Hamish MacBeth 06 (1991) - Death of a Snob Read Online Free Page A

darkness and water.”
    “Ower there.” The fisherman pointed to the middle west. Hamish strained his eyes. He had never been to Eileencraig. Then, all at once, he saw lights in the blackness, lights so low that he seemed to be looking down on them. He was to find out later that a large part of the center of the very flat island was below sea-level. The sea was calming. Somewhere far overhead, the wind was tearing and shrieking, but down below, all was suddenly still, an eerie effect, as if Eileencraig, like a sort of aquatic Brigadoon, had risen from the sea.
    Jane appeared on deck, obviously looking for him. He went out to join her. The boat cruised into a wooden jetty. There were little knots of people standing on the jetty.
    As they disembarked, Hamish carrying the luggage, he gave them a cheery salute of “Afternoon,” but they all stared back at Hamish and Jane without moving, like sullen villagers in some long-forgotten war watching the arrival of their conquerors. There was something uncanny about their stillness, their watching. Their very clothes seemed to belong to an older age: the women in black shawls, the men in shiny tight suits. They stood immobile, watching, ever watching, not moving an inch, so that Hamish and Jane had to walk around the little groups to get off the jetty.
    Hamish had once had a murder case in a Sutherland village called Cnothah. There, the inhabitants were anything but friendly but would have looked like a welcoming committee compared to these islanders.
    Jane strode to where an ex-army jeep was parked and swung her long legs into it, and Hamish climbed in beside her after slinging the luggage into the back. “Horrible old thing,” commented Jane, “but sheer extravagance to leave anything more expensive lying around. They’d just take it to pieces.”
    “Out of spite?” Hamish looked back at the islanders on the jetty, who had all turned around and were now staring at the jeep, their black silhouettes against the jetty lights, like cardboard cut-outs.
    Jane drove off. “Oh, no,” she shouted above the noise of the engine. “They’re rather sweet really. Just like naughty children.”
    “Why on earth do you stay in such a place?”
    “It is part of the health routine to have walks and exercise in such a remote, unspoiled part. My guests love it.”
    They probably would, thought Hamish, cushioned as they were from the stark realities of remote island life.
    “And just smell that air!”
    As the jeep was an open one, there was little else Hamish could do but smell the air. The road wound through the darkness, the headlights picking out acres of bleak bog at every turn.
    Jane swerved off the road and drove over a heathery track and then along the hard white sand of a curve of beach. “There it is,” she called. “At the end.”
    Floodlit, The Happy Wanderer stood in all its glory, cocking a snoot at the simple grandeur of beach and moorland. It had been built like one of those pseudo-Spanish villas in California with arches and curved wrought-iron balconies, the whole having been painted white. A pink curly sign, “The Happy Wanderer,” shone out into the blackness.
    It fronted right on the beach. Jane pulled up at the entrance.
    “Home at last,” she said. “Come in, Hamish, and I’ll show you to your room.”
    The front door led straight into the main lounge. There was a huge fireplace filled with blazing logs; in front of it stood several chintz-covered sofas and armchairs. The room had a high arched wooden ceiling and fake skin rugs on the floor; a fake leopardskin lay in front of the fire, and nylon sheepskins dotted, like islands, the haircord carpet. Several modern paintings in acid colours swore from the walls. There was no reception desk, no receptionist, no pigeon-holes for keys and letters.
    Jane conducted him down a corridor that led off the far end of the lounge and threw open a door with the legend ‘Rob Roy’ on it. The room was large, designed in a