Hamish Macbeth 03; Death of an Outsider

∨ Death of an Outsider ∧

2

There’s one parish church for all the people, whatsoever may be their ranks in life or their degrees,

Except for one damp, small, dark, freezing cold, little Methodist chapel of ease,

And close by the churchyard there’s a stonemason’s yard, that when the time is seasonable

Will furnish with afflictions sore and marble urns and cherubims very low and reasonable.

—Thomas Wood

Witchcraft,” said Hamish Macbeth. “Jist let me get my notebook.” He licked the end of his pencil and looked with delighted curiosity at William Mainwaring.

“Yes, witchcraft,” said Mainwaring testily. “Last week, I found crossed rowan branches placed outside the door. I am an expert on local folklore and knew this was to put a hex on us. Two days later, I found fingernails – the same thing. Then, last night, my wife was making her way home from the Women’s Rural Institute when three witches jumped over the churchyard wall and started cackling and howling about her.”

Hamish bit the end of his pencil thoughtfully. “Who is it that wants to drive you away?” he asked.

“Oh, everyone, I should think,” said Mainwaring.

“And why is that?”

“Because we are incomers and English.”

“And nothing else?”

“No other reason whatsoever,” said Mainwaring. “I am by way of being a leader of the community. They are a simple people here and look to me for guidance. It should be easy for you to find out the culprits and arrest them.”

“But if you are a leader of the community and looked up to,” asked Hamish blandly, “then why do they want to get rid of you?”

“We’re English, that’s all. And you don’t expect rational behaviour from these people. Also, the attack was directed against my wife. She is probably the target, now I come to think of it. She is a highly irritating woman.”

Hamish blinked. “In that case,” he said, “perhaps it would be better if I had a wee word with Mrs. Mainwaring.”

“Agatha has nothing to tell you that I cannot. You will probably find it is some of those bitches at the Women’s Rural Institute. I attended one of my wife’s lectures, and I could feel the atmosphere was hostile.”

“And at what time did this take place last night?”

“At ten o’clock, or as near as damn.”

Hamish looked at his shorthand notes. “Why did you not report the matter to Sergeant MacGregor?”

Mainwaring laughed. It was a pleasant and charming laugh, at odds with the words that followed. “MacGregor is a fool, and I have had reason to complain about him to his superiors on two occasions. I knew you, his replacement, would be arriving today and decided I would be better with fresh blood. You do not appear particularly intelligent to me, but, with my guidance, I should think we might get somewhere. I have experience of this sort of thing.”

“Witchcraft?”

“No, no, man. Detective work. Did my bit in the army. Not supposed to talk about it, but the little grey men in Whitehall called me in from time to time to ask my help.”

“And do you often talk to little grey men?” asked Hamish, deliberately misunderstanding him.

“God give me patience,” cried Mainwaring, his face turning a mottled colour. “M. I.5, you fool!”

“Is that a fact!” exclaimed Hamish, his eyes round with wonder. “Aye, I can see we’ll have your witches in no time at all, at all, with a brain like yours to help with the work.”

“You can start off with Mrs. Struthers, the minister’s wife. She runs the local WRI,” said Mainwaring.

“How long have you been in Cnothan?” asked Hamish.

“Eight years.”

Hamish was not in the least surprised that someone who had been in Cnothan for eight years was still regarded as an outsider. “And why did you come here?”

“My aunt was Scottish. She left me the house and the croft in her will. I like fishing and hill walking. I am a crofter, of course. I have two hundred Cheviots.”

Hamish stared blankly ahead. In his experience, incomers were often misguided romantics who thought they could get away from their troubles by leading a simple life in the Highlands of Scotland. They often took to drink. But there was no sign of the drinker about Mainwaring. Hamish wondered whether, as a retired army man in Chelmsford or somewhere like that in the south of England, he might have been considered very small beer. Mainwaring liked throwing his weight around and had probably, instead of selling his aunt’s house and croft, chosen to stay in this small pond to perform as a big fish.

“I will call on you tomorrow,” said Hamish, “and tell you how I got on. Address?”

“Balmain. It’s about two miles outside the town on the Lochdubh road.”

Hamish wrote it down.

“Goodbye, Constable,” said Mainwaring. “But you will find the hostility is directed against my wife. She puts people’s backs up.”

