“It wasn’t you,” she replied. “I promise you that.”
He shook his head, adjusted his clothing, took his shaving kit and went out the door. Rebecca got up and made not only her bed, but also his, which prompted another puzzled look when he returned. “Why did you do that? I’ll only be sleepin’ in it again.”
“Why wash your clothes? You’ll only wear them again. Why eat? You’ll only be hungry again.”
“Never you mind,” he said, like a police chaplain talking to a potential jumper perched on a high ledge.
Rebecca went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face. She hated women who kept testing their lovers. And yet what was she doing with Michael? Why was it so hard to do right by each other? It was certainly one of Nature’s dirtier tricks to make the opposite sex so damnably attractive and so damnably bewildering at once.
Mark was peering out of the dining room window at the dark clouds gathering in the north. She tried to scurry on by, not sure she could look him in the face, but he said over his shoulder, “Looks like it’s comin’ another frog-strangler, right enough.”
“You’re getting your dialects mixed up,” she told him.
“Waal, lil lady,” he drawled, “it’s y’all have them there dialects, not me.” He shot her a quick grin and headed into the kitchen.
With an appreciative chuckle she fled into the bedroom, threw herself onto Michael and clung like a vine. “I’m sorry, I’m an idiot.”
“Will you stop apologizin’?” he replied, resting his chin on her head.
“August third. Your birthday, the first day of the Festival, the end of the dig. On that day I—we—will make a decision. No matter whether anything else is settled by then or not.”
“Thank you. Much obliged.” He kissed her nose, shook her like a malfunctioning vending machine, and with glazed eyes headed toward the kitchen.
By the time she was dressed—in Caroline Campbell’s sweater vest, as proof of her good intentions—Michael and Mark had breakfast ready. After a few healthy swallows of caffeine she was ready to face the day. Friday. No weekend in Edinburgh or the Lake District this time. Not that it would hurt to work through the weekend, especially with the skeleton half-excavated.
She lingered to wash the dishes. On her way out the front door she saw the red and gold postal van. She walked up, got the mail, took it back inside and spread it out on the table. Nothing for either Michael or Hilary. A letter for Dennis, return address L.M. in Ann Arbor. For Adele, a smiley face sticker from an ashram in Arizona. An Austin address painfully printed in a child’s hand for Mark. One of his siblings or his own child?
For her, a large brown envelope from the University of Missouri. She ripped it open and read the enclosed papers in one predatory gulp: “The University is pleased to inform you that you will be awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History… .” She jumped up and down, did a jitterbug around the table, shouted, “All right!” to the house. The house didn’t reply.
She threw the envelope onto Michael’s bed and ran out the front door. Everything’s all right now, her mind caroled. Everything’s… . She caught herself and assumed a more sedate pace. Well, no, everything wasn’t all right now. That was only one worry eliminated, and she’d actually forgotten it over the more immediate worries of the last few days. The Ph.D. would make a difference with Michael—just what kind of difference she couldn’t say—damn, she hadn’t been worrying about getting a job, either. What an emotional roller coaster. No wonder she had a crick in her neck.
She was grinning like a squirrel with a mouth full of nuts. She tamped her expression into a crazed smile and headed for the footbridge. On an intercepting path with Harry Devlin, she noted. Reality struck again.
Mark was right. It looked as if it was going to rain; the northern horizon was ominous with dark clouds. The wind was stronger than it had been yesterday, gusty and damp. She should have put on her jacket. But then, she saw the Johnston children as they wandered along the banks of the stream. Their spindly, chill-reddened legs protruded from shorts even though their torsos were covered by sweaters. Well, Scots had tough knees.
A ray of sun glanced from beneath the advancing cloud and illuminated the church. The brassy light reminded Rebecca of her dream. She stood on the bridge rotating her shoulders and head, wincing, wondering if Rudesburn had a chiropractor.
