A crumpled piece of blue paper sailed past Charlie’s head and landed on the oily stones of the beach. The tide was out.
Charlie picked it up. It was a crumpled airmail. “You shouldn’t look at other people’s correspondence,” said Hamish Macbeth severely, “even though they may have chucked it away.”
“I wasn’t going to read it. It’s got a lovely stamp. Austrian.”
They passed the Roths, who were walking some distance apart. Marvin’s face was flushed and Amy’s mouth was turned down at the corners. “Hi!” said Marvin, forcing a smile.
“It’s a grand night,” remarked the policeman. The American couple went on their way, and Charlie hurriedly thrust the airmail into his pocket.
When they reached his aunts house, Charlie said shyly, “Do you mind leaving me here? I know how to get in without waking her.”
Hamish Macbeth nodded, but waited at the garden gate until the boy disappeared around the side of the house.
Then he made his way home to his own house where his dog, Towser, gave him a slavering welcome. Hamish absentmindedly stroked the animal’s rough coat. There was something about this particular fishing class that was making him uneasy.
∨ Death of a Gossip ∧
Day Three
Thy tongue imagineth wckedness: and with lies thou cuttest like a sharp razor.
—The Psalms
Alice had reasoned herself into an optimistic frame of mind, although anxiety had first roused her at six in the morning. She had dressed and had taken herself out on a walk up the hill behind the hotel.
A light, gauzy mist lay on everything, pearling the long grass and wild thyme, lying on the rippling silk of the loch, and drifting around the gnarled trunks of old twisted pines, last remnants of the Caledonian forest. Harebells shivered as Alice moved slowly through the grass, and a squirrel looked at her curiously before darting up a tree.
Alice sat on a rock and talked severely to herself. The youthful peccadillo that had landed her briefly in the juvenile court was something buried in the mists of time. Why, her mother’s neighbours in Liverpool hardly remembered it! It was certainly something that Lady Jane could not know about. It had appeared in the local paper, circulation eight thousand, in a little paragraph at the bottom of page two. At the time, it had seemed as if the eyes and the ears of the world’s press had been on her when she had read that little paragraph. But now she was older and wiser and knew that she had been of no interest whatsoever to the media. That was the hell of being so hypersensitive. You began to think people meant all sorts of things because of their lightest remarks. Who was Lady Jane anyway? Just some silly, bitchy, discontented housewife. Jeremy had said she had been married to Lord John Winters, a choleric backbencher in Wilson’s government, who had died of a heart attack only two months after he had received his peerage for nameless services.
Then there was Daphne Gore. Alice envied Daphne’s obvious money and cool poise. Lady Jane hadn’t been able to get at her. But she, Alice, must not let her own silly snobbery stand in the way of luring Jeremy away from Daphne. Come to think of it, Lady Jane had not riled Jeremy either. Perhaps that was what money and a public school gave you – armour plating.
♦
John Cartwright awoke with an unaccustomed feeling of dread. Certainly, he was used to enduring a bit of stage fright before the beginning of each new fishing class, but that soon disappeared, leaving him with only the heady pleasure of being paid for communicating to others his hobby and his passion…fishing.
Now Lady Jane loomed like a fat thundercloud on the horizon.
Perhaps he was taking the whole thing too seriously. But neither he nor Heather had really performed their duties very well this week. Usually, they meticulously took their class through more intensive instruction on casting, leader tying, fly tying and the habits of the wily salmon. But so far both of them had been only too glad to get their charges out on the water, as if spreading them as far apart as possible could diffuse the threatening atmosphere. There was nothing they could do – legally – to protect themselves from Lady Jane. There were two alternatives. They could pray – or they could murder Lady Jane. But John did not believe in God, and he shrank from the idea of violence. Lady Jane had been charming at dinner last night and seemed to be enjoying herself. Perhaps he could appeal to her better nature…if she had one.
The mist was burning off the loch when the class assembled in the lounge. It promised to be a scorching day. Alice was wearing a blue-and-white gingham blouse with a pair of brief white cotton shorts that showed her long, slim legs to advantage. She was wearing a cheap, oversweet perfume that delighted Jeremy’s nostrils. Women who wore cheap scent always seemed so much more approachable, conjuring up memories of tumbled flannel sheets in bedsitting rooms. She was concentrating on practising to tie knots, her fine, fluffy brown hair falling over her forehead. He went to sit beside her on the sofa, edging close to her so that his thigh touched her bare legs. Alice flushed, and her hands trembled a little. “You look delicious this morning,” murmured Jeremy and put a hand lightly on her knee. Alice realized, all in that delightful moment, that her knees could blush.
“I am so glad to meet a young man who actually pursues single girls,” commented Lady Jane to the world at large. “I’m one of those old–fashioned women who believe adultery to be a sin, the next worst thing to seducing servants.”
This remark, which sounded like something from Upstairs Downstairs, went largely unnoticed, but it had an odd effect on both Jeremy and Daphne Gore. Jeremy slowly removed his hand from Alice’s knee and sat very still. Daphne dropped her coffee cup and swore. “No good comes of it,” pursued Lady Jane. “I’ve known girls run off and make fools of themselves with Spanish waiters and young men who seduce married barmaids. Disgusting!”
There was a long silence. Daphne’s distress was all too evident, and Jeremy looked sick.
“Of course,” came Constable Macbeth’s soft Highland voice, “some of us are protected from the sins of the flesh by our very age and appearance. Would not you say so, Lady Jane?”
“Are you trying to insult me, Officer?”
“Not I. I would be in the way of thinking that it would be an almost impossible thing to do.”
Lady Jane’s massive bosom swelled under the thin puce silk of her blouse. She’s like the Hulk, thought Alice. Any moment now she’s going to turn green and explode.
“Were I not aware of the impoverished circumstances of your family,” said Lady Jane, “I would stop you from scrounging coffee. Six little brothers and sisters to support, eh? And your aged parents in Ross and Cromarty? So improvident to have children when one is middle-aged. They can turn out retarded, you know.”
“Better they turn out retarded – although they’re not – than grow up into a silly, fat, middle-aged, barren bitch like yourself,” said Hamish with a sweet smile.
“You will suffer for this,” howled Lady Jane. “Don’t you know who I am? Don’t you know the power I have?”
“No,” said Amy Roth flatly. “We don’t.”
Lady Jane opened and shut her mouth like a landed trout.
“That’s right, honey,” said Marvin Roth. “You can huff and you can puff, but you ain’t gonna blow any houses down here. You can make other folks’ lives a misery with your snide remarks, but I’m a New Yorker, born and bred, and Amy here’s a Blanchard of the Augusta, Georgia, Blanchards and you won’t find a tougher combination than that.”