“But you’ve had a month off.”
“And glad of it, too,” said Jessie waspishly. “The Todds were a couple of slave-drivers.”
“How can that be, if the business wasn’t doing at all well? I mean, what was there to do?”
Jessie stopped and looked at Harriet suspiciously and then shrugged. “It was her that was the problem. I don’t believe that woman even knew how to wipe her own backside.” The crudity sounded odd, spoken as it was in Jessie’s prim, Scottish-accented, carefully etecuted vowels. “Who do you think did all the work, setting up her ‘little parties’? Who typed her damn letters to this and that? Me. Even if the business hadn’t collapsed, I meant to leave anyway.”
“Did she entertain much?” Harriet watched Jessie closely, thinking what a moody, rather spiteful girl she appeared. “Oh, lots. It was all supposed to help the business. Invite the ‘right’ people in the hope they would become clients, lavish drink and concert tickets on them. And a useless lot they were, too. Occasionally she’d net a celebrity, by playing one celebrity off against the other, you know – ‘Mr. Bloggs is coming, Mr. Biggs’, and Mr. Biggs is reassured that there is to be another eminent celebrity, as is Mr. Bloggs when he is phoned and told that Mr. Biggs is coming. Old trick, but a surprising lot fell for it. I think Mr. Todd will find he hasn’t a friend in the world when it gets about he hasn’t any money.” This was said with a peculiar relish.
“Heather told me some very colourful stories about her upbringing in the Gorbals when it was one of the worst shims in Glasgow,” said Harriet, “so how did she have so much money?”
Jessie sniffed. “That was one of her lies to make her a genuine member of the left. She was brought up as an only child in a large house in Billhead, which, in case you don’t know, is a posh suburb near the university. She became left-wing to get an entree into a society which would otherwise have rejected her – you know, theatre, writing, the arts.”
“Was Diamond a good boss?”
“Yes, he’d have been all right on his own, but he expected me to work for his wife as well.”
“So why didn’t you leave? How long were you with them?”
“Six years. Look, they paid well, I’ll say that for them. I’ve always wanted to-live in Spain and I’ve kept that as my goal. Now, I’m cold. Run off and tell that copper boyfriend of yours everything I’ve said because that’s the only reason you’re marching me along this cold beach.”
And Harriet Shaw had the grace to blush.
? Death of a Snob ?
6
…the motive-hunting of motiveless malignity –
how awful it is
—SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
Hamish returned to the village alone and ran Angus Macleod to earth. After lecturing the unrepentant fisherman on his disgraceful behaviour, pushing Jane into the pillbox, Hamish asked him about that phone call from Diarmuid, requesting him to pick Jessie up at Oban.
“Oh, aye, he phoned in the middle o’ the evening in a rare state,” said Angus, “Asked me to take the boat out and go tae Oban. I telt him tae get lost, but he offered me a lot and the wind was dying, so ower I went.”
“Had you ever seen the girl, Jessie Maclean, before?”
“No, first time I’d seen her.”
Hamish then took himself along the main street to Mrs. Bannerman’s cottage. She was furious when he questioned her about her movements on the night of the murder, but eventually said she had been at a neighbour’s party. Hamish checked with the neighbour, a Mrs. Gillespie, who confirmed that Mrs. Bannennan had been there all evening. But the murder could have been committed earlier, thought Hamish. No pathologist could ever tell the exact time of any murder. The closest he could come to it was between about four in the afternoon and nine in the evening. Hamish asked Mrs. Gillespie if she had seen Mrs. Bannerman earlier and got the reply that Mrs. Bannerman had also been there in the late afternoon, helping Mrs. Gillespie with the arrangements for the party.
By the time Hamish returned to The Happy Wanderer, he was beginning to wonder whether Heather had actually fallen to her death after all. There did not seem to be any motive. He was told Diarmuid was still in his room. When Hamish opened the door, Diarmuid was lying flat on the bed, looking at the ceiling.
“I just want to ask you one thing,” said Hamish. “On Christmas Eve, Jane slipped you a note. What was that about?”
Diarmuid struggled up and smoothed down his ruffled hair with a careful hand, looking across at himself in the mirror. “Oh, that? I asked her if she had any contacts in the real estate business. I’m looking for a buyer. She gave me a note telling me to try James Baxter of Baxter, Fredericks and Baxter. James Baxter is an old acquaintance of hers. She bought the health farm from him. He’s expanding his business.”
“I don’t suppose you kept the note,” said Hamish suspiciously.
“Of course I did,” said Diarmuid crossly. He got up and went to the dressing-table and slid open one of the drawers. “Here it is. I meant to give it to Jessie so that she could make an appointment for me to meet Baxter when we got back to Glasgow.”
“I’d just take this for a while,” said Hamish.
“Don’t you think I have enough to bear?” demanded Diarmuid with a rare show of animation. “Good God, man, my wife’s dead! It’s an accident. Jessie says, and quite rightly, that you have no authority.”
“I’ll hae a word wi’ the lassie,” said Hamish grimly. “But I’ll be keeping this note for now.” He turned in the doorway, “By the way, where was your wife’s coat, the one she couldn’t find?”
“Hanging in the wardrobe,” said Diarmuid. “Over there. The police examined it but could find nothing sinister about it.”
Hamish ran Jane to earth in the kitchen. “I want to ask you about Diarmuid,” he said. Jane turned a little pink and stirred something she was cooking energetically. “What?”
“This note.” Hamish held it out. “Did you write it?”
Jane glanced at it. He sensed she was relieved and wondered why. “Yes, it’s the name of a big estate agent,” she said. “He wants to sell what’s left of his business.”
Hamish thanked her, returned the note to Diarmuid, and went back to the lounge, where Harriet drew him aside and repeated the conversation she had had with Jessie. “Are you sure it isn’t just an act?” asked Hamish. “I mean, she’s a wee bitch in my opinion, but there’s something, well – sexy – about her. Don’t you think she and Diarmuid…?”
“Nothing there that I can see except a lot of contempt for her employer on Jessie’s side,” replied Harriet. “How did you get on?”
Hamish told her in a low voice the result of his investigations while John Wetherby, reading a London newspaper that had come over on the Boxing Day ferry and had been delivered along with other newspapers and magazines, suddenly glared at them suspiciously over the top of it.
“I would like to think there might have been some sort of collusion between Jessie and Diarmuid,” Hamish said.
“That contemptuous manner of hers could be all an act.”
“But she wasn’t even on the island,” pointed out Harriet.
“Nonetheless, there could be something between them, and if there is, they’ll drop their guard pretty soon. I cannae stand that Diarmuid. His vanity is pathological.”
“Are you sure you are not letting this dislike of Diarmuid colour your attitude?” asked Harriet.
Hamish laughed. “I’ll try not to. Where’s Jessie?”
“Watching television.”
Hamish went into the television room. Jessie was sitting with the Carpenters. Hamish looked thoughtfully at the Carpenters. Was he right to dismiss them so easily as possible suspects? But he leaned over Jessie and said quietly, “A word with you, Miss Maclean, if you please.”
She followed him out. “We’ll use Jane’s office,” said Hamish.
“I asked Jane about you,” said Jessie when they were seated on either side of the desk. “You’re nothing but a bobby from some hick Highland village, and you have no right to bother my employer or me with questions. It was
