M.C. Beaton - Death of a Scriptwriter

He had become so used to rejection that day that he was almost amazed when Priscilla answered the phone after the first ring.

After the preliminary pleasantries, Hamish explained why he was in Cnothan.

“Doesn’t this woman have any friends?” asked Priscilla.

“Not a one.”

“Does she go to church?”

“Yes.”

“Then if she wanted to ask a favour like borrowing a car, she might go to the manse. Have you asked there?”

“No, I didnae even think of it.”

“You’re slipping,” said Priscilla cheerfully.

“This damn place is enough to make anyone’s brain slip a few cogs. Are you coming up here soon?”

“In about two weeks’ time.”

Hamish said goodbye and rang off. Two weeks! She would be home again in only two weeks. He felt so excited that he had to calm down by forcibly reminding himself that he did not love her anymore.

At the manse he was greeted by the minister’s wife, Mrs. Struthers. “What is it, Officer?” she demanded sharply. “I am busy.”

He masked his irritation and said, “Did Miss Martyn-Broyd at any time ask you for the loan of a car?”

“We don’t lend anyone our car,” she said sharply. “Our insurance doesn’t cover anyone else driving it.”

He thanked her and touched his cap and was turning away when he swung back. “But did she ask you?”

“Well, yes, and so late at night, too. I told her she could not have it.”

“Did you suggest anyone who might lend her one?”

“I said she could try old Mr. Ludlow.”

“And where does Mr. Ludlow live?”

“He is not very well, and I would not like to think of him being troubled.”

“I am a police officer, and you are obstructing me in my enquiries. Ludlow’s address, please!”

“Mr. Ludlow to you, Officer. Oh, very well. He lives at Five, The Glebe, down at the loch.”

Hamish walked down to where the grey waters of the loch lay sullen under a low grey sky. The great ugly dam soared above the loch. He stopped and stared at it, imagining it cracking, then bursting, then the deluge crashing through to drown the whole of Cnothan and everyone in it.

He found Mr. Ludlow’s cottage. There was a garage next to the cottage.

He knocked at the door and waited.

There was a shuffling sound inside, like that of some hibernating animal turning in its sleep. The shuffling noises grew nearer, and the door was opened a crack and a rheumy eye stared at Hamish.

“Mr Ludlow?”

“I havenae done anything. Go away.”

“Nobody said you had,” said Hamish patiently. “I just want a wee word with you.”

The door opened wider. Mr. Ludlow was an old man on whose face a lifetime of bitterness and discontent was mapped out in the deep, dismal wrinkles on a face as grey as elephant’s skin.

“Did you lend your car at any time to Patricia Martyn-Broyd?”

There was a long silence. An omen of crows suddenly tumbled overhead, cawing and cackling, and then they were gone.

“Aye, and if I did?”

“May I see your car?”

The old man grumbled out in a pair of battered carpet slippers. He led the way to the garage, took out a key and opened the padlock which secured the door. Inside was an old black Ford.

“When did she ask you for a loan of it?”

“It wass the night afore that tarty bit was murdered, her what bares her body. Miss Martyn-Broyd, I knew her from the church, she says her car had broken down. She had got me out o’ bed to answer the door. I didn’t want to let her have it.”

“But she took out a handful of notes, so you let her have it,” guessed Hamish.

“Aye, well, I’m a pensioner, and money’s tight.”

“Chust about as tight as that hole in your arse that you talk through,” said Hamish.

There was a stunned silence, neither of them able to believe what they had just heard.

“What did you say?” demanded Mr. Ludlow at last.

“I said, chust about as tight as that hole in the road over at Crask,” said Hamish, improvising wildly. “I’ll be on my way, Mr. Ludlow.”

“I didnae do anything wrong?” he asked.

“No, nothing,” said Hamish, and added maliciously, “provided your insurance covers another driver.”

He had the satisfaction of seeing from the sudden fright in Mr. Ludlow’s eyes that it probably did not.

As he walked back to his police Land Rover, he had a new respect for Sergeant MacGregor. If I lived here, thought Hamish, I would end up stark, staring mad.

He opened the Land Rover door. Then he stopped, one foot raised, his mouth a little open. Those two threads of blue tweed he had found on the mountain, the day Jamie died. Could they have been from something Patricia had been wearing?

He got in and drove to her cottage. She had been released from hospital but was obviously not home yet.

He stared at the cottage in frustration. Then he felt in the guttering above the door where locals usually hid a door key, but there was nothing there. Perhaps Patricia had not even bothered to lock up. He tried the door handle, and to his relief the door opened.

He went in and searched for the bedroom, finding it off the kitchen at the back.

There was a wardrobe over on the far wall. He swung open the door. There were a few tailored suits and dresses and, on a shelf above, an assortment of hats.

He slowly lifted out a blue tweed suit and laid it on the bed and began to go over it inch by inch. And then down at the hem of the skirt, he found where two threads had been tugged out.

He sat down suddenly on the bed. He could hardly go back to Lochdubh and find these threads and present them as evidence, for he would be charged with suppressing evidence.

He was sure now she had murdered both Jamie and Penelope.

And then he heard cars driving up outside. He went to the window. In the first black official car was Patricia with Superintendent Peter Daviot; in the second were Lovelace, Mac-nab and Anderson.

He went to the outside door and opened it. Peter Daviot was helping Patricia from the car. Lovelace and the two detectives had gathered around.

“We must assure you again, Miss Martyn-Broyd, of our deepest apologies,” Mr. Daviot was saying, when Lovelace suddenly saw Hamish standing there.

“What are you doing?” he shouted.

They all turned to stare at him.

“I think we had better all go inside,” said Hamish.

“You’d better have a damned good reason to explain what you are doing in Miss Martyn-Broyd’s cottage,” said Lovelace.

But Patricia, with an odd little smile on her face, had already walked forward. Hamish stood aside, and they all trooped into the parlour.

Hamish was suddenly terrified. All Patricia had to do was deny his accusations. He had no real proof. She could admit to borrowing Ludlow’s car but say that she’d had to get away, that in her distress she had forgotten to explain she was not in her own car. But he had gone this far, so he had to take it to the end.

“Perhaps if we all sit down,” said Hamish, “I’ll explain what I am doing here.”

“Tea?” said Patricia, smiling all around.

“Not now,” said Hamish. “I haff a story for you, Miss Martyn-Broyd, that is stranger than any fiction. Josh Gates did not kill Jamie Gallagher. You did. I think you waited until you saw them all leave. You had not thought of murder then. You noticed that Jamie had not come down. You were probably hidden somewhere beside the path. You went on up. You saw Jamie sitting there, and the impulse took you. You picked up a rock and brained him with it, and then just went away. You felt that the man who had sneered at your work, who had debased it, was finally dead and gone.

“But then there was Penelope Gates. She, too, sneered at you and told you how you had been tricked. You had killed once, and you could kill again. Somehow you knew from the script that she would be up on the mountain. In your book The Case of the Rising Tides , the murderer borrows a car so that his own car will not be recognised, so you borrowed a black Ford from Mr. Ludlow in Cnothan, calling on him late at night and paying him a lot to lend you that car.