“Listen to the great detective,” jeered Blair. “We all reached that conclusion in two seconds flat. Why don’t you trot off and find out if anyone’s been raiding the poor box in one of those churches. Damn ridiculous having so many churches in a wee place like this.”
Hamish turned to amble out. “And get your uniform on,” shouted Blair.
“Now,” said Blair, rustling through sheafs of statements. “According to these, they’re all innocent. But one of them was so afraid that Lady Jane would print something about them that they killed her. So chase up all these people we phoned yesterday and hurry them up. And that includes background on the Roths. See if there’s been a telex from the FBI. Find out if any of them have been in trouble with the police, although I think you’ll have to dig deeper than that.”
Hamish changed into his uniform, admitting to his reflection in the glass that he, Hamish Macbeth, was a very angry man. In fact, he could not quite remember being so angry in all his easygoing life. He was determined to go on talking to the members of the fishing school until someone said something that gave himself away. He was not going to be frightened because it was a murder investigation. All criminals were the same whether it was a theft in the school or poaching deer on the hills. You talked, asked questions, and listened and watched and waited. The hell with Blair. He would go up to the Marag and find out what Jeremy had been doing outside Lady Jane’s room. As he left by the back door, the press were entering the police station by the front. At least Lochdubh would be spared their headlines until the following morning. The newspapers were always a day late.
In any common-or-garden murder, the press would not hang about longer than a day or two. But this murderee had a title and the location was well away from their office with out-of-town expenses, so they would all try to spin it out as long as they could. Of course, Lady Jane had been one of their own, so to speak, and Hamish had learned from his relative in Fleet Street some time ago that the press were not like the police: they were notoriously uninterested in anything that happened to one of their ranks except as a subject for gossip.
The day was warm and sweaty, and although the rain had stopped, there was a thick mist everywhere and the midges were out in clouds. Hamish took a stick of repellent out of his tunic pocket and rubbed his face and neck with it.
When he reached the Marag, it was to find the fishing school diligently at work, looking like some old army-jungle movie, as each one had a mosquito net shrouding the face.
Hamish scanned the anonymous figures, picked out Heather and John by virtue of their expert casting rather than their appearance, and Charlie because of his size and because his mother was sitting on a rock nearby, flapping away the mosquitoes and watching her son as if expecting him to be dragged off to prison at any moment. Hamish went to join her.
“I think this is ridiculous,” she burst out as soon as she saw him. “It’s horrible weather and the whole school should be broken up and sent home.”
“They seem quite happy,” said Hamish.
“I don’t understand it,” wailed Mrs Baxter. “Those Cartwrights suggested the school should try to go on as if nothing has happened, and they all leapt at it when just a moment before they had been threatening to ask for their money back. I told my Charlie he was coming straight home with me, and he defied me. Just like his father.” Two large tears of self-pity formed in Mrs Baxter’s eyes and she dabbed at them furiously with a tissue. “I knew I should never have let Charlie come all the way up here. The minute I got his letter, I was on the train.”
“Aye, and when did you arrive?”
“I told the police. I got to Lochdubh just after the terrible murder.”
“Then how is it that Mrs MacPherson down at the bakery saw you the night before?”
“It wasn’t me. It must have been someone else.”
“Blair will check the buses and so on, you know,” said Hamish. “It’s always better to tell the truth. If you don’t, it looks as if you might have something to hide. Did you know Lady Jane was a newspaperwoman?”
Mrs Baxter sat in silence, twisting the damp tissue in her fingers. Rain dripped from her soutwester. “She’s been around the neighbourhood asking questions,” said Mrs Baxter at last in a low voice. “I’ve never got on with my neighbours and I know they told her all about the divorce. But what’s divorce? Half the population of Britain get divorced every year. I’ve nothing to be ashamed of and that I told her.”
“You told Lady Jane?”
“Well, I phoned her before I got on the train,” said Mrs Baxter miserably, “and I said if she wrote anything about my Charlie I would…”
“Kill her?”
“People say all sorts of things they don’t mean when they’re angry,” said Mrs Baxter defiantly. “This is a wretched business. Do you know that detective, MacNab, was round at the house last night asking for Charlie’s leader?”
“No, I did not. I’m shocked.”
“So you should be. Suspecting a mere child.”
“It is not that that shocks me but the fact that they did not immediately check all the leaders earlier in the day. Was anyone’s leader missing?”
“I don’t know. You should know. They fingerprinted everyone as well.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Hamish saw a white police car moving slowly round the edge of the loch.
He moved quickly out of sight behind a stand of trees and made his way silently along a rabbit track that led back down to the village. Jeremy would have to wait. Hamish went straight to the hotel and asked the manager, Mr Johnson, where the press had disappeared to, since he would have expected them to be up at the loch, photographing the school.
“There’s a big Jack the Ripper sort of murder broken in London,” said Mr Johnson, “and that’s sent most of them scampering back home. The nationals anyway. This is small beer by comparison. Also, Blair got the water bailiffs to block the private road to the Marag. He hates the press. Going to solve the murder for us, Mr Macbeth?”
“Aye, maybe.” Hamish grinned. “Any hope of a wee shufty at Lady Jane’s room?”
“Blair had it locked, of course. No one’s to go in. Police commandment.”
“I’m the police, so there’ll be no harm in letting me in.”
“I suppose. Come along then. But I think you’d better try to leave things as they are. I’ve a feeling that Blair doesn’t like you.”
Hamish followed the manager upstairs and along the corridors of the hotel. “They took a plan of all the hotel rooms,” said Mr Johnson over his shoulder. “I don’t know what they expect to learn from that because it’s said she was strangled up on the hillside in the middle of the night, not far from where she was shoved in the pool. They’ve found a bittie of a photograph, and Blair got everybody down to the last chambermaid fingerprinted. No fingerprints on the photo of course, and none on those chains that were around her legs, as if there would be anything worthwhile after that time of churning and bashing about that pool. But Mr Blair likes to throw his weight around. Here we are.”
He put the key in the lock and opened the door. Lady Jane had occupied a suite with a good view of the loch. “I’ll leave you to it,” said Mr Johnson cheerfully. “I can’t feel sad about this murder. It’s turned out good for business. Every lunch and dinner is booked up solid for the next few weeks. They’re coming from as far as Aberdeen, but then these oil people have more money than sense.”
Left alone, Hamish stood in the middle of the bedroom and looked around. Surely it must have dawned on Blair before anything else that Lady Jane would have brought notes of some kind. Yes, of course it had. Fingerprint dust lay like grey snow on every surface. Well, they would hardly come back for more fingerprints. Hamish began his search. The suite consisted of a small entrance hall with a side table and one chair, a tiny sitting room with a writing desk, television set and two easy chairs, and a bedroom with a bathroom leading off it.