Death of a Snob

∨ Death of a Snob ∧

2

From the lone shieling of the misty island

Mountains divide us, and the waste of seas –

Yet still the blood is strong, the heart is Highland,

And we in dreams behold the Hebrides!

—SIR WALTER SCOTT

The lights of the fishing boat which was to carry them to Eileencraig bobbed closer across the water. Hamish, out of uniform, pulled his tweed-coat collar up against the biting wind. Jane, he noticed, was wearing her jacket open. There might be something to this health-farm business after all, he thought.

The fisherman was a gnarled little man with a sour expression. Jane hailed him gaily, but he jumped nimbly onto the jetty and began to tie the rope around a bollard, ignoring her completely, as did his second in command, a pimply-faced boy with pale eyes, a wet mouth, and an incipient beard.

“Angus is quite a character,” said Jane, meaning the fisherman and giving that merry laugh of hers again. She and Hamish went on board, Hamish carrying her heavy suitcase and his own travelbag. The two-man crew cast off and the boat bucketed out over the rough sea. Hamish went down below to an oily, stinking little engine room furnished with two smelly berths and a dirty table. He sat on one of the berths. The youth scrambled down and went into the galley and put a kettle on the stove, which was lurching about on its gimbals.

“What’s your name?” asked Hamish.

“Joseph Macleod,” said the boy. He began to whistle through his teeth.

“Is Mrs. Wetherby in the wheelhouse?” asked Hamish.

“Naw, herself is oot on the deck.”

“In this weather?”

“Aye, her’s daft. There’s worse coming.” The boat lurched and bucketed but the boy kept his balance, swaying easily with the erratic motion. “Right bad storm inland. Heard it on the radio.”

Hamish thought uneasily of Priscilla. They were on the west coast. The storm had been driven in from the east. He hoped she was safe.

Jane clattered down to join Hamish, her face shining with good health. “Marvellous sea,” she said. “Waves like mountains.”

“I can feel them, and that’s enough.” Hamish, still seated on one of the berths with the raised edge of it digging into his thighs, looked queasily at Jane. “It’s a wonder you got them to bring the boat out in this weather.”

“I pay well.” Jane lay down on the other berth and raised one booted leg in the air to admire it.

Hamish had to hand it to Jane. It was a dreadful crossing and yet she prattled on as if lying on a sofa in her own living-room. The little fishing boat crawled up one wave and plunged down the next and then wallowed about in the choppy trough at the bottom before scaling another watery mountain. The boy left the kettle and started to work the pumps, for sea water was crashing down the companion-way. The air was horrid with the sound of wind and waves and the groanings of the boat as it fought its way to Eileencraig.

Hamish’s cold felt worse. His forehead was hot and there was a ringing in his ears. Jane’s presence was claustrophobic. There was too much of everything about her, thought Hamish dizzily. Too much length of black-booted leg, too much cleavage, and too much of that breathy, sexy voice that rose remorselessly above the storm.

“The reason for the divorce,” Jane was saying, “was that we both needed space. It’s very important to have space in a marriage, don’t you think?”

“I wouldn’t know,” replied Hamish, “not being married myself.”

Jane’s large eyes swivelled round like headlamps turning a corner to focus on him. “Everyone to their own bag,” she said cheerfully. “Have you a lover?”

“I am not a homosexual.”

“Then why aren’t you married? I mean, you’re over thirty, aren’t you? And anyone over thirty who is not married is either a homosexual or emotionally immature.”

“It could be argued that divorce is a sign of emotional immaturity,” said Hamish. “Inability to make a go of things once the first fine careless rapture has died down.”

“Why, Hamish Macbeth, you are straight out of the Dark Ages!”

Hamish got up and clutched at a shelf for support. “Going to get a breath of air,” he said, and scurried up the iron stairs before Jane could volunteer to accompany him.

It was still wild, but the great seas were dying. He went into the wheelhouse. “Nearly there,” grunted the fisherman.

Hamish peered through the spray-blotched window. “Can’t see anything but darkness and water.”

