Highland Laddie Gone

sooner or later they would get around to questioning him. In a fish-bowl like this, he had to assume that someone had overheard his quarrel with Colin Campbell.

Well, he had planned for that contingency. He would thicken his burr to the consistency of creamed cheese, and vow that he had nae idea whatsoever what these bloodthirsty Americans could be getting up to in the name of clan rivalry. He considered claiming kinship with the Campbells on his mother’s side, but that might leak out, and it would be bad for business.

Lachlan picked up his half-full can of shandy-it was closer to the woolens than he was used to putting it. This murder business was making him absentminded, he thought. Waving time-out to his customers, Lachlan took a swig of his drink, making his usual silent toast, the Cultoquhey litany: From the greed of the Campbells, From the ire of the Drummonds, From the pride of the Grahams, From the wind of the Murrays, Good Lord, deliver us.

James Stuart McGowan turned up a few minutes later, looking less bored than usual. He elbowed his way past the browsers. “Sorry I’m late!” he called to Lachlan. “Something interesting happened!”

“Oh, aye? Got your dad to give you power of attorney, did ye?”

Jimmy grinned. “Nah! Nothing interesting ever happens with them. I did shake them up a bit when I ordered a shandy with lunch. I would have gotten away with it if the waiter hadn’t asked, ‘I suppose you want it without the beer, young man.’ ”

Lachlan shook his head. “They’ll no be pleased, Jimmy.”

“When we were coming back into the festival, though, guess what we saw? The sheriff arresting somebody!”

Lachlan looked wary. “Oh, aye?”

“Yep. He didn’t have on handcuffs, but they put him in the backseat of the squad car, where there aren’t any door handles. He had changed back into regular clothes to go to jail, but my dad recognized him anyway.”

“Arrested? For the murder, do you mean?”

“Of course. You wouldn’t do drug busts on an affluent crowd like this,” said Jimmy smugly. “Don’t you want to know who the collar was? Take a guess-I mean, with your ESP.”

“For killing a Campbell?” Lachlan took a deep breath. “Would it by any chance be the president of the MacDonald clan?”

Jimmy grinned. “You got it! Walter Hutcheson. What do you think of that?”

“It grieves me,” said Lachlan Forsyth. “I was hoping to stay out of it.”

“Of course, he’s a well-known surgeon, so he probably has a competent attorney on retainer, don’t you think? He’ll probably make bail on his standing in the community and be out of the slammer by six o’clock.”

“What did you say, laddie?” murmured Lachlan. “I was thinking about something else.”

In hushed and well-bred tones, the word spread quickly around the festival that Walter Hutcheson had been taken in for questioning in connection with Colin’s murder. Elizabeth, on duty at the Chattan tent, heard it from Betty Carson, who maintained that Walter had been acting strangely for some time now, and she wondered if he might be taking narcotics.

“I wonder how Marge is taking this,” Elizabeth said to Cameron.

“Is that his former wife?”

“Yes. Oh, I see what you mean. But Cameron, they were married for ages, and Marge isn’t the sort of person who holds grudges. Why, I’ll bet she’ll even be speaking to Geoffrey again in a year or two. I think I should go and see how she’s doing. Will you watch Cluny for me?”

“I’m not even in Highland dress,” Cameron protested. “Why should I have to mind him?”

Elizabeth smiled. “Because you have a Ph.D. in biology, sir-I’ll be back soon!”

She hurried down the path toward the practice meadow, and Cameron scratched Cluny’s ears and watched her go. “I only do seals and porpoises,” he said with a sigh of resignation.

Somerled, the border collie, was on his chain in front of Marge’s tent, so Elizabeth knew that she had come to the right place. Marge was there. She wasn’t sure exactly what tone to adopt about this recent development, but perhaps she could take her cue from Marge’s behavior. If nothing else, Elizabeth could run errands or offer to look after Somerled.

“Hello,” she said softly, peering into the tent. “What a reek of smoke!” she added, leaning back and coughing. “If you’re going to chain-smoke, you ought to do it out in the open where there’s oxygen to compensate.”

Marge did not look up. “I don’t know what to do,” she said.

Elizabeth ventured in, fanning the air in front of her. “About Walter, you mean?”

“Yes. It’s all so complicated.”

“What does he want you to do?”

In a halting voice, Marge told her about their encounter just before the arrest, and Walter’s list of instructions. “He had forgotten all about her,” said Marge. “Anyone could see that. And I don’t know what to do.”

“I think you should do what’s best for Walter,” said Elizabeth, who felt that that was both a comforting and a neutral thing to say.

Marge nodded and reached for the pack of cigarettes. “Yes. Perhaps I should.” After a few moments silence, she remarked, “Walter didn’t kill Colin, you know.”

Elizabeth shook her head. “I don’t know anything about it. I’d heard they had a fight.”

“Yes, but I have known Walter for most of his life, and I assure you that he is not a murderer.”

“Well, I suppose they might let you testify as a character witness,” said Elizabeth kindly. She felt that such testimonials would be ridiculous as well as useless, but she meant to be soothing until Marge could get a grip on herself.

“He did not do it.”

“Then I’m sure that the sheriff’s investigations will turn up something in his favor, and everything will be all right.”

“I wouldn’t count on that,” said Marge grimly. “They have that stupid real estate argument as motive, and they asked me about Walter’s skian dubh, so presumably that was the murder weapon. And I know they fingerprinted a bunch of us. The fact that they took Walter away must mean that they found his prints on it.”

“That’s a pretty strong case,” Elizabeth admitted. “Maybe Walter has changed. I mean, he has been doing some strange things in the past few years, hasn’t he?”

“You mean Heather?”

“Well… maybe he’s going through some mid-life crisis, and-”

“Walter’s beyond mid-life crisis,” snorted Marge. “He now qualifies as an old fool. But I don’t think he could change enough to start stabbing people.”

Elizabeth was beginning to feel restless. There’s no reasoning with her, she thought. Women in love have one- track minds. I wonder what Cameron is doing?

“What the sheriff needs is some new evidence. He won’t be looking for any more himself. He thinks he’s solved the case.” Marge sighed. “Of course, no one would believe me. I’m not objective. I doubt if anyone would tell me anything anyway.”

Elizabeth’s heart sank. “I suppose that I could sort of ask around and see if I can come up with anything in Walter’s favor.”

“Colin must have quarreled with lots of people at the festival,” Marge mused.

“He had run-ins with Cameron and me, but we didn’t do it.”

“Yes, but besides that.”

Elizabeth thought about it. People had been discussing the case around her all afternoon, and occasional remarks had filtered through her thoughts about Cameron. She tried to remember what some of them were. “Betty Carson said something about Dr. Campbell wanting to call a committee meeting this morning.”

“Oh? That could be important! Colin would only do that if he intended to launch a large-scale donnybrook. I wonder what he was up to?”

“Something about embezzlement, I thought.”

“Money? Nonsense. The committee has accountants coming out of their ears, and half of them are lawyers anyway. Are you sure she said embezzlement? It doesn’t matter. It was probably third hand anyway. Who would Betty have heard all this from?”