Death of a Scriptwriter

∨ Death of a Scriptwriter ∧

3

Do not adultery commit;

Advantage rarely comes of it:

Thou shall not steal; an empty feat,

When it’s so lucrative to cheat:

Bear not false witness; let the lie

Have time on its own wings tofy:

Thou shall not covet; but tradition

Approves all forms of competition.

—Arthur Hugh Clough

Often one cannot look back on the best time in one’s life with any pleasure if it ends badly. So it was with Patricia Martyn-Broyd in the months leading up to the first day of filming.

During the long winter months, a glow of fame had kept her exhilarated. Local papers had interviewed her and one national. She had given a talk to the Mothers’ Union at the church in Cnothan on writing. And although she had not been able to start on a new book, there was always that little word ‘yet’ to comfort her. When all the excitement died down, she knew she could get to work again and the words would flow.

She arose early on the first day of filming and dressed carefully. The weather was fine, unusually fine for the Highlands of Scotland, with the moors and tarns of Sutherland stretched out benignly under a cloudless sky. She put on a Liberty print dress – good clothes lasted forever and did not date – and a black straw hat. Had the postman not decided to change his schedule and deliver the mail to Patricia’s end of the village first, then her feeling of euphoria might have lasted longer, but a square buff envelope with her publishers’ logo slid through the letter box.

She picked it up, sat down at the table and slit it open with an old silver paper knife which had belonged to her father.

She pulled out six glossy book jackets.

She stared down at them in shock. Certainly the old title was there – The Case of the Rising Tides – and her name in curly white letters, Patricia Martyn-Broyd. But on the front of the jacket was a photograph of Penelope Gates, a nude Penelope Gates. Her back was to the camera, but she was holding a magnifying glass and looking over one bare shoulder with a voluptuous smile. Larger than Patricia’s byline was the legend ‘Now a Major TV Series, Starring Penelope Gates as Lady Harriet.’

On the back of the jacket was more advertising for the TV series, along with Jamie Gallagher’s name as scriptwriter, Fiona King as producer, then a list of the cast.

Her hands trembled. What had gone wrong? She had seen such detective stories on the bookshop shelves but had never bought them, assuming that the writer was some hack who had written the books from television scripts rather than being an original writer.

Angry colour flooded her normally white face. A naked woman portrayed as her Lady Harriet – elegant, cool, clever Lady Harriet!

She went to the sideboard and took out a bottle of whisky which she had won in a church raffle the previous year, poured herself a glass and drank it down.

Then she phoned Pheasant Books in London and demanded to speak to her editor, Sue Percival, whom she considered much too young for the job.

“Hi, Patricia!” said Sue in that awful nasal accent of hers which always made Patricia shudder.

“I have just received the book jackets,” began Patricia.

“Great, aren’t they?”

Patricia took a deep breath. “They are disgusting. I am shocked. They must be changed immediately.”

“What’s up with them? I think they’re ace.”

“What has a naked actress to do with the character I created? And who is going to buy this? The covers make me look like some hack who has written up the book from the TV series.”

“Look here,” said Sue sharply, “you want to sell your book, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

“Well, the bookshops will take a good number if it’s going to be on TV. Without that book jacket, we may get very low sales indeed. I am sorry you feel this way. We’ll see what we can do when your next book is reprinted.”

The angry flush slowly died out of Patricia’s cheeks.

“Are you there?” asked Sue.

“Yes, yes,” said Patricia in a mollified voice. “You must understand I know little about marketing.”

“Leave it to us, Pat,” said Sue. “You’ll be a star.”

Patricia said goodbye and slowly replaced the receiver. Another book to be published. And what did it matter what they put on the cover? It was her work the public would be reading.

♦

Josh Gates awoke around his usual time, eleven in the morning. He remembered that Penelope was due to start filming that day. He smiled. He felt unusually well. Penelope had begged him to slow down on his drinking, and he only had a couple of pints the evening before. He was pleased with Penelope. The money was good, and this detective series would make her name. No more would people think of her as some sort of trollop.

