’s going on here?” shouted Stourie.

Blair went up to him. “We believe you are holding a policeman.” And let’s hope these weird-looking buggers have killed him, thought Blair suddenly. A life without Hamish Macbeth. Bloody marvellous.

“Whit policeman?” asked Stourie.

“Call off your dogs,” shouted Blair as two dogs snapped at his ankles.

“Down boys,” growled Stourie. “You’re going to have to pay for the damage to that lock.”

Blair grunted by way of reply and walked into the shed and looked around. “Nothing here,” said Jimmy.

“Ach, I should have known it,” said Blair, his voice heavy with disgust. “Hamish and his hysterical women. And do you know the price o’ this operation? We’ll search the house anyway. Come on then. Nothing here.”

Downstairs, Hamish heard him. In desperation he twisted and wriggled across the floor and kicked out savagely with his bound feet at a row of bottles.

“What was that?” said Jimmy Anderson at the doorway of the shed.

“I heard nothing,” said Stourie.

Silence again.

“Come on!” snapped Blair.

Crash!

“Jesus, it’s coining from under the floor. There’s a basement.”

“There is not.” A film of sweat covered Stourie’s face despite the cold of the dawn.

“Search all over the floor,” howled Blair. He had been so anxious to prove that Hamish Macbeth’s girlfriend had instigated a useless and expensive search that he had called off the search too soon.

“Over here,” called a policeman, scraping aside the straw over the trapdoor.

Blair lumbered over. “Unlock it,” he said over his shoulder to Stourie.

“I dinnae hae a key,” howled Stourie.

Blair nodded to a policeman who came forward with a sledgehammer and brought it down on the lock and smashed it.

The trapdoor was thrown back. Blair went down. Behind him Jimmy Anderson had found the light switch.

Blair looked at the bound and gagged figure of Hamish Macbeth.

He stooped over him and savagely ripped the gag from his mouth. “You’re in deep shit, man,” he said. “You’re going to have to explain why you decided to do this on your own and why you withheld information.”

♦

It was a long, long day for Hamish Macbeth. He had to type out reports to explain why he had decided to investigate on his own. He learned that The Scotsman Hotel had been raided and all the bottles removed from the bar. Macbean had been arrested and charged with supplying illegal liquor to his customers and had been bailed to appear at the sheriff’s court in Strathbane in a month’s time.

Blair tried to make as much trouble for Hamish as possible, but Superintendent Peter Daviot had said with irritating mildness that they would probably have never got on to it were it not for Hamish’s unorthodox investigations. Hamish had not broken into the property. The door of the shed had been unlocked.

So Hamish was finally free to go. Blair’s parting shot was that there was no police car available to take Hamish to Lochdubh and so he could walk. The last buses had gone by the time Hamish left police headquarters. He stood miserably out on the Lochdubh road, trying to hitch a lift. But cars which might have stopped for a policeman in uniform were not going to stop for a tired, unshaven man in black sweater and trousers.

Then just when he had given up hope of ever getting back to Lochdubh that night, the Currie sisters drew up beside him in their battered little Renault.

“You were on the six o’clock news,” said Nessie as she drove off.

“It’s getting like Chicago – Chicago,” put in the repetitive Jessie.

Hamish dozed in the back seat until they drew up outside the police station. He blinked awake. “Someone’s there,” he said. “The lights are burning.”

“It’ll be that girlfriend of yours,” sniffed Nessie.

Hamish walked into the police station. Sarah was sitting at the kitchen table.

“How did you get in?”

“I found the key under the doormat,” said Sarah. “I’m glad you’re safe. I heard about it on the news.”

“I’ll just see to the hens and sheep.”

“The sheep have had their winter feed and the hens are locked up for the night,” said Sarah. She added, seeing the look of surprise on his face, “My father is a farmer in Shropshire.”

“I know little about you.” Hamish sat down wearily at the table. “I gather it was you who called police headquarters. They planned to drop me in a peat bog. They were running a big operation. The police have been raiding hotels and bars all over the place. The owners of The Drouthy Crofter in Braikie have been charged along with a lot of others.”

“Well, now you’re home safe, I’ll be off,” said Sarah.

“Won’t you stay a bit?”

“No, you look exhausted. There’s a casserole for you in the oven.”

She stood up. He went to kiss her but she brushed past him, her head ducked.

