benches on the other side of the school yard. A harassed-looking elderly man came out and stood on the school steps.
“That’s Mr. Burns,” whispered Freda.
“Thanks for your time. I’ll just have a word with him. Would you give me your home address and telephone number?”
She gave them to him. He thanked her again and she scuttled off into the school, her head bent.
Poor wee soul, thought Hamish. One bullying boss replaced by another.
He rose and approached Mr. Burns. “I’ve just heard the news about Miss McAndrew,” said Mr. Burns. He had obviously once been a powerfully built man, but age had rounded his shoulders and turned muscle into fat. He had a thick shock of white hair and sagging jowls, his face marred by red broken veins.
“Who told you?” asked Hamish.
“Arkle.”
“Are you surprised? You don’t seem surprised.”
“I hated the auld biddy. Mind you, I would have thought everyone was too scared of her to murder her.”
“Someone obviously wasn’t. Do you know of anyone in particular who might have hated her enough?”
“Apart from me? No, not a clue. What a goings-on for a wee place like Braikie. First poor Miss Beattie murdered and now this.”
“Who told you Miss Beattie was murdered?” demanded Hamish sharply.
“Maisie Hart. She was late for school because she had a dental appointment and the nurse at the dentist’s told her.”
“And who,” demanded Hamish impatiently, “told the nurse?”
“She passed the post office on her way to the dentist’s and got chatting to the policeman on duty and he told her.”
“I suppose it’s all over the town,” said Hamish.
“Of course.”
If the cat’s out of the bag, I may as well go the whole hog, thought Hamish with a wild mix of metaphors.
“So did you know that Miss McAndrew was our poison-pen letter writer?”
He looked stunned. “Never! I mean, she was a bully, but she was all up front, if you know what I mean. Writing those letters was a poisonous, sneaky thing to do. Come to think about it, they started just around the time she retired.”
“Did you get one?”
“Yes. I sent it to you.”
“Refresh my memory. What was it about?”
“She accused me of having an affair with Maisie Hart. Maisie’s a pretty wee thing. I was flattered.”
Hamish felt a tap on the shoulder and turned round. Blair stood there with Jimmy Anderson, MacNab, and a policeman and policewoman. “We’ll take over here, Macbeth.”
“Don’t you want to know what I’ve got?” asked Hamish.
“I’ll approach this with a fresh mind, laddie. Get off with you and talk to folks in the shops around the post office and people in the flats above. They might have seen something.”
Hamish felt sure he was being sent off to cover ground that had already been covered, but he knew it was useless to protest. He walked off.
He decided to look for the layabout youth of Braikie. There were police all over the place and they would concentrate on the residents around the shops. He wandered along the main street until he saw a group of pallid youths admiring one of their fellows’ motorbikes. They showed signs of dispersing rapidly when they saw him approach, but he hailed them with, “I just want a wee word.”
He was always amazed at how unhealthy some of the young men of the Highlands could look. In some cases, it was drugs, but it was mostly a combination of bad diet and lack of exercise.
“Miss Beattie has been murdered,” he said, no longer seeing any reason to keep it quiet.
There were startled cries and they clustered around him, their eyes shining with excitement. “Will the telly be here?” asked one. “Will we get our pictures on the telly?”
“I should think they’ll be along any minute,” said Hamish. “Now, she was found dead last Sunday, so someone may have called on her on the Saturday evening. Were any of you passing the post office? Did any of you see anyone going up the stairs to her flat or even loitering about?”
They all shook their heads, and then a little voice from the back of the group piped up: “I saw someone.”
They parted to reveal a small boy with a white face dotted with freckles and a mop of hair as red as Hamish’s own.
“Och, Archie,” jeered the one with the motorbike. “You’re aye making things up.”
“But I did,” he protested.
“Come here, Archie,” said Hamish. He led the boy a little away and took out his notebook. “What is your full name?”
“Archie Brand.”
“And where do you live?”
“At 6 Glebe Street.”
“What time would this be?”
“Around nine. The night Miss Beattie was murdered.”
“And what were you doing at that time of night? Glebe Street is at the far end. How old are you?”
“Ten. I was going to the chip shop.”
“Right, Archie, now think carefully. What or who did you see?”
“It was a young fellow. I couldnae see clear, for the street light was out. He was wearing black clothes. He had wan o’ thae baseball caps pulled down low.”
“And what was he doing?”
“Just standing outside the post office, looking up and down, and when I came towards him, he turned and looked in the window.”
“So you didn’t see his face.”
“No, sir.”
“What age?”
“Maybe about ma brither’s age. About seventeen.”
“Tall?”
“Not as tall as you.”
Hamish turned and surveyed the group. “Is your brother there?”
“Yes, he’s the wan wi’ the motorbike.”
“About his height?”
“Just about.”
Hamish wrote five foot eight in his notebook. “Slim, fat, medium?”
“I couldnae be sure. He’d wan o’ thae puffy jackets on. I walked on towards the chippy and I turned back once, but he’d gone.”
“Anyone else around?”
“No, the street was empty. There wasn’t even anyone in the chip shop.”
“This could be vital evidence,” said Hamish solemnly. “I may be calling at your home later.”
In the distance, the school bell shrilled. “You’d best be getting back to school,” said Hamish, closing his notebook.
“Do I hafftae? I mean, this murder and all. Don’t I get a day off?”
“Run along,” said Hamish. The boy reluctantly trailed off in the direction of the school followed by the jeers of the gang headed by his brother.
Hamish walked back to the post office and studied the shops opposite. Some of them obviously used the upstairs of the premises, but above what was once a dress shop and was now an ironmonger’s, he could see curtains at windows. He crossed the road and went up the stairs to the flats above. What had once been a dentist’s
