Death of Yesterday (6 page)

But as he entered the police station, he found Charles Palfour waiting for him in the kitchen. From the living room came the sound of the television.

“What brings you here?” asked Hamish.

“I thought you could help me,” said Charles.

At that moment, the kitchen door opened and Olivia strode in. “I’ve been looking for you, dear brother. What are you doing here?”

“I saw the commotion at the bridge and came to ask what it was all about,” said Charles.

“I can tell you all about that,” said Olivia briskly. “Come along.”

Charles got to his feet. Hamish took out one of his cards, and as Charles passed him, he slipped it into his pocket.

“Are you sure you didn’t want to say something to me?” said Hamish to Charles’s retreating back.

“No, he doesn’t,” said Olivia.

They went out. Hamish strode into the living room. Dick was ensconced in an armchair with the dog and cat at his feet. Switching off the television, Hamish demanded, “Did Charles say anything to you while he was waiting for me?”

“Not a word. Said he would only talk to you.”

“Damn! That boy’s about to crack. While you’ve been lounging here, you lazy sod, I found another body.”

Dick settled himself more comfortably in his chair. “Aye, Fergus McQueen.”

“You’re a policeman. Didn’t it cross your mind to go and have a look?”

“I was about to, but just afore Charles arrived, Archie Maclean came by with some fish and told me the place was fair swarming with coppers. I thought I’d just be in the way.”

“Well, get along there and see what you can find out. I want to know what time he was killed.”

“They won’t know that until there are the results of the autopsy,” said Dick, reaching for the remote control.

“Out! Now!” shouted Hamish, exasperated.

As he sat down at his desk in the police office to prepare his report, he could hear Dick grumbling to the animals, “Makes me sick. He comes in here all wet and trachalt, so he wants me to go out and get as miserable as he is.”

Hamish sighed as he switched on the computer. This second body would bring the press in droves.

Th’ expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action

—William Shakespeare

Things in the real world, thought Hamish, the next morning, as he went up the back of the police station to check on his sheep, move so slowly. People had become so accustomed to
CSI
programmes on television that they expected instant forensic results. All he saw before him was a long wait for the results of the autopsy, and more plodding door-to-door asking questions that had probably been asked already by some policeman of the squad that an infuriated Blair was no doubt unleashing on Cnothan and the surrounding countryside.

But his date with Hannah shone in his brain. He knew he should not be dating the sister of a possible murderer, but she could have nothing to do with it. She had been in Glasgow at the time of Morag’s disappearance.

He would not admit to himself that her beauty comfortably dimmed any memories of Priscilla Halburton-Smythe in his mind.

The storm, instead of refreshing the weather, had left a sticky sunny day where midges danced through the air looking for people to bite.

He avoided the press as much as he could, leaving Dick to cope with them. Dick had an enviable, easygoing way with the press. He would talk to them happily without giving away one single fact.

Hamish decided to call on Mrs. Gilchrist. If, by any remote chance, Gilchrist and Morag had been having an affair, she might let something slip. A small, wiry man with a bald head was mowing the lawn. He switched off the mower when he saw Hamish. “Looking for someone?” he asked.

“Is Mrs. Gilchrist at home?”

“Naw. I drove herself to the airport yesterday. She’s aye taking the foreign holidays.”

“Where has she gone?” asked Hamish.

“Herself said she was going to tour through Europe. Och, I swear herself spends more time away than here. How her man puts up with it is beyond me, so it is.”

“I gather you work for the Gilchrists,” said Hamish.

“Aye, that’s right. I’m Sean Carmichael. I’m by way of being an odd job man.”

“Did you know Morag Merrilea?”

“I really only met her the once. I was sent tae Inverness airport to pick the lassie up when she came north. What a wee madam! I tried to have a bit o’ a chat but she says, ‘You’re a driver, aren’t you? Shut up and drive.’ Could ha’ skelped her. Cheeky bitch.”

“Did she socialise with the Gilchrists?”

