“I’m computer-friendly,” protested Mark.
Hilary looked hopefully at Adele. “Do you think your soup is ready yet? I could sure use something hot.”
“Tea,” stated Michael. “Lots of tea.”
Adele’s soup was delicious. After Rebecca helped clear the table she went into the bedroom and found Michael reading her letter from Missouri.
He glanced up. His brows struggled to find equilibrium among the several expressions fighting for control of his face, finally settling on a wary slant which diluted his pleased grin into a polite smile. “Were you no goin’ to tell me?”
“Of course I was. This is the first time we’ve been alone since I got it.” Rebecca embraced him. Still he held the letter extended behind her back. “Should I wait until Mackenzie or Jerry say ‘Miss Reid’ and then correct them? How about a party?” His body in her arms was as cautious as his brows. Even when he put the letter in the envelope and hugged her back, his arms were stiff. She gabbled on, “I think I detect the fine hand of Dr. Nelson, pushing the committee to move a little faster, to decide while I was still here.”
“Congratulations,” Michael said. His arms tightened into a fierce embrace that made her ribs protest. His breath caressed her hair in a laugh.
The rue in that laugh made her look sharply into his face. “Michael?”
His eyes were glassy. He kissed her, missing her mouth by an inch. “Congratulations. I knew you could do it, Dr. Reid.” He walked not only out of the room, but also out of the house, shutting the door quietly behind him.
Rebecca stood staring after him. Never in her worst nightmares did she think he’d want her to fail. Never did she think she’d have to tiptoe around his ego. Never, that is, until Monday. Her rondel, he had said—he didn’t have to remind her of that mistake.
Her jaw hurt as she suppressed something between a scream and a moan. She stamped out into the hall, only to be captured by Dennis. “Look at this, Rebecca.”
Mark sat at the table, tapping on the computer keyboard, his eyes fixed on the screen. “Elaine made these entries, didn’t she?”
With considerable effort Rebecca squashed down her emotions and peered at the dark tracks of letters on the silver screen. “Yes.”
“It says here that the penny we found in the layer above the skeleton was in a pouch hanging from its belt.”
Rebecca’s heart, already overloaded, lurched. “Implying the dating is more exact than it really is. Associating the body with Henry VIII—a name familiar even to the culturally deprived. Archeological evidence is easy to fudge, isn’t it, because you destroy it as you go along. Hell.”
“You think the record was altered deliberately?” demanded Mark.
“By Jerry,” Dennis stated. The stabbing sharpness in his voice made Rebecca spin toward him. He ducked her scrutiny, looked down at the floor and added, “Why would Elaine fudge the records? She handed over the computer without a squawk, not as if she was trying to hide anything.”
I didn’t think you were a dummy, Rebecca said to herself. “Why don’t we go and ask Dr. Kleinfelter just what’s going on here?” She headed out the door, Dennis beside her, Mark and the computer just behind.
It was still raining, even though the sky looked a little lighter, the cloud cover thinner. The face of the priory was as silver as the computer screen, inscribed not with liquid crystal letters but with cracks and shadow. Laurence expostulated to Jerry’s glowering face, Mackenzie standing to one side, Elaine to the other, Tony just behind. Devlin and a couple of bobbies strolled diffidently by the gatehouse as several reporters beat up and down outside. Jerry had probably been dropping hints in the hotel gent’s room. Hilary and Adele waited in the doorway of the church, while the top of Michael’s head showed in the trench.
“No news conference,” said Laurence, in a tone that indicated this was his last repetition. “Not until we have something positive to present. The opening of the grounds at the Festival, in two weeks, will be time enough. The publicity we’ve been getting isn’t the kind I bargained for.”
“Jesus!” Jerry snapped. “Why’d you hire me if you won’t cooperate…” He saw the trio with the computer. “What are you doing with that?”
“Our work,” said Rebecca. “I’m afraid we’ve found a discrepancy in the files. The penny was in the dirt above the bones, wasn’t it, not actually connected to them?”
Behind the misty lenses of his glasses Jerry’s eyes bulged. “Elaine! Where do you get off fouling up the site recording sheets?”
Michael came out of the trench like a jack-in-the-box. Elaine’s lipsticked mouth opened and shut. Rebecca’s frazzled nerves could almost hear her thinking, “What does he want me to say?” It was to Rebecca she spoke, her dark eyes flaring. “Are you accusing me of not doing my work proper?”
