Death of a Gentle Lady (3 page)

When the Tahirs returned to Izmir, Ayesha realised that her passport was not in her handbag. She thought it must have fallen out somewhere, but while applying for a new one and facing up to all the formalities of getting the visa again, she had fallen in love with a local man and decided to get married instead of furthering her education. So she put the passport right out of her mind.

The police now believed that the fake Ayesha had stolen the passport and run away from whoever was keeping her. Because of the Tahirs’ conviction that the men with her back then had looked like Russian mafia and had been talking in Russian, and because she had now left her clothes behind, it looked as if she might have been snatched—or murdered. Her photograph would appear in the local Turkish papers. Istanbul police had a copy and were checking at the Pera Palace Hotel to see if anyone knew anything about the missing girl.

“I think she was blackmailing Mrs. Gentle,” said Hamish.

“Why?”

“Mrs. Gentle gave her ten thousand pounds cash as a wedding present, she said. Now, one minute Ayesha’s sitting here weeping and telling me that Mrs. Gentle has given her notice, and the next minute she’s telling me that Mrs. Gentle is not only giving her money but hosting the reception.”

“Her passport?” asked Jimmy. “Did you find it?”

Hamish rose and took a bottle of whisky down from a cupboard. With his back to Jimmy, he said, “No.”

“You know,” said Jimmy, “I wouldnae mind a black coffee with my whisky.”

“The electric kettle’s broken,” said Hamish.

“You never used it. Light the stove. It’s cold in here.”

Hamish blushed. “Can’t. The chimney’s blocked. The sweep’s coming the morrow. Help yourself to whisky. I’ll chust put some o’ these trout out in the freezer. You’ll stay for dinner?”

“No, I’d best be getting back.”

Hamish went out to the shed where he kept the chest freezer. As soon as he had gone, Jimmy took the cleat and lifted the lid of the stove. He felt inside. His hand touched something. He lifted it out. Ayesha’s passport. “Oh, Hamish,” he muttered. “What have you done?”

Hamish came back and stiffened when he saw the passport lying on the table.

“Sit down, laddie,” said Jimmy grimly, “and spit it out. No lies this time.”

Suddenly weary and ashamed, Hamish sat down at the table and began to tell his story, leaving nothing out.

“You see,” he said finally, “they’ll examine that visa and check with the authorities. They’ll realise it’s a forgery and start looking around for highland forgers. They’ll get to Peter, and he’ll sing like a canary to shorten his prison sentence. Not only will my police station go, but my job as well.”

“But why, Hamish? Why did you do it?”

“It was a quixotic gesture. She was so beautiful that all I could think about besides saving my home and animals was letting folk know I wasn’t a failure in love. What a mess. I suppose you’d better do your duty.”

Jimmy took a gulp of whisky.

Then he rose and took the passport. He lifted the lid of the stove and dropped it in. He picked up a packet of firelighters, extracted one, ignited it with his lighter, and dropped it in on top of the passport.

“Now we’re partners in crime.”

“Thanks, Jimmy. I don’t know how . . .”

“Forget it. Let’s suppose she had something on Ma Gentle. So Gentle kills the girl. What does she do with the body? Ayesha, or whoever she is, is a great big girl. Mrs. Gentle is a wee old woman. Say she hit her hard. With the reception and the house full of people, it would need to be down in the cellar or in one of the upper rooms. Look, I’m off-duty tomorrow. Put me up for the night and we’ll go over, all innocent like, and ask if we can see her room. Mrs. Gentle can hardly refuse. If she follows us around and looks nervous, say, we might get an idea she’s guilty of something.”

Mrs. Gentle opened the door to them the next morning, looking flustered. “What is it? You can’t come in. I’ve got some women from Braikie clearing up the mess.”

“We’ve found out that Ayesha had stolen someone’s identity,” said Jimmy. “We would just like to look in her room to see if we can find any clues to who she really is.”

“Oh, very well. Follow me.” The sounds of energetic cleaning met their ears. “I’ll be glad when the house is clean again. I spent all day yesterday recruiting women to do the job.” Mrs. Gentle walked up the stairs ahead of them, her back erect. A faint smell of lavender perfume drifted back to them.

Mrs. Gentle pushed open a door at the top of the house. “This was her room,” she said.

“
Was
?” repeated Hamish. “Do you think she’s dead?”

“Of course not. If you remember, she was to leave here for good on the day of her wedding.”

