Death of a Lovable Geek

by Maria Hudgins

  “Are you the real Macbeth or are you Shakespeare’s bad boy?”

  “A friend.”

  He led me onto the previous square, which, although not labeled, was logically Wednesday. On Wednesday there was sunshine, rolling hills and ridiculously cheerful birds that twittered all around our heads. Alf and Eleanor Downes skipped past us, both dressed as garden gnomes, picking gold coins from the throats of flowers. I looked at Macbeth and said, “Is this what you wanted me to see?”

  Instead of answering, he turned spookily to the next square, clearly Tuesday because it was labeled as such in flashing lights, and pointed to the large dagger, dripping blood, which dangled above the letter “s.”

  “Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand?” Macbeth recited, a bit too melodramatically for my taste.

  “I’m confused,” I said. “What does all this mean?”

  “Is’t known who did this more than bloody deed?” Macbeth swirled around the square, and as he spun, big red mushrooms with white spots popped up all around.

  “No, I don’t know who did this more than bloody deed,” I said.

  “The deed was done on Tuesday last.”

  With that, Macbeth whooshed around the red mushrooms, ripping off chunks of them as he went, then whooshed right away.

  I raised my fogbound head from the pillow, opened my eyes, still gritty from fitful sleep, and saw the first light of dawn at my window. It was Tuesday.

  * * * * *

  After showering in the round tower, I had to wait on the narrow stairs above the second-floor landing before I could go down the rest of the way because William, the weird sisters, and their luggage were coming up. He conducted them into the same room they had shared on their last visit. We exchanged brief pleasantries and I hurried past them and down, being not yet completely dry or adequately covered by my robe.

  As soon as I had dressed, I slipped down the hall and knocked on Lettie’s door. She wasn’t quite ready for breakfast, so I trudged on to the dining room alone. Tony Marsh and the Lipscombs, already drinking their coffee, asked me to join them, but I took an adjoining table to save a seat for Lettie when she came in. Tony seemed to avoid eye contact with me, and I wondered if he was wise to my busybody meddling in his and Hannah’s affairs. His eyes were puffy and red. Was it from lack of sleep or from crying?

  (The Downeses popped in to say good-bye. We had all grown fond of them, strange as they were. I, for one, almost envied their ability to keep the real world out of the one they created for themselves. This morning they both wore flat black tams with red pom-poms on top. Alf swished a long tartan shawl over his shoulder and Eleanor carried a clean-smelling bouquet of heather tied with a green ribbon. “Eleanor and I have taken rooms in Braemar for a few days, and from there it’s on to Sterling Castle for the weekend.”

  Eleanor touched my shoulder for attention. “Have you heard of Kindrochit?” she asked. “We found it quite by accident, but it’s the ruins of an old castle in Braemar, built by Malcolm Canmore, at one end of a bridge, to keep people from crossing the river without his permission.”

  “Malcolm Canmore?” I was amazed that I didn’t already know about this. Malcolm Canmore, son of King Duncan, killed Macbeth and succeeded him as king. “I’ll definitely have to go there.”

  Eleanor said, “It was built not long after he killed Macbeth at Lumphanan, which is a few miles down the road.”

  With kisses tossed around to all of us, the Downeses were off.

  Maisie came over, bringing me a rack of warm toast. “The funeral will be the morn at ten o’clock. Noo, you and Lettie can sit in the part they’ll have set off for the family because our family is verra small and the church will be crowded. I doubt ye’ll be able to find a regular seat unless ye get there an hour early.”

  I started to protest that I wouldn’t dream of insinuating myself into the family seats, then realized that the Sinclair family, sadly, might consist of Maisie, William and Fallon. And Robbie MacBane. It might actually be nice if we castle guests plumped up their numbers for them. That reminded me of the memorial service so I said, loudly enough for everyone to hear me, “The kids at the dig are having a service for John and also for Dylan Quale today. You’re all welcome to come, but don’t feel obligated. I know most of us have more than enough to do, before tomorrow’s funeral.”

