The Blue Hackle

by Lillian Stewart Carl

  “As yet no one’s admitted to recognizing it. Nor has it any useful prints.” Gilnockie actually steepled his fingers a la Sherlock Holmes. His austere face fit the part. If you melted his ice, you’d get a puddle of fresh water.

  “Tina MacLeod.” The name squeezed from Young’s mouth like toothpaste from a tube.

  “We’ll be questioning her again, now that we’ve got ourselves another possible suspect, Lord Dunasheen’s stranger. Who might could have been Mr. Krum, although if the young lass saw the same man outside the gate, then it wasn’t him at all but someone from the village, like as not, though we’ll be keeping our options open.”

  Jean didn’t offer any thoughts on Australian mafiosos and the sign of the Red Kangaroo. “Tina said Greg didn’t have any enemies. For what that’s worth.”

  Fortunately, no one told her what that was worth.

  “Lord Dunasheen has no alibi for the time of the murder,” said Gilnockie, and quickly, to Alasdair, “I’m taking into account what Miss Fairbairn here noticed, that he was not breathing hard when she told him of the incident. We’ve not spoken with Miss MacDonald yet. However . . . ah. Bang on time.”

  The door opened and Sanjay Thomson ushered Colin Urquhart, now wearing a tattered pair of sneakers, down the steps.

  Young turned to another page. “Killed the man in a fit of madness, likely doesn’t even remember doing it. And dropped the knife on his way back to the light—”

  “Presumption of innocence,” Gilnockie interrupted, his voice firm but quiet.

  Alasdair said, “There’s motive even in madness, Sergeant,” and leaned back as Thomson pulled up a chair for Colin and then retired to the door.

  With Diana in charge, Colin, and Thomson, too, had no doubt been properly fed. Whether it was the distraction of his digestive process, Thomson’s presence, or both, Colin’s thin shoulders beneath the nylon patches of an oversized military sweater were now more slumped than braced. But those blue eyes—or eye, rather—still looked with exaggerated caution from face to face.

  “How can I help with your investigation, Inspector Gilnockie?” Colin’s voice was deeper than Jean expected, emanating from his throat as though from a deep well. An ancient sacred well, perhaps, where petitioners even today left scraps of cloth along with their prayers.

  “Where were you yesterday afternoon between three and four o’clock?” Gilnockie asked.

  “I wasn’t killing Aussie visitors,” Colin replied, and, to Young, “If I had done, I’d have taken the knife to Keppoch Point and chucked it over the cliff into the sea, not left it lying about the old graveyard.”

  Young’s mouth went so tight she looked like a centenarian with no teeth. Trying to do the right thing and make no further remarks, no doubt. Jean knew the feeling.

  “Where were you when the visitor was killed, then?” asked Gilnockie.

  “At the lighthouse. Watching the birds. Reading a book. I don’t know.”

  “On your own?”

  Colin’s contorted face was neither smiling nor frowning. He peered down at his hands, with their long fingers and the veins blue through the pale skin seeming too delicate to lift a weapon, never mind use it. “On my own.”

  If Colin had been alone at the time of the murder, Jean asked herself, then where was Diana? Admittedly the question placed him between the devil and the deep blue sea, but surely facing Fergie’s wrath was better than implicating Diana in a murder.

  “Do you know where Diana was just then?” Alasdair asked.

  “No.”

  “Were you by way of having an appointment at the old church at three?”

  “No.”

  Once again Gilnockie produced the plastic bag with the business card. “What’s this, then, signed with your initials?”

  Colin read the card. “I never wrote that. It’s not my handwriting.”

  At Gilnockie’s gesture, Young turned the pad of paper to a new page and shoved it across the table. Gilnockie offered Colin a pen from his own pocket. “Write something, please.”

  Colin’s back was starting to stiffen and his shoulders coil. If he’d had a pressure gauge, it would be inching upward. After a long moment, he set pen to paper and wrote out two lines, then threw the pen down like a live grenade.

  Gilnockie and Young almost bumped heads over the pad. “My love is like a red, red rose that sweetly blooms in June.” Those weren’t quite the words of Burns’s poem, but close. They seemed incongruous in Gilnockie’s dusty voice.