“I have found,” said Hamish slowly, “that married people often don’t think much of each other. I mean, if the couple is popular, each one takes the credit. If unpopular, each assumes the other is to blame.”

Mainwaring turned in the doorway, his eyes bulging. “Are you aware of what you have just said?” he shouted. “You are a cheeky blighter, and if I don’t get results from you by tomorrow, then I’ll have you out of Cnothan so fast, your feet won’t touch the ground!”

“I wass thinking aloud,” said Hamish sadly. “A bad, bad fault. Now don’t fash yourself, sir. Arresting the witches is part of my job.”

The crash of the door as Mainwaring slammed out was his only answer.

“I shouldnae ha’ said that,” mourned Hamish, fishing a packet of biscuits out of one of the shopping bags, opening it, and giving one to his dog. “But of a’ the conceited men!”

He helped himself to a biscuit and stared into space. There was something about Mainwaring that didn’t ring true. That ‘cheeky blighter’ was the sort of thing an ex-army man would say in a bad play.

He decided to go out and collect as much gossip about Mainwaring as he could before seeing the minister’s wife again.

He made himself dinner, walked Towser, and then set off down the main street, reflecting that there was no point in trying out MacGregor’s car until he had farther afield to go.

He went to the churchyard with his torch and poked about. Great Celtic crosses reared up against the night sky. Frost was already glittering on the gravel paths. They were raked smooth and there was not a sign of even one footstep. Deciding to have a word with Mrs. Mainwaring the following day and persuade her to come with him and show him exactly where the witches had appeared, Hamish went back to the churchyard gate and let himself out. Down on the waterfront was a bar called The Clachan. Hamish pushed open the door and went in. It was a dreary smoke-filled room with a juke-box blaring melancholy country-and-western songs from a corner. It was a Monday night and so few of the regulars were in, having spent all their money on the Saturday. Hamish ordered a bottle of beer and took it over to a table by the window and sat down.

The cowboy on the juke-box, who had been complaining that his son called another man Daddy, wailed off into silence.

The door opened and a tall, slim man walked in. Hamish observed him curiously. He had carefully waved hair, hornrimmed glasses, a sallow skin, and buck-teeth. He was wearing a city suit of charcoal-grey worsted with a checked shirt, and tight waistcoat under a camel-hair coat.

He ordered a gin and tonic and then turned and faced the room. His eyes fell on Hamish. He hesitated and then walked over. Incomer, thought Hamish. No local would approach a strange policeman. The minister’s wife, who felt such gestures to be her duty, did not count.

“You’re Macbeth,” he said. “I’m Harry Mackay.”

“You don’t look as if you belong here,” said Hamish.

“Oh, I was brought up here, but I spent a good part of my life in Edinburgh,” said Mackay.

“And what brought you back?”

“I’m an estate agent. I work for Queen and Earl.”

“I didn’t pass your office in the main street,” said Hamish.

“No, you wouldn’t,” said Mackay. “Estate agents are regarded with suspicion. My office is on the other side of the loch, among the council houses.”

“You can’t do much business in this part of Sutherland,” said Hamish, watching as the estate agent lit a cigarette with a gold Dunhill lighter.

“Oh, it would surprise you, Macbeth. Do you know Baran Castle?”

“Aye, it’s that big place over to the west. Bought by an American last year.”

“Well, I sold that,” said Mackay proudly. “It’s not the locals who give me the business, but the foreigners and ex-patriots. I sold that castle for over a million pounds. And Kringstein, the local big cheese, bought Strachan House and the estates from me as well. So, how’s crime getting on in Cnothan?”

“I have the case of witchcraft already,” said Hamish.

“The haunting of the Mainwarings? Someone wants that pillock out of here and I can’t blame them. Stuck-up bastard.”

“He hasn’t crossed you, has he?”

“I thought he meant to,” said Mackay with a grin. “He’s bought two more houses and crofts outside the town. Why, nobody knows. He uses the crofts, but the houses just stand empty. His own place is decrofted, and he got the land at the other two decrofted as well. That would be about six years ago. I thought he was going to compete with me by putting them on the market, but not him. Crofts are a pain in the neck to an estate agent anyway.”