Josh had strangely old·fashioned ideas. Films on Sky and cable television channels were full of writhing, naked bodies, but he ignored all that. Penelope taking off her clothes for anyone but him reflected badly, he thought, on his masculinity.

He had given his promise that he would not appear on the location. Penelope had hugged him and said that it would spoil her acting.

He wondered idly how to spend his day. He decided to go down to John Smith’s bookshop in St. Vincent Street and find something to read.

He crawled out of bed and picked up the clothes he had discarded the night before and put them on.

The bookshop, as usual, was crowded. He thumbed his way through several paperbacks and then, on impulse, asked an assistant whether he could look at the catalogue of forthcoming books.

She handed him an autumn catalogue, and he thumbed down the index until he found Patricia Martyn-Broyd’s name. He turned to the page indicated and found himself staring down at a full-page spread advertising The Case of the Rising Tides. The book jacket was there in all its glory. He glared at the naked photograph of his wife and let out a roar of, “Slut!” The bookshop assistants went calmly about their work. Any bookshop had its daily quota of nuts as far as they were concerned.

Sweating with fury, he went to the map section and jerked out a road atlas, blinking to clear his fury-filmed eyes until he located the village of Drim. Then he bought an ordnance survey map for the Sutherland area and strode out of the shop, taking great gulps of air.

“I’ll kill her!” he yelled to an astonished passerby.

Two policemen strolling along St. Vincent Street stopped for a moment and looked at the retreating figure of Josh.

“Nutter,” said one policeman laconically.

“I know that one,” said the other. “Thon’s Josh Gates, married to that actress. Probably drunk.”

“How do you know him?”

“Booked him for drunk and disorderly last year.”

“Who’s he going to kill?”

“Only himself, the way that one goes on. Fancy a hot pie?”

♦

Fiona sat in Drim Castle in her makeshift office, biting the end of a pencil. She was upset at the script for the first episode. But her protests had caused Jamie Gallagher to throw the scene of all time and threaten to get her sacked. “Back off,” Harry Frame had told her. “BBC Scotland want Jamie’s work, and that’s what they’ll get.”

But Fiona felt her job was going to be little more than a gofer, as Jamie fretted about camera angles and lighting. He had quarrelled not only with her, but with the production manager, Hal Forsyth, and with the director, Giles Brown.

Jamie had also tried to get Sheila Burford fired after he had tried to get into her room at the hotel. Sheila had phoned reception, and a couple of burly gamekeepers from the Tommel Castle Hotel estate had forcibly removed Jamie from outside her door.

But Harry Frame refused to be moved on the subject of Sheila. “That lassie has potential,” he said, meaning, thought ‘ Fiona bleakly, that he wanted to get into Sheila’s knickers as well.

Despite the blazing sunshine outside, the inside of the castle was cold and dark.

She sighed and ran over the budget again. If only Jamie would get well and truly drunk and fall into a peat bog and disappear forever.

♦

Hamish Macbeth, entering Drim Castle half an hour later, looked like a pointing gun dog, thought Sheila as she met him in the hall. His nose was in the air, and one leg was raised as he halted in midstride.

“What’s that smell?” he asked.

“I can’t smell anything,” said Sheila, blue eyes limpid with innocence. “Oh, maybe it’s the joss sticks. They’re starting with the commune scene in the first shot.”

“That’s pot,” said Hamish.

“Cannabis? Oh, I’m sure you are mistaken. We’re all drunks here.”

Nose sniffing busily, Hamish moved forward.

“You’re imagining things,” said Sheila as Hamish headed inexorably for Fiona’s office. She raised her voice and shouted, “You cannot possibly believe that any of us would smoke pot!”

Hamish opened the door of Fiona’s office and went inside. The window was wide open.

