M.C. Beaton: Death of a Witch

So Daviot told Blair testily that Hamish had nothing to do with it and it seemed to him as if a bunch of superstitious villagers had ganged together to murder Catriona Beldame.

If the atmosphere in the village had been bad before, now it was worse with everyone feeling they were under suspicion.

Hamish worried and worried over the fact that he had not searched the cottage for anyone – had not even sensed the presence of anyone.

He phoned Jimmy. “I’ve got nothing that can help you at the moment,” said Jimmy. “Forensics have been working all day on what’s left o’ the place. There’s one ray of sunshine.”

“What’s that?”

“There’s a new wee lassie on the forensic team. Keen as mustard. She’s having an uphill battle wi’ her beer-swilling, rugby-fanatical colleagues. But if there’s anything to find, she’ll find it.”

“Can you give me her name and home address?”

“Och, Hamish. Can’t you just wait? It’s just not the thing to call on a body at her home.”

“I cannae wait,” said Hamish. “I feel like such an idiot.”

“I don’t want to give her address. Try up at the witch’s cottage. She might be still there.”

♦

Hamish set out for the cottage. A great wind was tossing grey clouds over the sky. Buzzards wheeled above and a heron, its strong wings able to cope with the gale, sailed down and settled on a rock by the water.

Two television vans were already down on the waterfront, and he could see Blair’s posse of policemen going door-to-door.

One policeman was on guard outside the cottage, hunched against the wind.

“Is there anyone from forensics still inside?” asked Hamish.

“Aye, there’s a wee lassie from forensic.”

“I’ll just be having a word with her.”

The policeman barred his way. “Chief Detective Inspector Blair said nobody was to go in.”

“Aye, but he meant the press or the villagers,” said Hamish. He sidestepped round the policeman and went in, realising suddenly that as he was visiting the scene of a crime, he should have been wearing his blue coveralls. He retreated to just inside the doorway and called out, “Anybody here?”

A female voice called, “I’m out the back.”

Hamish went out and walked around to the back of the cottage. He had a sudden vision of the type of female forensic investigator he had seen on American TV programmes – slim and tall with long hair and high cheekbones. So it came as something of a disappointment to see a small dumpy figure, covered in a white suit, white hood, and white boots. She was searching diligently in the heather.

“Find anything?” asked Hamish. She stood up and pushed her hood back a little, revealing springy gold and red curls. Her cheeks were plump and rosy and she had large very blue eyes.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Hamish Macbeth. I’m the local bobby. And you are…?”

“Lesley Seaton, forensics.”

“I came up here,” said Hamish, “in the hope you might have found some reason for the cottage going up in flames. I found the body and then stood outside waiting for them from Strathbane to arrive. Then the cottage started to burn. What puzzles me is that I didnae sense anyone in the cottage.”

“I think I’ve found the reason for that,” said Lesley. “I’ve found faint ash traces in the heather going a bit back. Some of the roots are scorched. It’s my belief that someone lit a fuse.”

“Thank goodness for that,” said Hamish. “I thought I was slipping. Wait a bit. I didnae smell petrol or anything like that.”

“I think – mind you, this is only a preliminary investigation – that the fuse ran into a plastic bucket of wastepaper placed under the wooden kitchen cupboards. I think the kitchen wall was soaked in some sort of cooking oil. I’ve only traces of things, mind you. Oil had been poured under the bed. The flames must have shot through the kitchen wall into the bedroom. There was a paraffin heater in the kitchen. That would add to the blaze, and then there was one in the bedroom as well.”

“Any idea when she was killed?”

“I’ll need to wait for a report from the procurator fiscal,” said Lesley. “It’ll be hard to tell with the body being so badly burnt. But evidently there were two days’ uncollected milk on the step, so maybe she was killed two days ago.”

“What I cannae understand,” said Hamish, “is why then did the murderer wait so long to torch the place?”

“Maybe the murderer is some amateur who, once having murdered the woman, panicked. People see so many forensic programmes these days that they think someone will hold up a bit of hair a day later and say, “Aha, that’s the DNA of Jock McHaggis,” or whatever.” She sighed. “Little do they know.”

“Where are the rest of your team?”

Her face hardened. “They’re playing Braikie at rugby tonight so they’ve all gone off to get ready. I’ve got most of my samples so I think I’ll pack it in for tonight.” Her blue eyes twinkled. “Am I wrong in thinking that Mr. Blair is going to hate me when I produce evidence for this fuse? He’s chortling and rubbing his hands and telling everyone who’ll listen how Hamish Macbeth let a murderer get away from under his nose.”

“No, you’re not wrong. I hope it was a long fuse.”

“Not very long. With this springy heather, it’s hard to tell where it started but fortunately the back here is sheltered a bit from the wind. But farther away, the wind’s whipped off any traces and I can’t find anymore scorched heather roots.”

“Let me go back and see if I can see anything.” Hamish got down on his knees and, starting at the point where she said she had found the ash, began to crawl off through the heather. To his relief, the wind suddenly dropped in that erratic way it has in Sutherland. He crawled past the markers she had laid out to map the track of the fuse and carried on after the markers had run out. The clouds were still racing across the sky. A fitful gleam of sunshine sparkled on something ahead of him in the heather. He crawled forwards and gently parted the heather. He found himself looking at two metal clothes pegs and a squashed glue stick. “Come ower here and look at this,” he called.

She joined him. “I didn’t look far enough back. But I’ve an idea how the fuse could have been made.”

“How?”

“The recipe is one tablespoon of potassium nitrate, two to three spoonfuls of sugar, one glue stick, scissors, paper, and a plastic zip-lock bag. You mix the sugar and the potassium nitrate in the bag, fold a long length of paper into a V, smear the valley of the V with the glue, clip the corner of the bag, and pour the contents into the V. Pinch together and twist and fasten either end with a clip until it all sticks.”

“So we’re not looking for an amateur?”

“We still could be,” said Lesley.

“So where would an amateur buy potassium nitrate?”

“Off the Internet.”

“That’s hopeful.” Hamish brightened. “Anyone ordering the stuff would need to give a credit card number. They’d need to have a computer as well.”

“I shouldn’t think a place like Lochdubh has many computers,” said Lesley.

“Oh, a whiles back, there were these writing classes and a lot of folks got one. Mind you, I think most of them will be gathering dust, but it’s a start.”

Lesley gathered up the new evidence and put it in bags. “It would be wonderful if I could get a print off any of this,” she said. “I would also like the suggestion of a fuse leaked to the press.”

“Why?”

“Because a lot of your superstitious villagers think that either the fire was God’s retribution or the devil had come to claim his own.”