Shadows in Scarlet

by Carl, Lillian Stewart

  “Yes, I am.” So Carrie hadn’t managed to cover her tracks. But then, she could only go so far out on Amanda’s limb with her.

  Norah and Malcolm shared a puzzled glance.

  “There’s been a theft at Melrose,” Gibson said to Amanda.

  “I know. My friend Carrie Shaffer called me to tell me. It’s upstairs, in the display case with the sword.”

  “The scabbard?” asked Malcolm.

  Amanda didn’t know what story Carrie had given the police, but she was willing to bet it didn’t include James in its cast of characters. “The scabbard was reported stolen from Melrose. But it wasn’t stolen. I brought it here with me, because I decided at the last moment we needed photos of it with the sword, and I’m afraid I didn’t make it very clear that that’s what I was doing so it was reported stolen.” Having come full circle, she stopped and told herself that every truth was in the open but one, wasn’t it?

  Gibson was looking at her as though she’d started speaking Sanskrit. No way her American accent was that confusing. He unfolded the piece of paper. “An eighteenth century military scabbard, poor condition, brass oval bearing the Grant crest, no sword?”

  “It’s upstairs in the hall,” said Malcolm.

  “That item was crossed off the list before I received it,” Gibson returned.

  “List?” asked Amanda.

  “A Paul Revere silver tea service—pot, sugar bowl, creamer, and tray.”

  “What?”

  “A brass inkwell. A Chinese vase, Ming dynasty. Two pewter candlesticks. A pair of shell earrings that once belonged to Pook—Pocahen—Pocahontas.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Here,” said Norah in her best voice of reason. “Denny, I take it that’s a list of items stolen from Melrose Hall?”

  Silently he reversed the paper, revealing a dozen typewritten lines in the body of a letter. Irene’s knife snicked up and down on the cutting board. Calum puffed away like a rotund dragon. The animals, like good extras in a crowd scene, milled around underfoot.

  Amanda frowned. “I don’t get it. The scabbard was in the box with the bones, but I don’t know anything about the other things. They were all at Melrose when I left. Even the earrings, and they’re just Victorian fakes.”

  “The box with the bones,” said Gibson. “May I see it?”

  “Sure.” Amanda headed down the hall toward the spiral staircase, Gibson striding at her elbow, Malcolm and Norah close behind. Nothing like waking up, she thought, and finding herself accused of kleptomania in her sleep. “I take it the charges were filed by Cynthia Chancellor?” she asked. “Mrs. Anthony Chancellor, all-American busybody?”

  The gray moustache twitched. “Never heard the name, Miss. Williamsburg P.D. is asking that you help with their inquiries. But no charges have been filed.”

  “Oh.” Up the staircase the procession went, Amanda shooting a sarcastic thanks a lot at James’s portrait. But why should he take anything besides the scabbard? And how? There wasn’t room for anything larger than the scabbard in the box.

  The wooden crate stood empty beside the display case, its lid propped against its side, the roll of foam drooping over its edge. Each foam recess was empty now. It could have packed a set of dishes just as well as a human body. Amanda gestured toward it. “Help yourself.”

  Malcolm helped Gibson remove every bit of foam and each package of silica gel. “And your suitcase, Miss?” the constable asked at last.

  “Just clothes, shampoo—you know, my stuff,” Amanda said.

  “Give over, Denny,” said Malcolm. “If she filled her suitcase wi’ silver tea services she’d no have anything to wear, would she?”

  “When did the items go missing?” Norah asked.

  Gibson referred to the letter. “Thursday morning.”

  “I left Melrose Wednesday,” Amanda told him, “which would have been Thursday morning here. But you don’t mean here, do you?”

  “When it was Thursday morning in Virginia,” stated Norah, “it was afternoon here and Amanda was already with us. Speaking to her friend on the telephone about the scabbard.”

  Gibson nodded, folded the letter and tucked it into his pocket. “Well then, you can’t have a better reference than Norah here, Miss. I’d best tell my counterparts in the States to have another go at it. You’ll be returning the scabbard?”

  “I sure will,” Amanda told him. “Thursday.”

