could not fathom, Priscilla had found herself disliking him intensely. When the minister left, Priscilla felt the rather chilly air of the manse parlour lightening perceptibly. “We’ll have some more coal on that fire for a start,” said Annie, rising and suiting the action to the words. “I hate the way Callum rations it. I sometimes wish we had one of those new council houses, the ones with the central heating.”
Priscilla studied her hostess. She looked much younger than her years, she must be at least fifty, but with her long hair worn down her back and her well-spaced features she could easily have been taken for a woman in her thirties, and early thirties at that. Her figure was slim and well-shaped. Her dress was surprisingly Bohemian for a minister’s wife, Bohemian in a sort of old–fashioned way. She wore a white ‘peasant’ blouse with patchwork skirt and fringed calfskin boots.
“Do you think the pantomime will be a success?” asked Priscilla.
“Oh, I think so. It doesn’t look much like it at the moment. I’m borrowing costumes from the theatre in Strathbane. Once they see the costumes, they’ll get excited. Fortunately the girl who played the lead in the same pantomime in Strathbane last Christmas was on the heavy side, so there shouldn’t be that much of an alteration to get Nancy into it.”
“Why Nancy?” asked Priscilla curiously. “She’s hardly sweet sixteen.”
“She’s got a beautiful voice and that’s all that matters. People get irritated when the lead has a tinny voice. Look at those huge opera singers. No one bothers about their size when they start to sing.”
“But,” said Priscilla tentatively, “your choice of Nancy seems to have caused a certain amount of animosity. I mean, someone could have caused her to fall down those stairs.”
“Oh, believe me, I have survived here by never paying any attention to the squabbles of the village women.”
And in that sentence, thought Priscilla, Annie had betrayed that she looked on the women of the village as some strange tribe of aborigines whose jealousies and feuds had nothing to do with a civilized being. How could she have lived here so long, marvelled Priscilla, and maintained that attitude? Priscilla knew most of the women in Lochdubh and liked quite a few of them.
“Did you know this Peter Hynd who started all the trouble?” asked Priscilla.
“Yes, he was a frequent visitor to the manse. We both liked him.”
“He seems to have been a very manipulative young man, setting one woman against the other, and quite deliberately, too.”
Annie looked amused. “Your fiance is cursed with a Highland imagination. Your Highlander is an incurable romantic. Peter caused a bit of a flutter, that was all.”
“I think there was more to it than that. No, no more tea for me, thank you. I gather he had affairs with at least five of them – Betty Baxter, Ailsa Kennedy, Nancy Macleod, Edie Aubrey, and Alice MacOueen.”
“Now, I really must take you to task, Priscilla. I may call you Priscilla, may I not? No one is formal these days. You have been listening to wild gossip and perhaps stupid bragging on the part of these women. Do you know who you are dealing with here? They believe in fairies in this village. Nancy Macleod leaves a saucer of milk outside the door every night for the fairies.”
“And do they drink it?” asked Priscilla, momentarily diverted.
“They don’t, but a fat hedgehog does.”
Priscilla returned to the subject of Peter Hynd but could not seem to get anywhere. In fact, the minister’s wife’s manner grew somewhat supercilious, as if Annie Duncan had decided that Priscilla Halburton-Smythe was a sort of peasant in couture clothing. Perhaps it was the suddenly dying fire – the coal was poor quality – but a frost seemed to be settling on the room. When Priscilla stood up to leave, Annie barely managed to disguise her relief.
“One of the troubles about being a minister’s wife,” said Annie brightly, as she showed Priscilla out, “is that people will drop in unannounced. Do phone next time to say you are coming.”
“And so I left with a flea in both ears,” said Priscilla to Hamish when she arrived back at Edie’s. “Where is Edie?”
“Gone to bed.”
“And how did you get on, Hamish?”
“It was pretty awful,” said Hamish. “Before Peter came to this village, Nancy, Betty, Edie, Alice, and Ailsa were all the best of friends. Peter knew that and set out, I am convinced, quite deliberately, to put one against the other. Alice swears she didn’t have an affair with Peter. A boy-girl romance, she said, poor soul. Och, I’m tired.” He stood up and walked round the kitchen table and put his hands on her shoulders, feeling them stiffen at his touch. He bent down and placed a swift kiss on her cheek. “I’ll need to tackle Jock Kennedy tomorrow,” he said.
“Next to Harry Baxter, he must be prime suspect,” said Priscilla. “Peter beats him in a fight in a particularly nasty way and Peter lays his wife. It’s funny, usually you can’t cough in a Highland village during the night without everyone next day asking you if you’ve caught a cold, and yet Peter went off, car, papers, bags, and baggage without anyone hearing a thing.”
“There are times of the night when no one notices anything,” said Hamish, thinking of his own poaching forays. “Round about three in the morning until five, everything’s as dead as the grave. Are you coming?”
“I’ll just wash up these cups for Edie,” said Priscilla evasively. Hamish looked down sadly at the back of her smooth bright head. He’d tell her tomorrow that the engagement that never was, or whatever it had been, was at an end. He could not spend another day with all the unspoken words lying between them.
? Death of a Charming Man ?
10
The expense of spirit in a waste of shame.
Is lust in action; and till action, lust
Is perjur’d, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust.
—Shakespeare
Hamish could feel the tension and anxiety in the air as he pushed open the door of Jock’s shop in the morning. Customers had been chatting before he went in – he had heard them through the open door – but as soon as he walked in, all fell silent, and then, one by one, they gradually faded away in that Highland style of departing without apparently actually going.
Jock glared at him. “I hope you’re here to buy something because you’re driving my customers away, so you are!”
“It’s time you and I had a talk,” said Hamish. “You close at twelve-thirty, don’t you? I’ll be back then.”
As he turned and walked out, he could feel Jock’s hot and angry eyes boring into his back.
The good weather was holding and even Drim looked passably pretty in the autumn sunlight. Only the waters of the loch remained black, seeming to absorb, rather than reflect, the light from the sky above.
Hamish walked up to Peter Hynd’s cottage. Mr. Apple and his builders were hard at work. He waved when he saw Hamish and walked down to the garden gate. “Everything’s coming along fine,” he said. “We’re going to start draining the peatbog out back tomorrow.”
“On the Sabbath?” Hamish looked amused. “You’ll have the minister up here waving the Bible at you.”
“He’s already called,” said Mr. Apple, leaning on the gate and taking a battered pipe and leather tobacco pouch out of his pocket. “Read me a lecture. I told him he had no right to inflict his views on me. He said that I would put up the backs of the villagers, and I pointed out that as their backs were permanently up about anything and everything, I wouldn’t notice the difference. Then that wife of his turned up with some ecological mumbo-jumbo about me destroying the habitat of the rosy-breasted pushover or some damn-fool bird. All I wanted was a quiet holiday home and I think I’ve made a mistake coming here, but until I make up my mind what to do I’ll carry on, because if I decide to sell, I mean to make sure I get my money back.” Mrs. Apple, a small, sturdy woman, appeared to tell them that she had tea and scones ready and invited Harnish into the mobile home. Hamish passed a pleasant hour with them and then walked back to the shop in time to catch Jock as he was putting up the lunch hour CLOSED sign.
“You’re not here offically and you’ve got no right to ask me questions,” growled Jock. But he turned away
