“What did you argue about?” asked Devlin.
Rebecca’s jaw twinged. “Over personal and professional matters. Not over Sheila. We agreed about her.” If I’d only kept my mouth shut, she thought. But no. If that argument killed anything, it wasn’t Sheila.
Mackenzie drained his tea and set the cup down on the tray. Rebecca had to wonder about a man who kept his tie knotted all day long. No wonder Devlin’s eyes bulged belligerently above the knot at his own throat. There was competition in those ties.
“Miss Fitzgerald was small and slim,” said Mackenzie, half to himself. “Anyone, man or woman, who was moderately fit could have dragged her body across the gravel and the grass. And could have been seen through the church door.” He asked Rebecca, “You didn’t see anything odd in the church when you were walking toward the Craft Centre?”
“There’re usually odd things in the church in the evening. The local people could tell you that.”
“Right,” Devlin said.
Mackenzie glanced up at him, not at all humorlessly.
“Even Sheila came rushing out of the church yesterday as if she’d seen a ghost,” Rebecca went on. “I hoped she had. She’d been sneering at the very idea of anything supernatural, and yet she was making up a ghost story scenario for the film using the nun’s habit…” She stopped, seeing the white cloth stained with blood. What if Adele was right about unbelievers being punished? What if Sheila had been murdered by the spirits she had teased? Rebecca told herself, yeah, and the moon is made of green cheese.
“Mr. Owen told us about Miss Fitzgerald’s running out of the church.” Mackenzie said. “That seems to have been the last time anyone saw her near these airts—alive, that is. My lads have had a go at everyone in the village, from P.C. Johnston’s children to the old man in the toy shop. Everyone was inside eating, or watching the telly, or in Galashiels shopping. And several people went to a wedding. No one saw anything.”
“Or they’re not admitting it if they did. But you realize that.”
“I realize that.”
Rebecca continued, “You think she was killed with Michael’s sgian dubh, don’t you? But you haven’t found it, or any clothing stained with blood.”
“Aye, we think it was the sgian dubh. But it’s easy enough to speculate. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m asking the questions here.”
Mackenzie reached over his shoulder. Devlin handed him a computer printout. “We’re checking everyone’s antecedents—standard procedure, mind you. So far the only record we’ve obtained from the States is yours. I see that you and Dr. Campbell had some trouble in Ohio last winter.”
She’d been expecting this. She looked down at her hands clasped between her scuffed and dirty knees. “Yes, we’ve seen violent death before.”
“The inquest ruled self-defense during the prevention of a crime.”
“We prevented the crime, not the death. Sometimes I think we caused the death.” She could feel Mackenzie’s look cutting through her sweatshirt and jeans, flesh and bone, as if he were reading her mind. Maybe he wished he could read minds; it would make his job much easier. But his careful use of last names was either an effort to bring some kind of dignity to the undignified crime or an effort to save his sanity by keeping his distance. Mind reading would be insanity.
He flipped to another page of the printout. “Your instructor at the University of Missouri was Dr. Nelson.”
“You didn’t leave any stones unturned, did you?” Rebecca replied, more admiringly than flippantly.
“Your archeologist friends have nothing on us, Miss Reid. Dr. Nelson gave you a glowing reference and then mentioned something about Dr. Kleinfelter. Would you explain that?”
Great. Like a virus, that rumor kept coming back. She explained about the excavation in Virginia, Laurel Matheny, the wronged research assistant, Kleinfelter’s ego, the possible job in London, and the heart of Robert the Bruce.
She concluded by darting a glance over her shoulder to Jerry’s and Mark’s intense, dirt-smeared faces. They must think they were onto something. Tony had the video camera out now. Dennis was wielding a light. Hilary was sketching busily, holding that button or coin or whatever in the palm of her hand. Adele was clearing away the dirt. Rebecca grimaced, feeling left out. But then, Michael wasn’t there either, and Elaine sat on the periphery, smoking a cigarette.
“Did Dr. Kleinfelter know you’d heard that rumor?” asked Mackenzie.
