The Burning Glass

by Lillian Stewart Carl

  That choking sound was her own breath. Another minute and she’d start crying. . . . She had just driven past Glebe House. Jean hit the brakes, backed up, and dived into the driveway leading to the cookery building. She was barely off the road before a police car rolled out of the driveway in front of the house and accelerated toward Ferniebank, Logan crouched grimly over the steering wheel like Charon looking for passengers to taxi across the Styx. What? Was the police station here at Glebe House, too?

  Jean stopped more or less in a parking spot and climbed out of the car. Then she got back in and stared into the rearview mirror. Yes, her face was a disaster area. There was nothing she could do about the lines at the corners of her mouth, stress fractures from her clenched jaw, no doubt, or her color, which was closer to fish-belly than blooming rose. She dug lipstick and a comb from her purse and made what repairs she could.

  She slammed the car door, headed for the house, did an about-face, and hauled the picnic hamper out of the trunk. One more time. She wended her way across the immaculate lawn—she imagined Minty down on her hands and knees with nail scissors—and past the housebroken flowers and shrubs to the front door. Which opened before she raised her hand to knock.

  There was Minty herself, today clothed in a neat skirt and blouse accented with a cream and coral paisley scarf. Instead of speaking, she took a step backward, no doubt quailing from Jean’s glittering eyes. But Minty was made of stern stuff, and summoned a smile. “You Americans are an eager lot, aren’t you? Please, come through.”

  Oh. She was early. Attempting a similar smile, Jean held out the basket. “Thank . . .” There was a frog in her throat. Or a toad, most likely, one of those South American creatures with poison glands. She tried again. “Thank you very much for the dinner. It was delicious.”

  “My pleasure.” Minty whisked away the basket and set it down beside a grandfather clock. Her extended arm guided Jean into a sitting room furnished with all the subdued colors, rich fabrics, and old-money bric-a-brac as that of a good hotel. The bay window looked out over the front garden and the road, while a fireplace dominated a back wall. The marble fireplace surround seemed out of place, although Jean’s benumbed brain couldn’t think why.

  Rebecca was already ensconced on a soft couch. That explained the “you Americans.” She was looking fresh, if not exactly rested, in a flowery frock. Her infant appendage must be back at the B&B with Michael, since she wasn’t old enough to hold a tea cup, let alone quirk her little finger while doing so.

  At Minty’s approach, Rebecca pretended she wasn’t trying to stuff throw pillows behind her back. One good look at Jean’s face and her grin faltered into a dubious smile.

  “P.C. Logan was just here, sharing a bit of good news,” Minty said.

  “The clar . . .” Jean croaked again. “The clarsach has been found.”

  “It was left on a doorstep in Knightsbridge,” Minty affirmed. “Disgraceful. I understand that it’s been damaged. I’ve arranged for it to be airlifted to the National Museum in Edinburgh. They’ll deal with it much more expertly than any London auction house.”

  Jean’s curiosity rose up like a zombie and staggered forward. “Has the instrument been in Stanelaw all these years? Ever since Isabel died?”

  “In my husband’s family, yes. The tales about these things make them all the more valuable, don’t they? May I offer you a fruit juice? Malvern water? Rebecca?”

  “Water,” said Jean, barely remembering to add, “please.” She sat down beside Rebecca, leaned back, and leaned, and leaned, and finally came to rest at a drunken angle.

  “I’d like some juice, please,” Rebecca said, and when Minty disappeared into the dining room across the hall, leaned closer to Jean. “Are you all right? You look as though you’ve seen a ghost, if you’ll excuse my saying so. Did everything go all right last night?”

  Jean closed her eyes. Her and Alasdair’s intimate moment had turned into a Middle Eastern wedding night, with friends and relatives gathered beneath the window of the nuptial chamber waiting to be informed of the successful completion of the contract. Well, the contract had been signed, and sealed, and now . . . Like so many things, getting there was only a battle. Staying there was the campaign.

  She looked around at Rebecca’s worried face and cut to the catalyst. “We just found the inscription on Isabel’s gravestone chiseled away. Stolen.”

  “Stolen? Oh no! That explains why Logan took a call on his mobile phone and then went rushing out of here as though he’d been goosed with a cattle prod.”

