M.C. Beaton - Death of a Charming Man

“Oh, no.” Edie shook her head. “We may have our difficulties in Drim, but there’s no one here who would do a thing like that.”

“But Drim had never been subjected to such as Peter Hynd before,” said Hamish bitterly. “Sorry to have upset you, Edie. Come along, Priscilla. We have a call to make.”

“Where are we going?” asked Priscilla when they were outside.

“I think we’ll try Alice MacQueen, and then I’ll tackle Jock Kennedy and Jimmy Macleod on my own.”

“I hate this,” said Priscilla as they walked side by side to the hairdresser’s.

“Then don’t come.” Hamish slanted a look at her. “All this unbridled passion must be foreign to you.”

“Don’t get at me, Hamish.”

“Maybe you’d best leave Alice to me. Why not visit Annie Duncan yourself, Priscilla? She must have known what was going on. Goodness knows, she was there when I tried to warn the minister.”

“Yes, sir,” said Priscilla and turned and walked off in the direction of the manse. He stood for a moment watching her go, debating whether to run after her and give her a good shake. Then he shrugged and went on his way.

♦

Alice MacQueen opened the door to him. “I was just about to watch a show on the telly,” she said defensively. “I’ve come about Peter Hynd.”

She backed away from him, her hand to her mouth. “So he’s been found,” she said. Hamish followed her in. “What do you mean by that?”

She sat down in one of the hairdressing chairs. “I meant, has he come back?”

“Now why do I think that wass not what you meant at all?” said Hamish, his voice suddenly sibilant. “What would you be saying if I told you that the body of Peter Hynd had been found in a peatbog?”

“He can’t be dead,” wailed Alice.

Hamish relented. “No, he hasn’t been found.”

She goggled at him and then said furiously, “Why are you playing nasty games with me?”

Hamish sat down. “I want to get at the truth, Alice. Some thing’s wrong in Drim. Peter Hynd leaves and no one sees him go. Betty Baxter meets her death on the beach after she went out to meet someone, and someone tried to injure Nancy Macleod today.”

“That was the accident,” panted Alice. “She’s too heavy and she looks ridiculous playing the lead.”

“Well, let’s begin at the beginning. Let’s have a talk about Peter Hynd. Did you haff the affair wi’ him?”

She shook her head. “You’re sure about that?”

Her eyes flashed. “It was nothing like that. It was innocent. A boy-and-girl thing.”

How old was Alice? wondered Hamish. There was a puffiness under the eyes and little wrinkles radiated out from around her mouth. Fifty-five?

“Describe this boy-and-girl thing.”

“You wouldn’t understand,” she said, suddenly weary. “We talked a lot and went for walks on the moors. He…held my hand. He said he could talk to me. He said I wasn’t like I the otter women. He said…he said he had never met anyone like me. And then Betty Baxter with her great gross body took him away.”

“You mean she had an affair wi’ him?”

“She took away his innocence,” said Alice, all mad logic. “But herself always was a slut. It’s Ailsa I can’t forgive.”

“Ailsa?”

“We were friends. I began to guess what was happening when Jock asked me one day, casual-like, if the video had been any good. I said, ‘What video?’ – ‘Oh,’ he says, ‘the one you were watching last night with Ailsa.’ I realized I had to cover for her for some reason, so I said it was great I waited until I saw Ailsa next and asked her what it was about. She came home with me. She said she had a great secret to tell me. She was all excited. I should have known then what it was, but she was so excited and happy, I thought maybe she’d had a win on the football pools. She told me she had been with Peter…in bed. I was hurt and horrified. I said I had told her about my romance with Peter and how could she do such a thing? ‘Romance,’ she jeered. ‘What romance? Wandering about the heather holding hands? Grow up, Alice,’ she said. ‘I’m a real woman to him.’

“I told her he would betray her as he had betrayed me, but she went on laughing and laughing. And when he went away, she wanted to be friends again, and what could I do? You know what a small village is like, it’s not like the city. You have to get on with people. But Ailsa and I, we can’t be friends anymore like in the old days. In fact there were the five of us, Betty, Nancy, Ailsa, Edie, and me. We were close. We had a lot of laughs: When Peter Hynd first came, well, that was a laugh, too. They’d come to get their hair done and Edie’s exercise classes were a big success and we competed with each other to see who had talked to Peter last, but it was all friendly, all joshing. Then it all turned sour. I don’t really think I can go on living here.”

Not for the first time did Hamish Macbeth curse Peter Hynd under his breath. “Alice, did Peter know that you were all the best of friends?”

“Oh, yes. I used to tell him how lucky I was.”

And Peter promptly set out to turn one against the other, thought Hamish. He felt suddenly tired. If only Peter Hynd were alive and well so that he could punch him on the nose!

♦

Priscilla wondered, as she sat in the manse, if Hamish Macbeth would one day float away on a sea of tea and coffee. Every house one went into in the Highlands, one was offered some form of refreshment, and to refuse would be saying that one did not like one’s host. She was glad the minister had left them alone. For some reason she could not fathom, Priscilla had found herself disliking him intensely. When the minister left, Priscilla felt the rather chilly air of the manse parlour lightening perceptibly. “We’ll have some more coal on that fire for a start,” said Annie, rising and suiting the action to the words. “I hate the way Callum rations it. I sometimes wish we had one of those new council houses, the ones with the central heating.”

Priscilla studied her hostess. She looked much younger than her years, she must be at least fifty, but with her long hair worn down her back and her well-spaced features she could easily have been taken for a woman in her thirties, and early thirties at that. Her figure was slim and well-shaped. Her dress was surprisingly Bohemian for a minister’s wife, Bohemian in a sort of old–fashioned way. She wore a white ‘peasant’ blouse with patchwork skirt and fringed calfskin boots.

“Do you think the pantomime will be a success?” asked Priscilla.

“Oh, I think so. It doesn’t look much like it at the moment. I’m borrowing costumes from the theatre in Strathbane. Once they see the costumes, they’ll get excited. Fortunately the girl who played the lead in the same pantomime in Strathbane last Christmas was on the heavy side, so there shouldn’t be that much of an alteration to get Nancy into it.”

“Why Nancy?” asked Priscilla curiously. “She’s hardly sweet sixteen.”

“She’s got a beautiful voice and that’s all that matters. People get irritated when the lead has a tinny voice. Look at those huge opera singers. No one bothers about their size when they start to sing.”

“But,” said Priscilla tentatively, “your choice of Nancy seems to have caused a certain amount of animosity. I mean, someone could have caused her to fall down those stairs.”

“Oh, believe me, I have survived here by never paying any attention to the squabbles of the village women.”

And in that sentence, thought Priscilla, Annie had betrayed that she looked on the women of the village as some strange tribe of aborigines whose jealousies and feuds had nothing to do with a civilized being. How could she have lived here so long, marvelled Priscilla, and maintained that attitude? Priscilla knew most of the women in Lochdubh and liked quite a few of them.