The Murder Hole

by Lillian Stewart Carl

  “Uncle Ambrose, is it?” This time Kirsty’s complexion reddened to a cherry tinge. “The Lodge—it was a farm cottage, by the road. He had it shifted up here and fitted out as his study. All gentlemen had studies then, didn’t they? Places they could go shutting themselves away?”

  She was still protesting too much, Jean noted. “Yes, of course they did. You’re related to the Mackintoshes?”

  “That I am, my great-grandmother was Ambrose’s sister . . .” Making a quick sidestep toward the still-open front door, an evasive maneuver if Jean had ever seen one, Kirsty called, “Hello there! Miss Fairbairn, Charles and Sophie Bouchard.”

  The Bouchards, a handsome young couple dressed like fashion models, minced their way in as though avoiding stepping in dog doo. “Bonjour,” said the woman, and the man added in French-accented English, “How do you do.”

  “Hello,” Jean said. The couple glided on up the stairs, leaning together like twining vines. Ah. Honeymooners. Emitting a sigh more pensive than reminiscent, Jean turned back to Kirsty.

  She was holding the door open, her stance so stiff she looked like a taxidermist’s sample. “Thank you, Miss Fairbairn.”

  “It’s just Jean. And thank you.” Feeling like Eve turned out of Paradise even though she’d barely begun nibbling at the apple, Jean trundled her suitcase out into the courtyard. Behind her, the front door shut with a small but solid snick.

  The key opened the Lodge’s heavy wooden door, this one with decorative iron hinges. Jean stepped through the circular vestibule and past a burgundy velvet curtain shoved to one side, where it could stay. She wouldn’t need to keep out any drafts, not this time of year.

  She had half-expected the cottage to be full of quaint and curious volumes of forgotten lore, but no, Iris had done a thorough renovation to her father’s study. The Lodge owed more to Martha Stewart than to Edgar Allan Poe. A fringed carpet softened the flagstone floor, and bright printed fabrics covered the furniture and the windows. A vase of flowers stood on a small dining table. Shelves held ranks of books and magazines, and a television and DVD player occupied a discreet corner.

  Was that a hint of pipe tobacco below the pervading flower-and-polish aroma? She wouldn’t have expected Ambrose’s years in this room to be dismissed with only bleach and paint. Whether Iris had cleaned away any negative feelings or bad vibes or whatever pop culture was calling paranormal manifestations these days, Jean couldn’t say. Not yet, anyway. When she was pulling away from the house on her way back home, then she’d say.

  She nodded approval at the cleanliness of the kitchenette and smiled at the old photos of Nessie hanging on the walls, most of them now proved to be either fakes or mistakes. Then, leaving her canvas carryall beside the table, she dragged her suitcase up a narrow flight of stairs to a short hallway. The floor creaked expressively beneath each step.

  The first of three doors was locked. A second opened into a bathroom. Through the third door she found a bedroom with a four-poster bed and a dressing table set into the bulge of the turret. The Bouchards’ loss was very much her gain, although even someone who was curiosity-impaired would wonder why a honeymooning couple had retreated to the not so private house.

  Curiosity-ridden Jean had no clever theories about the Bouchards, so she turned her inquisitiveness to Kirsty. Her—well, “aunt” was more respectful than cousin—Iris had obviously schooled her in upstairs manners, but her anxiety about Pitclachie’s downstairs issues kept breaking through. The question was, were Kristy’s issues Dempsey and his assistants, Ambrose’s dubious reputation, Iris’s activism, all of the above, or none of the above?

  Jean hoped her remark hadn’t gotten the girl into trouble, but then, if Iris had watched her interview she knew about Kirsty’s visit to the expedition. Jean indulged herself while she unpacked by speculating whether the anonymous letters had been written on a typewriter.

  She was contemplating her own renovations when she heard voices. Through the windows behind the dressing table she saw the courtyard and a good portion of the terrace lying before her like a stage set, with the five ivy-covered stories of the tower at dead center, ready for Rapunzel—or Kirsty—to appear at the topmost window and let down her hair.

