Hamish Macbeth 02 (1987) - Death of a Cad (18 page)

He held out his hand, and Priscilla slipped her own into it. She looked into his eyes, wanting to tell him all her worries about Henry, about the engagement, and yet feeling it would be disloyal to Henry to discuss him with another man.

“Sorry to interrupt,” came a sarcastic voice from the dining-room door.

Hamish dropped Priscilla’s hand as if it were a hot brick and turned about.

Anderson was standing in the doorway.

“Chalmers sent me to get you,” he said. “There’s been another murder.”

“There
can’t
be,” gasped Priscilla. “Did Freddy escape?”

“It wasn’t Freddy,” said Anderson heavily. “Mr Forbes-Grant’s secure in prison in Strathbane. His wife’s been murdered.”

“Vera!” cried Priscilla, hanging on to the table. “How?”

“Poison. Someone poisoned her.”

Thou shall not kill, but needs not strive,

Officiously to keep alive.

 

—arthur clough.

T
his gets more like a Hammer horror movie every day,” grumbled Henry Withering.

No-one answered him. They were all huddled in the drawing room, listening to the footsteps of the police moving about upstairs in Vera’s bedroom.

“How do they know it’s poison?” whispered Priscilla in Henry’s ear.

“Don’t ask me. Suppose you’ve only got to look at her. The whole thing’s awful. There was a body hanging in the room as well.”

“A body!” squeaked Priscilla.

“Not a real one. Someone had made a pretty lifelike dummy and even embellished it with a handlebar moustache and strung it up over Vera’s bed.”

Pruney, who had been crying off and on since Priscilla’s return home, started to sob again, an irritating snuffly sound.

“Let’s go outside,” said Henry. “They can fetch us for statements when they need us.”

Outside the castle, a wind was rushing through the rhododendrons that bordered the drive. A small moon sailed high above through black ragged clouds.

“I have to ask you this,” said Henry. “I know there’s been another murder, and we’re all shocked and all that…but what the hell were you doing dining out with that copper and all dolled up in heels and a party gown?”

“I had to get away,” said Priscilla. “You don’t understand, Henry. I said I would meet Hamish for dinner because he’s, well, an old friend and comfortable to be with. I knew it wasn’t the thing to do and I was going to cancel the evening, but then you came out with this press-conference business, and I couldn’t
bear
it. I just wanted to run away. Henry, how
can
you go on forcing me on the press, just to see a few more grainy photos of yourself and me on the front page?”

Henry sighed. “You’re very young, Priscilla,” he said, unconsciously echoing Hamish. How could she know, he wondered, about the long years of wanting to be recognized, of knowing you could write and seeing the fame go to lesser people? She treated his experiences with the Communists with tolerant amusement, as if his interest in them had been some sort of fashionable fad. But they had cared for him and they had believed in his work, thought Henry, with a sudden longing for the old days of cold rehearsals and chipped teacups in draughty halls. He was famous now, but he missed the camaraderie of the experimental theatre groups and the occasional mothering laced with unselfish love from intense young girls who were prepared to die on the barricades to change the world.

He sighed again. Sometimes it was hard to know what
was
the real world. For a moment at the crofters’ fair, he had felt sure he had found his niche in life at last. He had felt he belonged. Now, it all seemed as if he had been taking part in some brightly coloured sort of
Brigadoon
.

Instead he said, “You’ve got to stop running around with that copper, Priscilla. Do you want to break our engagement?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know,” said Priscilla wretchedly. “Mummy and Daddy were so pleased.”

“Do you mean to say you only got engaged to me because you thought I was suitable? You’ll be wearing a crinoline next.”

“I can’t explain, Henry,” said Priscilla. “Right at this moment I don’t know what I think. Who on earth killed Vera?”

“She might have done it herself.”

“It doesn’t seem possible. She was actually proud of what she thought Freddy had done.”

“Meaning you don’t think Freddy did it?”

“Well, Hamish doesn’t.”

Henry drew a deep breath.

“Until you make up your mind to break the engagement, do me a favour and keep that man’s name out of our conversation.”

“It happened quite early on in the evening,” Chalmers was saying to Hamish at that moment as they both stood in Vera’s bedroom. The body had been taken off to Strathbane.

