Charm Stone

by Carl, Lillian Stewart

  Alasdair looked at her, amused caution shading the harsh edges of his features.

  “Never mind.”

  Through the doorway cub detective Olson ushered Matt Finch, who shambled along with all the desperate dignity of a condemned felon on his way to the scaffold. His bleary eyes focused on Jean and one corner of his mouth lifted slightly. Then his gaze shifted to Alasdair and the smile died before fruition.

  That’s why Alasdair had sat down beside her, Jean thought, to signal not ownership or even a controlling interest, but a partnership. No, he wasn’t jealous, he was just establishing facts.

  Olson found a chair. Waving Matt into another one, Stephanie resumed her position at the head of the room and asked, “What do you have to say for yourself?”

  “The Dingwalls,” Matt stated, his profile turned earnestly up to Stephanie, “have been harassing me and my family ever since Jessica refused to let Sharon squander the Charlotte document. That lawsuit, completely frivolous, just spite.”

  “And have you seen the Charlotte document for yourself?” One of Stephanie’s smoothly arched eyebrows lifted toward Jean.

  “Briefly. Jessica can use it in her work. So can my mother, in passing. But there’s nothing there strong enough to warrant Sharon and Tim making so much trouble over it. To warrant thievery and murder and God only knows what mayhem.”

  Very gently, Alasdair’s elbow bumped Jean’s ribs. So Matt hadn’t seen the other side of the paper. Okay.

  Having disposed of that issue, Stephanie went on, “You’ve been following Miss Fairbairn and Mr. Cameron and loitering outside their house.”

  “Yeah. I thought maybe they were working with the Dingwalls.”

  “And even after you knew they weren’t?”

  “Saturday night I got to the Courthouse just as the play let out. I wanted to talk to Jessica. But she’d already left. And then there was, there was Sharon.” He wiped his hand across his face. “I was worried about Jessica. I saw her sneaking into Jean’s house, so I waited for her outside. But she went off with, with your sergeant there. I knew she was in real trouble then.”

  “You thought Jessica might have murdered Sharon?” Stephanie asked.

  “I don’t know what I thought. I’ve been dithering so badly ever since she moved here—it’s stupid, I know. If I were Danish you could just call me Hamlet. To be or not to be, can’t make up my mind.”

  “Can’t make up your mind whether to kill yourself or someone else?”

  A literary point to Stephanie, thought Jean.

  “Whether to try and win Jessica back, or to let her go.”

  Jean thought, Ouch. Even Alasdair shifted uneasily at that one.

  “And you were seen,” Stephanie said, “outside Mr. Cameron’s house this afternoon.”

  “I wanted to talk to Jean, apologize for causing her and her—friend—any alarm, but I guess she’d gone somewhere else after she left my office, not straight home.”

  “You could have called me,” Jean said.

  “I didn’t want to get you while you were driving or something,” Matt told her. “Besides, if you’re going to grovel, face-to-face is the way to do it.”

  “Did you take her laptop computer?” asked Stephanie.

  “How could I? I was never inside the house. I knocked, no one was there, I played with the cats a few minutes, I went for a walk around town and saw some friends at a coffee shop. They can vouch for me, if I need—an alibi.” The word came out awkwardly. “I went to the memorial concert—it’s not Wes’s fault Jessica got to him—but when I saw Rachel sneaking out, I knew, I just knew, she was going to see that boy. Dylan Dingwall.” He covered his face with his hands.

  Jean looked from his now-concealed profile to Alasdair’s, crisp as ice. She just couldn’t see Matt killing Sharon. The iron in his soul was too deeply rusted.

  “Let’s get you down to the station for a formal statement,” said Stephanie. “And I want you to talk to Jessica, convince her that holding back information is just making it look worse for her.”

  Matt looked up. “Oh. Yes. Okay.”

  Olson stowed his notebook and pen and, taking Matt’s elbow, guided him to the door as though Matt was older than his mother. Matt glanced back from the hallway. “Sorry, Jean.”

  She couldn’t say, “That’s okay,” so she simply sent him a nod.

  The door shut. Jean told herself that this wasn’t a French farce, with various actors running on and off the stage, this was a Scottish . . . No, not farce. This Scottish play was, like Macbeth, a tragedy of marriage and ambition.