“I don’t see how. We thought it would be unprofessional to mention it, especially to the Bairds. Of course, you can also accuse us of being unprofessional because we never told him about the relic heart. Whether he knew about that anyway—well, I thought I heard him mention it once.” Rebecca sighed. “If his ego is as advertised, so is his competence. We haven’t caught him in one underhanded thing. Besides that charade of the alembic.”
“How do you spell that?” Devlin asked.
Rebecca told him, and explained about the filmed dishonesty.
“So,” said Mackenzie. “Miss Fitzgerald, at the least, wasn’t above a wee bit of fiddling with the evidence.”
“Did Sheila know about Jerry’s alleged malfeasance?” Devlin asked.
“I have no idea,” Rebecca replied. “She might have, but I doubt if it would’ve bothered her any.”
“Could she have been holdin’ it over him?”
“Blackmail?” Rebecca paused. “No, it looked to me as if they were working together to get publicity for the film.”
Mackenzie said, as indifferently as if reading a news report, “Dr. Kleinfelter admitted he’d been Miss Fitzgerald’s lover in London this spring. He said, ‘Well, it was just lying there for the taking’.”
“He would say something like that, wouldn’t he?” Rebecca snapped. “And he’d take everything he could get.”
“Mr. Wright,” Mackenzie added, “seems to accept that his sexual favors were part of his job.”
Devlin muttered something. Rebecca shifted on the cold stone. Sheila had been pathetic. “I can’t see Jerry having a motive to kill Sheila any more than the Bairds would kill her in order to sell beer to the reporters. Unless he was desperate to slow down the dig, to get some time alone after the volunteers have to leave, but that hardly seems credible.”
“Even if he had inside knowledge about what’s hidden here?”
“Yeah, well… .”
Mackenzie gestured. Devlin picked up the cardboard portfolio and handed it to Rebecca. She opened it and drew out its contents.
Her fingertips identified parchment. The tiny, spidery writing, faded to sepia, was probably sixteenth century. Three pages, one complete document, maybe, with a pinkish stain that meant it had once been sealed with wax. At the bottom was a crabbed signature Rebecca knew well: “Henricus Rex”.
“My God,” she said. She went back to the beginning, tilting the parchment to the sunlight. “Anno 1545. Anne Douglas, Prioress. Thomas Elliot, Commendator… . have most grievously, heinously and wantonly offended in the unnatural, most odious and detestable offenses… .”
Someone, four hundred years and a few feet away, cleared his throat. Rebecca looked up, blinking, surprised the church behind her was in ruins and that huge rumbling metallic beasts crossed the Gowan Water. “These are the records of Anne Douglas’s trial,” she said. “Where on Earth… ?”
“In Miss Fitzgerald’s room in the hotel.” A distant flicker in Mackenzie’s eye, like heat lightning in the midst of gray cloud, betrayed that he’d been testing her knowledge. “We’ll have to take them away for lab work. But you can have them back in a week or so. We’d like a translation as much as you would do. Dr. Kleinfelter says the sixteenth century is your field.”
So that’s why they’d been looking at her. “Did Sheila steal this from the British Museum? Did Tony know she had it? Did Jerry?”
“We suppose so, no, and, very grudgingly, yes.”
“So Jerry and Sheila were trying to make an end run around the rest of us!” Rebec
ca exclaimed, banging her clenched fists on her knees. “I knew it!”
“Excuse me?” asked Devlin. “An end run?”
“American football analogy. Trying to get to the important finds first and take credit for them. I bet one of them dropped that matchbook in the attic. But I can’t see them stealing the coin and the warrant… .” Her moment’s elation evaporated. “But Jerry didn’t actually break any rules, did he? If anyone stole anything, or cheated, it was Sheila. Damn.”
Rebecca shot a rueful gaze toward Jerry’s khaki-clad back as he stood, one hand on his hip, the other slashing the air like a general giving orders to his troops. Mark, Tony, and Dennis nodded in time, their faces reflecting varying degrees of understanding and agreement. Adele carried a bucket of dirt through the cloister and out the slype. The willow branches danced in the breeze, their tips etching the rush of the stream. The shadow of the cross extended toward the church like an accusing finger.
Mackenzie held out his hand. Rebecca gave back the papers. Her fingers tingled from the touch of ancient hands. Much good those fingerprints would do Mackenzie and his minions. “You won’t damage them, will you? Those are priceless documents. Like the warrant.”
