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

by Lillian Stewart Carl

Affixed to each door she passed was a tartan-backed plaque bearing the name of a clan that was “out” in 1745. Not that all the clan members responded unanimously to their prince’s call. Some men were forced out by threats. Others informed Charlie that his sense of entitlement was not universally applauded. Those men and women who followed Charlie did so with their hearts, not their heads. And all too soon hearts as well as heads were rolling. Whether they belonged to rebels or refuseniks didn’t matter to people like the original Hawley.

  While Jean understood Rick’s shudder at Norman’s name, she couldn’t help but think there had to be a better reason for ejecting the cook on Tuesday.

  A second, more modest staircase was fitted into an alcove at the far end of the hall. Unless the place had been re-designed by M. C. Escher, this staircase would come out next to the billiards room. Yes, Sawyer’s blustering voice drifted up from below, accompanied with a whiff of either coffee or brass polish.

  The staircase also led upward, to what in American dialect would be the third floor but in Britspeak was the second. Servant’s quarters? More guest rooms? Belfries for the MacLyon family bats?

  “Yo, Jean! Hi there!”

  Jean spun around. Vanessa MacLyon, another prime suspect, was walking briskly down the hall toward her.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Jean hardly recognized Vanessa. She was wearing wide-legged denims, clunky sandals, and a snug jersey blouse that barely contained her breasts. She resembled two olives on toothpicks, stylishly and painfully thin except for the protuberances on top. A navel ring winked between the hem of the blouse and the waistband of the pants. She was wearing a light sweater, but still Jean could count the goose bumps.

  “Hello,” Jean said, and, since she could hardly pretend otherwise, “I was just looking around. Great restoration.”

  “Yeah, Rick’s really good with detail, comes from designing all those games. Would you like the nickel tour?”

  “Yes, please. I appreciate y’all agreeing to an interview after—well, after everything that’s happened.”

  Vanessa’s green eyes flicked quickly toward Jean’s and just as quickly flicked away again. “To be honest, Rick only agreed to talk to you originally because of Miranda. And then after poor old George died, I expected Rick to dig a moat, install a drawbridge, and pull it up, but moats and drawbridges aren’t the right period, are they? Neil says you’re okay, though, not like the jackals who only want the sensational stuff.”

  “I’m after the historical and architectural story,” Jean assured her, giving a lick and a promise to the truth. “It was nice of Neil to speak up for me.”

  “It was George who got him to reading Great Scot. Poor old George, what a way to go.” Making a face, Vanessa fluttered her purple fingertips toward the back staircase. “Up there, that’s where Fiona and all of them sleep.”

  “All of them” meaning everyone except Rick and Vanessa, Jean supposed. At night, with everyone asleep, the house must be very quiet, nothing stirring except mice and shadows. . . . She’d be finding out what the house was like after dark very soon now. No need to borrow dread. “Are the police staying here?”

  “Some of them. It’s not like we’re short of space or anything.” Vanessa turned toward the main staircase. “All these rooms and there’s hardly ever anybody here. And Rick knows loads of celebrities, too.”

  “My next-door neighbor, Hugh Munro, he was here for your Hogmanay party. I guess that was the exception that proves the rule?”

  “Oh yeah. Rick wanted to make some social points with that, but everybody else who comes out here is deadly dull.”

  Jean didn’t expect Vanessa to say present company excepted, and sure enough she didn’t.

  “And he picks dull employees. Except for Meg, his personal assistant. She was fun but she turned out to be a Benedict Arnold, you know?”

  “Oh?” Jean murmured, adding to herself, from the British perspective Arnold was a patriot.

  “At least Neil’s here. He’s brilliant.”

  “He’s definitely easy on the eyes.”

  “You think so?” Vanessa raked Jean with a shrewd glance. “I saw in the newsp . . . But it’s not true, is it, about you having sex with a student and getting him expelled and everything?”

  Jean winced. She should have anticipated that one. Through her teeth she answered, “He got himself expelled by plagiarizing a published work. The sexual harassment angle was a lie.”

  “That’s what I figured,” Vanessa returned, with a shrug that pretty much said, You must be almost his mother’s age.

