M.C. Beaton - Death of a Charming Man

GET OUT OF DRIM OR WE’LL KILL YOU

Betty Baxter descended the ladder from the bedroom with Peter’s dressing-gown wrapped around her. “Whit’s happened?” she asked.

He showed her the message. “Maybe you’d best go home,” he said.

“Harry’s out with the fishing and won’t be back until the morn,” she said. “It’s probably Jock and the others. You’d better put something on,” she added, looking at Peter’s naked body.

“Why? I’m going back to bed. You don’t think. I’m going to let any of that lot spoil my sleep.”

“I’m frightened,” whispered Betty.

He pulled her against him and kissed her lips, and neither saw the blur of a face which peered for a moment in from the mist and then disappeared.

♦

Life picked up for Hamish Macbeth in the following weeks, so that he almost forgot about Drim. There had been a series of burglaries over in Carrask, a small village forty miles away but still on his beat. To his distress, his suspicions began to focus on a newcomer, even though Hamish thought most newcomers suffered from undeserved bad reputations. But in this case he believed the culprit was one Sammy Dolan, an itinerant Irish worker who was, at that moment in time, out of work and drawing the dole. He was beginning to despair of getting any hard proof when one of the locals told him that Dolan had been seen earlier in the day prowling around Miss Tabbet’s. Miss Tabbet was the local schoolteacher who lived in a neat bungalow outside the village and whose home had so far appeared burglar-proof.

Hamish visited her and suggested he spend the night in her front-room. Miss Tabbet was one of those no-nonsense, brisk women who, despite excellent academic qualifications, was quite stupid.

“Nonsense, Mr. Macbeth,” she said. “Any burglar would have more sense than to come here.”

Hamish stifled a sigh. Why did he always have to be patient and restrained? He felt like taking hold of her by her scrawny neck and shaking her. He said aloud, “Well, I’ll type out a letter which says that I was sure. Dolan would break into your premises this night and you refused our help. I’ll do two copies, one for headquarters at Strathbane and one for your insurance company…”

“No need for that,” she said, looking alarmed. “I’m sure I’ve done all I could to help the police when the occasion arose.”

“This is the occasion.”

“Oh, well,” she said ungraciously, “you can wait in the living-room, but make sure you wipe your feet. I’ve just shampooed that carpet. But don’t expect me to make cups of tea for you. I pay my taxes and that should be enough. You’re wasting your time. This house is burglar-proof.”

“How?”

“Come here,” she said, and Hamish thought for a moment that she was going to take hold of him by the ear and lead him by it like a bad child. She led the way to the front door and pointed triumphantly to an array of bolts, chains, and safety locks.

“What about the back door?” asked Hamish.

She snorted and led the way through to the kitchen. The back door was similarly armed. Hamish stood back and looked at the kitchen window and a smile crossed his face. “All the man need do is smash a pane in your kitchen window, put an arm in and open the catch.”

“But I’d hear the breaking glass,” she said triumphantly. “I’m a very light sleeper.”

“I could break thon glass without you hearing a thing,” said Hamish. “Chust bear with me. I’ll be here at six o’clock.”

“Why so early?” she jeered. She was a very jeering sort of woman, made so by years of controlling pupils by sarcasm. “Is he coming for his tea?”

“I want to get in here early, before he starts watching the house,” said Hamish. He smiled down warmly into her eyes, and despite herself she smiled back and looked up at him in a dazed way.

“You silly man,” Hamish chided himself as he walked back down through the village. “You’re getting as bad as Peter Hynd.” And with that thought, he once more had a mental picture of the dark village of Drim with all those passions seething and bubbling at the end of the loch. He was so preoccupied with his thoughts that he almost walked past Sophy Bisset, who hailed him enthusiastically. “What are you doing here?” asked Hamish in surprise.

“It’s my day off and I’m playing tourist,” said Sophy. “What are you doing here?” She asked, just as if she had never overheard Priscilla telling Mr. Johnston that Hamish was investigating crime in Carrask.

“On duty,” said Hamish.

“Time for a cup of tea? There’s a place in the back of the craft shop at the end of the village.”

“Aye, that’ll be grand,” said Hamish. He felt a warm glow. He did not for a moment believe that Sophy had not known he was to be found in Carrask, and that meant she had come in search of him whereas Priscilla had not; Priscilla who, before their engagement, would have dropped over to see him. That Priscilla was badly frightened by any intimacy was becoming clearer and clearer, and Hamish was beginning to think that his hopes that it would “be all right on the night,” namely on their honeymoon, were beginning to look naive in the extreme. Meanwhile, here was pretty Sophy with her sparkling eyes appearing delighted with his company. And a friendly bird in Carrask was worth two chilly ones in Lochdubh any day. He was hurt and angry with Priscilla and it was with a feeling of revenge that he set out to be especially charming to Sophy in the pepper-scented back room of the craft shop.

At last he looked at his watch; “I must be on my way,” he said with genuine regret. They walked out together. “See you back in Lochdubh, then,” said Sophy. She stood on tiptoe and kissed him on the cheek.

Across the street Mrs. Fair, who owned the small hotel called the Carrask Arms, watched curiously and then she picked up the phone. “Is that the Tommel Castle Hotel?” she asked. “Good. May I speak to Miss Halburton-Smythe?”

Hamish was glad of the tea and cakes he had shared with Sophy in the afternoon as the long evening wore on. He would have liked to watch television to pass the time but Miss Tabbet had recovered from the glow that smile of his had given her and said she “didn’t hold with it,” and Hamish wondered crossly why she had the thing in the first place. She sat and knitted fiercely while listening to a concert on the radio, a modern piece by a Hungarian composer full of crashing minor chords. At last, to Hamish’s relief, she went up to bed. He was amused to hear loud snores reverberating through the ceiling a short time later. Miss Tabbet slept like a pig, he thought. A whole gang of burglars could crash in without her hearing anything.

He looked at the clock. It was only ten. He switched on the television set and watched the news and then a programme in Gaelic, inevitably about the history of the Highland Clearances, when the crofters were driven off their land. Then a very fat Glaswegian woman sang a dirge about the clearances she had written herself, and apart from being briefly fascinated to hear Gaelic sung with all the glottal stops of a Glaswegian accent, Hamish became bored and switched it off.

The minutes dragged on. At midnight, he switched off the downstairs lights and sat in the darkness. The nights were getting darker and he knew that by two o’clock there would be about one hour of guaranteed darkness and that, he guessed, would be when Dolan struck, if it was Dolan who hid been guilty of the other break-ins.

Two o’clock came and went and he yawned and stretched. Nothing was going to happen, he decided. Miss Tabbet was an old battleaxe and even Dolan must have decided to give her house a miss. The wind had risen and was howling outside. But suddenly he heard it. The tinkle of breaking glass coming from the kitchen.