The Blue Hackle

by Lillian Stewart Carl

  A movement in the corner of her eye jerked her around toward the tall windows. But it was only her own reflection wavering in their black, mirrored depths, her crown of auburn hair turned inside out, her shoulders up around her ears, her stance that of a prizefighter in a corner of the ring.

  What she punched was the “Stop” button on the CD player. Sorry, Hugh. His voice halted between one beat and the next. Were those footsteps? Jean spun toward the door. No. She was hearing the tick of a clock.

  Dunasheen wasn’t one of those stately marble-halled homes tricked out with gilt cherubs, the sort of place that made Jean feel as though she was dragging the knuckles of all ten thumbs on the floor. This drawing room was friendly and functional with a Persian rug, needlepoint chair covers, a piano. The holly jolly crimson and tinsel of the season decorated mantelpiece and chandelier, while odds and ends from Chinese snuff bottles to Roman coins to prehistoric fish hooks were installed on every horizontal surface. An antique screen decoupaged with flowers, fairies, and saccharine Victorian angels almost managed to conceal a flat-screen TV set the size of a coffee table.

  Jean wondered how many of Fergie’s family antiques, artifacts, and holy relics had been sacrificed to fund Dunasheen’s upkeep. But he had enough left to make that good show, spiced with his own paintings and sculptures.

  Was that low murmuring wail, almost a voice but not quite, the wind in the chimney? Was it Tina screaming again? Alasdair might not have reached her yet. Maybe he’d slipped himself, and fallen, and lay broken and bloodied on the rocks . . . A chill puckered the back of Jean’s neck.

  Come on, come on! She yanked the bell pull again, then jogged to the door, looked down the hall, and shouted, “Fergie! Diana! Mrs. Finlay!” Her voice died away into silence.

  Dozens of painted and photographed eyes gazed accusingly down from the Pompeiian red walls, not least those of Fergus Mor and Allan Cameron. Fergie’s and Alasdair’s fathers wore the kilts, tunics, and bonnets or tam o’shanters—stiffened berets with wool pompoms—of the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders, an old and greatly honored regiment. Each bonnet, adorned with a badge and the colored feathers of a blue hackle, was bent toward the other. Or Fergus Mor’s, rather, was bent down toward Allan’s, demonstrating the maximum allowable versus the minimum allowable regimental heights.

  Breathe, Jean told herself. In with the good air, out with the bad.

  The embers piled in the grate emitted more of an ashy breath than warmth, and the castle’s scents of baking and furniture polish were tinged with mildew. Perhaps the house had become the terrestrial version of the Marie Celeste, abandoned to its ghosts.

  Although if new Dunasheen had any ghosts, neither Alasdair’s nor Jean’s sixth senses had picked up on them in the few hours since their arrival. It was her five ordinary senses that at last detected footsteps in the hall. She wouldn’t have to run down to the manager’s cottage after all.

  Jean popped out of the drawing room to see Fergie ambling toward her, round face and round glasses gleaming with good will. With his lavender sweater and slippers and bulky physique, he looked ready to host a children’s television program, welcoming them to a neighborhood where he played the part of a purple dinosaur. “Ah, it’s yourself, is it, Jean? No worries, we’re making the tea, though you’re good for a dram as well, I should think.”

  “Tina MacLeod’s down by the castle, she was screaming, Greg must have fallen, Alasdair’s already called 999 and he’s gone back down there.”

  Fergie gaped at her, pale blue eyes bulging, mouth working. “The old castle? But he went round the back—”

  “One of the Aussies may be hurt!”

  His lips snapping shut on a four-letter word, Fergie gesticulated frustration to heaven and the gods of the historic homes business—rising damp, mounting bills, and now this. And then with a grimace of contrition, for, after all, the welfare of the guests came first, he said, “I’ll organize the menfolk, if her, him needs carrying—though if there’s a broken limb involved, we shouldn’t—blankets, tea—if you could ask Diana to find the first-aid kit . . .” Mumbling beneath his breath, pirouetting so swiftly his long gray ponytail swung in an arc behind him, Fergie loped back the way he’d come.

  “Where’s Diana?” Jean called after him, but he didn’t hear.

