Mortsafe

by Carl, Lillian Stewart

  “Of course I am. You and I both know that ghosts exist, however you want to define them. Still, I don’t so much disagree with his premise as with his attitude. You have to have premises.”

  “Oh aye. We’re needing a place to live, right enough.” Alasdair vanished into the bathroom before she could throw anything at him.

  Laughing, she opened the book to the index and scanned the listed topics. Despite her irritation with Davis, she also had a mote of sympathy for him. Academic infighting made your average Tudor court look like a love-in. It was survival not of the fittest but of the boldest …

  Her eye stopped at the m’s. “Mortsafe”. Okay. She flipped to the page, and, as a bekilted Alasdair stepped back out of the bathroom threading his sporran onto his belt, she read aloud, “The mortsafe is an example of how the human mind seizes upon primitive fears. There is much greater public utility in studying the human body than in hiding it away and using it as the bogeyman in children’s fairy tales. Burke and Hare, for example, were turned into murderers by such fears. The motive of Doctor Robert Knox was of the best: the advancement of human knowledge.”

  “Right.” Alasdair settled the belt around his kilt. “I’m thinking Burke and Hare had freedom of will. Barely a pot to piss in, granted, but freedom of will.”

  Jean closed the book. “To turn his own metaphor around, you can put all the iron bars around yourself that you want, you can lock your body and your brain into a cage, but you’re still confronted with the inexplicable. If you want to believe, you’ll do it on the slightest of evidence. If you want to disbelieve, ditto. There’s more than just freedom of will at work there. There’s freedom of imagination, too.”

  Alasdair leaned closer to the full-length mirror on the back of the closet door, tying his green tie that complemented the secondary color in his mostly red Cameron tartan kilt. Scarlet red, unlike her crimson red dress. Both the color of blood. Fresh blood, pumping away in her body and his as well.

  “Although if you were protecting your mind, your sensibilities,” she said, “you wouldn’t call it a mortsafe. You’d call it an anima safe. A vita safe … No, that sounds too much like a food supplement.”

  He slipped on his jacket. “Good to see you’re back in form, Jean.”

  “Thank you, Alasdair.” She considered the mustard-yellow dust jacket of the book, now torn to reveal the navy blue binding beneath. A rip ran diagonally through the etching of the man and the stage-ghost.

  “Ghosts for Fun and Profit” had presumably featured ghosts on wires. And what else? Did the real, as distinct from metaphorical, mortsafe come into it at all—and she didn’t mean Billy’s aluminum-foil replica. What about the bones of Ranald Hamilton, which had been moved by someone who’d been working with glitter?

  Had Davis been pushing envelopes and cutting edges with his show, or had he been robbing a grave?

  Alasdair stood before her, hand extended. “Shall we?”

  Her gaze settled on the leather straps and buckles securing the sides of his kilt. Now there was erotic gear, never mind what Nicola intended for the buckles and straps in her shop. She should have retorted to Alasdair’s earlier charge that she had a legitimate reason to visit Pippa’s Erotic Gear as well as one to interview Davis.

  Smiling, she popped up and took Alasdair’s hand, and was closing in further when, from her evening bag on the dresser, came an electronic version of “The Campbells are Coming”. “Ah, Michael.” With a peck on Alasdair’s shaving-cream scented cheek, Jean answered the phone.

  “You’re all right, then?” asked Rebecca’s voice.

  “Oh yeah. Once again I’m living to tell the tale.”

  “If someone’s trying to push you under a bus, you must be closing in on solving the case.”

  “It’s easier to pick on me than on a six-foot-tall redheaded police detective.”

  A wail rose in the background, accompanied by a soothing paternal murmur. “Sorry,” Rebecca said. “The wee bairnie’s hungry. I just wanted to check in and pass on something from Michael. He’s been racking his brain …”

  “There’s an image for you,” Jean said, tilting the phone so Alasdair could hear as well. Funny how bodies and body parts were rather on her mind at the moment.

  “ … about people he knew back in the old days, and he thinks there was a lass, not a lad, named Chrissie hanging about The Body Snatcher. Not one you’d notice, he’s saying, plain, dowdy, kind of shadowing the other girls. I know you’re looking for a boy …”

  “Not any more,” Jean told her. “Now we are looking for a girl. Michael’s description doesn’t fit, but that was fifteen years ago. You can do a lot with cosmetics in fifteen years.”

