Betty Close saw her chance. She would see what information she could get out of Hamish Macbeth and send a preliminary report to Glasgow. And perhaps it was one of the locals who had committed the murders.
She decided to walk down to the village. If she told George or Phil what she was up to, they might tell Elspeth. Not that anyone was allowed in her room except Dr. Brodie, who said he was sure he was immune to germs by now. But they could slip notes to her under the door. They had both done that already, wishing her a speedy recovery.
She met the manager, Mr. Johnson, on her way out. “And where are you off to?” he asked.
“Just going for a walk. I’ll maybe pick up some background for Elspeth.”
“I should think Miss Grant knows all the village background, but you could try the seer, Angus Macdonald. He picks up a lot of gossip.” He gave her directions. “Oh, you’d best drop by at Patel’s grocery store and take him a present. He aye expects something.”
Betty walked out into the clear swimming light of a late-spring morning. What a peculiar place to live, she thought as she walked down to the village, stopping briefly on the humpbacked bridge over the River Anstey. The peaty river was swollen with the melting snow from the mountains above. The loch was very still and clear away from the place where the river waters tumbled into it. The village had been built as a result of the highland clearances when the crofters had been driven off their land to make way for vast herds of sheep. Apart from a few Victorian villas and some council houses, the rest of the buildings were Georgian cottages, whitewashed and pretty. By the harbour was a crumbling large building which had once been a hotel. No one wanted to buy it so it lay abandoned, its empty windows staring out over the sea loch.
Betty walked into the grocery store. There were several women gossiping at the counter with the owner, but they fell silent when she entered. A large tweedy woman stepped forward. “I am Mrs. Wellington, the minister’s wife.”
“Betty Close,” said Betty. “I’m here with Elspeth Grant.”
“How is poor Miss Grant?”
“Still quite ill.”
“You must let us know when she is well enough to receive visitors. May we expect to see you at church this Sunday?”
“Sure,” said Betty, who had no intention of going.
Two small women looking exactly alike, from their rigidly permed white hair to their thick spectacles and camel-hair coats, stepped forward. “We are the Misses Currie,” said Nessie. “Do you need anything?”
“Need anything?” echoed the Greek chorus that was her sister, Jessie.
“As Miss Grant is unwell,” said Betty importantly, “and we are here to research the murders, I am taking over. Do you think the murderer could be local?”
Frosty eyes looked at her, and the women turned away.
Betty shrugged and looked through the items in the small supermarket until she found a discounted box of biscuits. When she went back to the counter, the women had gone. She paid for the biscuits, walked out of the shop, and set off in the direction of Angus Macdonald’s cottage.
She felt tired when she finally got there. It had been a long walk from the hotel, and Angus’s cottage was perched on top of a steep brae.
She knocked at the door. A tall old man with a long grey beard opened the door and stared down at her. “Come ben,” he said abruptly. “You will be thon lassie who is a sidekick to our Elspeth.”
“I’m in charge now,” said Betty importantly. She looked around curiously, at the peat fire in the hearth with a blackened kettle on a chain hung over it, at the Orkney chairs on one side of the hearth and the battered wing chair on the other.
She handed Angus the box of biscuits. “Cut price at Patel’s,” he said. “I thocht you lot would have had better expenses.”
Betty’s sallow face coloured up in embarrassment. “Sit down,” commanded Angus.
Betty made to sit down in the wing chair but Angus said, “That’s mine,” so she sat down on one of the Orkney chairs while he settled down and surveyed her with a gleam of amusement in his eyes.
“So you want to take Elspeth’s job away from her,” commented Angus.
“Not at all. I am making enquiries because she is ill.”
“I wouldnae pin your hopes on her being out o’ commission for long,” said Angus. “The swine flu comes bad but it can be quite short and she’s a healthy lass.”
“I’ve heard you see things,” said Betty gamely. “I think maybe we’re looking in the wrong place and the murders might have been committed by someone local.”
Angus studied her for a long moment. She wondered uneasily what he was thinking. Angus was not thinking about Betty. He was thinking maliciously about Hamish Macbeth.
He had overheard a tourist last summer asking about the “famous seer” and heard Hamish say with a laugh, “I think he relies more on local gossip than second sight.”
Angus was vain and had the highland habit of plotting revenge long after the event.
“Now, Elspeth got a lot of her information up here before,” he said, “from Hamish Macbeth. Very keen on Hamish is our Elspeth. We all thought at one time that they’d get married, but, och, he kept backing off. Don’t interfere there, my girl, or you’ll really hurt Elspeth and she would not like you getting information that would put her in the shade.”
“I would do nothing to hurt Elspeth,” said Betty. “I must be on my way.”
Aye, and straight from here to the police station, thought Angus cynically.
He watched from the window as she hurried down the brae, and then he clutched at the sill. It seemed as if a dark shadow was creeping across the heather to engulf her. He shook his head and the vision disappeared.
But Hamish Macbeth was not at his police station. He was on his road to Inverness. He thought not enough had been done to investigate the woman who had helped to abduct Philomena.
He drove into the car park of the Dancing Scotsman, went into the bar, and asked to speak to the waitress who had previously been interviewed by the police. A plump waitress came forward wearing her uniform of frilly white blouse and Buchanan tartan pinafore dress.
“I’m sure I cannae tell ye more than I’ve already told the police afore,” she said.
“Maybe we could just sit down and have a wee chat,” suggested Hamish. The waitress, whose name was Rose Cameron, looked around the near-empty bar.
“Won’t do any harm. It’s fair quiet.”
“I know you’ve been through all this before and I’ve read the reports. But if you could just be describing her to me again.”
Hamish was in plainclothes and was driving an old car borrowed from the garage in Lochdubh, not wanting to alert Inverness police that he was poaching on their patch.
Rose was quite old for the job. Her face was wrinkled, and her sagging mouth showed that she had lost all her teeth some time ago. “Let’s see,” she said. “She was a bit on the fat side, dressed in a suede jacket and trousers. Her hair was hidden under one of those tweed fishing hats.”
“Face?”
“Roundish. Maybe she’d been to the dentist because she had a wee bittie difficulty speaking, as if her mouth was still frozen.”
“What kind of accent?”
“Posh. Lowlands. She came up to the bar for her first drink afore she joined that dead woman and I heard her telling the barman she was from Edinburgh.”
Hamish brightened. He now had one fact that the police had missed.
“And she didn’t pay by credit card?”