Hamish Macbeth 20 (2004) - Death of a Poison Pen (14 page)

“And typed the letter to go with it? Not likely,” said Elspeth.

“You’re right.”

“You know what this means?”

“What exactly are you getting at?”

“It means,” said Elspeth patiently, “that if whoever sent the video to the community hall was in on the murders but did not perform them, then that person is liable to find himself murdered.”

“Won’t wash. Whoever filmed the murder was as much a part of it as the man or men who strung Miss Beattie up. Someone’s looking at a long jail sentence.”

Elspeth suddenly swung the car to the side of the road and stopped. She darted out and was violently sick. Hamish climbed out and handed her a rather grubby handkerchief. “There, now,” he said gently. “It’s the shock.”

Elspeth choked and gasped and then handed Hamish back his handkerchief, unused. She took a small packet of tissues out of her pocket, extracted one, and dabbed her mouth. “Sorry, Hamish, it’s a nightmare.”

“It is that,” he said grimly. “Get back in the car, lassie, and I’ll drive.”

Jenny and Pat Mallone were just finishing a meal at the Italian restaurant when Iain Chisholm entered. He bent his head over a table of diners and whispered urgently. There were cries and shocked exclamations. Iain left. The diners he had spoken to leant over to the next table and began to whisper. More cries of shock and alarm.

“Something’s up.” Pat got to his feet. “And I’m going to find out.”

He walked over to the diners Iain had first spoken to. Jenny watched. She couldn’t hear what they were saying because they were whispering. Finally, Pat came back. “I’d better get to the office,” he said. “You’ll never believe what’s happened now.”

“What?”

“A video was shown at the community hall in Braikie tonight. Someone had delivered it and said it was a short documentary from Help the Aged. It showed Miss Beattie hanging.”

“Gosh!”

“I’d better see Sam and get over to Braikie.”

“Can I come with you?”

“No, I’ll need to take a photographer with me.”

When Pat got to the newspaper office, it was to find that Elspeth had already phoned over the story, and it had been sent off to the nationals along with library pictures of the community hall.

Pat chewed his thumb in vexation. At least the nationals would send their own reporters. Most of those reporters would rewrite Elspeth’s story and put their own names on it. He didn’t want Elspeth to get an offer of a job on a national newspaper before he did.

Hamish worked late filing his report. Blair phoned back at two in the morning and told him to go to Braikie as early as possible and do door-to-door enquiries. Hamish set the alarm and tried to compose himself for sleep, envying Lugs, who was snoring at the end of his bed. But sleep would not come. He felt sure that somewhere amongst all the people he had interviewed lay a clue to the murders, a clue he had missed.

O waly, waly, gin love be bonnie
,

A little time, while it is new!

But when ‘tis auld it waxeth cauld
,

And fades own’ like morning dew
.

—Anonymous

T
he following morning, Jenny, wrapped in a rosy dream, ate her breakfast. Pat had told her his ambitions of being an ace reporter on a national newspaper and then moving on to television. Jenny was determined to return to London engaged to be married. Hamish Macbeth was proving too difficult and she obscurely blamed him for having caught her lying. But now, if she was married to a top reporter, that would be something to brag about. And it would mean no more disappointing affairs, no more going out on dates. She would be Mrs. Mallone. They would have a trim London house, somewhere fashionable, and she would see him off in the morning and then have nothing else to do but leave instructions for the cleaning woman. No more work. No more going to the office. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be married
before
Priscilla! I’ll make her my bridesmaid, thought Jenny. I’ll make her wear a yellow dress. Yellow was never Priscilla’s colour.

Now, what should she do with the day? Pat had phoned to say he would be spending the whole day in Braikie. She could go there herself and see if she could find out anything. Yes, that might be a good idea. If she was going to be Mrs. Mallone, then she should help her future husband in getting his first break. She could see it now. He would become a foreign correspondent for the BBC and she would go with him everywhere and become something of a celebrity. Of course, that notion rather spoiled the dream of having a lazy married existence at home. Suddenly, she remembered the seer’s prediction. He had been right! She would go and see him first.

Wasn’t one supposed to take a present?