There was a short silence while both contemplated the peculiarities of crofting. The word ‘croft’ comes from the Gaelic coirtean, meaning a small enclosed field. In early times in the crofting counties of Shetland, Orkney, Caithness, Sutherland, Ross and Cromarty, Inverness, and Argyll, there was a belief that lengthy tenancy gave right to a ‘kindness,’ or permanency of settlement. But the Highland Clearances of the last century, when the crofters were driven off their hill farms to turn Sutherland into one large sheep ranch, had caused bitter hardship. The Crofting Act was passed to ensure security of tenure; this ended landlord absolutism. Once a crofter had tenancy of his croft or hill farm, he could be sure of no interference from the landlord and he no longer had any fear of being driven off. The crofter could also get the land decrofted – that is, buy it from the landowner at a reasonable price – but few crofters did this. Most were fearful of change, preferring to hang on to their small uneconomical croft units and collect the government grants. Sometimes unscrupulous estate agents let their clients who were buying an old croft house as a holiday home believe that the croft land went along with it.

This practice left the buyers to find out for themselves that crofting land must be worked all the year round or the tenancy is refused by the Crofters Commission, and the assignation of the croft can be blocked by the neighbours anyway, who put up objections to any incomer simply as a matter of habit.

Hamish broke the silence first. “Was there no objection to him getting the other two crofts when he had one already?” he asked.

“People didn’t dislike him as much then as they do now. The two crofts are adjoining the one he inherited from his aunt. But they’re surrounded by moors for miles. There are no other crofters near enough to him to put up a fight. Most of the crofts are to the other side of Cnothan. Besides, it’s happening all over. Some of these crofters have enough land to make up a good-sized farm. Of course, unlike Mainwaring, they don’t bother decrofting it, for they’re afraid of losing the government grants if they do.”

“And no objection from the landowner?”

“Kringstein. Couldn’t care less. You know he hardly gets any rents to speak of from the croft land. Besides, the crofter has more power in the matter than the landowner. The landowner’s got to sell to the crofter if asked and at a ridiculously low price, too. Mainwaring’s not short of a bob, and I could have got the owners of these houses a lot more money. He went along with cash and they sold cheap.”

“Speak of the devil,” said Mackay, twisting his head round. “Here he comes.”

Mainwaring had just entered and walked up to the bar. He was followed by two enormous Sutherland men, both well over six feet in height.

“And who are his companions?” asked Hamish, feeling he should escape before Mainwaring saw him, but being held to his seat by curiosity.

“Alistair Gunn is the one with the leather hat on,” said Mackay. “He works for the Forestry Commission and makes money on the side by working as a ghillie when the toffs come up from London. His friend, Dougie Macdonald, is a ghillie when he’s not collecting his dole and sleeping.”

Hamish had heard that the local landowner, Mr. Kringstein, a toilet-roll manufacturer, ran his home and estates in the time-honoured way. Contrary to gloomy expectations, he went on much as the aristocrat he had bought the land and estates from had done. The ghillies, or Highland servants, made their money when Kringstein had a house party. They went out on the river with the guests and showed them, if necessary, how to fish, and carried their tackle and rowed them up and down.

It was obvious to Hamish that the two ghillies wanted to get away from Mainwaring, but were kept by his side because they had accepted his self-appointed role as laird, much as they resented it. “Do ye know what happened to my aunt the other day?” said Alistair Gunn. “She was on the bus to Golspie and wearing her new fur coat and she could hear this bairn behind her, chattering to its mither, and then she smelt oranges, and the next thing she knew, she could feel something rubbing at the back of her new fur coat.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” said Mainwaring testily, “that happened to everyone’s aunt, and the story is as old as the hills. You were about to say that the next thing your aunt heard was the kid’s mother saying, ‘Don’t do that, dear. You’ll get fur all over your orange.’”

“I wass not about to say that,” said Allistair Gunn. “Not at all. It was a different thing entirely.”

“Then what was it?” asked Mainwaring, his voice full of amused contempt.

“Well, I am not going to tell you, because you are not going to listen,” said Alistair huffily. “You mean you can’t tell me,” jeered Mainwaring. “The trouble with you chaps is that you hear an old story or a joke on the radio and immediately you decide it’s something funny that happened to your aunt or uncle.”

The pub door opened and two other men came in. Alister and his friend hailed them with relief.

“Dearie me,” said Hamish. “Does he always go on like that?”

“Always,” said Mackay gloomily. “He’s spotted yi. Here he comes.”

