Did he mean, If only we’d synchronized our stories, we’d not have contradicted each other about your being at the lighthouse? And yet, if either Colin or Diana was the killer, surely he or she would have made a point of synchronizing stories.
Judging by the Alasdair-like crevice between Thomson’s black eyebrows, he was thinking the same thing.
In Fergie’s study, Pritchard was seated at the computer, a spreadsheet displayed on the screen before him. He spun around when Gilnockie and Alasdair walked in, Jean forming a hypotenuse at their backs. “What’s this?”
Alasdair batted a glance over his shoulder and Jean returned it. Yes, it could have been Pritchard who’d looked up Greg MacLeod on the Internet.
Gilnockie was tracking a different trail. Without speaking, he presented Pritchard with the evidence-bagged business card, first the front, then the back.
Pritchard’s shoe-button eyes hardened and his narrow moustache writhed. “What of it?”
“It was found in the pocket of your raincoat,” Gilnockie told him, fudging for effect.
“Oh, I very much doubt that.”
“Are you accusing me of framing you, Mr. Pritchard?”
Pritchard’s lipless mouth opened and shut, emitting something between a snort and a hiss. He snapped back around to the computer. “If you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”
Alasdair seized a paper lying next to the keyboard. “You wrote this, did you?” Craning her neck, Jean saw a list of expenses—food, cleaning supplies, repairs—written in smooth, small handwriting, the occasional lower loop protruding like a mocking tongue.
“Yes,” said Pritchard.
In other words, that wasn’t his writing on the card, either. But didn’t its presence in his pocket indicate that he’d had an appointment at the church? With Greg? What would the call record on his phone reveal—one to or from Greg at just about three p.m.? Just because he said he’d been in Portree didn’t mean he actually was.
“Mr. Pritchard. Were you after doing business with Greg MacLeod behind your employer’s back?” Anyone else’s voice, even Alasdair’s, would hold a subtle menace. If Gilnockie’s held anything, it was disappointment at the human condition. “Have you done business with Mr. Krum behind your employer’s back?”
Pritchard’s hand tightened on the mouse. “You’ve got no evidence to back up either charge.”
“That’s our job, looking out evidence. In the meantime, I’m wondering if you intended switching your raincoat for Miss MacDonald’s. Seems a simple-minded way of stitching someone up, though, either her or Mr. Urquhart.”
“What the hell are you going on about?” Pritchard spun the desk chair around, using its momentum to propel him to his feet. The scent of after-shave or cologne, one hinting at damp sweat socks and musk-ox breath, surged from his wool jacket and then dissipated.
Colin shouldered into the room. “You bastard. You’ve been watching Diana. You’ve been making suggestive remarks. Planning on having yourself a posh wife, were you? And an estate to plunder as well? But she’s too clever by half for the likes of you.”
Jean took a giant step into the corner as Thomson dragged Colin back to the door and handed him over to Diana. The chatelaine of Dunasheen was actually starting to look frazzled—one golden lock of hair escaped its ribbon and dangled beside her no longer ivory-pale but pastry-pasty cheek.
“Is that true, Miss MacDonald?” Gilnockie asked. “Has Mr. Pritchard been paying you unwelcome attentions?”
“It depends on your definition of ‘attentions.’ He’s always polite.” But an edged undertone in Diana’s voice belied her words—as well it should, Jean thought, remembering Pritchard’s snigger—even as a flash of steel in her eyes asked Gilnockie to back off. Then she herself backed off, murmuring to Colin, “They’re sorting it. Leave it, please.”
He shuddered as though every muscle in his body clenched and then, as though to his direct, conscious command, loosened.
And here came Young, carrying a yellow raincoat over her arm. Without any such niceties as “pardon me,” she elbowed past Colin and Diana and handed Gilnockie the coat. Everyone leaned forward as he held it up. Inside the lining of the collar was sewn a neat label: “Diana MacDonald.”
Gilnockie turned out the pockets, finding nothing but a few dried shreds of vegetation, a flower picked in the summer, perhaps, and a lump of tissue stained with pink lipstick. Then he lifted the lining of the coat to his face and inhaled. “The fabric’s smelling of your perfume, Miss MacDonald.”