“Somebody made a mistake,” Rebecca returned. “I didn’t say it was you. Although I’d appreciate it if you’d fix it.”
Elaine snatched the computer from Mark’s hands. With a piercing glance at Jerry, she marched back into the church. Jerry looked belligerently around the group. “Well,” he said, to the air between Laurence and Mackenzie, “women, you know. Not very good with machines. I’ll keep a better eye on her.”
Rebecca fantasized integrated circuit cards plugging Jerry’s gaping mouth. She turned, collided with Tony, and picked up her trowel. Michael slipped back into the trench, muttering something about “fair scunnered.” Just as long as it was Jerry he was mad at, not at her.
The debate over a news conference, deftly moderated by Mackenzie, concluded with an agreement to wait until further evidence was found, but not necessarily until the Festival. Laurence offered Michael a few complimentary words and returned to the village shaking his head. The rain slackened and stopped, leaving the stone and the grass sparkling damp, the air fresh as a lover’s kiss… . She would have to think of that, Rebecca reprimanded herself.
She looked at Hilary—time to make a drawing of the shard jigsaw puzzle—and saw Devlin escorting her into the church. He beckoned to Rebecca.
No, she wailed silently, I’ve had enough for one day, no! Gnashing her teeth, she climbed out of the trench, laid the spade carefully down on the grass, and trudged into the church. Devlin was just doing his job. They were all just doing their jobs.
Elaine sat by Salkeld’s tomb, her back turned, her fingers clicking on the keyboard. Beside her several site recording sheets were weighted by a brick, edges curling in the chill breeze. Hilary sat on one of the folding chairs liberated from the Craft Centre, her ankles held primly together, her hands folded, her face helpful if somewhat puzzled at Rebecca’s entrance. Her pinned-up hair left the nape of her neck exposed in all its fragility.
Devlin sat just behind her, Mackenzie to one side. Rebecca sat down and asked Mackenzie, “How’s your hand?”
Mackenzie seemed surprised at her question. “It will heal.” Despite Nora’s best efforts, his suit still showed traces of those harried moments on the soggy banks of the burn, but his dignified bearing wasn’t at all damaged.
Notebook pages flipped. Devlin said, “No usable fingerprints on either the coins or the warrant, Miss Reid.”
Still confiding in me, she thought. “I heard from my university this morning. I’ve been awarded my Ph.D. It’s Dr. Reid now.”
“Wow!” exclaimed Hilary. “That’s great! Congratulations!” She wasn’t in competition with Rebecca; her grin was perfectly genuine.
So was Mackenzie’s nod of acknowledgement. “Best wishes, Dr. Reid.” Devlin’s pen scratched something out.
Mackenzie turned to Hilary. “Miss Chase, I’d like you to tell us about the court case in which you were involved three years ago.”
Hilary’s eyes grew round. She looked quickly from side to side. There was no escape. Embarrassed, Rebecca focused down the nave. Tony sat on the porch outside the west door cleaning his lenses, every now and then sighting toward the wheel-cross. Elaine’s fingers tapped on the keyboard, s
ounding like the rattle of small arms fire.
“The—court case,” murmured Hilary. “Is it important now?”
“Aye, lass, I’m afraid it is,” Mackenzie said.
Hilary compressed herself into a defensive bundle. Her voice was staccato with haste. “I got myself—I was raped. By my mother’s step-brother. He’d been after me for years, I guess, but I never understood what all his jokes meant, I just knew I never liked the way he touched me. Then he came to the house one night when my parents were out.”
The roof creaked gently, and something fluttered in the tower. Rebecca reached over and laid her hand on Hilary’s knotted fingers.
Hilary didn’t look up. Her face drooped, abused by gravity, but she didn’t cry. She probably didn’t have any more tears to shed. “I fought. I screamed. But the house is big, the servants have their own rooms beyond the kitchen and they didn’t hear. Or maybe they did hear and didn’t want to get involved. I didn’t tell anyone, not for several days.
“But then I, well, I hurt so bad I had to go to the doctor. And he told my parents. At first they didn’t believe me. Then they fought, and threw things, and finally called the police. Ben told everyone I’d led him on. Dressing in pretty clothes and smiling at him. Everything a girl’s supposed to do. Then they found pornography in his apartment and found out he had a charge account at a brothel in Chicago. He went to prison. I went into therapy, and then away to college. The horrors, they come and go. But you wouldn’t understand that.”
