“What are you suggesting, Cameron?”
Jean looked around. Wait for it . . .
“Poison,” Alasdair said. “Drug overdose. Something of that nature. Murder, in other words. If the death seems ordinary, so that the M.E.’s not extending the postmortem to toxicology tests, the murderer gets clean away. Until he does it again. And again.”
Delaney shoved his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “This Wallace chap, and the woman. Had they any enemies?”
“I never met Mrs. Elliot at all, and only ever spoke with Wallace on the phone. But he was telling me then that his knees were too dodgy for him to be climbing down the ladder into the pit prison, yet that’s where Logan found him. And there’s the answerphone tape.”
“Ah, that. Where’s that now?”
“Inside a sock in the dresser.” Alasdair started to stand.
Delaney waved him down and his sergeant up. Kallinikos paced down the hall. The bedroom light came on. Drawers opened and shut. Jean tried not to think about a stranger’s hands, no matter how nicely sculpted, going through her things. The flat as sanctuary. Right.
Like a siren, the kettle began to whine and then shriek. She poured steaming water into the pot, popped the crumpets into the toaster oven, and assembled crockery and condiments.
The light in the bedroom went off and Kallinikos returned with the tape, which he inserted into the answering machine. He handed the entire unit to Delaney, holding the cord out of the way like a waiter standing ready with a napkin. Delaney pressed buttons. An electronically fuzzed voice, speaking over a sound like a brief peal of deep-throated wind chimes or like large bottles knocking together, filled the room: “. . . can be right dangerous, meddling in matters that are of no concern to you. Mind, you’re an old man and on your own. Mind what happened to Helen.”
A second voice, speaking with the bellow of the hard of hearing, said, “Get on with it, then.” The speaker hummed, a computerized voice said, “Thurs Day. August Thir Teenth. Twelve Past Ten,” and with a click the tape stopped.
“Blessed little to go on, that. The second voice, that’s your Wallace, is it?” Delaney returned the machine to Kallinikos, who placed it back on the desk, if not in the exact spot it had occupied, then no more than a centimeter away. Producing a plastic evidence bag from inside his jacket, he inserted the tape, labeled it, and tucked it away. Rather like a dog owner, Jean thought, would go around with a pocketful of plastic bags to act as pooper scoopers.
“It’s Wallace’s voice, right enough,” Alasdair said. “And the date’s the day he died.”
“And the first voice?”
“Sounds to be a man, but it’s a bad connection, likely from a mobile.”
“What of that noise in the background?”
Jean, loitering beside the kitchen table, repeated his question to herself. What was that noise in the background. . . . Oh! “That’s a clock.”
“Eh?” Delaney looked around as though he’d forgotten she was there. “What’s that?”
“The noise in the background of the tape, it sounds like a clock chiming the first four notes of the Westminster chimes. For ten-fifteen, quarter past ten, probably.” She had to say it, even with Angus now no more than an exhibit in a crime scene. “There’s a grandfather clock, a longcase clock, inside Angus and Minty Rutherford’s house. It plays the Westminster chimes. I heard it strike in the background when Keith Bell called me yesterday. Friday. Whenever it was. Of course, a lot of clocks play the Westminster chimes, including Big Ben. The sound on the tape could even have been from a television or radio.”
“Keith Bell?” asked Kallinikos.
“The architect working with Ciara Macquarrie. She’s staying in the Rutherfords’ guest suite, so it’s not surprising he called me from their house. That’s not his voice on the answerphone tape, though. He’s American, for one thing.” An acrid odor alerted Jean that the crumpets were burning. She jerked out the baking sheet and dumped them onto a plate. Tea. Milk and sugar. Marmalade. Spoons. Napkins. She hoisted the tray, only to have Kallinikos glide like Baryshnikov to her side, take it from her hands, and set it on the coffee table.
They couldn’t make her stay in the kitchen now. Jean sat down beside Alasdair, who glanced at her sidelong. She caught a glint through the arrow slits of his eyes that had to be approval. So he didn’t mind her butting in when it was him on the hot seat, did he?
