Mortsafe

by Carl, Lillian Stewart

  “Oh aye,” said Bewley. “Hair both black and red. Cleaned the old Body Snatcher and filled in behind the bar. Used to go repeating the odd bit of gossip, didn’t you now, Allsort?”

  “There were lots of people in and out of there,” Ryan asserted, his voice rising. “Poor lighting. Loud music. Drink and drugs. Why would I recognize anyone in particular?”

  “Sara Herries, now,” Bewley went on. “Never saw the woman ‘til they carried her up from the cellar in a body bag.”

  Had you heard of her, though, Jean wondered.

  Pagano raised a slab of a hand—a good thing, his having huge hands—and laid it on Ryan’s shoulder. “Whoever you are, Alasdair, we’ve got work to do. Either ask us what happened out there in the street or let us go. In any event, stop harassing my assistant.”

  “I do beg your pardon. I’m Detective Chief Inspector Alasdair Cameron, Northern Constabulary, retired. What happened in the street, then?”

  Ryan spoke up. “We were considering camera angles, we need footage of Lady Niddry’s …”

  “… and your lady here tripped and like to have fallen in front of the bus,” interrupted Pagano. “Fortunately I was standing just there, and was able to pull her back.”

  “Thank you,” Jean said.

  Pagano’s goatee encircled a quick flash of white teeth. “‘Tweren’t nuthin’, ma’am, as you Yanks would say.”

  “Thank you,” said Alasdair. “And for phoning me as well. What tripped her?”

  “So far as I could tell she fell over her own feet.”

  Ryan added helpfully, “She almost fell over one of the mortsafes at Greyfriars yesterday.”

  I had to remind him of that … Aha, here was her chance to throw out bait. “Yes, I did. I missed my step when you told your boss here that it was Sara’s body in the vault, and that she’d been murdered.”

  Ryan’s white face went an ugly ashy green. “It was in the newspaper. Boy, did that give me a turn. Poor Sara, after all these years.”

  So it was him who’d been talking to Pagano in the dusky kirkyard, not someone on the phone at all. Which wasn’t a piece of information she’d have wanted to die for.

  Alasdair’s narrowed eyes registered how that shot had gone home. “The notice was in this morning’s paper, not yesterday’s. A bit quick off the mark with the details, weren’t you now?”

  “I—I—well, I’ve been busy, the newspapers kind of run together, you know—I saw the notice about the bodies being found in the vault and just extrapolated, I mean, from where it is and everything—Sara had to have been murdered, why else would she be in there …”

  “There you are,” exclaimed Bewley. “I reckon Allsort sneaked in here yesterday and thumped that constable.”

  “No! Why would I do that?” Ryan slumped. Pagano grabbed his arm, spun him around, and dropped him onto the staircase with the same gesture he’d use to throw a bag of garbage into a dumpster.

  Alasdair rounded on Bewley. “You were telling us no one was here who shouldn’t have been.”

  “I can’t be everywhere at once, can I now?”

  “Here,” Pagano said to Alasdair. “Ryan was late getting to Greyfriars, he was trying to make it up to me by giving me a good lead, okay?”

  “Not okay,” Alasdair replied. “Perhaps he was extrapolating the body was Sara’s, aye, but why’d he go saying she was murdered? Either he was by way of being there at the time, or he’s knowing someone who was.”

  D. S. Gordon pushed past the constable into the entrance hall. “Are you all right, Miss Fairbairn?”

  “Yes. Yes I am, thanks.”

  “P.C., ah …”

  “Wallace, sir.”

  “P.C. Wallace, you took the names of the bus driver and the other witnesses?”

  “That I did, sir.”

  “Good. Bewley, what are you doing here?”

  The man’s face suffused with red. “I’m. Working. Here.”

  “Mr. Prasad’s not paying you to be drinking up the stock,” Alasdair murmured.

  Bewley shot him another glare, but the evidence of his own eyes and breath supported Alasdair’s observation.

  Gordon focused on the odd couple by the staircase. “Who are you?”