  The outside door opened and shut and footsteps walked away. Stephanie asked the air, “So did Matt kill Sharon hoping Jessica would be charged with the murder?”

  “Like a black widower,” murmured Jean, and, louder, “I think he does still love her, like he said. He’s had flashes of vindictiveness, but . . .”

  “He’s not got the grit to murder anyone,” Alasdair said. “In my not-inexperienced opinion.”

  “But it’s an opinion all the same.” Stephanie paced toward the door. “We know who stole the replica Witch Box. We know who burgled Wesley’s apartment. We know who murdered Wesley and we even pretty much know why. But who killed Sharon?”

  “And who took my laptop?” added Jean. “Although that’s a secondary issue.”

  “Jessica couldn’t have taken it, she was in custody. Maybe Kelly, to see how far up the creek with the replica she is.”

  “But that’s Alasdair’s case, why would I have any notes . . .”

  Stephanie’s sarcastic eye touched Jean’s.

  “Because she figures I’m the dominant person in the relationship. Right.” Beside her Alasdair laughed so dryly powder swirled around him. “Well, I am usually a few paces behind you, it seems,” she told him.

  “Jean . . .”

  A uniformed officer appeared in the doorway, holding up Sharon’s tote bag. “Yes! Dylan was telling the truth!” Stephanie seized it and dumped its contents onto a chair.

  Alasdair jumped up and offered his hand to Jean, who, after all, had been sitting a lot longer. He not only pulled her onto her feet, he almost pulled her off of them again, but she managed to keep her balance, and stumbled beside him to the impromptu display.

  There were the photocopies she had glimpsed outside the Cheese Shop, pictures of the Witch Box itself, probably, rather than the replica. The gap for the charm stone was circled in red ink—ink that had run in the dampness, and now matted the paper like bloodstains.

  Along with the photocopies were actual photos, tacky but not yet sticking together, and plans of such exceeding neatness it was hard to believe they’d been drawn by human hands, even the delicate ones, like fine instruments, of Wesley Hagedorn.

  Stephanie shook out the bag. Down onto the papers clattered several polished agates and discolored patches of metal, as well as two polished silver triangles sheened with tarnish. The one etched with a sinuous knotwork design bristled with prongs ready to clasp a stone. “He was going to make a replica of the charm stone, too?” she asked. “And the Dingwalls thought he had the real one? And they were in the churchyard trying to fit these bits onto a gravestone? They’re nuts.”

  “Aye,” said Alasdair, his tone conveying an entire paragraph of response.

  There were nuts, and then there were nuts, Jean thought. She picked up one of the agates and rolled it between her fingers. It was smooth and cold. The real charm stone, be it agate or emerald or something else, was probably as cold. But was it as smooth? Maybe it wasn’t even polished, not like the quartz of the Ardvorlich charm stone. “A rolling charm stone gathers no moss,” she said, and put the pebble back down.

  Now it was Stephanie who was looking at her with cautious amusement. Alasdair, though, was almost smiling, albeit mordantly. “Even if they turned up the charm stone, it’d not be opening any vaults or charming the birds from the trees, wishes not being horses and all.”

  Good heavens, the man was sounding like
her. He must be really tired. Jean returned his almost-smile and focused on Stephanie. “Never mind my crack about capstone and everything—that’s what the Dingwalls said, I didn’t make it up—never mind what they think, anyway—the crux of this whole situation isn’t Francis Bacon’s papers, it’s Edmond Malone’s gift to Charlotte Murray.”

  “The document?” asked Stephanie.

  “Yes. It’s being authenticated because everything with the Dingwalls’ fingerprints on it is suspect. Jessica doesn’t want anyone to question the academic points she makes off that document. Same with the Dingwalls themselves. They’ve taken a lot of flak over the years—justifiably, yes—but they didn’t rush ahead with using the document in their movie because, like Kelly said, they also need it to be authenticated. They’re smart enough to know that you can hang a lot of extrapolation—sorry—pin a lot on one solid source, especially if it’s a spectacular solid source.”

  “Spectacular?” Stephanie asked.

