Death of a Nag Read online

  When she answered the phone, he said, "Mrs. Agnew, this is Police Constable Hamish Macbeth. It is verra important for Miss Gunnery's sake that you tell me the truth. Was something worrying her?"

  "Of course something was worrying her," said Mrs. Agnew tartly. "Aren't two murders enough to worry anyone? How is she? Alive?"

  "Yes, why shouldn't she be? Look, Mrs. Agnew, if you know anything about Miss Gunnery that bears any relation on this case, then it is your duty to tell me."

  "I know nothing that bears any relation to the murders. Nor does she."

  "Well, for heffen's sake, woman, what's the other thing that's worrying her? I'll find out, if not from you, then from anyone else that knows her!"

  "Oh, if it stops you poking around ... Poor Felicity has only a few months left to live. She has cancer and she should be back here attending the hospital."

  He stared at the phone receiver. Then he said slowly, "Was Miss Gunnery ever married?"

  "No, no."

  He thought of Doris and Andrew, feeling with his mind for the right questions to ask, feeling blindly. "Was she effer in love wi' anyone?"

  "Really, Mr. Macbeth—"

  "Chust answer the damn question!" he shouted.

  "I do not see what it has to do with anything. Yes, a few years ago, when we were both teaching at Saint Charles, she fell in love with the geography teacher, a much younger man, and a married one, too."

  "So what came of it?"

  "Nothing. The man was married."

  "Thank you, Mrs. Agnew. I'll get back to you if there's anything else."

  He replaced the receiver.

  Miss Gunnery, dying of cancer, disappointed in love. He would need to talk to her.

  He left the police station and drove off to the boarding-house.

  Deacon came back shortly after Hamish had left, his face set in grim lines. "Did she confess, sir?" asked Maggie eagerly.

  "Aye," said Deacon bitterly. "The wee bitch confessed to lying to Tracey, and that's all we've got. Back to square one. I'll hae that lot back along here, one by one. But after I've had some tea. See to it, there's a good girl."

  "Hamish Macbeth was here, sir," said Maggie, fighting down a desire to scream at him to get his own tea.

  Deacon, who had been walking away, swung round. "What did he want?"

  "I don't know. He used the phone in the interview-room."

  "Who to?"

  "He didn't tell me."

  "We'll have that one back as well. He's not living up tae his reputation."

  Hamish Macbeth went into the lounge. They were all gathered there. He looked bleakly at all of them: June and Dermott and the children, Doris and Andrew, Miss Gunnery and Tracey.

  He stood in front of the fireplace and then he said quietly to Miss Gunnery. "You've got some explaining to do."

  She gave a nervous laugh. "Oh, Heather told me about telling you about that lie. But no harm's done. Cheryl's confessed."

  "I haven't heard from Deacon, but Cheryl only bragged to Tracey about committing the murders. If she sticks to her story, I'll be surprised. So let's say it wasn't her. It wass the one of you."

  They stared at him, hypnotized.

  "I'm going to speculate. Here's what I think happened:

  "Miss Gunnery, you have been disappointed in love, and that very disappointment made your eyes sharper than mine. You knew that Doris and Andrew were really in love, passionately in love. Harris was a hateful man. You longed to help. Quite what happened, I don't know. But perhaps you came across Harris and tried to reason with him. He had a vile tongue. Did he insult you drunkenly and then turn away in contempt? Was that when you struck him with those arms strengthened by the years of tennis playing? Anyway, you left him to die in the water. Then you began to try to cover not only your own tracks by saying you had slept wi' me, but you clumsily tried to protect Doris by using a wee child.

  "You havenae long to live, Miss Gunnery, and I think that prompted you. By the time they found out anything, if they found out anything, with any luck you'd be dead. But you havenae helped anyone. All you've done is brought misery all round. Doris here is haunted wi' the idea that Andrew might hae done it, and he sometimes worries about her." He looked at Doris. "Isn't that true?"

  "Yes," said Doris faintly.

