M.C. Beaton - Death of a Scriptwriter

Hamish took out a mobile telephone. “Inverness police’ll get us back.”

♦

They were driven straight back to Drim Castle. Major Neal had the fire lit in the main hall because although the weather was warm outside, and still light because it was at the time of the year when it hardly ever got dark, the castle was cold and gloomy.

Jimmy Anderson came out to meet Hamish and Sheila. “Follow me,” he said to Sheila. “Mr. Blair wants a word with ye.”

Hamish would have liked to accompany her but was sure that Blair would order him away. He joined the party round the fire. Most of the television crew seemed to be there.

Harry Frame scowled at Hamish. Then he said, “I say we go on. We can’t let all this publicity go for nothing. We’ll raise money selling that last shot of Penelope to every television company from here to Moscow.”

“Aren’t the police hanging on to that?” asked Hamish.

“Got several copies,” said Harry. He turned to Fiona. “What about Mary Hoyle?”

“She’s a fine actress, but no tottie, nor will she shed her clothes.”

“I’m fed up with totties. I want a good, solid actress to pull us through this. You know her reputation. She’s got a photographic memory. Also, she’s not doing anything at the moment.”

“I’d settle for anyone who would keep their mouth shut and just work. But can we really go on?”

“Of course we go on,” said Harry. “With all this publicity, by the time it goes out, we’ll have a huge audience.”

The door of the castle opened and a woman police officer led Patricia in. She looked white and tired and had lost all her usual confidence. “Wait here until they’re ready for you,” ordered the policewoman.

Patricia sat down at the edge of the group, clutching her large handbag.

A silence fell. Patricia was a writer and not one of them. Hamish took his chair round and sat next to her.

“You’ll be asked where you were today,” he said.

“It’s difficult to prove,” said Patricia miserably. She started and dropped her handbag as Jenkins, the mattre d’ from the hotel, came in. “What’s he doing here?” she hissed.

Hamish rose and went forward.

“I don’t want you,” said Jenkins, arms as usual slightly akimbo, as if carrying an imaginary tray. “I want the man in charge. It’s important.”

Glad of an excuse to get into that interviewing room and rescue Sheila, Hamish nodded and left the hall. The interviewing was taking place in Fiona’s office. Blair stopped in midbark and glared at Hamish. “Whit dae ye want?”

“Jenkins, the maître d’ from the Tommel Castle Hotel, is here. He says he has information for you.”

Blair’s eyes gleamed. “Send him in. I’ll talk more to you later, Miss Burford. Don’t leave.”

Hamish went out with Sheila. “Bad time?” he asked sympathetically.

“It was awful. He practically accused me of the murder.”

“That’s his way. He’s aye trying to fright a confession out of someone or other, and I’ve neffer known it to work.”

Sheila joined the others at the fire, and Hamish signalled to Jenkins. He was determined to stay in the interviewing room and hear what the man had to say.

So when Jenkins took a seat in front of the desk facing Blair, Hamish slid to a corner of the room and sat down.

Jenkins introduced himself.

“So what have ye to tell us?” demanded Blair.

“I was on duty in the castle dining room last night,” said Jenkins. “Miss Penelope Gates had dinner on her own. She ordered a bottle of champagne and drank the lot. Then she saw that writer, Miss Martyn-Broyd, come in. I gather from gossip that there was apparently some sex scene and Miss Martyn-Broyd and Mr. Jessop, the minister, had been reassured it was not so. Miss Gates told Miss Martyn-Broyd that she had been tricked, that there was in fact a sex scene, and she called her books dreary. Miss Martyn-Broyd was distressed and weeping. To my way of thinking,” said Jenkins pompously, “her mind was so overset that she probably murdered Miss Gates.”

“If that’s all ye’ve got to say,” said Blair, looking at him with dislike, “ye can go.”

Jenkins departed in a huff.

“Has that writer woman arrived yet?” demanded Blair.

“Yes,” said Hamish.

Blair glared at him for a moment, as if debating whether to tell him that he should not be in the interviewing room, but then said, “Fetch her in.”

Jimmy Anderson went out. Hamish stayed where he was.

Patricia came in. She was quite white, but now composed.

Blair started the questioning in his usual unsubtle way.

“Where were you today?”

“At what time, Officer?”

“Chief Inspector. We’ll start with when you got up.”

“I made breakfast and wrote another few pages of my new book. Then I went out for a drive.”

“Where?”

“I was distressed over what the television people were doing with my book. I know Miss Gates is dead and de mortuis and all that, but she was a horrible, vicious and vulgar woman. She sneered at me in the Tommel Castle Hotel the evening before and told me that what I had been assured was not going to be a pornographic scene was in fact going to be just that. She said they had tricked me into believing it otherwise. I was very, very upset. I could not write properly. So I drove and drove mindlessly. I had planned to drive to Drim and confront them, but I had no courage left. I do not know where I drove or for how long, but I suddenly realised I was hungry. I found myself in Golspie and went to the Sutherland Arms Hotel for a bar lunch. Then I returned home.”

“We’ll check with the Sutherland Arms Hotel. What is the make and registration number of your car?”

Patricia gave it to him.

“The way I see it,” said Blair with a fat smile, “is that you, more than anyone else, had a good reason to want Penelope Gates dead. She had jeered at you about how you had been tricked, and you admit your mind was overset. So you went to Drim and you climbed up that mountain. You heard Penelope being instructed to stand on that rock. You scrambled around in the mist until you were underneath and then you grabbed her ankle and pulled her over.”

“That is ridiculous,” said Patricia coolly. “May I point out that it is now after midnight and I am very tired.”

Blair struck the desk. “We’re all bloody tired, woman! But you will stay here until ah’m finished with you.” His Glasgow accent, which he usually modified when speaking to the ‘toffs’ such as Jenkins and Patricia, suddenly thickened.

♦

Sheila sat in the hall with the others and waited. She was feeling hard done by. It had transpired that the company lawyers had been present when all the others had been interviewed, but to her complaint Harry had given a massive shrug and said the lawyers needed their sleep.

For the first time, Sheila began to wonder who had really murdered Penelope. It was no longer an intellectual exercise. One of them in this castle, probably one of them around the fire, had murdered Penelope. No one was mourning her; no one had a good word to say for her.

♦

Hamish Macbeth awoke the next morning as the alarm shrilled. He felt very tired. He had had about four hours’ sleep.

He ran over in his mind the events of the night before. Fiona said she had been nowhere near Penelope, but there was no proof of that. Gervase had no firm alibi. With the mist so thick, anyone could have been anywhere.

He wondered if the BBC would go for a new actress and changed script or if the whole thing would just fall through.

He rose and washed and dressed. He then went into the kitchen to prepare himself some breakfast. Rain drummed steadily down outside, the first rain for many days.