  “Jason Pagano, from ‘Beyond the Edge’.” His frown now annotated by a smolder in his dark eyes, Pagano stepped forward. His catcher’s mitt of a hand engulfed Gordon’s. “Tristan Ryan, my associate. You’re an active copper, I take it? We have work that needs doing, we’re filming at Lady Niddry’s Drawing Room tonight, if we could just get on with filling out forms or anything else you’re needing.”

  “I’d be obliged if you’d step outside and hail a taxi,” Alasdair said to Wallace. “Jean, is that your book?”

  Yeah. Oh yeah. Jean handed Bewley the mug and picked up Davis’s book. She checked to make sure Pagano had returned her phone to her bag—yes, there it was—and zipped the zipper. She stood up. Her leg and ankle twinged, but her knees had solidified and the tiles on the floor didn’t shimmy beneath her feet. Good.

  “Sergeant.” Alasdair took Gordon to the side and spoke quickly and urgently. Bewley, Allsort and Sara, Ryan and—well, the only person coming out of this afternoon unscathed was Pagano. Maybe.

  “Thank you again,” Jean told him.

  The constable stuck his head through the door. “Here’s a taxi. Step lively, it’s stopping traffic.”

  “Got it?” Alasdair said to Gordon.

  “Yes, sir,” Gordon returned.

  Good man, Jean thought. He’s not wasting his breath telling Alasdair he’s not in charge of anything here … Alasdair’s arm—her husband’s arm, to have and to hold—wrapped her shoulders and guided her out onto the sidewalk.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Purring, Dougie settled down in Jean’s lap and rubbed his head against her arm. Of course, she was wearing the thick fuzzy robe that always attracted his attentions, but she didn’t have to be any more cynical than was really necessary. He was doing his best to make her feel better, that was all. Just like the other man of the house.

  “No, really,” she said into the phone. “I’m okay.”

  Miranda’s voice was as soothing as Dougie’s purr. “Soon I’ll be sending you out with a life jacket or safety harness. Unless I should be keeping you in, it being Friday the Thirteenth.”

  “Enemy action happens no matter the date.” Enemy, Jean thought. I’ve made an enemy.

  “If you’re feeling up to Vasudev’s ‘do this evening …” Miranda let the sentence wave delicately in the wind.

  “Oh, I’m not missing out on that, never fear.”

  “Good show, Jean. Keep your pecker up.”

  That expression always made Jean smile, and this time was no exception. “Thanks. Talk to you tomorrow.” She switched off the phone and set it down just as Alasdair emerged from the kitchen.

  He wore his own dressing gown and slippers—thank goodness for two bathrooms—and carried a steaming mug in each hand. “Here’s your cocoa.”

  “Thanks. I just can’t face any more tea, even though you make a great cuppa.”

  A hot shower had eased the tight lines and pallid complexion of the face looking back at her from the bathroom mirror. The robe and Dougie, Miranda and the rich hot chocolate, and above all the solid presence of Alasdair himself, settled her in the present. Survived another one.

  She thought again what a dangerous job it was, asking questions. But then, as Tolkien wrote, It’s a dangerous business going out your door. You step onto the road, and there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.

  Like Scotland, and the arms of Alasdair Cameron.

  He sat down close beside her, drank from his mug of tea, and turned his gaze to the window. He, too, was probably telling himself he used to be a complete brain all by himself. But neither of them had ever been a complete heart, not alone.

  As though he heard her thought, he wrapped his free arm around her shoulders.

  “I left a long
and probably incoherent message for Michael and Rebecca,” she told him. “Hugh we’ll be seeing in a couple hours at Lady Niddry’s.”

  “No need to be going there the night, if you’d rather rest.”

  “Are you kidding? Davis and Pagano are both going to be there. Miranda’s going to be hanging on every pixel I can produce.”

  “What was Hugh saying? There’s no such thing as bad publicity?”

  “He was joking. Vasudev isn’t, inviting the gasoline and the flame. And a witness with a notebook. Unless throwing Pagano and Davis at each other was Nicola’s idea. Whatever, I bet I won’t be the only media there.”

  “Nor I the only cop,” Alasdair stated.

  Look at that—beyond the window a rift in the overcast revealed a tiny strip of Prussian blue twilight. They could go back out without getting wet yet again. Jean wondered how long you had to live here before you starting growing lichen.

