“The torch in the well. Her fingerprints were on it. Her hair was on Angus’s cap. There was well-scum on that pink jacket of hers. The mud on Keith’s car matches that from the layby.”
“That still doesn’t mean either Ciara or Keith killed him. They were having their differences, but . . .” Alasdair didn’t know the full wretched excess of Ciara’s plans, did he?
His hard, uncompromising eyes focused beyond Jean, beyond the pub, beyond the town. “I told Gary he was moving too fast. She’d never have thought to leave the area. But no, she had means, she had opportunity. He’s thinking he can intimidate her into revealing a motive. Good luck to him. Arguing with Ciara’s like punching a marshmallow. You’ll just knacker yourself, and she’ll never feel a thing.”
And here I am, Jean thought, teaching myself to fight back. She removed her hand from his shoulder, not quite worried that he hadn’t shaken her away, not quite grateful. “Did she do it?”
That he hesitated before answering told her at least part of what she wanted to know. At last he said, “No. She didn’t do it. She’s not got it in her. Nor has she a motive, not that I can see.”
“What is the killer’s motive, then?”
“Something doing with Ferniebank, has to be. There’s always a reason for murder, if only in the killer’s own mind.” The harsh lines of his eyebrows and lips eased, if microscopically. “Delaney’s left no more than a skeleton crew at Ferniebank, if you’ll pardon the expression, and yet it’s Ferniebank that’s the point of the exercise. Let’s get on with it.”
Alasdair started off down the street so fast, Jean had to almost run to keep up. Get on with what? she wondered. And answered, the job. Free-lance knight errantry. Among all the other issues, there was now a maiden—er, a matron in distress.
He opened the car door for Jean, climbed in, and started the engine. In edgy but not uncompanionable silence, he drove up the High Street and out of town.
A few brushstrokes of purple-pink on the hills betrayed the presence of late foxglove blooms. The leaves would still be there, though, even if the flowers had passed. You could dry the leaves, you could soak them, you could add a pinch here and a dram there. . . .
The church stood deserted, no sexton digging another grave beside the two that still gaped. The Glebe lay still and silent. Behind it hunkered the cooking school, with all its dishes and implements and little bottles of spice. “It’s easy enough to put poison into someone’s food,” Jean said. “And they’re all working with food.”
“Minty’s school, the pub, Roddy’s dairy, Valerie and her bakery,” said Alasdair. “Her uncle and his shop, come to that.”
“Did you hear Zoe telling Noel that Valerie took off right after the police did?”
“Aye, I did that.”
“Didn’t she ask you yesterday whether there was going to be any more digging at Ferniebank before Ciara took over?”
“A question that now seems a bit more than idle curiosity. I’ll have one of the Ferniebank constables bring her in—like as not they’re still thinking I’m persona grata.”
“Delaney . . .”
“Bugger Delaney.” Alasdair’s jaw was set in concrete, his hands gripped the wheel as though it was Delaney’s throat, and yet his breathing had slowed to its normal watchful pattern. He wasn’t speeding or cutting corners. The drive, Jean hypothesized, was a contemplative exercise.
She said, “Ciara’s taken courses at Minty’s school. She’s been staying at the Glebe all month. It would be easy enough to get into the kitchens, prepare the poison, sneak it into Angus’s food. Especially since she planned the dinner to begin with. Sorry.”
“We’re obliged to consider all the possibilities.”
“Then don’t you have to consider the spouse? Would Minty have a motive to kill her husband? I sure wouldn’t want to get on her bad side. How many years has she been dissing Valerie, do you think?”
“I’m wondering why Val got up her nose to begin with.”
“For refusing to suck up to her, maybe? Noel was saying something about those who tug their forelocks for a living, and that’s him and his family and Logan—well, Roddy and Zoe aren’t exactly with the program. Maybe one of the peasants got fed up and poisoned Angus, although you’d think Minty would be the target. I mean, why go for the adjutant when you can get the general?”
“Maybe Minty was the target. That’s the disadvantage of poison, getting it into your intended victim. But then, the advantage of poison is that it gives you a grand alibi. Most poisoners are only caught when they do it again and then again.”
