The Murder Hole

by Lillian Stewart Carl

  His minions were tramping up the path. “Aye then. As you wish,” he said, and went to meet them.

  This had nothing to do with what she wished. And everything. Jean passed the three men, already deep in technical consideration, and headed down the hill.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Jean stood in the courtyard watching as Alasdair’s forensics technicians trooped away, bearing boxes and bags of evidence. The working day was over, then. She glanced at her watch, warily. Seven-thirty p.m.

  The official delegation left a temporary fence of orange netting surrounding the excavation and probably scaring the sheep. It shone like a beacon—There’s something interesting up here! But so far, any attempt by the reporters keeping vigil at the end of the drive to penetrate the fastness of Pitclachie had been repulsed by a flying squad of constables, the same constables who had admitted the various witnesses to the house and ushered them out again after they’d given statements about Tracy’s death.

  Jean had said her piece without provoking any reaction from Sawyer, who showed as much personality as mud from his post at the windows of the dining room. Did he realize he’d royally teed off his boss? He had to. He was an obnoxious overbearing ego on two legs. He wasn’t stupid.

  Now the last of the car doors slammed and silence fell over the house and the hillside, broken only by the occasional burst of amplified voices or music from the Festival field. The closing ceremonies, with or without Roger Dempsey at the helm, were under way. The Sunday night ceilidh was still to come, and the cruise tomorrow, but the Midsummer Monster Madness Festival and its unanticipated criminal sideshows were almost over.

  Even the constable who’d been standing by the tower door had taken off for parts unknown, Jean noted. Feeling as though she were the last person left on planet Fairbairn, not one of the solar system’s more scenic destinations, she went into the Lodge and moved her canvas carryall, laptop, and notebook from the dining table to the coffee table. Yeah, she’d gotten a lot done today. Every time she’d sat down to work on an article, any article, all she could see in the screen was Jonathan’s beetling brow, Tracy’s carefully outlined lips, the empty eye sockets of the skull. She no longer doubted it was all part of the same intricate pattern, right down to that small dropped stitch that was herself. But she couldn’t see the entire design to save her life—and she certainly hoped she wouldn’t have to.

  Now she set the table with silverware, plates, glasses, and bottles of whiskey and water. The whiskey might help wash down her serving of crow. It might not. Crow wings. Stir-fried crow. Crow and cornbread dressing. Whether Alasdair would listen to her apology, whether he would think her trying to discuss their relationship wildly inappropriate, considering, whether he, too, felt matters had come to a head, murder cases or no murder cases . . . Why were relationships so damned difficult, she wailed silently, and galloped up the stairs, ignoring her sore knee.

  The door of the lumber room was still ajar. Every time she’d passed it that afternoon, it had been ajar. She was onto something.

  Jean went into the bedroom and changed clothes yet again, from the Great Scot T-shirt she’d worn to splash food on, back to the blouse she’d worn with her khaki pants for her day’s formal appearances, errands, and reportorial duties . . . What the heck? She caught a glimpse of her bare back in the mirror above the dressing table. A tiny black bump was stuck to her skin just above her waist.

  She craned around with her hand mirror and then shuddered in revulsion. She’d picked up a deer tick from the bracken fronds. It had been crawling up her leg and digging in beneath the waistband of her jeans just as she had been crawling into and out of the tomb.

  Grabbing a pair of tweezers and leaving her blouse un-tucked, Jean hurried back downstairs and toward the door. She’d go across to the main house and get Kirsty, Iris, Noreen—whichever female she fell over first—to get the blood-sucking beastie off of her.

  Her hand was on the doorknob when she heard the voices. Alasdair and Sawyer. She diverted to the front window, where she peeked out from behind the curtain to see the two men standing in the courtyard, their shadows long parallel streaks on the flagstones. Sawyer was holding the laptop beneath his arm. Alasdair was holding Sawyer’s attention. His shoulders were back, his chin up, and his forefinger pointed into Sawyer’s chest might just as well have been a dirk.

  “. . . back to Inverness,” Alasdair was saying. “You’re off the case.”

  “Here,” protested Sawyer, “you can’t be giving me the sack over that little pervert Neville . . .”

