The Blue Hackle

by Lillian Stewart Carl

  “How could you think I’d hurt you?” His voice rising, Ken leaned forward, pulling at Tina’s blanket. “How could you think I’d hurt Greg? It’s your own guilt. And shame.”

  “Guilt. Shame. Yeah, that’s you, Ken, always passing judgment, always angry. I could never say a word that didn’t offend you.”

  “I don’t understand you, Teen. I’ve never understood you.” Ken fell back into the chair.

  Okay, so they weren’t going to witness a scene of tender reconciliation. The wounds ran too deep, and Greg’s ghost grinned at the bedside.

  Gilnockie’s stance contained such a depth of quietude that beside him Alasdair looked fidgety. Jean regretted her vampire simile—Gilnockie’s supernatural calm ran the other way, toward the angels.

  He stepped forward. Some detectives would have berated Tina for her earlier lies, or at least for her unhelpful answers, no doubt intended to muddy the true nature of her relationship with Greg. Gilnockie merely asked again, “Mrs. MacLeod, was Greg saying anything about meeting someone at Dunasheen just after your arrival?”

  She blinked up at him. “Have we met?”

  “Begging your pardon, madam. Patrick Gilnockie, Detective Chief Inspector, Northern Constabulary. Detective Sergeant Les—”

  “Oh, Lesley’s been a big help to me, explaining about Dunasheen and Skye.”

  Every eye glanced toward Young. She shrugged, shoulders jerking up and down. “She’s after asking the same thing over and over again. Concussion, they’re saying. We’ve been sorting it.”

  “Well done, Sergeant,” said Gilnockie.

  “Greg,” Tina said. Every eye turned back to her. “He hardly ever talked about his investments and stuff. It was all boring anyway. Not like the time he went to a party with movie stars. I could have looked at those pix on his mobile over and over again.”

  “What sort of investments?” asked Alasdair, unimpressed by movie stars. “Art and artifacts, such as the inscription he sold to the Bible History Research Society?”

  “Overpriced junk,” Ken muttered.

  Tina said, “If someone’s willing to pay, then they’re not overpriced, that’s what Greg said. Like those units along the river, the ones he went in for with the developer. Over the top prices and people queuing up to pay.”

  “Spoilt the view,” said Ken. “People don’t need half-million-dollar units. Or any more developments, let alone all the resorts Greg put money in. Yeppoon, Cairns—the man didn’t recognize his own home, not anymore.”

  “Who cares what people need? Greg never forced anyone to pay for a unit or a bit of artwork. He built resorts because he was mad about golf, reckoned he was going to play St. Andrews—classic course, he said, using up rough beachfront. He went on about golf and resorts the way he went on about the flipping family tree and tracking down old Tormod.”

  “He knew Tormod wasn’t a convict,” Alasdair said.

  “Yeah, he was a soldier, they reckon. Didn’t matter to me one way or the other. Same with Greg and Ken’s dad. He was water under the bridge even when Ken and I got married, but Greg couldn’t let it alone.”

  “Dad never had much use for us,” muttered Ken. “Wanted to see the world. Greg’s like him, even though I got the name.”

  “Did Greg know Fergus MacDonald had your father’s regimental dirk?” Gilnockie asked.

  Ken shook his head. Tina said, “He was meeting up with—that’s what you asked, isn’t it? Who Greg was meeting?”

  “Aye, that’s what I was asking,” said Gilnockie.

  “He said Dunasheen’s manager offered him the dirk for a good price. He said he meant to do a bigger deal than that, but because the dirk belonged to the family . . .” Tina frowned as though chasing a memory. “Maybe he went to talk to the manager. I don’t know. I was in the loo and he shouted through the door that he was off, he’d be seeing me for drinks and dinner. But when I saw him again, he was—dead.” Her face collapsed on itself, shattering the illusion of youth. Her free hand, its nail polish chipped, clenched on the blanket.

  Kenneth took it between his own, cradling it like a naked chick just out of the egg. “I’m here, Teen.”

  Gilnockie looked at Alasdair. Alasdair looked at Jean. Jean tilted her head in bewilderment. Greg was meeting Pritchard? Well yes, Pritchard had admitted planting Greg’s card noting the appointment in Diana’s raincoat, but Pritchard himself hadn’t been at Dunasheen at the time of Greg’s arrival, let alone his murder. Unless he’d set up an alibi the way a movie director would set up a scene.

