The door opened and Freda ushered in a teenager. She was a quite remarkable beauty. She had thick black hair and a perfect complexion and huge blue eyes. She was wearing the school uniform of grey sweater and grey pleated skirt with a blue shirt and striped tie. Hamish noticed that the skirt was very short and she was wearing sheer black tights and those clumpy shoes with thick soles like diving boots.
Freda produced two chairs for them and then sat down nervously behind her desk.
“I am PC Hamish Macbeth,” said Hamish.
“I know.” Penny smiled at him out of those incredible eyes and flicked a lock of glossy black hair over one shoulder. “Word gets around.”
“Now, Penny, I’ll get straight to the point. I’m trying to find out as much as I can about the character of your late headmistress.”
“Head teacher,” corrected Penny.
“Whatever. You see, sometimes the character of the deceased can give the police a clue as to why she was murdered. I believe you were something of a favourite with her.”
“Aye. She was all over me like a rash,” said Penny with an almost adult insouciance.
“So tell me about her.”
Penny shrugged. “She was always finding excuses to invite me round to her house. Said I had a brilliant future. Always making excuses that I need extra coaching in this and that. She said I didn’t want to rot the rest of my life in a place like Braikie. Oh, I ‘member. She got mad at me once. I told her I wasn’t going to the university. I mean, university in Strathbane! Spotty students. Dead-alive hole.” Another flick of the hair, a crossing of long legs, a sideways glance. “I told her I was going to be a television presenter and she went apeshit.”
“Penny!” admonished Freda.
“Sorry. But she went into full rant. Said television was full of men who would prey on me.
“I said, ‘What’s up with that?’ and she told me to get out of her house. But she sent me flowers the next day and an apology.”
“Didn’t your parents find her behaviour…weird?”
“Oh, Ma and Da think teachers are God. They could see nothing wrong with her.”
“Did it ever cross your mind that she might be a lesbian?”
Penny’s beautiful brow furrowed in thought. “No. I mean, she didn’t look Greek.”
So there was some innocence left in that beautiful brain, thought Hamish.
“You’re bound to know sooner or later,” he said. “Miss McAndrew appears to have been the author of those poison-pen letters. Did you have any idea she was writing them?”
For once, Penny looked shocked out of her normal composure. “I’d never have guessed,” she said. “I mean, who would think a head teacher would do something like that? Mind you, she always seemed to have taken a spite to someone, always complaining.”
“Did she ever complain about Miss Beattie?”
“Well, she did. Let me think. Said something about the way she was going on was disgraceful. Oh, there’s something else weird.”
“What?”
“I’ll tell you if you don’t let on.”
“Penny, I promise to let anything you say to me stay between these four walls – unless, of course, it relates directly to the murder.”
“It’s like this. Geordie Cromarty…”
“The ironmonger’s son.”
“Yes, him. He phoned me one night and said if I slipped out, he would buy me fish and chips. I’d been on this diet, see. If you’re going to be on television, you have to be thin. I was fair starving so I said I’d meet him. I slipped out by the bedroom window and met him in the main street.”
“About what time of night would that have been?”
“It was just before eleven. He said to hurry up because the chippy closed at eleven. So we were going to the chippy and you know what Braikie’s like at that time of night – dead as a doornail. Then I saw on the other side of the lights from the chippy’s window this cloaked figure. “Someone’s coming,” I said. So we hid in a doorway. She passed us. She had this long black cloak with a hood right down over her face. A gust of wind blew the hood back and it was her and she looked real weird.”
“Miss McAndrew?”
“Herself. She was muttering something under her breath. I tell you, it gave us both a scare. We stayed in the doorway until we were sure she had gone, and by the time we got to the chippy, it had closed.”
“Didn’t you think it odd that your former head teacher should be behaving so strangely?”
“Grown-ups are all weird, if you ask me,” said Penny with all the brutality of youth. “I’m never going to get like that.”
“What night did you see her?”
“A few nights back. Can’t remember which one.”
Hamish asked her a few more questions and then dismissed her.
He turned to Freda. “Did you think Miss McAndrew was weird?”
“No. Like I said, I thought she was a bully. I did think she was overfond of Penny, but teachers sometimes get harmless crushes on pupils. Sometimes it’s the other way round.” A smile lifted her pale lips. “Mind you, there’s no one in this school to get a crush on.”
Hamish thanked her and left. He sat on a wall outside the school and made rapid notes.
Miss McAndrew had taught many pupils in her career, seen them grow up, maybe knew their secrets. She had hit on one that meant ruin for someone. He closed his notebook with a sigh. He had better go back in again and ask to see Geordie.
♦
Freda had regained a little bit of colour when she ushered Geordie in to speak to Hamish. If only the lassie could get another job, thought Hamish. On the other hand, maybe she would attract bullies wherever she went.
Geordie Cromarty was small and swarthy. He had hair as black as Penny’s and it grew low on his forehead. His eyes were the same peculiarly silvery light grey as Elspeth’s. People with such eyes were often credited with having the second sight, the ability to see the future. Hamish thought of the seer of Lochdubh, Angus Macdonald. Perhaps it might be an idea to call on him later and see if he’d heard anything. Hamish was sure most of Angus’s predictions were based on gossip.
“Now, Geordie,” began Hamish, “Penny tells me you were both out in Braikie one night and saw Miss McAndrew behaving strangely.”
“Aye, her looked like something out o’ a horror movie, big cloak and all.”
“Now, Penny can’t remember which night it was. Can you?”
“Sure. It was the night afore that auld biddy in the post office topped herself.”
“May I remind you that Miss Beattie was murdered?”
“Was she? Cool!”
“And did Miss McAndrew go straight on down the street?”
“We didnae stop tae look, man,” said Geordie, whose speech was an odd mixture of Highland dialect and Americanisms culled from movies.
“Did you experience any trouble with Miss McAndrew?”
“All the time. She told me to stay away from Penny. She said Penny was meant for better things.”
“What did you reply to that?”
Geordie looked at him with scorn. “Lissen, copper, when the auldies are getting at ye, ye say, ‘Right, miss, no, miss, sure, miss.’”
“Did Penny not find the attentions of Miss McAndrew embarrassing?”
“She got the best marks in her exams. I think Miss McAndrew fixed a lot of her papers.”
“Did Penny tell you that?”
“Naw, just a guess.”
“Your father was angry with Miss McAndrew, wasn’t he?”
“Aye, herself gave me a bad mark in an exam. History, it was. I’m good at history. He demanded to see the exam paper and she wouldn’t let him see it, so he said he’d write to the education board. My dad said she was taking her spite out on me because of Penny.”