“Why, it’s Mr. Macbeth from Lochdubh,” said Fiona. Hamish went to the window, which was on the ground floor. He leaned out and picked up a roach from the flower bed and then held it up before Fiona. “Yours?”

“Look here, Constable,” said Fiona, “I’m under a lot of stress. It’s not cocaine. If you ask me, pot should be legalised. It’s a harmless, recreational drug.”

“I picked the pieces o’ a driver out from his car after it had gone over a cliff last year. He’d been smoking your recreational drug. I’m a policeman and it’s not legal, Miss King.”

“Call me Fiona.”

“Whether it’s Fiona or Miss King, you are breaking the law.”

Fiona saw her career falling in ruins before her eyes, and all because of one measly joint.

She reached for her handbag. “Perhaps this matter can be sorted out amicably, Officer.”

“Don’t even think of bribing me,” said Hamish. “You’re in bad enough trouble as it is.”

“I wasn’t going to bribe you,” said Fiona, near to tears, although that had been her intention. “I was just going to show you how little of the stuff I have.”

“Then show me.”

Fiona took out a packet and handed it over.

Hamish turned round and said to Sheila, “Close the door.”

Sheila closed the door and came to stand behind Fiona.

“It’s the people up here that could do with your money,” said Hamish. “I have no wish to disrupt the film. I’m giving you a warning. Don’t let me catch you or anyone else with this stuff again.” He put the packet in his pocket and threw the roach back out of the window.

Fiona sighed with relief after he had left. It was not as if she were addicted to the stuff. That was the great thing about pot. You could take it or leave it. Still, there was a little left in that roach. She climbed out of the window and began to look for it.

♦

In her caravan, Penelope put on her costume for the opening shots and thanked her stars that Josh was safely in Glasgow. It consisted of a gauzy, near-transparent Indian gown under which she was to wear nothing. The first scene was to be shot with the members of Lady Harriet’s commune on the shore of Loch Drim. Penelope had planned her future on the journey north. When the series was filmed and just about to be aired, she would take her final payments and put them in a new account in her name only. She would tell Josh that payments had been delayed to explain why the cheques did not appear in their remaining joint bank account. Then she would leave him and go to London, and with any luck he would drink himself to death before he found her.

A girl arrived to do her makeup, and then Sheila came to drive her down to the set. “I wonder what the locals are going to think of that getup,” said Sheila, “not to mention our famous author.”

“I won’t have to cope with it,” said Penelope. “That’s Fiona’s job.”

♦

There was quite a large audience on the waterfront to watch the first day of filming. Dressed in sixties Beatles style, the hippies wandered about, smoking and chatting. “What do you think of your leading man?” Sheila asked Penelope as they moved forward to join the others.

“He’s all right,” said Penelope, who privately thought that Gervase Hart, who played the part of the chief inspector, was painfully like Josh in drunkenness and bad temper. But she had learned quickly in her career never to criticise any actor. “He doesn’t appear in this scene, so I won’t be seeing him today.”

“Places,” called the director, Giles Brown, a thin, nervous man with a straggly beard.

Sheila helped Penelope out of her coat. There was a gasp from the assembled locals.

Her costume did not leave much to the imagination, thought Hamish as Penelope’s voluptuous curves were revealed by the thin gown.

The cast had rehearsed their lines over and over again in a cold, grimy church hall in Glasgow. The Highland day was sunny and warm, and there was an air of gaiety about the cast.

Then a voice cried, “Stop! This cannot go on!”

Everyone turned round. The little minister, Mr. Jessop, was thrusting his way to the front of the crowd.

“That woman is nearly naked!” he shouted.

Fiona moved quickly forward. “It’s only a film, Mr. Jessop,” she said placatingly.

The minister was red with anger. “I will not have such goings-on in my parish.”

Then Hamish saw Patricia’s car driving down the hill into Drim. More trouble, he thought.

