The owner of the scrap yard, a small greying man in blue overalls, drove up.
“What do ye want?” he demanded as he approached Hamish. “There’s not one stolen car here.”
Hamish got to his feet. “I’m not here about stolen cars,” he said. “I want to show you some photos and I want you to look at the folk in the photos and tell me if one of them called at your yard and asked for an old felt mat, like the kind you see under the bonnets of some engines, and two sparking plugs.”
He looked at the man without hope. It was too long a shot. “Funny that,” said the owner slowly. “I call to mind someone asking me for thae things.”
Hamish held out the photographs.
The man took them and led the way into the hut. He switched on the light and then with maddening slowness took a pair of glasses from his overall pocket and put them on his nose. He peered at the photographs.
“Aye,” he said. “That’s who ye want.”
Hamish looked down. His finger was almost covering one face.
“My God!” said Hamish. “Are ye sure? Ye have to be awry sure. If it’s that one, man, I couldnae for the life o’ me think why.”
“Of course I’m sure,” he said testily. “I can call tae mind every sod that comes in here. Came and asked far sparking plugs and then far the felt tae line the bonnet o’ a car. A Renault it was.”
Hamish took out a form he had brought with him and took down a statement and got the scrap yard owner to sign it. As he drove off, the sun was slipping below the horizon and the perpetual twilight of a northern summer lay across the countryside.
He drove a little way and pulled off the road and sat, thinking hard. Why?
And then, after an hour, all the little bits and pieces fell into place and he was looking at an almost complete picture. There was only one large piece missing and that was the reason for the death of Steel Ironside.
He called first at Dr. Brodie’s, then at the minister’s, back to the police station to make a few phone calls, and then made his way to the bungalow. P.C. Graham was still on duty. “You’re going to cop it frae Donati,” she jeered, “and I’m coming in tae watch.”
Hamish ignored her and went on into the house. Mrs. Todd was busy at the kitchen sink. “They’re all in the sitting room,” she said.
Hamish walked into the sitting room. Crispin, Peter, and James were sitting together on the sofa. Alison was curled up in an armchair. Donati was sitting on a hard chair in the middle. MacNab and Anderson were over by the window.
Donati looked up briefly and his face hardened. “I’ll deal with you later, Macbeth,” he said. “Get outside and make sure no press get as far as the house.”
“But – ” began Hamish.
“I said, get outside!”
P.C. Graham sniggered and took up a position against the wall, anxious to stay and watch the interrogation. Hamish could stand guard on his own.
Hamish did not go outside. He went into the kitchen and pulled out a kitchen chair and sat down.
In his usual lazy, companionable way, he said, “Aye, it was a grand funeral. A fitting funeral for a lady like Mrs. Baird.”
Mrs. Todd said nothing but continued to scrub pots with ferocious energy.
“She was a verra good woman as well,” Hamish went on.
Mrs. Todd swung round. “Maggie Baird was a whore,” she said viciously.
Hamish gave a little sigh and said quietly, “And you are the instrument of God.”
She wiped her hands on her apron and slowly came and sat down opposite him. Hamish clasped his hands behind his head and looked dreamily at the ceiling. “It was those photographs of you in the army. You were in the army during the war and would know a lot about car engines. You were a chauffeur to a Colonel Wilson in the Royal Artillery, or so the village gossip goes. You burned that book of Maggie’s. You read it and you burned it. I gather from Alison it was pretty hot stuff. Enough to turn that daft mind o’ yours.
“Your husband took to the drink and you joined the Temperance Society and you neffer gave the man a day’s peace till he drank himself to death. You asked Brodie to put ‘heart attack’ on the death certificate because you thought alcohol poisoning was a disgrace. He refused, but it was what else Brodie told you that shocked you. He told you your husband had venereal disease. Brodie told me that Mr. Todd had confessed to going with prostitutes from time to time in Aberdeen because he had had nothing in that line from you since your wedding night. Then I remembered the case of Mary MacTavish. She had an illegitimate child and Mr. Wellington said you made that lassie’s life such hell she had to leave the village. When the minister reproached you for your lack of charity, you said you were doing God’s work.
“Now, we come to Alison Kerr.
“She was a girl after your own heart, quiet and shy. But I gather you can hear everything in this house and so you listened at her bedroom door and that way you found out she was in bed with Peter Jenkins. You had committed murder once. And to my mind it was murder. You knew Maggie Baird had a weak heart. So you tampered with the brakes of Alison’s car. She had become unclean and had to go. But when you managed to poison her mind against Peter Jenkins…oh, I’m sure that rubbish Alison was talking about that a man would never respect you after you had slept with him came from you…I think you decided to give her a reprieve. Then the pop singer. You didn’t use the car but you could easily have cycled out or walked.”
“You can’t prove a thing,” said Mrs. Todd.
“Oh, but I can,” said Hamish, straightening up, his eyes hard and implacable and cold. “You went to the scrap yard at Brora and got the sparking plugs and the bit o’ felt and the man there identified you from your photograph.”
Mrs. Todd rose and went back to the sink and started scrubbing pots again.
“I’ll tell you something else,” said Hamish. “You’re like Maggie Baird.”
Mrs. Todd stopped scrubbing. “Never!” she said passionately.
“Yes, in a way. You see, when Maggie was all fat and tweedy and playing the county lady, I had an odd feeling that there was a pretty, flirtatious woman locked up inside all that fat, ready to come out like a butterfly coming out of a chrysalis. Inside that motherly outside of yours, Mrs. Todd, I see another woman: a thin, sharp, bitter, murderous woman.”
“Havers,” said Mrs. Todd calmly and opened a kitchen drawer.
¦
Detective Jimmy Anderson was to say long afterwards that the biggest shock he ever had in his career was when Hamish Macbeth erupted from that kitchen and dived over the sofa and the three men sitting on it, pursued by Mrs. Todd who was waving a glittering bread knife. Galvanized into action, MacNab and Anderson and Donati grabbed hold of her while P.C. Graham twisted the bread knife out of her hand. She struggled and cursed, trying to escape, her eyes bulging with hate as she surveyed the lanky length of Hamish Macbeth rising from behind the sofa.
As they put the handcuffs on her, Hamish charged her with the attempted murder of Mrs. Margaret Baird. Then he said, “Why Steel Ironside? Why the pop singer?”
“Dirty man!” Mrs. Todd spat out the words. “He wore his shirts open the whole time showing all that nasty, nasty hair. Yes, I burned that book of hers. I knew men were filth but I never realised how filthy till I read it. Wallowing in filth. Filth!” she screamed, and she was still screaming while they led her outside.
“She’s mad,” whispered Alison.
“Yes,” said Hamish wearily. “Barking mad and I never even noticed.”
“Yaas,” said James in his fake upper-class voice. “Of course, one never really looks at servants. I say, Alison, what about drinks all round? Thank God it’s all over.”
“Yes,” said Alison, a little colour beginning to come into her pale face. “Yes, it’s over and I’m safe.” She flung her arms around Hamish. “Oh, thank you!”
Hamish looked across her head to Peter Jenkins and signalled with his eyes and Peter came up. Hamish pushed Alison gently into Peter’s arms. “I’d best be off,” he said.
He had parked his Land Rover on the road outside. The press had disappeared for the moment but he knew they would soon be back. P.C. Graham was standing morosely on duty.
