The Murder Hole

by Lillian Stewart Carl

“Don’t go wasting my time or yours with that sort of rubbish.”

  “Ah, that’s the way of it, then. It’s rubbish when I’m doing my job, and heroics when you’re doing yours. If arresting your own partner isn’t breaking an egg, then what is?”

  Jean’s lips tightened in righteous anger. That was ugly, reminding Alasdair of the scandal—and its consequences—in his own past. Last month he’d said he felt Sawyer’s breath on the back of his neck. Now she realized what he meant. Alasdair had climbed the ladder of rank because of his competence and honesty, painful though the latter might have been. But Sawyer was one of those men who climbed by stepping on the fallen bodies of others.

  Alasdair enunciated so clearly each word fell like a pellet of hail. “That’s a low blow even from you, Detective Sergeant Sawyer. In the future you will keep your tongue behind your teeth.”

  A long pause, prickling with frost. Then Sawyer, lacking a devastating riposte, said in a tone so light it was mocking, “Oh aye, never you worry, Chief Inspector Cameron.”

  Jean visualized Alasdair’s face, cold, pale, impassive, and his body, upright and very still, seeming taller than Sawyer even though he was actually two inches shorter. She imagined Sawyer, his face red and overblown and his arms swinging loosely from his shoulders, knuckles dragging the floor. Menace for menace, she’d back Alasdair any day. But then, she was partial.

  Gunn tiptoed toward the door and pushed it shut, slowly and silently. He was very good at moving silently. He must have found that a useful survival skill.

  Taking Alasdair’s place at the desk, he drew forward a tape recorder and looked at Jean, his own face pale and set. She looked at him. No, neither one of them had heard a word.

  “Right,” said Gunn. “I’ve got most everything here, if you’d not mind repeating a bittie or two.”

  She minded, but there was no point in saying so. Nibbling at one of the cookies, she began, “I came here to interview Roger Dempsey and Iris Mackintosh.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Standing beside the Water Horse van, Jean watched the police car turn onto the main road. Gunn had chauffeured her back to Pitclachie House. With no one else in the car, she’d sat up front and eyed reporters and passersby alike from her height of importance, although she’d restrained herself from a making any regal waves.

  Now she rolled her eyes as much at herself as at the situation. The details of this case weren’t like the last, she thought—as though criminal investigations came her way on a regular basis—but the broad picture was disturbingly so, right down to that undeniable tug of attraction between her and Alasdair. A tug that neither of them could bring themselves to acknowledge, which is why they flirted with it and not with each other. No surprise there. They were both wounded by broken marriages. They were both struggling to find a compromise between personal space and loneliness. Neither of them needed a reclamation project for a relationship.

  Which begged the question, just what did either of them need for a relationship?

  Jean unlocked the door of the Lodge, telling herself she could be misinterpreting his just-between-us intimate moment, let alone that last searching glance. She didn’t want to make a fool of herself by responding to a signal he hadn’t sent. And that thought alone told her there was nothing foolish about this situation, either criminal or personal.

  In spite of Sawyer’s visit, let alone Iris’s enforced departure, the Lodge had been cleaned and tidied. The bookshelves were neatly arranged, the dishes were washed and stacked, the bed had been made and the towels folded in a bathroom smelling of pine cleanser. The locked door, Jean ascertained with a twist of the knob and a push, was still locked.

  So was the door of the wardrobe. She stowed the toys and the old book, liberated her laptop, and pulled her cell phone out of her bag. A moment later she was talking to Miranda. “Yep, it’s me again. I have news and a request.”

  “I doubt your news is more reliable than the sort off the telly,” said Miranda.

  That wasn’t a dig, that was a compliment, “doubt” meaning “expect” in Scots. I’m going native, Jean said to herself, and to Miranda, “First of all, Iris has confessed to writing the threatening letters to Roger.”

  “She never! Where did you hear that?”

  “From D.C.I. Cameron, in person.”

  “He’s there, is he? What luck!”

  Lucky for the case? Or lucky for her personally? “I agree that she never, but why she said so is another matter. Not to mention who really did send the letters, and whether they were trying to frame Iris or whether they were just careless.”