Patricia got out of her car and edged her way to the front of the crowd, saying in her authoritative voice, “I am the writer. Let me through.”

Then she stopped, aghast at the sight of the hippies and the nearly naked Penelope, and all the joy of getting yet another book back in print fled from her mind. “What is this travesty?” she asked in a thin voice.

The minister swung round, sensing an ally. “Just look at that woman,” he cried, pointing a shaking finger at Penelope.

Patricia looked and quickly averted her eyes.

“It’s like this, Minister,” said Jamie Gallagher with a false smile and truculent eyes. “Lady Harriet is head of this commune in the Highlands, and – ”

“My Lady Harriet!” Patricia was now as white as she had been red a moment before. She had consoled herself on the road over with the thought that the naked Penelope Gates on the cover of her book had just been a publicity stunt. Had she not seen weird and wonderful covers on paperback editions of Dickens? But for this slut to play Lady Harriet, noble, gallant, intelligent Lady Harriet, was past bearing.

“I forbid it,” she said. “There is nothing in my book about any hippie commune.”

“There’s nothing in your book that’s filmable,” said Jamie. “Och, calm down, woman. It’s just a bit of poetic licence.”

“I shall have it stopped!”

“You can’t do anything about it,” said Jamie. “You signed the contract.”

Patricia stared at Fiona. “Is this true?”

“Well, yes.”

“And who is this man?” demanded Patricia, who had forgotten what Jamie looked like.

“This is Jamie Gallagher, our scriptwriter.”

“You are a charlatan,” said Patricia to Jamie. “Why say you are going to film my book and then change the whole thing?”

“I am making it suitable for television,” said Jamie. “Can someone get this woman off the set and keep her off?”

“You are not filming pornography in my parish,” howled the minister.

“I think we should all go to the castle and talk this through,” said Fiona.

♦

“How are things going in there?” Hamish asked Major Neal.

“Stormy, I think. I’m sorry for Miss Martyn-Broyd. She seems to be in shock.”

“They seem quieter now,” said Hamish, cocking an ear in the direction of Fiona’s office. “I’m surprised to hear that BBC Scotland think so highly of Jamie. You wouldn’t think he could write anything intelligent.”

“Oh, did you see Football Fever?”

“Who didn’t?” replied Hamish. Football Fever had been a television documentary on the lives and passions of Scottish football fans. It had been witty, clever and fascinating and had sold all over the world.

“Well, that was Jamie’s script.”

“You can’t tell a book from its cover,” said Hamish sententiously.

“It’ll probably look all slick and clever when we see the finished result.”

“You could be right,” said Hamish. “Here they come.”

The minister emerged with Fiona, Giles Brown and the production manager, Hal Forsyth. They were all laughing and chatting.

“So that’s all settled,” said Giles, clapping the minister on the back.

“Most generous of you,” said the minister.

Greased his palm, thought Hamish.

Then came Jamie, who strode past without a word. Where’s Patricia? wondered Hamish.

When they had all left, he found her sitting alone in Fiona’s office, clutching a script.

She looked up and saw Hamish. Her eyes were bleak. “I’ll kill him before I let him get away with this.”

“Who?”

“Jamie Gallagher. I told him right in front of all of them. ‘I’ll kill you.’” She began to cry.

Hamish sat down next to her and put an arm around her shoulders. “There now,” he said. “Just think about your books.”

“I am thinking about them,” sobbed Patricia. “Look, at this!”

She unfastened the clasp of her large handbag and took out one of the book jackets.

“Oh, my,” said Hamish. “The things they do. But I saw a paperback of Jane Austen’s Emma and if you didn’t know the work, you’d have thought it was porn. Before I came up to the castle, I saw some press down by the waterfront. Why don’t you go and say your piece to them? It pays to advertise.”

Patricia dried her eyes and blew her nose. “It’s all a nightmare. I just want to forget about the whole thing. It’s the end of a dream.”

