The Murder Hole

by Lillian Stewart Carl

  “Yeah.” There was something about that . . . Jean wrapped the half-finished scarf around the ball of yarn and the needles, set it inside the maw of the desk, and closed the lid. Kirsty, the beginner, was knitting the scarf in a basic garter stitch, the building block of more complex patterns. But even an old pro like Jean herself could miscount a complex pattern. Accidentally moving the sequence of stitches over by just one place would leave a fault line cutting across the design. Moving your assumptions over just one place . . . She looked up, meeting the eyes of her colleague, another old pro.

  “What now?” he asked.

  “The ghosts on the staircase last night. Even when she was standing on the step below Ambrose, the top of Edith’s head came to Ambrose’s nose. She was almost as tall as he was.”

  “Never mind the ghosts, her skeleton measured a good five foot ten. No surprise that Gordon Fraser’s well over six foot.”

  “How tall is Iris, would you say?”

  “Two inches taller than I am myself, five foot ten as well. . .” Comprehension swept over his face, his eyebrows shooting up to his hairline, his lips pursing in a reverent, “Bloody hell.”

  “Everyone’s been assuming that Ambrose killed Eileen. Even when we found out that it was Edith he killed—we know it was an accident, but we’ll never be able to prove that—we were still assuming that Eileen was Iris’s mother. But she couldn’t have been more than five feet tall.”

  Alasdair’s forefinger indicated caution. “That’s circumstantial evidence. Eileen’s family might could have been tall. And how . . .”

  “Women wore loose dresses in those days, not like that outfit Kirsty’s wearing. And most births were still at home. How many people would know it was Edith who had the baby, not Eileen? Not if they were all in it together, and bought off the maid and everything. We’ve been assuming there was a rivalry between the women. What if they were working together? What if Edith was wearing Eileen’s earrings because Eileen gave them to her? Maybe it was Eileen who fled, to America, down the road, I don’t know where she went. The point is, either she died, too, or she ran away. And if she ran away, why didn’t she take her baby? Because the baby wasn’t hers, that’s why.” Jean threw her hands out to her sides. Ta da!

  Alasdair tilted his head, trying to roll all those little ball bearings of words into the proper holes. “Wouldn’t be the first time the wife adopted the mistress’s child.”

  “Iris must know the truth is in the autobiography, or she wouldn’t be hiding it. And she wouldn’t have given in to Roger’s demands if he hadn’t approached her with the truth—she’d have given him some equivalent of publish and be damned. But if Roger and Tracy knew Edith was dead, why risk telling Fraser she wasn’t? And why did Tracy have Martin looking for another copy of the book?”

  “It might be that Roger’s copy of the autobiography is missing out some pages. They based the blackmail and Fraser’s scam on the incomplete story, and were looking out another copy because they’re still searching for where Ambrose found his treasure.”

  “But Iris thinks Roger’s copy is complete! Bingo!”

  As if punctuating her words—we have a winner, folks!—Alasdair’s phone rang. His face still a little askew, he answered and listened intently to the voice emanating from the tiny speaker.

  Mandrake settled down on the chair and yawned. Jean scratched his ears, his fur soft and warm beneath her hand. Funny, her theory about Edith and Iris had sounded perfectly reasonable while she was articulating it, but now . . . Well, Alasdair was probably right about the Dempseys basing their scheme on an incomplete book. And if the phone hadn’t rung, he’d have pointed out that like Nessie, Iris’s parentage was none of his concern. Or was his concern only peripherally, in that it provided motive and machination.

  “Bring one of them round the terrace overlooking the loch,” he said, and switched off his phone. “We’ve got the Ducketts back again. Fancy another spin on the Pitclachie carousel?”

  “You’re not kicking me off the merry-go-round now.” Jean followed Alasdair out onto the terrace and around to the shady side of the house, where the air seemed somewhat thinner and fresher.

  He kept on walking, pacing up and down. Jean sat and then lay back on a chaise lounge, breathing in the scents of asphalt and roses, listening to Kirsty’s voice and Elvis’s laugh through the kitchen window. From here she had seen the boat explode, not three days ago. Now another, larger boat rode the turbid waves of the Bay. The reddish stone tower of Urquhart Castle stood up against the gray-green smudge of the far shore. The sky was no longer bright blue, but bleached by the haze.

