“I know it’s none of my business,” Elizabeth murmured. “It was pretty obvious that you knew her back in Scotland, and I thought you might still be in love with her.”
The rest of her carefully planned speech might have rivaled Sydney Carton’s address from the guillotine, but she didn’t get to deliver it. It would have spoiled the emotional content of the scene, what with Cameron sitting on the ground laughing. Elizabeth was confused. There is something here that I’m missing, she told herself. It wasn’t the kind of laughing that one associates with guilt or embarrassment. He was laughing just as if she had said something incredibly stupid.
“I suppose it’s all over now as far as you’re concerned, but I’m not sure about her. She probably should have someone she likes with her right now. Oh, maybe you should call the British embassy. After all, she is the niece of the Duke of Rothesay, and perhaps they’d send someone to advise her.”
Cameron, still grinning, looked up at her. “What did you say?”
“That the British embassy might send someone-”
“No. Before that. She’s what?”
“I don’t know what her title is. Walter just says that she’s the niece of the Duke of Rothesay. He’s been bragging about it all weekend. Of course, you’d know, wouldn’t you? What is the correct thing to call her?”
His eyes narrowed. “I think impostor would just about cover it,” he said evenly.
“What?”
“Everyone kept telling me she had a title, and I thought she was claiming to be a cousin of a life-peer. That was just barely possible. She wouldn’t have a title, of course, but I put it down to American generalization. I wouldn’t have thought she could get anyone to fall for this rubbish, though.”
“What rubbish?”
“Do you know who the Duke of Rothesay is?”
Elizabeth shook her head.
“It’s the Scottish title for the Prince of Wales. In other words, the present Bonnie Prince Charlie.”
“Walter must have got it wrong, then. Maybe it’s an earl with a similar title.”
Cameron patted the grass beside him. “Sit down. We’re going to talk about this long-lost love of mine.” When Elizabeth had settled beside him, being careful not to get too close-she still wasn’t sure about all of it-Cameron said, “All right. Granted that Heather and I are both Scottish. But do you notice any differences between us?”
Discarding all the time-wasting smart answers, Elizabeth said, “Well, her accent. And you don’t seem to use the same words much.”
“Very good, ma’am. What about her accent?”
“It’s so cute. Yours sounds sort of BBC, but hers is really Scottish.”
“Bloody hell!” muttered Cameron, shaking his head. “I see how she’s pulled it off then.” He sighed. “Heather’s accent, my dear, is perfectly normal if you happen to be from the Gorbals. That’s the slum area of Glasgow.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure! And I let her know it, too, when we were at that party of theirs. I suppose that was why she went out of her way to be insulting.”
Elizabeth tried to remember the gibberish they’d been talking at the party. “Something about a Ming bird,” she said at last. “I remember thinking about Chinese art.”
Cameron sighed. “She said the bobcat stank. A ming is a bad smell.” He paused, thinking how to word the next bit. “And a bird is a girl.”
Elizabeth scowled. “Why that… What else did she say?”
“Let’s see… Right after she made that remark, I decided to test her ladyship. So I said-”
“What was that Bella… something?”
“Oh, that. I was talking about schools. She claimed to have gone to Park, which is an exclusive girls’ school in Glasgow, and I knew that was rubbish. So I said, Bellahouston.”
“What’s that?”
“A public park. The only park she could get into, I meant.”
“You also asked her about a farm, didn’t you?”
“A farm? Oh, I must have asked, did she come from a dear green place.”
“Isn’t that a farm?”
“No. In Gaelic the word for dear green place is Glasgow.” Elizabeth brightened. “You know Gaelic?”
“About a dozen words.”
So Lachlan had been right about that. “She’s been calling you a Sloane Ranger, whatever that is.”
“Yes. I think you have another word for it in America. Preppy?”
“How would she know that?”
Cameron smiled. “Can you spot American ones?”
“Of course! I see what you mean. You spotted her by her accent and vocabulary, and she knew you for the same reasons.” She looked suspicious. “But you must have known her before, because you had pet names for each other.”