  “D.C. Gunn’s no more than a side issue. You had your reasons along with your warning yesterday, and now you’re away.”

  Sawyer’s face took on the smirk of a stuffed toad. “While you stay on with your bit of Yank . . .”

  “Go on, say it, and you’ll find yourself collecting litter bins in Stornoway so fast you’ll not have time to pack that bloody great chip on your shoulder.”

  Sawyer shrank back a step. “I’ll file a complaint.”

  “Be my guest. And hand that laptop in at the local station while you’re about it.” Alasdair turned away and paced toward the Lodge.

  “Boss,” Sawyer called after him. His thick features worked, but produced nothing except a squirm of his moustache.

  “You’ve had your second chance,” Alasdair shot over his shoulder. “There’s no third.”

  Jean heard Sawyer’s ponderous steps thudding away and Alasdair’s light steps tapping swiftly nearer. His knock was brisk and businesslike, like his confrontation with Sawyer. She opened the door to see him a bit white around the cheekbones and set around the jaw, but composed. Once he made a decision, then the decision was made. She could do that, too. “Come on in. Ah, I overheard . . .”

  “Sorry for having it out below your window.”

  “I’m just glad there’s some justice left in the world.” She stepped back so Alasdair could cross the threshold. “I agree Gunn isn’t the entire issue, but still—Sawyer calling him ‘Nancy’ this morning should have tipped me off. What happened? Did Gunn come out of the closet? That took courage.”

  “Not a bit of it. One of Sawyer’s mates saw him coming out of a gay club in Glasgow is all. Like as not the lad’s just curious, working things out. But that’s his business and none of mine.”

  “Isn’t that the truth?” Jean said. “I saw him talking to Brendan and Kirsty last night. Sawyer said something nasty to him—I can imagine what—but Gunn was doing a great imitation of you.”

  “Eh?” Alasdair asked.

  Great. He was barely in the door and she’d already inserted her foot into her mouth. “You know, ah, coolheaded.”

  “With a shell, you’re meaning.” So he, too, remembered his parting shot last month. Don’t go breaking my shell, woman, you might not like what’s inside.

  She ducked his scrutiny, suddenly aware she hadn’t yet combed her hair or applied lipstick, even more aware of her own awareness. They stood, heads bowed in a moment of silence, but not for the departed Sawyer.

  At last Alasdair walked on into the living room. “Are you planning to close the door at all?”

  “Oh.” Jean waved her tweezers. “That bracken’s a launching pad for ticks. One got me. I was going over to the house. I figured Kirsty or Iris was used to dealing with them.”

  “No one’s there. They’re all away to their dinners or the Festival. Andy and I were the last rats off the ship. I can phone for a W.P.C. if you like.”

  “Oh no, there’s no reason to drag one of your people up here.”

  “I’ll get it for you, then. Come into the light.”

  Slowly she shut the door. What did she expect, that he’d let the insect go on injecting God knew what bacteria into her body? No need to let her pendulum swing to the touchy subject of his protecting her. No need to let it swing the opposite way, either, to girly flusterment. She walked into the glare of the kitchen light and hitched up her blouse. “A policeman’s work is never done,”
she said, and promptly kicked herself for betraying her nervousness with a stupid joke.

  Alasdair didn’t offer her a dunce cap. He took the tweezers and went down on one knee behind her. “Ah, there’s the wee bugger.”

  His left hand cupped her waist the same way his right hand had cupped the edge of the Stone, gently, almost inquisitively, the smooth cool flesh of his palm against the smooth warm flesh of her torso. His breath on her back made an exquisite tickle. She felt heat mounting into her face and told herself that if ever there was a time to be businesslike, this was it.

  The tweezers poked and tugged delicately, surgically. “There you are.” Alasdair went outside, ground his foot against the paving stones, and wiped his shoe on the mat. When he came back into the house, he closed and locked the door behind him.

  Jean realized she was still holding her blouse bunched up beneath her breasts. Quickly she smoothed it down around her hips. “I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life.”

  “Then you’ve not been trying, have you now?” he returned, but his face was hidden by the shadow of the vestibule and she couldn’t see what variety of deadpan he was displaying. “I’d better be washing my hands.”

