Hamish Macbeth 01; Death of a Gossip

∨ Death of a Gossip ∧

Day Five

A counsel of perfection is very easy advice to give, but is usually quite impracticable.

—Maxwell Knight, Bird Gardening

Alice started to dress hurriedly, although it was only seven in the morning. She wanted to escape from the hotel before they were besieged by the press again. They had started to filter in gradually, and by late evening they had grown to an army: an army of questioning faces. Alice’s juvenile crime loomed large in her mind. If Lady Jane could have found out about that, then they could too. Normally Alice would have been thrilled to bits at the idea of getting her photograph in the papers. But her murky past tortured her. Jeremy had been particularly warm and friendly to her the evening before. She felt sure he would not even look at her again if he found out. The major had howled at the hotel manager over the problem of the press, and the manager had at last reluctantly banned them. He was thoroughly fed up with the notoriety the murder had brought to his hotel and had hoped to ease the pain with the large amount of money the gentlemen of the press were spending in the bar. But guests other than the major had complained, guests who came every year. And so the reporters and the photographers were now billeted out in the village, most of them at a boarding house at the other end of the bay.

Alice was just on the point of leaving the room when the telephone began to ring. She stared at it and then suddenly rushed and picked it up. Her mother’s voice, sharp with agitation, sounded over the line. “What’s all this, luv? Your name’s in the morning papers. You didn’t even tell us you was going to such a place. We’re that worried.”

“It’s all right, Mum,” said Alice. “It’s got nothing to do with me.”

“I know that, luv, but that woman that was murdered, her photo’s in the papers and she was around here last week, asking questions. Said she was writing a piece on young girls who had made the move to London and their reasons for doing it.”

She must have got all our addresses from Heather, thought Alice with a sudden sickening lurch of the heart. Heather even sent me the names of the other guests, sort of to make it sound social.

Her voice shrill with anxiety, Alice asked, “Did she find out anything about me being in court?”

“You was never in court, luv.”

“Yes. ‘Member? It was when I broke Mr Jenkins’ window and he took me to the juvenile court.”

“Oh, that. She didn’t ask me and I don’t suppose anyone around here remembers a silly little thing like that. She talked to Maggie Harrison, mind.”

Alice held tightly on to the phone. Maggie Harrison had been her rival for years. If Maggie could have remembered anything nasty about her, Alice, then Maggie would have undoubtedly told everything.

“Are you there?” Her mother’s voice sounded like a squawk. “I’m in a call box and the money’s running out. Can you call me back?”

“No, Mum, I’ve got to go. I’ll be all right.”

“Take care of yourself, will you? I don’t like you getting mixed up with those sort of people.”

The line went dead.

Alice slowly replaced the receiver and wiped her damp palm on her sweater. Well, Lady Jane couldn’t write anything now.

She turned quickly and ran from the room. Outside the hotel a thin, greasy drizzle was falling.

She looked quickly along the waterfront, dreading to see a reporter waiting to pounce on her, but everything was deserted as far as she could see. She hesitated. Perhaps it would have been better to stay in the hotel. It was now banned to the press, so why bother to venture out? But the fear of anyone – Jeremy in particular – finding out about her past drove her on.

There was a pleasant smell of woodsmoke, tar, kippers, bacon and strong tea drifting from the cottages. Alice approached Constable Macbeth’s house and saw him standing in his garden, feeding the chickens. He turned at the sound of her footsteps, and she smiled weakly.

“Is your third degree over?” asked the policeman.

“It wasn’t so bad,” said Alice. “I really didn’t know that awful woman was a newspaper columnist, and I think they believed me.”

“I was just about to make a cup of tea. Would you like one?”

“Yes,” said Alice gratefully, thinking how very unlike a policeman Constable Macbeth looked. He was hatless and wearing an old army sweater and a faded pair of jeans. That chief detective had made it plain that the village constable would not be having anything to do with the investigation. Mr Macbeth must have riled him in some way because he had been quite unpleasant about it, Alice remembered. Blair had asked her if she had noticed or heard anything unusual that might point to the murderer, and Alice had shaken her head, but had said if she did remember anything she would tell Constable Macbeth, and that was when Blair had sourly pointed out that the village policeman was not part of the murder investigation.

Alice followed Hamish into his kitchen, which was long and narrow with a table against the window.

She looked around the kitchen curiously. It was messy in a clean sort of way. There were piles of magazines, china, bits of old farm implements, Victorian dolls, and stacks of jam jars.

“I’m a hoarder,” said Mr Macbeth. “If aye think a thing’ll fetch a good price if I just hang on to it. I have a terrible time throwing things away. Milk and sugar?”

“Yes, please,” said Alice. He gave her a cup, sat down next to her at the table, and heaped five spoonfuls of sugar into his own tea.

“Do I look like a murderer?” asked Alice intently.

“I think a murderer could look like anyone,” said the policeman placidly. “Now this Lady Jane, it strikes me she went to a lot of work to find out about the people who were going to be at the fishing school. How did she know who was going?”

“Oh, that’s easy. Heather sent us all a list of names and addresses. The idea is that we can get in touch with anyone in our area and maybe travel up with them. That’s how Jeremy came to travel up with Daphne. He didn’t know her before,” Alice blushed furiously and buried her nose in her cup.

