Alasdair walked along, taking it all in, gears meshing, grinding, meshing again.
“Still, you saw Diana and Colin,” Jean said. “That answers our questions about the relationship and probably explains where Diana was yesterday afternoon, why she missed the Krums’ arrival and looked so flushed when she got there.”
“Likely she and Colin were at the lighthouse at three, not killing Greg on the beach.”
“Yeah, but poor Fergie when he hears that alibi.”
This time Alasdair’s frown was perfectly genuine.
Then there was what Scott and Pritchard had said, and finding Fergie’s virtual fingerprints on the Internet, and how a motive connected to the exceedingly lucrative art and antiquities trade was perhaps coagulating from the mist, and what “something else,” in addition to the Fairy Flagon, was Fergie planning to reveal, anyway?
Alasdair’s frown deepened and his steps faltered. Before Jean could slow her own, he stepped out again, marching like a soldier. You followed the investigative path to the end, wherever it led. They’d both done that in their previous lives, despite knowing how stiff a price such ends demanded.
“I think Pritchard has a thing for Diana, too,” Jean said, “which is why he was dissing Colin last night. But then, Scott’s comment was—not the sort of thing you’d say. You’ve got me spoiled, you know. I forget how crass some guys, some people, can be.”
Alasdair’s frown moderated, without comment.
“But then, like I thought when I saw that photo of Greg with another woman, jealousy makes a good motive, too.”
“It does that, aye. Any strong passion makes a motive. Love become hate or fear makes a grand motive. Indifference, no.”
“I can’t see Tina coming all the way here just to kill Greg.”
“Something might could have happened once they reached the U.K., but no, I cannot see premeditation. Even though she’s not told all she knows, not by a long chalk.”
“Protecting Greg, I bet.”
“Oh aye. And protecting herself as well.”
The bell tower, the slate roof, the delicate buttresses and finials, the lancet windows of St. Columcille’s appeared through the trees. The small building looked like a stone wedding cake, set in a circle of mulched flowerbeds and shrubbery borders. A driveway emerged from the trees to sweep past the building. Sighting along it, Jean could just make out several of the whitewashed buildings in the village. “Come summer time, Fergie must have half the people in Kinlochroy taking care of the gardens. One of the costs of the heritage business.”
“The heritage business,” Alasdair said, “generates jobs for the locals. The old laird—the old, old laird, Norman the Red MacDonald . . .”
“Must have been a real carrot-top,” said Jean.
“. . . likely had this chapel built as make-work for his tenants. More credit to him, when other lairds were turfing them out in favor of sheep, sheep turning a more handsome profit than people.”
“There’s a passion for you. Greed.”
“Oh aye. Though I’m never saying Fergie’s greedy keeping Dunasheen afloat.”
“No way, no how.”
“I’d not be surprised if Fergie was planning to sell off a family mathom or two. There are few stately homeowners who’ve not had to sacrifice the odd Rembrandt—not that Fergie’s found any Rembrandts, more’s the pity. His uncle already sold off most of the farming and hunting land. Good job his grandfather rented the place out to a Glasgow millionaire in the twenties, else it would have no heating, no plumbing, no electric flex. Could be Pritchard was dealing with Krum on Fergie’s instructions.”
“Well, yeah,” Jean said. “Sorry. It’s not like I’m trying to implicate Fergie.”
“No need apologizing.”
They stopped beside the church, Jean admiring the play of light and shadow in the intricately carved dark gray stone. “So maybe Greg was here to buy. Maybe Scott’s here to buy. And Fergie finds it all kind of embarrassing, so is not telling us. Yet, anyway.”
“And Greg was not telling us, but went blethering on about the genealogy, Tormod MacLeod, the 1822 murder, seeing as how his business with Fergie was none of ours. Then.”
“Speaking of jealousy as a motive, the master mason was jealous and so forth, but who did kill Seonaid? And why? And yes, I know you said we already had one case, but, darn it, I want to know what happened. If nothing else, that story brought Greg here as much as his business did.”
