“Well then.” Leaning toward Jean conspiratorially, Ciara murmured, “You’ve read that book claiming the Holy Grail is actually Mary Magdalen and that she was buried in Rosslyn for a time.”
Jean had to crane forward to hear her over the sounds of people talking, the television announcer, billiard balls clashing like skulls, the rant of the pipes. Her nostrils filled with Ciara’s perfume, which today reminded her of incense. “I’ve read it, yes. It’s fiction. The author took stories that have been around for ages—there’ve been tales about the Templars for hundreds of years—and grafted them onto a modern thriller. . . .” She snapped her teeth together and wrote “listen” in the middle of her page.
“I’ll be setting the record straight,” stated Ciara.
Jean waited for Ciara’s definition of “straight” before she handed out compliments.
“The romantic story of Isabel and the monk and the burning-glass and all, Gerald Rutherford wrote that to cover up the real story. Which is also romance, but in the larger meaning.”
“Ah, yes. Isabel was actually Mary Stuart’s secret courier.”
“Oh, not that. That story’s a cover-up as well. Gerald had a fine time weaving that with the truth in his poem about Isabel playing the harp for Mary. Not that I’d recommend reading his poem—it’s like treading treacle. Still, it was right clever of Gerald and then Wallace, hiding the truth behind not one but two plausible stories.”
Listen.
“You’ve seen Rosslyn, I reckon. You’ve seen Ferniebank. Same style. Same masons, like as not. No surprise, then, that at Ferniebank as well as Rosslyn the arrangement of the carvings, especially those wee boxes alongside the pillars, designate vibration frequencies. Pity they’ve been damaged, but by comparing the better-preserved carvings at Rosslyn, we can extrapolate.”
We can, can we? Jean retorted silently. The vibration frequencies of Michael’s pipes were making the dust motes dance a reel. She felt her feet tapping, and had to stop herself from getting up and tapping away. But no. The debatable shore where fantasy and reality intersected was her territory, her mandate, even if sometimes it resembled quicksand.
“If you pair the patterns with musical notes, you’ll have yourself a melody,” Ciara went on. “And if you play this melody with the proper medieval instrument, the resonations will dislodge stones and reveal a secret chamber. That’s the significance of the clarsach.”
Jean opened her mouth, shut it, and said, “Has anyone actually tried doing that?”
“Gerald did do. Well, he concealed the particulars, just as he concealed Isabel’s true story. Wallace spent years working it all out, and was after completing the pattern and revealing the contents of the secret chamber when he passed on. And then the clarsach—well, we all make . . .” Ciara pressed her lush pink lips together, keeping back the rest of the sentence.
We all make mistakes? Did she take the harp to test out the hypothesis and—well, dropping it wouldn’t have dismantled it. And something as cumbersome as breaking and entering hardly seemed Ciara’s style. “The archaeologists took up the floor of the church and didn’t find any secret chambers.”
“They’d no longer be secret then, would they now? But these sorts of spiritual explorations have nothing to fear from hard science.”
Hard science being just another belief system, Jean supposed. “Is this all connected with the Harp Line that was on the map in your press release?”
Ciara beamed. “Oh, very good! You’ve got the Rose Line extending from the south of France through Rosslyn—Rosslyn, Rose Line, right? And you’ve got the Harp Line defined by the arrangement of the four border abbeys. Melrose to Dryburgh to Kelso makes your upper curve, and the line extending down to Jedburgh is the back brace.”
“And the arms of the harper form a line pointing from Rosslyn to Ferniebank.”
“So they do. Well done, Jean!”
Sarcasm was lost on Ciara, Jean told herself. “And what’s going to be exposed in this secret chamber. Hole. Thing.”
“Well now. That’s the secret of Isabel’s grave inscription. They thought they could keep us from making our discovery by removing it, didn’t they? But no.”
Jean didn’t bother asking who “they” were. There was always a “they” preventing the dissemination of truth, justice, and the way of the weird.
“That right angle in the er of Sinncler. That’s the set-square of the Templars and the Master Masons. It means et reliqua, the remains or the relics are here. And when you add in the ‘m,’ well then!” Ciara spread her hands—look at me, I can pull a rabbit out of a hat!
