Hamish stared down at her, his mouth slightly open and a vacant expression on his face.
“What’s up?” asked Angela. “You look as if you’ve been struck by lightning.”
“I’ve been struck with a flash o’ the blindingly obvious,” said Hamish.
He turned and ran to the police station, got into the Land Rover, and sped off to the Tommel Castle Hotel.
He erupted into the manager’s office. “Where’s Elspeth?” he asked. “Which room?”
“Oh, she’s gone. Left about ten minutes ago. Coffee?”
Hamish slumped down in a chair in the office.
“Why not?” he said.
¦
When he left the manager’s office, he stood in the reception wondering whether to chase after Elspeth. But that sudden desire to ask her to marry him had faded. He sighed. Perhaps when this case was solved – if it ever was solved – he might take a trip down to Glasgow.
“Got over your bad temper?” asked Priscilla, interrupting his thoughts.
“Sorry about that,” said Hamish. “This case is getting to me. Murderers are usually stupid and have nearly got away with it before because they were lucky amateurs and the last people you would suspect. But this one isn’t an amateur. The only amateur attempt was that wire on the stairs.”
“I’ve heard weird and wonderful stories about what happened up at Grianach.”
“Still no odd strange woman booked in here?”
“No, only Polish maids. Do you know the
“Maybe the
“Not enough up here as yet. Have dinner with me and tell me about it.”
Hamish hesitated. Priscilla smiled. “Sonsie and Lugs will be fine. Gosh, it’s like dealing with a man with a possessive wife waiting at home.”
“All right, then. That would be grand.”
¦
Over dinner, Hamish told her all about the happenings in Grianach. When he had finished, Priscilla said, “You must still be in shock. Have you considered that?”
Hamish stared at her for a long moment. Was he? Was that what had prompted his sudden desire to propose to Elspeth? And it was hard to think of Elspeth with the cool beauty of Priscilla facing him across the table.
“I might be,” he said.
“I called on your mother the other day,” said Priscilla.
“I was over in Rogart and thought I would look her up. You should go home a bit more often, Hamish.”
“I’ll try. I bought presents for her in Grianach. Oh, I’ve one for you. Ma was so upset about the wedding. She made me feel ashamed, particularly when it got out that Irena was a prostitute.”
“So what happens now?”
“I think I’ll spend the next few days writing down everything I know. They might give me time off. I’m tempted to go down to London and talk to Kylie Gentle. I can’t ignore the fact that it must, somehow, have something to do with that family.”
? Death of a Gentle Lady ?
11
—Tobias Smollett
Hamish was granted leave. Daviot seemed relieved that he would be out of the way. Jimmy said that the van had been stolen from outside a croft near Grianach. He supplied Hamish with Kylie Gentle’s address in London but warned him that he was on his own. He would need to cover his own expenses.
Jimmy had a further bit of astonishing news. Blair was back on the job and sober. “He’s found God,” said Jimmy. “He keeps a Bible on his desk and lectures us all on our sins. He was a nasty bully when he was drunk and now he’s even nastier. The man’s a right religious maniac.”
“Won’t last long,” said Hamish cynically. “One setback and he’ll be screaming that God doesn’t exist and straight down to the pub.”
Anxious not to leave his pets too long, Hamish drove to Inverness and took an early plane to London. Kylie and her husband lived in a flat in St. George’s Mansions in Gloucester Road in Kensington.
He took the tube to the Gloucester Road tube station and walked along until he reached St. George’s Mansions. He rang the bell marked GENTLE, hoping his journey wouldn’t turn out to be a waste of time with them gone on holiday somewhere. But Kylie herself answered on the intercom. When Hamish announced himself, there was a little gasp of surprise, and then he was buzzed in.
Kylie, looking like an elegant stick insect, stood in the doorway to greet him. “What’s happened now?” she asked crossly. “The police have already been round asking if any of us have been near a place called Grianach. I told them we’d never even heard of it. Come in.”
Hamish, feeling uncomfortable in all the glory of his best suit, collar, and tie, followed her into a pleasant living room.
“It’s got nothing to do with that,” he said. “I can’t help feeling that something happened at your family reunion that maybe gave Irena the idea she could blackmail someone apart from Mark.”
“Sit down,” said Kylie. “Didn’t we go through that all before?”
“I thought maybe you might have had time to think of something.”
Hamish studied her covertly. Could she be the murderer? Could she be trying to protect someone?
Her face was Botoxed into expressionlessness. She stared at him for a long moment. Then she said, “It was the usual business, my mother-in-law demanding we all run around her, hinting that if she did not have the correct amount of grovel, she’d leave her money elsewhere. Mark was oiling about. Then he suddenly got furious. He’d got the news that she planned to change her will. He was talking a lot to Irena. Then he suddenly seemed to get cheerful again. Oh, he made one odd comment. He said, There’s a bastard in every family and a skeleton in every cupboard, isn’t there, Auntie?” Mrs. Gentle went quite white with rage.”
“I think I might pay a call on him,” said Hamish. “Where is he?”
“I’ll write it down for you. It’s a garage in Peckham.”
¦
Hamish looked up the address in a battered old copy of the London A to Z he had brought with him. He found the nearest tube station on the map and set off.
It was a cold, dusty, windy day. London seemed much dirtier than he remembered.
When he found the garage, it was closed. He asked around and was told it had been closed for the last week. No one knew where the workers were.
He pulled out his phone and asked Kylie where Mark Gentle lived, hoping it would be somewhere nearby, but Kylie gave him an address in East India Dock.
It took him an hour and a half to get there. Mark’s flat was in the middle of what had been damned as Yuppie Town. Nothing but flats for the City workers. No shops or pubs or churches.
Mark lived in a small converted Victorian warehouse fronting onto one of the old docks. Hamish rang the bell, but there was no reply. He rang all the bells until a woman answered, and he said, “Police. Let me in. I’m looking for Mark Gentle.”
She buzzed him in. He mounted the stairs to Mark’s flat and hammered on the door. He could hear the sound of rap music coming from inside. He knocked again.
He took out a bunch of skeleton keys and fiddled with the lock for half an hour until he got the door open. His heart sank as he recognised the smell.
He walked in through a small hall into a large living-room-cum-kitchen. Mark Gentle lay sprawled on the floor. The back of his head was matted with dried blood, and there was a pool of dried blood on the floor. He still had a