“Ower there.” The fisherman pointed to the middle west. Hamish strained his eyes. He had never been to Eileencraig. Then, all at once, he saw lights in the blackness, lights so low that he seemed to be looking down on them. He was to find out later that a large part of the center of the very flat island was below sea-level. The sea was calming. Somewhere far overhead, the wind was tearing and shrieking, but down below, all was suddenly still, an eerie effect, as if Eileencraig, like a sort of aquatic Brigadoon, had risen from the sea.

Jane appeared on deck, obviously looking for him. He went out to join her. The boat cruised into a wooden jetty. There were little knots of people standing on the jetty.

As they disembarked, Hamish carrying the luggage, he gave them a cheery salute of “Afternoon,” but they all stared back at Hamish and Jane without moving, like sullen villagers in some long-forgotten war watching the arrival of their conquerors. There was something uncanny about their stillness, their watching. Their very clothes seemed to belong to an older age: the women in black shawls, the men in shiny tight suits. They stood immobile, watching, ever watching, not moving an inch, so that Hamish and Jane had to walk around the little groups to get off the jetty.

Hamish had once had a murder case in a Sutherland village called Cnothah. There, the inhabitants were anything but friendly but would have looked like a welcoming committee compared to these islanders.

Jane strode to where an ex-army jeep was parked and swung her long legs into it, and Hamish climbed in beside her after slinging the luggage into the back. “Horrible old thing,” commented Jane, “but sheer extravagance to leave anything more expensive lying around. They’d just take it to pieces.”

“Out of spite?” Hamish looked back at the islanders on the jetty, who had all turned around and were now staring at the jeep, their black silhouettes against the jetty lights, like cardboard cut-outs.

Jane drove off. “Oh, no,” she shouted above the noise of the engine. “They’re rather sweet really. Just like naughty children.”

“Why on earth do you stay in such a place?”

“It is part of the health routine to have walks and exercise in such a remote, unspoiled part. My guests love it.”

They probably would, thought Hamish, cushioned as they were from the stark realities of remote island life.

“And just smell that air!”

As the jeep was an open one, there was little else Hamish could do but smell the air. The road wound through the darkness, the headlights picking out acres of bleak bog at every turn.

Jane swerved off the road and drove over a heathery track and then along the hard white sand of a curve of beach. “There it is,” she called. “At the end.”

Floodlit, The Happy Wanderer stood in all its glory, cocking a snoot at the simple grandeur of beach and moorland. It had been built like one of those pseudo-Spanish villas in California with arches and curved wrought-iron balconies, the whole having been painted white. A pink curly sign, “The Happy Wanderer,” shone out into the blackness.

It fronted right on the beach. Jane pulled up at the entrance.

“Home at last,” she said. “Come in, Hamish, and I’ll show you to your room.”

The front door led straight into the main lounge. There was a huge fireplace filled with blazing logs; in front of it stood several chintz-covered sofas and armchairs. The room had a high arched wooden ceiling and fake skin rugs on the floor; a fake leopardskin lay in front of the fire, and nylon sheepskins dotted, like islands, the haircord carpet. Several modern paintings in acid colours swore from the walls. There was no reception desk, no receptionist, no pigeon-holes for keys and letters.

Jane conducted him down a corridor that led off the far end of the lounge and threw open a door with the legend ‘Rob Roy’ on it. The room was large, designed in a sort of 1970s interior decorator’s shades of brown and cream, with a large vase of brown-and-cream dried flowers on a low glass table. There was a double bed and a desk and several chairs and a private bathroom. A bad painting of Rob Roy waving a broadsword and standing on his native heath looked down from over a strictly ornamental fireplace, and a bookshelf full of women’s magazines was beside the bed. There was, however, no television; nor a phone.

“Where is everyone?” asked Hamish.

“I suppose they’re in the television room as usual. Odd, isn’t it? I mean the way people can’t live without television.”

“Can I have my key?” asked Hamish.

Again that merry laugh, which was beginning to grate on Hamish’s nerves. “We don’t have keys here, copper. No need for them. We’re all one big happy family. I try to make it as much like a private house as possible.”

