“He only ever asked you,” said Alasdair, to which Diana could only nod. “He asked about his father’s dirk as well, did he?”
“No.” This time Diana annotated her negative with a shake of her head that set her blonde locks dancing. “No one knew about that until Greg was murdered with it.”
Alasdair turned to Colin. “You were telling us you were at the lighthouse at the time of Greg’s murder. Why were you lying?”
“It could be Kenneth lying,” said Diana.
Alasdair shot her a withering look and she shrank back. Jean pushed the milk and sugar toward her.
“Colin?” asked Alasdair.
The young man leaned forward, fixing Alasdair with a gaze like unexploded ordnance. “I often stopped by the church, thinking of this and that. Thinking of how religion’s supposed to bring you peace and comfort, but so often brings the opposite. I was standing there when someone in a yellow raincoat left the garden path, looked about the headland, then walked down to the beach.”
“He saw you?” asked Thomson.
“No, I was behind the wall.”
Alasdair asked, “Who was it?”
“Maybe Pritchard, maybe Fergie, maybe Rab. It wasn’t Diana, I’d have recognized her walk. It didn’t matter to me, not then.” Colin swigged his tea, but even the undamaged side of his face remained twisted and tense. “I was thinking that the chaps buried beneath the stones, they were comforted, so I went to cleaning away a bit of the lichen. Then I sensed a man in a dark green coat watching me from the garden.”
“Kenneth,” said Diana.
Colin shrugged agreement. “I didn’t know who he was, what he wanted. But soon as I saw him, he ran back into the garden and away.”
Alasdair nodded and Thomson wrote, both of them registering the accuracy of Ken’s testimony, although Jean knew there were often slips between the alibi and the lip.
“Then I heard raised voices from the beach. I thought maybe Pritchard was harassing some poor soul of a hiker—he never had much truck with the concept of right-of-way—so I walked down the path . . .” His hands around his cup tightened, the bones standing out beneath the fragile skin, and his body was racked with a shudder.
Jean glanced up to see the proprietor’s wary eye moving from Colin’s trembling form to Thomson’s uniformed gravity to Alasdair’s great stone face. He set down plates of sandwiches and backed away slowly.
Diana’s even gaze encompassed both representatives of the law. “Colin only remembered what happened last night, when he saw Kenneth again. I was driving him to Portree, thinking he might feel safer talking to the authorities there, away from Dunasheen. We stopped here for sandwiches and drinks.”
Alasdair once again cut to the chase. “What happened, then, Wednesday sunset, on the beach?”
“A man in a yellow raincoat,” said Colin, the words sieved through his teeth. “A man in a red jacket. He laughed. The other one shouted. He had a knife. There was a flash of red sunlight, and then the knife was red, and the man in the red jacket fell down.”
Gently Diana removed Colin’s hands from the teacup, which was now rattling in its saucer, and held them in her own. “It wasn’t your fault. You had nothing to do with it,” she told him, not in the indulgent tones one would use with a child, but matter-of-factly. In the same tone she told Alasdair, “He blanked it out. He genuinely thought he’d spent the afternoon at the lighthouse, as he would usually do. After a time he went on to the village shop, heard of the murder, and was concerned about me. He knew something was wrong, yes, but . . .”
“There’s always something wrong,” Colin said.
A shadow and a threat in his mind, Jean thought, paraphrasing Tolkien.
“Colin,” asked Thomson, “do you know who murdered Greg MacLeod?”
“I thought it was Pritchard, he’s bloody-minded enough.”
Alasdair said, “If his alibi’s no good, then . . .”
“It’s good,” Thomson said. “They told me at Portree station, a dozen folk saw him at the pub that afternoon. Took notice of him, rather, him never being known for couthieness.”
“Ah.” Alasdair shoved the sandwiches across the table. “The ones you bought at the shop will keep. Eat.”
Diana released Colin’s shaking hands. He began dismembering the bread and cheese. “I’m sorry I didn’t see who it was. It wasn’t Diana. It couldn’t have been Fergie, she’s saying.”
“I’m not saying that because he’s my father,” Diana added, taking a firm bite of her own sandwich. “You’ve cleared him, I believe.”
