“There’s something I’d better tell you,” said Hamish. “The new schoolteacher. It might be important. I think it’s nothing. Her name’s Moira Cartwright. She was married to a criminal, but a long time ago. She worked in Dingwall and while in Dingwall, she was blackmailed. The police set up a trap but never got the man.”
“So it could have been Fergus?”
“Could have been. Just before he left Dingwall.”
“So why haven’t we seen a report on this?”
“Because I couldn’t see a motive.” Because, thought Hamish wearily, I’m still protecting the blackmailed of the village. And I promised myself I would only hold on to that information for one day, and now there’s been another murder.
“I can see a motive,” said Jimmy. “You’re slipping. She wants a nice wee job up here and comes up afore-hand. Bound to have. Got to see the schoolhouse. See where all her stuff will go. Fergus recognises her. Says if you don’t pay up, I’ll tell the village about your evil husband.”
“I thought of all that. If she went to the police in Dingwall, then she would have come straight to me.”
“Still, I’d have a word with her.”
“Why isn’t Blair here annoying me?”
“He’s got to walk on eggshells. That Annie Robinson stuff. Our man didn’t find that. You did. Daviot’s singing your praises. You aren’t holding anything back?”
Hamish longed to tell him about the letters, but once again he promised himself, just one more day.
He shook his head. “All I can think of is asking and asking. Often there’s something that people have seen or heard that didn’t seem important at the time. What about that Greek at the hotel? What do we know of him?”
“I’ve been to see him. So has Blair. Wealthy man. Owns four hotels in Scotland. Makes them pay all right.”
“Any good? His hotels, I mean. Will the new one be competition for the Tommel Castle Hotel?”
Jimmy gave his foxy grin. “I know you, Hamish Macbeth, and I know the way that Highland brain of yours is working. You’re praying it’s some outsider. Nasty foreign hotel owner plans to ruin the Tommel Castle, so Fergus finds out and blackmails owner and owner hires goons to bump him off.”
Hamish gave a reluctant grin. “Aye, that would suit me just fine. I’m beat. Is there any hope of getting any sleep tonight?”
“If the press leave you alone. But they’re mostly badgering headquarters in Strathbane. That Fleming woman got herself on television at last. She turned up at the press briefing and made a speech. Daviot was furious.”
“Wish it would turn out to be her,” said Hamish gloomily.
“Where’s your man?”
“Clarry’s gone out to interview more people. He’s wasted in the police force. He’s such a grand cook. He’s left my dinner in the oven.”
“What is it?”
“Coq au vin.”
“Enough for two?”
“Knowing Clarry, I should think there’s enough for a regiment. Want some?”
“Aye. Got any wine to go with it?”
“No.”
“I’ll nip along to Patel’s and get us something.”
When Jimmy returned, Hamish gave them each two large helpings from the casserole. “This is magic,” said Jimmy. “Is Clarry still courting the widow?”
“Who said anything about that?” demanded Hamish sharply.
“Everyone in the village, that’s who.”
“They’re just friends.”
“Listen tae me, Hamish Macbeth, you keep going on as if you’re a sheriff in a Wild West movie, a one-man law officer. But one day you’ll hold back stuff and someone will get hurt.”
Hamish’s conscience smote him. Maybe if he had told them about the letters, Angus would be alive. But then, he was sure Angus had been blackmailing someone, someone Fergus had told him about. Then it could be argued that if the blackmailing had been out in the open, then Angus would not have even tried. Suddenly, with a forkful of food halfway to his mouth, he remembered that tiny thread of pink he had found in the Curries’ fence. Damn, he would ask them about it first and then send it to Strathbane.
♦
After Jimmy had left, Hamish ignored Lugs’s pleading. “No coq au vin for you,” he said severely. “The bones are too soft for ye and the food’s too rich, and you’ve had your dinner. Bed for us.”
He left a note on the table thanking Clarry for the dinner, washed, undressed and got into bed. Lugs leapt up beside him. Hamish stroked the dog’s rough fur. He would need to see the Curries in the morning and then the colonel again. He fell straight down into a nightmare that he was in Chief Superintendent Daviot’s office being asked why it was that he had held back vital information from the police. “If it had not been for this,” said Daviot, “then that crofter might still have been alive.”
Hamish awoke, feeling as if he had not slept at all. He wearily washed and dressed and then selected a new toothbrush from the whole packet of them that he had bought, and scrubbed his teeth. This definitely was the very last day, he told himself. Just one more day and then those letters would go to Strathbane.
He and Clarry had a silent breakfast. Hamish was worried about the case and Clarry was worrying that the murder would never be solved, and if it were not, he feared that Martha would not marry him. “I don’t like this shadow hanging over us,” she had told him. “I feel I can’t even be seen with you until the murderer is found.”
Hamish took Lugs for a walk along the waterfront. It was still August, but there was already a chill in the air, a harbinger of the long dark northern winter to come.
He took Lugs back to the police station, collected the envelope with the little bit of pink thread in it and then approached the Curries’ cottage. He saw the curtains twitching as he walked up the garden path, and Nessie opened the door to him before he could ring the bell.
“What is it now?” she asked.
Hamish took out the envelope and showed her the little scrap of thread. “I found this caught in that fence of yours at the side. Could it have come from any of your clothes?”
“No, we have nothing pink. Wouldn’t be seen dead wearing pink at our age.”
“What about blankets or sheets or towels?”
She shook her head. “Nothing pink at all.”
“And you haven’t remembered anything that might be of help?”
“Not a thing. All the gossip’s about Josie cancelling the wedding. Jilted that fiancé of hers at the last minute! I don’t know what girls these days can be thinking about.”
“She jilted him?”
“That’s what she’s saying. Her mother came round to return our present. I said to Jessie, I said, we’ll just put it away safe and keep it for the next wedding, but I don’t know when that’ll be. Nobody gets married these days, not even you, Hamish Macbeth.”
Hamish made his escape. He collected the Land Rover and drove up to the Tommel Castle Hotel. Every time he arrived at the hotel, he could not help remembering the days when it had been a private house, the days before the colonel had invested wildly and badly and lost everything. Although he had suggested to the colonel that he might consider the idea of turning his home into a hotel, the colonel had never given him any credit for the suggestion.
Priscilla was crossing the entrance hall with a sheaf of papers in her hands when he walked in. “Your father around?” asked Hamish.
“Oh, Hamish, he’s gone off to stay with friends. He didn’t say where he was going.”
“What about your mother?”
“She’s gone with him.”
Hamish clucked his tongue in annoyance. “I’ve got to find him. Did you get anything out of him?”
“No, he says Fergus was poaching.”