Alasdair’s gaze shot upward from beneath his eyebrows.
Good lord, Fergie had Emma cryogenically frozen, waiting for the aliens and their miracles to come back. Jean asked, half-strangled, “Your mother wasn’t buried?”
“She was cremated,” Diana said. “We scattered her ashes amongst the daffodils here at Dunasheen.”
Alasdair closed his eyes. Swept with relief and embarrassment, Jean began, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry.”
“Not to worry.” Diana’s stern face softened into sadness. “I know what Father’s been telling you. He’s gone round the bend. Mother’s death, and the pressures of running the estate, and, well, I tried to spare his feelings by hiding my relationship with Colin. Hindsight being what it is, we realize we’ve made a mistake when it’s too late to mend the damage it’s caused. Was it you asked for wassail? Would you prefer whisky or something else?”
Jean detected a request to change the subject. “The Krums were asking for wassail. But I’ll take some, too, thank you.”
“I’ll have the whisky, cheers.” Alasdair almost concealed his groan as he stood up.
Diana wielded cup and ladle, glass and bottle. “There you are.”
“Thank you. Can I help in the kitchen?” Jean asked.
Turning up her lips in a smile, Diana stepped over the fireplace and grasped the poker. “Thank you, no. Since Inspector Gilnockie asked Colin to stop here tonight, he’s set himself to work preparing food for the police officers in the incident, erm, old kitchen. I dare not send anyone else into the new kitchen, Rab’s muttering in his beard about folk underfoot and Nancy’s threatening to wallop him with her spoon. Rab, that is, though I expect Colin’s on her hit list as well.” She jabbed at the fire. Sparks flew. Flames leaped.
Alasdair tossed back a swig of his whisky, the water of life. Jean could trace its path through his mouth, down into his stomach, up into his head, by his features once more becoming pliable and the sheen of steel draining from his eyes.
She gulped thirstily at her punch. The sharp, sweet spices cleared the acid from her mouth and eased her clenched stomach. Another gulp, and she was surprised to see the cup empty. Every object in the room slipped into higher resolution, even as the floor executed an infinitesimal shimmy beneath her feet. Whoa.
“Father and I are making contingency plans,” Diana said to the images writhing in the fire, “in the event your friends arrive Saturday but Inspector Gilnockie hasn’t released the Krums or re-opened the Queen suite. We’d meant to put your Mr. Munro in our single, the Robert the Bruce room, but Colin’s there just now. He’s still a suspect. But as ex-police, Alasdair, you know that.”
“Aye.” Alasdair’s tone was gentle, his message not.
Diana spun around, her eyes a blue blaze. “Colin couldn’t have killed Greg MacLeod. He’d never met the man. He had no motive.”
Couldn’t have, Jean thought, rather than didn’t?
“You were with him at the time of the murder, then?” Alasdair asked.
“No I wasn’t, more’s the pity. I stopped in at the lighthouse but he wasn’t there. Nor did I see him in the gardens. You could hide a small army there, even in winter.”
Yeah. Jean remembered her impression that someone was following first her and Dakota, then her and Alasdair. She’d assumed it was Pritchard, but she’d been wrong many times before.
“Colin wouldn’t hide from me,” Diana concluded.
Not unless he was up to no good, said Alasdair’s frown. He finished off the whisky.
“Did you go by the old church?” Jean enunciated with her slightly benumbed tongue. “Did you see anyone there?”
“No. I walked through the far end of the garden. In the murk, I could barely see the church. Someone might have been standing behind the walls.” Diana clanged the poker into its stand. “I didn’t kill Greg. His purchase of the Coffer would have made quite a difference to our, erm, to us. I don’t know where we’ll find another dealer with, with less than . . .” She bit off her sentence.
With less than a full deck of scruples? Yes, Greg knew exactly what he’d have bought.
“Well then. I believe Scott Krum deals in art rather than antiquities, but you never know what might interest him.” Diana’s shoes clicked briskly across the room.
Alasdair leaped forward to open the door, but she was already through it and away. He shut it instead. The fire popped. The Chieftains fell silent. Jean realized she was still holding the cup, and put it down next to Fergie’s empty glass.
