“Did she send the threatening letters, too?” Alasdair asked.
After a long pause, Roger answered, “I told you. She got carried away. She was always getting carried away. That was just her personality. She was very clever, you know, arranged for the boat hire company in Inverness to send the letters thinking they were just self-addressed receipts. I didn’t know about it, I didn’t know a damn thing about what she was up to, not until . . .” His hands closed protectively around the bone they were holding, a vertebra that looked somewhat like a chalky caltrop. His head bowed over it so that the bill of his cap hid his face from Alasdair. But Jean could see Roger’s expression, very still, very calm, as though he was thinking that by playing dead he could fool the predator into going away.
He didn’t know Alasdair. “Until the boat exploded?”
“Yeah. Until the boat exploded. Then she told me everything.”
“Everything? Meaning what?”
“Like I said, she was really clever, picked up a lot of electronics know-how from hanging around me. The bug, the timing mechanism on the petrol bombs, she really did a good job.”
“Why did she do it?” Alasdair asked.
Again Roger looked from face to face, and then from the top of the Stone to the grove of trees. The faint breeze spilling desultorily down the hillside seemed cool, as though it were an exhalation from the pine glade, a sigh of recognition from the cold depths of time.
“There was an accident with a submersible,” he said at last. “It was a rotten shame. All my fault, I’ll take full responsibility—I wasn’t supervising the mechanical people well enough—not my thing, the mechanics, more into electronics, you know, although my degree’s in business.”
But he was into the mechanics enough to pick Brad’s brain, thought Jean. Alasdair said, “You were that concerned about the mechanical systems to question Miss Fairbairn’s former husband about them. And then to stalk Miss Fairbairn herself.”
“I saw her—your—name on Tracy’s promotion list,” Roger said, with an ungainly little bow in Jean’s direction. “Your editor set up an interview with you about two minutes after we announced the expedition. I said to Tracy, I wonder what the deal is, if Jean wants to do some sort of exposé about the sub. I mean, you showed me up at the conference that time.”
Thanks, Miranda, Jean thought caustically. So in Roger’s book there was publicity, and then there was publicity.
“Tracy said, oh, I’ll take care of it. I thought she’d send you another press release or something, you know, spin. I didn’t know she’d included a bugged toy in your press kit. Geez. What you must have thought when you found that.”
Since she’d been asked, Jean said, “Among other less repeatable things, I thought that you didn’t know I was divorced.”
“Well, no, not until Tracy said you were talking about Brad in the past tense. She was really good about picking up on things like that.”
That explained Tracy’s look at Roger when she’d met Jean on the boat. I told you so.
Alasdair said, very quietly, “You were thinking Miss Fairbairn was a threat to you.”
“I didn’t. I mean, freedom of the press and all that. If Jean wanted to pick holes in my theories, fine. It was Tracy who was worried. Jonathan was poking around in places he didn’t need to be poking, and she thought he was doing some sort of industrial espionage—me, I figured he was just impressed by my stuff, you know? But then Tracy saw Jean give Jonathan a note before she came on board . . .”
“That was a business card.” Jean turned another page in her notebook.
Roger waved—easy come, easy go. “Sure it was. I told you, the woman was paranoid. She tells that idiot from Bristol, Martin—he was eating out of her hand, like he was going to get anything out of her—she tells him to keep an eye on you, Jean. I’m sorry about that, really. He sees you talking to the other Americans, and then he hears them talking about some secret deal they’ve got going with Jonathan. Except they called him Jon, and he thought they were saying Jean, and . . .”
Jean dropped her face into her hand. She’d moan why me? except why her was irrelevant, now.
“Hey, that American couple, they’re connected to the guy who drowned in the submersible, right? I’m really sorry about that, I wish I could do something for them, but my hands are tied—things happen, space shuttles fall apart, it’s the march of science and everything and well, it’s a mess.”
“It’s a right mess,” Alasdair agreed. “Especially since Jonathan was killed.”
