M.C. Beaton - Death of a Dreamer

Hamish saw them and said hurriedly, “Let’s get back to the police station.”

“Not so fast!” shouted Nessie.

“So fast,” echoed her sister.

Hamish groaned and stopped. “Young woman,” said Nessie, “they may have loose morals in the cities, but in Lochdubh, we are decent, God-fearing people.”

“I am Detective Robin Mackenzie,” said Robin, her fluting South Uist accent cutting through Jessies usual echo. “I arrived at the police station at six o’clock this morning to begin work. Now, what can I do for you?”

“Just came out to say welcome,” mumbled Nessie, and the twins bolted back towards their cottage.

“If the rest of the inhabitants are as deranged as that pair, I’m not surprised there have been two murders up here,” said Robin.

“They’re very nice women,” said Hamish defensively. He hated any of the inhabitants being criticised by outsiders.

They walked back to the police station. “I’ll fix us an omelette for breakfast,” said Hamish.

In the kitchen, Robin noticed that the cat and dog stared at each other for a long moment and then slouched out. “Where are they going?” she asked.

“Who?”

“Your cat and dog.”

“I don’t know,” said Hamish crossly, lifting the lid of the stove and dropping in slices of brown peat. He knew exactly where they had gone. They had gone back to his bed to continue sleeping, but he did not want to tell her that.

“I’m chust going out to get some eggs,” he said.

Bloody women, thought Hamish as he collected fresh eggs from the hen house. I’m surrounded by them.

He returned to the kitchen and began to beat up the eggs for an omelette.

Robin watched him. Her heart was sinking rapidly. She should be out there with the experts, not stuck in this kitchen with this lanky policeman and his weird cat and weirder dog.

The omelette was excellent but the coffee dreadful. She edged her cup aside.

“I’ll make us some tea,” said Hamish. “That coffee’s a disgrace, and so I shall tell Patel.”

“Is it instant?”

“Yes, it’s called High Mountain Blue. It was on special offer. I think it’s made from the sweepings on the floor after they’ve processed the real stuff. After we see Caro, the sister, I think we should pay a visit to the seer, Angus Macdonald.”

This is truly awful, thought Robin. I’m stuck with a copper who believes in clairvoyants.

Hamish saw the expression on her face and grinned. “Angus is an old fraud, but he bases his so-called predictions and insights on listening closely to gossip.”

Caro Garrard looked at them wearily when they arrived on her doorstep. “More questions?”

“Just a few,” said Hamish amiably. “May we come in? This is Detective Mackenzie.”

“Don’t be long,” Caro said. “I slept badly last night, and I was planning to go back to bed.”

They sat down round the work table. Hamish removed his cap. A sunbeam shone on the rich red of his hair. I wonder if he dyes it, thought Robin. She cleared her throat and took out her notebook.

She took Caro over everything she had told Hamish. Caro wearily replied to her questions. Then Robin asked, “Just how furious were you when you discovered she had been passing your art off as her own?”

“I was very angry,” said Caro. “Oh, it wasn’t just that. It was an accumulation of all her other troubles I’d had to put up with. I sometimes think I would be married now if she hadn’t messed things up for me. No, I didn’t kill her. That murder wasn’t done by someone in a hot rage. It was cold and calculating.”

♦

“I think she did it,” said Robin as they got back into the Land Rover.

“Why?” asked Hamish.

“She was calculating enough to initially hide the fact that she was not in Brighton but up here, having it out with Effie.”

“We’ll see.” Hamish drove in the direction of the seer’s cottage. He stopped the car at the foot of a hill and said, “We’ll need to get out and walk. His cottage is up there.”

Angus’s cottage was perched on the top of a hill with a winding path leading up to it.

The seer opened the door to them just as they arrived on his doorstep. “Come ben,” he said. “What have you brought me?”

Hamish had forgotten that Angus always expected a present. “I haven’t had time,” he said. “We’re in the middle of an investigation. Look, I’ll get you a salmon later.”

“A real one out o’ the river,” ordered Angus, “and not one o’ thae ones out o’ the fish farm.”

Robin looked around the living room curiously. It was a low-ceiling room with an armchair on one side of the fire and two ladder-back Orkney chairs on the other. There was a table covered with the remains of breakfast by the small window set deep into the thick stone wall. The air was scented with peat smoke from the smouldering fire. Angus put an old blackened kettle on a hook over the fire. Hamish knew the seer had a perfectly good electric kettle in the kitchen but used the old·fashioned way of boiling water to impress visitors.

Angus sat down in the armchair, and Robin and Hamish took the chairs on the other side of the fire. “And who is this young lady?” asked Angus, stroking his long grey beard.

“I am Robin Mackenzie,” she said. “I am a detective who has been sent up here to work closely with Constable Macbeth.”

“And hating every minute of it,” said Angus. “Poor wee lassie sitting there thinking, what am I doing stuck here with this loon?”

Robin’s face flamed. “Nothing of the kind.”

Angus heaved himself to his feet. “Kettle’s boiled. I’ll just get the cups and an ashtray for you, Miss Mackenzie.”

“I don’t smoke!”

“Yes, you do,” said Angus, disappearing into the kitchen.

Hamish looked amused. “Is he right?”

“I’m trying to give up,” said Robin. “Oh, what the hell.” She took offher jacket and, rolling up the sleeve of her blouse, ripped off a nicotine patch and threw it on the fire. She replaced her jacket, opened her handbag, and took out a packet of Bensons. Hamish watched hungrily as she lit one up. He had given up smoking a long time ago, but the craving for a cigarette had never quite left him.

Angus made tea and poured cups and then, when they were served, sat down again. “You’ve come about the murder of that artist,” he said.

Robin started. “So you think that was murder?”

“Oh, aye.”

“So who did it?”

Angus closed his eyes. “I see four people circling around her like the buzzards. I see…”

Robin leaned forward expectantly but the seer only emitted a gentle snore.

“Come on,” said Hamish. “We won’t be getting any more out of him today.”

♦

“Where now?” asked Robin.

Hamish stared down the hill to the village. “I see a mobile police unit has been set up. Time to visit Jimmy and see what he’s found out.”

As the Land Rover bumped over the heathery hill tracks towards the village, Robin wondered uneasily what Hamish had thought of the seer’s accurate reading of her thoughts. She was beginning to sense a sharp intelligence behind Hamish’s laconic manner and feared she had misjudged him.

“That remark of Angus’s about me thinking you stupid was not correct,” she said.

“Oh, it probably was,” said Hamish. “Don’t worry about it.”

He drove along the waterfront and parked in front of the mobile unit.

He and Robin mounted the shallow steps and went in. Jimmy Anderson was sitting behind a desk studying a computer. “You’re just in time, Hamish. What are you doing here, Robin?”

“Superintendent Daviot has asked me to work with Hamish.”

“He has, has he? Both of you come and look at this.” He handed them a computer printout.