  Toward the house walked a tall thin man who looked so much like a stork Jean was surprised his legs didn’t bend backwards—he had rounded shoulders, a long neck, and a sharp nose supporting thick glasses. A tow-headed little boy bounded along beside him. Behind them trudged a short, plump woman with a lank dishwater-blond ponytail and the posture of a pigeon destined for a pie.

  The boy chattered away in the pluperfect accent of a child who’s not yet watched enough television to corrupt his native dialect, which in this case was mid-class English. “. . . sonar readings. . . Nessie . . . dead brilliant . . . must I have a nap, Mummy?”

  It was Daddy who answered. “Yes you must, Elvis, if you mean to stay awake for the fireworks. It’s midsummer, won’t be dark enough for fireworks ‘til well past your bedtime.”

  “Fireworks!” Elvis’s enthusiasm made his voice leap upward an octave. Oh, for the innocent enthusiasm of a child, Jean thought. He wasn’t saddled by the knowledge that tonight’s fireworks were the equivalent of the ancient midsummer bonfires, which were as much fertility rite as celebration.

  Mother and child disappeared into the house. Father peered at the dragon knocker and scraped at it with his fingernail before following them. The red numerals on the clock radio by Jean’s bed rearranged themselves to read 4:25.

  Almost show time. She cleaned her glasses, applied lipstick, and ran a comb through her mop of naturally surly hair, which wouldn’t be achieving any Art Nouveau effects. She added a light jacket over her shirt and pants combo, signaling that she was now on duty.

  Locking the door, Jean dumped its key into her mini-backpack and checked out the exterior of the Lodge. A small skylight opened above the staircase. The window of the locked room was neatly shuttered beneath the gingerbread-carved eaves. Well, any self-respecting Gothic household needed a locked room, although this one was more likely to hold cleaning supplies than the body of Ambrose’s murdered wife. Who hadn’t necessarily been murdered.

  Jean didn’t see the harshly truncated pillar of the Pitclachie Stone rising from the stretch of lawn below the main house. It wasn’t propped up in the herbaceous border along the terrace, either. She’d look for it later. Right now, on this lovely afternoon, she was going to deny that either she or this personable house had ever known death and destruction.

  To her right lay the white-painted houses of Drumnadrochit. Before her lay Urquhart Bay, a deep scoop in the side of the loch. Boats large and small rode the slow waves, rubber dinghies darting like insects between them and the shore. On the far side of the bay, from a neck of land separating it from the main body of the loch, rose the tower and walls of Urquhart Castle, built in the days when travel down the Great Glen was by boat. Boats in the water, towers overlooking the water—surely, Jean thought, someone would have seen a large creature, one so unusual its presence would have made waves both literal and metaphorical.

  Slinging her backpack over a shoulder, she strode off down the drive. A brisk walk would not only wake up the corpuscles in her brain, she’d earn a few extra calories at dinner time. The bay and the castle disappeared behind trees as she descended to the road, but Jean never lost sight of her goal—Roger Dempsey, who like Ambrose Mackintosh, proclaimed himself a True Believer.

  Chapter Five

  Jean had to walk only a short distance back towards Inverness before she reached the road that led down to Temple Pier, two docks jutting into Urquhart Bay. She stepped aside as a van paused at the intersection, then eased itself into the traffic. Its front door wore a sign reading Omnium Technologies Organization. Dempsey’s public, apparently, leaving an audience.

  Several exclamation-pointed brochures in Jean’s press release lauded Omnium, a multi-national corporation devoted to inventing and manufacturing tools that increas
ed man’s dominion over and profit from every living thing that moved upon the earth, not to mention those things that grew from it, could be dug out of it, or swam in its waters.

  While the looking-through-walls scanner Dempsey had been touting at the conference would work just as well for a SWAT team—or so he had insisted—Jean suspected that the medical and scientific devices were his first love. Through them he could dabble in archaeology and paleontology. Omnium super sonar was finding sunken ships from Ireland to Indonesia. Their remote-scanning equipment set the standard at excavations both scientific and commercial.

