“I suppose so.” Angela led the way into the kitchen. The table was covered in textbooks. She shovelled a clear space at one corner and sat down. Hamish sat opposite her.
“I went to see Cheryl yesterday,” said Hamish. Angela pushed a tress of fine wispy hair out of her eyes. “And?” she demanded.
“I gather that some evenings, Cheryl was sent out for a walk while Sean entertained some ladies. You were one of the ones mentioned. The previous times I’ve spoken to you, you’ve always said you went over with cakes and things when Sean and Cheryl originally came to the village, as a sort of welcome. You never said anything about spending any time with Sean alone.”
“I didn’t want my husband to find out,” said Angela. “All that happened was that I went over one evening to talk about my studies because he had seemed interested, and John never listens to me. When I talk about anything to do with this Open University degree, he switches off. Cheryl went out when I arrived. I stayed and talked, had a few drinks and then left. I never went back again because I thought if John ever found out about it, it would…well…look odd.”
“And that’s all there was to it?”
“Yes, Hamish, what else could there have been?”
“Sean didn’t ask you for money or…” Hamish looked at her in growing concern…“drugs?”
“I thought you were a friend, Hamish. How can you say such things?” Angela covered her thin face with her thin hands and began to cry.
“Now, now,” said Hamish awkwardly. “Dinnae greet. I haff to ask these questions, you know that. Haven’t you anything you’d like to get off your chest?”
“I’d like you to get out of here, now,” yelled Angela, her tear-stained face contorted.
Hamish rose to his feet and stood looking down at her. “I’ll go now,” he said heavily, “but I’ll have to be back.”
Priscilla, he thought, as he stood outside the doctor’s house, I need Priscilla. He drove up to the hotel in time to catch her closing up the gift shop for lunch.
“Hello, Hamish,” she said, “I’m just about to have lunch, coffee and sandwiches in the bar. You can join me, if you’d like.”
When they were seated in a corner of the bar, Hamish having agreed to coffee and refused whisky because he was driving, much as he would have liked one, for he had found the interview with Angela harrowing, Priscilla looked at him and said, “This case is really getting you down. Want to talk about it?”
So he told her all he knew from the beginning, outlining his fear that the murder had been committed by someone from the village.
“I think we should write some of this down,” said Priscilla. She rose and went through to the reception desk and came back with several sheets of paper. “Now,” she said, “let’s sort it out. All the women who have visited Sean have become wrecks. Mrs Wellington is a shadow of her former self. Angela is on the twitch and spending far too much money on clothes, which is totally out of character. The Currie sisters plan to sell up and move. Sean dies. They take the sign down.”
“There’s a common factor there, Hamish. You’re normally so acute. You’ve missed it although it’s been staring you in the face all the time because you’re praying for some outsider to turn out to be the murderer.”
“And what’s the common factor?”
Priscilla tapped the paper with her pen.
“Money,” she said. “They all needed money. Perhaps not Mrs Wellington. But the rest badly needed money.”
∨ Death of a Travelling Man ∧
7
O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!
—Shakespeare
Hamish looked down at the paper, his mind scurrying this way and that, trying to find a road away from the three women.
Then he gave a sigh and leaned back. “Aye, you’re maybe right. But Angela now, she was spending money on herself, not Sean.”
Priscilla tapped the paper again. “Drugs, Hamish. The missing morphine. And there’s another thing.”
“What’s that?”
“I called on Angela. She was wearing a black dress. I complimented her on it although I thought it made her look like a waiflike widow and she said uneasily that it had cost an awful lot of money, that it was a Dior.”
“So was it?”
“Yes, I should think it was – but a secondhand Dior.”
“How secondhand?”
“There were worn patches under the arms and although it was a simple style, it’s very short in the skirt and I would guess it was about twenty years old.”
“What are you getting at?”
“There are thrift shops in Inverness, Hamish, where a woman can buy a model dress for a few pounds and then tell her husband it cost a fortune.”
Hamish looked at her miserably.
“Now, Hamish, it may not be any of them, but you’ll never get to the bottom of it if you don’t start finding out why they all needed money. Sean must have been blackmailing them.”
“And Sean is dead and they’re all still worried, although the Currie sisters have decided to stay in Lochdubh,” said Hamish. “And they are worried, which means they think perhaps Cheryl or someone might have got their hands on the blackmailing material. I’m going back for another look at that bus.”
“I notice it’s still there,” said Priscilla. “Wasn’t there a mother or someone who was going to claim it?”
“Yes. Mrs Gourlay. She said she would be up next week to take a few things. She asked if anyone would want to buy the bus and I suggested she try Ian Chisholm at the garage. I’d better start work right away.”
“Could Willie help?”
“I doubt it. He’s really lovesick now. Lucia’s walking out with Tim Queen.”
“Oh, dear,” said Priscilla. Tim Queen was a handsome young man whose father owned the Lochdubh Bar.
“Aye, Willie skulks around after them, looking like a whipped dog.”
♦
Walking out was an old–fashioned pastime, but there was little else for a courting couple to do in Lochdubh. Lucia and Tim Queen were leaning over the bridge, looking down at the River Anstey. Lucia kept flicking little speculative looks at Tim from under her long lashes. He was tall and red-haired, with a square, pleasant freckled face. The Lochdubh Bar, once an extension of the Lochdubh Hotel, which was still awaiting a buyer, had been bought by Tim’s father in a separate sale and had been making a profit ever since.
Tim looked down at Lucia’s small red hands, which were resting on the parapet of the bridge, and then covered one of them with his own. Lucia snatched her hand away.
“What’s the matter?” asked Tim. “I was only holding your hand.”
“I am ashamed of my hands,” said Lucia, putting them behind her back. “They are so red. I would like soft white hands.”
“But that’s what I like about ye,” said Tim earnestly. “You’re an old–fashioned girl. I don’t like the young ones round here who slap paint all ower their faces and never do a day’s work and wouldnae know how to scrub a kitchen floor if you asked them.”
Lucia’s beautiful eyes became clouded with sad thought. “So you like a woman who does the housework, Teem?”
He slid an arm about her waist. “Yes, that’s my sort of girl. My friend, Johnny, over at Darquhart, just got married, and his wife, Darleen, well, she wanted a cleaning woman frae day one!”
“What is so odd about that?”
He laughed. “You silly wee thing, why should Johnny pay for a cleaning woman when he’s got a wife?”
She slid out from his arm and looked about. “Why, there is Constable Lament,” she cried.
She was looking at a stand of trees beside the river. Tim could not see anything.
But Lucia waved and sure enough, Willie eased out from behind a tree. “Do not bother to walk back with me, Teem,” said Lucia gaily. “See, I am safe with my policeman.”