  Oh for a glass of iced tea, she thought. But she had as much chance of getting that as she had of going water-skiing with Nessie.

  Two police cars came up the driveway and Jean sat up, trying to look like an alert and competent participant in the case. A moment later Gunn appeared, guiding Dave Duckett with a hand under his elbow. Dave was rolling from side to side, not drunk but traumatized. Self-traumatized, the worst kind. His color was terrible, a pasty white, and his plump cheeks sagged. He made the Pillsbury doughboy look like the model of health.

  “Please sit down, Mr. Duckett,” Alasdair said, back in knight-justiciar pose.

  Dave didn’t so much sit down on a lawn chair as collapse. “We didn’t know all this was going to happen. I feel like it’s our fault, even though we never, we didn’t . . .”

  Gunn sat down on the terrace wall, notebook at the ready. Alasdair loomed. “Go on.”

  “Our son-in-law, Chris Peretti, was testing a submersible off Florida. The hatch was defective, it wouldn’t shut properly. The sub sank. He drowned. It was a terrible, terrible . . .” Dave’s voice broke.

  “Take your time,” Alasdair told him.

  Shaking his head, Dave plunged on. “Melissa, our daughter, the three little ones, if it wasn’t for us they’d have been living on the streets. Chris couldn’t get insurance for a reasonable price, his work was so dangerous. We knew his work was dangerous, but heck, you’re in danger just crossing the street, aren’t you?”

  Denial, Jean thought, was a very useful skill.

  “He was contracted to Omnium because Roger Dempsey had developed the sub, but Omnium wouldn’t pay anything, said they weren’t liable, Dempsey wasn’t working for them any more. We tried contacting Dempsey, but he sent a message through some slick-willy lawyer saying he didn’t sweat the details of these things, that Chris must not have shut the hatch properly and, basically, tough luck.” Dave’s jaw firmed with indignation. “We found a lawyer of our own. He said we could sue, but that we’d only have a strong case if we could prove the hatch was defective. But the sub disappeared into a warehouse somewhere. Kind of like the Lost Ark, I guess.”

  Jean turned her smile into a crinkle of sympathy.

  “You hired Jonathan Paisley to get the proof for you,” Alasdair said quietly.

  “Yeah. We found out about the Water Horse Expedition and who was on it and that Dempsey was shipping a bunch of water-exploration stuff over here. We thought maybe he’d try to use the sub again. Jon had the right technical expertise, so we made a deal with him. Brendan came along later. Maybe we chose the wrong guy, I don’t know—Jon seemed to think that putting one over the boss was a good joke. He found our evidence, though. He said the sub was on board, but it had been partially disassembled, and Dempsey never said anything about using it. Jon himself thought the hatch looked dodgy. We gave him a camera, asked him to get photos. So he sneaked back onto the boat Friday night.”

  “And it exploded.”

  Dave subsided into a puddle of horror and remorse, his head sunk in his hands. With a sigh, Jean looked past him toward the water. The cold, uncompromising water. A shimmer was gathering above it, a mirage caused by the warm air against the chill surface of the loch. Good monster-spotting weather. Starr had chosen the right evening for their cruise.

  “We just wanted to get the evidence, Inspector. Chief Inspector, isn’t it? We
wanted to get what was coming to our kids. Is that so wrong? But the Dempseys blew up the sub rather than face us in court fair and square.”

  “Do you know that for a fact, that they themselves blew up the boat and the sub?”

  “Well, no.” Dave looked up, eyes pleading. “But the newspaper said you’d found evidence that the explosion was deliberate. What other explanation is there? They wanted to damage the hatch so badly we couldn’t use it as evidence. I don’t think they intended for Jon to die. As for the rest of it . . .”

  “Tracy Dempsey’s death?”

  Dave stared, mouth opening and shutting as though he was gathering bugs. At last he croaked, “Saturday night, Patti and I had some drinks at the Cameron Arms. Brendan was there, but he didn’t say anything that could help us and we didn’t dare ask him outright. We came back here and we were asleep, really deep asleep, you know? It took us a few minutes to come around and realize we were hearing people shouting. Even when she screamed and we heard someone running down the hall, from that door into the tower, I guess it was, we weren’t too quick on the uptake. That’s what we told your people when we made our statements yesterday. We’ve never lied to your people or to anyone here. We just never told the whole truth.”

