Death of a Charming Man (2 page)

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Is this visit official?’

‘No,’ said Hamish, ‘Just a friendly call.’

Peter smiled suddenly and Hamish blinked as though before a sudden burst of sunlight. That smile illuminated the young man’s face with a radiance. ‘You’d better come indoors,’ said Peter, ‘and have something. Tea or coffee?’

‘Coffee would be chust fine,’ said Hamish, feeling suddenly shy.

Peter took a checked shirt off a nail on the fence and put it on. His accent was light, pleasant, upper-class but totally without drawl or affectation.

Hamish followed him into the house, ducking his head as he did so, for the doorway was low. The cottage was in the usual old-fashioned croft-house pattern, living room with a fire for cooking on to one side and parlour to the other. Peter had transformed the living room into a sort of temporary kitchen, with a counter along one side with shelves containing dishes, and pots and pans above it. In the centre of the room was a scrubbed kitchen table surrounded by high-backed chairs. Peter put a kettle on a camping stove at the edge of the table. ‘I used that old kettle on the chain over the fire when I first arrived,’ he said with a grin, ‘but it took ages to boil. The peat around here doesn’t give out much heat. Milk and sugar?’

‘Just black,’ said Hamish, beginning to feel more at ease.

‘I’m building a kitchen at the back,’ said Peter, taking down two mugs.

‘What are you doing in the garden?’ asked Hamish.

‘Digging drains and a cesspool. I plan to have a flushing toilet and a bathroom. You’ve no idea what it’s like when you want a pee in the middle of the night and have to go out to that hut in the garden.’

‘You might find it difficult to get help,’ said Hamish. ‘The locals can be a bit standoffish.’

Peter looked surprised. ‘On the contrary, I’ve had more offers of help than I can cope with. People are very kind. I didn’t know we had a policeman.’

‘You don’t. I’m over at Lochdubh. This is part of my beat.’

‘Much crime?’

‘Verra quiet, I’m glad to say.’

‘Macbeth, Macbeth. That rings a bell. Oh, I know. You’ve been involved in some murder cases up here.’

‘Yes, but I am hoping neffer to be involved in another. Thank you for the coffee.’

Peter sat down opposite Hamish and stretched like a cat. A good thing there were no young women in Drim, thought Hamish, with this heart-breaker around.

‘Do you plan to stay here?’ he asked curiously.

‘Yes, why not?’

‘But you’re a young man. There’s nothing for you here.’

‘On the contrary, I think I’ve found what I’m looking for.’

‘That being?’

There was a slight hesitation. Hamish shivered suddenly. ‘Tranquillity,’ said Peter vaguely. ‘Building things, working with my hands.’

Hamish finished his coffee and got up to leave.

‘Come again,’ said Peter and again there was that blinding smile.

Hamish smiled back. ‘Aye, I will that, and maybe next time I’ll give you a hand.’

Hamish walked away from the cottage still smiling, but as he reached the car parked in the village his smile faded. He gave himself a little shake. There was no doubt that Peter Hynd possessed great charm. But out of his orbit, Hamish found himself almost disliking the man, almost afraid of him, and wondered why. With a little sigh he opened the passenger door for Towser to leap in, before getting into the driver’s seat.

His spirits lifted when he drove up the hill out of Drim and into the sunshine. There was no need to go back to Drim for some time, no need at all.

He parked the hotel car in the forecourt of Tommel Castle and then walked into the hotel and handed the keys to Mr Johnston.

‘Priscilla’s back,’ said the hotel manager. ‘Will I let her know you’re here?’

‘No, no,’ said Hamish. ‘I’ve got my chores to do. I’ll phone her later.’

He hurried off. Five minutes later Priscilla walked into the hotel office. ‘Someone told me they had seen Hamish and Towser walking off,’ she said.

‘Aye, he said he couldnae wait. He had chores to do.’

‘I wonder what those could be,’ said Priscilla cynically. ‘All he’s got to do is put the dinner I left him in his new oven. Did he tell you about the electric cooker?’

‘Yes, he did mention it. Did you ask him if he wanted a new cooker?’

‘No, why? There was no reason to. That old stove was a disgrace.’

‘I think he liked it,’ said Mr Johnston cautiously. ‘Cosy in the winter.’

‘He’s got central heating now.’

‘Aye, but there’s nothing like a real fire. You won’t change Hamish, Priscilla.’

‘I am not trying to change him,’ snapped Priscilla. ‘You forget, I’m going to have to live in that police station myself.’

