Death of Yesterday (15 page)

“Why did she try to hang herself?”

“That’s what I want to find out. She won’t tell anyone. Suicide’s a crime. Find out. She’s a staunch member of the church.”

After Mrs. Wellington had bustled off, Hamish sighed. He would have to leave a visit to Angela to another day. Some-one on his beat had tried to kill herself. It was his duty to look into the matter and make sure no one had driven her to it.

He drove to Braikie hospital and was ushered into a small ward where the frail figure of Mairie lay. She was a thin, pale woman in her fifties with greying hair and neat features.

She flinched when she saw Hamish and said hoarsely, “Have you come to arrest me?”

“No, Mairie. I would like to know what drove you to do such a thing.”

A tear ran down her cheek. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she whispered.

“Something or someone must have driven you to it,” said Hamish gently. “Look, I’m not taking notes.” He stood up and drew the curtains round the bed. “Just you tell Hamish. You’ll feel better if you get it off your chest.”

She began to cry. Hamish found a box of tissues and handed it to her and then waited patiently.

At last, she sobbed and said, “It was the shame. I’d always been respectable. I’ve always gone to church. It was the baking competition.”

“Go on,” urged Hamish, wondering if she had tried to poison someone.

“I baked a sponge cake and for the first time in my life, it was a mess. I-I w-went over to Tarry’s Cakes in Invergordon and I b-bought one. And I won first prize. I hadn’t expected to win. I couldn’t tell anyone. Then Mrs. Macleod’s niece came visiting from Invergordon. Mrs. Macleod brought her along to the Mothers’ Union. She looked at me and said, ‘I’ve seen you before—in Tarry’s Cakes. You were buying one o’ their famous sponge cakes. No one makes a sponge cake like Tarry.’ Well, the others gave me odd looks. Nessie Currie said, ‘Miss Torrich can bake just as well. She won first prize with her sponge cake.’

“Oh, they all looked at me
so
. I wanted to sink through the floor. I’ve always been a respectable body. I couldn’t bear it. Lochdubh seemed full of accusing eyes, everywhere I went. I decided to end it all but I couldn’t even get that right.” She began to cry again.

“Be back in a minute,” said Hamish. He went out into the corridor and phoned Dick. “Have you heard any gossip about Mairie Torrich putting a shop cake into the baking competition?”

“Not a word.”

“So don’t talk about this to anyone. Right?”

“Okay. But what . . . ?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

He went back to Mairie and waited until she had finished crying. “It’s nothing but your guilty conscience,” he said. “No one suspects a thing. Just get better and forget about it. But why try to kill yourself over something so trivial?”

“I’ve always been a respectable body, someone people could trust. There’s nothing worse in the world than to lose respectability.”

“Havers!” said Hamish. “There’s war, famine, and pestilence for a start.”

“You don’t understand!” she wailed.

“I’m beginning to. What did you tell the hospital psychiatrist?”

“I haven’t seen him. I said I bumped my car and that’s how I got whiplash.”

“Why wasn’t I called?”

“Mrs. Wellington found me. She said it would be better to stick to the whiplash story.”

“Mrs. Wellington sent me along. She thought someone had driven you to it. We’d better just say you were depressed.”

“Maybe I should confess.”

“I think you’ve taken the whole thing too seriously. There’s cheating goes on all over the Highlands. It’s part of our genetic make-up, like telling lies and poaching,” said Hamish cheerfully.

She smiled at him mistily. “How can I ever thank you? You are so strong, so kind.” She reached out to take his hand. Hamish smiled nervously and backed off.

“No thanks needed.” He fled out of the ward.

Back in Lochdubh, he made his way to the manse. Mrs. Wellington stared at him when he explained that Mairie had been severely depressed.

“I don’t know what’s up with folk these days,” complained Mrs. Wellington. “We never used to hear about depression. People just pulled themselves together and got on with things.”

“It’s caused by a fault in the brain,” said Hamish. “She’ll need a lot of kindness.”

