Death of a Lovable Geek

by Maria Hudgins

  The four of us looked at each other and sighed.

  “Do you know what hospital they’ve taken John to?” Amelia asked.

  I shook my head and relayed the question to William’s table.

  “He’s at Fort William, but I heard some talk that they might move him to the hospital in Inverness.”

  A low humming sound, like a bumble bee on the other side of the room, barely audible, started up. At first it was so faint I thought I was imagining it, and then it got a little louder. Lettie stopped what she was saying and turned her head left, then right.

  “Do you hear something?” she asked.

  Alf Downes, at the next table, guffawed over something, drowning out any other noise for a second or two. The four of us sat silently, forks poised in midair, waiting for the other table to get quiet. There was a noise coming through the window. It grew louder, more insistent.

  Someone in the party of six, the anniversary celebrants, proposed a toast, followed by loud hear-hears and clinking crystal. Then a persistent drone, definitely coming from outside the window, became too loud to ignore. Another toast at the anniversary table was cut short by a blare that sent William Sinclair scurrying to the window. He threw up the sash, opening the way for a blast so loud it vibrated the curtains.

  “What the hell are ye doin, ye damn fool? Pipe doon!” William yelled.

  The noise became a tune that sounded like a funeral dirge. We all dropped our napkins and rushed to one or another of the windows on that side of the room. A lone bagpiper stood in the parking lot. In kilt and work boots, he advanced one step closer to the windows every eight bars or so. Over the top of the air-filled bag was a red face surrounded by an even redder mass of curly hair. It was Robbie MacBane, and the dirge he was playing sped up and morphed into “The Campbells are Coming,” a call to arms if I ever heard one.

  William, still clasping his dinner napkin, dashed out through the kitchen door and stood about six inches from Robbie’s ear. He yelled, but I couldn’t hear what he yelled because Robbie’s pipes had by now reached the decibel level of a Concorde jet.

  Several people retreated to the anteroom adjoining the dining hall, but the niversary fGes returned to their chowder, smiling gaily and waving their spoons in time to the music. I dashed through the kitchen and out the side door, mere inches behind Christine and Maisie.

  “Haud yer whisht!” William yelled into Robbie’s ear.

  The cacophony died only when Robbie was good and ready. He bellowed through another chorus and squeezed out the last of the air with a sort of squawk. He threw the pipes on the ground and squared off against William, beet-red face to beet-red face. Having divested himself of his bulky instrument, he stood chest out, chin forward, and I saw the cartoon character on the front of his T-shirt: Spongebob Squarepants.

  “Yer mither’s turnin’ in her grave!” Robbie shouted.

  “What are ye talkin’ aboot?” William’s face showed total bafflement. I felt sure he didn’t know what Robbie was talking about.

  “Ye know damn well what I’m talkin’ aboot!”

  Within a few feet of the two men were a number of items that might serve as lethal weapons if the men lost control, and it looked to me as if they might. The bagpipes could become a bludgeon, William’s dinner napkin, a garrote. There was a lug wrench on the hood of William’s Volvo. Weapons everywhere.

  “Robbie, I don’t think he does know!” I shouted.

  “Know what?” William asked.

  “Dinnae tell me ye dinnae get a copy of the letter ye made yer solicitors send me.”

  “I know nothin’ aboot a letter.”

  I saw a chance to intervene. As the mother of four sons, I’ve learned a few things about boys and fights: Number one, boys don’t usually want to fight, and if you can give them a way to get out of it with their dignity intact, they’ll take it. Number two, boys almost always push before they hit. There’d be a shove to the shoulder followed by a reciprocal shove from the opponent. Number three, if the would-be combatants are seated, preferably facing each other (not side-by-side on a sofa; I made that mistake once), it’s less likely they will come to blows, because doing so requires that they stand up, shove, and get shoved back, all before the first blow is thrown.

  Where could we sit? My first idea was the hay bales outside the barn which was immediately behind the parking lot, but one quick glance in that direction showed me a pitchfork stuck into one of the bales. A lethal weapon.

