“This should work both ways,” said Hamish, “Phone me with anything you’ve got on Alice Brett. And I’ll be getting a petrol bill from my contact in Essex. I’ll pass it on to you.”
“Right. Can I hae a word wi’ Maggie?”
Hamish fetched her. In retaliation to Hamish’s behaviour, Maggie shut the door of the office on him.
She was annoyed to find out that there was nothing new she could tell Deacon, Hamish having told him more than she knew. “Can’t see much point in me being in this dead-alive place,” said Maggie.
“You just help Macbeth,” said Deacon sharply. “That’s what you’re there for.”
The phone rang almost as soon as she had put it down. She picked it up quickly. “Hamish?” demanded a voice. Maggie was just beginning to say, “This is WPC Donald. I will take any messages for PC Macbeth – ”, when Hamish strode in and snatched the phone from her. “Hello, Rory,” she heard him say. Maggie sat down in a chair in the office, determined to hear this call. What Rory was actually reporting was that he had found nothing on the files about any of the suspects, but all Maggie could hear from her end was Hamish’s grunts of disappointment. Hamish replaced the receiver and said to Maggie, “What about a cup of coffee?”
“You’re as bad as the rest of them,” said Maggie, slamming out.
The phone rang again. It was the editor of the newspaper in Worcester. He said he had found a few cuttings on Andrew Biggar; he had judged a dog show last year, ridden in one of the local point-to-points, lived with his mother in a large house outside Worcester on the Wyre Piddle road; nothing else.
Hamish thanked him, rang off and stared in frustration at the phone.
He went back into the kitchen. Maggie was looking depressed. “Forget the coffee,” he said abruptly. “We’ll go and call on Angela, the doctor’s wife, instead. Get you out a bit. And I’m taking you for dinner to the Tommel Castle Hotel tonight.”
Her face lit up. “Oh, Hamish, how kind! That will cost you a lot.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said grandly, having no intention of telling her that the meal was to be free.
Feeling suddenly pleased with him, Maggie followed him out and they walked towards the doctor’s house, leaning against the screaming wind. Waves curled and smashed down on the pebbles of the beach. A plastic dustbin rolled crazily past them. Children ran before the wind on the beach, screaming like seagulls. Hamish and Maggie walked round the side of the doctor’s house and Hamish knocked at the kitchen door.
Angela answered it and invited them in. Maggie looked curiously around the kitchen. Books everywhere: on the kitchen table, on the chairs and on the floor. Two cats promenaded lazily across the books on the table and two dogs snored under it.
“Clear a space for yourselves, Hamish,” said Angela. “You know the drill in this house.”
While she prepared a jug of coffee, Angela said over one thin shoulder, “So how’s the case going, Hamish, and why here and not in Skag?”
“I wanted the use of my own office,” said Hamish. “How’s life in the village?”
“Much the same. No dramas. Jessie Currie has gone back to being an ordinary lady. Whatever Angus told her seemed to do the trick, although she looked quite sad for a few days. There’s a cake sale up at the church hall tomorrow and I tried my best, but my cakes never rise. We’ve had various visitors looking at the Lochdubh Hotel.” She turned round and said to Maggie, “It’s been up for sale for some time. But they always go away again. There was even a consortium of Japanese business men, but the minute they saw the hills and mountains and found there was no way of attaching a golf course to it, they left again. Oh, yes, there was a drama last week. Didn’t you hear about it at the manse?” Hamish shook his head. “There were plans to make it into a sort of approved school for young offenders. I think everyone in the village wrote to their MP to protest.”
“It is a fine building and right on the harbour,” said Hamish. “You would think someone would want it.”
“If the Tommel Castle Hotel had not come into being, then someone might have bought it, but no one wants to start up in an area where there’s such a powerful rival.”
“Any sign of the colonel turning it back into his family home?” asked Hamish. “He must be as rich as anything now.”
“He got such a fright when he went broke last time,” said Angela, setting a jug of coffee on top of a pile of books on the table. “He won’t contemplate it. Johnson’s a good manager.” She poured two mugs of coffee. “Heard from Priscilla?” asked Angela.
“No,” said Hamish curtly, his face set.
“Oh, well,” said Angela quickly, “tell me about this case.”
Maggie listened carefully as Hamish succinctly outlined the facts of the murder case and described the suspects.
Angela sat down with them as Hamish talked. “Well,” she said when he had finished, “you’ll probably find it’s this Dermott Brett.”
Hamish thought of Dermott and June and the children. “I don’t want it to be,” he commented. “What about Dermott’s wife, Alice?”
Angela frowned and pushed a wisp of hair out of her eyes. “I’d like to know a bit more about her,” she said. “I mean, a legal secretary doesn’t actually sound like the hysterical type, but this Dermott obviously loves his June and yet was frightened to ask for a divorce in case his wife topped herself.”
“I wish I could be in about five places at once,” said Hamish. “This business of Andrew Biggar and Doris bothers me. Evesham and Worcester are not that far apart. Do you believe in love at first sight, Maggie?”
Maggie, having never been in love, shook her head.
“And yet I sometimes think there was something between them afore they met up. Andrew Biggar lives in a big house outside Worcester, he apparently leads the life of a gentleman, and yet he comes to a low-class boarding-house in an inferior Scottish resort for a holiday. Damn. I’d like to get down there and question people.”
“Or it could be Miss Gunnery,” said Angela. Hamish looked at her in surprise. “Why?”
“By saying she had slept with you, she gave herself a cast-iron alibi and she does not sound like a stupid woman.”
“But there’s nothing about her to suggest the murderess,” said Hamish, exasperated. “A blameless schoolteacher who appears to have led a blameless life.”
Angela sighed. “None of us has led a blameless life, Hamish. We all have some sort of skeleton in the closet. But then you might find out it’s this Cheryl and Tracey; have you thought of that?”
“I haven’t really considered them. Their nasty young lives are so well documented, what with prison records and probation records.”
“But,” said Angela eagerly, “that’s just it. You’ve been concentrating on a lot of respectable people trying to find a murderer. But here you have two young girls with criminal records and one of them has been found guilty of violence. You say they were overheard saying they would like to kill someone for kicks. It might be as simple as that. You are looking for someone with the sort of character that would kill. Cheryl and Tracey fit the bill.”
“They’re awfy young,” said Hamish.
“But very young children commit dreadful murders these days,” put in Maggie, who was beginning to feel she had been forgotten.
“I’ll check up on them myself,” said Hamish. “I hae a lot o’ contacts in Glasgow.”
“The way I see it,” said Angela dreamily, “is that it was a murder of savage impulse, no poisoning or shooting or stabbing, just a sudden blow to the head. Whoever it was may not even have contemplated murder. Just bashed the horrible Harris on the head in a fit of rage. Harris tips over into the river and the assailant rushes off without waiting to see the result of the blow. It was death by drowning, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Hamish slowly.
“So we get back to the respectable section of the boarding-house party,” said Angela eagerly. “Instead of looking for a murderer, look for someone who might just be capable of a fit of rage. Oh, and there’s something else.”
Maggie looked at the doctor’s wife in irritation. It should have been she, Maggie, who should have been enthralling Hamish Macbeth with her speculations.
“What else?” asked Hamish.
“Harris seemed to like having things on people, like tormenting Dermott. And what if Harris knew about the bad food from the old folks’ home? What of that? This Rogers. Now there’s a criminal for you.”
“Aye, you’ve given me a lot to think about,” said Hamish. “That business about Rogers now, I think Deacon
