Hamish saw Archie Maclean, the fisherman, sitting at a table beside the peat fire.
He bought himself a tonic water and went to join him.
“Wimmin trouble?” asked Archie.
“No, it iss chust this case I’m working on.”
“You know,” said Archie, “I haff been thinking. It iss all around the village that the auld woman, Gillespie, might ha’ been a blackmailer, but I haff the ither idea.”
“That being?” The high colour caused by Elspeth’s last remark was slowly subsiding in Hamish’s face.
“It iss this. It wass not the blackmailing at all, at all. It wass the cleaning.”
“Cleaning?”
“Aye. Now, look at my missus. She cleans and cleans and scrubs and polishes from sunup to sundown and, man, I tell you, Hamish Macbeth, there haff been the times when I haff had the evil thoughts.”
Hamish looked sympathetically at Archie in his tight suit. The locals said his wife even boiled his suits in the wash, and Archie always carried around with him an aroma of old·fashioned carbolic soap and disinfectant.
“Archie, there are times when we all feel like murdering someone, but we don’t do it.”
“Aye, but there is nothing like soap and water and scrubbing for tipping a man over the edge.”
♦
Hamish suddenly decided to go back and see Mr. Gillespie. But when he arrived at the housing estate, he could see police tape across the front of the garden. Jimmy was standing outside, smoking.
“What’s going on?” asked Hamish.
“We’re digging up the garden in case she might have buried a box of stuff there.”
“I’m beginning to think Mrs. Gillespie knew her life was in danger and the packet given to Mrs. Samson contained the genuine articles.” Hamish told Jimmy about what might have been two attempts on Mrs. Gillespie’s life. “All the bankbooks and stuff were in that box I gave you.”
Hamish then went to Heather Gillespie’s bungalow, but she wasn’t at home. He decided to go to the hospital and talk to Dr. Renfrew. Perhaps Mrs. Gillespie had been blackmailing him over his alleged affair with Mrs. Fleming.
He had to wait an hour before Dr. Renfrew appeared. Hamish looked at him in surprise. He had expected someone handsome. But Dr. Renfrew was small and tubby with thinning hair, gold-rimmed spectacles, podgy hands, and an arrogant manner.
“I hope you have a very good reason for disturbing me, Officer,” he said.
“Are you having an affair with Mrs. Fiona Fleming?” asked Hamish bluntly.
“This is outrageous. You come in here and – ”
Hamish interrupted. “Just answer the question.”
“Of course not. I have a good mind to sue you for slander.”
“Then you’d better sue most of Braikie as well,” said Hamish. “The reason I am asking is because the late Mrs. Gillespie appears to have been a blackmailer. Did she come after you?”
“I have nothing to hide. I lead a blameless life. Good day, Officer!”
♦
Hamish drove out of Braikie and up into the hills. He parked the Land Rover and let the dog and cat out into the heather for a run. He found a flat rock jutting out of the heather and sat down on it and stared out over Braikie. So many suspects. His thoughts were being hampered by a reluctant appreciation of the murderer. Mrs. Gillespie had been a vile woman. Still, murder was murder. He wondered whether Mrs. Samson was still at risk. He phoned Jimmy and asked if anyone was checking on her.
“There’s a police guard on her,” said Jimmy. “What are you doing now?”
“I think I’ll go to Strathbane University and see if I can dig up anything on the professor’s past. See if there’s anyone there old enough to remember him. Don’t tell Blair.”
♦
Strathbane University was a dismal Stalinist sort of building, put up in the fifties when most architects seem to have been in love with concrete. White-faced, unhealthy-looking students roamed its corridors. Hamish found his way to the bursar’s office. The bursar, Mrs. Pilkington, was an efficient-looking grey-haired woman. “I’ll check the records,” she said in answer to Hamish’s request. She switched on a computer on her desk.
At last, she said, “Professor Sander came here from Glasgow University in 1992. He retired from here five years ago.”
“Why did he leave a big university like Glasgow to come here?”
“That I do not know.”
“Is there anyone who might remember him? Someone he might have been friendly with?”
“I’m new to the job here. You could ask my predecessor, Mrs. Black. I’ll give you her address.”
♦
Mrs. Black lived in a croft house outside Strathbane on the Ullapool road.
When Hamish explained the reason for his visit, she invited him in. Like most croft houses, hers was very small, with a stone-flagged living room. Mrs. Black was an energetic, white-haired woman with a shrewd, intelligent face.
“I’ll make us some tea,” she said. “Sit down by the fire.”
Hamish looked around as she hurried off to the kitchen counter at the opposite side of the room. There was one good landscape painting over the fireplace and bookshelves crammed into every available space.
“Do you have sheep?” he asked.
“Yes, I do have sheep, and I’m going to sell the lot at the next sheep sales in Lairg. I’d only played at it before, helping out crofter friends. It’s more bother than it’s all worth.”
She brought over two mugs of tea and set them on a coffee table in front of the fire and then sat down opposite Hamish.
“So what do you want to know about Professor Sander?”
“Could anyone have been blackmailing him?”
“I shouldn’t think so. Fussy little man. Always complaining about something or another. How things were better at Glasgow University and so on until one day I shouted at him, “Why don’t you go back there?” He didn’t bother me much after that.”
“Not attracted to any of the students?”
“Nothing like that. I don’t think he liked them. Oh, wait a bit. There was something. I’d nearly forgotten. A chap turned up one day, and I could hear him shouting that Sander had stolen his work. That book on Byron. But he was shabby and dirty, and I think he was a junkie with delusions. Nobody paid any heed to his allegations, and we never saw him again.”
“If Sander had stolen someone’s work, that would be a motive for blackmail,” said Hamish. “I mean, that was really the only work he produced.”
“It’ll be hard to prove unless you find the young man. I know, he came to me first and I took a note of his name before directing him to Sander’s office.”
“Where did you take a note?”
“Just on a pad on my desk.”
“You wouldn’t happen to have kept the notebook?”
“If I did, it’s up in the loft with all the other papers. When I cleared my desk, I just threw everything into two large boxes.”
“May I look?”
“You’ll need to go up there yourself. My legs aren’t what they used to be.”
She led Hamish into the small hall and pulled down a folding ladder. Hamish climbed up and raised the trapdoor. He heaved himself into the loft and crawled towards two boxes standing among a jumble of discarded furniture and odds and ends. He propelled them to the loft opening, stood on the ladder, and lifted out one carton, carried it down, and then went back for the other.
“You’d better let me look,” said Mrs. Black. “I might recognise that notebook unless I threw it away. Lift the boxes through to the table at the window. I don’t want to have to be bending over the things.”
Hamish did as he was told and waited impatiently while she slowly took out one item after the other. His stomach gave a rumble. He longed for a really filling, stodgy meal.