  “As yet you’ve got more questions than answers, then.”

  “So what else is new? And speaking of questions . . .”

  “Oh, good shot,” said Miranda, and to Jean, “Duncan’s holed a putt long as my front hall.”

  “Good for him.” The appeal of golf escaped Jean, but then, so did the appeal of hitting herself in the head with a hammer. Her phone to her ear, her laptop beneath her arm, she stepped carefully down the stairs and waited to be recognized again.

  “Well then, what is it you’re wanting me to do?”

  “Find out just what Roger’s position with Omnium is. I mean, I know he’s the founder, and he runs a lot of the research and development, but he’s not actually chairman of the board, is he?”

  “Ah, you’re asking who’s lost the greenback dollars lying at the bottom of Loch Ness.”

  “Sort of. Just wondering about the state of the Dempsey’s finances—now that sort of question is relevant.” Jean pretended she didn’t hear Miranda’s whiskey-flavored chuckle.

  “Right. I’ll make further inquiries. And now my ball’s teed up and ready to go flying.”

  And fly it would, Jean was sure. “Enjoy your game. Thanks.”

  She switched off the phone and stood staring at the dining table. It had a drawer. She pulled it open. Yes, sheets of plain white writing paper lay next to plain white envelopes and a pen. Was this the same kind of paper the letters had been printed on? If so, the writer was as likely to have stolen it from the Lodge as from the house.

  Jean nibbled a protein bar from her emergency stash while she typed in whatever notes about the case and its cast of characters she was able to brainstorm. No patterns suddenly emerged. Neither did any way in which she could be in danger, Alasdair to the contrary, although the problem with danger is that it usually didn’t walk up and introduce itself before it pounced. Since running back to Edinburgh and hiding beneath her bed was not an option—a temptation, but not an option—she dug Alasdair’s note out of her pocket and dutifully programmed the numbers into her cell phone. Even though she’d like for him to be wrong, she wasn’t going to cut off her nose to spite her face. He was only concerned about her because he didn’t want anyone hurt on his watch. That was all.

  Right. Jean tucked everything away again and locked the door of the Lodge behind her. As she crossed the courtyard, a raindrop plunked down on her head. She looked up to see the sky almost as opaque as the look Alasdair had sent toward Gunn, although his eyes were blue with a sheen of gray, and the sky was gray with a sheen of blue.

  Was the dragon-shaped knocker on the front door going to take on the shape not of Marley’s ghost but of Jonathan Paisley’s? No. Pitclachie’s ghosts were more subtle than that. Jean stepped into the house, inhaling its delectable odor yet again. A soothing odor, she decided, even if its bread component made her stomach growl. She eyed the closed door of Iris’s office and the staircase leading upwards into terra incognita. A police team would be along presently to search the premises, Gunn had said, which meant Jean did not have permission for overt snooping. The library, now. The library was open season.

  She walked through the arched doorway and stopped dead. Oh my! Paradise!

  Bookshelves almost completely encircled the room. Arched moldings rimmed the ceiling. An ornate Gothic mantelpiece shaded the fireplace. Even though the hearth was cold, the calico cat lay before it li
ke a supplicant before an altar. He opened an eye, then closed it again with that typical feline expression that blended nonchalance with haughtiness.

  Today not enough sunlight filtered through the tall windows to pick the older books with their gilded lettering out from the newer, paper-covered books. Still, the array was inspiring. And the glass-topped display case beside the right-hand window attracted Jean like a magnet an iron filing. She had taken several paces across the Persian carpet when a voice behind her said, “Hello.”

  Innocuous enough, but that didn’t keep her from jumping and then pretending she hadn’t. Nervous? Moi? She looked around to see Kirsty sitting in a wingback chair next to a closed roll-top desk, knitting. The light of a lamp made the half-completed scarf glow crimson and the aluminum needles glint, but hooded Kirsty’s downcast face in shadow. With her hair piled on the back of her head, she looked like a proper Victorian miss at her needlework.

  “Oh, hello,” said Jean, with as sympathetic a tone as she could summon—and she’d be sympathetic even without Alasdair’s programming. “This is a very handsome room. Was it designed by Ambrose?”