  Alasdair’s voice had the soft texture of moss. “The question is whether Pagano’s Ryan’ll be attending. I told Gordon he’d best be taking the lad in for further questioning. Well, Ryan’s in his thirties, but still …”

  “He seems younger than that.”

  “No matter. He knows more than he’s telling.”

  “Oh yeah. He might be afraid of someone. Pagano? Or he’s afraid of what will happen to him if he tells all. Or happen to someone else, even. Bewley really did seem surprised to see him, although I suppose it could be an elaborate act.” She sipped a bit more chocolate therapy. “Bottom line: someone tried to kill me. Or at least tried to put me out of commission, and didn’t mind if I was killed in the process.”

  “No one’d be chucking you beneath a bus if you weren’t asking good questions, getting close to the truth of the matter.”

  “That’s hardly comforting. Whatever happened to the good old anonymous phone call?”

  “Even that was never making you back off.”

  “Or you.” He raised his mug in acknowledgment. She went on, “Twice today, I thought someone was watching me. With the rain and everything, he—or she—saw their chance. Sort of like coshing poor P.C. Ross to get into the vault … Oh! I think I know what they were looking for!”

  Alasdair listened intently while she explained about Robin Davis, the silver skull on his watch fob, the charms he’d given his favorites. “He was telling you he gave Sara one? Knox should be searching the scene again, then. Assuming the hand behind the cosh didn’t find the skull and carry it away.”

  “Assuming there’s something about that particular charm that would be a clue to whoever killed Sara. If all it has on it is her initials, that’s not going to tell us very much. Whatever, you’re not searching the scene again.”

  “No. I’m having me a posh dinner. And a show, it sounds like.”

  Jean’s smile was lopsided. “Sara had a skull charm. Is it that big a leap to think that Nicola had one, too? Has one, tucked away somewhere?”

  “Nicola. What were you saying, there at the Playfair Building, you were distracted and someone tripped you up because you were thinking about Nicola’s middle initial?”

  “Oh yeah.” Jean leaned forward and Dougie opened a warning eye. Never mind—she could show Alasdair the card later. “She’s Davis’s publicist. He gave me one of her cards to give Miranda. N.C. MacLaren. What does that ‘C’ stand for?”

  His brows lifted in comprehension. “Christine or the like? Chris? Well then.”

  “When I asked Michael if he remembered someone named Chris, Rebecca asked whether it was a man or a woman. They hadn’t heard Amy say boyfriend. I had. I told them it was a man. But …”

  “ … Amy was saying their parents were conservative sorts. She was saying their dad was thinking he’d failed with Sara …”

  “… she said Sara was trying out all sorts of, well, lifestyles. Why not a girlfriend? And a fling with the American in the group as well, I guess. Funny. Poor Grizel Hamilton was called immoral. Sara’s father called her immoral. And there they were in the vault, together, neither of them at all immoral by today’s standards.”

  Alasdair gazed toward the window, where the clouds might be thinning but the sun was also setting, eliminating any chance of actual light. “Gordon was telling me that he visited P.C. Ross this morning, who looks to be making a full recovery …”

  “Thank goodness.”

  “… but he’s still right muzzy, mumbling about Nicola in her window across the street.”

  “She made quite an impression on him. But that’s how she works, making an impression. What if she came into the Playfair Building with some story for him about, oh, things stored in the cellar? He’d escort her down there, and wham! I know Bewley said no one had been who shouldn’t have been there …”

  “… likely meaning he saw no strangers.”

  “But then he also said he couldn’t be everywhere and see everything.”

  “I’d not be taking his word on the time of day,” stated Alasdair.

  “Me neither.” In her lap, Dougie was no longer purring but snoring, radiating the oblivion of sleep. Jean yawned, then told herself, not yet. “Maybe Nicola was angry at Bewley yesterday morning, when Ross saw her telling him off, because he’d opened up the door and she knew what was in the vault and that she might be compromised somehow. I mean, she’s got a public relations job, she’s managing Pippa’s—and that place is neat as a pin, you should see it …”

  “You stopped by the shop?” He wasn’t smiling. That wasn’t a flirtatious question. A slight sheen of ice formed on his expression, the sort that the unwary skater could fall through.