“No,” Mackenzie agreed.
Rebecca felt Devlin’s gaze on the back of her neck. Her neck hurt. With her free hand she rubbed it.
“Ben’s out on parole,” Hilary said, a little louder. Elaine stopped typing and looked up, but not around. “That’s why I’m here. I might just live here in Europe for a while, after the dig is over.”
“He’s out already?” Rebecca asked. “I would’ve thrown away the key.”
“He had a good lawyer,” said Hilary. “He could afford one.”
Like Amanda Fraser Mackenzie? Above Hilary’s bowed head Rebecca met the Chief Inspector’s eye. She wanted to ask tartly, “Are you happy now?” But his face was set, mouth tight, eyes narrowed, in acute discomfort. Devlin’s pen scratched raggedly on.
Hilary’s face was haggard and pale. “Do you think I killed Sheila because of what happened to me? Some kind of ex post facto reasoning, that it was her fault? That it was the fault of her kind of woman?”
Mackenzie said. “We’re just exploring every possible motive.”
“I saw her with Mark once,” Hilary continued. “I was really disappointed that a nice guy like him could be taken in by such sleaze. But I guess he realizes that… .” Her voice trailed off, and she bit her lip.
Rebecca waited for Mackenzie to assure Hilary that her tentative probings toward Mark were none of the police’s business. He didn’t. With a defiant glance toward him she said, “Hilary, Michael had an affair with Sheila a couple of years ago. I know how you feel, in spades. I’d say I had an even better motive to kill Sheila. But I didn’t, just as you didn’t.”
Hilary looked gratefully at Rebecca, squeezed her hand, and shoved it gently aside. She sat up straight, squaring her shoulders. “The thing is, I was pretty upset the night Sheila died.”
“Why?” asked Mackenzie.
“Because I went over to the church to get the computer printouts right after supper and saw Sheila vamping Jerry.”
“What?” Rebecca asked. Hilary had withheld evidence? Mackenzie’s black eyes glinted.
“Doin’ what?” Devlin asked.
“Making up to him. Coming on to him. Flirting suggestively.”
“And how did he respond?” Mackenzie asked.
Hilary snorted. “Like any man would. They went through the slype, toward the back of the chapter house, groping each other. I wasn’t about to follow them. I forgot the printouts, came back to the house, and helped Mark do the dinner dishes. Then he kissed me, and I panicked. I went for a walk until I felt better. When I ran into Jerry in the bar, I couldn’t figure out why, if he’d just been—been with Sheila, he was coming on to me so strong.”
“It’s an addiction,” said Rebecca, and received Mackenzie’s warning glance pertaining to editorial opinions.
“Maybe his performance wasn’t satisfactory,” offered Devlin, “and Sheila slagged him off about it.”
There’s a thought. Rebecca nodded. Sheila evidently had unorthodox tastes. Jerry’s macho posturing could well mean that he didn’t.
Elaine bent over the keyboard. She must have caught something of that revelation. Beyond her Tony worked on his cameras, oblivious to the drama behind his back. Rebecca wondered how bothered he would have been if he’d seen Jerry and Sheila intent on a carnal encounter. If anything, he’d always seemed amused by her untiring efforts to serve mankind.
“Why,” Mackenzie asked, “didn’t you tell us when we spoke with you on Tuesday about Dr. Kleinfelter and Miss Fitzgerald?”
Hilary met his indignant gaze, chin up. “But you already knew they were getting it on, didn’t you? I sure didn’t want to talk about it.”
“Aye, we knew. But to be having it off at that particular moment… .” He glanced at Elaine. “Did you hear them talking?”
“Only a few words about the dig, about relics. Jerry said something to the effect that all the legends are well and good, but we don’t know for sure Marjory brought it here until we find it. I guess he meant Marjory Douglas, who founded the priory.”
“Go on,” urged Rebecca, on the edge of her seat.
“And Sheila said something to the effect, you’re the expert, that’s the bargain, you find it and I publicize it. I don’t know what ‘it’ was.”
