Death of a Nag

∨ Death of a Nag ∧

2

A tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use.

—Washington Irving

Hamish rose early and took Towser for a walk along the deserted dunes outside the hotel. The day was grey and warm and misty. Somewhere a foghorn sounded like some lost sea creature. The midges, those pestilent Scottish mosquitoes which he had naively thought he had left behind him on the west coast, were out in force. He automatically felt in his shirt pocket for a stick of repellent and found he had none and remembered there was one in his suitcase.

He returned to his room and pulled his suitcase out from under the bed and flipped back the lid. It was then that he realized it had been searched. It was not precisely that things had been disturbed; there was more a smell, a feeling, that things had been gone through. Not that there was much left in the suitcase. He had unpacked nearly everything. He found a stick of repellent in one of the pockets lining the back of the case. There were a few books and sweaters he had not yet put away in the drawers, and oh, God, his police identification card, his notebook, and a pair of handcuffs. He sat back on his heels, his mind ranging busily over the guests. He had not bothered to lock his bedroom door when he had gone out with Towser. Rogers? Was it plain nosiness? He could complain, and complain loudly, but he had no real proof. He fished out the suitcase keys from a back pocket and locked the case and pushed it back under the bed. Pointless thing to bother about doing now. Someone in this hotel now knew he was a policeman. He would study their reactions to him today.

The only good thing about breakfast was the surly silence of Bob Harris. The food was awful: fried haggis and watery eggs; hard, dry rolls with margarine; and marmalade so thin it could have been watered.

“I’m going to the carnival,” said Hamish to Miss Gunnery. “Would you like to come?”

Before she could reply, Dermott Brett called over. “Going to the carnival? We’ll come too, Hamish, and take the kids.”

And so, to Miss Gunnery’s disappointment, for she had murmured to Hamish, “I hate crowds,” the others came along as well, minus the Harrises. They had gone a little way towards Skag when the sound of running footsteps made them turn around. Doris Harris was running to catch up with them, her face flushed.

“Bob doesn’t want to come,” she said breathlessly.

As they walked on, they all found they were searching for new topics of conversation, the main one having hitherto been what a pig Bob Harris was. Hamish’s stick of repellent was gradually getting worn down as everyone kept borrowing it. Hands flapped at the stinging, biting midges. “Let’s hope they leave us when we get to the carnival,” said Hamish. A thin drizzle had started to fall.

An air of gloom was descending on the party. Hamish had a desire to lighten it for Doris’s sake. Her life with Bob was surely misery enough. She should enjoy this bit of freedom. He stared up at the sky, willing the weather to change. There was a whisper of a breeze against his cheek. “Anyone heard the weather forecast?” he asked.

“Said it might get sunny later,” said Andrew.

The children began to chatter with excitement, for the fair was now in view in a field outside Skag.

Hamish looked at his watch. “There’re floats and some sort of procession through the village first. Let’s go and watch that.”

The rain was falling heavier as they huddled in a group and watched a series of tacky floats move past. A Scottish bank had a traditional jazz band on the back of a truck which momentarily brightened things as it slowly cruised by them, but the rest of the floats were mostly tableaux by the children, wet children with grease-paint running down their faces in the rain. Then there was the crowning of the carnival queen, a singularly ill-favoured little girl; but as Hamish learned, she was the daughter of the publican, who had contributed a large sum of money to the carnival, so that explained the choice.

They all walked with Hamish to the fairground, all occasionally looking hopefully at him like tourists at their guide.

“I know,” said Hamish, “let’s go on the dodgem cars. What about it, Miss Gunnery?”

“It’s a mither complex, that’s whit it is,” said Cheryl sourly to Tracey, but Hamish decided to ignore the gibe. And then, as they crashed their way about in the dodgem cars, Doris with Andrew, Hamish with Miss Gunnery, Cheryl and Tracey screaming together and eyeing the local talent, Dermott and June with their toddler on their knee while the other two children took up another car, the weather made one of its lightning changes. Again the grey rolled back out to sea, like a curtain being swept back on the transformation scene in a pantomime.

