A MacKenzie Clan Gathering

by Jennifer Ashley

  * * *

  “Ye were done over proper, me lord.” The sergeant was originally from Glasgow but had been assigned this post in the north. Highlanders made him nervous, Beth had seen, and the Mackenzies made him more nervous than most.

  The sergeant was rocking on his heels in the middle of the ravaged gallery. The constable by his side, a local lad, had brought out a pencil and tiny notebook to take down the particulars.

  “Professionals, I’d say,” the sergeant went on. “In and out, never raising an alarm. You’d have lost more if ye hadn’t been wakeful, sir.”

  The sergeant rocked again as he spoke, not comfortable with the way Ian gave him a swift glance then wouldn’t look at him again while Beth described what had happened.

  As she spoke to the sergeant and constable, Ian turned on his heel, walked past them, and headed out the garden door, which was a glass single French door. Beth gave the sergeant a reassuring smile and hurried after Ian.

  She found her husband at the bottom of the steps outside the door. The stairs led to a path that guests used for strolling from the art gallery around the house to Kilmorgan’s famous gardens.

  Ian took in the trampled grass and the scuff marks on the marble steps, then walked a little way down the path and peered up at the trees that grew near the house. While Beth and the two men watched, mystified, Ian moved back up the steps and ran his hands along the garden door’s frame. He opened and closed the door a few times, then bent down to examine the lock.

  Ian walked into the house again, past the worried sergeant and to the front door, which he also went over. Beth followed him closely, not because she was concerned, but because whatever Ian did was certain to be interesting.

  “They had a key,” he announced.

  Beth blinked. “A key? How could they?”

  Ian shut the front door and ran his hand along the bolting mechanism. “This was unbolted when the last man ran out. He didn’t have to stop and fumble with it. The thieves came in through the garden door and unlocked the front door from the inside in case they needed to leave through it.”

  “So they had a key to the garden door?” she asked.

  Ian kept tracing the heavy iron bolt. “The lock on the garden door was nae picked. Or forced. Nor was this one.” He glanced at Beth, saw her trying to comprehend, and touched the keyhole. “No scratches. No nicks where the door meets the frame.”

  “Who on earth would have a key to Kilmorgan Castle?”

  “Me,” Ian answered readily. “Mac, Cam, Hart, Daniel, you, Eleanor, the majordomo, Mrs.—”

  “Yes, yes, I know.” Beth put her hand on his wrist. “I mean, who outside the family or staff?”

  “No one,” Ian said at once.

  “Precisely. Oh dear.”

  Ian didn’t shake off her hold, but he didn’t answer either.

  “That means,” Beth went on, “that the key must have been stolen from one of us at some point. A copy made. The thieves must have been planning this for some time.”

  Ian said nothing. Whether he agreed with her, Beth didn’t know. He would tell her at some point, but it might be tomorrow before he did, or next week.

  The sergeant approached them. “Well, me lord, if ye don’t mind me saying so, how they got in here is no’ so important. They did it, and that’s that. What ye need to do now is decide what they took and make a list. We can circulate it, and if the pieces turn up, we’ll know they’re His Grace’s.”

  Ian’s gaze went down the mostly empty walls. “Three Ramsays, a Turner, three of Mac’s landscapes—not his best work, a Giorgione, a Velázquez, a Delacroix, six of the Norwich School, a portrait by Édouard Manet and studies by him and his colleagues, three landscapes by Cézanne, a Canova sculpture, two ancient Asian bronzes, five wax figurines Degas gave Mac, and a Raphael.”

  Ian closed his mouth. The sergeant stared, but the constable busily scribbled in his notebook. “Sayz-anne, Sez—” The lad looked up in perplexity. “How are you spelling that, me lord?”

  Beth enlightened him. The constable nodded and carefully wrote it down.

  “Well, be sure, me lord,” the sergeant said. “If you remember any more, send word down to the station and let us know.”

  “There is no more,” Ian said.

  Beth smiled at the sergeant. “Do you need anything else here tonight? We are rather tired.”

  The sergeant gave her a patient look. “Aye, me lady, that’ll be all. We’ve had a look for finger marks and footprints, and we’ve talked to the rest of your servants.”

