Death of a Dentist

∨ Death of a Dentist ∧

2

My name is Death: the last best friend am I.

—Robert Soutfiey

Hamish stood for a moment, shocked. And then the heavy stillness was broken, almost as if the whole of the small town had been waiting for him to find the body.

A dog barked in the street below, its master called it in an angry voice, an old car coughed and spluttered its way, and high heels sounded on the stone staircase outside.

He heard the outside door opening as the high heels clacked their way in. He opened the door of the surgery. A beautiful girl was hanging her coat on a hatstand in the corner. She had glossy jet black hair, a white clear complexion and large blue eyes. She was of medium height with a curvaceous figure and excellent legs. “What do you want?” she snapped, and, oh, the voice did not match the face or figure. But the voice was undoubtedly that of the receptionist, Maggie Bane.

“Who are you?” she went on. Hamish was not in uniform.

“Hamish Macbeth.”

“Well, Mr. Macbeth, Mr. Gilchrist has his coffee at this time in the morning and does not like to be disturbed.”

“He’s dead.”

She did not seem to hear him. She detached a white coat from the coat rack and put it on. “In any case,” she went; on, “your appointment is for three o’clock this afternoon. Not eleven o’clock this morning.”

“He’s dead!” howled Hamish. “Mr. Gilchrist is dead and it looks like poison to me.”

Those wide blue eyes dilated. She suddenly ran past him into the surgery. She stared down at the dead body of the dentist. She stood there in silence. She looked as if she might never move again. “Miss Bane!” said Hamish sharply. “I am a police officer. Do not touch anything. I’ll need to phone police headquarters.”

He walked forward and took her by the shoulders and guided her back to her desk. “Sit down and don’t move,” he ordered.

She sat down numbly and stared straight ahead. He dialled the Strathbane number and got through to Detective Chief Inspector Blair, who listened while Hamish quickly outlined the finding of the body. “I’ll be over right away,” said Blair in his heavy Glaswegian accent. “Trust you to find another body. If ah hadnae enough on ma hands as it is.” Hamish put down the receiver and turned to Maggie Bane. “Do you feel up to answering a few questions, Miss Bane?”

She sat motionless.

“Miss Bane?”

Those beautiful eyes finally focused on him. “I can’t believe it,” she whispered. “I took him in his morning coffee and went out to the shops. Oh, here’s his next patient coming.”

Hamish went quickly to the door. A woman stood there, holding a small child by the hand. “I’m afraid there’s been an accident,” he said. “I am a police officer. Give me your name and address and we will be in touch with you.”

He coped with her startled questions as best he could, noted down her name, address and telephone number, and then went quickly into the surgery, where the dead body lay in the chair, to look for the coffee cup. He found it over by a stainless steel sink. Cup and saucer had been washed.

He went back to Maggie. “Did he usually wash his own cup and saucer after drinking his coffee?”

“No,” she said in a shaky voice. “He just usually left it and I washed it for him and put it away in the cupboard.”

“How long have you worked for him?”

“Five years.”

“I’ll need your home address and telephone number, Miss Bane. I do not want to distress you now with too many questions. When did Mr. Gilchrist start work?”

“At nine o’clock.”

“And you?”

“The same.”

“And was he in a good mood? No signs of depression or distress?”

“What? Oh, do you mean would he have committed suicide? No. He was the same as ever.”

Hamish crossed to the outside door, opened it and hung a CLOSED sign which had been hanging on the doorknob on the inside of the door on the outside doorknob. “What I need at the moment before the contingent from Strathbane arrives is your appointment book. Who had the first appointment?”

“Someone from Lochdubh.” She pulled forward the book. She seemed unnaturally calm now. “Mr. Archibald Macleod.”

Archie, the fisherman, thought Hamish.

“And how long was he with the dentist?”

“He wasn’t. He didn’t turn up.”

“Who did Mr. Gilchrist see before his coffee break?”

“A Mrs. Harrison.”

“Mrs. Harrison from outside Lochdubh on the Braikie road?”