“You’ll have a whole new readership. It could be the start of the dream.”

“I don’t want the sort of readers who will be attracted by that cover.” Patricia put the cover back in the handbag and closed it with a snap. “What happened to the world?” she said, looking about her in a dazed way.

It moved on and left you behind, thought Hamish, but he did not say so.

After he had said goodbye to Patricia, he went back to the waterfront. “How did you square it with the minister?” he asked Fiona.

“Contribution to the church – and that.” She pointed at Penelope.

Penelope was in the same gown, but underneath she wore a long silk underdress.

“Cleaning up the act?”

“Oh, we’ll have the saucy bits in a set where we can keep the public out,” said Fiona. “Where’s Patricia?”

“Gone home to have a good cry, I should think. Why the hell buy her book if you want to change it that much?”

“We wanted a Scottish location, and the plot isn’t bad. She should be grateful and shut up.”

The locals were beginning to drift off. It was all very boring. There seemed to be so many takes, so many long pauses, so little action.

Hamish reluctantly decided to go back to the police station and see if he was wanted for any duties.

His uneasy feeling about the whole business was melting away under the sunlight. Patricia now knew the worst and would get over her shock.

He had feared that the arrival of the television company would start up jealousies and rivalries among the village women, but the locals now looked bored with the whole thing.

♦

Above the general store in Drim, Ailsa Kennedy, wife of the proprietor, Jock, was studying her new hairstyle in the mirror and wondering if that cow Alice MacQueen had gone out of her way to sabotage her chances of appearing on television. Before she went to Alice’s, her fiery red hair had been long, almost to her waist. Now it had been chopped off and framed her face in one of those old·fashioned sixties styles with flicked-up ends. Alice could only manage old·fashioned styles. Ailsa scowled at her reflection. Her husband’s face appeared in the mirror behind her.

“What have you done to your hair?”

“Got it cut,” said Ailsa.

“You look a fright. I thought you said you’d never go near Alice’s. It’s this stupid fillum, and you’re to have nothing to do with it, lass. Did you see thon actress? Near naked, if the minister hadn’t made her cover up.”

“Oh, go away,” snapped Ailsa. “You give me a headache.”

♦

Jamie Gallagher heard the beat of music from the community hall and strolled inside. Village women were performing aerobics under the direction of Edie Aubrey.

He stared at them for a long moment and then went out again to search for Fiona. “You’ll never believe it,” he said when he found her. “There’s a whole time warp o’ women in the community hall. You’ve never seen so many sixties hairstyles.”

“I’ll have a look,” said Fiona.

♦

Ailsa Kennedy had just finished washing out the last of the offending hairstyle and was drying her hair into a smooth bob when she heard her latest friend, Holly Andrews, calling from the shop below. “Are you up there, Ailsa?”

“Coming,” called Ailsa, brushing down her hair.

She clattered down the steps to the shop.

Holly was a tubby middle-aged woman who had moved to a little cottage in Drim after the death of her husband. She had lived before his death in a large house on the outskirts of Lairg and after his death had sold up. Her brown hair was done in the same hairstyle that Ailsa had just vigorously washed out.

“What have you done to your hair?” gasped Holly.

“What d’you think? I washed it out. I looked like an aging Beatles fan.”

“They want our hair like this,” shrieked Holly. “It’s so exciting. The film’s set in the sixties, and Alice has turned us out in sixties hairstyles because that’s as far as she ever got in hairstyling, and the film people are wild about it. We’re all to be in crowd scenes.”

Ailsa clutched her now-smooth hair. “What have I done?”

“Go round to Alice’s and get her to do it again,” urged Holly.

Ten minutes later, Alice, with a superior smile on her face, whipped a smock around Ailsa. “I knew what I was doing,” she said. “I knew it was set in the sixties.”

Ailsa bit back an angry retort. “Just get on with it,” she muttered.