She walked along to Patel’s store and bought a large box of chocolates and then set off up the hill to where Angus lived. The day was windy, with great gusts of wind that sent her staggering up the hillside. Seagulls were dotted about the sheep-cropped grass like the work of so many taxidermists, standing still, their tail feathers to the wind. Jenny did not know that this was a sign of worse weather to come.

She ploughed on upwards and arrived panting on the seer’s doorstep. She was raising her hand to knock when Angus opened the door. His eyes gleamed with delight when he saw the large box of chocolates. Angus loved sweets. “Come in, lassie,” he said. “I was expecting you.”

“You were?” Jenny felt a shiver of delighted apprehension.

She walked in, handing him the box of chocolates. Jenny was very fond of chocolates and hoped he would open the box and offer her one, but Angus asked her to be seated and bore the box off to the kitchen.

“Tea?” he asked on his return.

“Nothing for me,” said Jenny. “Did you hear what happened last night at the community hall?”

“Of course.”

“And you saw it all?”

For a moment, Angus looked startled. He remembered that something weird had happened when this girl had visited him with Hamish but could not remember what it was he had said. “Aye,” he said portentously, “I see in the future.”

Jenny wriggled with excitement. “So do you know who committed these murders?”

“I’m working on it,” said Angus. “I said I could see the
future
.”

“Yes, but if you can see the future, then you will know who it is Hamish is going to arrest.”

“Hamish Macbeth has had a lot of luck, but this could be the time his luck will run out. He may never find out who murdered those two people.”

“I would like to help him, you see,” said Jenny eagerly.

“Then you’re wasting your time. Macbeth has no interest in you.”

Jenny flushed to the roots of her hair. She rose to her feet and said crossly, “You’re not half as clever as you think you are. I have no romantic interest in Hamish Macbeth. You’ve really nothing to tell me that’s worth a large box of chocolates. I’ll just take them back.”

For one brief moment, Angus was speechless. No one had ever demanded a present back. “Get out of here, lassie,” he roared, “and don’t come back again. A bad thing’s going to happen to you, but because of your rudeness and meanness, I am not going to tell you. Shove off!”

He loomed over her. Jenny, suddenly terrified, shot to her feet and ran round him to the door. She jerked it open and hurtled out. Clouds were racing across the sky. She reflected that surely nowhere else in Britain could you get four changes of climate in one day. A rainbow arched over the black and stormy waters of the loch and she found herself wondering, ridiculously, why it did not bend under the ferocity of the wind.

Would something bad happen to her? Or had he just been mad because she’d asked for her chocolates back?

Mentally trying to shrug off a feeling of foreboding, she gained the waterfront and got into her car. Now for Braikie. She was just moving slowly along the waterfront when Iain Chisholm came running out of his garage, waving his arms for her to stop. Jenny jerked to a halt and wound down the window.

“Going far?” asked Iain.

“Just over to Braikie.”

“There’s a bad storm coming up. That car’s only a three-wheeler. It could be blown over when you reach the shore road. I could put something heavy in her as ballast.”

But Jenny, still frightened by the seer, was anxious to get away. “I’ll be all right,” she said crossly. “If the wind gets too strong, I’ll just pull over.”

She let in the clutch and drove off before Iain could say anything else.

As she drove up out of Lochdubh, at the top of the first hill, a great gust of wind and rain made her hang on grimly to the steering wheel as the car bucked and rocked, but soon she was down the hill on the other side, driving between great banks of gorse. I’ll be all right when I get to Braikie, she told herself. As she drove slowly now towards the coast road, the sky was black and the thin one-way track in front of her twisted and glistened like a giant eel. She negotiated a hairpin bend and cruised down onto the shore road. Monstrous waves were pounding the beach. I’ll be all right, I’ll be all right, she told herself fiercely. Just a little way to go and I’ll be in the shelter of the houses. She was halfway along the road when with a great roar, the wind hit the car and blew it over on its side. Struggling to unfasten her seat belt, she realised her arm was broken. Helplessly, she lay there against the door of the car, praying for help to come along. Then she realised she was listening not only to the roar of the wind but to the roar of the waves. A huge wave struck the little car and drove it into a ditch. She screamed from the pain in her arm and fainted.