“Fergie’s gone daft,” said Alasdair.
“Well, it is the Daft Days, not that I think he’ll snap out of it at the stroke of midnight.” Jean walked over to the table holding the two antiquities, antiquity being relative.
“I knew he enjoyed reading about alien astronauts and the like,” Alasdair went on. “I did not know he’d launched himself into outer space. You’re always reading that sort of rubbish, you’re writing about it, but you’re knowing what’s real and what’s not. Most of the time, leastways.”
She could hear the wry half-smile in his voice. “At least Fergie’s not wearing aluminum foil on his head to keep the aliens from reading his mind.”
Glass rang, probably as Alasdair returned his tumbler to the trolley. His solid shape stepped up beside her. “You cannot write about this. He wants you to, I know that, but . . .”
“I’ll figure out some way of presenting it in the context of, ‘Hey, travelers, Dunasheen is a great place to visit.’ God knows I’ve wanted to make fun of some of these people, but this is your Fergie Beg. There’s publicity and there’s publicity.” She touched the surface of the Flagon, so smoothly polished it felt like cold butter. “I can’t help it, Alasdair. The true believers, they get me at ‘what if.’”
His forefinger flicked the alabaster, which replied with a sound between a chime and a thunk. “That’s the problem. Fergie’s not saying ‘if’ nearly often enough. Here’s the poor sod thinking that selling the Coffer’s the answer to their financial prayers. But there’s no saying what hopes I’d be clinging to, if I’d lost—you.” He folded her in his arm and pulled her close.
She slipped her arm around his waist, reveling in the living flesh beneath his coat. “Poor sod, yes. He’s grasping at every possible straw. Well, almost. For a minute there I expected him to segue into the old wheeze about the plots of the Freemasons, especially since there really is a stone mason involved with all this.”
“Tormod MacLeod, aye, and his descendant going into the trade in holy relics. You were thinking earlier about Greg selling the Pilate inscription, were you?”
“Yep.” Jean peered critically into the dank, scrubby interior of the Coffer. “God only knows what was in here. They find so many ossuaries in the Holy Land that people use them as flower pots.”
This time Alasdair’s finger-flick produced a dull clunk. “I’m no geologist, but that’s looking to be basalt, same as the inscription, eh?”
“I’m under the impression that the most common stone in the Holy Land, that every provenanced ossuary, is limestone. You’re thinking what I’m thinking, aren’t you? The Flagon really did come from Egypt at some time or another, but the Coffer didn’t come from anywhere. It was made here, from local stone. Just like Greg’s Pilate inscription.”
“One test, and Fergie’s house of cards will come tumbling down.” Alasdair glanced at the painting over the mantle, Calanais beneath not a rising moon but a landing spaceship.
“People used to see angels. Now they see UFOs. Seeing is believing, and believing is seeing. Never underestimate either the will to believe or the will to exploit belief.”
“Greg MacLeod scored a goal with the Pilate inscription, so meant to . . .” Alasdair’s keen blue gaze skidded back to Jean’s face. “Half a tick, now. Rebecca was saying that testing the inscription showed dust and debris from the right era.”
“And if the BHRS bought the Coffer from Greg and actually tested it, they’d find the same
. Probably exactly the same. Soil samples from an archaeological dig aren’t all that hard to come by, even in Australia, not if you’re a resourceful guy like Greg.”
Alasdair’s brows lofted upward even as his head canted to the side.
“When I talked to Michael yesterday, he said Rebecca herself had just been involved in a case at Holyrood, a collar supposedly belonging to Mary, Queen of Scots. The collar was genuine sixteenth-century, fine, but someone very recently sewed Mary’s monogram on it, scuffed the new stitches around to make them look worn, and then smeared them with period dirt. But there were traces of polyester on the actual thread.”
“Ah. Clever, that.”
“There’s been more than one case of genuine Bible-era artifacts enhanced with inscriptions or whatever, to make them more valuable. And forgers and fakers are learning how to outsmart sophisticated scientific equipment.”
Alasdair nodded, sorting, processing, filing.
