“I will come with you.”
“I’d better report to Detective Chief Inspector Blair.”
“I think we will leave him for the moment. Why is this the first time I have met him?”
“He’s just out of hospital.”
“What was up with him?”
“Alcohol poisoning.”
“We have that trouble with officers in Moscow. Let us go.”
♦
Bessie Hunter was at home. To their questions, she said that she thought the catering had been done by two women, Fiona King and Alison Queen. She said they joked about themselves as being the royal caterers.
“They do the meals at the Glen Lodge Hotel outside Braikie,” said Bessie. “But they do a bit of freelance stuff, nothing big, church socials, things like that.”
♦
As they drove north out of Braikie towards the Glen Lodge Hotel, the road curved until it was running along beside the sea. Although the sky was blue, the heaving water had turned black. “Storm coming,” said Hamish. “Did you notice when we were in the cellar that the pounding of the waves seemed very close, almost as if they were thudding right against the walls?”
“I didn’t notice. Why?”
“Bits of the cliffs have been falling away all along the coast. I was thinking the family won’t get much for the place if they try to sell it.”
“How do you know a storm is coming?”
“Experience. When the sky is blue but the sea turns black, it usually means there’s a big blow on the way.”
“Do you find this Blair creature difficult to work with?”
“Oh, dear. It could be that he doesn’t like me. I am after all only a policeman, and I have only myself to blame when I am kept out of the main investigation.”
“He struck me as being stupid.”
“I really can’t comment about a senior officer. Here’s the hotel.”
He drove up a short drive bordered by rhododendrons and parked in front of what had once been a large private home. “I remember this used to belong to an English family,” said Hamish, “but the winters drove them back down south.”
“Are the winters so very bad? The air still feels quite mild.”
“Nothing like the winters in Moscow. We’re near the Gulf Stream. But the wind blows a lot, and from now on we barely see daylight. It starts to get dark around two in the afternoon.”
They walked into the hotel. Hamish asked at the reception desk for Miss Queen and Miss King. They were told to wait in the lounge.
Two women in their late forties entered and introduced themselves. Fiona King was stocky with grey hair and an incipient moustache. Alison Queen was a fake blonde with a simpering manner. Both were English. They said they had always wanted to see the Highlands and had answered an advertisement for a cook. “We always travel as a pair,” said Alison. “The hotel said they would allow us to do some freelance work off-season.”
Hamish asked if they had seen anyone apart from Mrs. Gentle when they arrived to do the catering on the morning of the reception.
“No, only Mrs. Gentle,” said Alison. “She seemed very flustered and told us we would not be wanted to serve out the canapes and drinks at the reception. She had originally said that she meant to use some of the wine from her cellar, but then she told me there was nothing down there worth bringing up.”
Fiona chimed in. Her voice had a slight lisp. “I told her I was by way of being an expert on wine and if she would give me the key, I’d go down there and take a look for her. She fairly screamed at me, didn’t she, Alison pet? She said she’d ordered drinks from the wine merchant in Braikie, and when the stuff arrived it was the cheapest of cheap. Of course, Henry’s isn’t really a wine merchant, just an off-licence, and there was also whisky with names I’d never heard of, cheap gin and vodka along with the usual mixes. So we decided that she wasn’t going to waste any good wine on the guests.”
“Did you see her Russian maid?” asked Anna.
“The one that was to get married? No. We assumed she was upstairs getting ready,” said Alison.
Hamish asked, “Was there a limousine waiting to take them to the wedding?”
“That was your wedding, wasn’t it, you poor soul,” said Alison. “No, when we left she was fretting, saying they would be late, but there was only her own car outside and not even a bit of ribbon on it, if she had meant to use that.”
Anna asked, “At any time you were there, did she go upstairs to find out what was keeping Irena?”
“Come to think of it,” said Fiona, “that’s a bit odd. She was pacing up and down, muttering she was going to be late. Alison said, didn’t you, ducks, that she could run upstairs to the girl’s room and find out how she was getting on, but Mrs. Gentle said, “If you’ve finished, just go.” Thank goodness we got a cheque from her there and then because we might not have got paid, considering she got shoved over the cliff.”
“And if she hadn’t have been shoved over the cliff, I might have thought she killed the girl,” said Alison.
“Why did you not come forward and give the police this information?” asked Anna.
“Because we got two other jobs and put it out of our minds,” said Alison. “I mean, when we read in the papers that Mrs. Gentle had been murdered, well, we assumed that whoever killed her, killed the maid.”
“I am afraid I will have to ask you to accompany us to headquarters,” said Hamish. “We will need to take statements from both of you.”
“Ooh! This is exciting. I’ll just tell the boss where we are going.”
When they came back, they said they would follow in their own car and do some shopping in Strathbane.
“I hope it’s still low tide,” said Hamish as he drove off with the cooks following, “otherwise the shore road will be flooded.”
Great buffets of wind shook the Land Rover. Water was only just beginning to reach the shore road as they drove along beside a mountainous sea.
♦
Blair had been sent back to headquarters by Daviot, who was angry over Blair’s insulting Anna. He saw them arriving and rushed down to waylay them. Anna gave him a concise report about what they had learned from the two women.
“I’ll take over here,” said Blair. “The inspector and I will take statements from these ladies. Get off wi’ you.”
“I haff to drive the inspector here back to her hotel,” said Hamish.
“I’ll do that. Move, laddie. That’s an order.”
Blair had conducted a bullying interview and the statements had been taken. He was just leaving the police station with Anna when Daviot met them. To Blair’s fury, Anna described succinctly the latest discovery and credited Hamish with finding it all out.
“And where is Macbeth?” asked Daviot.
“This man sent him away,” said Anna coldly.
“I’ll have a word with you later,” said Daviot. “Where are you off to?”
“Just taking this lady back to her hotel.”
♦
Blair tried to converse with Anna on the road to Lochdubh, but she maintained a mutinous silence. To his surprise, though, when she reached the hotel she suddenly smiled at him.
“I think this bit of success demands a Russian celebration,” she said.
“And what’s that?”
“Vodka, of course.”
Anna strode into the bar and ordered a bottle of vodka and two shot glasses. “Now,” she said, filling up the glasses, “we drink Russian style.”
She tossed down the contents of her glass in one gulp. Blair cheerfully followed suit. They drank toast after toast, one bottle and then another. “And the third one ish on me,” cried Blair. He stumbled across to the bar and then was violently sick, projectile vomit which shot right across the bar and splashed on the mirror. There were a few people in the bar. They began to leave hurriedly as Blair turned round, vomited violently again, and fell on the carpet.