The Blue Hackle

by Lillian Stewart Carl

  Jean and Alasdair washed and dressed. Halfway downstairs, he detoured for a word with Nicolson. If anyone deserved coffee, Jean thought, Nicolson did. But it was like the flight attendant’s instructions on an airplane—if you didn’t apply your own oxygen mask first, you weren’t going to be helping anyone else with theirs.

  The dining room stood empty, the expanse of the table swept clean and polished into a mirror. “Nancy? Rab?” Alasdair pushed through the pantry door and a minute later called, “Everyone’s still sleeping. Let’s be making our own breakfast.”

  The cheery lemon-yellow kitchen shone, light and bright, despite the wan morning. And clean, too. No wonder Nancy wasn’t up yet. She’d probably been up until four a.m. scrubbing the tiles with a toothbrush. Even the remotes for the television and its related systems were lined up like soldiers on parade.

  Alasdair pulled bread out of the breadbox and removed the lid from the butter dish. Jean pounced on the sleek stainless-steel coffee maker that ground its own beans. So where were the beans? Not in the first two cabinets, not in a tier of drawers, not in the plastic garbage bin set into its own alcove beneath the counter and emitting a faint vapor of meat scraps, fish scales, and dog food. “Surely Gilnockie had the rubbish bins in the kitchen yard searched for the killer’s gloves.”

  “Aye, that he did. No joy.”

  “Why’d the killer ditch the gloves but not the knife? Ah, here we go, coffee beans. Or do you want tea?”

  “Either’s fine.”

  She inhaled deeply, the aroma not only helping to wake her up but overriding the garbage bin’s reminder that all flesh must pass. “Alasdair, what sort of alibis do Rab and Nancy have for the time of the murder? I mean, they told Gilnockie they were here in the kitchen, but did Fergie or anyone see them?”

  Frowning, searching his data-storage banks, Alasdair slipped the bread into the toaster oven. “Fergie welcomed Greg and Tina, then went straight to his office and sat there with his papers and his music ’til he heard you calling. That’s when he came into the kitchen. If one of the Finlays is the killer, then the other’s either covering or denying, eh?”

  “You expect to go out on a limb for your spouse.”

  “There are those who’d be chuffed sawing it off beneath him. Or her.”

  “True.” Bracing herself on the edge of the counter, Jean watched the black elixir stream down into the coffee pot and told herself to be patient, that drinking straight from the nozzle would be counter-productive . . . there. A cup, coffee, milk—the morning was looking better.

  She and Alasdair sat down at the table and the door opened. Fergie peered around its edge like a groundhog on February second. “I thought I smelled coffee. Lovely. How’d our ancestors ever get up and going of a morning without coffee or tea, I ask you?”

  Alasdair’s glance at Jean intersected hers at him. Here was their chance to add that last straw to Fergie’s burden. Better them than anyone else, though—even Gilnockie’s gentle touch could only go so far.

  Fergie sat down with coffee and toast. “I’ll have Nancy organize a fry-up soon as may be. Comfort food.”

  Jean’s stomach was uneasy enough without filling it with bacon, sausage, eggs, and bread drenched in salty grease. She managed something noncommittal.

  What Alasdair had no stomach for was waffle, friend or no old friend. “Did you know, Fergie, that you had Greg’s father’s dirk hanging in your front hall?”

  “No,” Fergie replied, it apparently not occurring to him he’d already answered that question.

  “Good job you looked out into the kitchen yard just as Kenneth walked by.”

  “I looked out because I heard a thump, probably the garden gate swinging shut. But Kenneth said he wasn’t the first person through. He said someone was ahead of him. Colin.”

  “He was saying he saw Colin at the crusader stones. That it was Colin walking ahead of him is by way of being circumstantial, leastways ’til we’ve talked to Colin.”

  Fergie smeared butter and strawberry jam, red as blood, onto his toast. Instead of coming into sharper focus he seemed to be blearing out. “Colin. My daughter’s likely in love with a murderer.”

  “Not necessarily,” said Alasdair.

  “The Krums will be giving Dunasheen a low rating on Internet travel sites.”

  Jean said, “Not necessarily.”

