He spun toward her. “Good God, no. Did someone do a recce through the cottage while we were oot?”
“I don’t know. None of the papers were gone. Of course, I haven’t done a translation yet, either, and they wouldn’t be as tempting without that.”
Michael muttered something profane. Mark annotated it. They walked across the footbridge and into the cottage, to be greeted by a delectable spicy smell. Hilary, Dennis, Adele and, strangely enough, Harry Devlin were ranged around the dining room table. Flat boxes of pizza lay open in the center. “Is it still warm?” Michael asked.
“Just right,” said Dennis around a mouthful.
“Those old newspapers turned the trick,” Devlin explained, and sucked a string of cheese into his mouth.
“What a treat!” said Hilary. “Mark, does your knife have a corkscrew? They even brought a bottle of Chianti.” She pulled out the chair beside her and patted it, looking sheepishly up at him. Rebecca handed over his knife and with a flourish Mark opened the bottle and shared it out.
It was Devlin, Michael said when they were mopping up the last crumbs, who’d bought the wine to go with the pizza. Rebecca looked at the policeman over the rim of her glass. “Why, thank you, Sergeant. Should I accuse you of trying to loosen up a few tongues?”
“Chance would be a fine thing,” Devlin snorted. “You lot talk more and say less than any suspects I’ve ever dealt with.”
Dennis looked up at the ceiling. Adele dismembered a stray piece of pepperoni. Mark’s mouth thinned; Hilary looked at her lap. Michael and Rebecca glanced at each other, conveying little more than caution.
Rebecca looked around to see Devlin watching her watching the others. “Actually,” he went on with an engaging smile, “I was thirsty.” He poured himself another glass and relaxed enough to loosen his tie, but not without a swift glance at the door, as if Mackenzie would leap out of the vestibule lecturing him about neatness and propriety.
“You’re single, I take it, Sergeant?” asked Mark.
“I am now.” He pulled out his wallet and produced a photograph of a little girl about five years old. She had his Irish coloring, fair skin, dark hair and blue eyes, but her expression betrayed youthful optimism rather than adult belligerence. Not that Devlin was particularly belligerent at the moment. He explained quite equably about the joint custody arrangement with his former wife. He was trying to draw them out, Rebecca thought. First Mackenzie, then Devlin, both playing good cop.
Adele admired the picture, then gathered the boxes and took them to the garbage can outside. She didn’t come back. Dennis slipped away to finish the day’s computer entries. Mark held the photo a long time, his expression distant. When Hilary gently took the photo from his hand and returned it to Devlin, Mark shook himself, as though someone had walked over his grave.
Michael shared out the rest of the wine and told Devlin about his nephews. “They intended to have only the two, mind you, but the second one turned oot to be twins. A wee bit ower the top, I told them. But they’re fine braw lads. Andrew, after my dad, Patrick and David.”
“The patron saints of the Celtic Fringe,” said Rebecca. “Good names.”
“I’ll tell Maddy and Geoff you approve,” Michael said into his glass. But he took care to smile, mitigating his sarcasm.
Quelling a groan, Rebecca went to the sideboard and got the boxes with the day’s choice artifacts. “Would you like to see what we do when we’re not causing problems for the police?” she asked Devlin.
Mark explained the recovery and preservation of the ivory comb. “Not as nice as the one at Jedburgh,” he concluded, “but a good piece nonetheless. And, not being gold, not tempting to thieves.”
“Let us hope,” said Devlin.
Rebecca pulled the tiny heraldic device out of its jeweler’s box. “This is in remarkably good condition.”
Michael took the disc and rubbed it delicately against his sleeve. “Lion and greyhound supporters—the arms of Henry VIII. Might’ve belonged to some personal envoy of Henry’s in Hertford’s army.”
“What really bothers me,” Rebecca admitted, as the disc passed from hand to hand around the table, “is that somebody dug this up and didn’t see it. I swear it wasn’t in my trench, but I really hate to blame anyone else. It’s not a big prize, but not something you’d want to get away.”
“It’s a good thing Adele spotted it,” said Hilary.
Something loomed at Rebecca’s back. “Where’d you get that?”
She swung around. “Oh—Dennis. Out of the spoil heap.”
