Colin glanced meditatively from Rebecca to Michael and back. Well, she had spilled her guts to Mark; why shouldn’t Michael spill his to Colin? She offered the bespectacled young man a slight shrug. Their argument had started out as a simple spat. It really shouldn’t have concerned anyone but themselves. It might have been resolved by now—with or without a happy ending.
Grant Johnston arrived at the step and handed Devlin an ordinary piece of lined notebook paper that looked as though it had been used to polish a shoe. “I found this in the fireplace in the bar. It’d fallen ahint the grate and was only singed.”
Devlin read the paper. He read it again and made a triumphant gesture. “Well done, Constable. This should put us in the picture right enough.”
Mackenzie plucked the paper from his grasp. Instead of echoing Devlin’s grin, his face creased into a frown. “Dr. Campbell?”
By the sudden twitch in his jaw Rebecca knew Michael had gritted his teeth. “Aye?”
She stood her ground, Colin beside her. Mackenzie, Devlin and Grant stood in a row like See No Evil, Hear No Evil, and Speak No Evil. The paper rustled loudly in a sudden gust of wind. Mark, bent over to brush off his knees, glanced up. His eyes went ice-gray in his dusty, slightly tanned face. He spat a four-letter word.
Mackenzie’s ascetic face revealed nothing. He handed Michael the paper. “Can you explain this to us, please?”
“I can’t. I’ve never seen it before.”
“Then why are your initials at the bottom?”
Rebecca stepped quietly to Michael’s elbow and peered around his arm. Black ink. A strong, swooping masculine script, followed by the initials “M.C. “… . But he didn’t write his initials that way, the two ends of the “C” reaching toward each other to almost close a circle. None of it was Michael’s writing. His was smaller, slanted to the right, the T’s crossed with precision, not with a slashing stroke like a sword cut.
The note was undated, the only heading the one damning word, “Sheila”. Then, “All right, I’ll bite. I’ll meet you at the footbridge at 8 to see the artifact.”
“I didn’t write this,” Michael said. He handed the paper back to Mackenzie and rubbed his hands on his shirt as if to cleanse them. “It’s no my handwritin’. And I’d no misspell ‘artefact’.”
“It’s not misspelled,” said Rebecca. “In American English ‘artifact’ with an ‘i’ is correct.” And she realized where she’d seen that script before, in a letter confirming a place on the expedition, on the chore lists at the cottage, on various site recording sheets. “That’s not a ‘C’,” she went on, her words choked to a moan. “It’s an ‘O’.”
“Written quickly, and unclosed,” confirmed Mackenzie. “Mr. Owen?” he called.
“I’m coming,” Mark said. Devlin, abashed, studied his notebook.
Rebecca bit her tongue and looked at the dirty toes of her wellies. She heard Mark’s steps march across the grass. His boots appeared in her peripheral vision, just beside Michael’s. “Sorry,” she said.
“I don’t want you or anyone to lie for me,” Mark returned. And, to Mackenzie, his voice edged not with defiance but with the same tired caution Rebecca had heard in Michael’s, he said, “Yeah, I wrote that. Not yesterday, but about ten days ago. A Thursday, I think. I’d forgotten about it.”
“Was that the night we saw you and Sheila on the bridge?” asked Michael. “Afore the ceilidh?”
“Yes.”
Devlin checked his notebook. “That would’ve been July the sixth. You saw him with Sheila, Dr. Campbell?”
“Several of us did do. He was only wi’ her a few minutes.”
“Why, Mr. Owen?” Mackenzie demanded.
Mark’s eyes flashed. Mackenzie may have been asking him why he killed Sheila, but he wasn’t going to recognize that inference. “She left me a note saying she had an artifact to show me. I was curious.”
“Did she show you an artifact?” asked Mackenzie.
“She wanted me to go into the ruins with her. She said she’d show me there. I decided all she really wanted was my body.” He grimaced, acknowledging his appeal to the opposite sex without dwelling on it. “I told her some other time, I wanted to go to the ceilidh.”
“And did she approach you again?”
“She flirted like the rest of us breathe, but she never propositioned me again, no.”
