Of Books and Bagpipes

by Paige Shelton

“I’m sorry,” I said to Edwin.

  “For what?”

  “So many things,” I said.

  “Och, lass, maybe I’m too tired, but I’m not angry at you in the least.” He shook his head and then continued, “In fact you might be the most level-headed one among us. I’m glad tae have ye here, and I’m the one who is sorry. I thought I could take care of things without more pain tae Fiona, or anyone else, for that matter. I should have known better.”

  “I’m glad to be here.”

  “Now, you should be resting. Take the day off. Tom,” Edwin said as Tom rejoined us, “take her home, feed her soup, and make sure she rests.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “I’m in charge of the soup,” Aggie added.

  “I’m in charge of driving,” Elias said. “Come with me and I’ll deliver Tom wherever he needs tae go later.”

  “Och, it’s a late one,” Rosie said.

  “We’ll all take the day off,” Edwin said. “Rosie, I’ll see you home.”

  Hamlet smiled. “I’ll come in later. I only need a couple hours’ rest and I’ll be good tae go.”

  “Thank you, Hamlet,” Edwin said.

  We dispersed into the cold night air. Our shared sense of relief was palpable. The truth was in the proper hands of the authorities. It was not up to us anymore to keep big and harmful secrets, and getting them out in the open felt good and right.

  It was only later that I remembered that even though we felt like we’d done our part, not one of us seemed to give much thought to the fact that a killer was still on the loose and that killer might have been the person who’d hurt Grizel and me. Maybe something worse could have happened. Maybe something worse could happen to any of us.

  If the characters in the books on the shop’s overstuffed shelves were trying to tell me something else, perhaps send me a warning, I didn’t hear it.

  Silence from the bookish voices, along with some soup, was just the right way to end the night.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  “Sore. I think that’s my word for the day,” I said as I walked into the kitchen.

  “I’m sure,” Tom said. He poured me a cup of coffee and joined me at the table. “There is breakfast food tae feed an army keeping warm in the cooker and cold in the fridge, depending.”

  “Aggie?”

  “And Elias,” Tom said with a smile over the rim of his mug. “He’s vacillating between being angry at you and wanting tae dote over you.”

  I cringed. “I didn’t even think I was being stupid.”

  “You weren’t. Something happened, it wasn’t good, but it could have been a lot worse. You’re all right.”

  “Yeah.” I sipped a big gulp of guilt along with the coffee. I wouldn’t say Tom was angry with me, but he was upset. He was trying to hide it but I could hear it in his voice. I put my hand over his as he held his own mug. “Sorry.”

  He twined his fingers with mine and smiled again. “Ye have a shiner,” he said a beat later.

  “I know. It didn’t appear until this morning. I don’t remember getting hit there, but everything was such a flurry. It’s not terrible. What’s black and white and red,” I pointed to my eye, my unharmed cheek, and then my messy bed hair, “all over?”

  Tom laughed. “Aye.”

  “What time do you have to go to work?” I asked.

  “Soon, but I don’t have tae stay all day. Is there anything you’d like tae do? You only slept a few hours. You should sleep more.”

  “I can’t sleep, and I can’t think of what I want to do.”

  Tom cocked his head. “Any chance you’d like tae go over what happened last night again? I know you told the police, and then you told all of us, but I wouldn’t mind hearing it again. Sometimes things come back with a rested mind.”

  I nodded, but before I could begin, my phone buzzed across the kitchen counter.

  “Rosie,” I said to Tom when I looked at it. “Hello?”

  “Delaney, lass, have ye heard?” Rosie asked.

  “I don’t think so. What’s up?”

  “Gordon Armstrong is missing, and … well, Edwin just rang and told me the news, but he also said the police are trying tae track down Clarissa. They cannae find her either. Edwin is with the police. He wanted me tae let ye know, and he wants ye tae be careful, be aware.”

  “Of course,” I said. “Where are you?”

  “At the shop. I couldnae sleep anyway. Ham’s here too, with Hector and myself.”

