“I will need to consult the spirits.” Angus closed his eyes. Hamish stared at him in irritation, but Charlie was wide-eyed.
“It is the money,” crooned Angus. “Thon nurse meant to get the old man to marry her. But he found out about her peddling her arse and they had a row. He got an anonymous letter.”
“Who told you that?” snapped Hamish.
Angus opened his eyes. “Now you’ve scared the spirits away.”
“I am afraid we will need to take you in for questioning,” said Fiona.
The seer’s eyes suddenly held a mean look. “I wonder what your husband would say to that?”
Fiona turned scarlet and Charlie looked shocked. Hamish looked quickly from one to the other.
“May I have a word with you outside, ma’am?” said Hamish.
Fiona followed him outside. “You take that fraud in and I’ll tell you what will happen. Folk in Sutherland believe he has the gift. It’ll be meat and drink to the newspapers because, trust me, Angus will call a press conference. During that conference, he will get a visit from the spirits, and if there is anything in your private life you do not want made public, then he will broadcast it. People come to him from all over and he has a gift of picking up juicy gossip.”
“How do I stop him?”
“Leave him alone in future. But he’s given us something to go on. Someone from Harrison’s must have spilled the beans. We’ve got to interview Harrison again.”
Inside the cottage, Charlie was looming over the seer. “If you ever say anything to upset that lady again,” he said, “I will break your neck.” Then he turned and stalked out, crashing the door shut behind him.
Hamish remained tactfully silent. It was not his business to ask a senior officer about her private life. But when he had said all that about Angus maybe holding a press conference and maybe revealing details of Fiona’s private life, he had noticed a flash of fear in her eyes. And was there anything going on between Charlie and Fiona? She must command great respect to be allowed to investigate murder along with two local coppers.
He almost missed Blair. Blair’s interference and insults usually spurred Hamish on to greater efforts.
A damp mist was settling down over the countryside. The stunted trees of Sutherland, blasted to near extinction by the severity of the gales, occasionally loomed up at the side of the road in the headlights like crouching old men. Hamish was driving. He had said bad weather was forecast and they would all be safer in the Land Rover.
As he swung in at the gates, a wind sprang up and the fog shifted and danced in front of them. Then the Gothic horror that was the hunting box appeared out of the mist.
“Castle Doom,” said Hamish. “Here we are again.”
Chapter Five
But onwards—always onwards,
In silence and in gloom,
The dreary pageant laboured,
Till it reached the house of doom.
—William Edmondstoune Aytoun
As they waited for the door to be opened, Hamish felt suddenly weary. He had a longing for his usually lazy life. He wondered what it would be like to stop being a policeman, buy a bit of land, and become a crofter instead. But as the door opened, a cynical voice in his head said, Buy land? With what?
Juris stood looking at them. “I don’t know if I should let you in,” he said. “The master is in a fair taking because of that detective who came earlier. He had to stop me being arrested. It was a Detective Chief Inspector Blair and he said, quote, ‘Them damn immigrants are the curse o’ this country and I am taking your Latvian back to headquarters for questioning.’”
“Stay in the hall,” snapped Fiona. “I have urgent calls to make.”
Hamish and Charlie waited under the glassy stare of the stuffed heads. “This’ll be the end of Blair,” said Charlie gleefully.
“Don’t bank on it,” said Hamish. “That cheil would wangle his way out o’ anything.”
Fiona came back in. “Juris, that detective had no authority being here. I can only apologise on behalf of the police force. Please explain matters to Mr. Harrison and say we have only a few questions to ask.”
After only a few minutes, the nurse, Helen Mackenzie, appeared. She was wearing her usual blue dress with a white collar and cuffs, thick black stockings, and flat, lace-up shoes with thick rubber soles.
“Only a few minutes,” she warned. They followed her into the room with the French windows where Hamish had been before.
Mr. Harrison was seated in his wheelchair with a tartan rug over his knees. “Now what is it?” he barked.
“We believe you received an anonymous letter from someone, saying that Miss Dainty hoped to marry you and was after your money. And that she was chasing other men. Do you still have that letter?”
“I burnt it.”
“Now, that is a pity. You had a row with her on the night she disappeared, did you not?”
“I’ll fire that Latvian!”
“It was nothing to do with Juris.”
“So who told you?”