After the dodgems, Hamish bought candy floss for the children and then looked about for more amusement. He was determined to keep ‘his’ little party happy. He was beginning to catch a glimpse of his own easygoing happiness coming back again and he did not want to lose it. So they obediently followed him to the ghost train and he had the delight and pleasure of hearing the prim Miss Gunnery beside him in the car shrieking her head off. She gave him a rueful look afterwards. “I don’t often let my hair down like that.”

Hamish looked at her glossy brown hair, which was scraped into a severe knot on top of her head. “You should,” he said. “You’ve got pretty hair.”

Miss Gunnery gave him such a warm glowing look that he moved away from her uneasily. But he found that leaving her side was to get the undivided attention of Cheryl and Tracey, so he returned to her and continued to lead his party on and off roundabouts all over the fairground until Dermott Brett said the children were weary and it was nearly time for tea. They had made a lunch of hot dogs, candy floss and chocolate bars, and as they all headed back to the hotel, the thought of the tea that was probably awaiting them dampened their appetites further.

The Brett children began to invent awful menus from fried snails to roast baby until they were helpless with giggles. Doris was laughing. She looked a changed woman. Hamish thought she had probably been quite pretty when she was younger. Andrew Biggar was walking beside her, looking delighted with her company.

Hamish, covertly watching them, began to feel uneasy. He felt he was looking at the ingredients for a disaster: crushed wife, nasty husband, gentle and decent man – mix all together and what do you get? Murder, said a voice in his brain.

He shook himself to get rid of the thought. Husbands and wives nagged each other up and down the length of the British Isles, but they didn’t murder each other – or not all of them did.

The main dish of high tea was a mixed grill: one small sausage, one kidney, one tomato and the inevitable chips. Bob Harris was there, and drunk. He was so drunk that his voice was lowered to an almost incomprehensible whining mumble. Hamish was just able to make out that the burden of his complaint was that Doris had actually defied him by going off to the fair.

After tea, Doris got to her feet and said quietly that she was tired and was going to have an early night. They all expected Bob Harris to join her but he followed them through to the lounge, just sober enough after the dreadful tea to turn his viciousness on the group. His first target was Andrew Biggar. “You army men are all the same,” he jeered. “The only reason you go into the army is because you can’t adapt to civilian life. Have to be told what to do.”

Andrew, who had picked up a book, put it down and said evenly, “Just shut up.”

Heather, the seven-year-old, gave a nervous laugh. Bob’s bulbous eyes focused on the child. “Your trouble is, you’re spoilt,” he said.

“Here, that’s enough,” protested Dermott. “Why don’t you go upstairs and sleep it off.”

“I can hold my drink,” said Bob truculently. “And don’t you come the high and mighty with me. I could tell this lot a thing or two about you and – ”

“I’m taking the children up to bed and out of this,” shouted June. She gathered up the toddler and left, with the other two children following close behind.

“You are one of the nastiest men I have ever come across,” said Miss Gunnery.

“Well, there can’t be many men who’ve come across you, or got their leg over you, if any,” sneered Bob. “You remind me of an old dried-up stick of a French teacher I used to have. You – ”

He let out a yelp of pain. Hamish Macbeth had twisted his arm up his back. “Off to bed,” said Hamish pleasantly. He marched him to the door, released him and shoved him outside and slammed the door in his face.

“That’s that,” said Hamish as Dermott, Andrew and Miss Gunnery, Cheryl and Tracey stared at him in awe. He looked out of the window. “The sun’s still blazing down. Anyone brave enough for a swim?”

“I think I would like that,” said Miss Gunnery, surprising them all.

“Wait till you see what we’ve got to wear,” cried Cheryl.

Andrew said quietly, “I wonder if Doris would like to come.”

“I wouldn’t bother,” said Hamish quickly.

But when they all had gathered in the hall, that is Miss Gunnery, Hamish, Cheryl and Tracey and Andrew Biggar, Doris came down the stairs to join them, carrying a large beach towel over one arm.

“Bob’s asleep,” she said. “Andrew heard the snores through the door, so he knocked and told me you were going.”

Hamish looked at Andrew and Doris uneasily. They made such a suitable couple. He fought down a nagging feeling of apprehension.

The party walked across the sand dunes in front of the hotel and then over the shingle rise which ran all the way from the harbour along the back of the beach and so down to the blowing sand. The sun was very warm for Scotland.