‘Oh, well, suit yourself.’

‘In fact, I might just run down there. I left the instruction booklet for the new cooker on the table, but you know Hamish.’

‘Aye, he’s a grown man and not a bairn.’

Priscilla fidgeted nervously with a pencil on the desk. ‘Nonetheless, I’ll just go and see how he’s doing.’

Mr Johnston shook his head sadly after she had left. It was as if the usually cool and calm Priscilla had taken up a cause and that cause was the advancement of Hamish Macbeth.

Priscilla pulled up outside the police station. Dr Brodie was walking past and raised his cap.

The doctor was one of the few people in the village opposed to the forthcoming marriage of Hamish Macbeth and Priscilla Halburton-Smythe. He saw over Priscilla’s shoulder as she got out of her car the approaching figure of Hamish at the far end of the waterfront. Priscilla must have passed him on the road without seeing him.

‘If you’re looking for Hamish,’ said Dr Brodie, ‘he’s gone off to see Angus Macdonald.’

‘That old fraud!’

‘He’s been feeling poorly.’

Priscilla opened her car door again. ‘I may as well rescue him before Angus pretends to tell his future.’

She drove off, swinging the car round.

That was childish of me, thought the doctor. I was only trying to give Hamish a break, but she’s bound to see him.

But as he looked along the waterfront, there was no sign of Hamish. Priscilla’s car sped out of view. Then Hamish reappeared. Dr Brodie grinned. Hamish must have dived for cover. Priscilla should be marrying one of her own kind, he thought, old-fashioned snobbery mixing with common sense.

Angus Macdonald had gained a certain fame as a seer. Priscilla thought he was a shrewd old man who listened to all the village gossip and made his predictions accordingly.

When she drove up it was to see the old man working in his garden. He waved to her and beckoned.

She went forward reluctantly. The Land Rover had been outside the police station. Hamish surely would not have bothered walking.

‘Dr Brodie said you were not feeling well,’ said Priscilla. ‘Where’s Hamish?’

‘Why should he say that? I havenae seen Hamish.’

‘I’d better be getting back.’

‘Och, stay a minute and give an auld man the pleasure of your company.’

Priscilla followed the seer into his cottage, noticing with irritation that he was putting the kettle on the peat fire to boil. With the money he conned out of people, she thought, he could well afford to buy something modern.

But she politely asked after his health and learned to her increasing irritation that it was ‘neffer better.’

Angus settled down finally over the teapot and asked her a lot of searching questions about people in the village. ‘I thought you were a seer,’ said Priscilla finally and impatiently. ‘You are supposed to know all this by just sitting on your backside and dreaming.’

‘I see things all right.’ Angus Macdonald was a tall, thin man in his sixties. He had a thick head of white hair and a craggy face with an enormous beak of a nose. He smiled at Priscilla and said, ‘I see your future.’ His voice had taken on an odd crooning note. Priscilla, despite herself, felt hypnotized. ‘You will not marry Macbeth. A beautiful man will come between you.’

Priscilla burst out laughing. ‘Oh, Angus,
honestly
. There is nothing homosexual about Hamish.’

‘I wisnae saying that. I see a beautiful young man and he’s going to come between you two.’

Priscilla picked up her handbag. ‘I’ve no intention of being unfaithful to Hamish either. Beautiful young man, indeed.’

She drove down to the police station, but as she was raising her hand to knock at the kitchen door, she heard the sound of masculine laughter coming from inside. She walked around the back of the house and glanced in the kitchen window. Hamish and Dr Brodie were sitting at the kitchen table, an open whisky bottle in front of them. Hamish appeared more relaxed and amused than Priscilla had seen him look for some time.

She walked away and got back in the car. Surely Dr Brodie could not have been deliberately lying to her about Angus. But she felt reluctant to go in there and face him with it. Besides, the new guests would be arriving about now at the hotel. She would feel more like her old self when she got down to work. She always felt better these days when she was working.

When she arrived at the hotel, Mr Johnston popped his head outside the office door and said, ‘Thon Mrs Daviot’s on the line for you.’

Priscilla brightened. The Chief Super-intendent’s wife. ‘Hello, Mrs Daviot,’ she said.

‘Now didn’t I tell you to call me Susan?’ said Mrs Daviot coyly. ‘Ai have been thinking, Priscilla, dear, that there are some vairy nice houses around Strathbane. If Hamish got a promotion, you’d need to live here. It wouldn’t do any hairm to look at just a few of them.’