Minty probably had recipes for hasenpfeffer or lapin en croute. Jean, though, played along. “Well, Isabel’s remains were there, yes. But . . . Ah! That memorial stone to a Henry, maybe Henry the Navigator, that’s got the same angled er.”
“And the same wee ‘m’ as well.”
“Well, the stone’s so badly damaged, I couldn’t make that out.”
Behind Jean’s back, billiard balls clonked decisively and a player whooped. Michael’s music slowed to a pibroch, a lament. Jean recognized the piece as “Lament for the Harp Tree.” Or Key, depending on who you asked. The front door opened and Alasdair and Delaney walked in, this time with Kallinikos and W.P.C. Blackhall in attendance. They—there was a “they”—stood in a prickly knot just inside the door. Shannon approached them, exchanged a long, gratified look with Kallinikos, then pointed toward the snug . . . Jean dragged her attention back to Ciara.
“You’ve seen the burning-glass,” Ciara was saying.
“It’s actually a mirror.”
“It was Isabel’s mirror, buried in her grave with her bones. She signaled to Edward Tempest at the monastery with it, and the flashes of light attracted her murderers.”
“Edward who?”
“Edward Tempest. From one of England’s old Catholic families. He was helping Isabel save the relic from the iconoclasts, the ones who exiled Mary and later had her killed. Ironic, isn’t it, how in the sixteenth century the relic—or the word of the relic rather, in the beginning was the Word—any road, in the sixteenth century the Catholics were saving the relic from the Protestant oppressors, but one hundred and fifty years earlier, the Templars were saving the relic from the Catholic oppressors. Soon as a religion establishes itself, it turns from the true stories, doesn’t it?”
Jean felt as though her brain was shrinking away from her ears, but she kept doggedly writing.
“And the glass! The Sinclairs had it etched, very cleverly, so it looks to be no more than the oxidized backing of a mirror, with the map of North America’s coastline. The Templars brought their relics to Scotland under Robert the Bruce and his Sinclair allies, and then Henry Sinclair the Navigator took Mary’s relics away to safety. It’s plain as the nose on your face!” Ciara grinned, but the grin wasn’t expansive enough for her, and segued into a merry laugh.
Jean could only see her own nose when she crossed her eyes. “Mary’s relic? You mean the one mentioned in the letter in the museum? Mary Stuart, as distinct from Mary of Guise, her mother, who had something going with the Sinclairs at Rosslyn—they might have been lending her money. Maybe they were custodians of Templar treasure or crown jewels of Scotland, who knows?”
“Oh aye, they’re all named Mary. Ferniebank’s well is St. Mary’s well. Coincidence?”
“Sure it is. People and wells were named after popular saints . . . Oh no.” Revelation swept over her like a cooler of Gatorade over a winning coach. Jean dropped her forehead onto her hand in lieu of beating her head against the table. That’s why Minty had stumbled over the name “Mary.” That was her and maybe Angus’s problem with Ciara’s plans. Which weren’t only blasphemous, they were absolutely bonkers. “Mary’s relic. Not a relic owned by Mary, but a relic of Mary, and you don’t mean any of the sixteenth-century Marys, you mean, so help me God, Mary Magdalen.”
“Very clever!” Ciara patted Jean’s shoulder. “I knew we’d get on swimmingly
, never mind the po-faced policeman.”
Through her fingers Jean could see several po-faced policemen, Alasdair the coldest and stoniest of the lot, turning toward them.
Ciara went blithely on. “There you have it. The letter thanking the Saint Clairs for their role in hiding the relics. The burning-glass as a hint to the significance of the conspiracy. The musical notes that will reveal where the map locating the relics is hidden. The grave inscription proving that the relics were those of Mary Magdalen—she was known as the Beautiful Sinner, hence the ‘catin.’ The cenotaph of Henry Sinclair proving that he took those same relics to America. Taken all together, you have overwhelming evidence that Mary, Queen of Scots, and her allies meant to protect that secret knowledge. Where’s your bestseller now, eh?”
