Hamish Macbeth 13 (1997) - Death of a Dentist (14 page)

“I think there was. I took to following him. Oh, it was silly. He found out right away and said if I didn’t give him space, he would have to get rid of me. He went down to Inverness a lot. I’m sure there was someone there.”

“If you can think of anything at all,” said Hamish, “just phone me. I’ll come over right away.”

Maggie sniffed miserably. “You’re very kind, not like those dreadful policemen in Strathbane.”

“Have the press been bothering you?”

“Yes, but this weather will keep them away, and they seem to have lost interest anyway.”

“Did Mr. Gilchrist have any particular friends?”

“No, for a time there was just me. Neither of us had any friends up here. We were all we needed.”

“And relatives? I mean, as far as I know, no relative has come forward.”

“He said he was an only child and that his parents were dead.”

“Odd that. You would think there would be a cousin or someone.” Wedding photographs; thought Hamish. Jeannie Gilchrist would have wedding photographs. Must see her.

He rose and said goodbye. He was grateful that Maggie had not commented on Sarah’s presence.

Once back in the Land Rover, he said, “I’ll drop you back at the hotel and go to Inverness. I want to talk to Gilchrist’s ex-wife again.”

“Take me with you,” said Sarah. “I’m not doing anything else.”

Hamish looked out at the steel grey sky. “The wind’s rising,” he said. “It might be a hairy journey.”

“Then let’s be hairy together.”

Hamish smiled at her suddenly. “Inverness it is.”

“Well, now that we have seen each other,” said the Unicorn, “if you’ll believe in me, I’ll believe in you. Is that a bargain?”

 

—
Lewis Carroll

“There’s coffee in that thermos on the floor beside you,” said Hamish as they drove slowly along. “It’s got milk and sugar in it because I meant to use it to make any policeman on guard outside Gilchrist’s a bit friendlier towards me.”

“I don’t take sugar, but I may be driven to it if we’re trapped in this snow.”

“We’ll go over by Dornoch and take the bridge,” said Hamish, peering out into the gloom. “I think the snow’s getting a bit wetter.”

By the time they reached the long bridge over the Dornoch Firth, Hamish’s eyes felt tired and gritty with the strain of peering ahead. As they made their way over the bridge, Hamish could see a yellowish light at the end and wondered what it was.

He soon found out.

On the other side was a different world. They drove straight out of the swirling snow and blackness and into brilliant sunshine. Hamish looked back in his driving mirror in amazement at the black wall of bad weather behind him. “Let’s just hope the storm stays where it is,” he said, “and doesn’t follow us into Inverness.”

“I will never get used to this weird climate. What do you hope to find out from Mrs. Gilchrist?” asked Sarah.

“I want to find out all I can about the man. She surely knew him better than anyone else.”

“What about Maggie Bane?”

“She was just having the affair with him. Marriage fair brings out the beast in people.”

“Yes, it does,” she said sadly.

He glanced sharply at the hunched figure in the passenger seat. “What would you know about it?”

“Observation,” she said, “just like you.”

When they reached Anstrumer Road in Inverness, Hamish climbed down from the Land Rover and looked up at the sky. Long ragged trails of black cloud were streaming out from the west, the fingers of the storm clawing eastward.

Jeannie Gilchrist was not at home. “Of course, she’ll be back at work,” said Hamish. “Let’s go into Inverness and get something to eat and then we’ll try the council offices.”

They found a self-service café. Sarah had a salad and Hamish, a Scotch pie and chips.

“You don’t worry about your cholesterol level, I see,” remarked Sarah.

“It’s comfort food,” said Hamish. “Salad makes me tetchy.”

“I cannot imagine you getting tetchy,” said Sarah. “You seem much too laid-back.”

He smiled at her. “I have the vicious temper.”

“I don’t believe that. Look at all the people inside and out. Where do they all come from? I was amazed to find Inverness such a busy place.”

“Aye, it’s grown out o’ recognition. There’s something suddenly bothering me.”

“And what’s that?”

“Thon still o’ the Smiley brothers. I keep thinking of that long shed. I mean a few bottles here and there for the locals is all right. What if they were into big production?”