‘I suppose not,’ said Priscilla cautiously. ‘But Hamish might not like it. He’s set on staying in Lochdubh.’

‘All that young man needs is a push,’ said Mrs Daviot. ‘Once you get him out of Lochdubh, he’ll forget the place existed.’

Hamish was surprised to find the next day passed without his seeing Priscilla. The short absence rapidly made the heart grow fonder, and he forgot her cleaning and remembered her kisses. The cooker gleamed in the corner of his dark kitchen in all its pristine glory and he felt he had been sparing in his thanks, to say the least.

By late evening, he was just making up his mind to phone her when Priscilla herself arrived in a cloud of French perfume.

‘My, you look grand,’ said Hamish, standing back to admire a short black silk skirt, black stockings, and a glittering evening top.

‘We had a reception for the guests, a computer company with money to burn. Nothing but the best. Gosh, I am tired.’

He noticed for the first time how thin she had become, and the shadows under her eyes.

‘You’ll need to learn to relax,’ he said.

Priscilla sighed. ‘I don’t think I know how to.’

‘I’ll show you,’ he said huskily. He wrapped his long arms about her and held her close, and then he kissed her with all his heart and soul. For one dizzying moment she responded, and then he felt her go rigid in his arms. He drew back a little and looked down at her. She was staring over his shoulder at a corner of the kitchen ceiling.

‘What’s the matter?’ asked Hamish, twisting his head to follow her gaze.

‘There’s a great big cobweb up there. How could I have missed it?’

‘Priscilla, forget the bloody cobweb, forget the cleaning, come to bed.’ His fingers began to unbutton the back of her top.

She twisted away from him. ‘Not now, Hamish, there’ll be time enough for that when we are married.’

Priscilla blushed the minute the awful words were out of her mouth, those trite words, the cry of the suburban prude. ‘See you tomorrow, Hamish.’ She gave him a quick peck on the cheek and almost ran out of the door.

As she drove back to Tommel Castle, the seer’s words rang in her head. But if she gave in to Hamish now, she would never have the strength to realize her ambitions for him, and all Hamish Macbeth needed was a
push
.

When she reached the hotel, she was met in the reception by Mr Johnston. ‘You’ll need to take over the bar, Priscilla, for the last hour. Roger’s fallen down.’ Roger was the barman.

‘Drunk?’ asked Priscilla.

‘Again.’

‘Been pinching the drinks?’

‘No,’ said Mr Johnston. ‘I’ll say that much for him. But the customers will say, “Have one yourself, Roger,” and he does, and the maids can’t mix the fancy drinks.’

‘Where’s my father?’

‘Gone tae his bed.’

‘I’ll do it.’

‘You’d better button up the back of that blouse,’ remarked Mr Johnston. ‘It’s nearly falling off you.’

Priscilla blushed again. ‘Here, I’ll do it.’ The manager buttoned her up, smiling his approval of what he took to be a hopeful sign that Hamish was getting down to business at last.

The bar, to Priscilla’s relief, was not very full. She relieved the maid, Jessie, who was plaintively asking a customer how to make a Manhattan. The bar closed at eleven. Priscilla glanced at the clock. Not too long to go. Then, as one by one the guests left to go to their rooms or through to watch television, she noticed one of the most beautiful young men she had ever seen sitting at a table in the corner. He was reading a magazine and had a half-finished pint of beer in front of him. His golden hair gleamed softly in the overhead lights and his long eyelashes cast shadows on his tanned cheeks. He looked up and saw her watching him and gave her a slow, intimate smile, and Priscilla found herself smiling back. Another customer came up and she forgot about the beautiful young man for the moment, but just before closing time he came up to the bar and said, ‘Have I time for another?’

‘Just,’ said Priscilla. ‘Another pint?’

‘I’ll have a whisky to see me on my way.’

‘Make sure you’re not over the limit,’ said Priscilla, holding a glass under the optic. ‘The police can be quite strict.’

‘I shouldn’t think Hamish Macbeth would be too strict about anything’ came his voice from behind her.

She felt a sudden superstitious stab of fear. Was this Angus’s beautiful young man? But she turned around and, putting the glass on the bar, said, ‘So you know our local copper.’

‘He paid a call on me. I live in Drim.’

‘Do you have relatives there?’

He paid for his drink. ‘No, I just wandered in one day and stayed. What about you?’

‘My parents run this hotel.’

