Dust to Dust

by Lillian Stewart Carl

  Together she and her assailant fell. She rolled to the side, crashed into a gorse bush, and clawed her way through it. Through the branches she looked back. He wore black beneath white, a Benedictine, not a Cistercian… . What difference did that make?

  His robes were floating loosely, giving him birdlike wings. The cold gleam in his hand was a knife. This one wasn’t a piece of the hotel’s pewter tableware. This one was razor-sharp.

  Just as Rebecca regained her feet, the moon shone out again. The man’s face was a puppet from a Punch and Judy show, teeth clenched, eyes dark and bulging. Tony. It was Tony. Oh for the love of… . Rebecca didn’t complete her oath. She lunged down the hill, tripped, and fell.

  He was on top of her, one hand on her throat, the sgian dubh shining in the corner of her eye. “Stupid female,” he said. His breath was foul with acid and beer. His knee ground into her stomach.” All cozy with the peelers, aren’t you? Such a good girl. So clever. Women, they’re only good for one thing, and thinking isn’t it.”

  She had too little breath to waste in a retort—even if she could have thought of something more effective than, “Oh yeah?” Something was digging into her side. A rock. No, Mark’s Swiss Army knife. Slowly she edged her hand toward her pocket.

  The sgian dubh glittered, blinding her. Tony’s face was only a misshapen lump against the sky. “Miss-bloody-Doctor Reid. I kept waiting for you to lead me to the treasure, but no, just like a woman, ponce here, ponce there, do sod-all. You’ll show me now, though, you worthless bint.”

  “Let me up,” she gasped, trying to sound calm and quiet. “I’ll show you.” Either the music had stopped, or her blood cascading through her ears had blanked it out. Her hand touched the handle of Mark’s knife.

  Tony didn’t move. “Sheila was going to do me over. She and Kleinfelter, they were going to nick the goods. She was showing him the coins. My coin.”

  “You stole it from the hotel?”

  “I sussed out the place for her. I helped her, and there she was chatting up Kleinfelter. I don’t need her. I’ll have the treasure without her. Gormless female.” His words seared Rebecca’s face.

  Between his knee in her stomach and his hand on her throat Rebecca couldn’t breathe. She tried to think herself into two dimensions. Her hand drew the knife slowly from her pocket and opened it. With her luck, she’d pull out the bottle opener. “Let me up. I’ll show you where the treasure is.”

  He didn’t move. She wondered if the treasure was still his motivation or if by now he was frustrated into wanting only revenge… .

  Shouts echoed across the hillside, “Cruachan!” and “Remember the Alamo!” Dim shapes rushed forward, wielding lights. Tony glanced up, his grip slackening for an instant.

  That was enough. Rebecca struck. The blade of the Swiss Army knife was small, but it bit deep. Tony jerked and howled. A solid thwack burst in Rebecca’s head. The sgian dubh glinted. She wrenched away from it, every muscle contracting at once. The blade scraped the side of her head. Tony was plucked magically away from her, and she lay stunned, staring up at the moon. Its silvery eye stared impassively back. It was a hole in the darkness, opening to light and warmth. The night drained into that eye… .

  Another set of hands seized her. But these were familiar hands with long fingers and slender wrists. They shook her, and her teeth rattled. “Rebecca, dinna go wi’oot me, love, never go wi’oot me again.”

  She focused on Michael’s agonized face. No wonder she’d heard someone shout “Cruachan!”—the old Campbell war cry. And the other… . Her hand still held the small knife, her fingers warm and wet. Mark was prying it away from her. “You scared the hell out of us. I’m sure glad you had this.”

  Rebecca looked at her hand. It was covered with blood. Her hair was sticky. “Don’t let me bleed on your sweater,” she said.

  Michael emitted a barking laugh. Carefully he and Mark stood her up. She wobbled like a rag doll. Someone gently patted her head with a cloth.

  People were shouting. Flashlights zigzagged like demented fireflies up and down the hill. A constable and a man in sixteenth century doublet and hose dragged Tony to his feet. He staggered and spat, “Go ahead, knock me about, that’s all you sodding police know, isn’t it?” Strips of his own white robe wrapped his middle and supported his arm in a makeshift sling. Only then did Rebecca’s mind resolve an after-image: She’d struck Tony with her knife just as Michael, in his kilted rage an English nightmare, brought a shovel down on Tony’s arm. “You saved my life,” she mumbled.

