Death of Yesterday

DEATH
of
YESTERDAY

The Hamish Macbeth series

Death of a Gossip
Death of a Cad
Death of an Outsider
Death of a Perfect Wife
Death of a Hussy
Death of a Snob
Death of a Prankster
Death of a Glutton
Death of a Travelling Man
Death of a Charming Man
Death of a Nag
Death of a Macho Man
Death of a Dentist
Death of a Scriptwriter
Death of an Addict
A Highland Christmas
Death of a Dustman
Death of a Celebrity
Death of a Village
Death of a Poison Pen
Death of a Bore
Death of a Dreamer
Death of a Maid
Death of a Gentle Lady
Death of a Witch
Death of a Valentine
Death of a Sweep
Death of a Kingfisher
Death of Yesterday

A Hamish Macbeth Murder Mystery

M. C. BEATON

Constable & Robinson Ltd
55–56 Russell Square
London WC1B 4HP
www.constablerobinson.com

First published in the US by Grand Central Publishing,
a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc., 2013

First published in the UK by C&R Crime,
an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd., 2013

Copyright © M. C. Beaton 2013

The right of M. C. Beaton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in
Publication Data is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-78033-103-4 (paperback)
ISBN: 978-1-78033-105-8 (ebook)

Printed and bound in the UK

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Jacket design by
stuartpolsondesign.com

To my good neighbours, Louise Bowles and
Samantha Burke, with affection

Death
of
Yesterday

Send home my long stray’d eyes to me,
Which O! too long have dwelt on thee

—William Blake

Morag Merrilea was an art student, earning money in her summer holidays by working as a secretary for Shopmark Fashions in Cnothan in the Scottish county of Sutherland. She was English and considered herself a cut above her fellow workers. She was highly unpopular. Her appearance was unprepossessing. She had lank brown hair and rather prominent green eyes. But she had a passion for art and for studying faces.

Shopmark Fashions was a new factory on the outskirts of the village, risen out of an old derelict Victorian furniture store. Cnothan was a grim place with one main street running down to a man-made loch over which towered the grey walls of a hydroelectric dam.

Morag had taken the job because she had dreamt of a romantic highland village, and had never quite got over the culture shock of being in Cnothan where the sour locals took pride in “keeping themselves to themselves.”

She sat in her usual corner of the Highlander pub one Saturday evening with her sketchbook, busily drawing the faces of people in the pub, and also the face of someone looking in at the window. Morag always drank alone. The other employees of the factory drank at a pub down on the lochside and, strangely enough, Morag’s solitary drinking was not remarked on because of her unpopularity and the locals shying away from any mention of her.

Although not particularly imaginative, that particular evening she seemed to feel the remoteness, the very foreignness of Sutherland pressing in on her, a claustrophobic sense that the great towering mountains were creeping closer across the heathery moors. The result was, she drank more than usual. The pub was quite full with forestry workers, crofters, and the unemployed. Morag was brilliant at drawing faces and felt the very act of drawing people, of getting them on paper, put them in her power.

At one point, she went to the lavatory. When she returned, she found her sketchbook was missing. She complained to the barman and to everyone around. Getting nothing in reply but blank stares, she downed her drink and made for the door. Morag collapsed outside and was taken to hospital.

After she came awake the following morning and received a lecture from a young doctor on the evils of drink, Morag was gripped with a sudden fear that she might be an alcoholic. She had drunk four pints of beer and assumed she had experienced a blackout. She could not remember the previous evening at all.

She did have one friend at Hornsey Art College where she had studied. She phoned her friend, Celia Hedron, and told her about losing her memory.

Celia said sharply, “Have you considered that someone might have slipped you a date rape drug? That blacks you out so you can’t remember things.”

This dramatic solution appealed to Morag, who did not like to think she was a common alcoholic. She dithered for a week before catching a bus from Cnothan and presenting herself at the police station in Lochdubh. She had been told the police sergeant, Hamish Macbeth, was also responsible for policing Cnothan—along with vast tracts of Sutherland.

Her first impression of Hamish Macbeth was a bad one. When she arrived, he was up on a ladder clearing out the guttering. His lazy constable, Dick Fraser, a plump man with a grey moustache, was sleeping peacefully in the front garden on a deck chair.

“You!” shouted Morag. “Get down here immediately. I have a crime to report.”

Hamish came slowly down the ladder. She saw a tall man with flaming red hair and hazel eyes.

