Free Death of a Perfect Wife by MC Beaton Page A

policeman in a small, normally law-abiding village was that you did not strike fear or terror into the heart of anyone.
    ‘I’m making enquiries into the death of Trixie Thomas,’ he said.
    ‘Why?’ Mrs Maclean sat back on her heels. ‘That wumman’s better off dead.’
    ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘But since yourself had no reason to like her, you are one of my suspects.’ He looked at her sternly, but she gave a contemptuous snort.
    ‘She made a fool o’ that silly man o’ mine. He thought she fancied him when all that moocher wanted was a bit o’ free fish. Take the sugar out o’ your tea, that one would. It’s my opinion the Thomases had money enough, but they was always talking about being hard up and scrounging everything they could get. The minister’s wife goes around saying Mrs Thomas was the perfect housewife. She was perfect when it came to getting other people to do the work for her. Thae women like Mrs Wellington and that Mrs Brodie haven’t enough to do. Microwaves and washing machines. A disgrace I call it.’
    A strong smell of bleach rose from a huge copper pot of sheets on the wood burning stove. Mrs Maclean was famous for her ‘whites’, boiling everything and hanging it over the bushes in the garden to bleach further on a sunny day. Perhaps that was why Archie’s Maclean’s clothes always looked too tight for him, reflected Hamish. She probably boiled his suits.
    ‘Well, you’ll have the detectives around soon asking you questions as well,’ said Hamish. ‘They’ll want to know where you were when she was murdered.’
    Mrs Maclean picked up the scrubbing brush again and scrubbed an area of already clean floor. ‘They can ask away,’ she said, ‘for I was right here all day, and my neighbours all saw me coming and going between the house and the garden.’
    ‘And Archie?’
    ‘Himself was down at the nets.’
    Hamish all at once remembered Dr Brodie singing about Trixie being dead and felt cold. That was something he should have told Blair as well. Damn Blair.
    ‘Anyway,’ said Mrs Maclean, picking out the floor cloth and wringing it out and wiping the wet floor, ‘you’ll probably find it was that husband o’ hers what did it.’
    ‘He was in Inverness at the dentist.’
    Mrs Maclean sniffed. ‘So he says.’
    When Hamish left by the garden gate, he heard a burst of music. Mrs Maclean had turned on the radio again.
    He remembered his promise to Paul. Somewhere in Lochdubh, there was a murderer. But it was hard to think such a thing had happened. The sun beat down on a perfect scene. The eighteenth-century cottages along the waterfront gleamed white. Roses scented the air and the still waters of the loch reflected the hills and woods and the gaily painted hulls of the fishing boats.
    Trixie had gone and something nasty in the atmosphere had gone with her. And yet she had not been an evil woman. And the women of Lochdubh would have got wise to her in time.
    He saw Blair and his two detectives driving out of the village and made his way to the doctor’s surgery.
    Dr Brodie said he would see Hamish. ‘Quiet day,’ he said when Hamish walked into the consulting room. ‘Monday’s the busy day when they all come in with their bad backs. It’s the Highland disease. Every Monday morning, a bad back strikes them and they want a line so they do not have to go to work.’
    ‘How did you get on with Blair?’ asked Hamish.
    ‘He tried to bully me. Threatened to arrest me. You told him about me diagnosing a heart attack.’
    ‘I had to,’ said Hamish quietly. ‘Why did you do that?’
    ‘As I told that fat lump, it looked like a heart attack to me.’
    ‘Oh, come on, John,’ said Hamish, exasperated. ‘It looked like nothing o’ the kind. Spit out the truth, man. It looked bad. You had been drunk out your skull the night before and singing about how you had killed Trixie. Did you know her real name was Alexandra?’
    ‘Yes. But she’s the sort of woman – she was the