“Aye, sheer spite.”
“I’ll do my best. How was the wedding?”
“Oh, just grand. Everything went off like clockwork. They’re off to the Canary Islands on their honeymoon.”
When Jamie left, Hamish washed his breakfast dishes and prepared to go out to look for Sandy Carmichael. He was on the point of leaving when Jenny arrived, looking shamefaced.
“Thanks for last night,” she said awkwardly. “I wasn’t myself.”
“That’s all right,” said Hamish. “I was just on my road out. Jamie Ross says that Sandy Carmichael is missing. But there’s time for a coffee. You wouldn’t happen to know if Sandy’s ever gone missing before?”
“Not that I know. Drunk or sober, he always hangs about the town. Oh, here’s Mrs. Mainwaring,” said Jenny, spotting a massive figure passing the kitchen window. “I wonder what she wants.”
Hamish went through to the police station annex in time to open the door to Mrs. Mainwaring.
She was wearing a squashed felt hat and a waxed coat over a navy dress with a white sailor collar, a photograph of which had appeared several months ago in one of the Sunday colour supplements: “Order now. Special offer. Flattering to the fuller figure.” A strong smell of peppermint and whisky blasted into Hamish’s face as she cried, “William is missing. He hasn’t been home for two nights!”
“Come in, Mrs. Mainwaring,” said Hamish. “Sit yourself down.” Jenny came through and stood in the office doorway. “What’s the matter?” she asked.
“Mr. Mainwaring is missing,” said Hamish. “Look, Mrs. Mainwaring, has he done this before?”
“No, never. I mean, yes, he has, but he’s always told me or left a note.”
“And where does he go?”
“Glasgow or Edinburgh. He likes to go to the theatre.”
“Alone?”
“Yes, of course.”
Hamish thought that William Mainwaring might possibly have a mistress in Glasgow or Edinburgh – either that or be staying away out of sheer malice. “I think you should give it a little more time,” he said soothingly. “He’ll be back.”
Jenny came forward and stood with her hand on Mrs. Mainwaring’s shoulder. “And I think you ought to look for him,” she said sharply. “Can’t you see how distressed Mrs. Mainwaring is?”
“All right,” said Hamish reluctantly. “I’ve got to look for Sandy Carmichael, so I may as well look for Mr. Mainwaring at the same time.”
♦
Ian Gibb was a budding reporter. He was on the dole, but he scoured the countryside in the hope of a good story. Occasionally one of the Scottish newspapers used a short piece from him, but he dreamt of having a scoop, a story that would hit the London papers.
That day, his sights were lower. With all the fuss about the decline in educational standards, he had decided to write a feature on Cnothan School. The school was run on the lines of an old–fashioned village school. It taught all ages up to university level. Educational standards were high and discipline was strict. Teachers wore black academic gowns in the classroom and mortar-boards on speech days. The headmaster, John Finch, was an aging martinet, the type of headmaster of whom people approve after they have left school and do not have to endure being taught by such a rigid personality themselves.
The headmaster had agreed to see him, but, true to his type, planned to keep Ian kicking his heels outside the headmaster’s study for a full quarter of an hour.
Ian was moodily wishing he could light up a cigarette. He was sitting on a hard bench with his back against the wall. But after five minutes of waiting, he was joined by a teenage girl. “Hallo,” said Ian cheerfully. “In trouble?”
“Oh, no,” said the girl. “I am one of the school prefects, and Mrs. Billings, the English teacher, has sent me along to report that two of the girls are misbehaving in class. I’ll wait till you’re finished.”
“Maybe you’d better go first,” said Ian, feeling disappointed in this girl, whose Highland beauty had initially charmed him. There was something cold-bloodedly precise about her manner. “I’ll be a while. I’m interviewing Mr. Finch for my newspaper.”
“Which newspaper is that?”
Ian didn’t have a newspaper, being a free lance. He only hoped one of them would take his education article. But he said, “The Scotsman,” hoping to impress.
“Oh, that’s why he’s seeing you,” said the girl sedately. “The Scotsman’s a good paper. I didn’t think he’d want to see a reporter, mind. I thought he would call it sensationalism.”
“What? Education?”
“No, the witchcraft story.”
Ian stiffened. “Oh yes, that,” he said casually, although it was the first he had heard of it, as he lived in Domoch. “Bad business.”
“I don’t approve of it myself,” said the girl primly. “But there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind the Mainwarings were asking for it.”
There came a commotion from the end of the corridor, Ian took out a small notebook, and as the girl turned her head away, he rapidly scribbled down ‘Mainwaring.’ A harassed, middle-aged woman came along the corridor, dragging two weeping six-year-olds. She saw the girl and said, “Gemma, was there ever such a business! These two brats were supposed to be off school with the flu. Now they say they were playing up on the moors and there’s a skeleton in the middle of that ring of standing stones.”
She knocked sharply on the door of the headmaster’s study, and, without waiting for a reply, she went in, dragging the weeping children behind her.
Ian pressed his ear against the panels of the door, “Here!” cried the girl called Gemma. “You cannae do that. I’ll tell on you!”
“Go tell,” snarled Ian over his shoulder, and then he listened hard.
♦
By the time Hamish Macbeth arrived at the ring of standing stones, there was already quite a large crowd gathered. His police Land Rover had been stopped by other cars and pedestrians, all crying to him about the skeleton up on the moors.
The crowd parted to let him through. The skeleton lay in all its horrible whiteness under a bleak windy sky.
Hamish walked forward and knelt down by the skeleton. The whiteness of the bone depressed him. He had been hoping it would turn out to be another joke, that it would prove to be a skeleton used by medical students, but this one was too new.
“I’m Dr. Brodie,” said a red-haired man, coming up to join him. “Is this a joke?”
“I hope so,” said Hamish. “But I don’t think so. What do you make of it?”
The doctor knelt down beside him and took out a strong magnifying glass. “I’ve no doubt the pathologist will tell us soon enough, but I’m baffled.” He raised the skull gently and lay down with his head on the ground and peered at the back of it. “Aye,” he murmured, “whoever it was had his neck broken. It’ll come away in your hands if you’re not careful. And see here…” He pointed to the left arm bone. “There’s tiny scratches all over the bone.”
“Acid?”
“No, definitely not acid.” He sat back on his heels. “Mainwaring’s missing, isn’t he?”
“Aye,” said Hamish, “and Sandy Carmichael. Teeth. What about teeth?”
The doctor peered at the skull. “None at all,” he said gloomily. “Can’t be Carmichael. I happen to know he had his own teeth. I don’t know about Mainwaring. He never consulted me. Went to some doctor in Edinburgh.”
Hamish glanced round anxiously at the swelling crowd. “I’ll need help,” he said urgently. “While I phone, you pick out the most reliable from the crowd and get them to find ropes and groundsheets. I want the whole place roped off and groundsheets over as much of the area surrounded by the stones as you can manage.”
When Hamish returned after using the car phone in the Land Rover, the doctor and his helpers were busy spreading tarpaulins over the turf.