“Rebecca!” She and Hilary spun around, the gravel of the driveway spurting beneath their shoes. Michael was doing a Highland fling in the door of the hotel. “I found it!”
Rebecca concealed the box beneath her jacket and ran. People converged from all over; nowadays the least outcry was like the trumpet before a race. Mackenzie and Michael were standing with Laurence in the corridor leading to the pub. Tony was already there, cameras at attention.
Whatever it was, Rebecca thought, it was worth it just to see Michael grin. “Look,” he exclaimed, holding up a creased piece of parchment. “It’s the missin’ page, the inventory, right enough.”
Rebecca snatched it from his hands. “It sure is. I’d know that clerk’s handwriting if it was in Sanskrit. Where was it?”
“Elizabeth’s Kerr’s box in the attic had several of these sportin’ prints in it. So I thought, hell, take a wee keek. The third one I took doon had the parchment folded in the back of the frame.”
“Those prints were here when we bought the place,” said Laurence. “Kerr himself put them up.”
“But why hide the inventory?” asked a voice from the crowd.
Rebecca started to say, “to protect the treasure”—Kerr had found only the two coins, after all. But she wasn’t sure that bit of intelligence needed to be broadcast.
Mackenzie said, clear as a bell, “To protect the treasure.” He was poker-faced, probably because he was playing a hand at this very moment.
Thanks, Rebecca thought. She handed the parchment to Laurence. “Put this in the safe, would you please? I’ll look at it tomorrow.”
Muttering, the crowd dispersed like a theatre audience at intermission, eager for the next act.
Rebecca managed to conceal the quaich throughout the celebratory drinks. Jerry had already been celebrating; his jokes about Scottish skinflints and wayward nuns and girl historians were delivered with the brittle jocularity of a drunk. He, Jenkins and a few other reporters became bellicose only when Bridget refused to serve them any more alcohol.
Back in the cottage, Rebecca stowed the quaich among her stockings just as Michael walked into the bedroom. He flopped down on his bed and picked up Colin’s notepad. She watched in the mirror as he turned the pages, his mouth set as tight as the slit of a letter box. It was not surprising that his moment’s elation had burned out so quickly. “Well done,” she said.
He met her reflected eyes. “Findin’ the inventory? Aboot time I did something to move us forwarder. Time’s runnin’ short.”
Rebecca took out her contact lenses. His image in the mirror blurred. If he wanted to look at the mystery as a competition, fine. But a competition with whom? Time? The killer? Mackenzie? Or Rebecca herself?
Michael didn’t want her to show him up. She didn’t want him to condescend to her. But if one of them had to choose between solving the puzzle and tiptoeing around the other’s ego, only one choice was possible, painful as the consequences might be. Anne Douglas had chosen death over dishonor… . With brisk strokes of her hairbrush Rebecca rejected death as an option.
Michael rolled off the bed, grabbed his shaving kit, and headed once again for the bathroom. By the time he returned, Rebecca was tucked into bed. They exchanged goodnights and lay silently in the darkness, too tired to sleep, too wary to talk, waiting for the night to pass. At last Rebecca’s churning thoughts went into gridlock and she dozed off.
*
Sunday morning was misty with impending rain. In the crypt Jerry supervised Mark and Michael as they laid out a coffin-shaped crate filled with foam rubber. “Can you get that?” he asked Tony.
Tony, peered through his camera and answered, “Right on target.”
Jerry produced an X-acto knife and with labored precision cut a cavity in the foam. He was trying to keep his hands from trembling, Rebecca realized. He’d really been sopping it up last night. “The bones of the left foot will fit neatly in here,” he said to the camera. He picked up a metatarsal bone, flourished it, and dropped it.
Michael and Rebecca stared, appalled. Mark fell to his knees, rescued the bone, and muttered, “You’d better lay off the sauce, Jerry.”
“Mind your own business, kid.” Jerry’s red-rimmed eyes darted from Mark’s frown to the other watching faces. “You girls are just wasting time down here. Get back to the infirmary trench. Take Dennis with you.”
Rebecca groped for a withering retort, found nothing, did an about-face and led her troop up the stairs. Elaine sat in the chancel, doggedly entering data, her jacket zipped against the cold, damp wind funneled from west door to east window. “Playing up again, is he,” she stated.
