The Secret Portrait (A Jean Fairbairn/Alasdair Cameron mystery Book 1)

by Lillian Stewart Carl

  “Oh aye, a dozen or so all kitted out in one version or another of Highland dress. Same group, you’re thinking?”

  “I hear MacLyon runs a historical society.”

  “Looks to be an admiration and bootlicking society,” said Hugh. “Mind you, he was showing them a good time in return.”

  “MacLyon’s piper was playing for the group yesterday. He’s MacSorley too—did you meet him at Hogmanay?”

  “No, no one was piping other than our Billy.”

  “Maybe Neil was too intimidated to get up in front of y’all, although I thought he sounded pretty good. Who else was at the party? The housekeeper?”

  “A bit of class she was, too, tall, red hair, odd look to her eye. Robinson? Is that her name?”

  “Robertson,” said Jean.

  “And the personal assistant, sweet young thing but a bit scatter-brained, the sort that goes about leaving a trail of scarves and hairclips and, come to that, broken hearts.”

  “A personal assistant? No one mentioned her. Fiona Robertson’s doing that job now. You remember the girl’s name?”

  “Meg-something?” Hugh asked, and with a chuckle went on, “Jean, it’s not you needing to ask all these questions. It’s a police matter, although I suppose it’s no good telling you so.”

  “No, it’s not, not when George Lovelace was murdered within twenty-four hours of asking me to help him out.” Jean couldn’t keep the edge out of the voice, but then, with Hugh she didn’t need to.

  He made another sympathetic noise. “Good luck to you, then. Oh, and wee Dougie’s getting on well, not to worry.”

  “Thank you, Hugh. Dougie’s welfare is the only thing I’m not worried about. If you can think of anything else, please let me know. Well, the police and me.”

  “That I’ll do. Cheers.”

  Hugh’s “Cheers” was more reassuring than Neil’s. Not that Neil had sounded particularly cheerful. The word had been a default mechanism. Jean got her notebook from her bag—sometimes plain old pencil and paper worked just fine—and jotted down what Hugh had said about the commemorative group and Meg-somebody. She was gathering evidence, right? She wasn’t just creating busywork to soothe both her conscience and her curiosity.

  She punched in Great Scot’s number and found Miranda her usual chipper self. “So you’ve not been chucked into pokey, then. Should I be phoning our lawyer?”

  “Not yet. If they arrest me, yeah, you can phone the lawyer, but I really can’t see things going that far. I was even on the side of the good guys this morning, almost caught a burglar at Lovelace’s house. Which gave me a chance to look around inside.”

  “And?”

  “No enemies’ list lying out on his desk, sad to say. Unless that’s what the burglar was after. What have you found out about Lovelace?”

  Papers rustled. “The usual, name, rank, serial number. Distinguished military record. Tenure at the University of Leicester. Wife died almost two years ago. There’s a daughter lives in Derby with her family.”

  “Not much there.”

  “Nothing he told you about himself was a lie, if that’s any comfort.”

  Jean emitted a hollow laugh. “It’s what he didn’t tell me about himself that’s got me going. That’s the key to his murder. He had a metal detector, so he may not have found the coin accidentally, but does that matter? He didn’t tell me he was working for MacLyon, but why should he? The only inconsistency is him already knowing about treasure trove. If I could find any other ones. . . .” Cameron’s cool voice said in the back of her mind, Inconsistencies can be very helpful when investigating a suspicious death.

  “A fine, braw lad he was,” Miranda said, meaning Lovelace, not Cameron, “to survive commando training. That was no piece of cake. Forty-five men killed by friendly fire. There’s an oxymoron for you.”

  Some ill omen must be attached to the number forty-five. “He told me they used live rounds. What a horror story for the folks at home, your guy getting shot down by his own side. And poor old Lovelace survives all of that only to be murdered.”

  “Not fair, not a bit of it. But then, what is?”

  “Oh, every now and then the wheels of fate churn out a grain of poetic justice, since the regular kind is so hard to come by.” And if I don’t really believe that, Jean told herself, then I should. “What about Lovelace’s time at Leicester?”