  “You saved yoursel’,” Michael returned. The music of pipes, flutes, and guitars made an incongruously cheerful background: “Hey Johnnie Cope are ye waukin’ yet? Or are your drums a-beatin’ yet? If ye were waukin’ I would wait, To gang to the coals i’ the mornin’.”

  There at long last were Mackenzie and Devlin, shining their lights in Tony’s face as if they were going to give him the third degree here and now. “Bloody berks,” he said, and added a few more choice descriptions. “I want a solicitor. It’s my right, you have to find me a solicitor.”

  “I’ll recommend one,” Mackenzie told him in a flat voice. He turned toward Rebecca. “I must apologize, Dr. Reid. This time our trap worked altogether too well. Rest assured we had you under surveillance the entire time.”

  “You didna have tae use her as bait,” Michael growled.

  She shook her head. “The other night I volunteered to be bait. And I certainly wasn’t hiding in a closet tonight.”

  “You went off wi’oot me,” said Michael. His accusing voice was so obviously concealing sheer terror that she hugged him even tighter.

  Mackenzie said, “I think the pub would be a better place for debriefing. Get the doctor to look at her head.”

  Several strong men hustled Tony down the hill. Caught between a shout and a sob, his voice cursed the police and the worldwide feminine conspiracy that had kept him from his just rewards. “What’s so wrong about me having a few quid—everyone else gets it all—everyone else has all they want… .”

  “Not necessarily,” Rebecca whispered. In a year or so, she thought, she might begin to feel sympathy for him.

  She looked over the shadowed priory and beyond it to the multicolored lamps of the Festival. The cold blue lights of police cars edged the street for the last time. She was trembling, cold, and nauseated. She apologized. Mark and Michael made soothing noises. Between them they got her down the hill and onto the smooth lawn. “I thought it was Adele,” she told them.

  “You’re daft,” said Michael. “I knew it was Tony. That’s why I brought the shovel.”

  Indignantly, Rebecca demanded, “All right Dr. Know-it-all, just when did you figure that out?”

  “Aboot ten minutes ago,” he admitted. “Dennis fetched me—in a proper state, he was—but we had to wait for Grant to knock up Mackenzie. That was when I noticed Dennis was wearin’ his Star Trek T-shirt.”

  “Yes?” said Rebecca cautiously. Mark grinned.

  Michael raised an admonitory forefinger. “You remember the episode wi’ the wee purrin’ fuzzballs that flyte at people they dislike? Well, a few days ago, when we were in the pub, one of the cats hissed and yowled. Then I thought Tony’d stepped on a paw or a tail. Tonight I thought, what if Guinevere’d hissed at Tony because he’d tried to drown her?”

  Rebecca stopped dead, pulling both Mark and Michael around with her. “You’re the one who’s daft! I could’ve told you Guinevere was hissing at the person who’d tried to kill her. Why else was she hissing that night we caught the killer—Tony—in the attic?”

  “I was a wee bit distracted that night.” Michael avoided a stone concealed in the grass. “You remember Colin askin’ people what other people were doin’ the night of the murder, tryin’ to catch someone oot? I asked Dennis aboot Tony. This time he said he went into the camera van at seven forty-five, to search for evidence against Jerry, and that he’d been there thirty minutes afore Tony got there.”

  Yes,
of course—with the clock stopped, Rebecca had heard their voices at eight-fifteen instead of… . “In Colin’s notes from the inquest they both said they’d got there at eight! And I thought they had!”

  “Dennis was hidin’ his identity from Jerry, so he agreed wi’ Tony’s estimate of the time. Tony didna ken what Dennis kent. Dennis didna ken—until I told him the night. And then I told Mackenzie.”

  Rats, Rebecca thought. Why didn’t it ever occur to her to use the cat as a Geiger counter? She said, “Colin was right—someone did know something. Dennis. And Winnie, too—no one ever asked her what time she’d seen me from the window. Well done, Michael.”

  “Thank you kindly. Noo if I’d only tumbled two weeks ago… .”

  A set of blue lights vanished toward Galashiels. The mob lining the road issued forth a solitary figure. “Mark? Rebecca?”

  “Here we are, Hilary,” Mark called. “She’s all right.”