  “Very good then. I’m sorry to have disturbed you.” His smile cracked his judicial sobriety. “Norah. Malcolm. Tonight at the ceilidh?”

  “Of course, Denny. Let me see you out.” Norah walked the policeman out of the hall. Their quiet voices receded into the depths of the house.

  Malcolm kicked at the wooden crate. “I’ll break this up for firewood, shall I? The foam and the gel can be recycled, I expect.”

  “I wonder what’s going on back at Melrose,” said Amanda. “Maybe I should call Carrie again—no, it’s Saturday, I’d have to call her at home. I could borrow your computer and try e-mail. But I’m not so sure I really want to know what’s going on.”

  Malcolm was looking at her. He’d make a good policeman himself—his clear, canny eyes saw through layer after layer of falsehood, intentional and otherwise. She ducked his eyes and turned toward the sword and the scabbard, cold artifacts under glass.

  “It’s a catch-22 situation. Cynthia’s worked so hard to publicize Melrose and James and everything now she’s got people stealing from the place. With so many visitors, a thief could easily pocket something. I worried about it all the time.”

  “Even a silver tea service?”

  “Several people, then.”

  “Disna seem likely, does it? And why should Cynthia think you had anything to do wi’ the thievery? If she’s thinkin’ that at all.”

  “God only knows what’s going on in her head. Like this crap about my being engaged to Wayne. He’s been after me ever since I got there—I don’t mean he’s a jerk or anything, just kind of clumsy. Cynthia thought she was doing us a favor sending us over here together. But we had an argument just as we were leaving.” Amanda waved her hands like she was shooing away a bee. “No, I told him off. He drove away without me and I came here alone. Maybe she’s out to get me because I won’t go along with her plans. Maybe she’s mad about what I said to Wayne. I didn’t think he’d tell her, or that she’d care if he did, but I’ve called a lot of shots wrong recently.”

  “You can hardly blame the chap for fancying you,” Malcolm observed.

  “I don’t. He just won’t take no for an answer and it’s made everything even more complicated than it already was.” She turned back around. “I don’t want to make an enemy of Cynthia. She can make or break my career. If I ever get a career.”

  “Nothing was stolen on your watch, was it?”

  “No, not—well… .” Again she glanced at the scabbard. She was going to have to tell Malcolm eventually. If she wanted to connect with him, that is. And did she ever want to connect with him.

  Norah’s voice drifted up the stairwell. “Malcolm? Amanda? Lunch!”

  Malcolm was still looking at her, his expression indicating deep thought. This man, Amanda told herself, wasn’t into delusion, either self-or otherwise. But all he said was, “Shall we go doon?”

  “Yes. Suddenly I’m starving.”

  “You should be fortifyin’ yoursel’ for the ceilidh.” His hand in the small of her back eased her toward the door.

  His substantial hand, Amanda thought. His corporeal hand. Funny how reality brought along its own set of problems.

  She smiled lopsidedly, caught between pleasure and frustration, all the way down the staircase.

  Chapter Twenty Two

  The third time Amanda fell asleep over Archibald’s manuscript she packed it away and went upstairs for a nap—if she’d slept last night, she couldn’t remember it. She made sure her alarm was set and woke up in plenty of time to fix herself up for the evening. Which was a job, she though
t with a look at her corrugated face and fright wig hair, right up there with making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

  But by the time she’d washed her hair, applied a light layer of make-up, and dressed in a long skirt and sleek jersey blouse, she felt like a new woman—one who’d learned from her mistakes and was all the better for the lesson.

  Amanda walked out the hall just as Malcolm left his room two doors away. All right! If Malcolm in a pair of blue jeans was a sight for sore eyes, Malcolm in a kilt could heal the blind.

  He saw her expression, grinned, and pirouetted, the red and green tartan swirling above a pair of finely turned knees.

  Amanda reeled her tongue back into her mouth before she stepped on it. “I’m impressed. Back in the heathen land where I come from, men dress up in dark suits.”

  “What a scunner.” Malcolm offered her his tweed-jacketed arm. “You’re lookin’ positively splendid yoursel’.”

  “Thank you.”

