The Burning Glass

by Lillian Stewart Carl

  “Coincidence?” Jean asked, but Alasdair wouldn’t commit himself to an answer. Setting the book aside, she picked up an accordion folder that emitted a peculiar earthy smell. Inside was tucked a sheaf of yellowed and crinkled papers, each one, she saw as she fanned them, covered with lines of ornate but faded handwriting. She turned one toward the light and read, “. . . late, late in the gloaming, Isabel came hame.”

  “Is that Gerald’s poem, then?”

  “Ciara said reading it’s like treading treacle. I’ll take her word for that, if not for everything.” Jean stacked the folder on top of the sketch book.

  “Have a look at these.” Alasdair opened another folder. “We’ve got star charts, road maps, maps of Roxburghshire, maps of Scotland. Here’s one with your Harp Line.”

  “It’s not my Harp Line,” Jean said, taking that one from his hand. The paper was scabbed with multiple erasures, the ghosts of earlier lines still showing through. “Ciara said something about the music of the harp revealing the map to where the relics are hidden.”

  “Her book is fiction, is it?”

  “Yeah, but she doesn’t intend it to be.” Jean frowned, trying to remember Ciara’s exact words. “If y’all had just held off arresting her for a few more minutes I might have had it out of her, whether she’s really got some sort of map or whether she’s just using that ‘if x is two then y is blue’ logic to assume that there is one.”

  Still expressionless, Alasdair took back the battered page of sketch paper and tucked it into the folder with the others. “Wallace might have made up the whole thing, and convinced her there was a map. Or perhaps he was thinking Gerald had hidden a map somewhere. Inside the harp? Is that why it was stolen, because Minty would never have stood for taking it apart?”

  “That must be it, it’s just a matter of who . . .” A light bulb considerably brighter than the one hanging from the ceiling went off above Jean’s head. She bounced to her knees and fixed Alasdair with a manic gaze and quivering finger. “Aha! That’s it!”

  He recoiled. “Eh?”

  “Ciara got a big advance because so many of these books”—Jean’s expansive gesture took in the entire pile—“are basically stuck together with moonshine and chewing gum, but she has proof! Or she convinced the publisher she has proof, because Wallace thought he had proof, because something Gerald said convinced him there was proof. Even if it’s a chart of Nova Scotia and Cape Cod from Henry the Navigator’s day, 1400 or so, that would be a heck of a discovery. And blazingly controversial. Not that I have a dog in that hunt, Columbus has nothing to fear from me.”

  She was hyperventilating. She plunked back down on the floor—whoa, a splash of cold, just not on the face—and caught her breath.

  “But there’s no proof, is there?” Alasdair’s nod was so firm he could have driven nails with his chin. “Anyone else would be a wee bit nervy by this time, but Ciara, well, she owns the place, she can take it apart at her leisure. If it’s meant to happen, it’ll happen, she used to say.”

  “That’s all well and good, but most people will start pushing toward what they want to happen. Like snatching the harp, which Ciara doesn’t own and couldn’t take apart at her leisure. Just think . . .” Jean was trying to think, but her thoughts were spinning around and rising and falling like carousel horses. If she could grab the gold ring—slowly, she told herself, logically. “The local people are divided into three camps. Ciara’s allies, which is a list that’s growing short, now that Wallace and Angus have been, er, erased. Maybe Helen was on that list too.”

  “It’s not a safe place to be, then, though Val’s still alive and well.”

  “In spite of the tattoo, she could actually be on the second list, the people who are gritting their teeth and going along because of the money involved. Like Minty and the Brimberrys, more or less. And then there’s Roddy Elliot, hurling his verbal thunderbolts.”

  Alasdair wiggled one of the fishing rods so that the metal bits jangled. “Did he stop by here the Saturday morning intending to search for the map amongst Wallace’s things . . . Listen to me, I’m assuming there is a map.”

  “It doesn’t matter whether there’s one or not . . .”

  “So long as folk think there is,” Alasdair concluded wearily. “Roddy could’ve had him a look at the lumber room any time since Wallace died, with no overzealous caretaker turfing him out, but he just now heard about the map. Or the book, at the least.”

