out.”
So much for progress, so much for cleaning and flossing, so much for dental technology, thought Hamish. This was still Scotland. Out with all of them and get yourself a nice set of false teeth.
“What about you, Darleen?” he asked.
Darleen giggled. “He was dead sexy.”
“In what way?”
“He used tae stroke my hair and tell me I was a good girl. Cool.”
“Pay no heed to her,” snapped Mrs. Macbean. “She thinks everything in trousers is after her.”
“And they usually are,” commented Darleen, smug in the security of long legs and youth.
“Did either of you ever meet him socially?”
“What d’ye mean?” Mrs. Macbean lost a roller.
“I mean, did he ever ask either of you out on a date?”
“Here!” screeched Mrs. Macbean. “What are you getting at? You cannae solve a burglary and now you’re trying to pin a murder on me.”
“Och, no,” said Hamish soothingly, wondering if her husband beat her out of a mixture of exasperation and hate – if he beat her. “Did you see anyone while you were at the surgery who looked as if they might loathe the man enough to murder him?”
“Everyone loathes the dentist.”
“And you Darleen?”
“There was that awful old Harrison woman always hanging around. She gave me the creeps.”
“Anyone else?”
“Naw.”
“Look, we’ve got a hotel to run, copper.” Mrs. Macbean got to her feet. She shook her head angrily and rollers fell from her head and rattled across the carpet, thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks in Vallombrosa. Hamish wondered whether to pick them up for her, but she was already walking away, leaving the rollers spinning across the carpet.
She turned in the doorway. “Come on, Darleen!”
Darleen winked at Hamish again and walked out after her mother, her hips swaying.
Hamish, who had stood up when they had left, sat down again and looked bleakly at the tablecloth, which had a large coffee stain in the middle of it although it was supposed to be clean. His mind wandered off to speculate on the various claims of washing powders, beaming women holding up stained items and then pulling them out of the machine an hour later with cries of joy. This cloth had come back from the laundry, starched and ironed but with the coffee stain still on it.
He jerked his mind back to the problem in hand. It was his own fault for doggedly avoiding promotion that he was kept in the dark as to what everyone had said in their statements. Had the dentist been sexy or had Darleen just been winding him up? What would a girl that young see in a middle-aged dentist? It was hard to tell what Gilchrist had really looked like. Had the pathplogist’s report come through?
Perhaps the day had come when he should alter his attitude to his job, apply for a job in the CID. But being a detective would mean moving to the hell that was Strathbane and working closely with Blair. Gone would be lazy days in Lochdubh. Was there something missing in his character, for he knew himself to be that rare thing, a truly unambitious man.
If this burglary had been an inside job, who was there on the inside? The staff of the hotel and the Macbeans. Was Macbean in debt? So many questions. He could go to Strathbane and try to get hold of Jimmy Andersen. But Blair would hear he had been at police headquarters go through another of his lightning changes of mood banish him from both cases.
Rain began to patter against the windows and the wind howled in increasing ferocity. The wind of Sutherland started with a regular gale and then increased to a booming sound finally ending in a great screech that rent the heavens from end to end. No wonder the locals were superstitious.
Was there any point in plodding on, finding out a bit here and a bit there? Why not go back to the police station, light the fire and settle down in front of it with a detective story, preferably an American one of the more violent kind where the hero could act out Hamish’s frustrations for him, slamming people up against walls and beating confessions out of them.
But Duty, stem daughter of the voice of God, niggled at his conscience. He would go back to Braikie and see what he could find out there.
Starting with Maggie Bane.
¦
Maggie Bane lived in a trim bungalow on the outskirts of Braikie called My Highland Home.
Hamish, as he rang the doorbell, wondered whether he should have called at the surgery first. But surely she would not be there. The police would have the whole place sealed off.
Maggie Bane answered the door and her face fell when she saw him. “I’m sick of the police,” she said harshly.
“Just a few more questions,” said Hamish soothingly.
“But two detectives have already been here this morning,” she wailed. “And yesterday, that horrible fat man, Blair, kept shouting at me and did everything but charge me.”
“It’s like this, Miss Bane. It’s a murder enquiry and I am sure you would be happy if we found the murderer. I think the answer to the murder must surely lie in Mr. Gilchrist’s personality and who he knew, and who better to tell us than yourself?”
She fidgeted on the doorstep and then said reluctantly, “You’d better come in.”
She led the way into a living room. It was furnished with a three–piece suite covered in flowered chintz. There was an electric fire, two bars, the kind that eats up electricity, the kind everyone in the Highlands bought in the heady days when they blocked off their coal fires under the impression that the Hydro Electric Board was going to supply cheap electricity. I mean, it all came from water, didn’t it? Too late they found themselves faced with some of the highest electricity charges in Britain and yet the electric fires remained and the coal fires stayed blocked up. Women in the Highlands, it seemed, did not want to go back to the days of shovelling coal and raking out ashes. There was a noisy flowered wallpaper on the walls, bamboo poles with writhing green vegetation. There was a square dining table at the window with a bowl of artificial flowers on it. A low coffee table stood in front of the sofa, with glossy magazines arranged in neat piles, rather like in a waiting room.
“Coffee?” she asked.
“No, thank you,” said the normally mooching Hamish, but he was anxious to get down to business.
She began to cry. “You think I’m a suspect,” she said when she could. “The police never take hospitality from people they think are guilty.”
“Och, no,” said Hamish. “I’m too anxious to get on with the questions, that’s all. You go and dry your eyes and make us a cup of coffee.”
Maggie gulped and nodded. She was a beautiful girl, he thought, when she had left the room, but with such an ugly voice, such an aggressive voice. She wasn’t aggressive at the moment and again he had an uneasy feeling that Maggie Bane was maybe one of those women who could cry at will.
He looked around the room for any sign of a desk, but there was not even a sideboard or cupboard which might house letters or documents.
Now, if he was one of the detectives in the stories he liked reading, he would seduce her and when she was asleep, search her bedroom and handbag. He grinned to himself. From his experience, he would probably sleep like a log and have to be awakened by her.
After some time, he was just beginning to wonder if she had run away, when the door opened and she came in carrying two mugs of coffee on a tray with milk and sugar.
“Were you fond of Mr. Gilchrist?” asked Hamish, once he was handed a mug of coffee.
“He was a good boss.”
“He was divorced. Was he going with anyone?”
“He liked the ladies, but I do not think there was anyone in particular.”
“And what about you, Miss Bane? Are you engaged?”
She held out one slim left hand. “See? No rings.”