“Sarah!” he called. But the closing of his kitchen door was the only answer he got.

♦

The next day was as cold as iron. The birds were silent. Hoar frost glittered on the grass and on the branches of trees. Ice glittered in puddles. Outside the police station, the loch lay flat like glass.

It seemed a cold, friendless world where romance had died.

Hamish decided he’d had enough. His ribs hurt where he had been kicked and there was a sore red patch about his mouth from the gag. It was up to Strathbane with all their forensic resources, computers and reports to solve this case. He had been neglecting his domestic duties about the croft. He cleaned the police station thoroughly and then went out and fed his sheep. Towser’s grave lay on the hill above the police station, a sad and silent reminder to one lonely policeman that even the dog who had loved him was no longer alive. By ten o’clock, he was beginning to feel considerably better because of all the physical exercise. He felt at peace. Deciding to leave the case alone had been a good idea.

The phone in the police station rang. Sarah was the first person he thought of. He thought it was her voice when he answered the phone and it took him a few moments to realise that the caller was Priscilla Halburton-Smythe.

“I’ve been waiting for a call from either you or Sarah,” said Priscilla, “and I’ve been reading accounts of the death of this dentist.”

Hamish sat down at his desk. “It’s like this Priscilla, I’ve given up.”

“That’s not like you. Tell me all about it.”

He began at the beginning with the murder and burglary and went on until he finished with his capture by the Smiley brothers.

“I’m sure you’re feeling rattled, tired and fed up,” said Priscilla sympathetically. “But what you used to do when you were stuck was to dig into the background of all the suspects. The answer, you always said, lay in the past. Also, Gilchrist was in debt and Gilchrist liked money. Could he have been involved with the Smiley brothers?”

“I’d thought of that,” said Hamish slowly, “but I can’t find any connection there.”

“It certainly must have been a magnificent obsession that Maggie Bane had for Gilchrist.”

“She was in love with him, yes, but why do you call it an obsession?”

“She gets a good degree, and by your account, apart from her ugly voice, she is very attractive. It must have been an obsession to make her bury herself alive in a dreary Highland town with a philanderer. Was there some jealous lover she left behind in St. Andrews? Might be worth rinding out. You could start with one of her tutors.”

“It’s a long way to St. Andrews, Priscilla, and in this weather.”

“You could phone.”

He sighed. “No, no, I have always found it better to go in person. I’ll phone Strathbane. I’m supposed to be on leave for a couple of days anyway.”

“Good hunting, Hamish. Phone me back if there’s any result.”

“Aye, I’ll do that. Any hope of you coming back up here?”

“I’ll be home for Christmas.”

He wanted to ask, “Alone?” But what if she said no, she was bringing a friend with her, a male friend. Right at that moment, he didn’t want to hear any more bad news.

Promising to phone, he said goodbye. He decided not to wear his uniform, he was not officially on duty. He phoned Strathbane and told them he was feeling unwell after his experience and would take two days leave. He then phoned Sergeant Macgregor at Cnothan and asked him to cover his beat for him.

He then locked up the police station after pinning a note on the door referring all callers to Cnothan.

As he drove out past the Tommel Castle Hotel, he resisted an impulse to swing the wheel, call at the hotel and see if Sarah would like to go with him.

Although the sky was threatening, no snow fell, and when he finally reached St. Andrews University, a gleam of pale sunlight was gilding the old university buildings.

It took some time to run Maggie Bane’s former physics tutor to earth, but Hamish finally found himself sitting in the living room of a comfortable book-lined home, facing a Mr. James Packer, a surprisingly youthful and cherubic-looking man.

“I read about the case in the newspapers, of course,” said Mr. Packer when Hamish explained the reason for his visit. “Do you know I was not very surprised that he had been killed.”

“You knew him?” Hamish leaned forward eagerly.

“I knew of him. Maggie was a brilliant student. I thought it was that brilliance which isolated her from the other students. She kept herself very much to herself. Didn’t go much to parties and dances, didn’t seem to have any boyfriends. Then right after the exams, I heard a rumour she had gone off to Paris with a middle-aged married man. I was concerned. On her return, I sent for her and told her bluntly I had heard the rumours. She laughed and said it was all respectable and that he was divorced and that they were going to get married, and until the wedding, she would work for him at his practise in Braikie. I counselled her that she was too young to know her own mind and that she was throwing away a brilliant future but she was so obviously very much in love.”

