M.C. Beaton - Death of a Dustman

“Josie, why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“It didn’t seem important.”

“If there’s any other little thing, you’ve got to let me know.”

“Sure.” She batted her heavily mascaraed eyelashes at him. “Would you like a drink?”

“No, thank you. I’ve got to get going.”

Hamish had a feeling of having escaped from something.

Somewhere in this village, he thought, was someone sitting on an important clue, and they didn’t even know it. The whole village of Lochdubh would just need to be interviewed again.

Jimmy Anderson sent three constables over to Lochdubh to help Hamish. They all plodded from house to house until, at the end of a month, there was a large folder of new reports, all containing nothing of any importance at all. “You’ll just need to face up to it, Hamish,” said Jimmy. “You can’t win them all. I thought you were onto something with Elspeth MacRae, but she seems pretty clear apart from withholding information.”

♦

As the dark winter nights settled down over Lochdubh and the mountains turned white with snow, Hamish would sit in the police office at night, making notes, studying what people had said, hoping always to find something important he might have missed.

One afternoon the phone rang. It was Clarry. “The hotel’s closing down for a couple of weeks,” he said cheerfully. “Priscilla’s back.” Hamish’s heart gave a treacherous lurch. “And Martha and I were just thinking we hadn’t seen you for a bit. I asked Priscilla if she’d like to pop round for dinner tonight and she said yes, so I said I would try to get you as well.”

Hamish accepted with delight. When he replaced the receiver, he happily pushed away the reports he had been studying and went to prepare himself for the evening ahead.

When he went out fine snow was whipping down the waterfront. He was dressed in his one good suit, tie and clean white shirt. He decided to drive, and so he put Lugs in the passenger seat and set off.

Priscilla was already there when he arrived. The children gave Lugs a rapturous welcome. How different it all was, thought Hamish, looking around. There were pictures on the walls and the cherry red carpet from Angela on the floor. There was the exotic smell of good cooking coming from the kitchen. Martha had her hair cut in a new short style, which made her look years younger. Hamish flicked a quick glance at Priscilla’s hands. No rings.

While Clarry went to get them drinks, Priscilla said, “I hear you’re back investigating the murder. Do you still think Angus was murdered by someone else?”

“I don’t know,” said Hamish, taking a glass of whisky from Clarry. “I questioned everyone in the village all over again, and I can find nothing.”

“What will Kirsty do?” asked Martha. “She can’t go on running that croft single-handed, and with this snow, things are going to be rough for her.”

“The other crofters will help,” said Hamish. “And I think the bank’s probably going easy on the overdraft for the moment. How long are you here for, Priscilla?”

“I’ll be here over Christmas. It’s the one good thing about being a freelance computer programmer: When a contract finishes, I can take time off.”

“I’d better have another word with your father. Is he home? I’ve tried several times, but he’s always been away.”

“He’s here at the moment. Oh, he’ll be so furious if all that’s dragged up again.”

The conversation then became general, about village affairs. Clarry sat beaming all round, the baby on his knee.

When they were sitting round the dining table, which had to be cleared first of toys and paint books, and eating excellent roast beef, Martha said, “I might call on Kirsty.”

“I didn’t know you were friendly,” said Hamish.

“I wasn’t friendly. I mean, when Fergus was alive, I wasn’t friendly with anyone. But we had a lot in common.”

“How’s that? No, Lugs,” said Hamish severely, as the dog put a paw on his knee. “You’ve had your supper.”

“I’ve got a nice marrow bone for him,” said Clarry, getting to his feet. “I’ll get it for him now, and that’ll keep him quiet.”

Hamish turned his attention back to Martha. “What do you mean, you’ve got a lot in common?”

“Well, we had, rather.”

“Tell me about it.”

“It was one day, a couple of months before Fergus was murdered, I was down at Patel’s. I had a black eye, and people had given up asking me about things like that, because I always said things like I had walked into the door. But Kirsty followed me out and said, ‘My marks don’t show. He’s too clever for that.’

“I pretended not to know what she meant because being secretive had become a way of life. But she rolled up her sleeves and there was a great burn on her arm. “He did that with the iron,” she said. So it might help if I talked to her. Because even though her man is dead, it takes a while to get over things like that. Clarry came up behind me in the kitchen only a month ago, and he raised his arm to get something down from the shelf, and I screamed and threw up my hands to cover my face.”

Hamish slowly laid down his knife and fork. “Martha, along with everyone else in this village, I’ve been asking and asking if anyone had any information that might shed light on Angus’s murder, and all you did was shake your head.”

“I didn’t think,” said Martha nervously. “I mean, there’s a sort of freemasonry among battered wives. You don’t talk about it. I mean, she’s the victim. What has that to do with murder?”

“I’d better see her in the morning if the snow allows me to get up there.”

Clarry, who had given Lugs the bone, looked anxiously at Martha’s strained face. “Can we talk about something else at the moment, Hamish? I don’t like her reminded of the bad times.”

Priscilla promptly weighed in, telling funny stories about awkward guests they had suffered at the hotel. Hamish forced himself to put the case out of his mind and the evening ended pleasantly.

When Priscilla and Hamish walked out, the snow had stopped. “Will you get home all right?” said Hamish.

“I’ve got snow tyres on the car,” said the ever-efficient Priscilla. “I heard the weather forecast.”

“When will I see you?” asked Hamish. His breath came out in the cold air like smoke and hung between them.

“I’ll take you for dinner tomorrow night,” said Priscilla. “The Italian’s. Eight o’clock?”

Hamish grinned. “I’ll be there.”

♦

In the morning he checked on his sheep, checked on his hens, and returned to put on his uniform and then go and talk to Kirsty. He opened the kitchen door and found the banker’s wife, Fiona McClellan, standing on the doorstep.

“There’s something’s come up you should know about,” she said.

“Come in. Have the roads been gritted?”

“Yes, as I came along the gritter was going along the waterfront.”

“So what have you got for me?”

“It’s only a little thing, and my husband would be furious if he knew I had been discussing bank business.”

“Go on.”

“He never tells me anything about people or their accounts, but I’ve been thinking and thinking about Angus’s murder, and I said last night, “That poor crofter’s wife, Kirsty. I gather she’s in financial trouble.” And he snorted and said, “She could buy and sell us.” So I asked him what he meant, and he said, “She’s just deposited a cheque for two hundred and fifty thousand pounds.””

“Where did she get that sum of money?” asked Hamish. “I’ve got to know.”

“He said her premium bonds had come up. He said she had only a hundred pounds of premium bonds, and we have ten thousand, and yet we never win anything like that.”