M.C. Beaton - Death of a Dentist

“How old was he?”

“Fifty.”

“Hadn’t he been married before?”

“Yes, I think he had. But he was secretive about things. I just got a feeling he had.”

“Where did he come from originally?”

“Dumfries.”

Hamish studied her for a moment. Then he asked, “But just suppose this should turn out to be murder and I think it’s bound to turn out that way, doesn’t the idea startle you and shock you?”

“You must realise,” she said gently, “that I came to hate him like poison. It stands to reason that some other woman would feel the same.”

“I don’t see that a woman would have the strength to watch him die, pick him up, put him in the dentist’s chair, drill all his teeth and – ”

“ What! ”

“Oh, dear, I thought the police that were here might have told you. But that’s what seems to have happened.”

“There must be some maniac on the loose.”

“A very cold-blooded maniac. The surgery, I think, had been cleaned up.”

“Do you mind leaving?” she said suddenly. “I don’t think I can take any more at the moment.”

Hamish walked to the door. Then he turned around. “Where were you this morning? Shouldn’t you be at work?”

“I took the day off. Woman’s troubles. Nothing too bad but my job bores me. No, I have no witnesses but I’ve been here all day till now.”

As he drove off, the full enormity of the strange murder hit Hamish. There were so many questions he would like answers to. Why had Maggie Bane stayed away so long? What if someone like himself with an aching tooth had just decided to drop in? That CLOSED sign. He had handled it himself. Damn! What if the murderer had entered and just hung the sign outside the way he had done himself?

♦

He drove straight to Braikie and parked on the outskirts of the town and then began to make his way on foot towards the dentist’s surgery. A Strathbane policeman approached him. “Blair was going ballistic looking for you.”

“I have been making the enquiries all over the town,” said Hamish. “That man usually wants me off the case.”

“Well, he said if I found you, you were to go straight to Strathbane. And he said to get your uniform on.”

Hamish drove to Lochdubh, changed into his uniform, made a sandwich and cup of coffee and then set out at a sedate pace for Strathbane. He did not like Blair. He did not like his anger or his bluster or the way he had of accusing the easiest person as a murderer. But when it came to everyday Strathbane crime, Hamish knew Blair to be good at his job. He kept his ear to the ground and knew all the villains.

The Land Rover crested a heathery rise and there below him lay Strathbane like the City of Dreadful Night. Black ragged clouds were racing across a windy sky and a fitful gleam of watery sunlight lit up the windows of the dreary tower blocks on the outskirts of the town.

Why such an excrescence should pollute the landscape of Sutherland, Hamish did not know. There had once been a lot of industry back in the fifties, paper mills, brick works, electronics factories, and the tower blocks had been thrown up to house the influx of workers from cities like Glasgow and Edinburgh. But the workers had brought their love of strikes north with them and gradually the following generations had preferred to live on the dole and not even pretend to work. Factories had closed down and the winds of Sutherland whipped through their shattered windows and fireweed grew in vacant lots. It was like one of those science-fiction movies about the twenty-first century where anarchy rules and gangs roam the streets. The last industry to go was the fishing industry, killed off by the European Union with its stringent fishing quotas and restrictions which only the British seemed to obey, and local lethargy. And then there were drugs. Drugs had crept north up the snaking new motorways which cut through the mountains: drugs like a plague, drugs causing crime; drugs breeding new white-faced malnourished children, AIDS from dirty shared needles, and death.

His jaw was beginning to ache from the punishment it had received at the dentist. He suddenly wished he had begged Mrs. Gilchrist not to mention his visit to the Inverness police, for if Blair heard about it, he would treat it as a case of insubordination.

Hamish entered the gloomy building where the smells of food from the police canteen always seemed to permeate the stale air.

He opened the door of the CID room and peered through the haze of cigarette smoke. Jimmy Anderson was alone, puffing at a cigarette, sitting with his feet up on his desk.

“Oh, Hamish, man, you are in deep shite,” he hailed him.

“Where’s Blair?”

“Still interviewing Maggie Bane, suspect number one.”

Hamish sat down opposite him. “Can I borrow this computer? I’d best start on my report.”

“Help yourself. Where were you?”

“I was around Braikie, asking questions, and then went back to Lochdubh to change into my uniform,” said Hamish, switching on the computer and then beginning to type his report of finding the body of Gilchrist.

“It looks as if you were right about one thing,” said Jimmy laconically. “They guess there was poison in his morning coffee, he writhed and vomited, and fell on the floor. There were vomit stains on the back of his coat as if he had rolled in his ain sick. Someone cleaned him up as best they could, hoisted him into that chair, drilled his teeth, then cold-bloodedly washed the floor. There were traces of vomit in the cracks in the linoleum.”

Hamish paused, his fingers hovering over the keys. “Why would anyone go to all that trouble?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, anyone with half a brain would have known we would have found the drilled teeth and the residue of vomit on the floor.”

“Maybe the murderer was filled with blind hatred. Maybe he was so mad with rage, he didn’t care whether he was interrupted or not.”

Hamish shook his head.

“It took a steady hand to drill one neat hole in each o’ his teeth. Anyone in a mad rage would have smashed all his teeth and then smashed the surgery.”

“Could be. But the strength that it all took! That lets Maggie Bane out, I think.”

“Unless,” said Hamish, “she had an accomplice.”

∨ Death of a Dentist ∧

3

Bold and erect the Caledonian stood, Old was his mutton and his claret good; Let him drink port, the English statesman cried – He drank the poison and his spirit died.

— John Home

Hamish typed away busily at his report. He remembered the day when computers were a deep and dark mystery to him. Now it was easier than a typewriter.

The door crashed open and Blair lumbered in. He loomed over Hamish. “Where were you?”

“I was interviewing townspeople,” said Hamish, “and then I went to change into my uniform before reporting here.” The printer rattled out the final page of his report. He bundled the pages together and handed them to Blair. “There’s my report.”

Blair took it and stood glaring. “Get to your feet, man, when a senior officer addresses you.”

Hamish obediently stood up.

Blair suddenly sighed and slumped down in a chair. “Oh, sit down, Macbeth,” he grumbled, “and stop standing there looking as useless as you are.”

Hamish sat down again. Jimmy sniggered.

“Where’s Maggie Bane?” asked Hamish.

“Had to send her home,” replied Blair with a surly scowl. “I’ll swear that lassie had something to dae with it, but she sticks to her story.”

“She said she was out shopping,” said Hamish, “but she had no bags of shopping with her when she returned to the surgery.”

“Oh, she had an explanation for that one. Says she went home and left the stuff there. We checked at the shops she said she went to and it all matches up. She went to the grocers and bought stuff, paid the rental on her telly, borrowed two videos from the video library and changed her books at the public library. It all checks out.”