  Alasdair reached past Jean, picked up the pad, and held it so she could see it, too. No, the jagged black letters on the card looked nothing like these, round and yet cramped, like the mouth of the man in the famous painting of “The Scream.”

  Jean slid the pad across the table to Young, who repositioned it between her hands.

  “Well then,” Gilnockie said, “Lord Dunasheen is telling us you threatened him.”

  Colin’s head, bent to consider a small ink stain on his forefinger, jerked up. “Why would I be doing that?”

  “Because he’s unhappy with your relationship with his daughter.”

  “Oh aye.” His forefinger curled into his palm with the others. “He’s thinking I’m a good-for-nothing layabout with designs on his daughter. Well, Diana’s an adult, and a clever one at that, capable of making her own decisions. I never threatened the man.”

  Alasdair explained, “You were telling him that men in your vicinity tended to die.”

  “They do.” A wave of tension ran through Colin’s body. “I remember now, it was when Fergus was turfing me out of the wee church, in all Christian charity, right? That’s what I was telling him, aye, by way of truth in advertising, not threatening, not at all.”

  Gilnockie’s smooth forehead puckered, very gently, perhaps sympathizing with Colin and yet wondering what he was capable of. At least the younger man wasn’t trying to hide his animosity. “Did you know the MacLeods at all?”

  “The murdered man and his wife? No. I didn’t even know their names ’til Diana told me.”

  “When did she do that?”

  “She rang me last night.”

  “Do you know the Krums at all?”

  “The Americans?” Colin asked. “No.”

  “Have you seen a man, a stranger, wearing a hat with a wide brim?”

  “Most folk here are strangers to me, Inspector.”

  Gilnockie conceded that with a nod. “How do you get on with Mr. and Mrs. Finlay and Mr. Pritchard?”

  “Sanjay told you about the pub, Rab and Lionel and two pensioners taking the piss. I overreacted, I’ll be owning to that. But they had no call jabbing sticks through the bars of my cage, eh?” Colin laughed, a sound like saw teeth snagging on hard wood.

  Gilnockie began, “I’m sorry—”

  “Oh aye, everyone’s sorry. I’m hearing the wee fiddles playing sad music. If you’ve finished patronizing me . . .”

  Gilnockie’s voice was calm, his gaze level. “Mr. Urquhart, I am sorry.”

  Jean thought of the old church, ancient stones settled solidly in the earth, roofed by the eternal sky, all passion spent. She glanced at Alasdair to see his head tilted pensively. He, too, sensed the wavelets of tranquility emanating from Gilnockie as surely as he scented damp ashes on the chill draft from the fireplace. Serenity was a valuable skill for a cop. And an unusual one. Jean looked back at Gilnockie, crossing Young’s nonplused gaze on the way.

  Colin took an audible breath and his fingers splayed out again. Oblivious to his power, Gilnockie gestured toward the door. “P.C. Thomson.”

  “Aye, sir?” Thomson wended his way between the tables and the technicians.

  “Where’s Diana MacDonald? She agreed to an interview at half past one.”

  “She’s in the kitchen, sir. She’s asking if you’d mind speaking to her there, the cooking wants seeing to.”

  Frowning, Young opened her mouth. But Gilnockie spoke first. “Aye, we’ll come along to the kitchen, no worries.” Rising gra
cefully, he started for the door.

  Everyone started for the door, even Colin. Once the procession made it to the hall, though, Thomson intercepted him and drew his attention to a series of Victorian prints depicting kilted Highlanders with their clan tartans and clan botanical badges. Prickly thistle represented Scotland itself, Jean noticed, and Stewart, family of kings and scoundrels. Cameron was oak, deep roots, wide-ranging branches, leaves curving in simple elegance.

  The sunlight glowing through the deep-set windows of the new kitchen was already taking on the sheen of late afternoon. A row of herbs along one sill seemed to stretch eager leaves toward the light, and the lemon-yellow tile with its colorful Spanish/Italian border magnified it. More windows framed the door into the kitchen yard, next to a row of hooks draped with raincoats, hats, scarves, and umbrellas.

  Like a star in the spotlight, Diana stood at the central counter. Her subdued sweater and pants outfit was eclipsed by a high apron of such bleached purity her fair face seemed almost tanned. A red ribbon tied back her hair. Her hand snicked a long chef’s knife up and down so briskly it seemed to be moving by itself, producing small cubes of potato.