“Oh, all right. But I’ve never heard the like!”

Hamish then called on Angela Brodie. The doctor’s wife was working on her latest novel.

“Am I interrupting you?” asked Hamish.

“Glad to take a break,” said Angela. “Move a cat and sit down.”

Hamish lifted one of Angela’s cats off a kitchen chair and sat down opposite her. “Something’s puzzling me,” he said. “I’ll need to tell you in strict confidence.”

“Go ahead. Want some coffee?”

“No thanks,” said Hamish, knowing from experience that Angela’s coffee was as bad as her baking. He told her about Mairie’s attempt at suicide, and ended by saying, “Doesn’t that seem daft to you?”

Angela pushed a flyaway wisp of hair out of her eyes. “Not really. Look, Mairie is not married. The church and all its activities are her whole life. If she were Chinese, you would say she was suffering from loss of face. You spend too much time with criminals, Hamish. To some village people, loss of respectability is the worst thing that could happen to them. And it’s not just maiden ladies in villages. There have been cases where some businessman goes bankrupt and kills his family and then himself because he can’t face the shame.”

“You’ve given me something to think about,” said Hamish slowly.

* * *

He went back to the police station office and got out his notes on the suspects.

Geordie Fleming. Had he been cooking the books? Had Strathbane done an audit of the accounts? But surely he would hardly kill his own sister. On the other hand, this murderer had been driven insane—by the threat, surely, of some sort of exposure. Morag liked money. Morag could have phoned any man she had had a subsequent relationship with and claimed that he was the father of her child and asked him to pay up.

Pete Eskdale. Hamish favoured Eskdale as a prime suspect. There was a raffishness about him. But he was not married. Even if he had slept with Morag, would he care? Had he had his fingers in the till?

Freda Crichton. She had been deeply in love with Morag. What if her reaction to his story of Morag’s pregnancy had been an act?

Then there was the boss, Harry Gilchrist. Where was his wife? Hamish decided it was time to call on her. She might have some insight into the character of the people in the factory.

I am past thirty, and three parts iced over.

—Matthew Arnold

Hamish walked up the front drive and rang the doorbell of the Gilchrists’ villa. Sean Carmichael, the odd job man, answered the door.

“Is Mrs. Gilchrist at home?” asked Hamish.

“No. Herself is still in foreign parts.”

“She’s been away an awfy long time.”

“Herself aye likes the travel.”

“And where is she now?”

“Ask the boss. He got a postcard yesterday.”

Back outside the villa, Hamish phoned Harry Gilchrist. “I wonder if I could drop in and see you,” he said.

“What about? I seem to have been answering police questions for years. Besides, I’m busy.”

“I actually wanted to ask you about your wife.”

“What’s she got to do with anything?”

“Mrs. Gilchrist has been abroad for a long time.”

“My wife likes to travel. I have just received a postcard from her. Up to before she went, she had been working hard, helping me in the business. I felt she deserved a break.”

“Where is she now?”

“This is police harassment. I shall speak to your superiors.” He rang off.

Now, that is very interesting, thought Hamish. I’m going to see him anyway.

He was just parking outside the factory when his phone rang. It was Superintendent Daviot. “What on earth are you playing at, harassing Mr. Gilchrist,” demanded Daviot.

“I just wanted to find out where his wife was,” said Hamish.

“What has that got to do with anything? Mr. Gilchrist is a pillar of the community. He is a member of my lodge. His wife likes to travel. End of story. Do not trouble him and that’s an order.”

“Yes, sir,” said Hamish meekly.

Hamish rang off and thought for a moment. Then he called Joan Friend. “Would you like to do a bit of detecting for me?”

“I’ve a lot to do arranging this show. Just as long as it doesn’t take up too much time,” said Joan.

“Harry Gilchrist got a postcard from his wife. It might be in his desk. Could you get into his office on some pretext and have a look?”

