They were received by me deputy manager, a Mr. Angus, a small, portly man with a pompous air.
“You’ve already asked all the questions,” he said impatiently. “Mr. Glover is due back Monday. He always holidays op north and no, he doesn’t leave an address, says he doesn’t want to be bothered. I am perfectly able to handle things here in his absence.” Mr. Angus looked as if he believed that he could ran things better than Mr. Glover any day.
“And you have his fiancee, Betty John, as an employee?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Angus testily, dashing Hamish’s hopes.
Faint but pursuing, he said, “We would like to see a photograph of Mr. Glover.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. I don’t carry photos about with me.”
“Perhaps,” ventured Bill, “there might be one taken at a staff function?”
“Oh, one of those.” Mr. Angus’s face cleared. “There’s one taken at the Christmas party on the wall of his office next door.”
He led them through and into a wood-panelled room with a large desk and the gloomy air of a million rejected bank loans. He lifted a framed photograph down from the wall and held it out to them.
Hamish looked at it and then said in a voice sharp with alarm, “Which is John Glover?”
“Why, there, next to Miss Betty John.” It was Betty all right, but the man next to her was thin and looped, with glasses and a tentative smile. “That’s not the John Glover who’s been holidaying in Lochdubh,” said Hamish bleakly. “Get us his home address,
“You mean someone’s been impersonating him?” said Mr. Angus, looking flustered.
“Just get the address,” howled Bill.
“Are you going to call for back-up?” asked Hamish. “We’ll do that from the car on the road there.” Mr. Angus came back with an address in Hyndland Road in the west end of the city.
Priscilla, thought Hamish, as they raced through the streets. As soon as we see what’s happened, I’d better warn Priscilla.
¦
“There’s your bill, Mr. Glover,” Priscilla was saying. “Thank you.” He handed over a gold credit card. “We’ve enjoyed our stay. We’ll just have a last cup of coffee and then we’ll be on our road. Back to the unexciting life of banking, hey?”
Betty, standing beside him, let out a snort of laughter. Then both headed in the direction of the restaurant, looking, thought Priscilla suddenly, more like conspirators than lovers. Maybe lawers look like conspirators, jeered a voice in her head. How would you know, Priscilla?
She gave a little sigh. Still short-staffed, rain still falling. She may as well check their rooms and see if they had left anything behind. She took down the pass key and went upstairs. She went into Betty’s room first. A suitcase and hold-all stood packed and ready on the floor. She went into the bathroom. Nothing there. She went next door to John’s room with a certain reluctance. She had an uneasy feeling John had used her. But why should she think that? They were obviously an immoral couple. Just think of Betty and Hamish. No, better not think of that. John had two suitcases – very expensive, Gucci – packed and ready. Nothing left in the bathroom. He had made his bed. How odd! He did not look the sort of man to bother making up his bed. And so neatly too. Hospital corners. He must surely know the beds would be stripped the minute they had left. And who was to strip the beds? Me, thought Priscilla grimly, thinking of the abseant maids. Might as well make a start.
She wrenched off the duvet and threw it on the floor, took off the cover, and then tugged at that firmly tucked-in under sheet. She placed it on the floor. Then the pillowslips. She went to the linen cupboard at the end of the hall and took out a fresh duvet cover, sheet and pillowslips and returned to John’s room. She knew she was being over-efficient. The next person who would take this room was not expected to arrive until the following morning. She knew she was playing the martyr, Some of the missing maids would surely soon be back on duty. Still, may as well use martyrdom to get some necessary jobs done.
And it was this wretched martyrdom of hers, Priscilla was to think later, that had made her decide to turn the mattress as well.
She heaved it up and over and then drew in her breath in sharp exclamation of surprise. For under the mattress lay two leather gun cases. She backed away from the bed, her eyes flying to the phone on the bedside table.
And then a voice behind her said grimly, “Leave the phone alone, Miss Halburton-Smythe.”
¦
Hamish and Bill arrived outside John Glover’s flat, which was in a tall sandstone building. They rang all the bells until the buzzer went on the door. “Who is it?” called a voice from the top of the stairs.
“Police!” shouted Bill. “Which is Mr. Glover’s flat?” There had been no cards next to the bells.
“Number one, ground floor,” quavered the voice from above.
“I hope to God we’re right about this,” said Bill, “for I’m about to smash in a good piece of Victorian stained glass.” He look a small, unofficial truncheon out of his trousers pocket and smashed at the glass. Brightly coloured shards flew everywhere. He reached through the hole he had made and removed chain and clicked the safety catch off the lock. “Easy,” he said. “You’d think a bank manager would be more security-conscious. Jesus! Smell that, Hamish!” There was a rank, sweetish smell, only too familiar to both men. In the distance they could hear the wail of police sirens. They did not have far to look for the real John Glover. Recognizable – just – from that photograph in me bank, he lay dead on his living-room floor among the ransacked debris of emptied drawers and cupboards. He had been strangled.
“Where’s this fake John Glover now?” asked Bill.
“Tommel Castle Hotel. I cannae wait,” said Hamish. “I’ve got to get there.”
“Man, you may as well take a back seat now,” said Bill. “They’ll call out Strathbane.”
“I’ve got to try,” said Hamish. “There’s someone I know might be in danger. I’m in enough trouble as it is. Give me the keys to your car, Bill. I did this for you.”
Bill tossed him the keys as police burst into the room. “Let him go,” snapped Bill as the police tried to grab hold of Hamish. “He’s one of us.”
¦
“So what do we do with her?” Betty John was asking. Priscilla was gagged with sticking plaster and bound to a chair in the fake John’s room.
“We wait,” said ‘John’ easily. “You go downstairs and tell that manager that Miss Halburton-Smythe has taken off for Inverness, then we wait until the lunch is over and the hotel is quiet again and then we take her out.”
“What are we going to do with her?”
“Take her up in the hills and lose her,” he said. “By the time she finds her way back and alerts the police, we’ll be long gone.”
“Why didn’t we just clear off after you had got rid of Duggan?” fretted Betty.
“Then they would have guessed right away. Don’t worry, we’ll still get clear.”
Betty’s next words horrified Priscilla.
“When Glover doesn’t turn up at the bank on Monday, they’ll start searching for him.”
“I thought of that. I’ll phone in sick on Monday and then we’ll disappear for a bit.”
Priscilla listened with her eyes half closed. There was no Hamish to ride to the rescue. She did not believe for one moment that ‘John’ meant to let her go. He would kill her as callously as he had killed the real bank manager and Duggan.
All she could do was wait and pray for a miracle. Betty went out. ‘John’ surveyed her with a smile. “You’re a silly, interfering bitch,” he said. “It amused me to stay on here and play games with you and that loon of a boyfriend of yours. No one crosses me and gets away with it. You know what Duggan did?”
And you’re going to tell me, thought Priscilla, because you’re going to kill me, so it doesn’t matter what I know now.
“He was told to stash a haul from a bank robbery and then report to my house for the share-out. We waited and waited. His name isn’t Duggan, it’s Charlie Stoddart. I couldn’t believe the little bastard had made off with the money, but that’s what he did. I kept a wait and watch. I traced him as far as America. I had all the planes watched, all the flights from America. There was a rumour he’d gone in for weight-lifting and plastic surgery. Then, by some fluke, the bastard got drunk one night in Houston, Texas, and shot off his mouth. The fellow he talked to