  If she remembered their arrival tour, and there was no guarantee she did, then he was heading for the new and pricey commercial kitchen and his command center at the garden end of the house.

  Jean started after him, only to stop dead in the center of the antechamber, foyer, lobby—she couldn’t remember what Fergie called the room that was the formal entrance hall. She’d sounded the alarm. Now she needed to get back down to the castle.

  In the distance, a door opened. A gust of canned laughter blew down the hall and was then choked off as the door shut again. Aha, the Finlays were in the kitchen watching a TV show or listening to the radio or doing something that, along with the thick stone walls, had muffled Alasdair’s shouts. That’s why Fergie himself had finally answered the bell. As for Diana, who knew?

  I’m coming, Alasdair! She made a U-turn. Flashlight. Boots.

  The massive wooden front door at the far side of the room vibrated beneath a rain of blows. A muffled voice shouted, “Hey! Anyone home? Answer the door, already!”

  Chapter Three

  All right! The cavalry had arrived!

  Looking right and left—Fergie had disappeared and no one else was in sight, not even a dog—Jean skidded across these considerably cleaner tiles, raised the latch, and opened the door.

  Three people, tall, not-so-tall, and shorter-than-Jean, stood in the tiny porch. As one, they pushed past her into the house and stood huddled together while she shut the door.

  “I pushed the freaking doorbell five times,” said the man with the razor-cut black hair, closely trimmed goatee, and mountaineer’s parka.

  “I told you, Scott,” said the brunette in the stylish narrow glasses and belted trench coat, “these places are big, it takes a while for the servants to answer the door.”

  The girl wore a red-and-gold-striped knitted muffler looped around her neck and shoulders. Above it, dark eyes in a pale, pinched face grew larger and larger, taking in the guns and swords arranged on the walls, the vaulted ceiling with its colorful clan shield bosses, the massive turnpike stair spiraling upward into shadow.

  “The luggage is in the car,” Scott told Jean. “Is there valet parking here?”

  The woman looked down from her superior height. “You need to get someone to help you. We don’t travel light.”

  Regaining traction, Jean’s brain recognized the accent of her own country people. More or less—she guessed northeast corridor. The appended “already” from the other side of the door should have tipped her off. “Um, yeah, I’ll call Fergus MacDonald, the owner.”

  Realization swept the man’s face. “She’s not a servant, Heather.”

  Heather’s face knotted in suspicion. “Who is she, then?”

  Jean bit back a tart, Someone who can hear you just fine, and said only, “I’m Jean Fairbairn, I’m a guest here, but we’ve got kind of a situation so I answered the door. The doorbell doesn’t work, by the way. We found that out this aft—”

  “A situation?” Scott demanded.

  Heather placed her hand protectively on the child’s wool-encased shoulder.

  “Someone’s had a fall down at the old castle. I need to—”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. How about we just let ourselves in, okay?” Scott threw the door open and headed back outside. His hiking boots, so new they squeaked, were already muddy—black smudges traced his path in and out.

  I’ve already let you in. But that didn’t matter. Taking two steps backwards, sweat trickling down her back beneath her shirt, Jean said, “Great. Fergus or his daughter Diana will be along any min—”

  “We booked a suite,” said Heather. “A king-size for us, a single for Dakota here.”

 
; The child spoke up. “Please tell me the bathroom’s not down the hall. One of my girlfriends stayed in a B and B and said the bathroom was down the hall and you had to share with strangers.”

  “It’s all en suite. That is, the bathroom and toilet’s attached to the bedroom.”

  Two pairs of eyes stared at her.

  “Here, a bathroom can be just that, a room with a bath, it doesn’t automatically come with a toilet.”

  Through the doorway Jean saw Scott pulling bag after bag from the trunk of an SUV. Beyond him, headlights jounced over the ribbon of tarmac that passed for a driveway. Was that the constable from Kinlochroy? It seemed like twenty hours since Alasdair called, but it was probably only twenty minutes.

  Yes, the reflective stripe on the side of a small, square all-terrain vehicle caught the lights of the house as it drove by. Would the local arm of the law reach as far as the old castle? The designation “all-terrain” was more hope than fact when it came to this rough ground.

  “Nice meeting you,” Jean said, “I’ve got to—oh!”

