The Burning Glass

by Lillian Stewart Carl

  Jean’s gaze moved from Minty’s serene face to Alasdair’s lack of expression. Wait for it . . .

  “That’s right good to hear,” he said. “Protect and Survive’s after accounting for all the keys. I’ll be collecting them in good time to turn over to Ms. Macquarrie.”

  Minty’s peach-colored lips curved up at the ends. “Ciara Macquarrie’s your former wife, I believe, Mr. Cameron?”

  “Aye, that she is.”

  Minty’s aloof gaze turned toward Jean. “Changing partners is quite the thing these days. Even without benefit of matrimony.”

  “You’ve been married for a long time?” Jean tried her own parry.

  “Thirty years last spring.”

  “Do you and Ang—er, Mr. Rutherford have children?”

  “We have not been so fortunate, no.”

  Jean would have guessed that from Minty’s criticism of the Brimberrys and Trotters. “It’s very kind of you to take an interest in Zoe, then.”

  “Her grandmother Helen was my assistant for many years. After she unfortunately became ill, Zoe’s mother Polly did her best to take her place. And her grandfather Roddy”—Minty gestured toward the farm—“he provides milk, butter, and cream to the community, although it’s not always of the quality that I require.”

  “I’m hearing that Helen Elliot died recently,” said Alasdair.

  “Such a sad event, but then, the traditional Scottish diet contributes to coronary disease.”

  “Roddy must have been gutted at losing Wallace as well, so soon after.”

  “That’s hard to say. Roddy and Wallace went on at each other like stags in rut. At their ages! Helen always said they were harmless enough, but then Helen was often the issue. Well, it’s all in the past now.”

  “Wallace must have been very fit for his age,” Alasdair persisted.

  “Once he was spry as a mountain goat. But, sadly, our Wallace’s eighty years were catching him up. Another unfortunate example of our national epidemic of heart disease.”

  “He’d worked for P and S since the castle was opened up.”

  “It was very good of Protect and Survive to keep him on here, even though he should have been retired some years ago. But he did so enjoy his job. That was one reason we opened Ferniebank to visitors, to give him useful work after the death of his wife and his retirement as headmaster of Kelso High School. The site was becoming a bit of a danger as well, to say nothing of an eyesore. Much better to tidy it up and allow it generate income for the community.”

  Jean compressed her lips. Alasdair, having guided the conversation to where he wanted it, said nothing. The old policeman’s trick, the old reporter’s trick, letting the subject ramble on. Assuming so collected an individual as Minty would let herself ramble.

  She at least strolled on a few more paces. “Our Wallace’s mind was failing, too, had been for quite a while, sadly, but he tried to keep up with his interests. One moment he’d be on the roof with his telescope, the next he’d be poking about in the pit prison—he feared there would be no further excavation with the new owner. Tragic, that he should go down at last, like an ancient oak.”

  Where he had gone down was into the pit prison. Jean didn’t look at Alasdair. She could sense him not looking at her.

  “Well then. I must be off. Tomorrow at noon, Miss Fairbairn. And Mr. Cameron, if there’s anything I can do to assist Protect and Survive . . .”

  “I’ll not hesitate to ask,” Alasdair finished for her.

  Minty had already opened the door of the car and levitated into the seat. “Have a good night, then.” The engine roared, and the headlights flashed—this time Jean shielded her eyes—and the car maneuvered out the gateway and disappeared.

  So far, Ferniebank Castle hadn’t turned out to be nearly as private as they had anticipated, had it? “Last year this time,” she said ruefully, “you probably could have set up a table on the main road and eaten a four-course dinner without anyone driving by.”

  “Ciara’s caused some changes here,” was all Alasdair said, and started for the gate.

  Jean told herself that maybe Ciara was just taking advantage of changes that were already under way—the heritage industry, New Age trends, the aging of the local population. She crossed her arms over her chest, warding off the increasing chill, and retreated to the front steps of the flat.

  With a mighty heave and a squeal of hinges Alasdair swung the gate shut. Again the rattle of keys, and he came back across the courtyard, scooping up the hamper on the way. The noisy gravel, Jean realized, made a dandy early-warning system. She opened the door and he followed her inside.