“Then, unless . . .” Alasdair paused. Jean knew what he was thinking—unless Colin is giving us the runaround. Unless Diana is lying in her pearl-like teeth. “Unless we’ve got some other stranger hanging about, it was Rab or Nancy killed Greg.”
Thomson tapped on the file folder. “I’ve got the reports on the footprints and all here, sir. And something else, as per that stranger in the village. Aye, we’re knowing now who it was, who he is, it’s Kenneth MacLeod, but still.”
Four sets of eyes turned toward him.
“I was blethering with my Auntie Brenda as to who Lachie’s stranger could be. You yourself, Mr. Cameron, were saying it was perhaps a local lad who’d been working away.”
“Fergie’d been telling us about Nancy’s brother having to leave to find work,” Jean said.
Diana nodded. “Jimmie’s done well for himself. He’s sent Nancy and Rab gift cards and all—the telly in the kitchen, that’s the latest. And Nancy’s earrings. My mum’s diamonds are half the size.”
Oh. Jean poured herself another cup of tea, to drown her chagrin. If Diana had been wearing those earrings, she would never have assumed they were rhinestones. What you believed was what you got.
Alasdair turned back to Thomson. “Go on.”
“Auntie Brenda’s not heard of him in donkey’s years. Just on principal, I asked Portree to check up on him. Turns out Jimmie’s living in a bed-sit in Birmingham and has not got a bean. If Nancy was not sending him money, he’d be living on the dole. Neither she nor Rab has any other family, Auntie’s saying.” He tapped the pen on the file folder. “If they’re not getting their money from Jimmie, well then, where’s it coming from?”
Jean stopped stirring her tea. She saw a family walk in the door and take off their coats. She heard a car horn honk briefly, in greeting rather than anger, and a sheep baa. She saw Alasdair’s lips tighten in a thin smile. Aha! “Fergie was telling us, Diana, that there’s nothing gone missing from the house. So far as he knows.”
“So far as either of us knows, yes. Only God knows what’s been stored in lumber rooms and dark corners. We can’t make a proper inventory and keep the place running at the same time.”
“You were saying you suspected Pritchard of cooking the books or making off with the odd item. What of the Finlays, either with or without Pritchard’s collusion?”
Her features went from puzzled to indignant, but not, Jean thought, at Alasdair’s question. “Father trusts them. He’s known them since he was a boy. They’ve lived at Dunasheen all their lives, working for my great-uncle, then for us. Pritchard was bitter about that, come to think of it, said more than once that Father trusted them over him. He must have suspected something.”
“What I’m suspecting,” said Alasdair, “is that it’s no matter of God knowing what’s in the attics and all, when Rab and Nancy know. And they’re likely knowing whose dirk was hanging in the hall as well.”
“When Greg booked his and Tina’s holiday,” said Jean, “one or the other of the Finlays contacted him, claiming to be Dunasheen’s manager and offering him the dirk. Thinking they were speaking for Fergie, Greg told them the dirk was all well and good, but he was also looking the place over for a golf course or resort or whatever. And then Fergie started talking about a big sale. He meant the Coffer, but . . .”
Diana arranged knife, fork, and spoon like bars on a graph. “The Finlays have had their opinions on our plan
s. They’re entitled to those.”
“If Dunasheen was sold, refitted, repurposed further than it already has been, would they be entitled to stay on?” asked Colin.
“Greg would want a younger, hipper staff,” Jean pointed out. “One that didn’t grouse about paying guests.”
“And even if the Finlays weren’t sent packing by a new owner,” said Alasdair, “that new owner’d be making proper inventories and clearing out the lumber rooms. No more nicking the odd item and selling it on. I reckon Rab and Nancy have been doing that for a good many years.”
Diana was looking less like a blushing rose and more like the Snow Queen.
Thomson added, “Nancy’s by way of taking things as they come, but Rab, no, he’s fussed. He was in the pub Wednesday talking about happy days with the old laird, when they were not obliged to suck up to strangers. And the Krums sitting in the window just then, though I’m thinking they didna understand all he was saying.”
Well no, Jean thought, the Krums hadn’t been marinating in Scottish accents like she had.
