He thanked her and touched his cap and was turning away when he swung back. "But did she ask you?"

"Well, yes, and so late at night, too. I told her she could not have it."

"Did you suggest anyone who might lend her one?"

"I said she could try old Mr. Ludlow."

"And where does Mr. Ludlow live?"

"He is not very well, and I would not like to think of him being troubled."

"I am a police officer, and you are obstructing me in my enquiries. Ludlow's address, please!"

"Mr. Ludlow to you, Officer. Oh, very well. He lives at Five, The Glebe, down at the loch."

Hamish walked down to where the grey waters of the loch lay sullen under a low grey sky. The great ugly dam soared above the loch. He stopped and stared at it, imagining it cracking, then bursting, then the deluge crashing through to drown the whole of Cnothan and everyone in it.

He found Mr. Ludlow's cottage. There was a garage next to the cottage.

He knocked at the door and waited.

There was a shuffling sound inside, like that of some hibernating animal turning in its sleep. The shuffling noises grew nearer, and the door was opened a crack and a rheumy eye stared at Hamish.

"Mr Ludlow?"

"I havenae done anything. Go away."

"n.o.body said you had," said Hamish patiently. "I just want a wee word with you."

The door opened wider. Mr. Ludlow was an old man on whose face a lifetime of bitterness and discontent was mapped out in the deep, dismal wrinkles on a face as grey as elephant's skin.

"Did you lend your car at any time to Patricia Martyn-Broyd?"

There was a long silence. An omen of crows suddenly tumbled overhead, cawing and cackling, and then they were gone.

"Aye, and if I did?"

"May I see your car?"

The old man grumbled out in a pair of battered carpet slippers. He led the way to the garage, took out a key and opened the padlock which secured the door. Inside was an old black Ford.

"When did she ask you for a loan of it?"

"It wa.s.s the night afore that tarty bit was murdered, her what bares her body. Miss Martyn-Broyd, I knew her from the church, she says her car had broken down. She had got me out o' bed to answer the door. I didn't want to let her have it."

"But she took out a handful of notes, so you let her have it," guessed Hamish.

"Aye, well, I'm a pensioner, and money's tight."

"Chust about as tight as that hole in your a.r.s.e that you talk through," said Hamish.

There was a stunned silence, neither of them able to believe what they had just heard.

"What did you say?" demanded Mr. Ludlow at last.

"I said, chust about as tight as that hole in the road over at Crask," said Hamish, improvising wildly. "I'll be on my way, Mr. Ludlow."

"I didnae do anything wrong?" he asked.

"No, nothing," said Hamish, and added maliciously, "provided your insurance covers another driver."

He had the satisfaction of seeing from the sudden fright in Mr. Ludlow's eyes that it probably did not.

As he walked back to his police Land Rover, he had a new respect for Sergeant MacGregor. If I lived here, thought Hamish, I would end up stark, staring mad.

He opened the Land Rover door. Then he stopped, one foot raised, his mouth a little open. Those two threads of blue tweed he had found on the mountain, the day Jamie died. Could they have been from something Patricia had been wearing?

He got in and drove to her cottage. She had been released from hospital but was obviously not home yet.

He stared at the cottage in frustration. Then he felt in the guttering above the door where locals usually hid a door key, but there was nothing there. Perhaps Patricia had not even bothered to lock up. He tried the door handle, and to his relief the door opened.

He went in and searched for the bedroom, finding it off the kitchen at the back.

There was a wardrobe over on the far wall. He swung open the door. There were a few tailored suits and dresses and, on a shelf above, an a.s.sortment of hats.

He slowly lifted out a blue tweed suit and laid it on the bed and began to go over it inch by inch. And then down at the hem of the skirt, he found where two threads had been tugged out.

He sat down suddenly on the bed. He could hardly go back to Lochdubh and find these threads and present them as evidence, for he would be charged with suppressing evidence.

He was sure now she had murdered both Jamie and Penelope.