Rebecca realized everyone had drifted forward, with the same morbid inquisitiveness that used to impel people to make a picnic out of a public execution. Only Hilary was hanging back, her face turned away.
“Mr. Owen,” said Devlin, shutting his notebook with a snap, “I think you’ll have to come to Galashiels… .”
“To help you with your enquiries,” Mark finished. “Sure. Why not?”
“Have a care for the fried bread,” offered Michael with a ghost of a smile.
“I wouldn’t recommend it myself,” Mackenzie said, with a sardonic smile. His teeth were white and even, the eyeteeth extending below the rest. He could not only play Sherlock Holmes or Bernard of Clairvaux, he could play Dracula.
“You haven’t been cleared of anything yet,” Devlin reminded Michael.
“Thank you. Much obliged.” Michael turned and headed briskly toward the bridge and the cottage.
Like a group of pigeons disturbed by a passing step everyone scattered. Rebecca looked after Michael’s stiff retreating back. She looked at Colin’s grave face turned toward the cross but not really seeing it. She looked at Hilary, packing her pencils with movements so swift and abrupt that Rebecca she could imagine the pencils were daggers and their bags Sheila’s corrupt and yet pitiable breast.
Mark, blank-faced, walked between Devlin and Grant toward the road. The reporters swirled around the gatehouse like sharks scenting blood. With a shout a police sergeant recalled the constables who’d been searching the grounds, to no avail, all day long.
Rebecca seized a handful of Mackenzie’s suit jacket before he, too, could get away. The fabric was smooth and cool, the arm beneath it as rigid as Michael’s spine. “Sheila did have an artifact,” Rebecca said. “She had the trial records. Maybe she had the gold coins. If I were you, I’d be keeping an eye on Jerry, not hassling Michael and Mark.”
“I’ll bear that in mind, Miss Reid.”
“Was Sheila killed to settle some private score, or did her death have another reason—something to do with the dig?” she went on.
Mackenzie’s voice was so crisp and sharp it almost could have drawn blood. “When we know why she died, then we’ll know who killed her. Whether it has anything to do with the dig or not. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” He pulled away and strode off across the grass, long legs stretching and yet not hurrying to catch up with Devlin, Grant and Mark.
“When we know why,” Rebecca repeated.
She only realized she’d spoken aloud when Colin said sarcastically, “Chance would be a fine thing.”
“Oh no,” she told him, with the same vehemence she’d pushed at Mark the night before. “No. Chance has nothing to do with this.”
1
Chapter Twelve
Rebecca pummeled the bread dough. If nothing else, she’d end up with bread as tender as her nerves. I hate feeling helpless. Punch. I hate being manipulated. Punch. I hate being indecisive. Punch.
In the dining room, Colin, Adele, Hilary, and Tony were supposedly playing bridge, but no one was paying much attention to the game. More than once Tony had to be reminded that it was his turn, which the others did with the lead-footed consideration afforded the recently bereaved.
In the sitting room, Elaine’s long wheedling sentences were met by monosyllables from Jerry. He must find it supremely frustrating, Rebecca thought, to be barred from the reporters who’d practically taken up residence in the hotel bar. He was the type who insisted on being the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral. But it had been Mackenzie who had conducted the news conference, telling the microphones and cameras what he thought the
y should know and not one sentence more.
With floury hands Rebecca scooped her hair off her forehead. She was taking the first deep breaths she’d taken in twenty-four hours. Her lungs had been whistling and moaning like Michael’s bagpipes when he inflated them. Not surprising she should think of that, when Michael was playing them just outside the kitchen window.
Dennis opened the back door, admitted Lancelot and Guinevere, and stepped out. The two cats watched Rebecca as though expecting her to magically transmogrify dough to meat. Taking pity on them, she went to the refrigerator and found them each a morsel of last night’s stew. With sharp white teeth the cats snapped the pieces of meat from her fingertips and carried them beneath the staircase, there to go through the ritual of stalking, killing and eating.
Adele made some comment about life after death. Hurriedly Hilary bid three clubs. Colin countered with another bid and a dissertation on lead miniatures. “… Troopin’ of the Colours. He let me have the wee Queen at a discount, because I’d helped wi’ the dig, and it was his daughter’s weddin’ day to boot. I was lucky to catch him before he left.”
