Charm Stone

by Carl, Lillian Stewart

  “One of the original cabinetmakers was named Bucktrout, come to think of it.” Jean scraped the last of the brown-flecked yogurt from the bottom of the tall glass and decided if she had anything to eat at the Cheese Shop it would be a cracker. “I take it you’re not going to come to the Dingwall interview? It’s bound to be, well, interesting isn’t quite the word.”

  “They’ll not be talking to you with me sitting by, not after last night. I’ll leave you to it.”

  “I hope you glean something from the cabinetmaker’s shop. Whoever discovered the body may be too shocked to talk to a passing stranger. Or he may be under orders from the police not to.”

  “Nothing ventured.” Alasdair tipped her a brief salute. “And I’ll fetch sawdust for tomorrow’s sausages, shall I?”

  And he was out the door and away, his lips thinned with determination, the crease between his eyebrows set with resolve. Both shaking her head and laughing, Jean piled the dishes back on the tray and washed out the coffee pot. She had to hand it to him, he might have been given a few lemons the last couple of days—or at least limes, not quite so sour as lemons—but he was determined to make fruit juice anyway.

  What she needed to make was a couple of phone calls. And a second check of her notes. And there was the ever-useful Internet. Her computer sat on the desk, humming gently, its nylon case set neatly aside. Alasdair had already been at it, seeing what he could find about Wesley Hagedorn, Williamsburg cabinetmaker.

  Jean chose Miranda’s name from her cell phone menu and pressed the button. But her colleague hadn’t yet switched on her phone. Jean recorded a brief account of last night’s events—Jessica and Sharon, Sharon and Tim—and then carried on to Rebecca’s number.

  She and Rebecca and their transatlantic romances, a foot in each culture, needing more than multi-nation-capable phones to keep their balance.

  “Hi, Jean,” said Rebecca’s voice.

  “I hope I didn’t wake you or catch you feeding the baby or something.”

  “Nope, one of my nieces has taken her for a walk and Michael’s gone along to supervise. How did the reception go?”

  “Long story.” Jean walked Rebecca through the events of the previous evening and its cast of characters, the Finch family, Miranda, the Dingwalls and their recurring role.

  “Whoa,” Rebecca replied when Jean finally ran down. “I knew they were out in left field but I didn’t realize they were actually climbing the outfield fence.”

  Jean would have had to explain that metaphor to Alasdair. “And then there’s the interpreter-cabinetmaker who probably made the replica Witch Box and who certainly drowned—well, we don’t know that. He certainly died, and was found in a pond.”

  “Next to a pond. That was on the news last night. His name was West-something?”

  “Wesley Hagedorn.”

  “That’s it. The police detective—striking woman, looked like an Aztec—said his death was suspicious.”

  “Oh yeah. And if he’s connected with the Witch Box . . . Well, it’s early days yet.”

  “Not that early, if there’s been time for theft and maybe murder.”

  “Yeah,” Jean said, and, grasping at a straw, “The Witch Box here in the Museum is the real one, isn’t it?”

  “It sure is. I managed to get close enough while they were setting up yesterday to get a wee vibe from it. It’s an old chest, right enough and there’s something off about it, something uncanny. I’m not surprised occult stories are attached to it, although I bet the stories give it the oddness, not the other way round. True believers can put out a powerful resonance.”

  One that set off an allergic reaction in the unlucky few. Like the allergy to ghosts. “What about that empty slot on top? Tim Dingwall says it’s for Francis Stewart, Lord Bothwell’s, charm stone—an emerald, maybe jade, maybe an agate, set in silver.”

  “Am Fear Uaine. The Green Man. Sounds like the sort of thing that would belong to Bothwell.”

  “Oh yeah. Green’s the fairy color, and not tiny, cute, harmless Disney fairies, either. This charm stone could well be a cursing rather than a healing stone, bearing in mind that the stories about Bothwell and his coven in Berwick are as much paranoia as truth.”

  “Those carved faces on the Witch Box are green men, and might or might not have been pagan symbols. I get the feeling there was once some kind of mineral matter in that gap, but it was a pretty vague feeling.”

  And not the sort of thing even Jean would consider as evidence, while Alasdair would dismiss it out of hand. “Thanks for that.”

