M. C. Beaton - Death of a Cad

Title:

Death of a Cad

Series:

The second book in the Hamish MacBeth series

Author:

by M.C. Beaton

Year:

1987

Synopsis:

When Priscilla Halburton-Smythe brings her London playwright fiance home to Lochdubh, the whole town is delightedsave perhaps for love-smitten bobby Hamish Macbeth. But the morning after a posh engagement party, one of the guests, Captain Bartlett, is murdered on a grouse hunt. Unfortunately, the prime suspects are the party guests. And a second murder soon follows the first. Now Hamish Macbeth must cut through the alibis before the killer strikes againall the while trying to woo the lovely Priscilla from her jealous boyfriend.

Land of brown heath and shaggy wood,

Land of the mountain and the flood.

Sir Walter Scott.

H enry Withering, playwright, slumped down in the passenger seat of the station wagon after another bleak look out at the forbidding landscape.

Have we much farther to go, darling? he asked plaintively.

Oh, yes, said his fiancee, Priscilla Halburton-Smythe, cheerfully. But we should be home before dark.

Henry wondered whether to point out that, as they seemed to be surely approaching the land of the midnight sun after all those weary hours of travel, there was therefore very little hope of reaching their destination at all. He suddenly found himself too overpowered by the landscape and too depressed by the change it seemed to be creating in Priscilla to say anything, and so he decided to go to sleep instead. But although he determinedly closed his eyes and listened to the hypnotic swish of the windscreen wipers, sleep would not come. Scotland had murdered sleep.

It was not that he, an Englishman born and bred, had never visited Scotland, it was just that he had never journeyed so far north before.

Its clearing up, came Priscillas cool, amused voice. Do look. The scenery is magnificent.

Henry reluctantly opened his eyes.

A watery sunlight was bathing the steep barren flanks of the towering mountains on either side. As the clouds rolled back, he found himself staring up at the awesome peaks and then around at the immediate prospect of damp sheep and bleak moorland.

The sun grew stronger and a wind arose. A river meandered beside the road, shining and glittering with red and gold lights. Then the scenery was blotted from view as they drove into a cutting. A waterfall hurtled down by the side of the road on Henrys side of the car, a relentless torrent that roared in his ear as they sped past.

He glanced out of the corner of his eyes at Priscilla. There was something rather frightening about a woman who could drive so well. They had left London at dawn, and she had driven the 640 miles north, sitting back, her hands resting easily on the wheel. She was wearing beige corduroy trousers and a cream silk blouse. Her fair hair was tied back behind her ears by a tightly rolled Hermes scarf. She looked sophisticated and elegant. But it seemed to him that there was a certain buoyancy in her manner as she neared her Scottish home, an excited anticipation that had nothing to do with him. In London, he had been used to a graceful and pliant Priscilla. After they were married, he decided, he would insist he did all the driving and that she should never wear trousers again. For the first time, he wondered if she would turn out in later years to be one of those terrible county ladies who managed everyone in the neighbourhood and opened fetes. He sulkily closed his eyes. She was not even thinking of him, of that he was sure.

In this, he was wrong.

During the journey, a great deal of Priscillas triumph at having secured a celebrity for a future husband had begun to ebb. She had told him to wear casual clothes, but he had turned up, impeccably dressed as usual, in white collar, striped shirt, old school tie, Savile Row suit, and shoes handmade by Lobb of St Jamess. She wondered uneasily what he had packed in his suitcase, whether he planned to startle the Highlands of Scotland by parading the countryside attired like a tailors dummy.

When he had asked her to marry him, all she had felt was a giddy elation at having done the right thing at last; at having finally found someone who would please her parents. Colonel and Mrs Halburton-Smythe had complained for a year because she had become a journalist, although Priscilla had tried, without success, to tell them that a job as a fashion editors assistant hardly qualified her for the title. They had come on flying visits, always dragging some suitable young man in tow. Priscilla realized uneasily she did not really know very much about Henry.

He was thirty-eight years of age, small, neat-featured, with smooth black hair and brown eyes that were almost black. His skin was sallow, and his legs were rather thin, but he had great charm and appeared to be universally popular.

Over the years, he had had various plays produced at experimental theatres, usually savage satires against the church and state. He was beloved by the Communists, Trotskyites, Marxists, and liberals. To them, he was what they wanted most, a genuine ex-Eton schoolboy, son of a landed family who had opted to join the class war. He wore faded jeans and black sweaters and rather dirty sneakers.

And then his play Duchess Darling had opened in London. No-one could understand what on earth had happened to Henry Withering. For it was a drawing-room comedy of the type that opens with the butler and the cockney housemaid discussing their betters. It had every cliche. Infidelity among the aristocracy, a silly-ass guardee, a gorgeous debutante, a stately duchess, and a bumbling duke. But the clothes were haute couture and it had a star-studded cast.

A clever impresario had decided that a London weary of inner-city riots, rape, and politics might be in the mood for nostalgia. The left-wing papers stoutly gave it good reviews, convinced that Henry had written a very clever satire that they could not quite understand but were afraid to say so. The right-wing press were hesitant to damn it when the cast contained so many famous names who had been brought out of moth-balls. The public loved it. It was frivolous, silly, trite, and beautifully presented. They flocked in droves. After all, it was like going to a royal wedding. No-one expected the stars to be clever, only to look very grand and rich.

Henrys success was sealed when the left wing at last found out their darling had betrayed them and the Young Communists staged a protest outside the theatre during which five policemen were sent to hospital and a member of the Royal family was seen to frown. Henrys name appeared on the front page of every major newspaper the next day. Priscillas work as a fashion editors assistant had mostly been arranging fashion photographs, sitting around studios, shoving models in and out of fashions that were a cross between those of medieval page and a Japanese labourer, and wondering whether the blue-rinsed lady she worked for was ever going to allow her a chance to write. She had finally been sent to write a report on the fashions in the play. She had gone backstage and had been introduced to Henry, who had promptly invited her out for dinner. One week later he had proposed. Now, one week after that, they were on the road to Priscillas Scottish home at the express invitation of Priscillas rapturously delighted parents, who were organizing a house party in honour of the new fiance. Priscilla, at the age of twenty-three, was still a virgin. Henry had kissed her five times, and that had been the sum total of his lovemaking to date. She knew what he looked like in shorts because he had been photographed in tennis whites for a society magazine. But she had never seen him in person dressed other than he was at that moment. It was odd that a man of his background should always look as if he were dressed for church, thought Priscilla, not knowing that Henrys clothes were a sort of costume to enhance his new darling-of-society image.