MacNab sniggered, and Jimmy Anderson said, “You’ve been reading too many detective stories, Hamish. Great detective gathers suspects in the library and unmasks killer.”
“Aye, chust so,” said Hamish, walking off.
“He’s mad,” growled MacNab. “I’ll tell him to go home and have some black coffee.”
“No,” said Blair. “Let him get on with it. I want him to make a right fool of himself. I’ll have him out of his cushy job in a week.”
And so Hamish found Blair surprisingly mild and cooperative when he returned. Yes. Blair grinned. MacNab would guard the door and Anderson the window.
At last, one by one, the members of the fishing party entered the lounge. Hamish stood with his back to the empty fireplace and waited until they were all seated.
“Before I take down your addresses and send you on your way tomorrow,” he said, “there’s just a few things I have to say.” MacNab stifled a laugh.
“It was a wee bit difficult for me to see at first which one of you had done the murder because you all seemed to have a motive.”
“Get on with it.” Daphne Gore yawned. “I’m dying for a drink.”
“John and Heather Cartwright,” went on Hamish, ignoring the interruption. “A bad press might have ruined your school, and there was no doubt that Lady Jane meant to give you a bad write-up. You had a letter from friends in Austria telling you how she had managed to ruin them. Mr Cartwright lives for this fishing school and Mrs Cartwright lives for her husband. Both could have committed the murder…or one of them.”
“Marvin and Amy Roth…”
“I’m not going to listen to any more of this,” said Heather. She half rose from her chair, her face flushed with distress, changed her mind, and sat down again, looking not at Hamish, but at her husband.
“Marvin Roth,” said Hamish, “was involved in a scandal some years ago when he was charged with running sweatshops in the garment district of New York and employing illegal aliens. He did not want his past raked up just when he was set on entering politics, and he guessed from a remark Lady Jane made that she knew all about his past.”
“Then Amy Roth. Always talking about being a Blanchard from Augusta, except you aren’t a Blanchard by birth. You married Tom Blanchard ten years ago and the marriage only lasted a few weeks, but you kept his name and background. Lady Jane must have known that.”
Marvin polished the top of his bald head. “Look here,” he said desperately. “Amy didn’t say anything about being a Blanchard by birth, now did you, hon?”
“Oh, yes, she did,” said Daphne. “Right down to the last mint julep.”
“You misheard,” said Marvin, giving Daphne a cold, pale look.
“Then we come to Major Peter Frame,” said Hamish.
“Not again,” said the major, burying his face in his hands.
“You care very much for your reputation as an officer and a gentleman,” said Hamish. “You have an excitable temper and you were heard to threaten Lady Jane’s life. You were never in the war, nor have you a particularly upper-class background. Lady Jane gave you a rough time.”
“Alice Wilson.” Alice smiled tremulously at Jeremy, who frowned and looked at the door. “You got into minor trouble as a child and it’s plagued you ever since. There was a big reason why you did not want the matter to get out. Perhaps you might have killed because of it.”
Nobody moved, but they seemed to shrink away from Alice.
“I wouldn’t,” gasped Alice. “Jeremy, please…”
“Charlie Baxter,” went on Hamish. “Well, you had a bad time with her ladyship, and boys of your age can do terrible things under stress.”
“Jeremy Blythe. I think you are a ruthless, ambitious, selfish man. You messed up two women in your Oxford days and God knows how many more. You want to be elected a member of the Conservative party, and Lady Jane’s story, had it appeared, would have meant the end of your ambitions.”
“This is cruel,” thought Alice wildly. “He could have taken us aside one at a time. It’s like some horrible game of truths, bringing all our skeletons out of the closet,” She looked angrily at Hamish, who was consulting a sheaf of notes. He raised his eyes and looked around the room. “He doesn’t know who did it!” thought Alice with a sudden flash of intuition. “He’s looking for some sign that will betray the murderer.”
“Daphne Gore. Lady Jane knew all about you. I won’t go into the details of your background that landed you under psychiatric care, but I think you are unbalanced enough to kill someone, given enough stress.”
There was a shocked silence. “If your little game is over, Macbeth,” said Blair, “we’ll get those addresses and…”
Hamish ignored him.
“Now we had one clue, a torn corner of a photograph with part of the legend BUY BRIT – in one corner. At first I thought it might be part of an old Buy British poster. The fragment also shows the top of a head with something sparkly on it like a tiara. I made a lot of phone calls and found out at last what the legend really read.”
“It runs BUY BRITTELS BEER – a kind of beer that is sold in America.”
“Never heard of it,” said Marvin Roth.
“Not many people have,” said Hamish. “It was made locally by a small firm controlled by the Mafia in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn. It was so strong the locals said it was made out of all the bodies that didn’t end up in the East River. It was a bit of luck I found that out. Mrs Roth had muttered something about Red Hook, but at the time, I thought she must be talking about something to do with the fishing. It was only later I remembered Red Hook was a district in Brooklyn. I have a cousin, Erchie, who lives in Red Hook and I phoned him up. He said it was sold in small Mafia gambling clubs.
“He neffer heard of Amy Blanchard or Amy Roth, but he had heard of an Amy a whiles back who was a stripper, Amy not being a usual name in the Italian section. Now Lady Jane had been in the States, no doubt digging up what dirt she could. Lady Jane was content to wait until her column appeared to see the rest of you suffering or to imagine your suffering. But Amy caught her on the raw. She arranged to meet Mrs Roth in the woods. There she showed her a photograph of Amy the stripper, wearing very little except a spangled headdress. You, Mrs Roth, have very little in the way of a conscience. This is something I feel about you, rather than something I definitely know. It came on me bit by bit. The look in the back of your eyes always had a certain steady calculating hardness no matter what you were saying. So you strangled her and then you dragged the body to the pool. You wanted something to weight the body and so you went down to the beach and found some old rusty chain. As soon as you had pushed her into the pool, you felt safe. You then returned to her room and destroyed all her notes and papers. Your husband would never know you were a Brooklyn stripper who sold her favours.”
Good God, thought Heather Cartwright wildly. Do people still talk about women selling their favours?
Amy Roth sat very still, her eyes lowered.
Marvin lumbered up and sat on the arm of his wife’s chair and put a hand on her shoulder and gave it a comforting squeeze.
“You’re talking shit,” grated Marvin. “I won’t believe what you said about Amy. I’ll tell you something else. She knows I love her. She knows that I wouldn’t give a damn about her past. Mine ain’t so lily white. Where’s your proof?”
“She was seen,” said Hamish. “There is this poacher, Angus MacGregor…”
His voice trailed away as Amy raised her eyes and looked at him. Her eyes had lost their soft, cow-like expression. They were as flat and as hard as two stones.
“You did it, didn’t you?” said Hamish.
Amy Roth moistened her lips.
“Yes,” she said flatly.
“And when you said you thought your husband had done it and you were frightened he had left something incriminating behind, you were really frightened
“Yes,” said Amy again in that dreadful flat voice.
Marvin’s face was white and working with emotion. Tears started to his eyes. “You’re making her say all this,” There was a long silence. “Amy,” pleaded Marvin, “if you did it, you did it for me. Well, the hell with politics. I wasn’t ever sold on the idea anyway.”