  Like Rick wasn’t old enough to be Vanessa’s father? But Jean hadn’t come here to debate gender politics. “Thanks for giving me the benefit of the doubt,” she said, and followed Vanessa back up the hall. “Fiona’s wearing a wedding ring. Is her husband in the area?”

  “No, she’s a widow. It was sad and everything, you can’t really blame her for doing the ice princess bit, but geez, she can be a little hard to take. Not real friendly. Kind of judgmental, even.”

  A widow? Tragic would be a better word than sad, then. That might explain Fiona’s reserve—she wasn’t hiding something, she was chilled to the bone, numb. Jean understood emotional survival mode, although, not, thank God, to that extent. “What happened to . . .”

  “Fiona helped with the decorating,” Vanessa said at the same time, and went on, “she’s got a great eye for fabric and knows her antiques, even though she’s way too conservative when it comes to putting it all together. But Rick wanted, like, classic stuff, and he pays the bills.”

  Vanessa was certainly being chatty. Since Jean could hardly run back into her bedroom and get her notebook and pen, she commanded her short-term memory to pay attention and her brain to adjust to Vanessa’s mosquito-whine California accent. Fiona’s husband’s death. Ask Miranda.

  “And poor old George—I know he’s gone, I don’t mean to knock him—but George was dead boring. We owe Toby to him, thank you very much. Not that there’s any harm in helping with his rehabilitation, it’s just that he’s a couple of sandwiches shy of a picnic, you know?”

  No, Jean didn’t know, but Miranda was already on that case.

  They walked through the sitting area at the head of the main staircase. The cat opened an eye and shut it again. “Hey, Clarinda, good kitty-cat. I eat breakfast here—in the winter the sun shines in. When the sun shines at all.”

  “There ought to be a way to base Scotland’s gross national product on clouds,” agreed Jean. The large windows overlooked the courtyard and the driveway, barred with the long shadows of evening. Was it from here Toby saw Lovelace walking up the drive? And if so, so what?

  Vanessa was halfway down the opposite hall. Jean caught up with her, asking, “Do you help Rick with his work?”

  “Absolutely. I act out story lines for him, and I interface with the accountants and lawyers. Rick’s freelancing now, though you’d never notice it the way he’s glued to a keyboard or a phone all the time. He’s wired, connected.”

  “And what about you? Do you ever get away?”

  “I’d go nuts if it wasn’t for the Internet. Sometimes I’ll get to Edinburgh or Glasgow, do some shopping and clubbing, you know, remember that this is the twenty-first century. A couple of months ago I spent a long weekend in London.”

  “A place where they actually have sidewalks, let alone a place where they never roll them up.”

  “What? Oh, rolling up the sidewalks. I get it. Here’s our bedroom.” Vanessa threw open the door at the end of the hall.

  Jean glimpsed a king-sized bed with a canopy, decorated by feathers and streamers like a Regency nightmare. Not the aborted regency of Bonnie Prince Charlie, for a change, but that of George IV, whose visit to Edinburgh in 1822 had spurred a tartan frenzy.

  Vanessa shut the door, leaving Jean staring at its plaque. It didn’t read “MacLyon” but “Cameron.” Odd, she thought. Rick seemed eager enough to plaster his name and his tartan over everything else, n
ot that clan tartans were any more authentic than his name. While tartan was genuinely historic, the clan tartan business was created during that same Regency frenzy by Walter Scott and the Sobieski-Stuart brothers, amiable charlatans who claimed to be Charlie’s grandsons.

  Vanessa started back down the hall. “Dinner’s going to be late, Norman bailed out this morning. That’s gratitude for you. I mean, Rick hired him even with the mediocre references. Of course he was all Kieran’s idea.”

  “Kieran MacSorley?” Jean asked, scurrying along behind, although she knew exactly who Vanessa meant.

  “Yeah, Norman worked at Kieran and Charlotte’s favorite place in Inverness. I figured they got tired of driving up there so they got Rick to hire Norman. They’re always here for dinner anyway.”

  “Maybe the MacSorleys won’t want to come now that Norman’s gone and the police and all the reporters are here.”

  Vanessa brightened at that. “You think?”

  “Why did Norman have mediocre references? I thought he was a good cook.”