“Yes, and she must have found out about me and my family after she came,” said Hamish. “She had only to ask a few people in the village. You can’t keep anything secret in the Highlands.”

“I wish she had never come,” said Alice passionately. “She’s ruined my life.”

“Indeed! And how is that?”

The rain was falling more steadily and the cluttered kitchen was peaceful and warm. Alice had a longing to unburden herself.

“If a young man was interested in a girl,” she said, not looking at him, “would you think that young man might go off that girl if he found out she had done something…well, against the law, when she was a kid?”

“It depends on the young man. Now if you’re talking about Mr Jeremy Blythe…”

“You noticed. He is rather sweet on me.” Alice removed her hat and tossed back her fluffy hair in what she fondly thought was a femme-fatale ish sort of way.

“It depends on the crime,” said Hamish. “Now if you’d poisoned your mother or…”

“No, nothing like that,” said Alice. “Look, when I was about Charlie’s age, I threw a brick through Mr Jenkins’ window for a dare. Mr Jenkins was a nasty old man who lived in our street. The other girls egged me on. Well, he got me charged and taken to court. All I got was a warning and Mum had to pay for the window and the local paper put a couple of lines about it at the bottom of one of their pages. I mean, it was a silly little thing, really, but would a man like Jeremy mind? You see, he’s awfully ambitious and…and…well, he plans to stand for Parliament, and…and…oh, do you know now I’ve told you, I realize I’ve been worrying about nothing. I should have told him. In fact, I’d better before anyone else does. How he’ll laugh!”

“If it’s that unimportant,” said Hamish, pouring himself more tea, “then I am thinking that there is no need whateffer to tell anyone at all. In my opinion, Miss Wilson, Mr Blythe is something of a snob and would not normally be interested in you were he not on holiday…”

Alice leapt to her feet. “You’re the snob,” she said. “And rude, too. I’ll show you. I’ll tell Jeremy right now and when I’m Mrs Blythe, you can eat your words.”

“As you please.” Hamish shrugged. Alice rushed out of the house and slammed the kitchen door with a bang. Hamish cursed himself for being clumsy. Alice reminded him of Ann Grant, a young girl brought up in Lochdubh, only passably pretty. She had been seen around one of the flashier holiday guests two summers ago, driving with him everywhere in his car, and gossiping about the grand wedding she would have. But the holidaymaker had left and Ann had gone about ill and red-eyed. She had been packed off suddenly to a relative in Glasgow. The village gossips said she had gone to have an abortion and was now walking the streets. But Hamish had heard through his relatives that she was working as a typist in a Glasgow office and had said she never wanted to see Lochdubh or her family again. If her family hadn’t been so common, she said, then her beau would have married her.

Snobbery is a terrible thing, thought Hamish dismally. It can almost kill young girls. Would they kill because of it? That was a question well worth turning over.

♦

Alice ran all the way back to the hotel and straight up to Jeremy’s room. She pounded on the door until a muffled voice shouted, “The door’s open. I’m in the bathroom.”

She pushed open the door. Perhaps the murder had made her a little crazy or perhaps Alice had lived in a fantasy world for too long, but she justified her next action by persuading herself that they were going to be married, or would be married if she established a basis of intimacy. She strolled casually into the bathroom and sat on the edge of the bath.

“Hello, darling,” she said.

Jeremy hastily floated a large sponge over himself to act as a fig leaf and asked carefully, without looking at her, “Have you been drinking? I know we’re all shattered by this murder business but…”

Alice came down to reality with a bump. “I’ll wait for you in the bedroom,” she gasped. “I’ve got something I must tell you.”

She sat nervously on the bed by the window, fidgeting with the curtain cord and wishing she hadn’t been so bold.

Jeremy came out with a white towel knotted around his waist and drying his hair with another.

Alice turned her face away and twisted a handkerchief nervously in her hands.

“Now you look like your usual self,” said Jeremy. “For a moment there I thought you were going to rape me.”

“Don’t make fun of me,” said Alice, wishing he wouldn’t look so amused, so detached. What if Macbeth should prove to be right?

But if they were married, it might come out. Better tell him now. And so Alice did, simply plunging into her story at the beginning and charging on until the end.

As she talked, she was back there in that dusty court on that hot summer’s day with the tar melting on the roads outside. She could still remember her mother, crying with shame. She could remember her own sick feeling of disgrace.

When she finished, she looked at Jeremy awkwardly. He was studying her face in an intent, serious way. Jeremy was actually wondering whether to share his own guilty secret and at the same time noticing how Alice’s schoolgirlish blouse was strained against her small, high breasts. God, it had been ages since…Then there was all this fear and worry about the murder. Yes, he knew why Alice had dreaded Lady Jane printing that bit of childhood nonsense. Hadn’t he himself gone through hell to try to shut her mouth? He glanced at the clock. Eight-thirty. Too early for a drink but not too early for that other tranquillizer.

He sat down beside Alice on the bed and drew her against his still-damp body. “You don’t mind?” whispered Alice.

“Of course not,” he said, stroking her hair. She smelled of nervous sweat, sharp and acrid, mixed with lavender talcum powder. He put a hand on one little breast and began to stroke it.

Alice shivered against him. She was not a virgin, having lost that through curiosity and drink two years ago in the back of a car after a party with a man whose name she could not remember. It had been a painful and degrading experience, but he had been a heavy, vulgar sort of man.

