“It wouldn’t have been easy to find him in the poor light, but when the captain got his brace, the murderer followed the sound of the shots. He met the captain on his way back here to the castle and they came face to face as the captain stepped over that fence.
“The murderer fired both barrels at point-blank range. What he did next shows he is a very clever man indeed. He opened the captain’s gun and found it unloaded. He checked the game bag and found the grouse, so he knew the gun had been fired. He took the spent cartridges from his own gun, the ones that had killed the captain, and put them in the captain’s gun, closed it again, then carefully tangled it in the gorse bush. Now it looked like an accident.
“But our murderer was more than just clever. He examined the captain’s pockets and came across a handful of unused cartridges. They were number seven shot, and the captain was killed with number six shot. So the murderer took the number sevens and replaced them with the number sixes he had brought with him.
“Then he had to get rid of the grouse, otherwise the police would wonder why his gun was still loaded after the captain had got his brace. He took them from the bag and hid them in the heather. He should have hidden them farther away, but maybe he wanted to rush back and get into his bed before the household was awake.
“What the police found was a dead man full of number six shot, two spent number six cartridges in his gun, and more number sixes in his pocket. The murderer was sure everyone would think it was accidental death. It should have been the perfect murder.” He glanced sharply at the faces turned towards him, faces that were no longer looking to Blair for help. They all looked shocked and strained.
“But the fence and the feather in the game bag made me suspicious, so I arranged with Angus and our dogs to do a bit of tracking this morning. We backtracked over the captain’s trail, in the direction away from the castle and, sure enough, we found the freshly used cartridges, number sevens. It took us a couple of hours, tracking in increasing circles away from the spot where the body was found, to find the grouse.
“I think that when the birds are examined, it’ll be found they were shot around the morning of the twelfth and that they were killed with number seven shot.”
“It’s still all speculation,” said Blair furiously.
“I should suppose,” said Hamish, “that his gear is still in his room and his car is still out front. I suggest we search both and see if he had any more cartridges with him.”
“Go and have a look, Jenkins,” barked the colonel.
“This is all a muddle, you village idiot,” said Blair, turning a dangerous colour of puce. “You keep calling the murderer a ‘he.’ How do you know it was a man?”
“I don’t,” said Hamish. “It could just as easily have been a woman.”
Voices rose in a furious buzz. “He’s a better fiction writer than I am,” came Henry’s sharp tones. And Mrs Halburton-Smythe’s voice, shaky with tears: “This is a nightmare. You must stop Macbeth making up these lies, Priscilla.”
Jenkins came back into the room, carrying a small box. He handed it to Colonel Halburton-Smythe. The colonel opened it and looked gloomily down at the contents. “Number seven,” he said in a hollow voice.
Everyone looked at Blair again as if he were their last hope. Hamish studied their faces. They were all, even Priscilla, willing Blair to say that Hamish Macbeth had made a mistake.
But Blair’s heavy head was down on his chest. “I’ll need to call the boys in,” he mumbled.
“Speak up!” demanded Lord Helmsdale.
“I’ll need tae get statements from ye,” roared Blair suddenly, making them all jump. “This is a bad business. And you’ll all need tae stay here until your rooms are searched. Come wi’ me, sir,” he said to the colonel.
The colonel followed him out. The rest stayed where they were, stricken, looking accusingly at Hamish, and listening to the mumble of voices from the hall.
Blair was in a quandary. He sweated to think what his superiors would say if they learned he had been made to look a fool by the local bobby. But if he could get Hamish out of the investigation before anyone from Strathbane arrived, then he could make it look as if he, as a diligent officer, had been unsatisfied with the accident verdict and had returned to the scene of the crime.
“Look here, sir,” he said in oily, wheedling tones. “This is going to take a wee bit of time. Now I am sure you don’t want the television and press to harass your wife, daughter, or guests. If you would let me set up headquarters here with MacNab and Anderson, we’ll soon get to the bottom of this.”
“You’ll find this dreadful murder had nothing to do with me or my guests,” said Colonel Halburton-Smythe.
“Exactly,” cried Blair. “And you won’t want your family or guests troubled with a lot of haranguing, which they would get if they allowed that Macbeth to stay around.”
The colonel hesitated. In all fairness, he could hardly bring himself to agree with the detective inspector’s description of Macbeth’s possible line of questioning. It was Blair who was notorious for his bullying manner. But Blair now seemed conciliatory and was behaving in a servile manner – which was more the way the man ought to behave, thought the colonel. He knew Hamish Macbeth would suspect each and every one of the guests. And Hamish, never as overawed by the local gentry as the colonel thought he ought to be, would not dream of taking the heat away from the castle by questioning the locals first. Then there was Priscilla to consider. The colonel, deep down, had always feared that one day Priscilla might horrify them by upping and saying she wished to marry the village policeman. It was only a half-formulated idea, never openly admitted, for the colonel was too much of a snob to bring that thought up into the open and look at it. But it niggled away at the back of his mind. Then there was the final clincher. If it hadn’t been for Macbeth’s interference, this sordid death would still be considered a respectable and gentlemanly accident – which Colonel Halburton-Smythe was still convinced it was. He found himself saying that Blair could stay at Tommel Castle, provided he agreed to keep the press at bay.
“But don’t go upsetting the servants, mind,” said the colonel. “No ringing the bells and making them fetch and carry. It’s hard enough to get good servants these days. I don’t want them handing in their notice because some copper decides to behave like a lord of the manor.”
Blair bit back an angry retort and bared his teeth in a horrible fawning smile instead.
In his new cringing manner, he thanked the colonel profusely and then went back to the breakfast room and jerked his head at Hamish as a signal that the policeman was to follow him out into the hall.
“Not here,” said Hamish, seeing Jenkins lurking in a corner of the hall. “You’re chust dying to have a go at me. Let’s go outside.”
He walked ahead out of the castle, and with a muttered curse, Blair followed him.
Hamish walked up to his car and then turned and faced the detective inspector. “Out wi’ it, man,” he said laconically.
Blair took a deep breath.
“In the first place, Officer,” he snarled, “You are incorrectly dressed. I shall put in a report about that.”
Hamish was wearing a worn checked shirt and an old pair of flannel trousers.
“Secondly, I am still convinced that this was an accident. You had no right to crawl about the moors looking for clues wi’out phoning me and telling me what you were doing. Thirdly, you should not have sent that helicopter pilot off before I saw him. You’re standing there, you big scunner, thinking you’re cleverer than me because you think you solved that last case. Well, it was a fluke, see. It’s all going in ma report, and I’ll see you in front of a police committee yet, you cheeky bugger.”