Alice’s hand jerked nervously, and she smeared lipstick over her cheek. She scrubbed it off with a tissue and then ran out, hoping to catch him, but he had already left.
When she went out into the corridor, two maids were stuffing dirty sheets into a hamper and they looked at her curiously. “Good morning,” said Alice, staring at both of them hard as if challenging them to voice their evil thoughts.
The fishing party was grouped around one large table in the far corner as if the management had decided to put them in quarantine. The Roths were there and Daphne, the major and Jeremy. Charlie would be having breakfast with his aunt, but where were the Cartwrights?
“Don’t know,” shrugged Daphne. “ I think they jolly well ought to be here handing out refunds. Pass the marmalade, Jeremy darling.”
Alice frowned. It was time to stake her claim. She slid into a chair beside Jeremy and took his hand under the table, gave it a squeeze, and smiled at him in an intimate way.
“I need both hands to eat, Alice,” said Jeremy crossly. Alice snatched her hand away and Daphne giggled.
♦
Heather and John Cartwright were sitting in Hamish’s cluttered kitchen, eating bacon baps and drinking tea. They had explained they were ‘just passing’.
It was Heather who had had the impulse to talk to Hamish. Hamish was a good sounding board because he was the law, and although he could hardly be described as a strong arm of it, he was in a position to overhear how the investigation was proceeding.
“I just hope this won’t break the fishing school,” said John gloomily.
“I should not think so,” said Hamish, turning bacon deftly in the pan. “Provided, of course, the murderer is found. It will be in the way of being an added attraction.”
“I was shocked when Blair told me she was really that awful columnist woman.”
Hamish stood very still, his back to them as he worked at the stove. “And you did not know this before?” he asked.
There was a little silence, and then John said, “Of course not. Had we known then we should not have allowed her to come.”
“Aye, but did you not know after she had arrived?” asked Hamish.
Again that silence. Hamish turned round, the bacon slice in one hand.
“No, we did not,” said Heather emphatically.
Hamish carefully and slowly lifted the bacon from the pan and put it on a plate. He turned off the gas. He lifted his cup of tea from beside the stove and came and joined Heather and John at the table.
“I happen to know that you had a letter from Austria. You see, you threw it out of the window, hoping it would land in the loch. The tide was out and the boy Charlie picked it up because the stamp attracted his attention. I would not normally read anyone else’s mail, but when it comes to murder, well, I don’t have that many fine scruples. It was from a couple of friends of yours in Austria who ran a ski resort until Lady Jane came on holiday.”
“You have no right to read private mail,” shouted John.
Hamish looked at him stolidly.
Heather put a hand on John’s arm. “It’s no use,” she said wearily. “We did know. We were frightened. This school is our life. Years of hard work have gone into building it up. We thought she was going to take it away from us.”
“But the couple at the ski resort turned out to be married to other people, not each other,” pointed out Hamish. “They said the publicity by Lady Jane ruined them only because Mr Bergen, the ski resort owner, had not been paying alimony for years. You are surely both not in that sort of position. When you found out, would it not have been better to try to tell the school, openly and in front of her, what she did for a living?”
“I didn’t think of that,” said John wretchedly. “You may as well know that I saw Jane on the night she was murdered. I went up to her room after dinner.”
“And…?”
“And she just laughed at me. She said this sort of fly fishing in these waters was like grouse shooting or deer stalking – a sport for the rich. She said she was about to prove that the sort of people who went on these holidays were social climbers who deserved to be cut down to size.”
“Deary me,” said Hamish, stirring his tea, “was she a Communist?”
“I don’t think she was a member of the Communist Party, if that’s what you mean,” said John. “She seemed to want to make people writhe. She was like a blackmailer who enjoys power. In Scotland they would say she was just agin everything.”
“Did she say she was out to ruin the fishing school?”
“Not in so many words. But that’s what she was setting out to do.”
“What exactly did you say?”
“I said that I had worked hard to build up this school and I begged her not to harm it. She laughed at me and told me to get out. I said…I said…”
“Yes?” prompted Hamish gently.
“You’d better tell him,” said Heather.
“I told her I would kill her,” whispered John. “I shouted it. I’ll have to tell Blair – I think Jeremy heard me.”
“Mr Blythe? Why would he hear you? Is his room next to hers?”
“No, he was out in the corridor when I left.”
“What will we do, Mr Macbeth?” pleaded Heather.
“I think you should tell Mr Blair. If there’s one thing that makes a detective like Blair suspicious, or any detective for that matter, it’s finding out someone’s been hiding something. The pair of you have got nothing awful in your past that Lady Jane was about to expose?”
Both shook their heads.
“And apart from the short time that Mr Cartwright was with Lady Jane, you were together all night?”
“Why do you ask?” Heather had turned white.
“I ask,” said Hamish patiently, “because any copper with a nasty mind might think that one of you might have sneaked off and bumped her off, if not the pair of you.”
“We had better go,” said Heather. “Tell Mr Blair we’re taking the class up to the Marag to fish. It’s near enough. We must go on as if nothing had happened.”
After they left, Hamish, who had already heard the sound of voices from his office at the front, ambled through with a cup of tea in one hand.
“Shouldn’t you be in uniform?” growled Blair, who was seated behind Hamish’s desk flanked by his two detectives.
“In a minute,” said Hamish easily.
“And I told you to keep out of this. That was the Cartwrights I saw leaving.”
“Aye.”
“Well, what did they have to say for themselves?”
“Only that they knew something they hadn’t told you and now thought they should. Also that they were taking the class up to the Marag which is quite close so that you can go and see any of the members quite easily.”
“For Jesus buggering Christ’s sake, don’t they know this is a murder investigation?”
“Find any clues?” asked Hamish.
“Just one thing. If it had been like today, we might have found more traces. But most of the ground was baked hard. The procurator fiscal’s report says she was strangled somewhere else and dragged along through the bushes and then thrown in the pool.”
“And what is this clue?”
“It’s just a bit of a photograph,” said MacNab, before Blair could stop him. “Just a bit torn off the top corner. See.”
He held out the bit of black and white photograph on a pair of tweezers. Hamish took it gingerly.
It showed the very top of a woman’s head, or what he could only guess to be a woman’s head because it had some sort of sparkly ornament on top like the edge of a tiara. Behind was a poster with the part legend BUY BRIT – .
“That might have been Buy British,” said Hamish, “which means it would have been taken in the sixties when Wilson was running that Buy British campaign and that would therefore eliminate the younger members of the fish…”