  For a moment she stood with her hand on the doorknob, disoriented. This ordinary, even pedestrian, room occupied a parallel universe from the hollow chambers next door. It was a warm nest of sanity at its most dull and most comforting, like a tuna casserole. And here she and Alasdair were alone at last, with everything that implied.

  Chapter Ten

  Peeling off her jacket, Jean pried the inscribed stone from her pocket and set it on an unoccupied lace doily atop the bookshelf. Alasdair snapped the flashlight back into its holder, shot a hard look at the answering machine on the desk, and thumped the basket down on the kitchen counter.

  “Don’t you trust Minty,” Jean asked, “or have you played your cards close to your chest for so long you’re still doing it?”

  Alasdair opened the lid of the basket. “I’m no gambler, Jean.”

  “Sure you are. You simply calculate the odds to the last decimal point. Or maybe you’re a scientist, suggesting a hypothesis and then testing for reproducible results.”

  “I’ve got no hypothesis now. Not as yet. Still—you heard, did you, what Minty said about Wallace digging in the pit prison?”

  “Maybe that was before his knees gave out. He was here for a long time.”

  “Or maybe, like Zoe, Minty knows more than she’s telling.”

  “Does she know Wallace had a chunk of that inscription in his pocket when he was found?”

  “As next of kin, she and Angus claimed all his belongings,” Alasdair said. “I reckon it was them cleared this place of personal items.”

  “Understandably leaving the tape in the answering machine. You took it out, right?”

  “Oh aye, it’s tucked well away in a sock. But then, odds are whoever phoned has no idea Wallace was recording them.”

  “Was it Roddy who called? Maybe he was trying to get Wallace to leave the neighborhood.”

  “I’m thinking it was Roddy arguing with Wallace the day he died, never mind Zoe.”

  “She sure clammed up once she realized she might have said too much.” Jean looked again at the inert bit of stone. Then her eye moved upwards to a print of the nineteenth-century painting of the murder of Mary Stuart’s secretary Riccio at Holyrood, stabbed repeatedly by disaffected nobles including a Kerr and a Douglas—and perhaps witnessed by Isabel Sinclair. The characters were lavishly costumed and the scene expansively acted to suit romantic-era tastes, not that it hadn’t been genuine high drama to begin with. No wonder she’d thought of just that event as she looked down into the dungeon. “Minty says Zoe tells tales, but then, so do I, bimonthly in Great Scot.”

  “There are stories, and then there are lies.”

  Jean conceded his point with a shrug. “And there’s missing Angus.”

  “We’ve got no concrete evidence that anything here’s wrong, save the clarsach pinched from the museum and an answerphone message that might mean nothing at all. Like as not I’m . . .”

  “Tilting at windmills? Straining at a gnat? Borrowing trouble? Those are my specialties.”

  “Oh aye, those and bouncing off walls and jumping to conclusions. You’re having a bad influence on me, lass.” Focusing on the interior of the hamper, Alasdair started producing not rabbits but a glittering array of cutlery and dishes, each item wrapped in tissue paper.

  “Yeah, right.” Jean inspected the bookcase, noting that the bottom shelf w
as bare except for a garish “Glasgow’s Miles Better” souvenir ashtray. The middle two shelves held astronomy, botany, geology, and geography texts as well as history and archaeology books and lots of thin bright-colored paperbacks of legends and ghost stories. The Ancient Monuments Commission logo, a lion and crown, was printed on the plainly bound spine of the tallest book on the shelf. She pulled it out. With it came a folded piece of drawing paper.

  On the book’s cover was printed: Ferniebank Castle and St. Mary’s Chapel. Excavation and Renovation Report. Cool! She set that on the coffee table for later, then opened the paper to reveal a sketch of archaeologists digging next to the chapel, in the same rough-and-ready style as the drawings in the leaflet. Still, each face was clearly defined with only a few pencil strokes, the youthful diggers, male and female, and an older man crouched beside the excavation holding what looked like a small chest. This drawing had a tiny, tidy signature: W.B. Rutherford. The man had been a one-man band, it seemed. She laid the sketch on top of the bookcase, next to the decorative doily.

  The door to the hall closet opened and Dougie emerged, whiskers as erect as his tail. He performed a silky swirl around Jean’s ankles, then padded purposefully into the kitchen and sat down beside his bowls, one filled with water, one still empty. “Yes,” Jean told him, “it’s dinnertime.”

