“There’s a common factor there, Hamish. You’re normally so acute. You’ve missed it although it’s been staring you in the face all the time because you’re praying for some outsider to turn out to be the murderer.”
“And what’s the common factor?”
Priscilla tapped the paper with her pen.
“Money,” she said. “They all needed money. Perhaps not Mrs Wellington. But the rest badly needed money.”
? Death of a Travelling Man ?
7
—Shakespeare
Hamish looked down at the paper, his mind scurrying this way and that, trying to find a road away from the three women.
Then he gave a sigh and leaned back. “Aye, you’re maybe right. But Angela now, she was spending money on herself, not Sean.”
Priscilla tapped the paper again. “Drugs, Hamish. The missing morphine. And there’s another thing.”
“What’s that?”
“I called on Angela. She was wearing a black dress. I complimented her on it although I thought it made her look like a waiflike widow and she said uneasily that it had cost an awful lot of money, that it was a Dior.”
“So was it?”
“Yes, I should think it was – but a secondhand Dior.”
“How secondhand?”
“There were worn patches under the arms and although it was a simple style, it’s very short in the skirt and I would guess it was about twenty years old.”
“What are you getting at?”
“There are thrift shops in Inverness, Hamish, where a woman can buy a model dress for a few pounds and then tell her husband it cost a fortune.”
Hamish looked at her miserably.
“Now, Hamish, it may not be any of them, but you’ll never get to the bottom of it if you don’t start finding out why they all needed money. Sean must have been blackmailing them.”
“And Sean is dead and they’re all still worried, although the Currie sisters have decided to stay in Lochdubh,” said Hamish. “And they are worried, which means they think perhaps Cheryl or someone might have got their hands on the blackmailing material. I’m going back for another look at that bus.”
“I notice it’s still there,” said Priscilla. “Wasn’t there a mother or someone who was going to claim it?”
“Yes. Mrs Gourlay. She said she would be up next week to take a few things. She asked if anyone would want to buy the bus and I suggested she try Ian Chisholm at the garage. I’d better start work right away.”
“Could Willie help?”
“I doubt it. He’s really lovesick now. Lucia’s walking out with Tim Queen.”
“Oh, dear,” said Priscilla. Tim Queen was a handsome young man whose father owned the Lochdubh Bar.
“Aye, Willie skulks around after them, looking like a whipped dog.”
¦
Walking out was an old–fashioned pastime, but there was little else for a courting couple to do in Lochdubh. Lucia and Tim Queen were leaning over the bridge, looking down at the River Anstey. Lucia kept flicking little speculative looks at Tim from under her long lashes. He was tall and red-haired, with a square, pleasant freckled face. The Lochdubh Bar, once an extension of the Lochdubh Hotel, which was still awaiting a buyer, had been bought by Tim’s father in a separate sale and had been making a profit ever since.
Tim looked down at Lucia’s small red hands, which were resting on the parapet of the bridge, and then covered one of them with his own. Lucia snatched her hand away.
“What’s the matter?” asked Tim. “I was only holding your hand.”
“I am ashamed of my hands,” said Lucia, putting them behind her back. “They are so red. I would like soft white hands.”
“But that’s what I like about ye,” said Tim earnestly. “You’re an old–fashioned girl. I don’t like the young ones round here who slap paint all ower their faces and never do a day’s work and wouldnae know how to scrub a kitchen floor if you asked them.”
Lucia’s beautiful eyes became clouded with sad thought. “So you like a woman who does the housework, Teem?”
He slid an arm about her waist. “Yes, that’s my sort of girl. My friend, Johnny, over at Darquhart, just got married, and his wife, Darleen, well, she wanted a cleaning woman frae day one!”
“What is so odd about that?”
He laughed. “You silly wee thing, why should Johnny pay for a cleaning woman when he’s got a wife?”
She slid out from his arm and looked about. “Why, there is Constable Lament,” she cried.
She was looking at a stand of trees beside the river. Tim could not see anything.
But Lucia waved and sure enough, Willie eased out from behind a tree. “Do not bother to walk back with me, Teem,” said Lucia gaily. “See, I am safe with my policeman.”
And Tim never knew what he had said wrong.
¦
Hamish collected the keys to the bus from the police station and then strode up to the field behind the manse. Sean’s presence still seemed to be around the place. He had a superstitious feeling that he was still in the bus and would laugh at him when he opened the door.
The day was warm and overcast, with great clouds of midges dancing on the muggy air.
He unlocked the door of the bus and climbed inside.
Everything was as the forensic team had left it and as he had last seen it. He began to search methodically, but wondering all the time what he could find that an experienced forensic team had missed. He even opened packets of coffee and bags of sugar in the hope of discovering something hidden in them. He worked for hours and did not find one thing.
He sat down miserably on a bench at the side of the table and looked dully at the blank screen of the small television set. There were videos piled up in a heap at the end of the table. As a last hope, he slid them out of their packets. They were mostly of the brutal sex-and-violence kind, but nothing under the counter, nothing illegal. He sighed. Then suddenly a little picture came into his brain, a picture of Sean striding along the waterfront with that easy athletic pace of his, carrying a video camera. He looked wildly around. There was the television, there were the videos, there was the video recorder, but no camera. But Patel rented one out.
The bus was still hitched up to the manse electricity. He switched on the television set and began to feed the videos into the machine, fast-forwarding them through a series of murders and rapes and general mayhem. The weather was clearing outside and yellow sunlight suddenly flooded the interior of the bus. Children’s voices drifted in along with the other homely sounds of the village, a different world from the misery of filth and violence which was flickering in front of him.
He ejected the one he had scanned through and put in another called
