Ghosts of the Vikings

by Marsali Taylor

The screams had become choking sobs. We took the steps two at a time, past the upstairs landing, where Dad was coming out of the front bedroom, in trousers and shirt, with Maman in her lace negligée behind him, dark hair loose round her shoulders, and on up to the top floor.

  It was Bryony who was sobbing. She was dressed only in a towel, wrapped around her. Her face was hidden in Per’s shoulder, but he was staring beyond her into the room he’d shared with Adrien, face stern, brows drawn together. Gavin put out a hand to stop me following, and went forwards to look. His face stilled. He looked round at Per. Suddenly he was inches taller, in spite of the bare chest and feet – DI Macrae of Police Scotland – and he spoke with authority. ‘You only found him just now?’

  Bryony’s dark head nodded.

  Per was silent for a moment, considering him, then explained. ‘She came up to the lavatory, and then I heard her scream.’

  ‘I’ll phone the station,’ Gavin said. ‘Nobody must go into the room.’ He looked around, then lifted the floor-length mirror and stood it in front of the door, a metre forward. ‘Don’t touch anything. Please go downstairs now. Tell the company not to come up here.’

  Per nodded, one man in charge to another, and led Bryony past me, still sobbing.

  Gavin turned to Charles, hovering in his doorway up the four steps. He was wearing a surprisingly rakish red silk dressing gown with blue cuffs. ‘It probably makes no difference, but I’d be grateful if you, sir, could please cross the landing only once. Pack up and bring your luggage down, and don’t go up again.’

  ‘Hang on,’ I said, and translated. Charles nodded, and retreated into his room.

  ‘My phone’s in the pavilion. Can you stay on guard, make sure nobody comes up?’

  I nodded, and he whisked past me. I took a cautious step forward.

  The door had been propped open. It was a strange, non-authentic feature of the house that each heavy door swung closed if you didn’t hold it open – something to do with fire regulations, no doubt, and a real nuisance when you were carrying dishes between dining room and kitchen – hence the wooden wedge in every room. It seemed odd to me that someone would want to sleep in a house of unknown people with an open door, especially in a room whose door was sandwiched between the two most convenient toilets, but no doubt fingerprints would tell us who’d touched the handle last.

  I couldn’t see inside the room from where I was, and I didn’t want to. I’d seen enough bodies to last me a lifetime. I turned my back on the landing and sat down on the top step. Below, Maman had taken charge of Bryony and was leading her back into her bedroom.

  ‘He was dead!’ she wailed. ‘His skin was all white and ... and still, like a waxwork, and his mouth was open at this horrible angle.’

  Maman soothed, and the door shut behind them, cutting the sound off. Dad came up the stairs and stopped halfway. ‘He’s dead, Cassie?’

  ‘Gavin said not to let anyone go up,’ I said.

  Dad’s eyes went to the open door. ‘How?’

  I shook my head. ‘Don’t know. I’m just guarding the stairs.’

  ‘Well ...’ – Dad said, as if at a loss, and sat down on the stair beside me.

  Gavin was away less than five minutes. He came back dressed and shod, with his notebook at the ready, and sent Dad downstairs, and me back to the pavilion to dress. Five minutes later, as I was rubbing some feeling into my cold feet, I heard a car pulling up, then another. Sergeant Peterson, I surmised, and probably the local doctor. They were going to have fun getting everyone they needed up to Unst, especially if the ferries were still off. I wondered if the police had powers to charter a helicopter.

  I put on my shoes and headed downstairs to the window that faced the sea, to check out the ferry situation. The first dazzle of light breaking through the clouds turned the water from the purple-grey of Welsh slate to scoured pewter. Dark cat’s-paws still swept across the sound, turning mud brown at the water’s edge, where the peaty burns ran. The sea around the ferry pier was smooth, but beyond it was still white with spray; furthermore, there was no sign of the blue and white boat sitting at her pier, although perhaps the 06.30 one only ran on a Sunday if it was pre-booked. I craned my neck around, and spotted the white superstructure over at Gutcher. Half past seven; there should be a ferry. Then I remembered that it was now half past eight; the clocks had changed in the night. An hour less sleep, on top of charging around the hills at midnight, and, well, other activity – I suppressed a smile. No wonder I felt washed out.