“We did? What?”
Elizabeth was never going to forget those. “Jimmy and Senga,” she said promptly.
He laughed. “Do you have a name you call somebody when you don’t know their name?”
She thought about it. “Buddy? Like ‘Hey, Buddy, watch it!’ ”
“Exactly. We say Jimmy. And Senga is…” He hesitated.
“Is what?”
“Agnes spelled backwards. It’s really used as a name.” He smiled. “But not by the nieces of dukes.”
Elizabeth nodded slowly. “Like Ethel-May. So you knew that Heather was a phony aristocrat. Who else would know?”
“Any Scot.” Cameron shrugged. “Anyone who knew much about Scotland.”
“Lachlan Forsyth?”
“None better.”
“And the fact that the Duke of Rothesay is Prince Charles. Anybody who knew a lot about genealogy and Scottish traditions would know that.”
“I expect so. They mentioned it during the royal wedding, which is how I happened to know. Watched it on the TV at the lab.”
“What’s a baby sham?”
“What does that have to do with anything? Babycham is a drink that you might get at the pub… for a Senga.”
Elizabeth nodded slowly. “Then Colin Campbell knew.”
“Of course. I didn’t say anything about her passing herself off as a snob. It wasn’t any business of mine, and I certainly didn’t think you’d be jumping to the daft conclusions you did. Anybody could see she hated me.” He scowled. “She called me a toffee-nose”
Elizabeth kissed him on the cheek. “I think you have a beautiful nose,” she said. “And the rest of you is pretty adorable, too, but right now we have to go and find the sheriff.” She stood up and brushed the grass from her skirt.
“What?” said Cameron.
“We have a murder to solve. And once that’s out of the way, you can get back to biology.” Seeing his bewilderment, she added, “Not seals and porpoises.”
Sheriff Lightfoot MacDonald, already in a black mood at having to spell out skian dubh on umpty-million police forms, scowled at the two young people in front of him-holding hands, yet! “I ain’t no goddamn justice of the peace,” he rumbled.
“No, Sheriff,” said Elizabeth politely, letting go of Cameron’s hand. “We brought you some information about the murder.”
“We’ve solved it!” Cameron chimed in.
Lightfoot’s headache went up a notch. “One of you confessing?” he drawled.
Elizabeth and Cameron looked at each other. “Let me explain,” she said. “You help me out on the cultural points.”
Lightfoot looked at his watch and yawned.
“I guess to understand the murders, you’d have to know about Scottish-Americans,” Elizabeth began.
“We aren’t all crazy,” grumbled the descendant of Flora MacDonald.
“No,” Cameron agreed. “But most of the ones here don’t know much about Scotland in the present century.”
“They don’t even want to. They’re perfectly happy rooting around for ancestors who might have held the Bonnie Prince’s horse, or been a third cousin of someone with a title. Titles are very glamorous to America
ns. So when Heather McSkye-”
“Which couldn’t be her real name,” Cameron put in. “McSkye, indeed!”
“-When Heather claimed to be the niece of a duke, it just bowled poor Walter over.”
“So?” growled Lightfoot, hoping this was leading somewhere soon.
“So he divorced his wife and married her, which I’m practically sure he wouldn’t have done otherwise. He might have been attracted to her, but I think it would have passed otherwise. She wasn’t a very nice person.”
“She was a right bloody bitch.”
“Which brings us to another not-very-nice person,” said Elizabeth, ignoring him. “Colin Campbell. He was obsessed with Scottish traditions, and ancestry, and all the rest of it. So when he heard who Heather claimed to be, he knew she was a phony.”
“Why?” asked Lightfoot, interested.
Elizabeth explained about the Duke of Rothesay, and Heather’s real background as evidenced by her accent and manner. “Cameron knew she was a fake right away,” she said.
The sheriff looked over at Dr. Dawson. “Then how come you’re not dead, boy?”
“I think it’s because I let her know that I wasn’t interested in giving the game away,” said Cameron slowly.