“Tracy was very upset about that, you know, very upset. That’s when she came to me. Should have done that ages ago, but then, that’s twenty-twenty hindsight. I bet it was the Ducketts who tried to run us down Saturday night, Jean. They thought you were Tracy, and they were out for revenge—you can’t blame them, can you? They got Trace later on that same evening. I’ll never forgive myself for having a good time at the ceilidh while she was—in danger.” Roger stared off across the glen, every line and crease in his face turning downwards like economic trends during a depression.
Alasdair gave Roger a few moments with that thought, even though his steely eyes didn’t leave the top of the grungy Omnium cap that shaded Roger’s face. Alasdair’s face was looking a bit pink, even though he was turned away from the sun. Jean felt her own skin, pale as his, starting to sizzle in the steamy sunlight. Another breath of air spilled down the hillside and teased the roots of her hair.
Roger was doing it again, she thought, playing his audience like a stand-up comedian. That was his personality. She shouldn’t read anything into it.
“What’s your position with Omnium now?” asked Alasdair.
“I’m afraid we’re on the outs. We’re having—what do the Hollywood types say, creative differences?”
“Usually when Hollywood’s saying that, they’re meaning a disagreement over money.”
“Well, there’s that.” Roger leaned toward Alasdair confidingly, a twitch of his beard including Jean in the cozy little group. “That’s why I’m so excited over the Nessie bones. And now the Stone, too! What a coup for Omnium and their equipment!”
“You were telling me yesterday it was luck that had you using Omnium’s equipment just here.”
“Hey, you’ve heard the expression, the harder I work the luckier I get?”
Alasdair didn’t react.
“Well, it’s been a lot of hard work, but it was luck to start with. Tracy was shopping at a boutique in Paris and found an old book, a privately-printed autobiography of Ambrose Mackintosh. We already knew Iris from her environmental work—what a gal, huh?—so Tracy bought the book.”
“This was the shop owned by Charles and Sophie Bouchard?”
“Oh yeah, he’s an old acquaintance, shouldn’t be forgot, or however the song goes. She was his clerk and now they’re married, just like a romance novel. Charles bought some stuff that had belonged to Aleister Crowley—now there’s a nut case for you. Can you imagine people used to be afraid of him?”
“Was there a Pictish silver chain in that same collection?” asked Jean, flexing her writing hand.
Roger glanced around at her, his bushy eyebrows twitching upward. “Yeah, there was, Charles got a small fortune for it. You’re good, Jean you’re really good!”
Baloney, she wrote again, and added the note that probably both the book and the chain had been given to Crowley by Ambrose. Alasdair was still looking at Roger, unblinking. “And the book?”
“Once I got through all the verbiage, it was a real eye-opener, all that stuff about Crowley and Ambrose taking in his old mistress Edith Fraser, and there was her brother finding the Stone and everything. And yes, I already knew there was a gripping beast on the broken half, and about old Gordon chiseling it in half, saving his family from the boogeyman.”
This being something Roger hadn’t bothered to tell Brendan, Jean thought, the better to amaze him in case the Stone turned up. But then, the Stone had become a secondary, maybe even te
rtiary, quest.
“And even better,” Roger went on, “Ambrose described the passage grave and—okay, can’t keep any secrets here, can I? He said he found the bones of the monster there.”
Ah, thought Jean. All right. Alasdair went so far as to nod.
“He didn’t give its location,” Roger continued, “but I was able to triangulate by using the pine grove, the tower of the house, and the tower of the Castle down by the loch.”
“But Iris didn’t want you go excavating here,” Alasdair pointed out.
“Well, no. She was smart enough to be an early investor in Omnium, but after the sub accident she pulled out.” Again he gestured dismissively. “Stubborn old woman. Just doesn’t have any imagination, can’t rise above her own petty . . .”
Into his pause Alasdair dropped the word, “Principles?”
Roger shot him a suspicious look. He had to know what was coming. Jean stirred, the rock she was sitting on becoming very hard. Funny though, how cool it had also become, as though the sun had only warmed the first millimeter, and the chill of a thousand fog-shrouded winters still lingered in its depths.
