“I went from there to the offices of the Scottish Telegraph and asked about the railway. I remembered hearing there were plans to alter it. An obliging reporter told me that once the Dornoch Firth railbridge idea was scrapped, the government still wanted to show they weren’t neglecting Scotland and so they’d decided on a cheaper compromise, that of cutting off that great loop before it gets to Cnothan and replacing it with a straight line of track. That track would go right through Mainwaring’s three crofts. Now, the compensation that would be paid for the loss of crofting land would be immense. I noticed when I was flying over Cnothan that the geographical lie of the land along through Mainwaring’s crofts would make an ideal railroad track. I went to the police and found Mr. Anstruther was part owner of a gambling club. I visited the club, and by bribing one of the staff to look at the books, I found that Harry Mackay owed Anstruther a considerable amount of money.
“When Anstruther learned he might be involved in a murder case, he caved in. The deal would have gone through the estate agent’s books in the normal way. When Anstruther got the compensation from the government, he would wipe out Mackay’s debt and still have a fortune. It is my belief that if Mackay had not moved to wipe out that debt, then Anstruther would have had him wiped out. The police tell me there’s been bad stories about the ways he copes with people who don’t pay up. Anstruther was brought up on the croft next to Mainwaring’s. He felt that Mainwaring must have known about the railway and had conned his relatives into selling the croft cheap. Anstruther planned to set up as a crofter until the compensation came through. As the son of a crofter and having been brought up on the croft, he would have no difficulty with the Crofters Commission.
“When I was in your house a few days ago, Mackay,” said Hamish, “I noticed you had a lot of books on your shelf on alcoholism. You knew if you left that drink for Sandy Carmichael on the lobster tank that he would drink it and then want more. That would get him out of the way. You phoned me and got me to drive out to the Angler’s Rest. You knew Mainwaring had advised Ross not to employ Sandy and would come around, poking his nose in, sooner or later. Mind you, it was a gamble, but then you are a gambler.”
Harry Mackay found his voice. It came out as a croak. He cleared his throat and said, “It’s all a load of rubbish, Macbeth. Okay, so I owed Anstruther money, but he’s your man. He had every reason to hate Mainwaring. He knew Mainwaring had pulled a fast one. And those books on alcoholism were for my sister. She was down in Inverness in the alcoholic unit and I sent away for them, but by the time I got them, she had disappeared.” His lips trembled and he took out a handkerchief and wiped his mouth. “I had nothing to do with it. Nothing. And you can’t prove it.”
Hamish kept his eyes fixed on Mackay. “Two deaths,” he said in a gentle, lilting voice. “Sandy knew what you’d done and so you killed him. Two deaths, and all for nothing. But there’s one thing you didn’t tell your friend Anstruther, and that was that the whole railway project was scrapped a month ago, and if he found you had bought him three worthless properties…We don’t have the death penalty – yet – but Anstruther would have been glad in that case to act as our executioner. He may very well yet, for I had great pleasure in telling him about the collapse of the scheme. The bailie he had bribed to give him information from the first secret meeting about the railway had resigned by the time of the second secret meeting, which cancelled the project.”
“So what’s it to be, Mackay? A nice safe police cell or Anstruther’s boys after you?”
There was a long silence. No one spoke, no one moved.
The rising wind moaned around The Clachan and snow pattered on the window panes.
“It wasn’t planned,” said Mackay in a tired voice. “I followed him. He was going to report me to my head office. They would have fired me. I daren’t lose my job. I didn’t think Mainwaring really knew about the railway project. I thought he was just buying up cheap property in the hope it would rise in value one day. He never had a good head for business.
“He insulted me in the The Clachan. I left and then waited for him to leave. I followed him to Cnothan Game. I found a bit of rusty pipe by the road and put it in my pocket. But, man, man, I still didn’t mean to kill him. He poked around and tried the office door but it was locked. I followed him into the lobster shed. He sat on the edge of the main tank and took out a notebook and began to write. There was an empty glass by the side of the tank. He put the note down by the tank. I knew it was a note for Jamie saying something about Sandy abandoning his post. Mainwaring never thought Sandy would return. All my hatred for the man boiled up in me and at the same time I realized in a flash that with him gone, Mrs. Mainwaring might sell and then I would be safe from Anstruther. I struck him hard, and he fell into – ”
But Blair moved like lightning. He thrust Hamish aside and clapped a large beefy hand over Harry Mackay’s mouth.
“Enough o’ this,” he shouted. “Anderson! MacNab! Take him off tae Strathbane and book him.”
“And so,” said Hamish Macbeth that evening to Jenny Lovelace, “I don’t know why Blair shut him up at that point.” But Hamish did know. Blair had seen the bit about the lobsters coming up.
Hamish wondered how on earth Blair would suppress the evidence.
Jenny looked at his drawn face and said quietly, “Want to be left alone tonight?”
Hamish most definitely did not want to be left alone, but he felt he had been using Jenny in a way. Proposal first. Bed later.
He nodded bleakly and Jenny kissed him gently on the cheek, patted Towser, and went out.
Just then, the phone rang and he went to answer it. It was Jimmy Anderson, phoning from Strath bane. “We’ve got the full confession,” he said cheerfully. “Like to hear the rest?”
“Go ahead,” said Hamish.
“Well, to take the story up from where Mackay left off, he just sacked him on the back of the neck and Mainwaring toppled over into the tank. Mackay fled, taking the note with him. When he heard about the skeleton, he knew whose it was and how it got to be one, but he didn’t know who had taken it out of the tank and cleaned up, see. He prayed that it might be some friendly local trying to cover up for the murderer, some local who wanted Mainwaring dead. Then Sandy turned up. Mackay had dropped his gold pen out of his jacket pocket when he’d bent over the tank as Mainwaring sank. Sandy had taken the clothes and all the other bits and burned the things that would burn, chucked the false teeth on the moor, and thrown the watch in Loch Cnothan. He’d even shovelled up all the ash, put it in a sack with a brick, and sunk it in a peat bog.
“He wanted money. Mackay arranged to meet him up the river and when Sandy got there, Mackay waited until he had counted the money and put it in his jacket and then took out his trusty rusty pipe and clobbered Sandy the way he had clobbered Mainwaring and then he stuffed the body under a bush. Then he remembered the money. He wanted to go back and retrieve it, but found he couldn’t bring himself to go near the corpse.”
“How are you going to keep it quiet about the lobsters?” asked Hamish.
“I don’t know. Maybe Blair’ll try to pervert the course of justice by saying, “Look, laddie, shut up about the lobsters and I’ll see you get a lenient sentence,” but I don’t know. Who was the reporter who told you about the railway? That one in London?”
“It wasnae really a reporter,” said Hamish. “It was my second cousin, who’s a cleaning woman on the Scottish Telegraph. She reads everything she finds in the wastepaper buckets. She told me last year and I forgot about it until the other day. So Mainwaring in a way brought about his own death by deciding to interfere in Jamie’s life. He left that glass of whisky on the tank, and Mackay got him when he went back to retrieve it. So it wasn’t a cold-bloodedly, planned murder; Mackay didn’t leave the whisky for Sandy. The witchcraft had nothing to do with it…och, I suppose you’ll be telling me next that that hoax call which got me out of the way was also made by someone else.”