  Gilnockie gestured Young to a Swedish table and chairs sitting beside a Swedish sideboard complete with a large flat-screen television and various DVD and control boxes. A perk from Fergie, Jean wondered, or a gift from Nancy’s successful brother?

  “Miss MacDonald,” began Gilnockie.

  “Inspector Gilnockie,” Diana returned. “Nancy’s helping Rab and my father do up the Great Hall for the evening function, and I’m helping her by preparing the vegetables. I’m at your disposal, even so.”

  “Where were you when you heard that Mr. MacLeod had been killed?” Gilnockie asked.

  She blinked, apparently not expecting that question. “I came back downstairs after showing the Krums to their suite and my father told me the news.”

  “How long had you been in the house before the Krums arrived?”

  “Only long enough to freshen up. I’d taken the dogs for a walk and lost track of time, so found myself in a wee bit of a hurry.” Her eyes turned toward Jean even as the knife moved on to a rutabaga. “I’m sorry you had to answer the door.”

  “No problem,” said Jean, without adding it had given her evidence to share. “When did the dogs get away from you?”

  The knife stopped, then started again. “It was you who let them into the house as well, then. They were wet and chilled, poor beasts, and ran off without waiting for me.”

  “Waiting for you doing what?” Gilnockie asked.

  “I stopped in at the lighthouse.”

  Young’s pen thunked the page as solidly as Diana’s knife hit the cutting board, probably exclamation-pointing that she’d just contradicted Colin’s testimony.

  Alasdair and Gilnockie nodded in perfect unison, but it was Gilnockie who spoke. “Was Colin Urquhart there at the time?”

  “Yes, he was.” The faintest whiff of steam moved over the limpid pools of Diana’s eyes. Once those icy ones melt, Jean thought.

  Alasdair came around on another tack. “What dealings have you had with Scott Krum?”

  “I’d never met the man. He visited here in September, whilst father and I were away, and Lionel dealt with him. He offered to buy four porcelain figurines, several pieces of my grandmother’s jewelry, and the Wilkie portrait of Seonaid MacDonald. Lionel, on our behalf, reached a bargain on all but the portrait. I have no doubt he had himself a look round then, and is having himself another one now.”

  The knife rose and fell so fast its blade flashed like a strobe. A bit of rutabaga launched itself into the air and landed beside Jean’s foot. She picked it up.

  Pulling forward a beet, Diana started reducing it to more small cubes.

  “Do you trust Mr. Pritchard?” Gilnockie asked.

  Diana’s hands stopped moving. She looked up, her gaze sharp as the knife, almost defiant. “Not entirely, no. We can’t afford to pay him the salary he believes he deserves, and I suspect he may be creaming off some of the accounts or even selling small items from the lumber rooms. Even if we could pay him, he’d continue to see his position here as no more than a job. It’s my father and I who are invested in this business. In this estate. In each other.”

  “Quite so.” Alasdair took a step forward. “Were you or your father dealing with Greg MacLeod as well? Was he planning on having a look round, the better to make offers of his own? He was meaning to walk out to the old church, likely meeting someone there. Had he said anything about buying one or more of the grave slabs for his museum of religion?”

  “Ooh, there’s a thought,” Jean said from the corner of her mouth.

  Just as the side of Alasdair’s mouth tightened in both acknowledgment and doubt, a telephone rang. Not the rotary-dial implement that looked like Darth Vader’s helmet, so big it occupied its own table, but a cell phone trilling ABBA’s “Take a Chance on Me.”

  Her sallow complexion reddening, Young whipped her phone from her pocket and answered it by spitting her name like an epithet. She listened to the faint electronic voice, said, “Aye. Cheers,” and switched off.

  Realizing that every face in the room was turned toward her, she mumbled, “Inverness, saying they’ve got the boots, and the photos of the prints from the beach, and the mud samples and all the rest. Urquhart’s boots will be arriving soon. They’ll be in touch.”

  “Very good then,” said Gilnockie, and turned back to Diana.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Diana’s gaze fell to the board and the knife. She cut a few more bits from the beet.

  “Your dealings with Greg MacLeod,” Alasdair reminded her.

