Free Death of an Outsider by M.C. Beaton Page B

came a commotion from the end of the corridor. Ian took out a small notebook, and as the girl turned her head away, he rapidly scribbled down ‘Mainwaring’. A harassed, middle-aged woman came along the corridor, dragging two weeping six-year-olds. She saw the girl and said, ‘Gemma, was there ever such a business! These two brats were supposed to be off school with the flu. Now they say they were playing up on the moors and there’s a skeleton in the middle of that ring of standing stones.’
    She knocked sharply on the door of the headmaster’s study, and, without waiting for a reply, she went in, dragging the weeping children behind her.
    Ian pressed his ear against the panels of the door, ‘Here!’ cried the girl called Gemma. ‘You cannae do that. I’ll tell on you!’
    ‘Go tell,’ snarled Ian over his shoulder, and then he listened hard.
       
    By the time Hamish Macbeth arrived at the ring of standing stones, there was already quite a large crowd gathered. His police Land Rover had been stopped by other cars and pedestrians, all crying to him about the skeleton up on the moors.
    The crowd parted to let him through. The skeleton lay in all its horrible whiteness under a bleak windy sky.
    Hamish walked forward and knelt down by the skeleton. The whiteness of the bone depressed him. He had been hoping it would turn out to be another joke, that it would prove to be a skeleton used by medical students, but this one was too new.
    ‘I’m Dr Brodie,’ said a red-haired man, coming up to join him. ‘Is this a joke?’
    ‘I hope so,’ said Hamish. ‘But I don’t think so. What do you make of it?’
    The doctor knelt down beside him and took out a strong magnifying glass. ‘I’ve no doubt the pathologist will tell us soon enough, but I’m baffled.’ He raised the skull gently and lay down with his head on the ground and peered at the back of it. ‘Aye,’ he murmured, ‘whoever it was had his neck broken. It’ll come away in your hands if you’re not careful. And see here …’ He pointed to the left arm bone.
    ‘There’s tiny scratches all over the bone.’
    ‘Acid?’
    ‘No, definitely not acid.’ He sat back on his heels. ‘Mainwaring’s missing, isn’t he?’
    ‘Aye,’ said Hamish, ‘and Sandy Carmichael. Teeth. What about teeth?’
    The doctor peered at the skull. ‘None at all,’ he said gloomily. ‘Can’t be Carmichael. I happen to know he had his own teeth. I don’t know about Mainwaring. He never consulted me. Went to some doctor in Edinburgh.’
    Hamish glanced round anxiously at the swelling crowd. ‘I’ll need help,’ he said urgently. ‘While I phone, you pick out the most reliable from the crowd and get them to find ropes and groundsheets. I want the whole place roped off and groundsheets over as much of the area surrounded by the stones as you can manage.’
    When Hamish returned after using the car phone in the Land Rover, the doctor and his helpers were busy spreading tarpaulins over the turf.
    Hamish’s heart was beating hard. After that business on Clachan Mohr, he had hoped never to be the butt of a practical joke again, but he found he was praying that this would turn out to be one. But the sky was dark and windy and his Highland soul felt menace in the very air.
    He took out his notebook and began to make rapid shorthand notes.
    Then he was approached by a group of men and women – reporters from the Northern Times , Highland Times , Moray Firth Radio, and the Ross-shire Journal , all clamouring to know about witchcraft in Cnothan.
    His heart sank. It was like a bad dream. He knew that the Glasgow and Edinburgh newspapers would soon follow, then the television teams, then the London newspaper and television reporters. But, worst of all – once more he would be working for Detective Chief Inspector Blair of Strathbane.
    Ian Gibb had found his scoop at last.

Chapter Five
    What makes life dreary is the want of motive.
    – George Eliot
    The circus came to