They were all wearing their bathing-costumes under their clothes. Tracey and Cheryl stripped down to string bikinis, exposing skinny acres of shark’s-belly-white skin. Miss Gunnery was wearing a modest one-piece. She had a surprisingly trim, muscled, if flat-chested body and long legs. Doris, also in a one-piece, ran down to the water with Andrew, plunged in and then let out a scream. “It’s freezing!” she called back.

Hamish, used to swimming in cold Highland streams and lochs, found the waters of the North Sea quite bearable. But the others gave up quite quickly and huddled in their beach towels, and when Hamish came running up the beach, they turned to him like hopeful children.

“There’s still the fair,” he said, “unless you’re all tired of it.”

This was hailed with enthusiasm, so they went back to the boarding-house to change. Doris was carrying a beach bag, and with a little guilty flush, she asked Miss Gunnery if she could use her room to change, “…so as not to disturb Bob.”

Hamish again felt that uneasiness as Miss Gunnery agreed. He felt they were all becoming conspirators in encouraging a highly dangerous romance between Doris and Andrew Biggar.

The Bretts were seated in the lounge. They looked wistful when they heard the others were going to the fair, but they had better stay and look after the children.

Hamish found himself cursing Bob Harris again as they all set out. Normally, they would have remained a typical group of British holiday-makers, restrained and separate and wary of each other. But the common resentment against the nag had drawn them all together so quickly, which might have been a good thing had it not been for the shy glow on Doris’s face when she looked at Andrew.

He had a sudden sharp longing for Priscilla Halburton-Smythe’s cool assessment of the situation. But Priscilla, his ex-fiancee, was down in England. She had seemed very comfortable and at ease in his company before she had left. Whatever she had once felt for him – and he often wondered now what that something had been – had gone. And what am I doing, Hamish Macbeth, he wondered, holidaying with this odd bunch? He automatically stooped to pat Towser for comfort and then remembered he had left the dog behind at the boarding-house.

As they approached Skag, the wind rose, making the sands sing, blowing white sand about them so that they were glad to get in amongst the comparative shelter of the fair booths and roundabouts. Hamish waited until they all had piled on to a roundabout and then slid off quietly to see a bit of Skag and have some time to himself. He wandered away from the fairground, hearing the harsh carousel music fading behind him, reaching him only now and then in snatches borne by the ever-increasing wind. He walked through the narrow streets, noticing, here and there, the larger window in front of a cottage denoting that it was once a shop, before the days of cars and cheap supermarkets at the nearest town. Some of the cottages were thatched, odd in Scotland, when the only cottages that were once thatched had been the black houses covered in heather, the ones without chimneys, now only maintained as museum pieces. And yet the buildings were surely not that old, late Victorian, perhaps. He saw a building with a sign ‘Museum’ outside and went in for a look around.

There had evidently been a village on the point between the river Skag and the North Sea for as long as anyone could remember, but in the 1880s, weeks of torrential rain and high winds and high tides had caused river and sea to meet in one roaring flood which had covered the whole village. The village had remained drowned for weeks before the waters had receded. Ten years later, when the village had been rebuilt and was thriving again, great gales had come tearing over the North Sea from Scandinavia, whipping up the white sand and eventually burying the whole village. After the houses had been excavated, trees and razor-grass had been planted on the other side of the river, where a Scottish Sahara of white sand dunes stretched for miles to stop the sand from shifting.

He bought a small book on the history of the village and went back out without stopping to look at any of the exhibits in glass cases. The narrow, unsurfaced streets were deserted. Ribbons of sand snaked along them like feelers put out by some alien creature. The trouble with Scottish villages like this, thought Hamish, was that all the community life had been bled out of them. Cars took the villagers out at night to the bright lights of the town. The villagers would often blame the incomers for having destroyed village life, but it was the automobile which had done that, making nomads of even the elderly. There was no putting the clock back now.

And then Hamish thought he was falling into the messy ways of thinking of so many – that the good old days had been better. Not so long ago, Skag would have been a closed-in fishing community, repressed and dark and secretive, everything kept under wraps – incest, drunkenness, violence, child abuse, pregnant girls forced to marry men who did not want them, all the miseries coloured by the overriding horror of living in poverty or the fear of having to.

