Grant was accosted by a reporter. Another constable walked over the footbridge carrying a brown cardboard portfolio. A third waved a car into the driveway, from which emerged two bobbies and Michael. They walked into the cottage; he waited on the step, his tired, unshaven face attempting a smile and failing utterly. “Good mornin’ to you, lassie,” he called across the water.
Rebecca pushed Jerry aside and sprinted toward the cottage. In the vestibule she and Michael embraced warily. “Are you all right?”
“Of course. What do you think they were doin’ to me?” He waved his hand. “I only shed one wee drop of blood, see?”
She focused on his bandaid-shrouded finger. “A blood test? Why?”
“To put it bluntly, someone’d been shaggin’ Sheila right afore she died. Someone wi’ A-positive blood. Like mine.”
Rebecca’s stomach lurched and she swallowed. “A-positive is common enough. So was Sheila. It could’ve been anyone.”
“Oh, I dout they’ll be takin’ donations from all the men.”
His voice thinned and broke, and he turned abruptly into the bedroom. He’d probably been dwelling on what the pathologists had done to Sheila to get that particular piece of evidence. Had done to Sheila’s body, that is. The body in which he’d once found comfort.
Rebecca followed Michael into the bedroom and shut the door. He stood staring into the closet. In spite of herself, Rebecca visualized Sheila knotted with him in an act of love. Not that it had been love, Michael had admitted. But they must have laughed together; they must have shared that secret smile of lovers. Making love, like making anything, left debris behind, be it affection or hatred or regret caught like cockleburs in the throat.
Decisively Michael seized a pair of jeans and a plain white T-shirt. Rebecca sat down on the bed and told him about her conversation with Colin.
“I’d rather Mum and Dad and Maddy hear it from him than from the evening news. And it’ll well and truly be on the news.” He sat heavily down beside her. “I’ll ring them the afternoon, tell them I’ve no been shipped off to Dartmoor.”
Rebecca wouldn’t even consider her family hearing the news. Hopefully distance would absorb the shock waves. “Do you know if the police have found the murder weapon yet?”
“Apparently no, judgin’ by the way they’re still turnin’ the place ower.” He nodded toward the footsteps echoing from the rest of the cottage. “Sergeant Devlin did share another result of the post mortem wi’ me, though; the murder weapon was aboot seven inches long and had a serrated edge. It was probably my sgian dubh.”
Rebecca moaned, “I was afraid of that.”
“I didna do it, lass.” His eyes, slate blue with exhaustion, glanced off her face rather than touching it.
“I know you didn’t.” She avoided his eyes, too. It hurt to see his defenses breached like this. It hurt to not know whether he wanted her to acknowledge the damage. “I know,” she ended lamely.
With slow deliberation he pulled on clean socks. “They may have let me go for noo, but they told me no to leave the dig, even for Edinburgh. If you want to go to the flat this weekend, you’ll have to drive yoursel’.”
“I don’t think I’m ready to drive myself, not yet. I mean, I made it all the way across the Forth Bridge that time, but then forgot I was driving a standard and stalled out at the toll booth. And that was better than I did the weekend before, on those one-lane roads in the Lake District. I swear, just when you think no one’s been over those roads since the Romans built them, you round a bend, and there’s a herd of sheep… .” Her voice trailed off.
He was still looking at his socks. “If you’re stayin’ here in the UK, you’ll have to learn to clutch and shift and stay on the left, sheep or no.”
“And not expect you to take care of me,” she concluded. “That was just my point yesterday, wasn’t it?”
He glanced up. Their eyes met like flint striking flint.
A policewoman opened the door. “Oh, sorry,” she said, and backed away. The spark went out. Hell of a time for an intimate discussion, Rebecca wailed silently, and clenched her fists in her lap. No wonder their emotional drawbridges were slamming shut. The murder had violated not only the victim, but everyone.
She bounded to her feet and picked up Michael’s discarded clothing. He collapsed on the bed, eyes closed, hands folded like William Salkeld’s effigy. Like Sheila’s body laid ritually in the tomb. But he hadn’t seen that. “Rebecca,” he murmured, “when this is ower, love. When it’s ower… .”