She poured and passed, and for a few moments the only sounds were those of spoons rattling in cups, doors slamming outside, and the everlasting crunch of gravel underfoot, like a large animal gnawing dry bones. “Someone,” Jean said at last, a bite of crumpet catching in her throat, “has to tell Minty about Angus.”
“P.C. Logan’s volunteered himself.” Kallinikos returned his cup to the tray.
“Logan,” Jean repeated. Sour plum. One of the good guys. Thick as thieves. Again she caught Alasdair’s sideways glance, not approval this time so much as agreement.
Depositing his cup on the corner of the desk, Delaney smacked his lips and folded his hands over his waistcoat-covered stomach. “The message on the tape. Some do-gooder might have been warning Wallace he needed help.”
“By telling him that he was meddling and that meddling was dangerous?” Alasdair replied. “May be, but where’s the danger coming from, then? I’m thinking it was a threat.”
“Speaking of repetition, Cameron, did Mrs. Elliot or either of the Rutherfords have enemies?”
Alasdair put down his cup and saucer. “I’m hearing that Roddy Elliot, Helen’s husband, was not over fond of Wallace. That he blamed Wallace for Helen’s death.”
“Helen was cooking for Wallace, generally paying too much attention to him,” added Jean.
“The eternal triangle?” asked Kallinikos.
Delaney snickered. “They were quite elderly, weren’t they?”
“Age has nothing to do with romance. Relationships. Emotional attractions.” Jean did not look at Alasdair.
“Wallace was a married man?” Delaney asked.
“A widower,” replied Alasdair.
“Minty said something about Wallace’s wife,” Jean went on. “She died and Wallace retired from Kelso High School and came here. Minty implied that opening the castle and chapel to visitors was her and Angus’s way of keeping Wallace busy. She’s one of the people who said that Roddy and Wallace didn’t get along. Roddy and Helen’s granddaughter, Zoe Brimberry, said the same thing.”
Delaney opened his mouth. Alasdair put words in it. “Mind you, that’s all hearsay. Roddy himself is saying he and Wallace were mates.”
Kallinikos checked another page in his notebook. “Roddy Elliot. Ferniebank Farm. He heard a car starting up and driving away around the time you were finding the body.”
“You’ll be questioning Roddy, then,” said Alasdair.
The chair creaked as Delaney leaned forward. “I believe you’ve retired, Alasdair?”
Alasdair’s eyes narrowed. “Get off it, Gary. I’m not threatening your patch, I’m offering my expertise. Only a fool’d reject help from another professional, but you’re never a fool.”
The two men eyed each other. Kallinikos eyed them. Jean waited for one or the other to throw down a gauntlet . . . No. The armored glove of a gauntlet was already lying there, warm and fuzzy as a child’s mitten compared to the cold steel in Alasdair’s eyes.
“Who’s protecting whose patch, here?” Delaney asked at last.
Alasdair didn’t blink, but one corner of his mouth tucked itself in. “Point taken. So am I helping you with this case, now that you’re owning it is a case, or are you cutting me out?”
“Now that I’m owning it is a case,” Delaney said, with his own pucker conceding another point striking home, “I’ll not be rejecting any help.”
“Well then.” Alasdair sat back on the couch.
Jean wasn’t sure if any tension ebbed from his body, but a few motes did from hers. She’d almost expected a duel at dawn on the field of
honor, the courtyard at ten paces, with her and Kallinikos as seconds. She glanced over at the sergeant just as he looked down at his notebook, eyes concealed behind lowered lashes.
Alasdair followed her gaze toward the desk. “The items in that pasteboard box. I brought them up from the pit prison where Wallace was found dead.”
Interesting distinction, between “where Wallace died” and “where Wallace was found dead.”
Kallinikos picked up the box and tilted it toward Delaney.
“The lens,” Alasdair said, “is from his telescope. Not the sort of thing commonly used in a dungeon. The wee gold star was lying beside it.”
“I’ve seen similar stars in Ciara’s, Ms. Macquarrie’s, earrings,” Jean finished.
Delaney’s glance toward the box became a stare. “Well, well, well. Label that, Nik.”
No sooner said than done. Restoring the lid to the box, Kallinikos bagged and labeled it and then retrieved his pen, ready for his next task.