“Yes, and I suppose if anyone does pinch anything, they wouldn’t get very far,” commented Hamish cynically. “There’s no phone, so I suppose there’s no room service. Any chance o’ a cup of tea?”

Jane looked at him seriously. “Do you know that tea contains just as much caffeine as coffee?”

“Coffee would do just fine.”

“You don’t understand. Both are bad for you. But come and meet the others when you’re ready.”

Hamish sighed and sat down after she had left. He wondered whether he was supposed to change into black tie for dinner and then decided that the rugged people who came to remote, wind-swept health forms probably sat down in shorts and T–shirts.

He had a hot bath, changed into a clean shirt, sports jacket and flannels, swallowed two aspirin, and went in search of the others.

By following the sound of the six-o’clock news, he located the television room. Only one person looked up when he entered, a woman who had been reading a book. The rest were staring at the box. Jane then burst into the room. She had changed into a sort of white leather jump suit, the gohl zip pulled down to reveal that cleavage. “Drinks in the lounge,” she called.

A tetchy-looking man who held a remote control switched off the television. The small party rose stiffly to their feet. Hamish thought that they all, with the exception of the book-reading woman, looked as if they had been gazing at the television set since Jane had left on her visit to Priscilla.

A drinks trolley was pulled up near the fire. “I’ll introduce our newcomer,” said Jane. “This is Hamish Macbeth, a friend of Priscilla’s – you know Priscilla, the one I went to see. Hamish, first names will do. Heather and Diarmuid, Sheila and Ian, Harriet and John.”

Hamish’s eyes roved over the group. Which was Jane’s ex? He found the woman who had been reading had joined him. She had been introduced as Harriet. This then was Harriet Shaw, the cookery-book writer. She was a stylish-looking woman in her forties with a sallow, clever face made almost attractive by a pair of large humorous grey eyes.

“Jane told me you write books,” said Hamish.

“Yes,” said Harriet. “I came up here in the hope of getting some old Scottish recipes from the islanders.”

Hamish looked rueful. “I wouldn’t bank on it. You’ll find they dine on things like fish fingers and iced cakes made in Glasgow. Help me out. Who are the others? First names are not a help.”

“Have a drink first,” said Harriet.

“In a moment. I would really prefer a cup of tea. Jane seems down on caffeine, though. I thought she would have frowned on alcohol.”

“She seems to think it all right in moderation. Well, the couple drinking gin and tonics are Heather and Diarmuid Todd. He’s in real estate. She’s a self-appointed culture vulture.”

Diarmuid Todd was an attractive-looking man; that is, to anyone who liked the looks shown in tobacco advertisements. He had thick brown wavy hair and a pipe clenched between his teeth. He was smiling enigmatically and staring off into the middle distance. Despite the heat of the lounge, he was wearing a chunky Aran sweater with blue cords and boat shoes without socks.

His wife, Heather, looked older. She had blackish-brown hair and was wearing a pink jump suit with high heels. But her figure was lumpy and she looked like a parody of Jane, whom she obviously admired immensely. She had a doughy face set in lines of discontent.

“And Tweedledum and Tweedledee, that’s Ian and Sheila Carpenter.”

Ian and Sheila Carpenter were both roly-poly people with fat jolly faces and fat jolly smiles. They were flirting with each other in a kittenish, affectionate way.

“The small, bad-tempered man is Jane’s ex, John Wetherby.”

John was well-groomed, slightly plump, looking as if he had been reluctantly dragged from his office. He was wearing an immaculately tailored pin-striped suit, a shirt with a white separate collar and striped front, and an old school tie.

“He’s a barrister,” said Harriet. “So what do you do?”

Hamish hesitated. It was obvious that Jane did not want anyone to know he was a policeman. “I work for the forestry,” he said.

Heather Todd, who had come up to them, caught Hamish’s last remark. Her eyes bored insolently into his. “Good heavens,” she said, “where did Jane pick you up?”

“In Lochdubh, on the mainland,” said Hamish amiably.

