Death of a Charming Man by M. C Beaton

Author:M. C Beaton [Beaton, M. C]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Mystery, Humour
ISBN: 9780446403382
Google: cscxFMp_Qk8C
Amazon: 0446403385
Barnesnoble: 0446403385
Goodreads: 24127
Publisher: Thorndike Press
Published: 1994-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

SEVEN

Even if we take matrimony at its lowest, even if we regard it as no more than a sort of friendship recognised by the police.

—Robert Louis Stevenson

Hamish left the bank feeling puzzled. Peter Hynd certainly had an account with them but no money had been drawn by him anywhere in the last few weeks. But he had a London address in the Vale of Health, Hampstead. He went into Fenwick’s, the Bond Street department store, and up to the coffee shop and examined the tube map at the back of his diary while he drank coffee, the only man in a roomful of women.

He made his way out into a street, which looked strangely thin of people compared to the bustling main street of Inverness, say, walked to Bond Street Tube and took the Central Line to Tottenham Court Road, and changed to the Northern Edgware Line. It took him an hour to reach Hampstead. He was always amazed at the vastness of London, although the infrequent trains on the Northern Line always served to slow up any journey. Thriftily not wanting to spend any more money than he had to, he walked into a Hampstead newsagent’s, took down a London A-Z, located the Vale of Health, and returned the book to the shelf.

The Vale of Health, originally called Hackett’s Bottom, nestled in a hollow of the Heath beside a pond. As he walked down the twisting road, he saw a small fairground in front of the houses and beyond that the trees and grass and walks of Hampstead Heath.

Peter Hynd’s house was a trim villa in a terrace of villas, painted ice-cream pink. Much as he disliked Peter Hynd, as Hamish pressed the bell, he wished with all his heart and soul that the man himself would answer the door. But it was a rather bizarre young woman who looked up at him, her dusty hair backcombed and left that way, making her look like some cartoon about electric-shock therapy. Her skin was sallow and she wore old-fashioned purple lipstick and her tired eyes were rimmed with kohl.

“Mr. Hynd?” asked Hamish. “I am from the Sutherland police,” he added, thinking that sounded grander than Lochdubh.

“What’s it about?”

“Is he here?”

“No, he’s somewhere up your part of the world. Oh, I suppose you know that. He’s our landlord.”

“And when did you see him last?”

She crinkled her brow and then shouted over her shoulder, “Cove!”

A squat bald man, or, as Hamish supposed one would have to say these days, one of the follicly disadvantaged, hove into view.

“This man’s from the police,” she said. “He’s asking about Peter.”

“Good God, woman. When will you ever learn? Some fellow turns up on the doorstep and claims to be a policeman and you don’t even ask to see any identification.”

“Well, I did, so get stuffed,” she said, throwing Hamish a conspiratorial wink. Clive made a disgusted sound and walked away.

“Brownie points to me,” she said cheerfully. “Never let the bastards get the upper hand, husbands, I mean.

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