Death of a Perfect Wife (3 page)

After some gossip, Hamish got up and left. A thin drizzle was falling. The sky was weeping over the loch, but the air was warm and clammy.

And then he saw a Volvo parked at the side of the police station and Priscilla just getting out of it. He broke into a run.

He slowed his pace as he neared the police station and tried to appear casual although his mouth was dry and his heart was thumping against his ribs.

Then just before he reached her, his pride came to his rescue. He, Hamish Macbeth, was not going to run after a woman with such abysmal taste that she could become starry-eyed over a man who looked like an ape.

‘Evening, Priscilla,’ he said.

‘Open the kitchen door quickly,’ said Priscilla. ‘I’m being eaten alive. Why do the midges leave you alone?’

‘I’m covered in repellent,’ said Hamish. ‘The door’s unlocked anyway. No need to wait for me. What brings you?’

Priscilla sat down at the kitchen table and pushed back the hood of her anorak. ‘Father thought I ought to call on the newcomers,’ she said.

Of course, thought Hamish bleakly, and while you’re playing lady of the manor, drop in on the local bobby at the same time.

‘What did you think of them?’ he asked, putting on the kettle.

‘They seem very pleasant. She’s got quite a forceful personality. Dr Brodie’s wife was helping her get things arranged. Mrs Brodie’s delighted to find a friend at last, of course.’

‘Why of course?’ Hamish measured tea leaves into the teapot with a careful hand.

‘Mrs Brodie’s a lonely woman. She should have been one of those vague academics, writing her thesis and taking yet another degree or doctorate. Lots of brains and no self-confidence and very little commonsense. Trixie Thomas has taken her over with a firm hand. She’s going to perm her hair for her tomorrow.’

‘She shouldn’t have a perm,’ said Hamish. ‘That baby hair of hers suits her.’

‘Oh, well, she’s happy and perms grow out,’ said Priscilla.

Hamish handed her a cup of tea, poured one for himself, and sat down opposite her at the table.

‘And what do you make of the husband, Paul?’ he asked.

‘Nice man. Bit of a helpless child. Seems Trixie’s got a hard job managing him and all the arrangements for the bed and breakfast.’

‘Or that’s the way she plays it,’ said Hamish. ‘Has she asked you for any furniture?’

‘As a matter of fact she did. But I told her she’d need to see my father. I don’t own any of it.’

‘I hear you’ve been back for over a week.’

Priscilla looked at Hamish’s hazel eyes, which were calm and appraising.

‘I meant to get down and see you sooner,’ she said defensively, ‘but time seemed to fly past. I’ve got these friends up with me. They’re leaving tomorrow.’

‘Who are they?’

‘Oh, just friends. Sarah James and her sister, Janet, David Baxter and John Burlington.’

‘I saw them,’ said Hamish casually. ‘I was driving past. Who’s the hairy fellow?’

‘You mean the good-looking one with the tanned face? That’s John.’

‘What does he do?’

‘He’s a very successful stockbroker.’

‘Looks a bit old for a yuppie.’

‘Hamish, I wouldn’t have thought you would be the type to sneer at yuppies. He’s not exactly young, he’s thirty.’

‘Nearly as old as me,’ said Hamish drily.

‘Anyway, he’s very hard-working and ambitious. He’s bought this brill farmhouse in Gloucester for weekends and he’s going to take me down to see it when I get back in September. I’m studying computers. My course starts up again in the autumn.’

‘And you’re in love with him,’ said Hamish flatly.

Priscilla coloured up. ‘I don’t know. I think so.’

All in that moment, Hamish could have struck her. If she had said ‘Yes’, then that would have been the end of hope and he could learn to be comfortable. But Hamish knew people in love were never in any doubt about it and he cursed her in his heart for the hope she had so unwittingly held out.

He had no claim on her. As far as Priscilla was concerned, they were friends, nothing more.

Priscilla changed the subject. ‘After that business in Cnothan, I thought you would have got a promotion.’

‘I told you, I don’t want a promotion. I’ve very comfortable here.’

‘Hamish, there seems something very … well … immature about a man who doesn’t want to get on.’

‘You’re hardly a dynamo of ambition yourself, Miss Halburton-Smythe, or are you just an old-fashioned girl who wants to realize her ambition by marrying an ambitious man?’

‘This tea’s foul,’ said Priscilla. ‘And you’re foul. You’re usually so friendly and pleasant.’

‘Priscilla, you haff jist called me an immature layabout and you expect me to be pleasant.’