“You suspected Wallace was poisoned—heavens, you suspected Helen was poisoned—but no one investigated until Angus went down.”
“Exactly. Once someone solves a problem by, say, embezzling, they’ll solve the next problem the same way, not stopping when they’re ahead. Ciara’s always overdoing, and yet . . .”
There was Ferniebank Farm, showing no signs of life, human, canine, or bovine. Roddy, too, had a date with Delaney. And there were probably detectives drying dishes in the pub kitchen, all the better to hurl questions at a passing Brimberry. “The killer was trying to solve the problem of Ferniebank. But what problem is that? Wallace wasn’t trying to stop the sale or anything. He told you himself he was happy about it. And it’s too late for Angus to renege on the sale or retract the planning permission. Ciara was saying they could all vanish and the conference center would go through as planned, it’s all set.”
“Is it now?” Alasdair stopped in front of the closed gates of the castle. The tarpaulin covering the gate twitched and P.C. Freeman peered through the iron bars. But no, the media mob hadn’t hared back this way. Yet.
With its usual creak, the gate swung open. Alasdair maneuvered the car into the courtyard, brought it to a halt beneath the eaves of the trees, and slammed the door behind him so emphatically that crows squawked and a detective glanced out of the incident room.
Freeman started to push the gate shut. In two economical gestures, Alasdair stopped him and summoned a second constable from the front steps of the castle. “. . . wee house, Gillyflower Cottage . . .” That’s right, he’d been there when Valerie gave her address to Delaney the first time around.
Jean waited beside the car, looking around as curiously as though she’d never seen Ferniebank before. The castle hid its secrets behind the gray precipice of its facade. The chapel hid its secrets behind the whispering leaves of the trees. Maybe Roddy was right, and the place should be torn down and sold for stone. And the grounds sown with salt, for good measure. Would Isabel’s ghost still run, then, over land ruined not by nature but the passions of man?
Freeman climbed into his patrol car, drove through the gate, and headed south. The other constable took over his post at the gate. With a mini-smile of satisfaction, Alasdair returned to Jean. “All right then. What else was Ciara saying?”
Jean groaned, but steeled herself to the task. By the time he unlocked the door of the flat and waved her inside, she’d not so much led him through Ciara’s maze, with its illogical branches and dead ends, as gotten him lost with her.
He stood in the doorway, less stunned, Jean estimated, than resigned. Then he ran his hand through his hair and down the back of his neck, as though wiping away cobwebs, and shut the door. “The glass, Mary’s letter, the harp, Gerald’s papers and all—where’s your chain of custody? Where’s your provenance? And Edward Tempest sounds to be the hero of a bodice-ripper romance.”
“A family of Catholics named Tempest lived in Yorkshire—they probably were involved in the 1569 rebellion, although whether there was an Edward here . . . ” Jean shrugged. “Ciara’s version of the occult fantasies that are going around is barely ten percent original, if that much. There are Sinclairs pontificating at this very moment about their loyalty to the Stuart cause and secret Catholicism and the Holy Grail. Even the sculptures being musical notes—I’ve heard something similar about Rosslyn. Religion as puzzle rather than as dogma
is quite the fad these days. As for historical veracity—who cares?”
“Ciara’s share is that the Scottish monarchs conspired with the Templars to send the Magdalen’s relics to America, is that it?”
“I’m not even sure that’s original. It’s the Ferniebank angle that’s new. And there’s no telling how much of that is Wallace’s, let alone Gerald’s. Minty was right, this sort of thing takes on a life of its own.”
“And Ciara’s sprung this on one and all in just the last two days?”
“Apparently so,” Jean said. “What I’m really wondering is why one more book on all of this stuff got such a big advance from a publisher. I mean, okay, Ciara’s got writing credentials, but she’d have to have something special . . .”
Alasdair’s eyes were taking on the thousand-yard stare of the combat veteran, although his version was closer to a thousand-year stare.
“Well,” Jean concluded, “she’s either a superb charlatan, a nut case, or a businesswoman giving the customers what they want.”
“All three, I reckon, though she’s not aware of the first.”
