by M. B. Shaw
‘Am I talking too much?’ she asked suddenly, putting down her wine and taking a slow and deliberate bite of prosciutto pizza, being careful not to let any straggly bits of melted mozzarella attach themselves wantonly to her chin.
‘No. Not at all,’ Jamie assured her, refilling her glass.
But she knew she was. Jamie had started asking her questions the moment they sat down, and a lethal combination of nerves and wine seemed to have acted like some sort of Tourette’s-inducing serum on Iris’s brain. They were only halfway through the main course, and she was already borderline drunk and spewing out anecdotes about which of her past portrait subjects had been the worst lungers, like a teenage girl gossiping to her gay best friend.
‘Tell me about your work.’ She attempted to change the subject.
‘Like what? There’s nothing to tell.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Iris. ‘You must have some stories.’
Jamie pulled a face. ‘Herring aren’t really known for their wild and crazy antics.’
‘So you’re not like George Clooney in A Perfect Storm?’ Iris teased him.
‘Sadly not.’ Jamie laughed, finishing the last forkful of his vast plate of spaghetti carbonara. ‘So what’s the latest with the bodies in the bothy?’ he asked casually. ‘Or what is it the papers calling them now? The Girls in the Wood? Do they know who they were yet?’
‘I don’t know why you’re asking me,’ said Iris.
‘Ach, come on, sure you do. You’re my woman on the inside,’ said Jamie, perusing the dessert menu before beckoning the waitress over and giving his order. ‘So what’s new?’
Impulsively, she decided to confide in him about Haley’s request for her help. ‘It’s all very off the record,’ she explained as the waitress came to clear their plates. ‘I think the main thing he wants is for me to use my social media platform, such as it is, to get the word out there.’
She told him about the glass beads found at the scene, for some reason omitting the part about exactly how the police had stumbled upon that evidence.
‘I didn’t know they’d found any jewellery up there,’ said Jamie.
‘Well, exactly. Nobody does – or did,’ said Iris. ‘I posted the images on my Facebook page this afternoon. You never know, maybe someone will recognise the beads as part of a necklace they once made, or bought, or saw somebody wearing.’
‘Your Facebook page, eh?’ Jamie mused, looking at Iris in a way that made her stomach flip over. ‘I’ll have to give that a wee look.’
Raised voices near the door made both of them turn and look.
‘There’s no need to make a scene, Simon,’ a young woman was saying plaintively, as her boyfriend stood up suddenly, demanding their bill. ‘Let’s just go.’
‘We are just going,’ the boyfriend snarled. ‘D’you think I’d stay here now? D’you think I could eat another bloody bite?’
Tossing notes down on the table, he pushed his way towards the door, where an older customer had just walked in. Only now, when he turned, did Iris recognise him as the headmaster from the church fair. The man she and Jamie had beaten at the coconut shy the day they first met.
‘Isn’t that…?’ she whispered, the name escaping her.
‘John Donnelly. Aye. You’ve a good memory.’
The angry young man seemed to make a point of glaring at Donnelly, even banging into him deliberately with his shoulder as he stormed out, trailed by his unfortunate-looking girlfriend. Iris watched the interaction closely and with interest. Was John Donnelly’s arrival the reason that the young man had left? Moments later, the headmaster picked up his own lonely bag of takeout and also left, and the normal hum of conversation resumed.
‘How well do you know him?’ Iris asked Jamie, a connection beginning to form in the back of her mind.
Jamie shrugged. ‘He was my headmaster. I see him around. I like him. Why?’
‘It’s probably nothing,’ said Iris. ‘It’s just that he seems to rub a lot of people up the wrong way.’
‘Does he?’ Jamie frowned.
‘Well, there was obviously something going on just now, between him and that fellow,’ said Iris.
‘Was there?’ Jamie’s frown deepened. He wasn’t angry, just surprised.
‘Definitely,’ Iris insisted. ‘And the last time I saw him, as I was leaving the fair, I remember he was arguing heatedly then too, with Angus Brae. I’d forgotten all about it till now.’
‘John and Angus?’ repeated Jamie. ‘Are you sure about that?’
‘Quite sure,’ said Iris. ‘Donnelly was accusing Angus of threatening him about something. And Angus did seem threatening at the time, I remember it distinctly. Which is odd, because every other time I’ve seen Angus, he’s always been so gentle and calm, not aggressive at all.’
