“So please say you will come,” urged Mrs Trask.
“Yes, I’d be delighted,” said Hamish finally.
“Good, we’ll meet you there at seven o’clock.”
Hamish drove back to the village. The village spinsters, Jessie and Nessie Currie, were waiting for him outside the police station.
“Just imagine!” cried Jessie. “A lawyer being involved in drug smuggling! In drug smuggling!”
“And it’s just said on the radio that he took his own life,” said Nessie. “Did he inject himself with crack?”
“No,” said Hamish crossly. “He was a madman who killed by mistake. Had he lived, the charge would probably have been reduced from murder to culpable homicide.”
“You said it was the drugs,” said Jessie, disappointed. “Not much of a policeman, are you? Not much of a policeman.”
“Run along, ladies,” said Hamish. “I have work to do.”
He went into the police station by the kitchen door at the back. His dog, Towser, who had been feeling neglected during the case, stared at him accusingly. He had had no walks, only let out into the field at the back, and, worse man that, Hamish had been feeding him dog food, and Towser liked people food. “I sometimes think you’re the only friend I’ve got, Towser,” said Hamish. The yellowish mongrel turned his back on him as if to remind him that even that was in doubt.
Hamish looked at the kitchen. The sink was piled high with dirty dishes. He sighed and went back out to the butcher’s, where he bought a pound of liver. He returned and cooked it and then, when it was cool, cut it up and gave it to Towser. Then he washed the dishes while the dog ate and then cleaned the rest of the kitchen. He moved to the remainder of the house, changing the sheets on the bed, washing them by hand because he had not yet got a washing machine and hanging them out in the back garden to dry. He then took Towser for a long walk. A stiff breeze was sending choppy angry little waves splashing on the beach, but it gradually entered his soul that murder had left Lochdubh, that everything was back to normal, and he had a pleasant dinner to look forward to…and sod Priscilla.
By evening, he felt it had all been some sort of nightmare. The police station was clean, and warm from the fire in the kitchen stove. Towser was happily stretched out before it. He phoned his cousin in London to tell him about the case and then he bathed and dressed in a clean shirt and tie and his one pair of good trousers.
Jenny and her mother were already there and waiting for him when he arrived at the restaurant. As soon as the pre-dinner drinks had been served, he was pressed to tell them all about it.
“It was the madness of it all,” said Hamish. “That was the clue. Your daughter helped a lot, Mrs Trask.”
“She’s a bright girl,” said Mrs Trask fondly and patted her daughter’s hand. “But how did she help?”
“She said she was upset because she sensed one of them was mad. I found myself thinking about that. Then my cousin, Rory, who works for a newspaper, said the religious correspondent had been taken off to a mental asylum. I talked to him again before coming here, and he was saying how odd it was that in newspapers, the church, law, or various other places which house eccentrics, that someone can be going quite mad and yet all that happens for a long time is that they build up the reputation of being a ‘great old character’. Now John Taylor had punched a policeman in the face outside the Old Bailey for trying to stop him parking on a double-yellow line. You would have thought that would have been the end of Mr Taylor’s career, but not a bit of it. The policeman did not press charges, but it got in the newspapers and John Taylor received very affectionate comments from various columnists.”
“For attacking a policeman!” exclaimed Mrs Trask.
“My cousin, Rory, said that journalists and readers are fed up with the strict parking laws in London. So Mr Taylor’s mad behaviour was treated as that of a great old character who had simply done what a great deal of the public and press feel like doing when accused of a parking offence.” Warming to his subject under their admiring gaze, Hamish went on to tell them about the light bulb.
“So the difficulty in solving the case,” said Mrs Trask shrewdly, “was because the murder was done by a rank amateur?”
“A lucky one, too,” said Hamish.
The door of the restaurant opened and Priscilla came in with Jamie. They sat at a table by the window that had just been vacated. Priscilla was wearing a short scarlet wool dress with a black patent-leather belt. Jamie had changed into a dark, beautifully tailored suit for dinner. He looked smooth and rugged at the same time, like a man in an aftershave-lotion advertisement.
“It is interesting,” Mrs Trask was saying, “because the murder was solved in such an amateur way.”
“What?” said Hamish, wrenching his eyes away from Priscilla.
“Mummy!” protested Jenny.
“Well, one could hardly expect you to be an expert,” said Mrs Trask in a kindly voice. “You’re only a village policeman. But it is amusing, when you think of it; an amateur murder which could only probably have been solved by another amateur.”
“Mummy, you’d better explain,” said Jenny in an agonized voice. “You’re being quite rude.”
Jamie was talking away but Priscilla was not listening to him. She was listening instead to Mrs Trask, who had a carrying voice.
“I mean…” Mrs Trask rolled linguine neatly round her fork and popped it in her mouth before going on, “if that girl at the hotel hadn’t discovered about the light bulbs, you would have had nothing other to go on but some trumped-up evidence that would have fallen on its face if you ever got the case to court.”
“Who said it was trumped-up evidence?” demanded Hamish stiffly.
“Jenny said two local men were called into the library to give evidence. They were not even taken off to Strathbane to make statements, which they surely should have been if they were witnesses and telling the truth. Jenny met them waiting at reception and one of them told her that they were witnesses to the murder. But it was in the newspapers, on radio and on television, and surely every detail of the case was chewed over in this little village, and yet two locals did not come forward at the time! Do you know what I think?”
“No,” said Hamish crossly.
“I think you got them to say they saw something to startle John Taylor into an admission of guilt.” She shook her head and gave a patronizing laugh. “So Highland. So amateur.”
“I really cannot be bothered arguing with you,” said Hamish.
“Oh, Mummy, Hamish is the one who persuaded me to sit for my bar exams.”
“I’m not surprised. You are not married, are you, Mr Macbeth?”
“No.”
“Well, I hold old-fashioned views. A young girl like Jenny should be thinking of marriage and not a career. If I had known of this dating agency, I would have stopped it. Jenny’s going to come home to live with her parents for a bit.”
“You never said anything about that,” gasped Jenny, thinking of her little flat in South Kensington and her freedom.
“I’ve made up my mind. There are plenty of suitable men in Haywards Heath, and law offices there, too, if you want to go on earning pocket money.”
“But Mummy.”
“Now, all this murder business has quite turned your head. You’ll see sense when you get home.”
Jenny grasped the edge of the table firmly with both hands. “I’m taking my law exams and that’s that!”
“I’m not going to support you in this folly, and neither is Daddy.”
“Then I’ll get a grant. You can’t stop me.”
“Well, now,” said Mrs Trask smoothly, “I think we should save these family rows for a less public place, Jenny. You should not have put such a silly idea into her head, Mr Macbeth.”