So now the young people left the quiet Scottish villages and were replaced by incomers from the south, who claimed they had come in search of ‘the quality of life’ which meant they got regularly drunk with all the other incomers fleeing from reality. But the village did have an odd eerie charm, filled as it was with the sound of rushing water from the river and the susurration of the gritty white sand blowing in the streets. There was one shop still open, manned by the inevitable Asian. A Scottish shopkeeper closed up at teatime, no matter how bad trade was. It sold newspapers, sweets, postcards and toys, and an odd assortment of household goods. Next to it was a dress-shop, Paris Fashions, with two dresses drooping in the window and with price-tags marking the gowns down from £120 to £85. Hamish wondered if they would ever sell. But where teashops used to be the last refuge of the genteel, now it was dress-shops, which opened their doors for a few months before facing up to the fact that with cheap clothes so near at hand in the local town, it was folly to try to sell Bond Street fashions at Bond Street prices.

There were two churches, one Free Church of Scotland and one Church of Scotland. A poster outside the Church of Scotland was half torn and fluttering in the wind. It said, “Life is Fragile. Handle with Prayer.”

Turning away from it, Hamish saw Bob Harris. He was coming out of a house at the end of the main street, his walk denoting that he was still drunk. His face was flushed and he had a triumphant smile on his face. He’s just made someone’s life a misery, thought Hamish. I wonder who lives there. Then he suddenly did not want to know anything more about Bob Harris and about whom he had been possibly persecuting. He walked instead to the harbour and sat on a bollard and looked down into the water.

The wind suddenly dropped and all was very quiet and still. He reflected that it must be the turn of the tide. It was a phenomenon he had noticed before. Just at the turn of the tide, nature held its breath – no bird sang, everything seemed to be waiting and waiting. And then, sure enough, as if someone had flicked a switch, everything started in motion again.

He got up and decided to go straight back to the hotel, collect a couple of paperbacks, and walk Towser along the beach. He occasionally wondered who it was who had searched his case but decided it had probably been Rogers, whose motive had been nothing more sinister than vulgar curiosity.

He felt a pang of guilt at not rejoining the others, but then reminded himself severely that he was not related to them, barely knew them, neither was he on police duty. If Bob Harris murdered his wife, then that was his business. And so, comforting himself with these callous thoughts, he loped home, collected Towser and the paperbacks, and set out along the beach in the opposite direction from Skag. He found a comfortable hollow and settled down to read with Towser at his feet. It would not get really dark. A pearly twilight would settle down about one in the morning for about two hours.

He read a tough-cop American detective story. The detective in it seemed to get results by punching confessions out of people, which gave Hamish a vicarious thrill as he thought of the scandal and miles of red tape that would descend on his head if he tried to do the same thing. The story ended satisfactorily with the detective incinerating the villains in a warehouse and getting a medal for bravery from the mayor in front of a cheering crowd on the steps of City Hall. America must be a marvellous country, thought Hamish wryly, if any of this was real. He imagined what would happen to him if he did the same thing. He would be hauled up before his superiors, who would want to know first of all why he had tackled the villians single-handed and not called for back-up, and why he had wrecked three police cars. Then he would be told that when he had finished writing all that out in triplicate, he would be interviewed by the gentlemen who owned the warehouse and their insurance company to explain why he had torched billions of dollars’ worth of stock.

With a sigh of satisfaction, he stood up and stretched and set off back along the beach for the boarding-house.

He had been looking forward to reading the other book, but Bob Harris was berating his wife next door and she was crying. Hamish ripped up pieces of tissue paper to form earplugs, buried his head under the pillow and fell asleep.

♦

Hamish had fully intended to keep the next day for himself, but when he entered the dining room for breakfast, all eyes turned to him hopefully. It was the sight of Doris’s sad face that made up his mind for him. He suddenly did not care whether Doris fell in love with Andrew or not. She might have a little happiness to remember in her otherwise miserable life.

“Whit are we daein’ the day, Hamish?” Cheryl called over to him.

“I thought you would all have had enough of bloody civil servants,” growled Bob Harris. “Petty little bureaucrats.”

Hamish ignored him. “I was down at the harbour yesterday evening,” he said, “and I noticed that you can hire a boat and fishing tackle. Anyone for fishing?”

