“Come on, Iain,” said Hamish. “We’ll settle this ourselves.”
Iain sized up Hamish’s thin, gangling form and began to smile. “OK, Hamish, but don’t blame me if ye get sore hurt.”
But Iain found it impossible to hit Hamish. The constable weaved and ducked, dancing lightly on his feet, diving under the farmer’s guard to land his punches. At last, Hamish said, “Let’s finish this,” and that was the last thing Iain heard for about ten minutes as a massive punch landed full on his jaw.
When he recovered consciousness. Hamish was kneeling beside him on the ground. “All right?” he asked anxiously.
“Man, ye’ve got a sore punch,” whispered the farmer.
“Well, now that the law in its way has been enforced,” said Hamish cheerfully, “can I hae your word that you’ll leave the bats alone?”
“Aye, you hae my word.”
Hamish helped him to his feet, gave him a swig of brandy from his flask and helped him back into his bulldozer and stood waiting while the bulldozer churned its way back over the soft ground.
He decided to go and pay a visit on old Mrs MacGowan and see if Trixie had managed to winkle anything valuable out of her. Perhaps it was simple greed which had caused the murder and Trixie had got hold of something worth killing for.
But as he drove into Lochdubh, he saw he was approaching Harry Drummond’s house and, in his usual, nosey, Highland way, decided to find out first what on earth had persuaded Mrs Drummond to divorce a sober and working man when she would not divorce the drunk.
Mrs Drummond was at home. She was a soft, shapeless, dyed blonde of a woman with a face covered in a layer of thick make-up and a sour little painted red mouth like a wound. “Whit’s he done?” she asked when she saw Hamish on the doorstep and he could swear there was a certain amount of hope in her eyes.
“Harry? Nothing,” said Hamish. “Can I come in a minute?”
She shrugged by way of an answer and led the way through to the living-room, removing a tattered pile of women’s magazines from a chair so that he could sit down.
Flies buzzed about the room and she seized a can of fly spray and sent a cloud of it up to the ceiling. Hamish sat in a gentle rain of insecticide and asked, “Why are you going to divorce Harry? He’s looking great and he’s got a good job.”
She lit a cigarette and took an enormous drag on it. “I’m in love wi’ somebody else,” she said.
“Who?”
“Buckie Graham, him over at Crask.”
“But Buckie Graham’s a terrible drunk with a nasty temper!” exclaimed Hamish.
“All he needs is someone to look after him,” said Mrs Drummond defiantly. “We’re getting married as soon as the divorce comes through.”
She offered Hamish a cup of tea in a half-hearted way and he refused. He spent several more minutes trying to persuade her of the folly of marrying Buckie, but she only became extremely angry.
“Women!” he thought, as he drove over to Mrs MacGowan’s on the other side of the loch.
The cottage was tucked away at the edge of the pine forest. Hamish climbed down from the Land Rover and took a deep breath of sweet pine-scented air. He knew that the inside of Mrs. MacGowan’s cottage was going to smell as horrible as usual.
“So you’ve finally decided to come and see me,” said the old woman when she opened the door.
She was bent and gnarled and twisted like an old willow tree but her black eyes sparkled with intelligence. Hamish edged his way into her small parlour. It was crammed with furniture and china and photographs, reminding him of Mrs Haggerty’s cottage. Dust lay everywhere and the awful smell of Mrs MacGowan pervaded the close atmosphere.
“I’ll just open the window,” said Hamish hopefully.
“Leave it be,” she said. “The flies just come in.”
“You seem to have caught plenty already,” said Hamish, looking up at the fly paper, black with dead flies, which dangled from the ceiling light. “Where do people get these things from?”
“It was that Mrs Thomas. Herself got Patel, that wee Pakistani…”
“He’s Indian.”
“Oh, well, what does it matter. She starts on about this ozone layer, whateffer that might be in the name o’ creation, and says these sticky ones are better than spray cans and the wee Indian got some from somewhere.”
“I want to ask you about Mrs Thomas. Did she call on you often?”
“Oh, aye, herself came a lot.”
“What for?”
“She said she wass sorry for me and brought me cakes and scones. But I knew what she wass after.”
“That being?” prompted Hamish.
She nodded her head towards a Welsh dresser. “That.”
“The dresser?”
“That platter wi’ the three women and the man on it.”
Hamish went over and examined it. It had a gold edge and a painted scene showing three ladies in eighteenth-century dress surrounding a courtier. The colours were exquisite.
“Offer you any money?” asked Hamish.
“Och, aye,” she cackled with laughter, “A fiver.”
“I would say it’s worth a lot more than that.”
“When I saw her getting that keen on having it and trying no’ to look it, I got Andy, the postie, to bring round his Polaroid and take a picture. I sent the picture tae the Art Galleries in Glasgow and they sent me a wee note. It’s up on the shelf above it.” Hamish took down the dusty letter and opened it. The museum had pleasure in informing Mrs MacGowan that her platter appeared to be Meissen, around 1745, with a scene painted after Watteau, but they could not be sure until they examined the platter themselves.
Hamish whistled silently. “And did you tell her?”
“Not me. I jist kept her coming round wi’ the cakes and biscuits and hinting I wass ready to give it awav to her.”
“You know you could get a lot of money for that?”
“Aye, but I’ll leave it to my great grand-daughter in my will. She can sell it if she wants.”
“So she didn’t get anything out of you?” asked Hamish.
“Not a thing, although it wasnae for the want o’ trying.”
Hamish asked after her health, made her a pot of tea, presented her with a packet of chocolate biscuits, and got up to leave. He looked in distaste at the fly paper with its load of dead flies.
“If you’ve got another of these things, I’ll hang up a fresh one for you,” he said.
“No, I hivnae. I don’t like them anyway. I liked the good old–fashioned kind. Herself was going to get me some. Not from Patel. He could only get the sticky ones. The flies did not stick to the old–fashioned ones. They jist smelled it and dropped dead.”
Hamish got out of the cottage with the usual feeling of relief at finding himself back in the fresh air. He drove slowly back to Lochdubh, wondering what to do next. A movement to the side of the road caught his eye. It was almost as if someone had ducked down when they saw the car.
He stopped and jumped down and walked back a bit. A small bottom was sticking out from behind a bush.
“Come out,” ordered Hamish.
The little figure backed out. Susan Kennedy, the evil-eyed child from The Laurels.
“I thought you were going home today,” said Hamish.
“I’m no’ going,” said the child. “I want tae stay here.”
“Well, you can’t. You have to go back to school. Come on. I’ll give you a lift back. I’ve got some sweeties in the car.”
“What kind?”
“Chocolate fudge.”
“OK.” She walked back with him and climbed into the passenger seat. Hamish fished in the box of sweets he kept handy for the local children and handed her a small bag.
“I love sweeties,” she said, putting two in her mouth at once. “Im o is bid assem.”