Death of a Sweep - M. C. Beaton [55]
He rose at last and found a taxi to take him to the airport. He had left his car in a back street.
Prosser was wearing a baseball cap pulled down over his face and dark glasses. He had changed his clothes and was wearing a Hawaiian shirt and Bermuda shorts and trainers. Bromley did not recognize him. The flight was called. With a beating heart, he boarded the plane and, with a great sigh of relief, took his seat in first class. He had paid for his seat with cash but at the airport had used his genuine passport. That way, he would be picked up by the police at Heathrow.
As the flight raced along the runway for takeoff, Prosser in the seat behind Bromley lifted his shirt and ripped off a syringe of morphine he had taped to his body. He had been grateful that new security X-ray machines had not been installed at Rio. The syringe was plastic and so had not been detected. There was no one sitting next to him. He waited patiently during the long journey. As they approached Heathrow for the landing and the airline crew retired to put on their seat belts, Prosser leaned forward. Between a gap in the seats, he could see Bromley’s arm on the armrest. He plunged the syringe into it. Bromley let out a strangled cry that was drowned by the roar of the engines as the plane landed.
As he left the plane, Prosser glanced down at Bromley. To all intents and purposes, it looked as if he were asleep. It would take several days for them to find out that Bromley had not died of natural causes. It never crossed his mind that Bromley would have used his real passport.
Angela Brodie found that returning to her old life was difficult. Although she had carefully avoided basing any one of her characters on the people in Lochdubh, the villagers were convinced that this one and that one was really old so-and-so. The villagers were deadly polite to her, a particularly highland way of sending someone to Coventry.
Her husband was unsympathetic. ‘You should never have done it, Angela,’ he said, but as her eyes filled with tears, he said, ‘Oh, look, let’s go to the hotel for dinner tonight and the hell with the lot of them.’
Angela felt a wave of great affection for her husband as they sat down for dinner. Not once had he shouted at her. He had been puzzled at first as to why she would do such a thing as use a thinly disguised village of Lochdubh as a basis for her novel, but then had accepted the fact that his surprising wife was a brilliant woman.
‘Oh, look!’ exclaimed Angela. ‘There’s Priscilla. I wonder if Hamish knows.’
The tall blonde figure of Priscilla had just entered the dining room. She saw them and came to join them. ‘And how’s the famous author?’ she asked.
‘Being sent to Coventry by the locals,’ said Angela.
‘They’ll get over it,’ said Priscilla. ‘There might be a quick way to do it.’
‘How?’
‘Give six free writing classes on the theme of How to Write About What You Know. They’ll come along because it’s free. Throw in some tea and cakes as well.’
‘It wasn’t a success when that horrible television scriptwriter gave classes,’ pointed out Dr Brodie.
‘But he was awful and it turned out he was a plagiarist who couldn’t write.’
Angela brightened. ‘It might work.’
‘What did Hamish think about being portrayed as the local Lothario?’ asked Priscilla.
‘He was annoyed, poor man. But you know Hamish. He never bears a grudge.’
‘Well …’ Priscilla was about to point out that Hamish was a highlander, a race capable of bearing grudges until the end of time, but decided to say instead, ‘If there’s anything I can do to help set up your classes, let me know.’
She smiled down at the obviously devoted couple and wondered how she could ever have believed Hamish guilty of having an affair with Angela. She said good evening to them and then drove to the police station.
Hamish’s face lit up in a glad smile when he opened the door to her, a smile to be quickly replaced with a look of caution. He did not want