  Unless, Jean thought again, just as Thomson stepped aside, admitting two more constables, one male and one female. Portree, collectively.

  “We’ll be taking statements from the both of them,” Gilnockie said to the newcomers. And, lowering his voice to a dry whisper, “Don’t go telling them more than that we’re not releasing Greg’s body just yet. The boffins have finished with it, but ’til Kenneth’s been cleared, well . . .”

  Kenneth and Tina were bent together, saying nothing. Probably with no need to say anything, when so much had already been said.

  Leaving Young to deal with the MacLeods and Portree, Gilnockie mobilized his forces, led them out of the room and down the corridor, and stopped just inside the main door. “The crime scene reports have just arrived. Soon as we’ve taken the statements, we’re away to the police station for a detailed look. Suffice it to be saying now, nothing’s showing bloodstains.”

  “It was going on for a mizzly day,” said Alasdair. “Everyone was wearing a raincoat.”

  “We weren’t. But then—” Jean visualized the coats, umbrellas and other protective gear hanging in the cloak room and the kitchen. “We’re not locals outside every day, expecting a mizzle and dressing accordingly.”

  Gilnockie continued, “With the beach being shingle, not sand, there were only a few prints.”

  “Someone stood about at the top of the path leading down from the church,” said Alasdair.

  “Aye. Now that the boffins have photos of Kenneth’s boots, they’re thinking they’ve got a match.”

  Thomson nodded. “So he was saying last night.”

  “There were other prints overlying those, though,” Gilnockie added, “all jumbled, someone running, most likely, and the path right slippy.”

  “Kenneth was saying he saw Colin walking toward the beach. If he came back running . . .” Leaving the implication lying on the polished linoleum floor like a body on a morgue tray, Alasdair went on, “Greg was asking Krum about the terrain round Dunasheen, the state of the castle and the collections, the personalities of the MacDonalds. Your aunt, Thomson, she mentioned the sale of the castle near Inverness, how it’s gone for a golf course and luxury time-shares.”

  “I’m hearing luxury hotel,” said Gilnockie, “but that’s as may be. You’re wondering if Greg was after investing in the estate as a whole, not just buying an artifact or two.”

  “Aye. I’m thinking Greg was using his knowledge of Tormod to be getting his foot in Dunasheen’s door. To be looking it over as a potential investment.”

  “He wouldn’t have a problem selling the Crusader Coffer to the BHRS,” said Jean. “But re-developing the entire area or even buying Dunasheen outright? We overheard Fergie and Diana talking, they’re in bad shape financially, grasping at straws . . .” And how, she added to herself. “But they never once mentioned the possibility of selling the place.”

  “Maybe Greg hadn’t yet offered to buy it. First the dirk, then the Coffer, perhaps, then after he’d taken Fergie’s measure, and inspected the house and the landscape, then he’d move in.” Alasdair’s eyes lifted to the scene beyond the glass doors, at the light bleached of color like a faded photograph.

  “But someone killed him first,” said Gilnockie. “Why? To stop him from making an offer? If Mr. MacDonald was not wanting to sell up, he had only to refuse.”

  No one said anything about Greg making an offer Fergie couldn’t refuse, Jean thought, but then, what kind of
offer could that have been?

  “With respect to Greg having an appointment with Pritchard,” Gilnockie went on, “We’ll be double-checking the statements of the folk in the pub.”

  Jean raised her hand. “But what if the manager Greg was going to see . . .”

  “. . . was not Pritchard?” Alasdair finished for her.

  Yeah, he’d be, if not ahead of her, at least with her. “What if someone else got onto Fergie’s computer, checked out Greg, and e-mailed him?”

  “Anyone, Colin, Rab, Nancy, Diana, could have set up an appointment either using Pritchard’s name or claiming to be the manager.”

  “Quite right,” said Gilnockie.

  “The problem is, it wasn’t ’til Jean and I took the photo down from the wall anyone knew the significance of the dirk. Or so we’ve been thinking,” Alasdair amended. “Much easier for someone in the household, including Pritchard, to have sussed it out.”

