She looked alarmed when she saw Hamish.
“May I come in?” asked Hamish.
“All right. What’s it about?”
Hamish followed her into a living room furnished with a three·piece suite in white leather. A small crystal chandelier hung from the low ceiling, and a gas fire of fake coals hissed in the grate.
He turned to face her. “Why did you lie about Mrs. Barret-Wilkinson staying with you?”
“I didn’t know it was a police matter.” She had a voice which sounded as if it had been roughened over the years by whisky and cigarettes. “Crystal told me she was having an affair with a married man and his wife was getting suspicious. She said if the wife accused her of anything, she would say she had been staying with me, because she was going to spend the night with him at a hotel in Inverness.”
“Didn’t it strike you as odd when you heard about the murder of that television researcher?”
She twisted her heavily beringed hands and looked at the floor.
“You’re younger than she is,” said Hamish. “Were you one of her girls at that club in Beauchamp Place? Don’t lie to me. I can find out.”
“Yes, I was, and yes, I was frightened when I heard about the murder, so after the police had interviewed me, I cleared off.”
“Is her name really Barret-Wilkinson?”
“Yes, she married one of the punters. Did well for herself. Got a mint out of the divorce. I’d got out of the game with enough money to live comfortably. I wasn’t like the other girls. No drugs for me.”
“Did you think Mrs. Barret-Wilkinson might have killed Shona Fraser?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
She sighed. “Sit down, won’t you?”
Hamish took off his cap and sat down. Mrs. Fleming would love this white furniture, he thought.
“It was in ‘93,” she said. “One of the punters wanted her. Crystal used to be on the game but was glad to get the post as a madam. She refused, but the owner, Freddie Ionedes, was in the club that night, and he ordered her to get on with it. I don’t know what the punter did to Crystal, but I heard her scream. Freddie ran upstairs. I heard him shouting, “Why did you kill him?” I couldn’t hear what Crystal replied. I was curious. I crept up the stairs. “You stupid tart,” Freddie was saying. “We’ll need to get rid of the body. I don’t want the police around here. I’ve got the half of Debrett’s downstairs.” I heard him coming to the door of the room, so I nipped back downstairs. I don’t know what they did with the body. After that, Crystal told me she was getting out of the life. The next thing I knew was six months later when she invited me to her wedding in the Chelsea registry office. A year later, one of the girls told me she had bumped into Crystal. She said Crystal had gone all tweedy and respectable. Crystal told her she was divorced and was going somewhere to start a new life and where nothing from her past could catch up with her. I should have known it was a lie when she told me she was having an affair. There’s nothing like being a working girl to put you off men for life.”
“You’ll need to make a sworn statement,” said Hamish.
“Will my past life come out? I’ve gone respectable, and I don’t want the neighbours to know.”
“I’ll try to keep it quiet. A detective will be calling on you soon. Don’t run away again, or they’ll find you. And do not contact Mrs. Barret-Wilkinson, or we will arrest you. What was her name before she married?”
“Crystal Jackson.”
♦
Hamish drove back to the airport, left the rented car, and caught the plane to Inverness. He had a sudden idea of how to clear up the murders, get back at Blair, and avoid any threat of promotion at the same time.
He had the tape with him in the Land Rover. In his pocket was a powerful little tape recorder. He had recorded everything Bella had said.
He went to police headquarters in Inverness and asked to speak to Inspector Cannon.
He had to wait some time before she appeared. “What is it?” she asked harshly. “Come to gloat?”
Hamish smiled. “How would you like to get your own back?”
♦
In an interview room, Mary Cannon listened in growing excitement as Hamish described all he had found out about Crystal Barret-Wilkinson. She listened to his taped interview with Bella and then took him to another room with a video player and watched the tape.
At last, she said, “It’s enough to get a warrant to search her house. But it’s still pretty circumstantial. If she gets a good lawyer, she could walk free or at least get a ‘not proven’ verdict.”
“I have a suggestion to make,” said Hamish. “It might just work…”
♦
Mrs. Barret-Wilkinson opened the door and looked haughtily at the tall policeman. “What is it now, Officer? It’s ten o’clock in the evening.”
“I’d better come in,” said Hamish. “I have come to accuse you of the murders of Mrs. Gillespie and Shona Fraser.”
“You’re mad. Oh, come in. This is rubbish.”
In her sitting room, Hamish removed his cap and sat down and regarded her steadily.
“Well?” she demanded.
“You’d best sit down.”
She sat down in a chair facing him.
“We have a videotape from Trant Television which shows you working as a madam at a club in Beauchamp Place in London. I also have this interview with Bella Robinson.”
She listened while he played the tape, the many rings on her fingers digging into her clenched hands.
“So,” she said when the tape finished, “I was a tart managing tarts, and it was a long time ago. I had nothing to do with the murders. The professor has confessed.”
“Not to the murders, he hasn’t,” said Hamish. “Mrs. Gillespie recognised you from the television programme and blackmailed you. You’ve had a lot of luck. Not at first, mind. I think you tried to run her down, but that didn’t work, so you followed her to Moy Hall to the clay pigeon shoot and tried to kill her there. You found out her schedule and simply waited outside the professor’s for her. Maybe you’d decided to try to talk her out of it or even threaten her to keep quiet. Whatever she said drove you into a mad rage, and you struck her down with her bucket. Then Shona Fraser called on you. Maybe she’d just decided to go around everyone and do a bit of detecting on her own. She, too, recognised you. Maybe you heard her outside phoning me on her mobile. You drove towards Lochdubh. Maybe you’d seen that Land Rover parked up on the hill.”
“What Land Rover?”
“Geordie McArthur’s.”
“Never heard of him.”
Hamish experienced a twinge of doubt. He felt she was telling the truth.
“Okay. So you used your own car. Maybe you hid in the shadows by the police station until you saw her arrive, then you struck her down. You dragged her over to push her into the water, but the body fell into a rowing boat. You went down the stairs, but maybe you heard someone and cut the painter and let the boat drift off.”
Hamish saw uneasily that she was beginning to relax.
“And you have forensic proof to back up all your wild imaginings?”
“We’ll get it. We’ll search this place from top to bottom.”
“Let me get this straight. You say you’ve come here to arrest me for two murders, but you are only a village constable. There are no high-ranking police officers, no detectives. Is this flight of fancy all your own?”
Hamish shuffled his boots. “It iss like this. I haff been working on my own. But I haff enough here to start a full investigation. It would save time if you came quietly.”
“Oh, I may as well come with you to police headquarters and show you up for the fool you are.”
She went over to the table where her handbag lay. She opened it and whipped out a gun and pointed it at Hamish.