She drank and listened and seemed soothed. Hamish finally felt he could not talk any longer. He got to his feet. “I’ll be off to my bed, Jenny,” he said. “Maybe I’ll drop by tomorrow, if it is all right with you.”
“Sure. I’ll be here.” She came round the kitchen table and stood in front of him, her head bent. “You don’t need to go,” she said.
“Whit?”
“Stay the night…with me,” said Jenny.
Hamish bent and kissed her cheek. “It wouldna’ work,” he said softly. “Not when you’re this miserable. I’d be someone tae cling to the night, and someone to hate in the morning.”
Jenny remained standing, her head still bent.
Hamish turned and walked away and let himself out in the night.
¦
Hamish’s first visitor early next morning was Jamie Ross. “I don’t know whether I’m doin’ the right thing or not,” said Jamie. “I got back last night and found everything in order, but no sign of Sandy. I went out to his place, but there was no one home.”
“Maybe he’s indoors, dead drunk, and cannae hear you,” said Hamish.
“No, the door wasn’t locked. I took a look inside. He’s gone all right, but his Land Rover’s still there. I’m wondering whether to report him missing.”
“It’s early days,” said Hamish. “Had he been drinking?”
“Well, that’s what worries me. He had. Worse than that, he told Hector at The Clachan that I had kindly left a glass of booze for him on one of the tanks. I wouldn’t dream of doing a thing like that. Hector said he was drinking himself silly. I got mad and asked why no one had stopped him. But far from stopping him, the locals seem to have gone out of their way to buy him drinks.”
“Why would they do that?”
“Jealousy,” said Jamie simply. “You know what they’re like around here. They don’t like me showing I have any money at all. You’re supposed to be like the crofters and plead poverty. That’s why a lot of these crofters don’t buy their land, you know. They could force the landowner to sell it to them for a song, but then that’d mean they’d need to pass a means test in order to get the government grants, and not one of them could pass it. Sandy’s a good soul when he’s not drinking. I’d hate to see him have an accident. It would be just like him to wander off and fall asleep somewhere and die of exposure. Besides, I owed him the second half of his wages and it’s strange he didn’t turn up to collect. He went away and left the office locked up and took the key with him. I had to break in.”
“I’ll have a look around,” said Hamish. “So you think someone deliberately left that drink so as Sandy would go on drinking, once started?”
“Aye, sheer spite.”
“I’ll do my best. How was the wedding?”
“Oh, just grand. Everything went off like clockwork. They’re off to the Canary Islands on their honeymoon.”
When Jamie left, Hamish washed his breakfast dishes and prepared to go out to look for Sandy Carmichael. He was on the point of leaving when Jenny arrived, looking shamefaced.
“Thanks for last night,” she said awkwardly. “I wasn’t myself.”
“That’s all right,” said Hamish. “I was just on my road out. Jamie Ross says that Sandy Carmichael is missing. But there’s time for a coffee. You wouldn’t happen to know if Sandy’s ever gone missing before?”
“Not that I know. Drunk or sober, he always hangs about the town. Oh, here’s Mrs. Mainwaring,” said Jenny, spotting a massive figure passing the kitchen window. “I wonder what she wants.”
Hamish went through to the police station annex in time to open the door to Mrs. Mainwaring.
She was wearing a squashed felt hat and a waxed coat over a navy dress with a white sailor collar, a photograph of which had appeared several months ago in one of the Sunday colour supplements: “Order now. Special offer. Flattering to the fuller figure.” A strong smell of peppermint and whisky blasted into Hamish’s face as she cried, “William is missing. He hasn’t been home for two nights!”
“Come in, Mrs. Mainwaring,” said Hamish. “Sit yourself down.” Jenny came through and stood in the office doorway. “What’s the matter?” she asked.
“Mr. Mainwaring is missing,” said Hamish. “Look, Mrs. Mainwaring, has he done this before?”
“No, never. I mean, yes, he has, but he’s always told me or left a note.”
“And where does he go?”
“Glasgow or Edinburgh. He likes to go to the theatre.”
“Alone?”
“Yes, of course.”
Hamish thought that William Mainwaring might possibly have a mistress in Glasgow or Edinburgh – either that or be staying away out of sheer malice. “I think you should give it a little more time,” he said soothingly. “He’ll be back.”
Jenny came forward and stood with her hand on Mrs. Mainwaring’s shoulder. “And I think you ought to look for him,” she said sharply. “Can’t you see how distressed Mrs. Mainwaring is?”
“All right,” said Hamish reluctantly. “I’ve got to look for Sandy Carmichael, so I may as well look for Mr. Mainwaring at the same time.”
¦
Ian Gibb was a budding reporter. He was on the dole, but he scoured the countryside in the hope of a good story. Occasionally one of the Scottish newspapers used a short piece from him, but he dreamt of having a scoop, a story that would hit the London papers.
That day, his sights were lower. With all the fuss about the decline in educational standards, he had decided to write a feature on Cnothan School. The school was run on the lines of an old–fashioned village school. It taught all ages up to university level. Educational standards were high and discipline was strict. Teachers wore black academic gowns in the classroom and mortar-boards on speech days. The headmaster, John Finch, was an aging martinet, the type of headmaster of whom people approve after they have left school and do not have to endure being taught by such a rigid personality themselves.
The headmaster had agreed to see him, but, true to his type, planned to keep Ian kicking his heels outside the headmaster’s study for a full quarter of an hour.
Ian was moodily wishing he could light up a cigarette. He was sitting on a hard bench with his back against the wall. But after five minutes of waiting, he was joined by a teenage girl. “Hallo,” said Ian cheerfully. “In trouble?”
“Oh, no,” said the girl. “I am one of the school prefects, and Mrs. Billings, the English teacher, has sent me along to report that two of the girls are misbehaving in class. I’ll wait till you’re finished.”
“Maybe you’d better go first,” said Ian, feeling disappointed in this girl, whose Highland beauty had initially charmed him. There was something cold-bloodedly precise about her manner. “I’ll be a while. I’m interviewing Mr. Finch for my newspaper.”
“Which newspaper is that?”
Ian didn’t have a newspaper, being a free lance. He only hoped one of them would take his education article. But he said, “The Scotsman,” hoping to impress.
“Oh, that’s why he’s seeing you,” said the girl sedately. “The Scotsman’s a good paper. I didn’t think he’d want to see a reporter, mind. I thought he would call it sensationalism.”
“What? Education?”
“No, the witchcraft story.”
Ian stiffened. “Oh yes, that,” he said casually, although it was the first he had heard of it, as he lived in Domoch. “Bad business.”
“I don’t approve of it myself,” said the girl primly. “But there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind the Mainwarings were asking for it.”
There came a commotion from the end of the corridor, Ian took out a small notebook, and as the girl turned her head away, he rapidly scribbled down ‘Mainwaring.’ A harassed, middle-aged woman came along the corridor, dragging two weeping six-year-olds. She saw the girl and said, “Gemma, was there ever such a business! These two brats were supposed to be off school with the flu. Now they say they were playing up on the moors and there’s a skeleton in the middle of that ring of standing stones.”