Jean picked up her cup and Fergie’s glass and headed back to the trolley, more in the interests of tidiness than thirst. Her buzz might be evaporating, but still, more wassail now and she’d be under the dining room table by the end of the evening meal.
“You know,” she went on, with another look at the manger scene, “by definition, faith is evidence of things unseen. I don’t understand why so many people think it has to be supported by ‘seen’ evidence. That makes faith into a house of cards. A church of cards. You pull one out and the entire structure is worthless. If your faith is that precarious, then why bother with it at all?”
“Is that what Fergie’s on about? Proving the supernatural underpinnings of religious faith and therefore proving the after-life?”
“I’m not sure Fergie knows what he’s on about. At least he’s not holding Emma here as a ghost—she’s not the Green Lady, Seonaid is. I don’t know what Rory down at the old castle is.”
“An old soul looking out a soft landing,” said Alasdair.
Heavy footsteps approached and the door opened, shoved by Fergie’s shoulder. He was carrying a tray piled with bits of fruit and veg on toothpicks. He set it on the trolley and stared at it, not exactly frowning, but his face so tight Jean expected it to bow into a frown at any moment.
“Lionel Pritchard?” suggested Alasdair.
“Bloody cheek!” Fergie exclaimed. “He only just handed in his resignation before I sacked him. I told him to vacate his cottage straightaway—we can settle your guests there, if necessary.”
“You fired him?” Jean asked.
“He said he’d been harassed by the police, that Colin’s detracting from the tone of the place and is likely the guilty party, and that Diana’s a hypocrite, hoity toity to a fault but with a taste for the rough in Colin. Damn the man!” Fergie didn’t specify which man. “Lionel feels he was perfectly justified in—well, I can hardly credit his confession. The neck!”
“Confession?” Jean and Alasdair said simultaneously, and Alasdair added, sidling toward the door, “He’s confessed to killing Greg, has he? The Portree alibi’s a setup?”
“Ah no, no. Sorry.” Fergie turned his red, indignant face toward Alasdair. “He was right chuffed to tell me he’d found that, that damned business card, the one Greg gave or sent to someone—likely his killer, I realize that—Pritchard found it in the parking area soon after returning from Portree, and—I ask you! He realized the implications, yes, but did he take it to the police? No, he put it in the pocket of Diana’s coat so she’d assume Colin was the murderer, and turn against him. Then Pritchard himself would move in for the kill. Not his words, mind you, but mine.”
Jean didn’t point out that no matter what Pritchard had done, Colin was still a suspect, or that everyone up to and including the local sheep had walked through the parking area potentially dropping business cards the afternoon of the murder. A break in the case—or a hairline crack—was still a break. She said, “Those initials weren’t Colin’s. They’re shorthand for ‘see you.’”
“So it seems. Now. And now we’re obliged to do without a manager—economizing on his salary, that’s all to the good . . .” Fergie sputtered out.
Alasdair fished the telephone from his sporran and punched a couple of buttons. “Well then. Pritchard and I are going to be having us a wee word about concealing police evidence. Jean struck lucky finding the card, it might have been days before Diana turned it up, if ever. Hello, Patrick, Alasdair here . . .” Closer to spitting than sputtering, he vanished out the door.
Chapter Twenty-three
“Good man, Alasdair,” Fergie said stoutly. “He’ll sort things.”
Jean nodded agreement, if more flabbily than stoutly, but then, positive thinking never hurt.
Chimes ranging from deep-throated to tinny resonated in the corners of the house as all the clocks struck seven. American accents wafted up the hall—Heather’s snarky whine, Scott’s edgy rumble, Dakota’s hesitant trill.
Here they came, dressed to the nines. Scott’s dark suit was impeccably tailored and color-coordinated with his shirt, just as his yellow power tie matched the handkerchief square in his pocket. Heather’s dress was draped just so, clinging here, flowing there. The fabric was printed with a retro groovy psychedelic pattern, man—starbursts and daisy chains in shades of purple. Dakota wore decorative flats, a pink dress, and a sweater appliquéd with cats, if not the frilly-socks-and-petticoat of a little girl, then not the mini-hooker style that Jean blamed on marketers gone wild.
