“A criminal! Oh, you must be mistaken. I wouldn’t have had anything to do with anyone like that!”
“But you didn’t know he was a criminal,” said Hamish patiently.
“And you don’t either. You’re just clutching at straws.”
“Annie, try to be a bit less defensive. Think. What money did he have?”
“He always had wads of the stuff,” said Annie. “You must have heard that. And he was always flashing it about in the bar.”
Hamish asked her several more questions but could learn nothing of importance. He left and went up to the mobile unit and read the reports. The whole wrestling fraternity of America and Britain had been rigorously interviewed without success. Police artists in Glasgow were working on pictures of what Randy might have looked like before plastic surgery. Rosie’s sister, Mrs. Beck, had been contacted and was travelling up to Lochdubh. The rain was still falling, and through the smeared and misted-up windows of the mobile home, Hamish could see groups of pressmen huddled together. Some tourists were also standing about, as if waiting for another murder to happen to enliven the tedium of a rain soaked Scottish holiday.
Mrs. Beck, he learned, was due to arrive from Inverness around five o’clock. She would be staying in Mrs. McCartney’s bed and breakfast in the village. Blair was all set to interview her and Hamish wanted to be present at that interview. He knew that if he asked Blair he would be sent about his business and so he decided to wait until she arrived and just turn up.
He left and went to question Archie Maclean, Geordie Mackenzie, and then the barman, Pete Queen. The trouble turned out to be that all had accepted Randy’s hospitality without paying any attention to what he had said. Randy had arrived among them, Randy had bragged, Randy had been murdered, and that was the end of it. When he returned to the police station, bending his bead against the now wind-driven rain, he felt tired and dirty and miserable. He wanted to phone Priscilla and explain how he had happened to be in bed with Betty, but could think of no explanation which would appeal in any way.
He felt, too, that he ought, as a Highland gentleman should, to phone Betty. Although she had taken it well, there had been no reason for him to have been so rude. He phoned the Tommel Castle Hotel. At first he did not recognize the curt voice on the telephone as that of Priscilla and he asked to speak to Betty. And that was when he recognized her voice when Priscilla said coldly, “Your lady-love is out in the hills with her fiancé’.”
Cursing the fact that with servants at the castle always going off sick with bad backs or whatever other Highland excuse occurred to them, leaving Priscilla to fill their jobs, Hamish said, “That just happened. I woke up and found her in bed.” Her voice dripped icicles. “Indeed? I will tell her you called.” The line went dead and he looked miserably at the receiver before slowly replacing it. Why, when he had done the right thing by getting himself out of a cold relationship, did he still get so dreadfully hurt? A psychiatrist would say it pointed to a lack of love in childhood that he should long for the unobtainable, and yet he had had a very loving childhood. Bugger analysis, thought Hamish Macbeth, and geared himself up instead to gate-crashing me interview with Mrs. Beck.
♦
A furiously rolling eye in his direction was the only sign of Blair’s displeasure when Hamish quietly followed the detectives into the bed and breakfast. Mrs. Beck was sitting in the front parlour under a sign which warned guests that the terms were bed and breakfast and no matter what the weather, they were expected to make themselves absent from the house immediately after breakfast was over.
Mrs. Beck did not look at all like her sister. She was small and plump with that brisk, no-nonsense look about her which often betrays a total lack of humour. We all adopt masks, thought Hamish dreamily. Somewhere along the line, Mrs. Beck had decided on the role of capable housewife who did not suffer fools gladly and would probably play it to the end of time. Did he have a mask? he wondered. Did he…?
“Sit down, Macbeth, and stop gawping like a loon,” snapped Blair. Hamish hurriedly retreated to a small chair in the comer of the parlour.
“Now, Mrs. Beck,” crooned Blair, adjusting his truculent features into the oily expression he wore when facing the recently bereaved, “we are all shocked and saddened by your loss.”
“Enough of that,” said Mrs. Beck, clutching a large battered learner handbag on her knees. “You don’t give a damn, so let’s not waste any time.”
Her accent was Scottish, which surprised Hamish. Rosie had had an almost accentless voice and he had assumed her to be English.
“Then we won’t waste time,” said Blair, returning to his usual bad-tempered character. “We believe your sister found out something about a man who was murdered here, Randy Duggan. We believe she wanted to use the information about this man, who was possibly a criminal, in one of her books, and that is the reason she was killed.”
“What is this? What kind of policeman are you?”
“Did she try to take your husband away from you?” Hamish’s voice was suddenly sharp.
“How did you find out about that?”
Hamish remained silent. The wind began to rise outside with a low, keening, moaning sound which meant even worse weather to come. A puff of smoke belched out from the dismal little peat fire which was doing little to warm the room.
Blair, for once, had the wit to remain silent. “It was just after Bob and me were married,” said Mrs. Beck. “She came on a visit. Bob was an overseer at an electronics factory and he was made redundant. I took a job in a shop because although he had his redundancy money, I knew it wouldn’t last forever. So I was out all day. And then I found out they had been going to the movies in the afternoon when I was out and to lunch as well, spending that precious redundancy money while I slaved away selling women’s underwear. There was a big scene. I gave Rosie her marching orders, and Bob said he was going with her. But I’d found out the night before from the doctor that she was pregnant. So I told him that and he stayed and Rosie went. That’s all.”
And what a wealth of bitterness ‘that’s all’ covered, thought Hamish. Rosie had probably not fancied Bob in the slightest but was determined to prove to her sister that she could do anything better, and Mrs. Beck had probably crowed over Rosie about being married.
“Where were you when Rosie was murdered?” demanded Blair sharply.
“I was at home.”
“With your husband?”
“He only comes home at the weekends. He works in Birmingham.”
Again Hamish’s voice. “Do you know if he saw your sister at any time?”
Her eyes flashed. “He wouldn’t dare.”
“But then you wouldnae know,” said Hamish, almost as if talking to himself. “He was away all week. He could take time off from work and go where he liked. Where was he the night of Rosie’s murder, for example?”
She looked at this Highland tormentor with a slight air of triumph. “He phoned me from Birmingham that very evening.”
“How did you know he was phoning from Birmingham?”
“Aye,” put in Blair. “He could have been phoning from up here.”
“That’s where you’re wrong! Bob’s digs are next to the railway line. He always phones at nine in the evening and at nine a train always goes past on the line outside and shakes the very place. I heard it.”
“That seems conclusive enough,” said Blair heavily. “Mrs. Beck…or may I call you Beryl?”
“You may call me Mrs. Beck.”
“Just write down your husband’s address. That will be all for now. PC Black will take you to Strathbane now to formally identify the body. Do you know if Miss Draly made a will?”
She shook her head.
“We’re still sifting through her papers. If we find anything, we’ll let you know.”