“What seems to be the problem?” he asked.

Morag threw back her head and declared, “I have been drugged, raped, and my sketchbook has been stolen.”

“Then you’d better come ben to the office,” said Hamish mildly.

“Whassat?” mumbled Dick and went back to sleep.

Hamish led the way in at the side door, through the kitchen, and into his small office, where he pulled out a chair for her. He wrote down the details of her addresses in Cnothan and London along with her phone numbers at home and work.

“It’s like this,” said Morag. She gave him her view of what had happened, along with details of her age, twenty-three, and her work as a secretary at the clothes factory.

“And when exactly did this take place?” asked Hamish.

“Last Saturday week.”

Hamish had been taking notes. He put down his pen. “If you were drugged with some date rape drug, it would no longer be in your system. Were you checked for signs of rape?”

“Well, no.”

“I think we should go to the hospital right away and have you checked.”

Morag bit her lip. She had examined herself and knew there were no signs of bruising or forced entry. “I can’t be bothered,” she said.

“Then I don’t see what you expect me to do,” said Hamish patiently.

“You are a moron,” said Morag. “You could at least make some push to get my sketchbook back—that is if you ever get off your arse and do anything.”

“What were you sketching?”

“Faces of people in the pub. Oh, and someone who looked in at the window.”

“Are you any good?” asked Hamish bluntly.

She opened her large handbag, pulled out a small sketchpad, and handed it to him.

His interest quickened. She was very good indeed.

“I’ll need to take a note of who was in the pub. Can you remember any names?”

“They’re all just faces to me—Angus this and Jimmy that. I do not consort with the local peasantry. The factory staff drink at the Loaming down on the loch.”

“With an attitude like that,” said Hamish, the sudden sibilance of his accent showing he was annoyed, “I’m fair astounded that someone didnae try to bump you off instead of chust slipping something in your drink.”

“You’re as useless as the rest of . . .”

“Calm down, lassie. I hae this idea . . .”

“Wonders will never cease.”

“Oh, shut up and listen for once in your life. I know a hypnotist down in Strathbane. He might be able to put you under and restore some o’ your memory.”

Morag’s protruding eyes gleamed. The drama of such a suggestion appealed to her along with the idea of rattling the cage of whoever had drugged her drink.

“I’ll make an appointment and let you know,” said Hamish.

Hamish wondered as he set off for Strathbane later that day with Dick why he was even bothering to help such an unlovely character as Morag Merrilea. He cursed himself for not having asked exactly how much she had to drink. She could simply have had an alcoholic blackout.

Still, he reminded himself, he wasn’t doing anything else at the moment. The summer was unusually warm, with those nasty biting midges of the Highlands out in force. Patel’s, the local shop in Lochdubh, had sold out of insect repellant.

As they mounted a crest of the road, Dick said, “Every time I see Strathbane, I’m right glad I’m out of it.”

Strathbane was a blot on the beauty of Sutherland. Once a busy fishing port, it had died when the fishing stocks ran out. Drugs arrived and it became a town with an air of dirt and desolation.

“I don’t like this idea of a hypnotist,” said Dick. “Sounds awfy like black magic.”

“Och, even Strathbane police use Mr. Jeffreys from time to time.”

“Did they say they would pay his bill?”

Hamish shifted uncomfortably in the driver’s seat. He knew that Detective Chief Inspector Blair, the bane of his life, would have put a stop to it.

“It’s fine,” he said airily. “He’ll just send in his bill as usual.”

* * *

Dick was disappointed in Mr. Jeffreys. He had expected to meet an elderly guru.

But Jeffreys was only in his thirties, a thin man with brown hair in a ponytail, dressed in torn jeans and a T-shirt.

“Let me see,” said Jeffreys. “I can fit her in at three o’clock next Saturday.”

Hamish phoned Morag on her mobile. She was delighted. “Wait till those bastards in the pub hear about this!”

“I wouldnae go around shooting your mouth off,” cautioned Hamish. “I’ll collect you on Saturday and take you to Strathbane.”

In the three days leading up to Saturday, Hamish and Dick pottered around the police station. To Dick Fraser, it was paradise. Viewed as useless by headquarters in Strathbane, he had been relocated to Lochdubh. He was a quiz addict, appearing on television quiz shows, and the kitchen in the police station gleamed with his winnings—an espresso coffee making machine, a dishwasher, a new washing machine, and a new microwave.