Hamish MacBeth 06 (1991) - Death of a Snob (3 page)

“What’s your name?” asked Hamish.

“Joseph Macleod,” said the boy. He began to whistle through his teeth.

“Is Mrs. Wetherby in the wheelhouse?” asked Hamish.

“Naw, herself is oot on the deck.”

“In this weather?”

“Aye, her’s daft. There’s worse coming.” The boat lurched and bucketed but the boy kept his balance, swaying easily with the erratic motion. “Right bad storm inland. Heard it on the radio.”

Hamish thought uneasily of Priscilla. They were on the west coast. The storm had been driven in from the east. He hoped she was safe.

Jane clattered down to join Hamish, her face shining with good health. “Marvellous sea,” she said. “Waves like mountains.”

“I can feel them, and that’s enough.” Hamish, still seated on one of the berths with the raised edge of it digging into his thighs, looked queasily at Jane. “It’s a wonder you got them to bring the boat out in this weather.”

“I pay well.” Jane lay down on the other berth and raised one booted leg in the air to admire it.

Hamish had to hand it to Jane. It was a dreadful crossing and yet she prattled on as if lying on a sofa in her own living-room. The little fishing boat crawled up one wave and plunged down the next and then wallowed about in the choppy trough at the bottom before scaling another watery mountain. The boy left the kettle and started to work the pumps, for sea water was crashing down the companion-way. The air was horrid with the sound of wind and waves and the groanings of the boat as it fought its way to Eileencraig.

Hamish’s cold felt worse. His forehead was hot and there was a ringing in his ears. Jane’s presence was claustrophobic. There was too much of everything about her, thought Hamish dizzily. Too much length of black-booted leg, too much cleavage, and too much of that breathy, sexy voice that rose remorselessly above the storm.

“The reason for the divorce,” Jane was saying, “was that we both needed space. It’s very important to have space in a marriage, don’t you think?”

“I wouldn’t know,” replied Hamish, “not being married myself.”

Jane’s large eyes swivelled round like headlamps turning a corner to focus on him. “Everyone to their own bag,” she said cheerfully. “Have you a lover?”

“I am not a homosexual.”

“Then why aren’t you married? I mean, you’re over thirty, aren’t you? And anyone over thirty who is not married is either a homosexual or emotionally immature.”

“It could be argued that divorce is a sign of emotional immaturity,” said Hamish. “Inability to make a go of things once the first fine careless rapture has died down.”

“Why, Hamish Macbeth, you are straight out of the Dark Ages!”

Hamish got up and clutched at a shelf for support. “Going to get a breath of air,” he said, and scurried up the iron stairs before Jane could volunteer to accompany him.

It was still wild, but the great seas were dying. He went into the wheelhouse. “Nearly there,” grunted the fisherman.

Hamish peered through the spray-blotched window. “Can’t see anything but darkness and water.”

“Ower there.” The fisherman pointed to the middle west. Hamish strained his eyes. He had never been to Eileencraig. Then, all at once, he saw lights in the blackness, lights so low that he seemed to be looking down on them. He was to find out later that a large part of the center of the very flat island was below sea-level. The sea was calming. Somewhere far overhead, the wind was tearing and shrieking, but down below, all was suddenly still, an eerie effect, as if Eileencraig, like a sort of aquatic Brigadoon, had risen from the sea.

Jane appeared on deck, obviously looking for him. He went out to join her. The boat cruised into a wooden jetty. There were little knots of people standing on the jetty.

As they disembarked, Hamish carrying the luggage, he gave them a cheery salute of “Afternoon,” but they all stared back at Hamish and Jane without moving, like sullen villagers in some long-forgotten war watching the arrival of their conquerors. There was something uncanny about their stillness, their watching. Their very clothes seemed to belong to an older age: the women in black shawls, the men in shiny tight suits. They stood immobile, watching, ever watching, not moving an inch, so that Hamish and Jane had to walk around the little groups to get off the jetty.

Hamish had once had a murder case in a Sutherland village called Cnothah. There, the inhabitants were anything but friendly but would have looked like a welcoming committee compared to these islanders.

Jane strode to where an ex-army jeep was parked and swung her long legs into it, and Hamish climbed in beside her after slinging the luggage into the back. “Horrible old thing,” commented Jane, “but sheer extravagance to leave anything more expensive lying around. They’d just take it to pieces.”

