Death of a Gentle Lady

oiling all over the village bobby?’
    Then came Mrs Gentle’s voice: ‘Such a clown, my dear. Improbable red hair and about seven feet tall. These highlanders!’
    ‘If you don’t like highlanders, you should get back down south, Mother. Of course you can’t, can you? Can’t play lady of the manor down there.’
    Hamish walked off slowly. He felt uneasy. He had felt it before when some incomer had started to spread an evil atmosphere around the peace of the Highlands.

    ‘Evil!’ exclaimed Angela Brodie when he met her later on a sunny afternoon on the waterfront. ‘That’s a bit strong. Everyone adores her. Do you know, she has just promised a large sum of money to the church to help with the restoration of the roof?’
    ‘I still don’t like her,’ grumbled Hamish. His cat, Sonsie, and his dog, Lugs, lay at his feet, panting in the sunshine. ‘I should get the animals indoors where it’s cool.’
    ‘Have you heard from Elspeth?’ Elspeth Grant, once a local reporter, was now working at a Glasgow newspaper: Hamish had toyed too long with the idea of marrying her so she had become engaged to a fellow reporter. But the reporter had jilted her on their wedding day.
    ‘No,’ said Hamish curtly.
    ‘Or Priscilla?’
    ‘Neither.’
    Hamish moved off. He liked Angela but he wished she would not ferret about in his love life – or lack of it. He had once been engaged to Priscilla Halburton-Smythe, daughter of a colonel who ran the local hotel, but had ended the engagement because of her chilly nature.
    In the comparative coolness of the police station, where he also lived, he suddenly felt he was being overimaginative. Mrs Gentle was, in his opinion, a pretentious bitch. But to think of her as evil was going too far.

    Autumn arrived early, bringing gusty gales and showers of rain sweeping in from the Atlantic to churn up the waters of the sea loch at Lochdubh. Hamish was involved in coping with a series of petty crimes. His beat was large because the police station in the nearby village of Cnothan had been closed down. He was soon to find out that his own station had come up again on the list of closures. The news came from Detective Inspector Jimmy Anderson, who called one blustery Saturday.
    ‘Got any whisky?’ he asked, sitting at the kitchen table and shrugging off his coat.
    ‘You’re not getting any,’ said Hamish. ‘Have coffee. You’ll get caught one day and off the force you’ll go.’
    ‘You’ll want a dram yourself when you hear what I have to say,’ said Jimmy.
    ‘What’s that?’
    ‘You’d best start selling off your livestock.’ Hamish kept sheep and hens. ‘This police station is being put up for sale.’
    Hamish sank into a chair opposite Jimmy, his hazel eyes troubled. ‘Tell me about it.’
    ‘Do you ken a woman called Gentle?’
    ‘Oh, her, aye. What’s she got to do with it?’
    ‘It’s like this. I was at a Rotary dinner last night –’
    ‘I didn’t know you were a member of the Rotary Club.’
    ‘Not me. But Sergeant MacAllister couldn’t go and gave me his ticket. Anyway, the super was there, and Blair.’
    Detective Chief Inspector Blair was the bane of Hamish’s life.
    ‘And? What’s this Gentle female got to do with it?’
    ‘Well, she was seated between Superintendent Daviot and Blair. They were all over her. She was fluttering and flirting – odd at her age.’
    ‘Get to the point, man.’
    ‘I went to have a pee and when I got back into the room, I heard her say your name. My place was at the other end o’ the table, but I waited for a bit. She was saying that she was surprised that the police would go to the cost of maintaining a police station in Lochdubh when everyone knew you did practically nothing.
    ‘Daviot said you were a good officer and had solved a lot of murders. Blair weighed in and said there weren’t any murders now and no drug problems because most of the young people went south to the cities. He said that house prices were astronomical these days and that the police could get a lot of money for your station. Mrs Gentle shook her little head and said sadly that you were short on social skills – that you had called on her without an invitation and stayed eating her out of house and home before she could get rid of you.
    ‘Then Blair turned round and saw me and demanded to know what I thought I was doing, so I didn’t hear any more.’
    ‘That woman iss a slimy wee bitch!’ raged Hamish, his accent becoming more