  The question was, of course, what the policeman’s girlfriend did now. Tea seemed likely, except – I snicked the light switch experimentally. Yes, the power was still out. Good thing I’d prepared that Thermos. I called Cat and headed over to the house. It was only once I got there, and passed the closed door of the little downstairs sitting room, that I realised there had been one person missing this morning. Per and Bryony, Dad and Maman, Charles ... how come Fournier hadn’t come out to see what was happening?

  The kitchen was deserted. Someone must have thought of tea – Maman, perhaps, for Bryony, for my Thermos was empty. I fed Cat, and was just about to head for Peter’s when the porch door opened, there was the shaking noise of someone taking a waterproof off, and the lady in the pink nylon pinnie came in. She had an old-fashioned wicker basket in one hand, loaded down with three Thermos flasks, and a biscuit tin in the other. ‘I thought you might be glad of water for tea,’ she said, ‘and I made a few more bannocks.’

  ‘You’re a star,’ I said. I ate one bannock while the tea was steeping, buttered another two and headed up to the top landing. Constable Buchanan was on duty; I handed the tray to him. On the way down again I knocked at Maman and Dad’s door, but there was no answer. There were still muffled sobs from Bryony’s room, so I knocked there, and eased the door open. ‘I’m making tea. Will I bring a pot of chamomile up?’

  Maman’s face lit with hope. ‘Is the power back on?’

  I shook my head. ‘The caretaker wife.’

  ‘Yes, please.’ Maman came out into the hall, and closed the door softly behind her. ‘The poor child has had a shock. I will stay with her for a little longer, then once she is calmer I’ll dress.’ She hesitated. ‘You did not see what happened?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘It seems, from what Bryony says, that he may have committed suicide. Or perhaps she’s making that up, or wanting it to be true.’ Her hands swirled in the air, pushing it all away from her.

  ‘The police will find out.’ I looked around. ‘Where’s Dad?’

  ‘Oh, he, Per and Vincent are talking ways of salvaging the tour.’ The creamy colour was gone from her cheeks, and her mouth was drawn down in a weary line. ‘I think it is jinxed. Oh, we have Gabriella to replace Kamilla, and for the performance today we can get John Cormack – do you remember him? Dermot said you were talking to him after the performance on Friday. He was my singing teacher here. It was he who got me interested in early music, because that had been what he specialised in. He still takes pupils, and sings in the Choral Society, so he is well in practice, and he has sung Hippolyte so often he could perform in his sleep. Well, no, the full role would be too much to ask, but this is extracts, and singing with me, as he used to. He could do it. After that, we could get someone for Edinburgh, and the rest of the tour, but, oh, Cassandre, I am too old for this.’

  I put my arm round her, alarmed. If my indomitable Maman was losing her nerve, nothing was safe. ‘Why don’t you go and have a nice, hot shower, if the system will let you? I think it’s supplied from the hot tank. I’ll make tea for Bryony and take it up, and sit with her till you’re ready to face the world again.’

  ‘Cassandre, you are an angel. Thank you.’ She kissed me and disappeared into the bedroom.

  I made a pot of chamomile tea, and headed up to Bryony. There was a lot I’d have liked to say to her, but I had no proof she’d intended to make Maman keep being ill, and her shock at Kamilla’s death had, I presumed, made her abandon the idea
. She’d play the bit-parts in Edinburgh, and I hoped a frog sat in her throat throughout.

  I felt a bit more sympathetic once I actually saw her. Maman had helped her into her onesie, and she’d put a jumper on top of it, but she was still shivering. She clutched the cup of tea to her. ‘It was ghastly. I glanced in, and saw him lying there, with his mouth wide open, as if he was snoring, but there wasn’t a sound, and his face was all lit up green from the computer, you know, one of those flickering swirl screensavers. And his eyes were just staring, with the light glinting on them, and the pupils not moving at all.’

  It sounded as if she’d gone right into the room. She wouldn’t have been able to see his eyes from the doorway.

  ‘Then I saw the bottle. It was lying on the floor, you know, one of those plastic water bottles, with the cap off and a little water still in it. And his hand was hanging down just above it.’

  ‘You went right into the room then?’

  She jerked away from me. ‘No, I ... why should I do that?’

