Death of a Sweep - M. C. Beaton [62]
‘Are that lot back from Brazil yet?’
‘Yes, they’re in Wormwood Scrubs on remand.’
‘Get Scotland Yard to ask them if a Giles Brandon was involved in any of their crooked deals.’
‘Hamish, I don’t usually agree with Blair, but you know you should wait a bit or you’ll look a right fool when he walks back in the door of Milly’s house.’
Angus Macdonald, the seer, awoke suddenly that night. He sensed someone outside. He got slowly out of bed without putting on the light, unlocked the gun cabinet, and took out his shotgun. He deftly loaded it and went into his kitchen at the back of his cottage. He cautiously opened the back door, raised his shotgun, and fired it out into the blackness.
Prosser cursed and ran for cover. He had picked out the seer’s cottage, hoping to break in and terrify some householder into giving him shelter until the small hours of the morning.
Angus phoned Hamish Macbeth. Hamish had been asleep, but he jumped out of bed as soon as Angus told him about the prowler.
Prosser, thought Hamish. He knew if he tried to get some manpower over, Blair would block it. He quickly dressed, ran to the church, and began to ring the bell.
The villagers began to gather in the church. Some of the old people remembered when the bell had been rung during the Second World War to alert them that a German warship had been spotted by one of the fishing boats.
Hamish decided to say he thought the prowler was Prosser. When they had all gathered, he said, ‘Thon murderer, Prosser, is on the loose around the village. I want you men to get your guns and spread out and hunt him down!’
High up above the village, Prosser stared down through his night-vision binoculars. He saw people streaming out of the church hall. Then he began to see men with guns beginning to leave the village and head up on to the moors.
He thought quickly. The safest place for him that night would be in the village itself. He would break into one of the cottages while the men were searching the moors and mountains for him, hold up some householder, and wait until the hunt had died down. Then he would take care of Hamish Macbeth.
The Currie sisters returned to their cottage on the waterfront. ‘I’ll make us a nice cup of cocoa,’ said Nessie, ‘after we’ve got into something comfortable.’
‘Comfortable,’ repeated her sister, the echo.
Nessie went into the kitchen and turned on the radio. She was getting rather deaf, and whistles and static sounded round the kitchen as she tried to find a programme with some music. At last, the music of the Polonaise from Eugene Onegin blasted round the kitchen.
The kettle had just boiled when Nessie felt something pressed against the side of her neck and a man’s voice said, ‘This is a gun. I have tied the other old bird up. One squeak out of you and I’ll kill you both. Make me something to eat.’
Nessie, a small figure wrapped in a fluffy pink dressing gown, with old-fashioned steel rollers in her white hair, said, ‘Bacon and eggs?’
‘That’ll do. I’ve cut the phone line so don’t be getting any ideas. I’m going back into your living room and if you make a wrong move, I will shoot your friend.’
Nessie felt a dead calm. She took down a frying pan, opened the fridge, took out eggs and bacon, and then began to cook them. As if moving in a dream, she took down another pan and filled it up with bleach. She put two teabags into a teapot and then poured the boiling bleach in on top of them.
She slipped a sharp knife into her dressing gown pocket. When everything was ready, she loaded up a large tray and carried it into the living room. Jessie stared at her, her eyes wide and blank with shock. She had tape over her mouth. Her ankles were bound with her dressing-gown cord.
Nessie put the tray down on the table by the window. Prosser looked a sinister figure. His face was blacked, and his clothes were filthy from sleeping rough.
He waved the pistol.