  There was a lot of that going around, Jean thought.

  Alasdair met Dave’s stare evenly, his impassivity a question.

  “We didn’t push her out of the window. What good would that do us? Revenge? How’s revenge going to bring Chris back and send our grandkids to college? We wanted justice, and we didn’t get that. We’re not going to get it, now. Roger Dempsey screwed up, and Omnium screwed up, and now we’re screwed.” He groaned. “Running away today, that was stupid.”

  Alasdair did not disagree. He met Gunn’s eye and nodded. Gunn stood up, tucking his notebook into his pocket. “Come along please, Mr. Duckett.”

  Dave had to try twice to heave himself to his feet. He trudged off, Gunn at his elbow, Alasdair just behind with Jean at his elbow. She looked at him, rolled her eyes toward Dave, looked back. Alasdair shook his head, an infinitesimal movement, but a negative one, nonetheless.

  Slumped in the back seat of the police car, a policewoman beside her although presumably not handcuffed to her, Patti was in full meltdown. She wasn’t even trying to wipe away the tears that flowed down her face. Jean’s heart wrenched with compassion.

  Patti reached through the open window. “Dave, hon, we’re going to jail.”

  Taking her hand, Dave turned back to Alasdair and drew himself up with one last grasp at dignity. “Are you sending us to jail, Chief Inspector? We should have come to you right after the explosion, and we shouldn’t have left when you told us to stay put. We’re sorry we caused you and your people problems. But I don’t see where we’ve actually broken any laws.”

  “We’re hoping you’ll continue helping us with our inquiries for a wee while yet,” Alasdair replied, and taking Gunn aside, “Take them to the station, brew up a pot of tea, get her calmed down a bit. Have a blether about the grandchildren. I’ll stop in directly.”

  Gunn, the model of efficiency—he was probably enjoying his impromptu promotion—organized the Ducketts and assorted police people into the cars and away.

  Even after they had negotiated the telecommunications siege engines at the foot of the drive and disappeared toward town, Alasdair stood cogitating, almost but not quite expressionlessly. Jean could trace the thoughts moving across his face the way physicists traced neutrons passing through the earth, with great difficulty . . . Suddenly he made a frustrated gesture, turned around, and saw Jean biding her time just behind him. “Ah, there you are.”

  “I’m not anywhere else,” she replied, and as he started around the side of the house she fell into step beside him. His helpmeet. His cheering section. His gadfly. So much for her vaunted independence.

  Iris was still knitting in the upper window, like Madame Defarge knitting beside the guillotine. She had to be hoping the blade would fall before any awkward truths came out about her parentage.

  “You’re going to talk to Patti, see if her story matches Dave’s?” Jean asked.

  Alasdair’s smile was thin as a blade. “I reckon it will.”

  “That’s my gut feeling, but then, I’m not an experienced detective. And we’re still faced with one question.”

  “If the Ducketts didn’t kill Tracy, then who did do?” Looking like Napoleon scanning a map of Europe, Alasdair stopped at the end of the garden path to scan the hillside, Brendan, and Roger. “Let’s have ourselves that word with Dr. Dempsey.”

  Roger, Jean thought. Ambrose might be the prime mover, but Roger was sure his prophet.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Every flower petal, every leaf and twig, hung limp in the still moist warmth of the afternoon. In his black and white uniform, the constable standing by the hedge seemed as out of place amid the flowers as a penguin in a drift of confetti. Alasdair, Jean thought, must have conscripted police personnel from the farthest reaches of Northern Constabulary territory. This would be a good time to rob a bank in Orkney.

  He held the gate open for her. Just as she stepped through, Brendan shouted, “Hey! Look at this!”

  Roger glanced up from his array of boxes and bags, each now holding a bone or some other bit of excavated loot, like a time-traveling crime scene. “What?”

  “It’s a carved stone, just down from the entrance. Put there really recently.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “By the bottle cap behind it.”