  Lettie joined me, breakfasting on porridge and milk. She was avoiding acidic, scratchy and hard foods because of the stitches; her mouth was still recuperating from the attack of the killer pencil. Afterwards, we went up to Fallon’s room together.

  We paused outside Fallon’s door, and I put my ear against it. I could hear nothing at all. “If she’s still asleep, I certainly don’t want to wake her up, poor thing,” I said. “Let’s go to the cellar. I can come back here later.”

  * * * * *

  The small rectangle that had been freshly dug in the cellar floor and loosely refilled the last time Lettie and I were down there had been tamped down and smoothed over. The picture frames and brass head- and footboards still leaned against the walls, as far as I could tell, exactly where they had been before. In this little room, we needed our flashlights in addition to the overhead light, but before we attacked the rows of stacked frames, I walked through the doorless opening into the adjoining room where the only illumination was a weak fluorescent grow light. The shelves on which I’d found bits of the dark musty-smelling material were still empty and the other walls in the room, still littered with junk. I tried to remember what I’d done with the material I’d picked up and stuck in a paper bag.

  Lettie had already started leafing through the stacks of frames oods bechen I returned to her. “I’m going to need another bath after this,” she said. “These frames are filthy.”

  They weren’t all picture frames. There was a plywood square that looked as if it had been sawed from a paneled wall, a couple of nice, probably mahogany, boards which may have been dining table extenders, and the hands-down ugliest fox hunt picture I’d ever seen. I lifted it out of the stack, knocked some dust off, and showed it to Lettie. She opened her mouth and poked her forefinger in.

  I found what I was looking for in the next stack. In a frame that, as far as I could tell, was identical to those holding Roger’s and Fenella’s portraits, was a grime-encrusted oil painting of a woman in a 1950’s pageboy hairstyle, pulled back on one side with a tortoiseshell comb. From the photo I’d seen in the newspaper article Lettie had brought me, I knew it was Becky. I dragged it out and lugged it over to a vacant space along the wall. It was so dirty and dark, it looked like a Rembrandt. I dug into my pocket for the paper napkin I had swiped from the breakfast table and pulled it out. Before I could spit on it, I caught the disapproving look on Lettie’s face and said, “Well, how do you suggest I wet this? I want to see what’s under that muck.”

  Lettie pointed to the exterior door at the base of the stairs we had recently come down. “There’s a puddle on the stone out there, it must have run under the door in last night’s rain.”

  With a loud sigh of irritation, I plodded out and found some water that had collected at a low spot in the stone and dipped in the napkin.

  I stroked gently at the face and cleared off a spot on a smooth, ivory cheek. Then the eyes—oh my! They were indeed a pure violet, so startling that Lettie gave a little gasp. I cleaned off the only ear visible on the slightly turned head and found that Becky had chosen to have her portrait done wearing amethyst earrings that exactly matched her eyes. Large brilliant amethysts, surrounded by little seed pearls.

  The same pair whose lone survivor, until yesterday, had lain in the little box with my gold coin.

  “That’s the earring, Lettie. Hannah Dunbar found that same earring in the field last week. She gave it to John, and he was keeping it in the box with my coin.”

  “So it’s been stolen, too?”

  “The coin, the earring, and a very rare stamp.”

  “How can you ever expect to f
ind them? They’re so small, you could hide all three under your tongue.”

  I chuckled, still staring at Becky’s portrait, still not quite believing. “Not the stamp; the glue would come off.”

  “Clever of old Becky, wasn’t it?” Lettie said. “Wearing earrings that play up the color of your eyes is—”

  She was interrupted by two loud thunks coming from the direction of the stairwell. It sounded as if someone had fallen down a couple of steps. I dashed out and across the landing to the foot of the stairs, but I saw no one because only the lowest four steps of the winding staircase were visible from the bottom. Did I really want to catch whoever it was? What would I say if I did? I glanced back to make sure Lettie was behind me and then climbed to the first floor, where I found absolutely nothing in the west wing hall, the portrait room, or the great hall. I even checked the side door leading to the west lawn. Nadaare stam) g/font>

  But someone was spying on us.

