M.C. Beaton - Death of a Charming Man

“Heather, you’re verra young. How can you know that?”

“Because I followed her up to his cottage one night,” she said wearily. She sat down at the table opposite him and rested her small pointed chin on her hands.

“B-but how could you know?” asked Hamish, blushing a deep red.

“I heard them.”

“But not saw . You might have been mistaken. You’re only twelve.”

She jerked her head towards the television set in the corner.

“I see and hear it all on that.”

Oh, the lost days of youth, thought Hamish bitterly. Aloud he said, “It must have been hard for you.”

“Peter Hynd was an evil man,” she said. “Really evil. I’m glad he’s gone.”

“But you no longer think he was killed?”

“That wass chust a fancy.”

Hamish felt he should not be asking one so young the next question, but who else in this village was going to tell him?

“Heather,” he said, “do you know which of the others were sleeping with Peter Hynd?”

She held up a slim hand and ticked off the names on her fingers: “Nancy Macleod, Ailsa Kennedy, Alice MacQueen, and Edie Aubrey.”

“I cannae believe that! Edie! Come on, Heather.”

“The uglier they come, the harder they fall,” said Heather. “Now, Da will be back from the fishing and I’ve got to get his dinner on. I will speak to you again, Mr. Macbeth.”

“And I hope I’m strong enough to take it,” said Hamish after he had rejoined Priscilla and repeated what Heather had said. “What do you make of her?”

“I think she is a remarkably strong and self-disciplined little girl who is delighted to run the house and have her father to herself,” said Priscilla. “Of course, I may be wrong. It could all be a front. The child could be teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown for all I know. But those women she listed! And her own mother. I can hardly believe it of Edie.”

“There’s one way to find out,” Hamish pointed out. “I could ask Edie point-blank. All she has to do is to deny it.”

“You know,” said Priscilla, “we’re barking up me wrong tree. Let’s look at this another way around. Let’s assume Peter Hynd was murdered and Betty Baxter was murdered. Who had the best motive? Why, the husband, Harry. Harry finds out Betty has been unfaithful to him. He murders Peter Hynd and gets rid of Peter’s belongings. The place is full of peatbogs where stuff, including Peter’s body and Peter’s car, could be sunk without trace. The murder twists his brain further and so he calls Betty and somehow gets her to think he is Peter, don’t ask me how, follows her down to the beach, and breaks her neck. He tells Heather to back him up on the frozen-cod story and she, being happy to have her mother out of the way,-goes along with it.”

“Except for one thing,” Hamish pointed out. “Harry Baxter has a cast-iron alibi.”

“Does he?” asked Priscilla eagerly. “We assume Betty was killed about seven in the morning. What if it were earlier? A post-mortem cannot tell the exact time of death. The fishing boats often come in around six.”

“Thought about that. Harry Baxter went straight to the bar. The bar opens up for the fishermen.”

Priscilla frowned. “Lochdubh is a close-knit community. Gossip from Drim filters over there. Harry would be pitied by his cronies. Say he did not go out fishing or say he did not go to the bar, would his friends cover up for him to get him out of trouble?”

Hamish’s hazel eyes gleamed. “They might at that. They don’t like Blair – who does? – and as they would think that poor old Harry would never do such a thing in a hundred years, they just could have decided to give him an alibi.”

“There’s Archie Maclean’s wife,” said Priscilla. “She waits on the harbour for the boats to come in. Which boat is Harry on again?”

“The Silver Princess. Archie’s boat.”

“Let’s go to Lochdubh,” urged Priscilla. “We can get some sandwiches for lunch at the hotel. I never realized before how inconvenient this bed-and-breakfast-only arrangement is. How do the poor holiday-makers fare when its pouring wet?”

“Goodness knows,” said Hamish. “I suppose they just drive around looking at wet sheep and eating in cafes until it’s safe to return. Mrs. Wellington, the minister’s wife in Lochdubh, she ran bed-and-breakfast for a wee while, and her guests had to be out of the house at nine in the morning whatever the weather and were ordered not to return until eight-thirty in the evening.”

“Let’s go to Lochdubh anyway. It’ll be a relief to get out of here.”

It was a crisp, cold day. Both felt it amazing that two such villages as Lochdubh and Drim could exist in the north of Scotland, two such vastly different villages. Lochdubh as usual was full of the sounds of life.

“Let’s try Archie first,” suggested Hamish.

Mrs. Maclean was scrubbing the kitchen counters. Not for her the easy road of plastic or laminated surface. She attacked the pine wood with a scrubbing brush with tremendous ferocity and looked up in disapproval when Hamish popped his head around the door. “I’m busy,” she snapped.

Hamish strolled into the kitchen, with Priscilla after him. “Just a few questions,” he said.

“You’re not in uniform,” said Mrs. Maclean, throwing the scrubbing brush in the bucket and rubbing her red hands dry on a towel that looked as if it had been starched.

“This is unofficial. Where’s Archie? Asleep?”

“Drinking, as usual.”

“We’ll get round to him in a minute. Now, you go down to the harbour to see the boat come in, don’t you?”

She put her hands on her hips. “And what if I do? That’s no crime. Like to see my man come in safely.”

“Aye, well. The day Betty Baxter over at Drim was killed, can you remember if Harry Baxter was out on the boat the night before?”

She turned away and took the brush out of the bucket and fell to scrubbing again. “I cannae remember one morning from another,” she said.

“But that would be the morning the police came around asking the fishermen questions,” said Priscilla. “And as Archie is skipper of the boat Harry was supposed to be on, they must have called here. Surely you remember that?”

“I tell you, I’m too busy,” she said, scrubbing unabated.

“They didnae see me. They asked Archie.”

Hamish raised his eyes to heaven. “Come on, Priscilla,” he said. “We’d better ask Archie.”

He glanced back in the kitchen window as they walked through the garden. “She’s on the phone already,” he said. “Let’s get to the bar fast.”

The fishermen were divided into two groups, those who drank and those who did not drink at all, and the ones who drank could sink leg-fills of the stuff, and so most of them were still there. As they came in, Archie was just replacing the receiver on the phone on the bar.

“Hullo, Hamish,” he said sheepishly. “What are you having?”

“Nothing at the moment. Too early. Archie, as your wife has just told you, we’re checking up on Harry Baxter’s alibi.”

“And chust when did herself join the polis?” Archie jerked his head in Priscilla’s direction. He looked uncomfortable, but then Archie always looked uncomfortable. The locals swore his wife boiled his clothes. His pullover was riding up somewhere about his midriff and was so felted, it looked like cloth.

“Doa’t get cheeky with me,” said Hamish. “Come on, Archie, I’m going to keep after you and keep after you until I get at the truth.”

“And I’m telling you Harry wass out on the boat, chust like I told them great pudding, Blair.”

“And I’m telling you that I’m not only going to ask your crew but the other fishermen and the women who wait for them and everyone else in Lochdubh, and then I’ll have great pleasure in hauling you off to prison for impeding the police in their inquiries, bearing false witness, and downright lying.”