“Dennis,” said Rebecca as they walked through the cloister, “make sure you keep on checking what Elaine’s entering.”
“Don’t worry,” Dennis replied. “I still have to clear Laurel’s name.”
By lunch time they’d uncovered a small cache of pilgrim’s ampullae—tiny lead containers for holy water—marked with the woman and cross that had evidently symbolized Rudesburn. Adele’s collection of glass fragments was expanding, and despite the rain Hilary did a lovely grease pencil sketch of a painted plaster wall. Dennis dug and sifted and carried dirt uncomplainingly.
By quitting time, Michael and Mark had finished plotting the positions of the bones, and Jerry was managing to get them to the box without breaking them. In a few more days, Rebecca told herself, Anne and her child would be on their way to join Alexander in Edinburgh. Had he tried to escape and failed, where Thomas succeeded in escaping Rudesburn but not his conscience?
Through the mist clinging to her lashes, Rebecca saw Jerry, Tony and Elaine squeeze by Mackenzie’s attenuated form in the doorway of the hotel. She found Michael undressing in the bedroom. “Are you going to stick it?” she asked.
“I begin to see how Fletcher Christian felt,” he replied. “You ken Captain Bligh’s goin’ to do you ower, but if you do him first, then you’ve stranded yoursel’ on a desert island for the rest of your life.”
“Graham wouldn’t exile you for saving the dig.”
“Does the dig need to be saved? The location of the penny, and the heraldic disc, and whether or no Jerry deliberately broke doon the wall—it’s our word against his, just like it was wi’ Dennis’s sister.”
“I hate to say wait until he really fouls something up, but… .”
Michael’s eyes glinted. “Jerry himself was talkin’ entrapment, remember? When I was at Fishbourne, the director would put a few Roman coins into the trench to see if we’d turn them in right and proper.”
“An honesty test?
“For Jerry, a pre-emptive strike. What we need is a bittie artifact, bait to catch him oot. Maybe I should talk to Graham.”
“Talk to Graham,” Rebecca told him.
*
That evening Rebecca sat down at the dining room table to transcribe the newly discovered inventory into the computer. Everyone else wandered in and out of the room until she felt like a mother with a houseful of toddlers. She couldn’t tell them to go outside and play, not with the rain coming down hard on the slates of the roof. Only Adele pulled up the hood of her jacket and plunged out into the night.
“Gold noble of Henry III,” Rebecca typed. “Silver chalice. Jeweled pectoral cross of Saint Benedict.” It had probably never come near Saint Benedict. But a tenth century jeweled cross would still be a valuable work of art. It would be valuable for its materials, for that matter. Maybe Jerry was waiting until she uncovered the treasure so he could steal it. Entrapping Jerry in academic skullduggery might be inadmissible in court, but academic disputes didn’t usually go to court… . Her thought raveled, the dangling end tickling the back of her mind.
Guinevere and Lancelot materialized on the table. One left a neat tooth-puncture in the corner of her notebook. The other pawed curiously at the parchment. Rebecca was about to start defensive procedures when Dennis opened the refrigerator. They vanished, leaving behind strands of fur.
In the s
itting room Mark strummed “The City of New Orleans.” Michael got out his practice chanter and ran through his repertory. Footsteps skimmed down the staircase, and Hilary burst wild-eyed into the dining room. “Look!” She held out her hand. The ceiling light struck a halo from the gold signet ring in her palm.
Chanter and guitar stopped abruptly. A meow of protest followed the slam of the refrigerator door. Grasping coherence, Rebecca saved her file on the computer before she took the ring from Hilary’s hand. “It’s the one from the skeleton, all right. Where’d you find it?”
“My socks and Adele’s got mixed up in the wash. I was putting hers in her drawer and felt something hard in the sleeve of that UCLA sweatshirt. So I looked—sorry… .” Hilary grimaced.
“You should’ve looked,” Mark assured her. “But the police already have, several times.”
“Adele?” asked Dennis. “You mean it’s been Adele all along?”
“Dinna make any assumptions,” Michael told him. “Where’s Mackenzie?”