  “Thanks for calling. I’ll see you soon.” We ended the call and I turned to Tom. “Should we ask Elias if he’ll take us both to work?”

  “I think he’d like that.”

  * * *

  Elias dropped Tom off first, in front of his pub, and then drove the short distance back to the bookshop. Neither of them were happy I was going into work, but they didn’t argue too much. I told them I felt much, much better. They pretended to believe me.

  “Lass, ye’ll go nowhere without me, understood?” Elias said. “Not until this mess is cleared up.”

  “I promise.”

  “Not even tae the corner. I’ll come get ye and take ye.”

  “But it’s an easy bus trip anywhere.”

  “No; frankly, Aggie will have my hide if ye step one foot oot of that shop without me.”

  I smiled. “You have more to do with your day than just take care of me.”

  “I’ll keep close by. Ring me if ye need me.”

  “You can come in.”

  “No, I’ll just be in the area.”

  “Thanks, Elias.” I leaned over and kissed his cheek. I’d never done that before.

  “Get on with ye, lass,” he said as he tried to hide a smile.

  I squeezed his arm once gently before I got out.

  If Rosie and Hamlet had wanted to spend time being worried about anything, they’d been properly diverted.

  Ellen, the young woman who’d come in earlier to pick up the Gaelic book for her employer, stood on the edge of the crowd gathered around the front desk. I assumed the people with her were the family she worked for.

  There was such a murmur of conversation that no one heard the bell jingle as I came through. My eyes landed on Ellen and I remembered that something from her last visit had given me pause, perhaps a moment of question. What had it been? Her cap?

  “Delaney, hello,” Hamlet said as he came around the group to meet me at the door. He glanced back at the group. He pointed to his own eye and silently mouthed the words you okay? to me.

  I nodded.

  “Lordy be, what happened to you?” a middle-aged and pretty woman asked.

  “I’m fine, but I was in a bit of an accident last night. I hope I don’t look too scary.” I tried a smile.

  “Not at all.” The woman approached and put her hands on my arms, and bored her concerned eyes into mine. She was very tall and the maneuver made me uncomfortable but I tried not to show it. “Ice. I think you should be icing that. Nolan, shouldn’t she be icing this?”

  Before my eyes landed on Nolan, they skimmed over Ellen’s eyes. She was more uncomfortable than I was and she sent me an apologetic frown.

  “Well, dear, I’m sure she’s seen a doctor,” Nolan said. He was a tall, round man with an almost completely bald head and heavy glasses that hung on the tip of his nose. There was something appealing about him, approachable maybe.

  I nodded at the woman.

  She didn’t care. “Nolan’s a doctor. He’ll have a closer look at that if you want.”

  “I’m doing much better. I iced it a little and took some ibuprofen,” I lied.

  “There, you see,” Nolan said with a pleasant and welcoming smile. I bet he had a great bedside manner.

  “All right.”

  She let go of my arms and propelled a hand in my direction.

  “Gretchen Kramer. Ellen said Delaney was the one to help her with Nolan’s book. That you?”

  “It is.” I shook her hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you all.”


  There were also two children, both of them under five, but I wasn’t good at guessing any closer than that. They each held one of Ellen’s hands; the little girl kept wide eyes on Hector on the edge of the desk and the little boy looked around at everything else.

  “And this shop,” Gretchen continued. “Ellen said it was as storybook charming as any place we’d ever been into. She was so right. You’re from the States, she also said.”

  “I am. Kansas.”

  “Oh, how I love Kansas. It’s a beautiful state.” Gretchen smiled politely.

  “Thank you,” I said. I looked at Nolan. “Do you read or speak Gaelic?”

  He laughed. “I do a little bit, but it’ll take me a year or two to read a chapter in that book. I just wanted it for my collection. We were coming to Edinburgh, and it seemed perfect.”

  “I’m glad you came back in,” I said to Ellen.

  “Me too,” she said as she pulled her attention up from the little boy.

  I stared at her. I didn’t mean to and I didn’t know why I did. I caught myself before the moment went on too long.

