“Daft,” muttered Hamish after the minister had left. “They’re all plain daft.”
He walked down the main street in the sunshine, wishing it were all over, wishing the murder solved and himself back in Lochdubh.
He met Diarmuid Sinclair and told him about the room having been booked for him at the Glen Abb Hotel, and continued on down the hill. A car slowed to a halt beside him, and Harry Mackay, the estate agent, popped his head out.
“Like to come back to the office with me for a coffee?” he called.
Hamish hesitated only a minute. Blair could wait. Harry Mackay might throw some light on the mystery.
The estate office was in a Victorian villa in the middle of the council houses. The office was in what used to be the front and back parlours on the ground floor. Harry Mackay led the way upstairs to his living-room, which was above the shop.
When he went off to make coffee, Hamish studied the bookshelves.
He turned round as the estate agent came back in carrying a tray with coffee and biscuits.
“This is very kind of you,” said Hamish.
Harry Mackay grinned. “I’m hoping to find out how our murder’s going. Blair won’t tell anyone anything.”
“It’s not going anywhere,” said Hamish gloomily. “Sandy Carmichael is the prime suspect and he hasn’t been found.” Hamish then sat still, the coffee-cup half raised to his lips and his mouth open. He remembered sitting by the river in Inverness, thinking about all the suspects, and yet he had never once thought of Sandy Carmichael. Why? Surely it followed that the nosy Mainwaring had called round to bait Sandy and Sandy had struck him and shoved him in the pool. The very fact that Blair kept insisting it was Sandy had made him, Hamish Macbeth, discount the whole idea. There was the question of the clothes. Someone had got rid of the clothes. Surely the lobsters hadn’t eaten clothes, wallet, credit cards, watch, and all the other indestructible bits without leaving a trace. Teams of policemen had combed the area for miles around, looking for any sort of fragment, and they hadn’t come up with so much as a button. But there were peatbogs where a parcel of clothes would sink without a trace. Sandy’s cottage had been gone over. There had been evidence in the garden at the back that a fire had recently been lit, but there had been no ash to sift through. The Land Rover had been scrubbed and hosed down. When had Sandy ever bothered to clean his Rover before?
Hamish felt like a fool.
“What’s the matter?” asked Harry Mackay. “You look as if you’ve just been struck by lightning.”
“Nothing,” mumbled Hamish. He pulled himself together. “How’s business?”
“Not very good. There’s only one strange thing, Mrs. Mainwaring called to see me. As soon as all the legal formalities are over, she wants me to buy the crofts and houses. I have a client for them in Edinburgh. Interested in holiday homes.”
Hamish’s eyes sharpened. “But not her own? She’ll be staying on there?”
“Yes, her own as well. I warned her I can’t get her much. I may get six thousand pounds apiece for the crofts if I’m lucky, but the houses are in a worse state than when Mainwaring bought them.”
“But Mrs. Mainwaring has always said she liked Cnothan.”
“Well, she told me she’ll be glad to get out. Wants to go back and live in Maidstone. And I’ll tell you another thing: she was stone-cold sober. I used to wonder how on earth she put up with Mainwaring, but she told me he held the purse-strings and if she had left him, she wouldn’t have got anything.”
“He had a rare way with the ladies, I gather,” said Hamish.
“Not that I ever noticed,” said Harry Mackay.
“Didn’t interfere in your love life?” asked Hamish.
“What love life?” countered Harry Mackay. “There’s only two lookers around here. One’s that artist and the other’s Helen Ross.”
“And no success there?”
“No. I took Jenny Lovelace out for dinner a couple of times, but no go, and Helen Ross’s come-hither eye doesn’t mean a thing.”
“Who do you think did it?” asked Hamish. “The murder, I mean.”
“Oh, don’t ask me. This place is getting me down. They’re all sick and twisted and narrow-minded and malicious.”
“I thought you were a Cnothan man yourself?”
“Aye, but I’ve been away from it for a long time, and I haven’t been able to settle since I came back.”
Hamish took his leave and went to the Anstey Hotel, where he found Blair half asleep in the television lounge,
A children’s show flickered on the screen.
“Do you usually watch ‘Postman Pat’?” asked Hamish.
Blair came fully awake with a grunt. “I was thinking about clues,” he said huffily. “Got something for me?”
Hamish sat down and began to read his report on Helen Ross.
“Fancy whore,” said Blair when Hamish had finished. “Ah’ll go and see her maself and have some fun.”
“Don’t have too much fun,” warned Hamish, “or Ja-mie’ll have his lawyer breathing down your neck.”
“‘Get oot o’ here,’” snarled Blair, “and don’t tell me what tae do. Bugger off.”
Hamish went off out into the soft sunlight. It was a mellow day, too good a day for one constable to be fuming over a pill of a detective inspector.
All at once, he decided to go fishing. He had a telescopic rod in his luggage. He would go to the upper reaches of the Cnothan River and if the water bailiffs caught him, he could swear blind he was looking for clues. He needed peace and quiet to think.
He kept on his uniform – proof to any water bailiffs that he was on duty – and ambled off with Towser loping at his heels. He had strapped the collapsible rod onto his back under his waterproof cape.
As he strolled along beside the foaming river, he wished he had not worn his cape. The sun was quite warm, although clouds were massing to the west and the wind was becoming chill.
It struck him that he had not thought of Priscilla for some time and he wondered whether he was cured.
♦
Priscilla Halburton-Smythe sat in a chair in the hat shop in the King’s Road and searched the newspapers for some mention of Cnothan. But the papers were still full of the aftermath of the Downing Street bombing.
The shop door opened and her friend, Sarah Paterson, who owned the shop and shared a flat with Priscilla, came in. Priscilla’s eyes slid to the clock. Eleven in the morning! Sarah was always late.
“I brought you a letter,” said Sarah. “Arrived after you left.”
Priscilla took the letter and opened it. It was from her father. Her eye skimmed down it, looking for some mention of Hamish. Ah, here it was. Colonel Halburton-Smythe was incensed that Hamish Macbeth was still absent from Loch-dubh. He had written to the Chief Constable to complain. It was an insult, leaving Lochdubh without a policeman, even though Hamish Macbeth was a gangling, useless lout. Priscilla’s father thought his daughter was too friendly with the village policeman and never missed an opportunity to malign Hamish.
It dawned on Priscilla all at once that London was a very boring place compared to the Highlands of Scotland. “Nothing ever happens here,” she said aloud.
“Oh, but darling, it does!” trilled Sarah. “I met Peter Twist at a divine party last night and he’s going to buy this white elephant of a shop from me.”
“You might have warned me you were thinking of selling,” said Priscilla angrily.
“Don’t be cross, sweetie. You won’t be out of a job. He’s going to have all these divine fashions. All black leather, you know. The shop’s going to be called Champers Campers and we’re to stand around in his creations.”
“I don’t think so, Sarah darling,” said Priscilla. “I’m getting out. I mean I’m going north.”
“What? Leave London for the sticks just when everything’s happening? I know what it is – you’ve got a fellow tucked away up there.”