The Blue Hackle

by Lillian Stewart Carl

  “Used to be,” muttered Young, “the lairds would be inviting their tenants.”

  “. . . but with the lab boffins in Inverness missing out their holiday, we’re after doing no less. We’re away to Portree just now for a teleconference. And we’re hoping to interview Tina MacLeod.”

  “She’s still in Portree, then,” Alasdair said.

  “Aye, the concussion’s not so bad, the broken bone’s a simple fracture, and there are no internal injuries. She’s regained consciousness, though she’s not yet coherent.”

  “Have you spoken with any of her and Greg’s relations in Australia?”

  “It’s the morning of New Year’s Day there, no one’s answering the telephone. We’ll have another go as soon as may be.”

  “Don’t worry about tomorrow,” said Jean. “It’s already tomorrow in Australia.”

  Young turned a blank stare in her direction, then jerked back, blinking, at the electronic strains of “Take a Chance on Me.” Grabbing for her phone, she retreated several steps closer to the door and mumbled her half of a conversation.

  “The chap in the photo,” Gilnockie went on, “looks like being Greg MacLeod’s father, right enough. Lord Dunasheen did not know that, or so he’s saying.”

  The corners of Alasdair’s mouth tightened. But it was Gilnockie’s job to be skeptical.

  “We’ve not yet worked out the ramifications,” Gilnockie went on, “though I doubt there are some.”

  I suspect there are some, Jean translated automatically, even though she was the only outlander present. “I can see Kenneth senior throwing the shrimps onto the barbie and telling his sons about Scotland, land of their forefathers. Between his ancestors and his business, Greg had plenty of motivation to come here.”

  “He did that.” Gilnockie went on, “Lord Dunasheen tells me this Sunday is your wedding day. May I be offering you both my best wishes for a long, happy life together?”

  “Thank you,” said Alasdair, echoed by Jean. No need to repulse the man’s courtesy by adding provisos.

  “Cheers.” Young snapped her phone shut and scowled down at her feet, turned somewhat pigeon-toed on the tile floor. “Portree’s reporting that Pritchard’s alibi is solid. He spent the day in a pub with a woman, and didn’t come away ’til four, after the murder.”

  Oh. Damn. Jean had actually started to hope Pritchard was the guilty party. She didn’t want it to be a member of the household, for Fergie’s sake. Or Scott or Heather, for Dakota’s sake. Or Colin, for Diana’s sake. At least they had a stranger who could still qualify.

  Alasdair said nothing. His face showed no expression. Beside the pleats of his kilt, his hands shut, opened, and shut again.

  Gilnockie went, if possible, even more colorless. But he recovered his voice first. “Well then, I’ll relieve Thomson of sitting with Pritchard. His report was right helpful, by the way. W.P.C. McCrummin and P.C. Nicolson are going round to the area B&Bs, looking out the chap from the shop in Kinlochroy.”

  “Here’s hoping he turns out to be the chap hanging about the night of the murder,” Alasdair said. “We’re having an interview of sorts with Fergie just now. If there’s anything . . .”

  I think you should know, Jean finished for him.

  “. . . I’ll be in touch,” Alasdair finished for himself.

  Young fell into a walk toward the door. “They’ll have brought the car round.”

  “Half a tick,” Gilnockie told her, and as she opened the door, “Alasdair, I’m thinking this is not a good way to end a career, leaving a case open.”

  “It’s early days yet, Patrick.”

  Yeah, it was still early. This could drag on for a long time. And Gilnockie, if anyone, knew how cases were more likely to be solved sooner rather than later, cold case dramas notwithstanding.

  “Aye,” said Gilnockie. “Nil desperandum.”

  Don’t despair. That was the message of the evening. The cold draft from the open door rippled Alasdair’s kilt and fluttered Jean’s dress. She stepped backward. Gilnockie made for the door. “Good night, then,” he called.

  “Good night,” Alasdair and Jean both returned, and hurried on into the slightly warmer air of the hallway. The front door shut behind them.

  In front of them, Nancy Finlay stood outside the half-closed door of the library, her dishtowel jerking over a picture frame.