  “I was just going to offer our visitors some coffee,” Rosie said.

  “Oh, no, we couldn’t,” Nolan said. “Just wanted to thank Delaney and the young man Hamlet here, and see the shop. Thanks for your hospitality though.”

  “We have so much more to do,” Gretchen said. “But thank you anyway.”

  “Verra weel.” Rosie smiled. If she hadn’t had so much on her mind, the Kramer family wouldn’t have gotten away so easily. Rosie would have insisted on coffee and conversation. In fact, the Kramers would be seated and drinking coffee before they even realized they’d been invited.

  The kids followed their parents through the front door as Ellen hung back.

  “Thank you,” she said to Rosie. She smiled shyly at Hamlet before she joined me by the door.

  “You were right,” she said quietly. “He looks just like a Hamlet.”

  I saw the blush on her cheeks. She was going back to Florida, and Hamlet wasn’t leaving Scotland anytime soon. As selfish as it was, I couldn’t help but be glad that my visit to Scotland was a little longer than just a few days.

  “He does.” I smiled.

  She sent one more shy smile back his direction. He waved and smiled too. He didn’t do it on purpose but he had such a classic look about him that women, even some men, of all ages couldn’t help but look his direction. He never wearied from offering a friendly smile, even if he accidentally melted a few hearts along the way.

  I heard Ellen’s slight sigh before she turned and left the store.

  As she hurried to catch up to the rest of the family, I watched her closely and wondered what in the world it was about her that made me want to stare at her, figure out the question to whatever answer she so clearly must be.

  “It’s not clear to me,” I muttered.

  The books weren’t talking either, at least not right away. As Ellen took the boy’s hand again and then tousled his hair with her free hand, the words finally came.

  Yes, to pay a fine for a periwig, and recover the lost hair of another man.

  It was Dromio of Syracuse from Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors. He was speaking with another character about how some men can’t avoid becoming bald. The characters conclude that some men have more hair than intelligence.

  I had no idea what Dromio was trying to tell me, unless to notice that Mr. Kramer was bald and that didn’t make any sense. Had it just been all the recent Hamlet/Shakespeare talk that had prompted him to speak, not my subconscious working to find the answer?

  “Delaney.” Hamlet, the one I worked with, had stepped up next to me. “You okay?”

  I blinked. “Yes, actually, I’m great. I feel much better and I’m ready to get to work or help Edwin. What does he need?”

  The four of us conferred; Hector took his role seriously and offered comfort to each of us, somehow sensing when one of us experienced an upward tick of anxiety. He moved from lap to lap and calmed us as best he could as Rosie told us that Edwin had been awakened at about three o’clock and taken into the station. She said that he hadn’t been arrested, but the police didn’t seem to want to give him an option as to whether or not to go with them. He had been asked to stay there.

  “They found the room where Gordon Armstrong was staying but it’s been cleared oot, no sign of the man t’all. Then, because yer police friend is so good at his job meebe, they went tae check on some other folks mentioned. Fiona Armstrong was fine and I dinnae ken if they told her aboot Gordon, but Clarissa was not home, which was odd,” Rosie said.

  “Was her cousin home?” I asked.

  “I dinnae ken anything aboot her cousin so I dinnae think tae ask.”

  I nodded. I didn’t have their phone number, but Elias had driven me to Clarissa’s house once before. That trip hadn’t gone well, but I wondered if he’d be interested in trying again. I wasn’t even sure why I wanted to go, except that it was something to do. If I found Clarissa, would I tell her about Gordon Armstrong being alive or just that she needed to let the police know she was okay? I didn’t want to risk causing her another hospital visit.

  “Rosie, I need to ask you something,” I said.

  She nodded and leaned forward so Hector could lick her cheek. “Aye?”

  “I know you remember something different about what you were told regarding the night of the boating accident. A dirk, right?”

  “Oh, aye, there was something else.” She sat up straight, disappointing Hector. He trotted across the desk to Hamlet, who lifted the dog to his lap.

  “What?”