  Oh for the love of … “I had a few minutes between checking out the site of the theater and talking to Davis, so I thought I’d ask her a few questions—good grief, I never told you about the theater, either, the Hamiltons’ cave and everything …”

  “Going behind Knox’s back, were you, questioning suspects?”

  “Nicola wasn’t anything more than a casual witness then, not a suspect. Besides, you were the one who suggested I talk to Davis.”

  “You’ve got a legitimate interest in him, with his book and all.”

  “You went behind Knox’s back with Amy.”

  “She phoned me,” he snapped, and, a second too late, amended, “She phoned us.”

  Dougie stirred and opened an eye. Now children … “Don’t worry,” Jean said stiffly, “Nicola blew me off. I have nothing to report to Knox. All that happened was I roused somebody’s suspicions and almost got killed.”

  She hadn’t meant that to come out the way it had, but Alasdair winced, cracking the sheen of ice. His eyes warmed to the color of the North Atlantic. “Sorry.”

  “So am I. It’s just that …”

  “I know. And Nicola wasn’t telling Knox anything either. It’s all circumstantial, but still, time Knox was having another go at her. And getting a warrant and searching her flat and her office. As for Davis …”

  “He might be the mover and shaker behind it all, but I sure didn’t turn anything up that Knox would find actionable. On the other hand, I think I found where the second entrance to the vault is. Or was.” Jean went on with all the details she could remember—and she didn’t think the bus had knocked any out of her mind. At last, with a parting squeeze of Jean’s shoulders, Alasdair drained his mug and headed for phone.

  She was never going to take the policeman out of the spouse, Jean told herself. Not that she really wanted to.

  Dougie was now sprawled in her lap, paws flopping. “Sorry, little guy. Places to go, and so forth.” She started shoving him onto the couch. He half-opened his eyes, but otherwise didn’t move a muscle. How a cat the size of a loaf of bread could make itself weigh the equivalent of, well, a sack of cement, was yet another mystery of physics.

  From the bedroom window Jean looked out toward the castle, now no more than a hulking mass dotted by a lamp or two. That eerie gray-green glow in the clouds over the topmost tower must be the moon following the sun into
the west. The esplanade was as dark as it would ever get in the midst of a modern city. If any ghosts walked through the mingled light and shadow, they walked alone.

  Jean applied make-up and was glad to see her complexion was no longer the color of chalk. Her stomach was back to normal, too—it growled piteously as she pulled on her red New Year’s Eve dress.

  Red. The color of Valentine’s Day, of love, of passion. Of a matador’s cape brandished before a bull. Come and get me. Jean supposed she was no less a target than Alasdair, but she’d already proved she was easier to get the drop on.

  It wasn’t, she told herself, that she was getting used to this sort of adventure, it was that her adventures had shaved so many fibers off her nervous system she no longer had as many to get excited. Still she ached all over, and several of the roses in her cheeks were evidence of a rising anger at the gall of whoever had taken her one and only life into his own hands.

  By the time Alasdair appeared in the bedroom, Jean was sitting on the edge of the bed leafing through Davis’s battered book.

  He laid his phone on the dresser. “Right. Thanks to public records, Knox had it at her fingertips within a minute’s time. Nicola Christine MacLaren. Born in Stornoway, Isle of Lewis.”

  “Stornoway? She’s quite a glamour girl to come from a dour place like Stornoway.”

  “Everyone’s coming from somewhere. She’s been cutting a swathe here in the big city a long time since.”

  “Has she ever.”

  “We’re still needing confirmation that she’s Sara’s Chris, though.”

  “And where does Ryan come in?”

  “From stage left, like as not.” He dived into the wardrobe. “Is that Davis’s book? How’d that part of the interview go, over and beyond the bits about the skull charms and Nicola C. and all.”

  “Davis is a smug so-and-so. He seems to have no problem making pets of his female students, thinks they’re lucky to have him. I’d almost like to find out he murdered Sara, just to bring him down a peg or two.”

  Alasdair emerged with his kilt and Argyll jacket. “You’re disagreeing with his paranormal-is-bunk theory, are you?”