“Rab Finlay.” Alasdair’s hands remained clasped on the table, but his tone was enough of a pointing finger. “He made an appointment with Greg, to show him the gravestones—and the dirk—and likely telling him he could organize a word with Fergie about the estate itself. But Rab was meaning instead to take Greg’s measure as a threat.”
“Meaning to kill him?” The faint sheen of bronze, his genetic tan, was ebbing from Thomson’s face, but he didn’t shy away from the facts.
“That’s a question for the jury, not for us.”
Jean could see the scene, Rab grim and tense, and Greg’s ready laugh inadvertently pushing Rab over the edge.
“Rab and Nancy know we’re struggling to make a go of the place,” said Diana. “We might have taken Greg’s offer, if with some plan to stay on as managers ourselves.”
“Someone did kill Greg to stop him from getting something,” Jean said. “To stop him from getting Dunasheen itself. Rab didn’t kill the goose laying the golden eggs. He killed the man who would deprive them of the goose, the eggs, and the nest, too.”
“Rab came away from the pub in good time to be meeting Greg,” said Thomson. “I saw him myself, stopping for a word with the American lass, Dakota—she’d dropped a scrap of paper, I’m thinking—and then buttoning his coat and pulling on his gloves.”
Alasdair picked up the story. “His mind muddled by beer or whisky . . .”
Scotch courage, Jean thought.
“. . . Rab went walking through the kitchen yard into the gardens. If Fergie’d seen him, he’d have thought nothing of it. Rab’s job was to go walking about the place. Save Kenneth was just behind him. And Rab did not know that.”
“It was Rab I saw, then. I should have known, his raincoat’s big as a tent. But it was gey murky with the mizzle and . . .” Colin choked. Again, Diana took his hand.
“Rab took the knife but left the sheath,” Jean suggested, “so Fergie or Diana wouldn’t notice it was gone. He didn’t throw it into the sea—it had belonged to Fergus Mor in the good old days, and it would be worth a bundle to a collector of military memorabilia. He intended to retrieve it, clean it, and put it back in the sheath. But Diana did notice. So did Dakota.”
“I reckon,” said Colin faintly, “Rab never thought it all out, not like that. Likely he found himself standing on the beach holding a bloody knife and the man’s body . . .”
Diana’s fingers knotted with his. “That’s why Nancy was slow to say she saw Kenneth in the yard. Whether or not she knew that Rab intended to meet Greg, let alone kill him, by the time she was interviewed she knew what he’d done. And she was dealing with it, as she’s always dealt. Practical. Pragmatic.”
“Nancy befriended Tina,” Jean said, “to find out how much Tina knew about Greg meeting Rab. She might even have planted the suggestion that Tina let herself down from the window to escape the murderer, hoping she’d fall—but that’s going out on a limb.”
Alasdair said, “I’ll get onto Gilnockie. We’ll be needing a show of force when we go confronting Rab. And hard evidence, more than all this supposition, sensible as it is.”
“More than any statement I could be making, eh?” Colin asked.
No one answered. Alasdair reached for his phone. “The crime scene reports, Thomson. What have you got there?”
Thomson was staring bleakly off into the distance, probably watching a turret of his childhood castle subside into the sea—how often had Nancy given him and the other village lads cookies . . . Jerked back to the present, he flipped open the folder. “Aye. The reports. What footprints we’ve got aren’t at all definitive, save there are muckle ones of large boots, and Rab’s are the largest.”
“His job is walking around the estate,” Jean reminded him.
“Aye, but when the boffins went comparing prints to boots, Rab’s were the only ones that were clean. Everyone else’s had some muck in the treads, but not his.”
“Nancy’s cleaned them, then,” Diana said. “She had ample time to clean them.”
“That’s all well and good, but it’s still no more than circumstantial.” Alasdair punched buttons on the phone. Thomson considered another page of the report. Diana wilted against Colin’s shoulder and no doubt considered the ramifications, Dunasheen left without any staff at all, for one.
Jean remembered Rab standing beside Greg’s body, saying, “No good will come of that.” No wonder he’d spoken with such conviction, and resentment as well, with Greg’s blood staining his boots. But then, she, Alasdair, and Thomson might have traces of Greg’s blood on their footwear. If Nancy had just left well enough alone Rab could have claimed that he, too, had picked up blood droplets when he came to move the body. And the same would go for droplets on his . . .