  “Minty knows, too, then.”

  “Minty knows all, sees all.”

  “Does Logan live upstairs or something?”

  Rebecca lowered her voice. “He’s got a vine-covered cottage, and pretty much a vine-covered wife, in town. But he’s thick as thieves with the Rutherfords, you’ve got that right. He was here when Michael dropped me off, spreading comfort and joy about the clarsach.”

  “Right,” Jean said with a sigh. “Speaking of ghosts, guess what? Ciara Macquarrie is Alasdair’s ex-wife.”

  Rebecca’s eyes bulged. The only reason her jaw didn’t drop into her lap, Jean guessed, was because she needed it to exclaim, “What? No way!”

  “I wish there was no way, but it’s true.”

  “Well now, that’s awkward. I remember when one of Michael’s old girlfriends turned up at the Rudesburn dig . . .”

  Minty walked back into the room. A teenage girl carrying a tray tiptoed behind her. Jean had to look twice. Zoe was stripped of her goth accessories and cosmetics and clothed in a demure skirt and blouse. Only the stiff black pouf of her hair still insisted on personality. She offered the tray and the glasses it held to Jean and Rebecca.

  “How are you, Zoe?” Jean managed to close her hand around her glass.

  “Very well, madam, thankyoukindly,” the girl returned in a rush. As soon as Rebecca had her drink, Zoe bobbed up and down and fled. Judging by her wary glance at Minty as she passed, her employer had imposed such old-fashioned courtesies via a program of intimidation.

  “A quick tour of the cookery school, then, before Ciara arrives?” Without waiting for a reply, Minty strolled to the front hall and opened the door.

  Rebecca stood. Jean hauled her body up from the couch. Just as they walked outside, the grandfather clock struck noon. There was something about those reverberating chimes that rung a smaller chime in Jean’s mind, but with her diminished mental capacity she couldn’t grasp it.

  Minty shooed her guests along a flagstone path toward the Euro-barn, her royal estate. “Ciara rang to say she had to deal with a tour group. Her new assistant didn’t appear for work this morning, the more shame to her.”

  “Her new assistant?” Rebecca asked at Minty’s side while Jean lagged behind. “So she hired Shannon Brimberry after all?”

  Another Brim . . . That’s right, Jean told herself. Zoe’s older sister who had failed her exams due to the bad luck exhaled by the bit of inscription.

  “Quite so,” Minty replied. “Shannon was sent down from university. She’s an intelligent girl, more than one would expect from her background, but she’ll not apply herself—well, poor Noel and Polly have done the best they could with those girls. Shannon’s set to be the tour guide here in Roxburghshire while Ciara deals with her other tours and the renovations at Ferniebank, trying to help Shannon’s family, over and beyond her helping us all by bringing so much new business to Stanelaw. One is quite willing to forgive certain eccentricities, considering.”

  Considering the money involved, Jean concluded, and shared a bemused glance with Rebecca while Minty unlocked a glass door and walked them through a vestibule.

  The interior of the classroom was cool, the air layered with subtle traces of garlic and onion, cinnamon, bread, roasting meat. Jean realized she was still holding her glass, one ice cube joggling around in the water. Ice. Alasdair, the Ice Prince. The Snow King. She drank deeply.

  Minty’s mouthful-of-marbles acce
nt, all posh girl’s school and none of Scotland, rose and fell in Jean’s ears like the muzak Hugh decried. She was supposed to be writing about this. She tried to focus. Granite countertops. Cooking implements ranging from gleaming knives and pots to machines so arcane they might just as well be torture devices. Bright Italian pottery. Wreaths of dried herbs, peppers, garlic. Bottles of powders and liquids of all shapes, hues, and national origins.

  Rebecca held up the side by responding to Minty’s mission statement, something about teaching the local schoolchildren domestic skills, then making a business of it—refusing to descend to the lowest common denominator, don’t you know—exclusiveness are us. Jean trudged blearily along behind. It wasn’t her glasses that were smeared, but her brain. Reality can be slippy, Alasdair had said. He would agree that reality could be slippery without the least paranormal overtone. Like her, he might get pretty damn impatient with reality.

