The Burning Glass

by Lillian Stewart Carl

  Zoe flinched, almost throwing Ciara’s wineglass into her lap. Deftly, Ciara fielded it.

  “That will be all, Zoe,” instructed Minty. “Tell your mother luncheon in ten minutes.”

  Again plowing straight through the underbrush, Jean asked, “So y’all have the stone inscribed ac, then, the one that was in Wallace’s pocket when he died?”

  “Why yes, I do,” Minty replied, ignoring Jean’s second-person plural. “Ciara, if you’d like to donate the icj to the Stanelaw Museum, the two pieces could be fitted together. The entire inscription should have been removed to the museum long since. But that was P and S’s decision, to risk damage and even theft by leaving it in situ.”

  “The museum’s welcome to keep the pieces for the time being,” said Ciara graciously. “A shame the villains struck just now, but it was all to a higher purpose.”

  Right, Jean thought. Funny how the air seemed to be leaching from the room.

  Rebecca looked from face to face. Ciara eyed the row of photos on the mantelpiece, her auburn brows tightening. Keith inspected either his fingerprints or Ciara through his glass of water. Minty said, “Publicity. The more the fairy-tales about Ferniebank are publicized, the more likely it is to attract hooligans like that Derek Trotter. I told P.C. Logan that boy needs questioning.”

  Wondering if Minty meant “publicity” as a dig at Ciara, Jean repeated, “Fairy tales?”

  “Isabel Sinclair,” conceded Minty, “was a lady-in-waiting to Mary, Queen of Scots. She died in a fire at the castle in 1569, soon after Mary stopped there on her flight to England.”

  “A Catholic queen, fleeing to a Protestant land at a time of religious ferment,” said Ciara. “No wonder she was done to death in 1587.”

  “Her messy relationships lost her Scotland as much as her religion did do,” Minty said.

  Rebecca smiled, not mentioning that her PhD dissertation considered Mary’s role in sixteenth-century politics, including her supposed plots to overthrow her cousin Elizabeth of England—a distinct possibility, with Mary’s son James being next in line to childless Elizabeth’s throne.

  “And Isabel’s ghost has walked at Ferniebank ever since,” concluded Ciara, her smile at Minty more cheery than cheeky. “But then, there’s more to Isabel’s story than Wallace printed in the brochure. His grandfather Gerald, typical Victorian gentleman that he was, plastered sentimentality over bothersome historical truths.”

  Minty reclaimed the floor by raising her voice the merest fraction of a decibel. “In any event, our museum has a burning-glass that is said to be the one with which Isabel ignited the fatal fire.”

  “It survived the fire?” Jean asked.

  Minty smiled. “I’ve brought it here until I can consult with Alasdair about security issues at the museum. I’m sure he’ll recover from the embarrassing theft of the inscription quite quickly.”

  Jean pressed her lips together, not that she had any effective retorts, and caught Rebecca’s lifted eyebrow. They’d seen Minty, outside the museum, putting a small box into her handbag. That must have been the burning-glass. Some nerve, to regard the museum as her own private treasury.

  “I’ve got a friend who’s a dab hand at psychometry,” said Ciara. “If he’s holding an artifact, he’s sensing what happened all round it. I’ll be bringing him along in time, so’s he can have himself a go at the burning-glass. And the bits of inscription as well.”

  Minty’s alabaster complexion grew just a bit ashen at that. Rebecca’s mouth turned down in a frown, probably because she was trying not to smile. Keith chewed pensively on a fingernail.

  Feeling more breathless by the minute, Jean went on, “Thank goodness Gerald Rutherford made sketches of the complete inscription. And Wallace had some skill with a pen, didn’t he? Last night I found a drawing he did of the dig at Ferniebank. Is Angus an artist, too?”

  Again Ciara’s eyes focused on the mantelpiece, then darted in Jean’s direction. Jean met her gaze evenly. Yes, I saw you with him. Is something going on behind Minty’s back? Or does Minty really know and see all?

  Ciara looked away. If Alasdair was right about Ciara’s abilities—and he was rarely wrong, even when he was infuriating—she hadn’t caught a hint of Jean’s telepathic transmission.