Heather’s voice was Glaswegian, although it would take a practised ear to register the tact. Among the middle classes of Glasgow it had become unfashionable to try to affect an English accent, the painful result of that effort usually coming out as what was damned not so long ago as Kelvinside, the name of one of the posher areas, where glass came out as ‘gless’ and path as ‘peth’. The new generation of middle-aged, middle–class snobs affected a transatlantic drawl (“I godda go’) but occasionally throwing in a few chosen words of Scottish dialect to show they were of the people, there being nothing more snobbish than a left-wing Glaswegian who longed for the days when that city was a dump of slums and despair instead of having its present successful image. These same snobs talked about ‘the workers’ and their rights frequently, but made sure they never knew one, short of indulgently telling some barman when they were slumming to “buy that wee fellow in the cap a drink.”

“Do you realise what you and your like are doing?” demanded Heather.

“No, tell me.” Hamish looked around, wondering whether he could ask Jane to relent and fetch him a cup of tea. There did not seem to be any staff.

“Covering the Highlands with those ghastly conifers, and all so that rich yuppies in England can get a tax shelter.”

“Forestry is no longer a tax shelter,” pointed out Hamish.

“There arnae that many jobs in the Highlands, and forestry’s a blessing.”

“Well, that’s not the way I see it,” said Heather, casting her eyes about her to draw an audience from the rest. “The massacre of the flow country in Sutherland, the damage to the environment…” Her hectoring voice went on and on.

Hamish did not like the dreary new pine forests that covered the north of Scotland, but someone like Heather always made him feel like defending them.

“I’ll find you a cup of tea,” said Harriet’s voice at his ear, and she tugged at his sleeve. They slipped quietly away while Heather continued her lecture, her eyes half-closed so that she could better enjoy the sound of her own voice, which went on and on.

Harriet led kim into a sterile-looking kitchen where everything gleamed white under strips of fluorescent light.

“I bet it’s herb tea,” said Hamish, looking gloomily about.

“No, real tea. I’ve been in charge of the kitchen while Jane’s been away.” Harriet opened a cupboard and took down a canister of tea and then plugged in an electric kettle.

“Never tell me Jane does all her own cooking,” Hamish said more in hope of being contradicted than anything else.

“Not while the hotel is running.” Harriet heated the teapot and spooned in tea-leaves. “Women come in during the day to do the cleaning and make the beds. But for us, her friends, she does do the cooking.”

“Health stuff?” asked Hamish.

“Well, yes, but you only have to suffer for the next few days. I’m doing a traditional Christmas dinner, and, of course, tonight’s dinner.”

“Which is?”

“Very simple. Sirloin steak, baked potato, peas and carrots, salad. Before that, soup; and after that, butterscotch pudding.” She filled the teapot.

“And were you all friends before you met up here?”

“No,” said Harriet. “We’re all new to each other. In fact, I was very surprised to get Jane’s invitation. We’re not that close. I felt I was putting on too much weight – oh, about four years ago – and went to a health farm in Surrey. Jane was there, slim as ever, but finding out how a health farm was run. We talked a lot and then met once or twice in London for lunch. How did you meet her?”

“I’m a friend o’ a friend o’ hers,” said Hamish. “That’s all. I had nowhere to go this Christmas and she asked me along.”

The grey eyes regarding him were shrewd. “And that’s all? You’re not Jane’s latest?”

“Hardly,” said Hamish stiffly, “with her husband present.”

“Her ex-husband. But that wouldn’t stop Jane. Anyway, she’s made a go of things here. Of course, she imports a lot of staff during the tourist season, chef, masseur, waitresses, the lot. The Todds, that’s Heather and Diarmuid, were paying guests, and so they’re now here as non-paying friends. The same with the Carpenters.”

“More like acquaintances than friends.”

“Exactly. Off with you. I’ve got to prepare dinner.” Harriet took down a tray and put teapot, cup and saucer, sugar and milk on it, handed it to Hamish, and shooed him out.

Hamish returned to the lounge, carrying the tray. He was feeling much more cheerful. He liked Harriet Shaw.

