The Blue Hackle

by Lillian Stewart Carl

  If Alasdair was seeing any nightmares at the moment, they were ones of Fergie not being as on top of the situation as he—either “he”—assumed. “Greg MacLeod was by way of being an art dealer as well.”

  “Oh, well,” Fergie told the plate, “yes, he meant to do a bit of business whilst on holiday. He was interested in the antiquity I’ll be showing you. I wonder if Scott heard about that as well.”

  The hall door opened and Rab stamped in as though he was knocking snow from his boots, if he’d been wearing boots instead of old athletic shoes. “I’ve fitted a bolt on the vestry door. Folk breaking into the chapel and leaving rubbish . . .” His voice trailed away into a mutter Jean translated as this never would have happened in the old laird’s day.

  “Thank you, Rab,” Fergie said.

  “Nancy’s carried a tray up to Mrs. MacLeod,” Rab went on, “and she’s saying she’s feeling much better, thank you, and she’ll be coming down for the dinner and cabaret.”

  “Festivities,” Fergie corrected, if in a murmur.

  Rab turned to Alasdair. “The wee McCrummin lass is asking if you’ll be wanting her to stand guard the night as well.”

  “That’s for Inspector Gilnockie to say,” Alasdair answered.

  “Ah well, you’ll be asking him, then.” His beard leading, like a broom sweeping clean, Rab stomped on into the pantry.

  Alasdair’s hand landed on his napkin, squashing it flat. “Aye. Speaking of the chapel, and Rab as well, come to that—he was telling us that there’s no one buried there, but Jean found a headstone beneath that huge tree.”

  Jean added, “It says, ‘A stranger known but to God.’”

  “Oh, that.” Fergie leaned back in his chair and folded his hands on his stomach. She expected him to begin, “Once upon a time,” but what he said was, “The gardeners turned up a human skeleton round and about 1885, some poor chap buried in a shallow grave not so long before.”

  “Any associated artifacts?” asked Alasdair.

  “Bits of cloth, the odd buckle and button, a few coins, an old bonnet tucked up with sprigs of juniper, or so the story goes. The minister in Kinlochroy was the traditional sort, and wouldn’t have the bones in the churchyard, since he had no way of knowing the man’s religious views. So my great-grandfather, the laird, had them reburied where they were found, installed a marker, and that was that.”

  “A shame there was no one to do a forensics workup,” said Jean, envisioning Seonaid’s ghost vanishing at the grave.

  “My great-grandfather had photos taken. Brenda at the local Heritage Museum’s got them on file, if you’d like to see them. And the buttons and all as well.”

  “I’d like to see them, aye,” Alasdair said.

  “Because you don’t know what’s important,” said Fergie with an I get it! smile.

  Alasdair’s smile was much more wry. “You never ken what’s important in a murder investigation, no. Although I’m thinking the odds of your unknown body being important to either today’s murder or the one in 1822 aren’t so good.”

  “Rab gave us one version of what happened in 1822,” said Jean. “What’s the official one?”

  “Tormod MacLeod was an apprentice stonemason working on the chapel,” Fergie said. “His carvings were finer than his master’s. The master schemed to get rid of him, putting it about that he was having an illicit affair with the laird’s wife, Seonaid.”

  Alasdair asked, “Were they having an affair, then?”

  Fergie shrugged. “The laird believed they were. He was twice her age, and had served with the Cameron Highlanders against Napoleon and been badly injured at Waterloo. Quite spoiled his looks. His disposition, they say, was never good.”

  The more things changed, Jean thought, the more they stayed the same. But if Fergie drew any connection with Colin Urquhart, he showed no sign of it.

  The pantry door opened and Nancy shot into the room. “You’re still sitting about, are you? You’ll not mind me clearing away?” Without waiting for an answer, she started collecting plates.

  “But his first wife had died childless,” Fergie went on, “and he needed an heir. So he married the local beauty—a fisherman’s daughter, or so the story goes.”

  “Not a love match, then. And I bet she already knew Tormod.” Jean imagined young Seonaid dazzled by the laird’s attentions, and her family urging her to better them all by making such an advantageous match. “Sounds like a cautionary tale for Jane Austen, about the dangers of letting your head rule your heart.”

