M.C. Beaton: Death of a Nag

“You havenae long to live, Miss Gunnery, and I think that prompted you. By the time they found out anything, if they found out anything, with any luck you’d be dead. But you havenae helped anyone. All you’ve done is brought misery all round. Doris here is haunted wi’ the idea that Andrew might hae done it, and he sometimes worries about her.” He looked at Doris. “Isn’t that true?”

“Yes,” said Doris faintly.

“Then, as I see it, MacPherson turns up and starts to blackmail you, Miss Gunnery. He wouldnae have bothered trying to blackmail someone like Cheryl. So you stabbed him with the scissors on his desk. Luck was on your side. No one saw you. No one ever really sees you, Miss Gunnery. That was the story of your life, was it not? A shadow, a cipher, passed over and ignored. And the one time love came into your life, it had to be a married man who wouldn’t leave his wife.”

His voice had taken on an uncharacteristically cruel and jeering edge.

She put her hands up as if to ward him off. “I meant it for the best,” she said. “It was only for the best. Henry’s wife was a bully and a nag – ”

“Henry being the geography teacher.”

She nodded. Then she rallied. “You have no proof…no proof. Who’s going to believe you?”

Hamish sat down suddenly in a chair by the fireplace. “I’ll bet you have the proof hidden away somewhere,” he said in a tired voice. “It would be like you to keep something for insurance chust in case someone innocent was accused of the murder, someone other than Cheryl, that is. You wouldn’t care much about Cheryl. But you’re a romantic. You did it all for Doris and Andrew. Where you had failed in love, they must not fail. I must be losing my wits. June, take the kids away.”

June marshalled her brood and took them out. Hamish jerked his head at Dermott. “Go with them.”

He turned back and said almost pleadingly to Miss Gunnery, “You know me. I’ll dig and pester and dig and pester and I’ll neffer leave you alone. If you want Doris and Andrew to be free, then admit your crimes. You wanted to be found out, didn’t you? You sent me to see your friend in Cheltenham. You had probably told her not to tell anyone that your life was shortly to end. You didn’t show much interest in your cat, didn’t even ask me when I came back. Oh, you didn’t sit down and think, if I ask Hamish Macbeth to call in on Mrs Agnew in Cheltenham, he might find out something about me. It wasn’t as clear-cut as that. What stopped me from suspecting you was because I liked you and could see no motive. I remember saying to you that a motiveless crime was the best one. Then there was the death of MacPherson. It took some force to drive those scissors into his neck. I’d neffer really noticed the strength of your arms before. Then I remembered that photo of you and Mrs Agnew in your tennis whites.”

She got to her feet. “Your reasoning is hardly logical,” she said, “and as you know, there is no proof.” Her voice shook. “I will go to my room and lie down. All this has been too much for me.” She went out and Hamish could think of no concrete reason to stop her.

“It cannae be her,” wailed Tracey. “The only decent body who’s ever been kind tae me.”

“Are you sure, Hamish?” asked Andrew. “Why not phone Deacon and see if Cheryl has confessed?”

“She didn’t protest all that much,” said Doris. “If she’d been innocent, surely she would have shouted at Hamish and threatened to report him to his superiors. Then she did say she had done it for the best.”

Mrs Aston put her head around the door. “Coffee?” she asked brightly.

“Aye, that’ll be chust grand,” said Hamish.

“I’ll bring a tray in. I’ll put an extra cup on it for Miss Gunnery. Maybe she’ll be feeling like one when she gets back from the beach.”

Hamish jumped to his feet. “The what? She’s gone out?”

“I think she must have forgotten something. She went off running.”

“Didn’t Crick stop her?”

“He’s in the kitchen having his coffee.”

Hamish ran out of the room, out of the boarding-house and over the dunes to the beach. He looked right and left when he reached the beach and then out to sea. Far out, bobbing above the waves, he could see a head.

He stripped down to his underwear and plunged in and started swimming powerfully. The wind was rising and the waves were rising and he battled through one after the other.

At last he saw her some yards in front of him and called loudly to her. She saw him, rather than heard him, for the wind whipped his words away. She was still wearing her glasses. How odd, he thought madly, that her glasses had managed to stay on. The sun glinted on them, giving her a blind look. Then she raised her arms to heaven and sank under the waves like a stone.

♦

Deacon and Clay had been phoned by Crick. They had come with Maggie and, joined by Dermott, Tracey, Andrew and Doris, they stood on the edge of the water and watched as Hamish struggled back, holding Miss Gunnery in his arms.

Clay and Crick waded in to help him as he neared the shore. Together they carried Miss Gunnery’s limp body on to the sand. Maggie moved in and began applying all the artificial respiration techniques she had learned. Far away sounded the wail of an ambulance siren. At last, Maggie sat back on her heels and shook her head.

“She’s dead,” she said flatly.

The wind rose even higher, the white sand snaked along the beach and began to sing a dirge for Miss Gunnery.

“So let’s have it then,” said Deacon to Hamish. “Mr Biggar here says you accused Miss Gunnery of the murders. What proof had you?”

“None,” said Hamish, pulling his dry clothes over his wet underwear. “Chust intuition.”

“Oh, shite, man. If you’ve driven that lady to her death by your harassment…”

“She’ll hae left proof somewhere,” said Hamish wearily. “And I’m going to look for it.”

“You won’t find it,” Deacon shouted at his retreating back. “Don’t you know all the rooms were searched several times?”

Deacon waited until the ambulance men arrived, until he had had a full report from Andrew about what had happened in the lounge before Miss Gunnery had swum to her death, before setting off in pursuit of Hamish.

“That Blair ower in Strathbane was right,” he grumbled. “Hamish Macbeth is stark-staring mad.”

♦

Hamish sat on the bed in Miss Gunnery’s room and looked about him. He was bone-weary. He had had to dive and dive before he had managed to get her. He had searched already, but there was nothing in her suitcase, or in the drawers, or in the bedside table. Then he thought: the police had not been looking for drugs, so their search would only have been through her belongings. So where would be the obvious place? He rolled back the carpet, but the floorboards did not seem to have been disturbed. Then he went out and went along to the communal bathroom. The toilet had an old–fashioned cistern, the type that is set high up, with a chain dangling from it. He stood on the pan and lifted the lid of the cistern. Nothing in the cistern, he thought, feeling around with his hand. And then, because he was so very tired, as he was about to replace the lid, it slipped out of his hands and fell on the floor. And there, staring up at him, taped to the underside of the cistern lid, was an oilskin packet.

He climbed down, sat on the floor, and ripped the packet free, wondering vaguely where, in this day and age of plastic, Miss Gunnery had been able to find oilskin. And for one moment, before he opened the packet, he wondered if it might turn out to have nothing to do with Miss Gunnery but was something criminal hidden by Rogers.

But on opening it he found two envelopes. One was addressed to himself.