  They walked through a greenhouse lush with variegated leaves and the sharp sweet scent of herbs—Jean recognized parsley, rosemary, basil, as Minty carried on about fresh quality ingredients and evading the cheapening effect of EU regulations—and then outside past the brick-walled garden with its bird netting and tomato props and flowers in vast array. Rebecca said, “This is all very interesting, Minty. Ciara will be sorry she missed out.”

  One of Jean’s ears perked up. Oh yeah. She was scheduled to interview Ciara this afternoon. Right now, hiking back to Edinburgh held more appeal. Maybe she could explain that she didn’t have her laptop, so would have to postpone the moment of truth, although all she ever did for these things was take notes in her paper notebook anyway.

  “Ciara’s taken more than one of my courses. And she’s been stopping in our guest cottage since the first of the month, whilst my husband and I deal with the paperwork generated by the Ferniebank sale.” Minty indicated a newish one-story addition beside the main house, which was more of a guest wing than a cottage proper, not that it mattered.

  Jean shared another meaningful look with Rebecca. Did Minty mean that the damned elusive Angus had reappeared? Now that mattered. Since she was in no mood for beating around bushes, not even Minty’s Princess Diana roses, she asked, “So Angus is back?”

  “I’m expecting him directly.” Minty turned not one hair of her tidily coiffed head. Rebecca shrugged—Angus was an easy-come, easy-go proposition, it seemed.

  The driveway and the path passed beneath Jean’s shoes and they were back at the front door, Minty opening it before them. The interior of the house seemed still and stuffy and surreptitiously Jean flapped her cotton coattails.

  Zoe was setting the table in the dining room. “Tell your mother just a few more minutes,” Minty instructed, and the girl vanished through a swinging door.

  “Polly’s here today?” Rebecca asked, leading the way into the sitting room.

  “Yes,” said Minty. “Polly does her best to be of help.”

  “Zoe was saying she cut herself.”

  “I insist upon properly sharpened knives, they’re much safer than ones allowed to go . . .” Minty stopped, arms crossed, gazing out the multiple panes of the bay window, then murmured, “Well then. Jean, Rebecca, if you’ll excuse me.” She glided into the dining room.

  Jean looked out of the window expecting to see the Mystic Scotland van. Instead she saw a small brown car in the driveway, Ciara emerging from the passenger side and Keith Bell the driver’s. Aha. Minty hadn’t invited Keith, had she? But here he was, stowing his camera bag in the trunk while Ciara eyed the landscape like Caesar inspecting Gaul. Her body language was not as tense as Jean expected, with the inscription and all, but it was less easygoing than it had been yesterday afternoon.

  The same muddy blue car Jean had almost collided with stopped at the end of the driveway. Valerie leaned out of the window, Ciara stepped forward, Valerie made a comment and drove on, back toward home and, presumably, Derek.

  Turning away, Jean was confronted again by the marble fireplace with its classical fluted columns. A Georgian-style fireplace was out of keeping with this Victorian house, but it would be of the same time period as the blocked door in Ferniebank’s Laigh Hall. Like the clarsach, had the fireplace, too, been—taken, borrowed, rescued—and passed down through generations of Rutherfords? What had the Rutherfords been to the Sinclairs, the Douglases, the Kerrs? Squires? Opportunistic tenants? Thorns in various metal-plated or silk-clothed sides?

  Jean walked over to inspect the photos arranged along the mantel, each silver frame polished to a fare-thee-well. Most photos were of Minty, hanging onto a long-faced man’s arm as though hanging onto a dog’s leash, standing in front of Buckingham Palace, the Great Pyramid, the Taj Mahal, the Grand Canyon. The odd photo out was of an elderly man—the late Wallace?—smiling on the steps of the flat at Ferniebank. Where Alasdair had stood this morning, grasping the railing.

  Wait a minute. Jean focused on Minty’s companion. Hugh had described Angus as a long, lanky chap with a face like the Queen of Faerie’s milk-white steed. That fit the man in these photos, all right. That also fit the man from the Mystic Scotland van, the only difference being the provisional moustache.

  What the . . . ? Jean spun around. “These photos are of Angus, right?

  “That they are,” Rebecca replied.

  “I swear to God,” said Jean, suiting action to word by casting her gaze upwards, “I saw him arguing with Ciara at Ferniebank not an hour and a half ago.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The doorbell rang. Jean sprang for the couch and sat down on its edge just as Minty sailed past the sitting room door.