‘So I did.’ She put a hand on his jersey sleeve. ‘I’m sorry, Hamish. Let’s start again. I have just arrived, you have just poured me a cup of something made out of sawdust, and we are talking about the Thomases.’

Hamish grinned at her in sudden relief. He prized their usual easygoing friendship and did not want to lose it.

Priscilla smiled back and then sighed. Hamish was tall and gangly and lanky and unambitious. But when he smiled and his hazel eyes crinkled up in his thin face, he seemed part of an older, cleaner world that John Burlington knew nothing about and could never belong to.

‘Yes, the Thomases,’ she said. ‘She’s very good at getting one to do things for her. I think half the village has been up at the house already, getting them food and fixing things for them.’

‘Where are they from?’

‘Edgware, North London.’

‘Plenty of jobs in London,’ said Hamish. ‘Not like the north. Wonder why he’s on the dole?’

‘Maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he threw up his job to come here and went on the dole after he arrived. You’re very curious about them.’

‘I have an uneasy feeling they are going to cause trouble,’ said Hamish slowly.

There was a knock at the kitchen door and Hamish went to open it. John Burlington stood there. ‘Is Priscilla here?’ he asked. ‘I saw her car.’

‘I’m here,’ called Priscilla, getting to her feet. She introduced the two men. John Burlington’s handsome face broke into an engaging smile. ‘You’ve been away for ages, Cilla,’ he said. ‘The others are outside.’

Priscilla and John left. Hamish wandered through to the office and idly picked up some forms and put them down again. Cilla! What a name. He could hear them laughing outside. He could hear John Burlington saying, ‘You’ll never guess what our Cilla was doing. Drinking tea with the local copper. Darling, you’re too marvellous!’ He must have brought the others with him.

Hamish sat down at the desk. He felt he did not really know Priscilla Halburton-Smythe very well. He himself could not have tolerated such company for very long, but then, perhaps jealousy was clouding his judgement.

Dr Brodie sniffed the air suspiciously when he came home that night. Everything seemed to smell of furniture polish and disinfectant. Angela must be worn out with cleaning. Still, he had always wanted a clean house. He sat down at the table.

Angela lifted two boil-in-the-bag curries out of a pan and then the packets of rice. She cut open the bags and tipped the contents on to two plates.

‘Where’s Raffles?’ asked the doctor, ladling mango chutney on to his rice.

‘I shut him out in the garden. He will climb on to the table during meals and cats are full of germs.’

‘I think over the years we’ve become immune to Raffles’s germs,’ said the doctor, pouring a glass of something that was simply emblazoned claret without the name of any vintage to sully its label. ‘Why the sudden fear of pollution by Raffles?’

‘Trixie Thomas says cats are a menace. Besides, I’m sick of the hairs everywhere.’

‘Poor old Raffles,’ said the doctor, but his wife had retreated into a book.

He finished his curry. ‘Anything for dessert?’ he asked. ‘The trouble with these instant meals is that they don’t fill you up.’

Angela rose from the table. ‘I made a butterscotch pudding,’ she said. ‘Trixie showed me how.’

She put a plate in front of her husband. He took a mouthful and his eyebrows raised in surprise. ‘This is delicious,’ he said. ‘Absolutely delicious. You clever girl.’

‘I couldn’t have done it without Trixie.’

‘Well, God bless Trixie,’ said the doctor, looking around the shining kitchen with pleasure.

He was to regret those words bitterly in the weeks to come.

The summer crawled into July. The days seemed long and irritable. Intermittent drizzle and warm wet winds brought the flies and midges in droves. Trixie had made a sign that hung outside the house – The Laurels, Bed & Breakfast. She already had guests, a broken-down looking woman from Glasgow with a brood of noisy, unhealthy children and a thin, quiet man who drifted about the village like a ghost.

Hamish had given the Thomases a wide berth, but one day he saw Paul working in the garden. There was no sign of Trixie so he ambled over.

The big man leaned on his spade when he saw Hamish and said, ‘I’m trying to make a vegetable garden. It’s hard work. This ground hasn’t been turned over for years.’

‘Where’s Mrs Thomas?’ asked Hamish.

‘Oh, off somewhere. Inverness, I think.’

‘That’s verra hard work,’ said Hamish sympathetically. ‘Archie Maclean’s got a rotary cultivator, you know, one of those things that just churn up the earth. If he’s not out fishing, I suppose he would lend it to you. Would you like to walk along to his house and we’ll ask him?’

