He stopped off at the police station to get extra clothes and I make sure he really had switched everything off. The new cooker gleamed in the dark corner. He gave it a savage kick. And then the bell at the front door sounded. He had an impulse to let it go on ringing. After all, there was that notice on the door telling people that all inquiries were being handled from Cnothan. But curiosity beat sloth and he went and opened the door.
Mrs. Hendry, the schoolteacher’s wife, stood there, her face blotched with tears.
“I saw the police car,” she said in a choked voice. “I’ve got to speak to you, Mr. Macbeth.”
∨ Death of a Charming Man ∧
8
Good Lord, what is man! for as simple he looks,
Do but try to develop his hooks and his crooks,
With his depthsand his shallows, his good and his evil,
All in all, he’s a problem must puzzle the devil.
—Robert Burns
“Come in,” said Hamish. “Come ben to the kitchen. It’s not formal as the police office.”
He put an arm about her shaking shoulders and led her through.
She sat down at the kitchen table and put her head in her hands. “I can’t go on,” she said. “I’m so weary.”
“He’s been beating you, hasn’t he?” asked Hamish.
She nodded dumbly.
“And what about the children? How many have you got?”
“Two. Ann and Paul. Ann is twelve and Paul thirteen. I had them late. I had given up hope of haying any children. He doesn’t touch them…yet. But he runs the house like a military academy. They have very little freedom. Paul’s starting to get into trouble, playing truant, mixing with a crowd of rough boys.”
“Does your husband drink?”
“That’s the trouble. Lately it’s been getting worse. Dr. Jekyll turns into Mr. Hyde.”
“Has he tried Alcoholics Anonymous?”
“I called him an alcoholic last night and this is what he did.” She raised her sweater. There were red weals and bruises on her body.
“So you want to register an official complaint?” She shook her head and began to cry again, so Hamish rose and put on the kettle and busied himself making tea until she was under control again.
“I can’t,” she said. “The next thing the social services would be round to take the children away.”
Hamish looked at her bleakly. Ever since the famous Orkney case, where the social services and police had raided homes on the island at dawn and taken the children away to the mainland, mothers were terrified of having anything to do with them.
“So what can I do?” he asked.
“Perhaps you could have a word with him?”
“Perhaps I could. But the word I’ll be having with him is not for the record books. I’ll go back with you and wait for him. Keep the children away for an hour.”
“You’ll not hurt him?”
Hamish looked at her in grim amusement. “Only his ego,” he said untruthfully. “You chust leave it to me.”
He followed her car to Strathbane. She parked outside a trim bungalow. He waited, hearing her calling to the children.
Then she reappeared and put the children in the car and drove off.
He waited a few moments and went up and rang the bell. Mr. Hendry answered the door. Hamish immediately smelled whisky. The schoolteacher blinked up at Hamish and said, “Oh, it’s you. Come about the house?”
“If we could go inside…” Mr. Hendry stood back and walked through to the living-room. Hamish followed him. “Do you want to look at it again?” asked Mr. Hendry. “No, I want a good look at you. You’ve been beating your wife again.”
“How dare – ”
“Again. Now she hasn’t laid a charge against you…yet…But I am convinced I can talk her into it.”
“Prove it,” sneered the schoolteacher.
“Oh, I could get her to a doctor to look at the bruises and weals on her body. You can either end up in court or we’ll do it this way. You will pick up that phone and phone Alcoholics Anonymous and tell them you want to go to a meeting. You will neffer drink again.”
Mr. Hendry’s fist shot out but Hamish caught him by the wrist and twisted his arm up his back. “Stop it,” shouted Mr. Hendry, “you’re hurting me.”
“Aye, just like you hurt your wife.” Hamish ran his head into the wall and gave it a good bang. “Every time from now on that you hit her, I’ll get to hear of it and come and hit you worse.”
“This is police brutality, you fascist pig, you bourgeois lackey.” Hamish listened in delight to these Stalinist phrases. Anyone of any other political persuasion would repent him to headquarters. Only a drunk pertaining to the far left would think he was up against an establishment conspiracy. He dragged the schoolteacher to the phone and stood over him. “Phone,” he ordered, “or I’ll kick your head in.” Mumbling and cursing, Mr. Hendry dialled the number. “When’s the next meeting?” he snapped when a voice answered.
The voice at the other end said something. “My drinking’s nothing to do with you,” howled the schoolteacher.
Hamish took the phone away from him. “What he is trying to ask is where and when is the next AA meeting?”
“It’s in the church in Market Square in half an hour,” said the voice. “My name is Ron. Ask for me. I’m just leaving to go there.”
“Right,” Hamish banged down the phone.
Fifteen minutes later he thrust the still-cursing Mr. Hendry into the church-room, which was hung with slogans like EASY DOES IT and LIVE AND LET LIVE, reminding Hamish he wasn’t doing much of either.
He did snatch up a pamphlet entitled ‘Help for the Family’ and took it with him back to the Hendrys’ house; He sat in the car and read it, parked outside. He noticed gloomily that it warned families that you could not force the drunk to get sober. All the family could do was to attend Al-Anon meetings for help for themselves. Mrs. Hendry arrived with the children and he handed her the pamphlet. “He’sat an AA-meeting,” said Hamish. “But you’d better read this and get some help yourself. And here is my phone number in Drim. If he lays a finger on you again, you’re to phone me.”
She thanked him but in a way that showed she was regretting the whole business already.
Feeling sad and slightly dirty, he wished he had taken the orthodox line and had got her to report her husband. He drove to a fish-and-chip shop and moodily ate fish and chips behind the driving wheel and then threw the remains to Strathbane’s grimy scavenging seagulls.
Tomorrow was another day. He would doggedly stay in Drim. He thought Heather was right. Even if a murder had not taken place, he was convinced something pretty bad had happened there.
♦
The next morning he went up to Jimmy Macleod’s. Nancy was in the kitchen, grey roots poking through the dead black of her hair. “Oh, it’s you,” she said ungraciously. “You’ll find Jimmy out back in the shed.”
“Did you see Peter Hynd leave the village?” asked Hamish.
She turned away from him and riddled with a pot handle on the stove. “No. Why ask me? He came, he went. Like most incomers, that’s all there is to it.”
“Who put a brick through his window?”
“What is this? Folks are saying you are here on holiday?”
“Aye, but I’m curious all the same. Who threw the brick through his window?”
“Och, weans.”
“What had children got against him?”
“Weans will be weans.”
Hamish left and went out to the shed, where Jimmy was sharpening an axe.
“Grand day,” said Hamish.
Jimmy scowled by way of reply.
Hamish leaned against the door-jamb. A pile of logs waited by a chopping block to be split. The air smelled pleasantly of pine. Outside, the day was still and clear, with white patches in the shade where the morning sun could not reach the frost. Up in the clear blue sky, two buzzards swirled and turned.