  “Charlotte’s message and drawing are interesting, cool, whatever. The thing is, they’re written on the back of something else. I think it might be a page out of a Shakespeare Folio, one of the first printed editions of his works.”

  Stephanie’s lips pursed but she didn’t quite whistle. “That’s why Jessica’s being vague about it. There is a lot at stake. And there’s another motive for her to kill Sharon, over and beyond revenge for Sharon killing Wesley.”

  “How did she know Sharon killed Wesley, then?” Alasdair asked.

  “Yeah. Well.” Stephanie looked back down at the plans.

  “Oh!” Alasdair hadn’t suddenly answered his own question, he’d remembered Jean’s phone. Pulling it out of his pocket, he handed it over. “Miranda’s left a message, I reckon.”

  Jean fired up the phone again and checked. Yes, Miranda had left a message. Backed by the glissando of crystal chiming and silver sliding across porcelain, she said, “I’ve spoken with Gordon Bilsson from the Folger. The document’s there, right enough, and looks like being authentic. He’s saying nothing more, but he’s going about like a cat with Atholl Brose on its whiskers. He’ll be in touch with Stephanie soon as may be.”

  “That’s helpful.” Jean replayed the message, this time holding the phone in mid-air so Alasdair and Stephanie could hear.

  “Atholl Brose?” asked Stephanie.

  “Cream, honey, oatmeal, whiskey. Delicious stuff. The implication is . . .”

  “That much I get. She means there is something spectacular about the document.”

  “Yep.” Jean shut the phone and tucked it into her bag. All three of them stood silently, Jean, at least, less mulling over all the evidence than simply watching her brain sprawl in her skull like something the cat dragged in. Like something the cat had regurgitated in the middle of the rug.

  Alasdair turned toward her, eyes still hard but no longer cold, bleached with weariness. “Let’s be getting ourselves to the house. Tomorrow . . .”

  “. . . and tomorrow and tomorrow,” Jean couldn’t resist concluding. Wasn’t that the passage where Macbeth reacted to his wife’s death by proclaiming that life was no more than a player spending an hour on stage, signifying nothing? She had her moments, but she wasn’t that far gone.

  Stephanie was scooping the papers and stones back into the bag. “As soon as I hear from the guy at the Folger, I’ll let you know. If I hear anything from anybody, I’ll let you know.”

  “Likewise,” said Alasdair, and Jean said, “Good night.”

  They headed outside to discover that even though the room had been dim, the night was dimmer. The stars were veiled by thin cloud, smeared as though seen through teary eyes. A train whistled behind the Palace, and as Jean and Alasdair walked away, side by side, close together but not touching, she thought, how lonely the sound was, the wail of a lost soul.

  Right now she was lonely, too, if not lost. Even if not alone.

  Alasdair took her hand, and yet his lay cold, heavy, inert in her grasp.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Jean considered her toothbrush, angled away from the other one in the glass beside the sink. Flicking the glass with her fingernail produced an anemic ding. The Liberty Bell, she thought again. There was independence of the body politic, and then there was independence of the body personal.

  Last night she and Alasdair had staggered into the Dinwiddie Kitchen, finding it unattended by either cats or ghosts, although the Bellarmine bottle had moved yet again, back into the pantry. Jean left it there while she made cocoa for both her and Alasdair, he declining her half-hearted offer to join him in a wee dram at the Lodge.

  Too drained to contemplate any more than default detente, they’d slept side by side, if not exactly together. Thomasina’s ghost could have driven a team of spectral oxen through the house and Jean, at least, wouldn’t have heard it.

  Now, in the living room, Alasdair was telling Eric that no, the computer hadn’t yet turned up, and no, no one was blaming him, and thank you kindly for bringing the breakfast, here’s a bittie something for yourself.

  Jean trudged into the living room, noting that the daylight outside was as uncertain as her own feelings. Today was All Souls Day, or El Dia de los Muertos back in Texas, a celebration of family, of ancestry, rather than a shrinking away from the certainty of death.

  Way to start the morning, she told herself. Exchanging a polite greeting with Alasdair, she hunkered down over a cup of coffee while he paid more attention to the newspaper than his breakfast.

  Jessica had said something about men and women living next door to each other. Hugh had said something about Agnes, Jean’s other neighbor, moving out. Was there any way she could get Alasdair to move next door?

