Hamish Macbeth 01; Death of a Gossip

∨ Death of a Gossip ∧

Day Three

Thy tongue imagineth wckedness: and with lies thou cuttest like a sharp razor.

—The Psalms

Alice had reasoned herself into an optimistic frame of mind, although anxiety had first roused her at six in the morning. She had dressed and had taken herself out on a walk up the hill behind the hotel.

A light, gauzy mist lay on everything, pearling the long grass and wild thyme, lying on the rippling silk of the loch, and drifting around the gnarled trunks of old twisted pines, last remnants of the Caledonian forest. Harebells shivered as Alice moved slowly through the grass, and a squirrel looked at her curiously before darting up a tree.

Alice sat on a rock and talked severely to herself. The youthful peccadillo that had landed her briefly in the juvenile court was something buried in the mists of time. Why, her mother’s neighbours in Liverpool hardly remembered it! It was certainly something that Lady Jane could not know about. It had appeared in the local paper, circulation eight thousand, in a little paragraph at the bottom of page two. At the time, it had seemed as if the eyes and the ears of the world’s press had been on her when she had read that little paragraph. But now she was older and wiser and knew that she had been of no interest whatsoever to the media. That was the hell of being so hypersensitive. You began to think people meant all sorts of things because of their lightest remarks. Who was Lady Jane anyway? Just some silly, bitchy, discontented housewife. Jeremy had said she had been married to Lord John Winters, a choleric backbencher in Wilson’s government, who had died of a heart attack only two months after he had received his peerage for nameless services.

Then there was Daphne Gore. Alice envied Daphne’s obvious money and cool poise. Lady Jane hadn’t been able to get at her. But she, Alice, must not let her own silly snobbery stand in the way of luring Jeremy away from Daphne. Come to think of it, Lady Jane had not riled Jeremy either. Perhaps that was what money and a public school gave you – armour plating.

♦

John Cartwright awoke with an unaccustomed feeling of dread. Certainly, he was used to enduring a bit of stage fright before the beginning of each new fishing class, but that soon disappeared, leaving him with only the heady pleasure of being paid for communicating to others his hobby and his passion…fishing.

Now Lady Jane loomed like a fat thundercloud on the horizon.

Perhaps he was taking the whole thing too seriously. But neither he nor Heather had really performed their duties very well this week. Usually, they meticulously took their class through more intensive instruction on casting, leader tying, fly tying and the habits of the wily salmon. But so far both of them had been only too glad to get their charges out on the water, as if spreading them as far apart as possible could diffuse the threatening atmosphere. There was nothing they could do – legally – to protect themselves from Lady Jane. There were two alternatives. They could pray – or they could murder Lady Jane. But John did not believe in God, and he shrank from the idea of violence. Lady Jane had been charming at dinner last night and seemed to be enjoying herself. Perhaps he could appeal to her better nature…if she had one.

The mist was burning off the loch when the class assembled in the lounge. It promised to be a scorching day. Alice was wearing a blue-and-white gingham blouse with a pair of brief white cotton shorts that showed her long, slim legs to advantage. She was wearing a cheap, oversweet perfume that delighted Jeremy’s nostrils. Women who wore cheap scent always seemed so much more approachable, conjuring up memories of tumbled flannel sheets in bedsitting rooms. She was concentrating on practising to tie knots, her fine, fluffy brown hair falling over her forehead. He went to sit beside her on the sofa, edging close to her so that his thigh touched her bare legs. Alice flushed, and her hands trembled a little. “You look delicious this morning,” murmured Jeremy and put a hand lightly on her knee. Alice realized, all in that delightful moment, that her knees could blush.

“I am so glad to meet a young man who actually pursues single girls,” commented Lady Jane to the world at large. “I’m one of those old–fashioned women who believe adultery to be a sin, the next worst thing to seducing servants.”

This remark, which sounded like something from Upstairs Downstairs, went largely unnoticed, but it had an odd effect on both Jeremy and Daphne Gore. Jeremy slowly removed his hand from Alice’s knee and sat very still. Daphne dropped her coffee cup and swore. “No good comes of it,” pursued Lady Jane. “I’ve known girls run off and make fools of themselves with Spanish waiters and young men who seduce married barmaids. Disgusting!”