“Yes, her.”

“But she was spreading scandal that Mr. Gilchrist had sexually interfered with her.”

“She’s a nut case. She was always hanging around him.”

Hamish scratched his head in perplexity.

“Mr. Gilchrist must have known what she had been saying about him. Why on earth was he treating her?”

“She was a good-paying customer.”

“Now, let’s go over your own movements. When you came in at nine o’clock, Mr. Gilchrist was the same as ever. Mr. Macleod did not turn up. The next was Mrs, Harrison. What did she have done?”

“She had a tooth drawn.”

“How long was she with him?”

“Half an hour.”

“And so it was coffee break time. You took him in a cup of coffee?”

“Yes. At ten o’clock. I told him I was stepping out to buy a few things from the shops.”

“Show me where the coffee things are kept.”

She rose and went over to a low cupboard next to the tank of dead fish. “Why are these fish dead?” asked Hamish.

“I don’t know. I followed all the instructions properly but they died a week ago.”

Hamish looked into the depths of the murky tank. “You should have a filter and the tank should have been cleaned.”

“I didn’t want the things,” said Maggie, crouching down by the cupboard. “It was Mr. Gilchrist’s idea. When they died he ordered me to clear out the tank and throw the dead fish away but I told him to do it himself.”

“And he agreed?”

“What does it matter now?” demanded Maggie in that sharp, ugly voice of hers. “He’s lying dead next door.”

“We’ll get back to it later.” Hamish bent down in front of the cupboard. “So this is where you keep the coffee things.” There was a can of instant coffee and three cups and saucers and two spoons, a bowl of lump sugar, and a carton of milk. “I’d better not touch anything here until the forensic team arrives,” he said.

He was itching to go out and ask if anyone had been seen entering the surgery after ten o’clock. But he did not want to leave her alone. “How many lumps of sugar did Mr. Gilchrist take in his coffee?”

“Six lumps.”

“Six! There’s a packet of biscuits at the back,” he said, peering into the depths of the cupboard. “Gypsy Creams. Did he have any of them?”

“He usually had two with his coffee but he said he didn’t want any biscuits this morning.”

“Did he say why?”

Maggie Bane stood up and suddenly began to cry. Hamish got slowly to his feet. “You’d best go and sit down,” he said, although he could not help wondering whether the tears were genuine or not. Maggie’s ugly voice robbed her of femininity and any softness.

He went back into the surgery and stared down at the dead man. If he had been poisoned, and Hamish suspected he might have been, then the killer had waited in the surgery for him to die and then had taken the cup and saucer and washed both. Hamish shook his head. Had he been arranged in the chair after death? Surely a poisoned man would writhe and vomit, stagger to the door for help.

Wait a bit, he thought. He, Hamish, had arrived just after eleven. When he had felt the pulse, the body was still warm.

He went back to the reception. Maggie had stopped crying and had lit up a cigarette.

“You went out to buy some things,” said Hamish, “and yet you didnae get back here until after eleven. A long coffee break. Did you always go out?”

“No, hardly ever.”

“And was the coffee break always an hour?”

“No, half an hour.”

“So what kept you?”

“There wasn’t another patient expected until that woman and her child turned up, Mrs. Albert and wee Jamie.”

“But you gave me the impression when I phoned for an appointment that he was busy all day.”

“It’s business,” she said wearily. “Mr. Gilchrist didn’t like his clients to know that he wasn’t fully booked.”

Police sirens sounded, coming down the street. “This is the lot from headquarters,” said Hamish.

When Blair lumbered in, a heavyset man whose fat face always seemed to be sneering, accompanied by his sidekicks, detectives Anderson and MacNab, and then the forensic team, pathologist and photographer, Hamish hurriedly, outlined what he had found, and then suggested he should go out and try to find out if anyone had seen anything.

“Aye, all right,” growled Blair ungraciously. “We don’t want you getting in the way o’ the professionals.”

Hamish went out onto the landing. The staircase led to an upper floor. A man was leaning over the banister, looking down.

“Whit’s going on?” he asked.