But no sooner had he taken off his sports jacket and tie, for the room was hot and there did not seem to be any rigid dress code, and established himself in an armchair, than Heather Todd bore down on him and stood over him, her hands on her hips. “Are you a Highlander?” she demanded.

“Yes,” said Hamish, carefully pouring tea and determined to enjoy it.

She threw back her head and laughed. It was a copy of that laugh of Jane’s, which always sounded as though Jane herself had copied it from someone else.

“A Highlander, and yet you are prepared to contribute to the rape of your country.”

Hamish’s eyes travelled up and down her body with calculated insolence. “Right now, I’ve never felt less like raping anyone or anything in ma life.”

Heather snorted, and one sandalled foot pawed the carpet. “What of the Highland clearances?” she demanded.

“That wass the last century.”

“Burning the poor Highlanders’ houses over their heads, driving them out of their homes to make way for sheep. And now it’s trees!”

“I hivnae heard o’ one cottager being turned out to make way for a tree,” said Hamish, trying to peer round her tightly corseted figure to see if Jane or anyone else looked like coming to his rescue.

“What have you to say for yourself?” Heather was asking.

“What I haff to say,” said Hamish, his suddenly sibilant accent betraying his annoyance, “is that when the Hydro Electric board was burying whole villages under man-made lakes, your sort never breathed a word. Now that it iss politically fashionable to bleat about the environment, it’s hard for folks like me to believe you give a damn.”

Heather did not listen to him. He was to learn that once launched, you could say what you liked, she never heard a word. Irritated, he rose and pushed past her and sat on the other side of the room.

He was joined by John Wetherby. “I could kill that woman,” said John. “Pontificates from morning till night.”

“Well, maybe her husband will do the job for you.” Hamish looked longingly at the tea he had been forced to abandon.

“Him! That wimp. Have you seen him pass a mirror? He stops dead-still and gazes longingly at himself like a man looking at a lover.”

“Let’s talk about something else,” said Hamish. “What brought you here?”

“I am Jane’s ex-husband.”

“Aye, just so, but what brought you?”

“Oh, I get you. I couldn’t believe she’d made such a go of things. When we were married, she was always full of harebrained schemes to make money. That’s how I got her to agree to a divorce. I said I would put up the money for this place if she agreed. I thought she would be back after a year, asking me to bail her out, but not a bit of it.”

“And weren’t you embarrassed about seeing her again…after the divorce, I mean?”

He gave a cackle of laughter. “You don’t know Jane. Have you heard her psycho-babble yet? There’s not one idea in that head of hers that doesn’t come straight out of a woman’s magazine. An article on ‘How to Be Friends With Your Ex’ was one she enjoyed a lot. Are you the latest amour? She occasionally liked a bit of the rough stuff.”

Hamish was too amazed to feel insulted at this bit of blatant snobbery. “Did she have affairs when you were married?”

“Yes, she said we had become sexually stagnant and went out to experiment.” His voice grew reflective. “It was that hairy truck-driver I couldn’t take.”

Hamish gave John Wetherby a prim look of startled disapproval and rose and moved away. The Carpenters, surely, would be safe company. Sheila was reading a book and Ian was sipping a large whisky and smiling vaguely at nothing.

He sat down next to Ian. “Topping place,” said Ian, looking around.

“I hear you’re a farmer,” said Hamish. “Funny, I wouldn’t have thought farmers would go to health farms. Although, come to think of it, maybe that’s not true. I just had a vague idea that perhaps health fanatics went in for it.”

Ian patted his round stomach complacently. “Sheila keeps up with all the fads. We each lost five pounds when we were here in the summer. Of course, we put it all back on again the week we got home. Didn’t we, sweetie?”

“Mmm?” Sheila was buried in a book with a pink cover called Love’s Abiding Passion. Her lips were moving slightly and she was breathing heavily through her nose.

And then Heather was before them. “What are you reading, Sheila?” she demanded. Sheila gave a little sigh and held up the book so that Heather could read the tide.

“My dear, dear Sheila,” said Heather, shaking her head. “Surely you can find something better than that pap?”

“It’s a marvellous book,” said Sheila, her fat cheeks turning pink.