  Lettie and I slipped away to our respective rooms to wash off the cellar dirt. Wedging my forearms into the basin until the tap water reached my elbows, I tried to remember the details of my early morning dream. Those red mushrooms with white spots. They had been so vivid. They looked like mushrooms you’d see in a children’s book, always with elves or gnomes under them. I dried my hands and pulled the mushroom book out from under the bed. There was, indeed, a real mushroom that looked like that, the Amanita muscaria or fly agaric, called the fly agaric because it was once used, mixed with milk, to stupefy houseflies. A skull and crossbones in the margin of the page identified the Amanita muscaria as poisonous, but, as I read further, I found that it wasn’t actually deadly and has been used by some cultures in religious rites for thousands of years. But since it was dangerous, inducing delirium, disorientation, sensory alterations, and visions, the authors of the book cautioned readers to stay away from it. Apparently there were differences between the A. muscaria that grows wild in the United States and varieties found in other parts of the globe. Some of the American varieties were particularly potent.

  I tucked the book into my backpack. The next time I saw Joyce, I intended to ask her if these photos looked like the magic mushrooms they ate Saturday night. It wasn’t as if she wouldn’t have noticed if they were bright red with white spots.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  A second trip up to Fallon’s room yielded no better results than the first; she was either elsewhere or sleeping late. So I caught a ride with Lettie as far as the MacBane house and wished her a successful day in Inverness. Spotting Robbie’s car in the driveway, I strode up to the door and knocked.

  The fishy aroma of frying kippers swirled around Robbie when he opened the door. “Ah, there ye are. I telephoned to the castle a few minutes ago; they said you’d left.” His red curls were in rare form this morning, as he had obviously neither shaved nor combed his hair yet.

  “How’s your wife feeling?” Politeness dictated that I ask about her first.

  “The doctor’s makin’ her stay off her feet, so me mother-in-law is waitin’ on her hand an’ foot. Noo, what will I do wi’ her when I bring her back home? She’ll be spoiled rotten.” Robbie led me into his kitchen and offered me breakfast. I declined, but took a seat at the kitchen table across from Robbie’s plate of kippers and eggs. He flipped a paper napkin across one knee and said, “I think she’s doing well. If she can hold on to the bairn a few more weeks, the doc says it’ll be all right even if he comes early.”

  “He?”

  “Aye, it’s a boy,” he said with thinly disguised pride. He attacked his eggs, scissors style, with his knife and fork. Then he said, “The memorial thing you mentioned in your note; it’s today, is it?”

  “At eleven.”

  “What d’ye want me to play?”

  “Could you do ‘Amazing Grace’ on the bagpipes?”

  “Ant size>, I thought ye’d ask that. Would ye like me to play something on the fiddle as well? Froggy liked ‘Annie Laurie’ when I played it on the fiddle.”

  “That would be wonderful,” I said. I tried to imagine Froggy and Robbie sitting in the parlor, Froggy listening to the plaintive strains of “Annie Laurie” from Robbie’s bow. Would Van have been there, too? Based on the CDs I’d noticed on his desk, Van’s definition of traditional music would be Jimi Hendrix.

  “Have you seen Boots since you got back from Inverness?” I asked.

  “Oh, aye!” Robbie dropped his fork. “He came over late. Must ha’ been midnight. The police were oot here before I came home, interrogatin’ him aboot runnin’ around wi’ a knife or some such foolishness.”

  “One of the girls at the dig, a girl named Joyce Parsley, told me—”

  “The crazy lass? The one that sneaked aboot, hidin’ in the bushes? Don’t tell me ye’d believe anything she’d say!” Robbie waved his eggy knife in the air.

  “I don’t doubt that she saw something, but of course, Boots might have had a reasonable explanation for the knife.”

  “Boots told me he was merely takin’ a fish-cleanin’ knife back to the shootin’ hut in the wood. Said somebody had left it on the wall by the castle car park.” Robbie lifted the coffeepot from the automatic drip machine to the table, first holding it up to me, his eyebrows raised.

  I shook my head. “May I go up to Van’s room? I need to grab a few things to take to him.” I didn’t really need to pick up anything else, but it was a good excuse.

