There was a shamefaced silence and then one woman said, “It’s kept under the doormat outside. Anyone could have got it.”
“There’s not much I can do, ladies,” said Hamish, “short of fingerprinting the whole village, and even then I doubt if I’d find the prints of the thief on the box. There’s probably only your fingerprints on it, Mrs Battersby.”
A small, angry-looking woman, Mrs Gunn, said, “I notice ye got a new microwave the last week, Mrs Battersby.”
“What are you saying?” squeaked Mrs Battersby. “Me, that’s worked so hard for Famine Relief, to take that money!”
“We won’t get to the bottom of this if you’re all going to maliciously accuse each other,” said Hamish sharply. “Now the money was all right on Sunday. This is Wednesday. Who’s been in the hall since then?”
“The Guides used it on Monday evening,” volunteered Mrs Wellington, “and the Boy Scouts on Tuesday evening.”
“Bessie Dunbar’s the Guide captain,” said Mrs Gunn, “and herself came back from Inverness ‘on Monday wi’ a new coat.”
“Enough!” roared Hamish, upset by the malice, upset by the fact that the usually indomitable Mrs Wellington had begun to cry. “I need a list of all the members of the Mothers’ Union. Willie, you start taking statements from those here. Mrs Wellington, go home and get a cup of tea or something and I’ll call on you later.”
By the end of the day, Hamish thought wearily that some of the murder cases he had previously worked on had been clean and innocent compared to the spite and malice roused by the theft of the Mothers’ Union funds. Everyone seemed eager to accuse everyone else. Any woman who had a new purchase of any kind was evidently suspect. He doggedly went round the village taking statement after statement, ending up at the manse with Mrs Wellington.
“This iss a bad business,” mourned Hamish. “I thought ye were all such friends, and now one’s accusing the other.” He turned on the minister, who was slumped in an armchair by the fire. “This village is in sore need of a lecture on common decency. I suggest you start thinking of them and less about yourself and give them a sermon about the wickedness of bearing false witness against their neighbour. I neffer thought to see the day in Lochdubh. If I believed in the devil, then I’d say he’d come among you!”
“Maybe he has,” said Mrs Wellington, scrubbing at her red eyes with a damp handkerchief.
“Havers,” snorted Hamish. “Where are the funds now?”
“Nobody trusts poor Mrs Battersby or anyone else,” said Mrs Wellington. “So I took what’s left to the bank and lodged it with the manager.”
Hamish asked a string of questions, trying to find out if anyone from outside had been seen in the village, but there was no one. There were guests up at Tommel Castle Hotel who had arrived on Sunday but none as yet had come down to the village, the guests having been out on the river on the colonel’s estate, fishing.
At last he made his way from the manse and then stopped in surprise outside the trim cottage owned by Jessie and Nessie Currie. A ‘For Sale’ sign was placed by the garden gate.
Now the sisters, although often a pain in the neck to Hamish with their frequent remarks that he was a lazy lout, were Lochdubh, as much a part of the scenery as the twin mountains which rose above the village, and the sea loch in front of it.
He had interviewed them earlier, for both, although spinsters, were members of the Mothers’ Union. He walked up to the door and knocked.
A lace curtain twitched beside the window and then there was a long silence. He knocked again. Jessie answered the door. “Oh, it’s yourself,” she said. “It’s yourself.” Jessie often repeated herself, like the brave thrush, as if she never could recapture the first fine careless rapture of her original sentences.
“You didnae tell me you were thinking of moving,” said Hamish.
“Why should we? Why should we?” demanded Jessie and then slammed the door in his face.
Hamish walked sadly away.
He was hailed by Dr Brodie. “I’m going to the pub for a dram,” said the doctor. “Care to join me?”
“Aye, I’d be glad to get the taste of this day out of my mouth.”
“I heard what happened,” said Dr Brodie. “First the morphine and then this theft of money and the only people who might have taken the stuff are Sean and Cheryl, but the drugs weren’t found on them and they were definitely out of the village when the money was stolen.”
“Everything’s gone bad and wrong,” mourned Hamish. “You should have heard these women, all hinting that one or the other one of them had stolen the funds. Jessie and Nessie Currie have put their house up for sale.”
“What?” The doctor stopped short in amazement. “Why? What’s happened?”
“I don’t know. Jessie answered the door but she wouldn’t talk to me. Everyone in this village has changed for the worse since Sean arrived.”
They walked into the bar. Dr Brodie bought two double whiskies and they sat down at a small table in the corner. The juke-box was belting out a country-and-western number which eventually twanged to a halt, leaving a blessed silence.
“Angela’s gone funny again,” said the doctor.
“But she’s been doing so well, studying for her degree,” said Hamish, “and she’s been so happy.”
“She’s gone edgy of late and she keeps asking me for money for clothes. Angela! I could have sworn Angela didn’t know what was on her back half the time. Do you know, Hamish, she came back from Inverness last week with a dress that cost three hundred pounds! Three hundred! I didn’t know there was a shop in Inverness that sold anything as expensive as that.”
“Oh, Inverness is a boom town,” said Hamish. “There’s all sorts of shops now. Maybe we’re behind the times. Maybe three hundred pounds is not an odd price for a frock.”
“Maybe not in Bond Street, but it’s a hell of a price to pay for something to wear around the hills and glens.”
“Is it a verra grand frock?”
“I’m no judge. It’s just black, and the only thing about it is that it’s got a Christian Dior label.”
“Are you worried she’s fallen in love with someone else?” asked Hamish.
“There can’t be anyone else. If you’re thinking of Sean Gourlay, forget it. Oh, she took the odd cake and things over to the bus, but then she’s like that. Always ready to welcome any newcomer to the village. But after the initial visits, she lost interest. There’s something secret and nervy about her. I got out my torch and examined her eyeballs in case she had been taking the drugs for herself.”
“Well, that’s enough to put any woman off her husband, for a start,” said Hamish.
“Aye, but I had to know. It’s not drugs. She’s plain miserable. One minute she’s all over me, and the next, she’s telling me to get lost.”
“Sean Gourlay…” began Hamish.
“Forget it,” sighed Dr Brodie. “Admit it, you’ve had a bee in your bonnet about that one since he came here.”
“But everything’s gone wrong since he came here,” protested Hamish. “Everything’s wrong, everything’s polluted. Mr Wellington’s lost his faith and is ranting rubbish from the pulpit which was written in the last century, and he doesn’t believe a word of it. Mrs Wellington’s a wreck, Jessie and Nessie are selling up, and the women at the Mothers’ Union are that spiteful, you wouldnae believe it. There’s something at the back of it all, and I mean to find out!”
¦
The next morning, Sean and Cheryl returned. The next afternoon, they had a public row on the waterfront. Cheryl called Sean every name under the sun. She was astride the scooter and had a rucksack on her back. The fluency of her obscenities amazed the villagers, the mothers clamping their hands over their children’s ears but continuing to listen themselves.
Shorn of obscenities, Cheryl’s complaint was that she was sick of the village and sick of Sean and she was leaving and she would not be back.
Sean shrugged and smiled lazily and then loped off with long strides, up towards the manse. Cheryl drove off on the scooter, put-putting her way out of Lochdubh, over the newly repaired hump-backed bridge, up the long road which led past Tommel Castle Hotel and out of sight.
One down, thought Hamish Macbeth savagely, and one to go.