“You keep saying it’s hard to keep anything quiet in the Highlands. Someone would have told you. I mean, you said that Kylie girl in the chemists knew about them.”

“I suppose that’s true. Well, murder comes before illegal hooch.”

After their meal, they went to the council offices and found Jeannie Gilchrist. She led them into a side room. Hamish introduced Sarah, saying she was a friend he had met in Inverness and that she could wait outside if Jeannie objected to her presence. Jeannie shrugged. “I’ve no secrets. I will have to cope with Frederick’s funeral after the procurator fiscal releases the body.”

“That’s why I’m here. He had no wedding photographs or photographs of any kind in his house. There must have been some relatives at the wedding.”

“Oh, that’s easily explained. He hated photographs of himself. I think he carried a glamorised picture of himself in his head and didn’t like to look at the reality. He was very vain. There were no relatives at the wedding. He was actually adopted from an orphanage. The couple who adopted him are long dead. He had a few colleagues at the wedding.”

“You said something to me about thinking he might have been married before. Surely that would have come out in his papers when you were making the wedding arrangements.”

“He handled all that. No, I suppose he was never married before if there’s no evidence of it. It was just a feeling, an intuition that one time he had been heavily involved with someone and that no one else was ever going to match up.”

Hamish sighed. “Every time I think I’ve found something mysterious and significant, it’s all explained neatly away. I happen to know he was heavily in debt.”

“Finally caught up with him, did it?”

“What?”

“He liked to show off, big car, best restaurants, that kind of man.”

“Did you know he was having an affair with his receptionist, Maggie Bane?”

“I did not. But then I never saw or heard from him.”

“Mrs. Gilchrist, someone hated him enough to kill him in a savage way. Can you guess what he might have got into?”

She shook her head. “He was a braggart and a show-off but he was never involved in anything criminal.”

“Why do you assume that the murderer or murderers were criminals?”

“The drilling the teeth. That could have been a form of revenge.”

“Yes,” said Hamish slowly. “So it could.”

He could not think of anything else to ask her and so they took their leave. Once outside, he said, “That still is bothering me. I’ll drop you back at the hotel. No, I can’t take you with me. The Smiley brothers can be nasty.” He cocked his head to one side. “The Inverness seagulls have stopped screaming overhead and the sky is black. I wonder if we can make it back.”

They crossed the suspension bridge over the Black Isle and took the A9 north. Snowflakes began to whirl about them and the road in front was becoming whiter by the minute.

“This is hopeless,” said Hamish. “I think I’ll take the road over to Dingwall and find us a place to stay.”

“All right,” said Sarah.

Traffic had slowed to a crawl. They seemed to inch their way towards the town of Dingwall through the thickening, driving sheets of snow. Hamish finally drove up to the Station Hotel and parked.

At reception, he asked for two rooms. “Two,” said the receptionist, peering over the desk at Sarah’s wrists.

She grinned. “No handcuffs. I am a friend of Mr. Macbeth, not a prisoner.”

After they had been shown to adjoining rooms, Sarah insisted on battling out in the storm to a nearby chemists to buy makeup and a toothbrush and toothpaste. They also bought paperbacks and then retreated to the hotel lounge. But while Sarah read, Hamish looked idly out at the driving snow and turned all that he knew about the case over in his mind. Who was the most likely suspect? Maggie Bane. But how could Maggie Bane lift a man as heavy as the dentist and put him in the chair?

Then there was the deranged Mrs. Harrison. Could she have suffered from an extreme fit of madness that gave her unnatural strength? Or had the dentist been having an affair with Kylie—Kylie who knew so many young men in the bar?

There was a sudden vicious pattering against the glass of the lounge windows. “It’s turning to rain,” commented one of the guests.

Sarah looked up from her book. “If it thaws quickly, we might not have to stay here for the night.”

“Oh, I should think whateffer happens, the roads will be much too bad to move in the night,” said Hamish.

She returned to her book. Hamish studied her speculalively. Her shiny brown hair shielded her face. Here they were in a romantic situation, stranded in this hotel by the station. Was there any hope for Hamish Macbeth?

Perhaps it would be better to go on thinking about the murder and stop wondering whether he could get her into bed or not.