  “Not Colin, then,” Thomson murmured beneath his breath. “Though Diana, now . . .”

  Every face puckered in thought. Finally, Gilnockie said, “We’re getting a good ways ahead of ourselves. Colin needs finding and interviewing. And Scott Krum as well. I’m not happy with the Finlays’ role in all this. Nor with Diana’s and Fergus’s.”

  “The MacDonalds are not concealing evidence,” Alasdair said, adding quickly. “In my professional opinion.”

  “I’ve got a deal of respect for your professional opinion,” Gilnockie told him. “Off you go, back to Dunasheen, continue with your researches.”

  “Right,” Alasdair said on a breath that just might have been a sigh, while Jean, thinking a hysterical laugh would disturb the peace of the hospital, confined her reply to a nod.

  “P.C. Thomson, soon as I’ve looked over the crime scene reports and taken the MacLeods’ statements, you can go carrying copies back to Kinlochroy with you. Then you, McCrummin, and Nicolson, begin another sweep of the area. If nothing breaks by sunset, I’ll be calling out the crime scene team again tomorrow. They likely missed something at the scene or in the house.”

  Jean saw that the clock on the wall behind Gilnockie’s back showed noon-forty-five. Less than three hours until sunset. And then tomorrow, and the day after that . . .

  Gilnockie turned back toward Tina’s room. “Well then. We’ll be joining you at Dunasheen presently, Alasdair, Jean. P.C. Thomson, if you’d be so good as to wait outside Tina’s room.”

  “Aye, sir.” Thomson marched off down the hall.

  “Later, Patrick.” Alasdair opened the door for Jean and she stepped out into the chill. A couple of snowflakes drifted down onto her glasses, leaving tiny wet dots. No problem—she wasn’t seeing too clearly anyway.

  Once back in the car, she again hunkered down into her coat. Her brain hunkered, too, not cold but sore as though it had been used as a punching bag. She didn’t want any of these people to be the murderer. But one of them was.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Wordlessly, Alasdair drove around Portree’s main square. A few people were out and about, despite the late night and the cold day. One older couple laid a single red rose at the base of the war memorial, a chunky base with a slender shaft not nearly as well proportioned as the monument in Kinlochroy. But the plaques holding the names of the dead were what it was all about, Jean told herself. They should include the names of men like Colin.

  There was St. Columba’s Church, where she and Alasdair had stopped on their way to Dunasheen on Tuesday, or last year, whenever it had been, to finalize wedding plans with Reverend Elphinstone. Then she’d been almost giggling with delight at the reverend’s name, Scottish standard though it was, and all the way to Dunasheen had batted jokes and literary references toward Alasdair. He’d batted them back, a few “yes, dear” smiles notwithstanding.

  Today his profile against the frosty mist revealed no humor, no accommodation, just a grim expressionlessness. No need to share her thoughts with him now. No need for him to eke out a few for her. They were of as like a mind today as they ever had been, or were ever likely to be.

  Their entire relationship had been rocky. No surprise their wedding, too, was traveling a rough road. It wasn’t a matter of getting to the church on time. It was a matter of getting there at all. And even if they did get there, if the proper, time-honored words were actually said, like an incantation, then . . . what? Would that exorcize the malice that had been shadowing them?

  Her breath casting thin sheets of fog on her window, she wondered whether the Krums’ holiday was serving its purpose. Could that marriage be saved? Probably not, no more than her and Alasdair’s first marriages could have been saved. And what about the MacLeods’ marriage?

  What didn’t kill you either made you stronger, or it left you disgusted with the whole thing and ready to bail.

  The miles passed, a flurry of snowflakes blew across the windshield, and once again they were in Dunvegan, passing another Celtic-cross war memorial. Here, too, people were out and about and a shop or two had opened for business regardless of the holiday. Light glowed in the conservatory windows of a small hotel, revealing people seated at tables, utensils flashing. Lunch, Jean thought. Hunger trumped unease every time.

  “I could do with a cuppa.” Alasdair guided the car into the hotel’s parking area.

  Within minutes they were seated in the warm, slightly steamy, conservatory, tucking into plates of fragrant curried chicken and rice that were hot in more than one meaning of the word.