The Chief Inspector tucked the papers into the portfolio and tied the string. “We haven’t found that yet, have we? But you’ll get these and the gold coins back, I assure you.”
“Yeah. That extra coin. Where did it come from, anyway?”
“Do you remember P.C. Johnston saying he saw Miss Fitzgerald in the call box?”
“Yes. Who was she calling, her gynecologist?” Behind her back Devlin chuckled. She bit her tongue, chiding herself, I’m not jealous, huh?
Mackenzie, with laudable aplomb, said only, “No. She was calling Bob Jenkins, a reporter with the Sunburn. He was good enough to step forward earlier the day and tell us.”
“In the hopes of gettin’ a better story in exchange,” said Devlin.
“I imagine so,” she returned. “And what did she want from him?”
“She told him that the expedition had found gold and suggested that he come write up a story.”
“Gold? Did she mean the dragon brooch? Or did she mean the extra coin? In which case she found it herself, but where?” Rebecca grimaced. Her brain hurt, just as surely as if she’d been juggling notes and references and sources for a final exam. The brooch had been taken from the safe and yet had turned up in the cottage. The stolen coin had returned with a mysterious mate. The book of matches was from a pub right around the corner from Fleet Street, newspaper alley… . No one had the answers to this exam. “Let me guess. She didn’t tell him any more than just gold, did she?”
“No,” said Mackenzie. “She promised him an interview with Dr. Kleinfelter, but he says he knows nothing about it.”
“She was just trying to get some attention after Michael shoved her aside,” Rebecca muttered, “either from Kleinfelter or from Jenkins or both.”
Mackenzie smoothed his printouts. “Miss Vavra is from Brixton, part of London, and has grandparents in Spain to whom she sends money on a regular basis. She’s held a variety of jobs, from exotic dancer to secretary. Mr. Wright grew up in an industrial ghetto in Liverpool, and unlike his family hasn’t been on the dole any more than strictly necessary. Twelve years ago he spent some time in a London youth custody center, for vandalism, but since then his record has been clean.”
Tony, Rebecca mused dully, did a better job of hiding his non-university accent than Elaine. Both wanted to rise above their origins. So did she. Who was Mackenzie to say what was necessary and what wasn’t with that goal in sight? And was he inviting her to comment on those tidbits of information? Maybe they all had skeletons in their closets, but she didn’t want to rummage through them.
Her jaw ached from keeping her upper lip stiff. She rubbed her temples, squinting in pain. Through her lashes she saw Michael come out of the hotel and start across Jedburgh Street. He stopped dead when a car pulled up beside him. Colin got out. The two men stood close together, speaking quietly and intently.
“Who is that?” Mackenzie asked.
“Colin MacLeod,” answered Rebecca. “A friend of Michael’s. He was here yesterday morning. You’d probably like to talk to him, too.”
“The more the merrier,” said Devlin. Maybe he, rather than Mackenzie, was enjoying a murder investigation. Maybe he’d never been in on one before, Scotland being the civilized country it was. Maybe Mackenzie had.
“Did everyone dislike Sheila?” The Chief Inspector’s eyes followed Michael and Colin as they turned and walked slowly down the driveway.
Rebecca saw Sheila’s face, first the artistic, glossily presented one, then the one twisted in pain. “In varying degrees, yes,” she replied.
“Who killed her?”
Taken aback, Rebecca shrugged wordlessly.
Mackenzie’s silence pressed her for an answer.
Rebecca thought, they’d been making a lot of assumptions about who was where when. Just because she heard someone playing a guitar didn’t mean it was Mark. Just because a light was on in the upstairs bedroom didn’t mean Dennis was there. She’d never seen Adele past 7:30 or so… .
She said, “Adele’s a nut, but I can’t see her hurting anyone. The other students, Mark, Hilary, Dennis, are just as incapable of violence as Michael. Elaine was jealous of Jerry, yes. Tony was more irritated by Sheila’s high-handedness than by her—her flirtatiousness. Jerry might have fought with her over the account of the trial, but I don’t see why.”
Devlin’s pen scratched. Colin and Michael crossed the footbridge.