Again Mackenzie and Rebecca shared a glance. The reliquary containing Robert the Bruce’s heart? Maybe it was mentioned in the trial records, for them to know about it… . “Here we go again,” she said with a sigh. “All this time, and we get two flecks of evidence against Jerry in one day, mostly by wild extrapolation, which doesn’t make Jerry a killer.”
“Did you ever doubt Jerry and Sheila had been planning an end run?” Devlin asked, relishing his new bit of American slang.
“No, I didn’t. Not after what Dr. Nelson told me about Jerry’s dig in Virginia.”
Elaine’s shoulders were coiled, radiating anger.
“Miss Chase, you should’ve told us this earlier,” Mackenzie chided.
“I didn’t know it was important,” said Hilary miserably. “I’m sorry.”
Rebecca grimaced. “I should have told you about our suspicions of Jerry and Sheila. You would have realized what you were hearing. And yet I really couldn’t.” She sighed. “Catch me later, and I’ll explain.”
“It’s our job to decide what’s important,” said Mackenzie. “Thank you for helping us. If we’ve caused you any discomfort… .” He stopped, cleared his throat, and made a show of looking over Devlin’s notebook.
Thus dismissed, Hilary stood and shook herself. She walked out the door, lifting her feet as though they wore cement boots.
“May I go?” Rebecca asked Mackenzie.
“Oh aye. Ask Dr. Kleinfelter to come round if you would, please.” Mackenzie turned his gaze on Elaine, much as Jerry would contemplate an artifact, trowel in hand. “Miss Vavra, may we speak to you a moment?”
Elaine snapped to her feet, tossed her head, and advanced on Mackenzie with the clicking steps and flashing eyes of a flamenco dancer. The worm turns, Rebecca thought. Serves Jerry right. She went outside and walked toward the trench. Jerry was holding forth on some arcane aspect of bone preservation. Hilary sat down with her drawing board and stared blankly at it. Mark looked at her, his brows knit with puzzled concern.
Rebecca told Jerry the inquisitors were waiting.
1
Chapter Eighteen
Adele sat on the stump of the wall cleaning Jerry’s trowels. She kept eyeing the third trench, her face somber, as if she we
re the next of kin of the emerging skeleton. Dennis did some desultory spade work in the second trench, glancing over his shoulder at Jerry rebelliously continuing his monologue on bones rather than jumping to attend Mackenzie. Hilary settled her drawing board and poised her pencil.
“I’m sorry you had to go through that.” Rebecca’s trowel exposed another lump of pottery, this one a curved handle.
“Telling about it isn’t the hard part,” Hilary returned.
Through the transept door came Elaine’s voice, angry enough to scatter its “h’s” far and wide. “‘E gave me that paper and said to copy hit hinto the computer. I didn’t change sod-all.”
“And what were you and Dr. Kleinfelter going to do after the dig?” asked Mackenzie, his voice the bass line to Elaine’s treble.
“‘E was going to take me back to the States, wasn’t ‘e? Even if ‘e scarpered then, I’d be away from ‘ere.”
“You’d like to emigrate?”
“Who wouldn’t? Cost of living’s over the top, and the dole pays more than anything you can get at the job centre.”
Jerry strolled into the church, fashionably late. Elaine stopped abruptly. Rebecca uncovered a pottery piece the size of her hand, the curved side of a bowl or beaker.
“Sit down, Dr. Kleinfelter,” said Mackenzie. Chairs scraped on the tile floor. “Are you sure the data you gave Miss Vavra to enter into the computer was completely accurate?”
“Anything I did was accurate,” Jerry answered in his favorite, “why am I dealing with idiots” tone. “Of course I’m the only professional here.”
Mackenzie went about on another tack. “Miss Vavra, tell us again about the night Miss Fitzgerald was killed.”
Elaine’s voice was cold enough to reclaim her BBC accent. “I waited in the hotel room for Jerry. He said we’d suss out the pubs in Jedburgh, but he had to do something first. He was chuffed over it, whatever it was.”
“I was pleased the dig was going well,” said Jerry. The faint odors of cigar and cigarette smoke fouled the breeze.
“I waited,” Elaine continued. “When he came back, the knees of his trousers were stained. I asked him if he’d been with Sheila. He laughed at me, said he’d slipped into one of the trenches. Mind you, this is the same toff who’ll tick off anyone who comes within a foot of a trench. I’d taken enough aggro. I left, went to Newton St. Boswells by myself.”
Dust to Dust Page 24