They all agreed, with the exception of Bob, who sneered, “Fishing’s for fools.”

Dermott Brett said he would take his car into Skag because he didn’t want the children too tired with the walk before the day started. “Are you taking Towser?” asked Heather.

“Yes,” said Hamish. “He likes boats.”

Miss Gunnery said she would take her car as well and offered Hamish a lift. She frowned when Cheryl and Tracey begged a lift as well but said reluctantly that they could come too. Andrew and Doris said nothing. Hamish sensed a waiting in Doris. She was hoping she could slip away.

Nonetheless he was surprised when they all gathered on the harbour to find that Andrew had driven Doris in his car.

“Where’s Bob?” asked Dermott.

“He doesn’t want to come,” said Doris curtly.

They went to a hut at the back of the harbour where a surly man said he would supply them with tackle and take them out. They all paid their share of the cost. It was a large open boat with an outboard. The day was grey and still, the water flat and oily.

The boat owner, Jamie MacPherson, issued them with old lifejackets and even found some small ones for the children. He tried to object to Towser until he saw the party was going to cancel the trip if the dog wasn’t allowed on board.

They all climbed down a seaweed-slippery ladder from the jetty and on to the boat. Hamish had taken a dislike to Jamie, but he had to admit the man was efficient. He had small rods for Heather and Callum and even a small stick with a thread and a bent pin on it for the toddler, Fiona. They chugged out into the North Sea until the boat stopped and they began to rig up their lines. There were various false alarms. Doris caught a bit of seaweed and June Brett, an old shoe.

The day was hazy and lazy and then Heather said suddenly, “Someone ought to kill Mr Harris.”

“That’s enough of that, miss,” said her mother sharply and then looked apologetically at Doris.

“A lot of people want to kill Bob,” said Doris. “Don’t get angry with the child.”

“Why did you marry him?” asked Heather in her clear piping voice.

“People change,” said Doris on a sigh.

“It’s not easy to kill someone,” said Hamish, wondering if one of them might betray that he or she had searched his suitcase and knew he was a policeman.

Andrew laughed and then asked the question Hamish had been dreading. “Which branch of the civil service are you in, Hamish?”

“Min of Ag and Fish,” said Hamish, meaning the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries.

“Anyone there you would like to kill?”

“Aye,” said Hamish, thinking of the bane of his life, Detective Chief Inspector Blair, “there’s this big fat Glaswegian wi’ a sewer mouth.”

“I always think the best murders are when they are committed by someone who doesn’t know the victim,” said Miss Gunnery.

“There iss no such thing as a good murder,” said Hamish repressively. His Highland accent took on that sibilancy it always did when he was upset. “There iss nothing good in the taking of another’s life.”

“Well, I think that awfy Bob Harris waud be better dead,” said Tracey.

“Please do not say such things in front of Doris,” said Andrew sharply.

“She waud be glad tae see the last o’ him,” retorted Cheryl.

“In a book I was reading at school, the wicked girl in the remove was killed with a rare South African poison,” said Heather.

“You won’t get rare South African poisons in Skag,” said Hamish. “Murders are usually done in rage and they’re dreary and simple – a blow tae the head, a push down the stairs, an electric heater chucked in the bath, or something that looks like a climbing accident.”

“If he had come with us,” said Heather eagerly, “we could have pushed him overboard and said it was an accident.”

“What about Mr MacPherson there?” said Hamish, jerking his thumb at the surly man at the tiller.

“We would need to pay him hush money,” said Heather.

She was told sharply by her mother to be quiet, but the fish weren’t biting and somehow the subject of killing Bob Harris just wouldn’t go away. Miss Gunnery raised a laugh by saying the food at the boarding-house was enough to kill anyone, and that started a discussion of the various methods of poisoning, from simple broken glass in the pudding to arsenic in the tea.

Hamish was relieved when they drifted into a shoal of mackerel and shrieks of excitement as the fish were landed drove thoughts of murder out of the heads of the party. Hamish agreed as they made their way back to the harbour that he would phone the hotel and tell the Rogerses that he would cook the mackerel for their tea. They ate sandwiches in the pub and then headed home with their catch, Hamish having found out that there was to be a dance in the Church of Scotland hall that evening and suggesting they all go. Dermott said he would stay behind with the children so that June could have a night out. They seemed to have the ideal marriage.

