“Oh, I will. I won’t even tell my husband.”
“Okay, let’s just go through it again.”
¦
Hamish Macbeth gloomily finished his solitary meal in the Napoli. She could have got tied up with something, but the place over there was crawling with mobile phones. She could at least have phoned. He had been rejected all round, off the case, and stood up by Sheila.
But there was still something he could do for Patricia in his spare time. Somehow, somewhere, he would find someone who had seen her on the day of the murder.
¦
Eileen Jessop left Drim Castle after midnight, her eyes shining and her face flushed. That drive to Inverness with Ailsa had changed her life. She longed to tell Ailsa about what Sheila had said of the film, but she had promised Sheila not to breathe a word. She remembered all Sheila’s advice and comments. She would get all the women together and try again, making it glossier and sharper. Sheila had said that was not necessary, but it would give them all something to do while she waited to see if Sheila could sell the film.
As she approached the grim bulk of the manse, her heart sank. And then for the first time she wondered why she stayed married to Colin. She could just get in the car and drive away into the sunshine as she had driven down to Inverness with Ailsa, with the wind in her hair and the tape deck blasting.
¦
The next day Hamish put on his uniform and went out on his rounds. He had a feeling that Lovelace might call at the police station to make sure he was not slacking off. He drove over to Cnothan and started again to ask questions. The trouble was that Patricia’s cottage was outside the village and she did not need to drive through Cnothan to get anywhere.
He started at one end of the village and began knocking on doors, patiently questioning without success.
Cnothan stood on the edge of an artificial loch caused by an ugly hydroelectric dam. It consisted of one bleak main street which led down to the loch. The council houses were segregated on the other side of the loch from the main village, but the privately owned houses in the village were so drab and grey that they looked like the council ones. The people of Cnothan seemed to have been soured by their surroundings. All he got were curt, rude answers. The villagers had a capacity for making work. They were always rushing about doing nothing. “I’m too busy to speak to you,” seemed to be the standard reply.
In his zeal to find out where Patricia had been, he had quite forgotten he was poaching on Sergeant MacGregor’s territory until, on leaving one house at the top of the main street, he found the sergeant standing by the garden gate, glaring at him.
“Whit are you doing here?” demanded the sergeant.
“Can we go somewhere and talk?”
“Aye, come up to the house until we sort this thing out.”
Hamish thought Sergeant MacGregor’s house reflected everything that was worst about Cnothan. Even on this summer’s day, it felt cold.
The living room was still the same as the last time he had seen it, with its dreadful ornaments and overstuffed salmon-coloured three·piece suite.
“Now what’s this all about?” demanded Sergeant MacGregor.
“It’s like this,” said Hamish. “I have a quiet day today and I thought I might find out if anyone had seen Patricia Martyn-Broyd on the day of the murder. I should have called you first, but I did not think you would be wanting to waste your time with this sort of inquiry. In fact, I have to beg you not to report my visit here.”
“Why?”
“Blair has been suspended and Lovelace is in charge of the case, and he told me to butt out.”
“Lovelace!” MacGregor’s face darkened. “Thon bastard.”
“You know him?”
“Know him? I was off duty in Inverness five years ago and I nipped into a pub for a drink before I got home. I didn’t know Lovelace, so I didn’t recognise him. I got talking to a crony, had a few more. When I left the pub and got in the car, Lovelace and two coppers were waiting to Breathalyze me. He insisted on putting in a report, and I nearly lost my job. If that’s all you’re doing in Cnothan, you can go ahead. He won’t be hearing anything from me.”
“That’s good of you,” said Hamish with relief. Lovelace could certainly have handled that affair better. He could have strolled over to MacGregor in the bar and introduced himself, and MacGregor would have been out of there like a shot. Of course, it could be argued that MacGregor should not have been taking one nip over the limit, but still, it seemed an unnecessarily harsh way of doing things.
“Have you any idea where I might find out something about where our writer went that day, the day Penelope Gates was murdered?” asked Hamish.
“Haven’t a clue. Wait a minute. There might be the one person.”
“Who?”
“Scan Fitz is back on the road.”
Scan Fitzpatrick, known all over the Highlands as simply Scan Fitz, was an itinerant tramp, calling at doors to do small jobs in return for a cup of tea and a bite of food.
No one had seen him for the past two years.
“Where has he been?” asked Hamish.
“Don’t know. Maybe down south. But he’s your man.”
Hamish thanked him and set out to try to find Scan. Scan Fitz noticed everything and everybody on the road.
? Death of a Scriptwriter ?
8
—Sir Thomas Wyatt
Two days later, a good number of the village women who had acted in Eileen’s film were gathered in the manse.
For the first time, Eileen became aware that there was a sour atmosphere. Nonetheless she was determined that nothing was going to take the glow out of her achievement, even though she could not talk about it.
She stood up before them and cleared her throat. “There are a few mistakes in act one that need to be fixed. I thought we could film it again.”
There was an impatient, restless shuffling. Then Nancy Macleod stood up. “We cannae really be wasting any more time on your fillum, Mrs. Jessop. We’ve got other things to do.”
Eileen looked at her in surprise.
“You see,” said Holly Andrews, Ailsa’s friend, whose nose had been put out of joint because of the friendship which had grown up between Ailsa and the minister’s wife, “we all feel we’re wasting our time with an amateur film when we’re in the real thing.”
“But you are only in several of the crowd scenes in
“But Edie Aubrey got a speaking part,” said Nancy. “There’s a chance for us all tae be discovered.”
“Where is Edie?” asked Eileen. “And shouldn’t Alice be here as well?”
A hostile silence greeted her.
“So we’d best all be going,” said Nancy.
Eileen watched them all, with the exception of Ailsa, depart in silence.
As soon as she was alone with Ailsa, she asked, “What has gone wrong? Up till now they’ve all enjoyed acting for me. They said they’d never had so much fun.”
“They’ve been discontented for some time,” said Ailsa.
“I didn’t know that!”
