Death of a Charming Man (7 page)

‘Hiss days here are numbered, wumman.’

‘I’ll leave you both,’ said Hamish hurriedly. ‘Don’t forget what I said, Jock.’

He went outside. He paused for a moment, studying the scene in front of him. Priscilla had turned to face the loch, trying to look unconcerned. The women of Drim had edged closer to her, as if inspecting some rare wild beast.

‘Shoo!’ said Hamish, running up to them and waving his hands.

Hamish returned to Priscilla, his face grim. ‘That great fool, Jock Kennedy, challenged Peter Hynd to a fight and Peter kicked him where it hurts the most.’

‘That’s bad,’ said Priscilla. ‘A Highlander won’t ever forget or forgive that until he gets revenge.’

‘They’ll gang up on him one dark night,’ said Hamish. ‘Let’s go and see the minister.’

‘Why?’

‘He’s supposed to be looking after the morals of his flock.’

They went up to the manse and this time Hamish found Mr Callum Duncan at home as well as his wife, Annie.

They were served tea in the manse living room, the minister and Hamish exchanging general chit-chat until Annie brought in tea and scones. Hamish noticed that Annie’s hair was once more its natural brown colour.

‘So what brings you to Drim?’ asked the minister at last.

‘I’m worried about Peter Hynd.’

‘Our newcomer?’ said the minister. ‘A most amiable and intelligent young man. Nothing wrong with him, I hope?’

‘He’s been flirting with the women of your parish.’ Hamish felt ridiculously like a Victorian reformer. ‘He’s stirring up all sorts of emotions. Have you not noticed the way the women are behaving?’

‘Oh, they’ve been getting a bit silly, but that’s women for you,’ said the minister indulgently. Hamish glanced at Annie Duncan, but her head was bent over the teapot.

‘It iss more than that,’ said Hamish firmly. ‘There was a fight. Jock Kennedy and Peter Hynd, and Peter … er … kicked him where he shouldn’t have.’

‘As he was up against an ox like Jock, then I suppose he had to protect himself anyway he could,’ said Mr Duncan. ‘It will all settle down. You know what the Highlands are like. There is always a certain antipathy to the newcomer.’

‘It is because of this silly antipathy that a lot of good people go away from the Highlands and leave the trash behind,’ said Hamish bitterly.

Annie’s voice came, cool and amused. ‘Peter Hynd does seem capable of rousing jealousy in men and women alike.’

‘I am not jealous of the man,’ said Hamish. ‘This is a serious matter. If that young man does not settle down and stop playing silly games with the locals, then someone will stab him. I am taking this verra seriously. Talk to them on the sabbath, minister, and warn them against bitterness, envy and lust.’

‘Dear me, and they call poor Callum a Holy Roller,’ said Annie, sounding amused.

‘May I point out that the thing that causes most passions to run high,’ said the minister, ‘is strong drink, and we have none of that in Drim.’

‘Havers,’ said Hamish. ‘Every man has his bottle. The fact that it isn’t sold openly doesn’t stop them drinking, and I’m willing to bet that there’s more than one illegal still up in the hills.’

‘I am sure your motives are of the best.’ Mr Duncan’s voice was suddenly steely. ‘You do your job and I will do mine. I am not lax in reminding my flock on Sunday of the virtues of life. Now, may we talk of something more pleasant? Miss Halburton-Smythe, I believe your family home is now a hotel? Does that disturb you, or have you come to accept it?’

Priscilla talked easily of the difficulties of settling into a hotel life while Hamish sat and brooded. Was he perhaps jealous of Peter Hynd? But he had been uneasy about the man before Peter had ever taken Priscilla out for dinner.

When they emerged from the manse, wreaths of mist were stealing down the sides of the mountains, like long, searching fingers.

At the Land Rover, Priscilla hesitated beside it. ‘Hamish,’ she said, ‘when I went to the seer looking for you, he said an odd thing.’

‘Aye, what was that?’

‘He said a beautiful young man would come between us.’

Hamish looked bleakly at the descending mist. ‘You neffer believed a word that man said before.’

‘And why should I now?’ rejoined Priscilla lightly. ‘You’re quite right, Hamish. This place is enough to give anyone the creeps.’

They climbed into the Land Rover. Hamish released the handbrake. He saw a little figure moving towards them up the road through the mist. Heather Baxter. Her eyes were blank but tears were streaming down her cheeks. He swore under his breath and jerked the brake on again and climbed down. The girl saw him coming and swerved away off the road and began to run across the peatbog beside the loch, off into the mist. ‘Heather!’ called Hamish sharply. ‘Heather!’ But only silence came back to him.