Judging by the sheen on his brow, Alasdair was warming up physically, but his manner was as cold-tempered as always. “You blackmailed her with information you got from Ambrose’s autobiography. And you tracked down and gulled Gordon Fraser into helping you find the tomb. It was his description that helped you triangulate the location.”
“Just applying a little leverage for the greater good. Imagination, right?” Roger held out the bone. “I mean, here’s Nessie! What a deal! And thanks to Ambrose’s book, I solved the old mystery about Eileen Mackintosh too. Here she is! You think Iris would be grateful I found her mother’s body.”
“I doubt she’s grateful to you for fitting her up for the letters and the boat explosion as well.”
Nice use of the ambiguities of the word “doubt,” Jean thought.
Roger tsked beneath his breath. “Tracy framed her, not me. Either Tracy thought she should be punished for refusing to help, or was just hoping to get her out of the way. Tracy went overboard, got carried away, trying to protect me, you know.”
Alasdair had heard that verse before. “I don’t suppose your book tells where Ambrose found his hoard of Pictish treasure.”
“Nah. The last chapter’s torn out.”
Alasdair half-winked in Jean’s direction. Gotcha. She wrinkled her nose at him.
“Not a frigging word,” Roger went on. “The area could be riddled with tombs and hoards and monsters, and if he said anything about it at all, it’s in that last few pages. I tell you, Inspector Cameron, what’s a man to do?” Roger grinned and shrugged.
Jean expected Alasdair to reply, A man could stop playing silly beggars with the police, and yet, was Roger playing them for fools? What Alasdair asked was, “You’re working with the Bouchards then, hoping to recover more treasure?”
“Sure. No harm in that. I need them back up here, too, when you’re done—with them.” He was about to say “harassing” or the equivalent, but thought better of it. Again he looked from face to face, exuding helpfulness. “The book’s at the hotel, you can have it if you need it for evidence or something. I found what I came here for. I’ll be back on the fast track before you know it!”
“Are you saying ‘I’ because your wife’s dead, or because you were always after following that track on your own? Sounds to have been a bit of a rift between you, with her planting bugs and bombs and the like, and never telling you.”
Roger looked pained, as though Alasdair had just hit him below the belt. “Every marriage has its ups and downs. You know what I mean, I bet you’re a married man, Inspector Cameron.”
Jean would have winced, but she wanted to keep her eyes open for the expression on Alasdair’s face.
It was something between a sniff and snarl. “No, Dr. Dempsey, I’m not a married man.”
“Hello!” shouted a voice from below. Jean looked around to see Peter Kettering trudging up the hill, his suit jacket slung over his shoulder, his vest gaping open, fashionable sunglasses looking like a bandit’s mask across his face.
Chapter Thirty-three
Alasdair stood up and brushed off his trousers, then gave Jean a hand up. His expression was set, but she could swear she caught a sigh of decompression. Maybe he was glad Kettering had broken up the cheery little gathering before Alasdair told Roger just what he could do with his bones, the ones that made everything worthwhile.
Roger scrambled to his feet. “Hey, Peter, look, I found the rest of the Pitclachie Stone! There’s still time to get photos of it into the press release.”
“Well then, better and better!” Kettering stumbled to a halt, out of breath, face polished cherry-red. He glanced at Roger’s osteological booty, stared, then knelt down and probed the skull with a forefinger. “The photographs came out quite well, but I wanted to see for myself—these look to be . . .”
“Authentic?” Roger asked with a chortle of glee. “They’ll stand up to any test you want to throw at them, Peter. What a day for science!”
“I wasn’t meaning to suggest,” Peter hemmed and hawed, although he clearly was meaning to suggest, and was taking the precaution of checking out the situation himself. “Very impressive. Amazing story.”
Jean met Alasdair’s jaundiced eye. All the instrumentation in the world, but there’s a difference in actually seeing for yourself. The problem was, even seeing for yourself proved nothing.
Kettering stood up, his insectoid sunglasses still turned toward the bones. “The boat sails at half past seven. If you could come a bit early to assist with the display?”