  She smiled at that, and the smile heartened her enough to nibble at a muffin.

  She was going to miss Agnes and her flowerpots, quibbles over Dougie’s intimate habits aside . . . Jean stopped, holding the muffin in mid-air, and heard a faint peal of bells high in her brain’s belfry. What had Matt said about his mother’s apartment?

  Dropping the muffin, she leaped for the desk, brushed aside the cell phone and its electronic umbilical—at least she’d remembered to hook it up last night—and dived into her bag. Billfold, hairbrush, protein bar . . . There. Her notebook.

  Alasdair, she realized, was staring at her quizzically.

  “Here it is,” she said. “Matt said his mother lives in an apartment, that she’s so busy she doesn’t have any pets or even potted plants. But Miranda said . . . Damn!”

  Alasdair removed his glasses.

  “I was standing there at the crime scene. Miranda came up. She’d been waiting for us at the church. We didn’t show up. Barbara Finch came in and Miranda remembered her from the reception and chatted with her. And then she, Barbara, went on inside because the concert was starting and Miranda came looking for us.”

  Alasdair folded the newspaper.

  An emphatic mental dingdong almost rattled Jean’s teeth. “Miranda said Barbara was a keen gardener! But she didn’t even know what a chrysanthemum was.”

  “Whyever should Miranda be saying that, then?”

  “My point exactly.” Jean freed the phone from its tether, switched it on, punched Miranda’s number. And, again, got her voice mail. “Dang. We’re playing tag.”

  “It’s early for Miranda, not yet half nine.”

  “Especially after the reception last night.” Into the phone Jean said, “Call me. I need to know what it was about Barbara Finch at the church Saturday night that made you think she’s a keen gardener.” She snapped the phone shut and laid it and the notebook beside her plate while she retrieved her muffin and took a hearty bite.

  Alasdair’s eyebrows were almost knitting a sweater. “You were saying yesterday, at the pond, that Barbara was at the concert at the time of the murder. But we heard the organ well after we found Sharon’s body, didn’t we now?”

  Jean swallowed the sweet mouthful and raked back through her memories. The chase through
the shrubbery, the interviews at Chowning’s. Oh. “Yes, we sure did, now that I think about it. Barbara was at the Courthouse helping Rachel dress for the play—she said that last night, right? And that’s when . . .” Back to the notebook she went. “That’s when Jessica left the message for Sharon, changing their meeting place from behind the Courthouse to the Lodge. What if . . .”

  “. . . Barbara overheard. Has Stephanie asked the other cast members if Barbara left early as well? After Jessica, but before . . .”

  “. . . the play ended. Before we found Sharon in the tree.”

  They stared at each other across newspaper, plates, cups, eyes lit with wild if dire surmise. “Revenge?” hazarded Alasdair. “Barbara was Wes’s pal. And while she’s no pal of Jessica’s, she’s after protecting Jessica’s reputation because Jessica’s Rachel’s mum.”

  “She was almost too careful to alibi Rachel last night, wasn’t she?” Jean gulped her coffee and started forking in her omelet, suddenly hungry. “But then, Jessica’s in jail for the murder.”

  “She’ll not be charged, not if the forensics don’t match—the hair in the mobile and the skin cells caught beneath Sharon’s nails.”

  “Where Sharon scratched her attacker. On the wrist or arm, probably.”

  “Like as not. She had the torn fingernail as well, catching up a thread.” Alasdair opened a packet of marmalade, turned his nose up at it, dumped it on his toast anyway.

  “When I saw Barbara Sunday morning she was wearing long sleeves. Last night at the concert, she was wearing gloves up to her elbows. Not that that’s suspicious, Lady Dunmore would have done the same. Barbara took the gloves off when she began to play the harpsichord, but it was dark, and she was leaning over the keyboard with her back turned.”

  “She was wearing the gloves after the concert.”

  “Again, nothing suspicious in that, not in itself.” Jean bit off another chunk of muffin, then almost choked on it. “The hair. The hair in the phone. Stephanie said it was the same color as Jessica’s. But did she mean blond or the same color as Jessica’s silver streak? If it’s silver, then the hair could be Barbara’s.”