  Once inside the bedroom, I booted Froggy’s laptop, pulled up a chair to the desk, and clicked on the Internet browser icon. Something wasn’t connected. It took my electronically challenged self a good five minutes to locate a cable that was attached to something only on one end, and to reason that it might be good to find a place to stick the other end. I found several wrong places to stick it.

  At length, a window opened on the screen and asked for a password. I typed “froggy,” but it didn’t work. The user name on the display read “dquale,” the same as at the dig site, so I tried qualed, froggy1, froggy123, frogman, pollen, spores, mushroom, fernman, and fungus. The thing cut me off.

  I closed that window and walked to the real one that overlooked the castle and woods. Boots and Lucy were heading toward the castle, Lucy’s heavy fur bouncing left and right as she trotted along. Back to the desk. I slid open the drawer under the computer and found a slip of paper, near the front where I could hardly have missed it, that said: “PW, doctorquale.” So Froggy had been dreaming of the day when he’d have his PhD. If he’d been allowed to live as he had every right to do, he’d have had that PhD.

  I typed “doctorquale” and I was in. I should have known Froggy wouldn’t have used an imaginative password like “fernman.”

  Being computer-literate enough to know how to check the history of Internet usage, I did so and found that the sites visited were listed by date. The last time anyone had been online at this computer was last Wednesday, the day after Froggy was killed. Van would’ve had no reason to use this machine because he had his own, but he might have done so, ted by @ay, for the same reason that I was doing it now. More likely, I thought, the police had done it while combing through his room on the first day of their investigation. I still wondered why they hadn’t taken the whole computer in, as evidence. Perhaps that was one more stupidity committed by Chief Inspector Coates.

  The last Web site visited on Tuesday was “All about Amanitas.” The one immediately before that was “Veiled mushrooms.” So Froggy had started with veiled mushrooms and proceeded from there to Amanitas, as he would have done if he’d had an unknown specimen he wanted to learn about. My hands were shaking so badly, I had to make two fists until they calmed down.

  I clicked on “All about Amanitas” and read what may have been the last words Froggy ever read:

  Amanita phalloides is easily distinguished from other pale-colored mushrooms by the veil which leaves a ring or a cup (volva) in the mature fruiting body. Also called the Death Cap, it causes death due to liver or kidney damage if trea
tment is not started almost immediately.

  Amanita phalloides is responsible for a large percentage of mushroom poisonings worldwide, the first symptoms appearing after a 6–24 hour latent period and including vomiting, diarrhea, and abdominal cramps. This is followed by a period of apparent remission, lasting about a day, followed by the return of the symptoms. It is in this last stage that liver failure, kidney failure, coma, and death (often in 5–10 days) may ensue.

  Amanita phalloides is widespread across North America and Europe and is typically found under conifers and hardwoods. Like all the Amanitas, phalloides is distinguished from other genera by a white spore print.

  I sat back from the screen and pressed my hands over my eyes. What was it? Something was pushing at the edges of my conscious brain. I drew my hands back a bit and opened my eyes, staring at my palms. That was it! It was as if I were back at the stone wall, standing guard over Froggy’s body on the blue tarp. I saw him lying on his left side, his right arm bent in front of him so that his thumb was close to his face, his left arm extended behind him, palm upward. The writing on the palm of Froggy’s left hand: “halloi,” wasn’t it? Put a “p” in front and a “des” after it and you got phalloides!

  Froggy had studied this Web page, grabbed a ballpoint pen, written “phalloides” on his hand (probably because no paper was handy) and took off down the road toward the castle.

  But John Sinclair, if he was poisoned, was “done for” on Thursday, wasn’t he? That’s when we had the mushroom soup for dinner. I looked at the second paragraph again. There were four stages to Amanita phalloides poisoning. What if John had been in stage three, the period of apparent remission, when the soup was served? Then he would have gotten sick like the rest of us, but unlike the rest of us, he would not get better. He couldn’t get better because he wasn’t simply suffering from a sick-making mushroom. He had already been condemned to death by a deadly mushroom.