  "Then, as I see it, MacPherson turns up and starts to blackmail you, Miss Gunnery. He wouldnae have bothered trying to blackmail someone like Cheryl. So you stabbed him with the scissors on his desk. Luck was on your side. No one saw you. No one ever really sees you, Miss Gunnery. That was the story of your life, was it not? A shadow, a cipher, passed over and ignored. And the one time love came into your life, it had to be a married man who wouldn't leave his wife."

  His voice had taken on an uncharacteristically cruel and jeering edge.

  She put her hands up as if to ward him off. "I meant it for the best," she said. "It was only for the best. Henry's wife was a bully and a nag—"

  "Henry being the geography teacher."

  She nodded. Then she rallied. "You have no proof ... no proof. Who's going to believe you?"

  Hamish sat down suddenly in a chair by the fireplace. "I'll bet you have the proof hidden away somewhere," he said in a tired voice. "It would be like you to keep something for insurance chust in case someone innocent was accused of the murder, someone other than Cheryl, that is. You wouldn't care much about Cheryl. But you're a romantic. You did it all for Doris and Andrew. Where you had failed in love, they must not fail. I must be losing my wits. June, take the kids away."

  June marshalled her brood and took them out. Hamish jerked his head at Dermott. "Go with them."

  He turned back and said almost pleadingly to Miss Gunnery, "You know me. I'll dig and pester and dig and pester and I'll neffer leave you alone. If you want Doris and Andrew to be free, then admit your crimes. You wanted to be found out, didn't you? You sent me to see your friend in Cheltenham. You had probably told her not to tell anyone that your life was shortly to end. You didn't show much interest in your cat, didn't even ask me when I came back. Oh, you didn't sit down and think, if I ask Hamish Macbeth to call in on Mrs. Agnew in Cheltenham, he might find out something about me. It wasn't as clear-cut as that. What stopped me from suspecting you was because I liked you and could see no motive. I remember saying to you that a motiveless crime was the best one. Then there was the death of MacPherson. It took some force to drive those scissors into his neck. I'd neffer really noticed the strength of your arms before. Then I remembered that photo of you and Mrs. Agnew in your tennis whites."

  She got to her feet. "Your reasoning is hardly logical," she said, "and as you know, there is no proof." Her voice shook. "I will go to my room and lie down. All this has been too much for me." She went out and Hamish could think of no concrete reason to stop her.

  "It cannae be her," wailed Tracey. "The only decent body who's ever been kind tae me."

  "Are you sure, Hamish?" asked Andrew. "Why not phone Deacon and see if Cheryl has confessed?"

  "She didn't protest all that much," said Doris. "If she'd been innocent, surely she would have shouted at Hamish and threatened to report him to his superiors. Then she did say had done it for the best."

  Mrs. Aston put her head around the door. "Coffee?" she asked brightly.

  "Aye, that'll be chust grand," said Hamish.

  "I'll bring a tray in. I'll put an extra cup on it for Miss Gunnery. Maybe she'll be feeling like one when she gets back from the beach."

  Hamish jumped to his feet. "The what? She's gone out."

  "I think she must have forgotten something. She went off running."

  "Didn't Crick stop her?"

  "He's in the kitchen having his coffee."

  Hamish ran out of the room, out of the boarding-house and over the dunes to the beach. He looked right and left when he reached the beach and then out to sea. Far out, bobbing above the waves, he could see a head.

  He stripped down to his underwear and plunged in and started swimm
ing powerfully. The wind was rising and the waves were rising and he battled through one after the other.

  At last he saw her some yards in front of him and called loudly to her. She saw him, rather than heard him, for the wind whipped his words away. She was still wearing her glasses. How odd, he thought madly, that her glasses had managed to stay on. The sun glinted on them, giving her a blind look. Then she raised her arms to heaven and sank under the waves like a stone.

  Deacon and Clay had been phoned by Crick. They had come with Maggie and, joined by Dermott, Tracey, Andrew and Doris, they stood on the edge of the water and watched as Hamish struggled back, holding Miss Gunnery in his arms.