  Alasdair’s subtle expulsion of breath wasn’t quite a “hah!” but close. Nancy was eavesdropping. Without any embarrassment, though, she looked around, said, “Good evening to you,” and headed toward the kitchen.

  Alasdair sent a scowl after her. Jean shook her head and shrugged—Miranda would say that eavesdropping was staff prerogative. From the narrow space between the library door and its jamb issued what Nancy had overheard, a strain of baroque music, violins soaring nervously.

  And Fergie’s voice, with an odd blustery resonance. “. . . insurance alone, if we opened every day. And we’d need extra help, more facilities, more paperwork—planning permission, licensing inspections—when we’ve barely got time to deal with woodworm, dry rot, damp rot. The drains. Ice buildup in the gutters. We’re running as hard as we can to stay in the same place.”

  “But simply selling the landscape’s become a cliché. And, considering the climate, an uphill job. We’re obliged to position ourselves as a destination for luxury short breaks, or a stop on diaspora tours, the descendants of emigrants rediscovering their roots.” Diana’s voice was cool and calm as the surface of Loch Ness, mirror-flat while a primitive form glided by below.

  “Greg MacLeod was on a diaspora tour, looking out his ancestors.”

  “He was on a buying trip as well, don’t forget that.”

  “How could I?” asked Fergie. “Lionel’s saying there’s no such thing as bad publicity, but I can’t agree. What sort of clientele will we attract now, I ask you?”

  “And yet you’ve arranged for Jean to write about the Crusader Coffer and your related . . .” One beat, two, and Diana settled on, “. . . theories. What sort of clientele will you attract with those? I do so wish you’d wait until the police investigation has been finished. Circumstances are quite awkward enough without—”

  “We’ve come too far to stop now,” Fergie interrupted.

  Alasdair raised his hand to knock on the door, then, no doubt realizing how clumsy their sudden appearance would be, took several catfooted steps back down the hall. He beckoned to Jean, but she hesitated—there was eavesdropping, and then there was research. Besides this was the answer to more than what Diana and Fergie had been quibbling about on the staircase yesterday.

  “We should organize concerts, then,” said Diana, “in addition to weddings, dinners, receptions. Living history, study tours, boat rides and wildlife tours on the loch. Craft or cooking weekends.”

  “More facilities,” repeated Fergie. “Extra help. Rab and Nancy aren’t growing younger. Neither am I, come to that.”

  “Colin could help.”

  “Diana, please, I can’t deal with Colin Urquhart, not just now.”

  “If you’d been willing to deal with him earlier . . . but no, we’re not speaking of him, are we?” Diana’s voice grew choppy. “You’ve dismissed taking out another loan to make the tenants’ cottages over into holiday homes—no, no, you’re quite right, we’d have only seasonal income from those. I could put it about that we’re willing to lend objects to corporations who’ll sponsor repairs. Many new companies build their images on heritage of some sort or another.”

  “Can you see Seonaid’s portrait hanging in a bank in Tokyo?”

  “Yes, Father, I can. Better there than on an auction block.” Diana continued, “There’s Pritchard’s idea of selling off one square foot plots of land. We could advertise in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand. Buy a bit of the Auld Sod, call yourself a laird or lady, that sort of thing. We’d essentially be selling deckle-edged, hand-lettered certificates of purchase, suitable for framing.”

  Something
creaked, probably a chair as Fergie sat down in it. He made a strangled sound that evolved into laughter. “Can you see an Aussie buying enough for a campsite? Or a Yank wanting to be buried standing up in his one square foot? Can you see a Canuck turning up with a shovel and digging up the sod to take home?”

  “Have we a choice?” Diana asked, her words positively white-capped.

  Jean could see one of her own countrymen wandering around with a GPS unit and little pegs to mark out his claim, dressed in a polyester kilt and “Braveheart” T-shirt.

  Behind her, Alasdair whispered not, “You were right, we should have turned up fashionably late,” but, “You and your flapping ears.”

  “Like your ears are folded over politely?” Jean whispered back. “This is a murder case, isn’t it?”

  “It’s not—”

  “—something you want happening to your friends. I know, I get the message.”

  In a cascade of chimes, less-than-synchronized clocks struck all through the house. Six o’clock. They were no longer early. Jean barely had enough time to leap backward before the library door flew open and Diana shot out into the hall, the color in her compressed lips dull, the color in her cheeks high.