  “Edwin told me the man had accidentally been stabbed with the dirk.”

  “At least, that’s what you remember?” I said.

  “Aye, but I’m sure my memory isnae off. I was too tired last night when he took me home tae remember tae ask why he wanted me tae lie, but I will ask him next time I see him. He’ll tell me.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Aye. It was a horrible story and stuck with me.”

  “And it was Clarissa’s dirk?”

  Rosie nodded, then paused. “I’m not sure he told me whose dirk it was.”

  “It’s not in the police record that way,” I said. “However, Tom’s father might have found some old articles to corroborate what you’re saying.”

  Hamlet shrugged. “Maybe Edwin or his family paid off the police.”

  I blinked and looked at Hamlet, and so did Rosie, but not with as much surprise as I had done.

  “What?” I said.

  “It could have happened,” Hamlet said.

  I looked at Rosie. She lifted her eyebrows and shrugged too.

  “Do you think that’s a possibility?” I said to her. She leveled her gaze at me. “Did they do that other times?”

  “Delaney, it sounds like something terrible on the surface, of course, but remember Edwin’s sister and all her problems? If the family didnae have a relationship with the police, they might not have managed tae keep her oot of jail as much as they did.”

  Sometimes I was too naive for my own good.

  “I wonder if Inspector Winters can look into this?” I said.

  “I doubt it,” Hamlet said. “We’ll have to get the truth from Edwin himself.”

  “Or Clarissa,” I said.

  “If she’s okay, the poor dear,” Rosie said.

  Frustration, real and ripe, worked its way through my gut. We’d thought we’d told the police the truth. Hopefully, Edwin was telling them the rest of it.

  I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  “Delaney?” Rosie said.

  My eyes snapped back up to her. “Do you think what happened all those years ago on the boat has anything to do with Billy Armstrong’s murder?”

  “I dinnae ken really, but I wouldnae be surprised. Edwin will do the right thing, Delaney. He always does,” she said.

  I looked at Hamlet.

  “I don’t hav
e any idea. We’ll talk to Edwin when he gets back,” Hamlet said.

  “Right. Well, actually.” I pulled out my mobile and punched a button.

  “I’ll be out front in a minute,” Elias said as he answered.

  “Thanks.”

  I disconnected the call.

  “You two okay here without me?” I said.

  “Absolutely,” Hamlet said. “But…”

  “If ye stay right by Elias’s side, lass, then I’m okay with it. Dinnae even think about letting him oot of yer sight.”

  “I won’t, I promise,” I said as I stood.

  From Hamlet’s lap, Hector barked. He was a dog of few words, so it was always surprising to hear his ferocity.

  I crouched and scratched his ears.

  “I promise,” I said.

  He panted agreeably.

  Elias was true to his word and was outside by the time I was there.

  “Where’re we going, lass?”

  “The university library, please.”

  “Awright. Tell me aboot Edwin on the way,” he said as he pulled out into traffic.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  “I found a few other pictures and articles that might be of interest, but I couldnae find anything else aboot the man who was killed on the boat,” Artair said as he closed the art room door. “I rang a friend at The Scotsman and he couldae find anything else either, but he said he’d look deeper.”

  “Nothing more that mentions a stabbing, accident or not?” I said.

  “Nothing. Not that stabbing, at least. I did find another article about the accidental stabbing of the William Wallace reenactor,” Artair said as he made his way toward the card table.

  I’d all but forgotten about the conspiracy angle. I switched my mind’s gears as Elias and I followed Artair and watched as he sorted through stacks that weren’t there the last time I was.

  “Do ye really think the truth aboot what happened back then has something tae do with Billy Armstrong’s murder?” Artair asked.

  “Honestly, I have no idea,” I said.

  “Here it is,” Artair said as he handed me a copy of an article with a picture: “William Wallace Reenactor Accidentally Killed by a Dirk.” The article outlined the circumstances behind the accidental dirk stabbing of Gilroy Wyly. I skimmed the tragic story, and then zeroed in on the picture.