  Basking in mutual admiration they went downstairs. Norah was rearranging the blossoms in the large vase on the kist. She wore a red jacket and a tartan skirt that revealed legs every bit as well turned as her son’s. From somewhere deep in the house came the sound of a sitcom’s canned laughter. “The Finlays are stayin’ in the night,” Malcolm explained as he held Amanda’s windbreaker for her.

  Except for a few drops scudding down the wind the rain had stopped. Wreaths and swags of cloud spun across the sky, trailing sunbeams which spotlighted first one, then another patch of green hillside. Norah clambered into the back of the Land Rover, carrying a basket that exuded a warm, floury odor. Amanda tucked herself in beside Malcolm and looked ahead with a smile.

  The chapel perched on its headland, a solitary geometrical shape against the curves of the hills. “The headstone should be arriving next month,” said Norah. “A small one with his name, dates, and a thistle.”

  “It’s really nice of you to go to all the trouble,” Amanda said over her shoulder.

  “It’s no trouble. He’s family, after all.”

  The chapel dropped behind a shoulder of land. The road headed downward into the river valley. “Glenmoriston,” said Malcolm with an inclusive wave of his hand. “Bonnie Prince Charlie hid hereabouts. One o’ the local lads put on Charlie’s jacket and showed himsel’ to the redcoats. They killed him, as you’d expect, but they thought they had their man long enough for the real Charlie to leg it up the glen toward Skye.”

  “And in the next generation,” Amanda pointed out, “James and Archibald were redcoats themselves.”

  Malcolm nodded. “It’s just as well Charlie lost. As usual, the romance plays better than the reality.”

  “Tell me about it!”

  The car emerged onto the main road—or what passed for a main road in this part of the world—and turned toward the village. The village hall was an aluminum barn on the outskirts of town. A procession of people waded through a shoal of playing children toward the door.

  Amanda followed her escorts into a brightly-lit vestibule. Lindley Duncan sat next to the cloakroom, collecting a five-pound note from each arrival. “Good evening,” he said. “I thought the service went well.”

  Malcolm produced the admission fee. “He’s been laid to rest right and proper.”

  And not one minute too soon, Amanda added to herself. She said, “Yes, thank you very much for helping out.”

  Paper streamers and fairy lights hung from the exposed I-beams in the darkened main room, from the corner of her eye looking almost magical. Flames leaped in the mouth of a massive stone fireplace. Norah took plates of scones out of her basket and made room for them on a long table heaped with food. Two men dispensed the liquid sort of refreshment from another table. On a low stage to the left of the fireplace several musicians were warming up. Amanda counted a keyboard, a tin whistle, a fiddle, an accordion, and a set of drums. A piper in full kilt and plaid massaged his pipes behind them.

  “What’s your pleasure?” Malcolm asked in her ear, above the din of voices and instrumental squeaks.

  She smiled, remembering her vision of a cool evening, a handsome man, a fireplace, and a glass of whiskey. Here were all the ingredients, plus music, even. What was the line from Shakespeare? If music be the food of love, play on. “Food,” she answered generically.

  “Oh aye. Food.” They grazed down the table, Malcolm initiating Amanda into the secrets of Dundee cake and Forfar bridies. Saving the alcohol for later—no sense in wiping herself out before things even got going—she accepted a glass of what he called lemonade but which turned out to be Seven Up. Again he offered her his arm, and introduced her to half the population of Inverness-shire, none of whose names she remembered. She smiled dazedly and said again and again how much she loved Scotland.

  To a chorus of cheers the piper stepped forward and let loose with “Scotland the Brave.” The blast parted Amanda’s hair and made her ears ring, but the resulting exhilaration was worth it. The party was under way.

  Guided by Malcolm’s steady hand she danced, stumbling at first and then picking up the steps. Fortunately the band spaced the rough and tumble fast dances with slow ones, letting a little oxygen leak back into the carbon dioxide content of the room.

  It was during the slow dances Amanda and Malcolm exchanged life stories. He’d studied historical architecture in Massachusetts, she discovered—“Gey modern buildin’s, none older than 1686, but interestin’ nonetheless”—and computer science in London. Her life, she told him in return, had ranged from mundane to dull up until this summer—“which is why I got the internship, probably, my profs at Cornell knowing I wasn’t going to sell off the artifacts for drugs or hold Satanic rituals in the library.”

