“And you were scared of seeing ghosts?”
“Of talking about them. Here’s me, aged six, telling my teacher and classmates I’d seen soldiers from the old fort walking past the library and the ski shop. Not my finest hour.”
“Yeah. I had moments like that, too.” She chased the last morsel of sweet yellow pepper across her plate. “How long were you and Ciara together?”
“A year or so. Married for ten, mind you, but together for only the one.”
“Disillusionment must have set in pretty quickly.”
“Oh aye, that it did. You said once that fantasy was like alcohol, and some people alcoholics. That’s Ciara. And not a mote of genuine—ESP, whatever you’re calling it.”
“I see now why you have that ‘bah, humbug’ attitude about the romance of myth and all that. She sensitized you to it.”
“I’ve never had a taste for rubbish,” he stated. “Ciara’s swung a good distance to her side and I’ve swung a good distance to mine. If I’m shocked at what she’s become, I daresay she’s shocked at what I’ve become.”
Jean had had a few moments of shock herself recently. But then, getting to know Alasdair was like excavating a complex archaeological site—no matter how many layers she pared away, there was always something else to learn. “Thanks for explaining. I’d wondered. I mean, you’ve never struck me as a man who could be led by his gonads.”
“Well now, don’t discount that aspect of it entirely.” With an expression wry as a pickle, Alasdair scooted back from the table and started collecting the dishes.
Smiling, Jean headed for the sink and turned on the hot water. “It’s not fair that Brad and Ciara are doing much better than we are now.”
“Ah, but we’re the ones seeing dead folk.” Balancing their empty plates in one hand, Alasdair opened the window curtain with the other and peered out. At that instant the sunlight faded from gold to silver as the sun dropped behind the western hills.
Jean eyed the leftover curry and rice, and found a plastic container in the cabinet large enough to hold both. “Did Delaney take any of these to test for poison?”
“A few, and good luck to him, now that he knows what he’s looking for.” Alasdair set the plates down in the sink. “No worries, I only prepared the food we brought ourselves.”
“There wasn’t anything here to fix, just some salt, sugar packets, herbs. . . .” They collided reaching for the cabinet door. Jean pulled out two small glass bottles filled with desiccated greenish-brown shreds. Both were wrapped with elegant but tasteful paper labels reading, “Cookery at the Glebe,” the names of the individual herbs printed below.
“Those could do with testing as well,” said Alasdair.
Jean took off each cap and, very gingerly, sniffed. “That really is thyme. Or at least, if any of it’s foxglove, a sprinkle of it wouldn’t have been enough to kill Wallace. And this one is basil. Just like the labels say. Besides, wouldn’t it have been easier to soak the leaves? A little bit of liquid poison would go a long way.”
“It might have been prepared at the pub,” said Alasdair, taking and examining the bottles. “Roddy, for example, he might have been hanging about the kitchens all the evening long and no one would have thought a thing of it.”
“I’ll admit that Roddy seems more believable as the killer than Noel, say, but . . .”
“How’s he benefit from killing Angus? That brings us back ’round to the disadvantage of using poison.”
“You might not kill the person you intend to kill.”
“Quite right.” Alasdair set the bottles on the cabinet and turned his gaze, brighter than any glass-concentrated light, on Jean. “What if Angus wasn’t the target at all? What if Minty wasn’t the target? What if . . .”
The tinder of her mind flared. “What if the killer was after Ciara? That’s got to be it. Eliminate the troublemaker. Troublemakers, plural, first Wallace with his weird stuff and then Ciara and her even weirder stuff. The conference center and so forth would go on as planned, just on a much less embarrassing basis . . . Oh boy.” She grasped Alasdair’s arm.
“Your listing of the local camps. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Oh yeah . . .” Dougie sat up on the couch and peered with hard, amber eyes toward the hall closet. From which came the sound of footsteps, the light pad of slipper-like shoes on stone, echoing through the squint. “Do you hear footsteps?”
Alasdair whipped around, almost throwing her across the room, seizing her hand to keep her from falling. “You’re not feeling heavy?”
“No.”
“Well then,” he said with a sudden grin, each tooth flashing like a tiny dagger, “we’ve caught us a fly.”