Women’s Lib has a long way to go before it gets inside girls like Alice. As his lips began to move against her own, her one thought was, “If I sleep with him, he’ll have to marry me.”

As they lay stretched out on the bed, pressed together, as Alice’s clothes were removed, she had an idiotic wish that Jeremy might have been wearing some sort of status symbol, his gold wrist watch, say. For when the all-too-brief fore-play was over and she was rammed into the bed by the panting, struggling weight of this man, it all seemed as painful and degrading as that time in the back of the car. She wished he’d hurry up and get it over with. There was that terrible tyranny of the orgasm. What was it? He was obviously waiting for something to happen to her. She had read about women shrieking in ecstasy, but if she shrieked, she might bring people rushing in, thinking there had been another murder.

His silence was punctuated by grunts, not words of love. At last, just when she thought she could not bear it any longer, he collapsed on top of her. She let out a long sigh of relief, and Jeremy kissed her ear and said, “It was good for you too,” mistaking her sigh for one of satisfaction.

“I love you, Jeremy,” whispered Alice, winding her arms around him and hugging that vision of sports car, expensive clothes, good accent, and Member of Parliament.

“Do you?” He propped himself up on one elbow. “That’s nice.” He kissed her nose and then smacked her on the bottom. “Better get dressed. Gosh, I’m hungry.”

Alice scooped up her clothes and scuttled into the bathroom. After she had showered and dressed, she felt better. Love in the morning. How sophisticated. How deliciously decadent.

She was just putting on lipstick when Jeremy shouted through the door, “I’ll see you in the dining room. Don’t be long.”

Alice’s hand jerked nervously, and she smeared lipstick over her cheek. She scrubbed it off with a tissue and then ran out, hoping to catch him, but he had already left.

When she went out into the corridor, two maids were stuffing dirty sheets into a hamper and they looked at her curiously. “Good morning,” said Alice, staring at both of them hard as if challenging them to voice their evil thoughts.

The fishing party was grouped around one large table in the far corner as if the management had decided to put them in quarantine. The Roths were there and Daphne, the major and Jeremy. Charlie would be having breakfast with his aunt, but where were the Cartwrights?

“Don’t know,” shrugged Daphne. “ I think they jolly well ought to be here handing out refunds. Pass the marmalade, Jeremy darling.”

Alice frowned. It was time to stake her claim. She slid into a chair beside Jeremy and took his hand under the table, gave it a squeeze, and smiled at him in an intimate way.

“I need both hands to eat, Alice,” said Jeremy crossly. Alice snatched her hand away and Daphne giggled.

♦

Heather and John Cartwright were sitting in Hamish’s cluttered kitchen, eating bacon baps and drinking tea. They had explained they were ‘just passing’.

It was Heather who had had the impulse to talk to Hamish. Hamish was a good sounding board because he was the law, and although he could hardly be described as a strong arm of it, he was in a position to overhear how the investigation was proceeding.

“I just hope this won’t break the fishing school,” said John gloomily.

“I should not think so,” said Hamish, turning bacon deftly in the pan. “Provided, of course, the murderer is found. It will be in the way of being an added attraction.”

“I was shocked when Blair told me she was really that awful columnist woman.”

Hamish stood very still, his back to them as he worked at the stove. “And you did not know this before?” he asked.

There was a little silence, and then John said, “Of course not. Had we known then we should not have allowed her to come.”

“Aye, but did you not know after she had arrived?” asked Hamish.

Again that silence. Hamish turned round, the bacon slice in one hand.

“No, we did not,” said Heather emphatically.

Hamish carefully and slowly lifted the bacon from the pan and put it on a plate. He turned off the gas. He lifted his cup of tea from beside the stove and came and joined Heather and John at the table.

“I happen to know that you had a letter from Austria. You see, you threw it out of the window, hoping it would land in the loch. The tide was out and the boy Charlie picked it up because the stamp attracted his attention. I would not normally read anyone else’s mail, but when it comes to murder, well, I don’t have that many fine scruples. It was from a couple of friends of yours in Austria who ran a ski resort until Lady Jane came on holiday.”

“You have no right to read private mail,” shouted John.

Hamish looked at him stolidly.

Heather put a hand on John’s arm. “It’s no use,” she said wearily. “We did know. We were frightened. This school is our life. Years of hard work have gone into building it up. We thought she was going to take it away from us.”

“But the couple at the ski resort turned out to be married to other people, not each other,” pointed out Hamish. “They said the publicity by Lady Jane ruined them only because Mr Bergen, the ski resort owner, had not been paying alimony for years. You are surely both not in that sort of position. When you found out, would it not have been better to try to tell the school, openly and in front of her, what she did for a living?”

“I didn’t think of that,” said John wretchedly. “You may as well know that I saw Jane on the night she was murdered. I went up to her room after dinner.”

“And…?”

“And she just laughed at me. She said this sort of fly fishing in these waters was like grouse shooting or deer stalking – a sport for the rich. She said she was about to prove that the sort of people who went on these holidays were social climbers who deserved to be cut down to size.”

“Deary me,” said Hamish, stirring his tea, “was she a Communist?”

“I don’t think she was a member of the Communist Party, if that’s what you mean,” said John. “She seemed to want to make people writhe. She was like a blackmailer who enjoys power. In Scotland they would say she was just agin everything.”