“Naw. Mr. Gilchrist says tae me, he says, ‘I like to keep a distance between me and the staff. Get friendly and they take liberties.’ ”

Hamish made his way towards the factory but did a U-turn when he saw Blair’s car parked outside. He went instead to Fergus’s lodgings but turned away from there as well when he saw the forensic van outside.

Feeling frustrated, he returned to the police station. It was hard to believe all this was happening in the Highlands with no one having seen a thing. You could be up on the moors and feel alone in the world and maybe decide to sing, and, sure enough, some shepherd the next day or so would comment: “I heard ye singing up the brae. Bit too much o’ the hard stuff, hey?”

Cnothan, however, as he knew from bitter experience, was unnaturally secretive.

He sat down at the kitchen table with his notes. Dick was outside in the front garden on a deck chair, fast asleep.

He wondered about Pete Eskdale. He seemed a bit of a philanderer if all his broken marriages were any proof of that. Morag liked manipulating people. It might have amused her to go to bed with him in London to secure the job.

Hamish put away his notes. He roused Dick, saying, “We’re going to Strathbane to interview Gilchrist’s former secretary. If she’s bitter about getting the sack, she might talk more freely than most of them.”

Hamish stopped halfway to Strathbane to let the dog and cat out for a run in the heather. “They spend too much time lounging around with you, Dick,” he complained. “They’re getting fat.”

“That reminds me,” said Dick, “I’m hungry. I didn’t have much for breakfast. Just the one wee bit o’ toast and some fried haggis and bacon.”

“We’ll get something in Strathbane after we see this girl. She works at an electronics factory and there’s only the one in Strathbane—Gerald and Simons.”

The factory was the only prosperous-looking building on a run-down industrial estate on the outskirts of the town.

Hamish asked to see Stacey McIver and was told it was her lunch hour and she was in the works canteen. Dick brightened and said quickly, “We’ll go and join her.”

They followed the receptionist into the factory and up in the lift to the top floor to a well-equipped self-service canteen.

The receptionist introduced them and left. “I’ll just be getting us some food,” said Dick and moved rapidly towards the counter before Hamish could protest.

Stacey McIver was a small, thin girl with a white spotty face and lank brown hair. She had prominent eyes of an indeterminate colour and a large nose.

Hamish sat down facing her. “I want to ask you about your time at the factory working as secretary to Mr. Gilchrist.”

“It wasnae fair, sacking me like that,” said Stacey. Her voice held the fluting notes of the Outer Hebrides. “I was good at my job.”

“So why did he sack you?”

“He said I was incompetent. But I wasnae! Ask them here. I do good work.”

“When exactly did he sack you? Was it long before Morag Merrilea arrived?”

“It was the day after she arrived.”

“What! But Pete Eskdale told me he had hired Morag in London because the situation was vacant—or that’s the impression he gave me.”

“That’s the way it happened.”

“What is Gilchrist like?”

She frowned. “A bit cold and bossy. Made me work hard. Wrapped up in that bossy wife of his. Mind you, he gave me a good reference and a goodbye handshake.”

“How much?”

“Five hundred pounds.”

Dick thrust a laden tray in front of Hamish. “I can’t eat all that,” complained Hamish. “Three mutton pies!”

“And two doggie bags,” said Dick triumphantly. “Two of them are for the dog and cat.”

Hamish turned his attention back to Stacey. “Didn’t that strike you as odd?”

“I was so shocked, I didnae know what to think. My ma said, ‘Chust take the money. Thae capitalists are aye weird.’ My ma’s a Communist. I got this job almost right away and it’s a lot better than working for Gilchrist. Look, I’ve got to get back to work.”

Hamish took out his notebook and asked for her name and address. After Stacey had left, he said to Dick, who was eating a mutton pie, peas, and chips with relish, “Let’s see Gilchrist again. He’s got some explaining to do.”

