He heard a faint croak from the bedroom and opened the door. Angus was huddled in bed. The room was freezing.
“What’s up, Angus?” asked Hamish, bending over him.
“I think it’s the flu, Hamish. Dr. Brodie came up. He said it was a bad cold and left me some pills to take my temperature down.”
“I’ll get a fire going in this bedroom for a start,” said Hamish.
He worked busily, lighting a fire and then, in the kitchen, preparing a bowl of soup and some toast and carrying the lot in on a tray to Angus. He propped the seer up on his pillows and placed the tray in front of him. “Try to get that down you,” said Hamish, “and I’ll make you some tea afterwards. You shouldnae be alone like this.”
Hamish retreated into the kitchen and phoned Mrs. Wellington. After he had made Angus tea and persuaded him to take some aspirin, Hamish heard approaching voices and went to the front door.
There was nothing in the world, he thought, more indomitable than the ladies of Lochdubh. Fighting their way up the hill came Mrs. Wellington, the Currie sisters, and Angela. Angela was pulling a laden sledge.
Soon the little cottage was a hive of activity. Angus was persuaded to move through to his living room wrapped in blankets and sit by the fire until the sheets on his bed were changed.
“You’re a kind man, Hamish,” croaked Angus.
Hamish looked quickly around and then bent over Angus. “Know anything about a brothel near Lochdubh?”
“You wouldnae be punishing a wee body for doing a few men a favour,” he wheezed.
“Not me. But where?”
Mrs. Wellington came in. “I hope you are not bothering our patient, Hamish. We need more peat for the fire. And get out the back and knock the snow off his satellite dish so he can watch the telly.”
“I didn’t know you had satellite television, Angus,” said Hamish.
“Stop bothering the man,” boomed Mrs. Wellington, “and get to it!”
Hamish collected more peat from a shed at the back. Then he got a ladder and climbed up to the satellite dish – which was on a pole – and cleared the snow from it. He felt the wind on his cheek and realised it had moved round to the west. The snow had stopped falling, and there was a little patch of blue sky appearing above his head.
When he went into the bedroom, the television had flickered into life. The Currie sisters were sitting on either side of the fire, drying their feet.
“The Misses Currie are going to stay with Angus for a bit. I’ll call up this evening,” said Mrs. Wellington. “Oh, the thought of that walk back.”
“I’m taking the sledge back,” said Angela. “We could sledge down the hill along the track we made coming up.”
“You’ll never get me on a sledge,” protested the minister’s wife, but once outside, she quailed at the thought of struggling all the way down.
“Hamish,” said Angus. “Come near.”
Hamish bent over him.
“Cnothan. Mobile home. Up on the north brae.”
“Come along, Hamish,” ordered Mrs. Wellington.
Outside, Angela and a reluctant Mrs. Wellington sat on the sledge. Hamish pushed from the back and jumped on board and they all went hurtling down, ending in a heap against a garden fence at the bottom.
“That actually was fun,” said Mrs. Wellington, standing up and brushing snow from her clothes.
♦
The thaw came quickly the following day, only to be followed by a sharp frost turning the roads treacherous. He got a call from gamekeeper Willie. “There’s a couple o’ fellows skidded off the road up north of the hotel.”
“I’ll see to it,” said Hamish.
A gritting lorry was making its way along the waterfront, spraying sand and salt. Hamish followed it out of the village and up the hill past the hotel to where two men were standing on the road, talking to Willie. Their Land Rover was lying on its side in the ditch.
Hamish got down and approached them. He stared. The older man had a beard and was accompanied by a younger man. He nodded to them and said to Willie, who was standing with his gun broken, “Get your shotgun on them.” To the two men he said, “Don’t dare move.”
He took two sets of handcuffs out of his own vehicle and handcuffed both men, who were protesting violently. He then went to their Land Rover and peered inside. A deer carcase was lying in the back. So Timmy wasn’t lying after all, he thought.
By the time he had taken them down to the police station, locked them in the one cell, phoned Strathbane, and filed a report, the ice on the roads had melted and a squad arrived from Strathbane to impound the poachers’ vehicle and take them to Strathbane. From their driving licences, he identified them as Walter Wills and Granger Home.
As they were led off, the older man turned and spat at Hamish. “You’re a dead man,” he said.
That evening, the weather remained relatively mild and the air was full of the melted snow, dripping from roofs. Hamish planned to set out the next morning to Cnothan.
He once again looked at the stew pot and plate. If the weather stayed mild, then he might run over to Strambane and return both to Lesley. He was surprised that she hadn’t contacted him. On the other hand, he should at least have sent her a note or some flowers to thank her for the meal. He sat down at his computer, contacted Interflora, and ordered a bunch of spring flowers from the Channel Islands to be sent to her. He hesitated over the message and finally wrote, “Thank you for a splendid dinner. Hamish.”
That being done, he began to write out all he knew about the murders of Catriona and Ina to get it clear in his head. The fact that the back door of Catriona’s cottage did not appear to have been forced pointed to a local who might have known where a spare key was kept. On the other hand, it had been a simple Yale lock, easily sprung with a credit card.
Every time he thought of Catriona, he felt rage building up inside him. He was sure she had been a murderess. He wished he could get down to Perth but Jimmy would get to hear of it and Hamish did not want to lose his friend. At least Blair had been quiet. As soon as a case went cold, Blair quickly concentrated on other cases, often building them out of proportion so that Daviot would hopefully forget about the murders.
His mind ranged over the men in the village. There had been no odd incomers. He knew them all. He checked into the police records of the guests who had been staying at the hotel, but they all had impeccable backgrounds. What of Ruby Connachie in Perth, who must have felt she had been cheated out of a cosy marriage? Jimmy had filed all the reports. Maybe he had incorporated the Perth interviews. To his relief, Jimmy had filed the interview with Ruby. Hamish looked dismally at her age. Ruby was now seventy-six years old. She was a staunch member of the Methodist Church. Her statement was full of hatred for Catriona. She said it was God’s punishment. On the day of Ina’s death and at the very time they estimated Ina was being murdered in Patel’s grocery store, Ruby had been having lunch in Perth with two old friends. Hamish read and reread all the reports until he realised it was late at night and he wanted to get off to Cnothan in the morning early.
♦
Great pools of melted snow lay along the waterfront as he drove off in the morning with a brisk breeze sending little waves across their surfaces. A pale sun rode high in the washed-out blue of the sky. “I wish I could see Elspeth again,” he said over his shoulder to his pets in the back.
“There he goes, talking to himself again,” said Nessie Currie, watching as the police Land Rover disappeared over the bridge at the end of the village. “That man needs a woman in his life.”
“Woman in his life,” echoed Jessie.
Hamish drove to Cnothan and then up the brae to the north. He could see no sign of a mobile home so he stopped at one of the outlying crofts.