Hamish and Jimmy walked in. Jimmy turned round to where Mrs. Gentle was hovering in the doorway. “You can leave us,” he said.

She hesitated a moment and then went slowly away down the stairs.

It was a turret room. Very little furniture. A narrow bed stood against one wall, an old-fashioned wardrobe against another. There was a round table at the window with three hard-backed chairs; on the table was a small television set. No books, no pictures, and no framed photographs.

Hamish opened the wardrobe. There was only one garment, a black fur coat. “Jimmy, is this mink, would ye say?”

Jimmy felt the fur. “Aye, it is that. Imagine leaving that . . . maybe she was frightened of animal rights people.”

“We don’t get them up here,” said Hamish. There were three drawers at the foot of the wardrobe. He knelt down and opened them. In one he found three sweaters and in another silk underwear, not of the sexy type but knitted silk, the kind used by sportsmen and women when they were out shooting on the moors. The bottom drawer was empty. “It probably got cold up here,” he said. “I noticed that there isn’t any central heating. She’s got money, our Mrs. Gentle, but it’d take an awful lot to get central heating into this folly. The fireplace is blocked up.

“I tell you, Jimmy, it’s weird. There’s nothing personal either here or in her suitcases. I mean, no letters, no jewellery, no photographs.”

“If she turns out to be some sort of Russian tart,” said Jimmy, “it stands to reason she wouldnae have anything like that.”

“But even tarts have friends, family, someone,” said Hamish. A buffet of wind rattled the windowpanes. He crossed to the window and looked down. “It must have been like an icebox up here last winter,” he said. “Why did she stay? Why wasn’t she down in one of the cities looking for a rich protector?”

“Probably because of that stolen passport,” said Jimmy.

“And if she was a dolly for the Russian mafia, she might have been scared of a dose of radiation in her tea.”

“I shouldnae think they’d bother,” said Hamish moodily. “Whoever her protector was, he’d just move on to the next good-looking girl. Now, if anyone wanted to get rid of a body around this castle, where would they dump it?”

“Easy. Over the cliff she goes.”

“I was afraid you’d say that. I’d best get back and pick up my climbing gear.”

As they drove back, Jimmy said, “You shouldnae be hoping to find a body, my friend.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know what’s happened to your wits these days. You’d be first suspect.”

“Not me. I was with you and then at the registry office in Inverness.”

“Aye, but if the procurator fiscal got evidence that she’d been killed during the night, where would that leave you?”

“Maybe Mrs. Gentle got rid of her. There’s something not right about that woman.”

“Havers! That wee woman?”

“Do you know, I ran her name through the police computer. Nothing. I wonder what her maiden name is.”

“Can you see an elderly lady taking on a big strapping Russian lassie? And then getting the body out of the castle and over the cliffs?”

“Look at it this way. Maybe our Russian went out for a walk and was standing on the cliffs. What with the noise of the sea and the wind, she wouldn’t hear anyone creeping up behind her. One good shove and down she goes.”

Later when Hamish was stowing his climbing gear in the Land Rover along with his dog and cat, Jimmy complained, “Do you need to take thae beasties with ye? That wild cat of yours fair gives me the creeps.”

“She’s harmless,” said Hamish. Sonsie had been found injured up on the moors, and Hamish had adopted the animal. Despite dire predictions that a wild cat could not be domesticated, she had settled in and, even stranger, formed a bond with Hamish’s dog.

Jimmy sat on the top of the cliffs as Hamish began his slow descent. He looked over once and then shrank back. He pulled a flask out of his pocket and took a swig of whisky. Seagulls sailed overhead, screeching and diving. A few puffins, like fussy little men in tailcoats, came out of their burrows and stared at him.

At last, Hamish came back. “It’s high tide,” he said. “I’ll wait for low tide and go back down.”

“And when’s low tide?”

“Two hours’ time.”

“I hope you don’t except me to sit here on this draughty hilltop for four hours.”

“We’ll go into Braikie and get something to eat.”

In Braikie, Jimmy looked around The Highlanders Arms in amazement. “It’s the spirit o’ John Knox,” he said. “If you’re going to drink, you are not going to enjoy yourself. I didnae know places like this still existed.”

It was a dimly lit establishment with tables scarred with old cigarette burns. The floor was covered in dark green greasy linoleum. The bar and the shelves behind looked as if they had not been cleaned in a long time.

“Eat your pie and peas.”

“I might get salmonella.”

“The pies come from the bakery. They’re all right.”

“I still don’t know how you let yourself nearly get trapped into marriage,” said Jimmy.