“He should be knocking off for lunch soon. I’ll try then. Where are you?”

“I’m outside, but I’ll go to the café in the High Street. Meet me there if you get anything.”

In the café, Hamish wondered whether to buy some food for his pets and then remembered he had left them with Dick. He sometimes felt that Sonsie and Lugs were becoming fonder of Dick than they were of himself and experienced an odd pang of jealousy. Half an hour went by while he ate a dry ham sandwich and drank as much as he could of a truly horrible cup of coffee. He was just beginning to wonder whether she would come when the door of the café opened and she walked in.

“Any luck?” asked Hamish.

“Yes, I took a copy.”

“Good girl. Let’s see it.”

She had copied both sides of a postcard. One side showed a view of Tallinn in Estonia. On the other side was a scrawled message: “Be home soon. Lovely place here. At the President Hotel. Will phone you tonight. Love and kisses, Brenda.”

“What’s this all about?” asked Joan.

“At the moment, I’m just thinking of this and that. Notice anything in particular about the folk at the factory?”

“I’ve hardly finished unpacking,” she said. “Look, I just haven’t got the time.”

“All right,” said Hamish huffily. He had become used to his female friends rushing to help him.

“Got to go!” She dashed off. Hamish stared down at the copy of the postcard. An idea began to form in his head. If he could take a weekend off and get Dick to cover for him, he might be able to book a cheap break to Tallinn. He had a sudden longing to see the mysterious Brenda Gilchrist for himself.

Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, is a small walled city, a carefully preserved mediaeval gem. A cold wind was blowing off the Baltic Sea as he made his way to the President Hotel through the narrow cobbled streets.

He was told at the reception desk that Mrs. Gilchrist was out and so he settled down in an armchair near the door to wait. He had obtained a photo of a staff party at the factory. Standing beside her husband was Brenda, a tall, rangy woman with a mass of brown hair.

Hamish began to feel sleepy and his eyelids were beginning to close when he suddenly heard the receptionist saying, “That gentleman over there is waiting for you.”

She walked over to him. Hamish got to his feet. No glasses now, he thought. Contact lenses.

“Mrs. Gilchrist?”

“Yes, who are you?”

“My name is Hamish Macbeth. I am police sergeant in Lochdubh. I just happened to be here for the weekend and I remembered someone told me you were holidaying here and thought I would have a wee word.”

“About the murders? I’ve been away the whole time. I can’t help you.”

“Maybe we should sit down,” suggested Hamish.

“I haven’t got the time and I haven’t anything to tell you. Goodbye.”

She turned on her heel and walked away.

Now, that’s odd, thought Hamish, sitting down again. A normal reaction would be curiosity. But she’s on the defence and I could swear there was a glimmer of fear in her eyes. What type of wife is it anyway who travels and travels and never goes home?

He took out a notebook and began to scribble in it questions such as: “What kind of woman is Brenda Gilchrist? What type of character? What’s her background? Is she from Cnothan originally? Or does she have money of her own?”

He closed his notebook and sat for a while lost in thought. Suddenly he became aware of someone looming over him. He looked up. Brenda Gilchrist was glaring down at him.

“I have telephoned my husband. He has contacted your superior officer, Mr. Daviot. You are to report to him on your return.” And before Hamish could say anything, she marched out of the hotel.

He hesitated a moment and then rose and left the hotel. There was no sign of her anywhere. He wondered whether she had really reported him to Daviot. If she did, it would prove she had nothing to fear.

Hamish walked around the old town all that day under the shadow of the ancient walls, along narrow cobbled streets, across handsome squares while the wind from the Baltic stiffened and ruffled his red hair. Nowhere could he see any sign of Brenda. At last, he returned to her hotel, thinking that as he was in trouble anyway, he might as well try to have another word with her. But he was told at the hotel that she had checked out.

There was nothing more he could do but take the long road home.

On Monday morning, he brushed his uniform before putting it on, polished his boots, and drove to Strathbane to face Daviot.