  “Are you sure it was Angus?” Rebecca hissed.

  “If it wasn’t him, it was his identical twin.” She was going to have to tell Alasdair about this. Although she would have told him even without that crack about “making a report.”

  From the entry hall came the sound of the door opening and Minty’s voice, exuding if not warmth, then at least neutrality. “Ciara. So glad you could join us. And Keith. What a lovely surprise. Zoe, take Miss Macquarrie’s coat.”

  Again the crash of cutlery. Zoe hurried into the hall as Keith ambled into the sitting room and saw the two women sitting on the couch. “Oh. Hi.”

  “Keith Bell,” said Jean, “Rebecca Campbell-Reid from Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh.”

  “We’ve met,” Rebecca said. “Keith’s staying at the Reiver’s Rest.”

  “Oh. Hi.” Keith pretzeled himself into an armchair and held a paper folder out to Jean. “Here. Have a press kit. I didn’t get to talk to you yesterday.”

  No kidding. Saying, “Perhaps I can talk to you and Ciara after lunch,” she took the folder. The cover was printed with “Ferniebank Conference and Healing Centre. Getting in Touch with the Secret Wisdom of the Past.” Inside were elevations, floor plans, maps, testimonials, all of which spun across the surface of Jean’s mind like snowflakes across a blacktop and vanished. She tucked the folder next to her backpack in the space between the couch and the legs of an end table.

  “Naw, after lunch won’t work,” Keith said. “We’ve got to go into Hawick, you know, regional police headquarters, to make a report about the inscription. Some detective inspector’s coming all the way from Edinburgh, big whoop.”

  For a split second, Jean was actually grateful to the thief with his nasty little chisel. But then, if not for him, she and Alasdair wouldn’t have lashed out at each other.

  Minty led Ciara through the doorway while in the background Zoe retreated, clutching Ciara’s Abominable Barbie fake-fur jacket. “. . . all right between you, then,” Minty was saying.

  “We had a bit of a miscommunication is all,” answered Ciara. “No harm done. Shannon’s with our clientele now, showing them round Floors and Kelso, with high tea at the Abbey Close.”

  “The Abbey Close does a—nice—tea,” stated Minty. “Drinks?”

  “Pink Zinfandel, please.” Ciara sat down on another armchair, the ruffles on her blouse palpitating gent
ly. “Hello, Jean. Hello—Rebecca, isn’t it? We met at the Granite Cross a few nights since. Your husband was piping.”

  Rebecca nodded, smiled, and said nothing about Ciara’s past affiliations.

  “Keith?” asked Minty. “Juice? Malvern water? Ah, wine?”

  “I’m fine with water.” Keith’s colorless eyes followed her as she once again trekked across to the dining room. In a bigger house, Jean thought, Minty would have had buttons and bells to summon the servants. But then, this way she could keep a close eye on the peons at their work.

  The clock clunked, whirred, and played the melody of the Westminster chimes, followed by one emphatic dong. Now that Jean wasn’t trying to dredge it up, the memory appeared. She’d heard that same clock strike yesterday, in the background when Keith called her at the office. That was no mystery, with Ciara staying with the Rutherfords. She’d probably urged him to set up his own interview, so that her project would get even more column inches.

  Ciara’s blue eyes were fixed on her. Something moved in their—shallows, Jean thought waspishly. Condemnation, perhaps. Or simple curiosity. She returned the stare. Yes? No? Maybe?

  Ciara tossed her head, and again her earrings, cascades of tiny gold stars, tinkled behind the red curls. “Dreadful, isn’t it? The inscription and all. And there’s me, rewriting my lecture in mid-stream. Alasdair . . . Well, Alasdair’s dealing with it, I’m sure.”

  “He’s dealing with it,” Jean said, even as the echo of his “Damn and blast!” ran through her body like an aftershock.

  Minty returned, Zoe at her heels with the tray. Zoe served while Minty pulled forward a smaller chair and seated herself, her hands with their plain gold wedding band folded tightly in her lap. “Bad news indeed about the inscription. Good job we have the bits that we do. The one with the ic and j, the one with the ac, and three others from the left edge, all in the museum.”