“Did she say she was out to ruin the fishing school?”

“Not in so many words. But that’s what she was setting out to do.”

“What exactly did you say?”

“I said that I had worked hard to build up this school and I begged her not to harm it. She laughed at me and told me to get out. I said…I said…”

“Yes?” prompted Hamish gently.

“You’d better tell him,” said Heather.

“I told her I would kill her,” whispered John. “I shouted it. I’ll have to tell Blair – I think Jeremy heard me.”

“Mr Blythe? Why would he hear you? Is his room next to hers?”

“No, he was out in the corridor when I left.”

“What will we do, Mr Macbeth?” pleaded Heather.

“I think you should tell Mr Blair. If there’s one thing that makes a detective like Blair suspicious, or any detective for that matter, it’s finding out someone’s been hiding something. The pair of you have got nothing awful in your past that Lady Jane was about to expose?”

Both shook their heads.

“And apart from the short time that Mr Cartwright was with Lady Jane, you were together all night?”

“Why do you ask?” Heather had turned white.

“I ask,” said Hamish patiently, “because any copper with a nasty mind might think that one of you might have sneaked off and bumped her off, if not the pair of you.”

“We had better go,” said Heather. “Tell Mr Blair we’re taking the class up to the Marag to fish. It’s near enough. We must go on as if nothing had happened.”

After they left, Hamish, who had already heard the sound of voices from his office at the front, ambled through with a cup of tea in one hand.

“Shouldn’t you be in uniform?” growled Blair, who was seated behind Hamish’s desk flanked by his two detectives.

“In a minute,” said Hamish easily.

“And I told you to keep out of this. That was the Cartwrights I saw leaving.”

“Aye.”

“Well, what did they have to say for themselves?”

“Only that they knew something they hadn’t told you and now thought they should. Also that they were taking the class up to the Marag which is quite close so that you can go and see any of the members quite easily.”

“For Jesus buggering Christ’s sake, don’t they know this is a murder investigation?”

“Find any clues?” asked Hamish.

“Just one thing. If it had been like today, we might have found more traces. But most of the ground was baked hard. The procurator fiscal’s report says she was strangled somewhere else and dragged along through the bushes and then thrown in the pool.”

“And what is this clue?”

“It’s just a bit of a photograph,” said MacNab, before Blair could stop him. “Just a bit torn off the top corner. See.”

He held out the bit of black and white photograph on a pair of tweezers. Hamish took it gingerly.

It showed the very top of a woman’s head, or what he could only guess to be a woman’s head because it had some sort of sparkly ornament on top like the edge of a tiara. Behind was a poster with the part legend BUY BRIT – .

“That might have been Buy British,” said Hamish, “which means it would have been taken in the sixties when Wilson was running that Buy British campaign and that would therefore eliminate the younger members of the fish…”

“Listen to the great detective,” jeered Blair. “We all reached that conclusion in two seconds flat. Why don’t you trot off and find out if anyone’s been raiding the poor box in one of those churches. Damn ridiculous having so many churches in a wee place like this.”

Hamish turned to amble out. “And get your uniform on,” shouted Blair.

“Now,” said Blair, rustling through sheafs of statements. “According to these, they’re all innocent. But one of them was so afraid that Lady Jane would print something about them that they killed her. So chase up all these people we phoned yesterday and hurry them up. And that includes background on the Roths. See if there’s been a telex from the FBI. Find out if any of them have been in trouble with the police, although I think you’ll have to dig deeper than that.”

Hamish changed into his uniform, admitting to his reflection in the glass that he, Hamish Macbeth, was a very angry man. In fact, he could not quite remember being so angry in all his easygoing life. He was determined to go on talking to the members of the fishing school until someone said something that gave himself away. He was not going to be frightened because it was a murder investigation. All criminals were the same whether it was a theft in the school or poaching deer on the hills. You talked, asked questions, and listened and watched and waited. The hell with Blair. He would go up to the Marag and find out what Jeremy had been doing outside Lady Jane’s room. As he left by the back door, the press were entering the police station by the front. At least Lochdubh would be spared their headlines until the following morning. The newspapers were always a day late.

In any common-or-garden murder, the press would not hang about longer than a day or two. But this murderee had a title and the location was well away from their office with out-of-town expenses, so they would all try to spin it out as long as they could. Of course, Lady Jane had been one of their own, so to speak, and Hamish had learned from his relative in Fleet Street some time ago that the press were not like the police: they were notoriously uninterested in anything that happened to one of their ranks except as a subject for gossip.

The day was warm and sweaty, and although the rain had stopped, there was a thick mist everywhere and the midges were out in clouds. Hamish took a stick of repellent out of his tunic pocket and rubbed his face and neck with it.

When he reached the Marag, it was to find the fishing school diligently at work, looking like some old army-jungle movie, as each one had a mosquito net shrouding the face.

Hamish scanned the anonymous figures, picked out Heather and John by virtue of their expert casting rather than their appearance, and Charlie because of his size and because his mother was sitting on a rock nearby, flapping away the mosquitoes and watching her son as if expecting him to be dragged off to prison at any moment. Hamish went to join her.

“I think this is ridiculous,” she burst out as soon as she saw him. “It’s horrible weather and the whole school should be broken up and sent home.”

“They seem quite happy,” said Hamish.