There was a long silence. Daphne’s distress was all too evident, and Jeremy looked sick.

“Of course,” came Constable Macbeth’s soft Highland voice, “some of us are protected from the sins of the flesh by our very age and appearance. Would not you say so, Lady Jane?”

“Are you trying to insult me, Officer?”

“Not I. I would be in the way of thinking that it would be an almost impossible thing to do.”

Lady Jane’s massive bosom swelled under the thin puce silk of her blouse. She’s like the Hulk, thought Alice. Any moment now she’s going to turn green and explode.

“Were I not aware of the impoverished circumstances of your family,” said Lady Jane, “I would stop you from scrounging coffee. Six little brothers and sisters to support, eh? And your aged parents in Ross and Cromarty? So improvident to have children when one is middle-aged. They can turn out retarded, you know.”

“Better they turn out retarded – although they’re not – than grow up into a silly, fat, middle-aged, barren bitch like yourself,” said Hamish with a sweet smile.

“You will suffer for this,” howled Lady Jane. “Don’t you know who I am? Don’t you know the power I have?”

“No,” said Amy Roth flatly. “We don’t.”

Lady Jane opened and shut her mouth like a landed trout.

“That’s right, honey,” said Marvin Roth. “You can huff and you can puff, but you ain’t gonna blow any houses down here. You can make other folks’ lives a misery with your snide remarks, but I’m a New Yorker, born and bred, and Amy here’s a Blanchard of the Augusta, Georgia, Blanchards and you won’t find a tougher combination than that.”

A strange change came over Lady Jane. One minute she looked about to suffer the same fate as her late husband; the next, her angry colour had died and she looked around lovingly at Amy.

“Dear me,” she said sweetly, “a Blanchard born and bred?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Marvin Roth proudly. “Amy’s old money, just like the Rockefellers.”

“Please!” called John Cartwright. “Let me begin or we’ll never get the day started.”

They shuffled their chairs into a semicircle. Heather unrolled a screen and then started setting up a small projector. “Lantern slides,” groaned Lady Jane.

A tic appeared in John’s left cheek, but he gamely went on with his lecture, showing slides of what salmon looked like when they headed up river from the sea, when they were spawning, and when they were returning to the sea.

“Our prices at this school are very reasonable,” said John. “Very reasonable,” he repeated firmly after Lady Jane snorted. “The better-class salmon beats are all strictly preserved and can only usually be fished at enormous cost. Salmon are fly-caught, particularly the ones of small size, on ordinary reservoir-strength trout rods. Regular salmon anglers, however, also include in their tackle longer rods, some designed for two-handed casting, larger reels, heavier lines, stouter leaders, and flies much bigger on average than those used for trout.”

“If we had a decent government in power,” interrupted Lady Jane, “instead of that Thatcher woman’s dictatorship, then everyone would be able to fish for salmon, even the common people.”

John sighed and signalled to Heather to pack up the projector He and Heather loved the Sutherland countryside, and he usually ended his talk by showing beautiful colour slides of rivers and mountains and lochs. But he felt beauty would be wasted on the present gathering. “We will fish the Upper Sutherland today. Heather will pass around maps. The pools on the upper river are small, easy to fish, closely grouped together and within easy distance of the road. During the summer, the fish cannot get over the Sutherland falls and so that’s why they concentrate in the upper beats. On your map, you will see the Slow Pool marked. This is a very good holding pool, but it is particularly good in high water when it is best fished from the right bank. Heather and I will take Alice and Charlie and the rest of you can follow as before.”

The day was gloriously hot, and even Charlie Baxter lost his customary reserve and whistled cheerfully as the large estate car swung around the hairpin bends of the Highland roads. At one point a military plane roared overhead, flying so low the noise of its jets was deafening. “A Jaguar!” said Charlie.

John fiddled with the knobs of the car radio. A blast of Gaelic keening split the air. He tried again. Gaelic. “Isn’t there anything in English?” asked Alice, feeling the more cut off from civilization by the sound of that incomprehensible tongue coming from the radio. ‘She’s got a ticket to ride’ roared the Beatles, and everyone laughed and joined in. There was something about the scorching sun and clear air that reduced the likes of Lady Jane to a dot on the horizon. Alice could now well understand why people once thought the night hideous with evil creatures.