In a mad scramble, they pulled on their jackets and boots and found flashlights. Rebecca rushed back into the dining room, grabbed a plastic bag, inserted the inventory, and zipped it into her jacket.
It took only moments to reach to the hotel. Mackenzie was at his post in the lobby, a tea-tray beside his chair, Devlin and his notebook in attendance. Voices and jangling glassware echoed down the hallway from the pub. Mackenzie listened to the students’ babble for only two seconds before he pointed to Rebecca. “You”. She told the tale. “Did you hide the ring?” he asked Hilary.
She shook her head in a vigorous negative, pony tail flying.
“Where is Adele?” Mackenzie went on. “In the church?”
“If she’s not spouting philosophy in the bar, “ Rebecca replied.
She wasn’t in the bar. Mackenzie delivered the ring to Laurence; “Adele?” the innkeeper asked queasily. Devlin dispatched his long-suffering constabulary into the night.
Raincoats and fluorescent vests glistened in the lights of the village. Flashlights pierced the dark. The soggy grass of the lawns squished. The rain hid the priory until they were almost on top of it. “Look!” said Dennis.
A pale light gleamed in the north transept door. Even as they watched it faded away, sucked into nothingness. Mackenzie led the way into the west door and down the nave. The face of Salkeld’s effigy winked out of the darkness. Birds stirred uneasily in the rafters. Adele was sitting with her back to the barred crypt door, legs crossed, hands on knees, eyes closed. The same silk scarf she’d worn to the inquest lay on the tiles before her. On it, a flame amid the blue and green dyes, lay the dragon brooch.
Mackenzie went down on his haunches beside Adele. “Mrs. Garrity.”
Slowly, reluctantly, she opened her eyes. “Why, Chief Inspector, how nice of you to join us.”
“Us?” Mackenzie repeated. The students moved closer together. Grant stood in the doorway with the other constables. Devlin got out his notebook.
“Anne and I. It’s her brooch, you see. The dragons symbolize the conquest of paganism by Christianity. She practiced the old religion, witchcraft, playing the sacred mother. Of course, in her present discorporeal form she can’t wear the brooch, so I’m keeping it for her.”
“She really was talking to Anne,” said Rebecca. “But we have no proof the brooch was Anne’s, let alone that she was anything but a Christian.”
“You stole the brooch and the ring,” Mackenzie stated.
“I borrowed them for my séances,” Adele explained patiently. “Dr. Reid told me the artifacts were haunted. I knew I could help Anne by letting her talk out her problems.” Adele’s blue eyes, strangely pallid in the dim light, found Rebecca in the crowd and focused on her. Rebecca shrank back.
“Where did you hide the artifacts?”
“Oh, here and there.” Adele’s eyes blurred.
“Did you kill Miss Fitzgerald?”
Still the eyes didn’t quite focus. “I helped her into the otherworld, yes. But I didn’t deliver the mortal blow. Oh no. I didn’t do that.”
“What?” Mackenzie asked. Devlin leaned forward.
“No surprise there,” said Michael. “She put the coins on Sheila’s eyes. A sacrament called the viaticum. Like the ancient Greeks puttin’ coins in a dead person’s mouth to pay the fare across the River Styx.”
Adele smiled as sweetly as a baby on a jar of strained peaches. “Very good. But, of course, the leader of souls is the archangel Michael.”
“Leave me oot of this,” Michael muttered.
“She’s round the twist,” said Devlin.
Mackenzie stood up and summoned a policewoman. “Come along, Mrs. Garrity,” she said soothingly. “Let’s go for a little ride.”
Adele snatched her arm away. “What do you think I am, a child? You’re going to take me to the Galashiels police station, just like the others.”
“Right on schedule,” said Mark. Dennis looked down at his boots. Hilary looked up at the ceiling.
Two constables and Devlin trotted after Adele as she strode down the aisle. “Which car do I get to ride in, the one with the orange stripe?”
They disappeared. The church seemed oppressively still without the fluting of Adele’s soprano voice. The only sound was that of rain dripping into the nave and through the mouths of the gargoyles outside.
Mackenzie said, “P.C. Johnston, would you bring the brooch, please?” And he, too, was off down the aisle, his coat flapping like a superhero’s cape behind him.