“I don’t understand it,” wailed Mrs Baxter. “Those Cartwrights suggested the school should try to go on as if nothing has happened, and they all leapt at it when just a moment before they had been threatening to ask for their money back. I told my Charlie he was coming straight home with me, and he defied me. Just like his father.” Two large tears of self-pity formed in Mrs Baxter’s eyes and she dabbed at them furiously with a tissue. “I knew I should never have let Charlie come all the way up here. The minute I got his letter, I was on the train.”

“Aye, and when did you arrive?”

“I told the police. I got to Lochdubh just after the terrible murder.”

“Then how is it that Mrs MacPherson down at the bakery saw you the night before?”

“It wasn’t me. It must have been someone else.”

“Blair will check the buses and so on, you know,” said Hamish. “It’s always better to tell the truth. If you don’t, it looks as if you might have something to hide. Did you know Lady Jane was a newspaperwoman?”

Mrs Baxter sat in silence, twisting the damp tissue in her fingers. Rain dripped from her soutwester. “She’s been around the neighbourhood asking questions,” said Mrs Baxter at last in a low voice. “I’ve never got on with my neighbours and I know they told her all about the divorce. But what’s divorce? Half the population of Britain get divorced every year. I’ve nothing to be ashamed of and that I told her.”

“You told Lady Jane?”

“Well, I phoned her before I got on the train,” said Mrs Baxter miserably, “and I said if she wrote anything about my Charlie I would…”

“Kill her?”

“People say all sorts of things they don’t mean when they’re angry,” said Mrs Baxter defiantly. “This is a wretched business. Do you know that detective, MacNab, was round at the house last night asking for Charlie’s leader?”

“No, I did not. I’m shocked.”

“So you should be. Suspecting a mere child.”

“It is not that that shocks me but the fact that they did not immediately check all the leaders earlier in the day. Was anyone’s leader missing?”

“I don’t know. You should know. They fingerprinted everyone as well.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Hamish saw a white police car moving slowly round the edge of the loch.

He moved quickly out of sight behind a stand of trees and made his way silently along a rabbit track that led back down to the village. Jeremy would have to wait. Hamish went straight to the hotel and asked the manager, Mr Johnson, where the press had disappeared to, since he would have expected them to be up at the loch, photographing the school.

“There’s a big Jack the Ripper sort of murder broken in London,” said Mr Johnson, “and that’s sent most of them scampering back home. The nationals anyway. This is small beer by comparison. Also, Blair got the water bailiffs to block the private road to the Marag. He hates the press. Going to solve the murder for us, Mr Macbeth?”

“Aye, maybe.” Hamish grinned. “Any hope of a wee shufty at Lady Jane’s room?”

“Blair had it locked, of course. No one’s to go in. Police commandment.”

“I’m the police, so there’ll be no harm in letting me in.”

“I suppose. Come along then. But I think you’d better try to leave things as they are. I’ve a feeling that Blair doesn’t like you.”

Hamish followed the manager upstairs and along the corridors of the hotel. “They took a plan of all the hotel rooms,” said Mr Johnson over his shoulder. “I don’t know what they expect to learn from that because it’s said she was strangled up on the hillside in the middle of the night, not far from where she was shoved in the pool. They’ve found a bittie of a photograph, and Blair got everybody down to the last chambermaid fingerprinted. No fingerprints on the photo of course, and none on those chains that were around her legs, as if there would be anything worthwhile after that time of churning and bashing about that pool. But Mr Blair likes to throw his weight around. Here we are.”

He put the key in the lock and opened the door. Lady Jane had occupied a suite with a good view of the loch. “I’ll leave you to it,” said Mr Johnson cheerfully. “I can’t feel sad about this murder. It’s turned out good for business. Every lunch and dinner is booked up solid for the next few weeks. They’re coming from as far as Aberdeen, but then these oil people have more money than sense.”

Left alone, Hamish stood in the middle of the bedroom and looked around. Surely it must have dawned on Blair before anything else that Lady Jane would have brought notes of some kind. Yes, of course it had. Fingerprint dust lay like grey snow on every surface. Well, they would hardly come back for more fingerprints. Hamish began his search. The suite consisted of a small entrance hall with a side table and one chair, a tiny sitting room with a writing desk, television set and two easy chairs, and a bedroom with a bathroom leading off it.

There was a typewriter open on the writing desk with a pile of hotel writing paper beside it. He diligently searched the top of the desk and drawers. There was not a single piece of paper with any writing on it whatsoever. Perhaps Blair had taken away what there was.

He turned his attention to the bedroom. He slid open drawers of frivolous underwear – Lady Jane’s taste in that direction was rather startling – and rummaged underneath. Nothing. If she had had a handbag, then Blair must have taken it away. Two suitcases lay on a luggage rack at the foot of the bed. Locked.

He took a large ring of keys out of his tunic pocket and got to work, listening all the while in case Blair should choose that moment to return for another search. At last the first case sprang open. There was a lavender sachet, two detective stories, a box of heated rollers, and a hair dryer. No paper of any kind. The next suitcase was completely empty.

He looked under the bed, under the mattress, down the sides of the chairs, even in the toilet tank and the bathroom cupboard, but not one scrap of paper did he find.

The manager had left the keys in the door. Hamish carefully locked the room and deposited the keys in the manager’s office.