  “A second-rank figure, I gather, but respected within his own field, quite the expert on eighteenth-century books and the like.”

  “That’s what he was doing for MacLyon, putting together a library—of eighteenth-century books, I assume, MacLyon being nuts over Charlie.”

  “Now you’re wanting me to suss out the facts on MacLyon himself, is that it?” Miranda asked.

  I never have to explain to Miranda, Jean thought. She can be trusted. “You got it. Rick and Vanessa MacLyon, and a guy named Kieran MacSorley, a local judge and the man who sold Glendessary house to MacLyon to begin with, and his wife Charlotte.”

  “MacSorley. Rings a bell. I’m seeing one of those old landowning dinosaurs. Looks like one as well, does he?”

  “Like a velociraptor,” agreed Jean. “Snout, beady eyes, the works.”

  “The wife’s the sort goes about with her nostrils dilated, as though she’s smelling something a bit off. There’s a son, I’m thinking. . . .”

  “Neil. Looks like a movie star.”

  “A treat for your weary eyes, then.”

  Jean wasn’t going to touch that one. “Also, MacLyon’s got some hired muscle named Toby Walsh.”

  “Walsh. Doesn’t sound the sort I’ll be finding in the society pages, not like the others. I’ll have Gavin do a public records search.”

  “And MacLyon had a personal assistant at New Year’s, Meg something.”

  “Ah, that one is by way of the society pages. Meg Parkinson-Fraser, daughter of the Parkinson-Frasers of Morningside and Ibiza. A P. G. Wodehouse heroine with a trendy, serrated edge. Vanessa hired her, fancied having another debutante about, I’m thinking, but no go.”

  “What happened?”

  “She sold a story to The Sunburn. Squire MacLyon sacked her so fast she didn’t hit the ground ‘til she reached Inverness.”

  “That’s what I get for not reading the tabloids,” said Jean. “Find the article for me, will you?”

  “No article, sorry. MacLyon must have paid good baksheesh to have it killed. I’ll ring Derek at The Sunburn, see what he knows about it.”

  “So what would MacLyon want killed. . . .” Jean heard what she was saying. Maybe the days a wealthy man could have someone killed weren’t as far in the past as they should be, although she had no evidence Rick was guilty of parking illegally, let alone ordering a murder. “Vanessa was a debutante?”

  “Oh aye, and old money to boot. At least, as old as it gets in the U S of A—railroads, drugs, something solid, not like MacLyon’s dot-com money. She’s a graduate of some posh girl’s school in New England—it’s never Wembley. . . .”

  “Wellesley, I’ll bet.” Jean jotted that down. “And do you know about some historical society of MacLyon’s, people going around draped with tartan and paying court to him?”

  Miranda stage-whispered, “Ah well, that would be the Jacobite Lodge. All very exclusive, not to mention hush-hush. Makes the Queen’s Garden Party look to be an open house.” She added in her usual voice, “We already knew MacLyon was a bit of a nutter. He can play at secret societies if he wants.”

  “The Jacobite Lodge?” Jean repeated. “Why am I not surprised?”

  “I hear tell you can’t join up unless you’ve got a name dating back to the Forty-five, which lets me out, certainly. Not that I’m keen on joining.They sit about debating battle tactics and tartan patterns, I expect.”

  “Sounds like our DAR. Daughters of the American Revolution, where you have to prove you have an ancestor who fought in the war. Like you’re responsible for your ancestors. I’ve always wondered whether the DAR would tak
e someone descended from Burgoyne or Howe or Cornwallis—the bad guys, from our point of view.”

  “Ah, but the DAR’s not after keeping itself a secret.”

  “MacLyon’s Lodge can’t be all that secret a society if you know. . . .” Jean interrupted herself. “I take that back. You know everything.”

  Miranda didn’t argue. “We had a police detective this morning,” she went on, making it sound like taking a pill. “I gave you a good enough reference to be going on with.”

  “You want me to go on? You’re not going to warn me about interfering with the police?”

  “You’re not interfering. You’re a journalist, serving the public’s right to know. You’ve a legitimate interest in the case.”

  “Oh yes,” Jean told her gratefully. “See what you can do with that list of names, would you?”