“Oh aye,” was all Alasdair replied, his tone dropping from analytical to pensive.
Together they peered through the tall, pointed windows of the chapel. There were the wooden pews incised with leaves and tendrils, the decorative vaulting, the white-draped altar that they’d inspected with Fergie last night—before he went back to the house and they went on to the old church, the old castle, and a new crime.
Then they’d talked about flowers, candles, menus, ritual, and music. Now Jean stood outside the tiny porch and noticed how the chapel’s front door faced a break in the trees, providing a glimpse of the gable end of the old church and the sea. This new church sat at the center of a sundial, in a way. If she didn’t know how recent it was, she’d suspect that it, too, had been sited on some prehistoric place of power.
The 1822 laird, Norman MacDonald, had intended to build a folly, a mock ruin, an elaborate joke. If one of the stonemasons had murdered his wife, then he’d probably felt the place was folly indeed, in another meaning entirely.
Behind her back, Alasdair rattled the door. “It’s locked.”
“Well, yes. Can’t you just see the place littered with empty liquor bottles and used condoms? Assuming anyone from Kinlochroy would be that crass, never mind what I just said about most guys.”
“I’m not minding it, no. But look here.”
She turned around into the shadow of the porch, and followed Alasdair’s forefinger to the iron latch and lock of the door. Several scratches glinted dully in the metal. “Looks like someone was trying to pick the lock. Recently. Was it like that yesterday?”
“I’ve got no idea. Fergie was leading the way with the key. Half a tick, whilst I check the vestry door.” He hurried away around the building.
Jean trailed behind, then stopped. What was that beside the gnarled roots of a huge tree on the far side of the driveway? Several modest sculptures—an angel, St. Francis, Buddha—rose from the herbaceous borders, but this was different. Another of Fergie’s whimsical touches, such as a ceramic fairy house shaped like a toadstool?
A few paces carried her into chill dappled shadow beneath the heavy branches. No, the mound was a miniature round-shouldered tombstone, perhaps six inches of it protruding from leaf mold and lichen. Jean bent to brush away the debris, first from the stone, then from her gloves, still expecting to see another joke. Here lies the eight-track tape, perhaps. If nothing else, this might be the grave of a pet.
The weathered letters didn’t read Fido or Felix. They read, A stranger known but to God. Rest in peace.
It was a grave, all right. Of a human being. But Rab had said there were no graves near the new church.
A prickle emanated from the roots of her hair, danced across her nape, and slipped down her back like an invisible icicle. A faint disturbance in the Force, a fragile qualm, a whiff of the paranormal. Slight as it was, it was still more than she’d sensed at the old church, site of a famous mass murder. But Rab had said Seonaid was found dead at the house, not here.
The prickle had nothing to do with the grave. Slowly Jean looked around. The chapel and its grounds were so quiet she heard a car engine and birds calling in the distance, and up close the slow friction of leaf on leaf as subtle drafts played through the woods. Or was that a draft? Yet again she heard footsteps. It used to be that lairds would hire a hermit to live in their gardens. Maybe Fergie, having one of those already, had hired a Bigfoot.
Silence. Jean stood up. “Alasdair?”
The church bell rang, its bright, clear note la
unching a couple of gulls, squawking in surprise, from the roof into the sky. Again it rang, and a third time, sending a subliminal reverberation less through Jean’s ears than her sixth sense.
She ran toward the chapel. “Alasdair?”
The small arched door stood open. Jean stepped into a tiny room furnished with table, chair, a line of coat hooks, a couple of shelves holding candlesticks and vases. You couldn’t leave prayer or hymn books out here in the damp and cold, they’d be worm fodder. At least the place didn’t have too strong a wet-dog smell . . .
Whoa. She slumped against the table, the prickle at her neck and back thickening into lead shielding. Seonaid?
Yes. Through the door from the main part of the church walked Seonaid MacDonald, in her green dress and ringlets as solid, as real, as colorful as any living soul—except for her gaze still fixed on another world. A sunlit world, its radiance shimmering in her blue eyes as though on the surface of the sea. Her complexion might be cool and white, but her pale pink lips were parted in a smile.