  “And he’s saying that when the police are done with that mortsafe, to have them contact the Museum. That’s something that could be displayed alongside all the other peculiar—and I do mean peculiar, in some cases—Scottish artifacts.” Linda shrieked. “Gotta run. Good luck. Enjoy your posh evening out.”

  “Thanks.” Jean switched off the phone and tucked it away.

  Beside her, Alasdair’s mouth settled into a grim line. “I’m not thinking enjoyment’s quite the intention, not now.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Jean walked the few paces from the taxi to the portico of Lady Niddry’s trying not to look over her shoulder. She had Alasdair beside her now. And that tall woman just stepping into the lobby was D. I. Wendy Knox, dressed in an elegant pants suit, teal blue satin blouse, and diamond earrings.

  If Jean didn’t know better, she’d have thought the slight figure beside Knox was the dummy to her ventriloquist. They even had similar red hair, although his was more orange and less spiky. So Ryan was here after all, if under escort. Knox couldn’t resist having all her persons of interest under one roof.

  Inside the door, Jean had to look twice to make sure she’d come to the same place she’d visited that morning. Now the chandelier blazed and the black-and-white tile floor swirled with at least thirty other guests. White-jacketed servitors took coats and offered snacks and drinks. The doors to one side stood open on a drawing room that George III and Queen Charlotte—or the restorers of Colonial Williamsburg—would have recognized, right down to the blue walls and lavish Turkey carpet. Servers were spreading an ornately carved buffet with an array of delicacies. Red and white flowers lavished every surface. Either an invisible string quartet or a CD played something classical.

  No, Alasdair wasn’t the only man there wearing a kilt—although he was without doubt, Jean thought, the handsomest. Nor, as she’d suspected, was she the only member of the fourth estate in attendance. She recognized at least one print and one television reporter taking in the scene as well as the food and drink.

  Here came a waiter balancing a silver tray loaded with champagne flutes. Alasdair took two and handed one to Jean. She did no more than sip—bubbly goodness wasn’t so good on an empty stomach. But another waiter approached with a tray of hors d’oeuvres. She appropriated a cheesy bit and a tiny meat pie and only then met the beady brown eyes of the server. Des Bewley.

  He looked odd with neither his hard hat nor his stubble, as though the whiskers had migrated upwards to form a fuzz over his cranium. For once he exuded an aroma of mouthwash rather than beer or whisky or both, and for once he was smiling, if stiffly, the expression glued on. But his eyes were still bloodshot, as though he hadn’t slept since he’d unblocked that door and, like opening Pandora’s Box, released the contents of the vault.

  “Oh. Hi,” Jean said. “Moonlighting here, are you?”

  “Chap called in sick, and herself threw me into his monkey suit. Another few quid’s all to the good, eh?”

  “Yes, it is,” Jean told him, and he moved on through the crowd.

  Knox was telling Alasdair, “… Ryan’s refusing to tell us much more than he’s already told us, though, thanks to your new information, he’s admitted he had a rival for Sara’s affections, a woman named Chrissie. And he doesn’t know what’s bec
ome of her. He’s saying he wasn’t telling us, not wanting to speak ill of the dead.”

  “No one’s getting exercised over a same-sex relationship,” said Alasdair. “Well, save Sara’s own father.”

  “But was the girl known as Chrissie then, the same woman known as Nicola now?” Jean looked up the elegant curving staircase. Now the door to Pippa’s was shut, and the pink sign was dark, even though she could still make out the letters.

  Jason Pagano had set up shop in the shadowed area beneath the stairs. He was still dressed in black, a suit cut to fit his muscular frame, a black shirt with the sheen of silk, and a black bolo tie. His police leash at its maximum length, Ryan accepted his computer tablet from Jason’s hand. Beside him, Liz Estrada wore a Jane Austen-style high-waisted dress, her dark hair lying over her shoulders in sausage-like ringlets. Was she impersonating the resident ghost? If so, her clothing was no more than a wild guess based on the age of the building.

  “Ryan worked here when it was a student meeting-place,” Knox went on. “Recently he heard some tale about a ghost. He thought it must be Sara’s. Nothing like a guilty conscience to produce bogles in the shadows.”