“I told you,” said Hamish huffily. “I thought I was going to have to leave the force in order to keep my dog and cat. I thought I was doing a grand thing. Anyway, she told me she was a lesbian.”

“That figures. A lot of tarts are. She could hae been lying, of course. Didn’t fancy you.”

“Oh, shut up.”

When they arrived back at the clifftop, Jimmy elected to stay in the Land Rover.The rising wind buffeted the car. His eyes began to droop, and soon he was fast asleep.

He awoke with a start. Hamish had wrenched open the door. “I’ve got to phone air-sea rescue,” he shouted. “Body at the foot of the cliffs.”

“Is it her?”

“No. It’s Mrs. Gentle.”

Chapter Three

I waive the quantum o’ the sin,The hazard of concealing;But och! It hardens a’ within,And petrifies the feeling!

—Robert Burns

Great gusts of rain blew in from the Atlantic on the grisly scene as the body of Mrs. Gentle was brought up the cliff face. Blair had arrived and was marching about over the heather on the clifftop.

“He’s wiping out any clues,” muttered Jimmy.

“There won’t be any footprints on this heather,” said Hamish. “Here’s the pathologist.”

Dr. Forsythe arrived while a tent was being set up over the body. The men struggled with it for some time as the wind whipped it around until at last they got it firmly anchored.

Blair approached Hamish and Jimmy. His choleric eyes fell on Jimmy. “What were you doing up here?”

“Day off, sir,” said Jimmy. “Thought I’d help Macbeth look for his missing fiancée.”

“And whit made ye look ower the cliff ?”

“I thought she might have been killed,” said Hamish.

“More likely to hae committed suicide at the thought o’ being wed to a loon like you,” said Blair.

They all looked at the tent where, in the strong lights that had been rigged up, the shadow of the pathologist could be seen bending over the body.

Blair retreated to his car. Hamish waited anxiously. Dr. Forsythe at last emerged. She went straight up to Hamish.

“It’s murder, plain as day,” she said. “She was strangled before she was thrown over the cliff.”

“What this?” demanded Blair, lumbering up. “You should report first to me.”

Dr. Forsythe looked at him with dislike. “It’s a murder. Mrs. Gentle was strangled and thrown over.”

“The women cleaning the house might have seen something,” said Hamish.

“Whit women?” growled Blair.

“She had hired women from Braikie to clean up the mess after the reception. I called on her earlier today to have a look at Ayesha’s room and see if she had left any clues. There was nothing. All she had is in the two suitcases she left at the police station. In one suitcase is ten thousand pounds given to her by Mrs. Gentle. When Jimmy and I were here this morning, we could hear the women cleaning.”

“We’ll need those suitcases. Was her passport in one of them?”

“No,” said Hamish. “No passport.”

“Looks as if she strangled her employer and ran for it. She must have got that passport picture doctored somehow.”

Hamish stiffened. “Why?”

“Why? Because we got a photo of the real Ayesha wired over, and she’s fair but small. Get into Braikie, Macbeth. I’ll send some other men as well. We’ve got to find thae maids.”

Hamish drove into Braikie. He stopped at a fish-and-chip shop and bought a fish for Sonsie and a meat pie for Lugs, watched while they ate, and then drove off to the council estate. He remembered that Bessie, who used to do the cleaning at the Tommel Castle Hotel, had moved to Braikie. What was her married name? Hunter, that was it. He took out his laptop and brought up the Highlands and Islands telephone directory. There were only two Hunters on the estate, a J. Hunter and an A. Hunter. He could not remember the first name of Bessie’s husband, so he tried the address of

A. Hunter. Bessie herself answered the door. “Why, Hamish!” she said, looking alarmed. “What’s up?” “Nothing to do with your family,” said Hamish. “Can I come in?”

She stood back and he walked into Bessie’s cheerful living room. “Where’s your man?” he asked.

“Andy’s doing late shift at the paper works in Strathbane.”

Hamish removed his cap. “Sit down, Bessie. This is about

Mrs. Gentle. She’s been found murdered.” “Oh, my God! How? Where?”

“Someone strangled her and threw her over the cliff. Now, were you working for her?”

“Aye, me and Annie Chisholm.”

“When did you finish?”

“We finished about three in the afternoon. She’d been hustling us along because she was paying by the hour. We started at nine in the morning.”

“And she was there when you left?”

“No. The phone rang. She looked quite cheerful but said she had to go out for a breath of fresh air.”