At the excavation Michael was showing Hilary the ring. Elaine was adding to the ring’s artifact record and Tony was taking its picture. Rebecca half expected Dennis and Adele to rush forward to thrust microphones at it, but instead they were removing the plastic wrap from the skeleton under Mark’s direction. Whether Jerry knew about the ring and its suggestive coat of arms was hard to say. He was in the hot seat on the porch of the church, puffs of cigar smoke emanating from his mouth like toxic fumes from a diesel truck, while Mackenzie stood on the lawn considering him as his wife would no doubt consider a hostile witness.
Detective Sergeant Devlin passed behind Rebecca, saying from the corner of his mouth, “His nibs is playin’ up again, I see.” She smiled at his departing back. Anyone who realized what an ass Jerry was couldn’t be all bad.
The Johnston children were clustered at the edge of the burn, where the water invaded a willow’s tangled roots. The oldest held onto the second while he fished a smudged white blob from behind the tangle. The youngest stood with her thumb jammed securely in her mouth, her eyes huge and frightened. A chill traced a cold fingertip down Rebecca’s spine.
The oldest child lifted the blob. All three of them huddled around. The little one shrieked. Ravens shot from the trees. The middle boy spun around and saw Rebecca on the bridge. “Here, miss, here… .”
Rebecca ran. Part of her mind thought, why are children’s accents always exaggerated versions of adults’? The rest of her mind reeled with dread.
There among the reeds at the edge of the stream lay a white cloth bag. From the opening protruded two black and white paws and a small face. Guinevere, mouth open, eyes closed, whiskers matted.
With an incoherent cry of her own, Rebecca fell to her knees beside the animal and pulled her from the imprisoning cloth. Who? Her thoughts stuttered. Who could do such a thing? Why?
For a moment she stared, the cat’s wet body a heavy weight in her hands. Then she detonated with rage. She picked the cat up by her hind legs and swung her up and down. Encouraged to see water trickling from her mouth, she stretched the animal across the grass and pushed at her ribs. Careful, careful, her bones were thin… . Water gushed from Guinevere’s mouth, and she wriggled.
Someone else was kneeling in the muddy reeds. Long, tapering fingers were pressing on the cat. “Poor little beggar,” said a male voice. And a young female voice said with a quaver, “Is she going to be all right?”
Rebecca glanced around. The stream bank was thronged with people. Mackenzie knelt beside her, pressing gently on the cat’s ribs. Devlin and Michael knelt in the mud and reeds and pooled water beside her. Adele clasped the sobbing little girl. Tony’s mouth hung open, as limp as his hand dangling a camera. Dennis looked ill. Hilary and Mark stood protectively over the two boys. Elaine’s eyes bulged as she clutched Jerry’s arm. Jerry himself hung back uncomfortably, his cigar plugging his mouth like the little girl’s thumb plugged hers.
Rebecca wondered with a trace of hysteria whether Mackenzie’s duties had ever before included administering artificial respiration to a cat.
Guinevere hissed and spat. Her claws left bloody grooves in Mackenzie’s hand. Rebecca took off her sweater, and she and Michael managed to wrap it around the animal before she inflicted any more damage on her rescuers. Caroline would surely approve—the sweater was being used for a good cause… .
Grant rushed up, shouldering his way through the crowd, collecting his children in one giant hug of his long arms. “There, there, they’ve sorted her oot. Thank the Chief Inspector and the lady.”
The children’s expressions were instantly transfo
rmed into joy. Dutifully they said their thank yous. Guinevere, having none of it, yowled and struggled.
Without so much as a grimace Mackenzie wrapped his hand in his handkerchief. He would carry a handkerchief, Rebecca thought. Went with the tie. She stood up, clasping the spitting bundle, and gave her to Grant. “We’ll put her doon afore the fire,” he said, and directed his daughter, “Run, lass, tell your mum tae warm some milk.”
The girl took off running toward the village. Cautiously, with admonitions of “Have a care” from their father, the two boys took Guinevere and carried her away like Cleopatra in her carpet. Mackenzie examined the sodden, muddy bag and the length of twine that had bound it shut. “A pillowcase. P.C. Johnston, can you identify it?”
Only now, with his children safely away, did Grant’s rosy complexion go ashen. He took the pillowcase and flipped out the hem. In small precise letters were inked the initials “G.J.” “It’s ours, right enough. Winnie left the wash on the line, it was such a grand night.”