Mackay reflected he had never seen anyone move with such speed. One minute, the constable was sitting at ease; the next, he had darted out of the door.

Mainwaring dived after him. “Macbeth!” he called. But there was no movement in the darkness.

Hamish, who had run around the side of the pub, waited a few moments, and then started to walk towards the manse.

But there was no friendly welcome from Mrs. Struthers. The minister was there, and so, with many nervous look at her husband, Mrs. Struthers said there was no one at Women’s Rural Institute who would behave in such a way, and no one in Cnothan had any reason to wish the Mainwarings ill.

Hamish went sadly back to the police station. He felt homesick. He did not switch on the lights when he got the police station, but sat on the floor of the kitchen with the curtains drawn and the little television set on the floor in front of him.

After fifteen minutes, he heard the bell at the police-station end resounding furiously through the house, followed a few minutes later by knocking on the kitchen door.

Towser let out a low growl and Hamish shushed the dog into silence.

After a while, he could hear footsteps crunching away over the gravel, and then there was silence. Mr. Mainwaring had gone home.

Hamish switched on the lights, put the television set on the table, and made himself a cup of coffee. A female newscaster with flat, pale eyes was talking about famine in Ethiopia and making Hamish feel he was personally responsible for it. He switched channels. There was a programme about wildlife in the Galapagos Islands. He settled down to watch.

And then there was a knock at the kitchen door again.

He cocked his head to one side and listened. Whoever it was had chosen to come straight to the kitchen door rather than go to the police-station end.

He softly approached the door and listened again. He felt sure if Mainwaring had returned, then he would feel the man’s anger through the door.

He suddenly opened it. A couple stood on the step, blinking in the light.

“Constable Macbeth?” said the man. “I am John Sinclair, and this is my wife, Mary. We’re in need of a bit of help.”

“Come in,” said Hamish, leading the way into the kitchen. He pulled out chairs for them and switched on the electric kettle and took cups and saucers down from the cupboard.

“And what can I do for you, Mr. Sinclair?” said Hamish, measuring tea-leaves into the teapot. “We’re friends of Mr. Johnston, the hotel manager, over at Lochdubh.”

“Aye, I know him well.”

“He told us you might be able to help us. We wass over in Lochdubh the other day. My brother, Angus, has the fishing boat there.”

“I know Angus. No trouble in Lochdubh, is there?” asked Hamish sharply.

“No, none whateffer,” said John Sinclair. He took off his tweed cap and twisted it round and round in his fingers. His wife, Mary, lit up a cigarette and Hamish sniffed the air longingly. He had given up smoking two months ago and wondered if the sharp desire for nicotine would ever leave him. Priscilla Halburton-Smythe disapproved of smoking.

Hamish filled the teapot with boiling water and tipped some of the biscuits from the packet on the table onto a plate. He sat down beside them, poured tea, cast an anguished look at Mary Sinclair’s cigarette, and then said, “What’s it about?”

“It’s like this,” said John Sinclair. “My faither lives outside the town on the road to Lochdubh, not far, about a mile up the road, say. He’s got a bit croft and a cottage. My mither died two years ago, and since then Faither’s shut himself up. He won’t see me or Mary or his wee grandson or anyone.”

“And what is it I can do?” asked Hamish.

“Mr. Johnston told us you had the gift o’ the gab,” said John Sinclair. “We wass hoping you could go out and see Faither and have a blether with him, and see if you can cheer him up.”

Hamish began to feel cheered up himself. This was just the sort of family problem he was often asked to deal with in Lochdubh, where the policeman doubled as local psychiatrist.

“I’ve got business out that way with Mr. Mainwaring,” said Hamish. “I’ll drop by to see your father in the morning.”

John Sinclair had a typically Sutherland type of face, high cheek-bones and intense blue eyes that slanted at the corners in an almost oriental way. Those eyes went blank.

“Och, I wouldnae bother yourself with the crabbit auld man,” said Mary Sinclair, speaking for the first time. She was a small, fat woman with dyed blonde hair cut in what Hamish was already beginning to think of as the Cnothan cut, short and chrysanthemum-like, a style which had been fashionable in the fifties. “Thanks for the tea. We’d best be on our way.”

“I am not a friend of Mr. Mainwaring’s,” said Hamish, correctly interpreting the reason for the sudden coolness in the air. “I am investigating the attack on his wife.”