‘That would be great.’ Paul threw down the spade and wiped his hands on his trousers and came out of the garden to join Hamish.

‘You must find Lochdubh a bit of a change from London,’ said Hamish, taking out a stick of midge repellent and wiping his face with it.

‘I think I can make something of it here,’ said Paul. ‘New start. Never been able to do much with my life. Trixie’s a marvel. I don’t know what I would do without her.’

‘What was your job in London?’

‘Oh, this and that. Trouble was, I’d got so fat, I couldn’t move, and the fatter I got, the more I felt I had to eat. Trixie came into my life like a whirlwind and took me over and put me on a diet. I owned the house I lived in. It had been my mother’s. Trixie suggested we put it up for sale and buy something up here with the money. I hope I can make something of the garden. It would mean a lot to me to be able to grow things, know what I mean?’

Hamish nodded, and then said, ‘But don’t you miss the theatres and cinemas and all the fun of the city?’

‘No, I didn’t have much fun. It’s quiet here and the people are friendly. We’ve had such a lot of help. But that’s Trixie for you. Everyone loves her. She’s going to do a lot for the village. She’s forming the Lochdubh Bird Watching and Bird Protection Society. The first meeting’s at the church tonight.’

‘It’ll be an interest for the children,’ said Hamish cautiously. ‘It doesn’t do to go too far with this bird thing. Some of these societies can be downright threatening, telling people they can’t dig the peats because that’s the nesting place of the greater crested twit, or something. But I suppose Mrs Thomas is just interested in finding out about the different types of birds.’

‘I suppose,’ echoed Paul. ‘But she likes to do things thoroughly. She’s even starting a Clean Up Lochdubh campaign.’

‘Morals?’

‘No, litter.’

Hamish looked along the street which bordered the waterfront. There was not a scrap of paper in sight.

‘And she’s going to see Dr Brodie about starting an Anti-Smoking League.’

‘My, my, she’ll be on dangerous ground there,’ said Hamish. ‘The doctor smokes like a chimney.’

‘I know. Trixie says it’s a disgrace. She says he’s giving all his patients cancer. And she’s had to talk to Angela about the doctor’s diet. You should see what she’s been feeding that man. Chips with everything. Too much cholesterol.’

Hamish felt uncomfortable. ‘It doesn’t do to interfere with people,’ he said. ‘Brodie’s fifty-seven and looks about forty and he’s never had a day’s illness that I can remember.’

‘Oh, Trixie knows what’s best for him,’ said Paul easily.

They walked on in silence. Hamish remembered David Currie, a thin, weedy man who used to live in Lochdubh. He had a tyrant of a mother whom he adored. ‘Mother knows best’, was his favourite expression. Then one night he had got drunk and had chased his mother down the street with an axe and Hamish had had to rescue the terrified woman. After that, the Curries had moved to Edinburgh. Hamish had heard that David was a leading light in the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Archie Maclean was at home. He gave Hamish a welcoming smile and then the smile faded as he saw Paul behind Hamish. He agreed to lend them his cultivator but he was decidedly chilly towards Paul and Hamish wondered why.

Hamish and Paul worked amiably together throughout the afternoon. Hamish then asked him back to the police station for tea. He put the teapot, two mugs, and a plate of chocolate biscuits on the kitchen table and then the phone in the office rang.

He left Paul and went to answer it. It was Detective Chief Inspector Blair from Strath-bane. ‘How’s the local yokel?’ asked Blair.

‘Chust fine,’ said Hamish.

‘Anything going on there?’

‘No, nothing.’

‘You lucky sod,’ grumbled Blair. ‘Look, the new super, Peter Daviot, is coming over to the Lochdubh Hotel for the fishing. I want you to keep oot o’ his way.’

‘Why?’

‘For yir own good, you pillock. If he finds you’re daein’ nothing, he’ll close down your polis station.’

‘Anything else?’ asked Hamish.

‘No,’ growled Blair. ‘Keep away from Daviot. Ah’m warning ye.’

He slammed down the phone.

Hamish waited a moment and then phoned Mr Johnson, the manager of the Lochdubh Hotel.

‘How would you like a supply of free-range eggs for a month for nothing?’ asked Hamish.

‘I’d like it fine,’ said the manager. ‘With this salmonella scare, everyone keeps asking for free-range eggs. Of course, I’ve been telling them they’re free range. I get cook to dip them in coffee to turn them brown and stick a wee hen’s feather on some of the shells to make it look like the real thing but it would be just my luck if one of them got the food poisoning. What d’you want in return?’