Death of a Nurse (9 page)

As Hamish rounded into the grimy street where Willie had his office, he found his way blocked by police cars and fire engines.

He got out and made his way forward to where Detective Inspector Blair was talking to the fire chief.

Blair scowled at Hamish. “What are you doing here?”

“Willie Dunne told me he had information about the murderer. He told me to call this morning. What’s happened here?”

“Too early to tell,” said the fire chief.

“And Willie Dunne?”

“Burnt to a crisp.”

“Murder?”

“Too early to tell.”

“Wait a minute,” roared Blair. “This is my case.”

Hamish stared at him for a long moment. Surely if anyone wanted to destroy Fiona’s reputation, it would be Blair.

“A word with you, sir,” said Hamish, walking a little away. Blair followed him.

“Willie was employed by someone to spy on Miss Herring,” he said.

“Rubbish!” roared Blair, turning a muddy colour. “Get oot o’ here, ye great daft gowk.”

He watched uneasily as Hamish walked away. Thank heavens everything in that office, including Willie, had been burnt to cinders.

Hamish drove up onto the moors. He needed peace and quiet to think. If it had been Blair who had employed Willie, and feared he had been found out, would he go to the lengths of murdering the man? Willie may have phoned Blair during the night and told him that he, Hamish, was on his trail. But murder?

Willie had been just the sort of creature to blackmail some of his clients. What if he had warned the murderer?

Any evidence that might have been in the office was now lost.

His phone rang. It was Fiona. “I have just heard the news about the fire.”

“On my road back from it,” said Hamish.

“You should have phoned me immediately. Go back to your station and I’ll meet you there.”

Hamish drove to Lochdubh as fast as he could. It was one of those rare balmy days when a mild west wind blew in from the Gulf Stream. The mountains soared up to a pale-blue sky. He longed for the case to be over.

Fiona was waiting outside the police station. There was no sign of Charlie.

“Where’s Charlie?” asked Hamish.

“I have sent him to Kinlochbervie. I asked him to man this station but when I checked, he was out walking those ridiculous pets of yours. He might be able to find out something the other policemen have missed.”

They walked into the police station where Hamish gave her a rapid report of his conversation with Willie.

“I think,” he concluded by saying, “that Willie was just the sort of lowlife to maybe blackmail his clients. So, say he knew something about someone that might lead us to the identity of the murderer. He was prepared to do that rather than give up the name of whoever asked him to spy on you.”

“Have you any idea who might have employed Willie to spy on me?” she asked.

Hamish hesitated only a moment before he said, “I cannae think o’ anyone, ma’am.”

He knew that if he said he suspected Blair, there would be a full enquiry. He would be asked to present all his suspicions and findings in triplicate and nothing would come of it.

Fiona took out her phone. “I’d better get headquarters to find out the identity of all phone calls to that hunting box last night.”

When she had finished, she said, “What on earth are you doing, Macbeth?”

“I’m lighting the stove, ma’am.”

“There’s no time for that. You get off and join Constable Carter. And don’t take your weird animals with you.”

He saw Fiona out and waited until she had been driven off, then made his way to his friend Angela Brodie’s house.

Angela was the doctor’s wife and an author. Hamish often wondered why she bothered to write anything at all because she seemed to hate the process so much. She was seated at a cluttered kitchen table where three cats prowled among the breakfast debris. One had its head in the milk jug.

She smiled at Hamish. “I’m glad to see you. Coffee?”

“No thanks,” said Hamish, reflecting that Angela was amazingly unsanitary for a doctor’s wife. “One of your cats has its head in the jug and another is licking the butter.”

“Shoo!” said Angela, waving her hands. “What do you want, Hamish?”

“I’ve left Sonsie and Lugs back at the station. I know they frighten your cats so I didn’t bring them. But if you could pop in from time to time and see they’ve got water and food.”

“All right. But they’ll probably go along to the restaurant kitchen and mooch something. How’s the case?”

“Dead, slow, and stop. What do you think of immigrants, Angela?”

“Apart from thinking occasionally that if you took all the Eastern Europeans out of Scotland, the hotels would be self-service, and if you took the Indians and Pakistanis out of the National Health Service, it would collapse?”