Hamish made the mistake of stopping on the road back to feed the dog and cat and to report to Jimmy Anderson what he had found out and asking if anyone knew where Mrs. Gilchrist was.

“I’m at the factory,” said Jimmy. “I’ll handle it.”

In vain did Hamish protest. It was only occasionally that Jimmy tried to grab the credit for work that Hamish had done, but when he did, there was no moving him.

He drove back to the police station in a bad mood. The sweltering weather did not help his temper.

In the office, he sat down and began to type out a possible scenario where Gilchrist had killed his wife, Morag had found out, and so he had got rid of her as well. But what of Sean Carmichael who had driven Brenda Gilchrist to the airport? He searched the police records and came up with the name of Maisie Moffat’s husband. Nothing very serious. One charge of drunk and disorderly and another for shoplifting. But such a man could be bribed. Perhaps he had been in the pub the night Morag had been drugged.

He drove back to Cnothan and went straight to the Highlander pub. But Stolly Maguire said he was tired of being asked questions. He knew Moffat but could not remember if he’d been in the pub that evening.

He went round to the factory and caught Jimmy as he was leaving. “It’s no go, Hamish,” said Jimmy. “Gilchrist got a call from his Mrs. last night from a hotel in Lyon. I phoned her from his office and she was very much alive and as loudmouthed and bossy as folks say she is and she is travelling on her very own passport, so no doubt there.”

“But why was he in such a rush to get rid of Stacey, give her a good reference, and pay her five hundred pounds as well?”

“He says she was no good and he desperately needed an efficient secretary. He says he felt sorry for the girl.”

“I don’t like it,” said Hamish.

“Well, there’s damn all we can do about it,” said Jimmy crossly. “I’ll maybe drop by this evening.”

“I can’t,” said Hamish. “I’ve got a date.”

“Who with?”

“Mind your own business.” Hamish was afraid that if Jimmy found out he was dating Hannah, he might protest that it was against the rules to date the sister of a suspect. But the very thought of the evening ahead lightened his mood.

* * *

He dressed with special care that evening. For once he was glad that neither Priscilla nor Elspeth was in Lochdubh. In the past, they had often turned up unexpectedly when he was dining with some woman or other.

As he was ready to leave, he said to Dick, “Not a word to anyone about my dinner date.”

“Just so you know it will be all over Lochdubh in about one hour,” said Dick.

“They won’t know who she is,” said Hamish hopefully.

“Oh, aye? The drums will be beating, the smoke signals will be going up, and by the time you get to the coffee stage I’m sure folks like the Currie sisters will have found out exactly who she is.”

The Italian restaurant was candlelit. “On your own?” asked Willie Lamont, the waiter who was married to the owner’s daughter.

“No, I’m dining with someone.”

“Who would that be?”

“Someone you don’t know.”

“Is it Sonja?”

“Who the hell’s she?” asked Hamish, looking at his watch.

“A new maid up at the hotel. A real fam fatal.”

“Femme fatale,” corrected Hamish, who was used to Willie’s malapropisms.

The door opened and Hannah came in. Hamish stood up, feeling his heartbeat quicken.

Hannah was wearing a gold-coloured sheath of a dress which clung to her figure. Her thick black hair framed her perfect face. She was carrying a huge handbag. Willie rushed to pull a chair out for her. In the candlelight, Hamish noticed her eyelashes were so thick that they cast shadows on her cheeks.

“I’d try the spaghetti carbonated,” said Willie eagerly. “I had some for my supper, miss, and it was grand.”

“Go away,” ordered Hamish. “We’ll call you back when we’re ready to order.”

“I’ve never had carbonated spaghetti before,” said Hannah.

“I think our Willie means carbonara. You’d think he’d have learned the menu by now.”

After some discussion, they agreed to order the same thing: starters of avocado and prawns, followed by osso buco. Hamish also ordered a bottle of Valpolicello.

“Tell me about the case,” said Hannah.

“I can’t really talk about it,” said Hamish awkwardly.