He decided to go back to the Marag to see if the field was clear. But as he was making his way out of the hotel, he heard voices from the interviewing room and noticed Alice sitting nervously in the lounge outside.

“He’s got Jeremy in there,” said Alice. “Will this never end? He’s going to see me next and then call in the others one by one. I told Jeremy about that court thing and he didn’t mind, so you were wrong.”

“Is that a fact?” said Hamish, looking down at her curiously.

Alice jerked her head to one side to avoid the policeman’s gaze. Jeremy had been offhand all day, to say the least.

Hamish left quickly, deciding to try to find out a bit about the background of the others. He had in his tunic a list of the names and addresses of the members of the school. Perhaps he should start by trying to find out something about the Roths. But he could not use the telephone at the police station because Blair had set up headquarters there, and although he was busy interviewing Jeremy, no doubt his team of officers would be in the office.

Hamish’s car was parked outside his house. He decided to take a run up to the Halburton-Smythes. The rain had stopped falling and a light breeze had sprung up. But everything was wet and sodden and grey. Mist shrouded the mountains, and wet, long-haired sheep scampered across the road in front of the car on their spindly black legs like startled fur-coated schoolmarms.

He swung off the main road and up the narrower one which led through acres of grouse moor to the Halburton-Smythes’ home. Home was a mock castle, built by a beer baron in the nineteenth century when Queen Victoria made the Highlands fashionable. It had pinnacles, turrets and battlements and a multitude of small, cold, dark rooms.

Hamish pushed open the massive, brass-studded front door and walked into the stone-flagged gloom of the hall. He made his way through to the estate office, expecting to find Mr Halburton-Smythe’s secretary, Lucy Hanson, there, but the room was deserted and the bright red telephone sitting on the polished mahogany desk seemed to beg Hamish to reach out and use it.

He sat down beside the desk and after some thought phoned Rory Grant at the Daily Recorder in Fleet Street. Rory sounded exasperated when he came on the line. “What’s the use of having a bobby for a relative if I can’t get an exclusive on a nice juicy murder? I had my bags packed and was going to set out on the road north when the Libyans decided to put a bomb in Selfridges and some Jack the Ripper started cutting up brass nails in Brixton, so I’m kept here. No one cares about your bloody murder now, but you might have given me a buzz. I called the police station several times, and some copper told me each time to piss off.”

“It would still be news if I found the murderer, Rory,” cajoled Hamish. “You know the people who are at the fishing school. The names have been in all the papers. See if you can find out a bit more about them than has appeared. Oh, and while I’m on the phone, if I wanted to find out about someone from New York who might have been in trouble, or someone from Augusta, Georgia, what would I do?”

“You phone the FBI, don’t you, you great Highland berk.”

“I think Detective Chief Inspector Blair will have done that and I would not want to go treading on any toes.”

“You can phone the newspapers, then, but you’ll need to wait until I go and get names from the foreign desk. You are a pest, Hamish.”

Hamish held the line patiently until Rory returned with the information.

He thanked the reporter and, after listening to the silence of the castle for a few moments, dialled New York. He was in luck. The reporter Rory had recommended said cheerfully it was a slack day and did Hamish want him to call back. “No, I will chust wait,” said Hamish, comfortably aware that he was not paying for the call.

After some time the reporter came back with the information on Marvin Roth. “All old history,” he said cheerfully. “Seems that back around 1970, he was in trouble over running sweatshops in the garment district. Employing illegal aliens and paying them peanuts. Big stink. Never got to trial. Bribed his way out of it. Wants to go into politics. Big man in town now. Donates to charities, fashionable pinko, ban the bomb and clean up the environment. No one’s going to rake up his past. Got a nasty way of hitting back. Knows all the big names and he’s a buddy of my editor’s, so don’t say where you got the information from, for Chrissake.”

“Do you mean to tell me that you cannot print the facts?”

“Absolutely.”

“It is all very strange,” said Hamish, shaking his head. “I have never been to New York. What is the weather like at the moment?”

They chatted amiably for five more minutes at Mr Halburton-Smythe’s expense before Hamish remembered the BUY BRIT – on the section of photograph. It seemed that it must be Buy British, but could it perhaps be an American advertisement?

“Never heard of anything like it,” said the American reporter cheerfully, “but I’ll ask around.” Hamish gave him the Halburton-Smythes’ phone number and told the reporter to give any information to Priscilla.

Then he phoned Augusta, Georgia. Here he was unlucky. The reporter sounded cross and harried. No, he didn’t know anything about Amy Roth, nee Blanchard, off the top of his head. Yes, he would phone back, but he couldn’t promise.

Hamish put down the telephone and sighed.

He heard the sound of heavy footsteps in the corridor and jumped to his feet. Colonel Halburton-Smythe erupted into the room. He was a small, thin, choleric man in his late fifties. Hamish marvelled anew that the fair Priscilla could have such an awful father.

“What are you doing here, Officer?” barked the colonel, looking suspiciously at the phone.

“I was waiting for your good self,” said Hamish. “Miss Halburton-Smythe told me you were still having trouble with the poachers.”

“I’ve just been down to your wretched station. Fat chappie told me he was in the middle of a murder investigation. Told him one of my deer had been shot in the leg last night. Gave me a wall-eyed stare. Useless, the lot of you. What are you going to do about it?”

“I will look into the matter,” said Hamish soothingly.