  “As an artist,” Minty was saying, “my husband has a tendency to dot his t’s and cross his i’s. But then, there are very few people whose abilities live up to their self-images. Much better to bear their shortcomings without complaint. Luncheon is served. If you’ll excuse me for a moment, Zoe will show you to your places.”

  Jean and Ciara bounded to their feet. Jean’s thigh muscles twinged and she lurched into Ciara. They spun away from each other, two magnets touching negative poles. “Sorry,” said Ciara, and headed onwards, Keith in tow.

  Jean was left with an impression of softness, soft fabrics, soft pillowy flesh. A man could get lost in a body like that. It’s a jungle in there. For a moment she felt dizzy.

  Rebecca took her arm. “You’re sure you’re all right?”

  “Yes, I’m fine, thanks, I just got up too fast.” Jean plowed on toward the dining room. The table gleamed with what might have been Minty’s third-best service, painted pottery and stainless steel ranged around a vase of flowers so fresh dew clung to the petals. Rebecca sat down across from Ciara, Keith rather crammed in next to her. Jean found herself seated at the foot of the table, while Ciara had the guest of honor slot on the right hand of Minty. Inhale, Jean told herself. Exhale.

  Zoe stood bracing the door open and balancing a tray. Beyond her, Jean saw a heavyset woman, swathed in an apron reading “Cookery at the Glebe,” scowling with the effort of daubing morsels of food onto myriad small plates. As though that wasn’t enough to identify Polly, the bandaged left hand did so. Her drab hair, encased in a net, looked like mouse sausage.

  Minty reappeared, seated herself, and announced, “I’m organizing the catering for the new conference and healing center. Today we have a tasting menu of dishes. Zoe.”

  Zoe started distributing the plates as though she was bowling and trying to make the spare, then hurried back for more.

  Jean considered the array. Right now she would have done just fine with bread and water, although the mingled aromas were quite appealing. Despite its acid coating, her mouth began to water. When she saw Minty lift her fork, she followed suit. Inhale. Exhale. Prepare to swallow.

  “We have haggis wonton and plum sauce,” said Minty, “haggis tortellini with a spiked salsa verde, haggis beignets with diable sauce, haggis pakora, and haggis dumplings.”

  What Jean swallowed at first was her incredulity. Rebecca was making little hiccups, trying not to laugh. Minty wasn’t joking. Piled in artistic mounds on the plates, decorated with sauces, enclosed in pastry, was haggis in all its liverish glory.

  “And we have,” Minty went on, “a clapshot of diced root vegetables—potato, turnip, parsnip—al dente, with a sprinkling of parsley, as well as salad lettuces fresh from my garden. The water is the new select brand from the springs near Balmoral. Enjoy.”

  Considering her mood, Jean expected the food to taste like ashes. Or at least like it sounded, an unholy combination of ethnic foibles. But no. It was good. It was delicious, even. Minty had chosen well—the salad and vegetables cleared her palate between bites of richness.

  Propping himself on his forearm, Keith put his head down and ate, apparently having lived in Scotland long enough to overcome squeamishness about the national dish. Unless his body shape indicated that he simply never got a decent meal.

  Minty nibbled. Rebecca tasted and nodded. Ciara made appreciative foodie rumbles, interspersed with soliloquies about hiring therapists for massages, hypnotherapy, color readings, and the like—why, she was already getting applications—understandable, as Ferniebank had long been associated with natural healing energy.

  Jean hoped so. After centuries of feuds, raids, blackmail, kidnappings, arson, protection rackets, and outright terrorism, healing
was necessary. Healing all around.

  From the kitchen came Zoe’s voice. “. . . putting it about that she and Shan had ‘a bit of a miscommunication.’ The neck! Ciara phoned to say Shan could have the morning out, didn’t she? I knew that woman was bad news when Grandad’s Nero died the day she moved here. Poisoned, he said.”

  “That dog was near as old as you,” Polly returned, “and like to die any moment. You know your grandad, nothing ever just happens, there’s always folk plotting against him. Going on about Wallace killing Mum. The idea.”

  “It’s Ferniebank, isn’t it? Val’s saying that Isabel left a curse, and I believe her.” Zoe’s voice rose. A frantic hiss was either a teakettle or Polly warning her daughter that the walls had ears.