The silence was so profound that the noise of the stream sounded like a flood. A gust of wind rattled the willow branches overhead. Rebecca stepped back and collided with a lean body. A firm, familiar hand closed on her arm. Michael’s voice said, “Bluidy hell, all she did was bring in the wax seal.”
If anyone could make a quantum leap of perception, and be unafraid to put it into words, Michael could. Rebecca’s horrorstruck eyes met Mackenzie’s blank stare. It was not comforting to know the man could be taken aback. She said, her voice grating her throat, “It wasn’t Guinevere who brought me the seal. It was Lancelot.”
“The other cat?” Devlin asked. “Where is he?”
With a universal mutter of concern the group scattered, leaving Rebecca, Michael, and Mackenzie like jetsam on the banks of the burn.
Rebecca’s wet legs and feet were icy, but not as icy as her face. What sick, evil spite, to murder the cat in revenge for her exposing the warrant. She’d been right. Not only wasn’t Sheila killed for personal reasons, but also the murderer hadn’t achieved his or her aims with Sheila’s death. “Now,” Rebecca said under her breath, “I’m really scared.”
“That makes two of us,” Michael returned.
They stood together on the banks of the stream. Mackenzie paced grimly toward the church. It started to rain.
1
Chapter Seventeen
After half an hour’s frenzied search, Winnie Johnston found Lancelot asleep in her kitchen cabinet, draped gracefully around a deep fat fryer. He considered the dozen people in his audience, yawned, and stretched. Devlin made a note in his notebook, the children carried Lancelot into the sitting room to join Guinevere, and everyone went back to work.
The cloister was swathed in funereal gloom, silent except for the scrape-slap of Mark’s, Jerry’s, and Michael’s trowels. The wet grass muffled Adele’s footsteps. The click of Elaine’s keyboard was absorbed by the stone walls of the church. Mackenzie and Devlin cornered Dennis by the blocked crypt door, their voices low and studiedly casual. Tony swathed his cameras in little plastic raincoats and carried on.
Rebecca’s spade ground against some lumps she identified as pottery. She picked up a trowel and pecked carefully at the assorted lumps. Who knows which cat dragged in the seal? she asked herself. She did. And Mark. And Michael, because they’d told him. A few surreptitious glances had shown her no scratches on anyone except Mackenzie, who’d earned his honorably. But Guinevere was a trusting soul; chances were she hadn’t realized what was happening until it was too late. It always came down to trust.
Not one of the circle of faces watching her and Mackenzie resuscitate the cat had betrayed any guilt. Even Tony, who preferred birds to cats, had looked as sick as the rest.
Guilt? she asked herself. Whoever tried to kill Guinevere, like whoever did kill Sheila, probably considered his or her actions perfectly logical. And surely the same person was responsible for both. Having two separate killers on the premises was just too much.
Nothing happened any more without that circle of faces closing in like the drawstrings of a bag. For a moment Rebecca felt cold, clammy cloth sealing her mouth and nose, and she shuddered violently. The cat had been caught in the roots of the willow. Like Moses in the bulrushes, some supernatural power had saved her from being swept into oblivion. Maybe it was Anne’s power. And yet Anne supposedly cursed lovers who came to Rudesburn carrying the baggage of other places and other times.
Rebecca rubbed her cold, raw hands on her legs and tried to ignore the prickle between her shoulderblades. The attack on the cat was almost more frightening than Sheila’s actual murder, evidence of a terrible malice at work. Guinevere was an innocent bystander, but Sheila had been involved in something… . No matter what Sheila was up to, she hadn’t deserved a knife in the heart.
Rebecca mopped a piece of pottery on the damp grass. Just as she’d thought. Typical Cistercian ware made in the north of England, red fabric with a brown glaze. The shards looked more like the sweepings of the kitchen rather than a complete implement. Just the same, she should borrow Hilary’s drawing board and make a sketch.
She clambered out of the first trench. Tony was juggling two different cameras, peering down into the third trench where the body lay upside down like an astronaut in free-fall. A free-fall into death, Rebecca thought. It happened to everyone eventually. The object was to not be hurried into it.