Chapter Twenty-nine
Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly. And there was Tolkien’s giant spider Shelob, lurking in her fetid caverns. . . . But we’re the good guys, Jean told herself.
Alasdair grabbed the huge flashlight, threw the door open, and balanced on the top step as Jean, designated the chatelaine of the castle, locked up.
P.C. Freeman was standing by the gate, the fluorescent yellow of his coat dulled by shadow, his usually nimble expression dulled by, perhaps, contemplation of tea times yet to come. The door of the incident room was shut, but a light in the window indicated the presence of the second constable. The noxious yard light hadn’t come on yet, and the hills on the east side of the river gleamed the deep greens and golds of jewelry against a velvet-blue sky. Tonight the breeze held no trace of smoke, just the rich odors of earth, tree, and cow.
Alasdair stepped across the gravel with as much care as a tiger creeping toward its prey, so that the nagging little granules barely shifted beneath his feet. Jean tiptoed behind him up the steps of the castle. The front door was closed, just as they’d left it.
Freeman suddenly woke up and took a step forward. Alasdair gestured, palm outward, then touched his fingertip to his lips. With a nod of understanding, Freeman subsided, if standing alertly on the balls of his feet could be considered subsiding. If he tried any flanking movements, the gravel would sound an alarm.
Alasdair’s voice in Jean’s ear was little more than a purr. “I’ll run to the right. You cut to the left, keep Derek from the window. Here, mind the torch.”
Grasping the cold, hard barrel of the flashlight, she whispered, “Just as long as you don’t expect me to tackle him.”
“No worries. I’ll do the tackling.” Head down, shoulders coiled, Alasdair threw the door open and sprinted through the entrance chamber, deftly flicking the light switch as he charged by.
Derek was standing over the boxes in a classic deer-in-the-headlights pose. Or rat in the headlights. With his black clothing and long, narrow, white face beneath spikes of hair, he needed only whiskers and a tail to complete the illusion of a rodent caught sticky-pawed.
At the sight of the adults charging toward him, he emitted a squeak of dismay and leaped for the window. Jean zigged to the left, Derek zagged to the right, and Alasdair seized the boy’s jacket and jerked him to a stop so abruptly that a small flashlight flew from his hand and shattered on the floor.
Echoes ran away into the upper stories and dust fell from the ceiling. From the open door of the pit prison wafted the miasma of wet dog, mingling with an aura of stale sweat from Derek’s jacket. Unfazed, Alasdair transferred his grip to Derek’s upper arm and spun the boy around to face him. “Turning up again, are you, lad? What’s your excuse this time round?”
Jean crept closer, but not too close. Alasdair’s expression was so cold and fierce it made her quail, even though she knew it was an act. A very convincing act.
Derek’s knobby knees were knocking together. He stammered, “I was after seeing where the old guy—”
“Don’t go wasting my time with that flannel. Why are you here?”
Derek’s eyes rolled toward Jean. She folded her arms and assumed her best “why haven’t you done your homework?” frown. He looked back at Alasdair
.
No sympathy there. “It’s well past time for telling the truth. Why are you here?”
“You’re hurting me.”
“Talk,” said Alasdair. Perhaps the stark white of his knuckles against Derek’s jacket sleeve softened a bit, perhaps not.
“Me mum and the Macquarrie woman, they’ve been blethering about a treasure map.”
Alasdair’s glance high-fived Jean’s, then sprang back to Derek.
“They think I’m a baby, that I’ve not understood all their plots and plans, but I have done. Everything’ll be all right if they find the map. So I was after finding it for them, so maybe they’d show some respect.”
“And where is this map, then?”
“It was Gerald’s. Has to be with Wally’s stuff, don’t it?”
“Why will everything be all right if you find it?”
Derek tried a scoff, but it was thin and wan. “Ciara Crackers, she’ll give mum her money.”
Ciara Crackers? Jean repeated silently. Not that everyone else didn’t have a similar opinion of Ciara.
“How long’s your mum known Ms. Macquarrie?”
“Five, six years maybe. Wally sent her to Middlesbrough, sent her to talk to mum about Ferniebank. It’s always Ferniebank, isn’t it, arsehole of creation.”
“Your parents were here before you were born.”
“Yeh.”