  “For what it’s worth.”

  “When are y’all going to be back this way?” asked Jean.

  “Tonight. We want to hear Jessica’s witch lecture and her take on gender politics. You said she was entertaining, especially when it comes to the notorious Mary Napier.”

  “Ah yes, one of the few women who was tried for witchcraft in colonial Virginia.” Jean reached over and picked up the schedule. “They’ve been dramatizing her trial here for years, and since tonight is Halloween they’re putting on a special show, ‘A Matter of Witchcraft.’ We were too late to get tickets, though, so we’re going to the concert in the church. Either way, you want to do dinner afterwards, even if it’s pretty late?”

  “Who can resist wandering around the Historic Area after dark on Halloween? It’s a date.”

  “I’ll find out where Hugh and his fiddle are moonlighting tonight, no pun intended, and make a reservation. Talk to you later.” Switching off the phone, Jean opened the lid of her laptop and checked the queue of search items.

  Yes, Alasdair had found articles about Hagedorn’s death on the local newspaper’s and television station’s websites. Rodney Lockhart may have discreetly used the words “tragic accident,” but none of the reporters did. One even quoted Detective Venegas’s most recent take on the subject: “This is a homicide investigation.”

  Jean’s heart sank into the pit of her stomach like a barometer before a storm, but she wasn’t at all surprised.

  Chapter Nine

  What had happened to Wesley Hagedorn, exactly? Why had it happened? And, perhaps most importantly, who had made it happen?

  Jean read on, her stomach grumbling under the weight of breakfast and dread.

  Wesley Hagedorn had been forty-three, the same age as Alasdair. Never married, no close relatives remaining, built fine furniture and other replicas, including harpsichords that he also played in the occasional concert. The Foundation’s official statement expressed shock and regret and stated that Wesley would be sorely missed.

  She scrolled on, and found an article on fine woodworking that Hagedorn himself had written for a magazine. Of the photos, all but two were of his work. Jean ran her gaze appreciatively over the curves and curlicues of a set of chairs and a desk. He had been a fine craftsman. Replicating the rough-and-ready designs of the Witch Box wouldn’t have been at all difficult after the delicacy of his other work.

  Wesley’s right hand—the one with the cunning, according to the Bible—was pictured demonstrating its craft to a black-haired, sallow-faced twenty-ish man identified as Samuel Gould, apprentice. While Gould’s fingers looked like hot dogs sprouting strands of dark hair, Wesley’s were preternaturally long and delicate, with pearly, sawdust-covered nails. They were applying an engraving tool to a wooden surface and producing coiled shavings fine as Linda Campbell-Reid’s reddish-blond curls.

  Jean knew very well indeed that the size and shape of a man’s hands had nothing to do with the delicacy of their touch. And Gould did have a vague Neanderthal charm. Was he the colleague who had discovered Wesley’s body?

  Wesley himself occupied the center of the last photo, both those remarkable hands depressing the keys of what Jean assumed was a harpsichord. He wore the usual eighteenth-century waistcoat and shirt over a slender body. His salt-and-pepper hair was pulled back from a long, sensitive face, all forehead and chin and slightly watery—from years of sawdust?—hazel eyes behind wire-ri
mmed glasses.

  Jean had seen photos of drowning victims. Imagining Wesley’s face blanched and swollen and those fine instruments of hands reduced to sagging meat made her hope that he hadn’t drowned after all. Or been drowned, rather, if he’d been murdered. Death in any form, natural or otherwise, was not kind to the physical shell.

  Hurriedly she clicked back to the search queue, then stopped—wait a minute. She returned to the picture and its legend: “Wesley Hagedorn plays the newest product of the cabinetmaker’s shop, a harpsichord similar to that played by Governor Dunmore’s wife and daughters.”

  This time Jean considered the person standing partly beyond the edge of the photo, a woman, turned three-quarters away from the camera, wearing a featureless black coat. With little more than the angles of her elbow and shoulder in the frame, she looked like a raven crouching over Wesley’s inoffensive—okay, maybe he’d had the vocabulary of a sailor, he looked inoffensive—back. But no raven had blond hair with a streak of silver, like crumpled tinsel, flaring down one side.