  A woman swanned down the helix of the staircase, her feet in their chaste low-heeled pumps skimming the stone treads, her body swaying like a willow wand in black pants and white Aran sweater, her blonde hair flowing in satin waves away from the red roses blooming in her cheeks. An angel descending Jacob’s ladder would look like a chimpanzee in comparison. “Did I hear . . . Oh, hello there! You’re the Krum family, I expect. I’m Diana MacDonald. Ceud mille failte!”

  “Say what?” Heather’s lipstick had worn off, leaving only the darker red of the liner tracing her lips, so that her grimace was that of a cartoon character.

  “A thousand million welcomes,” said Dakota. “That’s Gaelic. They speak Gaelic here.”

  “Aren’t you a clever lass!” Diana’s smile cast sunshine throughout the room. “Thank you, Jean, for playing hostess. I apologize for the broken doorbell.”

  “No problem,” Jean said, backpedaling even more rapidly. She hated to miss Diana in action, but she hated even more to leave Alasdair alone in the dark with a—situation.

  “Is that Mr. Krum?” Diana asked.

  Scott tramped in, juggling a matched set of leather-trimmed bags and suitcases. “Oh, hi.”

  “Leave the luggage,” said Diana, “We’ll organize it. Your accommodations are in the William Wallace suite, a double bedroom and a foldaway bed in the sitting room. Drinks are at half-past-six in the library, and dinner at half-past-seven. This way, please.”

  “I could use a drink after those roads. Jeez, our driveway’s wider than the one marked as two-lane.” Scott dumped the luggage and Heather guided Dakota to the stairs.

  “Would you care for tea and biscuits just now?” Diana asked, already several steps up.

  “Biscuits?” repeated Heather.

  “She means cookies,” Dakota said.

  “Tea,” said Scott. “Yeah, whatever.”

  Free at last, Jean skated back down the hall. Would Miss Dakota point out that William Wallace had probably never set foot on Skye? No matter, his name was marketable, and if Diana understood anything, it was her market. How odd, then, that she’d missed the Krums’ arrival, especially when she’d been expecting them.

  Diana’s delicate Scottish complexion was always rose-pink, but now it was positively crimson. She must have been embarrassed at missing her cue or in a rush or both. Maybe she’d been in her office, tied hand and foot with tape the color of her cheeks, the kind spooled out in vast quantities by both heritage watchdogs with their lists of permissible changes and heritage advocates with their lists of grants-in-aid—well no, Diana ran the house, Fergie wrestled with red tape.

  The sound of multiple footsteps on stone treads and Diana’s soothing voice faded into the upper reaches of the house. “The weather’s been dreadful but we’re expecting it to clear tomorrow, just in time for our New Year’s Eve celebration.”

  What the lady of the house hadn’t been expecting was an accident at the old castle. But Fergie could tell her about that. Jean slid to a stop in the cloak room, where she managed to pull on her wellies and button her coat, wrap her wool scarf around her head, and thrust her hands into her gloves, somehow all at the same time.

  A flashlight clutched to her chest, she shut the door and raced across the courtyard. Alasdair, I’m coming! The lights reflecting from the damp-sheened cobblestones created an optical illusion and she stumbled, then righted herself. The crash of the ironwork gate behind her reverberated into the distance. The very silent distance.

  Jean’s light-adapted eyes found the night doubly dark. At the far side of the gravel perimeter, the interior light of a small square car looked like a klieg light illuminating a human shape in a peaked police cap. She homed in on the—well, not the cavalry. Its scout.

  “Hi. I’m Jean Fairbairn. I’ll show you down to the old castle.”

  “P.C. Thomson here,” the constable replied, not at all startled by her appearance. But then, the slam of the gate would have waked the inhabitants of the graves at the old church. Settling his fluorescent yellow jacket over his chest, he turned toward her. As far as she could tell in the gloom, he was about fifteen, and a foot taller than she was. If police work didn’t pan out, he could get a job selling toothpaste—his smile shone with a light of its own. “No worries,” he went on, “I’m a local lad, I’ve visited the old castle many a time. What’s happened?”

