“You could have got rid of him by telling the police what you knew,” Hamish pointed out.
“He said if I ever told anyone, he’d kill me,” said Kylie. “But you know how it is, you have to tell someone, so I told Tootsie, not about the murder but how I was having an affair with Charlie and what a perv he was. She said we should get some of the boys in the pub to sort him out, but panicked and said nobody must know. But the silly bitch told her grandfather, old Joe Gibbon. Joe Gibbon goes to the Old Timers and he must have told Fred Sutherland, because Fred dropped a note through my door. He said he’d found out about my affair with Charlie Cody and that he was going to tell the police. The old fool said he was a private investigator and if I came to see him first, he would take me to the police and make things easy for me.”
“So you told Mr. Cody.”
She nodded. “He said, “Don’t worry. I’ll see to it.””
“Look here, lassie,” said Hamish wrathfully, “you’re as bad as Lady Macbeth. Did it no’ dawn on you that you were inciting the man to murder?”
Her face hardened. “I wanted that business. That business should have been mine. You know what my mother does? She’s a brass nail.”
“She may be a prostitute,” said Hamish heavily, “but she does it for money. She doesnae get men to murder for her.”
“Did I tell that old fool, Cody, to murder for me?” screeched Kylie.
“Look, what I don’t understand,” said Hamish, “is how you managed to keep it quiet in a place like this.”
“Two of the flats here are empty and there’s two elderly people in the others who go to bed early. You cannae really see who’s going up to the house because of all the bushes and trees. He’d slip something in his wife’s cocoa to make her sleep and then he’d join me, but most it was in the back of the shop after hours. If I hadnae told Tootsie, he wouldn’t have gone for old Fred.”
Hamish stood up. “We’ll be back for you, Kylie.”
“Aye, well, I’ll deny everything I’ve said to you.” Hamish went out into the cold evening and took several gulps of fresh air. He drove to the nearest phone box instead of using the radio and talked rapidly to Jimmy Anderson, finishing with, “I’ll wait for you outside Cody’s.”
Hamish waited patiently until he saw the cars arriving, Jimmy with his sidekick, Harry MacNab, in the first car, and four policemen in the second. Hamish, who had parked round the corner from the house, got down and said, “No Blair?”
Jimmy grinned. “Shame to disturb his beauty sleep. Do we drag the bugger straight to Strathbane?”
“No, he’ll get in that lawyer I’m sure he got for Kylie and we’ll have hard going. We take this tape in and play it to him.”
“Right, it’s your show, Hamish. Lead the way.”
They all crowded on the doorstep while Hamish rang the bell. Cody had obviously not drugged his wife’s cocoa that night, for after a few moments, she opened the door, wearing a dressing gown over her nightgown. “What is all this?” she demanded furiously.
“Get your husband – now,” ordered Hamish. She stared at him, and then at the detectives and police behind him. She turned away and went upstairs. They all crowded into the hall.
Charles Cody came down in his pyjamas. “I’ve had enough of this,” he said. “What on earth do you want with me now?”
“Let’s chust go into the living room,” said Hamish. “There’s something we want you to listen to.”
He led the way. The two detectives and Hamish followed. The policemen waited in the hall.
Hamish solemnly cautioned the pharmacist and charged him with the murders of Gilchrist and Sutherland. A sheen of sweat covered the pharmacist’s face. Mrs. Cody could be heard out in the hall demanding to know why she could not join her husband.
Hamish placed the tape recorder on the table. Gody buried his face in his hands as the tape began to turn and Kylie’s voice sounded out loud and clear.
When it finished, he said in a dull voice, “You tricked her, Macbeth, you bastard. There was no proof. I remembered the dog taking a leak at the foot of the stairs and went and scrubbed it clean, just in case. You bastard. She called me a perv! I thought she loved me.” His voice broke. He wailed, “She loved me! She said she loved me!” Then he began to sob.
♦
They led him out to the car. Lights were on in all the neighbouring houses, people stood out on their steps, staring at the police, at the small figure of Cody being taken to the cars. Mrs. Cody joined her husband. As she got in the car, she said, “If by any chance you get off, Charles’, I’ll kill you myself. We were always so respectable.”
“Weren’t we just,” he said savagely. “You with your ugly body and your respectable knickers. You make me sick.”
♦
“Are they bringing in Kylie?” asked Hamish when they reached Strathbane.
Jimmy nodded. “And she’s in for a shock when she hears that tape. We’ll need to wait for that lawyer. Cody insists on that. Want a cup of tea afore he arrives? They’ve gone to get him out of bed.”
“Aye, that would be grand,” said Hamish.
They went up to the canteen. “Good work, Hamish,” said Jimmy. “You did well and no cowboy tactics. This’ll mean promotion for you.”
Hamish looked at him thoughtfully. “Unless you say the whole thing was your idea.”
“What?”
“Think about it, Jimmy. A feather in your cap. Promotion would mean Strathbane for me.”
“I don’t want to do a Blair on you, Hamish, but I’d be right glad to take the credit. What do you want?”
Hamish grinned. “Peace and quiet.”
“Well, here’s to you,” said Jimmy, raising his teacup.
Hamish suddenly stiffened. “They’d get Cody to turn out his pockets, wouldn’t they?”
“Aye, that’s the form. What are you thinking of, Hamish?”
“I’m thinking of poison. I hope they took any pills off him.”
Jimmy stared at Hamish wide-eyed. “Unless the bugger said they were heart pills or something and being a pharmacist, whatever would be in the right bottle.”
They both ran for the door.
“Of course we got him to turn out his pockets,” said the desk sergeant contemptuously. Cody had been allowed to dress before they had taken him from his home. “He had nothing on him but a handkerchief and his house keys and car keys.”
“No medicine?”
“He had his asthma pills.”
“But you kept them?”
“No. It seemed all right to – ”
“Which cell is he in?” shouted Jimmy.
“Number five. But – ”
“Open it now!”
Looking sulky, the desk sergeant went and unlocked cell number five. Mr. Charles Cody lay as dead as a doornail on the floor.
♦
“So it all ended up a right mess,” said Hamish on the phone to Priscilla the following day. “Of course Blair arrived in the morning and tried to sabotage Jimmy’s catch by saying if he’d have been called out, Cody would still have been alive.”
“So what happens to Kylie?”
“She’ll appear in court charged with accessory to murder and incitement to murder and impeding the police in their enquiries. But that expensive lawyer’s probably going to defend her for free. He likes the publicity. He’ll make mincemeat of me at the trial and Kylie will probably walk free and sell her story to the newspaper that pays the most and live a happy selfish life forever after.” There was a little silence and then Hamish said with affected casualness, “I didn’t know Sarah was married.”