‘Poor you. Hard work, I should think. Ever get a night off?’

‘From time to time, when we’re not too busy.’

‘You must come over to Drim and see my place,’ he said, leaning easily on the bar. He held out his hand. ‘Peter Hynd.’

‘Priscilla Halburton-Smythe.’ Priscilla took his hand and then gave him a startled look as something like an electric charge went from his hand up her arm. ‘I’m not free even on my nights off,’ she said. ‘I am engaged to be married, and that takes up my time.’

‘Who’s the lucky man?’

‘Hamish Macbeth.’

He stood back a little and surveyed the cool and sophisticated Priscilla from the top of her smooth blonde head to the expensive French evening top, which was as much as he could see of her behind the bar. ‘Well, well, well,’ he said. ‘You amaze me.’

Priscilla gave herself a mental shake. Peter Hynd was talking to her as if he had known her for a long time, not so much by his words as by his manner, which seemed to be creating a heady atmosphere of intimacy. To her relief another customer came up and Peter took his whisky and retreated to his corner.

He stayed in the bar until she closed it down and pulled the grille over it. He looked about to speak to her again but she quickly left the bar and went to see Mr Johnston. She experienced the same feeling as Hamish had had – that once she was out of Peter’s magic orbit, she found she neither liked him nor trusted him. ‘I must tell Hamish,’ she thought, but then forgot all about the meeting until some time later.

Over in Drim the next day, Miss Alice MacQueen was up early to prepare for business, and business had never been so good. She was the village hairdresser and worked from the front parlour of her cottage. Before the arrival of Peter Hynd, she had not been very busy, the women of Drim getting their hair permed about once a year, usually before Christmas. But now her services were in demand, and the number of greyheads who wanted to be dyed blonde or black was mounting.

Mrs Edie Aubrey was also preparing for a busy day. For the past six months, she had been trying to run an exercise class in the community hall but without much success. Now her classes were suddenly full of sweating village women determined to reduce their massive bums and bosoms.

In the general store, Jock Kennedy unpacked a new consignment of cosmetics and put them on display. He had found the women were travelling to Strathbane to pay a fortune for the latest in anti-wrinkle creams and decided it was time he made some money out of the craze for youth that the incomer had roused in so many middle-aged bosoms. As his own wife seemed unaffected, he was one of the few in the village who was not troubled by Peter Hynd. Drim did not have any young women, apart from teenagers at school. The school-leaving daughters took off for the cities to find work.

Jimmy Macleod, a crofter, came in from the fields for his dinner, which, as in most of the homes in Drim, was still served in the middle of the day.

His meal consisted of soup, mince and potatoes, and strong tea. He ate while reading a newspaper, folded open at the sports section and propped against the milk jug. He had just finished reading when he realized that something was different. In the first place, his wife should have been sitting opposite him instead of fiddling over at the kitchen sink.

‘Arenae you eating?’ He looked up and his mouth fell open. ‘Whit haff you been doin’t tae your hair?’

For his wife Nancy’s normally grey locks were now jet-black and cut in that old-fashioned chrysanthemum style of the fifties, which was the best that Alice MacQueen could achieve. Not only that, but Nancy’s normally high colour was hidden under a mask of foundation cream and powder and her lips were painted scarlet.

She patted her hair with a nervous hand. ‘Got tired o’ looking old,’ she said. She turned back to the sink and began to clatter the dishes with unnecessary energy.

‘You look daft,’ he said with scorn. ‘And that muck on your face makes you look like a hooker.’

‘And what would you know aboot hookers, wee man?’

‘Mair o’ your lip and I’ll take my belt tae ye.’

She turned round slowly and lifted up the bread knife. ‘Chust you try,’ she said softly.

‘Hey, I’m oot o’ here till ye come tae your senses,’ he said. He was a small, wiry man with rounded shoulders and a crablike walk. He scuttled out the door. For the first time he regretted the fact that Drim was a ‘dry’ village. He felt he could do with a large whisky. He headed out to the fields. His neighbour, Andrew King, hailed him.

‘Looking a bit grim, Jimmy.’

‘Women,’ growled Jimmy, walking up to him. ‘My Nancy’s got her face painted like a tart and she’s dyed her hair black. Aye, and she threatened me wi’ the bread knife. Whit’s the world coming tae?’

‘Ye’ve got naethin’ tae worry about,’ said Andrew, an older crofter whose nutcracker face was seamed and wrinkled. ‘I’ member when my Jeannie went daft. You know whit it was?’