  Interesting, Jean thought, with another look at Ciara that this time was more of a glare. Did she tell Shannon to take the morning off because she knew she’d have Angus with her? But then, they were hardly jovial companions. And the mention of poison . . . Filing those nuggets, too, in her “something’s rotten in the state of Ferniebank” in-basket, Jean pitched Val Trotter’s curse in on top.

  Ciara’s voice rose and lightened as she careered among her enthusiasms, not muzak to Jean’s ear, but experimental music, clunking one minute, soaring the next. She spoke about the archaeology of standing buildings and conservation versus restoration. She considered aspects of cultural resource management. She expressed concern about environmental impact studies at Ferniebank—the hospice drains, for one thing, might still be teeming with every bacterium known to man, including little numbers like the Black Death.

  “You’re very quiet, Jean,” said Minty.

  “A journalist has to listen,” Jean returned with a bland smile.

  “Tell us about your work,” Rebecca asked Keith.

  He mumbled about how the wiring in the castle had probably been done by Edison himself, and how the plumbing wasn’t much better than the original latrines, then warming to his subject, said, “You know what’s cool? There’s a garderobe in one of those mural chambers off the Laigh Hall, and it’s still got a slate lid. Man, can you imagine plopping yourself down there on a cold night, a stone seat and a draft whistling up your butt from beneath. Constipation would have been a real problem, but then, the hospital was right there, and medicine back then meant bleeding you or giving you a purgative. That garden wasn’t just to look pretty, they had herbal remedies and tonics and stuff to put hair on the seigneur’s chest so he could help himself to the peasant brides.”

  Minty’s brows went ever so slightly lopsided, and with an audible gulp, Keith slumped back down. “Zoe,” instructed the lady of the house. “Dessert.”

  Zoe cleared away the dishes, then doled out not haggis with chocolate sauce, thank goodness, but a simple mousse garnished with berries, everyone’s reward for good behavior during the culinary infomercial. Jean passed on coffee. The meal had filled some of the void in her stomach, reassuring her that she was not going to lose structural integrity. No need to upset the delicate equilibrium with caffeine.

  Piling her napkin on the table, Ciara said, “Thank you, Minty. That was delicious. I’m sure our clients will relish every bite. Now I’m obliged to get on to Hawick and some po-faced detective inspector named Delaney. It being my fate. That sort of man keeps recurring in my life.” She looked at Jean.

  Jean deployed her bland smile once again, her teeth clamped together, even as she thought Delaney. That was the detective who had dismissed Alasdair’s concerns about Wallace’s death. Good. If he was coming down from Edinburgh, the theft of the inscription had raised Ferniebank above his event horizon.

  Chairs scraped. Voices muttered. Jean managed to stand up. Minty, her arms spread in a “we are the world” sweep, said, “Jean, Ciara, how good that the two of you can be so civilized.”

  Jean shared a quick glance with Ciara. They had, she estimated, a second thing in common—irritation with Minty’s noblesse oblige. But Ciara needed Minty more than Jean did, which made her sneaking around with Minty’s husband even more puzzling.

  Jean needed fresh air. She needed to move around. She needed Alasdair, on so many different levels. Right now she wasn’t going to ask herself what he needed, over and beyond to salvage his self-respect—and perhaps his reputation—by solving at least one of the accumulating Ferniebank mysteries.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The group straggled toward the door, murmuring compliments and thanks. Zoe appeared bearing Ciara’s pink pelt. Keith said to Jean, “We’ll do the interview tomorrow afternoon, okay?”

  “Oh aye,” Ciara added. “Two p.m. at the Granite Cross—most everyone’s there of a Sunday afternoon. Will your husband be playing again, Rebecca?”

  “That can be arranged,” Rebecca returned.

  “Super,” said Ciara.

  “I’ll write up what I’ve learned today and we can take it from there.” Jean retrieved her bag and the folder and made a break for the door. “Thank you, Minty, wonderful food—Rebecca, I’ll drive you back to town—Ciara, Keith.” She was on the path, across the lawn, and in the car before she stopped to breathe.

  Rebecca climbed in beside her. “So then, what did you learn today?”

  “Ciara’s not a total airhead. She’s got a good grasp of what it’s going to take to restore Ferniebank. As for playing ‘what if,’ well, I do that, too, although as Alasdair was saying, there’s a difference between stories and lies. Who was it who said you’re entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts?” Jean exited the school driveway and turned toward town just as Keith’s car exited the house driveway and turned the other way. Jean veered, he veered, and each car steadied as it went.

