William Mainwaring drew out a kitchen chair and sat down and looked up at the tall policeman. He took out a pipe and lit it with precise, fussy movements. Hamish waited patiently.
“You ask me what the crime is?” said Mainwaring finally. “Well, I’ll tell you in one word: ‘Witchcraft’.”
∨ Death of an Outsider ∧
2
There’s one parish church for all the people, whatsoever may be their ranks in life or their degrees,
Except for one damp, small, dark, freezing cold, little Methodist chapel of ease,
And close by the churchyard there’s a stonemason’s yard, that when the time is seasonable
Will furnish with afflictions sore and marble urns and cherubims very low and reasonable.
—Thomas Wood
Witchcraft,” said Hamish Macbeth. “Jist let me get my notebook.” He licked the end of his pencil and looked with delighted curiosity at William Mainwaring.
“Yes, witchcraft,” said Mainwaring testily. “Last week, I found crossed rowan branches placed outside the door. I am an expert on local folklore and knew this was to put a hex on us. Two days later, I found fingernails – the same thing. Then, last night, my wife was making her way home from the Women’s Rural Institute when three witches jumped over the churchyard wall and started cackling and howling about her.”
Hamish bit the end of his pencil thoughtfully. “Who is it that wants to drive you away?” he asked.
“Oh, everyone, I should think,” said Mainwaring.
“And why is that?”
“Because we are incomers and English.”
“And nothing else?”
“No other reason whatsoever,” said Mainwaring. “I am by way of being a leader of the community. They are a simple people here and look to me for guidance. It should be easy for you to find out the culprits and arrest them.”
“But if you are a leader of the community and looked up to,” asked Hamish blandly, “then why do they want to get rid of you?”
“We’re English, that’s all. And you don’t expect rational behaviour from these people. Also, the attack was directed against my wife. She is probably the target, now I come to think of it. She is a highly irritating woman.”
Hamish blinked. “In that case,” he said, “perhaps it would be better if I had a wee word with Mrs. Mainwaring.”
“Agatha has nothing to tell you that I cannot. You will probably find it is some of those bitches at the Women’s Rural Institute. I attended one of my wife’s lectures, and I could feel the atmosphere was hostile.”
“And at what time did this take place last night?”
“At ten o’clock, or as near as damn.”
Hamish looked at his shorthand notes. “Why did you not report the matter to Sergeant MacGregor?”
Mainwaring laughed. It was a pleasant and charming laugh, at odds with the words that followed. “MacGregor is a fool, and I have had reason to complain about him to his superiors on two occasions. I knew you, his replacement, would be arriving today and decided I would be better with fresh blood. You do not appear particularly intelligent to me, but, with my guidance, I should think we might get somewhere. I have experience of this sort of thing.”
“Witchcraft?”
“No, no, man. Detective work. Did my bit in the army. Not supposed to talk about it, but the little grey men in Whitehall called me in from time to time to ask my help.”
“And do you often talk to little grey men?” asked Hamish, deliberately misunderstanding him.
“God give me patience,” cried Mainwaring, his face turning a mottled colour. “M. I.5, you fool!”
“Is that a fact!” exclaimed Hamish, his eyes round with wonder. “Aye, I can see we’ll have your witches in no time at all, at all, with a brain like yours to help with the work.”
“You can start off with Mrs. Struthers, the minister’s wife. She runs the local WRI,” said Mainwaring.
“How long have you been in Cnothan?” asked Hamish.
“Eight years.”
Hamish was not in the least surprised that someone who had been in Cnothan for eight years was still regarded as an outsider. “And why did you come here?”
“My aunt was Scottish. She left me the house and the croft in her will. I like fishing and hill walking. I am a crofter, of course. I have two hundred Cheviots.”
Hamish stared blankly ahead. In his experience, incomers were often misguided romantics who thought they could get away from their troubles by leading a simple life in the Highlands of Scotland. They often took to drink. But there was no sign of the drinker about Mainwaring. Hamish wondered whether, as a retired army man in Chelmsford or somewhere like that in the south of England, he might have been considered very small beer. Mainwaring liked throwing his weight around and had probably, instead of selling his aunt’s house and croft, chosen to stay in this small pond to perform as a big fish.
“I will call on you tomorrow,” said Hamish, “and tell you how I got on. Address?”
“Balmain. It’s about two miles outside the town on the Lochdubh road.”
Hamish wrote it down.
“Goodbye, Constable,” said Mainwaring. “But you will find the hostility is directed against my wife. She puts people’s backs up.”
“I have found,” said Hamish slowly, “that married people often don’t think much of each other. I mean, if the couple is popular, each one takes the credit. If unpopular, each assumes the other is to blame.”
Mainwaring turned in the doorway, his eyes bulging. “Are you aware of what you have just said?” he shouted. “You are a cheeky blighter, and if I don’t get results from you by tomorrow, then I’ll have you out of Cnothan so fast, your feet won’t touch the ground!”
“I wass thinking aloud,” said Hamish sadly. “A bad, bad fault. Now don’t fash yourself, sir. Arresting the witches is part of my job.”
The crash of the door as Mainwaring slammed out was his only answer.
“I shouldnae ha’ said that,” mourned Hamish, fishing a packet of biscuits out of one of the shopping bags, opening it, and giving one to his dog. “But of a’ the conceited men!”
He helped himself to a biscuit and stared into space. There was something about Mainwaring that didn’t ring true. That ‘cheeky blighter’ was the sort of thing an ex-army man would say in a bad play.
He decided to go out and collect as much gossip about Mainwaring as he could before seeing the minister’s wife again.
He made himself dinner, walked Towser, and then set off down the main street, reflecting that there was no point in trying out MacGregor’s car until he had farther afield to go.
He went to the churchyard with his torch and poked about. Great Celtic crosses reared up against the night sky. Frost was already glittering on the gravel paths. They were raked smooth and there was not a sign of even one footstep. Deciding to have a word with Mrs. Mainwaring the following day and persuade her to come with him and show him exactly where the witches had appeared, Hamish went back to the churchyard gate and let himself out. Down on the waterfront was a bar called The Clachan. Hamish pushed open the door and went in. It was a dreary smoke-filled room with a juke-box blaring melancholy country-and-western songs from a corner. It was a Monday night and so few of the regulars were in, having spent all their money on the Saturday. Hamish ordered a bottle of beer and took it over to a table by the window and sat down.
The cowboy on the juke-box, who had been complaining that his son called another man Daddy, wailed off into silence.
The door opened and a tall, slim man walked in. Hamish observed him curiously. He had carefully waved hair, hornrimmed glasses, a sallow skin, and buck-teeth. He was wearing a city suit of charcoal-grey worsted with a checked shirt, and tight waistcoat under a camel-hair coat.