The pathologist, a tall, lugubrious man, looked up from his examination in surprise. “He’s a dentist. He looks at other people’s teeth.”
“Chust look at them,” begged Hamish, “afore rigour sets in too bad.”
“I was just about to examine the mouth.” The pathologist prised the mouth open and shone a torch, into it.
Then he looked up at Hamish with a startled expression on his face. “How did you know about this?”
“Know about what?” howled Blair.
“A hole has been drilled in each tooth.”
“After death?” asked Hamish.
“I do not know,” said the pathologist slowly. “The face is discoloured, yes, but I would expect signs of a struggle and bruising.”
“How did you…?” began Blair.
But Hamish ignored him. “There’s something else. If he had been poisoned wi’ something, surely he would have writhed about. Could someone have lifted him off the floor after death, put him in that chair and drilled his teeth?”
“Could be.”
Blair managed to interrupt. “How did you know the teeth had been drilled?”
“A wee man who lives above the surgery heard the drill going when Gilchrist was not supposed to have a patient.”
“But someone could have dropped in.”
“Aye, but I wass beginning to get the feeling the man might be hated.”
“I’ll go and see your wee man myself.” Blair set off.
Hamish then went downstairs to the dress shop underneath. A bell clanged above the door when he opened it A fussy little woman came forward to meet him.
“I am a police officer,” began Hamish.
“What’s all the row upstairs?”
“Mr. Gilchrist is dead.”
She was a neat middle-aged woman with neat closed features and white hair in a rigid perm. “Oh, dear. Is there anything I can do to help? Was it a heart attack?”
“No. What is your name?”
“Mrs. Elsie Edwardson.”
“And you own this dress shop?”
“Yes.”
“Did you notice anyone going up the stairs to the dentists between, say, ten and eleven o’clock?”
“Is it murder?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“Well, let me think. Dear me, this is quite a bit of excitement for us all.” Her eyes gleamed. “Nothing usually happens in Braikie. Nobody even knows where Braikie is. I once went on a holiday to Scarborough and people had not only not heard of Braikie, they’d never heard of the county of Sutherland. That receptionist, that bad-tempered girl, Maggie Bane, I saw her go out but I couldn’t be sure of the exact time.”
“Anyone going in?”
She shook her head. “I was pricing goods in the back shop most of the time.”
“And did you hear any funny noises from upstairs?”
“Not that I remember.”
A glare of white light lit up the shop windows. “Dear me, what is that?” asked Mrs. Edwardson.
“I think Grampian Television has arrived.”
“Oh, the television! My wee shop on the telly! I’d best go and put a little more lipstick on.” Mrs. Edwardson was now flushed and happy. “This is grand publicity for my shop.”
Hamish looked at the depressing display in the window and privately thought that even if Princess Diana appeared in a gown bought from Mrs. Edwardson, it would not sell one of them.
“We’ll be talking to you again,” he said, but Mrs. Edwardson already had her compact out and was applying I pink lipstick in the little mirror.
He continued with his interviews in the shops on either side, occasionally pursued by the local press who all knew him. The death of a dentist and in such gruesome circumstances would soon bring up the national newspapers and then the foreign ones. Blair would feel under pressure and Blair under pressure was a nasty sight.
At last he returned to the surgery. Blair was telling Maggie Bane she would need to accompany them to Strathbane for questioning. He obviously thought her the prime suspect. Hamish reported his lack of success and Blair grunted and then told him to go about the town and see what he could dig up on Gilchrist’s background.
“Was he married?” asked Hamish.
“He was, but he got a divorce ten years ago.”
“And where’s the wife?”
“Down in Inverness.”
“What’s her name?”
“Nothing to do wi’ you,” said Blair truculently. “Now run along and see if you can dae anything useful.”
As Hamish went back down the stairs again, Jimmy Anderson was coming up.
“The press are driving me fair mad,” he grumbled.
“Listen,” said Hamish, catching his arm as he would have sprinted past up the stairs, “what’s the name of the ex-wife?”
“Jeannie Gilchrist.”
“And whereabouts in Inverness can she be found?”
“She can be found by the Inverness police.”
“No more whisky for you, Jimmy.”
“Och, if you’re that interested, she’s at 851 Anstruther Road.”
“Thanks.”
“Hamish!” Jimmy called after him. “Don’t you go near her or Blair’ll have you off the force.” Hamish waved by way of reply and went out to the police Land Rover. He was determined to go to Inverness because his tooth had started to ache again. He would go to his own dentist and then he may as well call on Mrs. Gilchrist. Various camera flashes went off in his face as he drove off. He knew the press had an irritating way of photographing everyone and everything. The photos would not be used.
As he took the long road to Inverness, putting on the police siren so that he could exceed the speed limit, he reflected that it would be nice to be one of those private eyes in fiction before whose wisdom the whole of Scotland Yard bowed and who seemed to be kept informed of every step of the game. But he was only a Highland policeman, a little cog in a murder enquiry. Blair would get the pathologist’s report and all the statements and he would need to winkle out what he could by plying Jimmy Anderson with whisky.
Once in Inverness, he went straight to his own dentist: a Mr. Murchison, and pleaded with the receptionist that the pain in his tooth was so bad he was about to die. “They all say that,” she said heartlessly. “Take a seat if and I’ll see if he can fit you in.”
“Tell him I haven’t much time,” said Hamish with low cunning, for there were six people in the waiting room. “Mr. Gilchrist, the dentist over at Braikie, has just been murdered. And I am in the middle of a murder investigation.”
“Oh, my! How dreadful. Wait there.”
She went into the surgery. After a few moments, she emerged. “Mr. Murchison will see you right now. He’s just finished.”
A man walked out holding his jaw. Hamish walked in under the baleful stares of the waiting patients.
“What’s this all about?” asked Mr. Murchison.
“It’s this tooth here,” said Hamish, opening his mouth.
“I mean about the murder?”
“Look, Mr. Murchison, just stop this pain and I’ll tell you everything.”