Diana’s smile was narrow as a needle. “It’s my coat, then, isn’t it? But we’ve come back round to the start—I’ve never before seen that note.”
Jean said, “That’s the coat I borrowed last night, the one with the card in the pocket. I guess that’s the one that was hanging wet on the hook by the back door when Alasdair and I heard Tina screaming from the beach.”
“No way of knowing otherwise, not now,” said Alasdair.
Gilnockie handed Diana her coat, retrieved the business card in its bag, and took Pritchard’s elbow. “Sergeant, let’s be getting Mr. Pritchard here back to the incident room.”
“Hang on,” protested Pritchard. “We’ve just established . . .”
“. . . who owns the raincoat is all. Now I’m after discussing your dealings with Mr. Krum and Mr. MacLeod.”
Pritchard shot a venomous glance toward Diana. “So that’s it. If you can’t put me in the frame one way, you’ll find another.” And, his glare shifting toward Gilnockie, “I’ve told you, I was in Portree when MacLeod was killed. I never met the man. And I had no dealings with Krum that Fergus wasn’t a party to.”
“We’ll be seeing about that.” Young took Pritchard’s other elbow and steered him down the corridor, snapping as she passed, “You, Urquhart, don’t be leaving the place, eh?”
Colin half-smiled at that, probably having no intention of abandoning Diana to be bothered and beset at Dunasheen. Together they retreated, Thomson behind them like a sheep dog poised to direct any strays. Diana could no longer pretend to the local constable that there was nothing between her and Colin, but the moment of truth with Fergie was yet to come.
In the suddenly quiet room, the hum of the computer sounded like a hornet’s nest. Alasdair saved and closed out Pritchard’s program, then looked slowly around the room. Fergie’s room.
Jean’s brain felt like a pillow squashed flat in a sleepless night. Sighing, she looked up at the chubby orange face of Ganesh, who was supposed to avert bad luck—although what was going on here wasn’t luck at all, but human choices. She suggested, without much conviction, “Maybe the card’s been in Diana’s pocket for a month and has nothing to do with the murder.”
“It would be a bit more ragged, then. This one’s only stained with damp.” Alasdair leaned over the desk, eyed the Excalibur letter opener, and delicately, as though sifting through eggshells, moved the papers around. Picking one up, he stared at it, handed it to Jean, and turned to face the window.
On a notepaper headed From Fergus’s desk was written a recipe for steak pie. Dripping or butter. Stewing beef, diced. Onion. Puff pastry. Heat the dripping, toss the meat in seasoned flour, and brown all over . . . a tiny bolt of lightning shot through her, making her hand clench on the paper. The letters were as jagged as a stock market summary, similar to those on the back of the card. Similar, but not identical—they were not pressed as heavily into the paper, and they slanted more strongly to the right. “Is this Fergie’s handwriting?” Jean asked Alasdair.
“Writing changes,” he said to the sky above the shadowed kitchen yard. “I’ve not had anything but e-mails from him for donkey’s years.”
“It’s a recipe. It could be Diana’s or Nancy’s.” She put the paper back on the desk and scanned the others, but saw nothing else handwritten, just several signatures at the bottom of letters and printed application forms. Fergie’s Dunasheen resembled a squashed thistle, a bit spiky, yes, as though his rounded body and lo
w-key personality had to break out somewhere. Still . . . her mini lightning bolt fizzled into ashes. “He couldn’t have killed Greg.”
“I know!” Alasdair’s expression split the difference between irritated and frustrated.
Yeah, frustration and irritation were going around, like a rash. “Even if Fergie wrote the note on the card, it doesn’t mean—”
“He’s telling Patrick he’s never before seen that card.”
“Oh. Well, then, maybe Greg himself wrote it. Tina must have . . .”
“. . . a sample of his handwriting.”
Of course Alasdair would have the same idea. They needed to convince Tina to trust them with the full story, whatever the full story was. “Although,” Jean said, “even if Greg did write the note, who did he send it ahead to? It didn’t crawl into Diana’s pocket by itself.”
“Just now,” said Alasdair, “I’d credit Fergie’s fairies and Greg’s ancestral spirits with the entire plot.”