  Hilary came running. “Jerry’s getting drunk at the beer pavilion. Dennis is filming the dancers. Nobody’s seen Elaine or Adele for a couple of hours, and Grant’s afraid… .”

  “That Tony was oot the night eliminatin’ witnesses?” Michael finished.

  Rebecca’s teeth were chattering. She unclenched them long enough to say, “I heard something when I was in the tower. Try the crypt.”

  Michael and Rebecca, Mark and Hilary huddled in the nave while flashlights swept dust and shadows from the stone tracery. The key gone, the police had to break the lock on the crypt door. The screech of the crowbar and the thud of the door opening echoed from the vaults like Armageddon.

  Adele sat on the steps, her hands folded, waiting for rescue or death, whichever came first. Her cracked voice was still singing “Amazing Grace” as a constable walked her toward the ambulance; her eyes, drained of rationality, shone as pale and clear as though they no longer had pupils.

  Elaine was carried out on a stretcher. Her fingernails were ripped and bloody from tearing at the door and her face was swollen with terrified tears. “Hysterical claustrophobia,” explained the doctor. “She’ll be all right. Let me tend to you, too, Miss Reid.”

  At the hotel the doctor checked her over and pronounced her alive and well, if bruised, contused, and looking like a scarecrow dripping moss and heather. At last she could wash her face and hands. Bloody hands. Self defense. Her hands weren’t as bloody as Tony’s. As Tony’s would have been—he’d no doubt intended to come back and finish off Elaine and Adele.

  Rebecca assumed the face staring from the mirror was hers, even though she didn’t quite recognize it. Her features sagged like elastic stretched to the limit. She limped into the pub, her head floating a foot or so above her shoulders as though her brain were a helium balloon.

  Two tables had been shoved together in front of a roaring fire. Mackenzie presided, with Laurence and Nora anchoring the other end. Mark’s and Hilary’s laps were adorned by the cats, whose eager whiskers above the edge of the table gave them the air of third world countries admitted to the General Assembly. Michael seated Rebecca and gave her a glass of whiskey. Her hand was shaking so hard that it almost slopped over. She drank deep, coughed, and said, “You people certainly have a way with alcohol.”

  “In this climate we need dependable anti-freeze.” Michael took her free hand and chafed it between his own. Slowly her body began to relax and warm up.

  “You look as if you’ve been dragged through a barbed-wire fence backwards,” said Mark cheerfully.

  “I feel like it,” Rebecca returned. “But the stab wound is just a scratch; my hair covers the bandage.”

  Michael was cleaner, but his own face was as drained by strong emotion as hers. It might be foolish to be glad she hadn’t single-handedly solved the murder, but she was. She didn’t even have enough energy to be embarrassed over her hasty conclusion about Adele. She hiccupped with love and remorse, and visualized little hearts appearing above her head.

  Bridget served sandwiches. Even Mackenzie claimed his fair share. Rebecca glanced at his Roman profile, like Julius Caesar surveying the field after a hard-fought battle. What price victory?

  The stolen notebooks lay on the table, their pages blotted and ripped with frustration, their message too subtle. “They were under Tony’s mattress,” said Mackenzie. “His light meter was outwith the crypt. He lured Elaine and Adele there with a story about photographs.”

  “If only he’d waited a few more days,” Nora said, “he could’ve taken his photos and films and left with the rest of you.”

  “And the treasure?” Mark asked. “Surely he realized if he ran off with it he’d have to break it up—that he wouldn’t get near its value.”

  “It was Sheila,” said Laurence, “who would’ve been sophisticated enough to make a packet from the publicity as well as the intrinsic value of the plate and jewels. She was going to smile to our faces and stab us in the back… .” He looked suddenly down into his gin.

  “Is there a treasure?” Mackenzie asked.

  Rebecca replied, “Anne hid something. I only tonight figured out where.” A log fell in the fire, sending a spray of sparks upward. Two pairs of gold feline eyes blinked gravely. Everyone else stared. “Oh! Well, you see… .” Laboriously Rebecca went through her reasoning about Adele’s guilt and the location of the treasure inextricably intertwined. “Come tomorrow,” she concluded, “we’ll see if I’m wrong about the treasure, too.”