  “Then we can say good night.” Beth, playing gracious hostess, saw the two to the garden door and out. She closed the door, acknowledging the sergeant’s admonition to be sure she locked it.

  “Like closing the barn door after the horses are gone,” Beth said, turning her key in the lock and removing it. “There’s a thought. Did they bother with the horses? Cam’s new colts would be worth a lot of money. Not to mention all the Kilmorgan jewels upstairs.”

  “They had a key,” Ian said. “No one sleeps on the ground floor.”

  “I know.” Beth deflated. “The artworks in the gallery were the easiest to take. I cannot imagine why Hart doesn’t keep the house better fortified.”

  Ian shrugged. “He is Hart.”

  Beth knew what he meant. Hart had a belief that no one would be foolish enough to steal from the Duke of Kilmorgan, and in most circumstances, he would be correct. These thieves must not understand Hart’s power, or they did not care about it, which was a frightening thought.

  Beth sighed. “And now we have to break the news to him. And Mac—he loved those figurines. Not to mention his own paintings.”

  “He didn’t love his paintings,” Ian said as they climbed the stairs. “Mac gave them to Hart because he doesn’t like them and didn’t want to see them in his own house.”

  Knowing Mac, this was no doubt true. “Even so,” Beth answered. “A Raphael, for heaven’s sake.”

  “The Raphael,” Ian said. “It’s . . . wrong.”

  Beth could imagine art experts the world over swooning at his dismissal. But she understood what Ian meant. The Madonna and child in the painting Hart owned had been idealized, and Ian preferred art that was very realistic—he liked the Dutch and Flemish painters, and Velázquez, for instance, and he liked still lifes most of all. Still lifes were about real things, he said. While Beth found the work of Cézanne stunningly beautiful, Ian said the proportions disturbed him. That was why Ian loved his Ming bowls—each one was a small, exquisite, perfect form.

  Cold rushed through Beth at her last thought. “Ian—your bowls. We haven’t checked that any were taken.”

  Ian maintained a room at Kilmorgan that housed the bulk of his collection. Each bowl had its own shelf, and was labeled, numbered, in order. Ian also kept a few bowls in the house he shared with Beth ten miles north of Kilmorgan, swapping them out every so often with bowls here, depending on what he decided he wanted to look at that week.

  Instead of rushing up the stairs in consternation, Ian shook his head. “You and I and Curry have the key to that room. No one else.”

  “But if the thieves stole the key to the house . . .”

  Ian kept on shaking his head. “No one else.”

  “Still, we ought to make sure.”

  Ian’s look told her he thought her worry unnecessary. But he took her hand and walked with her down the wide hall at the top of the stairs to his collection room.

  Beth turned up the lights as they entered, but she saw that Ian had been correct. Every bowl was in its place, except the three that had been taken to their house after their last visit.

  Ian drew Beth into the circle of his arm and kissed the top of her head. “Don’t worry, my Beth. You and our children weren’t hurt. The paintings are just paint.”

  Another shudder had just gone through the art world, but Beth understood. For Ian, the people in his life—his wife and children, his brothers and their families—were far more impor
tant than artwork and paintings, things that only represented the real. And for Ian, the real would always triumph over the imaginary.

  “I love you,” Beth said, her heart warming.

  Ian frowned, puzzled by her response. Then his face lost its drawn, concentrated look, and his eyes softened. “I love you, my Beth. Love you, love you, love you.”

  He liked saying it.

  * * *

  The nursery was in an uproar in the morning. Ian ran to it when he heard the shouting, and found his son Jamie standing in his nightshirt in the middle of the room, demanding to know why he’d not been woken when the thieves had broken in.

  Jamie was nearly eleven years old now, growing taller and more sturdy each year. He had the dark red hair of the Mackenzies, his mother’s blue eyes, and an arrogant manner worthy of his uncle Hart.

  Jamie considered himself the leader of the band of younger cousins, being the oldest of the children. The only cousin he deferred to was Cam’s son, Daniel, but that was because Daniel was a grown-up, fifteen years or so older than Jamie.

