“This lot should be made to pay for all this expense,” he grumbled. “What sort of fools drive in the Highlands in this weather?”

Hamish stood with his hands on his hips until the helicopter was only a little dot against the brightening sky.

A light breeze sprang up and caressed his cheek, a breeze coming from the west. Wind’s shifted, he thought. Thaw coming. Hoods and mud. What a country!

He made his way slowly back to Lochdubh. Smoke was rising from cottage chimneys.

The Currie sisters, Nessie and Jessie, middle-aged village spinsters, were outside their cottage, the pale sunlight flashing off their glasses.

“Just the man!” cried Jessie. “Come and shovel this snow.”

“Away wi’ you,” said Hamish. “I’ve been up since dawn.”

He trudged past.

“Call yourself a public servant!” Jessie shouted after him.

“I call myself one verra tired policeman,” Hamish shouted back.

And an uneasy one, he thought. I hope this film company stays away. I’ve got a bad feeling about the whole damn thing.

? Death of a Scriptwriter ?

3

Do not adultery commit;

Advantage rarely comes of it:

Thou shall not steal; an empty feat,

When it’s so lucrative to cheat:

Bear not false witness; let the lie

Have time on its own wings tofy:

Thou shall not covet; but tradition

Approves all forms of competition.

—Arthur Hugh Clough

Often one cannot look back on the best time in one’s life with any pleasure if it ends badly. So it was with Patricia Martyn-Broyd in the months leading up to the first day of filming.

During the long winter months, a glow of fame had kept her exhilarated. Local papers had interviewed her and one national. She had given a talk to the Mothers’ Union at the church in Cnothan on writing. And although she had not been able to start on a new book, there was always that little word ‘yet’ to comfort her. When all the excitement died down, she knew she could get to work again and the words would flow.

She arose early on the first day of filming and dressed carefully. The weather was fine, unusually fine for the Highlands of Scotland, with the moors and tarns of Sutherland stretched out benignly under a cloudless sky. She put on a Liberty print dress – good clothes lasted forever and did not date – and a black straw hat. Had the postman not decided to change his schedule and deliver the mail to Patricia’s end of the village first, then her feeling of euphoria might have lasted longer, but a square buff envelope with her publishers’ logo slid through the letter box.

She picked it up, sat down at the table and slit it open with an old silver paper knife which had belonged to her father.

She pulled out six glossy book jackets.

She stared down at them in shock. Certainly the old title was there – The Case of the Rising Tides – and her name in curly white letters, Patricia Martyn-Broyd. But on the front of the jacket was a photograph of Penelope Gates, a nude Penelope Gates. Her back was to the camera, but she was holding a magnifying glass and looking over one bare shoulder with a voluptuous smile. Larger than Patricia’s byline was the legend ‘Now a Major TV Series, Starring Penelope Gates as Lady Harriet.’

On the back of the jacket was more advertising for the TV series, along with Jamie Gallagher’s name as scriptwriter, Fiona King as producer, then a list of the cast.

Her hands trembled. What had gone wrong? She had seen such detective stories on the bookshop shelves but had never bought them, assuming that the writer was some hack who had written the books from television scripts rather than being an original writer.

Angry colour flooded her normally white face. A naked woman portrayed as her Lady Harriet – elegant, cool, clever Lady Harriet!

She went to the sideboard and took out a bottle of whisky which she had won in a church raffle the previous year, poured herself a glass and drank it down.

Then she phoned Pheasant Books in London and demanded to speak to her editor, Sue Percival, whom she considered much too young for the job.

“Hi, Patricia!” said Sue in that awful nasal accent of hers which always made Patricia shudder.

“I have just received the book jackets,” began Patricia.

“Great, aren’t they?”

Patricia took a deep breath. “They are disgusting. I am shocked. They must be changed immediately.”

“What’s up with them? I think they’re ace.”

“What has a naked actress to do with the character I created? And who is going to buy this? The covers make me look like some hack who has written up the book from the TV series.”

“Look here,” said Sue sharply, “you want to sell your book, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

“Well, the bookshops will take a good number if it’s going to be on TV. Without that book jacket, we may get very low sales indeed. I am sorry you feel this way. We’ll see what we can do when your next book is reprinted.”

The angry flush slowly died out of Patricia’s cheeks.

“Are you there?” asked Sue.

“Yes, yes,” said Patricia in a mollified voice. “You must understand I know little about marketing.”

“Leave it to us, Pat,” said Sue. “You’ll be a star.”

Patricia said goodbye and slowly replaced the receiver. Another book to be published. And what did it matter what they put on the cover? It was her work the public would be reading.

¦

Josh Gates awoke around his usual time, eleven in the morning. He remembered that Penelope was due to start filming that day. He smiled. He felt unusually well. Penelope had begged him to slow down on his drinking, and he only had a couple of pints the evening before. He was pleased with Penelope. The money was good, and this detective series would make her name. No more would people think of her as some sort of trollop.

Josh had strangely old·fashioned ideas. Films on Sky and cable television channels were full of writhing, naked bodies, but he ignored all that. Penelope taking off her clothes for anyone but him reflected badly, he thought, on his masculinity.

He had given his promise that he would not appear on the location. Penelope had hugged him and said that it would spoil her acting.

He wondered idly how to spend his day. He decided to go down to John Smith’s bookshop in St. Vincent Street and find something to read.

He crawled out of bed and picked up the clothes he had discarded the night before and put them on.

The bookshop, as usual, was crowded. He thumbed his way through several paperbacks and then, on impulse, asked an assistant whether he could look at the catalogue of forthcoming books.

She handed him an autumn catalogue, and he thumbed down the index until he found Patricia Martyn-Broyd’s name. He turned to the page indicated and found himself staring down at a full-page spread advertising The Case of the Rising Tides. The book jacket was there in all its glory. He glared at the naked photograph of his wife and let out a roar of, “Slut!” The bookshop assistants went calmly about their work.

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