Dr. Cameron arrived, a small, rotund man with a fat face and little gold-rimmed spectacles. The receptionist followed him into his office and then came out again after a few minutes. She jerked her head at Elspeth. “You can go in now.”
Elspeth switched a powerful little tape recorder on, leaving her handbag open, and went in.
“Now, then,” said Dr. Cameron. “What’s all the rush?”
“I want to get married,” said Elspeth.
He grinned. “Can’t help you there.”
“As a matter of fact, you can. You can do for me what you did for my friend Josie McSween. You gave her a certificate to say she was pregnant when she wasn’t pregnant at all. You didn’t even examine her. Josie gave me your name.”
Careful not to disturb the tape recorder, Elspeth pulled five hundred pounds out of her handbag and put them on the desk. “Will that do?” she asked.
He counted out the notes. “Josie McSween gave me one thousand pounds,” he said. “That was the deal.”
Glad she had drawn out a large sum of money earlier, Elspeth took out her wallet and counted out another five hundred.
Again he checked the money. He drew his prescription pad forward. “Name?”
“Heather Dunne.”
“Address?”
“Number six, the Waterfront, Cnothan.”
He scribbled busily and handed the note over.
“Nice to do business with you, Miss Dunne. Don’t come back.”
Elspeth drove to the centre of town and sat in her car. She hated Josie with an all-consuming rage. She could go straight to the police station and hand the evidence to Hamish. But she wanted Josie to suffer as much as Hamish had suffered. She wanted her to be publicly humiliated.
Josie was at the manse, trying on her new wedding gown, altered to fit her larger figure.
“Why did you have to go and put on weight,” fussed Flora, and then flushed nervously as she remembered in time that no one was supposed to know that Josie was pregnant.
“I think she looks a picture,” said Mrs. Wellington, her eyes full of sentimental tears.
All Josie wanted was to get the dress off, get rid of everyone and sneak out into the garden where she had hidden a bottle of vodka. She was suffering from nerves. When she wasn’t drinking, the enormity of the way she had tricked Hamish would hit her. But with drink inside her, all her rosy dreams of domestic life with a loving Hamish came back to her, giving her courage.
Her friend Charlotte and husband Bill were staying at the manse. Charlotte came into the room, wearing a maternity gown, just as Josie was being helped out of her wedding dress.
“Oh, put it on again, Josie. I must have a look.”
Clasping her hands into fists to hide their shaking, Josie struggled back into the gown with the help of her mother.
“You look a picture,” breathed Charlotte. “Do you remember the last time I saw you, Josie? I’d just discovered I was pregnant. And do you know, it was the strangest thing. After you’d left, I searched and searched for that pregnancy kit and I couldn’t find it anywhere.”
Flora, who had bent down to check the hem of her daughter’s gown, suddenly felt a qualm of unease. Would Josie? Could Josie? No, banish the very thought.
“Come on, Hamish,” said Jimmy, “have a dram.”
The kitchen was full of men. Hamish had refused to hold a stag party so the male villagers had all crowded into the police station instead.
“I want to have a clear head,” protested Hamish. He forced a smile. “It’s not every day I get married. Oh, just the one, then.”
How Hamish bore that evening, he did not know. Everyone got very drunk. Angus, the seer, had produced a pair of bagpipes and begun to play. He was not a good player and the horrendous noise filled the kitchen. The flap on the kitchen floor banged as Hamish’s pets fled from the noise. Hamish heard them go. He was worried about them. They had picked up on his distress, and when they saw Josie, the cat would hiss menacingly and the dog would growl.
At last they all left with the exception of Jimmy, who was to be best man. Hamish helped him into the bed in the one cell and then sat down at the kitchen table and stared bleakly into space. The flap banged and Sonsie and Lugs came in. The dog put a paw on Hamish’s knee and stared up at him with his odd blue eyes.
“What’s to become of all of us?” said Hamish.
Josie sat in her room, drinking from the bottle of vodka she had collected from the garden.
As the liquor burned its comforting way down, her hands stopped shaking and the rosy dreams came back. Everything was going to be all right.
Angela desperately tried again and again to call Elspeth. But she was not at the television studio and she had her mobile switched off. She wondered whether to go and see Mrs. Wellington. But what proof did she have? And everyone in the village was very excited about the wedding.
She went to the church-which was never locked-sat down in a pew, and prayed that somehow, something would happen to stop the wedding.
Chapter Twelve
Behold while she before the altar stands
Hearing the holy priest that to her speaks
And blesseth her with his two happy hands
– Edmund Spenser
The day of Josie’s wedding to Hamish Macbeth dawned bright and sunny. The village buzzed with anticipation. Those who were not married found the whole idea of a wedding romantic, and those who were had a feeling of schadenfreude that some other poor soul was about to be chained in holy matrimony.
Cottage bedrooms reeked of mothballs as rarely used finery was taken out to be put on. Men grumbled that their suits had shrunk and the more tactful wives refrained from pointing out that they had put on weight.
The Currie sisters, each donning a large hat, looked like a couple of small toadstools, for the hats were of brown straw topping their camel-hair coats.
Josie squeezed herself into a body stocking and took a swig of vodka to stop her hands shaking. Her mother came into her room to help her put on the wedding gown.
“Your face is all blotchy!” exclaimed Flora. “You smell bad. Have you had a bath?”
An excess of vodka sometimes does not smell like alcohol but more like a nasty body odour.
“It’s just nerves,” said Josie, spraying her armpits with deodorant. “Help me on with my dress and then I’ll make up my face.”
In the police station, Hamish stood before the wardrobe mirror in his bedroom, dressed in a
