“Miss Simmonds,” began Hamish. “This is the police in Lochdubh, Sutherland. I am afraid I have bad news about your author, Rosie Draly.”
“What? How?” demanded Miss Simmonds. And then, by the sharpening of her voice, he realized she had come fully awake. “Come again,” she said. “You are the police? From Lochdubh? That’s where Rosie lives.”
“Lived,” corrected Hamish gently. “She has been murdered.”
“Murdered? Is this some bad joke? Who are you?”
“My name is Hamish Macbeth, and I am the police constable in Lochdubh. If you do not believe me, I will give you a number to call back.” As he said it, he realized it was a bit silly, because there was only he himself.
“No, no,” said Miss Simmonds, “I’ve got myself together now. It’s the shock. Rosie. Murdered! Why would anyone murder Rosie? How was she murdered?”
“Someone, we don’t know who yet, stuck a knife in her back.”
“Good God! I was expecting to see her today.”
“There is another thing,” said Hamish. “Did she tell you that there had been a murder here?”
“Yes, she did. She said it was interesting because she was going to write a detective story. I tried to dissuade her.”
“Why?”
“It’s a crowded market. I suppose they all are. She was competent, but I didn’t think she could do it. But she said it would be faction.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s where an author takes a real-life story and fictionalizes it.”
“The trouble is,” said Hamish, “I think that’s what caused her death. Her discs and papers have been burnt, or rather, there’s evidence of that, and I think the murderer was destroying her evidence. Did she tell you anything about it?”
“No, but she was going to…today. I told her if she knew anything, she should tell the police. But she said it was her chance to make big money. She was tired of being a library author and earning peanuts.”
“What’s a library author?”
“It’s a writer who is well liked enough but never a bestseller. The books are bought by the libraries but hardly ever bought by the bookshops. Do you know there are a legion of writers in this country who never actually see their books on sale? And she was desperate for money.”
“Was she in trouble? In debt?”
“No, but she felt very frustrated every time she read about some writer making a fortune. She wanted to travel. I’m her fourth agent. You see, at first she blamed the agent for her lack of success. I mean, she was always published, but she didn’t earn much. She was always trying to bandwagon.”
“You’ll need to explain that as well.”
“If a certain genre became fashionable – science fiction, spy, the occult, World War Two, that sort of thing – Rosie would try to write whatever she thought would hit the big time. Now when even a competent author tries to write in a field that first of all they haven’t read much of and it isn’t their thing, the writing becomes very bad indeed. That’s what happened to Rosie. But she worked so hard! Always trying. She was so excited about this detective story.”
“I cannae envisage Rosie Draly getting excited about anything,” said Hamish. “She seemed so self-contained, almost colourless.”
“I suppose I’m the only person she ever talked to. She never referred to any friends.”
“Family? Lovers?”
“No lovers. She has a sister. I have the name and address.”
“Can you give it to me? She’ll need to be informed.”
“Wait a moment.”
After a few minutes she came back to the phone. “It’s a Mrs. Beck, 12 Jubilee Lane, Willesden.”
“Any phone number?”
“I don’t have that. But the police down here will no doubt get it.”
“Miss Simmonds, if there is anything you can think of, anything at all, that Rosie might have said about her life up here that might give us a clue to her murder, please let us know.”
“I will, of course. But Rosie liked secrets. Not that she ever seemed to have anything to be secretive about, but that’s the impression I got.”
“Did you like her?”
There was a startled silence and then she said cautiously, “I don’t want to speak ill of the dead…”
“Oh, please do,” urged Hamish.
“Well, I didn’t like her, and that’s a fact. She had a way of watching me out of the corner of her eye, as if seeing something in me that caused amused contempt. It rattled me. She also kept implying, without actually putting it into exact words, that I was a failure as an agent, although after her failures with her previous agents she must have known that wasn’t true. I feel awful talking about her like this. It seems such a lurid death. What kind of knife?”
“An ordinary big kitchen knife.”
“Oh, poor Rosie! It might at least have been a mysterious South American dagger or something. Still, I suppose the press will all be there and she’ll get the publicity she always craved, but hardly in a way she ever dreamt of getting it. Give me your number. I promise to call you if I think of anything.”
“There’s just one more thing. Rosie had been chatting up the locals for a bit of colour. Two of them seem to have been quite entranced with her.”
“You lot must be stuck for women up there. I am being bitchy. Sorry. But I swear to God, Rosie wasn’t interested in men. I always thought she was a lesbian.”
“Now there’s something. Anything concrete on that?”
“Nothing, I’m afraid. Just an impression. I used to spend as little time with Rosie as was decently possible.”
Hamish felt he had got as much out of her as he possibly could for the time being. He said goodbye and rang off. Then he sat down to type out a statement of what she had said. He had just finished and was looking forward to going to bed when there was a knock at the kitchen door. He went through and answered it.
Betty John stood there, her large black eyes gleaming with excitement. “What a thrilling place this has turned out to be!” she said. “Another murder. Tell me about it.”
“I can’t now,” said Hamish. “I’ve been up all night and now I’m going to bed.”
She pouted. “I was hoping for a cup of coffee.”
“There’s instant in the kitchen. Help yourself, but chust let me go to bed. I’m weary.”
He went into the bathroom, stripped off and washed down, put on his pyjamas, and then, stretching and yawning, went through to his bedroom and climbed into bed. What had Rosie found out? he wondered sleepily. The silly woman must have found out something from Randy. Randy’s plastic surgery pointed to a high-level criminal. He dozed off. Then he awoke with a start. Someone was in the bed with him, someone’s body was pressed against his own. He twisted round on the pillow and found himself looking straight into the lecherous black eyes of Betty John.
“For heffen’s sakes, woman,” groaned Hamish. “What do you think you are doing?”
“This,” she said with a throaty laugh, and her hands became busy under the bedclothes.
Hamish was half drugged with sleep, but he had been celibate a long time. Making love to Betty John seemed part of an exotic dream. When he finally fell completely asleep, she buried her head on his chest and fell asleep as well.
♦
Priscilla headed down to the police station at lunch-time with a basket of food from the hotel kitchen beside her on the seat. She was surprised that she had recovered so quickly from the sight of Rosie’s dead body, but reflected that had Rosie been blasted to death or battered to death, it would have taken her considerably longer to get over it. There had been something so unreal, so theatrical, about that naked body with the knife sticking out of its back.