  “All the dirt, served up on a silver salver,” said Miranda. “And Jean, have a care.”

  That might be a tall order, considering how she’d just chased after a burglar. But the devil drives when needs must, or however the saying went. Jean said simply, “Yes, ma’am. Thanks.” Switching off her phone, she scribbled a few more notes and wondered if Cameron, with all the might of the constabulary at his back, had such good sources.

  Raindrops spattered against the window. Yep, she thought, rain. That’s what it did in Scotland, it rained. And when it stopped raining, its beauty alone would break your heart—never mind love, death, and nostalgia.

  She was picking up her phone again when she heard steps coming down the corridor. Nothing strange in that. She was in a hotel. But these steps were uncertain, stopping, starting again, and this time stopping just outside her door. She braced herself. A police escort? A particularly enterprising reporter?

  No one knocked. The footsteps walked away again, heavily but also quickly. Jean catapulted off the bed, ran across to the door, and opened it a crack. She caught a glimpse of a man rounding the corner at the end of the hall. A very large man, dressed in army boots, canvas pants, and a waterproof jacket. Toby? What had he wanted with her? And, equally important, why had he changed his mind and walked on?

  Telling herself that this was interesting, not intimidating, she made sure her door was locked and placed her third and last call.

  “Michael Campbell-Reid.”

  “Hey, Michael, it’s Jean Fairbairn.”

  “Well now, should I be owning up to knowing you? We’ve had the police.”

  “Yeah, it’s going around, like the measles. They were checking up on me and the coin, right?”

  “Got it in one. Bad luck about Lovelace. And about you finding him, as well.”

  “Never underestimate the power of luck, both bad and good,” Jean said with feeling. “Where’s the coin now?”

  “Under analysis. With the police interested and the murder and all, it’s gone to the head of the queue.”

  “No surprise there.”

  “Ah, but there is a surprise. Our pollen expert had a go first thing, says so far she’s found heather, birch—the sorts of pollen you’d expect. Thing is. . . .” Michael paused for effect, “. . . she also turned up a grain of citrus limon and two of olea europaea. Known when they’re at home as lemon and olive. Not exactly important products of Scotland.”

  “What?” Jean felt like she’d just taken a swift uppercut to the brain. “On the Louis d’Or?”

  “Oh aye, just there.”

  Her brain, still reeling, seized on an explanation. “Lemon and olive. Lovelace was in Sicily and Italy during the war. There’s an old shoe box in his house holding his commando beret. Maybe he put the coin in there and it picked up some pollen. Would that work? Or how about that little white box?”

  “The beret’s a possibility, aye. So’s the box.”

  Jean considered hitting herself in the head with the phone, but that wouldn’t cancel out all the assumptions she’d made about Lovelace’s story. He hadn’t actually told her he’d found the coin in the Western Highlands, although he’d come damn close with his manifesto about gold rushes and frightened sheep. He hadn’t told her when he’d found it, either. He could have picked it up during his commando training and carried it with him as a good luck token. He could even have bought it in Italy. Charlie spent most of his misspent life in Italy. What if the coin had nothing to do with Charlie at all? But no, he was there, no matter how faintly, like the ghost in Glendessary House’s sitting room.

  That problem would have to go on a long list labeled, “Not enough evidence yet.” And the “yet” was optimistic. She wasn’t even sure she’d just come up with another inconsistency. “One more question, Michael.”

  “Questions are my specialty. Answers are another matter.”

  “Right now you have more answers than I do,” Jean returned. “Rick MacLyon has what looks like the original of that from-life drawing of Jenny Cameron.”

  “The only from-life drawing extant? The one made in Edinburgh whilst Charles was holding court at Holyrood?”

  “Yes, that one. What’s its provenance? Is Rick’s the original?”

  “Aye, that it is. The drawing belonged to some Jacobite family ‘til the late eighteen hundreds, when they gave it to Aberdeen University. MacLyon bought it off them last year. Or rather, he endowed a scholarship at Aberdeen and the University gave him the picture in gratitude.”

  “In other words, he bought it,” said Jean. “He does have a thing for Jenny Cameron. For Clan Cameron, I guess, judging by his reaction to Detective Chief Inspector Cameron, Northern Constabulary.”