  “Dad!” Jamie yelled as Ian came in. He insisted on calling Ian Dad, when the girls liked to refer to him as Papa. “Why didn’t you fetch me? We’d have caught ’em!”

  Ian didn’t bother to wonder how Jamie knew about the night’s adventure. Curry and the rest of the staff would have readily told the three children the tale.

  “No,” Ian said. “They would have hurt you.”

  “I’d have laid into ’em,” Jamie insisted. “Daniel and Bellamy have been teaching me how to fight.” Bellamy was Mac’s valet, a former prizefighting pugilist.

  “No,” Ian repeated. He found he had to say this word many times to Jamie before its meaning penetrated. “They were strong and violent. One almost shot me. I would have died if he had.”

  The nanny, a very proper woman, gave Ian a severe look. “Sir, you’ll upset the young ladies.”

  Megan and Belle, both in dressing gowns at the nursery table, were listening avidly.

  “I’m not upset,” Belle said. “Papa is only trying to explain to Jamie that running off half-cocked after a violent criminal is dangerous.”

  Jamie gave his sister, a year younger than he was, a deprecating look. “’Tis my duty to look after ye.”

  “No,” Ian said again. “He would have killed you too, lad. These were hard men. They did not care.”

  Megan, the youngest at seven years old, left her chair and came to Ian. She laid her hand on his. “Then we are glad you are well, Papa. You are well, are you not?”

  At her touch, Ian forgot all about the missing paintings, the man turning the gun on him, his terrible fear when the thug had run for the stairs.

  He was now with the most precious things in his life, which were far more important than Hart’s artwork or the Ming bowls. Ian had run right past the Ming room to the nursery last night to make certain the children were safe. He hadn’t thought about the bloody bowls at all until Beth had mentioned them.

  Ian lifted Megan into his arms, kissed her hair, and lost himself in the sweetness he’d never realized fatherhood would bring.

  * * *

  By the end of the day, a flurry of telegrams had gone back and forth through the train station at Kilmorgan—to Scotland Yard, Hart, the rest of Ian’s brothers. Ian went to the train station himself to send and pick up the replies, too impatient to wait for servants to do it for him.

  He let Jamie accompany him on the errand, and they walked back together, Jamie carrying all the telegrams after his father had read them. Ian was opening the last two.

  In Edinburgh. Arrive tonight. Fellows.

  Ian folded the missive and handed it to Jamie. The next one was addressed to Lady Ian Mackenzie and was an anomaly among the correspondence today.

  Arrive 8 A.M. on the 7th. John Ackerley.

  Ian folded the telegram but tucked it into his own pocket instead of giving it to Jamie.

  Fellows was Chief Inspector Fellows of Scotland Yard and Ian’s half brother.

  John Ackerley was the brother of Beth’s deceased husband, and was a missionary who’d been absent from England for more than a dozen years. He’d arrive at Kilmorgan tomorrow morning.

  Ian walked in silence while Jamie made observations on everything they passed with his usual verve. Ian wasn’t certain what he felt about John Ackerley’s arrival, but the telegram burned inside his coat, very hot indeed.

  Chapter Three

  Chief Inspector Lloyd Fellows never arrived at Kilmorgan Castle without mixed feelings.

  On the one hand, Fellows no longer entered the house in trepidation tinged with rage. He’d made his peace with the dead father who’d refused to acknowledge him, and reconciled with his half siblings.

  He was invited to—no, expected to—attend all major celebrations at the ducal seat, including this one to acknowledge Hart’s upcoming birthday. Fellows could run into and out of the house anytime he wanted, Hart had told him. Make himself at home. Thus far, Hart had kept his word.

  On the other hand, Hart and his brothers had been raised to luxury and splendor, even if their father had been a brutal bully. While they’d lived in terror of the man, they’d had every physical comfort provided, been given the best education, and had piles of cash settled on them.

  Fellows had grown up in the gutter, raised by a barmaid mother who loved him, and loved him still. Fellows and his mother had worked fingers to the bone for every scrap of food they’d ever eaten. Even now, the lofty title of chief inspector carried only a modest salary that let him live in the middle-class area of Pimlico with his wife, daughter, and two sons.