“Raincoat,” Jean said. “Rab was wearing a raincoat and gloves when he left the pub, right?”
“Right,” said Thomson.
“And he was wearing his raincoat when you saw him, Colin?”
“Right,” Colin said.
“But when he came down to the beach with Irvine, he wasn’t wearing a raincoat. He left it at the house so Nancy could clean it off, too. And he wasn’t wearing gloves, either. He dumped them somewhere.”
“Patrick,” Alasdair said into the phone. “We’re needing you at Dunasheen soon as may be—the reports, Thomson, aye, reinforcements—you’re on your way, then? Good.”
Just below the crisp notes of Alasdair’s voice, Jean heard something else, a rattle of bones in the wardrobe of her mind, or the clatter of billiard balls across it—traditionally billiard balls were bone-ivory . . . She focused on a Christmas card hanging between Colin and Diana, one depicting a traditional robin-redbreast. And her mouth went dry.
Last night, Dakota Krum had been standing on the other side of the Christmas tree, just beyond a robin ornament, while Jean and Alasdair discussed Pritchard and the business card. Dakota had asked about it. Ever since then, the child had been looking at them as though trying to make up her mind to say something. As though deciding whether to crawl out once again on the limb of witness, when her first foray out there had left her hanging on by her fingernails.
“Sanjay,” Jean said, hearing her own voice go sharp. “Rab was in the pub Wednesday afternoon at the same time as the Krums?”
“Aye. Well, the mother and the father were coming and going, but the lass was sitting there with her book.”
“She dropped her bookmark or something and Rab picked it up as he was leaving. Or did he drop a scrap of paper, and she picked it up?”
Thomson frowned. “Maybe it was the other way round, aye, Rab dropping a bittie white scrap from his pocket as he went pulling out his gloves, and her handing it to him. I didna know I was playing witness, or I’d have had a closer look.”
Focus, woman, focus! Jean said slowly, meticulously, “What if it was Greg’s business card that fell from Rab’s pocket, just as it did again, later on, in the parking a
rea? What if Dakota saw it? Gilnockie asked her parents about the card, not her. Last night, though, she asked Alasdair and me about it.”
Every eye around the table, from Thomson’s dark brown through Alasdair’s, Colin’s, and Diana’s shades and temperatures of blue, snapped toward Jean and widened.
“Rab does not know the results of the tests on the boots,” said Alasdair. “He does not know that we’ve found the truth of his and Nancy’s embezzling, or that we’ve found Colin, come to that, and that Colin saw the murder. He’s likely thinking the only evidence we have against him is his having that card in his pocket—when he’s made a formal statement he knew nothing about it.”
Horror oozed like cold jelly down Jean’s back. “In other words, what if Rab thinks Dakota’s testimony is the only thing that can put him in jail?”
“Who’d go harming a child?” asked Colin.
“A man,” Alasdair answered, “who’s already killed.”
After a long moment in which the words fibrillated above the table, Diana ventured, “Her mum and dad have never left her alone.”
“Yeah, when she wanted to walk in the garden they asked me to go with her.” Jean’s horror ebbed on a long breath. It’s all right . . .
The phone, still in Alasdair’s hand, rang. He jabbed at it. “Fergie?”
Fergie’s voice emanated from the tiny speaker, whetted by agitation. “The dogs, they’ve found a pair of bloody gloves just outside the courtyard—Alasdair, what if they broke loose from Diana on Wednesday because they, well, animals have ESP, you know—they sensed the murder, and they scented the killer’s gloves and found them and brought them back here.” He gulped. “Alasdair, they’re Rab Finlay’s gloves, fleece-lined leather, Nancy’s brother sent them.”
“Fergie,” Alasdair demanded. “Where’s the lass, Dakota?”
“Odd you should ask. Her parents went upstairs and she was sitting here in the library—I saw her not half an hour ago—but she’s not here now. I don’t know where she’s gone.”
Jean’s horror came roaring back like a tsunami, swamping her every sense. Dakota!
Alasdair was on his feet, waving the others toward the door. She stumbled after him, then spun around and threw her twenty-pound note back down onto the table.
The Blue Hackle Page 32