Alice was only sorry the estate car was big enough to take their rods lying down flat in the back. It would have been jolly to have them poking upright out of the open window, advertising to the world at large that she was a professional fisher of salmon.

They parked in a disused quarry and climbed out to meet the others. Lady Jane was wearing a Greek fisherman’s hat that gave her fleshy face with its curved beak of a nose an oddly hermaphroditic appearance.

John spread out the map on the bonnet of the car and sorted them out into pairs. Daphne and Lady Jane were to fish the Calm Pool, a good holding pool, and were told that the streamy water at the top was best. The major and Jeremy were to try their chances at the Slow Pool; the Roths at the Silver Bank; and Alice and Charlie at the Sheiling. Heather would go with Alice and Charlie and John with the major and Jeremy.

Alice fished diligently until Heather announced they should break for lunch. Fishing fever had her in its grip and she had not thought of Jeremy once.

At lunch it transpired that Lady Jane and the major were missing. Jeremy said the local ghillie from Lochdubh had taken him aside and begun talking to him, and the major had packed up and left with him. Daphne said crossly that Lady Jane had thrashed her line about the water enough to scare away a whale and then had mercifully disappeared.

The absence of Lady Jane acted on the spirits of the party like champagne. Heather had augmented the hotel lunch with homemade sausage rolls, potato scones, and fruit bread covered in lashings of butter and strawberry jam. Alice was dreamily happy to see that Daphne’s skin was turning an ugly red in the sun while her own was turning to pale gold. A little breeze fanned their hot cheeks and Jeremy made Alice’s day perfect by opting to fish with her for the rest of the afternoon.

After some time, Jeremy suggested they should take a rest. Alice lay back on the springy heather by the water’s edge and stared dreamily up into the blue sky.

“What do you think of Lady Jane?” asked Jeremy abruptly. Alice propped herself up on one elbow. “I dunno,” she said cautiously. “I think she’s learned the knack of fishing of a different sort. I think she knows everyone’s got some sort of skeleton in the cupboard and she throws out remarks at random and watches until she sees she’s caught someone. Like with you and Daphne this morning. Whatever she meant by that servant and Spanish waiter remark, it upset you and Daphne no end.”

“Nonsense,” said Jeremy quickly. “I was upset for Daphne’s sake. I could see the remark had got home.” But you were upset before, thought Alice. “I think the woman’s plain mad. All that talk about her having power is pure rot. She’s nothing but the widow of some obscure Labour peer. She’s not even good dass. I phoned my father about her the other night. He says she’s the daughter of old Marie Phipps, who was secretary to and mistress of Lord Chalcont, and Marie forced his lordship into sending Jane to a finishing school in Switzerland. There never was a Mr Phipps, you know.”

“You mean, she’s illegitimate!” gasped Alice. “How splendid. I’d like to throw that in her face.”

“Don’t, for God’s sake,” said Jeremy harshly. “She’d bite back like a viper.”

“But you said she’s got no power.”

“Hasn’t any power,” corrected Jeremy automatically, and Alice hated him for that brief moment. “It’s just that I’m thinking of standing for Parliament and I’m very careful about avoiding enemies.”

“You’d be marvellous,” breathed Alice. Why, he could be Prime Minister! Maggie Thatcher couldn’t live forever.

“You’re a funny, intense little thing,” said Jeremy. He leaned forward and kissed her on the lips, a firm but schoolboyish embrace. “Now, let’s go fish.” He grinned.

Alice waded dizzily into the Sheiling, her legs trembling, a sick feeling of excitement churning in her stomach. The future Prime Minister of Britain had just kissed her! “No comment,” she said to the clamouring press as she swept into Number Ten. Where did Princess Di get her hats? She must find out.

Sunshine, physical exercise, and dreams of glory. Alice was often to look back on that afternoon as the last golden period of her existence.

The sun burned down behind the mountains, making them two-dimensional cardboard mountains from a stage set. The clear air was scented with thyme and sage and pine.

To Alice’s joy, Daphne had been suffering from mild sunstroke and had been taken back to the hotel by Heather. So she was allowed to ride home with Jeremy.

There is nothing more sensuous than a rich fast car driven by a rich slow man through a Highland evening.

Alice felt languorous and sexy. The setting sun flashed between the trees and bushes as they drove along with the pale gold brilliance of the far north.