  Clay and Crick waded in to help him as he neared the shore. Together they carried Miss Gunnery's limp body onto the sand. Maggie moved in and began applying all the artificial respiration techniques she had learned. Far away sounded the wail of an ambulance siren. At last, Maggie sat back on her heels and shook her head.

  "She's dead," she said flatly.

  The wind rose even higher, the white sand snaked along the beach and began to sing a dirge for Miss Gunnery.

  "So let's have it then," said Deacon to Hamish. "Mr. Biggar here says you accused Miss Gunnery of the murders. What proof had you?"

  "None," said Hamish, pulling his dry clothes over his wet underwear. "Chust intuition."

  "Oh, shite, man. If you've driven that lady to her death by your harassment ..."

  "She'll hae left proof somewhere," said Hamish wearily. "And I'm going to look for it."

  "You won't find it," Deacon shouted at his retreating back. "Don't you know all the rooms were searched several times?"

  Deacon waited until the ambulance men arrived, until he had had a full report from Andrew about what had happened in the lounge before Miss Gunnery had swum to her death, before setting off in pursuit of Hamish.

  "That Blair ower in Strathbane was right," he grumbled. "Hamish Macbeth is stark-staring mad."

  Hamish sat on the bed in Miss Gunnery's room and looked about him. He was bone-weary. He had had to dive and dive before he had managed to get her. He had searched already, but there was nothing in her suitcase, or in the drawers, or in the bedside table. Then he thought: the police had not been looking for drugs, so their search would only have been through her belongings. So where would be the obvious place? He rolled back the carpet, but the floorboards did not seem to have been disturbed. Then he went out and went along to the communal bathroom. The toilet had an old-fashioned cistern, the type that is set high up, with a chain dangling from it. He stood on the pan and lifted the lid of the cistern. Nothing in the cistern, he thought, feeling around with his hand. And then, because he was so very tired, as he was about to replace the lid, it slipped out of his hands and fell on the floor. And there, staring up at him, taped to the underside of the cistern lid, was an oilskin packet.

  He climbed down, sat on the floor, and ripped the packet free, wondering vaguely where, in this day and age of plastic, Miss Gunnery had been able to find oilskin. And for one moment, before he opened the packet, he wondered if it might turn out to have nothing to do with Miss Gunnery but was something criminal hidden by Rogers.

  But on opening it he found two envelopes. One was addressed to himself.

  He opened it.

  "Dear Hamish Macbeth," he read, "In the event of anyone being falsely accused for the murders, I have written this confession of what I have done."

  He had a feeling of relief as he read on. The murder of Harris had been on impulse. Miss Gunnery had come across him that day in Skag. She had pleaded with him to give Doris her freedom. She had told him she knew what it was like to be in love. He had made several crude remarks about her lack of any attraction, called her a warped little spinster, and turned away. She had caught up the driftwood and hit him with it as he stood at the edge of the jetty. When he had fallen in the water, she had been about to run for help. But then she had thought of Doris and Andrew. She, Miss Gunnery, did not believe in God or divine retribution. As far as she was concerned, she was soon to die, and that would be the end of everything. So why not just let Harris die? Furthermore, she herself might be sent to prison for assault and she had no intention of spending her remaining days behind bars. So she had left him and then had done her clumsy best to see that no one else should suffer. Then MacPherson had approached her, said he had seen her and demanded money. She told him she would pay him. But, she had written in that old-fashioned italic writing so rarely seen these days, she felt that he did not deserve to live either. So she had gone quietly into his shed when he was working at his desk, seized up the scissors and driven them into his neck. The scissors were wrapped in a plastic bag and buried under the lilac tree in the garden of the boarding-house at the back. Her fingerprints would be found on them. "I did not lie about sleeping with you to give myself an alibi, Hamish," she ended, "but to give you one because I love you."

  Hamish put it down on the floor and opened the other envelope. It contained a will form. Miss Gunnery had left everything she owned to Tracey.

  11

  What beck'ning ghost along the moon-light shade

  Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade?

  —Alexander Pope

  The following morning, Hamish sat for the last time in the interview-room with Deacon. Clay had been sent out.