‘Well,’ said Jamie, beaming with childish delight as a large, steaming bowl of treacle tart was set down in front of him, and apparently forgetting all about John Donnelly. ‘Angus has always been a bit of an odd bod, if you ask me.’
‘I didn’t know you knew him,’ said Iris.
‘Everyone knows everyone in Pitfeldy,’ observed Jamie, digging into his pudding with glee.
‘Do you know him well?’
‘Well enough. We were at school together, all the way through our Nationals.’
‘What happened after that?’ asked Iris.
‘Angus stayed on for his Highers,’ said Jamie. ‘He’s always been really bright.’
‘And you didn’t?’
‘Me?’ He looked at her, astonished. ‘No way. That was never on the cards for me. I left to go on the boats.’
Iris paused for a moment to take this in. Was it weird that she, an Oxford graduate in her forties, was being taken out to dinner by a thirty-something fisherman who’d left school after his Nationals?
Yes, surely, was the answer to that. And yet it didn’t feel weird. In fact, it felt weirdly normal.
‘What was Angus like at school?’ she asked, curious suddenly about this previously unknown connection.
Jamie thought about it. ‘Quiet. He was quiet.’
‘Unpopular?’ Iris tried to read between the lines.
‘Not exactly. He wasn’t disliked, but he was a loner. “Gentle and calm”, like you said, I suppose. Arty. We all thought he was gay.’
‘Really?’ Iris looked up. ‘But isn’t he with that girl?’
‘Hannah, aye. He is now, so who knows,’ admitted Jamie. ‘Maybe we were wrong.’
Iris digested this. ‘And John Donnelly – is he gay?’
‘As a maypole,’ Jamie confirmed cheerfully. ‘But he’s also a really good guy, whatever you’ve heard to the contrary. Kind, upstanding, super-moral. I’ll eat my hat if anything ever went on between him and Angus sexually, if that’s what you’re driving at.’
Iris wasn’t sure what she was driving at. Other than the fact that there was bad blood between Angus Brae and his old headmaster. She knew she hadn’t misremembered what had happened at the fair. And that it must have come from somewhere.
‘John Donnelly could no more shag one of his pupils than fly to the moon,’ said Jamie, reading her mind. ‘He’s like the Sam Eagle of Pitfeldy.’
‘I’m amazed you know who Sam Eagle is,’ observed Iris, watching Jamie dispatch the last spoonful of tart in record time. He might be laid-back in all other ways, but he certainly ate like a man in a hurry.
‘I’m not a total philistine, you know,’ he said, reaching across the table and grabbing both Iris’s hands in his without even a flicker of hesitation. Whatever else he lacked, it wasn’t confidence. ‘I might not know about Shakespeare or classical music, but I’ve heard of the bloody Muppets.’
* * *
Jamie walked Iris home, slipping one long arm easily around her shoulders as they strolled through Pitfeldy’s dark streets, still slick with rain from the afternoon’s downpour. Iris leaned into him, happy, saying little as her mind whirred, flitting between thoughts of Angus Brae
and John Donnelly, and a mental image of those blueglass beads, hanging around the neck of a smiling young woman. A young woman Iris was starting to feel increasingly close to, but whose face she still couldn’t see.
Who are you?
‘What was that now?’ Jamie looked down at her with a puzzled look, removing his arm. They’d arrived at Murray House, and Iris realised she must have spoken aloud.
‘Nothing. Sorry,’ she blabbered. ‘I was miles away.’
‘I noticed.’
He said it kindly. Unusually for a young person, Jamie seemed to be perfectly comfortable with silence. Yet another sign of his self-confidence, Iris reflected, his happiness in his own skin.
‘Thank you for a lovely dinner.’
She stood on the doorstep, her raincoat belted tightly around her, swaying slightly.
‘My pleasure.’
He took a step towards her, stopping with his face just inches from hers. With Iris standing up on the step, and Jamie in the street, their eyes and lips were level. Instinctively, Iris closed her eyes, waiting for the kiss. But when it came it was chaste and brief, little more than a brush against her cheek.
‘Goodnight.’
‘Goodnight.’
Iris’s eyes snapped open. Hiding her blushes in the darkness, she watched him turn and walk away.
