Dressed to Kilt (A Scottish Highlands Mystery)

by Hannah Reed

I grabbed his arm and pulled him inside. “It’s freezing out there,” I said, closing the door. “And I have a few questions for you.”

  Sean moaned. “Ye’re gettin’ me in deeper and deeper. Can’t ye just leave me alone?”

  “This one is easy. I haven’t heard anything more about that threatening note. I know that Bridie’s grandson sent it and that he’s come clean, but has there been any subsequent follow-up?”

  “I don’t know wha’ ye mean.”

  “Has he been cleared as a suspect in Henrietta’s murder?”

  “Aye, the lad caused a wee bit o’ mischief and the inspector investigated him further. He had nothin’ tae do with the murder.”

  “What about Florence?” Which was the real question I’d been leading up to but in a roundabout way so Sean’s suspicions wouldn’t be aroused. “And Archie Dougal?”

  “And I suppose ye want all the details on Gordon and Patricia Martin and Bridie herself and the rubbish collector and . . .”

  “Any and all,” I agreed, seeing the first signs of resistance in Sean’s set expression.

  “I’m done with bein’ blackmailed by the likes o’ yerself,” he said.

  I studied him, searching for a break in his confidence, a way to slip in and gain a firm hold. Then with growing horror I realized I’d been as manipulative with Sean as I’d been accusing others of being with me.

  “Okay,” I said, taking the first step to correcting my unacceptable behavior.

  “O . . . kay?” There was the crack, widening, large enough to squeeze through. I left it alone.

  “I apologize for pressuring you,” I told him.

  Sean’s look went blank while he absorbed this strange turn, and then he grinned. “It’s all right. You and me, we go back a bit. A little clash now and again is normal.”

  “Okay, great, how’s Vicki?”

  “Still not back tae her old self. Another day will see her better. I hear ye’re havin’ a hen party when she recovers, goin’ on a visit tae yer ancestors. What are yer plans fer today, if I might be so bold as tae ask?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I said, knowing exactly, thinking the quiet side of my personality needed space today to reenergize, and the only way to get it was through misdirection. “I’ll probably go into Glenkillen and write at the pub for most of the day.”

  “I can’t see ye getting into any sort o’ trouble there. Ye’ll be on alert, though, won’t ye?”

  “Of course.”

  “If ye get it intae yer head tae go further afield, ye’ll let me know? I’ll go with ye or tag along in me own rattletrap.” Sean glanced out the window, up at the gray sky. “On second thought, there’s a storm brewin’ and it would be best fer ye tae stay within easy drivin’.”

  “I’ll stay put,” I said, opening the door and shooing him out, thinking, So what if a storm is on the way? More snow? What else is new?

  A short time later I pulled out from the lane onto the main road. I’d packed what I anticipated needing for the day—a freshly charged phone and laptop, water bottle, extra outerwear in case of a breakdown, and the map of the Highlands. The route to Tainwick wasn’t complicated, a direct shot to Loch Ness and then due north. Applefary was even farther north than Tainwick, and I’d go there if time allowed. Otherwise, I’d save that village for another trip in a few days with Vicki when I retraced these steps for her benefit.

  And with her history-gathering expertise.

  Remembering that, I decided that the library historical section could wait as well. Vicki would enjoy combing through the files, searching for genealogical tidbits. While I reveled in researching topics myself, I couldn’t take the fun away from my friend. She’d be upset enough if she learned I’d left her behind today.

  Morning’s first light was a spectacular visual display. Clouds hung low and red over snow-covered hills and frost-coated trees, and as I approached Loch Ness, the colors reflected brilliantly on the icy lake. When I turned due north, a wild deer stood out on the side of a glen watching me.

  I took it all in until twenty-some kilometers outside Tainwick, when my mind turned back to Henrietta McCloud’s murder. I attempted to find new angles, fresh perspectives, starting not from the very beginning but after her death. When she’d wanted to speak with me after the tasting. At first I’d assumed she intended to pinpoint the note writer, to send me off to handle this person who had threatened Bridie. Then after I’d learned of Henrietta’s link to my father, I’d figured that she wanted to share information about him with me, or that she was seeking word of him.

  Henrietta was a dying woman, even before her unexpected murder, after her diagnosis and prognosis. She’d talked to Gordon about regrets, about setting things right. What if she’d wanted to tell me something before it was too late? What if she’d been killed because of what she intended to reveal to me Saturday night?

  Setting things right. Weren’t those the words Gordon had used, implying that she was going to make amends? There was a distinct difference between making amends and offering apologies. Amends were much more complex than apologies; their intent was to restore justice, to set right a wrong. Amends were more active than apologies.

  Henrietta gave those who knew her the impression that she was in denial over her deadly disease, but she’d expressed regrets to her nephew and she’d made some provisions for her imminent death by leaving written instructions regarding her ashes. Was I one of her pieces of unfinished business?

  But Henrietta never did anything to me personally. Had she hurt my father in some horrible way that she’d lived to regret? From Katie’s account, he had been the one doing the hurting. What could she possibly have done to him that she needed to set right?

