♦
At that very moment, Priscilla was thinking about Hamish instead of paying attention to her date. She had been startled to see and hear the story of witchcraft in Cnothan on the six-o’clock news. There had been a brief shot of a group of policemen and detectives, and there, on the edge of the group, had stood Hamish Macbeth. He looked lost, ill at ease, and a bit silly. I hope Blair isn’t giving him a hard time, thought Priscilla.
The restaurant she was in was crowded. It was society’s latest ‘find.’ Priscilla did not like it one bit. It was full of Hooray Henrys and their Henriettas, all being familiar with the waiters, which had resulted in the Italian waiters’ being noisy and insolent, rather in the way that top hairdressers ate encouraged to be insolent by that masochistic streak in the English upper class.
Priscilla was helping a girlfriend to run a hat shop in the King’s Road in Chelsea. The girlfriend, Sarah Paterson, was convinced that hats were about to make a come-back. Priscilla had promised Sarah to help her out for six months. Now she was wishing she had never made such a promise. The shop was usually full of people giggling and trying on hats, but very few bought any, and some days their only sales seemed to be made to transvestites whose idea of fashion had stayed frozen in the fifties.
I would be better off in Lochdubh minding Hamish’s sheep for him, Priscilla’s thoughts ran on. I wonder who he got to look after things? I’m surprised Blair allowed him near Cnothan. Maybe he was only there for the day. She had a sudden yearning to be in Hamish’s cluttered kitchen, to sit and gossip about local things while Towser snored at their feet and the wind howled down the loch. She realized her dinner date, Jeremy Tring-Gillingham, was speaking to her.
“You made a great mistake in not having the lobster, Priscilla,” said Jeremy. “Mario tells me he goes down to Billingsgate first thing to buy everything fresh. The taste is exquisite.”
“Mmm,” said Priscilla. “Have you been following that story, Jeremy, the one on the news this evening, about witchcraft in Sutherland?”
“Oh, that,” mumbled Jeremy, swallowing more lobster. “Sounds great, but you’ll find it was probably some medic students playing about.”
♦
Blair and Hamish were closeted in the police-station annex. Hamish had insisted they be alone. The pair of false teeth and the little strand of scarlet wool lay on the desk between them.
“So,” said Blair savagely, when Hamish had finished, “instead o’ picking up the phone, you great gowk, you takes your doggie fur a walk back here to tell me. Jist keep out of it while I take MacNab and Anderson down there and arrest Ross.”
“He wasnae there at the time, or as far as we know,” said Hamish. “He was at his son’s wedding in Inverness. Mind you, we’ll need to make sure he was there the whole time. He’s got a powerful car. He may not have left it in the station car-park like he said. You’ll look damned silly if you arrest him and then have to let him off, and a man like Jamie Ross would have you in court for causing him undue distress and everything else he could throw at you. And there’s one big thing you’d better think of before you tell anyone of this.”
“Whit’s that, Sherlock?” demanded Blair sarcastically.
“Jamie Ross’s lobsters go to all the top places in London and even to the House of Commons dining room. Think about it! “Prime Minister a Cannibal.” Can’t you see the headlines? The scandal will be terrible, and someone’s head is going to have to roll for letting those lobsters go off to London. Oh, I know, there wasnae time to stop them, but the big ones will want a sacrifice, and they’re not going to take their temper out on a mere village copper. So that leaves you.”
Blair, who had half-risen to his feet, sank back in his chair.
“Get oot o’ here,” he snarled, “and keep your mouth shut.”
He picked up the phone and began to dial an Inverness number.
Hamish strolled over to Jenny’s cottage and knocked on the door. “Come in,” she said, answering it promptly. “Have you eaten?”
“No, I’ve been ordered out the police station by Blair.”
“Horrible man,” said Jenny. “I can feed you and Towser. How’s the investigation going?”
“Something pretty terrible’s come up,” said Hamish. “It looks as if that skeleton was Mainwaring’s after all.”
“But it can’t be!” said Jenny. “How?”
“I can’t tell ye,” said Hamish. “It’s all very puzzling. Are you all right?” he added sharply, for Jenny was very white.
“I’m fine, fine.” She sat down and looked at her hands.
“Your sister’s death must still be troubling ye sore,” said Hamish sympathetically.
“I hated her,” said Jenny fiercely.
Embarrassed and not knowing quite how to react, Hamish began to speak aloud about the crime. “It’s the lack of motive that puzzles me,” he said half to himself. “A lot of people hated Mainwaring, but only enough to perpetrate some piece of spite. I wonder whether it was a practical joke that went wrong?”
Jenny got to her feet and took two steaks out of the refrigerator. Towser placed a large yellow paw with ludicrous familiarity on her bottom. She shrugged and took out another steak and went to a small microwave oven in the corner.
“How does your dog like his steak done?” she asked over her shoulder.
“Well done,” said Hamish absent-mindedly, “and the same for me.” He returned to musing aloud. “Yes, when you look at it first, there seem to be a lot of suspects, but not one of them the killer type. There chust isn’t a strong enough motive. Not for this kind of killing. Not for all the wicked cruelty of it. Someone must have had nerves of steel to kill the man and then – ” He broke off. The lobsters must stay secret.
“That’s enough about murder,” he said. “Have you been painting?”
“No, I haven’t been in the mood. Any news of Sandy?”
“Not a word as far as I know. But then I’m being kept out o’ the investigation. Most of my day was taken up listening to residents’ complaints about the press.”
“You’ve worked with Blair before, haven’t you? There were those two murders over in Lochdubh. You’re a sort of vulture, Hamish Macbeth. Murder follows you around wherever you go.”
“Don’t say that.” Hamish shuddered. “I suppose it will have been on the national news.”
“Bound to be,” said Jenny. “Nothing else is happening, although the networks don’t seem to have caught on to the fact that the great British public has really no interest in foreign news whatsoever. They probably gave it two minutes after a long speech from Reagan, a longer one from Gorbachev, and practically a whole fifteen minutes on the riots in Paris.”
“So people in London would see it,” said Hamish. Had she seen it? And would it prompt her to return?
“So who’s in London that you want to remind of your existence?” said Jenny, her slate-coloured eyes suddenly shrewd. Hamish blushed and looked away. “Ma cousin Rory. He’s a reporter.”
“On Fleet Street?”
“I don’t think there’s a reporter left in Fleet Street,” said Hamish. “Rory has moved to dockland like everyone else. I was hoping he would be up. I would have phoned him, but Blair’s crouched over the police phone like a great toad.”
“Go and use mine,” said Jenny, tossing salad in a bowl. “You’ll find it through in the living-room.”
The living-room was actually the gallery. There were easy chairs and a coffee-table. Jenny hardly ever used it herself except when working or entertaining prospective customers. There was a painting, a view of Clachan Mohr, on an easel. Hamish recognized that odd cliff which he had climbed when Alistair and Dougie had played that trick on him. That he recognized it did not surprise him. All Jenny’s paintings were representational. But it was the power in the picture, the black and boiling sky above the sinister cliff, the stark trees and bleak landscape beyond. He lightly touched the paint with his finger. Wet. And yet she’d said she had not been painting. And she had never painted with such power and ferocity before.