‘Something must be wrong at the Baxters’,’ he said when he rejoined Priscilla. ‘I’m going over there.’

But when they got to the Baxters’ cottage, it was closed and silent. No smoke rose from the chimney. Hamish wondered whether to go back into the village and look for Betty Baxter. As he was standing there, irresolute, Heather Baxter came round the side of the cottage. She looked calm and composed. ‘Oh, Mr Macbeth,’ she said. ‘Can I help you?’

‘I saw you crying,’ said Hamish.

‘Me? Och, no, it must haff been a trick o’ the mist.’

‘Where’s your ma?’

‘Edie Aubrey is running the bingo. She’s there.’

‘Not the exercise class?’

‘After it, she sometimes has the bingo.’

‘And your faither?’

‘Up in bed.’

‘Look, Heather, if there is anything you ever want to talk to me about, phone me up.’ Hamish scribbled the Lochdubh police-station telephone number on a piece of paper and handed it over.

‘Thank you,’ said Heather, taking the paper, but Hamish noticed she crumpled it up in her hand.

He returned to Priscilla and drove off. Up the twisting road they went, crawling through the now-thick mist until, at the top, they moved out into brilliant sunshine and blue sky. Hamish stopped and looked back. Below them, shrouded somewhere in the mist and at the foot of those black mountains, lay Drim. He shivered.

‘I’ve done my best,’ he said to Priscilla. ‘That place gives me weird fancies. Best leave it alone.’

And indeed, among the bright heather and with the warmth of the sun striking through the glass, he could feel all his fears melting away. There were a lot of strange places in the Highlands of Scotland where the very earth gave out a bleak atmosphere of misery, as if years of hardship had been recorded in the ancient rock and thin poor soil. They made things seem exaggerated. With a feeling of relief, he drove home to Lochdubh.

That night at two in the morning Peter Hynd was awakened by a sound of breaking glass. He struggled out of bed and climbed down the ladder from his bedroom under the roof. He went into the kitchen and switched on the light. A brick with a piece of paper wrapped round it was lying below the shattered kitchen window. He unwrapped the paper and smoothed it out on the table. In capital letters was the message: GET OUT OF DRIM OR WE’LL KILL YOU. Betty Baxter descended the ladder from the bedroom with Peter’s dressing-gown wrapped around her. ‘Whit’s happened?’ she asked.

He showed her the message. ‘Maybe you’d best go home,’ he said.

‘Harry’s out with the fishing and won’t be back until the morn,’ she said. ‘It’s probably Jock and the others. You’d better put something on,’ she added, looking at Peter’s naked body.

‘Why? I’m going back to bed. You don’t think I’m going to let any of that lot spoil my sleep.’

‘I’m frightened,’ whispered Betty.

He pulled her against him and kissed her lips, and neither saw the blur of a face which peered for a moment in from the mist and then disappeared.

Life picked up for Hamish Macbeth in the following weeks, so that he almost forgot about Drim. There had been a series of burglaries over in Carrask, a small village forty miles away but still on his beat. To his distress, his suspicions began to focus on a newcomer, even though Hamish thought most newcomers suffered from undeserved bad reputations. But in this case he believed the culprit was one Sammy Dolan, an itinerant Irish worker who was, at that moment in time, out of work and drawing the dole. He was beginning to despair of getting any hard proof when one of the locals told him that Dolan had been seen earlier in the day prowling around Miss Tabbet’s. Miss Tabbet was the local schoolteacher who lived in a neat bungalow outside the village and whose home had so far appeared burglar-proof.

Hamish visited her and suggested he spend the night in her front room. Miss Tabbet was one of those no-nonsense, brisk women who, despite excellent academic qualifications, was quite stupid.

‘Nonsense, Mr Macbeth,’ she said. ‘Any burglar would have more sense than to come here.’

Hamish stifled a sigh. Why did he always have to be patient and restrained? He felt like taking hold of her by her scrawny neck and shaking her. He said aloud, ‘Well, I’ll type out a letter which says that I was sure Dolan would break into your premises this night and you refused our help. I’ll do two copies, one for headquarters at Strathbane and one for your insurance company …’

‘No need for that,’ she said, looking alarmed. ‘I’m sure I’ve done all I could to help the police when the occasion arose.’

‘This is the occasion.’