  Even though Malcolm named each song, still the traditional arrangements ran together with the contemporary rock tunes in Amanda’s mind until she was dancing to something titled, “The Cape Breton Fiddler’s Welcome to the Gay Gordons and Lady Carmichael’s Strathspey in the Pride of the Summer O’er the Sea to Skye in the Land of a Thousand Dances.”

  She was working up a pretty good drunk on the music and on Malcolm’s voice. Time for the whiskey.

  The whiskey evaporated on her tongue, leaving her mouth filled with the flavor of peat smoke and fire. Yes, it reminded her of James. But that had been far away and long ago. The man had been in his grave two hundred years.

  Urged by several good-natured catcalls, Malcolm shed his coat and tie, stepped onto the stage, and set a tin whistle between his lips. His eyes found Amanda’s in the crowd and held her spellbound as he played a tune so sweet and clear and pure her skin tingled. Why was it, she asked herself, that every human culture invented both weapons and musical instruments? Maybe grace as well as aggression was hard-wired into the human brain.

  Malcolm gave the whistle back to its owner and stepped off the stage. “What was that song?” she asked him.

  “A Gaelic piece, I canna even pronounce the title.”

  “It’s beautiful.”

  “Like you,” he said, and swept her into another slow dance.

  Funny, when Wayne said things like that they seemed stilted and hollow. When Malcolm said them she melted into his arms.

  They didn’t bother with dance steps any more, but embraced and turned a slow circle in time to the music. Amanda had never thought an accordion could play sensuous music. Was she ever wrong. The notes vibrated every nerve ending. The drums tapped a soft undercurrent like the beat of her heart. She hung on to Malcolm’s shoulders, sensing the warm flesh beneath his shirt, nestling her cheek against his jaw. Through her half-closed eyes she watched the fireplace circle around her, embers glowing.

  Malcolm’s fingers moved up and down her back just as they’d moved on the tin whistle. His sixth sense must know how she needed to be eased back into reality. She savored every subtlety of the friction between her body and his wonderfully solid flesh—it was soothing and arousing both. He smelled of fresh air, whiskey, and wool, a scent so compelling she wa
s tempted to nibble his ear lobe. But no, not now. Not yet. “What’s this song?” she asked.

  “The Misty Mountains of Home.”

  That wasn’t appropriate or anything… . She recognized the couple dancing, similarly entwined, a few feet away. Norah was a little bit taller than Denny Gibson, but judging by her blissful expression his moustache buried in her neck was more stimulation than annoyance. “Is that relationship what it looks like?”

  Malcolm glanced around to see who she was referring to. “Oh aye, Mum and Denny are lovers, right enough.”

  “Really?” Amanda liked his matter-of-fact attitude. “Denny seemed so correct this afternoon. You know, stiff.”

  “He’d no be makin’ a guid lover otherwise, would he?” Malcolm said with a remorseless grin.

  Amanda laughed. She couldn’t imagine Cynthia with a lover. Sex tended to be messy, after all.

  The evening wound down in a blush of fire and whiskey and just enough sexual tension to make things very, very interesting. Amanda felt relaxed for the first time in weeks, relaxed and paradoxically wide awake.

  Duncan stood at the door like at the door of his church, shaking hands and wishing everyone a good night. There were probably more people at the ceilidh than at the church, Amanda reflected. She and Malcolm clung together through the chill of the parking lot. Their breaths made clouds inside the car.

  “The evening was great,” Amanda said. “Thanks so much.”

  “The evenin’s no over yet,” said Malcolm. He cupped her face in his hand, pulling her gently forward.

  Oh yeah. She lifted her chin and parted her lips.

  The dome light burst through the darkness as Norah opened the back door. “What a lovely evening! Don’t you think so?”

  “Oh aye,” said Malcolm. Laughing, he released Amanda and turned to the steering wheel. “I do think so.”

  “Denny says to tell you he’s sorry about this afternoon, Amanda, and he hopes he didn’t upset you.”