Rebecca whacked the dough a couple more times and rolled it into a ball. She wondered how Mark’s slow Texas twang was competing with the rounded vowels and glottal stops of the Scottish constabulary. If Michael had survived, so would Mark. He’d be returned like a cow shooed back into the herd, branded with a scarlet “S” for Suspect. As if they weren’t all suspects.
Maybe Mackenzie could tie the gold brooch to a fishing line and leave it out as bait… . Rebecca laughed at herself, greased a bowl, and plunked the dough into it. She covered it with a clean dishtowel and placed it on the always-warm Aga. The cats finished their snack and sat washing their faces, black and white paws oddly disembodied in the shadow of the staircase.
But the brooch would only be tempting if Sheila died because of greed. Or else—well, if they all had skeletons in their closets, then she probably had mammoth bones. The murder could have been coldly premeditated before the expedition had started. It could’ve been committed in a moment’s heat, her obnoxious mouth uttering some last straw. It might have been personal or just a business adjustment. When we know why, Mackenzie had said, we’ll know who.
She knew Michael, Rebecca thought. Through him she knew Colin. And she knew herself. But what about the others? Who might have a motive for murder?
Jerry. His reputation was inconsistent, to say the least. Rebecca snorted indignantly at his letting the trial records sit there untranslated and unused. Even if Jerry was an archeologist, not a historian, he would have known the value of written records. What was he planning to do, produce them with a flourish as soon as he had something to report to a news conference?
Sheila, with her museum background, would have known the importance of those records. But how they fit in with Devlin’s theory of blackmail, Rebecca couldn’t tell. Sheila seemed too smart to resort to blackmail when she had so many other methods of getting what she wanted.
Rebecca dumped her measuring cups and bowls into the sink, turned on the hot water, and gave the bottle of washing-up liquid a vicious squeeze. She needed to make sure Mackenzie understood the importance of those records.
Adele. She was searching for reassurance. Hilary. She was licking her wounds after… . Rebecca hoped it was a failed relationship and not something worse. Mark. He admitted to a difficult past, but smoothly evaded any specifics. What a shame Mark and Hilary couldn’t get together; they’d each have something worthwhile to offer.
People who lived in emotional glass houses, Rebecca told herself, shouldn’t throw spitballs. She piled the soapy dishes in the drainer and poured hot water over them, wishing for a good old American sink with one spigot for both hot and cold water.
Dennis. He’d dutifully told Michael about taking the sgian dubh. Michael’s clashing brows and exasperated, “For God’s sake, man, why?” hadn’t been unreasonable, considering. But all evening poor Dennis had walked around, head hanging, like a child told he couldn’t go out at recess. Apparently confession wasn’t as good for the soul as it was cracked up to be.
Tony. Elaine. They had similarly poor, even shady, backgrounds. Mackenzie had named one of Elaine’s earlier professions “exotic dancer”; Rebecca wondered if she’d worked in a fancy nightclub or a sleazy strip joint. Tony had been in a juvenile delinquent program—for vandalism, a sure sign of youthful frustration. Sheila might have been blackmailing either of them, but whom could she threaten to tell when those wretched little clods of dirt were already in the public record?
In the twilight, the Priory lay across its lawns in expectant, almost nervous silence, like a veiled bride waiting for her groom. Nuns were brides of Christ. Such a spiritual consummation was all very noble, but Rebecca was willing to bet it left a frustrated itch in the pit of the stomach.
Cautiously, she remembered the first time she and Michael had made love. He’d joked afterward that he now knew how it felt to throw oneself on an exploding grenade. But in time familiarity damped explosiveness into comfort; sex was only part of marriage, after all. If the familiarity of marriage bred only indifference, the couple was lucky; so often it did breed contempt. Rebecca heard Mark saying, “Come on now, can you really see yourself acting that way?” Again she answered, No, that’s something else that has nothing to do with chance.
Holding his pipes like a child would hold a stuffed animal, Michael coaxed music from bag and chanter. The weft of the melody and the warp of the drones wove themselves into a fabric of emotion colored with wind and water. Rebecca half expected an antiphonal response from the priory. But no music other than the high, clear, silver voice of the pipes touched the dusk.
