“At first it seemed the Romeo and Juliet romance o’ all time. He would wait outside the factory for her in his car every evening. She was besotted with him. I got a wee bit worried because her work began to fall off, and then she began to turn up late in the mornings, hungover and – what’s the word? – looking shagged.”
Hamish suppressed a grin. “You mean they were having an affair?”
“Aye, talk went around. I couldn’t understand why the time passed on his holidays with no sign of a ring on her finger. I mean, things were stricter in those days. Her work got worse. I sat her down and had a wee talk to her. I said unless she pulled her socks up, I would need to fire her. She had grown insolent and she tossed her hair and said she’d soon be married so I had better start looking for a replacement, and then the next day she didn’t turn up, and a week later, she sent a note saying she had resigned. I got another secretary and forgot about it, until, oh, it must have been three months later, I was walking along with the wife, and she said, “Let’s cross the road. There’s these awful bikers.” I looked and there was this gang of blokes on motorcycles outside this pub, all sideburns and black leather and metal studs, and hanging around the neck of one of the bikers was Agnes Macwhirter. What a change! Her hair was a brassy blonde and she looked like a tart. I thought, that one will be on the streets before long, but she married one of those hoodlums, called Macbean, I think. He subsequently ran a pub and then a hotel, and then I never heard any more of her, Macbean or Gilchrist. The odd thing was that I read all about the murder in the newspapers and I didn’t connect the Gilchrist who was murdered with the dental student. I don’t get out much and no one comes to see me. Will you be having a dram?”
“I’m driving,” said Hamish.
“Well, a cup of tea?”
He wanted to escape from the loneliness of the old, but he said, “Thank you,” and virtue had its reward, for after making tea, Mr. Goodman produced some old staff photos. “There’s Agnes, at the Christmas party.”
She had indeed been beautiful then, and with a voluptuous figure.
Here was a motive for murder at last, thought Hamish. He forced himself to spend an hour with Mr. Goodman and then made his escape, putting on the police siren this time and breaking all speed limits on the road north.
When he finally reached Lochdubh at seven in the evening, he went straight to the police station and reluctantly picked up the phone. He knew if he tried to question Mrs. Macbean himself, he would probably be thrown out of the hotel, and this was news he could not, should not keep to himself.
He told Jimmy Anderson what he had found out. “You’re a miracle, Hamish,” said Jimmy. “I’ll tell Blair and we’ll pull her in now.”
“You can tell him, I want to be in on the questioning,” said Hamish. “He would never have found this out without me.”
“Aye, I’ll tell him. Give us a bit to get her back here.”
Hamish then phoned Sarah but was told she had gone out for dinner. He went along to the Italian restaurant, but she was not there, so he ate a solitary meal and then set out for Strathbane.
♦
Mrs. Macbean had red plastic hair rollers in mis time. Hamish sat in a corner of the interrogation room with a policewoman while Blair began the examination.
“Why did you not tell us you knew Gilchrist afore you were married?”
“It was a long time ago,” she said angrily.
“You had an affair with him. Did you murder him?”
“No, I did not,” she said, folding her arms. “The only reason I went to him was because he pulled my teeth and didnae charge a thing.”
Hamish looking at her thin mouth, rollered hair, bad-tempered face, thick body and rounded shoulders could not find a trace left of that happy, laughing beautiful girl of the staff photograph.
“Where were you on the morning of the murder?”
“I was at the hotel.”
“Witnesses?”
“I was in my room. My daughter’ll tell ye.”
“We need an independent witness. One of the guests, someone like that.”
“Whit time was the murder?”
“Between ten and eleven as you very well know,” said Blair.
“Aye, I was at the hotel. I know. I phoned down to Johnny at the bar sometime about then and asked if the insurance men had been yet.”
“We’ll check with him. But I think you killed him,” Blair shouted right in her face.
She leaned back in her chair and looked at him with contempt. “Prove it.”
The questioning went on while Hamish studied her, his mind working furiously. He was suddenly sure she had not done it. But she had known Gilchrist, had loved him passionately. Jeannie Gilchrist had thought her husband had been married before because she sensed there was someone in his past he had not got over. Yet Gilchrist with his penchant for attractive young women would find nothing left in her to love, in what had become an ugly, bad-tempered woman. She could not even pay him to…He sat up. It was a long shot.
Hamish interrupted Blair. “Sir?”
Blair swung round furiously. “Whit?”
“I chust wanted to ask Mrs. Macbean where the money is, the money she promised to Gilchrist.”
There was a dead silence. One red roller fell from Mrs. Macbean’s head and came to rest in front of Blair.
Mrs. Macbean was now staring at Hamish, all truculence gone.
“The way I see it is this.” Hamish’s gentle Highland voice sounded in the stillness of the room. “You had loved Gilchrist more than you had ever loved any man. You are unhappy in your marriage. You could no longer attract him. He was having an affair with a pretty young girl. But he liked money, he was worried sick about money. I think for two hundred and fifty thousand pounds he would have gone off with you. What happened? Did he take the money and then refuse?” Hamish watched her face closely. “No, that’s not it. You’ve still got the money. You’d best tell us where for we’ll take your room apart, take the hotel apart. I know you’ve got it and we’ll keep you here for as long as it takes to get you to confess.”
A long silence followed. Blair gave an impatient grunt For one moment, he thought Hamish had discovered something, but this was sidetracking. He wanted a murderer.
“Better to be damned as a thief than a murderer,” said Hamish.
But she had regained her composure. She shrugged. “Search my room all you want,” she said. “You won’t find anything.”
Hamish stared at her. “No,” he said, “perhaps not in your room. Your daughter’s room?” No reaction. “So somewhere in the hotel.” She stared at him boldly. “Och, well, now let’s chust say not in the hotel, but outside…buried.”
Her eyes flickered. “Can I have a cigarette?”
“Buried,” said Hamish flatly. “In the hotel grounds. Should be easy to find this winter weather. We’ll look for a sign of recent digging. Shouldn’t take long.”
Silence.
“Well, you’ve had your say, Hamish…” Blair was just beginning when Mrs. Macbean, who had not taken her eyes off Hamish, said, “You bastard. You knew all the time. Who was it told you? Darleen?”
“So it was you what stole the money,” said Blair, suddenly wishing Hamish miles away so that he could take all the credit for this.
She gave a little sigh. “I loved him,” she said. She looked at Hamish and for a moment her eyes blazed with something, for one split second the ghost of the pretty girl she had once been shone out at him, and then she began to sob in a helpless dreary way. “I couldn’t even mourn him,” she said at last. “I couldnae even shed a tear or folks might have guessed. He said if I got the money we could go away together and start a new life. It wisnae really stealing, that’s what he said. The insurance company would pay up and the insurance company could afford it. We would go to Spain. I would get away from Macbean. Funny thing, marriage. I think I hated that man a week after we were wed but the years dragged on and on and on. I stayed for Darleen, but she’s become a hard little bitch. She wouldnae hae missed me. Oh God, I didnae kill him.”