The grass was so very green in this evening light, this gloaming. Green as the fairy stories, green and gold as Never-Never Land. Alice could well understand now why the Highlanders believed in fairies. Jeremy slowed the car outside the village as the tall blonde Alice had seen with Constable Macbeth came striding along the side of the road with two Irish wolfhounds on the leash.

“That’s the love of Constable Macbeth’s life,” said Alice, delighted to have a piece of gossip.

“No hope there,” said Jeremy, cheerfully and unconsciously quoting Lady Jane. “That’s Priscilla Halburton-Smythe, daughter of Colonel James Halburton-Smythe. Her photograph was in Country Life the other week. The Halburton-Smythes own most of the land around here.”

“Oh,” said Alice, feeling a certain kinship with the village constable. “Perhaps she loves him too.”

“She wouldn’t be so silly,” said Jeremy. “I wouldn’t even have a chance there.”

“Do people’s backgrounds matter a great deal to you?” asked Alice in a low voice.

Jeremy reminded himself of his future as a politician. “No,” he said stoutly. “I think all that sort of thing is rot. A lady is a lady no matter what her background.”

Alice gave him a brilliant smile, and he smiled back, thinking she really was a very pretty little thing.

The sun disappeared as they plunged down to Lochdubh. Alice prayed that Jeremy would stop the car and kiss her again, but he seemed to have become immersed in his own thoughts.

When they arrived at the hotel, it was to find the rest of the fishing party surrounding Major Peter Frame. He was proudly holding up a large salmon while Heather took his photograph. Two more giants lay in plastic bags on the ground at his feet.

“How on earth did you do it?” said Jeremy, slapping the major on the back. “Hey, that fellow’s got a chunk out the side.”

“Fraid that’s where I wrenched the hook out, old man,” said the major. “Got too excited.”

“Gosh, I wish I had stayed with you,” said Jeremy. “But I thought you went off somewhere else. Did you?”

The major laid his finger alongside his nose. “Mum’s the word, and talking about mum, the filthy Iron Curtain champers is on me tonight.”

“Let’s take them to the scales and log your catch in the book,” said John, his face radiant. The photograph would go to the local papers and the fishing magazines. He loved it when one of his pupils made a good catch. And no one had ever had such luck as this before.

They all were now looking forward to the evening, reminding themselves that that was the time when Lady Jane could be guaranteed to be at her best. They were to meet in the bar at eight to toast the major’s catch.

Alice slaved over her appearance. She had bought one good dinner gown at an elegant Help the Aged shop in Mayfair. Although the clothes were secondhand, most of them had barely been worn and the dinner gown was as good as new. It was made of black silk velvet, very severe, cut low in the front and slit up to mid-thigh on either side of the narrow skirt.

She was ready at last, half an hour too early. This was one time Alice was determined to make an appearance. Her high-heeled black sandals with thin straps gave her extra height and extra confidence. In the shaded light of the hotel room, her reflection looked poised and sophisticated.

Alice was just turning away from the mirror when all the barbed remarks Lady Jane had made seemed to clamour in her brain. It was no use pretending otherwise; Lady Jane had set out to fold out something about each one of them.

Jeremy must never know. The future Prime Minister of Britain could not have a wife with a criminal record. But then, Lady Jane knew something about Jeremy. Had he seduced a servant? But that was an upper-class sin and therefore forgivable, thought Alice miserably. She sat down on the edge of the bed and looked about her with bleak eyes.

How perfectly splendid it would be to go back to Mr Patterson-James and hand in her notice, and say she was going to be married to Jeremy Blythe – “one of the Somerset Blythes, you know,” There was Mum and Dad in Liverpool to cope with. Alice thought of her small, poky, shabby, comfortable home. Jeremy must never be allowed to go there. Mum and Dad would just have to travel to London for the wedding.

But between Alice and all those dreams stood Lady Jane. A wave of hate for Jane Winters engulfed Alice; primitive, naked hate.

Ten past eight! Alice leapt to her feet with an anguished look at her travel alarm.

The bar was crowded when she made her entrance. “Dear me, the Merry Widow,” remarked Lady Jane, casting a pale look over Alice’s black velvet gown. The fishing party had taken a table by the window where the major was cheerfully dispensing champagne. Alice’s entrance had fallen flat because the major was describing how he had landed his first salmon, and everyone was hanging on his every word. “It’s almost a good enough story to be true,” said Lady Jane.