Hamish went up the stairs. “There’s been a bit of an accident. I am a police officer.”

“Aye, I ken you fine. You’re thon Hamish Macbeth from Lochdubh.”

He was an elderly man, small, gnarled, wearing the odd mixture of pyjamas, dressing gown and a tweed cloth cap on his head.

“Come ben,” he said as Hamish reached the upper landing. Hamish followed him into a small, neat flat.

“What is your name?”

“Fred Sutherland.”

“Right, Mr. Sutherland, the situation is this. Mr. Gilchrist has been found dead.”

“Murdered?”

“We don’t know yet. Now, did you hear any odd sound from downstairs between ten this morning and eleven?”

“Nothing oot o’ the way. Usual dentist’s noises.”

“But he didnae hae a customer between those hours. What do you mean, dentist’s noises?”

“Just that damn drill. I’ve got the dentures. Had them for years. But I tell you, laddie, every time that drill goes, my false teeth ache.”

“I’ll be back,” said Hamish and shot out the flat and hurtled down the stairs.

The surgery was crammed with police. Hamish shoved his way in and said to the pathologist, “Have you looked at his teeth?”

The pathologist, a tall, lugubrious man, looked up from his examination in surprise. “He’s a dentist. He looks at other people’s teeth.”

“Chust look at them,” begged Hamish, “afore rigour sets in too bad.”

“I was just about to examine the mouth.” The pathologist prised the mouth open and shone a torch, into it.

Then he looked up at Hamish with a startled expression on his face. “How did you know about this?”

“Know about what?” howled Blair.

“A hole has been drilled in each tooth.”

“After death?” asked Hamish.

“I do not know,” said the pathologist slowly. “The face is discoloured, yes, but I would expect signs of a struggle and bruising.”

“How did you…?” began Blair.

But Hamish ignored him. “There’s something else. If he had been poisoned wi’ something, surely he would have writhed about. Could someone have lifted him off the floor after death, put him in that chair and drilled his teeth?”

“Could be.”

Blair managed to interrupt. “How did you know the teeth had been drilled?”

“A wee man who lives above the surgery heard the drill going when Gilchrist was not supposed to have a patient.”

“But someone could have dropped in.”

“Aye, but I wass beginning to get the feeling the man might be hated.”

“I’ll go and see your wee man myself.” Blair set off.

Hamish then went downstairs to the dress shop underneath. A bell clanged above the door when he opened it A fussy little woman came forward to meet him.

“I am a police officer,” began Hamish.

“What’s all the row upstairs?”

“Mr. Gilchrist is dead.”

She was a neat middle-aged woman with neat closed features and white hair in a rigid perm. “Oh, dear. Is there anything I can do to help? Was it a heart attack?”

“No. What is your name?”

“Mrs. Elsie Edwardson.”

“And you own this dress shop?”

“Yes.”

“Did you notice anyone going up the stairs to the dentists between, say, ten and eleven o’clock?”

“Is it murder?”

“We don’t know yet.”

“Well, let me think. Dear me, this is quite a bit of excitement for us all.” Her eyes gleamed. “Nothing usually happens in Braikie. Nobody even knows where Braikie is. I once went on a holiday to Scarborough and people had not only not heard of Braikie, they’d never heard of the county of Sutherland. That receptionist, that bad-tempered girl, Maggie Bane, I saw her go out but I couldn’t be sure of the exact time.”

“Anyone going in?”

She shook her head. “I was pricing goods in the back shop most of the time.”

“And did you hear any funny noises from upstairs?”

“Not that I remember.”

A glare of white light lit up the shop windows. “Dear me, what is that?” asked Mrs. Edwardson.

“I think Grampian Television has arrived.”

“Oh, the television! My wee shop on the telly! I’d best go and put a little more lipstick on.” Mrs. Edwardson was now flushed and happy. “This is grand publicity for my shop.”

Hamish looked at the depressing display in the window and privately thought that even if Princess Diana appeared in a gown bought from Mrs. Edwardson, it would not sell one of them.