Heather suddenly snatched it out of Sheila’s hand and flicked over the pages and then gleefully read aloud.

“There was a tearing sound and the thin silk cascaded at her feet. He thrust his hot body against her naked one and she could feel his aroused masculinity bulging against her thigh.”

I ask you, Sheila, how can you bear to read a book like that?”

Sheila snatched it back and heaved herself out of the sofa and waddled from the room. Her husband stood up and glared at Heather. “It’s better than the works of Marx any day.”

“It would considerably improve your wife’s mind to read Karl Marx.”

“Yah!” said Ian. “What d’you lot think about the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, hey?”

“That was not real Communism,” said Heather; “Real communism…”

“Stuff it, you old crow,” said the farmer and left the room with the same waddling walk as his wife. Hamish felt like running after him and shaking his hand.

Before Heather could speak to him again, he darted for the door and let himself out into the night. The high wind of earlier in the day had descended to ground level and was tearing and shrieking and moaning along the shore, where seals lay at the edge of the crashing waves, their curious eyes gleaming pink from the neon sign of The Happy Wanderer.

The wind was cold. Hamish wished he had remembered to put on his jacket. Priscilla often called him a moocher. He hugged his thin body against the bite of the wind. He should have stayed where he was in Lochdubh. He could imagine someone saying they would like to strangle Jane, but no one would really think of doing it. There was not enough real about the woman to encourage great love or great hate. And that marriage of hers! When John had been talking about that truck driver, Hamish had felt slightly sick.

His cold would get worse if he stayed outside. He walked back in. Jane was standing talking to Heather. Heather was not hectoring Jane about anything but looking at her with open-mouthed admiration and hanging on every word.

“Is there a telephone?” Hamish asked Jane.

“There’s one in my office you can use. It’s over there,” said Jane, pointing to a door on the right of the lounge.

Hamish walked over to where she had pointed. A ceramic sign on the door said ‘Jane’s Office’ and was decorated by a wreath of painted wild flowers.

The office was strictly functional; large steel desk, steel filing cabinets, two easy chairs for visitors.

Hamish sat behind the desk, picked up the phone and dialled Tommel Castle, now called Tommel Castle Hotel. He recognised the voice of Mary Anderson, a local girl, who operated the hotel switchboard. “Can I speak to Priscilla?” he asked.

“Herself is not back,” said Mary. “She went to Rogart.”

“Is the storm bad?” asked Hamish, trying to blot out pictures of a car upended in a blizzard by the side of the road with a woman and a dog lying beside it.

“Oh, it’s real bad. That’s Hamish, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Has she phoned?”

“No, but they got it worse over there than here, so folks are saying. Maybe the lines are down.”

Hamish thanked her, put down the receiver, then lifted it again and dialled his parents’ home.

His mother answered. “Is Priscilla there?” demanded Hamish, his voice sharp with anxiety.

“Aye, she’s here. But you cannae talk to her, son.”

“Why?”

“The poor lassie’s still fast asleep by the fire. My, Hamish, she used to be the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen, and now she’s nothing but skin and bone. She cannae leave. She’ll need to stay the night. I’ll let her sleep a bit and then give her a good supper and put her to bed.”

“Have you the room?”

“Och, yes, we’ll put a cot bed in the girls’ room. How’s yourself?”

“I’m just fine.”

“Is it a grand place?”

“Well, it’s a health farm, sort of mock-Spanish villa.”

“On Eileencraig! My, my.”

“Dinner,” called Jane, putting her head round the door.

“I’ve got to go, Ma,” said Hamish quickly. “I’d phone tomorrow.”

He said goodbye and sat for a moment looking at the phone. What on earth would the elegant and fastidious Priscilla make of his noisy, easygoing family?

He rose then and went out through the lounge to the dining-room. It was panelled in pine wood. Several small tables had been put together to make a big one and it was covered by a red-and-white-checked cloth and decorated with candles in wine bottles. A stag’s head ornamented one wall, and Hamish noticed to his surprise that it was fake. He hadn’t known that such a thing existed. Jane probably did not approve of bits of real animal being used, hence the fake head and the synthetic skins on the lounge floor.