What? she asked mutely, but he said nothing more. He probably didn’t have any more to say.
“Take a nap. I’ll be at the dig.” She kissed his forehead and went through the kitchen, where a constable was narrowly inspecting each carving knife, out the back door, across the stream, and back up the lawn.
Dennis was setting up a camera on a tripod. His color was better now, less sickly. In fact, when he glanced up and saw Rebecca, he flushed. “Er,” he called, “may I speak to you a moment?”
Mackenzie and Devlin were just inside the church, in close consultation with Grant, the reporter he’d been talking to, and two other constables. What did that reporter have to offer that the others didn’t? And what was in the brown portfolio Mackenzie was peering at so intently?
Hilary, Adele, and Elaine bent to their tasks. Tony jockeyed along the trench, sighting his camera between Jerry’s and Mark’s backs, directed by Jerry’s hand which waved above the earth like a shark’s fin above the water.
“I’m sorry,” Dennis mumbled to Rebecca. “I—well—I thought I really ought to tell them, you know.”
Rebecca thought he was going to confess to taking an extra cookie at dinner last night. “What, Dennis?”
“I took Michael’s dagger and gave it to Sheila.”
Rebecca felt her jaw unhinge and fall almost to her chest. “What?”
“She asked me to get it for her, said she was going to play a trick on Michael. I didn’t realize—I thought she was chapped because he liked you better, I didn’t know about… .” The boy’s face was contorted with honesty. “I didn’t know what was going to happen. She said it was a joke.”
Rebecca managed to close her mouth. She wanted to demand, “How could you do such a thing?” The croak that emerged from her throat was, “Nobody can tell the future, Dennis. And Sheila could be pretty persuasive, I’ll admit.” Especially for an unsophisticated kid like you, she added to herself. Chances were the joke would have been on Dennis, not Michael. “You told Mackenzie?”
“Yes. He just nodded, you know. Didn’t really react.”
Rebecca knew. “Honesty is the best policy,” she said, her attempt to smile failing as miserably as Michael’s had.
“Er—ah—will you tell Michael? I don’t think I can.”
“I think it’s up to you, Dennis.” From the corner of her eye Rebecca saw Michael’s tall, slender shape emerge from the house and walk toward the footbridge. Stubborn, she thought. He’d rather be tortured by the C.I.D. than reveal how badly he was shaken. Even to her, it seemed… . But then, she’d asked for that.
“Okay,” Dennis mumbled. He turned back to the camera and adjusted a dial. His expression was that of a child expecting a blow, a mockery of his usual good-natured innocence.
Grant, the reporter, and the two constables headed toward the village. Mackenzie stepped out onto the porch and called, “Mrs. Garrity, may we speak to you, please?” He seated Adele on the stone step as gallantly as if he held a chair for her in a restaurant. Graciously, she submitted to fingerprinting.
Elaine’s face was so near to the screen of the computer that Rebecca wondered if she were rearranging the pixels with her nose. Michael peered into the trench and said with ghastly levity, “What’re you on aboot wi’ my pavement?”
Jerry glanced up. “So you’re back. Couldn’t pin anything on you, could they?”
“Could be because there’s naething to pin,” Michael replied, barely concealing the
edge of resentment in his voice.
“We’re going to raise these paving stones,” said Mark, “and see just why they’re laid differently from the rest.”
Tony’s camera clicked. Michael chose a trowel. Rebecca picked up a toothbrush and started scrubbing the masonry. She would have liked to scrub the dirt from the crevices of her mind. The murderer was from somewhere else, not even a villager, someone from Sheila’s past who’d met her here last night. Not one of her own colleagues.
Adele spoke calmly and quietly to Mackenzie, and at last he let her return to work. Rebecca gave her a quick lesson on cleaning masonry: “Don’t be afraid to scrub hard. There are layers and layers of grunge to get off.” Probably Mackenzie lectured Devlin with those same precepts.
Tony’s puppet face curved down like a mask of tragedy. He spent most of his interview shrugging in bewilderment, not least when one of the attending constables showed him the contents of the portfolio. Rebecca craned her neck, but could see only a sheaf of papers.