There was a sad little silence. Then Mr. Packer said, “But he did not marry her, did he?”

“No,” said Hamish, “and it appears he was not very faithful to her either. Apart from being a brilliant student, tell me more about Maggie Bane.”

“To tell the truth, I was amazed by her passion for mis dentist. I always thought of her as being rather cold and analytical. I thought she did not mix with the other students because she despised them, rather than out of shyness.”

“What is her background?”

“Doting mother and father, possibly no longer doting. I heard the mother used to call at the university with home-baked cakes and things like that for Maggie, and Maggie was quite dreadfully rude to her. I suppose, you know, I really only saw Maggie’s intellectual brilliance. But looking back, I don’t suppose Maggie Bane was a very nice character.”

“Do you think she could be violent?”

“I do not know. I would not have credited her with violence, but until the advent of Gilchrist, I would not have thought her capable of passion either.”

“I wish I’d known Gilchrist,” said Hamish. “I only saw him dead. He was nothing much to look at – white hair, white face – typical dentist, in fact. There must have been something in his character to attract women. He liked the high life and he left a lot of debt.”

Mr. Packer gave an odd little nod of his head as if Hamish had just confirmed something he had already thought. “Have you noticed, Mr. Macbeth, those ugly little millionaires who usually have some gorgeous blonde hanging on their arm? Women find an ambience of power and money almost irresistible. And before you damn me as being a chauvinist and politically incorrect, I mean some women. This is not Palm Beach, this is the north of Scotland where things are scaled down. A man who drives a large car and offers trips to Paris just like that must have struck Maggie Bane as a rare exotic. I think she is much to be pitied. I think I shall write to her if you would be so good as to furnish me with her address. I think she could channel all that passion and energy into a successful career.”

Hamish took out his notebook, wrote down Maggie’s address, and passed it over.

“There’s something else I want to ask you – about nicotine poison.”

“It’s very easy to make.”

“You will see from the newspapers, an illegal still was raided. I thought that might have been used. I mean anyone with the machinery to manufacture illegal whisky would be able to make nicotine poison.”

“I should think any bright schoolchild might be able to do the same in a school lab.”

Hamish sighed. “Motive, that’s the thing.”

“It’s usually drunkenness, love or money.”

“There was this robbery at The Scotsman Hotel. I kept thinking that Gilchrist with his love of spending and being low on funds might have had something to do with it. I mean, Mrs. Macbean, that’s the manager’s wife, might have let something slip about the money, about the safe having a wooden back.”

“Or,” said Mr. Packer, crossing a neat pair of ankles in Argyll socks, “if he was such a charmer, he could have worked on her. Surely such an enormous sum of money for a bingo prize would be advertised by the hotel in the newspapers.”

“Yes, it was.”

“This is fun,” said the tutor happily. “I feel quite like Dr. Watson. Tell me about this Mrs. Macbean.”

“She isn’t a looker, middle-aged, waspish, hair in curlers from morning till night. Husband is said to beat her up, but she does not seem afraid of him. Told a friend of mine” – oh, Sarah, what happened to us? – “that a woman with a breadknife in her hand didn’t need to be afraid of any man. Said she put laxative in his morning coffee after he had beaten her and threatened it would be poison the next time.”

“Mrs. Macbean sounds a likely candidate.”

“But she would need help. Someone with strength and coldness murdered Gilchrist and hoisted him into the dentist’s chair and drilled all his teeth.”

“You came here,” said Mr. Packer, “to find out more about Maggie Bane. I assume this is because there is often something in the person’s past which will highlight some murderous side of their character?”

“That is often the case.”

“Then perhaps you should try to find out a bit more about what Mrs. Macbean is like?”

“You’re right. I might just call down to Leith and see what I can find.”

♦

Blessing the motorways which made travel so easy, Hamish drove down to Edinburgh and so to Leith. He had fortunately a note of Mrs. Macbean’s original address in his notebook. There might be someone living there or living close by who might remember her.

The early Scottish night had fallen when he finally entered a Georgian tenement in Leith. The woman who answered the door to him said that, yes, the police had already been round asking questions but she had never known the woman. Try Mrs. Morton on the ground floor.

