“Michty me. You mean a man cannae do whit he likes with his ain property?”
“Not when it comes to bats,” said Hamish.
Iain’s face darkened with anger. “I’ve a good mind to bulldoze this lot o’ harpies.”
“Do you hear him, constable?” cried Trixie. “He is threatening to kill us.”
“I didnae hear a word,” said Hamish crossly. “But you women should be ashamed of yourselves. Yes, you too, Mrs Wellington! Somehow you heard Iain was going to bulldoze this old ruin. Well, why the h – , why on earth didn’t you just write the man a letter? Behaving like silly bairns. You are a right disgrace – all of you.”
“A man as full of land greed as Iain Gunn would not have paid attention to any letter,” said Trixie.
“Now, I did hear that,” said Hamish, “and if you want to sue her, Iain, I will be your witness. Off home with the lot of ye and try to behave like grownups. Shoo!”
Angela flinched. Hamish’s eyes were hard. How silly they all looked, she thought suddenly. Why had she come along? And Trixie had no right to say that about Iain. Crofters never liked farmers but although they occasionally made sour and jealous remarks about Iain Gunn, there was no real animosity in their hearts.
The women trailed off. “I’ll walk,” said Angela to Trixie. She had come in Trixie’s old Ford van.
“Don’t be silly, Angela,” said Trixie, and Angela felt she would weep if anyone ever called her silly again. “You know how much I rely on you. We had to make a stand. Gunn wouldn’t have paid any heed to a letter. Besides, I’ve got the minutes of the last Anti-Smoking League meeting to type out and I’m hopeless at it. Don’t be cross with me. I do rely on you, Angela.” Trixie’s eyes seemed very large and almost hypnotic. “Everyone’s remarked on how much you’ve changed lately. Why, even Mrs Wellington was saying only the other day that you were looking younger and prettier than you had done in ages.”
Angela melted. Her husband had never once in their marriage commented on her appearance until that remark about her looking like Harpo Marx. Sensitive and insecure, never able to think much of herself, Angela was an easy prey for the dominant Trixie.
With a weak smile, she got in the van beside Trixie.
Iain Gunn watched them go. “Environmentalists should be poisoned like rats,” he said.
Angela Brodie typed out the minutes while Trixie worked in the back garden and Paul sat on the wall in front of the house looking at the loch. She glanced guiltily at the clock, remembering her husband’s demand for steak. The butchers would be closed quite soon. She stacked the minutes in a neat pile and ran out of the kitchen, calling to Paul to say goodbye to Trixie for her. Again, Angela felt a slight unease about Trixie, but she fought it down. Her drab life was now colourful and full of events because of Trixie. She was proud of her clean house and seemed to be on a constant high of energy and hard work. She could not go back to being the lazy, dreamy person she had been for so long. But she bought the steak.
Trixie put down her spade and walked around from the back garden to the front. She saw Priscilla Halburton-Smythe walking along the road. Trixie ran into the house and emerged a little while later with a navy-blue sweater slung over her shoulders. Ignoring her blank-eyed husband she stepped out into the road just as Priscilla was approaching. “Good afternoon, Priscilla,” she called cheerfully.
“Good afternoon, Mrs Thomas,” said Priscilla. Her eyes fell on the sweater and a little frown marred the smooth surface of her brow. “That looks like one of Hamish’s sweaters,” she said.
Trixie lifted it from her shoulders and held it out to Priscilla. “Would you hand it back to him?” she said, “I’d be too embarrassed.”
“Why?” asked Priscilla, ignoring the proffered sweater.
Trixie giggled. “Our romantic policeman’s a bit soppy about me. He gave it to me to wear, you know, just like an American college kid giving his girlfriend his football sweater.”
Priscilla looked down her nose. “Give it to him yourself,” she snapped, and walked around Trixie and off down the road.
Angela Brodie waited and waited but her husband did not return home. The cat was sleeping by the fire along with the dogs, its claws dug into the carpet in case it should be lifted up and banished to the garden again. The clock ticked slowly, marking off the time. Angela phoned the surgery but only got the answering machine referring callers to the house number. He must have been called out on an emergency, she thought, but then she had a feeling he was deliberately staying away. She tried to read but reading did not bring the old comfort. She turned on the television. There was a party political broadcast on one channel, a sordid play on another, a wildlife programme about snakes on the third, and on the fourth, a ballet with screeching music and white-faced performers in black tights. She switched it off. She opened the cupboard under the sink and took out dusters and polish and began to clean the clean house all over again.
At ten o’clock, she phoned the police station. Hamish Macbeth said he would go and find the doctor. She had a feeling that Hamish knew where the doctor was.
At half past ten, the kitchen door opened and the doctor entered, or rather was helped in by Hamish. He giggled when he saw his wife and sang to the tune of Loch Lomond, “Oh, I’ve just killed Trixie Thomas, the rotten harpie’s dead.”
“Come to bed, doctor,” said Hamish. “Come away. Where’s the bedroom?”
“Upstairs,” said Angela weakly.
She waited, listening to the sounds as the doctor sang loudly about having killed Trixie and Hamish patiently coaxed him into bed.
She could not ever remember her husband being drunk before. But Trixie had warned her that all that smoking and junk food would cause a deterioration in him sooner or later. At the very corner of her mind was a niggling little voice accusing her of having driven her husband to drink, but she did not listen to it. Instead she tucked her sneakered feet – those gleaming white sneakers so like Trixie’s – under her on the sofa and waited for Hamish to descend.
Trixie Thomas could be harsh with her husband for his own good. The fact that Paul did not want to go to the dentist in Inverness and the fact that Trixie was determined he should go was all over Lochdubh by lunchtime as the couple’s row on the subject had taken place in their front garden.
“Afraid o’ the dentist like a wee wean,” jeered Archie Maclean who had had all his teeth pulled out at the age of twenty-one and had never had to worry about a dentist since.
Paul was eventually seen driving off in the van. At one o’clock, Mrs Kennedy, the boarder, returned to The Laurels with her sticky children to see if she could coax Trixie into making them all some sandwiches. The rain was falling steadily and the children were fractious and bored. But there was no sign of Trixie and her bedroom door was locked.
Angela Brodie turned up at two. Mrs Kennedy was cheerfully raiding the pantry. “Mrs Thomas must be having a wee lie down,” she said. “I cannae get a reply.”
Angela ran up the stairs and knocked on Trixie’s door. Trixie had a separate room from her husband, an odd luxury in a couple who claimed they needed to rent out every available space to boarders. Angela hesitated. Then she knocked louder and called and waited. Silence.
It was a big, rambling Victorian villa. A large fly buzzed monotonously against the stained glass window on the landing. From below came the wails of the Kennedy children demanding ‘mair jelly pieces’ by which they meant more jam sandwiches.
Angela knew Paul had gone to Inverness to the dentist. Everyone knew that.
The silence from behind Trixie’s door was un –