“Why bother?” said Hamish laconically. “It’s the same stuff you got from the police in Inverness. But there’s something you should know.” He told Blair about the dealer.
“Bugger it,” said Blair. That complicates things.
“She’d probably made off with someone’s family heirloom.”
“You should ask Halburton-Smythe,” said Hamish maliciously. “He was driving her around while she looked for antiques.”
Blair’s face darkened. The Daviots had been bragging about their dinner at the castle and he had no desire to run foul of the new super by putting the colonel’s back up. “Aye, well, I might send Anderson up. This is the devil of a case. There was nae arsenic in that curry. Must hae been in something else.”
Towser, who was sitting beside Hamish, growled softly.
“You look right daft with that mongrel beside you,” sneered Blair.
“This is a highly trained police dog,” said Hamish, “and I’ve already been offered five hundred pounds for him.”
Blair’s mouth dropped in surprise as Hamish drove off.
“It wasn’t really a lie,” Hamish told Towser. “If they had any sense in this place, I’m sure they would have given me an offer for you.” Towser lolled his tongue and put a large affectionate paw on Hamish’s knee.
“Should be a woman’s hand on my knee,” said Hamish, “and not a mangy dog like yourself.”
The seer lived in a small white-washed cottage on the top of a round green hill with a winding path leading up to it. It looked like a child’s drawing. Hamish parked his vehicle at the foot of the path and began to walk up. Black storm clouds rolled across the heavens and the wind roared through a pylon overhead with a dismal shriek. At least the wind is keeping away the flies and midges, thought Hamish, leaning against its force as he walked towards the cottage. A thin column of grey smoke from one of the cottage’s chimneys was being whipped and shredded by the wind.
Angus Macdonald was a tall, thin man in his sixties. He had a thick head of white hair and a craggy face with an enormous beak of a nose. His eyes were very pale grey.
He opened the door as Hamish reached it. “So ye’ve come at last,” he said. “I knew you’d be by. Cannae solve the case?”
“And I suppose you can,” said Hamish, following the seer into his small kitchen-cum-living room.
“Aye, maybe, maybe,” said Angus. “Whit have ye brought me?”
“Nothing. What did you want? Your palm crossed with silver?”
“Folks aye bring me something. A bit o’ salmon, or a piece of venison or a homemade cake.”
“I am here to ask you to tell me as an officer of the law what you know about Trixie Thomas.”
“She’s dead,” said the seer and cackled with laughter.
“When she came to see you, what did you tell her?”
Angus lifted a black kettle from its chain over the open fire and took it over to the sink and filled it with water and then hung it back on the hook. “I’ve a bad memory these days.” he said. “Seems tae me that there’s nothing like a wee dram for bringing it to life.”
“I haven’t brought any whisky with me,” said Hamish crossly.
The seer turned from the fire and bent a penetrating gaze on Hamish. “She’ll never marry you,” he said.
The Highland part of Hamish repressed a superstitious shudder. The policeman part decided to be diplomatic.
“Look, you auld scunner,” he said, “I’ll be back in a bit with a dram. You’d better get your brains working by then.”
Angus smiled when Hamish had left and then set about making a pot of tea. The wind howled and screeched about his cottage like a banshee. He could hear nothing but the fury of the wind. He hoped Hamish would be back soon with that whisky. The wind depressed him. It seemed like a live thing, some monster howling about his cottage, seeking a way in.
It was probably playing havoc with his garden at the back. He put the teapot on the hearth beside the fire and then opened the back door. His raspberry canes were flattened and the door of his garden shed was swinging wildly on its hinges. He went out into the small garden and shut the shed door and wedged a brick against it.
A fitful gleam of watery sunlight struck through the clouds as he turned and shone on something lying beside his back door. He went and looked down. A full bottle of whisky.
He grinned. Just like devious Hamish Macbeth. Leaving the whisky and hoping he’d get well oiled before the constable came back to ask his questions.
He carried the bottle inside. Time to switch on the television and watch the long-range forecast. People were always amazed at his ability to predict the weather so accurately although they watched the same programme themselves. He settled down in his battered armchair by the fire and poured himself a glass of whisky, noticing that the top had already been opened. “Decided to have a dram himself and thought the better of it,” reflected Angus with amusement.
The wind increased in force and shrieked and battered at his cottage like a maniac. As he raised his glass to his lips, the room whirled away and he suddenly saw his long dead mother. She was looking surprised and delighted, the way she had looked when he had unexpectedly come home on leave during the war. And then the vision faded. He sat very still and then put the glass down on the floor beside him with a shaking hand.
As a youth, he had been sure he had been gifted with the second sight, as that ability to see into the future is called in the Highlands. He had had it during the war. He had seen in his mind’s eye his friend getting shot by the Germans and sure enough that’s exactly what had happened. He had gradually built up the reputation of a seer. The gift had never come back, but he had found it easy to impress the locals as he knew all about them anyway and listened to every bit of gossip.
He was sitting, staring into space, when Hamish came back.
“Here’s your whisky,” said Hamish, holding up a half bottle. “Why, you greedy auld pig, you’ve got a whole bottle there.”
“It’s death,” said the seer in a thin voice. “Oh, tak’ it away, Hamish. I saw death in it.”
He was white and trembling.
“Where did you get it from?” asked Hamish sharply.
“It was outside the kitchen door – at the back. People aye leave me things, you know that, Hamish. I didnae hear anyone because o’ that damn wind.”
“And what stopped ye?” asked Hamish, looking at him intently.
Angus shook his head as if to clear it. “I saw my mither,” he said. “She was standing by the door and she looked surprised tae see me as if I’d jist crossed over tae the other side.”
“And ye hadn’t been drinking anything before that?” asked Hamish cynically.
“No, man, no. I swear it.”
Hamish took out a clean handkerchief and lifted the bottle of whisky. “Have you a bit o’ kitchen paper or something so I can take the glass as well?” he asked.
Angus nodded in the direction of the sink where there was a roll of kitchen paper standing on the draining board.
“I’ll just be off,” said Hamish, tenderly carrying both glass and bottle.
“Dinnae leave me,” wailed Angus, getting to his feet.
“Aye, I suppose ye’d better come with me to Blair, although what he’s going to make of this, I shudder to think.”
Blair was in the police station office when Hamish returned with the seer. The police station, like most of the houses in Lochdubh, was hardly ever locked.
“I know you’re not staying at the hotel,” said Hamish crossly, “but I thought Johnson had given you the free use of a room.”
“Aye, well I jist happened to be passing and needed tae use the phone. Who’s he? And whit are ye daein’ stinking o’ whisky?” Hamish was carefully carrying a glass of whisky and the bottle he had taken from Angus.