Chapter Fourteen
Iris felt a small thrill as she crunched her way across the gravel towards the castle. Tonight’s Halloween party had been hotly awaited in the village for the past three weeks, with even the most ardent Kathy-haters excited by the prospect of a night of dancing, costumes and, most importantly, a free bar, all at Baron Pitfeldy’s expense. God knew there was usually precious little to do in rural Scotland in late October, and the added excitement of a double murder provided an additional frisson to the general spookiness.
Iris saw at once that Kathy had made a titanic effort. Even before you got inside the castle, you walked down a driveway lined with grinning, candlelit pumpkins – Jack-o’-lanterns as the Americans called them – some elaborately carved to look like bats or ghouls or witches’ cats. The weather had been kind, offering up a rain- and cloud-free night where you could see the stars, as well as your own breath in the crisp, cold air. On either side of the castle doors, thrown open to welcome revellers, two enormous flame torches had been lit and chained to the walls, and all sorts of delicious smells wafted out on a warm cloud from the kitchens. Savoury scents of onion and garlic and fresh-baked bread battled it out with sweeter rivals like cinnamon, apple and sugary clove, heavy-baked treats to help soak up the (free-flowing) whisky. Iris could feel her mouth start to water, and her body start to sway to the fiddle music coming from somewhere deep in the recesses of the house, only partially audible over the low, humming throb of conversation. A lot of people were obviously here already, and it was only eight o’clock.
Good, Iris thought. Kathy needed a win, and she deserved one. After the whole debacle with the church fair back in August, refusing to hold it in the castle grounds, she’d lost what small modicum of support she’d ever had in the village. And for all her protestations that she didn’t care what Pitfeldy folk thought of her, Iris knew full well that she did. Once she married Jock and became Lady Pitfeldy, Kathy would need the locals’ acceptance. Especially if, one day, she wanted to make good on her plans to open the castle to the public and run it as some sort of going concern. The fact that so many villagers had turned up tonight was definitely a good sign, and in costume, too, really getting into the spirit of things. Iris saw Frankenstein’s monsters, Disney princesses, latex-masked politicians and a solid smattering of kilted Bravehearts all rubbing shoulders happily. For all the mutterings she’d heard locally, about Halloween being an American affectation and Kathy having ‘turned Jock’s head’, it seemed to Iris that an effort had been made on both sides.
She herself felt slightly self-conscious in her home-made Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz outfit, complete with short gingham dress, ruby slippers, cape and wicker basket, with a little toy dog inside. Her hair wasn’t long enough for pigtails so she’d gone for drawn-on freckles and a bow, all of which she’d been thoroughly pleased with yesterday, but which she now worried looked a bit Schoolgirl Porn and over the top.
‘My goodness, Iris. Don’t you look marvellous.’
A Regency fop in silk breeches, tights, a brocade jacket and elaborate wig greeted her somewhat leeringly at the door, his eyes roving appreciatively over Iris’s mostly bare legs.
‘Do I?’ Iris blushed. It took her a moment to recognise the fop as Fergus Twomey, Emma MacKinnon’s huntbore husband. She hadn’t seen Fergus since the weekend she’d arrived at Pitfeldy, and she had to admit she hadn’t missed him. ‘Well, thank you. You look pretty natty yourself.’
Fergus did his best theatrical bow as Emma bustled up beside him. Crinolined up in an ugly pink blancmange of a dress, the bodice of which thrust her huge breasts vertically upwards like two giant softballs beneath her chin, she looked as plump and ruddy-cheeked as Iris remembered.
‘Hello, Iris.’ Emma smiled thinly, eyeing Iris’s bare legs with matronly disapproval. Iris suspected that she had been filed by both the MacKinnon children as ‘Kathy’s friend’ and therefore not to be trusted. ‘You look – cold.’
‘I am a bit,’ Iris admitted cheerfully. ‘Still, I expect it’s warmer inside. Which way to the bar?’
‘The closest one’s in the library,’ said Fergus. ‘But you’ll have a job battling your way through. It’s wall-to-wall grockles, I’m afraid,’ he added in a stage whisper. ‘My future stepmother-in-law’s idea of noblesse oblige.’
‘Noblesse? Please,’ Emma sneered, sounding more like her brother Rory than Iris remembered. She wondered whether the siblings had been spending more time together recently. ‘Kathy’s more of a pleb than any of them. You should see her in there, swanning around like she owns the place in that ridiculous dress, pressing the flesh.’
