indeed. That’s what happened to Rosie. But she worked so hard! Always trying. She was so excited about this detective story.”
“I cannae envisage Rosie Draly getting excited about anything,” said Hamish. “She seemed so self-contained, almost colourless.”
“I suppose I’m the only person she ever talked to. She never referred to any friends.”
“Family? Lovers?”
“No lovers. She has a sister. I have the name and address.”
“Can you give it to me? She’ll need to be informed.”
“Wait a moment.”
After a few minutes she came back to the phone. “It’s a Mrs. Beck, 12 Jubilee Lane, Willesden.”
“Any phone number?”
“I don’t have that. But the police down here will no doubt get it.”
“Miss Simmonds, if there is anything you can think of, anything at all, that Rosie might have said about her life up here that might give us a clue to her murder, please let us know.”
“I will, of course. But Rosie liked secrets. Not that she ever seemed to have anything to be secretive about, but that’s the impression I got.”
“Did you like her?”
There was a startled silence and then she said cautiously, “I don’t want to speak ill of the dead…”
“Oh, please do,” urged Hamish.
“Well, I didn’t like her, and that’s a fact. She had a way of watching me out of the corner of her eye, as if seeing something in me that caused amused contempt. It rattled me. She also kept implying, without actually putting it into exact words, that I was a failure as an agent, although after her failures with her previous agents she must have known that wasn’t true. I feel awful talking about her like this. It seems such a lurid death. What kind of knife?”
“An ordinary big kitchen knife.”
“Oh, poor Rosie! It might at least have been a mysterious South American dagger or something. Still, I suppose the press will all be there and she’ll get the publicity she always craved, but hardly in a way she ever dreamt of getting it. Give me your number. I promise to call you if I think of anything.”
“There’s just one more thing. Rosie had been chatting up the locals for a bit of colour. Two of them seem to have been quite entranced with her.”
“You lot must be stuck for women up there. I am being bitchy. Sorry. But I swear to God, Rosie wasn’t interested in men. I always thought she was a lesbian.”
“Now there’s something. Anything concrete on that?”
“Nothing, I’m afraid. Just an impression. I used to spend as little time with Rosie as was decently possible.”
Hamish felt he had got as much out of her as he possibly could for the time being. He said goodbye and rang off. Then he sat down to type out a statement of what she had said. He had just finished and was looking forward to going to bed when there was a knock at the kitchen door. He went through and answered it.
Betty John stood there, her large black eyes gleaming with excitement. “What a thrilling place this has turned out to be!” she said. “Another murder. Tell me about it.”
“I can’t now,” said Hamish. “I’ve been up all night and now I’m going to bed.”
She pouted. “I was hoping for a cup of coffee.”
“There’s instant in the kitchen. Help yourself, but chust let me go to bed. I’m weary.”
He went into the bathroom, stripped off and washed down, put on his pyjamas, and then, stretching and yawning, went through to his bedroom and climbed into bed. What had Rosie found out? he wondered sleepily. The silly woman must have found out something from Randy. Randy’s plastic surgery pointed to a high-level criminal. He dozed off. Then he awoke with a start. Someone was in the bed with him, someone’s body was pressed against his own. He twisted round on the pillow and found himself looking straight into the lecherous black eyes of Betty John.
“For heffen’s sakes, woman,” groaned Hamish. “What do you think you are doing?”
“This,” she said with a throaty laugh, and her hands became busy under the bedclothes.
Hamish was half drugged with sleep, but he had been celibate a long time. Making love to Betty John seemed part of an exotic dream. When he finally fell completely asleep, she buried her head on his chest and fell asleep as well.
¦
Priscilla headed down to the police station at lunch-time with a basket of food from the hotel kitchen beside her on the seat. She was surprised that she had recovered so quickly from the sight of Rosie’s dead body, but reflected that had Rosie been blasted to death or battered to death, it would have taken her considerably longer to get over it. There had been something so unreal, so theatrical, about that naked body with the knife sticking out of its back.
She planned to make Hamish lunch and discuss the case. As she parked the car and climbed out, she was hailed by the Currie sisters, Nessie and Jessie, and then immediately joined by Mrs. Wellington, the minister’s wife. While the spinster sisters exclaimed about the murder and wondered volubly what had happened to the normally tranquil life of the Scottish Highlands, Mrs. Wellington boomed, “I want to see Hamish Macbeth and find out just what he is doing about this. This place is getting like New York!”
“He’s probably very tired,” said Priscilla. “He was up all night.”
“It’s his job to be up all night,” said Mrs. Wellington, marching towards the kitchen door, which stood open. The Currie sisters followed, glasses gleaming, rigidly permed hair shining with raindrops. Priscilla reluctantly followed.
Mrs. Wellington looked around the kitchen and then went through to the police office. “Still in bed, the lazy man,”she snorted. “Time he was up.”
She pushed open the bedroom door and then let out a squawk of horror. The Currie sisters peered around her tweedy bulk and Priscilla, taller than the rest, looked over them. The naked bodies of Hamish Macbeth and Betty John lay tangled on the bed.
Hamish awoke, as if conscious of all the horrified stares directed at him. “Get out of here!” he shouted.
“Disgraceful,” said the sisters in unison. They looked absolutely delighted.
The women retreated to the kitchen. “That man is not only immoral, he is amoral, Priscilla,” said Mrs. Wellington. “Priscilla?”
But the slamming of the kitchen door was the only reply.
¦
Hamish, in a most unloverlike way, told Betty to get lost. She took it with good humour, unselfconsciously pulling her discarded clothes over her sturdy, naked body. When she had left he turned his face into the pillow and groaned aloud. What a disgrace! That he had been found in bed with Betty would be all over Lochdubh. He waited until he heard Mrs. Wellington and the Currie sisters, exclaiming their way out of the police station. And Priscilla! What did that chilly lassie expect him to do? Live like a monk?
He gloomily took a scalding bath, reflecting that he was behaving like a girl who had just lost her virginity.
He had just dressed in his uniform when Jimmy Anderson arrived. “How’s the Don Joon o’ the hills?” he greeted Hamish, a leer on his foxy features.
“You heard already?”
“Man, if you stick your nose out o’ the police-station door, you’ll see wee groups of people all along the waterfront and they’re talking about nothing else.”
“Damn this place,” said Hamish savagely. “There’s been two brutal murders and all they’ve got to gossip about is my private life!”
“Well, next time, lock your doors. Blair wants your report and your presence.”
“He’ll get both. Where is he?”
“Up at the mobile unit. Any whisky?”
“How you can drink at this time of day beats me.”
“Come on, Hamish. The sun is over the poop deck, or whatever.”