“It seems she went up to her room about seven and started screaming the place down. Everyone rushed up. Vera was gabbling and pointing at that dummy strung up over the bed. She rounded on the others and accused them all of playing a nasty trick, ordered them out, and locked herself in. About eight o’clock, that Diana went up to her room and passed Vera’s on the way. She said she heard scrabblings and choking noises. Asked why she didn’t call for help, she said she just thought Vera was carrying on to get attention. The guests and the Halburton-Smythes are now convinced she took her own life. I can’t look at it that way. I think we’ve got the wrong man in prison in Strathbane, and that someone else killed Bartlett and then killed Vera because she knew something.”

“Maybe she did,” said Hamish. “She liked money. Maybe she was blackmailing the murderer. What was she eating or drinking?”

“Tea and cakes. There was nothing left on the cake plate but crumbs, and those and the dregs from the teapot have been taken away for analysis.”

“She had a terrible sweet tooth,” said Hamish. “If anyone wanted to poison some cakes—well, we were all down in the school kitchens baking like mad and passing round bowls of stuff to be beaten and putting trays in the ovens.”

“We’d better get down there and have a look and hope they’ve left the cleaning up until the morning.”

Hamish and Chalmers hurried out to the police cars. Henry was just coming in with Priscilla. He had an arm about her waist. Priscilla avoided looking at Hamish.

The headmistress of the primary school refused to open her door, claiming they were only masquerading as policemen and she had read about thugs like them.

“It’s me, Mrs Mackenzie,” called Hamish. “Macbeth! Take a look through the letter-box.”

The letter-box was cautiously poked open. Chalmers flicked a lighter under Hamish’s face.

There was a squeak of alarm and the metal flap of the letter-box dropped. “Hamish Macbeth,” came Mrs Mackenzie’s shaky voice, “does not own a dinner jacket.”

“Mrs Wellington’s got a spare key,” said Hamish. “We’ll try the manse.”

Mrs Wellington was wearing a voluminous flannel nightgown when she answered the door. Hamish was glad Mr Wellington had found God, because it certainly looked as if he would need to wait until he got to heaven to get his reward. She went back in and emerged wrapped in a large tweed coat, produced the key, and insisted on accompanying them.

One look at the school kitchen was enough to tell both Chalmers and Hamish that they would be lucky if they found one fingerprint. Tables were scrubbed and counters were shining.

Hamish fished in the pocket of Uncle Harry’s dinner jacket and took out his notebook, glad he had transferred it into the pocket with his other bits and pieces before he went out for dinner.

He licked the end of his pencil and then began to write in meticulous shorthand as Chalmers asked Mrs Wellington to remember where everyone was standing and what they were doing.

But Mrs Wellington was one of those bossy women to whom the very rapping out of orders is an end in itself. She had barked at people to do various things and then had moved on to bully someone else without waiting to see whether her orders were carried out or not.

Nonetheless, Chalmers persisted with his questions as the night wore on and a rising wind soughed about the schoolhouse with a lost, wailing sound.

When Chalmers had at last finished, Hamish asked, “Do you mind if we see the cupboards where you keep your cleaning materials and things like that?”

“I am very tired,” said Mrs Wellington, “and I see no reason…oh, very well. They’re over here, underneath the sinks.”

Mindful of Uncle Harry’s trousers, Hamish took out a clean handkerchief, spread it on the floor, knelt down and poked his red head into the cupboards. Then he suddenly stiffened and appeared to point like a dog.

He eased the handkerchief out from under his knees and draped it over one hand. He reached into the cupboard and brought out a cylindrical cardboard container with the label Buggo. He read the list of ingredients carefully and then opened the lid.

“Empty,” he said. “This is roach powder. I haff never heard of the cockroaches being in Loch-dubh.”

“It was that American lady, Mrs Fitzgerald, who left it,” said Mrs Wellington. “You remember her, Mr Macbeth, the one who turned up at the Loch-dubh Hotel for her holidays two years ago with a suitcaseful of mosquito repellent, disinfectant flea powder, ant spray—the works. She gave that roach powder to Mrs Mackenzie for the school kitchen.”

“And did she use it?” asked Hamish, sitting back on his heels.

“I don’t know. Ask her.”

“You’d better come along with us. She thinks we’re muggers pretending to be policemen.”