  “If the story is true,” Fergie said, “then Seonaid’s heart won out and she went on with young Tormod after her son was born.”

  Alasdair asked, “Who killed her, then? The laird himself, out of jealousy?”

  “Sounds like the plot of Othello, with Othello strangling Desdemona because of Iago’s lies,” Jean said. “Except I gather the master mason’s story wasn’t entirely a lie.”

  Two plates clashed together in Nancy’s hands, making a sound not unlike that of the bell at the chapel. “Stories get twisted round in the telling. Chinese whispers. That’s the way of these things.”

  “Undoubtedly so, but there’s a fair amount of documentation,” Fergie told her. “Old Norman was named ‘the Red’ because of his temper—he had dark hair, before it went gray. I’m never pleased at possibly having a murderer in the family tree, mind you.”

  “Didna fash Greg MacLeod, did it? Coming all this way looking out such a story, imagine that! Though I reckon he had other reasons for coming, poking and prying just like the polis.” And Nancy popped back through the swinging door like a cuckoo back into its clock.

  “The poor soul hardly had time to poke and pry,” said Fergie to the slow swing of the door. “And if my ancestor murdered Seonaid, then Greg’s didn’t.”

  Jean silently repeated Miranda’s mantra: The staff sees all, knows all, and is likely to tell all unless you make it worth their while not to.

  Fergie shrugged. “Rab and Nancy have been here so long I suspect they were born in the attics. When I was a child her brother would show me all the little hidden places, until he was obliged to find work elsewhere—haven’t seen him for donkey’s years, he’s too successful for the likes of Kinlochroy now, sends Nancy tidy sums. In any event, you can’t blame Rab and Nancy for being a bit possessive.”

  The kink in Alasdair’s right eyebrow attested that yes, he could blame them. He said, “More people than the Finlays work here, you were saying.”

  “Yes, God knows there are cleaners, gardeners, tradesmen of all descriptions. No stonemasons like Tormod MacLeod. Though we’ve just thrown up another murderer, more’s the pity. A genuine murderer, this time round.”

  “I reckon Tormod was transported rather than hanged,” said Alasdair, “because the local jury knew he wasn’t guilty of murder.”

  “Even as the laird insisted that he be disappeared. Hustled off to an emigrant ship heading Down Under, in other words, a pretty grim fate in those days, but hardly worse than death.” Jean imagined the echo of Greg’s voice, like an antipodean banshee. “If Seonaid died from following her heart, that takes her story out of an Austen drawing room, into, oh, a Thomas Hardy dungeon. You know, life’s a bitch and then you die.”

  “Was there any question about the bairn’s paternity?” Alasdair asked.

  “None,” answered Fergie. “Norman acknowledged him as his son and heir. Short of doing a DNA test, and that would involve digging up Seonaid . . .”

  “Is she in the churchyard in Kinlochroy?” Jean asked.

  “Why yes, where else would she be?” replied Fergie.

  “Was Greg asking you about all this?” Alasdair went on.

  “He mentioned his MacLeod ancestry is all. It was Tina going on about Tormod and Greg’s—well, she said ‘obsession’ with Dunasheen, but that’s a wife.” Fergie gazed again at Emma’s painted features. “Greg was in too much of a hurry just then. We agreed to have us a chin-wag that evening is all, and off he went, down
the stairs just as I went into my office, out the front door and away.”

  Out the . . . Jean jolted into an upright and locked position. “You heard him go out the front door? But we saw him leaving the house through the courtyard gate.”

  “Oh aye.” Alasdair leaned forward.

  “That’s right, you saw him at the courtyard gate.” Fergie’s features pursed in pursuit of memory. “No, I didn’t hear the door open and shut at all. I heard Greg walking down the stairs, then saw him going through the kitchen yard and into the back garden gate. But he couldn’t have gone through the garden, could he, not and met up with you on the castle path.”

  Jean’s memory bubbled up like a mud pit and belched what Fergie had said the day before. “That’s why you said it was odd he’d gone that way. And you said he’d stayed in his room just long enough to get his hat. But he wasn’t wearing a hat.”

