M.C. Beaton - Death of a Scriptwriter

“Anyway, type up your report. Blair will be with you later.”

The phone rang shrilly. Hamish picked it up. Blair’s truculent voice asked for Daviot, and Hamish passed the receiver over.

Daviot listened and then gave an exclamation and said, “That’s great. Good work. It looks as if we’ve got our man. We’ll have this wrapped up today.”

Daviot rang off. “Blair’s had a call from the police in Glasgow. Two policemen heard Josh Gates, the husband of Penelope Gates, who stars in the series, shouting in the middle of St. Vincent Street, “I’ll kill him.” It turns out he was well-known in the business for blowing his top over his wife’s various sexy roles. He’d been in Smith’s bookshop and asked to see the catalogue of forthcoming books. Then he shouted, “Slut,” and bought an ordnance survey map of this section of Sutherland. The bookseller’s assistant said the catalogue was left open at a book illustration of The Case of the Rising Tides , showing his wife naked on the cover. We’ll find him.”

♦

Hamish typed up his report, feeling irritated and isolated. He itched to know what was going on. Had Josh Gates really committed the murder? If he had, he was probably in hiding somewhere.

He wondered if Patricia had heard the news. Surely she was bound to have heard about the murder by now. And where was Angus Harris?

It was eight o’clock in the evening by the time Jimmy An-derson called. His long nose was red with sunburn.

“Filed your report?” asked Jimmy, sitting down wearily.

“Sent it to Strathbane ages ago,” said Hamish. “The wonder o’ computers.”

“Well, this case is nicely wrapped up. Got a dram?”

They were in the kitchen. Hamish went to the cupboard and brought down a bottle of cheap whisky. He knew Jimmy of old and was not going to waste good malt on him. “So was it Josh Gates after all?”

“Yes, it was him.”

“Confessed?”

“No, dead as a doornail when they got him.”

“So how do they know he did it? What did he die of?”

“We’re waiting for the pathology report, but it looks as if he got drunk and choked on his own vomit. He was lying up on the hill a little bit beside the road outside Drim. One of the locals found him.”

“So how do they know it was him?” asked Hamish impatiently.

“He had blood on his hands. They’ll need to check the DNA. But we’re pretty sure it’ll turn out to be Jamie’s blood.”

“What’s the wife saying to this?”

“She says he had a violent temper and that after the series was over, she was going to leave him.”

“It’s all too convenient,” muttered Hamish. “What happens now with the TV series? Cancelled?”

“No, I gather Harry Frame considers it all wonderful publicity. They’re all returning briefly to Glasgow to recoup, get another scriptwriter.”

“Why another? Hadn’t Jamie written all the scripts?”

“He’d written the first two and the bible – that’s the casting, story line, setting, all that – but they’ll need someone or several to work out the remaining scripts, or maybe change the first ones. That Fiona King says Jamie’s work was crap.”

“So she’s still got her job?”

“Didn’t know she had been fired.”

“Aye, Jamie got her fired. An ambitious woman, I think.”

“Och, we don’t need to worry about her or anyone else. Thank God it’s all tied up. Thon place, Drim, gies me the creeps.”

Hamish looked at him thoughtfully. He had an uneasy feeling it was all too pat. Yet Josh had been found dead with blood on his hands. But why should he have blood on his hands? If he had struck Jamie on the back of the head with a rock or a bottle or anything else and he were close enough, blood might have spurted on his clothes, but not his hands.

“Just supposing,” said Hamish slowly, “Josh came across Jamie’s body when the man was already dead. You’d think with that wound in the back of the head that he would be lying facedown in the heather. Josh wants to make sure he’s dead, so he turns him over on his back and that’s how he got the blood on his hands.”

“Who cares?” Jimmy finished his whisky and put the glass down and rose to his feet. “It’s all over.”

♦

Soon Drim was emptied of television crew and actors and press. As if to mark their departure, the weather changed and a warm gust of wind blew rain in from the Atlantic and up the long sea loch of Drim. The tops of the mountains were shrouded in mist. Damp penetrated everything, and tempers in the village were frayed.

Excitement and glamour had gone. Only two determined women attended Edie’s exercise class, and Alice’s front parlour, which she used as a hair salon, stood empty.

Mr. Jessop, the minister, thought he should feel glad that the ‘foreign invasion’ had left, but he felt uneasy. Everyone seemed to be squabbling and discontented.

He felt his wife was not much help in running the parish. Eileen Jessop, a small, faded woman, never interested herself in village affairs. It was her Christian duty, he thought sternly as he watched her knitting something lumpy in magenta wool, to do something to give the women of the village an interest.

“What can I do?” asked Eileen, blinking at him myopically in the dim light of the manse living room. Mr. Jessop insisted she put only 40-watt bulbs in the sockets to save money.

“You could organise some activity for them,” said the minister crossly. “Weaving or something.”

“Why would they want to weave anything?” asked Eileen. “The women buy their clothes from Marks and Spencer. And I don’t know how to weave.”

“Think of something. You never talk to any of the women except to say good morning and good evening. Get to know them.”

Eileen stifled a sigh. “I’ll see what I can do.”

♦

It started more as a venture to keep her husband quiet. The next day Eileen plucked up her courage and went down to the general store, where Ailsa was leaning on the counter and filing her nails.

“What can I do for you, Mrs. Jessop?” asked Ailsa.

“I was wondering whether I could organize anything for the village women,” said Eileen timidly. “Perhaps Scottish country dancing, something like that.”

“We all know fine how to dance,” said Ailsa. She gave a rueful laugh. “They were all hoping for parts in the fillum, that they were, and now they all feel flat.”

And then Eileen found herself saying, “It’s a pity we couldn’t make a film of our own.”

“A grand idea, Mrs. Jessop, but – ”

“Eileen.”

“Eileen, then. A grand idea, but what do any of us know about filming?”

“My husband has a camcorder,” said Eileen, “and I could get some books and maybe write a script. I was in my university dramatic society, and I wrote a couple of Scottish plays.”

Ailsa looked in surprise at the minister’s wife, at her grey hair and glasses and at the jumble of shapeless clothes she wore. “Funny,” she said, “I cannae imagine you being in any amateur dramatic society.”

“That was before I married Mr. Jessop, of course,” said Eileen, thinking treacherously of how marriage to a bad-tempered and domineering man had crushed the life out of her over the years. “What do you say, Ailsa? Mr. Jessop is going to Inverness this evening. We could have a meeting in the manse if you could round up some people who might be interested. There are some crowd scenes in the play. We could end up using everyone in the village.”

Ailsa suddenly smiled, and her blue eyes sparkled. “You know, that would be the grand thing. What time?”

“Seven o’clock?”

“Fine, I’ll see you then.”

♦

Mr. Jessop looked amazed and then gratified when his wife told him she was going to make an amateur film using the people of the village as actors.