“Well, obviously it’s true,” said the major, his good humour unimpaired. “Here I am and there are my fish, all waiting in the hotel freezer to be smoked. By the way, Alice, your trout’s still there. You forgot to have it for breakfast.”

“You and Alice have a lot in common,” said Lady Jane sweetly. “I can see that by the end of the week that hotel freezer will be packed with fish that neither of you caught.”

The rest of the group tried to ignore Lady Jane’s remark. “Tell us where exactly you caught those salmon, Major,” asked Jeremy.

“Yes, do tell,” echoed Daphne. “It isn’t fair to keep such a prize place to yourself.”

The major laughed and shook his head.

“Oh, I’ll tell you,” said Lady Jane. She was wearing a sort of flowered pyjama suit of the type that used to be in vogue in the thirties. Vermillion lipstick accentuated the petulant droop of her mouth. “I was talking to Ian Morrison, the ghillie, a little while ago and the dear man was in his cups and told me exactly how you caught them.”

An awful silence fell on the group. The major stood with a bottle of champagne in one hand and a glass in the other and a silly smile pasted on his face.

“I think we should go in to dinner,” said Heather loudly and clearly.

“I say, yes, let’s,” said the major eagerly.

They all rose to their feet. Lady Jane remained seated, a gilt sandal swinging from one plump foot as she looked up at them.

“Major Frame didn’t catch those fish at all,” she said with hideous clarity. “Ian Morrison took him up to the high pools on the Anstey. In one of those pools, three salmon had been trapped because of the river dwindling suddenly in the heat. They were dying from lack of oxygen. One was half out of the water and a seagull had torn a gash in its side, not the dear major’s fictitious hook!”

One by one they filed into the dining room, not looking at each other, not looking at the major. Alice couldn’t bear it any longer. She took a seat by the major. “I don’t believe a word of it,” she said, patting his hand. “That terrible woman made it all up.”

The major smiled at her in a rigid sort of way and drank steadily from his champagne glass.

Charlie Baxter had been invited to join them for dinner. He had not been in the bar and therefore did not know about the major’s humiliation. But he looked from face to face and then settled down to eat his food so that he could escape as quickly as possible.

Lady Jane launched into her usual evening flow of anecdotes while the rest stared at her with hate-filled eyes.

What the major had done was not so bad. Alice thought he had been very clever. She herself, she was sure, would have sworn blind she had caught them.

Heather Cartwright was miserable. She had already posted off the photographs, developed quickly by John in their own darkroom, to the local papers and fishing magazines. Heather didn’t know which one she wanted to kill – Lady Jane or the major. When it had seemed as if the major had landed that splendid catch, Heather and John had heaved a sigh of relief. Surely nothing Lady Jane said could touch them now. It was the most marvellous piece of publicity for the fishing school. But the silly, vain, major had now played right into Lady Jane’s hands. Well I can just about bear it, thought Heather, but if anything happens to this fishing school, it will kill John.

“I always think those silly beanpole women who model clothes are a hoot,” Lady Jane was saying. “I remember going to Hartnell’s collection and there were the usual pan-faced lot of mannequins modelling clothes for the Season and the salon was so hot and stuffy and we were all half asleep. They were marching on saying in those awful sort of Putney deb voices, ‘For Goodwood, For Ascot’, and things like that, and then this one marches on and says, ‘For Cowes’, and we all laughed fit to burst.” Lady Jane herself laughed in a fat, jolly way.

Marvin Roth was gloomily longing for the appearance of that village constable with the red hair. No one else seemed to have the courage to be rude to Lady Jane. If she did know something about him, Marvin Roth, then good luck to her. But that remark of hers to the constable about ‘having power’ was worrying. What sort of power?

