this village, although I suppose you are. You’re more the suburban-housewife type. Now, I’m going to have a drink. You can join me or you can go.’ He went into the other room, I suppose to get the bottle of whisky. I saw a hammer lying on the floor of the extension. I went and picked it up and hefted it in my hand. He came back and went over to the counter and took down a glass. My hand seemed to take on a life of its own. I struck him as hard as I could. He fell to the floor, stone dead. And I was glad. I worked like the devil. He had only a few sticks of furniture, so I knew nobody would think it odd that he might include them in the house sale. I took everything else and loaded it up in his car except the papers and title deeds and bank-books and cards, which I took back to the manse later. I backed the car up to the door, his car, and put his body in the boot. I loaded up his car, like I said. I got into the driving seat and free-wheeled slowly down past the community hall. I had the car windows open and could see the lights in the hall and hear the sound of laughter. When I was down past the hall, I started the engine and drove to the end of the loch, to the deep part, to that ledge which hangs over it. I switched off the engine. I got out and I pushed the car over and watched it sink down like a stone into the black water.
“I went back to his cottage and scrubbed the blood from the floor and scrubbed every surface I could see. I had kept his typewriter back, along with the papers. I took it home with me, typed the letter to Jock, and put it with the key through the letter-box at the shop. The next day I couldn’t believe I had done it.” Hamish looked at her in bewilderment. “But the body was found in the peatbog.”
“The what?”
“Thon body was found in the peatbog at the back of Apple’s cottage. Didn’t you know?”
She shook her head. “Someone came running up to tell us we were to come to the community hall. That was all.” She stared at him and then began to laugh harshly. ‘Wrong body,’ she said. Hamish rose and went outside and told one of the waiting men to phone Strathbane and order a team of frogmen.
Then he returned to Annie, determined to worry about the strange peatbog body when he had got her full confession. “And Betty Baxter?” he said when he had sat down again. She sighed heavily. “Betty had become over- familiar with me. I like the women to know their place and keep their distance, and it was borne in on me that Peter had told her about his affair with me, had probably laughed over it with her and God knows who else. I hated her. I thought I would play a trick on her. I phoned her and said I was Peter and I asked her to meet me on the beach the following morning, and then sat back and enjoyed the spectacle of Betty wild with excitement, getting her hair done, running about in a glow of triumph.
“I saw her standing by the rocks, her gross body supported I on those ridiculous heels, and I thought, Oh, Peter, how could you! I had meant to jeer at her, to see the look of disappointment on her face. But I gave her a great push in her great fat back. Why didn’t she put her hands out to save herself? I couldn’t believe it when I found she was dead. I ran away.”
“How could you live with yourself?” marvelled Hamish. “Betty’s death was an accident, not murder. I put it out of my mind. I was waiting until things all died down and then I planned to leave Callum and go back to London. But you had to turn up with your gawky amateur probing.” She began to laugh again. “And you got the wrong body.” She was still laughing and weeping when the team from Strathbane arrived.
? Death of a Charming Man ?
11
When we were a soft amoeba, in ages past and gone,
Ere you were the Queen of Sheba, or King Solomon,
Alone and undivided, we lived a life of sloth,
Whatever you did, I did one dinner served for both.
Anon came separation, by fission and divorce,
A lonely pseudopodium I wandered on my course.
—Sir Arthur Shipley
“So,” said detective Jimmy Anderson gleefully, “you’ve been reduced to the ranks, Hamish. Stripped o’ yer stripes, and nae wonder. You dig up a fine example o’ Pictish man in a bog, accuse a minister’s wife o’ murdering it, and she confesses to murdering Peter Hynd. Och, we havena’ had such a laugh down at Strathbane for years and years.”
Anderson and Hamish were sitting in the police office at Lochdubh several days later, sharing a bottle of whisky.
“Man, man,” said Anderson, pouring another shot of Scotch, “I think the super must have had complaints from every prof, museum, and archaeological society from here to Australia. Such a valuable relic in the hands of a clod-hopping policeman.”
“Oh, shut up,” said Hamish moodily. “Do you know what got to all of you lazy fools in Strathbane? It wass that I knew there had been the murder, and proved it too.”
“Aye, you did that. Car in the loch, body in the boot, and Hynd’s typewriter up at the manse. What put you on to her?”
“It was when I saw her on the stage dressed up as a principal boy with her hair pushed up under one of those Tudor hats. I remembered thinking that she made a fine-looking man. I had been uneasy about her in the back of my mind, or I must have been. It wass her vanity, you see. Priscilla told me she seemed to think herself a good cut above the women of the village, and I could see that vanity in the way she strutted about the stage and the way she ordered the women about during that rehearsal. But she had seemed such a controlled and quiet woman that her vanity was not immediately evident. She was the only one in the village with the sophistication to keep cool and to plan, and to impersonate Peter. I don’t know how I knew it, but I somehow knew Peter had been killed and one o’ them had done it. I’m right glad it didn’t turn out to be Harry Baxter.”
“It’s a wonder it wasn’t that cold wee daughter o’ his.”
“Och, the lassie wasnae cold at all,” said Hamish. “She wass chust holding herself together because she loves her father and she thought he had done it. When she heard about Annie, she broke down and cried her eyes out wi’ relief that the nightmare wass over for her. It was her that put me on to it. She came here one night and said she had seen the murder of Peter in her head.”
“Well, it’s all over,” said Anderson, “although I could do without Blair being so happy about your demotion. Then the super got to hear from his wife that your engagement was at an end and that made you even more of a failure, Hamish. Aye, and there’s something else.”
“There can’t be,” said Hamish, reaching for the bottle.
“But there is. Do you ken a wee man called Hendry, schoolteacher?”
“The wife-beater? What’s happened?”
“He’s put in a complaint about you.”
“What did he say, not but what it’ll be all lies,” added Hamish quickly, thinking of how he had banged the school-teacher’s head into the wall.
“He says you got his missus into some sort o’ brainwashing cult.”
“Havers. I suggested she go to Al-Anon.”
“Aye, well, so she did, and she put the children into Ala-Teen. That house, Craigallen, was in her name. She’s got her ain money. Well, she sells the house, pockets the money, takes the kids and goes off tae Glasgow saying she’s finished wi’ being a martyr, and the wee drunk man she married can either come tae his senses or drink himself tae death. It looks as if he’s chosen the latter solution.”
“But surely Strathbane didn’t take the complaint seriously?”
“Relax, they didn’t, Blair was all for sobering Hendry up and presenting him to the super, but Hendry had a half bottle in his pocket and showed no signs of wanting to sober op. So what are you going to do with yourself now?”
“Same as I did before,” said Hamish. “Police Lochdubh and stay as far away from Strathbane as possible. Is Annie Duncan still talking?”
“Aye, and the more she talks, the weirder she gets. Now she’s over the shock o’ being caught, she seems almost proud of what she’s done.”
“It’s odd,” said Hamish. “When the estate agents reported that Peter Hynd had had a bad cold and was muffled up to the eyebrows, I thought that must be someone impersonating him. But that was him. It was her that