“But Sheila had it,” he said.
Like a tidal wave of glue, silence fell upon the room. Then Devlin tightened his tie, reached into his jacket draped over the chair behind him, and pulled out his notebook. “Did she show it to you, then?”
Dennis looked hurriedly from face to stunned face. No help there. “Yeah. She told me she’d bought it at some antiquarian’s shop in London, that it had come from Hampton Court. Jerry asked her to get it for him… .” First comprehension and then outright elation swept his features. He dropped into the chair. The chair squeaked a protest.
The back of Rebecca’s neck corded, sending a throb of pain through her head. “Great. Jerry was out salting the dig last night.”
“Not necessarily,” said Hilary. “It could have been Sheila. It could have been Adele, for that matter.”
Devlin wrote in his notebook, saying, “It’s worth the askin’.”
Michael swore through his teeth. Mark simply looked sick.
“It was Jerry who was planting artifacts that don’t belong here,” Dennis said. “That’s what he did in Virginia with a Harington farthing.”
Rebecca’s thoughts churned. Not only had Dennis not been in the pub when Michael had told everyone about Jerry’s possible wrongdoing, but also no one except she and Michael knew specifically what that wrongdoing had been. With a jolt she remembered seeing a letter for Dennis from Michigan, return address “L.M.” Matheny was married. She’d gone home to Michigan. Dennis had two married sisters, one of whom had worked in a museum.
Rebecca turned to Dennis so fiercely, eyes blazing, he shrank back in his chair. “You’re her brother, aren’t you? You came here to get something on Jerry! That’s why you were breathing down Elaine’s neck, to get closer to the computer. That’s why you volunteered to check the records.”
Dennis turned pale. But he didn’t flinch. “Yeah. I’m her brother.”
“Who?” asked Hilary faintly. Devlin leaned forward, his pencil poised. Rebecca explained.
“Man,” Michael exclaimed to Dennis, “you should’ve put us in the picture straightaway. We’re natural allies!”
“It was something I had to do by myself.”
“You told Sheila!” retorted Devlin.
“She could be very persuasive,” Mark said dryly.
“The more people who knew, the greater the chance of Jerry catching on,” Dennis insisted. “I had to catch him in the act. What he did to Laurel—someone should’ve killed him, not Sheila.”
Devlin frowned. “Could it be,” he said quietly, “that someone thought it would be poetic justice to frame Jerry for something he didn’t do?”
One moment ticked by, then two. Dennis’s pale face went beet-red. “Me? Kill Sheila and make it look like Jerry did it?”
“You stole Michael’s sgian dubh and gave it to her. She showed you the…” pages flipped, “… heraldic disc.”
“I told you about the dagger. She said it was going to be a joke. She said if I helped her, she’d help me. I don’t know why she showed me the disc—maybe to convince me she’d help me.” He leaned his elbows on the table and sank his face into his hands.
“Oh Dennis,” said Rebecca, “she was just playing with you.”
“Maybe he realized that, that evening behind the chapter house.” Devlin stood up. He put on his jacket and stowed the notebook in a pocket. When he put his hand on Dennis’s shoulder he at least had the courtesy to
look solemn instead of triumphant. “You’ll have to come with me to Galashiels, Mr. Tucker, to help us with our inquiries.”
1
Chapter Twenty-Two
The sound of bells punctured Rebecca’s doze. She groped for pencil and paper—the exam was starting, she hadn’t studied… . With a gasp she lurched into wakefulness. The ceiling shimmered with the fine, clear light of morning. Sunday morning. Church bells ringing. There was no church in Rudesburn except the priory, and the bells in the tower came down centuries ago.
She clambered over the foot of the bed, opened the curtains, and unlatched the window. The sun was low on the eastern horizon, so bright that it hit her eyes like an exploding flashbulb. The priory was an indistinct outline beyond a translucent mist rising from the burn. Shapes might be moving in the dimness of the church. They might not.
Hands touched her shoulders, and she started so violently her head collided with something hard. “Ow!” Michael exclaimed. “I’ve no need of a nose job, thank you just the same.”
She spun around. “I’m sorry. Are you all right?”
He wiggled his nose. “I’m all right. Can you hear the bells?”
