“I am not scared,” howled Hamish. “Listen here. I haff the abscess in my tooth and the doctor says I will need to wait until the antibiotic works before seeing the dentist.”
Maggie’s voice was heavy with sarcasm. “Oh, and when is that likely to be?”
Hamish took a deep breath. He was suddenly determined to see this dentist with the unsavoury reputation and this horrible receptionist. “Tomorrow,” he said firmly.
“There’s a Miss Nessie Currie has cancelled at three. You can have her appointment.”
“Thank you.” Hamish slammed down the phone.
Nessie Currie and her sister, Jessie, were the village spinsters. It was their fussy, gossipy manner which damned them as spinsters in a country like Scotland where women who had escaped marriage were sometimes considered fortunate, a hangover from the days when marriage meant domestic slavery and a string of children.
He decided to go and call on Nessie.
Nessie and Jessie were working in their small patch of front garden where narrow beds of regimented plants stood to attention bordering a square of lawn. A rowan tree, heavy with scarlet berries, stood beside the gate as it did outside many Highland homes as a charm to keep the fairies, witches, and evil spirits away.
“There’s that Hamish Macbeth,” said Jessie. “Hamish Macbeth.” She had an irritating habit of repeating everything.
Nessie straightened up and pulled off her gardening gloves, the sunlight glinting on her glasses. “We heard there was the burglary over at The Scotsman,” she said. “Why aren’t you over there?”
“Over there,” echoed Jessie, pulling a weed.
“I’m working on it. Why did you cancel your dentist’s appointment, Nessie?”
“It is not the criminal offence.”
“Criminal offence,” echoed the Greek chorus from the flower bed.
“Chust curiosity,” said Hamish testily, his Highland accent becoming more pronounced as it always did when he was irritated or upset.
“I don’t see it’s any business of yours, but the fact is, Mr. Gilchrist has a reputation of being a philanderer and I was going to have the gas, but goodness knows, he might interfere with my person.”
“Interfere with my person,” said Jessie, sotto voce.
Hamish looked at Nessie’s elderly and flat-chested body and reflected that this Gilchrist must indeed have one hell of a reputation.
He touched his cap and walked off. The sun was slanting over the loch and soon the early northern night would begin. He felt suddenly lonely and wished he could speak to Priscilla and immediately after that thought had a sudden sharp longing for a cigarette although he had given up smoking some years before.
“You’re looking pretty down in the mourn.” The doctor’s wife, Angela, stopped in front of him. “Tooth still hurting?”
“No, it’s fine at the moment. I was wishing Priscilla was back. We aye talked things over. Then the damnedest thing. I wanted a cigarette.”
Angela smiled, her thin face lighting up. “Why is it everything you let go of, Hamish, ends up with your claw marks on it?”
“I haff let go,” said Hamish crossly. “I wass chust thinking…”
“And I’m thinking you could do with a cup of tea and some scones. Come along, I’m on my way home.”
As Hamish walked beside her, he suddenly remembered that Angela’s home-baked scones were always as hard as bricks and his diseased tooth gave an anticipatory twinge.
The scones that Angela produced and put on the kitchen table looked light and buttery. “A present from Mrs. Wellington,” she said.
Hamish brightened. Mrs. Wellington, the minister’s wife, was a good cook.
He had two scones and butter and two cups of tea. But disaster struck when Angela produced a pot of blackberry jam and urged him to try another. Hamish buttered another scone, covered it liberally in jam, and sank his teeth into it. A red-hot pain seemed to shoot up right through the top of his head. He let out a yelp.
“I say, that tooth is hurting,” said Angela. “Probably the jam. There’s a lot of acid in blackberries. Here.” She rummaged in a kitchen drawer and drew out a handful of new toothbrushes and handed him one. “Go to the bathroom and clean your teeth and rinse out your mouth well. Then come back and I’ll give you a couple of aspirin.”
Hamish grabbed the toothbrush and went into the long narrow bathroom. Two cats slept in the bath and another was curled up on top of the toilet seat. He ripped the wrappings off the toothbrush, brushed his teeth, found a mouth-wash in the cabinet and rinsed out his mouth. By the time he returned to the kitchen, the pain was down to a dull ache. He gratefully swallowed two aspirin. “I thought you would be over at The Scotsman Hotel,” said Angela.
The cats had followed Hamish from the bathroom. One began to affectionately sharpen its claws on his trouser leg and he resisted an impulse to knock it across the kitchen. Angela was very fond of her cats and Hamish was fond of Angela.
“Jimmy Anderson is on the case so I’m off it. Blair’s liver is playing up so Jimmy has dreams of glory.” Angela cradled her cup of tea between her thin fingers. “I’m surprised you haven’t been called to that hotel before.”
“Why?”
“I suppose I shouldn’t be telling you this, but I heard a rumour that Macbean beats his wife.”
“Neffer!”
“I think he does. She had bruised cheeks two months ago as if he’d given her a couple of backhanders.”
Hamish leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head. “Now there’s a thing. A battered wife and two hundred and fifty thousand pounds missing from the safe. She could get a long way away from him on that.”
“Battered wives don’t usually have the guts to do anything to escape. Not unless there’s another man.”
Hamish thought of the acidulous Mrs. Macbean with her thin, lipsticked mouth and hair in pink rollers and sighed. “No, I don’t think it can be anything to do with her. Thanks for the tea and everything, Angela. I’d best get back to the station.”
Jimmy Anderson was waiting for him. “Typed up your notes yet on that burglary?”
“You said you didn’t want them.”
“Well, I would like them now.” Jimmy followed Hamish into the police station and through to the police office. “Got any whisky?”
Seeing that Jimmy was restored to something like his normal self, Hamish said, “Aye, there’s a bottle in the bottom drawer. I’ll get you a glass.”
“What about yourself?”
“Not me,” said Hamish with a shudder. “I have the tooth-ache.”
“Get them all pulled out, Hamish. That’s what I did. I got a rare pair of dentures. I even got the dentist to stain them a bit wi’ nicotine so they look like the real thing.”
He bared an evil-looking set of false teeth.
Hamish got a glass and poured Jimmy a generous measure of whisky.
“So what’s happening with the burglary?”
Jimmy looked sour. “Nothing. We’ll need to wait for the reports on Macbean and the staff to see if any of them has a criminal background.”
“I hear Macbean beats his wife.”
“This is the Highlands, man. What else do they do on the long winter nights?”
“Just thought I’d tell you, which is very generous of me, considering you sent me away wi’ a flea in my ear. You had a touch of Blairitis.”
“You’d best keep your ear to the ground, Hamish, or we’ll have that pillock, Blair, poking his nose in.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Maybe you’d best go back there tomorrow.”
♦
And Hamish would have definitely gone straight to The Scotsman Hotel in the morning but for one thing. After he had typed out his notes for Jimmy, he found the whole side of his face was burning and throbbing with pain. He decided to go straight to Gilchrist and ask him to pull the tooth. He could make time between appointments. There was just so much pain a man could bear. He got into the police Land Rover and set out on the narrow one-track road which led to Braikie. The weather was milder, which meant a thin drizzle was misting the windscreen and the cloud was low on the flanks of the Sutherland mountains.