river. At least Macbeth would have found a way to stop it, although he never arrested anyone.”
“But this is dreadful,” exclaimed Priscilla. “Hamish is a terrible loss to the village.”
“Well,
Priscilla’s cool manner seemed ruffled. Oho! thought Alison, I wonder if the daughter of the castle is in love with the absent local copper.
Maggie looked amused. “If you want to get him back,” she said, “all you need to do is manufacture some crime in the village.”
She flashed a flirtatious look at the colonel. Priscilla thought, It’s as if there’s a beauty encased under that layer of fat.
But she said aloud, “What a good idea. Why don’t we organise a meeting in the village hall and put it to the locals.”
The colonel seemed about to protest but the suggestion caught Maggie’s imagination. She liked to imagine herself a leader of Highland village society.
“I’ll arrange it for you if you like,” she said. “Alison can help. Or try to help. She’s not really good at anything, you know. When shall we have the meeting?”
“Why not this Saturday?” asked Priscilla. “You are not suggesting you are going to encourage the villagers to commit crimes so as to get Hamish back!” said Mrs. Halburton-Smythe.
“Something must be done,” said Priscilla. “We’ll put it to the locals and then take a vote.”
“A vote on what?” demanded her father.
“On whatever suggestions are put up,” said Priscilla evasively. “There’s no need for you to get involved, Daddy. I am sure Mrs. Baird and I can handle everything.”
Alison found herself beginning to speculate on this local bobby. He must be someone very special to attract the cool Priscilla. Her mind wandered off into fantasy. What if she helped to get him back, managed to do more than Priscilla? This Hamish Macbeth would be tall and fair and handsome like those paintings of Bonnie Prince Charlie on the old biscuit tins. He would fall in love with her, Alison, and take her away from Maggie and leave Priscilla with the knowledge that Alison’s inner attractions were more important to a man than stereotyped outward beauty. She lacks character in her face, thought Alison, looking under her lashes at Priscilla and trying to find fault.
At last the evening was over. Maggie was wrapped by the butler in a voluminous mink coat. I hope Macbeth isn’t into Animal Liberation, thought Alison maliciously. That coat must have taken a whole ranch of minks.
As she was leaving, the colonel suddenly leaned forward and kissed Maggie on the cheek. She flashed him a roguish look and he puffed out his chest and strutted like a bantam.
Oh, dear, thought Priscilla, I wish he wouldn’t make such a fool of himself.
She did not know that her father’s misplaced gallantry was to start a chain of events which would lead to murder.
¦
Maggie was in a good mood as she drove home through the wintry landscape and under the bright and burning stars of Sutherland. So she could still attract a man. And if she could attract a man when she was like this – well, plump – think what effect she could have if she took herself in hand.
It was all the fault of that damned waiter, thought Maggie. Maggie Baird had earned a considerable amount of money during her career. Although she had managed to stay off the streets and had been married and divorced twice, she had made a business out of being mistress to a long string of wealthy men, occasionally straying to the poorer ones for her own amusement. Like most women addicted to food, she also had a tremendous appetite for sex. Unlike most of her sisters on the game, she had squirreled away her earnings, buying and selling property and investing cleverly. That was when the blow had fallen. Finding herself a very wealthy woman and looking for amusement, Maggie had taken up with a Greek waiter whose swarthy good looks had appealed to her. But for the first time in her life, she had fallen helplessly in love and when she had found that he was taking her money to save enough to marry a young blonde from Stepney, she felt her life was over.
She had bought the bungalow in the Highlands, a place to lick her wounds. She had let the bleach grow out of her hair so that it became its natural brown streaked with grey. She had put on pounds and pounds in weight. She wore tweeds and suede hats and oilskin coats and brogues and everything she could to adopt the character of a Scottish gentlewoman, as if hiding her hurt under layers of fat and country dress.
Taking Alison out of the hospital made her feel good for a while, until the novelty had worn off. Now the pain of the waiter’s rejection was fading as well.
“There’s life in the old girl yet,” she said cheerfully.
“You mean the car?” asked Alison.
“Me, you fool, not this heap of junk.”
“It’s a very nice little car,” said Alison timidly. “Auntie – ”
“I told you not to call me that,” snapped Maggie.
“Sorry…Maggie. Look, do you think I could take driving lessons? I could do the shopping for you.”
“I’ve got more to do with my money than pay for your driving lessons,” said Maggie. “That colonel’s quite a lad. His wife looks a bit of a faded nonentity. And that daughter of his! No character.”
“Exactly,” agreed Alison eagerly. Both women fell to trashing Priscilla and arrived home quite pleased with each other for the first time in weeks.
The Highlands of Scotland contain many pretty towns and villages but Strathbane was not one of them. It had been attractive once, but had become a centre for light industry in the early fifties and that had brought people flooding in from the cities. Ugly housing complexes had been thrown up all round; garish supermarkets, discos, and wine bars and all the doubtful benefits of a booming economy had come to Strathbane along with crime and drugs.
Police Constable Hamish Macbeth sadly left the kennels where his dog, Towser, was housed. It was his evening off. He was bored and lonely and he hated Strathbane and he hated Detective Chief Inspector Blair with a passion for moving him out of Lochdubh.
He was sick and tired of the youth of Strathbane with their white pinched faces, their drunkenness, and their obscenities. He was tired of raiding discos for drugs, and bars for drunks, and football matches for hooligans.
He walked along the dirty streets. A thin drizzle was falling. Even the seagulls wheeling under the harsh orange light of the sodium street lamps looked dirty. He leaned on the wall and stared down on the beach. The tide was up; oil glittered on the water and an old sofa with burst springs was slowly being gathered in by the rising tide.
A man reeled past him, then leaned against the sea wall and vomited onto the beach. Hamish shuddered and moved away. He wondered how much longer he could endure this existence. His home in Lochdubh had been the police station, so he did not even have a house to go back to. The neighbours were looking after his hens and his sheep, but he could not expect them to do so indefinitely. Some real estate agent would probably sell the police station. He had left most of his possessions there, refusing to believe his life in Lochdubh was over.
Then there was Mary Graham. P.C. Graham was Hamish’s usual partner on the beat in Strathbane. She was a thin, spare woman with a hard face and dyed blond hair and a thirst for making as many arrests as possible. She was from the south of Scotland and considered Hamish some sort of half-witted peasant.
Hamish’s mind went back and forth and round and round the problem, seeking escape. He could always go back to Lochdubh and take lodgings with someone. He could move his hen houses onto the bit of croft land assigned to him. But, like all crofters, he knew it was impossible to live on small farming alone, trying to wrest a living out of a few stony fields. He could work on the fishing boats, of course.
What hurt most of all was that the people of Lochdubh appeared to have taken his banishment without comment. He felt very friendless.
On Saturday night, the village hall in Lochdubh was crammed to capacity. On the platform facing the audience was the committee made up of Maggie, Alison, Priscilla, and the minister, Mr. Wellington, and his large, tweedy wife – who for the first time in her life was outdone in largeness and tweediness. Maggie Baird was encased in new tweeds and had a suede hat with a pheasant’s feather on it on her head. Alison had washed and set her hair for the occasion, perhaps in the hope that the handsome policeman would walk in the door while the meeting was on.
Maggie Baird, much to the annoyance of Mrs. Wellington, rose to speak.
“Our local policeman has been sent away because of a lack of crime in the area. I suggest we organise enough crime to make it necessary to send him back.”