  “A guilty conscience is likely enough, aye, but he’s still keeping his head down,” said Alasdair. “And Gordon’s back in the vault, you’re saying?”

  “With two constables, a magnifying glass, and a fine tooth comb. I’m telling him to come back with that skull charm or he needn’t come back at all.” Knox’s smile smacked of dry satisfaction, as though she was contrasting her congenial surroundings with Gordon’s.

  Did he deserve the hard time she was giving him, Jean wondered? What did he do, make some bad jokes at her expense? Surely he hadn’t made a pass at her, although he might have hit on someone else.

  Alasdair, of course, was sticking to business. “What if the person who hit Ross already found the charm?”

  “We’re searching the bar,” Knox replied, “especially Bewley’s office, and his flat.”

  “Bewley’s? Not Nicola MacLaren’s?”

  “Hers as well, since she’s giving Bewley his orders. But then, you’ll not have heard yet. Ross’s head is clearing. He’s saying he’s never shared two words with MacLaren. He was keeping watch, heard someone on the stairs, and next thing he knew, lights out.”

  “You’re still thinking it was Bewley, then.”

  “I am that.”

  Jean snagged a puff pastry from a passing tray, dared a good swallow of her champagne, and said, “You do know that Bewley’s here, right?”

  Knox spun around. “Eh?”

  “Nicola put him to work in place of a waiter who called in sick.”

  “And you know that how?”

  “He told me, when I took a snack off his tray five minutes ago.” Jean bit into the pastry. Spicy green stuff. Peas? Spinach? Whatever.

  Behind Knox’s back Alasdair sent Jean a quick grin.

  The front door opened. Amy Herries walked in, on the arm of a man Jean recognized as one of her work-in-laws at The Scotsman. Jean would have thought Amy was dressed to the nines, except her outfit was so abbreviated she was more dressed to the sixes. Catching her eye, Jean smiled.

  Amy’s black-lined eyes and red lips returned the smile, if a bit shamefacedly. As the couple walked past, she leaned in and whispered, “I’m wanting a good look at Robin Davis. I’m thinking my sister would still be alive, but for him.”

  Jean had no good answer to that, so contented herself with a nod at Amy and another at the Scotsman stringer. Who had approached whom, she wondered. The victim’s sister’s story in exchange for entry to the party.

  Vasudev made his entrance from a door at the back of the lobby next to the cloak room. His dinner jacket fit perfectly, his shoes shone like mirrors, his moustache curled and his hair waved just so. “Good to see you, welcome, glad you could join us …” He worked his way through the room, pressing flesh and air-kissing.

  And here came Davis himself through the front door, looking less like Winnie-the-Pooh than Dracula, all tuxedo, tie, and teeth. At his side walked a woman even younger than Amy, in a dress even skimpier, exposing legs as long as a politician’s nose that ended in thick-soled, high-heeled shoes.

  Jean asked herself when she’d stumbled into middle age, one-inch block heels and all. Then she saw the silver skull dangling on a fine chain at the girl’s neck. Davis was still up to his tricks.

  “Ah, Jean, good to see you,” he said, leaning in to kiss her.

  She dodged, flipping her hand up into his. “Nice to see you again, too. May I introduce my husband, Alasdair Cameron?”

  Alasdair and Davis exchanged handshakes and polite mutters, and the girl’s name and giggle came and went, but Davis’s eye had spotted Pagano and his crew at the foot of the staircase, Liz poised on the bottom tread. Brushing by Knox without even glancing at her, Davis plunged through the crowd with his date tripping along behind. Almost literally—a man in a kilt grabbed her arm and steadied her on her shoes.

  Pagano looked around. “Well, well, well. If it’s not the professor of denial.”

  “If it’s not public charlatan number one,” replied Davis.

  The crowd eddied, forming a semi-circle with Vasudev at one wing. A few cell phones rose like periscopes, cameras clicking. Ryan looked up from his computer and made arcane gestures at two men toting camera and sound equipment. The recording devices leaned in. A bright light flared. Pagano’s shadow rushed up the wall.

  Knox crossed her arms quizzically. Vasudev stood with his hands folded behind his back, head tilted to the side, moustache shading a gleaming smile.