  “That it was.”

  “Did he add the tower onto the house, too?”

  “Aye, so he might could watch for the creature in the loch.”

  “And what’s your opinion on the creature? Do you think it exists?”

  “You don’t expect me to go denying the local religion, do you now?”

  Smiling, Jean moved on to a topic that was, if no less interesting, also less peripheral to her brief as nosy journalist and police henchwoman. “This room doesn’t look as though it’s been changed from Ambrose’s day. I guess Iris felt she couldn’t improve on it. Except to add books, of course.”

  “The furnishings are the same, Aunt Iris says. Except for this desk, it was shifted from the Lodge when Iris did the place up.”

  “So that was where Ambrose wrote his books? Amazing, isn’t it, how people wrote entire books in longhand? Or did he use something as newfangled as a typewriter?”

  “He had a typewriter. Iris still uses it.”

  “But I bet she can use a computer, too.”

  Did Kirsty grimace at that, or simply frown in concentration as each stitch moved with a brisk stab and an abrupt tug from the first needle to the second. “Oh aye, Aunt Iris has a computer. Canna run the business without one, I’m thinking.”

  Yes, Iris could have sent the letters to Roger. But Jean still bet she hadn’t. Irritating, to have to contradict the woman’s own confession. “Was it you who tidied up the Lodge today?”

  “I dinna usually, but Aunt Iris was obliged to go away to Inverness.”

  That was a delicate way of putting it. But some games Jean just wouldn’t play. “I know. D.C.I. Cameron told me Iris was helping the police with their inquiries.”

  Kirsty’s hands stopped moving on the stitches, but she didn’t look up. Maybe she was wondering not so much whose side Jean was on as whether there were sides to be taken.

  Having run her standard up the flagpole, Jean went on, “It’s nice of you and Iris to let me have so much space. You could put several people in the Lodge. Or you could if you opened that room with the locked door. Is that another bedroom?”

  “It’s a lumber room is all. Bits of furniture and the like.” Kirsty started knitting again, reached the end of the row, and turned the scarf around.

  An old sepia-tinted photograph stood on the desk. It showed a summerhouse, the intricately-carved barge boards looking as though they’d been designed by William Morris and executed by elves. A man and a woman sat in the wide doorway, on either side of a tea table. The man Jean recognized as Ambrose, holding his cup and saucer like rare artifacts. The woman was dressed in the shapeless dress and thick stockings of circa 1930. The top of her head barely came to his shoulder, although whether this meant she was small or he was tall Jean couldn’t say. A certain fox-like sharpness to the woman’s face reminded Jean of Iris. “Is that Ambrose and Eileen?” she asked.

  “Oh aye. Having tea in the summerhouse.”

  “Here? There’s no summerhouse in the garden now, not that that one looks sturdy enough to survive seventy years or so of Scottish weather.”

  “Iris had it torn down. I saw it once, years ago. It was overgrown, dark, with a bad smell and a bad feel.”

  “A bad feel?” Had Kirsty sensed the garden ghost? “You mean it felt spooky? Eerie?”

  “Uncanny, aye, but I was no more than six or eight, mind, and right fanciful.” The young woman’s head bent even further, concealing her face, and her shoulders hunched as defensively as Gunn’s. Who had criticized her for being imaginative? Iris?

  Taking the hint, Jean finished her trek across the room and peered into the glass case. Oh my, yes. By today’s standards Ambrose had been little more than a grave robber, ignoring occupation layers in his quest for ancient artifacts, and then failing to record those artifacts’ exact provenance. But their lure was undeniable. A small bronze pot lay with its hanger-chain wrapped around it like a dragon’s tail. Several silver-gilt crescents that could have been anything from scabbard tips to brooches were etched with knot work designs and ended in stylized animal heads. They weren’t quite the homogenized interlace that signaled Celtic art to today’s consumers—they had an angularity, an edge, a nervous energy.

  What particularly caught her eye were two matching diamond-shaped silver plaques, only a few inches long, engraved with the same crescent and line design as the Stone. Another plaque, somewhat larger, displayed the Stone’s figure eight symbol, the double disc. Holes at the top of all three told Jean she was looking at two earrings and a necklace.