  “Long past dinnertime,” added Alasdair, perhaps with double meaning aforethought.

  Jean found the box of kitty kibble, measured brown lumps redolent of rancid fish into Dougie’s dish, and left him scrunching away contentedly. The only appetite he had to satisfy tonight was one for food. Whether that made him lucky or otherwise was not a good question, period.

  Alasdair was twisting two tall candles into their holders. His appetites were as complex as the rest of his personality, but she’d never know it by looking at him. Even though his face was no longer stony or icy, neither was it an open book. He was far too good at expressionlessness—something Ciara had taken pains to point out. Had he been applying intellectual rigor to dangerous emotional situations all his life? Which came first, his rational chicken or his emotional egg?

  She really needed another hobby than psychoanalyzing Alasdair. Counting the number of angels that could dance on the head of a pin, maybe.

  He tapped a champagne flute against a translucent plate, evoking a chime. “Mrs. Rutherford does nothing by halves. If that’s not sterling silver, bone china, and crystal, I’ll eat the lot.”

  “No need for that. Wow.” Jean pulled a chilled bottle of champagne, wrapped in its own little fitted quilt, out of the seemingly bottomless basket.

  “Moses’s entire family has staterooms in there,” Alasdair said, and met her laugh with a smile.

  He had an appealing smile, if stiff from lack of use. He was making a calculated effort to lighten the proceedings, wasn’t he, maybe even to apologize for his spasm of bad temper. Hey, she beamed at him, that’s all right, I needed to know there was a burr beneath your saddle. Speaking of which . . . “So what’s the latest in the Northern Constabulary soap opera? Did Sergeant Sawyer, a.k.a. the Troll of Inverness, finally get his just desserts?”

  “Depends on how you’re defining justice. The Chief Constable suggested he work a bit harder at being a team player, so Sawyer asked for a transfer and now’s with the Strathclyde Police, a thorn in some other D.C.I’s hide.”

  “And D.C. Gunn?”

  “He’s swotting for the exams for promotion to sergeant. A bit prematurely, I reckon, but he’ll do well in the long run.”

  “He’s got your example before him.”

  Alasdair shook his head, but said nothing else.

  Okay, Jean told herself, they’d covered all the important topics except one, and this was emphatically the wrong time to open the Pandora’s box of Ciara. She pulled a thick beige envelope from beneath the lid of the basket.

  The stationery was the same as her invitation to Minty’s culinary function—oh, it wasn’t just that the handwriting was idiosyncratic, Jean was holding the card upside down. She flipped it over and read: “ ‘Quail’s eggs in a Parma ham nest. Salmon in sorrel beurre blanc with roasted vegetable couscous. Gooseberry and elderflower fool with shortbread biscuit.’ I hope the fool is a dish, not an editorial comment.”

  “It’s mushy fruit with cream, I’m thinking.” Alasdair lit the candles—Minty had even included a book of matches—while Jean sorted the aromatic contents of several insulated plastic containers onto the dishes. Similar containers were stacked in the cupboard, weren’t they? Wallace had probably been happy to play beta tester for Minty’s preparations, conveyed to his doorstep via Helen and Polly.

  Despite her dig at their unmarried status, Stanelaw’s Martha Stewart had provided the compleat honeymoon repast, lacking only a gypsy violinist tuning up in the courtyard. That couldn’t be a coincidence, either. Minty had put one and one together from comments made by Ciara or the Campbell-Reids, or Alasdair himself.

  Judging by the wry curl developing in his brows, he was thinking the same thing. He reached for the bottle, saying, “I’m surprised Minty didn’t send oysters as well.”

  The man could actually do comedy if he set his mind to it. “Heavens no,” Jean replied. “August doesn’t have an ‘r’ in it.”

  He popped the cork from the champagne bottle, the small explosion making Dougie’s ears twitch, and filled each flute with sparkling liquid the color of straw spun into gold.

  She took one from his hand and held it up. A couple of high-flying droplets landed on her glasses, making little prismatic UFOs. “To, er, Ferniebank.”

