Murder Most Scottish

by Blake Banner

  We stepped through the door, and the butler said, “Welcome to Castle Gordon.”

  TWO

  We stepped into a vaulted, Gothic entrance hall. The floor was tiled in a black and white checkerboard pattern, and a magnificent stone staircase rose directly in front of us, and then split in two to ascend, right and left, to a galleried first floor landing. Immediately on our right was a reception desk and coming out from behind it as we entered was a man in his early thirties in chinos and a blazer, with blond hair swept back from a face that was intelligent, but too kind to be handsome.

  He held out a large, soft hand and smiled as we approached. “Mr. and Mrs. Stone, I imagine. How splendid that you could join us. We have a full house this summer.”

  There was no trace of an accent and I figured he had been educated at an English boarding school. We shook hands and he added, as though we had asked, “Charles Gordon. My father insists on calling me Junior, because he is also Charles. So we call him Senior. He’s an American, you know. Now!” He gave each of us a broad grin and held out his arms like he was about to hug us. “I imagine you will want to freshen up after a long journey. Brown will show you to your room and we’ll be having cocktails in the drawing room…” He gestured across the hall to a set of walnut doors. “At seven. Then you’ll be able to meet our other charming guests. We’ll be going in to dine at about half seven or eight.”

  Dehan frowned. “Half seven?” Then she grinned. “What’s that, three thirty?”

  Charles laughed.

  I said, “Seven thirty, smart ass. Thank you, Charles, that sounds perfect. I’ve heard you have an exceptional range of whiskeys.”

  “Second to none, old chap, and I’ll guide you through them with great pleasure. I’ve put you in the tower, in the honeymoon suite. I trust you’ll find it comfortable.”

  The honeymoon suite was everything you’d expect from a Hollywood rendition of a Scottish castle. There was a gigantic mahogany four poster bed with drapes, there were gabled, leaded windows overlooking the formal gardens, a stone fireplace big enough to house a small family and vast, bare wooden rafters overhead. The walls were oak paneled and on the bedside table there was a silver bucket filled with ice, holding a bottle of Bollinger and two Edinburgh crystal glasses.

  Once Brown had put our cases on the bed and left, Dehan stood looking around with a big smile all over the right side of her face. “Oh man,” she said. “Stone.”

  I took off my jacket and she crossed the room to poke her head into the bathroom. “There is a free standing tub, with clawed feet and gold taps.” She turned and winked at me. “Open the champagne, big guy, we’re going to have a bath, Scottish castle style…”

  * * *

  An hour later, we joined the other guests in the drawing room.

  The Gordon Castle was a boutique hotel. There was no pool, no bar and no dining room in the usual sense of the word. More than staying at an hotel, it was like staying with a rich friend at his country manor. Instead of several hundred anonymous guests milling around a vast building in Florida, here we had just a handful of fellow guests who had cocktails in the drawing room, and lunched and dined with the family in the ancestral dining room. It was different, and it had sounded like exactly what Dehan and I needed.

  The drawing room was big. The floors were wood, strewn with what looked like genuine Persian rugs, and to the right of the door as you went in, there was a huge, granite fireplace. Right now there were several large logs burning in it. An eclectic collection of sofas and armchairs, standard lamps and occasional tables were scattered around the room in an apparently random fashion that somehow managed to be homely and comfortable. Against the far wall, an elaborate credenza held an extensive collection of bottles, hand cut decanters and glasses. To the left of it, French windows stood open onto a stone terrace with steps down onto the lawns and the gardens.

  There were a number of people standing and sitting, and they all turned to watch us come in. For a moment they looked like a bizarre frozen tableau from an early play by Agatha Christie: Charles Gordon was standing by the drinks, dressed in a tuxedo, holding a cocktail shaker. On the crimson and gold sofa directly in front of the fire was a woman who was still attractive in her mid fifties. She had short, black hair and wore a long evening dress of deep blue satin, with a string of pearls around her neck. She had very red lipstick and regarded Dehan with wary eyes.