He did not expect that Doris would be able to go with them, but Bob Harris was absent from the tea table as they laughed and joked and ate grilled mackerel and voted Hamish cook of the year.

They gathered in the lounge to sort out who would go in which car. Cheryl and Tracey were both wearing very short black leather skirts with very high heels and skimpy tops with plunging necklines. Their blonded hair had been backcombed and left to stand on end. Miss Gunnery was a surprise. She had left off her glasses and her brown hair was combed down to her shoulders, soft and wavy. She was wearing a plain white blouse and black skirt and modest heels but she looked softer and more vulnerable. June was amazing in a shocking-pink chiffon dress with thin straps and a fake diamond necklace. Doris Brett had brushed down her hair and put on a plain black dress. She had a very good figure and Hamish noticed gloomily that Andrew Biggar was taking in that fact as well.

Miss Gunnery asked Hamish to drive her car, saying she couldn’t see a thing without her glasses. Cheryl and Tracey went with them.

Hamish had thought it would be a sort of ceilidh with reels and country dances, but it turned out to be a disco full of thin, badly nourished teenagers, brought up on a diet of bread and frozen food. Scotland has one of the worst diets in the world, shunning fresh fruit and green vegetables. Scotland is also famous for bad teeth and Hamish noticed that some of the young teenagers had dentures. The old idea still prevailed. If you have a toothache, get the tooth extracted.

“I can’t do that sort of dancing,” said Miss Gunnery. “They look like a lot of dervishes.”

“Oh, you jist throw yourself around,” said Hamish amiably. “Follow me.”

His long, gangling figure threw itself this way and that, and since his movements seemed to have absolutely nothing to do with the beat of the music, the others joined him on the floor. If Hamish could make such a fool of himself, then they could, too.

It turned out to be a happy evening, and the teenagers who came up to talk to them turned into ordinary pleasant young people. One youth approached Hamish and whispered, “Hey, Mac, we got a drink outside.” Glad to see some of the old Highland traditions still existed, Hamish followed him outside, where he joined a group of youths. One passed him a half bottle of Scotch and Hamish took a hearty swig.

“Nice to see young people still around the villages,” he said. “I thought you would all be in town for the evening.”

“We hiv our ain fun,” said one, proving it by lighting up a joint. “Fancy a bit o’ skirt, grand-dad?”

Hamish, who was in his thirties, ignored the ‘grand-dad’ and the smell of cannabis. He was on holiday, and unless someone slew someone in front of him, he did not plan to become a policeman again until the holiday was over.

“I’m with my own party,” he said amiably.

“Och, them,” said the youth derisively. “I mean bint, get a leg ower.”

“Oh,” said Hamish, the light dawning. “You mean a brothel.”

“Aye, Maggie Simpson’s, down the end of the main street.”

Hamish wondered suddenly if that had been the house he had seen Bob Harris leaving. “Not tonight,” he said. He crossed the road to the pub, bought a half bottle of whisky, and returned and passed it around. He found that not one of the youths was employed, that all dreamt of going to London or Glasgow. The boredom of their days was alleviated by a combination of drink, hash and videos. And yet they seemed a nice enough bunch. A generation or two ago, before the dole was enough to drink on, they would have found work in fishing or farming. But they were as much slaves to pleasure and idleness as any dilettante aristocrat of a century ago.

He went back into the church hall and stared in delight at the spectacle of Miss Gunnery dancing with a slim leatherclad youth. Miss Gunnery appeared to have left her inhibitions behind with her glasses and hairpins. She was shaking and moving with the best of them. In a dark corner of the hall, Doris and Andrew were sitting side by side, talking intensely.

He took June Brett up for a dance, but she said she couldn’t abide ‘this modern stuff’ and insisted on shuffling around trying to get him to do a foxtrot to a disco beat.

Hamish could not but help feeling pleased with himself. He knew his efforts were making it a happy holiday, even for such as the dreadful Cheryl and Tracey, who were dancing with stiff stork-like movements in their very high heels, their faces animated under their masks of dead-white make-up and purple eyeshadow.

It certainly never crossed his mind that this would be their last happy evening together, and that he himself would do something before the night was out that would start a chain of events leading to murder.