  Stone? Jean sprinted up the hill, Alasdair at her heels for once, and came to a stop beside the trench, lathered in sweat and expectation. “Stone?”

  “Here.” Brendan handed her a dirt-encrusted bottle cap. “It was wedged in right there, between the edge of the stone and the rocks behind it. I bet that’ll give you a good date.”

  Jean already had a good date. 1933, when the entrance to the tomb was filled in—a task not done by Gordon Fraser, she bet. She handed the cap to Alasdair, who inspected it, popped it into a plastic bag he liberated from Roger’s stash, and stowed it in a pocket.

  Brendan was right. The stone that was emerging from the dirt wall of trench did seem to have been propped up against the smaller stones that formed the main body of the passage grave. But it wasn’t the same shape and size as the other curbstones. It was larger, perhaps four feet tall, and tapered upward from a stubby base like a giant stone canine tooth. Brendan scraped delicately at the very bottom of the stone, revealing a dirt-filled pictograph—a gripping beast crossed by an ornately-decorated Z-rod.

  Roger clambered to his feet. “Is it the other half of the Pitclachie Stone?”

  “Looks like it,” Jean said. “It fits the description.”

  “There’s a description?” asked Brendan. “You knew it was here?”

  Alasdair said, “Quite startling what you’ll turn up in a criminal investigation.”

  “Oh? I’d like to hear about that.” Roger didn’t specify whether he meant the disposition of the Stone or the investigation. He chose a camera from his collection of electronic paraphernalia and started taking photos. “And I was about to tell you to give that up and help me pack, Brendan. Good going! Nessie’s bones and her image carved on the sacred Stone, too. Absolute proof!”

  Alasdair plucked the paparazzo back, just as the rim of the trench was crumbling beneath his oversized athletic shoes. “All in good time. Just now, Dr. Dempsey, I’ve got some questions that need answering.”

  “Sure. Yeah. No problem.” Lowering the camera, Roger blinked around him as though wondering why no one stepped forward with a press release. “Brendan . . .”

  “Mr. Gilstrap,” Alasdair directed, “go down by the house, please, and help Miss Wotherspoon look after the Hall lad.”

  “Kirsty? Sure.” Brendan leaped from the trench and bounded down the hillside like a buck scenting a doe. Some men, Jean reflected, would have just looked dirty. Brendan seemed all the manlier for
his coating of grime. Put him together with Kirsty and her skimpy outfit and they’d be ready for a photo spread in Maxim or some other men’s magazine. So had they gotten back together last night, when—something sensual—had been in the air?

  Roger just looked grubby. “I’m sure he’d be glad to help and everything, but I really need him to be up here working. We’ve got to get the bones packed up and into a safe place. Locked up.” As though illustrating his point he lowered himself down onto his tarp and went back to packing bones, not without the occasional possessive glance toward the trench and the Stone inside.

  Alasdair loosened his tie and removed his jacket and sat down across from Roger, his pose as casual as though they were having a picnic, the flicker of light and shadow and thought in his eyes not casual at all. Jean arranged herself on a flat rock to one side and pulled out her notebook. She couldn’t make notes like Gunn, but she could get something down.

  Her gaze drifted to the landscape behind Alasdair, the mountains that seemed made of paper, not stone, the banks and braes plunging into the loch, the water glistening gunmetal blue-gray in the diffused sunlight. When he asked, “And then what?” she jumped.

  Roger didn’t. “What?”

  “After you get the bones to a safe place and locked up. What then?”

  “Why, I’ll study them. I’ll invite scientists from all over the world, and news teams, and I’ll apply for funding for a Museum. Jean,” Roger called to the side, “you can have a lifetime ticket.”

  “Thanks,” she said, and wrote baloney on her blank page.

  “Documentaries, books—this is a big story, Cameron. I’ll have to retire after this one. No more worlds to conquer.”

  “So that’s why you felt justified in planting a bug on Miss Fairbairn here?”

  Roger’s hands stopped dead. He looked from Jean to Alasdair and back, warily as an animal from the cover of his cap and his beard. “Ah. Well. That was Tracy’s idea. Sorry about that, Jean. She got a little carried away. Very supportive, you know. I’ll name the Museum after her.”