  “Scott Krum’s not interested in the Coffer, said that sort of thing’s too controversial. But—” Fergie set one of his chins, “—controversy sells, I learned that working in public relations. Someone else will buy it.”

  “Jean’s friend Rebecca,” Alasdair articulated slowly, “was just telling us someone’s bought an inscription mentioning Pontius Pilate.”

  “Have they, now?”

  Jean’s turn. “Was it Norman who said there was an inscription here at Dunasheen with Pontius Pilate’s name on it?”

  “Yes, yes, he did, just a quick reference in passing. If it’s still here, though, we’ve yet to turn it up. The inscription, not the reference.”

  Alasdair said, “We’re thinking it’s the same inscription. It was Greg selling it. By cheating.”

  “Cheating” was close enough. “He might have smeared the inscription with dirt and pollen and so forth from an archaeological excavation of the right period. He might have intended to do the same with the inscription on the Coffer. As it is, though, even simple tests, well . . .” Jean’s voice ran down. She drained her coffee, which now left an acid taste in her throat, milk or no milk.

  “Greg had the Pilate inscription? You mean Tormod took it to Australia with him?” Fergie looked from face to face, butter knife upraised.

  “Apparently so, aye,” said Alasdair. “As a souvenir, or a sample of his work—we’ll never be knowing for sure. Just as we’ll never be knowing for sure whether those bones turned up by the chapel are his.”

  “Tormod’s bones? The ones by the chapel?”

  Having run more than a few academic committee meetings, Jean quickly herded this particular cat back onto topic—in another minute Fergie would be sitting on the garden wall yowling. “The carvings that Tormod were making in the chapel, so fine the master mason was jealous. The ones that Nancy called pernickety. They weren’t, by any chance, a sequence depicting the last hours of Jesus Christ? The stations of the cross, they’d say in a Catholic church. The sort of church Norman was trying to evoke but that people in this area would have called ‘papish.’”

  Fergie hadn’t yet blinked. “Well now, that’s right impressive, your deducing that.”

  “Greg’s inscription called Pilate a procurator. A genuine one found in 1961 called him a prefect. If Greg’s inscription was carved by Tormod for Norman’s folly, it would be in the old style.”

  Fergie’s stare moved from Jean to Alasdair. With a sickly grimace—tag-teaming the man was the equivalent of using a kitten as a kickball—Alasdair explained, “This sort of historical puzzle’s her field.”

  “Oh yeah, if I had a family crest the motto would be ‘what if.’” Without waiting for further commentary, Jean plunged on. “What if Norman planned a set of stations of the cross but then cancelled it, either bowing to local feeling or not wanting Tormod’s work in his chapel after the scandal surrounding Seonaig? Tormod carried away a small piece of the first station, where Jesus is condemned to death by Pilate. A piece of the last station, a miniature sarcophagus, ended up in the cellar. You recognized it for what it was, a symbol of the empty tomb and the Resurrection.”

  “Yes. I recognized it. I just never connected the dots, did I?” Fergie’s knife clinked against the plate. His first chin sagged over his second. “There’s so much evidence for alien visitation, I was hoping I’d found the truth of the matter is all. Hoping I’d found proof.”

  “Right.” Alasdair’s chair squealed over the tile and he snapped to his feet. Briefly he rested his hand on Fergie’s shoulder—steady on. “This is us, then, away to Portree—there are pieces of the murder investigati
on still missing.”

  “Yes. That has to take precedence.” Fergie looked up, attempting a brave smile even though his eyes were so dull they might have been painted on his glasses. “And your wedding’s the day after tomorrow.”

  “Yes, it is.” Jean bent to give Fergie a quick hug while Alasdair poured the last of the coffee into a clean mug. His other hand pulled the phone from his pocket and thumbed a number. “Thomson, we’ll be passing the police house in a quarter of an hour . . . Ah, good man. Cheers.”

  “He’s got Kenneth ready to go?” Jean asked, then reeled back from the door as it opened, almost hitting her in the face.

  Every hair on Nancy’s head was lacquered into submission, and her red lips were indented into her seamed cheeks like puncture wounds. She’d dispatch a mouse without compunction, but a human being? Alasdair had once said something about killers of his acquaintance. Jean now had a few killers in her album of acquaintances, too, and not one of them had worn identification.