Still they rang, trills spilling into the soft morning air like crystal coins down a well. The breeze through the window was cool and damp, and gooseflesh rose on Rebecca’s arms. Then, as sharp and quick as a gunshot, the back door of the cottage shut. “Come on,” said Michael.
They rushed into their clothes and dashed outside while Rebecca was still hooking her glasses over her ears. A prosaic human form hurried over the green lawn toward the church. The sun cleared the roof, and a ray of light illuminated Adele’s silver hair.
Beneath the bridge the babble of water played counterpoint to the bells. Mist wreathed upward, touching Rebecca’s face with chilly kisses. On the far side of the stream, the air was palpably cold.
“Hey! Wait for us!” Mark’s shout was subdued into an urgent stage-whisper. He and Hilary ran hand in hand toward the bridge.
Adele rushed into the church like a parishioner late for services. The bells faded away, quieter and quieter, until they were only an echo quivering in the ground and pealing gently through Rebecca’s blood. The cold ebbed. Together the four walked across the bridge and swished through the grass.
The ancient stone of the wheel cross glistened with rivulets of light and damp. Inside the church the sunlight shining through the tracery of the eastern window made an intricate pattern of light and shadow on the floor. Adele knelt at the altar. Beside her knelt someone or something else—a white contour of draperies and light. A curtain of cold air blocked the door.
Michael and Rebecca, Hilary and Mark, edged away. Toward them across the lawns came Laurence and Grant, shoulder to shoulder, like Ghostbusters summoned to an early shift. “What is it?” called the bobby.
“Naething couthy,” Michael responded.
They peered into the church. Adele didn’t move. Neither did the ghostly form. Faint and distant women’s voices sang, “Angelus domini descendit de caelo et accedeus revolvit lapidem.”
“An Easter verse,” whispered Rebecca. “‘God’s angels came down from heaven and rolled back the stone’, or something like that.”
“The stone covering Christ’s tomb,” added Hilary.
“Angelus domini…” sang the voices. The broken arches and the shattered tiles glowed, the stone seeming to flow like a viscous liquid, healing itself from centuries of injury.
As one they all turned from the door, blinded by the glowing light. Silence fell, even the wind and the stream muted. After a long moment Grant asked plaintively, “Any chance of a cuppa?”
Nora welcomed them into the hotel kitchen where a massive Aga cooker emanated warmth. Rebecca’s glasses steamed up. A cup of blissfully hot and sweet tea and a mound of wholemeal toast chased the shiver from her spine and almost relaxed the back of her neck. The roses returned to Hilary’s cheeks. Lancelot and Guinevere lounged in front of the oven door, knowing better than to go chasing ghosts on a chilly morning.
“My grandfather used tae say,” offered Grant, “that Anne and her nuns didna realize they were dead; they kept right on doin’ their duty.”
“Guardin’ something?” Michael asked. “Wantin’ revenge? What else did Adele say was a motive for hauntin’?”
Mark stirred his tea.” Adele fits right in, doesn’t she? No more grasp of reality than a ghost.”
“Reality?” Hilary retorted. “We all saw her.”
“Serve us right,” said Laurence, “if Adele really has been chatting with Anne Douglas.”
“But we’ll no be able to summon Anne as a witness.” Grant scooped marmalade onto his toast. “Speakin’ o’ witnesses, I dout they’ll be bringin’ Dennis back straightaway, just like all the others.”
Mackenzie’s quest for a motive for murder was producing too damn many, Rebecca thought.
Jerry’s voice boomed suddenly from the door. “Is this shindig invitation-only? Sorry, don’t have my black tie.” He pulled a chair from a stack against the wall, forced a space between Michael and Rebecca, and sat. “Damned bells woke me up. Somebody’s idea of a joke?”
Rebecca considered Jerry’s jowl, gleaming pale and cold beneath a mousey stubble of whiskers. He knew quite well that the bells hadn’t been a joke.
Jerry yammered on. “Where’s the nerd? I figured free food would pull him in like a moth to a candle.”