  Pagano raised a blinking electronic device in each hand, not unlike a priest with his cross and his holy water. But instead of thrusting them into Davis’s face, he turned to the camera. “A ghost walks Lady Niddry’s Drawing Room. It’s a woman, they say. But this fine-dining establishment is set in one of the most haunted parts of Edinburgh, the South Bridge, known to be the haunt of the Mackenzie Poltergeist.”

  Pagano inspected his gadgets. “We’re getting a fluctuation in the magnetic field. There’s definitely something here.”

  Liz ran up the stairs, struck a pose, ran down again. Overhead, the chandelier started to swing back and forth. The crowd gasped, glasses clinked, and people backed away. Exchanging a puzzled glance with Alasdair, Jean thought of the chandelier scenario from The Phantom of the Opera—but that took place in the Paris catacombs, not Edinburgh’s, a detail a showman like Pagano would never miss.

  A noise percolated into her awareness. The ticking of a distant clock? No. Robin Davis tut-tutting as loudly as he could. Heads turned away from Pagano and toward him. “Rubbish! There’s a fishing line attached to the chandelier. See, it’s catching the light.”

  Everyone looked up. The chandelier slowly stopped swaying. Knox nodded. “Looks to be a line, yes.”

  “That’s a cobweb,” stated Pagano.

  A familiar voice said, “There’ll be no cobwebs in any establishment under my management, thank you just the same.”

  On cue, everyone turned toward the drawing room. Nicola stood in the doorway. Her black sheath dress, cut down to here and slit up to there, gleamed like the scales of a snake and fit just as snugly. Red jewels shone at her throat and in her ears beneath her upswept hair, matching the red of her lipstick.

  She waved one arm in a graceful movement worthy of Swan Lake. “Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy our hors d’oeuvres buffet before taking your places in our dining room downstairs.”

  And what, Jean asked herself as everyone surged toward the drawing room, did you call a female maitre d’? A maitresse d’? Now that did sound like a dominatrix.

  Amy hung back, eyeing Davis and his companion, who still stood beneath the chandelier. Finally she allowed her own companion to sweep her away. The lobby almost cleared, Davis called to Pagano, “There’s proof for you, that ghosts and poltergeists are no more than the products of a diseased mind.”

  “There’
s proof for you,” Pagano replied, “that diseased minds are the ones closed to the evil forces walking the Earth.”

  “Evil forces inhabit human bodies, not old buildings,” said Knox, half to herself.

  “Disproving Pagano,” commented Alasdair beside Jean, “doesn’t disprove the paranormal.”

  “And vice versa.”

  Knox stepped forward as though to mediate. Vasudev looked over his shoulder, brow furrowed—he’d miscalculated how strongly the buffet would attract all the reporters. No such thing as bad publicity …

  The breath went out of Jean’s chest as though she’d been punched in the stomach. Her shoulders slumped beneath the cold burden of the paranormal. Pagano and Davis’s rising voices faded to a buzz. Laboriously, she stepped to the side, bumping her shoulder against Alasdair’s. She felt the slow, viscous shudder tracing its way through his own body. As one, they looked up.

  On the landing of the staircase stood the ghost of Grizel Hamilton.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Grizel stood in the landing, rather, the hem of her dress not just brushing the planks of the floor, but mingling with them. The banisters below the railing sketched black verticals against the soft gray-white of her apron. Her hands were folded in front of her chest, her downcast eyes half-hidden by the rim of her bonnet.

  “That’s how she was standing when Gordon and I …” Alasdair began in a hoarse whisper.

  Suddenly Grizel lurched forward and fell. No, suddenly she was pushed over the edge, Jean corrected. The railing passed through her body. The staircase and Pagano’s crew, Davis and Knox, all became momentary shadows through it, as though through a fog. Then Grizel hit the floor and lay motionless, twisted, one stockinged foot—the shoe must have gone flying at impact—emerging piteously from her skirts.

  The face beneath the bonnet was still calm, still quiet. Jean was as sure as she’d ever been of anything that the open eyes were far from sightless. They searched for another world, a distant horizon just beyond reach …

  The apparition vanished. The cold eased, the weight lifted. Alasdair’s shoulder rose and fell in a breath like the one Jean took. Flowers. Perfume. Food.