“Right. But a lot o’ folk complain so much about them that I’m inclined to lean too far the other way,” said Hamish. “Now, Juris and Inga Janson are called Latvians. But they are British citizens. In reaction to xenophobia, I haven’t been studying them that closely.”

Angela had been typing on a laptop at the table. With a sigh of relief, she closed it down and pushed a wisp of hair away from her gentle face.

“You have to ask yourself what the motive is,” she said. “Surely, money is the motive.”

“In that case, the one that had the most to lose,” said Hamish, “would be the son, Andrew, but he’s got a cast-iron alibi.”

“You always used to say that the ones with cast-iron alibis were suspicious. Oh, do get off, Flopsy.” Angela gently removed a fat cat from her computer and put it on the floor.

“Let me think,” said Hamish. “Andrew and his wife claim to have been guests of friends in Somerset the weekend of the murder. Maybe they got the friends to lie for them. I’ll check it out.”

As Hamish had expected, he found Charlie at the café. “It’s no use, Hamish. Everyone’s been interviewed over and over again and they’ve got nothing to add. Does anyone know what poisoned her?”

“Too early,” said Hamish, sitting down to join him. “Why are you banished from Fiona’s side?”

Charlie gave a massive shrug. “Don’t know. I think that detective scared her.”

“Did you hear about him being killed?”

“Yes, herself briefed me afore sending me off.”

“I wish I could get down to England and check out Andrew’s alibi.”

“I’ve got my computer in my car,” said Charlie. “We can find out their names and make a call. Say something like doubts have been cast on their alibi and the dire consequences of perverting the course of justice.”

They walked out to Charlie’s old Volvo, one of the long ones that looks like a hearse but is big enough to accommodate his height. They both climbed in. Charlie switched on his laptop and began to scroll through the notes. “Here we are,” he said. “Bunty and Jeremy Thripp. Who is going to phone?”

“I’ll have a try,” said Hamish, “because if Andrew gets to hear we’ve been checking up on him, someone’s going to get it in the neck and it may as well be me.”

Hamish took out his phone, squinted at the computer screen, and dialled a number. A woman answered. “Is that Mrs. Thripp?” asked Hamish.

“Yes, but I’m not buying anything.”

“This is Police Sergeant Hamish Macbeth from Lochdubh in Sutherland. You and your husband claim that Andrew Harrison and his wife were with you on the weekend a nurse who had been looking after his father was murdered.”

“Yes, that’s right,” she said. “Why are you asking again?”

“Someone has come forward,” lied Hamish, “with a suggestion that you may be guilty of perverting the course of justice by giving them an alibi. If this is true, you do realise you will be charged and maybe go to prison?”

“My lawyer will be in touch with you,” she shouted, and banged down the phone.

“No good?” asked Charlie.

“Says she’ll get her lawyer.”

“Are they tapping the calls at the hunting box?”

Hamish shook his head. “The inspector said she couldn’t get permission. But look at it this way: Why did she say she would get her lawyer? Why not honest outrage at the very suggestion? We’ll wait and see. If nothing at all happens, I’ll need to pluck up my courage and tell your inspector what I’ve done. Inaction would suggest guilt. And if it had been an innocent person getting that call, they would have surely asked for my phone number and called me back to make sure it was me. Finding it was someone on a mobile, she’d have hung up and called Andrew, who would then call Daviot.”

“What do we do now?” asked Charlie.

“Forget about the whole thing until the axe falls, if it’s going to fall. I know. Let’s go and see Dick Fraser at the bakery. No point in hanging around here. It’s half day in Braikie, so the shop’ll be closed.”

Dick and Anka welcomed them. Charlie’s clumsiness returned. He dropped his coffee cup on the floor and, bending over to retrieve it, fell on the carpet. As they all helped him up and Anka gave him a fresh cup of coffee, Charlie thought sadly that while he had been with the colonel or Fiona, he hadn’t broken anything at all.

Anka had been working on Internet orders and excused herself to go through to the office, leaving Hamish and Charlie with Dick.

Dick eagerly asked how the case was going. He listened carefully while Hamish talked. When Hamish had finished, Dick said, “I don’t think it can have anything to do with the son.”

“Why?” asked Hamish.