Dinner was excellent and Hamish could only be glad that he was seated between the Carpenters and therefore protected by their bulk from Heather. Also, to his relief, conversation at dinner was innocuous. Jane was explaining that they would all go for a walk along the shore in the morning and then, after lunch, take a walk inland while there was still some light. Hamish enjoyed the excellent meal washed down with some good claret. He began to feel mellow. It was not going to be such a disaster after all. But he should show some gesture toward earning his keep.

As soon as dinner was over, he asked Jane to show him that bathroom heater.

Jane let him into her bedroom, through a door emblazoned with the legend “Sir Walter Scott.” It was furnished pretty much the same as the one allotted to Hamish, except that there were two bookshelves stuffed with women’s magazines instead of one.

He went into the bathroom and examined the heater carefully and then stood back and looked at the ceiling.

There was a patch of damp and black mould beginning to form on it. He was sure the builder had been right and that the heater had fallen off the wall because of the damp. In fact, probably the whole structure of the health farm needed to be treated for damp, but to tell Jane that at this early date would make him feel more of a fraud than he was and so he murmured non-committally that he would take another look at it on the following day, and that he would probably start his investigations by going to see Mrs. Bannerman.

Jane stood very close beside him. “I see what Priscilla means,” she said. “You are very competent.”

Hamish shied and took a nervous step back.

“How did you meet Priscilla?” he asked.

“It was at a party in London,” replied Jane. “Such a boring party, we decided to leave early and went to a bar for a drink and got talking. We had a few lunches after that.”

“And when did you last see her?”

“About three years ago, and then I heard this summer that her father had gone bust and turned the castle into an hotel.”

Hardly a friendship, thought Hamish. “Shall we join the others?” he said, easing around her and making for the door.

Jane looked a little disappointed but followed him out. “Pity,” she murmured. “I’ve never had a policeman before.” Or rather, that’s what Hamish thought she’d said.

The rest of the guests were back in the television lounge and grouped around the set. It was a talk show. A famous film star told everyone how he had got off the booze, and he was followed by a famous romantic novelist.

Heather’s eyes narrowed. “Just look at that silly woman. It gars me grue to see creatures like that making all that money producing rubbish.”

Sheila flushed and Hamish noticed that she slid the romance she had been holding on her lap down the side of the chair.

“Here, wait a minute,” said Harriet crossly. “I may only write cookery books, but I do know something about romance writers. To be successful you can’t write down, and very few of them make big money.”

Heather sniffed. “Money for old rope, if you ask me. And the historical ones are the worst. I doubt if they even open a history book.”

“Well, it’s the romance that sells it, not the historical content,” said Harriet soothingly. “For example, if I wrote a book about the French Revolution, I would describe the tyranny and horror and how the storming of the Bastille was only to get at the arsenal. There were only seven people freed, you know. Now your true romance writer would see it more through the eyes of Hollywood. Thousands of prisoners would be released while the heroine, dressed in rags, led the liberators. Great stuff. I really sometimes wonder if the less romance writers know, the better. Or, for example, I would describe a shiekh of the desert as a fat little man with glasses and a dish-towel on his head. Your true romance writer would have a hawk-eyed Rudolph Valentine character in Turkish turban and thigh-boots. It’s a harmless escape.”

“Harmless!” Heather snorted. “It’s even got women like poor Sheila here stuffing her mind with rubbish.”

“For heaven’s sake,” said Harriet crossly, “you watch the most awful pap on television, day and night. There was a programme on Channel Four last night about some Hollywood producer who does soft-porn horror films and who was treated by the interviewer as a serious intellectual. Anyone who writes popular literature, on the other hand, is treated like a charlatan, and do you know why, Heather? It’s because the world is full of morons who think they could write a book if only they had the time. You’re just jealous!”

“Yes, if you’re so bloody superior,” said John Wetherby, “why don’t you write a book, Heather?”

Heather looked at them like a baffled bull. Hamish guessed it was the very first time during her visit to the island that she had been under attack.