From his croft high up above the shore road, a crofter, Duncan Moray, saw what was happening and picked up the phone and called the police. He was old, in his eighties, and did not feel strong enough to go to the rescue himself.

Jenny came out of her faint. Another wave pounded down on the car. The sea was coming right across the road. She could only hope the tide would turn and leave her, miraculously, still alive. Oh, God, she was going to die here in this ridiculous car in the wilds of the northernmost part of the British Isles, and all because she had been jealous of Priscilla.

And then she thought she was hallucinating because through the window on the passenger side, above her head, she saw the face of Hamish Macbeth. But he turned out to be real, because he wrenched open the passenger door. “There’s another big wave coming,” he said. “Come on, take my hand.”

“My arm’s broken,” said Jenny. “My right arm.”

“Give me your left hand. Quick!”

But another wave struck, drenching Hamish and flooding the car. “Do you want to die?” roared Hamish as the wave retreated. He leant in and put his arms round her waist and began to pull her upwards. “Here’s the ambulance,” he said. He shouted over his shoulder, “Come on, boys, and she’ll have us all drowned.” He let Jenny go, and she fell backwards with a moan. She felt the car rock and then it was pushed upright. Another wave struck it and she could hear yells and curses from outside. Then the door was opened and two ambulance men eased her out. They lifted her bodily into the ambulance and slammed the door.

The ambulance moved off, the driver swearing as a wave struck his vehicle. The ambulance man inside with Jenny said, “I would put a splint on that arm now, but it isn’t safe with us rocking like this. Didn’t you hear the warnings not to go out?”

But Jenny had fainted again.

Jenny recovered consciousness as she was being lifted down into a wheelchair. She was soaked to the skin and shivering with cold and shock. In the hospital, an admissions clerk said sourly, “It’s a shame to give up a bed for a mere broken arm. But we’d better get these wet clothes off her and take her along to X-ray.”

Jenny could not possibly feel like a heroine. She felt like a badly behaved child and she also, superstitiously, felt that Angus had put a curse on her.

Fortunately for Jenny, by the time she was put into a hospital nightgown and robe after a nurse had sponged her down and administered strong painkillers, she looked remarkably pretty again, and a susceptible doctor insisted that, after her arm was set, she be kept in for the night and allowed to go home in the morning.

Her first visitor was Elspeth. “I’d like to put a piece in the paper about your accident,” said Elspeth.

“I feel such a fool,” said Jenny. “Everyone will think I’m a fool.”

“No, they won’t. Everyone knows you aren’t used to the weather up here,” said Elspeth soothingly, although she was thinking of how tired she was of idiots who would not respect the dangers of Highland weather—climbers who had to be rescued at great expense and who then sold the stories of their ordeals to the tabloids and never thought of giving any money to Highland Rescue, whose members had risked their own necks to save them.

“I’ll send a photographer round to take a picture of you when I can find him. You’ll look really pretty.”

Jenny told her story, omitting the fact that Iain had tried to warn her, not guessing that Elspeth would hear of Iain’s warning before the day was out.

Jenny also omitted the fact that Hamish Macbeth had been first on the scene.

“You haven’t mentioned Hamish,” said Elspeth.

Somehow Jenny resented Hamish for having caught her out in her lies and having not found her attractive enough.

“Oh, well,” she said sulkily, “it didn’t seem necessary. The ambulance men got me out.”

“I met Hamish before I came here,” said Elspeth. “The poor man was sitting in the mobile police unit with only a small towel to cover his modesty while he tried to dry his clothes at a two-bar electric heater.”

“I must get the names of the ambulance men,” said Jenny, deliberately ignoring the subject of Hamish Macbeth. “I must thank them.”

Elspeth closed her notebook. “Well, that about wraps it up. There are more exciting stories up here than you’d get on the streets of London.”

“I thought Pat would be covering this.” Jenny took out a small mirror from her handbag on the bed and studied her appearance.

“I’m sure he would have. He wasn’t in the office when I left. Sam was phoning him. He had slept in.”