‘Oh, well,’ she said ungraciously, ‘you can wait in the living room, but make sure you wipe your feet. I’ve just shampooed that carpet. But don’t expect me to make cups of tea for you. I pay my taxes and that should be enough. You’re wasting your time. This house is burglar-proof.’

‘How?’

‘Come here,’ she said, and Hamish thought for a moment that she was going to take hold of him by the ear and lead him by it like a bad child. She led the way to the front door and pointed triumphantly to an array of bolts, chains, and safety locks.

‘What about the back door?’ asked Hamish.

She snorted and led the way through to the kitchen. The back door was similarly armed. Hamish stood back and looked at the kitchen window and a smile crossed his face. ‘All the man need do is smash a pane in your kitchen window, put an arm in and open the catch.’

‘But I’d hear the breaking glass,’ she said triumphantly. ‘I’m a very light sleeper.’

‘I could break thon glass without you hearing a thing,’ said Hamish. ‘Chust bear with me. I’ll be here at six o’clock.’

‘Why so early?’ she jeered. She was a very jeering sort of woman, made so by years of controlling pupils by sarcasm. ‘Is he coming for his tea?’

‘I want to get in here early, before he starts watching the house,’ said Hamish. He smiled down warmly into her eyes, and despite herself she smiled back and looked up at him in a dazed way.

‘You silly man,’ Hamish chided himself as he walked back down through the village. ‘You’re getting as bad as Peter Hynd.’ And with that thought, he once more had a mental picture of the dark village of Drim with all those passions seething and bubbling at the end of the loch. He was so preoccupied with his thoughts that he almost walked past Sophy Bisset, who hailed him enthusiastically. ‘What are you doing here?’ asked Hamish in surprise.

‘It’s my day off and I’m playing tourist,’ said Sophy. ‘What are
you
doing here?’ She asked, just as if she had never overheard Priscilla telling Mr Johnston that Hamish was investigating crime in Carrask.

‘On duty,’ said Hamish.

‘Time for a cup of tea? There’s a place in the back of the craft shop at the end of the village.’

‘Aye, that’ll be grand,’ said Hamish. He felt a warm glow. He did not for a moment believe that Sophy had not known he was to be found in Carrask, and that meant she had come in search of him whereas Priscilla had not; Priscilla who, before their engagement, would have dropped over to see him. That Priscilla was badly frightened by any intimacy was becoming clearer and clearer, and Hamish was beginning to think that his hopes that it would ‘be all right on the night,’ namely on their honeymoon, were beginning to look naive in the extreme. Meanwhile, here was pretty Sophy with her sparkling eyes appearing delighted with his company. And a friendly bird in Carrask was worth two chilly ones in Lochdubh any day. He was hurt and angry with Priscilla and it was with a feeling of revenge that he set out to be especially charming to Sophy in the pepper-scented back room of the craft shop.

At last he looked at his watch. ‘I must be on my way,’ he said with genuine regret. They walked out together. ‘See you back in Lochdubh, then,’ said Sophy. She stood on tiptoe and kissed him on the cheek.

Across the street Mrs Fair, who owned the small hotel called Carrask Arms, watched curiously and then she picked up the phone. ‘Is that the Tommel Castle Hotel?’ she asked. ‘Good. May I speak to Miss Halburton-Smythe?’

Hamish was glad of the tea and cakes he had shared with Sophy in the afternoon as the long evening wore on. He would have liked to watch television to pass the time but Miss Tabbet had recovered from the glow that smile of his had given her and said she ‘didn’t hold with it,’ and Hamish wondered crossly why she had the thing in the first place. She sat and knitted fiercely while listening to a concert on the radio, a modern piece by a Hungarian composer full of crashing minor chords. At last, to Hamish’s relief, she went up to bed. He was amused to hear loud snores reverberating through the ceiling a short time later. Miss Tabbet slept like a pig, he thought. A whole gang of burglars could crash in without her hearing anything.

He looked at the clock. It was only ten. He switched on the television set and watched the news and then a programme in Gaelic, inevitably about the history of the Highland Clearances, when the crofters were driven off their land. Then a very fat Glaswegian woman sang a dirge about the clearances she had written herself, and apart from being briefly fascinated to hear Gaelic sung with all the glottal stops of a Glaswegian accent, Hamish became bored and switched it off.

The minutes dragged on. At midnight, he switched off the downstairs lights and sat in the darkness. The nights were getting darker and he knew that by two o’clock there would be about one hour of guaranteed darkness and that, he guessed, would be when Dolan struck, if it was Dolan who had been guilty of the other break-ins.