Jean shot Seonaid an accusatory look. Who walked into you at the garden gate last night? Seonaid looked back—or beyond, as the case might be—offering no more helping hands. “We’re not getting any testimony from her short of a séance, and maybe not even then.”
“Please do not give Fergie any such idea.” Alasdair turned toward the door just as regular footsteps heralded the arrival of P.C. Thomson.
“Colin’s helping Diana in the kitchen,” he reported. “He’ll do for now. Inspector Gilnockie’s setting me to asking round the village, seeing who was out and about yesterday afternoon. Other than me, that is.”
Alasdair nodded. “If you’ll hang on a tick, we’ll come along and ask a few questions as well. The daylight’s getting away, and,” he added to Jean, “Tina’s not.”
Getting away. What a concept. “Great idea. Let’s get our coats.”
Leaving Thomson waiting in the front porch, they jog-trotted up the stairs, pausing very briefly at the tripping stane and the tremor of Seonaid’s incorporeal being.
While Alasdair unlocked the door of the Charlie suite, Jean took a second look at Seonaid’s tapestry. The colors were faded and the human shapes, folk-arty primitive, were rather lost amid exuberant trees, tumultuous waves, and fanciful ruins . . . no. Those ruins weren’t fanciful at all, but were those of old Dunasheen, rendered by the authoritative hand of someone who knew them well. Was that a tiny figure plummeting from the tower? The thread was a bit frayed.
Unfrayed, in the foreground, stood Fionn, the once-mighty Irish warrior with his battered armor and gray beard, and Grainne, his much younger betrothed, with flowing red hair, and Diarmuid, Fionn’s follower, tall, muscular, and suitably noble-browed. She was offering Diarmuid a cup of love potion, magicking him into eloping with her.
Interesting, how Seonaid had chosen to illustrate that particular moment of the legend, not Grainne and Diarmuid’s subsequent adventures or his death at Fionn’s hands. Interesting that she’d chosen that legend at all. Had she seen herself as Grainne—or as Isolde, in a related story—living a tale of high romance, of a passion so strong it swept all before it and therefore justified everything from ambiguity to outright sin? But Grainne had survived to tell her tale. Seonaid had not. Neither had Rory, for that matter.
Jean ran her fingertips down the decorative border of the tapestry, feeling the soft nubble of stitches and stirring up several dust motes. She’d have to ask Rebecca to lay her hands on it, see if she sensed any lingering emotion, be it joy or melancholy or . . . what did teenage Seonaid feel as she stitched the tapestry? Destiny unfurling and tragedy looming? Or had she merely been caught by the high romance of the era—ruined castles, brooding hillsides, strong emotion—oblivious to playing with forces beyond her control?
Diana knew what she’d taken on with Colin. She was stitching together a human being, not a myth whose knots had been loosened by time and repetition.
The tapestry rippled and one end flapped in the draft escaping the open door of the Charlie suite. “Well then,” Alasdair called, “your moggie’s made—”
A woman’s cry of terror sliced the stillness like the sudden slash of a razor blade, sharp and short. A heavy thud seemed to come from everywhere at once, their own room, the turnpike stair, the vacant, secret corners of the house.
This time Jean didn’t have to stop and ask. Tina!
Chapter Seventeen
Jean’s heart jolted into her throat, then dropped into her stomach. The murderer, he’d gotten to her, too—a kitchen knife, a letter opener, no need for an antique dirk . . . Alasdair shot out of their room, slammed the door, locked it, ran for the stairs with Jean on his heels.
Feet up, she ordered herself. Feet down. Breathe.
Doors crashed, footsteps pounded, dogs barked, their frenzy muffled by stone walls. A voice echoed up the stairwell, W.P.C. McCrummin shouting, “She’s gone out the window!”
“Out the window?” demanded Alasdair.
He and Jean rushed back down the stairs—no stane, no Seonaid, no time—and met McCrummin at the landing. Every freckle on her face bounced in agitation, her expressions flipping from alarm to bafflement, from chagrin to anger. “I was reading a magazine in the sitting room. She said she was having a nap and went into the bedroom. Not half an hour on, she screamed. I went running in. She’d tied her linens to the window frame and crawled out the window and she fell.”