“Attack!” Mary Sinclair looked amazed.

“Three people dressed as witches jumped out at her last night,” said Hamish.

“Oh, that.” Mary shrugged. “They didnae hurt her, jist gave her the wee fright.”

Hamish looked at her sharply. “You don’t seem very shocked. And anyway, why Mrs. Mainwaring? Why not Mr. Mainwaring, who seems to be the one nobody likes?”

“I don’t know a thing about it,” said Mary quickly, “but if you ask me, you could poison that man, and he’d still be in Cnothan in the morning. Nothing would get rid of him.”

“And so the vulnerable one is attacked? Nasty,” said Hamish. “I mean, the weaker one,” he added in reply to Mary’s blank look.

“I don’t know a thing about it,” she said again. She dragged on her cigarette. Hamish waited for the smoke to appear but it did not. He wondered where it went, or if Mary Sinclair went around with fog-bound lungs.

“Don’t be tellin’ that Mainwaring any of our business,” said John Sinclair. “We keep ourselves to ourselves in Cnothan.”

“Aye,” said Hamish dryly. “I had noticed that. I’ll call on your father tomorrow.”

After the Sinclairs had left, Hamish turned back to the television. The wildlife programme had ended and now a couple with almost unintelligible Birmingham accents were writhing on a bed. He wondered why it was that the actresses television chose for the passionate sex scenes were always scrawny, sallow, and angry-looking. He tried the other channels. On one, the news again, on another, an ‘alternative’ comedian was making up in four-letter words what he lacked in wit, and on the third, there was the umpteenth rerun of The Quiet Man. He switched off the set and stared moodily into space. The wind had risen and was tearing through the trees outside the house. He felt lonely and miserable. Then he thought of Jenny Lovelace, and a little glimmer of light appeared on the horizon of his depression.

♦

The morning was glaring bright and freezing cold. He crossed the road and knocked on the door of Jenny’s cottage.

There was no reply. Feeling cold and miserable again, he returned to the police station and got out MacGregor’s white police Land Rover, noticing without much surprise that it was nearly out of petrol.

He stopped at the garage, calling out ‘Fine day’ to the petrol-pump attendant, who grunted by way of reply and looked at him with hard, hostile eyes.

Hamish waited until the tank was filled up, paid for the petrol, and then said to the petrol-pump attendant, “That’s a nasty, stupid face you’ve got, you unfriendly, horrible man.”

He drove off, leaving the man staring after him, and headed out on the Lochdubh road, wishing with all his heart he were going home. Just on the outskirts of the town were several long, low, white-washed buildings with a sign outside that read CNOTHAN GAME AND FISH COMPANY.

Hamish decided to call in on the way back and see if he could scrounge anything.

The natives appeared to grow friendlier the farther he drove out of Cnothan. By asking a man on a tractor, he was able to find out that Diarmuid Sinclair, John’s father, lived on the hill up on the left of the road a few yards farther on.

There was a path leading up to a small white croft house, but no drive. He parked the Land Rover in the ditch and walked up toward the house.

No smoke came from the chimney and the curtains were tightly drawn. And yet, mused Hamish, the old man could not be too much of a recluse, for the fencing around the croft was in good repair and there was a fair-sized flock of Cheviots cropping the grass.

He knocked on the low door but there was no reply. The wind soughed and whistled through the stunted trees that formed a shelter belt to one side of the house. A flock of sea-gulls wheeled overhead and then landed in the field in front of the house. “Bad weather coming,” muttered Hamish. He tried the handle of the door and found it unlocked. He opened it and went in.

Like most croft houses, it had a parlour, seldom used, to one side, and a living-room-cum-kitchen on the other. He went into the kitchen.

Diarmuid Sinclair sat beside the cold hearth wrapped in a tartan blanket. He looked like one of the minor prophets or the Ancient Mariner seeking one of three to stoppeth. He had a long white beard and glittering eyes, bushy eyebrows, and a rosy, wrinkled face.

“Blowing up outside,” said Hamish. “Cold in here. Want the fire lit?”

Diarmuid looked at him with the sorrowful eyes of a whipped dog, but said nothing.

Hamish made a clicking noise of impatience. He went back outside and round the house to the peat stack and collected some peats. He chopped kindling and took the lot back indoors and proceeded to light the fire.