Mrs. Morton turned out to be God’s gift to a policeman – a lonely grey-haired widow anxious for company and anxious to talk.

“Yes, yes, I remember Agnes Macwhirter. Beautiful girl and knew it. Full of herself. All the boys were mad for her. Said she was going to be someone someday. Went to business college and said she would be secretary to someone famous, like a film star.”

“And did she become secretary to someone famous?”

“No, she ended up as a pretty ordinary secretary working for the manager of a children’s wear factory in Dumfries.”

Hamish looked at her sharply. “Did you say Dumfries?”

“Yes, indeed. Now what was the place called. I’ll remember in a moment. It’s funny at my age how one remembers things clearly from the old days but nothing much about yesterday. I remember her mother coming down to tell me. Poor Mrs. Macwhirter, the cancer took her off. I know, it was Tot Modes, that’s it, Tot Modes in Dumfries.”

“Can you remember the name of the manager?”

She shook her head regretfully.

Dumfries, thought Hamish. That’s where Gilchrist had come from.

“I’d best find somewhere to stay the night and then I might drive over to Dumfries in the morning.”

“I have a spare room here,” said Mrs. Morton, loneliness peering out of her old eyes. “I would be glad of the company.”

Hamish hesitated. He would have liked to rack up in some anonymous hotel room and sort out his thoughts. But he knew what it was like to feel lonely and one day he would be old himself, and to hell with it…

“That is most kind of you,” he said. He retired early however, feeling if he looked through another album of ancient photographs he would scream.

♦

He awoke early but Mrs. Morton was up before him and had prepared a massive breakfast. Hamish longed to offer to pay for food and accommodation but was afraid of offending her. But when he left, he put two twenty-pound notes in an envelope and left it on the bedside table with a note: “This is for your favourite charity,” hoping that Mrs. Motion’s favourite charity was herself, for he knew she sorely needed money. The little flat was spotless, but everything was shabby and worn.

He set out for Dumfries, grateful that although the weather was cold, it was still dry. Skeletal winter trees held their black tracery of branches up in supplication to an unforgiving sky. He took all seasons as they came, finding some beauty in all, but beginning to have an intimation of how much he would learn to hate the winter when he was older. Mrs. Morton had said she hailed each spring as a gift from God, knowing she would be alive for another year, because old people died in winter.

He had not phoned, and wondering if the children’s clothing factory would be still in operation, he stopped at the main post office in Dumfries and looked up the phone book. To his relief Tot Modes was listed. He drove out to an industrial estate and found the factory, which consisted of two long low buildings and asked for the manager.

The manager, a Mr. Goodman, was, Hamish saw with disappointment, a relatively young man. But he explained why he had called.

“That would be in my father’s time,” said Mr. Goodman.

“Is he still alive?”

“Yes, I’ll just phone him and say you will be calling, and then I’ll give you directions.”

Another twenty minutes and Hamish found himself confronting Mr. Goodman, senior, a portly old gentleman with a round face covered in so many broken veins it looked like a relief map. His eyes had the watery sheen of the perpetual drinker, but he was sober that morning and seemed delighted to have company.

“Agnes Macwhirter,” he said. “Aye, I remember her well. Bonnie lassie.”

“Can you tell me what she was like?”

“Very good secretary. Miss Perfect. Tailored white blouses, pencil skirts, that sort of thing. Walking out with a respectable young doctor.”

“Doctor?” Hamish looked disappointed. “I was hoping to find some connection between her and that dentist who’s just been murdered, Frederick Gilchrist.”

“Oh, him.” Then the old man stared at Hamish. “Of course, Gilchrist, that was the fellow. He was only a student when he was here. That’s right. Someone said he was a dental student, studying to be a dentist.”

“And he knew Miss Macwhirter?”

“Knew her? He ruined that lassie’s life.”

“How?”

“At first it seemed the Romeo and Juliet romance o’ all time. He would wait outside the factory for her in his car every evening. She was besotted with him. I got a wee bit worried because her work began to fall off, and then she began to turn up late in the mornings, hungover and – what’s the word? – looking shagged.”

Hamish suppressed a grin. “You mean they were having an affair?”