“And there I was talking to Miranda just the other day about marketing belief systems. Myth as . . . Well, there’s nothing wrong with myth per se.”
“The danger comes in hiding from the fact that they’re myths.” Having issued his manifesto, Alasdair strode on down the hall toward the bedroom.
Amen to that, Jean thought, and then, with a blink and a breath, noticed how dark and dreary the flat seemed after the bright sunlight and soft breezes outside. She could still smell the soup they’d reheated for lunch. And Dougie had made an aromatic deposit in his litter box, which was as good an editorial comment as any on the present situation.
She dumped her bag and started opening windows, so that the fresh air, the rustle of the trees, and the rush of the river filtered inside. She cleaned the litter box and located the culprit, who was asleep in the center of the bed with his tail draped over his nose like a furry gas mask.
Alasdair had changed into jeans and a T-shirt reading “Real Men Wear Kilts.” “I’m for having a wee keek at Wallace’s boxes. I reckon Ciara’s got his copies of Gerald’s papers, and everyone else in the area’s had time to pick them over, but still, there might be something interesting there.”
And it’s something to do, Jean concluded. No question of stopping for a rest, even though his face was showing the strain, his mouth stretched taut as a twisted rope. “Be right with you,” she told him, and didn’t so much change her clothes as gird her loins with denim and a Great Scot T-shirt. What she told herself was that something had to give soon. Just as long as it wasn’t Alasdair.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Jean stepped out of the flat to find Alasdair standing with Freeman while the other constable pushed the gate shut yet again. “. . . no car there,” the young man was saying, his freckles sliding downward in dismay. “I chapped at the door and shouted. I’m thinking the lad was playing silly beggars, going from window to window, though it could have been the breeze blowing the curtains.”
“It was the lad,” said Alasdair, “hiding out whilst his mum chases off to Kelso.”
“Shall I go back?”
“No, we’ve got no warrant to flush him out. Thank you just the same. Have yourself a cuppa.”
“Thank you, sir.” Freeman strolled over to the incident room.
“I hope Val chased after Ciara,” said Jean, “and didn’t bug out permanently.”
“If Val did a bunk, she’d take Derek,” Alasdair said. “She left him at the cottage so he’d not go talking to any more detectives is all.”
“If we could get him away from Valerie, or even Zoe . . . Maybe we can leave that window in the back of the castle open and lure him here. You know, third time’s the charm.”
A small, concentrated flame flared in Alasdair’s eye. “That’s bordering on entrapment.”
“I was joking,” she told him.
“I’m not joking. Not a bit of it. Here, lock the flat, please, and open the window in the Laigh Hall.” Handing her the keys, Alasdair strode over to the shop, hoisted the wooden pallet, and carried it around the side of the castle whence it came.
Okay. Jean locked the flat, tucked the keys into her pocket, and marched herself into the castle.
Even with the light bulb burning in the Laigh Hall, shadows hung like bats in the vaults of the ceiling and the corners were duskily indistinct. The south-facing windows admitted some daylight but not what Jean would call illumination, and the air was dense with mildew, rot, and silence. The trap door to the pit prison was closed. Giving it a wide berth, she padded across the flagstones to the left-hand window and with a heave and a squeal raised the probably Victorian sash.
Below, Alasdair angled the pallet against the side of the building. Grasping the drain pipe, he stepped up on the wooden rack as though it was a ladder. His left hand fumbled for and found the weathered stone windowsill. Jean set her hand on his. “You could climb in yourself.”
“Only if something was chasing me. Derek’s no taller than me but a good deal more limber—he’ll get in, I reckon. If he wants to.” With a quick squeeze of her hand, he let himself drop down to the ground and headed back around the building.
Yeah, Jean repeated silently. And if he wants to, then what? Telling herself she could open a gallery at the British Museum with her collection of misgivings, she turned back to the room.
The scabrous paneling, the old door, the dark yawn of the old fireplace still held some of their derelict charm, some of their romance, the same way a cow’s skull was romantic, more in symbol than in reality. She tried to imagine Gerald setting up housekeeping here, or more likely in the rooms above, with oil lamps and water basins and a woman from the village, a Brimberry or a Trotter, maybe, to “do”—to cook and clean—for him. The marble Georgian fireplace surround that was now at Glebe House would have moderated the gloom, as would furniture and carpets.