  She didn’t seem to notice that Jean and Alasdair were just standing there, rather than walking toward her. Neither did she notice Alasdair’s suffused expression, which, Jean was sure, her own face replicated. “Good evening. Please go on in, Father’s expecting you. I’ll bring the drinks round soon as I’ve changed.”

  “Thank you,” Jean said.

  “Very kind of you,” said Alasdair, and with a roll of his eyes—okay, she deserved that—he bowed Jean into the room and made sure the door was shut behind them.

  Flames crackled in the fireplace. The Christmas tree’s glitter was doubled in the window behind it. The doors between library and drawing room stood open, providing a vista appropriate to Country Life or a travelogue on the stately homes of Britain.

  Just to complete the picture, Fergie, too, was wearing a kilt, a garment that flattered any type of male physique, from bean pole to walrus. A man in a kilt stood tall and walked with a certain strut.

  Although when Fergie set an empty glass on the side table and rose to his feet, he didn’t strut but stood to attention. A stiff smile was plastered on his face, which was colored even more brightly than Diana’s. Jean wasn’t surprised to catch a whiff of whisky. Why taking a wee dram to brace yourself up was called Dutch courage, she didn’t know—it could just as well be called Scotch courage. She hoped Fergie had had only the one glass, that no more than his smile was plastered.

  “Here we are, then,” he said.

  “Aye,” returned Alasdair.

  The shrill music of the violins swooped like songbirds trapped beneath a high ceiling. Fergie stepped over to the CD player nestled between skull-shaped bookends and put the piece out of its misery, producing a silence so deep his slight wheeze seemed loud.

  Jean said, “I’m afraid our cat got into the hatbox you left for us and tore up the hackles on the bonnets. I’m so sorry, I know they were heirlooms.”

  “Hackles? Oh, yes, the old bonnets. Not to worry, Jean, I’d not seen them for years. It was just that one of them belonged to my father’s friend Kenneth MacLeod, and Inspector Gilnockie’s saying it was his knife killed Greg. That Greg was likely his son. I wondered why that name sounded so familiar. It was you who took down the photo in the dining room, then?”

  “Aye, that was us,” Alasdair answered. “The frame’s in the sideboard.”

  “Good. I mean, good it was you. Rab was thinking Pritchard had made off with it, or Scott Krum. The frame’s an antique in its own right, a century older than the photo.”

  “Was it Pritchard who looked up both Krum and Greg MacLeod on the Internet?”

  “I expect so,” Fergie said. “Seems a bit ill-mannered, but then, Lionel’s looking out for Dunasheen’s well-being.”

  “And for his own as well?” asked Alasdair.

  Fergie’s gaze dropped to the stack of CDs. He chose one and inserted it in the player. “Lionel Pritchard’s not the most congenial of colleagues, I’ll grant you that. I’m not at all pleased with the way he looks at Diana. No surprise she mistrusts him. But he’s willing to work here, his accounts are accurate to the last decimal point, and nothing’s gone missing.”

  “That you know of,” said Jean.

  “Well, yes. I gather Pritchard’s your prime suspect for the murder?”

  “Not anymore,” Alasdair said. “He’s been cleared.”

  “I suppose I’m relieved to hear that.” Absently, Fergie patted one of the skull bookends. “I don’t rightly know how I feel, to tell truth. I’d rather have Pritchard turn out to be a villain than anyone else I can name. Even Colin Urquhart, for Diana’s sake.”

  “I know how you feel. But it’s going to come down to motive, what Greg wanted and what someone else didn’t want him to have . . .” Jean looked over at Alasdair.

  He was eyeing the cabinet holding the Fairy Flagon. “Was Greg after buying the Flagon? Or was he interested only in the Crusader Coffer?”

  Fergie didn’t ask how Alasdair knew about the latter. He didn’t answer either question. He said, “Time to get the show on the road, you Yanks would say,” and punched the “play” button. The Chieftains begin to sing a jolly Christmas ditty, “The St. Stephen’s Day Murders.”

  “I’m thinking it’s time to open the show, aye.” Alasdair drew his camera from his sporran.