  I felt a growing sense of inexplicable unease and tried to shake it off as I approached the outskirts of Tainwick. But it stuck with me. I turned my thoughts elsewhere.

  An online search had informed me that the Tainwick parish churchyard had originally been in the center of the village but had filled up with no room for expansion in the latter part of the nineteenth century. A public cemetery had been created south of Tainwick at the turn of the twentieth century. Since my grandfather had passed away in the early 1980s, that was where I would find his grave.

  When I realized that I didn’t have an exact location for his site, I considered driving on past the cemetery to the village library. But it was still early morning; not much would be open, certainly not the library. And I wasn’t sure that the genealogy section could even supply specific gravesite information. Besides, how large could the cemetery be?

  The Tainwick Cemetery signage was large enough that I didn’t miss it. I followed the arrow, turning off and driving down a narrow road that had been recently cleared of snow. I pulled into a car lot. Mine was the only vehicle there at this time of the morning.

  I placed a call to Bridie, mildly surprised that it went through from this remote location.

  “You mentioned that my father and mother visited you right after they were married.”

  “Aye, Dennis was showin’ off his new bride.”

  “Was Henrietta living with you at the time?”

  “She was, but . . . let me think . . . something came up with her family and she went tae Edinburgh.”

  “That’s an excellent memory you have. So Henrietta didn’t meet them?”

  “Ye can’t take away an old woman’s memories. The past is clearer than the present when ye get tae my age. I believe Gordon was ill and she went off, and I remember because I wanted everything tae be shiny fer the visit and had tae rely on a local girl. As I recall, she didn’t meet yer parents.”

  “You also said that you and my mother exchanged letters.”

  “A few here and there.”

  “Did you receive any from her after my grandfather’s funeral, once my father left us?”

  “No. And it’s
a shame. Yer mother was a lovely woman.”

  After disconnecting I sat for a moment thinking about the letters my mother had written to Scotland in search of information regarding my father. She’d told me about them and that they’d gone unanswered. Who else might she have written to? I didn’t know.

  My thoughts shifted to plotlines and my frustrating inability to create a full-blown outline before beginning to write a new story. Some writers can do that. They can see the big picture before ever putting pen to paper. Mine have to grow organically, each scene playing off the last. Sometimes I feel like I’m just along for the ride and am as surprised as my characters at the turn of events.

  So it wasn’t surprising that I’d go at this murder plot in the same fashion. By the seat of my pants.

  A bit of information here, something that appears entirely unrelated there.

  In a flash, I decided that Archie and Florence probably hadn’t had anything to do with Henrietta’s murder. They had the best motive, and they’d been “skating on thin ice” ever since that threatening note, even when it turned out to be a prank. But having a motive and actually committing murder were two very different things.

  I didn’t know enough about Gordon Martin to make that same declaration, but he’d been honest about his aunt’s wistful expressions and there wasn’t anything false about his pain when he and I discovered his aunt’s body.

  Janet Dougal might very well end up with a guilty charge and verdict. But it was hard for me to believe that she’d kill another human being over a slight. The inspector would call me naïve. I’m sure he’s seen it all.

  As much as I tried, I still couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being set up.

  What about Patricia Martin? The grieving sister? She didn’t have an alibi. No one could confirm that she’d been in her room all afternoon, and she was a tall, strong woman who could easily have managed to set up the murder scene.

  I shivered, but not from the cold weather, rather from the cold calculation of Henrietta’s killer. To shove a washback over to a cask and drain whisky into it . . .

  Patricia didn’t have an obvious motive for killing her sister. But why was she at the tasting in the first place? If she’d wanted to visit with Henrietta there would have been better opportunities, ones when Henrietta wasn’t busy planning gatherings. Afterward would have been preferable.

  Had she felt that she had to hurry to Glenkillen? To put a stop to Henrietta’s plan, whatever that plan was?

  The plot was thickening with suppositions. I could speculate all I wanted, but without evidence, I couldn’t write a proper ending.

  As I turned off the Peugeot’s engine, I heard the crunch of tires on hard-packed snow. Another car pulled in and parked on the other side of the lot. I got out, thinking that it was windier than I’d expected and that I needed to make this a quick exploratory trip. That was when I glanced up and saw Patricia Martin emerge from the other car. I ducked down, reopened my car door, and slid inside.

  It wasn’t clear why, but instinct guided me.

  She came around the back of the car and opened its trunk, shuffling around inside. Then she removed something that looked about the size of a shoebox, closed the trunk, and walked down a shoveled pathway flanked by pine trees that led to the gravesites.

  I recognized the object from its cylinder shape. It was a scattering urn, much like the one in which my mother’s ashes had been presented to me for my own task of scattering her ashes. Was the cemetery one of those special places Henrietta had designated? Well, why not. She probably had a family plot here.

  I followed discreetly, keeping a distance, the wind stinging my eyes, my hands clutching the collar of my coat tighter against it. Patricia walked wide around a hole that had been freshly dug and came to a stop before one of the tombstones on the far side.

