by Amy M. Reade
“Why didn’t you tell us this?” I asked. “We would have helped you.”
Callum snorted. “Charity for a poor relation? I couldn’t. I’d kill myself first.”
“How did you know about the painting?” Seamus asked.
“I was there the night Florian told you he’d buy it, remember? So I knew it was valuable. But I didn’t know about the map behind it. Not yet. Not only that, but I had gotten a call at the office about the painting. I was filling out requisition forms for artwork to go on the walls of an old house that the village is helping to restore, and someone called asking lots of very specific questions about the painting. They had heard it was in the Cauld Loch area and also that the local preservation office was looking for artwork. Whoever rang me up was willing to buy it from me at any price, and I was curious. So I looked it up online and recognized the picture from when I had seen it hanging in your shop.”
It must have been either Hagen or Florian, searching for the painting, who had talked to Callum on the phone.
“So why didn’t you just buy the painting?” Seamus asked.
“For three thousand pounds? I don’t have that kind of money, Seamus,” he scoffed.
“Was Florian’s death really an accident, Callum?” Seamus repeated. Callum started to cry, shaking his head slowly from side to side.
Florian’s death had been no accident.
Seamus shook his head. “What are we supposed to do now?” he asked me.
I couldn’t bear the pain I was feeling for Callum, and especially for Eilidh. What would she do when she found out her husband had killed someone? “I honestly don’t know,” I answered.
“I do,” Callum said. He pulled his mobile phone from his back pocket and dialed 9-9-9.
He was asking the officer on the other end to send someone to pick him up when Eilidh came into the house.
She stopped short in the doorway, frowning. “What’s going on here?” She looked around the room, taking in the sight of Callum’s tears, my drawn face, and Seamus’s pained expression. “What’s going on, I asked?” she repeated, more shrill this time.
“Eilidh,” I said, taking a step toward her. “I think you should have a seat.”
Callum hung up the phone. Eilidh sat down in an armchair across from him and he knelt down next to her.
“Eilidh, there’s something you need to know,” he said, then he bowed his head. “I’m so sorry, Eilidh.”
“Just tell me, please,” she pleaded. There was terror in her eyes.
“You remember the night Florian died?” he asked.
“No,” she said, her eyes widening, her hand flying to cover her mouth. “No. Tell me it wasn’t you. Tell me you didn’t kill him, Callum.”
He didn’t answer. He couldn’t. He pressed his lips together until they turned white. He closed his eyes and gulped.
“I’m so sorry, Eilidh. I did it for us. I did it so we wouldn’t have to worry about money anymore.”
“No!” she screamed, leaping to her feet. “Callum, it was an accident, right?”
“It wasn’t,” he said quietly.
“What’s going to happen now?” she screeched. “You’ll go to prison! What am I going to do without you?” She was hysterical.
“You’ll be okay,” he assured her, though I didn’t know how that could be true. How could anyone recover from such a thing?
“No I won’t!” she screamed. She started pummeling him with her fists. Instead of trying to stop her, he stood still and let her get out her aggression, her fear, and her hopelessness.
She was crying so hard I was afraid for her. The keening noises coming from her throat were horrifying and terribly sad. I wanted to hug her, to take her in my arms and make everything better, but I knew not to touch her. She had to calm down before she would be ready to accept hugs.
The next thing we knew she fainted. I rushed to her side, where Callum was already tapping her face gently, trying to bring her back to consciousness. Seamus stood over us, his face showing sadness, shock, and concern. And that’s how the police found us when they knocked on the door just a few moments later. Callum called for them to come in.
They took charge of the scene immediately. They called for an ambulance for Eilidh and handcuffed Callum, despite my assurances that he wasn’t dangerous and wasn’t going to try to flee. Callum looked at me sadly and shook his head, as if understanding they were doing their jobs. Then two officers took Callum away while a third waited with us for the ambulance.
Seamus and I accompanied Eilidh to hospital. When she awoke in the ambulance, she panicked, screaming for Callum and hitting my hand as I tried to hold hers. “Don’t touch me!” she cried.
“I’m sorry,” I murmured.
She cried harder. “I’m sorry, Sylvie. I’m so sorry. What am I going to do? How am I going to live without him?”
I didn’t know what to say, except to mumble that everything would work out all right, though I didn’t believe it myself.
The orderly in the ambulance gave Eilidh a mask and pure oxygen started to flow into her lungs. She calmed noticeably and closed her eyes, probably hoping to dream and wake up to find all of this nothing but a nightmare.
But it was real. She was given something to help her sleep soon after she reached the hospital. I stayed with her overnight while nurses watched her for signs of agitation. I think they were afraid she would wake up and try to take her own life. That’s what I feared, too, and that’s why I spent the night in her room.
In the morning she was able to speak, but she wouldn’t. She was lethargic and morose. She checked her mobile phone a hundred times, hoping, I’m sure, for a text from Callum. But none would come. I knew that. The police would have confiscated his mobile phone. Seamus arrived at hospital early in the morning. While I sipped the tea he had brought me, he sat with Eilidh and tried to explain what Callum would be experiencing as he waited to be formally charged. Knowing that seemed to bring a calm to her, though that surprised me. I expected her to be more upset.
“Do you think he’ll be able to come home?” she asked Seamus in a pitiful voice.