In a couple of months, she will own the place, thought Iris, wondering what Kathy had chosen to wear for tonight’s event and whether it was, in fact, ridiculous, or whether Emma was just being bitchy.
‘Poor Daddy,’ Emma sighed. ‘He’s smiling away next to her, but you can tell inside he’s mortified. This entire party’s an abomination.’
Unable to stand the meanness a minute longer, Iris made her excuses and pushed through to the bar, suddenly feeling more in need of a drink than ever. She didn’t blame Emma for disliking the woman who’d bewitched her father and put the final nail in the coffin of her parents’ marriage. That was understandable. It was the ingrained snobbery that she found so horridly depressing, especially among the younger generation.
She quickly forgot about Emma and Fergus, however, distracted by the throng of guests packing the library and the drawing room and ballroom beyond. There were at least three hundred people here, not counting the waiting staff, whom Kathy had brilliantly dressed as skeletons in black jumpsuits with painted-on, glow-in-the-dark bones. Iris only knew a smattering of the guests: Jock’s family and one or two locals, although even they were hard to pick out beneath the various masks and disguises.
Emma’s and Fergus’s children were running around, both dressed as Power Rangers and having a whale of a time playing chase with village kids whom their parents would no doubt deem ‘unsuitable’, stuffing their faces with crisps and peanuts from the skull bowls Kathy had put out everywhere.
Rory stood out like a sore thumb in a suit and tie, a plain, Zorro-style mask his only concession to fancy dress or the Halloween theme. Was it vanity that made him reluctant to dress up, Iris wondered? Or snobbery, his usual, above-it-all aloofness? He certainly had plenty of both, and was fully aware of how handsome he looked, and the attention women paid him. Iris wondered if the sexy brunette standing next to him was his date, or just a colleague or friend from London. Dressed as Catwoman, the girl leaned in towards him when he spoke, visibly hanging on his every word. But Rory as good as ignored her,
continuing to regale a small group of Jock’s aristo cronies without paying her any particular attention.
Moving into the drawing room, Iris spotted the vicar, Michaela, dressed rather splendidly as Joan of Arc complete with a stake up her back. John Donnelly was there too as a paunchy Batman, chatting up some of the Pitfeldy School parents. Iris hadn’t seen Donnelly since that night at Maria’s with Jamie. Their dinner date had only been just over three weeks ago, but it felt far longer, probably because Iris hadn’t seen Jamie since, and had heard nothing from him beyond a few friendly texts. She tried not to mind. After all, they were both busy, and she was by no means sure she wanted things to go any further with Jamie anyway. She hadn’t called him either, so she could hardly complain. But on some subconscious level it rankled, enough to make her turn away from Donnelly and the unwanted memory.
Walking into the ballroom, the first person Iris saw was Brenda, the landlady from the Fisherman’s Arms, knocking back the whisky chasers with a group of girlfriends. She was dressed as Bet Lynch from Coronation Street, a tower of hairsprayed blonde curls teetering precariously over her shiny round face, and she looked spectacular. Smiling, Iris moved past her and immediately found herself confronted by a gaggle of local trawlermen. Wearing their oilskins and rubber boots, presumably playing themselves – one or two even carried nets – they were laughing loudly at one another’s jokes and availing themselves frequently of the glowing skeletons’ trays of goodies.
To Iris’s simultaneous disappointment and relief, Jamie didn’t appear to be among them. She was wondering where he was tonight when the trawlermen turned as one, like a school of fish, gawping at something at the far end of the room.
Following their gaze, Iris’s own mouth fell open, like the proverbial stunned mullet. Kathy, holding Jock’s hand, had appeared in the wide, double doorway like a vision. She looked exquisite, more beautiful than even Iris had ever seen her. In a clinging white chiffon gown that seemed glued to her spectacular body, with matching gold and diamond bracelets at her wrists, and something similar encircling her head – a wreath of some sort, from which flowed a long, gossamer-fine lace veil – she lit up the room like a firework. A red, jagged line of fake blood painted across her neck and down towards the top of her breasts was weirdly erotic; more so, although in a rather disturbing way, when Jock, dressed all in black as a horribly convincing Dracula, leaned down and pretended to plunge his fangs into the smooth white skin above her collarbone.