Death of a Gentle Lady

about the visit some other time.’
    Hamish let out a slow breath of relief.
    She began to question him about the death of Cyril and listened carefully while he described how he had discovered that Cyril had stolen Harold Jury’s identity.
    ‘Amazing,’ she said when he had finished. ‘But did you not notice his small feet before?’
    ‘I had no reason to be looking at men’s feet,’ said Hamish. ‘It was seeing him dressed as a woman to play the part of Lady Macbeth that gave me the idea. Also, it was not just that he was good in the part of Lady Macbeth, he almost was Lady Macbeth, if you know what I mean. There was something cold and murderous about him. He was mad, of course. It wasn’t just because of his rotten upbringing. Lots of kids have rotten upbringings and go on to be decent citizens. I think he really was a dangerous psychopath. He’d need to have been to go around killing all those people. But he was clever. He played the part of that author so well.’
    ‘But why, when he had finished what he came to do, murder his mother, did he hang around?’
    ‘I think he fell in love – or as much as a character like that could fall in love – with Priscilla Halburton-Smythe.’
    ‘Ah, the blonde beauty.’
    ‘Then he loved acting, and the production of the play got him close to Priscilla and kept him in the limelight, even though it was only the limelight of a small village. Also he hated me for playing a trick on him.’ Hamish told her about the ‘highland welcome’.
    Anna laughed. ‘If he was that clever, why did he fall for a stupid prank like that?’
    ‘Because he was acting the part of Harold Jury. God rest his soul, but I think Harold Jury must have been pretty pretentious.’
    At the end of the meal, Hamish asked, ‘Where are you staying? Can I drive you somewhere?’
    ‘I am staying in Inverness. I have a car and driver waiting.’
    Hamish waved her goodbye with relief and started to walk towards the police station. Then he froze. Aileen’s car was still parked outside, and the engine was running. She must be inside her car, running the heater, and waiting for me, thought Hamish. No doubt, she really wants to tell me what she thinks of me.
    Huddled in his coat, he set off on the long walk up to the Tommel Castle Hotel to beg once more for a room for the night.

    The next morning when he walked back to the police station, snow was beginning to fall. Winter was moving back into Sutherland. It looked as if the spring would never come.
    Aileen’s car was gone. He set about doing his chores. The snow became a blinding blizzard.
    It raged all day and then by evening, it roared away to the east. Hamish dug a path outside the police station, leaned on his shovel, and looked along the waterfront. Everything was white and glittering under the moon. He felt the village and landscape had been in some way sanitized by the snow, swept clean of murder and strangers and blood.
    With a comfortable feeling of being safe at home at last, he went in and locked the door.

If you enjoyed Death of a Gentle Lady , read on for the first chapter of the next book in the Hamish Macbeth series …

Chapter One

    By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.
– William Shakespeare

    Police Constable Hamish Macbeth, heading home to his police station in the village of Lochdubh in Sutherland, heaved a sigh of relief. He stopped for a moment by the side of the road and rolled down the car window. He was driving a battered old Rover, manufactured before the days of power steering and electronic windows.
    Hamish breathed in all the familiar scents of the Scottish Highlands: peat smoke, wild thyme, pine and salt air blown in on the Atlantic gales from the coast.
    Urged by his friend Angela Brodie to go abroad on holiday for once in his life, Hamish had opted for a cheap off-season package trip to the south of Spain.
    His hopes of a holiday romance had been dashed as soon as he arrived. The hotel, ambitiously named The Royal Britannia, catered for British old-age pensioners who wanted to escape the winter back home and the heating bills that came with it. He was in great demand at tea dances, as the other guests were mostly sprightly ladies in their sixties and seventies. When he tried to escape from the hotel food, which was designed for the British palate – chips with everything – and went to some little Spanish restaurant, he would find that several of the ladies had followed him only to