He walked until he had reached the scene of the captain’s death and then he said to Towser, “Fetch!”
Towser was an indiscriminate fetcher. He brought everything he could find if asked. Hamish sat down on a clump of heather to wait.
He looked up at the sky. Little feathery clouds, gold and tinged with pink, spread a broad band of beauty over the westerning sun. The colour of the heather deepened to dark purple. The fantastic mountains stood out sharply against the sky. As every Highlander knows, the ghosts and fairies come out at dusk. The huge boulders scattered over the moorland took on weird, dark, hunched shapes, like an army of trolls on the march.
Hamish lay back in the heather, his hands behind his head, as Towser fetched and fetched. At last he sat up.
There was a small stack of items at his feet. Five old rusty tin cans, a sock, an old boot, one of those cheap digital watches people throw away when the battery runs out, the charred remains of a travelling blanket, an old thermos, and a broken piece of fishing rod.
Towser emerged, panting through the heather, dragging a piece of old tyre.
“Enough, boy,” said Hamish. “We’ll be back tomorrow. Maybe we’re searching too near.”
“Not tonight, Henry,” said Priscilla Halburton-Smythe. “It’s this terrible death. I think I’m feeling shocked. I simply don’t feel romantic. I’m awfully sorry.”
“All right,” said Henry sulkily. “If that’s the way you feel…Where did you vanish to early this evening?”
“Just out. I felt I had to get out Good night, darling. I’ll be back to normal tomorrow.”
She gently closed her bedroom door in his face.
Jenkins marched into the breakfast room in the morning and stood to attention before his master. “Sinclair has just been to report that Hamish Macbeth, that poacher MacGregor, and their dogs are out on our moors, sir.”
“The devil they are,” said the colonel, turning red. “Didn’t he tell them to hop it?”
“Sinclair did, sir, but Macbeth said he was within his rights. He said he was looking for clues.”
“The insolence of that man is beyond anything,” said the colonel. “Phone Strathbane and tell Blair to come over here and give Macbeth the dressing down of his life, and if he doesn’t get over here sharpish, I shall report him to his superiors.”
“Certainly, sir,” said Jenkins with a satisfied smile.
The guests looked at each other uneasily.
“What is he doing?” asked Diana. “I mean, it was an accident.”
“He’s probably poaching,” said Colonel Halburton-Smythe. “I know that man poaches. He’s only using this looking-for-clues nonsense to cover up the fact he’s a poacher himself. And what is he doing with that rascal MacGregor, if he’s not poaching?”
Jenkins came back into the room. “Strathbane says that Mr Blair is already on his way here. He wanted to assure you personally that the procurator fiscal’s report tallied with his own. In fact, he should be here now.”
“Good,” said the colonel. There was the sound of an arriving car scrunching on the gravel outside. “That’ll be him,” said the colonel. “Show him in.”
Blair could easily have phoned in the news, but he was still smarting over what he considered the Halburton-Smythes’ rudeness in not offering him tea and, like most thin-skinned people who have been snubbed, he could not leave the snubbers alone.
His fury on learning that Hamish was supposedly looking for clues was tinged with satisfaction. He was in a vile temper and giving Hamish a bawling out appealed to him immensely.
“I’ll go out and see him now,” said Blair.
Priscilla looked up and saw Hamish, with Angus MacGregor behind him, standing at the entrance to the breakfast room. She signalled wildly to him to escape, but Hamish stayed where he was, his face unusually set and grim.
“Good morning, Chief Inspector,” said Hamish.
Blair swung about, his piggy eyes gleaming. He opened his mouth to yell.
“It was murder,” said Hamish Macbeth. “Captain Peter Bartlett was murdered. And I hae the proof o’ it right here.”
Blair’s mouth dropped open and he stared stupidly. A heavy shocked silence fell on the room.
Into that silence came again the soft Highland voice of PC Macbeth.
“Och, aye,” he said. “It was nearly the perfect murder.”
? Death of a Cad ?
6
You may kill or you may miss,
But at all times think of this –
All the pheasants ever bred,
Won’t repay for one man dead.
—Mark Beaufoy.
Hamish walked into the room and placed a red-and-white plastic shopping bag on a small table by the window. He rummaged in the bag, then turned around, holding up to the stunned gathering two spent shotgun cartridges.
“These,” he said, “are number seven shot, not number six.”
There was a puzzled silence, finally broken by Blair. “What the devil are you talking about, you great gowk?” he cried furiously. “What has all this nonsense got to do with murder?”
“I think these belonged to Captain Bartlett, and I think he used them yesterday,” said Hamish, unperturbed.
“Nonsense,” said Blair. “Anyone could have fired them.”
“But the captain was the only one out shooting,” replied Hamish, inwardly sending an apology up to heaven for the lie when he thought of Angus the poacher’s brace of grouse. But Angus had just assured him they had been shot miles from where the captain died, although still on the estate, and Hamish had years of experience of knowing when the poacher was telling the truth and when he was lying. “Besides, the season just began yesterday.”
“Then they were from last season,” said Blair with a pitying smile.
“Och, no,” said Hamish. “The last season’s shooting ended in December, eight months ago. They haven’t been lying out on the moor all that time, in all that rain and snow.”
Lord Helmsdale nodded in agreement. Blair saw that nod and felt his lovely neat accident verdict beginning to slip away. “Get on with it, then,” he snarled.
Hamish turned back to the plastic bag and produced two grouse. He held them up.
“I found these hidden in the heather, not very far from where the captain was murdered. Angus’s dog found them. I think we shall find that they were killed with number seven shot, with these” – he held up the two spent cartridges – “and that the captain had bagged them before he was killed.”
“Oh, aye?” sneered Blair. “Your poacher friend found them, did he? Maybe that was because
“Well, he was up on the moor on the morning of the murder,” admitted Hamish.
“And what number of shot does
“Number six,” said Hamish.
“Bartlett was shot with number six, so, if it was murder, then, you great pillock, your friend did it!”
“Och, but he couldn’t have…” Hamish began, but Blair started to interrupt. He was silenced by Lord Helmsdale.
“Let Macbeth speak,” said Lord Helmsdale crossly. “When it comes to guns and shooting, he knows what he’s talking about.”
Blair looked about to protest, but then he nodded to Hamish to continue.
“The time of the shooting was put at around seven in the morning,” said Hamish. “I was down at the harbour at seven and there was Angus, sleeping like a pig. So he didn’t murder the captain.”