When it was crackling merrily, he swung the smoke-blackened kettle on its chain over the blaze and then went to a shelf in the corner and found mugs, a carton of milk, and a jar of instant coffee. When the kettle was boiling, he made the coffee, put in plenty of sugar, and, fishing in his pocket, produced a flask of whisky and poured a generous measure in one cup.

He handed the cup to the old man, who drew a wrinkled hand out from under his rug and waved it away.

“I am not wasting good whisky,” said Hamish severely. “Drink it, ye miserable old sinner, or I’ll arrest ye for impeding the law in the process of its duty.”

“I am the sick man,” quavered Diarmuid.

“You look it,” said Hamish heartlessly. “And it’s no wonder, sitting there feeling sorry for yourself and too damn lazy to light your own fire.”

Diarmuid drank a large mouthful of hot coffee and whisky.

“I see you haven’t heard the news,” he said drearily. “Ma wife died.”

“That wass two years ago,” said Hamish. “And life goes on, and the poor woman can’t be having much of a time up there what with worrying about you neglecting your grandson and committing suicide. For that’s just what you are doing, you auld scunner.”

“I’m a poor auld man,” wailed Diarmuid.

“You’re about sixty, although I admit you’ve done your best to look like eighty. What on earth are you thinking about to turn your own son and grandson from the door?”

“They don’t need me. I’m a poor auld – ”

“Oh, shut up,” said Hamish morosely. He walked to the window and looked out on the desolate scene. “Aye, it’s blowing hard and the sea-gulls are in your fields. There’ll be snow before long.”

Diarmuid tilted his mug and drained the rest of the scalding contents in one gulp.

Then he threw back the rug and eased himself to his feet, releasing a strong smell of unwashed body. “That’s where you’re wrong,” said Diarmuid. He went to a barometer on the wall and tapped it. “Never wrong,” he said. “Says ‘set fair.”

The wind howled and the first drops of sleet struck the panes of the windows. “It’s wrong,” said Hamish. “Look. Sleet. It’ll turn to snow before evening.”

“Nobody’ll listen to a poor auld man,” mourned Diarmuid. “That machine never makes a mistake.”

Hamish seldom lost his temper, but loneliness, worry that Priscilla might even now be in Lochdubh, and fury at the self-pity of Diarmuid boiled up in him. He seized the barometer from the wall, walked to the front door, and threw it out on the grass. “See for yourself, you stupid barometer,” he howled.

There was a strange rusty sound from behind him. Ashamed of himself, Hamish ran out and retrieved the barometer, scared he had given Diarmuid a heart attack. The crofter’s choking and creaking noises were becoming louder by the minute.

“There, there,” said Hamish, quite frightened. “Me and my damn temper. Sit down, man.” Diarmuid sank back into his armchair by the fire, still choking, grunting, and wheezing. It was then that Hamish realized the crofter was laughing.

♦

It was an hour before he left Diarmuid. As if the laughter had broken his self-imposed isolation, the crofter would not stop talking. Hamish found the croft house boasted a surprisingly modern bathroom at the back and coaxed Diarmuid to take a bath. Then he fried him eggs and bacon, made him a pot of strong tea laced with more whisky, and went on his way, promising to call again.

As he had forecast, the sleet was already changing to snow as he turned the Land Rover in to the short drive that led to Balmain.

Balmain was a bungalow, and not a very good one either. It was a square, thin-walled affair with a temporary look, having the appearance of some lakeside summer-houses. The original croft house stood close by, now being used as a shed. Some scraggly wellingtonias acted as a shelter belt. He rang the doorbell, which sounded like Big Ben, and waited.

He had imagined Mrs. Mainwaring would turn out to be a small, faded, timid woman, but it was a giantess who answered the door. Mrs. Mainwaring was nearly six feet tall. She was powerfully built and had an enormous bust and a great tweed-covered backside, which she wordlessly displayed to Hamish as she turned and walked off into the house, leaving the door open. He followed her in and found himself in a book-lined living-room. A quick curious glance at the titles told Hamish that it was doubtful the shelves contained one work of fiction, either classical or modern. There were a great number of ‘How to’ books on carpentry, painting, sheep-rearing, art, and gardening. There were shelves of books on popular psychology, and row upon row of encyclopaedias and dictionaries. There were two easy chairs, a low coffee-table, a desk with a typewriter, two filing cabinets, and a large Persian rug on the floor. There were no knick-knacks or ornaments, no magazines or newspapers. And the room was cold. The fireplace was ugly, being made of acid-green tiles. A single log smouldered dismally, occasionally sending puffs of smoke out into the stale, cold air of the room.

