M.C. Beaton - Death of a Macho Man

“Och, it got to me, the poison seeping in and seeping in.”

“So what did she say when you asked her about it?”

“She began to cry and said it was none of my business. She kept on saying I had to trust her. I was going to kill him, Duggan, but some kind soul got there first and I hope you never find out who did it.”

Hamish shook his head as if to clear his brain. Then he said, “You’re to stop drinking and you’re coming home wi’ me and we’re both going to talk to Lucia if I haff to drag you there.”

Willie protested and clutched the wine bottle fiercely, as if that would anchor him to the table. Hamish gave an exclamation of disgust, twisted Willie’s arm up his back and marched the protesting man out of the restaurant and along the waterfront towards the cottage by the bridge.

He opened the door and thrust Willie inside and into the living-room. Lucia saw them and began to cry.

“Enough!” shouted Hamish, torn between exasperation and fear. “Now we’ll sit down and you will tell us what you were doing with Randy Duggan, Lucia.”

She mopped her streaming eyes with an already sodden handkerchief and said fiercely, “No! If my own husband can’t trust me…”

“Och, lassie, if you were married to me and I saw you go to another man’s house, a man like Duggan, I’d want to know the reason why. Think o’ your bairn. It’s bad for a child to hae an atmosphere like this in the house. You’d better tell us, Lucia, or I’ll sit here all night. Don’t you know I ought to report your visit to Blair?”

“You wouldn’t,” said Lucia, looking appalled.

Hamish saw his advantage and took it. “Oh, yes, I would. So out wi’ it!”

Lucia found another handkerchief in her handbag, blew her little nose and stared at them both defiantly. Then she said, “It is Willie’s birthday in a week’s time.”

Hamish looked puzzled. “So?”

“So when I was serving in the restaurant one night – we were busy and Mrs. Mulligan was baby-sitting for me – Randy came in for dinner. He was wearing a Rolex watch and I admired it. He said he could get me one, cheap. I thought it would make a good present for Willie. I told him to go ahead but to keep it a secret. He phoned me a week later and said that he had the watch. I went to his cottage. The watch was a copy, not the real thing. There are many like it in Italy. I told him it was a fake and he tried to make a pass at me. I slapped his face.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this?” howled Willie.

“Because you should trust me,” shouted Lucia. “There should be trust between a husband and wife!” Willie began to cry, hiccuping drunken sobs. “I thocht I had lost ye,” he said between sobs.

Lucia crossed the room and knelt in front of him. “Oh, I Willie, I did not know I had made you suffer so much. Oh, Willie.” She began to kiss him. Hamish quietly left the room and, once outside, mopped his brow. Thank God that’s over, he thought, but the nagging fear that Willie, believing Lucia was unfaithful to him, had murdered Randy, would not go away.

♦

Hamish rose the next morning, his mind still full of worries. He felt he had to do something and so he decided to call on Annie again and try to find out why she had lied to him without letting her know he had searched her house.

Annie Ferguson answered the door to him. She looked delighted to see him and Hamish wondered whether she might have been telling the truth and that, although she considered it allright for herself to wear sexy underwear, she considered it indecent to wear it for love-making.

He refused an offer of tea and scones and sat down.

“Annie,” he said, “I am worried about you.”

“Oh, there is nothing to worry about,” she said cheerfully. “I told Blair what you told me to tell him and – ”

“I think there’s more to it man that,” interrupted Hamish. “Annie,” he lied, “you are a sophisticated woman of the world and well-travelled. I believe you have even been as far as Glasgow.”

“I have that,” she said, preening. “I’ve seen the world.”

Hamish reflected that Glasgow was hardly an exotic place and that one trip to the south of Scotland hardly turned anyone into a world traveller, but he pressed on. “I really cannae see you being shocked by Randy’s suggestion.”

A flush mounted to her face, mottling her neck and leaving patches of red on her cheeks.

Very much the outraged matron, she said, “I took you into my confidence and you doubt my word! Me, who told the minister’s wife, too!”

Hamish sighed. “Annie, lies in a murder investigation are dangerous things. The innocent have nothing to fear.” Except with someone like Blair around, he thought gloomily. “I am trying to do my best for you and I will protect you if you are innocent, but when I thought about your story, och, it didnae make sense. Come on, Annie. The truth.”

“You’re all the same. Men,” she muttered. “Take you. Look what you did to that lovely girl, Priscilla. She was better than someone like you deserved and you jilted her.”

“We came to an agreement to separate. I didnae jilt her.”

Isaid Hamish furiously. Then his face cleared. “That’s it! He jilted you. Thon ape jilted you.” She stayed mulishly silent, looking at the carpet, a faded Wilton covered in cabbage roses. “Yes, that’s the way it was,” said Hamish, his voice suddenly gentle. “And you despised him, too. That’s what made the rejection so bitter. You were ashamed of your affair with him. Did he say why he’d dropped you?”

She gave a dry little sob. “He told me he had found better.”

“Who?” demanded Hamish with again that clutch of fear at the heart.

“That slut, Lucia Lamont.”

“Lucia is not a slut and you know it, Annie. That’s the jeal-ousy talking. Lucia would have nothing to do with him.”

“Then why was she seen going into his cottage?” Hamish groaned inwardly. There were few secrets in a village. Sooner or later, Blair might get to hear of it. Of course, the villagers were united against such as Blair, but some of the policemen combing the heather around Randy’s cottage for clues were another matter. They drank in the pub in the evening. They might hear gossip and relay it to Blair.

“Randy had promised Lucia that he could get her a cheap Rolex watch for Willie’s birthday. She went to collect it and found it a fake. He made a pass at her and she slapped his face. That’s all there was to it. A man of his vanity probably thought he could get lucky.”

“So what are you going to do?” asked Annie, suddenly frightened. “If you tell them I lied, that Blair will arrest me.” Hamish sat silent for a few moments, thinking hard. By not telling Blair what he knew, he was obstructing a police investigation. And yet Blair would come down on him like a ton of bricks for having held back information. At last he said, “Did you kill him, Annie?”

“No,” she said. “But I wanted to.”

“We’ll leave it there, Annie, and hopefully none of this will need to come out. But unless I find the real murderer fast, then both you and Lucia are going to be in trouble!”

∨ Death of a Macho Man ∧

6

Never make a defence of apology before you be accused.

— King Charles

Priscilla was closing up the gift shop at lunch-time the following day when John Glover suddenly appeared. “Back from your travels?” she said, feeling awkward because she felt that he might at least have told her he was engaged when he first took her out for dinner.

“Just got back, and pretty hungry.”

Priscilla looked at her watch. “They’ll be serving lunch in the dining-room.”

“I don’t want lunch in the dining-room and it’s actually sunny. Come with me and we’ll drive someplace.”