  “Just drop the tweezers in the bag by the sink. And while you’re up there, take a look at the earrings in Eileen’s portrait in the lumber room.”

  His steps went up the stairs and down the hall. Water ran. No, she thought, she hadn’t been trying. Well, she’d been a trial to Brad, she supposed. She was certainly being one to Alasdair.

  The footsteps returned down the hall and entered the lumber room. Jean contemplated the cool virtues of salad, wondering if a tomato slice down the back of her neck would help. Maybe she should mourn the summarily executed tick—talk about an ice breaker! She expected to see icebergs bobbing along in Alasdair’s wake as he descended the stairs, the sort of innocuous icebergs that had sunk the Titanic, and yes, he was his usual self-possessed self. Even though he was now carrying his jacket and his tie over his arm, the top button of his shirt unbuttoned and his sleeves rolled up, exposing a plain, efficient watch wrapping his wrist and a toothbrush emerging from his pocket.

  “Nice tie,” she said, diverting her gaze from the pale vulnerability of his exposed throat. “Rennie Mackintosh design?”

  “Oh aye. Not so’s anyone at the cop shop has noticed, mind. Philistines, one and all. Here’s a bit antiseptic for the tick bite.” He handed over a damp cotton swab, then threw his jacket and tie over the back of a chair.

  So he’d dug through her cosmetics bag to find the cotton and antiseptic. Well, it wasn’t as though she kept any secrets there. Jean dragged the cotton across her back until the sting told her she’d hit the spot. Wincing, she turned to see Alasdair eyeing the bottle of whiskey.

  “A drop of the creature, is it? May I?” At her gesture of assent he poured dollops, added water, offered her a glass, and lifted his. Behind the rim his eyes were aloof. Businesslike. “Here’s to us.”

  “Who’s like us?” she responded appropriately.

  “Damn few, and they’re all . . .” His mouth formed the word “dead” but made no noise except an long exhalation that she had no idea how to interpret.

  With a sip that was more fire and air in her mouth than liquid, Jean busied herself getting the food on the table. She never quite looked at Alasdair. She didn’t need to. Every one of her nerve endings was aware of him standing at the window, a riddle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in flesh. Alone at last, she told herself. It was her move. He didn’t give third chances.

  One hand was knotted in his pocket. The glass in his other hand glowed amber in the diffused sunlight. His keen face was still as that of the Stone. He said, “‘The day has gone down in the west, behind the hills into shadow.’”

  She blanked on the next line of Tolkien’s poem, but saw her chance. “The shorter versions of all three Lord of the Rings movies are on the shelf, there. We could watch one after dinner.”

  “Oh aye,” he returned.

  “Sit down. Eat.”

  With a polite smile that didn’t crinkle one corner of his eyes, Alasdair sat down at the demilitarized zone of the table and began to eat.

  Jean rearranged her mashed potatoes rather than trying to force them past the knot in her throat “Full disclosure. I didn’t make the shepherd’s pie. I bought it. I’m sure it’s nothing like . . .” She stopped before she said, your mother used to make. She didn’t want to compare herself to any of the women in his life.

  Equably, he piled food onto the back of his fork. “How was your day?”

  “I cleaned up, missing the tick, and I checked back with Miranda, so that she wouldn’t think I’d been abducted by aliens, and I did the statement thing. I went down to the Festival and hung out with Hugh, and reconfirmed with Kettering that I’m on the list for the cruise tomorrow night.”

  Alasdair nodded knowingly. “Oh aye, we’ll be there as well.”

  This time “we” meant various official presences. “Then I went shopping. When I got back Roger was wandering around like a stray dog looking for a handout. You could almost count his psychic ribs. How have the mighty fallen. It’s sad.”

  “He’ll be allowed back to his dig tomorrow. We’ve removed all the human bones.”

  “Is the body Eileen’s, do you think?”

  Alasdair chewed thoughtfully on a bite of bread, his gaze focused unblinking on Jean’s face. Trying to decide how much to tell her, probably. He swallowed and said, “Like as not it is her body, with the evidence of the earring and all, though we found only the one. Other associated artifacts indicate a modern burial as well. The bones appear to be a woman’s. Just one thing. I had a good look at the photo in the library, and the one on the chair upstairs, and the only place you’re seeing Eileen’s left hand is in the portrait.”