Jean was beginning to wonder if the sergeant had any siblings who could be persuaded to work for Great Scot, as a contrast to Gavin’s slapdashery behind the reception desk.
“We’ve got a chain of evidence,” Alasdair stated, his quiet voice putting a slight but unmistakable emphasis on the first-person plural. “A chain of incident, you could be saying.”
With exaggerated patience, Delaney waited for the pronouncement.
“Mrs. Elliot’s death. Wallace Rutherford’s death. The theft of the clarsach. Angus Rutherford’s disappearance. The theft of the grave inscription. And the disappearance of two drawings from here, this flat, some time today.”
“Both the clarsach and Angus have turned up, if neither in good condition,” said Delaney.
“Drawings?” Kallinikos asked.
“Two of Wallace’s. One of the archaeological dig—I found that on the bookshelf—and the other of the complete grave inscription, which we found in this book.” Jean pulled the Ancient Monuments book out from beneath the tea tray and handed it over. “Both drawings were on top of the shelf the last time I saw them.”
Kallinikos leafed through it, then gave it to Delaney, who weighed the tome in his hands. “Heavy reading, that, heh.”
“Two drawings,” said Kallinikos, making a note. “Who visited here the day?”
Alasdair got up, retrieved the book, and held it before him like a breastplate. “It was P.C. Logan who most likely took the drawings, though I didn’t think to ask him about them just now.”
“The local bobby?” Delaney asked. “Come now, Cameron, just because you’re thinking yourself too good for the police force doesn’t entitle you to go slandering those still in it. You were watching the door all afternoon, were you?”
Alasdair’s jaw shifted and his lips clamped—Jean could almost hear his teeth grinding. “No, I didn’t have my eye on the door the entire time. The place was locked up, though, and Jean was here since—when, Jean?”
“I got back about three.”
Delaney cocked his hedgerows of brows. “Who has keys?”
“Everyone, including the sheepdogs across the way.” Alasdair paced over to the window.
“Those keys need collecting.”
“Feel free,” said Alasdair, a marginally more polite response than “No kidding.”
“Is there anything else?” Kallinikos asked.
Jean could think of any number of things—speculations on sacred geometry, comments on architecture and fine cooking—but not now. Not tonight. Maybe not ever, depending on what Delaney considered evidence. Alasdair now, Alasdair never counted anything out.
He said, “Not at present, no. Here’s one of your chaps just coming up the steps.”
The door reverberated to a knock. Delaney heaved himself up from the chair. Stowing his pen and notebook, Kallinikos stood and collected the cardboard box. Alasdair set the book on the desk and opened the door.
Another be-suited and yellow-jacketed man stood in the opening. Locks of sandy hair were plastered to his forehead by what was now a misty drizzle and his cheeks were pink. “You’re needed at the scene, Inspector Delaney. They’ll be removing the body directly.”
“I’m just coming.” Delaney ambled toward the door, stopping short to confront Alasdair. “Here’s your chance to go telling me my business. Toxicology tests? Oh aye, on all three bodies as soon as may be. Incident room? Where should we set ourselves up to suit you? The dungeon?”
“There’s a lumber room just beyond the shop.” Alasdair’s inscrutable, humorless smile rose above Delaney’s bait. “Clear away the boxes and all into the castle and it’s yours.”
“And the castle itself?”
“Closed ’til further notice.”
Delaney glanced over at Jean. “Have a look round, make sure nothing else has gone missing. I’ll have my lot give the place a quick check the morn.”
Nodding, Jean did not point out that she and Alasdair weren’t hiding clues in their dirty linen. For all she knew, their linen had already been carried away by criminals unknown.
“We’ll take your formal statements the morn as well. By then the media will be after us like a pack of wolves.” Muttering to himself, Delaney left the building.
Kallinikos paused in the doorway. “You’re the Jean Fairbairn writing for Great Scot? Grand stories, one and all.” Leaving Jean gaping—the sergeant had unexpected depths, not to mention good taste—he stepped out into the mizzle and was gone.
Alasdair closed the door, locked it, and stood with his back against it, eyes closed, less expressive than the granite gravestones beside the church.