♦

Jimmy Macleod, a crofter, listened in horror as his wife, Nancy, teetering on high heels across the stone flags of the kitchen floor, announced that she had a part in the film.

“You’re not consorting with naked women and that’s that,” said Jimmy.

His wife looked at him contemptuously.

“I’ll put a stop to it right now.” He seized his jacket from a peg by the door and strode out.

In her office in Drim Castle, Fiona looked up wearily as Jimmy Macleod was ushered in by Sheila. He was a small man with rounded shoulders, a wrinkled face and an odd crab-like walk.

“Whit’s this about putting my wife in a fillum?” demanded Jimmy.

Fiona smiled at him. She had already dealt with two other irate husbands and knew exactly what to do.

“Wait right here,” she commanded. She made her hands into a square and surveyed the now bewildered Jimmy through them. “Perfect,” she said.

“What are ye talking about, woman?”

“You look the perfect Highlander to me,” said Fiona. “A very good face for one of our crowd scenes.”

Jimmy looked at her, his mouth open and the anger dying out of his face. “You will be paid, of course,” said Fiona. “Yes, we need the nobility of your face. What about a dram, Mr…?”

“Macleod, Jimmy Macleod.” Jimmy scuttled forward and sat down. His heart was beating very hard. He had gone to as many movies as he could afford when he was a boy. He felt as if some fairy had waved a wand and transformed him into Robert Redford. Fiona poured him a generous measure of whisky.

“Here’s to a successful show,” said Fiona.

“Aye,” said Jimmy, a smile cracking his walnut face. “Here’s tae the fillum business.”

“Film business,” said Fiona, “of which you are now a member.”

And Jimmy thought his heart would burst with pride.

♦

Jamie Gallagher was swollen up with vanity and whisky. He felt he could have turned out the whole television series on his own. Had he not told the director which camera angles should be used? But going over the day’s rushes, Fiona had objected to several of his choices, although the final choice would lie with Harry Frame.

Jamie left the bar of the Tommel Castle Hotel and went up to his room, where he phoned Harry Frame.

“We’ve a good team up here, Harry,” he said. “But there’s one person I cannae get along with and that’s Fiona. She’ll have to be replaced.”

Harry’s voice squawked objections at the other end. The publicity had gone out with Fiona’s name on it. Jamie finally threatened to pull out of the series, and Harry capitulated.

♦

Fiona listened to Harry ten minutes later on her mobile phone. “You can’t do this to me, Harry,” she said.

“I’m afraid I have to, luv. I’ll find something else for you.”

“I’ll kill Jamie,” said Fiona.

“I’ll come up myself tomorrow,” said Harry.

“What’s the point?” Fiona snapped her mobile phone shut and stared coldly into space.

♦

The following morning Patricia sat down to read her daily copy of the Scotsman. She felt calmer now. She would just stay away from the film location, wait until her book was published and then the reviewers would surely point out how superior it was to the television production. Then she came across an interview with Jamie Gallagher, famous scriptwriter of Football Fever. In the interview, Jamie described how he had created The Case of the Rising Tides and the character of Lady Harriet. There was no mention of Patricia or that the television series had been adapted from one of her books.

“I’ll kill him,” hissed Patricia. Then she ripped the newspaper to shreds.

♦

Angus Harris sat sadly in the Glasgow flat of his late friend, Stuart Campbell, sorting through his effects. Angus had been away in the States and had only just discovered that his friend had died of AIDS during his absence and had left him his flat and effects in his will.

Stuart had been a struggling writer. A trunk was full of manuscripts. Angus did not know what to do. Perhaps he should find some literary agent and send off all these manuscripts in the hope that at least one would get published. He pulled them out one by one, stopping when he came to one entitled Football Fever.

He slowly opened it. It was the script for a television documentary. He frowned. It had been shown in the States on PBS, but he was sure Stuart’s name hadn’t been on it. It had originally been produced by BBC Scotland.