Jerry’s interview coincided with lunch. Michael declined food, saying the fried bread from the police canteen in Galashiels was unfortunately still with him. Rebecca herded her flock to the cottage, pressed soup and crackers upon them, then herded them back. They found Jerry still pacing truculently up and down before impassive Mackenzie, while Devlin held the portfolio under one arm and wrote busily. All three faces turned toward Rebecca as she walked across the lawn, making her feel like a beauty contestant trying to slink down the runway without stumbling. What about me? she wondered, and answered herself, I’ll probably be next.
Elaine was next. She sat, arms crossed, her denim-clad knees pressed tightly together, shaking her head. Once she fumbled in her pocket for a cigarette. No one offered to light it for her, and she held it foolishly for a few moments before shredding it to bits and grinding the flakes into the grass with the heel of her shoe.
A medical officer appeared to take blood samples from all the men. Tony stood stoically silent, Dennis looked sick and had to sit down on the wall. Jerry complied muttering about American consulates and the Bill of Rights. Mark barely paid attention, holding out his dirty hand from the depths of the trench. Mackenzie looked on abstractedly. He knows, Rebecca told herself, that the man who made it with Sheila last night wasn’t necessarily the person who killed her. The blood tests were just a formality, just official harassment, part of the process of peeling and exposing everyone concerned, innocent or not, to the harsh eye of—of what? Justice?
A constable appeared with several computer printouts. Mackenzie looked over them, then cast a long speculative look at the faces around him. Devlin’s brows arched expressively and he nodded.
Rebecca quelled her growing irritation; she was beginning to feel like the victim of an elaborate practical joke. Despite the slightly hazy sunlight, he afternoon shadows were dark with suspicion. The human figures scattered across the lawns moved in slow motion, their voices distorted. God, Rebecca thought. I’m already sick and tired of this. She told Dennis to scoop the rich dark dirt the men had piled on edge of the third trench into a bucket, take it to the rubbish tip, and sift it.
Hilary slumped onto the stone step of the porch, head bowed, and spoke so quietly that Devlin’s and Mackenzie’s foreheads collided above her scarf-adorned ponytail. When Mark’s turn came, he spoke solemnly and sat stiffly. Mackenzie nodded, Devlin capped his pen, and Mark walked away with several frowning glances over his shoulder.
By now a dozen rounded cobbles were ranged on the side of the trench, and Tony lay on his stomach the better to focus inside. “Backfill, right enough,” said Michael to Mark when he returned.
“Hilary!” Jerry shouted, and the girl hurried over to accept either a button or a coin from his hand.
Amazing, Rebecca thought. Jerry and Michael were actually working as a team. Nothing like getting rid of Sheila’s baleful influence… . “Miss Reid!” Mackenzie called. “May we speak to you now?” Her hands jerked on the handle of the spade. How, she asked herself, could a man so perfectly non-judgmental make her feel so guilty?
Nora came across the grass carrying a tray of tea and sandwiches. Devlin gulped thirstily and then bit into a sandwich like a lion bringing down an antelope. Mackenzie peered into his cup, then pulled a spring of cress from the sandwich and chewed it with his front teeth.
“Dr. Campbell has a phone call,” Nora announced. “Dr. Graham from the Museum in Edinburgh, on behalf of the Historic Buildings and Monuments lot. Laurence talked to him, and now he wants to talk to Michael.”
“In other words,” said Michael, “what the hell is the expedition doin’ on the front pages of the papers.”
He and Nora walked off toward the hotel. Mackenzie watched them go, his dark eyes flat. Rebecca wondered if he was any better at reading body language than she’d been today. She could guess at Michael’s internal turmoil because she knew him, but even so, his face was closed and locked. As for the others—what they were thinking was anybody’s guess.
“Miss Reid,” Mackenzie called again.
Rebecca sat on the stone step. Its chill seeped through the denim of her jeans. The wheel-cross rose before her, its weathered face as uncompromising as a Bible held out to swear in a witness. Mackenzie sat down beside her and gazed off across the stream, presumably collecting his thoughts about motive, opportunity, and means.