“Ah, bang on time!” Finding his second or perhaps third wind, Fergie once again donned the mantle of genial host. “Come in, come in. Here’s your wassail—a fine tradition, wassail. And here’s another tradition, the holiday boar.”
Heather’s eye-roll implied she’d heard that as “bore.” Scott eyed Fergie’s kilt with a half-concealed snicker.
Fergie went on, “In place of the boar’s head that our ancestors would have had for their holiday feast, I’ve had Nancy make us one from half a pineapple.”
Everyone leaned closer. Sure enough, the toothpicks holding morsels of fruit or olives resembled bristles rising from the half-mound of a pineapple. Two maraschino cherries and an apple slice formed a face, and a curled licorice whip a tail. Even as she handed Dakota a melon square and helped herself to a stuffed green olive, Jean imagined what Nancy—or, more likely, Rab—had said about such whimsy, especially when the holiday boar was an olde English custom, not Scottish.
She drifted away toward the tree, inhaling its head-clearing pine fragrance. The Christmas tree was another English custom late coming to Scotland. So was wassail, for that matter. Fergie’s “old-fashioned” Hogmanay was as much imagination as tradition—not that there was anything wrong with that.
He carried on to the Krums about the exceptionally humorless Scottish Protestant Reformation, and how Hogmanay had become more important than Christmas, since Christmas was seen as Catholic, even pagan. Christmas Day wasn’t a holiday in Scotland until the 1950s, about the time Fergie was born.
So, Jean thought, Norman the Red’s folly of a chapel with its Catholic features would have brought down the disapproval of the local community within living memory, never mind in Norman’s era. . . . She cast a sharp glance at the Coffer just as Scott strolled toward it.
Dakota hung on Fergie’s every word, blinking owlishly and seizing the occasional grape from the back of the boar. “The days between Christmas and New Year’s are the Daft Days, it being the time of year for role reversals, the lairds and ladies serving the tenants . . .” His gaze strayed to where Scott was circling the Flagon and the Coffer like a shark scenting prey. “Excuse me, please.”
“More family heirlooms, like Diana’s necklace?” Scott asked as Fergie hove to beside him.
“Why yes, they are that.” Fergie proceeded to deliver a sales pitch in which he confined himself to the facts, such as the facts were.
Wassail in hand, Heather sat down next to the fire. Her strappy sandals with spike heels enclosed purple toenails—f
rom polish, Jean assumed, not the cold.
From outside the window came the emphatic slam of a car door, followed by the sounds of its engine starting up and pulling away into the distance. From the corridor came Alasdair, doing his best imitation of the Sphinx. He nodded a stiff greeting to each of the Krums and joined Jean in the lee of the Christmas tree. If he noticed each set of American eyes focused on his tartan-clad nether regions—Scott skeptical, Heather intrigued, Dakota impressed—he ignored them.
“Well?” Jean asked, lowering her voice.
“I put a flea in Pritchard’s ear, right enough, and had him show me where he found the card, just next a flower pot to the left of the porch.”
“Out of the rain, sort of.”
“Aye, but still, it had not been lying there long when he picked it up.”
Nibbling a bit of pineapple off its toothpick, Dakota drifted past the tree toward the bookshelves. Heather leaned back in the chair, crossed her legs, and let her sandal dangle from her toes.
“Maybe Greg never sent or gave the card to anyone. Maybe it fell out of his own car. Although,” Jean added before Alasdair could, “he had to have intended to give it to someone, to remind them of their appointment. Unless Pritchard’s lying about finding it where he did.”
“I’m seeing no reason for that. He’s enjoying the stramash caused by one wee bit business card.”
Scott said to Fergie, “Yeah, there’s a lot of money in that sort of thing. The problem is . . .”
“Patrick,” Alasdair went on, “is saying that he’ll stop by the hospital soon as Tina’s coherent, may or may not be returning here the night, depending.”
Dakota’s voice came from the far side of the Christmas tree—for a fraction Jean thought it was a robin ornament speaking. “What business card is that?”
“A bit of evidence.” Alasdair peered around a tinsel-hung branch.
The Blue Hackle Page 26