“I think it’s because he hasn’t been near her since, and he hasn’t been alone all day,” said Elizabeth. “Anyway, Colin Campbell would have been delighted to make a fool of Walter in front of the whole festival. He already had a score to settle with him about that land business.”
The sheriff nodded. “I know about that. Go on.”
“He told Walter that he wanted to call a meeting about a fraud, and he meant Lachlan Forsyth and the S.R.A., but then he met Heather. I’m sure he was planning to put her in as Fraud: Part Two, and she overheard about the meeting and may have known what he planned. He let her know he was on to her.”
“How?”
“He congratulated her on having a new baby cousin. Prince Charles and Princess Diana have a new baby, of course. So that she knew that he realized who the Duke of Rothesay was.”
“So she killed him to keep the secret?”
“Yes. She had just as much access to Walter’s skian dubh as he did.”
“That’s the part that don’t make sense,” Lightfoot remarked. “If a woman kills somebody in order to keep her husband from being disillusioned with her, then why would she go and use his weapon-marked with his fingerprints-and get him arrested for the crime?”
Elizabeth thought it over. “I don’t think Heather loved Walter. She didn’t want him to divorce her, but that was for economic reasons.”
“If he was sent to prison for the crime, she would have control of all his money, wouldn’t she?” asked Cameron. “A lot of money and no husband might be preferable to having money and one you didn’t care for, especially if you were always having to worry about your lies coming out. Getting him sent away might have been a great relief for her.”
Elizabeth nodded. “I agree. I think she went to see Colin Campbell early this morning and stabbed him-before he could call that board meeting and ruin her scheme.”
“What about murder number two?”
“Another source of danger,” said Elizabeth. “Lachlan would have known she was a fake as well.”
“He’d have got it faster than I did,” said Cameron. “He knew which part of Edinburgh I came from straight after I’d met him.”
“Blackmail?” asked Lightfoot.
“Maybe,” sighed Elizabeth. “But he didn’t approach her until after Walter was arrested, did he? I don’t know. I’d like to think that he didn’t want the wrong person convicted for the murder, and that he wanted her to give herself up.”
“Blackmail,” said Cameron.
“This isn’t evidence,” Lightfoot warned them.
“Tell Walter the truth about her,” Elizabeth advised. “I’ll bet he knows that she took the skian dubh, and that she wasn’t around early this morning. You’ll have all the evidence you need.”
“You’ll give her the third degree, anyway, won’t you, Sheriff?” asked Cameron.
Lightfoot turned to Elizabeth. “Get him out of here.”
She smiled. “I bet you’ll be glad to get this case out of the way.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He was dialing his mobile telephone. “Hello, Merle? Bring Dr. Hutcheson with you out to Glencoe Park. Yeah, we got a new development. Quick as you can. Out.” The sheriff put the phone back on his belt. “Yep, I sure will be glad to finish this case. We need to get this park back to normal, too.”
“For the Civil War reenactment?”
“Right. I still got practices to schedule. And then after that, I’ll have to come back up here next weekend, because the park is being used by the SCA.”
“Is that the group that dresses up in armor and holds jousting tournaments? Those people are crazy,” sniffed the Chattan Maid of the Cat.
“I agree with you there, ma’am,” said Confederate Colonel Lightfoot MacDonald.
Elizabeth found Marge Hutcheson in the practice meadow with Somerled and the rookie ducks. The feathered troops had calmed down considerably since they realized that they were not intended to be puppy chow, and they were now happily marching through concrete pipes and up little ramps, at the border collie’s bidding.
“We may be able to do the trials again tomorrow,” Marge remarked. “These brutes are nearly manageable now.”
Elizabeth nodded. The collie seemed in perfect control again, sliding across the field like the planchette of a Ouija board. “I came to tell you that the case is solved,” she said quietly.
“Someone confessed?” asked Marge.
“No. Cameron and I figured it out.” She hesitated, wondering what effect this was going to have. Marge didn’t need more complications in her life. She hoped this wouldn’t be one. “It was Heather.”