There was a rhetorical question for you, Jean thought, just as Detective Inspector Delaney stopped at Ciara’s shoulder.
She looked up at him with a warm smile. “Hullo, Inspector. Alasdair, Sergeant Kallinikos, please join us.”
“Ciara Macquarrie,” said Delaney, “I arrest you in connection with the murders of Wallace Rutherford and Angus Rutherford. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defense if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.”
The music stopped, the voices stopped, all motion in the room seemed to stop as Jean’s already uncertain breath escaped in a whoosh.
Chapter Twenty-six
Ciara’s smile withered into bafflement. “I beg your pardon, Inspector Delaney? Alasdair, what’s all this in aid of?”
Alasdair mumbled something beneath his breath that sounded like “stupid cow.” His eyes, Jean saw at second glance, weren’t cold as sea-ice after all, but scorched by heat.
Blackhall took Ciara’s arm and pulled her unresisting from the chair. “Is this your bag? I’ll just bring it along, then.”
Briefly Jean saw with Ciara’s eyes—her own features registering shock and awe, Alasdair smoldering, Delaney smug. And beyond, every face in the pub turned toward her, sentences hanging half-finished, glasses and forks suspended in mid-air, billiard cues held aloft. “Oh,” Ciara said, her voice suddenly very small. “Here’s me, thinking they simply passed over. But they died defending secret knowledge, just as Isabel did. Her romance is going on, and we’re playing our own parts in it.”
And that, Jean thought, her gaze glancing off Alasdair’s like a water droplet off a hot iron, that was what was wrong with romance.
Kallinikos cleared a way through the crowd, people stepping back as though from a procession of lepers ringing their bells. Stuffing her notebook into her bag next to the box with the ambiguous burning-glass—yeah, fires can really get away from you—Jean followed Alasdair and Delaney. Photographers materialized and cameras clicked. Outside, in the sudden sunlight, Logan and two other constables formed a human dam.
Two patrol cars waited at the curb. Ciara went quietly, allowing herself to be placed into the first car with Blackhall as companion.
Around the corner from the beer garden came the sandy-haired detective constable and O. Hawick. Hawick was actually grasping Keith’s arm, even though he gave the impression he was hauling Keith along by the scruff of his neck. Keith stumbled and his glasses slid down his nose. His gaze darted here and there like a mad mouse ride at a carnival and then crashed to a halt on Jean’s face. “You gotta call my firm in Glasgow, the American ambassador, whoever. I’m in deep doo-doo here.”
Jean opened her mouth, but the only sound that came out was a squeak.
“I shoulda bailed out ages ago. They’re nuts, all of them—that damn Angus, face of a horse, jawbone of an ass.”
“D.C. Linklater,” said Delaney, “did you not caution the man?”
“That I did,” Linklater replied, with a shushing gesture toward Keith.
Keith spotted Ciara’s wan but very brave face in the rear window of the car. “Okay, okay, she’s a lot of fun already, but I’m not going to jail for her.”
Linklater seized Keith’s other arm and with Hawick frog-marched him to the second car, where Kallinikos was holding the door open. “We all ate the same stuff, when Angus went green around the gills I figured he had an ulcer or something—hey!” Keith protested as the three men packed him into the car, an operation that reminded Jean of cramming Dougie into the pet carrier.
Even after Kallinikos climbed in behind Keith and shut the door, she could still hear the young man’s flat but far from soft voice, “Come on, people, this is all a really big mistake.”
“Away with you. I’ll catch you up at Kelso.” Delaney gestured and two or three more police people sorted themselves into the vehicles. “Logan, bring a car round for me.”
The police cars headed out, each trailing reporters like a honeymooner’s car dragging tin cans and old shoes.
Pushing aside the leftover gawkers, Logan marched toward a third patrol car down the street. His face, Jean saw, was set with satisfaction. And she also saw, across the way, Minty standing with her usual brittle dignity in the doorway of the museum. But even as Jean watched, her lips parted in an unusual, slow, and even sensual smile. So the interloper’s turned out to be the murderer. She’ll get her comeuppance, then. But if Jean couldn’t see Ciara breaking and entering, she certainly couldn’t see her killing.