  The question of where his boys would go to school was starting to become an argument. They were four and six, respectively. When William, the oldest, turned eight, he would be expected to leave his tutors and go to a school.

  Hart had already promised a place for him at Harrow, to be educated alongside the other Mackenzie lads. Fees paid, of course. Hart was anxious to close the chasm their mutual father had created, to give Fellows everything he’d have been entitled to had he been legitimate.

  Fellows, proud man that he was, wanted to send his children to a school he could afford, to be raised with young men of their own class. Fellows would never inherit what Hart or his brothers would, and he did not want to imply that his sons stood a chance to either. The laws of England would never let them.

  Louisa, his wife, was the daughter of an earl. Fellows had assumed Louisa would take Hart’s side—aristocrats together—but Louisa saw the sense of Fellows’s argument and was standing with him.

  There it lay. Fellows knew Hart would begin the debate again this visit, but Fellows would stand firm.

  Then had come the telegram from Ian that Kilmorgan had been robbed. Hard on its heels had come the message from the sergeant in Kilmorgan’s village to Scotland Yard about the robbery. Fellows had demanded to be given the case and had taken the first train north.

  Louisa, who insisted she needed far more time than that to pack, would travel there with her sister and family in a few days, as planned. She’d kissed Fellows and sent him off.

  It was very late when the coach that had been sent to fetch Fellows let him out at the castle. He stepped down from the carriage without waiting to be helped and strode for the front door.

  It was called Kilmorgan Castle, but it was a huge house rather than a crenellated fortress, built in the Palladian style in the middle of the eighteenth century. The original castle from the 1300s was now a ruin, a tumble of blocks on a hill that overlooked the valley. A hundred and fifty years ago, the English army had burned the castle, and later pulled it down. Many of its stones had been incorporated into the new house.

  Malcolm Mackenzie, the current Mackenzies’ illustrious ancestor, had designed the house, including the many wings to contain the large number of children each duke seemed to sire. The house and gardens had been the envy of aristocrats both English and Scottish, which had been the point.

&nbs
p; The man who met Fellows at the massive front door and reached for his luggage was Ian’s valet, Curry.

  “It weren’t me, Inspector,” Curry said immediately. “I ’ad nothin’ to do with it. I was asleep in me room, dreaming peaceful dreams.”

  Fellows swept off his short-crowned hat. “I haven’t started rounding up suspects yet, Curry.”

  “I know. It’s ’abit of mine, the minute I see a copper, to say it weren’t me, don’t matter what’s ’appened. In this case, it’s a pile of artwork been nicked. I wouldn’t know ’ow to sell that on, would I? Even if I would steal from ’is nibs, which I wouldn’t.”

  Curry had been an excellent thief in his time, Fellows had heard. All in the past, Curry would hasten to say. He’d reformed. It was true that since he’d begun working for Ian Mackenzie, Curry had kept to the straight and narrow.

  “You wouldn’t be such a fool as to rob Hart,” Fellows said. “Don’t worry. You’re safe from me.”

  Curry blew out his breath. “Well, that’s a relief. I’ll take these up to your usual. The scene of the crime is down there.”

  Curry pointed down the long gallery that was well lit even this late, and scurried up the stairs with Fellows’s one bag. A footman took Fellows’s hat and coat, and left him to wander down the gallery, taking in the damage.

  “Good Lord,” Fellows said under his breath.

  The villains had done a thorough job. They’d taken what they could carry out quickly, abandoning the rest when Ian had set upon them. Some famous paintings had hung in here. It was a bloody shame.

  Fellows examined the door at the end and saw that it was as Ian had said in his telegrams—the lock had not been picked nor forced.

  A stolen or copied key, Ian had speculated. Or an inside man, Fellows added silently. Someone promised a great reward if he left the door open.

  A neutral investigator would not discard the idea that Hart himself had organized the crime. Many an art collector robbed himself for the insurance money in times of need. Sometimes the paintings had already been quietly sold over the years and replaced with copies. A robbery got rid of the damning fakes, and the unlucky insurers paid out.