Hamish leaned back in his chair and sighed and waited for the inevitable denial. To his honor he heard Beck say, “So you know about that too?”
“Aye,” said Blair triumphantly. “So tell us about it.”
Hesitantly Beck said, “She said she had met this most interesting man. It was in one of her rare letters, but I read between the lines and I went mad with jealousy. I stayed at a bed-and-breakfast place on the road to Lochdubh; don’t ask me what it was called, I was in such a passion, I can’t remember. I bought a shotgun in Birmingham. They’re easy to get if you know which pub to go to. I bought myself a wig and put on a pair of sunglasses and scouted around until I had identified him and then I followed him home. I had some chloral hydrate. It was my mother’s. I called on him and said I was a friend of Rosie’s and had dropped by for a chat. He offered me a drink. When he was out of the room, I poured the chloral hydrate into his glass and then, after he had drunk it, I waited for it to take effect. I bound up his hands because I was frightened he would wake up. I shot him, turned up the heating to conceal the time of death, just in case I had been seen, and then I drove south again, stopping only to throw the shotgun into a peat bog.”
“You’re lying,” said Hamish Macbeth.
Blair’s face turned purple with rage. Here he was on the edge of winding up the whole business and this rat, Macbeth, was trying to spoil it. Like every other human being, Blair: judged other people’s motives by his own. Hamish Macbeth was trying to take his success away from him.
“You!” he roared at Hamish. “Get oot o’here!”
And so Hamish left Beck signed a written statement and the next day the newspapers were full of the solving of the two murders.
♦
The press left Lochdubh, satellite dishes, cables, cameras and all. The rain continued to fall steadily and Hamish Macbeth was left alone with an unsolved murder on his hands. He believed that Beck had murdered Rosie – all that passion, all that obsession had been genuine. But why on earth had the man confessed to murdering Randy? All the details of the case had been published in the newspapers, so he would have known of every detail, from the tying of the wrists to the chloral hydrate in the drink. Blair, so anxious to believe the confession, would not check it thoroughly, would not find out who Beck’s mother’s doctor had been and whether he had ever prescribed chloral hydrate. Could it be that Beck might have been as burnt up with hatred for his wife as he had been with passion for Rosie? Was this his way of getting even, so that Beryl would find out she was married to a double murderer.
He sat down in his office and began to write out a short list of suspects. There was Geordie Mackenzie, who had been sorely humiliated by Randy; there was Annie Ferguson; there was Andy MacTavish, the forestry worker; and even Archie Maclean was suspect. And then there was Willie Lamont and Lucia. Beck had shown what a mild man in the grip of passion could do. He now could not interview any of them officially. But he could talk to them as friends. He could say that he did not believe Beck had murdered Randy and he knew that piece of gossip would go around the village like wildfire. He had not seen anything of Betty and felt he ought to phone her but did not like to find that Priscilla was answering the hotel phones. He shivered. Not only was it still raining but the weather was turning colder. He lit the wood-burning stove in the kitchen so that he would have a warm room to return to, pulled on his raincoat, settled his peaked cap down about his ears and went wearily out into the deluge. He headed in the direction of Geordie’s cottage, reflecting that he had never been there before. It was a trim, low-storeyed, whitewashed building. The garden was neat and orderly, with small flowerbeds edged with scallop-shells. He rang the bell and waited.
After a few moments Geordie answered the door and smiled a welcome. Hamish thought that none of his suspects would feel they had anything to fear from the police any more. Geordie led the way into a small living-room. It was as soulless and characterless as Rosie’s and just as cold.
“Coffee?” asked Geordie. “I just put the kettle on.”
“No, thank you,” said the normally mooching Hamish and Geordie looked at the tall policeman with a flicker of unease at the back of his eyes. “Well, well,” he said, rubbing his hands, “sit down, sit down. It was kind of you to call. What a business, eh? Here we all are thinking of international crime and gangsters and it was that man, Beck, all along.”
“Aye,” said Hamish, “but there’s a lot still to be explained.”
“Such as?”
“Who on earth was Randy Duggan, for a start? Why the plastic surgery? And why,” said Hamish, leaning forward, “should Beck admit to a murder he did not commit?”
Geordie stared in dismay. “What are you talking about, Hamish?”
“I don’t believe he killed Duggan. He killed Rosie, yes, but not Duggan. And this is Scotland, not England. A confession on its own isn’t enough. They’ll need to dig up some more proof, although, if I know Blair, he’ll try not to.”
Geordie protested, “But why would he admit to it?”
“I think his obsession with Rosie turned Beck’s brain. I think he hated his wife with a passion because she would not give him his freedom when he wanted to leave her and marry Rosie, I think he thought he would confess to Duggan’s murder to get revenge on her and also to make him look more macho, not some wimp dying of love for a woman, but an action man.”
“That’s guesswork. Look, Hamish, it’s over and we can all return to normal. You’re only trying to stir up things because you’ve got a hunch. Folks here say you’re easygoing and would rather go fishing than solve crimes. What’s come over you?”
Hamish’s normally lazy expression vanished and a hard look came over his face. “I may be easygoing with small little crimes in the village that can be sorted out by me, Geordie, without bringing Strathbane into it. But when it comes to murder, then justice must be done, and justice isn’t pouncing on some fellow who gives a convenient confession. I will continue to ferret away, Geordie, until I find the real killer. It could ha’ been anyone.” He let a little silence fall. The rain drummed steadily on the bushes outside the window. Then he spoke again. “It could have been you.”
“Me!” squeaked Geordie. “Why me?”
“He humiliated you publicly.”
“And you think that would make me kill the man? Because I was humiliated? Look at me, Hamish was a schoolteacher, long years of teaching snotty little boys who took the piss out of me on every occasion. Teachers who were promoted over my head for no other reason than that they were rugger buggers or sleeping with the head’s wife. I tell you, man, with me, humiliation’s a way of life!”