“I don’t want to upset you,” said Hamish gently, “but you must have known you weren’t the only one.”
“I thought I was,” said Edie piteously. “He let me think I was. “Don’t come to the cottage unless I ask you to, Edie,” he said, but then he stopped inviting me and I…I got all dressed up one night. I couldn’t believe he had gone off me, after all that he had said, after all we had done.” She choked and then regained some composure. “I should have knocked. Like the fool I was, I thought I would surprise him, I’d been into Strathbane that day to buy a bottle of champagne and I had it under my arm. I opened the door, it wasn’t locked, and went in. The ladder was there, up to the bedroom. I climbed up. And then I heard them. Betty Baxter and Peter. I couldn’t believe it. I went on up. Well, they were fortunately too busy to see me. I crawled back down the ladder and left as quietly as I could. I was so wretched I felt like killing myself. Betty Baxter! If it had been someone like her” – she jerked a thumb at Priscilla – “I could have borne it better.”
“But when I asked you about Peter, you were quite’…er…kindly about him,” said Hamish.
“When he left,” said Edie, “and the days passed and he did not return, I built up a dream about him. I put that awful night out of my head. I talked myself into thinking I was the only one. I remembered all the nice things he had said to me. It was easy with him not being here. It’s better to dream, it’s safer to dream.”
Hamish looked at her bleakly, thinking in that moment that he had been happier when he had only dreamed about Priscilla, for now that she was engaged to him, however unofficially, she seemed more remote than she had ever been.
“And was there anyone else that you know of?” asked Priscilla quietly.
“Not for sure, but jealousy makes the senses awfully sharp. I began to notice that Ailsa was beginning to look triumphant and that Betty’s eyes were often red with crying.”
“But how could Ailsa get a chance to have an affair?” asked Hamish. “Aren’t she and Jock together all day?”
“When Jock has his cronies in for a drink in the evening,” said Edie, “Ailsa often goes out to visit some of the women in the village. Alice MacQueen was her friend for a while, but that is finished. Oh, they still talk, but in a funny sort of cold way.”
“Did you ever confront Peter with the fact that you knew he had been sleeping with Betty Baxter?” asked Priscilla.
Edie shook her head. “I couldn’t. I couldn’t bear to hear him admit it. What’s the point in all this? He’s gone, and he’s never coming back.”
“Why do you say that?” asked Hamish quickly. “Do you think he’s dead?”
“Dead?” Her surprise appeared totally genuine. “Why would Peter be dead?”
“Why not?” put in Priscilla. “Don’t you think with the way he’s been going on, that some irate husband might not have bumped him off and that’s why no one saw him leave?”
“Oh, no.” Edie shook her head. “We may have our difficulties in Drim, but there’s no one here who would do a thing like that.”
“But Drim had never been subjected to such as Peter Hynd before,” said Hamish bitterly. “Sorry to have upset you, Edie. Come along, Priscilla. We have a call to make.”
“Where are we going?” asked Priscilla when they were outside.
“I think we’ll try Alice MacQueen, and then I’ll tackle Jock Kennedy and Jimmy Macleod on my own.”
“I hate this,” said Priscilla as they walked side by side to the hairdresser’s.
“Then don’t come.” Hamish slanted a look at her. “All this unbridled passion must be foreign to you.”
“Don’t get at me, Hamish.”
“Maybe you’d best leave Alice to me. Why not visit Annie Duncan yourself, Priscilla? She must have known what was going on. Goodness knows, she was there when I tried to warn the minister.”
“Yes, sir,” said Priscilla and turned and walked off in the direction of the manse. He stood for a moment watching her go, debating whether to run after her and give her a good shake. Then he shrugged and went on his way.
¦
Alice MacQueen opened the door to him. “I was just about to watch a show on the telly,” she said defensively. “I’ve come about Peter Hynd.”
She backed away from him, her hand to her mouth. “So he’s been found,” she said. Hamish followed her in. “What do you mean by that?”
She sat down in one of the hairdressing chairs. “I meant, has he come back?”
“Now why do I think that wass not what you meant at all?” said Hamish, his voice suddenly sibilant. “What would you be saying if I told you that the body of Peter Hynd had been found in a peatbog?”
“He can’t be dead,” wailed Alice.
Hamish relented. “No, he hasn’t been found.”
She goggled at him and then said furiously, “Why are you playing nasty games with me?”
Hamish sat down. “I want to get at the truth, Alice. Some thing’s wrong in Drim. Peter Hynd leaves and no one sees him go. Betty Baxter meets her death on the beach after she went out to meet someone, and someone tried to injure Nancy Macleod today.”
“That was the accident,” panted Alice. “She’s too heavy and she looks ridiculous playing the lead.”
“Well, let’s begin at the beginning. Let’s have a talk about Peter Hynd. Did you haff the affair wi’ him?”
She shook her head. “You’re sure about that?”
Her eyes flashed. “It was nothing like that. It was innocent. A boy-and-girl thing.”
How old was Alice? wondered Hamish. There was a puffiness under the eyes and little wrinkles radiated out from around her mouth. Fifty-five?
“Describe this boy-and-girl thing.”
“You wouldn’t understand,” she said, suddenly weary. “We talked a lot and went for walks on the moors. He…held my hand. He said he could talk to me. He said I wasn’t like I the otter women. He said…he said he had never met anyone like me. And then Betty Baxter with her great gross body took him away.”
“You mean she had an affair wi’ him?”
“She took away his innocence,” said Alice, all mad logic. “But herself always was a slut. It’s Ailsa I can’t forgive.”
“Ailsa?”
“We were friends. I began to guess what was happening when Jock asked me one day, casual-like, if the video had been any good. I said, ‘What video?’ – ‘Oh,’ he says, ‘the one you were watching last night with Ailsa.’ I realized I had to cover for her for some reason, so I said it was great I waited until I saw Ailsa next and asked her what it was about. She came home with me. She said she had a great secret to tell me. She was all excited. I should have known then what it was, but she was so excited and happy, I thought maybe she’d had a win on the football pools. She told me she had been with Peter…in bed. I was hurt and horrified. I said I had told her about my romance with Peter and how could she do such a thing? ‘Romance,’ she jeered. ‘What romance? Wandering about the heather holding hands? Grow up, Alice,’ she said. ‘I’m a real woman to him.’
“I told her he would betray her as he had betrayed me, but she went on laughing and laughing. And when he went away, she wanted to be friends again, and what could I do? You know what a small village is like, it’s not like the city. You have to get on with people. But Ailsa and I, we can’t be friends anymore like in the old days. In fact there were the five of us, Betty, Nancy, Ailsa, Edie, and me. We were close. We had a lot of laughs: When Peter Hynd first came, well, that was a laugh, too. They’d come to get their hair done and Edie’s exercise classes were a big success and we competed with each other to see who had talked to Peter last, but it was all friendly, all joshing. Then it all turned sour. I don’t really think I can go on living here.”
Not for the first time did Hamish Macbeth curse Peter Hynd under his breath. “Alice, did Peter know that you were all the best of friends?”
“Oh, yes. I used to tell him how lucky I was.”
And Peter promptly set out to turn one against the other, thought Hamish. He felt suddenly tired. If only Peter Hynd were alive and well so that he could punch him on the nose!
¦
Priscilla wondered, as she sat in the manse, if Hamish Macbeth would one day float away on a sea of tea and coffee. Every house one went into in the Highlands, one was offered some form of refreshment, and to refuse would be saying that one did not like one’s host. She was glad the minister had left them alone. For some reason she