“Aye, talk went around. I couldn’t understand why the time passed on his holidays with no sign of a ring on her finger. I mean, things were stricter in those days. Her work got worse. I sat her down and had a wee talk to her. I said unless she pulled her socks up, I would need to fire her. She had grown insolent and she tossed her hair and said she’d soon be married so I had better start looking for a replacement, and then the next day she didn’t turn up, and a week later, she sent a note saying she had resigned. I got another secretary and forgot about it, until, oh, it must have been three months later, I was walking along with the wife, and she said, “Let’s cross the road. There’s these awful bikers.” I looked and there was this gang of blokes on motorcycles outside this pub, all sideburns and black leather and metal studs, and hanging around the neck of one of the bikers was Agnes Macwhirter. What a change! Her hair was a brassy blonde and she looked like a tart. I thought, that one will be on the streets before long, but she married one of those hoodlums, called Macbean, I think. He subsequently ran a pub and then a hotel, and then I never heard any more of her, Macbean or Gilchrist. The odd thing was that I read all about the murder in the newspapers and I didn’t connect the Gilchrist who was murdered with the dental student. I don’t get out much and no one comes to see me. Will you be having a dram?”

“I’m driving,” said Hamish.

“Well, a cup of tea?”

He wanted to escape from the loneliness of the old, but he said, “Thank you,” and virtue had its reward, for after making tea, Mr. Goodman produced some old staff photos. “There’s Agnes, at the Christmas party.”

She had indeed been beautiful then, and with a voluptuous figure.

Here was a motive for murder at last, thought Hamish. He forced himself to spend an hour with Mr. Goodman and then made his escape, putting on the police siren this time and breaking all speed limits on the road north.

When he finally reached Lochdubh at seven in the evening, he went straight to the police station and reluctantly picked up the phone. He knew if he tried to question Mrs. Macbean himself, he would probably be thrown out of the hotel, and this was news he could not, should not keep to himself.

He told Jimmy Anderson what he had found out. “You’re a miracle, Hamish,” said Jimmy. “I’ll tell Blair and we’ll pull her in now.”

“You can tell him, I want to be in on the questioning,” said Hamish. “He would never have found this out without me.”

“Aye, I’ll tell him. Give us a bit to get her back here.”

Hamish then phoned Sarah but was told she had gone out for dinner. He went along to the Italian restaurant, but she was not there, so he ate a solitary meal and then set out for Strathbane.

♦

Mrs. Macbean had red plastic hair rollers in mis time. Hamish sat in a corner of the interrogation room with a policewoman while Blair began the examination.

“Why did you not tell us you knew Gilchrist afore you were married?”

“It was a long time ago,” she said angrily.

“You had an affair with him. Did you murder him?”

“No, I did not,” she said, folding her arms. “The only reason I went to him was because he pulled my teeth and didnae charge a thing.”

Hamish looking at her thin mouth, rollered hair, bad-tempered face, thick body and rounded shoulders could not find a trace left of that happy, laughing beautiful girl of the staff photograph.

“Where were you on the morning of the murder?”

“I was at the hotel.”

“Witnesses?”

“I was in my room. My daughter’ll tell ye.”

“We need an independent witness. One of the guests, someone like that.”

“Whit time was the murder?”

“Between ten and eleven as you very well know,” said Blair.

“Aye, I was at the hotel. I know. I phoned down to Johnny at the bar sometime about then and asked if the insurance men had been yet.”

“We’ll check with him. But I think you killed him,” Blair shouted right in her face.

She leaned back in her chair and looked at him with contempt. “Prove it.”

The questioning went on while Hamish studied her, his mind working furiously. He was suddenly sure she had not done it. But she had known Gilchrist, had loved him passionately. Jeannie Gilchrist had thought her husband had been married before because she sensed there was someone in his past he had not got over. Yet Gilchrist with his penchant for attractive young women would find nothing left in her to love, in what had become an ugly, bad-tempered woman. She could not even pay him to…He sat up. It was a long shot.

Hamish interrupted Blair. “Sir?”

Blair swung round furiously. “Whit?”

“I chust wanted to ask Mrs. Macbean where the money is, the money she promised to Gilchrist.”

There was a dead silence. One red roller fell from Mrs. Macbean’s head and came to rest in front of Blair.

Mrs. Macbean was now staring at Hamish, all truculence gone.