  “He is. He does a salmon mousse to die for. It’s just that he’s so negative, thinks everyone’s out to get him. Like anyone would even notice a weasel like him. He made poor old George look like an elder statesman or something. But hey, we’ve got to eat.”

  The choice being between a cook and starvation, Jean deduced.

  The saccharine murmur of music was broken suddenly by the slam of doors and the roar of engines. Below the windows of the sitting area, several uniforms, Gunn, Sawyer, and Cameron were swarming into cars and racing off. Apprehension trickled through Jean’s body. She didn’t need twitching thumbs to tell her that this fresh cascade did not bode good news. “They look like they’re on their way to a fire. Now what?”

  “We’ll be finding out soon enough,” groaned Vanessa.

  The last car vanished down the drive, leaving not so much as a dust mote behind. Jean hoped the cops were off to happy hour at the pub, or at least nothing worse than a fender bender on the highway. . . . Vanessa was right. They’d find out soon enough. No need to borrow dread there, either.

  With an air of resignation and her finger to her lips, Vanessa opened one of the doors at the top of the stairs and revealed a room that, except for the wood and tartan trim, might have been Mission Control. Before the screens and the keyboards sat Rick, hardly noticeable in his ergonomic chair. An electronic sound track thweeped and bumped in time to the swirling colors and shapes on the screens, clashing with the tinkly version of “Flower of Scotland” Jean could hear in the background. Rick must have set up an intercom sound system and was playing his own program of elevator music.

  Vanessa led the way behind Rick’s back to a wrought-iron spiral staircase that wound its way down into a stunning library. Jean stopped at its foot to breathe in the scent of books—paper with an afterglow of mildew, a headier perfume than that of the roses in her room. Only here, now, was she jealous of Rick’s wealth.

  Tall windows looked out over gardens and tennis courts. Between each window stood cabinets and shelves. Some were filled with books, others held a collection of Jacobite memorabilia, professionally displayed and spotlighted: rings, brooches, miniature paintings, a sword, a pistol, even a small round shield called a targe. Every item gleamed, reminding Jean of the gold coin.

  Overstuffed chairs hinted of long afternoons, a good book, a glass of Scotch, a fire in the fireplace, a purring cat, the music of Vaughan Williams or Debussy instead of that homogenized Greatest Scottish Hits soundtrack. Although silence would be good, too, broken only by the whisper of rain and the turn of pages. . . . Firmly turning her back on the seductive murmur of the shelves, Jean asked, “Did Kieran suggest George Lovelace to Rick, too?”

  Vanessa stood with her hands on her hips, looking critically around the room. “Yeah, Kieran strong-armed Rick into taking him. Rick figured he could get by with just Fiona, you know, doing double duty. But she’s not an eighteenth-century expert, said so herself.”

  “Kieran had worked with George before?”

  “No. They weren’t even friends, not that I could tell, constantly giving each other static over—well, the equivalent of angels dancing on pins, if you ask me. Like the divine right of kings. Big deal.”

  It had once been a big deal, an issue people died for. “Did Kieran doubt George’s competence?”

  “Oh, no. No way. It’s just that Kieran gets up your nose. So does Charlotte, la-de-dah, the fish forks have to be arranged just right or it’s the end of civilization as we know it, know what I mean?”

  “Yes I do,” Jean said with a grin.

  “Hard to believe Neil is Kieran’s son,” Vanessa went on, “he’s a sweetheart but his dad’s, like, a total manipulator.”

  Jean expressed no more opinions about Neil. “Won’t George’s death put a crimp in Rick’s plans?”

  “No, not really. George was pretty much done with the collection. He was just saying last week how glad he was he didn’t have to go back to Inverness again. He spent days on end in the Highland Archives at the Public Library in Farraline Park, researching books of the period.” Vanessa angled a bit of bric-a-brac an inch to the right.

  “Fiona must have been grateful for the help. It would be hard for her to spend days in Inverness and run the house, too.”

  “Well, she and poor old George got a territorial thing going a time or two. Though since Fiona’s into everything else around here, you think she’d be glad to share the burden. But they got along all right most of the time.”

  Was there a note of acid in that? Fiona’s into everything else around here. Like what, exactly? Fiona had implied it was George who was exceeding his commission. Jean tried, “I’m sure George’s expertise paid off.”