“See that you do, and while we’re on the subject of poaching, I believe you’ve been squiring my daughter to the local flea pit. It’s got to stop.”

“It was not a den of vice,” said Hamish patiently. “And I would say Miss Halburton-Smythe is old enough to know her own mind.”

“If I find you sniffing around my daughter again,” said the colonel rudely, “I’ll report you to your superiors.”

“You should not let yourself be getting in the bad temper,” said Hamish soothingly. “Why, I can see the wee red veins breaking out all over your eyeballs. A terrible thing is the high blood pressure. Why, I mind…”

“Get out!”

“Very well.” Hamish sauntered off with maddening slowness.

Once out in the drive, however, he could not resist loitering and looking around for a glimpse of Priscilla.

“If you think you’re going to see my daughter,” barked the colonel behind him, “have another think. She’s gone out for the day with John Harrington, Lord Harrington’s son, and for your further information, she is shortly going to become engaged to him.”

Hamish realized with some amazement that hearts actually did ache. Without replying, he walked to his car, climbed in and, without once looking at the colonel again, he drove off.

When he arrived at the police station, it was to find Blair and MacNab were still at the hotel and the suspicious-eyed detective, Jimmy Anderson, was sitting behind the desk in the office.

Hamish noticed a woman’s handbag on the desk. “Would that be Lady Jane’s?” he asked.

“Yes,” grunted the detective without looking up.

“And would she maybe have a diary or anything with notes?”

“No, she did not,” said Jimmy Anderson. “Deil a piece o’ paper or a note. Her money’s there and her credit cards and cheque-book.”

“And it was in her room?”

“Aye, and Mr Blair still thinks someone killed her to stop her publishing something.”

“What have you got on them, just by way of a wee gossip?” Hamish reached a hand into a vase and produced a bottle of Scotch. “You’ll be having a dram, of course.”

“That’s very kind of you,” said Anderson, visibly thawing. “Don’t see any harm in telling you, only don’t tell Blair. Cheers. Right, now. We’re waiting to hear about the Roths. Blair’s keen on them all of a sudden despite that Buy British thing. He thinks there’s a chance Roth might have Mafia connections and Lady Jane might have been on to it. Would damage his career.”

“Would it now,” said Hamish, pouring himself a whisky. “Mind you, it doesn’t seem to have got in the way of an American politician’s career before. What about Amy Roth?”

“We’re trying to find a bit on her too.”

“But Lady Jane would not have had the time to find out about the Roths. I mean, if it’s that difficult.”

“All these bookings were made at least eight months ago and that’s when Lady Jane got the list. She’s been in the States since then.”

“She certainly worked hard for her living,” said Hamish. “A little more to warm you, Mr Anderson?”

“Thank you. Call me Jimmy. As to the rest, Jeremy Blythe’s got an interest in politics as well. He was supposed to be sent down from Oxford for having an affair with the wife of one of the dons, but there’s more to it than that. While he was having an affair with her, he also found time to get one of the local barmaids pregnant, and her husband raised a stink at the college. That way the don’s wife found out and made a stink. Then he owed money all over the place although Daddy’s rich. Wasn’t studying. Sent down and finished his degree at London University. Became respectable but is still paying for the upkeep of the barmaid’s kid. Her husband settled for that out of court. Daddy bought him a partnership, but he’s been making rumblings of becoming the next Conservative candidate. At a party last year, old friend from Oxford started ribbing him about the barmaid and this Jeremy punched him rotten. Police called in but no charges. Filthy temper, he has.

“Alice Wilson chucked a brick through a neighbour’s window when she was a kid and ended up in court. Not much there.

“Daphne Gore comes from a rich family. Caused a scandal by running off with a Spanish waiter who, it turned out, had no intention of marrying her but had to be bought off by Daphne’s parents. Girl went into a depression and was in a psychiatric clinic for a few months. Could be a bit of insanity still around.

“Heather and John Cartwright. Very suspicious. Owned up they knew Lady Jane was out to get the school and they’re both fishing mad. Not a sport with them, more a religion.

“Charlie Baxter. You can never tell with kids of that age, but I’m sure he’s out of it. The mother, On the other hand, is an hysterical type.”

“And the major?” prompted Hamish. “He was more humiliated by Lady Jane than any of them.”

“Oh, the fishing and all that. We heard about how he’d threatened to kill her. Don’t think there’s anything to worry about there. Fine old soldier. Blair likes him. But we’re waiting for a full report.”

There was the crunch of wheels on the gravel outside. One minute Hamish was lounging in the chair opposite Anderson. The next he was gone – and the bottle of whisky.

Hamish ambled along the front. A pale sun was beginning to turn the mist to gold, and there was a long patch of greenish-blue sky out on the horizon where the tiny white dot of a yacht bucketed about to show the approaching wind beyond the shelter of the harbour. The tide was out, leaving an expanse of oily pebbled beach scattered with the debris of storms and flotsam and jetsam from boats.

He tried to focus his whole mind on the problem of the murder to banish the haunting picture of Priscilla languishing away the afternoon in this man Harrington’s arms.

Then he saw the Roths approaching. They were an odd pair, he thought. Amy was a big, soft woman, but Marvin’s six feet topped her by a few inches. Although her movements were usually slow and calm, there seemed an underlying restlessness about her. She was wearing a trouser suit of faded denim with a scarf knotted about her throat. Marvin had changed into his usual sombre black business suit, and his bald head shone in the yellow light from the sea.