  “He wasn’t?” Fergie grimaced in bewilderment. “The man I saw was wearing one of those slouch hats with the wide brim, the sort you associate with Australians. I thought it was Greg, but then, I only saw his back, the hat and a heavy anorak.”

  “Anoraks are usually nylon, aren’t they? Waterproofed. Sort of shiny,” Jean murmured, even as all three sets of eyes widened and batted stares back and forth.

  It was Alasdair who put the vital question into words. “If that was not Greg crossing the yard, then who was it?”

  “And did Dakota Krum see the same man when she and her family were driving up the driveway? He would have had just enough time to run up from the beach, I bet—if that was the murderer, which isn’t a given. I should have asked her to define ‘hat,’ but I saw Colin Urquhart wearing a hood, a sweatshirt beneath a coat, probably not an anorak. And then we saw him with his bonnet, and, well . . .” The images winged across Jean’s mind and winked out. “Damn.”

  “Eh?” asked Fergie, his eyes growing positively bulbous with alarm. “Urquhart?”

  “We met up with him by the old church just before noon,” Alasdair said. “Thomson’s saying he’s the sole survivor of a bomb in Iraq. Could be that’s what he was telling you, Fergie, about men in his vicinity dying nasty deaths.”

  “Oh. I didn’t know. That’s why he’s—poor chap, he could play the Phantom of the Opera without makeup.” Fergie sagged, then sat up again. “I’m sorry the man’s not right in the head, but still, what he said is a threat of sorts. He’s a suspect, isn’t he, Alasdair?”

  “Aye.” Alasdair pushed back from the table. “Sounds to be our list of suspects is longer than we’ve been thinking. I’d best report to Gilnockie. “

  Our. We. And he didn’t mean Jean, who popped up beside him. Despite the spicy sting of the soup in her throat and its warm glow in her stomach, a nap was the last thing on her mind. Forward momentum, she exhorted herself, knowing by Alasdair’s keen expression he needed no exhortation.

  Leaving Fergie staring out the window with the same expression as his ancestors searching the horizon for a Viking sail, Alasdair paced down the hall and pushed open the door to the old kitchen.

  Jean shut the door as he cut through the technological and conversational buzz and caught Gilnockie’s eye. With a jerk of his head, he summoned his colleague to a brief conference beside the fireplace and the bulletin board, which now displayed not only the grim sequence of photos but notes and a list of names. Did that list already include the person—just because Fergie said “he” didn’t mean it was a man—with the hat?

  Dakota, wilted as a flower without water, sat between her parents and facing Sergeant Young. This time there was no accommodating cushion and cup of tea, although Scott’s thunderous and Heather’s sarcastic expressions suggested a cup of hemlock would do the trick. Young made notations on a pad of paper, her curled lip repelling both thunder and sarcasm.

  Figuring it was better to claim a spot than ask for it, especially since Gilnockie seemed to accept her as an extension of Alasdair—his left hand, not his right—Jean pulled a plastic chair into the conversational perimeter, and sat down just as Gilnockie resumed his seat at the table. Alasdair circled like a plane looking for a landing strip, pulled another chair forward, and settled down beside Jean.

  “Mr. Krum,” said Gilnockie. “Do you own any hats?”

  Scott stared. “Hats? Yeah, I’ve got a stocking cap, and some gimme caps . . .”

  “What?” demanded Young.

  “Baseball caps with company logos,” Scott explained.

  Heather rolled her eyes, perhaps at both Young’s question and Scott’s low-class headgear.

  “Is that all?” asked Gilnockie.

  “I might have an old cowboy hat someone gave me. I don’t know. They’re all in the hall closet back home. Why?”

  Heather adjusted the cuticle of a fingernail long and shiny as a talon. “I have a sun hat and one of those Scarlett O’Hara things I wore at a wedding. Tacky, but what can you do, the bride calls the shots.”

  Gilnockie asked Dakota, “The man you saw at the garden gate last night. What sort of hat was he wearing?”

  “Kind of like Indiana Jones’s hat, except with a wider, you know . . .” Dakota’s limp fingers circled her head.

  “Brim,” said Heather. “And I guess the ghost had a hat too, huh?”

  “No,” Dakota said, her voice dropping to a whisper. “The ghost wasn’t wearing a hat.”