Blackmail, thought Marvin Roth suddenly. That’s it. And there was nothing he could do about it. Had they been in New York, then things might have been different. There was always – someone who could be hired to clear away people like Lady Jane…although he had heard that even in old New York things were not what they were in the early seventies, say, when a thousand dollars to the local Mafia could get someone wasted. If only he could do it himself. Maybe he should just try to pay her off before she approached him. Amy must never know. Amy was the prize. In order to get divorced from that little whore of a first wife, he had paid an arm and a leg, but gaining Amy Blanchard had been worth it. He knew Amy hoped he would make it big on the political scene. Of course,-Amy either knew or had guessed about his unsavoury past, but any approach to Lady Jane must be kept secret. There was a vein of steel running through Amy, and he was sure she would despise him for trying to conciliate Lady Jane.

Marvin polished his bald head with his hand and looked sideways at Lady Jane. No ma’am, he thought, the day I let a broad like you screw up my act, well, you can kiss my ass in Macy’s window.

At last the horrible dinner was over. Alice smoothed down the velvet of her gown with a nervous hand and smiled hopefully at Jeremy. He looked at her vaguely and turned abruptly to Daphne Gore. “Come on,” he said to Daphne. “We’ve got to talk.”

Alice’s eyes filmed over with tears. She was dreadfully tired. She felt alien, foreign, alone. When she passed the bar, it was full of people drinking and laughing, the other guests who did not belong to the fishing school. She hesitated, longing for the courage to go in and join them, longing for just one compliment on her gown to make some of her misery go away.

♦

Constable Hamish Macbeth leaned on his garden gate and gazed across the loch to the lights of the hotel. He had fed the chickens and geese; his dog lay at his feet, stretched across his boots like a carriage rug, snoring peacefully.

Hamish lit a cigarette and pushed his cap back on his head. He was not happy, which was a fairly unusual state of mind for him. This was usually the time of the day he liked best.

He had to admit to himself he had let Lady Jane get under his skin. He did not like the idea of that fat woman ferreting out details of his family life, even if there was nothing shameful to ferret out.

It was true that Hamish Macbeth had six brothers and sisters to support. He had been born one year after his parents had been married. After that there had been a long gap and then Mr and Mrs Macbeth had produced three boys and three girls in as quick a succession as was physically possible. As in many Celtic families, it was taken for granted that the eldest son would remain a bachelor until such time as the next in line were able to support themselves. Hamish had deliberately chosen the unambitious career of village constable because it enabled him to send most of his pay home. He was a skilful poacher and presents of venison and salmon found their way regularly to his parents’ croft in Ross and Cromarty. The little egg money he got from his poultry was sent home as well. Then there was the annual prize money for best hill runner at the Strathbane Highland games. Hamish had taken the prize five years in a row.

His father was a crofter but could not make nearly enough to support all six younger children. Hamish had accepted his lot as he accepted most things, with easy-going good nature.

But of late, he had found himself wishing he had a little bit more money in his pocket and yet he would not admit to himself the reason for this.

What he could admit to himself was that he was very worried about the fishing class. Crime in Hamish’s parish usually ran to things like bigamy or the occasional drunk on a Saturday night. Most village wrangles were settled out of court, so to speak, by the diplomatic Hamish. He was not plagued with the savage violence of poaching gangs, although he felt sure that would come. A new housing estate was being built outside the village; one of those mad schemes where the worst of the welfare cases were wrenched out of the cosy clamour of the city slums and transported to the awesome bleakness of the Highlands. To Hamish, these housing estates were the breeding grounds of poaching gangs who dynamited the salmon to the surface and fought each other with razors and sharpened bicycle chains.

Something in his bones seemed to tell him that trouble was going to come from this fishing class. He decided it was time to find out a little more about Lady Jane.

He sifted through the filing cabinet of his mind, which was filled with the names and addresses and telephone numbers of various friends and relatives. Like most Highlanders, Hamish had relatives scattered all over the world.

Then he remembered his second cousin, Rory Grant, who worked for the Daily Recorder in Fleet Street. Hamish ambled indoors and put through a collect call. “This is Constable Macbeth of Lochdubh with a verra important story for Rory Grant,” said Hamish when the newspaper switchboard showed signs of being reluctant to pay for the call. When he was at last put through to Rory, Hamish gave a description of Lady Jane Winters and asked for details about her.

“I’ll need to go through to the library and look at her cuttings,” said Rory. “It might take a bit of time. I’ll call you back.”

“Och, no,” said Hamish comfortably, “I am not paying for the call, so I will just hold on and have a beer while you are looking.”