Over Jerry’s shoulder Rebecca saw Michael stifle a wicked grin. Grant gazed innocently at the ceiling. Laurence and Nora buttered toast and handed around marmalade. That had been a good ploy of Devlin’s, worthy of Mackenzie himself, to quietly haul Dennis away and no doubt wring him dry before giving Jerry a chance to pile on any wet blankets.
“Oh, you know Dennis,” said Mark. “A brass band wouldn’t wake him up, let alone a few bells.”
Jerry offered anecdotes about Colchester and Nimrud, but no one took the bait. He ventured an opinion on Thatcher’s economic policies. The British taxpayers concealed smiles and the Americans yawned. He pontificated briefly on crime detection, but gave up when there was no response but the desultory clink of spoons in cups. Before he could begin speculating why Tony and Elaine hadn’t heard the bells, everyone muttered excuses and sidled away.
By the time everyone had washed, brushed their teeth, and gathered at the dig, the mist had been absorbed into a cloud-laced sky. Adele didn’t ask why she’d had to breakfast alone. She set to work at the infirmary trench with the virtuous air of a child who’d earned a good-conduct badge in Sunday School. The church was once again a silent shell of rock.
Laurence, not wanting to waste Jerry’s enthusiasm, volunteered some lads from the village to help with the ditch-filling. Elaine trotted behind Tony, juggling the pieces of equipment he tossed to her, while he filmed the closing of the old trenches and the opening of the new. Judging by Michael’s suffused expression, he had to squelch more than one sardonic comment about Jerry’s metamorphosis from slug to butterfly. He took a miniature pick and a level and started tapping his way up the tower staircase, recording arcane aspects of subsidence and decay. Rebecca sent Adele and Hilary on to the infirmary trench while she lingered in the church; with Dennis gone someone had to get the computer booted and spurred for the day.
She hit “enter”, watched yesterday’s artifact records unfurl on the glowing screen, and looked up. Simon Mackenzie came striding down the nave toward her with Devlin two paces behind. A pinched look about Mackenzie’s mouth and Devlin’s truculent air, made Rebecca suspect Devlin hadn’t bothered to call his superior back to Galashiels until this morning. She called, “Good morning.”
Mackenzie sat on one of the folding chairs and stared at William Salkeld’s effigy. Salkeld was unimpressed. Mackenzie looked up at the tatty wooden roof that had replaced carved stone bosses. The heavens didn’t open with inspiration. He pulled a small white box out of his pocket and said, “There is no one more dangerous than a successful murderer
.”
“Thank you, Chief Inspector, for easing my mind,” said Rebecca. “Especially since I think someone was snooping around the cottage, looking at the trial records, the other night. But I haven’t done a translation yet.”
Devlin whipped out his notebook and wrote that down.
Mackenzie seemed unsurprised. “Once you start translating, don’t leave them lying around.” His scratched hand opened the box, revealing the damning enamel disc. “Mr. Tucker is either a superb actor or just what he says he is. Which way would you vote?”
“Just what he says he is. A lifelong klutz who finally found a crusade, saving his sister’s honor. I should’ve realized ages ago what he was up to—he’s been an elephant tiptoeing through a china shop.”
“You think, then, the subtlety of killing Miss Fitzgerald and making it look like Dr. Kleinfelter did it is beyond him?”
“The only thing that could possibly make me think Dennis killed her is that he failed utterly to make it look like anyone else did.” Rebecca leaned her chin on her hand. “Besides, we’re assuming Sheila’s killer also tried to kill the cat—in other words, Sheila’s killer is after relics or treasure. How do you dovetail that with Dennis’s revenge motive?”
Mackenzie indulged in a sardonic laugh. “I don’t. That’s why Mr. Tucker is even now outside in the cloister, free to go.”
All right. Devlin retired behind a pillar, presumably to bang his head against it.
Jerry appeared in the doorway. “Dr. Kleinfelter,” said Mackenzie. “Good of you to come. Please sit down.”
Taking her cue from Mackenzie’s labored courtesy, Rebecca gathered up computer and records and went into the cloister. Dennis and Mark were comparing notes on police station cuisine. Michael’s hammer tapped away. The local lads seemed to work harder without Jerry supervising. Word got around quickly, Rebecca thought, and set the computer on a flat column base. “Glad you’re back, Dennis. Here it is, all ready to go.”
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