“Out of spite?” Hamish looked back at the islanders on the jetty, who had all turned around and were now staring at the jeep, their black silhouettes against the jetty lights, like cardboard cut-outs.

Jane drove off. “Oh, no,” she shouted above the noise of the engine. “They’re rather sweet really. Just like naughty children.”

“Why on earth do you stay in such a place?”

“It is part of the health routine to have walks and exercise in such a remote, unspoiled part. My guests love it.”

They probably would, thought Hamish, cushioned as they were from the stark realities of remote island life.

“And just smell that air!”

As the jeep was an open one, there was little else Hamish could do but smell the air. The road wound through the darkness, the headlights picking out acres of bleak bog at every turn.

Jane swerved off the road and drove over a heathery track and then along the hard white sand of a curve of beach. “There it is,” she called. “At the end.”

Floodlit, The Happy Wanderer stood in all its glory, cocking a snoot at the simple grandeur of beach and moorland. It had been built like one of those pseudo-Spanish villas in California with arches and curved wrought-iron balconies, the whole having been painted white. A pink curly sign, “The Happy Wanderer,” shone out into the blackness.

It fronted right on the beach. Jane pulled up at the entrance.

“Home at last,” she said. “Come in, Hamish, and I’ll show you to your room.”

The front door led straight into the main lounge. There was a huge fireplace filled with blazing logs; in front of it stood several chintz-covered sofas and armchairs. The room had a high arched wooden ceiling and fake skin rugs on the floor; a fake leopardskin lay in front of the fire, and nylon sheepskins dotted, like islands, the haircord carpet. Several modern paintings in acid colours swore from the walls. There was no reception desk, no receptionist, no pigeon-holes for keys and letters.

Jane conducted him down a corridor that led off the far end of the lounge and threw open a door with the legend ‘Rob Roy’ on it. The room was large, designed in a sort of 1970
s
interior decorator’s shades of brown and cream, with a large vase of brown-and-cream dried flowers on a low glass table. There was a double bed and a desk and several chairs and a private bathroom. A bad painting of Rob Roy waving a broadsword and standing on his native heath looked down from over a strictly ornamental fireplace, and a bookshelf full of women’s magazines was beside the bed. There was, however, no television; nor a phone.

“Where is everyone?” asked Hamish.

“I suppose they’re in the television room as usual. Odd, isn’t it? I mean the way people can’t live without television.”

“Can I have my key?” asked Hamish.

Again that merry laugh, which was beginning to grate on Hamish’s nerves. “We don’t have keys here, copper. No need for them. We’re all one big happy family. I try to make it as much like a private house as possible.”

“Yes, and I suppose if anyone does pinch anything, they wouldn’t get very far,” commented Hamish cynically. “There’s no phone, so I suppose there’s no room service. Any chance o’ a cup of tea?”

Jane looked at him seriously. “Do you know that tea contains just as much caffeine as coffee?”

“Coffee would do just fine.”

“You don’t understand. Both are bad for you. But come and meet the others when you’re ready.”

Hamish sighed and sat down after she had left. He wondered whether he was supposed to change into black tie for dinner and then decided that the rugged people who came to remote, wind-swept health forms probably sat down in shorts and T-shirts.

He had a hot bath, changed into a clean shirt, sports jacket and flannels, swallowed two aspirin, and went in search of the others.

By following the sound of the six-o’clock news, he located the television room. Only one person looked up when he entered, a woman who had been reading a book. The rest were staring at the box. Jane then burst into the room. She had changed into a sort of white leather jump suit, the gohl zip pulled down to reveal that cleavage. “Drinks in the lounge,” she called.

A tetchy-looking man who held a remote control switched off the television. The small party rose stiffly to their feet. Hamish thought that they all, with the exception of the book-reading woman, looked as if they had been gazing at the television set since Jane had left on her visit to Priscilla.

A drinks trolley was pulled up near the fire. “I’ll introduce our newcomer,” said Jane. “This is Hamish Macbeth, a friend of Priscilla’s—you know Priscilla, the one I went to see. Hamish, first names will do. Heather and Diarmuid, Sheila and Ian, Harriet and John.”