She passed so close that every follicle on Jean’s body tightened and every hair twitched—the surface tension between realities touching as lightly as a kiss.
Jean was long past feeling afraid of these moments, not that she enjoyed them. But what she felt now wasn’t fear at all, not her own, not any hanging like a sour odor around the ghost. Despite the cold weight on her shoulders, her heart was buoyed upward on the scent of spring flowers.
Seonaid glided with light but measured steps out into the afternoon. With a creak like that of rusty machinery, Jean turned her head and watched.
Seonaid cast no shadow, even though she walked through the shadow of several trees—through the shadow of the valley of death—to the stump of the marker. For a long moment she stood over the grave. And then she was gone, transported between one second and the next into another dimension.
Warmth flooded back into Jean’s body. Her shoulders lifted and she straightened her spine. She shook herself the way Dougie would shake off water, spraying the room with motes of perception. If ghosts were bits of strong emotion caught in time like a fly in amber, then, unusually, Seonaid’s strong emotion wasn’t fear or grief, but joy. Jean felt her face relax into a smile. Wow.
Heavy footsteps thumped up to the inside door and Alasdair plodded into the vestry as slowly and heavily as though chill had penetrated deep into his bones. And yet he, too, was smiling. His voice brushed against the nap, wavering oddly, he said, “You saw her, then.”
Jean’s voice seemed to be transmitted through helium. “She brushed right by me. Can you still get that whiff of flowers?”
“Oh aye. No sackcloth and ashes for that one. Right cheery ghost, I’m thinking, for all she was murdered.”
“She was murdered at the house. Here, she’s happy. Why she’s here, as in, on this plane of existence, though, is the question.”
“She’s not after revenge. Nor identification.”
“No.” Jean stretched, reveling in the pulse in her own body. “Did she ring the bell?”
“Aye, she did that. I was reaching beneath a pew when I heard the bell ring. By the time I’d looked up, there she was, up the aisle and away.” With a stretch of his own, Alasdair peered out through the doorway. “She went outside, did she?”
“Yeah, and vanished at the grave.”
“What grave?”
“I’ll show you. I don’t see any way it could be her own grave, but . . . Why were you reaching under a pew?”
“Everything’s tidy inside, save for this. An empty bag of crisps.” Alasdair held up a gaudy plastic bag. “The lock on this door was picked, not expertly, but effectively. I’ll be having a word with Fergie about installing ones a bit more complex. And perhaps adding an alarm system, but then, there’s no electricity here, he was blethering on about lamps and candles and the like yesterday.”
“So someone breaks into the church, eats a snack, and then leaves again, closing the door. Fergie said he found Colin Urquhart here once, but . . .”
“But.” The smile ebbed from Alasdair’s face. “Time we were getting ourselves back to the house and having words with more than the laird.”
Chapter Fourteen
Lunch passed in silence except for the occasional slurp and crunch. Dakota kept darting wary glances from Scott to Heather and back again. Each of them ate with head down, the better to ignore the other—and to ignore Jean and Alasdair and the inconvenient murder case—and peeled away in opposite directions the moment the last of the fruit salad with heavy cream had disappeared.
With a backward look at Jean she interpreted as don’t worry, our secret is safe, Dakota, too, made her escape—only to be stopped in the hall by Sergeant Young, whose astringent voice ordered the entire family into the incident room. As Heather’s equally astringent protestations faded into the distance, Jean said, “Gilnockie’s not planning to interview all three of them at the same time, is he?”
Alasdair arranged his napkin into a linen pyramid. “I told him everything you told me is all. What he’s doing with it is his own affair.”
Yeah, right. Jean noted the tension at the corners of Mr. Truth, Justice, and the British Way’s mouth and in the creases beside his eyes. She knew how he felt. So much for the positive effects of fresh air and exercise, not to mention that bolt of joy from, paradoxically, a ghost. It was the other ghost of Dunasheen, Rory MacLeod, who captured the mood of the place. You could scream on the way down, but it wouldn’t soften your landing.
