success of the business, but she had lost her cool good looks and graceful movements; perpetually worried, perpetually strung up, now brittle to snapping point.
Hamish crept back to bed. “What a pigstye!” exclaimed Priscilla, following him in. “Have you fed Towser?”
“Just some o’ the hard food. He doesnae like it ower-much.”
“He never did like it. He likes people food. You know that, Hamish. Come, Towser.”
Towser slid off the bed and crept servilely after her.
Hamish lay listening to the sound of Priscilla scrubbing floors and cleaning out cupboards and washing dishes. He felt she ought to be at his bedside, stroking his brow, instead of going on like some sort of health visitor.
Two hours later, she crashed into the bedroom, carrying a bucket and mop and dusters. She raked out the fire, which was choked with cold ashes, piled it up with paper and wood, and set a cheerful blaze crackling. “I’ve run you a hot bath,” she said over her shoulder. “Go and take it while I change, your bed.”
“I think I’m too ill to take a bath.”
“Take it,” she ordered, “and stop being so disgustingly sorry for yourself.”
“Haff I complained?” Hamish gave her thin back a wounded look.
“You are exuding such self-pity, it’s creeping like smoke through the whole place. Go on!”
Injured, Hamish stalked off to the bathroom. With quick nervous movements, Priscilla stripped the sheets off the bed and replaced them with clean ones. She dusted and vacumed the room and then made up a flask of tea and put it, along with a cup, at Hamish’s bedside.
Hamish emerged from his bath to find Priscilla waiting to settle him in bed. She neatly arranged the blankets over him and then tucked them in all round him, so firmly he felt he was in a strait-jacket.
“There’s tea in that flask,” said Priscilla, “and a casserole on the stove for your dinner. Towser’s been fed.”
Hamish wriggled his toes and eased the tight blankets a bit. The fire was roaring up the chimney and the room looked clean and comfortable and there was a delicious smell coming from the kitchen. He began to feel better.
“I’d better be off,” sighed Priscilla. “I didn’t mean to be here so long.”
“Thank you,” said Hamish awkwardly, and then blurted out before he could stop himself, “My, lassie, but you’re awfy thin.”
Priscilla sat down on the end of the bed. “I know,” she said. “And to think that before Daddy started the hotel, I was considering going on a diet.”
“If he looks after the money this time instead of handing it over to some con man,” – Priscilla winced, said con man having been one of her boyfriends – “he should be able to take down that hotel sign soon and return to being a private landowner.”
“He enjoys it all,” said Priscilla sadly. “He’s having the time of his life.”
“Yes, I have seen him.” Hamish looked at her sympathetically. “You run yourself ragged with all the management and bookings and complaints while he puts on a black tie in the evening and lords it over the guests. Then he has a few and forgets they’re paying guests and is nasty to them, and you have to soothe them down.”
“I’ll manage.”
“You don’t need to,” said Hamish. “Things are going just fine. Why, he could hire an experienced hotel manager and give you a break.”
“But no one else could handle the guests the way I can,” protested Priscilla.
“Once the colonel was paying someone to run things, he might mind his tongue. It’s because you’re his daughter and a woman that he treats you like a skivvy.”
“It’s not as bad as that.” Priscilla rose to go.
“Well, it was nice of you to come and look after me.”
Priscilla turned pink. “I didn’t know you were ill, Hamish. There’s another reason.”
“Oh, aye? I should hae known,” he said huffily. “Out with it.”
“There’s this friend of mine staying at the hotel. She’s leaving at the end of the week. She’s got a bit of a problem and doesn’t want to go to the police direct, if you know what I mean. She just wants some advice. Could you see her? I’d rather she told you about it.”
“Oh, all right. Bring her down tomorrow. What’s her name?”
“Jane. Jane Wetherby.”
???
The next day, the snow stopped and a mild gale blew in from the Atlantic, turning the snow to slush. For a brief few hours, a watery sunlight shone on the choppy waters of the loch before night fell, as it does in the far north of Scotland in winter, at two in the afternoon.
Hamish was feeling considerably better. He received a phone call from headquarters at Strathbane reminding him that he was expected to stop motorists at random and breathalyse them as part of a campaign to stop drunk driving over Christmas. Hamish, who knew every drunk in the village and solved the problem by taking their car keys away, had no intention of wasting time breathalysing the rest of the population.
He ate lunch, fed his hens, gave his sheep their winter feed, and then climbed back into bed with a book. He had completely forgotten about Priscilla’s friend. Lulled by a glass of toddy, his eyes were beginning to close when he heard a car driving up.
Then he remembered about Jane Wetherby. It was too late to get dressed. He rose and tied his dressing- gown about him and made for the kitchen door, exuding a strong smell of whisky and wintergreen.
“Be back for Jane later,” called Priscilla. “I’ll leave you to it.”
Hamish ushered Jane into the kitchen and then looked at her in startled amazement as she removed her coat and threw it on a kitchen chair. She was a tall woman wearing a brief divided skirt in shocking-pink wool, and her long, long legs ended in high-heeled sandals with thin patent-leather straps. Her thin white blouse plunged at the front to a deep V. Hamish cast a wild look through the kitchen window as if to reassure himself that the weather had not turned tropical, and then took in the rest of her. She had cloudy dark hair and very large grey-green eyes, a straight thin nose, and a long thin upper lip over a small pouting lower lip.
“Well, well,” said Jane in, a sort of breathy voice, “so you’re the village constable. Why aren’t you in uniform?”
“Because,” retorted Hamish sharply, “I am very sick. Did Priscilla no’ tell you?”
She shook her head. “Come ben, then,” said Hamish sulkily. Here he was, at death’s door, and Priscilla had not even bothered to tell her friend he was sick. He began to feel shaky and ill again. Priscilla had left the living- room fire set with paper and logs. He struck a match and lit it.
Jane sank down into an armchair and crossed her long legs.
“The trouble,” she said, suddenly leaning forward so that her blouse plunged alarmingly low at the front, “is that you are not going the right way about curing your cold. It is the common cold, isn’t it?”
Hamish, now in the armchair opposite, took out a handkerchief and blew his nose miserably by way of reply.
“It is all in your mind,” said Jane.
“The weather has been very cold and so you began to feel you might get one and your mind conveyed that message to the rest of your body and so you got one. Put your index fingers on either side of your head, just at the temples, and repeat after me, concentrating all the while, ‘I have not got a cold. I am fit and well’.”
“Havers,” said Hamish crossly.
“There you have it,” said Jane triumphantly. “You have just told me what I had already guessed.”
“That you were havering?” commented Hamish rudely.
“No, no. That you want to have a cold and make everyone feel sorry for you.” She leaned back and uncrossed and crossed her legs. Embarrassed, Hamish looked at the ceiling.
“What is the difficulty you’re in?” Hamish asked the lampshade. He found those flashing legs and thighs unnerving.
“I think someone might be trying to kill me.”
Hamish’s hazel eyes focused on her. “Did you tell someone else how to get rid of their cold?”
“Do be serious. Oh, perhaps I am imagining it, but a rock did hurtle down last week close to my head, and