Hamish’s eyes roved over the group. Which was Jane’s ex? He found the woman who had been reading had joined him. She had been introduced as Harriet. This then was Harriet Shaw, the cookery-book writer. She was a stylish-looking woman in her forties with a sallow, clever face made almost attractive by a pair of large humorous grey eyes.

“Jane told me you write books,” said Hamish.

“Yes,” said Harriet. “I came up here in the hope of getting some old Scottish recipes from the islanders.”

Hamish looked rueful. “I wouldn’t bank on it. You’ll find they dine on things like fish fingers and iced cakes made in Glasgow. Help me out. Who are the others? First names are not a help.”

“Have a drink first,” said Harriet.

“In a moment. I would really prefer a cup of tea. Jane seems down on caffeine, though. I thought she would have frowned on alcohol.”

“She seems to think it all right in moderation. Well, the couple drinking gin and tonics are Heather and Diarmuid Todd. He’s in real estate. She’s a self-appointed culture vulture.” -.

Diarmuid Todd was an attractive-looking man; that is, to anyone who liked the looks shown in tobacco advertisements. He had thick brown wavy hair and a pipe clenched between his teeth. He was smiling enigmatically and staring off into the middle distance. Despite the heat of the lounge, he was wearing a chunky Aran sweater with blue cords and boat shoes without socks.

His wife, Heather, looked older. She had blackish-brown hair and was wearing a pink jump suit with high heels. But her figure was lumpy and she looked like a parody of Jane, whom she obviously admired immensely. She had a doughy face set in lines of discontent.

“And Tweedledum and Tweedledee, that’s Ian and Sheila Carpenter.”

Ian and Sheila Carpenter were both roly-poly people with fat jolly faces and fat jolly smiles. They were flirting with each other in a kittenish, affectionate way.

“The small, bad-tempered man is Jane’s ex, John Wetherby.”

John was well-groomed, slightly plump, looking as if he had been reluctantly dragged from his office. He was wearing an immaculately tailored pin-striped suit, a shirt with a white separate collar and striped front, and an old school tie.

“He’s a barrister,” said Harriet. “So what do
you
do?”

Hamish hesitated. It was obvious that Jane did not want anyone to know he was a policeman. “I work for the forestry,” he said.

Heather Todd, who had come up to them, caught Hamish’s last remark. Her eyes bored insolently into his. “Good heavens,” she said, “where did Jane pick you up?”

“In Lochdubh, on the mainland,” said Hamish amiably.

Heather’s voice was Glaswegian, although it would take a practised ear to register the tact. Among the middle classes of Glasgow it had become unfashionable to try to affect an English accent, the painful result of that effort usually coming out as what was damned not so long ago as Kelvinside, the name of one of the posher areas, where glass came out as ‘gless’ and path as ‘peth’. The new generation of middle-aged, middle-class snobs affected a transatlantic drawl (“I godda go’) but occasionally throwing in a few chosen words of Scottish dialect to show they were of the people, there being nothing more snobbish than a left-wing Glaswegian who longed for the days when that city was a dump of slums and despair instead of having its present successful image. These same snobs talked about ‘the workers’ and their rights frequently, but made sure they never knew one, short of indulgently telling some barman when they were slumming to “buy that wee fellow in the cap a drink.”

“Do you realise what you and your like are doing?” demanded Heather.

“No, tell me.” Hamish looked around, wondering whether he could ask Jane to relent and fetch him a cup of tea. There did not seem to be any staff.

“Covering the Highlands with those ghastly conifers, and all so that rich yuppies in England can get a tax shelter.”

“Forestry is no longer a tax shelter,” pointed out Hamish.

“There arnae that many jobs in the Highlands, and forestry’s a blessing.”

“Well, that’s not the way I see it,” said Heather, casting her eyes about her to draw an audience from the rest. “The massacre of the flow country in Sutherland, the damage to the environment…” Her hectoring voice went on and on.

Hamish did not like the dreary new pine forests that covered the north of Scotland, but someone like Heather always made him feel like defending them.

“I’ll find you a cup of tea,” said Harriet’s voice at his ear, and she tugged at his sleeve. They slipped quietly away while Heather continued her lecture, her eyes half-closed so that she could better enjoy the sound of her own voice, which went on and on.