  In an aquamarine armchair with wooden legs, also beside the fire, was another woman, blonde, perhaps in her early sixties. She wore a low cut white satin dress with a gash up to her thigh, exposing a leg that looked thirty years younger than she did.

  A third woman stood by the French windows, smoking. She was younger than the other two, perhaps thirty. Her dress was mauve and the gash, up to her hip, exposed a leg you had to try hard not to look at. She had hair that was wild, curly and red, tied back in a mauve satin bow. Her face should have been pretty, but a spray of freckles and mischievous blue eyes made it more captivating than that.

  Besides Charles, there were two other men in the room. One was standing beside the redhead. He was tall and strongly built, wearing what looked like an off the peg Italian suit. He had black hair and sullen eyes, which he was using to undress Dehan. I figured he was in his thirties.

  The other was standing by the fire. Like Charles, he was wearing an evening suit and a bow tie. He was probably in his late fifties and had that stiff, brisk air that the British military brass all seem to acquire by osmosis.

  They all smiled with varying degrees of sincerity, and Charles said in a loud voice, “Ah! You’re here! Well done! Now, what will you have? Major, care to make the introductions?”

  Before the major could get started, Dehan said, “Any whiskey you recommend, straight up. Stone will have the same.”

  The blonde in the aquamarine chair, with the low cut white dress, turned out to be our hostess, Charles Jr.’s mother. She smiled at me without moving, raised an eyebrow and sipped her drink, then said, “How do you do, John?”

  I caught something in her voice which I filed away under irrelevant gossip that might later be useful, and asked her how she did. Then the major gestured toward the woman on the sofa in the blue dress.

  “Lady Jane Butterworth, Detective John Stone and his wife, Detective Carmen Stone.”

  She ignored Dehan but leaned forward and offered me her hand to kiss. “I don’t use my title, I’m a committed socialist, you know,” she said breathlessly, then laughed. “I hope you won’t arrest me! Call me Bee, may I call you Stone? Such a strong name.”

  I told her I wouldn’t and she could and the major led us on to the couple at the French windows. “Dr. and Sally Cameron, very old friends of the family! Ian has his surgery opposite the pub in the village. Very handy, eh, Ian? And Sally owns the grocery store and runs the post office. Everyone does a bit of everything on Gordon’s Swoma, hay?”

  The major laughed and the doctor looked at him with distaste. Sally stepped forward and kissed Dehan on the cheek while I shook the doctor’s hand. I had seen friendlier eyes on great white sharks. We all asked each other how we did, and then the major laughed like he was telling a hilarious story and said, “And I am Major Reggie Hook, old friend of Charlie’s, been coming here for years, ay, Charles?”

  “Indeed!” Charles approached with two glasses of whiskey and handed them to us. With an enthusiasm that had more to do with wishful thinking than truth, he added, “We are all old friends here. Aren’t we, Mummy?” Whatever Mummy was going to answer, he didn’t give her a chance. He plowed on, “I think you’ll like this single malt. It’s from the local distillery and a bit of a hidden treasure. We have superb water here.”

  The thing continued in that vein for the next half hour. At first I worried that it would get on Dehan’s nerves. I knew well that her tolerance of BS and small talk was limited, at best, but when I glanced at her, talking to Charles, I saw her eyes were alive and she was smiling. I also noticed Ian Cameron watching he
r. I didn’t blame him. She was in a very simple, but very expensive black dress with no sleeves or shoulders, and a silver chain around her neck with a single amethyst. It all served to highlight her own beauty. I smiled, partly because she was mine, and partly because that very beauty hid the kick-ass, Bronx-bred bad attitude that was never very far below the surface.

  Pamela stood, gave me a thin smile and joined Dehan and her son. She gave Dehan a frigid once over and said, “What an exquisite dress, but darling, are you in mourning? Who died?”

  Dehan raised an eyebrow at her and smiled. “My tolerance for bullshit. It died a long time ago, but I’m still in mourning.”

  Charles burst out laughing. Dehan caught my eye, winked and grinned.