  ‘You couldn’t have seen a bottle on the floor from the door,’ I pointed out. ‘The bed would have hidden it.’

  ‘No, on this side of his bed.’

  ‘The nearer bed would still have hidden it.’ I wasn’t certain, but it was worth risking the bluff. ‘And you’d never have seen his eyes from the door.’

  She changed tack as if the wind had shifted forty degrees. ‘I thought at first he’d had a stroke or something. I went in to see. That’s when I saw his eyes, and the bottle.’

  I remembered what Maman had said. ‘Why do you think he killed himself?’

  ‘He had this ring. Like the Resistance fighters in the war. A suicide ring, a poison ring. He always wore it. It had a big, black stone on it, you must have noticed it. I don’t know what poison was in it, but he talked about it being his way out of the world when it got too much for him. Well, he must have used it.’

  ‘He couldn’t have.’ I didn’t think this was classified information. Maman, at least, had heard the row in the hall. ‘The police took the powder out of it.’

  Her mouth dropped open. ‘He must have had more powder, then.’

  I shook my head. ‘The police searched all your bags, remember. They’d have taken it, if he had.’

  ‘They didn’t strip search us. He must have kept it on him.’

  I didn’t buy that one. ‘Why? He didn’t know the police were coming, none of us did.’ And he wouldn’t have seen the police arrive from his room, up in the attic, with the skylight the only window. Even if he had, his guilty knowledge would have focused on treasure, not poison. ‘He already had one lot of poison on him, in the ring. Why on earth would he carry another dose?’

  ‘Maybe to stop someone else eating it by mistake.’

  I gave her a sceptical look. She flushed, and came clean at last. ‘It was the computer, you see. I wondered why he’d left it on, so I touched a key, and there was a note on the screen. It said he’d killed Kamilla, and he couldn’t live without her, and so he was taking his own life.’

  Huddled in her onesie and patterned jumper, she looked more like a hung-over schoolgirl than someone who’d planned to make the other members of her company ill, just to give herself a chance to impress the critics. Someone who’d let her curiosity overcome her fright at a dead body. She was nearly as old as I was, and in spite of what I’d said to Gavin about opera singers living in their own world, she should have known better than to touch the computer.

  Unless, of course, she’d done it on purpose. There may have been a suicide note on the computer, but that didn’t prove it had been Adrien who’d typed it.

  Gavin couldn’t interview my parents, of course. Sergeant Peterson took Dad, while Constable Buchanan tackled Maman. Since she’d asked me to stay, he couldn’t chuck me out, or at least didn’t have enough smeddum to try it, faced with Maman in her most imposing black and white chic, her hair smoothly rolled into its Callas chignon, and her face perfectly made-up.

  ‘It’s just routine, madam,’ he assured her. ‘There are always questions after a sudden death.’

  Maman considered him. Since he was obviously terrified she’d go temperamental on him, I saw her deciding to be as down-to-earth as possible. She nodded. ‘Of course. I understand.’

  His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. ‘Did you get up during the night, madam?’

  Maman nodded. ‘At around one. I went to the lavatory, on the ground floor.’

  He noted it. ‘And how did you know it was at one, madam?’

  ‘I cannot be certain, of course, but it usually is.’ He stared at her, and she explained. ‘One has habits, with age. For me, I usually rise at one, but I did not look at the hour, why should I have? It was dark. I descended, I climbed and went back to sleep, as I always do.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Then we were awoken by Bryony screaming. I heard Per running up to her, and pulled on my own wrap. We were just on the way up when Gavin came running past, like a Highlander in the charge for the Bonny Prince, then Cassandre.’

  I nodded. ‘I can corroborate that. Maman and Dad were just in the doorway as we came up the stairs.’

  He wrote that in his notebook as well. ‘And Mr Lynch, madam?’

  Maman gave him a blank look. ‘I do not understand.’

  ‘Did your husband rise in the middle of the night?’

  ‘Oh.’ Maman gave an airy wave of her hand. ‘Oh, yes, I expect so, he generally does, but you understand I am used to it. I would not it have registered.’

  ‘At what time, madam?’

  Maman shook her head. ‘I do not know. He does rise, and I expect he did last night, but I would not have awaked me or looked at the time. Why? I continued sleeping.’