Marge pulled a cigarette out of the pack in her pocket. “Tell me about it,” she said.
Elizabeth explained about the Duke of Rothesay, and the rest of their deductions. “The sheriff brought Walter back, and we told him the truth. He had known, of course, that she was the logical person to have taken his skian dubh.”
“Didn’t want to believe it, of course,” muttered Marge.
“He did, though,” said Elizabeth. “When they confronted her with the evidence, she confessed, but she’s trying to say that Colin attacked her, and that it was self-defense.”
“Hardly twice in one day,” said Marge dryly. “You say Walter is back?”
“Yes. I think he’s in the camper. The sheriff took Heather away. Walter says that the lawyer can take over her case, since he’s on his way down, anyway.” Elizabeth hesitated again.
“What else?”
“Well… Walter wants to see you.”
“Does he?” Marge smiled. “I expect he does. Poor Walter. He’s had a roller-coaster of a year, hasn’t he?” She brushed a lock of hair from her forehead. “I’d better go and see about him.”
“Are you sure?” asked Elizabeth.
Marge Hutcheson smiled. “Oh, yes, Elizabeth. You have to be forgiving in this world. And I think it’s best for Walter. Tell him I’ll be along when I get things packed up here.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
WHAT a happy ending, thought Elizabeth as she walked back to the festival area. The bagpipes were playing “Scotland the Brave,” and she almost felt like dancing. She was sure that Marge and Walter would get back together again, and she was glad for Marge. And as for herself-the case was over, and there was still another night and half-day of the festival to spend with Cameron. The fleeting thoughts that she spared for Heather were intended to reflect sympathy for her, that she should have resorted to murder over something that should have been so trivial; but Elizabeth was not very good at empathizing with people she disliked. She caught herself gloating, and dismissed Heather from further consideration.
Elizabeth found it easier to be sorry about Lachlan Forsyth. He had been a charming o
ld scoundrel-like Long John Silver-and she regretted his passing. She patted the pocket where she had put the note he left her. Looking toward the souvenir stall, she expected to see it covered in canvas, awaiting removal, but it was surrounded by customers, just as usual. What on earth, she thought.
When she had elbowed her way past a dozen people, Elizabeth found two clerks doing a brisk business: Jimmy and Geoffrey. They were edging around each other, making change and reaching for paper bags with the ease of long-practiced co-workers. “What are you doing in here?” Elizabeth demanded as Geoffrey went by.
“Fleecing this little plaid flock,” Geoffrey purred.
“And Cluny is right over here in his basket. He makes a great crowd-attractor, does Cluny.”
“Why are you doing this?”
Geoffrey lowered his voice. “The money we make will go toward the funeral expenses,” he said quietly. “Jimmy wants it this way.”
Elizabeth nodded. “Well, I’m glad I found you. I wanted you to know that I solved the case.” She tossed her head in satisfaction.
“Did you?”
“Yes! It was Heather. Come out of there for a minute and I’ll tell you about it.”
Geoffrey listened patiently while Elizabeth gave him a full account of the brilliance of her deductions, with a little credit to Cameron for providing all the keys to the puzzle. “It was very simple, really,” she told him. “I knew that Walter would never want Heather if he knew the truth, because he’d think she’d made a fool of him. Heather must have known that, too, of course. And there was no way to shut up Colin Campbell, short of murder. You know what a tartar he was.”
“Very interesting,” said Geoffrey politely.
Elizabeth looked up at him suspiciously. “You needn’t think I’m wrong,” she snapped. “The sheriff agreed with me, and once he got Walter back here and confronted Heather with it, she confessed.”
“You are to be commended,” said Geoffrey gently.
Elizabeth looked embarrassed. “Oh, it isn’t just that. The best part is that Marge and Walter are getting back together. At least, I’ll bet they do. She’s down in the practice meadow now, but she’s going to go and see him in a little while. I’ll bet you anything they’ll be at next year’s festival as a married couple again. I’m really happy for Marge. She’s such a wonderful person that she deserves some happiness.”
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