  “Men,” I announced in my most authoritative voice, “I think I can help you both understand if you will follow me around to the front, please.” With outstretched arms, I herded them off as if they were little boys getting taken to the principal’s office. The steps to the big front entrance were flanked by low walls on either side. Obediently, the two men sat where I indicated they should, on opposite walls, facing each other.

  “Robbie, did you bring the letter with you?” I asked.

  “Nae, why should I? He knows what it says.”

  “I have no idea what he’s talkin’ aboot.”

  “I think he’s telling the truth, Robbie.” I turned to William and described the contents of the letter Robbie had showed me that morning. “If I recall correctly, William, the MacBanes have forty years left on a one-hundred-year lease on the farm.”

  “Forty-one,” Robbie said.

  “The rent is one hundred pounds a month and the contract states that it will never rise above that amount.”

  “And a contract’s a contract, William.” Robbie jabbed a pointed forefinger at his landlord.

  “It’s a license to steal, if ye ask me!” William planted both hands on his knees and leaned forward. I caught my breath.

  “William, did you ask your solicitors to write that letter?” I asked.

  “Nae. I know nothing aboot it.”

  “Then the solicitors must have done it of their own accord. Perhaps they’re simply reviewing old contracts, cleaning out their files, you know?”

  “Why would they do that?” Robbie fired back at me. “The contract’s nothin’ to do with them. They’re just the ones that drew it up to begin with. They don’t care if it’s still in effect or not. We could make paper doilies oot o’ it for a’ they care!”

  “Good point. What we need to do, then, is call and ask them.”

  “It’s eight o’clock,” Robbie said. “They won’t be there.”

  “We’ll call in the morning.”

  “Tomorrow’s Sunday,” William said.

  “Okay, Monday.” At least I had them both arguing with me, now. “If I may make one more comment, it occurs to me that your contract might, indeed, need to be reviewed.”

  “If the rent goes up, I’ll go broke! D’ye ken what it costs to raise a Heelan coo? D’ye ken what I get for a ton o’ barley?” Robbie waved an arm at me. Spongebob grinned goofily at me.

  “Same as it costs me to raise a Heelan coo. Dinnae forget, I’ve got twenty head meself, and I get the same price for my barley as you do.” William crossed his arms in front of his chest. “And I’ve got a castle to run! D’ye ken hoo much that takes?”

  “Maybe you two could work out something that wouldn’t involve money,” I suggested.

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, searching my brain desperately for an idea, even a bad one. “Robbie plays the bagpipes beautifully and I know also he plays the violin.”

  “Fiddle,” both men said.

  “Didn’t you say you play with a group, for dances and such?” I asked Robbie.

  “Aye.”

  “Well, how about entertainment here at the castle? William’s guests would love it, and if you did it for free …”

  “Then we wouldnae have to involve the tax man!” they both said, practically in unison.

  Give a Scotsman a way to beat the tax man and you’ve made a friend for life. My idea needed some work, but, at least for now, they had forgotten about the fight.

  Chapter Fifteen
r />   I got penny buns, I got chantarellies, I got blue … blue somethings. That had to be my st AXbutting point. It was, as nearly as I could remember what Boots had said when he took Maisie that burlap sack that I now knew had contained wild mushrooms, some of which had ended up in our soup that evening. The soup had other mushrooms in it, since Maisie had indicated she added Boot’s contribution to what was already in the pot, but I had to assume that those were mushrooms she had bought at a reputable market. Maisie had told us she drove to a market in Aviemore two days earlier. The day Froggy was killed.

  I sat by the fire in the library this evening with my new mushroom book. Lettie and the Downeses were my only companions. Alf Downes walked around the room, his hands clasped behind his back, and studied the paneling in minute detail. I would have bet that he was making mental notes for a room of his own back in Texas. Eleanor had tucked herself up in an overstuffed chair with a copy of Robert Burns’s poetry. She yanked off her glasses and looked up.

