A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h the restaurant. The town was not busy, and there was no traffic in Thistle Street. So they walked a short distance in the road itself, their footsteps echoing against the walls on either side. Then, on the right, the discreet door of the restaurant.
It was not large—about eight tables in all, and there were only two other diners. Isabel recognised the couple and nodded.
They smiled, and then looked down at the tablecloth, with discretion, of course, but they were interested.
“Well,” said Jamie, as they sat down. “Tell me.”
Isabel arranged her table napkin on her lap and picked up the menu. “You can take the credit,” she began. “Or part of it.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. You said to me in the Vincent that I should be prepared to find out that Paul Hogg was the person we were after.
That’s what you said. And that made me think.”
“So you decided that it was him,” said Jamie.
“No,” said Isabel. “It’s her. Minty Auchterlonie.”
“Hard-faced cow,” muttered Jamie.
Isabel smiled. “You could say that. I might not use those exact words, but I wouldn’t disagree with you.”
“I disliked her the moment she came into the room,” said Jamie.
“Which is odd, because I think that she liked you. In fact, I’m pretty sure that she . . . how shall I put it? She
Her remark seemed to embarrass Jamie, who looked down at the menu which the waiter had placed before him. “I didn’t see—”
he began.
“Of course you didn’t,” said Isabel. “Only another woman would pick it up. But she took an interest in you. Not that it stopped her getting bored with both of us after a while.”
“I don’t know,” said Jamie. “Anyway, she’s a type that I just can’t stand. I really can’t.”
T H E S U N D A Y P H I L O S O P H Y C L U B
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Isabel looked thoughtful. “I wonder what it is that made us—
both of us—take a bizz against her.” The old Scots word “bizz,”
like so many Scots terms, could only be roughly translated. A bizz was a feeling of antipathy, but it had subtle nuances. A bizz was often irrational or unjustified.
“It’s what she represents,” Jamie offered. “It’s a sort of mixture, isn’t it, of ambition and ruthlessness and materialism and—”
“Yes,” Isabel interrupted him. “Quite. It may be difficult to define, but I think we both know exactly what it is. And the interesting thing is that she had it and he didn’t. Would you agree with that?”
Jamie nodded. “I quite liked him. I wouldn’t choose him as a particularly close friend, but he seemed friendly enough.”
“Exactly,” said Isabel. “Unexceptionable, and unexceptional.”
“And not somebody who would ruthlessly remove somebody who threatened to expose him.”
Isabel shook her head. “Definitely not.”
“Whereas she . . .”
“Lady Macbeth,” Isabel said firmly. “There should be a syndrome named after her. Perhaps there is. Like the Othello syndrome.”
“What’s that?” asked Jamie.
Isabel took up a bread roll and broke it on her side plate. She would not use a knife on a roll, of course, although Jamie did. In Germany it once was considered inappropriate to use a knife on a potato, a curious custom which she had never understood. An enquiry she had made of a German friend had received a strange explanation, which she could only assume had not been serious.
“A nineteenth-century custom,” he had explained. “Perhaps the emperor had a face like a potato and it was considered disre-spectful.” She had laughed, but when she later saw a portrait of 1 5 4
A l e x a n d e r M c C a l l S m i t h the emperor, she thought it might just be true. He did look like a potato, just as Quintin Hogg, Lord Hailsham, had looked slightly porcine. She imagined him at breakfast, being served bacon, and laying down his knife and fork and sighing, regretfully, “I just can’t . . .”
“The Othello syndrome is pathological jealousy,” said Isabel, reaching for the glass of gassy mineral water which the attentive waiter had now poured her. “It afflicts men, usually, and it makes them believe that their wife or partner is being unfaithful to them. They become obsessed with the thought, and nothing, nothing can persuade them otherwise. They may eventually end up being violent.”
Jamie, she noticed, was listening very carefully to her as she spoke, and the thought occurred to her:
Was he jealous of Cat? Of course he was. But then Cat was having an affair with somebody else, in his view at least.
