M.C. Beaton - Death of a Scriptwriter

The restaurant was all brass and mahogany and palm trees and an exotic menu of foreign dishes. They ordered a Mexican dish and washed it down with lager, Ailsa protesting that she would ‘walk off the drink’ after lunch.

Most of the tables were screened from the others by greenery and brass poles. Eileen said she had to go to the ladies’ room. She actually wanted to study her new appearance in the mirror.

It was as she was walking to the ladies’ room that she suddenly saw her husband. He was sitting at a table by the window. Opposite him was a plump middle-aged woman with improbably blond hair and a predatory rouged mouth. Colin was holding this woman’s hand across the table and, noticed Eileen in amazement, he had a soppy smile on his face.

She scurried on into the ladies’ room and leaned against the handbasin. Colin, of all people! This probably explained all his trips to Inverness. What should she do? Nothing. Ailsa would know.

Her black hair and new dress gave her a strange courage. She took out a lipstick that she had bought in Boots and applied it carefully. She had also bought eye shadow, mascara, foundation cream and powder but decided she was too shaken to put on anything else.

A few weeks before, a time in her life which Eileen privately designated as Before the Film, she would have kept secret the news of her husband’s presence in the restaurant and possible infidelity.

But she was enjoying this new friendship, this new feeling of not being alone, so as soon as she was back at the table, she blurted out, “Ailsa! Ailsa, you’ll never believe what has happened, what I’ve just seen. Colin! My husband! He’s in this very restaurant, and he’s holding hands with a trollopy woman.”

“Whit!” Ailsa shrieked.

“Keep your voice down,” whispered Eileen urgently. “Colin is over there near the bar, holding hands with a blond woman.”

“It could be some parishioner that he is consoling.”

“You didn’t see the look on his face.”

“Crivens!” said Ailsa. “That wee man. I’d never have believed it. Did he see your hair?”

Eileen shook her head. “He was too wrapped up in that woman.”

“Are you going over there to confront him?”

There was a silence while Eileen looked down at her hands. Then she said, “No, I’m not.”

“But you’ll speak to him this evening?”

“Maybe not.”

Ailsa looked at her curiously. “You look a bit shocked, but not furious or distressed.”

Eileen gave a small smile. “Maybe I’m in shock.”

Ailsa took a meditative sip of a blue cocktail called Highland Wind, tilting her head so that the little tartan umbrella sticking out of the top of the concoction did not get in her eye.

“It’s a rare piece of gossip.”

“You’re not to talk about it,” said Eileen fiercely, “not to Jock, not to anyone.”

“All right.”

“Promise?”

“Cross my heart.”

“We’d best take our time until Colin leaves,” said Eileen. “Do you know what amazes me?”

“What? I thought the whole business of Colin being maybe unfaithful to you would be enough puzzlement.”

“That woman is wearing a ton of makeup and dyed hair, yet if I put on so much as lipstick, he shouts at me that it is not fitting for the wife of a minister.”

“Oh, that doesn’t puzzle me at all,” said Ailsa. “Men were aye the same. The minute they’ve got you, they start to try to get rid of all the things about you that attracted them to you in the first place.”

And despite her bewilderment at her husband’s behavior, Eileen felt once more enfolded in the world of women, a world banded together against the peculiar alien world of men.

♦

It took Hamish Macbeth some time to find Angus’s path. At last he located it and found his way up the mountain, searching all the while for clues. But by the time he had nearly reached the top, an easier climb than the other path, he found to his surprise, he had found nothing at all. The path looked as if no one had used it for years but rabbits and deer.

Still, anyone using the path could have easily reached the bit under that outcrop of rock. But how would anyone know Penelope was to stand there? Was it in the script?

He thought after some reflection that the murder had not been premeditated. Either Fiona or Gervase or Harry had seen the opportunity to get rid of her and had taken it. Right under the outcrop was a flat, sheltered bit where someone could have stood. Harry could have easily slid down there, reached up and pulled Penelope’s ankle to overbalance her. Fiona could have run off in the mist and done the same, or Gervase. And where had Patricia really been that day, and was her plea to him for help merely a blind?

Could the seer really think that Fiona had done it? If so, who had supplied him with that information? Angus rarely went out these days, but picked up gossip from his visitors. From time to time there were articles in the newspapers on ‘the seer of the Highlands,’ and he had been on television several times.

He noticed how clearly he could hear all the voices of the men still searching the heathery plateau above.

Anyone lurking down here could have heard the instructions to Penelope.

He made his way back down the mountain and headed for Drim Castle to learn that Patricia had been taken off to Strath-bane for further questioning. The information was supplied by Fiona.

“So what happens now?” asked Hamish.

“To Patricia?”

“No, to the TV show.”

“We go on. Mary Hoyle is flying up today. She’s a competent actress.”

“I’ve seen her in some things. Hardly a blond bombshell.”

“It’ll take a few alterations to the script, but we’ll manage.”

Hamish studied her for a few moments and then asked, “Do you think Patricia did it?”

“Yes, I do,” said Fiona, puffing on a cigarette which Hamish was pleased to note was ordinary tobacco.

“Why?”

Fiona put down her cigarette and ran her hands through her short-cropped hair. “None of us could have done it. I’ve worked with all these people before. It’s not in them. But writers! Take it from me, they’re all mad with vanity. They don’t understand how television works, and they expect us to dramatise every dreary word they’ve written.”

“It could be argued that murder is not in Patricia, either. She is very conscious of being a lady.”

“‘God bless the squire and his relations, and keep them in their proper stations,”’quoted Fiona.

“Aye, something like that. Is Sheila around?”

“She’s been taken to Strathbane for questioning as well. She was heard shouting to Penelope, “I hope you break your neck.””

“Have they taken in Gervase Hart?”

“No, not him.”

“I wonder why. He was overheard telling Penelope he’d kill her.”

“Who told you that?” demanded Fiona sharply.

“Meaning you’ve told them all to shut up, except when it comes to Sheila.”

“That’s not the case at all.”

Hamish sighed. “Lies, lies and more lies. Don’t go around trying to hide things from the police. All it means is that a lot of innocent people get grilled by Blair when the murderer could be running around loose.”

He decided to spend what was left of the day trying to find out if anyone had seen Patricia on the morning of the murder. He drove over to Golspie and learned that the police had already questioned the waitresses at the Sutherland Arms Hotel and had found that Patricia did indeed have lunch there. No one had noticed that her manner was anything out of the way. She had, for example, not been muttering and talking to herself as she had been on the day that Dr. Brodie had found her. But although he diligently checked around Golspie – calling first on Hugh Johnston, the owner of Golspie Motors, the main garage – no one had seen Patricia or her car. It was a white Metro. Perhaps she had stopped somewhere for petrol. He drove miles, checking at petrol stations without success.