“What happened at the dig?”
“I dunno, something about finding treasure, but then, they’re still looking for the treasure map—it don’t make sense anyhow.”
“Treasure?” Alasdair asked, with another lightning-fast glance at Jean.
Treasure. Well yes, Ciara’s map would bring in a lot of money, but Ciara hadn’t been at the original dig, so how . . .
“It was money, that’s all I know.” Derek sagged and Alasdair pulled him upright. “Mum’s bakery went bust. Even her posh friends couldn’t stop it going bust. And Dad did a bunk and my uncles said it was all Mum’s fault for not taking care of him proper. But Crackers, she’s helping us.”
“Posh friends?” asked Alasdair. “Other than Ms. Macquarrie?”
“Old Wally sometimes, but mostly Old Horseface, Angus. What a prat, bringing me toy trucks and the like when I’d rather have an iPod.”
Well, well, well, thought Jean. Was that where Angus kept wandering off to, to see—what? A second family? But he’d never had a first family, other than Minty.
Minty. Jean tracked the thoughts moving across Alasdair’s face. Oh yes, they were thinking the same thing. If she’d grabbed the gold ring in her carousel of thoughts, it was the plain gold one on Minty’s left hand.
A flicker of light in the entrance chamber accompanied the sound of a car, of two cars, driving into the courtyard. Derek looked around, his expression indicating that any arriving cavalry would just cause him more trouble.
“Wallace and Angus gave your mum money?” Alasdair asked.
“It was hers, she said. She said she’d earned it. She said that Flinty Minty—oh shit, oh shit.” The boy’s voice rose and broke, so that Jean thought he was going to cry.
Alasdair was unimpressed. “What about Minty?”
“I can’t.” Derek shook his head. “She’ll get me, too.”
If Alasdair had been any taller his grip would have raised the boy off the floor, Darth Vader style. “What makes you think Minty got anyone?”
Car doors slammed. Alasdair scowled. “Tell me. Now.”
“I don’t, I can’t . . .”
“You’re that interested in where Wally died, you could do with a closer look. Come along.” He dragged Derek across the floor. Toward the trap door. Toward the black square opening into the depths.
An electrical charge exploded in Jean’s stomach and shot sparks off her appendages. Her free hand flew up to her mouth. Was she supposed to play good cop and protest? Was she supposed to just stand there while Alasdair bluffed . . . It was a bluff, right? Alasdair, no!
He had the boy by both arms. At the edge of the pit. “It’s not so far down. You’re young, you’ll bounce a wee bit, maybe no more than break your legs.”
“No, please.” The boy wriggled. He was going to come right out of his jacket and tip over the edge. Jean pressed her own cry of dismay back into her mouth.
But Alasdair had Derek firmly in hand. He wasn’t going anywhere—unless Alasdair let go. “Talk. Now.”
A heavy step reverberated from the entrance.
“I saw Minty,” the boy gabbled. “Last night at the pub. A right posh bitch, me mum always called her, cold as an iron poker.”
Colder than an iron poker, Alasdair said, “Go on.”
“She was asking about the plans, and after dinner, the Yank, he rolled them out on the billiards table and everyone gathered round. And me mum, she set a tray with the coffees down on the table. Minty’s special blend coffee, has it in from Harrod’s. And Mum went back to the kitchen, and Minty, she pulled out a glass jar from that smart bag of hers, a little jar with water inside—it caught the light, I saw it, plain—she tipped it into one of the coffees and put it back in her bag.”
Derek was crying now, his breath gasping, his nose running. Alasdair didn’t move. “And?”
“Then the lot of them, they sat back down and she started handing round the coffees, but Noel, he took them away and handed them round himself—‘Can’t let you do the serving, can we?’ he said. Minty didn’t say a word, stirred her own coffee and watched Ciara, smiling like the woman on the cover of that book, like she knew something no one else did.”
Jean could hear her own breath sieving between her fingers. What gall. What nerve. What cool. Did Minty realize the poisoned coffee had gone to the wrong person? If she had, she could hardly have leaped up with a cry of “Don’t drink that!” No wonder she’d smiled to see Ciara arrested. She might have unwittingly sacrificed Angus to her cause, but she thought she’d won after all, Ciara gone and the new Ferniebank safely and tastefully under her control.