  "Now," began Deacon, "take me over it again. Why did you suddenly come to the conclusion that a woman like Miss Gunnery had committed two murders?"

  "I had been feeling uneasy about her for some time," said Hamish, "but I thought that was because she was falling in love wi' me. It stopped me from thinking about her too much. And she seemed so kind. Kind to me over the death of my dog, kind to the Brett children, kind to Tracey. You could say that it was that kindness that killed Harris. She thought she was giving Doris all the love and new life that she had been cheated of herself."

  "I told you—a repressed spinster," said Deacon.

  "I still don't agree wi' ye. There's folks these days won't even use the word 'spinster,' it's become such an insult. What woman these days is even still a virgin at her age?"

  "She was," said Deacon with satisfaction. "Preliminary pathologist's report."

  "Oh, well," said Hamish huffily, "if ye knew all about it, why didn't you suspect her yourself?"

  "Now, now, I'm not saying you haven't been clever. But what made you think of her?"

  "It was when I learned she had made Heather tell that lie. I was uneasy about Cheryl's supposed confession. I realized I hadn't been thinking clearly about her. There were all sorts of little things: lying about having been in bed with me; telling me to look up her friend in Cheltenham and ask about her cat and then not showing any interest in the animal when I came back; her friend implying that she was worried about something other than the murders; and then there was a photograph of her and her friend in their tennis whites. I remembered seeing Miss Gunnery in her swimsuit and noticing she had very strong forearms, although it didn't register at the time. I realized that, desperate and strong enough, she could have stabbed MacPherson with the necessary force. You found the scissors?"

  "Aye, right where she said they would be. We've sent them off to be checked for fingerprints. But what could you have done had she stuck to her original story, said she was innocent?"

  "I would ha' got you to pull Doris in and then tell Miss Gunnery she had been charged with the murder and, worn down with brutal police questioning, she had confessed and was talking about taking her own life."

  "You're a ruthless man, Macbeth. Wouldnae think it to look at you."

  "I can't be doin' wi' murder," said Hamish severely. "Mind you, I'm feeling rather stupid. There I was having dinner and making friends with a woman who must have been as mad as a hatter and I didnae suspect a thing."

  "Well, you got a result anyway." Deacon picked up a paper-knife and twisted it this way and that. "You'll be off to Lochdubh today."

  "I suppose so."

&nb
sp; "When?"

  "I don't know when," said Hamish testily. "Does it matter?"

  Clay put his head round the door. "The press are arriving."

  Hamish leaned back in his chair and smiled. "Giving a press conference, sir?"

  "Aye, well, I called one," said Deacon gruffly. "If you'd like to give me a list of your expenses, I'll see they go through."

  "I have them right here," said Hamish, handing them over.

  "Goodbye then," Deacon stood up.

  Hamish remained sitting. "Och, I think I might as well stay for that press conference of yours."

  "Off with you, Clay," snapped Deacon. Clay withdrew his head and closed the door.

  Deacon sat down again and pulled open a desk drawer and took out an envelope. "Since your holiday was spoiled working for me, Macbeth, I thought the enclosed might compensate you."

  Hamish opened the envelope. Inside it were four fifty-pound bank notes. How dare you bribe a police officer? was his first thought, followed by the more pragmatic one that a bribe from a superior to an inferior could really hardly be called a bribe ... could it?

  He stuffed the envelope in his trousers pocket and stood up. "I'll be off then, sir."

  Deacon smiled his relief.

  "Call in and see us any time, Macbeth."

  When Hamish had left, Deacon went to a small mirror in the corner, carefully brushed his hair, straightened his tie, and then went off to tell the press how he had solved the murders.

  Hamish returned to the boarding-house. They were gathered in the lounge. Andrew appeared to be advising Tracey on how to go about claiming her legacy. Tracey looked elated. The others appeared relaxed and relieved. Poor Miss Gunnery! No one to mourn her, thought Hamish, and then wondered why he should even think such a thing. Miss Gunnery had taken two lives, and had escaped both a lingering death and the full weight of the law.