  Then the door opened and I noticed several things all at once. Dr. Cameron stiffened and his hostile face became even more hostile. His wife, whose side he had not left since we’d entered the room, also stiffened, but the expression on her face was anticipation, not hostility. Everybody else in the room went silent and stared, except Dehan, who caught my eye again with an unspoken question.

  The man who entered the room was aware of the effect he had, and of his own magnificence. He was over six foot, but if he’d been four foot two he would not have looked any smaller. He had a powerful chest, a powerful jaw and a mane of silver hair swept back from a large forehead. His nose was aquiline and his pale blue eyes were cruel and ruthless. He was a man born to be king in a world that no longer needed kings.

  Charles moved forward, “Ah, Father, there you are. May I present Detective Carmen Stone…”

  Charles Gordon Sr. ignored his son and moved in on Dehan like a hungry wolf moving in on an injured baby gazelle. His voice was deep and resonant, with clear traces of his Boston roots. “Detective? I’ll wager most of the men you hunt down surrender willingly.”

  I saw the doctor turn away. Dehan shook her head. “No, most of them need a couple of slaps and their hands cuffed.”

  He laughed. “You make it sound so appealing.”

  “Yeah? The reality is a little different, Mr. Gordon. This is my husband, Detective John Stone.”

  He gave me the kind of look that all the women in the room were giving Dehan. There was enough acid in there right then to clean a ton of copper. He raised an eyebrow.

  “Another detective? We had better all behave, then, hadn’t we? Though you are, of course, outside your jurisdiction.”

  I stepped up and put my hand on Dehan’s elbow. “And on our honeymoon,” I added. “Thank you, by the way, for the champagne. We enjoyed it.”

  “Don’t thank me.” He said it like he meant it. “Thank my son. And speaking of useless incompetence, Charles, am I not entitled to a drink in my own house?”

  He pushed past me toward his son, who was hurrying to the drinks tray, and Pamela, Lady Jane and Sally Cameron all seemed to be sucked into his wake, like seagulls trailing after a Spanish galleon in full sail.

  “What will you have, Father?”

  “Let me see…” He didn’t so much say it as boom it. “Let me see! Shall I have something different to what I have every single night? Good lord, boy! Can you take the initiative on nothing? Not even a simple task like getting your father a drink?”

  “Vodka martini it is! What a character!”

  There was some simpering and giggling and I stepped out the French windows onto the terrace. The sun was low on the horizon and the evening light was turning a grainy copper. The shadows of the trees stretched long across the lawns and above, the blue was turning dark. There was a closeness to the air and you could almost taste the static electricity in the humid air.

  Dehan came out after me and rested her ass on the ancient stone balustrade. She gave a small laugh. “We just stepped through the looking glass, but instead of winding up with Alice in Wonderland, we wound up in an Agatha Christie novel.”

  I smiled. “You’re not far wrong.” I sipped, watching her. “I hope you’re not regretting it. We can move on if you want.”

  “Are you kidding? I love it. I never saw a group of people hate each other so politely. Is this what Brits are really like, Stone? I thought it was just the movies.”

  “Some. This small archipelago has a very complex society.”

  She held my eye a moment, still smiling. “Let’s make a bet.”

  “What kind of bet?”

  “Who will the victim be, and who will the killer be. So far I don’t think it’s the butler.”

  I laughed, then shrugged and gazed out at the slowly gathering dusk, which the Scots call the gloaming. “The victim is obvious,” I said, playing her game for a moment, but feeling oddly uncomfortable about it.

  “The old man? CG Sr.?” I nodded and she nodded back. “I agree.”

  “The murderer…” I shook my head. “I have some ideas, but we’re here on our honeymoon, and I don’t want to tempt the gods…”

  I trailed off. It was as though the word had some hidden power of evocation. In the sky, over broken stone wall and the trees in the north, a great plume of green light shot up into the sky, flickered and spread out like a fan. Dehan saw my face and said, “What?”