  “Ciara herself told me she told Shannon about it Friday afternoon. Shannon told Zoe and Zoe told Roddy—she was staying with him Friday night.”

  “That’s why Zoe herself was sneaking about. And why Roddy scalped the inscription that same night. But what of Angus in the chapel the next night?”

  “It’s where he was standing when he went down, yeah, but why he was standing there? It could be something as simple as losing his cap or whatever when he was there earlier in the morning and going back to get it. Or maybe he was heading for the lumber room to look for the map, too.”

  “He could have looked it out at his leisure after the work began here. Or waited ’til she gave it him.” Alasdair’s lips thinned to a fissure of frustration.

  “If Angus had been with someone when the poison took effect, he might have reached a doctor, a hospital . . .” Jean didn’t need to finish her sentence. Ferniebank had claimed another life. She glanced at the trap door, half expecting to see skeletal fingers from below feeling around its edge. “So we’re back for the umpteenth time to why was Wallace standing in the pit prison when he went down. Looking for the quasi-mythical map, with his telescope lens to magnify—something? Hiding the bit of inscription? Was he reacting to that phone call? Roddy could have made the call while he was dropping off a bottle of milk at Logan’s house. He’d already had a fight with Wallace earlier the same day.”

  “Or Logan himself made the call, as a friendly warning of things getting out of hand in the community.”

  “How good a look did you take around the dungeon when you got the lens and the star?” Jean asked, crawling to her feet and taking a cautious step or two toward the trap door.

  “I had me a look round, right enough, but what was there to look for?” Not at all cautious, Alasdair outpaced her and threw back the trap. The dank, moldy breath that wafted upwards really should have included wraiths of mist. He knelt at the edge and peered downward, Jean craning over his shoulder. She could see only the top foot or so of the ladder, plunging downward into impenetrable darkness. “Wasn’t I saying on the Friday I’d not be coming in here without a flashlight? I’ll fetch it from the flat.”

  Jean took two long paces back. If Alasdair wanted her to, she’d climb down into the dungeon. And stand there with her skin crawling while he looked for whatever there was to look for . . . Her skin was crawling now, frissons of chill trickling along her arms and down the back of her neck, dragging her skin downward so she felt as though she was clothed in lead.

  Involuntarily she looked up, but she could see nothing. It was what she was hearing: light, quick steps pacing overhead, and the faintest ripple of harp strings.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Alasdair stood up, his hand on his stomach, grimacing. “Isabel, is it?”

  “Yep,” Jean told him. And, falling back on the traditional remedy for stress—no, she wasn’t running away from a ghost, not at all—she said, “It’s past six. Let’s carry that box of papers over to the flat and fix something to eat. We can do the dungeon some other time.”

  He nodded, more, she thought, out of consideration for her than because he wanted to take a break. If sheer willpower could have wrenched the entire story from either stone or paper, he would have had them babbling away by now.

  Alasdair collected the papers and The Harp Key with its sketch, lifted the box, and followed Jean past the sentry constable on the front steps, pausing only while she dragged the heavy door closed. Inside the flat, he set the box on the coffee table and sent a glance edged with envy towa
rd Dougie, who was reposing on the windowsill like a supernally calm, if furry, little Buddha. “I’ve got the ingredients for a curry, if that suits your taste.”

  “Great, I love curry.” Jean almost added thanks for cooking, then thought better of it. She also thought better of trying to help, and sat down to leaf through the documents in the box.

  Some were typed, but most were handwritten, either in the elegant cursive of a hundred years ago or a practical if cramped modern hand. Some were originals, some were copies. Just as she emitted a gaping yawn, Alasdair placed a steaming cup of tea on the table in front of her, then walked into the bedroom.

  A few moments later she heard his voice rising and falling. He returned with the Ancient Monuments book under his arm and his phone to his ear. “Thank you just the same, Sergeant Kallinikos,” he said, handed her the book, then inserted his phone into his pocket.