And then he remembered seeing something about it in that day’s Scotsman. He went and got the paper and came to the interview with Jamie Gallagher.

It all clicked into place in his mind as he read the interview with Jamie. Stuart had written to him, saying that a scriptwriter called Jamie Gallagher was running an evening class to teach writers how to prepare a script for television.

“The bugger must have stolen it,” said Angus.

He set out to investigate. He called at BBC Scotland, but they had never heard of Stuart. He tried to find out names of any people who had attended Jamie’s classes, which had been held in the basement of a church. But there were no records, and no one could remember anything.

Angus knew his own violent temper was his weakness. But the thought that poor Stuart had died and someone had used his script to get international fame and glory was past bearing. This Jamie Gallagher was in Drim.

He would drive up there and confront him.

♦

Josh Gates, hungover, ate his bacon and eggs in a bed-and-breakfast outside Perth as he read the interview with Jamie. Here was the man who was behind making his wife flaunt herself on television.

“He’ll have me to reckon with!” howled Josh.

The other diners averted their eyes. This must be the madman whose drunken retching had kept them awake during the night.

♦

Fiona moved through the next day as if walking in a nightmare. She could hardly bear to look at Jamie and at the triumphant little smirk on his face.

Harry Frame arrived, having flown to Inverness early in the morning and taken a taxi up to Drim. Typical, thought Fiona.

I have to watch out for every penny, and he spends about a hundred and fifty pounds on a cab fare.

“Hang on for another week and be sweet to Jamie,” urged Harry. “It might blow over.”

“No scriptwriter should have this amount of power,” said Fiona.

“Well, he hasn’t done anything since Football Fever, but everyone still talks about that.”

Fiona picked up a script. “But Football Fever was clever and witty, and this is just crap.”

“Jamie knows what he’s doing,” said Harry.

“Well, let’s take this location of Drim for a start. The Case of the Rising Tides. It’s on a sea loch, but the tides don’t rise and fall the way they would do at the seaside. Also, the climax of the book is based on the flooding of the spring tide, and this is summer and the tide doesn’t flood.”

“I thought we weren’t going by the book,” said Harry. “What is it, Sheila?”

“There’s an Angus Harris here, breathing blood and fire,” said Sheila. “He says his friend Stuart Campbell wrote the script for Football Fever and Jamie pinched it.”

“Show him in,” said Fiona quickly.

Angus Harris was a good-looking young man with blond hair and a tanned face.

“What’s this all about?” asked Fiona.

“This!” Angus held out the script of Football Fever he had discovered. “My friend Stuart Campbell died when I was in the States. He left me his flat and effects. I was going through his stuff and I found this. Now Stuart attended a scriptwriting class given by Jamie Gallagher, and as I remember, the people in this class submitted various scripts to Gallagher for his opinion. The bastard must have copied Stuart’s script and, hearing he was dead, submitted it as his own.”

“Do you have any proof of this?”

“Not yet. But I’ll get it. I’ll go the newspapers with this. I’m sure someone who was in the same class will read it and come forward.”

“Get Jamie in here,” Harry ordered Sheila.

They waited in silence until Jamie came in. With a certain amount of relish, Fiona described the reason for Angus’s visit.

Jamie went off into full rant. “How dare you!” he gasped. “That was my script and no one else’s. I gave up that class because they were a bunch of losers. I was wasting my time and talent on a bunch of no-hopers and wannabes. Och, I remember this Stuart Campbell. Useless wee faggot.”

Angus punched him on the nose, and Jamie reeled back, blood streaming down his face. “Get the police!” howled Jamie, and Fiona picked up the phone.

♦

Hamish Macbeth, arriving half an hour later, listened carefully, trying to sort out accusations from the babble of voices that greeted him. Jamie’s voice was loudest, “I’m charging this bastard with assault!”