  “Well, yes, she’s holding a rose.”

  “The left forefinger of the skeleton in the passage grave is missing its two end joints. And no, the bones didn’t go astray in the tomb. The wound was healed up well before death. Clean cut, the medicos are saying. With a meat cleaver or the like.”

  Ouch! Jean made a face. “It must have happened after she had the portrait painted. Unless the artist painted her fingertip back in.”

  “That sort of distinguishing mark’s right helpful in identifying a body. DNA tests take weeks. I tried to get onto Iris to ask her—not that she ever knew her mum, mind—but she’s away again, to Fort Augustus, Kirsty’s saying.”

  “You need to ask, yes—and if Iris doesn’t know, my friend Michael Campbell-Reid’s grandmother probably would.”

  With a nod, Alasdair filed that bit of information in his mental rolodex.

  “But why would Eileen be whacking at a joint of meat?” Jean went on. “She was born a princess and married as the lady of the manor. Butcher or cook wasn’t in her job description.”

  “Oh aye, there is that.” Alasdair’s eye sparked. Okay, Jean wondered, what bright idea was he about to produce, like a rabbit out of hat? “I had a squint at your book as well—aye, it was still in the desk in the library. It has a bit of a pong, doesn’t it? Same smell’s in the box upstairs, something both sweet and rotten. And the inscription, to ‘E,’ that’s a bit suggestive, eh?”

  So that’s what he was thinking. Jean gestured with her fork, spearing the rabbit on the upswing. “The woman who was killed and buried could have been Edith, not Eileen. All the earring proves is that Eileen’s maid didn’t know what she was talking about when she said no jewelry was missing.”

  His features cracked into a grin, all the more dazzling for being brief. “Got it in one. There’s your reason for Eileen running through the shrubbery and also screaming down the stairs.”

  “Because it’s not her screaming down the stairs.” In unison, they looked toward the staircase, where each tread mounted innocently and emptily upwards into shadow, and then turned back to each other. “But how can we prove that, Alasdair? For one thing, if Edith is the ske
leton, where the heck is Eileen? Did Ambrose kill both of them?”

  “Perhaps these papers of his tell the story.”

  “Roger sure seems to have those papers. Or some of them. Maybe that’s what my mysterious prowler was looking for, more papers. The lumber room would be the first place to look. Maybe it wasn’t about me at all, and my notebook really did just happen to fall out of my bag.”

  “The same way Roger just happened to give you a toy complete with a bug?”

  “Oh. Well.”

  “Still, Roger could well have been the prowler. Or Tracy.”

  Jean looked down at her plate. Once they’d defaulted to discussing the case she’d inhaled her food with good appetite. Without tasting it, particularly, but with good appetite. She thought of the Dempseys arguing over their tea, and wondered if Tracy had tasted anything of what had been her last supper. “Have you learned anything from her body?”

  “She died from the fall, no surprise there. She’d taken a drink or two, though not enough to make her drunk. You’re sure you saw someone in the tower room with her?”

  “Yes, I am. I can see where she might have fallen by accident, but then, wouldn’t whoever was there have come running down to see about her?”

  “Unless he or she didn’t want it known they’d been together.”

  “Which makes me think of Martin. Does he have an alibi? I think I saw him with Tracy in her hotel room yesterday.” Standing up, Jean stacked the plates and carried them to the kitchen sink.

  Alasdair appeared at her elbow with the salad bowl and bread basket. “His wife’s saying he was with her and the lad. They were awoken by Tracy’s scream and he ran to see what happened.”

  “Can we believe Noreen, though? She’s pretty well brow-beaten. In my opinion, of course.”

  Alasdair inclined his head, admitting her opinion into evidence, and reached for the dishtowel. “The Bouchards were at the ceilidh, aye, and Roger, and the Ducketts were here asleep. Said they were awoken by people shouting and the scream, and they heard someone running down the hall. Which leaves them without a proper alibi, mind.”