“Look at it this way. If Willie had the goods on someone, it must be someone in Sutherland. He’d hardly know anything about a London lawyer. This Juris: Did Gloria make a pass at him?”

“Yes, according to his wife, who threatened to kill her.”

“Or,” said Dick, folding his hands over his stomach, “it could be someone out of Gloria’s past in Strathbane. You think Willie might have been a blackmailer? Gloria liked money. Maybe she supplied him with the goods on somebody. Maybe no one’s dug into her background properly.”

“That’s a good idea,” said Hamish. “I just assumed that our inspector would have found out everything there was to know. Let’s see. Gloria worked in Strathbane Hospital before going into private nursing. I’d like to get down to that agency and see who she was taking care of before she got the job with old Harrison.”

“We’d better tell the inspector,” said Charlie cautiously. “I mean, we’re supposed to be in Kinlochbervie.”

“I’ll try anyway.” Hamish phoned Strathbane, but was told that Fiona and Jimmy were back at the hunting lodge. He phoned Fiona’s mobile and it went straight to the answering service. So he left a long message about where they were about to go and what they were about to do. He then switched off his own phone and told Charlie to do the same.

Charlie left his car at the police station and joined Hamish in the Land Rover. The sun was crawling reluctantly over the horizon as they drove into Strathbane. The agency, Private Nursing, was in a former villa near the hospital.

Before he rang the bell, Hamish said, “I’d like to interview the nurse that Gloria replaced. She may have known her.”

He pushed the round white bell set in brass by the door. It was opened by a thin woman with a haggard face. Hamish explained who they were and what they wanted.

“I am the secretary here, Alexandra Chisholm,” she said. “Come into the office.”

They followed her into what had once been a front parlour, now furnished only with a desk and computer, two chairs in front of the desk, and one behind it.

She waved a hand to indicate they should sit down and surveyed them with dark-brown suspicious eyes. “The nurse who originally looked after Mr. Harrison is one of our best, Harriet Macduff. Out of the blue, Mr. Harrison demanded Gloria Dainty. He said she was an old friend of the family and he had promised to keep an eye out for her. At that time, Gloria was nursing a Miss Whittaker and so Harriet took over her job and Gloria was sent to Mr. Harrison.”

“And where can we find Miss Macduff?” asked Hamish.

“Number five, Tomintoul Brae, just outside the town on the Lairg road.”

“What was your opinion of Gloria Dainty?” asked Hamish.

“She appeared to be a good nurse. She had been working at the hospital before deciding to go into private nursing. She seemed quiet and modest.”

“Did she have any boyfriends?” asked Hamish.

“No one who called here, and we definitely do not encourage that sort of thing.”

“Do you have a photo of her?” asked Charlie.

“There is a staff photo taken before she left to go to Mr. Harrison. Wait a minute.”

Alexandra left the room. “Why do you want to see her photo?” asked Hamish. “I know what she looks like.”

“Just an idea.”

Alexandra came back. She held out a photograph. There were ten nurses in the photograph. “Which is Gloria?” asked Hamish, puzzled.

“Second from the left in the front row.”

The Gloria in the photograph had brown hair. Like the other nurses, she was dressed in a dark-blue uniform with white collar and cuffs. She wore no make-up.

“May I take this?” asked Hamish. “I’ll give you a receipt.”

“Yes, if you think it will help you.”

Outside, Hamish said, “You’re a clever man, Charlie. Did you think she might have changed her appearance?”

“It crossed my mind. You said she looked like a fantasy nurse and I couldn’t see that agency letting her go around dressed like that. I wondered suddenly if there might be a connection to Willie Dunne. Gloria wanted money. Maybe she hoped someone elderly might pop off and leave her some. She finds out which nurse is looking after which client and maybe finds out Harrison is the richest by getting Willie on the job.”

“And,” said Hamish excitedly, “all she had to do is wait until it’s Harriet Macduff’s day off, go up there all blonded and tarted up. Harrison agrees to tell the agency she’s a friend o’ the family. Let’s go and see what Macduff has to say.”

Miss Whittaker lived in a large sandstone house with a short drive leading up to it, bordered by rhododendron bushes.

There was a large garage to one side of the house and a small Ford Escort was parked outside it.