‘No, that I don’t.’

‘It’s the Men’s Paws.’

‘The whit?’

‘The Men’s Paws. The change. Drives the women fair daft, that it does. I talked to the doctor about Jeannie and he said, “Jist ignore it and it’ll go away,” and so it did.’ Andrew fished in the capacious pocket of his coat and produced a half bottle of whisky. ‘Like a pull?’

‘Man, I would that. But don’t let the minister see us!’

Drim’s minister, Mr Callum Duncan, was putting the finishing touches to his sermon. He gave a sigh of satisfaction. He would now have free time to write to his son in Edinburgh and his daughter in London.

‘I’m just going to write to Agnes and Diarmuid,’ he said to his wife, who was sitting sewing by the window. ‘Do you want to add a note?’

‘I wrote to them both yesterday,’ said his wife, Annie.

‘Well, you’d better tell me what you told them so I don’t repeat the gossip.’ The minister rose and stretched. He was a slight man with thinning grey hair, grey eyes, and a trap of a mouth. Annie had begun recently to hate that mouth, which always seemed to be clamped shut in disapproval.

A shaft of sunlight shone in the window and lit up Annie’s hair. The minister stared at his wife. ‘What have you been doing to your hair?’

‘I put a red rinse on it,’ she said calmly. ‘Jock has some new stuff. It washes out.’

‘What’s up with brown hair?’ he demanded crossly. He had always considered his wife’s thick brown hair her one beauty.

‘I got tired of it,’ she said with a little sigh. ‘Don’t make a fuss about trivia, Callum. It wearies me.’ And she went on sewing.

Harry Baxter drove his battered old truck down the winding road to Drim. He was a fisherman. There had been a bad-weather forecast and so the fishing boat at Lochdubh that he worked on had decided not to put out to sea. He was chewing peppermints because he had spent part of the morning in the Lochdubh bar, and like most of the men in Drim he liked to maintain the fiction that he never touched liquor. Just outside the village he saw a shapely woman with bright-blonde hair piled up on her head tottering along on very high heels. Her ample hips swayed as she walked. He grinned and rolled down the window and pursed up his lips to give a wolf whistle. Then he realized there was an awful familiarity about that figure and drew his truck alongside.

‘Hello, Harry,’ said his wife, Betty.

‘Oh, my God,’ he said slowly in horror. ‘You look a right mess.’

‘It was time I did something tae masel’,’ she said, heaving her plump shoulders in a shrug. She was carrying a pink holdall.

‘We’d better go home and talk about this,’ he said. ‘Hop in.’

‘Can’t,’ she said laconically. ‘I’m off to Edie’s exercise class.’ And she turned on those ridiculous heels and swayed off.

There was a fine drizzle falling by early evening. Stripped to the waist and with raindrops running down his golden chest, Peter Hynd worked diligently, as if oblivious to the row of village women standing silently watching him. Rain dripped down on bodies sore from unaccustomed exercise and on newly dyed hair. Feet ached in thin high-heeled shoes. And beyond the women the men of the village gathered – small sour men, wrinkled crablike men, men who watched and suddenly knew the reason for all the beautifying.

‘Men’s Paws,’ sneered Jimmy Macleod, spitting on the ground.

*    *    *

Several days later, Hamish was strolling along the waterfront with his dog at his heels and his cap pushed on the back of his head. A gusty warm wind was blowing in from the Gulf Stream and banishing the midges for one day at least. Everything danced in the wind: the fishing boats at anchor, the roses and sweet peas in the gardens, and the washing on the lines. Busy little waves slapped at the shore, as if applauding one indolent policeman’s progress.

And then a car drew up beside him. Hamish smiled down and then his face took on a guarded, cautious look. For the driver was Susan Daviot, wife of his Chief Superintendent. She was a sturdy woman who always looked as if she was on her way to a garden party or a wedding, for she always wore a hat, one of those hats that had gone out of fashion at the end of the fifties but were still sold in some Scottish backwaters. This day’s number was of maroon felt with a feather stuck through the front of it. She had a high colour which showed under the floury-white powder with which she dusted her face. Her mouth was small and pursed. ‘Ai’ll be coming beck with Priscilla to pick you up,’ said Mrs Daviot.

‘I am on duty,’ said Hamish stiffly.

‘Don’t be silly. I told Peter I was taking you off for the day. There is this dehrling house just outside Strathbane I want you and Priscilla to see.’