  No, there was no point in him asking Delaney for a report on the interviews with Ciara and Keith. Jean took a healthy swallow of the hot, sweet tea, clearing her throat of dust and mold and a lingering hint of bitterness, and turned back to the box.

  There she found pages of notes and chronologies taken from various books, what looked like the start of a biography of Gerald, and some memos on genealogy. She did not expect to find an inventory of Wallace’s papers, and was not gratified by finding one after all. Other than a few innocuous letters, Gerald’s writings were confined to the musty pages of the poem. She held a couple of them up to the light, noting that the paper was crinkled and stained, as though it had gotten damp. Well, what didn’t get damp, in this climate?

  If either Gerald or Wallace left anything explanatory, let alone incriminating, Jean told herself, Ciara has it now.

  The snick-snick of a knife and the pungent smell of sauteing onions signaled Alasdair’s progress in the kitchen. Ah, she got it—cooking was something else useful he could do. As much as she’d like to collapse onto the couch pillows, she had to hold up her side. She opened the Ancient Monuments book, this time noting not only Valerie’s name but also her husband Harry Spivey’s, and paged through it.

  The half of the book about the castle dealt with flaking stone, rotting wood, leaking slates—the renovations were little more than a desperate rearguard action against the forces of entropy. . . . Ah. There was a photo of the pit prison, layered with rubbish and dirt but far from inaccessible, if also far from the stark stone chamber of today. What had Minty said about Wallace poking about in the pit prison? Yes, Jean told herself without enthusiasm, we do need to check the place out.

  There was the photo of the skeleton she now knew was Isabel’s, as a quick check of the list of illustrations established. Each one of those cuts and slices had gone through living flesh into living bone. Each had been made by a living hand directed by a living mind, likely no more disturbed than by hewing wood. As Alasdair said, once you solve a problem by a certain method, it becomes easier and easier to use the same method, terrible though it might be.

  There was the photo of Isabel’s grave inscription, complete except for the harp, no more informative than it had been the day before. Photos of other inscribed stones included Henry Sinclair’s, which was definitely a memorial rather than a stone marking a burial, no surprise there.

  An inventory listed bits of pottery and other artifacts, many of which Jean had just seen in the museum. There was no mention of the mirror, whether as Gerald’s shaving glass or Isabel’s communications device.

  A spicy aroma wafted into her nose and mouth. She inhaled, an extra brain cell ticked over, and she realized that there was no mention in the inventory of the money chest, either, the one that Wallace had drawn not once but twice, and that was now in the museum.

  Frowning, she turned back to the photo of Isabel’s skeleton and looked at the one beside it. It showed the area of the grave just inside the collapsed corner of the coffin. No, she hadn’t imagined it—the clear imprint of something small and square lay next to the ghastly, hacked shoulder-bone. “Alasdair, that chest in Wallace’s drawings. The one in the museum. It’s not listed in the inventory, but there’s a mark of something just that size in Isabel’s grave.”

  He looked around from setting cutlery out on the table. “An oversight? Or a deliberate omission?”

  “A dig sixteen years ago wouldn’t have been recorded as punctiliously as one today, and the director of this one wasn’t known for attention to detail—which is why he got the job at such a minor site, I bet. But losing track of a broken pot is one thing, simply not mentioning a nice little chest like that is another. There has to be some significance to Wallace drawing that chest. . . .” The thought, whatever it had been, spun through her mind and vanished.

  Alasdair beckoned her to the table. “We’re thinking too hard, lass. Come and eat.”

  Dougie leaped down off the windowsill, giving Jean a view of the lengthening shadows outside, and trotted into the kitchen, tail erect, whiskers alert. Her taut facial muscles cracked into a smile as Alasdair gravely dispensed kibble and fresh water, and indulged in a stroke of Dougie’s velvet-furred head. The men in my life, she thought. They had a lot in common, not least by complicating the life she’d intended to simplify.

  Sitting down, she eyed the reddish-brown curry and rice appreciatively. Alasdair had even opened a small container of plain yogurt and prepared a salad, slices of various vegetables garnished with the green commas of watercress. After one bite of tongue-searing heat, Jean reached for the yogurt and added a generous spoonful. “Delicious. You have talents I never suspected.”