Fergie looked either at Diana at the other end of the table, or at the portrait of her mother just beyond. His expression wobbled into that of a child who’d anticipated a special holiday toy—or guests delighted with holiday festivities—but instead received a set of underwear, and dirty underwear at that. Then his chins firmed and his upper lip stiffened. “What difference does it make if they’re interviewed together?”
Before Alasdair could answer, Diana said, “Separately, the interviewer can catch out any discrepancies in testimony. However, I expect it usually isn’t done to interview a child without the parents present.”
Not by Gilnockie, anyway. Jean didn’t look at Alasdair, in case her look reminded him of an incident last August.
Diana asked, “Coffee, Jean? Alasdair? Father?”
“No thank you,” all three said in unison.
She scooted back from the table and stood up. Something moved in the depths of her eyes, blue as her ancestor Seonaid’s—amusement, perhaps. Or perhaps no more than an intelligent assessment of the situation. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m booked for an interview myself. Alone.”
Not in tandem with Colin, Jean finished for her. During his brief encounter with Gilnockie and Young before lunch, Colin had offered nothing more than the equivalent of name, rank, and serial number. Now he was on hold in the staff sitting room, Thomson in attendance, awaiting not Alasdair’s pleasure but his reluctant duty. “We’ll have another interview after your meal,” Gilnockie had told Alasdair equably. “No need to go interrupting your holiday.”
Alasdair had replied to that with body language Jean hoped Gilnockie didn’t speak, but fully deserved, and in great-stone-face mode had repaired to the dining room.
“Alasdair, Jean,” Fergie said, “if you’ll meet me in the library at six, before we begin our New Year’s Eve festivities, I’ll finally be able to show you the Fairy Flagon and another artifact I think you’ll find quite interesting.”
Alasdair’s smile and nod were stiff but gracious. He said, “Speaking of your collections, Fergie, Jean overheard Scott Krum speaking to Pritchard about how he’d visited here in September, when you and Diana weren’t home.”
“Ah. Well.” Blushing, Fergie looked down at his empty plate. “That’s the, I mean, Emma’s family’s had dealings with the London branch of Scott’s auction house, and he was touring about the U.K. appraising old family mathoms, so he asked if he could stop by.”
No surprise Fergie used the same word Alasdai
r had, mathom, Tolkien’s designation for souvenirs, gifts, the objects one generation loved that the next loathed—all the things that accumulated like lint on laundry in the back corners of any home, no matter how well maintained.
“Pritchard showed him round the place,” Fergie went on, “and he offered on a few small items. Some day, when we’ve made a complete inventory, we might find . . .”
“He did not offer on the regimental dirk that’s gone missing,” said Alasdair, without hinting that it was missing no longer.
“I’ve got no clue where that got off to, or when. Scott never mentioned it. I suspect he’s brought his family here on holiday looking out more items.”
“You think?” Jean asked. “He was checking over that ivory-inlaid chest across from the door of the Charlie suite. The one about the size of a laundry basket.”
“Was he now? The chest beside Seonaid’s tapestry?” Fergie arranged several stray crumbs.
Alasdair repeated, “Seonaid’s tapestry?”
“Well, technically a tapestry is woven, and this is petit-point,” Fergie said. “She was after providing employment for the village girls, and stitchery was seen as appropriate.”
“I’ll take a closer look.” Jean knew she wasn’t the only one wondering if Scott’s interest extended beyond the chest to the almost two-hundred-year-old needlework.
“I expect Scott wants that portrait of Seonaid in my office. It’s a David Wilkie, you know, fairly valuable, but I don’t want it to leave the family. Doesn’t she look like Diana, though?”
“Yes, she does,” said Jean, with certainty not based only on the portrait. The only works of David Wilkie she knew off the top of her head were those depicting George IV, Georgie-Porgie, in Edinburgh in 1822, a nightmare in tartan and flesh-colored tights.
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