He shook his head. “Not if he really did what he says he did. He’ll probably go to trial. And it’s anyone’s guess what will happen after that.”
“Eilidh, was there anything to suggest that he did this?” I asked quietly.
She was silent and I held my breath, waiting for her to speak.
“I never said anything because the idea was too horrible to put into words,” she began. “But he left the house the night Florian died. I remember because I heard the sirens and I hoped he hadn’t been in an accident. He wasn’t gone long. When he came home he didn’t say much, but I have secretly wondered about it ever since. But I never saw the painting in our house, and I began to relax and think my suspicions had all been in my mind. He must have hidden it well.”
And so he had. As more information came to light about Callum’s involvement in the death of Florian McDermott, we learned that he had indeed hidden the painting in his office to keep it from Eilidh. He had yearned for a better life for the two of them, one in which Eilidh wouldn’t have to work and one in which they could afford their dream house and posh vacations.
“But I never asked for any of those things,” Eilidh insisted one night when Seamus and I were staying with her. “I would have been perfectly happy just being married to Callum for the rest of my life, worrying about money and never having enough. The money wasn’t what was important.”
Callum and I had both learned that lesson the hard way.
EPILOGUE
Callum was indeed convicted of killing Florian McDermott and is now in prison. With good behavior, he should be out within six years, or so his solicitor tells him. Seamus goes to visit him regularly, since he knows what it’s like to be in prison and how comforting it can be to see a friendly face. Since Callum is the brother Seamus never had, my husband misses the camaraderie they shared before Callum left.
E
ilidh, on the other hand, has not been able to bring herself to visit Callum yet. She was devastated following his conviction and was terrified to see him face-to-face after that. Since she’s been on her own she’s changed a lot—she’s become more pensive, but she’s also shown a surprising willingness to get out of the house and meet new people. She even took a second job, in addition to her job at our shop, to pay the bills. When she talks about Callum it’s clear that she despises what he did, and that she’s embarrassed he kept insisting he did it for her. I do wonder what the future holds for the two of them when he is eventually released.
Seamus took a three-week break from visiting Callum in the spring. At Felix’s request, he we back to London to be the first featured artist in the artist-in-residence program at the Lundenburg Gallery. I didn’t go with him because he was going to be working every minute he was in the city and wouldn’t have time to spend with me at all. Besides, business at our shop and gallery had picked up even more after Callum’s trial, and it wasn’t fair to ask Eilidh to answer questions that customers might have about the painting and the circumstances surrounding its disappearance and reappearance.
After the painting resurfaced, it was confiscated by the government and put in the custody of the National Trust for Scotland until its fate could be determined. Alice had left one heir when she fell to her death—her brother Hagen. But there were questions about his right to the ownership of the painting, the map, and anything that might be found when searchers followed the map to the place where Elizabeth had buried the gems centuries before. Hagen’s solicitor came up with an intriguing plan—Hagen would give up his rights to the painting and the map in order to avoid imprisonment. In doing so, he would also give up any possible claim he might have to the jewels, if they should be located. Hagen agreed to the plan immediately and preparations began to look for the jewels.
The search for the jewels became a story followed by all of Scotland. To the nation’s amazement and joy, when researchers from the National Trust for Scotland followed Elizabeth’s map they found the jewels from the Honours of Scotland exactly where Elizabeth originally buried them. Seamus and I were invited to be on hand when the jewels were unearthed: it was an astounding and emotional discovery. We were pleased to learn that the National Trust for Scotland would keep them on permanent display with the Honours of Scotland. As much as Seamus enjoyed the artist-in-residence program in London, and as much as we both enjoyed participating in the exciting discovery of the missing jewels from the Scottish Regalia, we couldn’t wait to get back to our peaceful day-to-day lives in our beloved Highlands. There is nothing that can compare to the breathtaking beauty of the mountains, the lochs, the forests, and the tiny villages of this rugged and pristine part of Scotland. Now, in the shadow of the mountain behind Gorse Brae, we work side by side in the studio, Seamus on his paintings and me on my photographs.
We’ve never been happier.
Author’s Note
Photo by John A. Reade, Jr.
USA Today bestselling author Amy M. Reade is also the author of the Malice series, as well as the novels Secrets of Hallstead House, The Ghosts of Peppernell Manor, and House of the Hanging Jade. A former attorney, she now writes full-time from her home in southern New Jersey, where she is also a wife, a mom of three, and a volunteer in school, church, and community groups. She loves cooking, traveling, and all things Hawaii and is currently at work on the next novel in the Malice series. Visit her on the web at www.amymreade.comoratamreade.wordpress.com.
Trading the urban pace of Edinburgh for a tiny village overlooking a breathtaking blue loch was a great move for budding photographer Sylvie Carmichael and her artist husband, Seamus—until a dangerous crime obscures the view . . .
Sylvie’s bucolic life along the heather-covered moors of the Highlands is a world away from the hectic energy of the city. But then a London buyer is killed after purchasing a long-lost Scottish masterpiece from Seamus’s gallery—and the painting vanishes. As suspicion clouds their new life, and their relationship, Sylvie’s search for answers plunges her into an unsolved mystery dating back to Cromwellian Scotland through World War I and beyond. And as she moves closer to the truth, Sylvie is targeted by a murderer who’s after a treasure within a treasure that could rewrite history . . . and her own future.
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