Dennis appeared beside Adele, his face a question mark. Two constables looked through a gap in the perimeter wall. Michael reached into the darkness. His features stiffened in alarm. For a moment Rebecca thought something really had seized him. Then alarm moderated to disgust, and he pulled out the sodden paper wrappings of a takeaway fish and chips meal. A long black slug clung to one piece. “Canna blame the moggies for wantin’ this,” he said, and threw the garbage down.
“I appreciate someone not littering,” said Rebecca, trying not to be too disappointed. “But shoving it under a gravestone… .”
Michael was staring at his hand. Red wax particles were mingled with the greasy dirt on his palm. He threw himself down on his stomach so forcefully that water squished around his chest, and he pressed his face to the cavity. “I need a torch,” he said.
Rebecca spun toward the constables at the wall, only to discover they were standing right behind her. One was already proffering a flashlight. As Michael shone it into the hole, Dennis came around the corner of the church leading a stampede. Jerry waved his trowel like a cheerleader’s pompom. Tony, with a grin not unlike that of the carved skull spreading from ear to ear, loped along with his video camera on his shoulder. Hilary, Mark and Colin jostled each other for the lead, while Elaine brought up the rear with a here-we-go-again expression curling her features.
The hurrying steps must have sounded like a herd of buffalo. Michael looked up, bellowed, “Watch your step!” and reached again into the hole.
The constables started forward with crowd-containment gestures. Mackenzie, Devlin, and Grant Johnston spurted through the gateway and across the grass. The reporters were at their heels.
“Eureka!” Michael exclaimed, and sat up holding a dirty crumple of plastic that had once been white. Rebecca laughed. Mud and grass particles plastered his jeans, his shirt and jacket, even his face. His grin was a ray of sunlight glancing through cloud.
“Let me have it,” said Jerry.
“No,” Michael returned, “I get first look.”
Jerry backed off; apparently there wasn’t enough of an encroachment on his territory to make a scene. Tony closed in, looking like a giant insect with the whirring camera held before his face. A pair of creased trousers at Rebecca’s shoulder was Mackenzie; the flipping notebook pages no doubt belonged to Devlin—unless they were from Colin’s little notepad.
Michael laid the tangle on the slab of stone and smoothed it out. “Plastic garbage bag secured with a wire strip,” he said, in his best museum-guide diction.
“We have ones just like that in the dustbins at the hotel,” said Nora’s voice. Rebecca glanced up—the crowd now included both Bairds, Winnie Johnston and Bridget. The reporters were photographing not only the find but Laurence’s kilt fluttering photogenically in the wind.
“One corner torn,” Michael went on. “Perhaps when the bag was shoved beneath the stone. Perhaps by the cats. I don’t think we’ll be able to tell whether the takeaway wrappers were hidden at the same time.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” said Devlin. He gestured. One of the policewomen pulled a clear plastic bag from her pocket and, using only her fingertips, stowed away and labeled the greasy, crumb-encrusted papers and their attendant slug.
Michael wiped his dirty hands on his dirty jeans and undid the twist-tie. He handed it up to the policewoman, took a deep breath, and peered into the bag. He excavated. The only sounds were of plastic rustling, the whirrs and clicks of assorted cameras, and the sighing branches of the yew tree.
“It’s the warrant, right enough!” Michael exclaimed. “Just a bit damp and gnawed at one end.” He tenderly drew the heavy parchment from its cocoon of plastic. The ink was faded by time but smeared only in the one corner. The seals clung like stubborn multicolored jellyfish to the lower edge.
Rebecca heaved a sigh of relief. “Boy, it could have been ruined out here in the rain. At least the thief wrapped it up.”
“They knew how to make documents back then,” Jerry said. “A piece of today’s newsprint would have disintegrated in five minutes.”
“I should have donated it to the Museum,” moaned Laurence.
“Why,” Mackenzie asked, “did the thief leave it here? You’d think he—she—would want to take better care of his investment.”
Rebecca looked up and met the dark, sober eyes gazing down. What do you want to bet, she replied silently, it’s because whoever stole it and hid it is working here. Because the cottage is too small, or the hotel could be searched, or… . Mackenzie nodded in silent agreement.