  Darting a glance around the kitchen, Nancy demanded, “The coffee pot’s all right for you, is it? The toaster? Ah, Fergus. Good morning.”

  Stiffly, Fergie sat up. “Bacon, please Nancy. Sausage, eggs, tomatoes, mushrooms, beans. The lot. I’ll have a word with the Krums. Yesterday they expected pastries.”

  Alasdair and Jean escaped into the hall, Jean telling herself everyone to his own way of dealing with stress. If bacon fat worked, fine. Right now she herself would have fallen gleefully on a chocolate cake, preferably with vanilla-bean ice cream.

  In the entrance hall, the Krums were exiting the staircase, followed by a rumpled Nicolson. He fell on the proffered cup of coffee like a dog on a bone. “Cheers, sir. Very kind of you.”

  Either Heather was flushed or had applied too much blusher, while Scott was almost as disheveled as Nicolson, with the addition of a distinct hound-dog droop. “Morning,” he said.

  Heather kept on walking, with no more than a perfunctory, “Hi.”

  Dakota looked up from struggling with the zipper on her pink hoodie sweatshirt, dark eyes lusterless with sleep. “Are you gonna be around this morning?”

  “We’re away to have a word with Mrs. MacLeod in Portree,” Alasdair replied.

  “Oh. Okay. When you get back—”

  “Dakota,” called Heather, “Come on. Breakfast. Maybe they’ll have some real cereal today, not that porridge stuff.”

  “I could sure use a double espresso,” Scott said, “but I guess Nancy’s battery acid will do.”

  “Talk to you later,” Dakota told Jean, and trotted off after her parents, if not without a backward look utterly devoid of drowsiness.

  Jean watched her little disciple disappear around the corner. What did Dakota want from her that she could possibly provide?—well, other than solving the murder and clearing the air. That was still in her and Alasdair’s grasp.

  The two dogs burst through the entrance hall toward the front door, nails clattering on the tiles like sleet on a window, Rab in cursing, heavy-footed pursuit. Jean dodged up the stairs.

  January first. New Year’s Day. Ne’er Day. The year was under way. The first day of the rest of her life, of everyone’s lives, begun with business left from the old.

  “Jean?” called Alasdair from around the curve of the steps, and she picked up her feet and her pace as well.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Thomson was just slamming the driver’s-side door of his boxy vehicle when Alasdair braked beside it. In the passenger seat, pulling the seat belt around his shoulders, sat Kenneth MacLeod. The younger Kenneth MacLeod, who had inherited more than he wanted from the past he disdained.

  “So much for letting him drive himself.” Jean hunkered down in her seat, waiting for the car’s heating system to stop blowing frigid air.

  “One suspect on walkabout is quite enough.” Returning Thomson’s salute, Alasdair accelerated through the deserted streets of Kinlochroy. The village looked even plainer in the anemic light, which was filtered not through leaden clouds that threatened serious snowfall but through a fragile icy haze.

  The road wound over hill and down dale, also deserted except for sheep peering incuriously, jaws moving, at the passersby. The cars seemed to be moving in a bubble surrounded by mist, one that opened over road signs, sheep, the occasional farm and frequent ruined houses, then swept on, leaving sheep and ruins to fade into nothingness.

  Even after they came to the intersection at Dunvegan—the original Dunvegan—and turned onto the two lanes of the main road, drifts of snow filled hollows and lay against boulders, making the harsh moorland look as though it had been dusted with powdered sugar. Rough terrain, this. Jean wondered how many years of backbreaking labor it had taken to create Dunasheen’s garden acres.

  “Maybe,” she thought aloud, “I heard Kenneth’s steps in the garden while I was walking with Dakota. Just because I saw Pritchard watching Diana doesn’t mean it was him.”

  Alasdair gazed straight ahead, hands steady on the steering wheel. “Could Kenneth have kept ahead of you, not knowing the gardens?”

  “Good question.” A lot of good questions bumped and caromed like billiard balls across the table of her mind, but she didn’t try taking any other shots.

  Before long their bubble of visibility included more houses, small businesses, and finally the semicircular sweep of Portree’s waterfront, lined with houses painted in bright colors. The gray water of the harbor heaved up and wallowed down and every now and then belched a whitecap. Jean knew the feeling—that was the way her stomach had felt listening to Fergie construct his dream-castle on custard.