“I’ll be damned,” called out Jerry. “Tony… .”
“Dennis!” Tony shouted. “Fetch the lights!”
Dennis and his chaperones appeared in the doorway of the church. “Now what?” asked Mackenzie.
“Come look at this, Inspector,” Jerry returned.
“Chief Inspector,” corrected Devlin.
Jerry’s hair was matted brown by the rain. He pulled off his glasses, mopped at them, put them back on and blinked in owlish smugness. Michael’s hair hung lank over his forehead and ears. Mark’s stood up spikily. Both blue eyes and gray sparkled.
Rebecca accepted Michael’s wet, cold, hand and stepped down into the musty depths of the trench. The skeleton was framed by its supporting timbers, a macabre bas-relief sculpture on a dark brown wall. Its head and shoulders were still buried, but its ribs stood out in stark parallel lines against the mud. Between two of them was a ridge of rust extending into a knob that could have been either wood or ivory.
Michael said, “There’s your rondel, Rebecca. A dagger through the heart. He was killed.”
The walls of the trench seemed to ooze forward. The watching faces registered various expressions, calculated interest from the police and Jerry, nausea from Hilary and Elaine, a firm nod from Adele. Dennis hoisted a light, and the whir of Tony’s camera was loud enough to blank out the murmur of the rain. In the sudden luminescence, the brown bones looked doubly ghastly.
“Was he a Scot killed by a Sassenach?” Michael went on, so quickly she deduced he was trying to break the silence. “Or vice versa? Or was it something else entirely, no political at all?”
“Got him from the front,” said Devlin. “Someone he knew, perhaps. At least a fair fight.”
“If it’d been a fair fight,” Michael asked, “would they’ve bunged him into the cellar?”
“He’s not wearing armor,” said Jerry. “Not a soldier.”
“At least,” Mark added, “not soldiering when he was killed. A duel, maybe? Look at the traces of gold thread there and there. And the shreds of cloth—I bet they’ll turn out to be linen or even silk. Somebody wealthy and influential. The rondel might have been his own.”
“A hurried burial,” asserted Jerry, turning up his volume. “The murderer didn’t even retrieve his weapon.”
Unlike Sheila’s killer, Rebecca added silently. And this body wasn’t meant to be found. She said aloud, “The signet ring has the Elliot coat of arms on it. I suppose there’s a chance he, the body, is the commendator.”
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me that earlier?” Jerry demanded.
“Sorry,” she said with a sigh.
“We’ll have to call a news conference,” the archeologist continued, his face lighting eagerly behind its scum of dirt and damp. “This ties in with the brouhaha about Anne. Wasn’t he accused along with her?”
“Aye, that he was,” said Michael.
“No news conferences,” Mackenzie directed, “until you have a lot better evidence than you have the now.”
“Circumstantial evidence,” huffed Jerry. “Men have been hanged on less than we have now.”
“Not in my jurisdiction, Dr. Kleinfelter. Rudesburn is getting altogether too much publicity already.”
“That’s the object of the excavation!”
Tony’s camera whirred on, recording the discussion and the faces of its spectators moving back and forth as if they were watching tennis at Wimbledon. With a boost from Michael, Rebecca climbed out of the trench, followed by Mark. “My money’s on Mackenzie,” he whispered, stifling a grin. And, louder, “Let me check the site records on those little nails. I’m under the impression one of his shoes was tossed in after him, not left on his foot.”
Elaine said, “I’ll find the file for you…”
“Elaine!” shouted Jerry. “Gather up the tools, it’s lunch time.” And to Mackenzie, “Let’s see what Baird has to say about this. The reporters are all here. It’d be a waste not to use them.” He gestured toward the perimeter wall, but only one or two stubborn faces showed above it, hats dripping. The reporters were no doubt entrenched in the hotel bar.
Devlin followed Jerry as he started purposefully in that direction, like a dog nipping at the heels of a recalcitrant sheep. Mackenzie walked behind them with a determined expression that boded ill for Jerry’s delusions of grandeur. Tony gathered his cameras, probably hoping for more fireworks.
“I’ll find the file, Mark,” Dennis said as he stowed the lights.
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