And then he heard cars driving up outside. He went to the window. In the first black official car was Patricia with Superintendent Peter Daviot; in the second were Lovelace, Mac-nab and Anderson.

He went to the outside door and opened it. Peter Daviot was helping Patricia from the car. Lovelace and the two detectives had gathered around.

"We must a.s.sure you again, Miss Martyn-Broyd, of our deepest apologies," Mr. Daviot was saying, when Lovelace suddenly saw Hamish standing there.

"What are you doing?" he shouted.

They all turned to stare at him.

"I think we had better all go inside," said Hamish.

"You'd better have a d.a.m.ned good reason to explain what you are doing in Miss Martyn-Broyd's cottage," said Lovelace.

But Patricia, with an odd little smile on her face, had already walked forward. Hamish stood aside, and they all trooped into the parlour.

Hamish was suddenly terrified. All Patricia had to do was deny his accusations. He had no real proof. She could admit to borrowing Ludlow's car but say that she'd had to get away, that in her distress she had forgotten to explain she was not in her own car. But he had gone this far, so he had to take it to the end.

"Perhaps if we all sit down," said Hamish, "I'll explain what I am doing here."

"Tea?" said Patricia, smiling all around.

"Not now," said Hamish. "I haff a story for you, Miss Martyn-Broyd, that is stranger than any fiction. Josh Gates did not kill Jamie Gallagher. You did. I think you waited until you saw them all leave. You had not thought of murder then. You noticed that Jamie had not come down. You were probably hidden somewhere beside the path. You went on up. You saw Jamie sitting there, and the impulse took you. You picked up a rock and brained him with it, and then just went away. You felt that the man who had sneered at your work, who had debased it, was finally dead and gone.

"But then there was Penelope Gates. She, too, sneered at you and told you how you had been tricked. You had killed once, and you could kill again. Somehow you knew from the script that she would be up on the mountain. In your book The Case of the Rising Tides The Case of the Rising Tides, the murderer borrows a car so that his own car will not be recognised, so you borrowed a black Ford from Mr. Ludlow in Cnothan, calling on him late at night and paying him a lot to lend you that car.

"At around six in the morning on the day of the murder you were spotted by the tramp Scan Fitz, heading for Drim. I think you found by accident that other path up the mountain. You would want to avoid the main path, too many people coming and going.

"Sound carries verra clearly up there. You heard the instruction to Penelope to stand on that outcrop of rock. You were hidden underneath. When you knew she was in position, you stood up and grasped her ankle and jerked her over your head, and she went flying down the mountain. You escaped in the thick mist, got in the car, drove around and finally went to the Sutherland Arms Hotel for lunch. Then you returned the car to Ludlow."

Lovelace opened his mouth to say something, but Daviot held up a warning finger. All looked at Patricia.

"What a load of rubbish," she fluted. "Yes, I did borrow a car, but I was so dazed and unhappy, I did not know what I was doing that day. Yes, I may have gone near Drim, but I did not go up on that mountain." She spread her hands in an appealing gesture and looked at Lovelace. "Have I not endured enough?"

She might get away with it, thought Hamish, and even if it cost him his job, she would not get away with it. He would need to confess about those two threads of cloth.

He said instead, "You were seen going up the mountain on the day Jamie Gallagher was murdered. I chust found that out today. A crofter saw you and didn't think anything of it at the time, thinking you were part of the TV crew."

"You're lying," said Patricia flatly.

Too right, thought Hamish dismally. But he looked straight at her and said evenly, "I am only glad you will not profit from your crimes because after you are charged with these murders, the sales of your books will be immense, and all over the world, too. You will be a truly famous writer, and that is a distinction you do not deserve."

Patricia stared at him.

Lovelace stood up. "This is enough," he said. "1 have heard about you, Macbeth, and your behaviour has been disgraceful. Breaking into this poor woman's cottage-"

"I did it," said Patricia.

Everyone froze except Hamish, who felt himself go almost limp with relief.