“Were the coins here, too?” asked Dennis.
“What coins?” demanded several voices from the rank and file. “Those found with the murder victim?”
Devlin shot Dennis an irritated look. Lower lip protruding, Dennis stepped back. Hilary smiled compassionately at him.
Rebecca’s knees were wet and cold. She and Michael stood and tried to brush themselves off. The grass particles clung like tiny green leeches. “The coins might have been here,” she said under her breath to Mackenzie.
“Then why were they removed the night Sheila was killed?” he returned.
“To compare Kerr’s coin with the other one?” she guessed.
Michael stopped, half-stooped, and looked up sharply. “Is that it? Did someone find a new—old—one but wisna sure if it was genuine?”
“Well now,” said Mackenzie. “A wee bit of buried treasure, eh?”
“What?” asked Jerry, leaning forward to hear.
Devlin snapped his notebook shut and smiled blandly. Jerry rolled his eyes, sat down on the grave slab, and picked up the parchment. Michael said to him, “Have you no respect for the dead?” With an aggravated snort Jerry slid off into the grass and continued his inspection.
No one respected the dead like archeologists did, Rebecca told herself. No one committed more indignities on the dead than archeologists, with the possible exception of police pathologists.
At Mackenzie’s gesture Devlin set off at a run toward the Craft Centre and the temporary lab in the back room. Two constables began to cordon off the area. With miscellaneous mutters, contented and otherwise, the cast and crew of the Rudesburn follies began to disperse, aided by Grant’s and Laurence’s diplomatic skills. Dennis helped Tony with his camera and his bag. Adele walked away, head bowed. Mark whispered something to Hilary and received a giggle. Hope springing eternal, he followed her through the transept door.
Jerry helped Elaine slip the parchment into a fresh plastic bag. “I suppose you’ll want to take this away, too,” he said to Mackenzie.
“Of course.”
“Then get it back PDQ. And the trial records. I have to get Rebecca onto a translation. Written records are useful to an excavation, you know.”
“I know,” Mackenzie said.
Rebecca turned away before either man could see her exasperated expression. She, Michael, and Colin left the cemetery to the formal inquiries of the police and strolled to the front of the church. “You lot attract buried treasures, do you?” Colin asked.
“Dun Iain’s treasures weren’t exactly buried,” Rebecca replied.
Colin went on, “As much as I’m enjoyin’ this, I need to be goin’. The Hydroelectric Board and my wife are both waitin’ for me. Not necessarily in that order, mind you.”
In the cloister, Dennis was gabbling excitedly to Mark, who laughed and replied in kind. Hilary waited, drawing board poised, seeming to consider the back of Mark’s head more interesting than any artifact he might produce. Rebecca smiled—not that she considered herself a matchmaker, but it didn’t hurt to do some cheering from the sidelines.
Adele was nowhere to be seen. Tony sat on the remains of the dormitory wall, holding several oddments of camera and staring off into space. No, Rebecca realized, he was staring at the roof of the church where several ravens sat, feathers fluffed against the chill, looking appropriately ominous. As she walked by she said, “A penny for your thoughts.”
He dropped a lens cap and laughed. “I was imagining what it’d be like to be a bird, looking down on hills and rivers and cities. To be able to fly, not to have to crawl on the ground.”
“To be free?” Rebecca asked. “I think we’d all like that.”
Shaking his head, he retrieved the cap and put it on a camera. “Some people have a better go at it than others.”
Rebecca murmured something and walked on. Spoken like a true child of poverty, she thought. Tony took skilled photographs, but perhaps of the team it had been Sheila who had the drive and the know-how to market them. Maybe he’d really cared for her.
She asked herself when it was she had heard Tony talking to Laurence about bird-watching. Laurence mentioned something about the owl in the belfry, and that Tony had been in Rudesburn earlier setting up the film deal… . She sped up, passing Colin and Michael on the driveway. “I’m going to talk to Laurence. Be right back.”
