Death of an Outsider by M.C. Beaton Read Free Book Online

this will melt away like the fairy gold. Mainwaring senses that and does his best to make me feel insecure. He’d make a good blackmailer.’
    ‘Would you say his wife is frightened of him?’ asked Hamish, enjoying all this gossip immensely.
    ‘Aye, and I wonder why. She’s a big, strong woman, and though he’s a big, strong man, you’d think she could still make mincemeat of him if she liked. You know that business o’ the witches?’
    Hamish nodded.
    ‘Well, I wouldn’t put it past him to have stage-managed the whole thing himself. Mrs Mainwaring likes a dram, and she was a bit squiffy yesterday morning and told Mrs Grant in the town that she thought he was jealous of her popularity. Mrs Grant told Mrs MacNeill, who told Mrs Struthers, who told my wife, who told me.’
    ‘Some marriages are awf’y sad,’ said Hamish.
    ‘They are that,’ agreed Jamie, ‘and none so sad as the Mainwarings’.’
    Hamish thought deeply for a few moments, and then said, ‘I am still surprised he got the extra croft land just like that. There’s a lot of land greed in the Highlands.’
    ‘Like I said, he was popular in the beginning,’ said Jamie, ‘although I don’t believe the man knew it. He took shyness and diffidence among the locals for rebuff. Then his aunt had been very well-liked in the community. They didn’t like to put up objections. When they did, it was too late. You know crofters, Hamish. They don’t know their own laws. They learn distorted facts from each other by word of mouth. It was just after he acquired the crofts that he started throwing his weight about.’
    ‘So his aunt wasn’t English?’
    ‘Oh, no. But as far as I can gather, Main-waring was born and brought up in England. His aunt, Mrs Drummond, had been here since the day of her marriage about fifty years ago. Brian Drummond, her husband, died about ten years before she did. I think the Mainwarings are quite rich and Mrs Drummond belonged to the mother’s side, which hadn’t much of the ready. Mainwaring came up on a lot of flying visits before she died.’
    ‘And who was it objected to him getting the crofts?’
    ‘Two of them. Alec Birrell over at Dunain, that’s on the other side of Cnothan, and Davey Macdonald, also from Dunain. How Main-waring got to learn who had written in to object to him, I’m not sure, except at that time he was friendly with that wee weasel who works at the Crofters Commission, Peter Watson, so he could’ve told him. Anyway, a few months after they objected, both lost a couple of dozen sheep each one night. They accused Mainwaring of having taken them away out of spite, but since there was no proof and the sheep were never found, there was nothing Sergeant MacGregor could do.’
    Heartened by the friendly visit, Hamish returned to the police station. He saw, as he drove past, that Jenny was working in her gallery. Once inside the station, he brushed his hair and his uniform. The snow was still blowing past the window, but it was getting thinner and tinged with pale yellow as the sun fought to get through. He picked a bottle of aftershave out of the bathroom cabinet. MacGregor’s. It was called Muscle, and the advertising on the packet said it was for truly masculine men. Hamish opened it and sniffed. It smelled pleasantly of sandalwood. He splashed some on his chin, and feeling quite strange and exotic, for he had never used aftershave before, he decided to go across the road and visit Jenny Lovelace.
    And then the phone in the office began to ring. Cursing, he went through to answer it.
    The voice at the other end was husky and Highland. ‘Murder,’ it said. ‘A body on the top o’ Clachan Mohr. Come quick.’ And then the receiver at the other end was replaced.
    Heart beating hard, Hamish studied the ordnance survey map on the wall. Clachan Mohr was a craggy cliff outside the village, a relic of the ancient days when the long arms of the sea reached into the heart of Sutherland.
    He drove at