“Sit down, officer,” said Mrs. Mainwaring in a deep voice. “My husband is out somewhere at the moment. He told me he had been to see you.”

“I wondered,” said Hamish, looking round for a place to lay his cap and finally setting it neatly on the coffee table, “if you would mind coming with me to the churchyard and showing me exactly where it was you were attacked.”

“I wasn’t attacked,” said Mrs. Mainwaring. “Just startled. Not every day I see witches.” She gave a sudden bellowing laugh.

“Whateffer,” said Hamish politely. “When would it be convenient for you to visit the scene of the crime?”

“It wouldn’t be convenient,” said Mrs. Mainwaring. “William would just say I was making a fuss.”

“But your husband is most insistent that I find out who frightened you.”

“He likes poking his nose into things and annoying people,” said Mrs. Mainwaring. “Annoying the replacement constable must be the breath of life to him.”

“Would you say you were unpopular in the community?” asked Hamish.

“I’m not. He is,” said Mrs. Mainwaring roundly. “In fact, I like this place. Nice people.”

“I would not say that they are very friendly to incomers, even someone like myself from the west coast,” Hamish pointed out.

“Well, they’re not hypocrites like the English,” boomed Mrs. Mainwaring, as if speaking of a nationality other than her own. “They’re all right when you get to know them. William got soured, that’s all. He ran about at the beginning being charming to everyone and they rebuffed him, and so now he wants his revenge on the lot of them.”

Hamish sighed and took out his notebook. “Now, Mrs. Mainwaring, if we can just get down to the facts.”

“Put your book away. I can’t be bothered. I am not really interested in who it is. I can’t take something like that personally when it was all directed at William.”

“What shall I tell your husband?”

For the first time a little crack appeared in Mrs. Mainwaring’s self-assured manner. “Have a whisky,” she said, and lumbered out of the room without waiting for an answer. “The coffee will do just fine,” Hamish called after her. “I am driving.”

There was no reply. She was gone a long time. At last she returned with a whisky decanter, a siphon of soda, and a cup of coffee and a plate of scones. She put the coffee in front of Hamish and then poured herself an enormous glass of whisky and soda and lit a cigarette. She poured the drink down her throat and let out a long sigh. There came the sound of a car approaching. Mrs. Mainwaring moved like lightning. She stubbed out her cigarette and opened the window, letting the gale howl through the room. She seized the whisky decanter, the ashtray, and her glass and ran out.

In what seemed like two seconds she was back, breathing heavily and smelling strongly of peppermint. She closed the window and sat down primly on the edge of a chair. Mainwaring came into the room. “So you’ve actually turned up,” he said to Hamish. “Who did it?”

“I don’t know,” said Hamish mildly. “I was just interviewing your wife.”

“You won’t get much sense out of Agatha,” said Mainwaring. His small blue eyes turned on his wife. “What are you wearing that old tweed skirt and jumper for? Didn’t that dress I ordered from the mail order arrive yesterday?”

“Yes, dear,” said Mrs. Mainwaring meekly. “I was saving it for best.”

“And what is a better occasion than your husband’s company? Go and put it on.”

Mrs. Mainwaring’s colour was high as she left the room. A moment later there came the sound of a car starting up.

“Gone off in a huff, as usual,” said Mainwaring. “Now, I assume you have already dusted the churchyard wall for fingerprints.”

“No, I haven’t,” said Hamish crossly. “I suggest the best thing to do is to phone Strathbane and ask them to send a team from Forensic. They won’t budge for me but they might do it for you. Not that there’ll be any fingerprints worth having from that wall, and since it was probably not done by hardened criminals, even if you got fingerprints, it wouldn’t do much good.”

“What you are trying to say is that you’re damned lazy and don’t want to be bothered,” said Mainwaring.

Hamish got to his feet. “I will investigate the case for you as I would for anyone, but I would get further and faster without the hindrance of your insulting and spiteful remarks. You’ve got a nasty tongue. I want a quiet time here and I don’t want another murder investigation. So if you want my advice, stop putting people’s backs up or you’ll end up at the bottom of Loch Cnothan one of these days!”