  It sounded reasonable enough. I saw him shift into detective mode, trying for a Sherlock Holmes steely glare. ‘And there’s nothing, madam, that you would like to tell us about your relationships with the rest of the singers?’

  Maman’s make-up was too perfect for her to blush, but to my surprise a tide of colour flooded the base of her neck. ‘I don’t understand what you mean.’

  He’d spotted it too, and was quick to pursue his advantage. ‘Something you would prefer your husband didn’t know, perhaps?’

  Her dark eyes widened. ‘Something I am concealing from Dermot?’ she echoed. Her breathing had quickened. She steadied it, and swirled her hand again. ‘I do not understand what you are implying. We are a company of singers. I have known Adrien since some years, but we were not particularly close.’ She smiled at him, sensible and reasonable. ‘He was too dramatic for me.’

  She was doing it well. He couldn’t see, as I could, that her other hand, lying on her black trousers, was clenched tight. Not Adrien, but there was something with someone else, I could see. Fournier?

  Constable Buchanan was thinking along the same lines. ‘You’ve known Mr Fournier for some years, I believe.’

  ‘Oh, Vincent!’ Now her tone was entirely natural, but I couldn’t tell whether it was genuine. ‘For over thirty years now. He worked with Dermot here in Shetland, and we were friends because of his interest in the arts. He encouraged me to continue to sing when I was at home with this small child.’ She smiled at me; her slender hand smoothed my hair. ‘Then he worked for Scottish Heritage, and I encountered him when I was considering of this tour, oh, two years ago. We talked about it, and he suggested using the Scottish historic houses.’

  ‘Your relations have never been closer, madam?’

  ‘With Vincent? Oh, no.’ She brought both hands up to lay elegantly on the table. ‘Per, also, I have known for some years. Not as long as I have known Vincent. Twelve years, perhaps. I met him as a young musical director, his first show, I think, for a festival of early music in Vienna. We did not meet properly then, because he had to leave in a hurry, he had an interview in Graz, but we exchanged e-mail addresses. I thought that he was good, so I have recommended him to others. In early music, I do not know if you know, b
ut we are a smaller pool of specialists, so one keeps meeting the same people. We have worked together a number of times, and when Vincent and I were in train of devising this tour, I thought of him to direct.’ She gave him a warm smile. ‘But no, we have never been lovers. I understand that you have to ask these things. And Caleb, of course, since he is younger than my Cassandre here, is young enough to be my son.’

  The smile had charmed him. He blushed to the tips of his ears, but managed to answer, ‘You wouldn’t think that, madam. Thank you for your help.’ Then he gathered up his notebook and got himself out of the room.

  ‘Phew,’ Maman said, once the door had swung to behind him. ‘Now, I must pack. We are to be on the 10.45 ferry.’ Her mouth pursed, uncertain. ‘It seems very callous to just go, like that, but Gavin seems to think it would be better, so that the house can be examined properly, and of course they will not let us make arrangements for poor Adrien’s body, so we can’t remain here, with him in the house, like that.’

  I nodded. ‘I’ll come with you to Lerwick. Gavin’s car’s at Toft, so if you and Dad can give us a lift, we’ll follow you from there.’

  ‘Oh, Cassandre, that would be good.’ Her face clouded. ‘Poor Adrien. I never believed he would really do it.’

  I put an arm round her. ‘Try not to think about it. And, Maman, if there is something, then tell Gavin. He won’t tell Dad.’

  She shook her head. ‘Perhaps. But it’s nothing.’ She kissed my cheek. ‘Off you go, my Cassandre. I must pack for the ferry.’

  I watched her sweep out, and wished I could believe her.

  Chapter Twenty

  ‘Timing,’ Sergeant Peterson said. It was half past nine. The initial interviews were finished, and now we were sitting around the dining room table: Gavin, Sergeant Peterson, Constable Buchanan, and I. Cat was playing with a shell he’d found in one corner, patting it from paw to paw, then batting it across the floor and scampering after it. Outside, the sea was lavender-grey, slashed with white breakers that pounded the beach. Now the grey cold of the morning sky was clearing to show chinks of blue, bright as summer. ‘The doctor’s initial estimate of time of death is the early hours of the morning, between one and four. Our own doctor will narrow that down, if we ever manage to get the body to him. The suicide note was typed at 02.37.’