  A sports car was parked by the private pier. Both a Stars and Stripes and a Union Jack waved from the stern of the clunky barge-like boat tied up there. A youthful male figure moved purposefully around canvas-shrouded bundles on the boat. A second sorted through boxes stacked on the dock. A police constable stood watch, his hands folded at parade rest and his poker face turning back and forth like a radar dish. “Good afternoon,” he said to Jean, but didn’t challenge her further.

  “Good afternoon,” she returned. So the Northern Constabulary—read, D.C.I. Cameron—was taking those letters seriously. Not that one policeman could stop a frontal attack. His presence was the equivalent of a video camera mounted behind the cash register at a convenience store. Wondering whether he was the local plod or a reinforcement from Inverness, Jean started along the pier.

  The man in the black diving suit slipped over the edge of the boat and into the water like a seal. The other, wearing a thin red and black life preserver vest, straightened up from his box and targeted Jean with beadlike eyes. “Eh! Have you got an appointment?”

  “Yes I do. I’m Jean Fairbairn from Great Scot.” She pulled a business card out of the side pocket of her bag and handed it over.

  From the water came a slightly muffled American voice. “I set it up, Jonathan. Geez, relax already. You’re as jumpy as a guy tap-dancing in a minefield.”

  Jonathan tucked the card into the pocket of his shorts without looking at it and with one last myopic glare at Jean, turned back to his box.

  Roger Dempsey ducked out of the main cabin of the boat, a small metallic object in each hand. Jean assumed they were not both cell phones. One might be a PDA and the other a GPS unit—not that she knew anything about electronics. She felt about devices such as computers and DVD players the same way she felt about a car, wanting only to turn them on and make them go. She knew even less about boats, except that they figured prominently in the large bodies of water she found compelling.

  Dempsey looked up from beneath the bill of his Omnium cap and essayed an ingratiating smile, a flash of long carnivorous teeth in his facial shrubbery. He put down his doodads, wiped his hand on his dirty and sagging jeans, and extended it toward her. “Jean! Welcome aboard!”

  “Hello, Dr. Dempsey.” His hand was as soft and damp as a sponge, but it steadied her sensible shoes across the washboard-like gangplank and onto the deck, which was rising and falling to the swell. Her stomach was more likely to react to the faint odors of bilge, fish, and gasoline than to the motion, but fortunately the wind blew the smell away.

  Dempsey was taller than she remembered, but then, she was short enough that most people seemed tall. He squeezed her hand, approximating a handshake, and let it go. “It’s just Roger. The PhD is honorary, recognition from the old alma mater for my work, they said, but we both know it was actually for my building them a state-of-the-art science lab.”

  Jean smiled appreciatively at that. “Roger. How’s it going?”

  “Great,” he returned. “Sit down, sit down.”

  A large wave, probably reflected off the tourist cruiser just putting out from the public dock down the way, slapped up against the boat. Jean dropped into a canvas chair. Roger perched on a stool surrounded by tentacles of wire, control panels, screens, and, for all Jean knew, the remnants of Skylab. He bellowed toward the cabin, “Tracy! How about some tea!”

  “A cuppa will have to do, we’ve got no biscuits at all,” returned a female voice

  “That’s okay!” Roger muted his bellow to a confidential rumble. “The first time I was in Scotland, right out of college and wet behind the ears, a waitress asked if I’d like an egg with my tea. I figured it would be a hard-boiled egg floating in the cup like those buoys in the water there, but hey, if that’s the custom of the country, go for it.”

  “And what you got was a full supper, right?”

  “Oh yeah. My wife’s from England, she’s been teasing me about that ever since we met. Which was right out of college, too. She’s done a real good job of drying out my ears.”

  He was another American soul seduced by Britain. Jean identified with that.

  “Yo, Brendan,” Roger called to the diving-suited man as he flopped back onto the boat. Consulting one of several monitors, Roger delivered instructions in electronic Esperanto.

  “Sure thing,” Brendan replied, and back over the side he went.

  So he was the “go-to guy” Roger had referred to on the phone, the assistant with the broad shoulders, square jaw, and cleft chin. If Brendan peeled off his hood, would he have a curl in the middle of his forehead, like Superman?