They had an early dinner. Rain was now falling heavily. They went out for a walk after dinner. The air was full of rushing water.

“Look, the road is clear,” said Sarah.

“Aye, but we’d best leave things to the morning,” said Hamish. “It could still be snowing farther north.”

When they returned to the hotel, Sarah said she was going to have a bath and go to bed and read. Hamish rather bleakly said good night to her. So much for a romantic evening!

In his room, he stripped off, washed his underwear and shirt and hung them up to dry. Then he had a bath and climbed into bed and settled down to read, trying to forget about Sarah in the next room. He had succeeded so well that when there was a knock on his door, he called out, “Come in!” thinking it to be one of the hotel staff. “It’s not locked.”

The door opened and Sarah came in. She was wrapped in a blanket.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she said. She stood there, looking at him.

He sat up and pulled back the bedclothes. “Come and join me.”

She dropped the blanket. She was naked underneath it. She got into bed beside Hamish. He opened his mourn to say something but she put her hand across it. “No questions,” she whispered. “Let’s make love.”

When Hamish awoke in the morning, sun was streaming in through the windows and Sarah had gone. What was it about women, he thought crossly, that they were able to wake early after a night of lovemaking and disappear?

He had another bath and dressed and then knocked on her bedroom door. There was no reply. He went down to the dining room. Sarah was halfway through breakfast.

“You looked so peaceful, I didn’t like to wake you,” she said cheerfully.

“You look remarkably well,” said Hamish, who felt exhausted. He looked at her curiously. “Do you usually carry a packet of condoms about with you?”

“I bought them in the chemists while you were looking for a toothbrush.”

“That was verra thoughtful of you. How do you feel?”

“Marvellous.”

He looked into her eyes but could see nothing more there than the glow of good health. He had an uneasy feeling that he had been used as some sort of gymnastic exercise.

He wanted to say something loverlike but felt inhibited by her cheerful, matter-of-fact attitude.

“It looks as if we’ll get back all right,” he said. “I’d best go and phone Strathbane in case they’re looking for me. I’d best not say I’m in Inverness or they’ll ask me what I was doing there.”

“You can tell them you went back to see Mrs. Gilchrist.”

“I’m a humble copper. I wasn’t even supposed to see her in the first place.”

He went through to the reception where there was a public phone and got through to Jimmy Anderson.

“Nothing’s been happening,” said Jimmy. “Nobody could move here because of the snow.”

Relieved to find out that Blair had not been looking for him or had even been back to Braikie, Hamish returned to the dining room.

He had coffee and toast and then suggested that they should make a move.

They were both silent for most of the journey back. Hamish longed to ask Sarah if their night together had meant anything to her, but was terrified of rejection, terrified of being told brightly that it was only a one-night stand.

He dropped her at the Tommel Castle Hotel and then drove to the police station. The air smelled dusty and stale. He went around opening windows.

He checked on his hens and sheep, changed his clothes and climbed back into the police Land Rover. Time to visit the Smiley brothers.

The road was atrocious, thick with slush and grit. But a mild wind blew from the west and the sky was a washed-out blue with trailing wisps of white cloud. There was an air of false spring in the air, bringing with it the thoughts that spring usually brings. But he clamped down on any thoughts about Sarah Hudson as soon as they arose.

As he bumped up the rutted track that led to the Smileys’ croft house, he could sense those troll eyes watching him.

Stourie came round the side of the house and stood watching as Hamish descended from the Land Rover and walked towards him. Stourie was joined by Pete.

“What brings ye?” demanded Stourie.

“I want a look at your lambing shed.”

“Do you haff the search warrant?”

“Don’t be silly,” snapped Hamish. “You want me to go and get a search warrant then I will. But I’ll need to tell Strathbane exactly why I want it and you’ll be arrested, for it seems well known you run a still.”

“Chust our wee joke,” said Stourie with a hideous smile. He had his dreadful dentures in that morning. “Come along.”

He led the way to the new extension. He took a large key from his pocket and unlocked the door.

Hamish stepped into the gloom of the shed. It just looked like an ordinary lambing shed. But why the shuttered windows? He searched about but could see nothing suspicious.