What nerve, Jean thought again, but this time she was looking at Alasdair’s face. The anemic glow of the ceiling light illuminated his brow ridges and cheekbones, carved by glaciers, and cast the rest of his features into shadow.
Delaney walked into the Laigh Hall. “What’s this, Cameron? Intimidating a witness?”
“I’m not a policeman,” Alasdair told him. “Just how could I be intimidating a witness?” He aimed the boy away from the trap door, gave him a push, and released him.
Alasdair’s eyes met Jean’s. Cold as iron, hot as an anvil, expressionless and yet teeming with expression. He was an excavation, and she’d just uncovered unexploded ordnance. She shrank away.
Kallinikos emerged from the shadows behind Delaney, notebook open, pen in hand. “Come along, lad, P.C. Freeman will make you a cuppa in the incident room.”
Derek wiped his nose on the back of his hand, his sniff ringing from the rafters. “Me mum, she’ll not be in trouble, will she?”
“Depends on how helpful she is,” answered Delaney.
“She’s on her way here,” Kallinikos added.
With a thoroughly cowed and yet furtively admiring look at Alasdair, Derek shambled from the room, to be intercepted by Freeman in the entrance chamber and escorted out the door.
Delaney was staring at Alasdair. “Minty Rutherford? You credit the lad’s testimony?”
“It’s perfectly sensible. We already knew the poison went into the coffee or dessert. Minty had everything to gain by killing Ciara, but Noel accidentally handed Angus the poisoned cup.” The color was draining from Alasdair’s face. He held out his hand toward Jean—oh, the flashlight. Numbly she placed the cylinder into his hand. No, he wasn’t shaking. He couldn’t be shaking. “Besides,” he concluded, “what’s Derek got to gain by lying?”
Jean realized she was shaking, too. Her stomach roiled as though she’d drunk coffee with foxglove liqueur. Turning her back on Alasdair, she walked over to the window, leaned against the chill ston
e of its embrasure, and gulped the evening air. Cool. Fresh. The soft, rounded hills giving up the last of the twilight into a crystalline indigo sky that faded to the east, where a full moon was rising.
“You heard the lad,” Alasdair went on. “Minty Rutherford’s your killer. Like as not she meant to get rid of Ciara the same way she got rid of Wallace, exterminating pests, more or less.”
“That’s as may be—”
“If I were you, I’d have someone making a search of the pub dustbins for that glass bottle. Likewise the bins at Glebe House. And the kitchens. She might have a store of poisons, playing the Lucrezia Borgia of Stanelaw.”
“Who?” asked Delaney.
“And have a look at the rubbish bins at the museum. She was shredding documents the day.”
“I’ll see to it,” Kallinikos said. “By the by, you were right, Mr. Cameron. When we told Ms. Macquarrie we knew about a hidden map she started talking. Or talking in specifics, rather.” His footsteps receded toward the door.
“Up ’til then all we were getting was her usual twaddle,” said Delaney. “But this map, hah, the woman’s staked this book deal of hers on finding it, but hasn’t got a clue where it is.”
“Oh,” Alasdair said, “I imagine she’s got a clue.”
“Macquarrie and Bell are in custody yet. I’m not convinced they’ve told the entire story.”
“You’ve not got the evidence to hold them much longer, let alone the two streams of evidence you’re needing to charge them.”
“I’ve noticed that, thank you very much.”
“So you’ve come back here looking out more evidence, is that it?”
“Why else come back to this godforsaken pesthole?”
A horn honked from the road. The return of the media? A flash of light in the corner of her eye made Jean glance around. Alasdair had turned on the flashlight and was inspecting the vaults of the ceiling, revealing cobwebs, dirt, chipped mortar, but no secret messages. “What of Roddy Elliot?” he asked.
With his head tucked down into his shoulders, his lower lip protruding, and his chest swelling, Delaney looked like a toad in a three-piece suit. “We charged him with vandalizing a listed monument and set him a date in court. I’ve sent Linklater to collect the bits of the inscription. The old codger tucked them up in his hay barn, he said, not wanting them in the house. I’ve never seen such a prize collection of nutters as here in Stanelaw.”
The Burning Glass Page 30