Free Hamish Macbeth 02 (1987) - Death of a Cad by M.C. Beaton Page A

was soon to lose anyway. But Hamish emitted an aura of an old-fashioned world of courting, walking home in the evening, and holding hands; a world where it was all right to remain a virgin until your wedding night.
    What would it be like, mused Priscilla, to be a policeman’s wife? Perhaps the sheer boredom of living in a tiny remote place like Lochdubh would make her nervous and restless. And yet she had said she would live there with Henry.
    “I had better go home,” she said, collecting her handbag.
    “Aye,” said Hamish sadly.
    They stood looking at each other for a long moment and then Priscilla gave an odd, jerky nod of her head and turned and left.
    Hamish sat for a long time staring into space. Then he got out the car, called Towser, and drove off in the direction of the Halburton-Smythes’ estate. He had driven halfway there when he saw the poacher, Angus MacGregor, walking along. He was not carrying his gun and had the dazed look of a man who has been asleep all day long.
    Stopping the car, Hamish called him over. “I should book you, Angus,” he said.
    “Whit fur?” demanded the poacher, his bloodshot eyes raised to the sky as if calling on heaven to witness this persecution at the hands of the law.
    “I found you dead-drunk down at the harbour this morning,” said Hamish, “and in your back pocket was a brace o’ grouse. You’d been poaching on the Halburton-Smythes’ estate again, ye daft auld fool.”
    “Me!” screeched Angus, beating his breast. He began to rock to and fro, keening in Gaelic, “Ochone, ochone.”
    “Shut up and listen to me. I’ll not be taking you down to the police station. I hae something in mind for you,” said Hamish, staring ahead, drumming his long fingers on the steering wheel.
    Then he said, “I want to see you the morn’s morn with that dog o’ yours, Angus. I’ve a bit o’ work for you.”
    “And what iss a man to get paid?”
    “A man gets nothing. A man does not get his fat head punched. Be at the police station at six, or I’ll come looking for you.”
    Hamish drove off. He drew to a halt again where he had seen the helicopter and got out with Towser at his heels.
    He walked until he had reached the scene of the captain’s death and then he said to Towser, “Fetch!”
    Towser was an indiscriminate fetcher. He brought everything he could find if asked. Hamish sat down on a clump of heather to wait.
    He looked up at the sky. Little feathery clouds, gold and tinged with pink, spread a broad band of beauty over the westerning sun. The colour of the heather deepened to dark purple. The fantastic mountains stood out sharply against the sky. As every Highlander knows, the ghosts and fairies come out at dusk. The huge boulders scattered over the moorland took on weird, dark, hunched shapes, like an army of trolls on the march.
    Hamish lay back in the heather, his hands behind his head, as Towser fetched and fetched. At last he sat up.
    There was a small stack of items at his feet. Five old rusty tin cans, a sock, an old boot, one of those cheap digital watches people throw away when the battery runs out, the charred remains of a travelling blanket, an old thermos, and a broken piece of fishing rod.
    Towser emerged, panting through the heather, dragging a piece of old tyre.
    “Enough, boy,” said Hamish. “We’ll be back tomorrow. Maybe we’re searching too near.”
    “Not tonight, Henry,” said Priscilla Halburton-Smythe. “It’s this terrible death. I think I’m feeling shocked. I simply don’t feel romantic. I’m awfully sorry.”
    “All right,” said Henry sulkily. “If that’s the way you feel…Where did you vanish to early this evening?”
    “Just out. I felt I had to get out Good night, darling. I’ll be back to normal tomorrow.”
    She gently closed her bedroom door in his face.
    Jenkins marched into the breakfast room in the morning and stood to attention before his master. “Sinclair has just been to report that Hamish Macbeth,