“Wait a bit,” said Hamish soothingly. “Now Mr. Harris, as far as I can make out, the situation is this. You found a script of Football Fever amongst your dead friend’s effects and came to the conclusion that he had written it.”

“I know he wrote it,” said Angus. “It was his style.”

“Charge him,” said Jamie.

“In a moment,” said Hamish mildly. “We’ll deal with this business o’ the script first. I’ll phone Glasgow police and we’ll take the matter from there. It should be easy to find someone who was at that class.”

The anger drained out of Jamie. “Let’s just leave it. I’m sorry I called Stuart a faggot. I don’t feel like wasting my time appearing in a sheriff’s court. I’ve got work to do.”

“But I think the matter should be investigated,” said Fiona sweetly. “Plagiarism is a serious business.”

“You bitch!” snarled Jamie. “You’ve just got it in for me because you’re out of a job.”…

“Now I’ve met you,” said Angus to Jamie, “I can’t believe for a minute that you wrote anything as intelligent and amusing as Football Fever. You’re a dead man.”

“I’ll look into it,” said Hamish. “Although I gather the provocation was great, Mr. Harris, don’t go around hitting people.” He turned to Harry Frame. “I’ll let you know what I find out.”

♦

Over in Lochdubh, Dr. Brodie received a distress call from the minister’s wife at Cnothan. “It’s Miss Martyn-Broyd. She’s wandering around shouting something about killing someone, and our Dr. MacWhirter is on holiday.”

Dr. Brodie drove over to Cnothan. The first person he saw in the bleak main street was Patricia, striding up and down, clenching and unclenching her fists.

The doctor got out of the car. “Miss Martyn-Broyd? I’ll just be getting you home.”

“Leave me alone,” grumbled Patricia.

“This is a disgraceful way for a lady to behave,” said Dr. Brodie.

She looked at him in dazed surprise and then began to cry. “Get in the car,” ordered the doctor.

He drove her back to her cottage. He had called there once before when the local doctor had been on holiday. Patricia had thought she was suffering from a heart attack, but Dr. Brodie had diagnosed a bad case of indigestion.

“Sit down,” he ordered when they were in her cottage, “and tell me from the beginning what’s put you in this state.”

Patricia began to talk and talk. She showed him the book jacket. She told him about her horror at seeing Penelope Gates on the set and finished by wailing, “I’ll be a laughingstock. I’ll kill that man Gallagher.”

“You’ll only be a laughingstock if you march about Cnothan speaking to yourself,” complained Dr. Brodie. He noticed that Patricia was calm and reasonable now.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know what came over me.”

“Have you any friends up here?” asked Dr. Brodie.

“I know people in the church.”

“I meant real friends. A shoulder to cry on.”

“There is no one here I can relate to,” said Patricia with simple snobbery. “They are not of my class.”

“I would drop that old·fashioned attitude and get out and about a bit more or go somewhere where you think you’ll be amongst your own kind. I’m not giving you a sedative. I don’t believe in them. But if it all gets too much for you again, I want you to phone me or come to my surgery in Lochdubh and talk it over. There is nothing like talking in a situation like this.”

♦

When Dr. Brodie drove back into Lochdubh, he saw Hamish Macbeth strolling along the waterfront and hailed him.

“What’s this I hear about Patricia going bonkers?” asked Hamish.

“News travels fast in the Highlands,” said the doctor. “The poor woman had a brainstorm because of the savaging of her work.”

“I don’t like this film business at all,” said Hamish. “I want it to work for the people in Drim – they could do with the money – but there’s a bad feeling about the whole thing. I found out that Fiona woman, the producer, got fired because of Jamie Gallagher, the scriptwriter, and now there’s a young man from Glasgow who says that Jamie pinched his friend’s script for Football Fever and used it as his own. There’s already been violence. The young man, Angus Harris, punched Gallagher on the nose. Och, I’m worrying too much. Maybe it’s chust the way TV people go on!”