A murmur was Alasdair and Delaney speaking fast and low, each voice overriding the other. “ . . . Roddy Elliot about the inscription,” said Alasdair.
“I know, I know,” Delaney replied.
“Shannon, Zoe, their parents . . .”
“ . . . I’m on it.”
“. . . that answerphone tape—it’s never Ciara. And the keys, have you . . .”
“We’re on it.”
“Valerie Trotter . . .”
Logan’s car pulled up. He leaned across to open the door. Alasdair stepped toward it, but Delaney cut him off. “No.”
“Gary!”
“No! Love her, hate her, makes no matter to me. You’re too damn close to her. That’s all.” One meaty hand shoving Alasdair aside, Delaney wedged himself into the car and slammed the door.
The car sped up the street, leaving Alasdair standing on the curb. The crowd eddied around him, then dispersed. Jean tried to take a deep breath but it caught like a thistle in her throat. Delaney had just thrown Alasdair off the case because of his previous marital track. Bloody hell.
A movement in the corner of her eye was Michael, the bag of his pipes beneath his elbow and the drones resting on his shoulder like a soldier sloping arms. Beside him Noel was wringing both his hands and a dishtowel. “They ate here—why weren’t the lot of them poisoned as well as Angus—no one will stop here ever again.”
“Not a bit of it. I’m thinking you’ve got a right tourist attraction here.” Michael indicated the people surging back into the pub, the door swinging as though it was the revolving variety.
So many others were swamping the garden gateway that Zoe was pressed up against the side of the wall. “Dad? We’ve got orders but Val cannot help, she’s away with Derek.”
“I’ll play again, shall I? Music having charms, savage breasts, and so forth.” Michael nudged Noel toward the influx, called over his shoulder to Jean, “I’m expecting the full account soon as possible,” and was swept away with the others.
With a feeble nod, Jean looked around. Minty had vanished and the door of the museum was shut tight. Alasdair was standing as still as the statue of some historical worthy, set up in the marketplace only to be forgotten, useful to no one but roosting pigeons. Damn Delaney. Damn Ciara—there was the jawbone of an ass, not Angus.
Again pipe music sounded from the garden, this time the bittersweet melody of “Dark Island.” Jean wished she could pick Alasdair up and carry him away to one of the Outer Hebrides. But then, he’d fight his way back here if he had to swim. She set her hand on his shoulder. She could have played his tendons like the strings of a harp. “Alasdair?
”
His hands clenched and loosened. He shut his eyes and opened them. His jaw worked. “Jean.”
“I take it the results of the toxicology tests came in?”
“Oh aye.”
The police worked fast, then, their wonders to perform. “Angus and Wallace, Delaney said. What about Helen?”
“Helen died of natural causes. Heart failure. But the men . . .” Alasdair turned his back to the street. His face was a desert island composed of nothing beyond fire and ice. “Heart failure as well, but brought on by a dirty great dose of glycoside. Scrophulariacae. Digitalis purpurea. Foxglove.”
“Foxglove,” Jean repeated. “But lots of people take digitalis as a medicine. It can work differently in the elderly. Therapeutic overdoses aren’t uncommon.”
“Wallace was taking another medication, not digitalis. Angus was not taking anything.”
“I see.”
“When I was a lad in Fort William, we believed that poking a finger into a foxglove bell would kill you. It’s common knowledge it’s a poison. It’s readily available and fast-working. Angus had his dose at the dinner here. There were bread and herbs in the vomit by the chapel wall, and Noel says he served focaccia amongst other dishes, though Angus likely got his dose in the dessert or the coffee, else he’d have dropped just there at the pub. Wallace got his dose in his dinner as well. One that someone brought to him.”
Jean asked the unavoidable question. “Why arrest Ciara?”
“Those wee stars from her earrings, the chapel, the pit prison, one actually clinging to Angus’s clothing. It’s like she was leaving a trail of breadcrumbs.”
“That doesn’t even rise to the level of circumstantial evidence.”
The Burning Glass Page 27