  Scott shifted forward in his chair, as though ready to launch himself across the table. Young’s body tensed even further. But all Scott said was, “Inspector Gilnockie, I have to apologize for taking up your time with this ghost business. She’s a very imaginative child. We’re working with her to get that under control.”

  Heather snorted. Jean wanted to knock her head against Scott’s, all the better to adjust their attitudes. Don’t patronize her. Be glad you have a creative child.

  She had no idea what Dakota was thinking. The child fled, slipping from her chair, making tracks for the door, and plunking herself down on the step just inside.

  “If you’re finished with us . . .” Heather began.

  “Not quite.” Gilnockie reached into the breast pocket of his coat, pulled out a plastic bag holding a small white square, and set it on the table.

  “It’s a business card,” said Scott.

  Gilnockie turned it over.

  Heather asked, “So?”

  “You’ve not seen this before, then?”

  Both Scott and Heather shook their heads, Heather adding, “Well, there’s a dish of them in the room, but without any clues on the back. I guess that note is a clue?”

  “Thank you very much,” said Gilnockie. “If we need anything else, we’ll contact you. I hope your business with Lord Dunasheen goes satisfactorily.”

  “Fat chance, now,” Scott muttered, but he bared his teeth in a facsimile of a smile. “Thanks.”

  “We’re leaving Saturday morning,” Heather stated. “We have to get back to Glasgow for our flight home. The kid’s got to go to school. I have a business to run.”

  Gilnockie’s smile was genuine. “I hope you’ll not be obliged to change your plans, Mrs. Krum.”

  Great, Jean thought. There was another complication. What if Tina and the Krums couldn’t vacate their rooms on Saturday morning, even though Michael and Rebecca, Miranda, and Hugh were all scheduled to arrive Saturday afternoon? At least Alasdair’s mother was staying with friends in the village. Not that a wedding, and a second wedding at that, took precedence over murder.

  Expelling a long breath, Jean appealed to the ceiling for patience—as quickly as possible!—and settled back in her chair for the next round.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Gilnockie waited until the nuclear—as in fissionable—family Krum had left the room and Young started drumming her pen on the table. Finally, he restored the bag to his pocket and said, “Well now. The forensics boffins are having a go at the knife, thanks to you for recovering it, Miss Fairbairn.”

  “Dakota saw it before I did.”

 
; Young looked at Jean as though suddenly noticing she was there. Her belligerent gaze moved on to Alasdair, who met it both imperturbably and implacably, and then back to her notebook.

  “No matter,” said Gilnockie. “A preliminary blood test’s indicating that the regimental dirk is the murder weapon, though other tests are showing only indecipherable fingerprints. No surprise there, it was a cold, dreich afternoon, and folk were wearing gloves.”

  “If the murderer was wearing gloves, then there’s blood on them,” said Alasdair.

  “Oh aye, there is that. We’ve found multiple prints on the other dirk and both sheaths—Mrs. Finlay’s quite right, she’s not had the time to clean them.” Gilnockie looked up at the ceiling, either collecting his thoughts or, like Jean, appealing to the Almighty. “Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Krum has a proper alibi, and Mr. Krum already had some knowledge of these parts, though he’s saying he’s never heard of Greg MacLeod.”

  Young’s lips went from a curl to a clamp. “They’re not shy of a bob or two,” she said under her breath, letting the implications—avarice, underhanded dealings—dangle provocatively.

  “Aye,” Gilnockie said, without grasping the bait. “At the time of the murder, Lionel Pritchard was driving back from a day out in Portree. Or so he’s saying. I’m having someone there retrace his steps. Perhaps he’s negotiating with dealers such as Krum and MacLeod on his own, but we’ve got no evidence of that.”

  “Just yet,” said Young.

  “Rab Finlay returned here from the pub before the MacLeods arrived, and he and Mrs. Finlay set to preparing the evening meal. Their telly was tuned to a film, and they heard nothing ’til Lord Dunasheen gave the alarm.”

  Then how, Jean asked herself, did Nancy know about Greg and Tormod . . . oh. Nancy had ever-so-helpfully kept Tina company over breakfast.

  “What of the note on the business card?” asked Alasdair.