“We’ll be talking to you again,” he said, but Mrs. Edwardson already had her compact out and was applying I pink lipstick in the little mirror.

He continued with his interviews in the shops on either side, occasionally pursued by the local press who all knew him. The death of a dentist and in such gruesome circumstances would soon bring up the national newspapers and then the foreign ones. Blair would feel under pressure and Blair under pressure was a nasty sight.

At last he returned to the surgery. Blair was telling Maggie Bane she would need to accompany them to Strathbane for questioning. He obviously thought her the prime suspect. Hamish reported his lack of success and Blair grunted and then told him to go about the town and see what he could dig up on Gilchrist’s background.

“Was he married?” asked Hamish.

“He was, but he got a divorce ten years ago.”

“And where’s the wife?”

“Down in Inverness.”

“What’s her name?”

“Nothing to do wi’ you,” said Blair truculently. “Now run along and see if you can dae anything useful.”

As Hamish went back down the stairs again, Jimmy Anderson was coming up.

“The press are driving me fair mad,” he grumbled.

“Listen,” said Hamish, catching his arm as he would have sprinted past up the stairs, “what’s the name of the ex-wife?”

“Jeannie Gilchrist.”

“And whereabouts in Inverness can she be found?”

“She can be found by the Inverness police.”

“No more whisky for you, Jimmy.”

“Och, if you’re that interested, she’s at 851 Anstruther Road.”

“Thanks.”

“Hamish!” Jimmy called after him. “Don’t you go near her or Blair’ll have you off the force.” Hamish waved by way of reply and went out to the police Land Rover. He was determined to go to Inverness because his tooth had started to ache again. He would go to his own dentist and then he may as well call on Mrs. Gilchrist. Various camera flashes went off in his face as he drove off. He knew the press had an irritating way of photographing everyone and everything. The photos would not be used.

As he took the long road to Inverness, putting on the police siren so that he could exceed the speed limit, he reflected that it would be nice to be one of those private eyes in fiction before whose wisdom the whole of Scotland Yard bowed and who seemed to be kept informed of every step of the game. But he was only a Highland policeman, a little cog in a murder enquiry. Blair would get the pathologist’s report and all the statements and he would need to winkle out what he could by plying Jimmy Anderson with whisky.

Once in Inverness, he went straight to his own dentist: a Mr. Murchison, and pleaded with the receptionist that the pain in his tooth was so bad he was about to die. “They all say that,” she said heartlessly. “Take a seat if and I’ll see if he can fit you in.”

“Tell him I haven’t much time,” said Hamish with low cunning, for there were six people in the waiting room. “Mr. Gilchrist, the dentist over at Braikie, has just been murdered. And I am in the middle of a murder investigation.”

“Oh, my! How dreadful. Wait there.”

She went into the surgery. After a few moments, she emerged. “Mr. Murchison will see you right now. He’s just finished.”

A man walked out holding his jaw. Hamish walked in under the baleful stares of the waiting patients.

“What’s this all about?” asked Mr. Murchison.

“It’s this tooth here,” said Hamish, opening his mouth.

“I mean about the murder?”

“Look, Mr. Murchison, just stop this pain and I’ll tell you everything.”

“All right. Get in the chair.”

Half an hour later after draining the abscess, drilling the diseased tooth, and filling the hole, Mr. Murchison said, “Tell me all about it,” and Hamish did the best he could although by that time half his face was still frozen with the injection.

“I’m not surprised,” said Mr. Murchison at last. “I dealt with some of his ex-patients and I’d never seen such bad work. I’d just got together with some of my colleagues and I was going to report him to the Health Board.”

“But do you know anyone in particular who would hate him enough to murder him?”

“Not a one. You know how it is, people say, “I’ll murder that bastard,” but they never actually go and do it.”

“Someone did,” said Hamish.