  “Did Lord William and that bagpiper get their differences settled?”

  “I think that’s what they’re doing now. I saw them leave, walking down the road together, right after dinner,” I said.

  “Where’s Tony?” This came from Lettie, who was simply sitting, tapping her fingers on the arm of her chair and swinging her legs to a tune only she could hear. Lettie is short, 5 foot 1, so her feet often don’t touch the floor when she’s seated. She has the habit of crossing her legs at the ankles and letting them swing.

  “Tony’s gone to some hotel or other to talk to the parents of that young man who was murdered,” Eleanor said. “At dinner he told us the parents are leaving tomorrow because the coroner hasn’t released the body yet, and there’s nothing much they can do here.”

  “The poor couple,” I said.

  “Tony said they would have a memorial service for him here, so all the students from the dig can attend. Most of them wouldn’t be able to travel back to southern England, where he was from, and where, I assume, a funeral will eventually be held.

  “That’s why he had to go see the Quales tonight; to make plans for a memorial service here,” Eleanor said. “Dr. John would have done it himself, but of course he can’t.”

  “When you say here,” Lettie asked Eleanor, “do you mean here at the castle?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I went back to my mushrooms, starting with the chanterelles because at least I’d heard of them before. The book had photos of chanterelles in cinnabar-red, bright yellow, bright orange, white, tan, even black. Their distinguishing feature seemed to be a frilly, trumpet shape, but not all were frilly and not all were trumpet-shaped. I had always heard that it was hard to identify wild mushrooms. Now I could see why. Chanterelles are edible and some are highly prized by gourmets, but another type, the Jack O’Lantern mushroom, sometimes called the False Chanterelle, is poisonous, causing gastric distress from a few hours to a couple of days. That sounded like a good candidate. Reading on, it got even better because the book said that, when freshly picked, the Jack O’Lantern glows an eerie green in the dark.

  Penny buns, I discovered, were the same thing as porcini mushrooms which I had seen in stores back home, members of the boletus family. Pretty little chubby things, they are easier to identify than most, but not all are choice or even edible and some are poisonous. How was one supposed to tell? I decided th xat the penny bun must be a common name for the species that this book called the King Bolete, considered by many to be the best of all boletes. In the pictures it didn’t look much like its cousin, the poisonous Red-mouth Bolete. I decided I could tell the difference if I found them in the wild.

  Blewits. That had to be what Boots had said. None of the other names started with anything that sounded like blue. Latin name: Clitocybe nuda, aka, Lepista nuda. A fragrant blue or violet-tinged mushroom with white spores. A strongly flavored mushroom and one of the most highly prized of all. (That’s what it said on one page.) A mildly flavored mushroom, not very tasty but quite pretty. (That’s what it said on another page.) It can be confused with the Silvery-violet Cort, which was declared poisonous on one page in my book, edible on another. Then there is the Deadly Cort which has rust-colored spores and is … I turned the page … deadly. At last, something that made sense.

  I thought about the mushroom caps I had seen under inverted drinking glasses on Froggy’s desk. The police had taken them, but I wondered what color spore prints they made.

  I shut my book. “Lettie, what are your plans for tomorrow?”

  “I have no plans. It’s Sunday, and the library is closed.”

  “Let’s go to the hospital in Fort William. They might let us in to see John, if he’s any better. And let’s go for a walk in the woods.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  It was Saturday night and by eleven o’clock the camp was under the spell of magic mushrooms. In the center, around a dying fire, several kids sprawled or lolled, making sporadic observations about the color, essence, and true meaning of fire. Three large orange juice bottles sat on the tow bar of a small trailer nearby. They had been purchased specifically for this evening because one of the participants declared the taste of orange juice to be “effing awesome” if drunk while tripping on magic mushrooms.

  Proctor Galigher sat on an upturned plastic milk crate with Tracee Wagg between his legs. She had both hands on one of Proctor’s knees, her head on her hands, and her bare feet stretched toward the fire. Both of them stared into the flame, their unblinking eyes reflecting its light.