The wind was picking up. Its damp breath moaned through the empty door of the church, making the grass bend and the willows dance. The back of Rebecca’s neck itched. Odd, how of all the emotions she’d felt in the last day she hadn’t felt fear. Until now.
1
Chapter Eleven
Rebecca wondered in an odd dispassionate weariness whether she was afraid of Mackenzie and Devlin or whether she was simply frightened of circumstances beyond her control. She’d done nothing—the police officers were no threat to her or to Michael or to anyone who played fair with them.
Supposedly. Circumstantial evidence was like putty. It could be stretched, bounced, and imprinted with images… . No. What frightened her was not the police, but not knowing whether the murderer’s secret agenda had been satisfied by Sheila’s death.
A good night’s sleep would help, she told herself. Time and distance would help. But only finding the murderer would solve anything. And deciding whether that time and distance would come between her and Michael.
Devlin rolled her fingertips across his ink pad and pressed them onto the paper without making eye contact. Just a job, eh? she asked him silently. Mackenzie rested his elbows on his knees and cradled his cup between his hands, gazing out over the vista of lawn, bridge, and village. “Well now,” he said at last, “we’re trying to make up a timetable of last evening.”
“I stayed in the cottage until I went to the Craft Centre at eight,” Rebecca reported obediently. “I stayed there about an hour, then met Hilary outside the hotel. We walked over here to get the day’s printouts. That’s when we found Sheila’s—found Sheila.”
Behind her back Devlin’s pen stopped scratching. Notebook pages flipped. “Bridget thought you came in somewhat after eight.”
Rebecca frowned. It wasn’t fair, she hadn’t known she’d need to account for her movements. “I stood on the step looking around for a few minutes before I went in.”
Still Mackenzie scanned the picture postcard scene rather than looking at her, as though, like a blind man, he was hypersensitive to nuances of sound.
“I passed Elaine in the parking lot,” Rebecca went on, “and Laurence on the street. Dennis and Tony were in the van, but they probably didn’t see me.”
“Who saw you in the cottage earlier?”
“Mark and Hilary were in the kitchen, but they didn’t know I was there.” I hope, she added to herself. She stole a quick dubious glance toward Hilary’s bowed head, her face concealed by the fluttering end of her scarf.
“Did you see Dr. Campbell at any time?” Mackenzie asked.
“No, but I saw the
lights on in the attic of the hotel, through the skylights, when Hilary and I were walking over to the church.”
“You’re engaged to be married to him?”
She hesitated. Mackenzie turned, striking her with the full force of his eyes. Almost involuntarily, as if he’d jerked the words out of her mind like a fisherman jerking a salmon out of a river, she answered, “I don’t know.”
“You are lovers, then.”
“Yes.”
“And he was Miss Fitzgerald’s lover two years ago?”
“Yes.”
“Was the parting amicable?”
“No.”
“How did he feel about her being here?”
“Very annoyed.”
“Were you jealous of her?”
Blame the murderer, she told herself, not the police, for this inexorable invasion of privacy like the drop, drop, drop of water torture. “Not jealous, no. Indignant that she’d treat him cruelly; bewildered that he saw anything in her to begin with. But that all happened before we met. It wasn’t any of my business until she showed up here and started making snide remarks.”
Devlin repeated quietly, “Not jealous?”
“I would’ve said I despised her, until last night,” Rebecca said, responding to Mackenzie’s imperturbable expression rather than Devlin’s innuendo. “After she argued with Michael, I caught a glimpse of her face. She was desperate for attention. I was actually sorry for her.”
“Dr. Campbell says he didn’t hit her.”
“He didn’t. She was hanging onto him, and he shook her away.”
“But Dr. Kleinfelter is correct in that Miss Fitzgerald was reminding Dr. Campbell of an argument you had with him yesterday?”
“I couldn’t hear what they were saying, except when Michael told her, ‘Leave us alone’. She could’ve been lurking outside the window when we were arguing—we weren’t exactly whispering.”
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