He settled his bill with the receptionist, complained bitterly about the price, wondering if these days the National Health Service actually paid for anything. Then he went out and drove out to Anstruther Road on the Loch Ness side of Inverness. He was just turning into Anstruther Road when he saw a police car. He swiftly reversed back around the corner. He got out and walked into Anstruther Road and then walked slowly up and down it until he saw a policeman and policewoman emerge from Mrs. Gilchrist’s house, get into the car and drive off.

He walked towards the house, a trim Victorian villa, opened the gate and walked up to a front door with a stained-glass panel and rang the bell beside it.

The woman who opened the door came as a surprise to Hamish. She looked very young. She was wearing a blue T–shirt and blue jeans and her black hair was tied back in a ponytail. Her features were small and elfin.

“My name is Police Constable Macbeth,” said Hamish. “Is Mrs. Gilchrist at home?”

“I’m Mrs. Gilchrist.”

“Och, you look too young,” Hamish blurted out.

Her face lit up in a charming smile. “I have just been interviewed by the police.”

“I am from Lochdubh,” said Hamish, “and I have just come from Braikie.”

“You’d best come in, but…” She looked up at him doubtfully.

“But, what?”

“Have you been drinking?”

“No! Why…? Oh, I’ve been to the dentist in Inverness, which is why my voice sounds slurred. My face is still frozen.”

“I thought you sounded drunk. Come in, then.”

Charming as Mrs. Gilchrist undoubtedly was, Hamish could not help noticing that the possible murder of her husband had left her unmoved.

The living room was designed in what he privately thought of as Scottish Modern: stripped pine furniture, lots of green plants, and prints by modern artists on the walls.

“Now Mrs. Gilchrist,” said Hamish, “the death of your husband must have come as a great shock to you.”

“Not really. I suppose the shock will hit me later.”

“Did you divorce him or did he divorce you?”

“I divorced him.”

“On what grounds?”

“I didn’t like him,” she said airily.

“Why?”

A look of irritation marred her pretty face. “It happens, you know. Little things begin to annoy and then they assume major proportions.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t see what this has to do with his possible murder.”

Hamish sighed. “I’m trying to get a picture of your husband.”

She echoed his sigh and then said, “I’ll do my best. I was working in the council offices when I met him. He came in with some question about council tax. He asked me out for dinner, just like that. He seemed a very strong, definite person who knew where he was going and what he was doing and I was tired of being single. He was a lot older than I, fifteen years older, but that was part of the attraction. We got married a few weeks later. It became gradually clear to me that he was a petulant, arrogant man. Things that annoyed me? Oh, reading the newspaper aloud at the breakfast table and tutting over it and explaining how he could have managed the world better, criticising my clothes – he liked short skirts, high heels, little blouses, things like that. I said I would wear what I liked and the verbal abuse started. I began to feel demoralised. I had kept my job, thank God, and so I moved out to this place, and then got a divorce after two years’ separation had passed.”

“How old was he?”

“Fifty.”

“Hadn’t he been married before?”

“Yes, I think he had. But he was secretive about things. I just got a feeling he had.”

“Where did he come from originally?”

“Dumfries.”

Hamish studied her for a moment. Then he asked, “But just suppose this should turn out to be murder and I think it’s bound to turn out that way, doesn’t the idea startle you and shock you?”

“You must realise,” she said gently, “that I came to hate him like poison. It stands to reason that some other woman would feel the same.”

“I don’t see that a woman would have the strength to watch him die, pick him up, put him in the dentist’s chair, drill all his teeth and – ”

“What!”

“Oh, dear, I thought the police that were here might have told you. But that’s what seems to have happened.”

“There must be some maniac on the loose.”

“A very cold-blooded maniac. The surgery, I think, had been cleaned up.”

“Do you mind leaving?” she said suddenly. “I don’t think I can take any more at the moment.”

Hamish walked to the door. Then he turned around. “Where were you this morning? Shouldn’t you be at work?”

“I took the day off. Woman’s troubles. Nothing too bad but my job bores me. No, I have no witnesses but I’ve been here all day till now.”