“What are you getting at?” said Chalmers.

“Mrs Forbes-Grant loved cakes,” said Hamish. “Everyone knew that. She was eating all she could in the kitchen this morning. Someone may have made a special batch of cakes, just for her, and put something like this roach powder in them. This powder contains, or did contain when the box was full, sodium fluoride. There were cake crumbs found in her room.”

“We’d better get a box and take everything,” said Chalmers heavily, “disinfectants, cleaners, the lot.”

Mrs Wellington persuaded Mrs Mackenzie to open her door. Mrs Mackenzie blinked at the packet of roach powder.

“I mind that American lady giving it to me,” she said. “I didnae like to disappoint her by saying we didn’t have any roaches. I just put it under the sink with the other stuff.”

“And you never used it?” asked Chalmers.

“No. I did not have any reason to.”

Carrying the box with the contents of the school-kitchen cupboards, Chalmers and Macbeth made their way back to their cars.

“That murderer must be laughing at us,” said Chalmers bitterly. “Not content with poisoning Vera Forbes-Grant, he, or she, put that grisly dummy up above the bed first.”

“Och, no, that was done for different reasons.”

“Who did it?”

“I should think that terrible pair, Jessica and Diana. It’s funny, when I first saw them I thought they were a typical couple of country girls. Now I think they’re silly and vicious. I’m sure they strung up that dummy.”

“Why? the woman had just seen her husband accused of murder.”

“Because Vera had an affair with Bartlett, and they’re still jealous of her. Because Vera probably milked the last little bit o’ drama out of our accusing her husband.”

“Or maybe you’ll find we were meant to discover it was them who played the dirty trick on her. That way, we might not suspect them of the murder.”

Priscilla Halburton-Smythe thought the night would never end. One by one they were called into the colonel’s study to make their statements, and each person seemed to be gone an hour. By the time it was Priscilla’s turn, she was too exhausted to think clearly. She felt she was living in a nightmare where she was doomed to sit in this study, making statements to the police over and over again. Hamish, still in evening dress, was sitting over by the window. He looked elegant and remote. She wished he were wearing his usual scruffy old clothes or worn uniform. He did not look like the Hamish she knew.

At last she was dismissed. Henry was waiting for her at the foot of the stairs.

“How did it go?” he asked sympathetically.

“As usual,” said Priscilla bitterly. “I’m an old hand at making statements.”

“Well, I’ve made mine, and dawn is breaking. Let’s go to bed.”

Priscilla looked at him warily. “Look, darling,” he said, “surely this is not the night to play the prude.”

“Henry, the last thing on my mind at this moment is sex. I don’t believe for a moment that Freddy shot Peter. I think the murderer is one of us—or the murderess. The only thing I’m taking to bed tonight is a hot-water bottle.”

“Very well,” he said coldly. “But it’s beginning to appear to me as if there’s every possibility of this rubbish going on after marriage. You may be lousy in bed for all I know. In a way, you’re asking me to buy the goods before I see them.”

Priscilla clutched hold of the banister. “Perhaps you’re right,” she said wearily. “But I am still going to my room alone and I am locking the door behind me.” She turned and went up the stairs.

“I suppose if that village bobby comes knocking, you’ll open your door, and your legs, soon enough,” he shouted after her.

Priscilla put her head down and ran up the remaining stairs. She collided with the solid bulk of Lady Helmsdale.

“What were you doing in my room?” cried Priscilla.

“I was looking for an aspirin,” said Lady Helms-dale.

Although Priscilla was tall, Lady Helmsdale seemed to loom over her in the darkness of the corridor.

Lady Helmsdale had pale eyes and they were fixed on Priscilla’s face in an unnerving stare.

Fear gripped Priscilla. She realized she had never really known Lady Helmsdale. In fact, what did she know of any of the guests, even Henry?

She gave a choked sob, pushed past Lady Helms-dale into her room, and slammed and locked the door.

But although she undressed, got into bed and clutched the hot-water bottle, she could not seem to get warm.

A timid knock at the door made her heart leap into her mouth.

“Who is it?” she called.

“It is I—Pruney.”

“Pruney, I’m exhausted. Is it very important?”

“Yes.”

Priscilla sighed. She climbed out of bed and opened the door.