  “Oh aye, the officer in charge. Heard his name once already, was told to phone him if I learned anything important to the investigation. Assuming I’d recognize something important to the investigation.”

  “I can tell you didn’t talk to Cameron yourself. He’d have told you to tell him everything, up to and including olive and lemon pollen, and let him decide whether it was important. You’d better keep in touch with both of us. . . .” That made it sound as though she and Cameron were a team. Jean made a face. She was a free agent, thank you very much. “I appreciate it, Michael.”

  “No problem,” he returned. “Have a care.”

  Funny. . . . No, it wasn’t funny how everyone was telling her to be careful. No matter how much she felt like the victim of a practical joke, this was not a comedy.

  The display on her phone, to say nothing of the bedside clock, showed time moving inexorably toward her appointment with the police. With Alasdair Cameron. For a long moment she sat slumped, feeling too heavy to move. This shouldn’t be happening. . . .

  It was happening. Time to get up and deal with it.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Jean’s skirt billowed in the raw wind that blustered off the loch and up the street, the sort of wind that blew ships either across finish lines or onto rocks. Fortunately the rain squall had passed. If she opened her umbrella she’d do a Mary Poppins imitation, not that she’d ever identified with Mary Poppins. She preferred taking her medicine straight.

  Seagulls looked like bits of white confetti against the deep blue-gray of the clouds. Their harsh cries echoed among the chimneys. Very few people were out and about, except for the cluster of bodies outside the police station. Even from Cameron Square, several blocks away, Jean counted two mini-cams and three microphones. Speaking of medicine. . . .

  “Jean!”

  She spun around. Neil MacSorley was walking toward her, hair blowing photogenically. Today he was dressed in civilian clothes—jeans, sweater, and coat. Instead of bagpipes, he carried a furled umbrella beneath his arm.

  Well, well, Jean thought, we don’t have Venus rising from the waves of Loch Linnhe, we have Adonis. She stepped out of the wind, closer to the weathered red stone wall of the West Highland Museum, and called, “Hi! Doing some shopping?”

  Neil stopped just inside her personal space, less than an arm’s length away. “I’m needing a roll of tape for my pipes—electrical tape, works a treat—so aye, I’m at the s
hops. But mostly I’m here being grilled by the police. You as well, eh?”

  “My appointment’s at two.”

  “Well then, I’ve been and gone already and lived to tell the tale. Not that I had a tale to tell. There I was playing the moldy oldies, as per Rick’s orders, and Toby steps out and says, you’d better close it down, we’ve got a dead man in the house. At first I thought he meant one of the visitors had fallen over into his tea, but no.” Neil’s face went slightly lopsided, a grimace fighting with a smile. “You’ve nothing better to tell the polis, I’m thinking.”

  “Not a thing,” Jean answered, and wondered if all MacLyon’s employees called him by his first name. Nothing like democracy in action.

  “But you’re feeling better the day? Not so peelie-wally as last night?”

  I looked sickly? No kidding. “Better, yes. Cured, no. Not until all this is—is worked out.”

  Neil nodded sagely. “Knew George well, did you?”

  “I didn’t know him at all. He came by my office Monday. . . .” Jean wondered whether Neil knew about the coin, and decided to err on the side of discretion. “. . . to say he enjoyed the article I wrote about Bonnie Prince Charlie.”

  “A long way to go to pay a compliment.”

  “He said something about the new Museum, too. I wrote an article about it when I first got here in January.” Now she was misleading Neil the way Lovelace had misled her, by inference. That was the problem with half-truths, they spread faster than outright lies, like a plague. But unlike outright lies, they were hard to disprove.

  “You didn’t come out to Glendessary to meet up with George, then?”

  “Oh no. My editor sent me to interview Rick. I was shocked and horrified to find George—there,” she concluded lamely, and looked down at the water stains on the toes of her sensible shoes.

  Neil touched her shoulder, drawing her gaze up to his face, not that that was an unpleasant place for it to rest. “What a scunner, catching yourself up in your own story. A reporter’s worst nightmare, eh?”