With a groan, Grant bent and wrapped the brooch in the scarf. Rebecca sighed, glanced at Michael’s somber face, and like a good little shepherdess shooed her flock home.
1
Chapter Twenty-six
It was Monday afternoon before Adele was returned to the fold. She thanked the constables as if they’d had her in for tea, and sauntered down the driveway blithely unaware of Mackenzie’s baleful gaze on her back.
Mackenzie turned and looked over at the steps of the church where Rebecca sat amid a pile of papers and books. Catching her eye, he beckoned. She waved acknowledgement. He and Devlin disappeared into the hotel.
The rain had stopped during the night. If the clouds hadn’t completely dispersed, at least they admitted frequent rays of sun. Beyond the hotel the Eildon Hills were a dark green brushed with tender strokes of purple heather. Tomorrow was August first. This week was the official end of the expedition. Rebecca’s return ticket to the United States was dated for next month. She felt like a demolitions worker gauging what length of fuse would allow her to escape the inevitable explosion.
She gathered her papers, stuffed them into the portfolio, and tucked it beneath her arm. She called into the church, “Elaine, get Michael for me.”
“Right-ho.” Elaine shouted his name into the crypt.
He emerged dusting his arms and legs. In almost a week his sling had gone from sterile white to tattletale gray. “Aye?”
“We’ve been summoned. War council, I daresay. Adele’s back.”
They started off across the lawns, skirting a young woman meditating over a disemboweled lawnmower and two reporters in Grant’s tow. Cameras leaped upward. In response to “Say whiskey!” Michael chirped, “Glenfiddich.” The gaggle of tourists outside the gate eyed them with horrified fascination; they’d touched death and lived to tell about it. So far, Rebecca thought.
“Did that copy of ‘The Dream of the Rood’ help you?” Michael asked.
“Not really. The only verse Anne wrote that seems remotely relevant is, ‘the warriors left me standing laced with blood, I was wounded unto death’. And that’s either the cross itself speaking, or the sacred tree of Norse/Saxon myth. Take your pick.” Rebecca glanced for the hundredth time that day at the wheel-cross sprouting from the grass before the door of the church. Its carved face revealed nothing.
“She’d no be writin’ doon the location of the treasure too plainly,” said Michael, “in case the soldiers came back to look.�
��
“If she wrote it down at all. It’s maddening, like trying to break a code.”
They walked into the hotel and found the police inspectors closeted with Laurence in his office. The room was only a little larger than Anne’s tomb. Rebecca set down the portfolio and shifted her chair so she could see out the window in the door.
“How did your lot react to Mrs. Garrity’s arrest?” asked Mackenzie, without so much as a “good afternoon”.
“They didna,” Michael replied. “Jerry made some jokes aboot her, Tony frowned, and Elaine shrugged.”
“By this time,” added Rebecca, “it’s like a game of musical chairs. Everyone’s been out. Now what? Do we play again?”
Nora opened the door. Ceremonially she placed a tiered rack of cakes, biscuits, scones, and sandwiches on the corner of the desk. Bridget laid down a tray filled with teapots and cups and shut the door. As the only woman present, Rebecca was expected to pour. She started rattling crockery.
Devlin opened his notebook. “Adele’s been shiftin’ the brooch and the ring from place to place, in the cottage and on the priory grounds. Which is, I reckon, just what someone’s been doin’ with the murder weapon. Two sugars, please.” He turned a page. “She dragged Sheila into the sarcophagus. She found the two coins beside Sheila’s body, behind the chapter house.”
“And didn’t steal them,” asked Laurence, “as she stole the ring and the brooch?” He accepted a cup and chose a scone.
“They were tainted, she said. But then, she’s not always sensible. She takes pagan and Christian ideas and mucks them about together.”
Just like in “The Dream of the Rood”, Rebecca thought. She poured Mackenzie’s tea.
“Just milk,” he said, and contemplated a wholemeal biscuit.
“When the Chief Inspector showed his displeasure at her movin’ the body and destroyin’ evidence, she just smiled at him. A psychiatrist had a go at her, and agrees she’s loony, but he couldn’t say if she’s dangerous. We’ll have a bobby on her from now on, don’t worry yourself.” Devlin bit down on a miniature éclair so firmly that cream smeared his lips.
Dust to Dust Page 36