  “Oh yeah, it paid off.” Vanessa laughed, not a giggle but a deep-throated guffaw. “Some of this stuff cost Rick a fortune and a half. I mean, he’s got a fortune and a half, and rare books are really collectible right now, especially a themed collection with the artifacts. But Rick’s just a little gullible at times—big surprise, right, he wouldn’t be filthy rich if it wasn’t for his imagination.”

  “You think Rick paid too much for some things?”

  “Hard to say,” said Vanessa with an easy-come, easy-go grimace. “It all depends on what the market will bear. He did have George look over all the books and papers, and the other stuff he sent to the National Museum in Edinburgh.”

  He had George. . . . Suddenly Jean wondered if Lovelace had been, well, embezzling. He’d said he needed money. She essayed, “George came to me about an artifact he’d found.”

  “The gold coin,” Vanessa returned, with no more emphasis than if she’d said the Pez dispenser. “Yeah, he said he was going to take it to you to do the treasure trove thing with.”

  So Vanessa knew about the coin, not to mention George’s visit to Edinburgh. “I’m surprised Rick didn’t buy the coin from him.”

  “He wanted to, but George wouldn’t sell up to him. It was funny, Rick’s eyes all bugged out, checkbook ready, and George saying it was his civic duty to sell it to the National Museum. I think George really enjoyed asserting himself with Rick right then. He was as cheerful as I ever saw him, usually he was sort of apologetic, you know.”

  “He seemed very polite,” Jean said. “He was keeping the coin in what looked like a jewelry box.”

  “Oh yeah, that. I was throwing it out and he asked if he could have it. Said it wasn’t proper to keep a historical artifact in an old sock.”

  No, an old sock wouldn’t make as good an impression on a gullible journalist. “Do you know when and where he found the coin?”

  “Around here somewhere. I got the impression he’d had it awhile.” Vanessa ran her fingertip along the edge of the mantel like a drill sergeant inspecting for dust.

  Jean’s eye followed her motion, then stopped. How about that? The expanse of chimney above the fireplace was startlingly unadorned. Rick had missed his chance to post another portrait or even th
e MacLyon arms there. Surely he hadn’t neglected to order a set of MacLyon arms.

  Vanessa was still talking about Lovelace. “It was hard to tell what was going on in his head, he was so old-fashioned. Kind of like Charlotte and her everlasting etiquette, you know, though George would deliver sermonettes about honor and courage and famous warriors, dead boring, and here’s Rick swallowing every word.”

  “Rick got along well with George?” asked Jean.

  “As well as Rick gets along with anybody. Still, he was sort of spooky—George, I mean. You’d be talking to someone or doing something and you’d look around and there he was¾like, how long have you been standing there?”

  “He eavesdropped?”

  “I don’t think so. It’s just that he blended into the background, you know?” Vanessa opened the door to the entrance hall. “And before you ask, no, I don’t know why anyone would want to kill him. He could get on your nerves but that’s hardly a killing offense, is it?”

  “No, it’s not, and a very good thing that is, too. Just what is a killing offense, do you think?”

  Vanessa opened the door to the entrance hall and walked through, either not hearing Jean’s question or not wanting to answer it.

  So, thought Jean, whether the coin had been found on MacLyon land wasn’t the issue. The coin itself wasn’t the issue, as Cameron had pointed out, darn him anyway. What if Lovelace overheard something he shouldn’t have. . . . That’s what she got for asking questions. Too many answers.

  Vanessa was waiting. With one last yearning glance back at the books, Jean stepped out onto the tiled floor of the entrance hall. “How did you and Rick meet?”

  “I was in a play, a historical thing about Charlie and Flora, and Rick was one of the backers. The show sucked, opened and closed before it even made it to off-Broadway, but Rick said I did a good job as Flora, being a MacDonald and all. I thought it was because I was a good actress, myself.” Vanessa curtsied, eyes downcast, hands spreading a make-believe skirt, chin set and back straight. Jean’s eyes widened. For just a moment Vanessa was the pliable and yet intrepid Flora, to the life. Then Flora vanished and Vanessa went striding off in her thick-soled shoes.