“Why worry?” asked Jimmy. “One blackmailer less would please me.”
“Aye, but it would be another murder to solve. Did you interview any of the folk she cleaned for?”
“Apart from the professor, I went with Blair to interview Mrs. Fleming. Blair was all over her. He told me afterwards she was like a fairy.”
“She’s a fairy who threw a vase at me,” said Hamish. “She lives quite near. She could have nipped over the garden fence and poured petrol through the back door.”
“Then there’s Mrs. Styles, the one that Blair fell foul of. What about your Mrs. Wellington?”
“Mrs. Gillespie found out that the minister delivered an old sermon one Sunday and hinted that it would be awful if folks found out. Got nowhere with that. Mrs. Barret-Wilkinson, now. She interests me. I’ve a feeling she’s playing the country lady. But she’s the one that lives furthest away.”
“We’ve run a police check already on all of them,” said Jimmy, reaching for the whisky bottle. “Nothing there.”
“I wonder if any of them got into the local newspaper over anything,” said Hamish. “Maybe I’ll walk along and have a look. No, you are not getting any more whisky, Jimmy, and take that box of stuff over to police headquarters.”
♦
“Here’s lover boy,” said Luke.
Elspeth looked up and flushed slightly as Hamish walked into the newspaper office.
“I need your help,” said Hamish.
“And we need yours.” Luke was sitting next to Elspeth, and he draped a long arm around her shoulders. “We just filed a story, but it’s very thin.”
“You’ll get what I’ve got when I get it,” said Hamish. “Elspeth knows that. All right. It’ll soon come out, so you can have this, only don’t quote me. Mrs. Samson collected a packet from the solicitor. Mrs. Gillespie had left it with him, saying she wanted it posted to Mrs. Samson. The solicitor phoned Mrs. Samson, who took a cab round on the day of the fire and picked up the package herself. Now, if Mrs. Gillespie was a blackmailer – and that’s sheer speculation, although she had more in her bank account than a cleaner should have – someone might have thought Mrs. Samson now had incriminating papers and set her house on fire. The solicitor is a Mr. James Bennet. I’ll give you his phone number. Phone him for confirmation, and then about the blackmail business put it down to ‘sources’ in Braikie. Oh, and ask the solicitor what size the package was. Mrs. Samson says she never even looked at it and it was in the house when it burned down, but she could be lying and it could be in the large handbag she was carrying.”
“Great stuff,” said Luke. “I’ll get onto it, Elspeth, if you help the copper here with what he wants.”
“What is it you want, Hamish?” asked Elspeth, shrugging Luke’s arm off her shoulders.
“I want to check the newspaper files to see if any of the suspects ever did anything worth a mention.”
“You don’t need me,” said Elspeth. “You need Terry the Geek. Terry!”
A thin young man with a bad case of acne and hair as red as Hamish’s came to join them from the back of the office.
“This is Terry,” said Elspeth. “Mrs. MacKay’s boy. He’s organised the whole system.”
“I didn’t recognise you,” said Hamish. “It seems the last time I saw you, you were just a lad.”
Terry grinned sheepishly. “How can I help you?”
“I’ve some names I want you to look up,” said Hamish. “I want to see if any of them appeared in the newspaper at any time.”
“Come over to my computer, and I’ll search for you.”
“I can’t see how it can work,” said Hamish. “I mean, won’t it be a long job of trawling through paper after paper?”
“Not a bit of it,” said Terry proudly. “I’ve organised it by names, places, and subject.”
“Let’s start.” Hamish sat down beside him in front of a computer. “Mrs. Fiona Fleming, formerly Mrs. Bernie Fleming.”
Terry’s long bony fingers flicked over the keys. “Do you mind being called Terry the Geek?” asked Hamish. “Highland nicknames can be a bit cruel.”
“I take it as a compliment. Anyway, this lot in Lochdubh couldn’t tell one end of a computer from another.”
“Some of them got computers when they were all trying to write books.”
“Aye, but the novelty soon wore off and highland lethargy settled in. Here we are. Her husband fell downstairs. Verdict: accidental death.”
“I know that one. Anything else?”
“Seems to be all.”
“What have you got on Mrs. Mavis Gillespie?”
“Wait a bit. Oh, here’s something. Last year she was down in Strathbane shopping. Speeding car mounted the pavement and nearly killed her. She jumped back just in time.”
“Let me see.”
Terry angled the screen towards Hamish. Hamish looked at the date. The incident had taken place in August the previous year when he was off on a fishing holiday.
Mrs. Gillespie had been waiting to cross the road at the junction of Glebe Street and Thomson Street. She had leapt back just in time. She said she was so shocked that the make of the car hadn’t registered with her. She said it was large and black. Police decided the driver had probably been drunk, for who would want to kill Mrs. Gillespie?
“I’ll get the police reports on that,” muttered Hamish.
“Here’s something else,” exclaimed Terry. “She was at the clay pigeon shoot down at Moy Hall, outside Inverness. That was January this year. She said a bullet whizzed past her, missing her by centimetres.”
Hamish studied the report. The police did not seem to have taken any action whatsoever.
“That seems to be all,” said Terry.
So that might explain why she turned the papers or whatever she had over to Mrs. Samson, thought Hamish.
She thought her life was in danger! She wanted to leave some proof of the reason for it behind.
∨ Death of a Maid ∧
5
I waive the quantum o’ the sin,
The hazard of concealing;
But och; it hardens a’ within,
And petrifies the feeling!
—Robert Burns
Hamish suddenly realised that he had not seen Matthew Campbell, the local reporter who was married to Lochdubh’s schoolteacher. “Where’s Matthew?” he called over to Elspeth.
“On vacation,” she called back. “He’ll be furious at missing all this.”
“But we’re not, are we, darling?” said Luke, and kissed her on the cheek.
Hamish turned back to Terry, his accent suddenly more marked. “Chust let us get on with this. Whit about Professor Sander?”
But apart from a short paragraph two years ago saying that the professor had given a lecture on Byron at the Braikie high school, there was nothing else. Mrs. Styles was mentioned various times in connection with church works, and there was nothing at all on Mrs. Barret-Wilkinson.
Hamish thanked Terry. He stopped beside Elspeth. “A wee word wi’ you in private.”
“Okay, we’ve just finished.”
They walked together outside. “Is that your fellow?” shouted Hamish, but the screaming gale whipped his words away.
By unspoken consent, they hurried along to the local bar. “What?” demanded Elspeth when they were inside. “No, I haven’t time for a drink. What is it?”
“Is that your fellow?”
“What’s it got to do with you?”
Hamish suddenly felt silly. “Chust wondered.”
“Then go on wondering,” said Elspeth, and shot out of the door.