  “I would not be surprised,” she answered, “if Mr. MacLeod saw Dunasheen as a cut-rate shopping mall, but I know nothing of his plans. I knew him only from his e-mails asking about our history and then booking a room.”

  Once again Gilnockie pulled the business card in its plastic bag from his pocket, and laid it on the counter, first one side up, then the other. “Have you seen this before?”

  Diana wiped her sleeve across her forehead. Granted, Jean thought, the blazing overhead lights and the huge Aga stove warmed the room, but seeing Diana sweat was like, well, like seeing her in a passionate embrace with Colin. “Where did you find that?” she asked.

  “I found it,” said Jean.

  “In the pocket of your raincoat,” Gilnockie added.

  “Then someone placed it there,” replied Diana. “That’s not Colin’s handwriting. If he wanted to speak with me, he’d ring me. And in any event, we didn’t meet at the church at three.”

  Young muttered something, the words unintelligible, the tone skeptical.

  A scowl flew across Diana’s face like the bird’s shadow had flown across Jean’s. She gestured toward Young with the knife, the beet juice on its blade thin and watery. In spite of herself, Jean saw the dirk striking upward into Greg MacLeod’s chest. Blood is thicker than water.

  Gilnockie asked, “You’re saying that someone might be stitching you up for the murder?”

  The knife swung toward him. “Or someone might aim to put Colin in the frame.”

  “You’re thinking of Pritchard, are you?” Alasdair asked.

  Without answering, Diana went back to the beet, cutting so briskly that several small red cubes rolled like dice onto the counter.

  Young spoke up. “Why don’t you just sack the man?”

  “Who else would do the job, then?” Diana answered. “My father’s already doing the work of three. As am I.”

  Jean thought again of devils and deep blue seas. And of Fergie, a well-meaning soul if ever there was one. Diana’s fourth job was watching out for him. Jean hazarded, “Maybe the CU on the card is an e-mail or texting abbreviation, meaning ‘see you.’ Maybe someone was trying to lure Diana out of the house by sending her a fake note from Colin. Maybe that particular raincoat isn’t Diana’s. There are two more hanging over there by the door.”

&nb
sp; With a quick dart of blue in Jean’s direction, Diana responded to her cue. “Many people in these parts have yellow raincoats. Last month Lionel Pritchard and I accidentally swapped ours—we’re much the same size. Rab’s there is quite large, and Nancy’s has a floral lining.”

  “The coat was too big for me, but not big enough to have been Rab’s or Fergie’s. And it had a plain fabric lining.” And it smelled good, Jean added to herself.

  Gilnockie said to Young, “Sergeant, bring the raincoat hanging in the cloak room, please.”

  Young threw down her pen and sidled away crab-wise. In the moment the door was open, Jean heard Pritchard’s oily voice. “. . . move the man on, P.C. Thomson.”

  “I canna be doing that, sir,” replied Thomson, “Inspector Gilnockie asked Mr. Urquhart to stop here.”

  Diana scraped her handiwork into piles, wiped off the knife, and rinsed her hands. Taking off her apron, she said, “I believe that was Pritchard going into my father’s office, where he does the accounts. Shouldn’t you be questioning him about that note?”

  Instead of asking, “Who’s in charge here, anyway?” Gilnockie said, “Aye,” and started for the door.

  Jean realized she was still holding the cold, wet cube of rutabaga. Setting it down on the table brought her within range of the row of cookbooks beside the television. No, none of them were by the cooking-school maven they’d encountered in August. No omens there.

  Alasdair held the door for her, his expression, if not icy, not warm either, but carefully neutral.

  They followed Gilnockie down the corridor and around the corner. Diana peeled off the procession when they passed Thomson and Colin. The clan print hanging between them was, appropriately, “MacLeod,” a tartan-clad figure encircled by sprigs of juniper and a scattering of dark berries. Juniper, Jean thought. She’d just heard that, and not in reference to gin and tonic . . .

  Colin lurched into Gilnockie’s face. “Leave her. She’s done nothing wrong.”

  Gilnockie acknowledged him with a polite nod, but he didn’t break pace.

  Diana set her hand on Colin’s arm and said something in his ear. His eye expanded and then shut and pain washed over his face. “If only you’d told me—” he began, before she shushed him.