“What time would this be?”

“It would be just about after you left. I saw you drive off. That would be around eleven o’clock. She asked us how long it would take and as she wanted the bedrooms and the like cleaned as well, we told her it would be around three in the afternoon. She’d been complaining about the price since the minute we arrived but she paid up the money without a murmur. I asked her if she wouldn’t be back before we finished, and she said, ‘Maybe not. Here’s the spare key. Lock the door behind you and put the key through the letter box.’”

“And how did she seem?”

“Quite happy, not excited. Poor woman. Who would kill her? Is your lassie still missing, Hamish?”

“Yes.”

Bessie’s round country face creased in sympathy. “It’s a right shame.”

“Where does Annie Chisholm live?”

“Round the corner. Broom Close, number ten.”

“If you can remember any little thing, let me know.”

Annie Chisholm was a short, burly woman. When she heard Hamish explain the reason for his visit, she exclaimed, “I didnae like the woman. But this is awfy. She started off being a slave driver. The only break we got was when you arrived and then she was back, following us around. When she got that phone call, she changed. She was just too happy to pay us the money and get out.”

“No member of her family around?”

“Not a soul. She was on her own when we were there. I tried at one point to speak to her, saying it was a shame you’d been stood up on your wedding day, and she said that it couldnae have happened to a nicer fellow, sneering, like. I could hardly believe my ears because everyone in Braikie thought she was some kind of a saint what with paying for the wedding and all.”

“She didn’t say anything about the missing girl?”

“Not a word. She still missing?”

“Aye.”

“She get on well wi’ Mrs. Gentle?”

“As far as I know,” said Hamish abruptly.

When he left, he realised that Ayesha, or whoever she was, might turn out to be the prime suspect.

He drove back to the police station, where he filed a long report of the finding of the body and of his interviews with the two cleaners. When he finally got to bed with his cat at his side and his dog at his feet, he somehow became more and more convinced that his fiancée was dead.

In the morning, Superintendent Daviot gave a press conference. Only a few of the local papers turned up. But as soon as he described the murder of Mrs. Gentle and the missing Russian girl who had been using someone else’s passport, the news flew out around the country.

Soon the press dug up the story of Hamish’s failed wedding, and Hamish fled the police station with flashes going off in his face to escape their questions. Earlier that morning, Jimmy had turned up with a forensic team who had gone over the luggage and then taken it away. Before leaving, Jimmy had said the family were travelling up to the castle.

Hamish did not fear being hounded by Blair because Blair was jealous of him and would want the whole case to himself. He felt sure that if “Ayesha” were safe somewhere, then someone in the Highlands must have seen her. She was too tall and beautiful to escape attention.

When he reached Braikie, Jimmy phoned him. “Got the news over from Istanbul police,” he said. “Your girl was called Irena Selakov from Moscow. Top hooker. Protector was a Russian businessman, runs a chain of restaurants in Moscow, name of Grigori Antonov. They were visiting Istanbul on business for a week when Irena did a bunk. Russian police so far uncooperative. Say of course they’ll help and then probably hope we’ll forget about it. But Grigori is definitely in Moscow.”

Hamish thanked him and rang off. Most of that morning, he walked in and out of shops in Braikie, asking if anyone had seen Irena but meeting up with a blank wall everywhere, although everyone he spoke to was anxious to help, regarding him as a desperate lovelorn man, looking for his fiancée.

He drove up to the castle. The coal-mine owner who had built it had wished to copy Balmoral on a very small scale for his summer holidays. It had stood empty for some time. Hamish wondered if anyone would buy it. Who on earth would want to live in such a wild, remote spot on the edge of the cliffs, particularly with the British coastline crumbling bit by bit each year?

The rain had gone but the wind still blew and the air was full of the smell of salt. The castle door stood open. The forensic van stood outside. There was no proper fencing around the acreage belonging to the castle, only a crumbling dry-stone wall. But there were police on duty at the entrance to the drive leading up to the castle, and for the moment they were keeping the press at bay.

Hamish struggled into the coverall blue plastic suit which was now regulation for policemen visiting a possible crime scene. He walked in and stood in the hall. He wondered if they had looked in the cellars yet. He could hear them moving about upstairs. He went into the kitchen. There was a rack inside the door holding keys. Putting on a pair of latex gloves, he selected one marked cellar and then searched around the hall until he saw the cellar door.

He unlocked the door and groped around at the top of the stairs until he found a light switch. He went down into the cellar. Down here, he could hear the boom, boom, boom of the waves.

