“See yourself out,” she snapped.
♦
Before he left, Hamish peered through the windows of the garage at the side of the house. He saw a powerful BMW. She could have raced over the hills to Braikie in record time with a car like that, waited outside the professor’s, and struck the cleaner down as she walked to her car. Hamish asked around the few houses in the village, but no one had seen Mrs. Barret-Wilkinson that morning. He learned that she was often absent for months at a time, and it was assumed she went to London. He wondered about Mrs. Barret-Wilkinson. What was she doing living alone so far from anywhere? And there had been something of the pretend-lady about her.
As he drove back towards Lochdubh, Hamish realised that Mrs. Wellington might know something interesting. She was always refreshingly direct.
Mrs. Wellington was in the manse kitchen, a gloomy relic of Victorian days with the rows of shelves meant for vast dinner services. There were still the old stone sinks.
“I heard about the murder,” said Mrs. Wellington. “I’m not surprised.”
Hamish sat down at the kitchen table and removed his hat.
“Why not?”
“She was such a nosy, bullying woman.”
“So why did you keep employing her?”
“I tried to fire her. She went to my husband in tears with some sob story. He told me it was my Christian duty to rehire her.”
“How was she nosy?”
“I occasionally caught her looking through drawers. She swore she had simply been cleaning the ledges inside. She was a great church-goer. One time my husband had just recovered from a nasty cold. He didn’t feel up to writing a sermon, and so he delivered an old one. Mrs. Gillespie recognised it and slyly asked me what people would think if they knew. I told her to go ahead and tell everyone, but I would let them all know the source of the nasty gossip. My! I remember I was so furious with her, I asked her if she went in for blackmail. She muttered something and scurried off.”
“The kettle’s boiling,” said Hamish, looking hopefully at the stove.
“I’ve no time to waste making tea or coffee for you, Hamish.”
“Apart from Professor Sander, do you know the other two women she worked for in Braikie, Mrs. Fleming and Mrs. Styles?”
“No, I don’t. They probably attend the kirk in Braikie. But I’ll tell you who will know – the Currie sisters. They sometimes attend church in Braikie for a bit of amusement.”
♦
The fact that the Currie sisters, Nessie and Jessie, twin spinsters of the parish, should find entertainment in church services came as no surprise to Hamish Macbeth. He knew local people who flocked to hear a visiting preacher with all the enthusiasm of teenagers going to a Robbie Williams concert.
Of course, he was not supposed to refer to them as spinsters any more. The police had been issued with a handbook of politically correct phrases. “Spinster’ was not allowed, nor, he thought sourly, as he headed for the spinsters’ cottage on the waterfront, was ‘interfering auld busybodies,” which was how he frequently damned them.
They were remarkably alike, both having tightly permed grey hair and thick glasses. He could tell them apart because Nessie was the more forceful one and her sister, Jessie, repeated phrases and sentences over again.
Other highlanders may have been alarmed to find a policeman on the doorstep, but it was almost as if the sisters had been expecting him.
“Come in,” said Nessie eagerly. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
“Waiting for you,” chorused her sister.
“Poor woman. Hit on the head with a bucket like that,” said Nessie. Bad news travels fast, thought Hamish.
“Was there a lot of blood?” asked Nessie.
“Blood,” intoned Jessie.
“Get the constable a cup of tea,” Nessie ordered her sister. Jessie left for the kitchen, grumbling under her breath.
Both sisters were small in size, and their furniture looked to Hamish as if it had come from a large doll’s house. He sank down into a small armchair and found his knees were up to his chin.
“I was wondering,” began Hamish, “if you could tell me anything about two ladies over in Braikie. Mrs. Gillespie worked for both of them. Mrs. Fleming and Mrs. Styles.”
“That would be gossip,” said Nessie righteously.
“It is known as helping the police with their enquiries,” corrected Hamish.
Nessie was delighted to have official permission to gossip. “Well,” she began, “Mrs. Fiona Fleming is a young widow with two teenage sons.”
“Can’t be that young. How old are the boys?”
“Sky is thirteen and Bobby, twelve.”
“Where did she get a name like Sky?” asked Hamish, momentarily diverted.
“I don’t know. Off the telly, most like.”
“What age is Mrs. Fleming?”
“About forty, I suppose. That’s young these days.”
“Does she work?”
“Doesn’t have to. Her late husband, Bernie, had a series of DVD rental shops all ower Scotland. She sold them off when he died.”
“When did he die?”
“Let me see.” Jessie came in stooped over a laden tray. “Jessie, when did Bernie Fleming die?”
“About five years ago, five years ago.”
“How did he die?”
“Got drunk and fell down the stairs in his house. Broke his poor neck,” said Nessie with ghoulish relish.
Hamish tuned out Jessie’s chorus and concentrated on what her sister was saying.
“What sort of woman is Mrs. Fleming?”
“Dainty wee thing. Been seen around with Dr. Renfrew from the hospital. Shocking.”
“Why?”
“The man’s married.”
Hamish took an offered cup of tea from Jessie. “And what about Mrs. Styles?”
“Now, there’s a right lady for you. Good church-goer and church worker.”
“Married?”
“Married to a retired shoe salesman. He’s a bit poorly in health.”
♦
When Hamish finally managed to leave the sisters’ cottage, his head was buzzing. He longed to go and interview this Mrs. Fleming. Had her husband’s death really been an accident? Did Dr. Renfrew’s wife know about the affair – if there was an affair? He knew from bitter experience that he had only to take some female out to dinner and the twins put it round the village the next day that he was having an affair.
∨ Death of a Maid ∧
3
3 or 4 families in a country village is the very thing to work on.
—Jane Austen, letter to Anna Austen
Hamish hurried back to the police station, thinking so hard about Mrs. Fleming that he only realised when he sat down in the police station office that he had left his pets in the Land Rover.
He hurried out and released them. “You’ve eaten,” he said. They both stared up at him, and then, with that odd telepathy the dog and the cat seemed to have between them, they both ran up to the fields at the back of the station.
Hamish went back into the office and looked up Jimmy Anderson’s mobile phone number. When Jimmy came on the line, Hamish said, “I happen to know one of the women in Braikie that Mrs. Gillespie cleaned for – a Mrs. Fleming. Could you persuade the auld scunner that it might be a good idea if I went to see her?” The good thing about being a Highlander, thought Hamish, was that one could tell a white lie without any conscience whatsoever.
“Wait a bit,” Jimmy said.
Hamish waited impatiently, hearing voices in the background. Then Jimmy’s voice came on the line again. He sounded amused. “Our lord and master says you can go.”
“Just like that?”
“Aye. That wee Shona lassie was listening, and Blair wants to be a television star, so he said yes. What have you got? You’ve heard something.”