“When is all this going to end?” demanded Marvin as the couple came abreast of Hamish. “Amy isn’t used to being treated the way she’s been by your coppers. That Blair thinks he’s hot shit.”

“I’m used to being treated like a lady,” said Amy. “I thought all you Britishers were supposed to be gentlemen.”

“We’re just like other folk,” said Hamish soothingly. “Like sweeties. We come in all shapes and sizes and some of us are horrible.”

“Sweeties?” queried Amy, momentarily diverted.

“Candy,” translated Marvin. “See here, Amy’s like aristocracy back home. This Blair wouldn’t treat your Queen like this.”

“It’s to my way of thinking that he might,” said Hamish.

“Well, it’s a pity Amy’s folks have all passed away or they would have something to say about this.”

Hamish looked at Amy as Marvin spoke and noticed the tightening of the skin at the corners of her eyelids and the way she was obviously ferreting around in her mind for a change of subject. He had a sudden intuition that Amy had been lying about her background. Well, a lot of people did, but they didn’t go around committing murder when they were found out. Or did they?

“Why doesn’t Blair just arrest that major? He’s the only one who had it in for Lady Jane,” said Amy. “You heard about his trick with the salmon?”

“Oh, aye, the gossip went two times around the village and back again. It is very hard to keep anything quiet in the Highlands.”

Amy muttered something like, “Just like red hook,” and Hamish wondered whether it was something to do with fishing.

“Except murder,” said Marvin. “This place is the asshole of the world. I don’t like the country, I don’t like the hick servants at the hotel. What’s a FEB?”

“Nothing that would apply to you, Mr Roth. It is just an expression the barman uses.”

“Him!” said Marvin with great contempt. “He can’t even make a dry martini. One part gin to three parts warm French is his idea. Jeez, the fuckers in this dump piss me off.”

“Honey,” pleaded Amy, “watch your language.”

Hamish’s red eyebrows had vanished up under his cap with shock.

“Sorry,” said Marvin wearily. “I guess I’m frightened. I feel trapped here. If we’re going for this goddam constitutional, then we’d better get on with it.”

“Catch any fish?” asked Hamish.

“Jeremy and Heather caught a trout each,” said Marvin, “but those salmon just can’t be caught, in my opinion. They just jump about the place and keep well away from the hooks.”

“I could lend you one of my flies,” volunteered Hamish. “I have had a bit of luck with it.”

“Say, why don’t you join us for dinner tonight and bring it with you,” said Marvin. “Everyone knows you’re not on the case and we’re getting a bit sick of each other. After all, one of us did it and we all sit around wondering who’s going to be next.”

Hamish accepted the invitation and went on his way.

As he approached the hotel, he saw Jeremy coming down towards it from the direction of the Marag, still wearing his fishing gear.

“Got one!” he shouted as Hamish approached. He held up a fair-sized trout.

“Let’s get into the hotel,” said Hamish, noticing a reporter and photographer heading in their direction.

They walked together into the little room where Jeremy placed his catch on the scales and logged the weight in the book. “I was hearing that you were seen in the corridor outside Lady Jane’s room the night she was murdered,” said Hamish.

“Nonsense,” said Jeremy, carefully lifting his fish off the scales. “Aren’t you supposed to be out of this investigation? I don’t think Blair would like to hear you had been asking questions.”

“Maybe not. But he would like to hear what you’d been up to,” said Hamish.

“Then tell him and much good it may do you,” yelled Jeremy. He rushed off, nearly bumping into Alice, who was watching them anxiously. Alice ran after Jeremy and, undeterred by the fact that he had slammed his room door in her face, she opened it and went in. He was sitting hunched on the edge of the bed. “That blasted, nosy copper,” he said without looking up.

Alice sat down beside him and took his hand in hers. “What’s the matter, Jeremy?” she pleaded. “You’ve been awful to me all day.”

“Christ, I’ve got enough on my mind without worrying about you,” snapped Jeremy. “I was seen outside Lady Jane’s room on the night of the murder.”

“Oh, Jeremy. What happened?”

“My father phoned me and told me about her. I got into a silly mess when I was at Oxford and I wanted to make sure she kept her mouth shut. She said if I spent the night with her, she would think about it. Can you imagine? That awful old cow.”

Alice tried to withdraw her hand. What if Jeremy had murdered Lady Jane? He looked so odd, older, grimmer, and there was a muscle jumping in his left cheek.

Jeremy turned and looked at her. “It wouldn’t have mattered so much if she had written about you,” said Alice timidly. “I mean, it wasn’t so very bad.”

“You don’t know anything about it,” snapped Jeremy. In a flat voice, he told Alice of his Oxford scandals, although he omitted the fact he was still paying for the support of the barmaid’s child.

“I could never have gone in for politics,” he said. He felt shaken with nerves and anger. How stupid he’d been not to have told Hamish the whole thing. He needed a drink…or something.

He seized Alice suddenly and pulled her down on the bed. “Oh, Jeremy,” whispered Alice, forgetting that she had thought him a murderer a moment ago, “do you love me?”

“Yes, yes,” mumbled Jeremy against her hair. He started to unbutton her blouse, and Alice was so thrilled and excited that he had confessed his love that she almost enjoyed the next ten minutes.