“Day off, sir,” said Jimmy. “Thought I’d help Macbeth look for his missing fiancee.”
“And whit made ye look ower the cliff?”
“I thought she might have been killed,” said Hamish.
“More likely to hae committed suicide at the thought o’ being wed to a loon like you,” said Blair.
They all looked at the tent where, in the strong lights that had been rigged up, the shadow of the pathologist could be seen bending over the body.
Blair retreated to his car. Hamish waited anxiously. Dr. Forsythe at last emerged. She went straight up to Hamish.
“It’s murder, plain as day,” she said. “She was strangled before she was thrown over the cliff.”
“What this?” demanded Blair, lumbering up. “You should report first to me.”
Dr. Forsythe looked at him with dislike. “It’s a murder. Mrs. Gentle was strangled and thrown over.”
“The women cleaning the house might have seen something,” said Hamish.
“Whit women?” growled Blair.
“She had hired women from Braikie to clean up the mess after the reception. I called on her earlier today to have a look at Ayesha’s room and see if she had left any clues. There was nothing. All she had is in the two suitcases she left at the police station. In one suitcase is ten thousand pounds given to her by Mrs. Gentle. When Jimmy and I were here this morning, we could hear the women cleaning.”
“We’ll need those suitcases. Was her passport in one of them?”
“No,” said Hamish. “No passport.”
“Looks as if she strangled her employer and ran for it. She must have got that passport picture doctored somehow.”
Hamish stiffened. “Why?”
“Why? Because we got a photo of the real Ayesha wired over, and she’s fair but small. Get into Braikie, Macbeth. I’ll send some other men as well. We’ve got to find thae maids.”
¦
Hamish drove into Braikie. He stopped at a fish-and-chip shop and bought a fish for Sonsie and a meat pie for Lugs, watched while they ate, and then drove off to the council estate. He remembered that Bessie, who used to do the cleaning at the Tommel Castle Hotel, had moved to Braikie. What was her married name? Hunter, that was it. He took out his laptop and brought up the Highlands and Islands telephone directory. There were only two Hunters on the estate, a J. Hunter and an A. Hunter. He could not remember the first name of Bessie’s husband, so he tried the address of A. Hunter. Bessie herself answered the door.
“Why, Hamish!” she said, looking alarmed. “What’s up?”
“Nothing to do with your family,” said Hamish. “Can I come in?”
She stood back and he walked into Bessie’s cheerful living room. “Where’s your man?” he asked.
“Andy’s doing late shift at the paper works in Strathbane.”
Hamish removed his cap. “Sit down, Bessie. This is about Mrs. Gentle. She’s been found murdered.”
“Oh, my God! How? Where?”
“Someone strangled her and threw her over the cliff. Now, were you working for her?”
“Aye, me and Annie Chisholm.”
“When did you finish?”
“We finished about three in the afternoon. She’d been hustling us along because she was paying by the hour. We started at nine in the morning.”
“And she was there when you left?”
“No. The phone rang. She looked quite cheerful but said she had to go out for a breath of fresh air.”
“What time would this be?”
“It would be just about after you left. I saw you drive off. That would be around eleven o’clock. She asked us how long it would take and as she wanted the bedrooms and the like cleaned as well, we told her it would be around three in the afternoon. She’d been complaining about the price since the minute we arrived but she paid up the money without a murmur. I asked her if she wouldn’t be back before we finished, and she said, “Maybe not. Here’s the spare key. Lock the door behind you and put the key through the letter box.””
“And how did she seem?”
“Quite happy, not excited. Poor woman. Who would kill her? Is your lassie still missing, Hamish?”
“Yes.”
Bessie’s round country face creased in sympathy. “It’s a right shame.”
“Where does Annie Chisholm live?”
“Round the corner. Broom Close, number ten.”
“If you can remember any little thing, let me know.”
¦
Annie Chisholm was a short, burly woman. When she heard Hamish explain the reason for his visit, she exclaimed, “I didnae like the woman. But this is awfy. She started off being a slave driver. The only break we got was when you arrived and then she was back, following us around. When she got that phone call, she changed. She was just too happy to pay us the money and get out.”
“No member of her family around?”
“Not a soul. She was on her own when we were there. I tried at one point to speak to her, saying it was a shame you’d been stood up on your wedding day, and she said that it couldnae have happened to a nicer fellow, sneering, like. I could hardly believe my ears because everyone in Braikie thought she was some kind of a saint, what with paying for the wedding and all.”
“She didn’t say anything about the missing girl?”
“Not a word. She still missing?”
“Aye.”
“She get on well wi’ Mrs. Gentle?”
“As far as I know,” said Hamish abruptly.
When he left, he realised that Ayesha, or whoever she was, might turn out to be the prime suspect.
He drove back to the police station, where he filed a long report of the finding of the body and of his interviews with the two cleaners. When he finally got to bed with his cat at his side and his dog at his feet, he somehow became more and more convinced that his fiancee was dead.
¦
In the morning, Superintendent Daviot gave a press conference. Only a few of the local papers turned up. But as soon as he described the murder of Mrs. Gentle and the missing Russian girl who had been using someone else’s passport, the news flew out around the country.
Soon the press dug up the story of Hamish’s failed wedding, and Hamish fled the police station with flashes going off in his face to escape their questions. Earlier that morning, Jimmy had turned up with a forensic team who had gone over the luggage and then taken it away. Before leaving, Jimmy had said the family were travelling up to the castle.
Hamish did not fear being hounded by Blair because Blair was jealous of him and would want the whole case to himself. He felt sure that if ‘Ayesha’ were safe somewhere, then someone in the Highlands must have seen her. She was too tall and beautiful to escape attention.
When he reached Braikie, Jimmy phoned him. “Got the news over from Istanbul police,” he said. “Your girl was called Irena Selakov from Moscow. Top hooker. Protector was a Russian businessman, runs a chain of restaurants in Moscow, name of Grigori Antonov. They were visiting Istanbul on business for a week when Irena did a bunk. Russian police so far uncooperative. Say of course they’ll help and then probably hope we’ll forget about it. But Grigori is definitely in Moscow.”
Hamish thanked him and rang off. Most of that morning, he walked in and out of shops in Braikie, asking if anyone had seen Irena but meeting up with a blank wall everywhere, although everyone he spoke to was anxious to help, regarding him as a desperate lovelorn man, looking for his fiancee.
He drove up to the castle. The coal-mine owner who had built it had wished to copy Balmoral on a very small scale for his summer holidays. It had stood empty for some time. Hamish wondered if anyone would buy it. Who on earth would want to live in such a wild, remote spot on the edge of the cliffs, particularly with the British coastline crumbling bit by bit each year?