Jean thought of the murder of King James I, how a noblewoman had tried to block the door against the assassins by thrusting her own arm through the slots intended for a bar. To no avail, in the end. Keith Bell would enjoy that story. The king had hidden in the catchment area for a privy, so that his last breath had been one of slime and stink.
Inhaling a deep breath flavored with nothing nastier than charred crumpet and cold night air, Jean added Delaney’s cup to the tray and picked it up. Her bones turned to spaghetti. Not even al dente spaghetti at that, but the flabby kind poured out of the can. With a clash of crockery, she plunked the tray down on the coffee table and herself down on the couch.
Roused by the noise, Alasdair plodded to her side, pressed her shoulder briefly, then carried the tray into the kitchen and began washing the dishes—his way of reassuring her, or encouraging her, or perhaps simply distracting himself.
Jean managed to stand herself up, not without a groan that was as much mental as physical. Her brain hurt as though it had been pummeled by large mailed fists. “Dougie?” she called down the hallway. “You can come out now.”
Unimpressed by her reassurances, Dougie did not appear.
Jean fluffed the throw pillows and straightened the bookshelf, tidying the room as much as checking it over. Nothing else seemed to be gone, but then, she’d hardly inventoried the place.
Water ran and cups clinked in the kitchen. She thought of joking about what Minty had said, Wallace and Roddy going on at each other like stags in rut, and how it was Alasdair and Delaney who’d left the floor strewn with bits of antler. But not only was that a weak joke, it brought her back around to Minty, who had been so sure her husband was coming home any moment, and yet he had come back to Ciara instead. Jean asked Alasdair, “How did you meet Delaney?”
“I was obliged to ask for Lothian and Borders’ assistance in a case three or four years since. He made it plain I was on his patch and on his sufferance. We got on well enough, though. I didn’t outrank him then. I don’t outrank him now, come to that.”
“He doesn’t seem to be very, well, quick on the uptake.”
“Gary can see through a brick wall in time. Or a stone wall.” Drying his hands, Alasdair returned to the window. “I’ve made a proper dog’s dinner of my new job.”
“You’re not responsible for Angus dying on the property.”
“I’m res
ponsible for the inscription. And for the two drawings as well.”
“Yeah, but . . .” What could she say? They won’t fire you? So what? He might be thinking he’d compromised his responsibilities by designating Ferniebank as a honeymoon cottage. He might be thinking of resigning. How long before the stress fractures in his face—in his psyche—widened and crumbled and he collapsed into rubble, crushing Jean as he fell. She’d already been winged by a falling gargoyle, when she told him about the lights in the chapel.
She tried telling herself she wasn’t responsible for him, for his psyche, for any part of his anatomy physical, emotional, or symbolic. But the set of his shoulders as he stood at the window, the angle of his head, the resonance of his voice lingering in her ears—each minor aspect of his presence had combined into more than the sum of his parts.
Maybe she wasn’t collateral damage just yet. She tried, “And here we thought we’d be far from the madding crowd.”
“The madding crowd’s away for the rest of the night,” he replied, to the accompaniment of doors slamming and engines revving. “What’s the time?”
“Too late for owl set and too early for lark rise.”
That drew a scorched chuckle.
Jean picked up her laptop and the Ancient Monuments book. “I’m taking these back to the bedroom. Oh, and that bit of inscription, too.”
“I’ll bring that along presently.” He was still staring out the window, she could only assume at the constables who’d been left to watch the crime scene.
“Aren’t you coming to bed, Alasdair?”
“You’re not expecting me to sleep, are you?” he said over his shoulder.
“I never said anything about sleeping.” Her smile was about as suggestive as the teapot, and was downright wobbly at the corners, but surely he’d pick up on the message. The pressing of flesh to flesh, to close out the chill, because they still had warm, living flesh to press. Because otherwise they’d both lie awake during the bitter watches of the night. Because they were a couple now.
He turned the rest of the way around. One of his eyebrows creaked upwards. “Ah. Well then.”
“I’ll be waiting.” Jean headed down the hall, telling herself to worry about tomorrow when tomorrow arrived. Knowing that tomorrow was already breaking down the door.
The Burning Glass Page 18