“You keep saying it’s hard to keep anything quiet in the Highlands. Someone would have told you. I mean, you said that Kylie girl in the chemists knew about them.”
“I suppose that’s true. Well, murder comes before illegal hooch.”
After their meal, they went to the council offices and found Jeannie Gilchrist. She led them into a side room. Hamish introduced Sarah, saying she was a friend he had met in Inverness and that she could wait outside if Jeannie objected to her presence. Jeannie shrugged. “I’ve no secrets. I will have to cope with Frederick’s funeral after the procurator fiscal releases the body.”
“That’s why I’m here. He had no wedding photographs or photographs of any kind in his house. There must have been some relatives at the wedding.”
“Oh, that’s easily explained. He hated photographs of himself. I think he carried a glamorised picture of himself in his head and didn’t like to look at the reality. He was very vain. There were no relatives at the wedding. He was actually adopted from an orphanage. The couple who adopted him are long dead. He had a few colleagues at the wedding.”
“You said something to me about thinking he might have been married before. Surely that would have come out in his papers when you were making the wedding arrangements.”
“He handled all that. No, I suppose he was never married before if there’s no evidence of it. It was just a feeling, an intuition that one time he had been heavily involved with someone and that no one else was ever going to match up.”
Hamish sighed. “Every time I think I’ve found something mysterious and significant, it’s all explained neatly away. I happen to know he was heavily in debt.”
“Finally caught up with him, did it?”
“What?”
“He liked to show off, big car, best restaurants, that kind of man.”
“Did you know he was having an affair with his receptionist, Maggie Bane?”
“I did not. But then I never saw or heard from him.”
“Mrs. Gilchrist, someone hated him enough to kill him in a savage way. Can you guess what he might have got into?”
She shook her head. “He was a braggart and a show-off but he was never involved in anything criminal.”
“Why do you assume that the murderer or murderers were criminals?”
“The drilling the teeth. That could have been a form of revenge.”
“Yes,” said Hamish slowly. “So it could.”
He could not think of anything else to ask her and so they took their leave. Once outside, he said, “That still is bothering me. I’ll drop you back at the hotel. No, I can’t take you with me. The Smiley brothers can be nasty.” He cocked his head to one side. “The Inverness seagulls have stopped screaming overhead and the sky is black. I wonder if we can make it back.”
They crossed the suspension bridge over the Black Isle and took the A9 north. Snowflakes began to whirl about them and the road in front was becoming whiter by the minute.
“This is hopeless,” said Hamish. “I think I’ll take the road over to Dingwall and find us a place to stay.”
“All right,” said Sarah.
Traffic had slowed to a crawl. They seemed to inch their way towards the town of Dingwall through the thickening, driving sheets of snow. Hamish finally drove up to the Station Hotel and parked.
At reception, he asked for two rooms. “Two,” said the receptionist, peering over the desk at Sarah’s wrists.
She grinned. “No handcuffs. I am a friend of Mr. Macbeth, not a prisoner.”
After they had been shown to adjoining rooms, Sarah insisted on battling out in the storm to a nearby chemists to buy makeup and a toothbrush and toothpaste. They also bought paperbacks and then retreated to the hotel lounge. But while Sarah read, Hamish looked idly out at the driving snow and turned all that he knew about the case over in his mind. Who was the most likely suspect? Maggie Bane. But how could Maggie Bane lift a man as heavy as the dentist and put him in the chair?
Then there was the deranged Mrs. Harrison. Could she have suffered from an extreme fit of madness that gave her unnatural strength? Or had the dentist been having an affair with Kylie – Kylie who knew so many young men in the bar?
There was a sudden vicious pattering against the glass of the lounge windows. “It’s turning to rain,” commented one of the guests.
Sarah looked up from her book. “If it thaws quickly, we might not have to stay here for the night.”
“Oh, I should think whateffer happens, the roads will be much too bad to move in the night,” said Hamish.
She returned to her book. Hamish studied her speculalively. Her shiny brown hair shielded her face. Here they were in a romantic situation, stranded in this hotel by the station. Was there any hope for Hamish Macbeth?
Perhaps it would be better to go on thinking about the murder and stop wondering whether he could get her into bed or not.
They had an early dinner. Rain was now falling heavily. They went out for a walk after dinner. The air was full of rushing water.
“Look, the road is clear,” said Sarah.
“Aye, but we’d best leave things to the morning,” said Hamish. “It could still be snowing farther north.”
When they returned to the hotel, Sarah said she was going to have a bath and go to bed and read. Hamish rather bleakly said good night to her. So much for a romantic evening!
In his room, he stripped off, washed his underwear and shirt and hung them up to dry. Then he had a bath and climbed into bed and settled down to read, trying to forget about Sarah in the next room. He had succeeded so well that when there was a knock on his door, he called out, “Come in!” thinking it to be one of the hotel staff. “It’s not locked.”
The door opened and Sarah came in. She was wrapped in a blanket.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said. She stood there, looking at him.
He sat up and pulled back the bedclothes. “Come and join me.”
She dropped the blanket. She was naked underneath it. She got into bed beside Hamish. He opened his mourn to say something but she put her hand across it. “No questions,” she whispered. “Let’s make love.”
♦
When Hamish awoke in the morning, sun was streaming in through the windows and Sarah had gone. What was it about women, he thought crossly, that they were able to wake early after a night of lovemaking and disappear?
He had another bath and dressed and then knocked on her bedroom door. There was no reply. He went down to the dining room. Sarah was halfway through breakfast.
“You looked so peaceful, I didn’t like to wake you,” she said cheerfully.
“You look remarkably well,” said Hamish, who felt exhausted. He looked at her curiously. “Do you usually carry a packet of condoms about with you?”
“I bought them in the chemists while you were looking for a toothbrush.”
“That was verra thoughtful of you. How do you feel?”
“Marvellous.”
He looked into her eyes but could see nothing more there than the glow of good health. He had an uneasy feeling that he had been used as some sort of gymnastic exercise.
He wanted to say something loverlike but felt inhibited by her cheerful, matter-of-fact attitude.
“It looks as if we’ll get back all right,” he said. “I’d best go and phone Strathbane in case they’re looking for me. I’d best not say I’m in Inverness or they’ll ask me what I was doing there.”
“You can tell them you went back to see Mrs. Gilchrist.”
“I’m a humble copper. I wasn’t even supposed to see her in the first place.”
He went through to the reception where there was a public phone and got through to Jimmy Anderson.
“Nothing’s been happening,” said Jimmy. “Nobody could move here because of the snow.”
Relieved to find out that Blair had not been looking for him or had even been back to Braikie, Hamish returned to the dining room.