  I took her hand and pulled her to her feet, then turned her around. A violet arch swelled like a great dome from the horizon, then shimmered and seemed to break up and spread like mist. Next thing the sky had turned green, and long, vertical columns of light, like immensely tall ghosts, sprang up and wavered this way and that. From the center, a plume of red expanded and within it, light flashed and seemed to move around in some crazy kind of dance. Dehan had gone rigid, gripping my hand as though she were trying to crush the bones. The red plume swelled, rising above the green light until half the sky was awash with eerie, alien light, twisting and flickering like a gossamer curtain over a parallel world of Norse gods and daemons. Then, as quickly as it had appeared, it began to fade.

  She turned to face me. Her eyes were huge and bright. She tried to speak, but words cannot express the way you feel the first time you see the Northern Lights. So she expressed it to me a different way.

  A footfall behind me made me turn. Dr. Ian Cameron stood framed in the doorway. He studied me a moment and said, “I’m sorry to interrupt. We’re going in to dinner, if you’d like to join us.”

  Like the honeymoon suite, the dining room was exactly what you would have expected from a Hollywood production of Murder at Castle Gordon. The ceiling was high, the table was long, dark, highly polished and mahogany, and set with placemats because tablecloths are considered vulgar. Three large silver candelabras were set down the center, and a vast crystal chandelier made tiny rainbows of the candlelight above the table.

  Charles Gordon Sr., naturally, sat at the head. Bee—Lady Jane—sat on his right and Sally Cameron on his left. I was next to Bee, with the major opposite me and Pamela on my right, with her son, Gordon Jr., on her right. Dehan was between the Major and Ian.

  A door opened at the far end of the room and Brown, very dignified in tails, entered carrying a very large tray with a silver soup tureen. Behind him were two girls in uniform with white aprons. They each carried a silver ice bucket with a bottle of white wine in it. I caught Dehan’s eye and winked at her. While the butler was serving the soup, and the maids were pouring the wine, Gordon Sr. boomed down the table, “I am an American, Carmen.”

  She glanced at him. “Boston born and bred, I’d say.”

  He laughed like a caricature of Orson Wells at his most hammy. “See! She is a detective!”

  “I just know my accents, Mr. Gordon. Here I’m not a detective. I am a newly wed bride.”

  His face went sour. “How charming,” he said. “I am an American, but this island belonged to my ancestors, along with much of the coast, for at least a thousand years. It was my father who reclaimed it, back in 1980. He was obsessed with his Scottish roots. He used to wear a kilt, you know? I haven’t the legs for it.”

  He sipped his wine and smiled at Sally. She looked away and Bee simpered. “No
nsense, Charles. You have a well turned leg!”

  “How would you know, Bee?” It was Pamela.

  Bee affected to think, with her finger on her cheek. “Well, I’m blessed if I know, darling! But am I wrong?”

  Everybody laughed except Pamela.

  I said, “Have you been here since the ’80s, Mr. Gordon?”

  “Yes. Since my father, Richard Gordon, died.” He stared at me, as though challenging me to ask. I didn’t, so he went on, “He committed suicide in his study, almost forty years ago.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  Pamela replied, breaking a hot bread roll. “Not everybody thought it was suicide.”

  He snapped, “That’s quite enough of that, Pamela!”

  She ignored him and went on, “Some people thought it was murder.”

  THREE

  By the end of the soup, Gordon Sr., Bee and Sally had fallen into conversation with each other. I couldn’t help feeling grateful. Ian and Pam maintained their characteristic sullen silence throughout, and Dehan, the major and I fell into conversation about the history of the island.

  “It was,” the major said, “for a long time merely a glorified pig farm! Hence the name Swona. It derives from ‘swine’. Keeping them on an island was safer than a farm, easier to protect and impossible for the animals to stray.”

  Dehan asked, “How old is the castle?”

  “There has been a small fortress here since the Vikings, first intended to fend them off, and then used by them to protect their settlements. The swine were a highly prized asset, as you can imagine.”

  We had been served lamb cutlets with new potatoes, Vichy carrots and fresh garden peas, all from the castle’s own orchards. Dehan was engrossed in her food, but looked up to ask, “So when did it come into the possession of the Gordons?”