Michael paced solemnly up and down the terrace. “Fingal’s Weeping” segued into “Heather Island” into “If I was a Blackbird”. Of course he’d be playing the slow airs… . Rebecca clutched the dishtowel, the next song hitting her like a slap. “Ferry me over, ferry me there; to leave the hills of Caledonia is more than my heart can bear.” It had been when he was piping that ballad at Dun Iain that she’d begun to realize how she felt about him.
His fingers moved on the chanter—magician’s hands, producing doves from midair. He played “Mo Nighean Donn, Gradh Mo Cridhe”, “My brown-haired lass, love of my heart”.
It didn’t matter whether Rebecca was actually hearing or just imagining the plea in that music. She had more control over the relationship than over anything else at the moment. She vowed over the rack of clean dishes to keep their misunderstanding from getting infected.
The music stopped. Rebecca was startled to realize she was still inside the house. The card players were sitting with abstracted expressions, Tony smoothing his cards, Colin inspecting the ceiling, Hilary leaning on her elbow. Even the cats lay quietly on the stair, ears pricked, eyes gleaming gold slits.
Adele came into the kitchen and ran herself a glass of water. “You have to get in touch with your feelings,” she said.
“That’s just the problem. I’m not only in touch with my feelings, I’m grappling with them. Can’t you see their fingerprints on my throat?”
Adele contemplated that for a moment and realized Rebecca was joking. She smiled politely. “That’s the trouble with men. They’ve been condemned for so long for expressing their feelings, they don’t know how even if they want to. You couldn’t read my husband with a reading lamp, but then, he was a man of his generation. No wonder he died of a heart attack. As for Chris…” She paused, her pale eyes focused beyond the window, beyond the dusk itself.
Rebecca waited.
“He was a lot better at expressing what troubled him,” the older woman continued. “Until there at the end. He never told anyone then. If you’ll excuse me.” She turned and walked with steady steps up the stairs, avoiding the cats as they lay like fur wraps on the treads.
Rebecca frowned. She didn’t like the implications of that. How many people around here had those rattling, grinning skeletons, anyway
?
Dennis’s baritone filtered in from the back porch. “Oh, Shenandoah, I’m bound to roam, across the wide Missouri.”
Thanks, Rebecca said silently to him. She checked the bread dough, found it acceptably puffy, and divided it into loaves. Elaine took Adele’s place at the card table. A subtle hint of cigar smoke drifted from Jerry’s lair in the sitting room. Michael taught Dennis the words to “Flowers o’ the Forest”. Maybe if he convinced the boy that all was forgiven Dennis would stop looking so uncomfortably guilty.
Had Sheila really wanted the dagger to play a trick on Michael? She had, however inadvertently; the manner not only of her death, but also her life made him a prime suspect. Or had she intended to get Dennis into trouble? She’d certainly achieved that, too.
Bugger it anyway. Rebecca sat down at the counter with last week’s grocery receipts, filling out a report for the Archeological Network. The volunteers may have found themselves involved in violent crime, but at least she was feeding them properly… . Her head fell forward in a doze, and she jerked herself awake.
Elaine had to be jogged into action at the bridge table every bit as frequently as Tony. Dennis came inside and sat down with a magazine. Then Michael, too, walked in. As he passed behind Rebecca’s back, he rested his hand on her shoulder. By the time she looked up, he’d vanished toward the bedroom, and the kiss she blew after him missed by a mile.
Rebecca put the loaves of bread into the oven and went out onto the back porch, the cats at her heels. Dusk had thickened into night. The lights of the village reflected in fitful gleams from the priory walls but illuminated nothing within—profane light turned back at the gate of the sacred. What stars Rebecca could see in the cloud-mottled sky were as smeared and uncertain as her mood.
Eyes narrowed, she peered toward the trench and its unexpected grave, imagining a blurred white apparition wafting upward like the ghosts in Fantasia. But she saw nothing. Whoever the man was—if it was a man, and she was willing to take Jerry’s word for that—if he rested uneasily, he was not sharing his unease with her. She couldn’t blame him for disdaining the orgy of public disclosure everyone else was caught up in.
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