There were a few racks of wine in dusty bottles. In the centre of the cellar was a wooden table which held a bottle and two glasses, one clean and one dirty. He sniffed at them and then sniffed the air. There was a faint smell of vomit. He looked down at the stone floor. It was clean. He turned and looked back at the stairs; they looked clean as well. He walked around the wine racks. Several large trunks were piled against the wall. He turned and climbed up the stairs, searching the rooms until he found the chief forensic officer, Bruce Murray.

“Look, Bruce,” said Hamish. “I’ve been down in the cellar. I swear it’s been cleaned recently, and there’s a faint smell of vomit. Now, there are some old trunks there, and I don’t want to get into trouble for compromising a crime scene. Would you mind taking your team down there and opening up those trunks?”

“Why?”

“There might be a body in one of them.”

“You’ve been looking at too many horror movies.”

“Okay. If I find anything and get a rocket, I’ll say you refused to search.”

“Oh, all
right
! But I’ll do it myself.”

He followed Hamish down to the cellar. The first trunk was empty, the second held fusty old clothes, a third, children’s toys and books, and the fourth old accounts and letters. The fifth at the bottom, a huge old steamer trunk, was pulled out, Bruce grumbling all the time. Hamish undid the old leather straps and threw back the lid.

“Will ye look at that,” marvelled Bruce. “You’re psychic.”

“That” was the dead body of Irena, doubled up and crushed into the trunk.

Her blonde hair was matted with blood. Hamish took out his phone. “Can’t get a signal down here,” he said. “I’ll go upstairs.”

“I’ll wait for the pathologist and then get the boys down here,” said Bruce. “Do you know Dr. Forsythe is leaving the force?”

“Why?”

“She wants to retire. Besides, she says that a forensic pathologist here only earns a third of what they do in England. Don’t know where we’ll find another. Probably need to get someone all the way from Aberdeen.”

Hamish went upstairs. He felt numb. He phoned Jimmy, not wanting to hear Blair’s bullying voice. Then he walked outside the castle and stood waiting. He suddenly craved a cigarette. He had stopped smoking some time ago, but occasionally the longing would come back.

Was there a serial killer on the loose? Had some maniac come to the Highlands?

He discounted any Russian connection. Whoever had phoned Mrs. Gentle had been someone she knew. She had happily gone out to meet whoever called her. Perhaps Irena had just got in the way. But wait a bit—Irena had been killed
before
Mrs. Gentle was strangled and thrown over. He was sure of it.

The gale blew the sound of approaching sirens. Jimmy arrived with Detective Constable Andy MacNab. In the following car came more detectives, a vanload of police after them.

“Where’s Blair?” asked Hamish.

“In the hospital with alcohol poisoning. How that man can keep on going is beyond me. So what have we got?”

Hamish told him briefly about finding the body. “The press are going to have a field day,” said Jimmy when Hamish had finished. “Here comes Dr. Forsythe. I’ll hae a look at the body when she’s finished. How do you feel?”

“I don’t know,” said Hamish. “Stunned, I guess.”

Dr. Forsythe got out of her car. “Where’s the body?”

“Down in the cellar. I’ll take you there,” said Hamish.

“Did she have any scratches on her face?”

“Too much blood,” said Hamish. “Why?”

“Despite being in the water, Mrs. Gentle had fragments of skin under her fingernails. I’m working on the DNA.”

“Do you think Irena killed her and then struck herself on the head with a hammer in a fit of remorse?”

“Don’t be cheeky, Hamish. I only meant that there’s hope the person who killed her might be on the DNA database.”

“Here’s the cellar,” said Hamish. “You’ll find Bruce down there.”

“Sober, I hope.”

“For the moment.”

Hamish went back and joined Jimmy. “What’s odd,” he said, “is that on a table in the cellar is a bottle with two glasses. Almost as if someone had lured Irena down there, given her a drugged drink, and then bashed her head in.”

“What? On the morning of her wedding? Mrs. Gentle said she went out for a walk.”

“Have you checked the phone records?”

“Yes. That phone call to Mrs. Gentle came from a call box in Lochdubh. Any strangers in Lochdubh?”

“I suppose there are visitors up at the Tommel Castle Hotel.”

“Her family are due to arrive today,” said Jimmy. “What a mess. You’d best get down to Lochdubh and ask around. Put a sign on that phone box and some police tape around it until the forensic people see if they can get anything off the receiver. Then check who’s staying at the hotel.”