Clay leaned forward. “So you knew each other before. So you knew, Mr Biggar, that Mr and Mrs Harris were to be here on holiday and you came along as well. Why? To put it bluntly, you could hardly have expected any romantic interludes with her husband around.” His voice hardened. “Could it be that you came up with murder in mind?”
“I just wanted to be near her, that’s all,” mumbled Andrew, looking the picture of gentlemanly embarrassment.
“We’ll start again,” said Deacon. “Were you having an affair?”
“No,” said Doris. “Never!”
Deacon gave them both a look of patent disbelief but he said in a milder tone to Andrew, “How did you first meet?”
“I was judging a dog show,” said Andrew. “Afterwards I went to the refreshment tent to get a beer. When I started to leave, it was coming down in buckets. Doris was standing at the entrance to the tent. She didn’t have a coat. She said something about having to wait or she would get soaked trying to reach the car park. My judging was over, so I suggested we have another drink and see if the rain eased off. We began to talk. I found her very easy to talk to.”
“Have you ever been married, Mr Biggar?” Hamish’s quiet Highland lilt came from the corner of the room.
“Yes, I was married over ten years ago. She left me when I was posted to Northern Ireland. She is married again. Her married name is Hester Glad-Jones. She now lives in Cambridge. She will testify that I was never violent or abusive to her. I am not the sort to murder.”
“But you were a professional soldier until recently. You must have known how to kill men.”
“Yes, but not by hitting them on the head and pushing them in the water and leaving them to die.”
“So when did you first meet Mrs Harris?”
“I told you…at the dog show.”
“Yes, I know, but I want month and year.”
“It was two years ago, in August.”
“And you have been seeing each other ever since?”
“Yes, on and off. Just the occasional drink or meal. We enjoyed each other’s company. There seemed no harm in it. We did not fall in love until recently.”
“You seem a sensible man to me,” said Deacon. “Okay, I can understand you not wanting us to know that you and Mrs Harris had been seeing each other before you came up here. But for heaven’s sake, man, what did you think you were doing coming up to a seedy boarding-house to watch the woman you loved being bullied by her husband? What did you think when you heard him going on at her? It drove Macbeth over there to punch Harris on the nose, although he will insist it was self-defence.”
Andrew said evenly, “The reason I stayed was to try to persuade her to leave with me, just leave him.”
Deacon transferred his attention to Doris. “And why didn’t you?” he asked.
“I was afraid Bob would kill me.”
“But if you just went off with him, how could he find you?”
She shivered and hugged herself. “He would have found us. I just hadn’t the strength.”
Again the voice of Hamish Macbeth. “You live with your mother, Mr Biggar. Did she know about Mrs Harris?”
He hesitated and then gave a curt “Yes.”
“And what did she think about it? I know you are a middle-aged man, but to mothers, sons never grow up. Had she met Mrs Harris?”
“No.”
“But she knew. What did she think?”
“I do not know. I refused to discuss the matter with her.”
“You must have seen an end to this. What did you envisage?”
Andrew sighed. “I lived from day to day. I hoped Doris would sooner or later get up the courage to leave him.”
The questioning continued. Where had they gone, apart from the Chinese restaurant, and when? At last, they were released. Maggie came in to clear away the empty cups as Deacon said to Hamish, “Well, I think they’re both mad. Why didn’t they just hop into bed and have a fling?”
“You’re looking at two old–fashioned people,” said Hamish. “It struck me for the first time looking at them both that they love with the intensity of a Romeo and Juliet. They had everything against them: disapproving mother, bullying husband. But this is the real thing, this is the stuff the poets wrote about, and that’s why Andrew Biggar followed her up here.”
“Havers. You’re a romantic.”
“I am the realist. Some surprising people are capable of the finer feelings,” said Hamish huffily.
Maggie went out with the tray. Could Hamish Macbeth love like that? Was he right? Did that sort of love still exist when everything these days was sex, sex, sex? Perhaps she would see if he was free for dinner. That new short black skirt with the slit up the side hadn’t been worn yet.
She hung about outside the interviewing room.
But Hamish was waiting inside to see Alice Brett.
∨ Death of a Nag ∧
9
Love’s like the measles – all the worse when it comes late in life.
—Douglas William Jerrold
Hamish, who had been studying his notes, looked up curiously as Alice Brett was ushered in. He had expected a legal secretary to turn out to be somewhat like Doris Harris in appearance, prim and neat. But Alice Brett was fleshy. She had a loose, floppy bosom and rather big loose arms, as if they had once been muscled and the muscle had gone into flab. Her heavily painted mouth was very thick and full, and she wore an orange lipstick which had the ‘wet’ look, so that it was hard to look anywhere else but at that huge glistening mouth. Her eyes were large and rather fixed. She was wearing a short-sleeved summer dress. She had large plump feet in white high-heeled shoes.
Clay switched on the tape again. Deacon consulted some notes and then began. “Mrs Brett, you say you came up here after the murder, and yet you checked out on holiday the week before. You will be interested to know that your neighbour, Mrs Dibb, now stands by her original story and has made a statement. She said you told her a week before the murder of Mr Harris that you had received a letter saying that your husband was cheating on you, and that you were going up to Scotland. Was that letter from Harris?”
“I want a lawyer,” said Mrs Brett.
“You’ll get one. But try to co-operate. If you did not murder Mr Harris, then you have nothing to fear.”
Hamish spoke suddenly, “The thing that is bothering me,” he said, “was that there was hardly time for Harris to have written to Mrs Brett here. We had all been here only a few days when the murder took place.”
Deacon looked at him in surprise. Then he glared at Alice Brett. “Out wi’ it. Who told you about June?”
“I’m saying nothing until a lawyer gets here.” Alice folded her baggy arms over her baggy bosom and faced them mutinously.
And then Hamish Macbeth had one of his flashes of Highland insight.
“I know who wrote to you,” he said.
“How? Who?” asked Deacon.
“It was June,” said Hamish flatly. He looked straight at Alice Brett. “June wrote to you, didn’t she?”
She stared back and then sneered, “Oh, well, if the silly trollop has told you, there’s no point in me denying it. The bitch. Let my man go and all that crap.”
“So why didn’t you approach them when you came up here?” asked Hamish. “You weren’t staying in Skag. I’m sure of that.”
“I stayed a bit away,” she said sulkily. “I stayed in Forres. I drove over one day. You were all on the beach. It was the children. I can’t have any. It made me sick. But I suddenly didn’t want him any more. I went to tell him so. Of course June and the children weren’t anywhere around. You know how I got my revenge? Not by murdering Harris. Why should I? I didn’t know the man. I got my revenge by saying he could have had a divorce any time he wanted, and then I saw the look on his face. He was mad with fury, thinking of all the wasted years.”