  If the symbols on the Stone were the names of a local magnate and his wife, then this might have been the bride’s wedding attire. Maybe the groom had worn the chain with the thick silver links, an engraved cuff holding the ends together, that lay next to the earrings. Such chains were so heavy and so rare, they must have been symbols of power.

  Hmmm. Several areas of the burgundy velvet background cloth were more deeply-colored than the rest, and defined in the shapes of several artifacts. The objects in the case had been rearranged, exposing areas that had been protected from the light for, perhaps, decades. Jean counted first the objects, then the patches. Yes, there were now three fewer artifacts.

  Michael had said that the Museum was recently offered a similar silver chain. Maybe it had spent the last sixty years or so in this exact display case. “Did Ambrose find these when he excavated in the area?”

  “Who knows? Aunt Iris was telling me of an old cemetery atop the hill. Don’t know why he’d spend time and effort digging round old bones, but digging up artifacts, now, there’s motivation for you.”

  “Very definitely.” Jean leaned over the case toward the window. There, beyond the garden, in the field beside the grove of pines, Brendan trundled along a large box on wheels while Roger guided the wires extending from it. That had to be some sort of geophysical implement that showed cavities beneath the ground.

  Again Jean thought how eccentric it was for Dempsey to look for Nessie, alive or dead, on land. Or at least on land so high above the water. And suddenly, like the tumblers of a lock falling into place at the insertion of the correct key, her thoughts formed a pattern. What if Roger wasn’t looking for the Loch Ness monster? What if he was searching for more Pictish artifacts, ones that fit the definition of treasure? What if Nessie were no more than scaly-hided, protective coloring?

  Chapter Fourteen

  For a moment Jean basked in the dazzling light of her bright idea. Then she told herself that that idea sure opened a can of worms—or miniature Nessies, as the case might be. Not least being the question of why, of all the ancient and possibly treasure-bearing sites in Scotland, had Dempsey come here to Pitclachie, where he was not welcome? Because of the cryptic message on the Stone, which he chose to interpret as proof of an ancient Nessie tradition? But how did that tie in with treasure of the silver and br
onze variety? Because Ambrose had written about ancient Pictish ceremonies and had also turned up an ancient Pictish hoard?

  What her idea didn’t open was any insight into who blew up the boat and caused Jonathan’s death, not to mention who wrote the anonymous letters. But still she needed to tell Alasdair. He wouldn’t laugh at her for free-associating. He knew that evidence could be more slippery than the Loch Ness monster, and as likely to be caught between the rock and the hard place of seeing and believing.

  Exhaling through pursed lips, Jean looked on suspiciously as Roger and Brendan trudged across the field, much as ancient Picts must have done with oxen dragging a wooden plow. Beyond them the pines swayed, concealing the Stone, and clouds spilled like wisps of smoke over the mountaintop.

  And here came the Bouchards out of the glade, closing the gate behind them. Charles strolled over to Roger and Brendan. Roger stopped in his tracks, forcing Brendan to stop too. The younger man stood flexing his arms and hands while Charles and Roger gesticulated so broadly they might have been mimes, communicating in symbols rather than words. Digging, Jean interpreted. Structures. People walking. Caverns—or graves, maybe? The creature dog-paddling through the loch. Sophie waited on the path, glancing at her watch.

  Then, with a tally-ho gesture, Charles led his wife on toward the house and clean clothes, food, and drink. The day had grown so dark the lighted window of the library probably beckoned invitingly . . . Sophie looked right at Jean and waved. She waved back, less at Sophie than at her own ghostly reflection in the glass.

  The front door opened and shut. Footsteps climbed the staircase. Another door slammed and floorboards squeaked. Jean turned to Kirsty. “What are Roger and Brendan looking for?”

  “Herself. Nessie, or so Brendan’s telling me.” Kirsty frowned down at her knitting. “Bones, I reckon.”

  “Funny,” Jean said, “that Iris would let Roger search here at Pitclachie. There doesn’t seem to be much love lost between them. She objects to his methods, I gather. Or is there more to it than that?”