Jean gave her head a quick shake, rearranging her preconceptions. Not an attack. An escape.
“Stupid woman, that’s the sort of thing only works in films.” Alasdair led the two women jostling down to the ground floor. “Famous last words, eh? Tina’s not getting away, I was saying. Bloody hell!”
Outside, in the cold sunlight, Jean, Alasdair, and McCrummin converged with six or seven people. Between their shifting bodies a life-sized doll lay crumpled on the gravel of the parking area—feet in brown boots and legs in brown pants lying akimbo, the leopard-skin coat like a pile of rags, one hand pitifully small and white, palm up, red-painted nails torn, arm twisted backward at an unnatural angle. The blond curls flopped like old straw, leaking crimson.
Jean saw Greg lying on the beach, blood trailing away toward the sea like an element seeking its primeval origins. Tina’s face, too, was turned away, toward the garden wall.
Thomson knelt beside her, one hand tucked between her curls and her collar. “She’s breathing. I saw her falling, I couldna catch her, she came down that fast.”
“If you’d tried catching her, lad,” Alasdair said, each word a pellet of sleet, “you’d be lying there as well.”
McCrummin knelt beside Thomson, her hand on his forearm, although Jean couldn’t tell who was steadying whom. Police radios staticked and phones chirped. Gilnockie and Young pelted through the front door. Young, carrying a first-aid kit, skidded to her knees beside Thomson and McCrummin. Gilnockie stopped below the windows of the library, the dim shape of the Christmas tree arching over his head.
His eyes closed. His lips moved silently. Going over procedures, Jean thought. And then, when he looked up and made the sign of the cross—forehead, breast, shoulders—she realized he’d been praying. For Tina’s recovery, no doubt, but also for explanations. More power to him.
Fergie thudded out onto the gravel, Rab and Nancy just behind. “What’s happened now?” he asked, and answered his own question. “Oh. No. No.”
Diana and Colin stepped out of the house behind him, hands clasped tightly, her face filled with dismay, his with stubborn pride. Fergie glanced at them, away, and then back, in a classic double-take. Spinning around, he reeled toward Tina, shaking his head and wringing his hands as though trying to stop events from running through his fingers.
Alasdair stopped Fergie’s reel with a hand on his shoulder, so firm his fingers made dents in Fergie’s sweater. Not a Vulcan nerve-pinch, as much as Fergie might like to be anesthetized right now. The gesture was the British, buck up, mustn’t complain, get on with it, lacking only the cup of tea and the biscuit.
“Rab!” Nancy’s voice snapped like a whip. “We canna sort things to suit ourselves. Have a care for Fergus and puir wee Di.”
Rab looked down at his legs and feet, like tree stumps, and thrust his hands into his pockets.
Inside, the dogs barked. Pritchard’s voice angrily shushed them. Where were the Krums? Probably in the village. Their car was still parked by the garden wall.
Jean realized she was standing with her hands pressed flat against her chest, holding her heart in place, while temblors ran through her limbs and mulligatawny soup roiled in her stomach. She turned her eyes to the sky, to the bare branches of the trees, to the windows of the Queen suite, two glass panels pushed out, one gaping open. A long, thick, white strip of fabric was knotted around the stone separating the two, and now swayed gently as a hangman’s rope. Had Tina been able to grasp the linen at all? Had she fallen straight from the windowsill? With the high ceilings of the ground floor, she had fallen twenty or twenty-five feet. Even Skye’s springy soil had proved no cushion.
Above that window, the bay window of the Charlie suite angled gracefully out from the facade. Dougie’s small gray shape sat against the glass, looking down curiously. Something hung from his mouth that was too small to be a mouse. That’s right, Alasdair had said something about her cat. He was her cat when he decided to, say, lick the butter dish.
Right now, he was welcome to butter dishes, pillows, whatever.
Dr. Irvine came running up the driveway, every limb pumping, his bag swinging. Gasping for breath, he shouldered through the crowd and knelt beside Tina.
And somewhere a phone rang, bleat-bleat, bleat-bleat . . . Alasdair jumped, plunged his hand into his pocket, glanced at the phone’s tiny display. “Miranda. Fine timing.”
The Blue Hackle Page 19