  Jessica Evesdottir.

  So what? Jean asked herself. The woman was entitled to walk around the Historic Area just like anyone else. And her study of colonial history gave her impeccable motives for doing so. Just because she was standing behind Wesley didn’t mean she even knew him, only that she’d been there when the photo was taken.

  However, if he’d been researching and then reproducing the Witch Box, Jessica would have been interested. She might even have been working with him.

  However again, Alasdair might come back from his mission with another take on the situation entirely. Or Ian might call from Edinburgh with new information. If so, ex-detective Cameron was honor-bound to share it with the inconsiderate but very much active-duty detective Venegas. Despite the mud on her shoes last night, she wasn’t letting the grass grow beneath her feet.

  With a thump on her touch pad, Jean closed the photo and tried to settle her slightly queasy gut with some affirmations. Wesley Hagedorn’s alleged murderer could have had any number of motives—money, jealousy, blackmail. His work on the Witch Box might not have had anything to do with his death. This particular case was none of her business.

  Right. Telling herself something was none of her business was getting to be a less effective exhortation all the time. And it wasn’t as though her curiosity had ever killed any cats. What it had almost killed was her.

  Wincing a la Matt Finch, Jean glanced across the room at the clock sitting on the mantelpiece between a black iron ladle and a brown ceramic bottle. Ten-fifteen. Almost time to set out for the interview, which was her business. She turned back to the computer and skimmed the file with the notes she’d taken from various writings of the Dingwalls’. Then, bracing herself, she clicked on the link to their website.

  This time she didn’t duck and cover at the sudden flare of rotating graphics and portentous music, but she did congratulate herself on talking Miranda out of having “Scotland the Brave,” pipes and drums and all, come up with the Great Scot website.

  Navigating the Dingwalls’ site was like piloting the Starship Enterprise, alarm klaxons screaming, exclamation points flying like photon torpedoes. The secret plot to control human destiny! Hidden history! What they don’t want you to know!

  There’s always a they, Jean thought. She closed the window and the music stopped. In the abrupt silence, a chill like a trickle of cold water ran down her back—and it wasn’t a trace of froth from the website. She looked around.

  The clock and the ladle sat on the mantelpiece. The brown bottle wasn’t there.

  Okaaay.

  Warily, she stood up, but the chill had dissipated before it became that all-too-familiar wet blanket. Still, something or someone had moved the bottle. To where?

  She found it in the pantry, next to the chrome and plastic of the coffee maker, looking out into the living room. Literally. On the mantelpiece, the bottle’s back had been turned to the room. Now Jean saw the medallion of a bearded face affixed to its neck.

  It was a Bellarmine bottle, a type of wine bottle named after a fierce anti-Reformation cardinal whose face had resembled the stylized ones on the jars. Inhabitants of an earlier age had occasionally used such bottles as witch bottles, filling them with iron pins or nails, human hair or even urine, and then hiding them around doorways or beneath the household hearth. The idea was to protect the house and those who lived there from a witch’s curse—like the role of the hidden shoes Jessica had once lectured about.

  Jean wasn’t sure when Bellarmine bottles had been manufactured, but was under the impression their era bracketed not only Lord and Lady Dunmore’s relatively enlightened period, but also Francis Stewart’s twilit one, when witches and demons, and the prevention thereof, had been taken seriously and often fatally.

  What had been in this bottle? Picking it up, she tried a tentative sniff at its mouth but sensed only a vague, damp, sweet muskiness. Her former husband had worn more assertive colognes.

  The bottle’s cool dimpled glazing, like a reddish-brown orange, felt innocuous. The ghost whose incorporeal hand had moved it was probably harmless, too. He—she?—was just repeating his normal daily round in life, cooking, pouring wine, protecting himself against witches.

  She replaced the bottle next to the clock. Time had leaped forward to ten-thirty-five. Now she was going to have to hustle.

  Swiftly, but not so swiftly she fell over her own hands and feet, she turned off the computer, called about the dirty breakfast dishes, dabbed on some make-up, collected her mini-backpack, and made sure she had the tools of her trade and her key to the door.