  “To us, Jean.” He tapped her flute with his and set it to his lips. His look over its rim, the tiny reflection of the candle flames thawing the blue depths of his eyes, made her face flush even before she drank. If she’d ever doubted that the man was versatile enough to do romance, too—however cynically she might define that word—they evaporated like the champagne. And that was so dry it was more effervescence than liquid, teasing her tongue and throat with the subtle flavor of grape.

  Ignoring his blanket, Dougie retired to the couch to apply his pink tongue to his anatomy until his gray fur was even sleeker. Outside, the sound of the wind in the trees reminded Jean of the rhythm of waves on the shore, advancing, retreating, advancing a bit farther. She sat down beside Alasdair and tried a bite of her glorified ham-and-egg appetizer. The mix of firm and soft textures filled her mouth. Suddenly she was starving.

  There was no need to make idle chitchat, not now. Silently, companionably, they ate. Salt and sweet, brine and earth, sharp and mellow, the flavors warmed first Jean’s mouth, then her stomach, then radiated outward until her fingertips and toes tingled. She had always suspected Alasdair had a sensual side, if deeply buried beneath layers of police canteen bangers and mash, and sure enough, he tasted and sipped as though assessing each savory molecule for its full potential. Maybe his toes were tingling, too.

  He lifted the bottle of champagne to refill their glasses. But she was already balanced on that knife’s edge between sober and tipsy, tingling but not yet numb. “No thank you,” she murmured, and Alasdair put the bottle down without topping off his own glass.

  There was a protocol to this kind of event, after all. Not just the food, not just the champagne, but the lingering looks and the fingertips barely touching between the rims of the plates and then slowly, entwining. Jean wasn’t only picking up on the prickle of his energy field, she was getting the snap, crackle, and pop as well. Funny, she’d thought she knew what foreplay was, but even their meal at the Witchery had not melted her down this effectively.

  The dessert might or might not be just, let alone foolish, but it was delicious, a fruit puree whipped with cream, delicate and rich at once, and buttery shortbread dissolving on her tongue. The set of Alasdair’s jaw eased at last, and his lips relaxed into their graceful and yet masculine curve, like gothic tracery. When an almost microscopic bit of the fool clung to the corner of his mouth, Jean wiped it
off not with the corner of her linen napkin but with her fingertip, and then pressed the sweet morsel against her own lips.

  His velvet voice was brushed against the nap. “There’s a packet of coffee in the basket. Shall I put on the pot?”

  “No thanks. Caffeine after dinner keeps me awake.”

  He waited, his mouth widening in a slow, supple smile.

  This time her face didn’t just flush. She felt herself go red as a beet. A traffic light. A fire engine. Positively scarlet. No scarlet letters here, though. No scarlet women. She dared a quick tickle of his ribs, like a row of iron bars through his sweater, and he laughed. The sound was a bit rusty, but it was a laugh.

  Jean leaned toward him, leading with her lips—and from the corner of eye saw her backpack lying on the desk, her car keys beside it. The cold water of obligation dashed her face and she halted. “Dang it, I never locked my car. Keep up the momentum. I’ll be right back.”

  Alasdair was behind her as she stood up. “I’ll do it.”

  “No, no problem.” Seizing the keys, she stepped out of the front door and stopped, grasping the railing beside the steps. Why did alcohol always go to her knees? Placing each foot carefully on the vociferous gravel, right, left, right, left, she walked across the courtyard, punched the button on her remote, and heard the car doors clunk in reply. There, already!

  The cold light and the colder wind pressed in around her warm glow like besiegers around a castle. Like the night around the courtyard, growing darker by the minute as the clouds crept forward, devouring stars and moon. Was that a movement among the trees? Jean froze like a dog at point. No, it was just the wind in the underbrush. Was that a light winking in and out of the leaves or a will-o’-the-wisp hovering above the ancient well? No. She saw nothing in the shadow-rippled darkness, not even the ghostly shapes of the chapel walls.

  Turning toward the keep, she detected a gleam in an upper window, Isabel’s window, a warm gleam not at all like the thin, off-color luminescence of the yard light. Nothing was there, either, just a sheen on the uneven window glass. Jean’s gaze rose to the serrated roof line and beyond, to the overcast sky that faintly reflected the glow of the great cities to the north and west.