  Spices and sweet, milky tea—Jean’s stomach relaxed a bit, even if her brain still hurt. She gazed past several hanging ferns interspersed with hanging Christmas cards and through the plate-glass window, feeling as though she was on display in a department store as little match girls peered in from the cold . . .

  She sat up so abruptly her spine bounced off the chair spindles. Out of the shop just across the road walked a familiar figure, a slender young man in a camouflage coat and a bonnet sporting a wilted red hackle. “Alasdair . . .”

  “I see him.” Alasdair already had the phone in his hand.

  Colin’s ravaged face looked right and left. But he didn’t hurry across the road. He turned back to the door of the shop.

  Between a swinging ice cream sign and a newspaper rack glided a lissome figure in a lilac tweed coat. Once again Diana’s golden hair was partially concealed by a colorful scarf. Once again she wasn’t fooling anyone—the driver of a passing van leaned on his horn in approval. Her glare after him should have caused all four tires to go flat. Whether Colin glared, Jean couldn’t tell. He handed Diana down the steps of the shop as though he was handing the Queen herself from her fairy-tale coach.

  “Thomson,” Alasdair said into his phone. “Where are you? Good. Colin Urquhart’s in Dunvegan, with Diana MacDonald at the wee shop across from the MacLeod Arms Hotel . . . aye. Just now.”

  Colin wasn’t acting like a fugitive. Instead of slinking away—you didn’t see me, I wasn’t here—he stood on the sidewalk talking to Diana. Jean tried to interpret their body language, the tight gestures, the tense stances, the way Diana’s gloved hand jiggled a plastic bag against her leg. They weren’t exactly exchanging recipes.

  Thrusting the phone into his pocket, Alasdair headed for the door. Jean leaped to her feet. An orange-striped all-terrain vehicle spun around the corner and skidded to a stop. Colin whirled, Diana extended her hand, Thomson jumped out of his car. Colin whirled the other way, saw Alasdair sprinting across the road toward him, and stopped. He didn’t raise his hands in surrender, but made more of a blessing-the-multitudes gesticulation, hands out, palms down.

  Jean only realized that she, too, had bolted out of the hotel when a voice said in her ear, “Excuse me, madam, you’ve not settled for your meals.”

  “Oh.” Jean looked around to see the proprietor, a dark green apron wrapped around his ample midsection, his coloring revealing that he not only came from south of Hadrian’s Wall but also from east of the Bosporus. She reached into her
bag. “Sorry.”

  Alasdair pretty much picked up Colin and Diana by the scruffs of their necks and dragged them toward the hotel. Thomson vaulted back into his car and ran it into a parking place, then beat Alasdair and his captives to the door.

  Sizing up the situation, the proprietor handed Jean back her twenty-pound note, scooted another table up to the one where they’d been sitting and added chairs. “Tea, is it? Sandwiches? Right you are.” The other patrons went back to their meals, pretending nothing had happened.

  Alasdair seated Diana and Colin with their faces toward the window, the light revealing their expressions. Her cheeks were more than rosy, they were the color of ripe cherries, more from embarrassment than from the cold, Jean estimated. Colin’s blue eye was less the color of cornflowers than of the Atlantic shipping lanes far from land. “I was an idiot to go running,” he said.

  “Aye, you were that,” said Alasdair. “And you, Diana, did you let him in through the cloak room after Thomson and Nicolson lost him? He did not leave the house wearing his coat and bonnet.”

  Thomson laid a file folder on the table, then quickly moved it aside as the proprietor distributed metal pitchers and ceramic teacups. As soon as he’d retired out of earshot, Diana set her single, sculpted chin the way Fergie had set one of his flaccid ones that morning. “Yes, I helped him. He didn’t kill Greg. Give me one reason for him to have killed Greg.”

  Alasdair did just that. “If you and Fergie sold up and moved away, then he’d lose you, eh?”

  “What?” Diana exclaimed.

  Biting her tongue, Jean busied herself pouring tea. Not one face was softened by the steam wavering above the cups. “Was Greg offering to invest in Dunasheen?” Alasdair asked. “Was he offering to buy it outright and make it over into a luxury hotel with a golf course?”

  “Good heavens, no. He only ever asked about the Coffer and his ancestor Tormod.”

  Thomson whipped out a pen and began taking notes on the back of the folder.