Death of a Traitor


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
 Copyright © 2023 by Marion Chesney
 Cover copyright © 2023 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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 First U.S. Edition: February 2023
 Simultaneously published in Great Britain by Constable
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 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
 ISBNs: 978-1-5387-4676-9 (hardcover), 978-1-5387-4674-5 (large type), 978-1-5387-46752 (ebook)
 E3-20221212-JV-NF-ORI
 
 
 
 Contents
 
 Cover
 Title Page
 Copyright
 Foreword by R. W. Green
 Chapter One
 Chapter Two
 Chapter Three
 Chapter Four
 Chapter Five
 Chapter Six
 Chapter Seven
 Chapter Eight
 Chapter Nine
 Chapter Ten
 Discover More
 About the Authors
 The Hamish Macbeth series
 
 
 
 
 Begin Reading
 Table of Contents
 
 
 
 
 The Hamish Macbeth series
 
 Death of a Gossip
 Death of a Cad
 Death of an Outsider
 Death of a Perfect Wife
 Death of a Hussy
 Death of a Snob
 Death of a Prankster
 Death of a Glutton
 Death of a Travelling Man
 Death of a Charming Man
 Death of a Nag
 Death of a Macho Man
 Death of a Dentist
 Death of a Scriptwriter
 Death of an Addict
 A Highland Christmas
 Death of a Dustman
 Death of a Celebrity
 Death of a Village
 Death of a Poison Pen
 Death of a Bore
 Death of a Dreamer
 Death of a Maid
 Death of a Gentle Lady
 Death of a Witch
 Death of a Valentine
 Death of a Sweep
 Death of a Kingfisher
 Death of Yesterday
 Death of a Policeman
 Death of a Liar
 Death of a Nurse
 Death of a Ghost
 Death of an Honest Man
 Death of a Green-Eyed Monster
 
 
 
 Foreword by R. W. Green
 Sergeant Hamish Macbeth knows far more than most about secrets and lies. If someone told you that they had no secrets and never told lies, Hamish would tell you that they were clearly lying to cover up their secrets. Everyone, after all, has a secret or two, and we’ve all told the odd fib at some time, haven’t we? What—not you? Hamish would have a hard time believing you…
 No one, you see, knows more about how secrets and lies work than Lochdubh’s police sergeant. He deals with them on a day-to-day basis and, like the village’s twin paragons of virtue, the Currie sisters, who manage to waylay him and lambast him for his laziness or some perceived dereliction of duty whenever he leaves his police station, Hamish knows that the twin demons of secrets and lies forever walk shoulder to shoulder. If you see them coming, like the Currie twins, they’re best avoided.
 For Hamish, of course, avoiding them really isn’t an option. His beat covers a vast swathe of rural Sutherland in the far north of Scotland. Here he deals with all sorts of problems, from rowdiness and burglaries to stolen bicycles and—on occasion—murder. Whatever crime or misdemeanour he’s investigating, the culprit will certainly tell desperate lies to avoid the wrath of the law—and hiding in the shadow of desperate lies lurk dark secrets. Fortunately, Hamish has a Highlander’s unerring instinct for recognising a lie when he hears one and the dogged determination to root out its twin secret.
 When M. C. Beaton—Marion—first devised her Highland policeman character almost forty years ago, she endowed him with all of the talents, traits and foibles she believed she saw in the people of the Highlands. Having lived there, she loved Sutherland and its inhabitants, admiring the strength and fortitude it takes to live and work in one of the most remote areas of the United Kingdom. She also regarded them as intuitive and astute, well able to bend the truth themselves when it suited their needs. Hamish is certainly capable of bending not only the truth but also the law when he sees it as a means to an end. That’s not to say that Marion based Hamish on any one particular person. She cherry-picked ingredients for her Hamish recipe as she thought fit—a little from someone she’d met in a shop, a smidgen from someone she’d seen in the street, a pinch from someone she’d overheard talking in the post office, and a huge portion from her own imagination.
 So did Marion regard Hamish as a typical Highlander? Is there even such a thing as a typical Highlander? Just like everywhere else, the Highlands are populated—albeit far more sparsely than most other places in the UK—by a wide variety of people, many of whom come from outside the region, just as Marion did. Outsiders can take a lifetime to be accepted into the fold by those born and bred in the far north, and Hamish was