She found the cats adorning the lobby furniture like Oriental potentates resting on their laurels. The hotelkeeper was in his office contemplating a stack of receipts. She refused his offer of a chair, of hot tea and scones, of a glass of whiskey—tempting as that prospect was—and leaned against the door.
In answer to her question, he said, “Yes, Tony came round two weeks before the dig started. He could’ve seen the coin and the warrant. Anyone could—we never hid them. But he wasn’t here the day they were stolen. Why?”
“Michael and I saw a man walking around the priory that day. It could have been anyone.”
“Even if Tony did steal the coin and the warrant,” Laurence pointed out, “that doesn’t mean he murdered Sheila.”
“Immutable logic,” Rebecca admitted. “Sheila herself wasn’t here earlier, was she? Or Elaine or Jerry? I thought maybe one of them dropped the matchbook in the attic, but a matchbook isn’t much of a witness.”
“I didn’t see any of them, no. None of the students, either.”
“I came in with two of them myself,” Rebecca told him. “Laurence, I know there are rumors of ghosts in the priory—I believe the rumors myself, now… .”
The man hunched as though feeling that last straw settling on his back.
“… but have you ever heard any rumors of treasure? I thought maybe your—Francis Kerr’s—coin was stolen to compare it with another one. Maybe one someone found here.”
“The priory treasure was looted by the English. We know that.”
“How do we know that?”
“From Pringle’s chronicles. What’re you on about?”
“Mackenzie says that when we find out why Sheila was murdered, we’ll know who did it. I think her murder has something to do with the priory and with the dig. And lust for money has always been a great motive.”
“For all of us.” Laurence peered blearily at a receipt and tossed it aside as though it were written in code. “To tell you the truth, Rebecca, Nora and I regret ever having called in Plantagenet Productions. Sheila wasn’t at all what we had in mind. I think someone killed her because he couldn’t tolerate her cheek anymore.”
A twitch in his expression made Rebecca wonder how many midnight arguments the Bairds had had over Sheila’s big game hunting. Poor Laurence. “The dig needed to be filmed. Getting Sheila was just bad luck.” She straightened. “I’d better get back. Thanks, anyway.”
“Thank you,” said Laurence, summoning a smile. Well, he, at least, didn’t object to a little bit of free lance sleuthing.
Michael and Colin stood beside Colin’s Vauxhall admiring the figurine of Queen Elizabeth on her horse. “May I see?” Rebecca asked.
“It’s a fine one,” Colin assured her, handing it over. “But I think I’ll buy a wellie bear for Anjali, just in case.”
“Insurance,” stated Michael. Rebecca laughed.
Duly admired, the bright colors of the lead figure disappeared into a box and the box into the car. For a moment Colin looked at Michael and Rebecca as though considering some admonition along the lines of “Don’t shoot until you see the whites of their eyes.” But he confined himself to, “Well then, keep your peckers up. Come see us, the kettle’s always on.” He climbed into the car, reached into his pocket, and climbed halfway out again. “Here. Keep my wee notepad. Add your own clues.”
“As we make them up?” asked Rebecca. “Good bye. See you soon.”
The Vauxhall moved away. Michael waved. Rebecca’s smile tightened. Maybe she would see Colin again. Maybe not. As much as she liked him, he was a feature on Michael’s map, not hers. She shoved the notepad into her pocket and walked with Michael back down the driveway.
“Eh, Ms. Marple,” he asked jokingly, “what did you want wi’ Laurence?”
“I was wondering if anyone besides Tony—and you and Colin, of course—had been here before. He didn’t see anyone.”
“And the priory treasury was looted by the Sassenach, as per Pringle, right?”
“Right.”
“Ah well, that was a guid idea aboot the coin. And right inspiration aboot the warrant.”
She glanced at him, wondering if her lover’s paranoia had sharpened his voice. “If you’d seen the photo, you’d have noticed the same thing… .”
His face remained noncommittal. “The cats did it,” she concluded.
They walked the rest of the way in meditative silence and found everyone connected with the dig ranged along the edge of the trench like medical students watching a famous surgeon operate. Mark and Jerry were muddy but unbowed. Brown bones glistened in the dark, damp ground before them. Rebecca quelled an instinctive shudder and said, “Making progress, I see.”
