But instead of going to the station, Hamish drove back to Sandy’s cottage. There was a strange policeman on duty. He shrugged when Hamish said he wanted to look around and said, “Help yourself.”
Hamish pushed open the door and went in. Nothing, he reflected sadly, is more bleak than the home of a drunk. Unwashed dishes were piled high in the greasy sink. The wood-burning stove was black with old grease. The floor was covered with food and drink stains, the bedroom smelled appallingly. He poked about through closets, through piles of romances, through hidden stacks of empty, bottles, but there was no clue to where Sandy could have gone. There were no personal papers, no clue to relatives – unless Blair had taken them away. He went out past the policeman and round to the back. The garden was a tip of old rubbish, old tyres, broken cups, more empty bottles, a shattered hen coop, and a large oil drum with holes bored in the side for burning refuse. Hamish tipped up the oil drum and looked inside. It was empty, but no doubt Forensic had taken away the contents to examine them. He was about to turn away when he noticed a blacker patch on the earth at his feet. He bent down and poked a finger into the soil. The ground was soft, as if it had recently been turned over and raked. He stood up and pushed his cap on the back of his head and thought hard. If Sandy had burnt something in the garden recently, something so important that he had taken the ashes away and raked the ground, it followed that Sandy Carmichael could be the murderer. But Hamish still could not believe it.
When he left the cottage, he went on to where Clachan Mohr reared up against a milky-blue sky. It had turned mild, and a soft wind brought hope of spring. He suddenly remembered how Jenny’s lips had felt pressed against his own and smiled. And yet to Hamish’s old–fashioned way of thinking, there was something slightly sad about bed before courtship. He might have fallen in love with her. Not that he was a prude or thought that Jenny’s morals were lax in any way. But in affairs, it was sometimes better to travel slowly than arrive too quickly. Instant gratification certainly knocked the spiritual side out of romance, no matter how much the modern mind tried to shout down the primitive emotions.
He parked the Land Rover and walked around a track at the foot of the cliff that led to the easy way up at the back. He walked steadily up the twisting track. At the top, a magnificent stag raised its head and stared at him with sad, wary eyes, like a schoolmaster surveying a tormenting schoolboy. Then it dipped its antlers and began to move off with that characteristically odd jerking start which quickly changed into the supple speed of a full gallop.
Hamish suddenly felt deliriously happy. The warm day, the stag, Jenny, the springy heather, Jenny, the sun on his neck, Jenny – all crowded together and sky-rocketed in his brain. He did several cart-wheels across the springy heather and then fell on his back, laughing helplessly. His sadness about sleeping with Jenny had gone. He felt sure he loved her.
And then he longed for a cigarette. The Americans would call it the reward syndrome, he thought. Something good happens, and you deserve a treat. Surely the cleverest advertising slogan man ever created was ‘Have Some Cadbury’s, You Deserve It.’
He was clambering on his feet, reminding himself he was supposed to be looking for clues, when he saw a glimmer of white down under deep clumps of heather. He fished out two crumpled paper cups.
He turned them round and round in his hands. There was a smear of lipstick on one. He looked closer. No, it was not a smear of lipstick, it was a smudged fingerprint. Paint. Oil paint.
He sat down and put the cups carefully on the grass and looked at them.
A cloud swept across the sun and he shivered.
Paint.
Jenny.
Paint + paper cup = Jenny.
But it could have been a schoolchild.
There were traces of coffee in the bottom of the cup. Children these days did not drink tea or coffee. They drank Coke or 7-Up or Dr. Pepper or a Scottish soda called Ban’s Irn Bru, “made from girders.”
He clutched his head. Time. Think about time. Jenny had been crying on – when was it? Sunday. Her sister had died. She had received a letter. Funny, that. The police were usually informed. Wait a bit! Jenny could have been here with someone else. It need not have been Mainwaring. Oh God, let it not be Jenny.
He searched further under the heather clumps and came up with a pipe. Mainwaring had smoked a pipe. He picked up the cups and put them in a bag along with the pipe and carried them down from Clachan Mohr. He drove carefully back to the police station and then crossed the road to Jenny’s cottage.
He did not even have time to knock. She opened the door even as he was raising his hand to the knocker. Her black hair was endearingly tousled and her lips were still slightly swollen from love-making.
“Hamish!” she cried. And then the light slowly left her eyes as she looked up into his face. He silently held up the plastic bag containing the two crumpled cups and the pipe.
“I found these up on Clachan Mohr,” he said.
He brushed past her into the cottage. She followed him into the kitchen. “Where’s Towser?” she asked with a laugh that sounded false.
He sat down at the kitchen table and placed the bag with the cups in front of him.
“Now, Jenny,” he said quietly. “For a start, let’s see that letter from Canada. The one telling you about your sister’s death.”
Jenny slid onto his knee and wrapped her arms around his neck. “Hamish!” she said. “Don’t turn detective on me.”
“The letter, Jenny,” said Hamish, his hazel eyes hard and bleak.
He lifted her up like a child and placed her on a seat next to his own.
“The letter,” he demanded again.
“I threw it away,” said Jenny.
“I can ask the postie if you got a letter from Canada and if he says you didn’t get one, that will prove you’re lying. Don’t make me do that.”
“Oh, all right,” shouted Jenny. And then in a quieter, almost defeated tone of voice, she repeated, “All right.”
“Tell me about it,” said Hamish gently.
Jenny shrugged. “It’s all so silly, really. There’s nothing to tell. I was upset about my painting. I had doubts that I was any good, that I would ever be any good. I felt you wouldn’t understand, no one would understand, and so I told that lie.”
“Were you Mainwaring’s mistress?” asked Hamish brutally.
“No! Never! Damn you. You’re like all men. The minute you’ve slept with them, they’ve damned you as a whore.”
“Wait a minute,” said Hamish.
He got to his feet and went through and looked at the oil painting of Clachan Mohr that stood in the gallery.
Jenny went for walks, he remembered. This painting shrieked rage and sorrow and menace. And yet none of Jenny’s other paintings reflected anything at all. Powerful emotion had rocked her to the very foundations.
“Okay,” said Jenny’s voice from behind him. “I went for walks with William Mainwaring. I saw a side of him that no one else saw. He was charming and kind.”
“Mrs. Mainwaring saw that side,” said Hamish. “That was before he married her and got her to sign her money over to him.”
A dry sob answered him and he turned round and looked compassionately at Jenny’s bent head and then back to the picture again.
“He could never stop being the know-all, could he, Jenny?” said Hamish. “He was flattered to have a pretty woman going along with him on his walks. But he had books on art appreciation on his shelves. He just had to tell you what he thought of your painting and it was Canada and your husband all over again. You painted Clachan Mohr right after that. You told me you had had a death in the family, because to you it was a bereavement. Another man you had admired and trusted had jumped all over your soul.”