Did Gerald sit at his desk writing about Isabel even as her ghost played the harp? Did her slippers waft over the ancient flooring, noiselessly, until her pale form leaned over his shoulder? No. Ghosts couldn’t interact with the living, although at times they seemed to respond to the presence of flesh, blood, and voice.
Cautiously Jean peeled back a corner of her extra sense, but did not pick up one paranormal vibe. Forward momentum, then. She walked over to the objects in the center of the floor. Fishing rods and accessories, tools, gardening equipment, the telescope. A case holding an old electric typewriter. And six cardboard boxes ranged in a semi-circle, flaps open. She settled herself onto the floor before them, the stone so cold it sent a shudder up her spine, and adjusted her position so the door of the dungeon was in her line of sight.
Two boxes held clothing while a third held domestic odds and ends. Jean folded a well-worn wool sweater, closed an empty leather case intended for tie tacks and cufflinks, and wiped her fingers clean of the toothpaste oozing from a squashed tube. Anything valuable—or at least, conventionally valuable—had already been carried away by Minty’s manicured hands.
Exhuming the cast-off shell of Wallace’s body seemed less of a sacrilege than going through his intimate belongings, not just his toothpaste, but the books and papers in the other three boxes.
A waver in the light in the entrance chamber, and soft footsteps, and Alasdair walked into the room saying, “I’ve told Freeman and the others that we’ve set a trap.”
“What if Derek suspects it’s a trap?”
“Not everyone’s as devious as we are, Jean.”
She hoped Alasdair’s thin smile indicated she was the grit that provided traction in his well-oiled mental machinery. Grit, helpmeet, comic relief. She could play those as well as significant other and lover. “So Delaney didn’t find anything here?”
“He’s saying he found nothing. Of course, he didn’t know what he was looking for. Nor do we, come to that.” Alasdair knelt down beside her and helped her stack
the books neatly on the floor. “Well, well, well. I’ll not be fainting in amazement at those.”
“Ancient mysteries, secret landscapes, hidden bloodlines, and underground history books going back to Watkins’ Old Straight Track. The Templars. The Shroud. The Passover Plot.”
“You’ve got a few of these yourself.” Alasdair’s forefinger nudged a book whose cover featured the word “conspiracy” in blood-red letters.
“These are the books that were on that bottom shelf in the flat, the one that’s empty now. Minty was embarrassed to leave them out, bestseller or no bestseller.” Jean held a dog-eared copy of the novel Miranda kept mis-naming beside her head, copying the cryptic smile of the Mona Lisa on its cover.
“Was Wallace reading this sort of thing B.C., before Ciara?”
“Oh yeah, some of these books date back to well before the nineties. See?” Jean picked up the conspiracy book and opened it to the flyleaf, which was stamped, “W. Rutherford, 12 Bruce Terrace, Kelso.” “Throw Gerald’s stuff into the mix, and I bet Hugh’s right, it was Wallace who pressed Angus and Minty to fix up Ferniebank. And that produced Ciara, drawn like a bee to honey.”
“Bees are attracted to foxgloves as well.”
She glanced sharply at him, but his face was solemn, revealing nothing but interest in a spiral-bound book of drawing paper. Each page was filled with sketches of the castle and the chapel. They were amateurish, yes, labored rather than fluid, and yet they were more than Minty’s “adequate.”
Jean picked up a large, flat book on the history of the clarsach. “The Harp Key. This is straight history and musicology . . . Oh, cool.” The flyleaf of the book held another sketch of the excavation, this one of a woman sitting on the edge of a narrow trench, a trowel in one hand, a small peaked chest on her lap. Jean made out Valerie’s fox-like features, then studied the chest. “That’s in the museum, isn’t it? A medieval money-box.”
“I’m thinking the same box is in the sketch Logan pinched, only there it’s Angus holding it. Perhaps. I only saw the man for a moment, and didn’t know who he was.”
The Burning Glass Page 28
