Death of a Gentle Lady

But I shall walk out on to the moors and speak to crofters.’
    ‘I’m sure they’ll give you a right primitive welcome,’ said Hamish. ‘Part of the highland greeting is to strike the visitor several times with a branch before inviting him inside. Then he must swallow a small bowl of rock salt and eat a piece of dried bread.’
    ‘I don’t know if I could cope with that.’
    ‘Try,’ urged Hamish. ‘In fact, you don’t need to go up on the moors. Why not try the village? There’s a fisherman, Archie Maclean, has the wee cottage down by the harbour. I’ll tell him you’re coming.’
    ‘That’s kind of you. I suppose a writer must suffer for his art.’

    Hamish decided he was wasting his time at the hotel. Surely the villagers were the best bet. He called on Archie Maclean first. ‘I cannae ask you in, Hamish,’ said Archie. ‘The wife’s down in Inverness visiting her sister. She’ll check when I get back to make sure I havenae dirtied anything.’
    ‘I won’t bother you,’ said Hamish. ‘But I want you to do something for me. It’s a bit of a joke …’

    When Hamish had finished preparing Harold Jury’s highland welcome, he realized he would have to visit the Currie sisters, Nessie and Jessie, Lochdubh’s spinster twins. They noticed everything that happened in the village.
    He could only hope that they had not yet learned of Irena’s profession.

Chapter Four

    Oh, what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive!
– Sir Walter Scott

    Hamish parked on the waterfront and walked towards the Currie sisters’ cottage. Anxious to delay going in, he stood with his back to the loch and surveyed his home village, sharply aware, not for the first time, how much he loved the place.
    It was dark, and lights shone from the windows of the small whitewashed cottages. You could tell the time of day by the smells in Lochdubh, thought Hamish. Morning was redolent with bacon and eggs and strong tea, intermingling with the scent of peat smoke from newly lit fires. Then, no such thing as lunch in Lochdubh. Dinner was in the middle of the day. Complex smells of soup, beef stew, roast lamb, and again strong tea – tea with everything, and it must be nearly black in colour. High tea was at six o’clock. No one wanted newfangled oven chips. Chips must be fried in cholesterol-building lard. High tea brought the smell of kippers or sliced ham along with the sugary smell of cakes, because no high tea was properly served unless there were plain cakes and iced cakes. Supper was cocoa-and-toasted-jam-sandwiches time.
    Hamish sniffed the chocolate-scented air. Suppertime already. Nine o’clock. With a sigh he approached the Curries’ cottage. The door opened just as he reached it.
    ‘We saw you hanging about across the road,’ said Nessie. ‘Wasting police time, that’s what you were doing.’
    ‘I need to ask you some questions,’ said Hamish.
    ‘Come ben.’ Hamish followed her into the small front parlour. Jessie Currie was watching television. ‘You interrupted this programme, this programme,’ said Jessie, who always repeated the last words of her sentences.
    ‘It’s fair amazing the way you can keep one eye on the telly and keek out o’ the window with the other,’ said Hamish.
    ‘Oh, sit down and get on with it,’ said Nessie. ‘Well, my lad, you had a lucky escape. A prostitute! We could hardly believe our ears.’
    ‘Believe our ears,’ echoed her sister, her eyes glued to a fornicating hippo on a wildlife programme.
    Hamish sighed. They complained of leaks at Number 10; they complained of leaks at the White House. But those were nothing compared with the Highlands of Scotland, which leaked information day in and day out like a sieve.
    ‘You ken Mrs Cullie, her what lives up the brae?’
    ‘Aye.’
    ‘Her niece is a nurse at Strathbane hospital and she heard that fat detective, Blair, laughing fit to burst a gut. She asked him what the matter was and when he could finish laughing he said he’d just received a phone call and learned you were about to wed a hooker.’
    For once Jessie was too engrossed in the programme on television to echo her sister’s comments. A wildebeest was being savaged by a pack of hyenas. Probably the producers of the programme orchestrated the kill, thought Hamish cynically.
    ‘Forget about that,’ said Hamish crossly. ‘Now, yesterday morning, someone made a call from that phone box on the waterfront, around eleven o’clock. Did