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

put some clothes on.’
       
    While she was getting ready, Hamish took a look at the pictures in the gallery. They were of the Sutherland countryside, but they were pretty – pretty, like the kind of pictures you used to see on old-fashioned calendars. They had not captured the wild, stark, highly individual beauty of Sutherland, and were strangely lifeless and dead. They were competently drawn and the draughtsmanship was excellent. He was examining a view of a path winding through graceful birch trees into a romantic sunset when Jenny came in.
    She was wearing faded jeans and a man’s checked shirt, much like his own. Her curls were damp and tousled and her feet bare. When she came to stand beside him, she barely reached his shoulder. ‘What do you think?’ she asked.
    ‘Very good,’ said Hamish politely.
    ‘I do quite well with the tourists in the summer. Of course, I charge very low prices. I don’t need much. Come through to the kitchen and have some coffee.’
    Hamish loped after her. The kitchen was warm and cluttered. A primrose-yellow Raeburn cooker stood against the wall and the table was covered with paints and brushes.
    She poured him a cup of coffee and sat opposite him, clearing a space on the table in front of her by sweeping an assortment of stuff to the side with one small dimpled hand, like a child’s.
    She gave him a gamine grin. ‘You’re looking better now,’ she said. ‘I thought the Hound of Heaven was after you.’
    ‘It’s this place,’ said Hamish ruefully. ‘It’s getting me down.’ He told her about the witchcraft investigation, and then about the fake murder.
    ‘They do have a rather childish sense of fun,’ said Jenny defensively.
    ‘Now me myself,’ said Hamish, ‘I would call it pure and simple malice.’
    ‘Maybe it’s because you don’t understand the Highlander.’
    ‘I’m one myself.’
    ‘Of course you are,’ giggled Jenny. ‘Silly of me. You mustn’t listen to all this rubbish about poor Agatha Mainwaring. She’s one of those women who deliberately goads her husband into being nasty so that she can play the martyr.’
    ‘That’s one way o’ looking at it,’ said Hamish slowly.
    ‘Never mind the Mainwarings,’ said Jenny. ‘Tell me about yourself. Married?’
    ‘No. Are you?’
    ‘I was. In Canada. It didn’t work out. He was jealous of my painting. He was an artist himself. At my first exhibition in Montreal, he waited until one minute before the show opened and then told me he had always thought my work was too chocolate-box and I wasn’t to be disappointed if the critics panned it. I never forgave him.’
    Hamish looked at her curiously. ‘I would never have guessed ye to be one of those Never-Forgive sort of people. Every husband or wife usually says something crashingly tactless they wouldn’t dream of saying to a friend.’
    ‘But not about my painting,’ said Jenny fiercely. ‘I put my whole personality into my work. He was insulting me and everything I stood for. Can’t you see that?’
    ‘Yes, yes,’ said Hamish soothingly, although one hazel eye slid to an oil painting on the kitchen wall. It was of a Highland cottage situated on a heathery hill: competent, colourful, and yet lifeless.
    ‘Anyway,’ said Jenny, ‘we’re talking about me and I meant to find out about you.’
    Hamish settled back and began to describe his life in Lochdubh and told several very tall and very Highland stories that set Jenny giggling.
    ‘And what about your love life?’ she suddenly asked.
    ‘Is there any more coffee?’ Hamish held out his cup.
    ‘Meaning you won’t talk about it.’ Jenny laughed. She went over to the Raeburn, where a glass coffee-pot had been placed to keep warm. Hamish eyed her appreciatively. She was everything Priscilla was not. Jenny was small and plumpish in all the right places, with that tousled hair. Priscilla was never tousled, always cool, slim, blonde, and efficient. Priscilla would never have a cluttered