  Even though the weather had been cold, I could see that the ground at my feet hadn’t been frozen more than a few inches deep. Beside the hole, a pile of chunks of ground and rocks remained. The mounded dirt was covered with snow, as was the ground and gravestones as far as I could see.

  I paused, reminded of my mother’s graveside service. And the hole, much like this one. Except that mound of dirt had been removed, as this one was sure to be before the funeral mourners arrived. I noted snow-covered strips of frozen turf lying like jigsaw puzzle pieces on plywood sheets to be used as covering after the coffin was inserted and the dirt returned to fill in the spaces. Planks had been laid along the edges of the hole to ensure firm footing for the pallbearers.

  I wondered who had died. Who would be buried soon in this prepared space?

  Moving up behind Patricia, I watched her as she bent and brushed away snow with a gloved hand, revealing the inscription.

  My eyes swept over the engraving, and I almost gasped aloud in surprise.

  Because the grave belonged to my grandfather.

  CHAPTER 30

  “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” Patricia spoke aloud, after I watched her remove a glove and open the urn. She withdrew a handful of ashes and bent down, patting them into the snow so they wouldn’t whirl away with the wind.

  Rising, she must have sensed my presence because she turned and faced me.

  Her face registered surprise, then anger. “What are you doing here?”

  “I might ask you the same thing. Are those Henrietta’s ashes?”

  A dumb question. Who else’s would they be? But what meaningful reason would an unrelated dead woman have for requesting that her ashes be spread on an Elliott grave? Why would Henrietta want her ashes here? Why?

  Patricia’s expression didn’t give anything away. She turned back as though my interruption were a tiny bleep in the moment. She stared at the grave. I followed her gaze.

  The now all-familiar family crest, with the fist clutching the cutlass, was etched into the stonework. And our motto:

  Fortiter et Recte

  Then:

  IN LOVING MEMORY OF

  RODERICK JAMES ELLIOT

  One T rather than the two that I’d always used when spelling my last name. A tiny detail, not unusual really.

  Born 29 September 1907, died 10 July 1983

  Beloved husband, father, and grandfather

  Grandfather to me. My father was his only child, meaning I’d been his only grandchild, at least at the time of his death. I still could be. Who had chosen the words for this stone? My grandmother had already been dead. My father probably decided what should go on the gravestone.

  A little below and centered was a short verse.

  His Life A Beautiful Memory,

  His Absence A Silent Grief.

  Until this moment, the Elliott clan had been an abstraction for me.

  The wind howled, calling me back, striking sharper and colder.

  “Why are you scattering Henrietta’s ashes on my grandfather’s grave?” I asked.

  Patricia remained motionless, still staring at the stone. “She thought of him as family,” she said.

  I thought about that and still found it strange. If I’d been eternally in love with one man, my wishes would be entirely different. I’d have my ashes spread on the grave of my beloved. If he was dead. Or in a secret place where we once met. But on the grave of one of his family members? I loved my mother, but I’d never consider scattering my ashes with hers.

  “Your sister had been in love with my father,” I said, chilled to the bone. It wasn’t all because of the temperature of the air, which had been steadily dropping. Or was it the harsh wind that made it seem so?

  “She was, but she was a foolish young girl.”

  “She never got over him.”

  “It was more complicated than a simple infatuation.”

  “You know where my father is,” I said, stating rather than questioning. “And you’ve been hiding that fact, keeping it a secret.”r />
  Patricia gave a little laugh, whether of contempt or disappointment I wasn’t sure. “Do ye know how difficult it is living in the public eye all the time, on guard constantly? Of course ye don’t. But I love my life; it’s all I ever wanted. And if I could have thrown away the rest of my past, I would have. Instead I buried it. But it never goes away, does it?”

  “We all have scars,” I said.

  Now Patricia turned and faced me, full on. “I loved my sister, would have protected her with my life. I risked everything for her.”

  I formed my next thought, verbalizing what I dreaded learning of, forcing it out, thinking if I could only go back to what I believed yesterday . . . but it was too late for that. “My father is dead, isn’t he?”

  “Let’s get out o’ this wind and we will talk.”

  Every red alert in my body was sending signals. I fumbled in my pocket for the pepper spray. But I’d carelessly stored my phone in the same pocket on top of the canister. I slipped the phone out, keeping a careful eye on Patricia. As we began walking back the way we’d come, as we passed the recently dug grave, I must have inadvertently pushed one of the keys because it beeped, alerting her.

  She stopped and stared at me. I was afraid to make a move to remove the pepper spray. She looked down at the phone.

  “My sister killed your father,” Patricia said. Before I had a chance to react, she tossed the urn aside, grabbed the phone from my hands, and forced me backward. She was taller than I. She drove me back like a football defensive player. And before I knew what was happening, I was airborne, flapping my arms, grasping at air.

  The earth beneath my feet was gone.

  I landed inside the open grave, flat on my back, the wind momentarily knocked out of me. I remained motionless while I did an internal assessment of my body parts, carefully flexing arms and legs until I determined that nothing was broken. I slowly rose.

  Patricia stood above, still without expression, my phone in her hand. And well out of range of a shot from my pepper spray. I left it where it was. She didn’t know I had it, and I needed that advantage.