  Among the buildings climbing the slope behind the waterfront stood the small hospital. What the building lacked in geographic distinction—no turrets, no crow-stepped gables, no stag’s antlers over its entrance—it no doubt made up for with mod cons like plumbing and electrical systems.

  Jean and Alasdair walked into the antiseptic-tinged interior to find Gilnockie waiting by the reception desk. With his washed-out complexion and austere features, Jean couldn’t help but envision a vampire being released after successfully completing a blood-addiction program.

  “Good morning,” he said.

  “Good morning,” Alasdair returned, and quickly acquainted Gilnockie with the latest developments, including the incident of the American antiques dealer in the nighttime. “Kenneth had a strong motive to go killing Greg, and looks to be he had the opportunity, but he’s only got the weapon if Greg had it with him—Jean’s thought of that angle.”

  Jean met Gilnockie’s grave nod of acknowledgment with a cramped smile.

  “’Til we find Colin . . . Ah, here’s Thomson and Mr. MacLeod.”

  Gilnockie greeted Thomson and introduced himself to Kenneth, who seemed no less worn this morning than he had last night, square face drooping into a trapezoid and steps dragging.

  “Mrs. MacLeod’s just this way.” Gilnockie conducted Kenneth, Jean, and Alasdair, Thomson just behind, along a corridor into a room that could have served as a dictionary definition of clean and neat. To the right of the door, Sergeant Young sat with her legs twined, ankles locked, hands clasped, narrow face with its insectivore eyes revealing no expression.

  Only one of the room’s two beds was occupied. Tina was propped against pillows, her arm and shoulder in a sling. Without makeup, she looked neither older nor younger, just more vulnerable. The skin beneath her eyes was tissue-thin and faintly purple, the bones of her face seemed delicate as a bird’s, her brassy curls lay muted and limp. Her pale lips moved, emitting a wisp of sound. “Ken.”

  “Teen,” he returned, his voice no stronger than hers.

  “You followed us.” If Tina noticed the others clustered near the doorway, she gave no sign.

  Ken sank down on a plastic chair beside the bed. “Yeah, I followed you.”

  A quizzical look passed over her features. “How’d you get here?”

  “Airlines, Teen. Kuala Lumpur, London, Inverness. A hire car.”
>
  She closed her eyes, and for a moment Jean thought she’d fallen asleep. Then her lashes fluttered and her lips moved again. “I’m sorry, Ken.”

  “So’m I.” He looked down at his hands spread on his knees, knuckles like knots.

  “Why work so hard, day after day? Why deny yourself some pleasure in life? You’ve been pinching every penny when there’s no need.”

  “No good throwing out things that might be useful. No good buying new things when the old work just as well. That’s why we’ve got no need to scrimp and save. No need to take Greg’s charity.”

  Beside Jean, Alasdair shifted his weight. There was the discussion-cum-argument that served as Ken and Tina’s refrain, just as the conflict between faith and fact was their own.

  Ken said, “Greg had glamour. Greg had conversation. Greg made money fast and spent it faster. I’m a cane cocky. But Teen, I’m your husband. Dunvegan’s your home.”

  She didn’t reply.

  “What were you going to do, after—after you and Greg got home again?”

  “Thought maybe I’d go to Brisbane or Sydney, somewhere I could be someone else.”

  “You’ve bushed the marriage, then? You want a divorce?”

  Again her eyes closed. “Ken. Where’d you come from?”

  “Home,” he said. “Got a last-minute ticket, cheap. I could have used the money to fix the harvester.”

  Jean winced at that. But then, most men had moments of tone-deafness at their significant other’s melody.

  “I knew it was you.” Tina looked up. “That Finlay woman said she’d seen you. She couldn’t leave me alone. Kept on asking questions like a cop. Why was Greg killed, was I scared the guy would get me too.”

  Neither the two cops to one side of the door, nor the ex-cop and his caboose on the other, said anything, although Jean knew she wasn’t alone in scheduling another conversation with Nancy. Curiosity attracted the attention of the authorities—no one knew that better than she did.