  Outside, Bushrod and Bucktrout were settling down on the sun-warmed sidewalk. She stepped around them just as Eric pushed open the gate. Aha, her ploy to attract the knowledgeable young man had worked in the nick of time. “Hello again,” she said. “I have another question.”

  “Yes, ma’am?” He bent to tickle a feline ear.

  “That bottle on the mantelpiece.”

  “The one with the Dumbledore face embedded into it?”

  There was an example of being over-educated. Knowing the face was Bellarmine’s, she’d seen it as sinister, not benign like that of Harry Potter’s headmaster. “Yes, that one. Do you know if it was found in the house?

  “Yes ma’am, I do—the restoration people were real nice about showing us around. They found the bottle below a loose stone in the hearth. Funny place for a wine bottle, but maybe the folks back then, they were using it to bury their valuables. There wasn’t anything in it except pebbles, a couple of old coins, and nails. Metal nails, not fingernails,” he added with a grin. “The wax cap was all dried out and broken.”

  Tempted as she was to keep on pumping him for information, he and she both had places to go and people to see. All she said was, “You know your stuff, Eric. Thanks! Do you need for me to unlock the door?”

  “No problem either way, ma’am.” Detouring around the reclining cats, Eric pulled a skeleton key from his pocket and applied it to the door.

  Jean heard the rumble of an approaching bus. Another nick of time! It was beneath Great Scot’s dignity for her to arrive for the interview sweaty, puffing, hair flying and glasses askew, not to mention late. Sprinting across the street to the bus stop in front of the Lodge, she clambered onto her natural-gas-powered chariot and whipped out her notebook—a paper notebook, with a pen or pencil, was a less fussy and demanding accessory than a PDA.

  “Bellarmine bottle beneath the hearth,” she wrote, her pencil jerking as the bus swung around the corner and past the entrance ramp to the Colonial Parkway. “Must have been hidden after the house moved from the Palace grounds in the 1750s. A bit late to be practicing preventive magic, but . . .”

  But what? she wondered, tucking her notebook and pencil back into her bag. Was the inhabitant of the house an older person clinging to the ways of his youth? Or was he simply someone less sophisticated than Franklin, Jefferson, and other paragons of the Enlightenment?
Maybe she could ask Jessica’s opinion before or after her lecture.

  The bus paused beside the Public Hospital Building and then paused again at the corner of Henry and Duke of Gloucester, where Jean hopped off.

  In the sunlight, the red brick, Federal-style buildings at Merchant’s Square and the college across the street glowed the same sunset hues as the trees. The air was cool, but not so cool she and Tim and Sharon wouldn’t be able to sit outside, all the better to see who was sneaking up on them. Snorting in something between impatience and indulgence, Jean eyed the patio outside the Cheese Shop. A few people sat at the wrought-iron tables, but none of them were Dingwalls.

  It was straight up eleven. They weren’t even fashionably late yet. Jean strolled on to the Kimball Theater and inspected a poster mounted beside the front door.

  November 1! it proclaimed. Hugh Munro and his band, traditional Celtic music with a contemporary awareness. The photo showed Hugh, his fiddle poised for action. The fringe of white hair around his head looked like the halo on a cherub, assuming the cherub also had a white beard and an impish smile. Behind him stood the lads—Billy on pipes, Jamie on guitar, Donnie on keyboard—ready to either light your fire or douse it with tears, depending on the mood of music that split the difference between sentiment and rock ’n’ roll.

  Thank goodness Alasdair had a good ear for music and no problem with hearing Hugh, individually and with his group, through the adjoining wall of Jean’s flat. But then, thank goodness she—they, now—didn’t live next door to the leader of a heavy metal band.

  She stepped across to the far side of the door to see another poster, this one advertising a play. The Scottish play, to be exact—Shakespeare’s Macbeth. This photo showed an actor presumably portraying the Thane of Cawdor himself, wearing the red coat and tartan kilt and plaid of one of George III’s Highland regiments. Beside him his infamous spouse hitched up her billowing dress, lifted her heaving bosom, and held a dagger before him, the hilt to his hand. It was his own dirk, probably, trimmed in silver. They leered at each other, their expressions drawing subtexts that would have intrigued Freud if Shakespeare hadn’t gotten there first.