“Suit yourself,” said Rory. Hamish tucked the phone under one ear and fished a bottle of beer out of his bottom drawer. He did not like cold beer and, in any case, Hamish had grown up on American movies where the hero had fished a bottle out of his desk drawer, and had never got over the thrill of being able to do the same thing, even though it was warm beer and not bourbon.

He had left the police office door open, and a curious hen came hopping in, flew up on top of the typewriter, and stared at him with curious, beady eyes.

Priscilla Halburton-Smythe suddenly appeared in the doorway, a brace of grouse dangling from one hand, and smiled at the sight of Hamish with his huge boots on the desk, bottle of beer in one hand, phone in the other and hen in front.

“I see you’re interviewing one of the village criminals,” said Priscilla.

“Not I,” said Hamish. “I am waiting for my cousin in London to come back to the telephone with some vital information.”

“I meant the hen, silly. Joke. I’ve brought you some grouse.”

“Have they been hung?”

“No, I shot them today. Why do you ask?”

“Oh, nothing, nothing. It is verra kind of you, Miss Halburton-Smythe.”

Since Hamish’s family did not like grouse, the policeman was calculating how soon he could manage to get into Ullapool, where he would no doubt get a good price for the brace from one of the butchers. If they were fresh, that would give him a few days. Hamish did not possess a freezer except the small compartment in his refrigerator, which was full of TV dinners.

Hamish stood up, startling the hen, who flew off with a squawk, and pulled out a chair for Priscilla. He studied her as she sat down. She was wearing a beige silk blouse tucked into cord breeches. Her waist was small and her breasts high and firm. The pale oval of her face, framed by the pale gold of her hair, was saved from being insipid by a pair of bright blue eyes fringed with sooty lashes. He cleared his throat. “I cannot leave the telephone. But you will find a bottle of beer in the refrigerator in the kitchen.”

“I thought you didn’t like cold beer,” called Priscilla over her shoulder as she made her way across the tiny hall to the kitchen. “I keep one for the guests,” called Hamish, thinking wistfully that he had kept a cold bottle of beer especially for her since that golden day she had first dropped in to see him about a minor poaching matter four whole months ago.

“No more trouble, I hope,” added Hamish as Priscilla returned with a foaming glass. “I hope it is not the crime that brings you here.”

“No, I thought you might like some birds for the pot.” Priscilla leaned back and crossed her legs, tightening the material along her thighs by the movement. Hamish half closed his eyes.

“Actually, I’m escaping,” said Priscilla. “Daddy’s brought the most awful twit up from London. He wants me to marry him.”

“And will you?”

“No, you silly constable. Didn’t I just say he was a twit? I say, there’s a picture show on at the village hall tonight. Second showing, ten o’clock. Wouldn’t it be a shriek if we went to it?”

Hamish smiled. “My dear lassie, it is Bill Haley and his Comets in Rock Around the Clock, which was showing a wee bit before you were born, I’m thinking.”

“Lovely. Let’s go after whoever you’re speaking to speaks.”

“I cannot think Colonel Halburton-Smythe would like his daughter to go to the pictures with the local bobby.”

“He won’t know.”

“You have not been long in the Highlands. Give it a day, give it a week, everyone around here knows everything.”

“But Daddy doesn’t speak to anyone in the village.”

“Your housemaid, Maisie, is picture daft. She’ll be there. She’ll tell the other servants and that po-faced butler, Jenkins, will see it as his duty to inform the master.”

“Do you care?”

“Not much,” grinned Hamish. “Oh, Rory, it is yourself.”

He listened intently. Priscilla watched Hamish’s face, noticing for the first time how cat-like his hazel eyes looked with their Celtic narrowness at the outer edges.

“Thank you, Rory,” said Hamish finally. “That is verra interesting. I am surprised that fact about her is not better known.”

The voice quacked again.

“Thank you,” said Hamish gloomily. “I may be in the way of having to report a wee murder to you in the next few days. No, it is chust my joke, Rory.” Hamish’s accent became more sibilant and Highland when he was seriously upset.

He put down the phone and stared into space.

“What was all that about?” asked Priscilla curiously.

“Gossip about a gossip,” said Hamish, getting to his feet. “Wait and I’ll just lock up, Miss Halburton-Smythe, and we’ll be on our way. I’ll tell you about it one of these days.”