“The way I see it is this.” Hamish’s gentle Highland voice sounded in the stillness of the room. “You had loved Gilchrist more than you had ever loved any man. You are unhappy in your marriage. You could no longer attract him. He was having an affair with a pretty young girl. But he liked money, he was worried sick about money. I think for two hundred and fifty thousand pounds he would have gone off with you. What happened? Did he take the money and then refuse?” Hamish watched her face closely. “No, that’s not it. You’ve still got the money. You’d best tell us where for we’ll take your room apart, take the hotel apart. I know you’ve got it and we’ll keep you here for as long as it takes to get you to confess.”

A long silence followed. Blair gave an impatient grunt For one moment, he thought Hamish had discovered something, but this was sidetracking. He wanted a murderer.

“Better to be damned as a thief than a murderer,” said Hamish.

But she had regained her composure. She shrugged. “Search my room all you want,” she said. “You won’t find anything.”

Hamish stared at her. “No,” he said, “perhaps not in your room. Your daughter’s room?” No reaction. “So somewhere in the hotel.” She stared at him boldly. “Och, well, now let’s chust say not in the hotel, but outside…buried.”

Her eyes flickered. “Can I have a cigarette?”

“Buried,” said Hamish flatly. “In the hotel grounds. Should be easy to find this winter weather. We’ll look for a sign of recent digging. Shouldn’t take long.”

Silence.

“Well, you’ve had your say, Hamish…” Blair was just beginning when Mrs. Macbean, who had not taken her eyes off Hamish, said, “You bastard. You knew all the time. Who was it told you? Darleen?”

“So it was you what stole the money,” said Blair, suddenly wishing Hamish miles away so that he could take all the credit for this.

She gave a little sigh. “I loved him,” she said. She looked at Hamish and for a moment her eyes blazed with something, for one split second the ghost of the pretty girl she had once been shone out at him, and then she began to sob in a helpless dreary way. “I couldn’t even mourn him,” she said at last. “I couldnae even shed a tear or folks might have guessed. He said if I got the money we could go away together and start a new life. It wisnae really stealing, that’s what he said. The insurance company would pay up and the insurance company could afford it. We would go to Spain. I would get away from Macbean. Funny thing, marriage. I think I hated that man a week after we were wed but the years dragged on and on and on. I stayed for Darleen, but she’s become a hard little bitch. She wouldnae hae missed me. Oh God, I didnae kill him.”

But Blair gave her a wolfish smile and hitched his chair closer to the table. As far as he was concerned, Mrs. Macbean had killed Gilchrist and he was going to stay up all night to make her confess.

Hamish arrived back at the police station in Lochdubh at dawn, feeling bone weary. Despite Blair’s insistent and truculent questioning, Mrs. Macbean had not cracked. She had told them where the money was hidden and it had been recovered but she insisted she had not murdered the dentist. The barman was pulled in and confirmed that she had phoned down at the time the murder was taking place. And then he remembered a maid had taken clean sheets up to Mrs. Macbean’s room. Mrs. Macbean did not share a room with her husband. Both lived separately in respective hotel rooms. A long wait while the maid was located, a local woman with an impeccable reputation, a Mrs. Tandy, who confirmed that at ten-thirty on the morning of the murder, she had taken clean sheets in to Mrs. Macbean. So that had been that. Mrs. Macbean had been charged with the theft. The fact that Hamish Macbeth had solved the robbery did not earn him any kudos with Blair, who had grown quite savage when he had realised the murder was still unsolved.

Hamish went wearily to bed. Before he fell asleep, he wondered again if there had been any connection between the Smiley brothers and the dentist. Greed for money had been at the back of the Smileys’ operation and Gilchrist had been greedy for money.

The phone rang several times from the police office, dragging him up out of the depths of sleep, but each time he remembered he had left the answering machine switched on and the murderer was hardly likely to phone him up and confess.

He slept for six hours and rose, still feeling tired and gritty. He washed and shaved and put on his uniform. Then he went into the police office and played back the messages on the answering machine. First Sergeant Macgregor from Cnothan’s cross voice, wondering whether Hamish was back on duty, then Mrs. Wellington asking whether she should go back and instruct Kylie and her friends farther in the paths of righteousness, and then a lilting voice, saying cautiously, “This is Fred Sutherland. I think I’ve found out something about Kylie. I should’ve told you afore, but I didnae think of it. Can ye come as soon as possible?”