As he drove off, the full enormity of the strange murder hit Hamish. There were so many questions he would like answers to. Why had Maggie Bane stayed away so long? What if someone like himself with an aching tooth had just decided to drop in? That CLOSED sign. He had handled it himself. Damn! What if the murderer had entered and just hung the sign outside the way he had done himself?

♦

He drove straight to Braikie and parked on the outskirts of the town and then began to make his way on foot towards the dentist’s surgery. A Strathbane policeman approached him. “Blair was going ballistic looking for you.”

“I have been making the enquiries all over the town,” said Hamish. “That man usually wants me off the case.”

“Well, he said if I found you, you were to go straight to Strathbane. And he said to get your uniform on.”

Hamish drove to Lochdubh, changed into his uniform, made a sandwich and cup of coffee and then set out at a sedate pace for Strathbane. He did not like Blair. He did not like his anger or his bluster or the way he had of accusing the easiest person as a murderer. But when it came to everyday Strathbane crime, Hamish knew Blair to be good at his job. He kept his ear to the ground and knew all the villains.

The Land Rover crested a heathery rise and there below him lay Strathbane like the City of Dreadful Night. Black ragged clouds were racing across a windy sky and a fitful gleam of watery sunlight lit up the windows of the dreary tower blocks on the outskirts of the town.

Why such an excrescence should pollute the landscape of Sutherland, Hamish did not know. There had once been a lot of industry back in the fifties, paper mills, brick works, electronics factories, and the tower blocks had been thrown up to house the influx of workers from cities like Glasgow and Edinburgh. But the workers had brought their love of strikes north with them and gradually the following generations had preferred to live on the dole and not even pretend to work. Factories had closed down and the winds of Sutherland whipped through their shattered windows and fireweed grew in vacant lots. It was like one of those science-fiction movies about the twenty-first century where anarchy rules and gangs roam the streets. The last industry to go was the fishing industry, killed off by the European Union with its stringent fishing quotas and restrictions which only the British seemed to obey, and local lethargy. And then there were drugs. Drugs had crept north up the snaking new motorways which cut through the mountains: drugs like a plague, drugs causing crime; drugs breeding new white-faced malnourished children, AIDS from dirty shared needles, and death.

His jaw was beginning to ache from the punishment it had received at the dentist. He suddenly wished he had begged Mrs. Gilchrist not to mention his visit to the Inverness police, for if Blair heard about it, he would treat it as a case of insubordination.

Hamish entered the gloomy building where the smells of food from the police canteen always seemed to permeate the stale air.

He opened the door of the CID room and peered through the haze of cigarette smoke. Jimmy Anderson was alone, puffing at a cigarette, sitting with his feet up on his desk.

“Oh, Hamish, man, you are in deep shite,” he hailed him.

“Where’s Blair?”

“Still interviewing Maggie Bane, suspect number one.”

Hamish sat down opposite him. “Can I borrow this computer? I’d best start on my report.”

“Help yourself. Where were you?”

“I was around Braikie, asking questions, and then went back to Lochdubh to change into my uniform,” said Hamish, switching on the computer and then beginning to type his report of finding the body of Gilchrist.

“It looks as if you were right about one thing,” said Jimmy laconically. “They guess there was poison in his morning coffee, he writhed and vomited, and fell on the floor. There were vomit stains on the back of his coat as if he had rolled in his ain sick. Someone cleaned him up as best they could, hoisted him into that chair, drilled his teeth, then cold-bloodedly washed the floor. There were traces of vomit in the cracks in the linoleum.”

Hamish paused, his fingers hovering over the keys. “Why would anyone go to all that trouble?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, anyone with half a brain would have known we would have found the drilled teeth and the residue of vomit on the floor.”

“Maybe the murderer was filled with blind hatred. Maybe he was so mad with rage, he didn’t care whether he was interrupted or not.”

Hamish shook his head.

“It took a steady hand to drill one neat hole in each o’ his teeth. Anyone in a mad rage would have smashed all his teeth and then smashed the surgery.”

“Could be. But the strength that it all took! That lets Maggie Bane out, I think.”

“Unless,” said Hamish, “she had an accomplice.”