  Judging by his accent, the other assistant, Jonathan, was a Brit. His domed brow made his head look too heavy for his body. His arms and legs were positively spindly beside and below his padded chest. Jean told herself that he probably had a very nice personality, his belligerent greeting to the contrary.

  Carrying a coil of wire, Jonathan picked his way across the gangplank and then the deck. He leaned over the gunwale and called, “Mind you don’t mess the flex about, Sunshine. It’s not pasta.”

  “Give me a break,” Brendan’s muffled voice replied.

  “And it’s not five minutes you were asking me to take your place this evening.” Jonathan handed down the wire.

  “What? That gives you the right to insult me? You’d better be sure you don’t fall in the water. With that giant chip on your shoulder you’d sink like a rock, life-jacket or no life-jacket.” A splash like that of a sounding whale cut off Jonathan’s reply. With a quick, wary glance toward Roger, Jonathan retreated back to the dock.

  Roger ignored the static. Turning to Jean, he radiated sincerity. Either he didn’t remember her putting him in his place, or was willing to let it go. She appreciated someone capable of letting go, no matter what his ulterior motive was. “Are your assistants both electronics experts, like you?” She fished her notebook and pen out of her bag and jotted, June 20. Loch Ness. Roger Dempsey.

  “I’m no expert, just a hobbyist. Jonathan—Jonathan Paisley—he’s a geek, could hack into NORAD, I bet. Brendan Gilstrap’s a marine biology student, just got back from a tour of the Great Barrier Reef.”

  “And why are you here, searching for a legend?”

  “Because it’s there!” Roger replied, with an expansive gesture toward the loch and the hills beyond. “Even if Nessie’s not obviously there, no one can prove she doesn’t exist, just like no one can prove there’s no such thing as a UFO. Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence.”

  Absence of evidence didn’t prove a thing, but Jean gathered that was Roger’s point. “Are you into ufology as well as crypto-zoology?”

  “Hell, no. That’s just people letting their imaginations run away with them.”

  “Imagination is the explanation for most of the Nessie sightings. Wind, waves, birds, otters, deer—the loch creates illusions, especially when you’re looking for a mysterious creature.”

  “Just because people jump to conclusions, and just because there have been outright frauds, doesn’t mean the creature doesn’t exist. There’s just too much eyewitness evidence.”

  “Any policeman will tell you that eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable,” Jean stated, knowing what she was talking about. “We have photos of snow leopards in the Himalayas, but not one of Nessie, who lives over the river and through the woods from millions of people. Scientists of all str
ipes have spent decades exploring the loch, and haven’t proved any creature exists.”

  “They’ve come up with such bizarre explanations it would be easier to believe all those eyewitnesses are lying. Animals acting in ways completely atypical of their species. Logs propelled by decaying gasses. Yeah, right! There have been sightings of mysterious water beasts going back centuries, not just in Loch Ness.”

  “The sources before nineteen-thirty-three are references to references to other references,” Jean said. “By the time you track them down, they turn out to have been taken out of context or are simply wrong. This scenery has been a tourist attraction for over two hundred years. Before then the loch was a major thoroughfare. No one ever reported a creature in the water until Ambrose Mackintosh did, unless you count the story of St. Columba,”

  “And you don’t, I take it.”

  “In context it’s a typical saintly miracle tale. And if it happened at all it was in the river up near Inverness, not here in the loch.”

  Roger leaned forward. Beneath the bill of the cap his eyes danced. They were an odd color, an indeterminate gray-blue-green, as though he’d spent so many hours in sunlight reflected off water they’d bleached out. “Let me guess. You’re playing devil’s advocate.”

  Not exactly, no, but she replied mildly, “You think?”

  “I do think, yes I do,” he said with a chuckle.

  How about that? His wiry shoulders covered by the Water Horse T-shirt appeared to be one hundred percent chip-free.

  “Up to a point,” he went on, “Ambrose Mackintosh was a fine scientist, the first one to seriously research the creature. The point comes with the crap about Aleister Crowley—that makes rotting logs and stuff look reasonable. Ambrose ignores any evidence from before his own time because it violates his thesis about Crowley.”