we’ll pull her in now.”
“You can tell him, I want to be in on the questioning,” said Hamish. “He would never have found this out without me.”
“Aye, I’ll tell him. Give us a bit to get her back here.”
Hamish then phoned Sarah but was told she had gone out for dinner. He went along to the Italian restaurant, but she was not there, so he ate a solitary meal and then set out for Strathbane.
¦
Mrs. Macbean had red plastic hair rollers in mis time. Hamish sat in a corner of the interrogation room with a policewoman while Blair began the examination.
“Why did you not tell us you knew Gilchrist afore you were married?”
“It was a long time ago,” she said angrily.
“You had an affair with him. Did you murder him?”
“No, I did not,” she said, folding her arms. “The only reason I went to him was because he pulled my teeth and didnae charge a thing.”
Hamish looking at her thin mouth, rollered hair, bad-tempered face, thick body and rounded shoulders could not find a trace left of that happy, laughing beautiful girl of the staff photograph.
“Where were you on the morning of the murder?”
“I was at the hotel.”
“Witnesses?”
“I was in my room. My daughter’ll tell ye.”
“We need an independent witness. One of the guests, someone like that.”
“Whit time was the murder?”
“Between ten and eleven as you very well know,” said Blair.
“Aye, I was at the hotel. I know. I phoned down to Johnny at the bar sometime about then and asked if the insurance men had been yet.”
“We’ll check with him. But I think you killed him,” Blair shouted right in her face.
She leaned back in her chair and looked at him with contempt. “Prove it.”
The questioning went on while Hamish studied her, his mind working furiously. He was suddenly sure she had not done it. But she had known Gilchrist, had loved him passionately. Jeannie Gilchrist had thought her husband had been married before because she sensed there was someone in his past he had not got over. Yet Gilchrist with his penchant for attractive young women would find nothing left in her to love, in what had become an ugly, bad- tempered woman. She could not even pay him to…He sat up. It was a long shot.
Hamish interrupted Blair. “Sir?”
Blair swung round furiously. “Whit?”
“I chust wanted to ask Mrs. Macbean where the money is, the money she promised to Gilchrist.”
There was a dead silence. One red roller fell from Mrs. Macbean’s head and came to rest in front of Blair.
Mrs. Macbean was now staring at Hamish, all truculence gone.
“The way I see it is this.” Hamish’s gentle Highland voice sounded in the stillness of the room. “You had loved Gilchrist more than you had ever loved any man. You are unhappy in your marriage. You could no longer attract him. He was having an affair with a pretty young girl. But he liked money, he was worried sick about money. I think for two hundred and fifty thousand pounds he would have gone off with you. What happened? Did he take the money and then refuse?” Hamish watched her face closely. “No, that’s not it. You’ve still got the money. You’d best tell us where for we’ll take your room apart, take the hotel apart. I know you’ve got it and we’ll keep you here for as long as it takes to get you to confess.”
A long silence followed. Blair gave an impatient grunt For one moment, he thought Hamish had discovered something, but this was sidetracking. He wanted a murderer.
“Better to be damned as a thief than a murderer,” said Hamish.
But she had regained her composure. She shrugged. “Search my room all you want,” she said. “You won’t find anything.”
Hamish stared at her. “No,” he said, “perhaps not in your room. Your daughter’s room?” No reaction. “So somewhere in the hotel.” She stared at him boldly. “Och, well, now let’s chust say not in the hotel, but outside… buried.”
Her eyes flickered. “Can I have a cigarette?”
“Buried,” said Hamish flatly. “In the hotel grounds. Should be easy to find this winter weather. We’ll look for a sign of recent digging. Shouldn’t take long.”
Silence.
“Well, you’ve had your say, Hamish…” Blair was just beginning when Mrs. Macbean, who had not taken her eyes off Hamish, said, “You bastard. You knew all the time. Who was it told you? Darleen?”
“So it was you what stole the money,” said Blair, suddenly wishing Hamish miles away so that he could take all the credit for this.
She gave a little sigh. “I loved him,” she said. She looked at Hamish and for a moment her eyes blazed with something, for one split second the ghost of the pretty girl she had once been shone out at him, and then she began to sob in a helpless dreary way. “I couldn’t even mourn him,” she said at last. “I couldnae even shed a tear or folks might have guessed. He said if I got the money we could go away together and start a new life. It wisnae really stealing, that’s what he said. The insurance company would pay up and the insurance company could afford it. We would go to Spain. I would get away from Macbean. Funny thing, marriage. I think I hated that man a week after we were wed but the years dragged on and on and on. I stayed for Darleen, but she’s become a hard little bitch. She wouldnae hae missed me. Oh God, I didnae kill him.”
But Blair gave her a wolfish smile and hitched his chair closer to the table. As far as he was concerned, Mrs. Macbean had killed Gilchrist and he was going to stay up all night to make her confess.
Hamish arrived back at the police station in Lochdubh at dawn, feeling bone weary. Despite Blair’s insistent and truculent questioning, Mrs. Macbean had not cracked. She had told them where the money was hidden and it had been recovered but she insisted she had not murdered the dentist. The barman was pulled in and confirmed that she had phoned down at the time the murder was taking place. And then he remembered a maid had taken clean sheets up to Mrs. Macbean’s room. Mrs. Macbean did not share a room with her husband. Both lived separately in respective hotel rooms. A long wait while the maid was located, a local woman with an impeccable reputation, a Mrs. Tandy, who confirmed that at ten-thirty on the morning of the murder, she had taken clean sheets in to Mrs. Macbean. So that had been that. Mrs. Macbean had been charged with the theft. The fact that Hamish Macbeth had solved the robbery did not earn him any kudos with Blair, who had grown quite savage when he had realised the murder was still unsolved.
Hamish went wearily to bed. Before he fell asleep, he wondered again if there had been any connection between the Smiley brothers and the dentist. Greed for money had been at the back of the Smileys’ operation and Gilchrist had been greedy for money.
The phone rang several times from the police office, dragging him up out of the depths of sleep, but each time he remembered he had left the answering machine switched on and the murderer was hardly likely to phone him up and confess.
He slept for six hours and rose, still feeling tired and gritty. He washed and shaved and put on his uniform. Then he went into the police office and played back the messages on the answering machine. First Sergeant Macgregor from Cnothan’s cross voice, wondering whether Hamish was back on duty, then Mrs. Wellington asking whether she should go back and instruct Kylie and her friends farther in the paths of righteousness, and then a lilting voice, saying cautiously, “This is Fred Sutherland. I think I’ve found out something about Kylie. I should’ve told you afore, but I didnae think of it. Can ye come as soon as possible?”
? Death of a Dentist ?
9
Alice was puzzled. “In our country,” she remarked, “there’s only one day at a time.”