She gave a shrug and said in an almost merry voice, "It was justice, don't you see? They were killing Lady Harriet, so they both had to go. I do not regret it. You are right. I did not mean to kill that Gallagher man. But I did not lurk around waiting until they all had left. I was late. I thought they were all still up there and that perhaps I could get them to change their minds. But there was no one there. I wandered about. And then I saw Jamie, sitting on the edge of the heather in front of the scree. After that I do not know what happened until he was dead at my feet and I was standing with a b.l.o.o.d.y rock in my hand. I hurled it away as hard as I could. I do not regret it.

"Penelope Gates was everything I hated, crude and vulgar and vicious. She had to go. I do not regret her death, either."

"But two murders!" exclaimed Daviot.

"But they were guilty of infanticide," said Patricia with a sort of dreadful patience. "They killed my child. They were killing Lady Harriet."

Lovelace charged her with the murders. She kept looking at Hamish. When Lovelace had finished, she said, "Hamish, will I be really famous?"

"Yes," he said sadly. "Very famous indeed."

"Then that's all right," she said briskly, getting to her feet. "Shall we go?"

"Wait a minute," said Hamish as she was being led out. "Patricia, why did you ask for my help to clear your name?"

"Oh, I thought you were the only person I had to fear," said Patricia with a little smile. "These other gentlemen are so stupid. It worked for a bit, didn't it?"

"Yes, it worked," said Hamish. "And did you really lose your memory?"

"No, I did not. I simply became weary of the act and decided to find it again. I wrote about an amnesia case in one of my books and had read a great deal on the subject, enough to trick the psychiatrist. How did you guess it was me?"

One more lie wouldn't matter, thought Hamish. He hoped they would forget about that crofter he said had seen Patricia on the mountain.

"It was Detective Jimmy Anderson who suggested that you might have used another car."

"How odd," said Patricia. "I would have thought him as stupid as the rest."

She was led out.

Daviot remained behind with Hamish. "Good work," he said. "This lets Blair off the hook, and I'm glad of it. He's a good man and probably thought she had done it all along."

Hamish groaned inwardly, but better Blair than Lovelace.

"I shall be glad to return Lovelace to Inverness," went on Daviot. "He ruffled too many feathers at Strathbane, ordering policewomen to do his shopping for him. Not on, in these liberated days."

"I had best go and get an official statement from that man who lent her the car," said Hamish.

"Yes," said Daviot absently. "This is all going to make us look a bunch of fools with the press."

"In what way, sir?"

"Well, saying Josh Gates murdered Jamie Gallagher. Bad press, that."

"But the murders are solved, and you've got them off your back."

"True. You should consider a move to Strathbane, Hamish." Hamish, not Macbeth. He was definitely in favour.

"No, sir. I am quite happy where I am. It was Jimmy Anderson who put me on to it."

"Then why did he not do it himself?"

"He might be frightened he would get into trouble with Lovelace. If you will forgive me for speaking freely, sir, that man does not like initiative."

"It will be good to have Blair back."

A man who disliked initiative just as much as Lovelace, thought Hamish.

"We should not be sitting here," said Daviot. "I'd best get the forensic team over here."

"Why don't you go ahead, sir," said Hamish. "The door was open, but I see there's a key on the counter there. I'll lock up and wait outside for the forensic team."

"Very well."

Hamish followed him out and stood waiting until Daviot's car had roared off into the distance. Then he went into the bedroom and carefully took the tweed suit off the bed and hung it back in the wardrobe.

Then he sat down to wait for the forensic team. He had plenty of time to reflect on his own stupidity. Patricia had initially got away with both murders through sheer luck. Different car or not, Ludlow could have come forward and told the police. But Hamish had not suspected her, something in Patricia's loneliness of spirit striking a chord in his own. And he had been flattered when she had asked him to help her. She must have been very confident that, owing to the mist and the different car, no one would recognise her. But thanks to her rudeness to one tramp, which had made him remember her vividly, she had been recognised.