“Yes, why shouldn’t she be? Look, Mrs Agnew, if you know anything about Miss Gunnery that bears any relation on this case, then it is your duty to tell me.”
“I know nothing that bears any relation to the murders. Nor does she.”
“Well, for heffen’s sake, woman, what’s the other thing that’s worrying her? I’ll find out, if not from you, then from anyone else that knows her!”
“Oh, if it stops you poking around…Poor Felicity has only a few months left to live. She has cancer and she should be back here attending the hospital.”
He stared at the phone receiver. Then he said slowly, “Was Miss Gunnery ever married?”
“No, no.”
He thought of Doris and Andrew, feeling with his mind for the right questions to ask, feeling blindly. “Was she effer in love wi’ anyone?”
“Really, Mr Macbeth – ”
“Chust answer the damn question!” he shouted.
“I do not see what it has to do with anything. Yes, a few years ago, when we were both teaching at Saint Charles, she fell in love with the geography teacher, a much younger man, and a married one, too.”
“So what came of it?”
“Nothing. The man was married.”
“Thank you, Mrs Agnew. I’ll get back to you if there’s anything else.”
He replaced the receiver.
Miss Gunnery, dying of cancer, disappointed in love. He would need to talk to her.
He left the police station and drove off to the boarding-house.
¦
Deacon came back shortly after Hamish had left, his face set in grim lines. “Did she confess, sir?” asked Maggie eagerly.
“Aye,” said Deacon bitterly. “The wee bitch confessed to lying to Tracey, and that’s all we’ve got. Back to square one. I’ll hae that lot back along here, one by one. But after I’ve had some tea. See to it, there’s a good girl.”
“Hamish Macbeth was here, sir,” said Maggie, fighting down a desire to scream at him to get his own tea.
Deacon, who had been walking away, swung round. “What did he want?”
“I don’t know. He used the phone in the interview room.”
“Who to?”
“He didn’t tell me.”
“We’ll have that one back as well. He’s not living up tae his reputation.”
Hamish Macbeth went into the lounge. They were all gathered there. He looked bleakly at all of them: June and Dermott and the children, Doris and Andrew, Miss Gunnery and Tracey.
He stood in front of the fireplace and then he said quietly to Miss Gunnery. “You’ve got some explaining to do.”
She gave a nervous laugh. “Oh, Heather told me about telling you about that lie. But no harm’s done. Cheryl’s confessed.”
“I haven’t heard from Deacon, but Cheryl only bragged to Tracey about committing the murders. If she sticks to her story, I’ll be surprised. So let’s say it wasn’t her. It wass the one of you.”
They stared at him, hypnotized.
“I’m going to speculate. Here’s what I think happened:
“Miss Gunnery, you have been disappointed in love, and that very disappointment made your eyes sharper than mine. You knew that Doris and Andrew were really in love, passionately in love. Harris was a hateful man. You longed to help. Quite what happened, I don’t know. But perhaps you came across Harris and tried to reason with him. He had a vile tongue. Did he insult you drunkenly and then turn away in contempt? Was that when you struck him with those arms strengthened by the years of tennis playing? Anyway, you left him to die in the water. Then you began to try to cover not only your own tracks by saying you had slept wi’ me, but you clumsily tried to protect Doris by using a wee child.
“You havenae long to live, Miss Gunnery, and I think that prompted you. By the time they found out anything, if they found out anything, with any luck you’d be dead. But you havenae helped anyone. All you’ve done is brought misery all round. Doris here is haunted wi’ the idea that Andrew might hae done it, and he sometimes worries about her.” He looked at Doris. “Isn’t that true?”
“Yes,” said Doris faintly.
“Then, as I see it, MacPherson turns up and starts to blackmail you, Miss Gunnery. He wouldnae have bothered trying to blackmail someone like Cheryl. So you stabbed him with the scissors on his desk. Luck was on your side. No one saw you. No one ever really sees you, Miss Gunnery. That was the story of your life, was it not? A shadow, a cipher, passed over and ignored. And the one time love came into your life, it had to be a married man who wouldn’t leave his wife.”
His voice had taken on an uncharacteristically cruel and jeering edge.
She put her hands up as if to ward him off. “I meant it for the best,” she said. “It was only for the best. Henry’s wife was a bully and a nag – ”
“Henry being the geography teacher.”
She nodded. Then she rallied. “You have no proof…no proof. Who’s going to believe you?”
Hamish sat down suddenly in a chair by the fireplace. “I’ll bet you have the proof hidden away somewhere,” he said in a tired voice. “It would be like you to keep something for insurance chust in case someone innocent was accused of the murder, someone other than Cheryl, that is. You wouldn’t care much about Cheryl. But you’re a romantic. You did it all for Doris and Andrew. Where you had failed in love, they must not fail. I must be losing my wits. June, take the kids away.”
June marshalled her brood and took them out. Hamish jerked his head at Dermott. “Go with them.”
He turned back and said almost pleadingly to Miss Gunnery, “You know me. I’ll dig and pester and dig and pester and I’ll neffer leave you alone. If you want Doris and Andrew to be free, then admit your crimes. You wanted to be found out, didn’t you? You sent me to see your friend in Cheltenham. You had probably told her not to tell anyone that your life was shortly to end. You didn’t show much interest in your cat, didn’t even ask me when I came back. Oh, you didn’t sit down and think, if I ask Hamish Macbeth to call in on Mrs Agnew in Cheltenham, he might find out something about me. It wasn’t as clear-cut as that. What stopped me from suspecting you was because I liked you and could see no motive. I remember saying to you that a motiveless crime was the best one. Then there was the death of MacPherson. It took some force to drive those scissors into his neck. I’d neffer really noticed the strength of your arms before. Then I remembered that photo of you and Mrs Agnew in your tennis whites.”
She got to her feet. “Your reasoning is hardly logical,” she said, “and as you know, there is no proof.” Her voice shook. “I will go to my room and lie down. All this has been too much for me.” She went out and Hamish could think of no concrete reason to stop her.
“It cannae be her,” wailed Tracey. “The only decent body who’s ever been kind tae me.”
“Are you sure, Hamish?” asked Andrew. “Why not phone Deacon and see if Cheryl has confessed?”
“She didn’t protest all that much,” said Doris. “If she’d been innocent, surely she would have shouted at Hamish and threatened to report him to his superiors. Then she did say she had done it for the best.”
Mrs Aston put her head around the door. “Coffee?” she asked brightly.
“Aye, that’ll be chust grand,” said Hamish.
“I’ll bring a tray in. I’ll put an extra cup on it for Miss Gunnery. Maybe she’ll be feeling like one when she gets back from the beach.”
Hamish jumped to his feet. “The what? She’s gone out?”
“I think she must have forgotten something. She went off running.”
“Didn’t Crick stop her?”
“He’s in the kitchen having his coffee.”
Hamish ran out of the room, out of the boarding-house and over the dunes to the beach. He looked right and left when he reached the beach and then out to sea. Far out, bobbing above the waves, he could see a head.
He stripped down to his underwear and plunged in and started swimming powerfully. The wind was rising and