  “Is my right arm up in the air?” Tracee asked no one in particular.

  “No,” said another girl. “Is mine?”

  “What arms?” asked a third, with a small giggle. “You have no arms.”

  Proctor stood up. Tracee, her hands now deprived of support, toppled sideways to the ground. “I gotta move!” he said. “I can’t sit still.” He bounced like a boxer, ducking and weaving, out of the circle of campers and tents and into the darkness beyond. He did jumping jacks, he shook his arms, and he ran in a little circle until he staggered from dizziness. Then he looked up at the revolving stars, and tears ran down his cheeks.

  Not everyone was participating in the magic mushroom party. Hannah Dunbar lay on her bunk in her little tent, reading by lantern light. Graham Jones merely watched the kids, circling the camp site occasionally, on the theory that, since he hadn’t managed to prevent this from ha?” askedening, at least maybe he could catch any who might wander off before they got hopelessly lost on the moors.

  Someone called out, “Ready for the dry-cleaner bag light show? Come on in.”

  They all abandoned the dying fire in favor of the camper from which the call had come. Inside, a thin, plastic dry-cleaner bag, knotted at six-inch intervals, hung suspended from a coat hanger taped to the roof. Directly below it sat a skillet full of water.

  “You’re not gonna believe this.” The young host indicated places to sit, until every conceivable spot was occupied. “We light this thing on the bottom, turn out the lights, and then watch.”

  “Wait! Let me get my black light. That’ll make it even cooler,” said Joyce Parsley.

  “No! That’ll ruin it. This makes its own light.”

  A lengthy but disjointed discussion as to the desirability of a black light followed.

  Beyond the camp, all was quiet on the moor and along the dark road from the camp to the MacBane farmhouse. Other than a few little rectangles of yellow light from the farmhouse and the distant castle, the only lights were those of the stars and a faint glow from a village beyond a ridge to the north. The only sounds were the hoot of an owl, a soft burble from the stream trickling through the glen to the north, and the crunch of Van Nguyen’s Nikes as he tramped along the road, head bowed.

  A dozen yards back and, like Van, walking southward toward the camp, were Boots and his dog. Boots called out to Van, “What they got goin’ on over here tonight? Sounds like a party.”

  Van turned, stopped, a
nd waited for Boots to catch up. They left the road and entered the camp together, first stopping at the abandoned fire with milk crates and canvas chairs scattered around it. The door of the little overcrowded camper stood open to the cool night air, but Van and Boots stood back a fair distance from it. Pixelated ribbons of flame were falling from the camper ceiling in an orderly procession, each flame making a strange little zooop sound, followed by a psst when it hit the water in the skillet. Every flash illuminated the faces of a dozen hypnotized kids.

  “What the hell?” said Van, pushing a long strand of hair out of his eyes.

  Lucy, the dog, snarled and crouched down on her haunches, ready for combat. Boots grabbed her by the scruff of her neck.

  From within the camper, Joyce Parsley jumped up, pointed out the door, and screamed, “You killed Froggy! You killed Froggy!”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “You drive, Dotsy.” Lettie bounced out the door on Sunday morning, waving her keys at me.

  “I haven’t driven a stick shift in years and besides, you’re used to these roads.” I climbed in on the passenger side of the little Nissan Micra, making it clear that I was not going to drive.

  “Maisie gave me some things to take to Fallon. Toothbrush, undies, stuff like that. Fallon’s been at the hospital all night, you know.” Lettie tossed a plastic bag into the back seat and took her rightful place on the right hand side behind the steering wheel. “Maisie’s very thoughtful, isn’t she?”

  I agreed and looked down at the gear shift, which was on the floor between my seat and hers. As Lettie lurched backward out of the parking space and jammed the car into first gear, I noticed that it had to be done left-handed; extremely clumsy, I would imagine, for an American. Lettie, however, needed both hands to force the stick over and up from reverse into first.