  Alasdair mashed rice and sauce onto the back of his fork. “Cooking’s no great talent. It’s simply following directions.”

  “Brad could have burned water,” Jean said, without making any comparisons that included the word “meticulous.”

  Dougie wandered over and sat down beside the table, looking upwards expectantly. “No way,” Jean told him. With a shrug of his whiskers—I didn’t want your nasty food anyway—he trotted over to the couch, where he began licking himself down.

  After few more bites that cleared her sinuses and hopefully her brain, Jean asked, “So what did you get out of Kallinikos? Is Delaney still holding Keith and Ciara?”

  “That he is, with solicitors dancing attendance. Keith’s the more helpful of the two. Seems Angus was keen on getting here to Ferniebank straightaway after the dinner, so Keith drove him to the layby and even lent him Ciara’s torch. Then he waited on the track, and waited, and waited, and when Angus never returned, found him lying next to the well, dead.”

  “That makes sense. Keith panicked, waved his flashlight around, and ran. Roddy heard his car speeding away. Poor Keith. He was probably a lot more scared of Minty than he was of Ciara, and didn’t want to be the one to report Angus dead.”

  “Keith is saying the flashlight in the well had Ciara’s prints on it because it was hers. He prodded Angus’s body, so his hands were wet, and he wiped them on the pink jacket she’d left in the car. Angus’s cap likely picked up some of Ciara’s hair in the van that morning. Keith’s not testifying against Ciara, mind, but he’s not taking a bullet for her, either.”

  Jean said, “Ciara told me she and Keith are sleeping together.”

  “So he was telling Kallinikos.” Alasdair shook his head. “Poor Keith, indeed, though like as not he was thinking he struck lucky.”

  “Where, then, was Ciara all the time Keith and Angus were here? WithVal?”

  “I’m guessing so, though all Val’s saying is that she has information about Angus.”

  “She is there in Kelso, then.”

  “Aye, but Delaney’s not interviewed her as yet.” Alasdair speared a morsel of meat.

  “And Ciara’s not talking?”

  “Oh, she’s talking, she’s just not telling Gary what he’s wanting to hear.”

  And he probably wasn’t asking what Alasdair would have asked, either. Outside someone crunched across the gravel and said, “Grand evening, eh?” />
  So it seemed—Jean saw clear burnished golden light reflected in the window glass. A car started up and the gate opened and shut. The detective must have locked up the incident room and gone on his way, either to Kelso to join in the interview-go-round or in search of sustenance more substantial than tea and biscuits.

  Alasdair was forking food into his mouth as though he was stoking a furnace rather than enjoying a meal. The curry brought some color to his face—usually very fair, it had been downright pale with anger and worry for almost twenty-four hours now. Forty-eight hours, ever since Ciara had appeared, unbidden, unwanted, but irrevocably a part of the scene.

  They must have married when he was very young, maybe even in his twenties. He’d been another creature entirely from the hard-bitten paladin Jean knew. . . . Well, of course. He and Ciara had to have been different creatures for them to get together. For them, Jean amended severely, to fall in love. “You and Ciara grew apart. That’s obvious. But how on earth did you ever get together?”

  He looked up, his startled blue glare almost knocking her back into her chair.

  She screwed her face into an apologetic grimace. “I know, it’s that annoying female habit of wanting to talk about things. Like the virtual pink elephant in the middle of our mutual space.”

  His gaze dropped back to his plate. “You’re distracting me from being closed out of the case, is that it?”

  “Well, ah . . .” She hadn’t thought of that.

  With a quick, dry laugh, he said, “We met when I pulled her back from the street in Inverness. She was photographing the Flora MacDonald monument, and almost stepped out in front of a car. I’d gone from police constable to detective the year before, but still had the instincts.”

  She’d seen a photo of Alasdair as a young constable. Ah, men in uniform!

  “That she was blethering on about Flora and the Bonnie Prince should have warned me off, but no, here was a bonny lass well up on her history and legend, one who wasn’t scairt of seeing ghosties.”