  “A guest, Greg MacLeod, walked down to the old castle at sunset. He wanted to go to the ruined church. We—my fiancé, Alasdair Cameron, and me—we told him how to get there by going along the beach. Then we met his wife. She was looking for him. She went down to the castle and we heard her scream. Alasdair went right back down there. That was twenty, maybe even thirty minutes ago.” Jean danced backwards across the gravel, toward the path.

  Thomson seized a bag from his car, slammed the door, fired up his flashlight, and headed out. “The ruins are dangerous, right enough. Kinlochroy Council and Lord Dunasheen have been going at it for years now, who’s responsible for shoring up the place, planting danger signs, and the like. The old laird, he let the place go rather than spend on its upkeep, squeezing his pounds so tight you could hear the Queen’s picture squealing.”

  Good lad. He could walk, talk, and even make jokes simultaneously. Whether she could was another matter—she had to adopt a part jog, part forward stumble to keep up with him. “Entropy tends to outrun good intentions. And clumsy tourists, though I don’t know that either Greg or Tina was clumsy. Alasdair’s with them now.”

  A clang behind them was the gate. The walrus-like shape trotting toward them was Fergie’s, laden with a folded blanket and a carrier bag. “Jean! Wait up! Is that Sanjay with you?”

  “Sanjay?” Jean repeated, sure she’d misheard some Gaelic expression.

  “My granny’s folk are from India,” the constable explained.

  “Cool,” said Jean, remembering Hugh’s song about the Scots as rovers, as swords for hire and missionaries, as transported criminals like Greg’s ancestor Tormod.

  Thomson turned to Fergie. “Sorry to be called out on business, Fergus.”

  With the Highlander’s fine disregard for titles, “Fergus” instead of “Fergie” counted as respectful address. Jean said, “I never did get the first-aid kit from Diana. I couldn’t find, er, an American family arrived and she’s dealing with them.”

  Fergie nodded. If he knew Diana had been AWOL, however temporarily, he didn’t show it. “Rab Finlay’s on his way as well, but Lionel, the manager, it’s his day out.”

  “I’ve got my kit.” Even Thomson had to shorten his steps on the twisting and bumpy path. At his heels, Jean followed not only his flashlight but his reflecting coat, and Fergie trudged along behind her, his breath rasping louder and louder.

  Mist was gathering, shimmering strands drifting across the circles of light from their flashlights like homeless phantoms. Beyond the rocks, pools, and scrubby bits of heather, Jean made out nothin
g more than a muted shimmer on the underside of the clouds, the reflected glows of Dunasheen and Kinlochroy. A similar shimmer played across the water of first the loch and then, as they approached the castle, the sea. She felt as though she was trailing along with her little lantern, looking for an honest man . . . well, she was. She was looking for Alasdair.

  Down the hill they went, and across the bridge, first Thomson, then Jean, then Fergie. Thomson went up the enceinte path like a mountain goat, then turned to offer Jean his hand. Putting her feminist pride in her pocket—one casualty was enough—she took it. But instead of steadying her up the slope, he heaved her upward so forcefully her feet almost left the ground. With a scramble she retrieved first her footing and then her hand, and managed a breathless, “Thanks.”

  She turned to take the blanket from Fergie, the beam of her flashlight spattering down the craggy drop-off to one side, her shoulder brushing the damp cold of the ancient stone wall to the other. A shudder raised the hair on the back of her neck. The night had stripped the old castle of its dignity. Now the broken barricades seemed more sinister than sad, concealing icy eyes that watched the living souls clambering past and hating them for their warmth.

  The faint blip on her paranormal radar faded so fast she suspected it might merely have been imagination, the dark, the scene getting to her. No time to analyze, not now.

  Fergie, too, hauled himself up the path and stopped at its summit, catching his breath. Ahead, the yellow blur that was Thomson dropped sedately down what might have once been stone steps, but was just as likely to be stacked bedrock. Balancing their burdens, Jean and Fergie levered each other down six or seven levels and across a muddy, weedy patch onto level ground.

  There was Alasdair! Or there were two circles of light, rather, meeting, blending, parting again, emanating from a shambling lump. Jean thought for a moment that Alasdair and Tina were supporting Greg between them. But no, the clump wasn’t wide enough for three. As the double figure resolved itself from the darkness, she saw Alasdair holding flashlights in each hand, and his right arm locked around a staggering Tina.