“If you’re looking for motives,” Rebecca went on, in a kind of weary insolence, “I suppose I have one as much as anyone. Sheila had no right throwing that ridiculous argument in Michael’s face. But that’s what she was, the mouth that roared. And I can’t see how our argument had anything to do with her death.”
Mackenzie made no move to leap up and arrest her. Michael and Colin arrived at the trench just as Jerry rose up and shouted, “Quitting time!” As every face, expedition member or police, for a hundred yards around turned to him, he added more quietly, “We’ll triangulate, plot, and section the feature tomorrow. Elaine, get a piece of plastic to cover it.”
“Well, well,” said Michael. He climbed into the trench and knelt, his head disappearing below the rim of earth.
Rebecca couldn’t stand it any more. “What is it?” she called.
“Human bones,” Mark returned with a cheerful grin.
Mackenzie and Devlin both went to point. “Old ones, I take it,” called the Sergeant.
“Oh yes,” Jerry replied. “There was a silver penny of Henry VIII lying right on top, giving us a terminus post quem of when, Rebecca?”
King Henry again. “He reigned from 1509 to 1547. Of course, the coin could’ve been deposited years later.” Jerry acknowledged that fact with a throwaway gesture. “Is it a soldier killed in one of the skirmishes during the Rough Wooing?” Rebecca went on.
“Could be, if you can think of some reason they’d bury him in the back corner of the cellar and not in the cemetery.”
“Not some nun’s illegitimate baby?” Devlin asked.
“Oh no, no. All we’ve got is the right femur and kneecap so far, but it’s an adult’s, and I’m pretty sure a man’s.”
“They had to fold him up to stuff him into the hole,” said Dennis, eyes wide. “I bet it’s another murder.”
“Somewhat out of Chief Inspector Mackenzie’s jurisdiction, though,” Jerry amended, with a slight touch of acid in his voice.
“Apparently,” Mackenzie agreed equably.
Rebecca envisioned the vaulted cellar, a guttering torch, shadows like deep water just outside the light. She saw the nuns, their white habits stained by dirt and sweat, struggling with the unwieldy weight of a body… . The image popped and sprayed her mind with droplets of common sense. Any good historian, she reminded herself, knows better than to create theories without fact
s. But how nice to make an interesting discovery!
Elaine went into the church. Dennis sidled over to the computer and peered down at its screen. Under the eye of Tony’s camera, Adele and Hilary started packing up trowels, buckets, pencils, and brushes. The small round whatever, apparently the penny, went into a jeweler’s box. Michael emerged from the pit and spoke to Jerry, Rebecca catching only his first few words: “Dr. Graham said to carry on… .”
Mackenzie stood and buttoned his jacket. That’s all? Rebecca wanted to ask him. She wondered whether he knew more than he was telling her, even without knowing the identity of the murderer, or whether he simply wanted her to think he was omniscient. It seemed like a nice psychological game, but it was not recreation.
Sheila was dead. Someone she knew was capable of murder.
Mackenzie said quietly, “The inquest is in Galashiels the morn, Miss Reid. I’ll be sending an escort for the lot of you at nine ack emma. You’ll need to make formal statements before the inquest. Other than that sortie, you and the others will stay in Rudesburn until further notice. And I needn’t caution you not to talk to the press—let us handle that.”
“All right.” She must be numb not to resent his imperious tone.
Elaine brought Jerry’s plastic tarpaulin. He and Mark tucked it carefully into the trench. Michael led Colin across the lawn and introduced him to Devlin and Mackenzie. Grant ran the gauntlet of the reporters by the gatehouse and strode purposefully across the lawn.
“Would you mind staying here tonight and attending the inquest tomorrow?” asked the Chief Inspector.
“No at all,” Colin replied. “I can doss down in the sittin’ room at the cottage.”
One end of Michael’s mouth quirked at Rebecca. She quirked back. He extended a hand and pulled her to her feet. In the late afternoon sunlight the stubble on his unshaven jaw glinted red. You don’t marry someone, she told herself, just because you like red hair. “Did you call your parents?” she whispered. “What did they say?”
“The usual exhortations,” he answered, his haggard face softening with a faint smile. “Wear clean underwear, stand up straight, and keep in touch.”
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