“Basically we’ve got a crouched inhumation,” said Jerry. “Not horizontal, though. As Dennis put it so bluntly yesterday, whoever buried him crammed him into the hole headfirst.”
“Like the Duke of Clarence drowned in a barrel of wine,” Mark said brightly over his shoulder.
“Don’t get dramatic,” retorted Jerry. With a spoon he scraped a thin layer of mud off one of two kneecaps, one slumped slightly away from the other. Two femurs extended downward into the undisturbed soil, two tibiae now lay on the surface. Those black gummy strips adhering to the thin foot bones must be shoe leather.
“See all those rusty spots?” Mark asked, pointing with his own spoon. “Little bitty nails. Whoever this was, he was wearing expensive shoes.”
“A robbery victim?” asked Adele.
“Could be,” Jerry said. “Could be we’ll never know. Campbell, get down here and relieve me for awhile.”
The men changed places. Dennis held a light while Tony’s video camera whirred. Jerry looked unctuously into the lens and intoned, “One of the most interesting finds on any dig… .”
Rebecca was curious as to what the final film would say about the sudden disappearance of its original narrator—unless they cut Sheila out of the earlier portions, making her the face on the cutting-room floor as well as the face in the tomb.
Her shoulder blades tightened. She turned, bumped into Elaine, excused herself, and headed toward the first trench. Maybe she could uncover a cache of gold nobles while everyone else clustered around the bones. Jerry should have told Adele and Dennis, at least, to work on something else—Elaine could have held the lights now and filled in the records later on.
They’d found the warrant, at least. She rummaged among the array of spades lying on the grass of the cloister and chose one. Finding the warrant was an accomplishment. She and Michael could bask in the glow of discovery for a while. Maybe all they needed was a bit of a glow… .
She stood up and came eyeball-to-eyeball with Harry Devlin. “Miss Reid?” he asked, gesturing toward the church steps where Chief Inspector Mackenzie waited. “May we speak to you, please?”
Rats. No one expects the Scottish Inquisition. Her glow fluttered and dissipated into the cold wind.
1
Chapter Fifteen
Rebecca dropped her spade. The grass was so soft the implement
didn’t make a satisfying clang but instead produced a frustrating thud. The excavation wasn’t supposed to be like this. Nothing was supposed to be like this. She plodded over to the steps thinking, I could try one of Michael’s martyred expressions, but that wouldn’t help anything.
The chill of the stone step through her jeans made her flinch. She forced herself to sit still, hands folded. Once again the late afternoon shadows lay in rivulets of darkness across the lawn. “Yes, Inspector, what can I do for you?”
“Chief Inspector,” corrected Devlin from behind her back.
“Sorry. Chief Inspector.”
Mackenzie himself said, “That was a bit of luck, finding the warrant.”
At least Michael, annoyed or not, had attributed it to her cleverness. “The cats did the hard part.”
“The forensics team examined the cavity and found this.”
Mackenzie had the incredibly long fingers of an artist. In his palm lay a small curving red object, like a scale shed from a scarlet dragon. “A fake fingernail,” Rebecca said. “Sheila’s?”
“We found a packet of them in her room.”
“Sheila must have hidden the warrant there herself; I did see her eating some fish and chips the other day. Or maybe she got the coin or coins out herself. And someone killed her for them. That’s as good a motive as Laurence’s jealousy theory.”
Mackenzie’s fingers closed over the dragon scale. He handed it to Devlin and sat down on the steps beside Rebecca. “You’ve been discussing the case with Mr. Baird?”
Mackenzie might need all the help he could get. It depended on his definition of help. “Yes, I have.”
Devlin clucked disapprovingly, but Mackenzie tilted his head and smiled as though to say, the worm turns, eh? Remember there are birds about who eat worms. He said, “Mr. Baird was experiencing a bit of jealousy himself, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yes, I would.”
“If Miss Fitzgerald was killed for the coins, why didn’t the murderer take them away? Wouldn’t that indicate the coins are irrelevant?”
Dust to Dust Page 20