  Jean pulled out her notepad, found a fresh page, and smiled with that surge of glee she always felt when the gates to something strange and perhaps wonderful swung open before her.

  Fergie tweaked the linen runner on a waiting table, then turned a key in the lock of the cabinet door and, with a flourish, threw it open.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  We meet at last, thought Jean, and leaned in for a better look.

  Fergie lifted the alabaster cup from its cavity as carefully as he’d have lifted baby Diana from her cradle. He set it on one end of the table, leaving room for a second object, and stood back. His starched smile broke into a beam that eased the grooves in his face. “You’ve seen it before, have you, Alasdair?”

  “A long time ago, as a wee lad.” Alasdair, too, tilted forward.

  The lotus-shaped cup stood less than nine inches tall. Its smooth milk-and-honey flanks, glowing as if it contained an internal light, traced one sinuous curve from lip to stem to base. The handles on either side rose up and out like stylized wings. Tiny, blocky scratches imbedded with traces of black ink marred the surface sheen of one side of the bowl. Jean guessed they were hieroglyphs, but she couldn’t see more than that with her naked eye. Or even with her glasses-enhanced eye. “That’s a work of art, all right. It’s been in your family how long?”

  “My uncle invited an expert from the Museum of Antiquities in Edinburgh to have a look at it. He pronounced it an Egyptian artifact, perhaps brought here by a crusader. Or at the latest, by Norman the Red’s father, a Cameron Highlander who fought Napoleon at Alexandria. Norman himself wrote of it.” Fergie chuckled. “My uncle dismissed the expert’s opinion, saying he knew for a fact the Flagon was given to Rory MacLeod by fairies. And the expert said, ‘Then I shall accept your superior knowledge.’ A diplomatic reply, if ever there was one.”

  Yeah, Jean thought, writing as fast as she could. “Did the expert decipher the inscription?”

  “It’s an ancient Egyptian prayer for the dead, the equivalent of ‘rest in peace.’”

  “Rory MacLeod?” asked Alasdair. “The chap who leaped from the old castle?”

  “More likely his father, the old laird. The legendary Rory was the younger son, who made the mistake of falling for his older brother’s wife. Falling literally, I’m afraid. Family orthodoxy has it that the Flagon belonged to the MacLeods at the old castle, the ones my own ancestors turfed out. Unless it is Napoleonic-era, in which case it’s been a MacDonald relic all along. No m
atter.”

  “What matters is whether Greg MacLeod wanted it.” Alasdair took a photo, considered his work in the camera’s display, took another.

  “He was not uninterested in it, though he never had the chance to look at it or the Coffer. No need taking photos of the Flagon, Alasdair, I’ll give Jean a publicity still. Amazing antiquity, isn’t it now? It evokes the alabaster jar carried by the woman in the Bible, the one who poured ointment over Jesus’s head and he said she was preparing him for burial.”

  It would evoke that passage, Jean told herself, even if it had been made in Alexandria five minutes before a Scottish soldier went souvenir-shopping.

  “Anointing him for burial.” Fergie’s beam radiated upward, making his eyes gleam. “That’s incredibly apt. It’s amazing the way things work out, eh? Makes you wonder whether there’s some force causing coincidences.”

  Alasdair looked around at Jean. She met his gaze with a slight shake of her head. She had no idea what was coming, just that they were launching into uncharted and debatable territory.

  Fergie unlocked a second cabinet and removed what looked like a gray breadbox. Although, since he strained to lift it, it was more likely a metal chest stuffed with several generations of coin collections . . . no. It was a oblong stone coffer, a fairy-sized sarcophagus containing not fragile bones and disintegrated wings, but a sprinkling of black dirt, gray dust, and either threads or cobwebs.

  “The Crusader Coffer, I presume?” This time Jean leaned so near the stone she could smell it, cold, damp, redolent of decay and long-dead fires.

  Alasdair took another picture, the flash dazzling the corner of her eye.

  Fergie’s expression reflected dazzlement to the point of dazed. “We found this in one of the cellars whilst laying pipes for the new kitchen. I’ve managed to keep it under wraps, so to speak, but it’s time it made its appearance on the world stage.”

  “You were after selling it to Greg MacLeod?” asked Alasdair.