  Jean watched the other car dwindle in the rearview mirror, then concentrated on the road. Within moments she was pulling up in front of the Reiver’s Rest, a white-painted modern house that looked more efficiently comfortable than stylish.

  “Speaking of Alasdair,” said Rebecca, so casually Jean knew the jig was up, “would you like to do just that? Come in for tea and sympathy. You know, girl-talk. We’ll send Michael to his room, although his opinion would be worthwhile.”

  “What happened when his old girlfriend turned up at Rudesburn?” Jean countered.

  “Ah. Well. She was murdered.”

  Jean winced. “Ow. I knew y’all had been involved in a couple of murder cases—it’s like the plague, it’s going around—but . . . I’m sorry I asked.”

  “It all brought us closer together. Eventually.”

  Eventually. “Do you think being involved in murder cases has made you, well, a lot quicker to suspect crimes?”

  “You mean are we wondering about losing both Helen and Wallace in the same way, in the same place, at almost the same time? Yeah, we’ve speculated about that, but coincidences happen, and there’s no evidence anything’s wrong. Or is there?”

  Jean reminded herself that Alasdair the gambler, the scientist, liked to keep his cards face down and his formulas private. “I need to get back to Ferniebank and tell Alasdair about Angus and Ciara. Plus I overheard Zoe say that Ciara told Shannon to take the morning off, and that Derek’s mother has been telling people Isabel left a curse on the place.”

  “The thot plickens, then.” Rebecca clambered out of the car. “Keep us posted on the inscription and everything. The ‘everything’ being at your discretion, of course.”

  “Thanks,” Jean returned, with the first genuine smile that had broken her face since sometime that morning. And it was now, she noted as she drove away, almost three p.m., four and a half hours until closing time. Until she had any hope—or fear—of getting Alasdair’s undivided attention.

  The road to Ferniebank unfurled ahead. “ ‘O see ye not yon narrow road,’ ” she declaimed to the windshield, “ ‘so thick beset with thorns and briers? That is the path of righteousness, though after it but few enquires.’ Should be enquire, singular, but that doesn’t rhyme.”

  The distant hillsides were brushed with a f
aint tint of pinkish-purple heather. Autumn was just over the horizon. Even now, the occasional ray of sun was still warm, but a coolness in the breeze and an opacity to the lengthening shadows hinted of chill, dark days to come, hopefully not soon.

  There was the farm, with Roddy now leaning on the fence contemplating a herdlet of fat cows on the hill above. The two black and white lumps at his feet were the dogs Hector and Jackie, minus the patriarch Nero. Maybe the deaths of the elderly had come in threes. All of them since Ciara made her deal and moved to Glebe House, although a more unlikely angel of death Jean couldn’t imagine.

  There was the gateway in the ancient wall, and the glowering castle parapets. Jean guided the car into the courtyard much more sedately than she had guided it out, and was surprised to find the parking area almost full, with people standing around holding leaflets and candy bars. She squeezed her car in next to Alasdair’s.

  She’d barely slammed the door when he stepped out of the shop. They looked at each other, separated by five or six yards of gravel and several fathoms of outer space. His expression was pared to the minimum, stern but no longer icy. Jean hoped her own expression was a better containment field than it had been earlier. “Business is good today,” she ventured.

  “We’re picking up Rosslyn’s overflow,” Alasdair replied, “just as Ciara intends.”

  From inside the shop came a strain of harp music. The hair twitched on Jean’s neck. Then she realized she was hearing a CD, setting the scene for the visitors, and her nape slumped back down.

  “I’ve covered up the spyhole,” he went on. “I’ve reported the, ah, loss of the inscription.”

  “I saw Logan heading this way.” Jean didn’t think either of them had blinked so far. That much she would concede—she closed her burning eyes and opened them. “The tall tweedy guy who was with Ciara this morning. It was Angus. There are photos of him at Glebe House.”

  “Eh?” Alasdair’s forehead pleated into its police-inspector frown. “He came peching back up the path and hid himself in the van just as Logan arrived. What game is Ciara after playing now?”