  Michael had her hand in his lap, nestled in a warm fold of wool. She wanted to nestle her entire body into his kilt. That was not as risqué a concept as it sounded, she thought with a smile; the original kilts were made of umpty-ump yards of fabric that could serve as pup tents as well as clothing.

  “The name of Christopher Garrity’s girlfriend is in the records. She wasn’t even British.” Mackenzie picked up another quarter-sandwich and peered inside. “Mrs. Garrity was a spanner in the works, no doubt about it. We’ll see she gets back to her family in the States.”

  Devlin walked wearily into the room. He slumped next to Mackenzie and laid a plastic bag containing Michael’s sgian dubh on the table. “Will you be wantin’ it back, Michael?”

  “Good lord, no. I ordered it from a shop in Edinburgh—I wanted one that would take an edge… .” He grimaced. “But it was made in England—it probably had an English curse on it.”

  “It has a curse on it now,” murmured Hilary.

  After a long moment’s silence, Mackenzie extended a long arm and swept the weapon away. The cats’ eyes vanished below the rim of the table. They padded toward the hearth and proceeded to lick themselves down.

  “Charges are murder, attempted murder, assault, theft, and cruelty to animals,” Devlin said between swallows of beer. “Tony bought that white robe from a theatrical supply shop in Newcastle. It has traces of bloodstains. The lab’ll find them to be Sheila’s, I’m sure. He’d been hidin’ the robes in his bed, or in the camera van—several places. And the dagger’s been everywhere. He thought it particularly amusin’ that part of the time it was in the wee trolley car on yon mantelpiece.”

  Every eye turned toward the fireplace. Even the cats looked up. Mackenzie swore under his breath, thinking, no doubt, if you wanted a search done well, you had to do it yourself.

  “We found blood on one of Tony’s tripods,” Devlin went on. “He admitted coshin’ P.C. Johnston and you, Hilary.” She smiled weakly. Mark gave her a reassuring hug. “He admitted stealin’ the coin and the warrant from the hotel, droppin’ the matchbook in the attic—Sheila’d been usin’ it for a notepad—and vandalizin’ the tomb. He also hid the coin and the warrant in the grave. Sheila knew they were there.”

  “We almost caught Tony the first day we were here,” Rebecca moaned.

  Michael said, “Twenty-twenty hindsight.”

  Devlin took the last sandwich. “The night he stabbed you, he slipped Elaine a sleepin’ pill. She wasn’t his accomplice, just none too bright. Neither was Jenkins—he didn’t realize he was causin’ a dive
rsion for Tony the other night. And Tony did think it was Rebecca workin’ in the cottage.”

  Between Michael’s ministrations and the whiskey Rebecca was no longer cold. Warmth rippled up her spine and onto her cheeks, so that they burned. Her aches and pains quieted into remote annoyances.

  “It was Tony wearin’ his own robes who scared Sheila that same evenin’ she was killed. He hadn’t intended to kill her, he says, but he saw her and Jerry comparin’ the coin he’d stolen with the one from the London shop. He reckoned they were goin’ to do him over, and confronted Sheila after Jerry left. She had the sgian dubh; she told him to—well, commit an anatomically impossible act. He lost his temper and wrestled the knife away from her.”

  The fire emitted a long sigh. Voices echoed from the lobby, overlaid by revving car and bus engines. Rebecca saw by a glance at her watch, that it was past midnight. Quietly Nora shut the door.

  “Tony hadn’t even had time to realize what he’d done when he heard footsteps,” Devlin continued. “He retrieved the knife but not the coins. He only found out a few days ago that it was Adele who moved the body—and she stole the ring and the brooch before he could. He wondered what she knew. And what Elaine knew, as well.”

  “Adele must have been very confused,” said Hilary, “to find Sheila in that white habit, dead. She probably thought it was Anne and tried to help her. You know those flowers behind the chapter house? I bet Adele was leaving them for Anne, not Sheila.”

  Mark said, “Tony’s mistake was to lose patience with Sheila. He kept getting more and more frustrated trying to carry on by himself. Why else attack Guinevere? And Grant and Hilary? No matter how cool he was on top, underneath he was getting desperate.”

  “He’d spent his entire life perfecting that good-natured facade,” Nora said with a sigh.

  “I canna blame him,” said Michael, “for goin’ round the twist at last.”

  “He hated women,” Rebecca added. “Even when he used Sheila and Elaine, even when he tried to use me, he hated us all.”