“Aren’t we all getting cross?” cried Jane. “Switch the goggle box off, John, and we’ll all have a game of Monopoly instead.”

Hamish was then able to see another side to Jane, the good-business⁄hostess side. She flattered Heather by asking her questions about the latest shows in Glasgow as she led them through to the lounge and spread out the Monopoly board on the table. She teased Sheila charmingly on having such a devoted husband and said she ought to write an article and tell everyone her secret. She congratulated Harriet on a beautiful meal and told Diarmuid, Heather’s husband, that he was so good-looking she was going to take some photographs of him to use for the health-farm brochure.

They all settled down in a better humour to a long game of Monopoly and nobody seemed to mind very much when Heather won.

Hamish at last went off to bed. The bed was comfortable and the central heating excellent. He wondered why Jane had seen fit to have extra wall heaters put in all the bathrooms, and then reflected that she was a clever-enough business woman to cosset her guests by seeming to supply them with a rigorous regime of exercise outside while pampering them with warmth and comfort indoors.

He was sure no one was trying to kill her. And yet, he could not shake off a nagging feeling of uneasiness. He put it down, after some thought, to the fact that he disliked Heather intensely and had been shocked by John’s revelations about his marriage. He would avoid them as much as possible. Harriet Shaw, now, was worth spending time with, and on that comfortable thought he drifted off to sleep.

≡≡≡

Sheila Carpenter sat in front of the dressing-table in the room called Mary of Argyll which she shared with her husband. She wound rollers in her hair while her husband lay in bed, watching her.

“I could kill her,” said Sheila suddenly.

“Who?”

“Heather, of course.”

“I’ll do it for you, pet. Don’t let her bother you. She’s not wurth it.”

“Petty, stupid snob,” said Sheila with uncharacteristic viciousness.

≡≡≡

“Who is that long drip of a Highlander?” demanded John Wetherby. Jane shrugged. She was putting away the Monopoly pieces in their box. “Just some friend of Priscilla’s.”

“You can’t fool me. For your benefit, your dear friend Heather told me this Macbeth was your latest.”

“It’s not true,” said Jane. “And Heather would not say anything malicious like that.”

“Oh, no? She’s a first-class bitch and I feel like bashing ‘her head in.”.

Jane studied him seriously and then said in a voice of patient reason, “You must stop this irrational jealousy, John. It’s not flattering or even sexually motivated. It is simply based on totally irrational masculine possessiveness. It said in an article I was reading the other day…”

“Pah!” shouted John and stomped off to his room.

≡≡≡

Diarmuid Todd sat at the dressing-table and trimmed his fingernails. His wife, Heather, was reading The Oppression of the Working Classes in a Capitalist Society. She read as far as page 2 and then put the book down. “What do you think of our Jane’s latest?”

Diarmuid paused, and then continued working on his nails with all the single-minded fastidiousness of a cat at its toilet. “Who do you mean?” he asked.

“Why, that Highland chap, Hamish something-or-another.”

Her husband put away the scissors in his leather manicure case and then took out an orangewood stick and began to clean his nails. “I don’t think he’s anything other than a Mend, Heather, and I hope you haven’t been going around saying anything else.”

His usually bland Scottish voice had a slight edge to it. “Maybe not,” said Heather. “Jane’s a very attractive-looking woman but hardly a man-eater. There’s something, well, sexless about her.”

She patted the springy waves of her permanently waved hair with a complacent hand before picking up her book again.

The stick snapped in Diarmuid’s suddenly tensed fingers and he threw his wife a look of pure and unadulterated hatred.

≡≡≡

Harriet Shaw creamed her face vigorously and then slapped at what she feared might become a double chin one of these days and wished she had not come. The Carpenters were sweet, but Heather was too much to take. Thank goodness for that Hamish fellow. He was charming and quite attractive in a way with his fiery-red hair and hazel eyes. Better stick with him till the holiday was over or she would end up killing Heather. She amused herself before falling asleep by thinking out ways to get rid of Heather and then how to dispose of the body, until, with a smile on her lips, she fell fast asleep.