“My reputation for getting lost in my work and running late precedes me, I see. No worries, Peter, I wouldn’t miss this for anything. My life’s work, vindicated! Soon as Inspector Cameron here gives the word, Brendan and I will get everything boxed up here and clean up for the cruise.” Suddenly Roger’s face pleated into his beard. “Geez, Tracy would have gotten such a charge out of this. She worked by my side all these years, contributed so much . . .”
Jean wondered what Jonathan would have thought, and decided it was better not to know. As far as Kettering was concerned, the upside of a Big Discovery trumped the downside of two Unfortunate Deaths, publicity-wise. She glanced at Alasdair.
All he said was, “Mr. Kettering, could you see your way clear to including a wee boy and his mum in the evening’s events? The lad’s a fan of Nessie. A future consumer.”
“Of course, Chief Inspector. Plenty of room. We’ve only invited sixty people—including Iris Mackintosh, of course, if we can lure her down from her ivory tower.” He brayed at his own joke, the glare off his teeth almost casting a shadow. “Miss Fairbairn, we’ll see you there with the other members of the fourth estate. And Chief Inspector, I know a fair number of your people will be there in their official capacities, but if you would care to be Starr’s honored guest—we’re having Hugh Munro and his band on the lounge deck, playing their own unique blend of traditional and modern tunes.”
“Thank you,” said Alasdair.
“You won’t mind my mentioning that the event is formal dress,” Kettering went on. “I’ll be dressed in the style of the country, myself. My first experience as a kilted Highlander, but I won’t be indulging in the same sort of undergarments that a proper Scotsman would be wearing. Or not wearing.” He bleated again.
Alasdair’s eyes were starting to cross. Jean kept her face hidden by continuing to make notes.
Roger shifted his vertebra from hand to hand like a gambler shaking luck into his dice. Unlike Alasdair, whose gambling consisted of counting the fall of the cards and playing the odds, Roger was the type who would risk everything on one throw. “Tracy would have loved Hugh. Great band. Heard them at the ceilidh Saturday night and enjoyed them so much I went back on Sunday for more. Takes your mind off, well, takes your mind off.”
“Yes, yes, of course, very brave of you to persevere. Most adm
irable,” said Kettering. “I’m afraid I made a bit of a fool of myself Saturday night, dancing and all—you just can’t keep your feet on the floor, now can you, when Hugh is playing?”
Yeah, Jean remembered, Hugh had said something about Kettering prancing around when he wasn’t ducking out to take a call.
“No way,” said Roger. “You remember that sequence of songs he did—oh, it must have been around midnight. The pop tunes, ‘Bad Moon Rising’ and ‘In-a-Gadda-da-Vida,’ and the jigs and stuff in between. If you weren’t drunk when he started, you were drunk . . .”
An electronic trill made all three men go for their pockets. Kettering won the jackpot. “Starr Beverages promotion! Ah yes, I’ll be there straightaway.” And, slipping the phone back into his dangling jacket, “Must see to the catering. Good job for me, eh, catering, Kettering?” Exuding ghastly jollity, he cantered back down the path.
“See you tonight, Peter! You too, Jean. Inspector. Champagne’s on me!” Roger gathered up a camera, and what was probably a GPS unit, and what could just as well have been Captain Kirk’s tricorder, and descended into the trench, there to lavish his affections on the top half of the Pitclachie Stone.
Alasdair jerked his head toward Pitclachie House. Jean walked beside him in silence until they were past the first gate and into the moist shade of the garden, where they were bushwhacked by a cloud of midges. They hurried the rest of the way into the courtyard of the house. Only then did Alasdair stop, and after a searching look up, down, and sideways had ascertained no one was watching—even Iris’s window was now vacant—he closed his eyes and let his shoulders sag.
Jean felt as though she’d been dragged through two barbed-wire fences, and she hadn’t been doing half the work he had. She applied her right hand to his left shoulder and allowed herself to both massage and appreciate the firm musculature concealed beneath his shirt. “Bonus points for remembering Elvis. How about one of those nice cups of tea for yourself?”
The Murder Hole Page 33
