“My nerves feel like the hair bristling on Guinevere’s back the night she cornered the killer in the bathroom. Sure, I’m fine.”
“Come oot to the Festival. Ease your mind.”
“In a little while. I want to—to be alone, to think, right now.” She could feel his perceptive blue gaze scalding the back of her neck. He thinks I’m deciding here and now. He’s trying to decide here and now.
“Be sure to lock up,” Michael said.
She said, “See you later,” but the front door had already shut.
Rebecca searched the house and locked the doors; if anybody wanted in, he could knock and identify himself. She prowled up and down the bedroom, six steps one way, six steps the other. Think, she ordered herself. This was ludicrous. There had to be a way out.
Was anyone ever going to catch Jerry cheating? That depended on whether he was also the killer. Why was Anne still around? They found her bones, but couldn’t avenge her—now what? Was she guarding the treasure? If Rebecca found it first, and the RDG gave Michael and her a cut, it would make a good nest egg… . She sat down on the bed, biting her lip. People had died for that treasure. It belonged to Rudesburn.
The sun set and tenuous darkness filled the room. Through the slitted window came snatches of music and a murmur of voices that peaked with the occasional shout or good-natured scream. The shapes that roamed around the priory now were children leaping out and trying to scare each other.
Where is the treasure? Rebecca shouted silently. Who killed Sheila for it? The puzzles were interconnected, like an acrostic, solve one to solve the other. But the clues were too damnably subtle.
She bounced up, folded Michael’s dirty clothes and put Colin’s dog eared notepad away. She smoothed the bedspread and picked up her University of Missouri sweatshirt. Its bloodstains were muted to a faint sepia. The blue shirt Michael had been wearing the night he was stabbed was a total loss. What a shame, since sweatshirts were practical, comfortable garments. Even Adele kept one of her son’s like a holy relic.
The shirt dropped from Rebecca’s nerveless fingers. Christopher Garrity, Adele’s son, had studied Roman Britain at Oxford. Sheila had done a television documentary on Boadicea, the scourge of Roman Britain. Chris had killed himself. Sheila was capable of driving a young man to suicide. Yes!
No. Rebecca sat abruptly down again. Adele had already been on her way to Scotland when Sheila signed on to the dig. Unlike Dennis tracking Jerry, Adele couldn’t have tracked Sheila. And yet, cosmic biorhythms being what they were, a meeting wouldn’t have been entirely accidental—Adele and Sheila moved in the same circle of historians and students and fringe newspapers. Not a yes, not a no. A maybe.
Rebecca pounded her temples with her fists. She felt as though her brain were carbonated, her thoughts bubbling and breaking as she tried to seize them.
Surely she had to reject Adele as the perpetrator for the same reason she’d rejected Dennis. Why on earth would either of them try to kill Guinevere? That the person who’d attacked Guinevere was the one who was after the treasure was proved by the cat’s reaction to the figure in the bathroom. The treasure, not revenge, was the motive. Sure, a woman with an ultra-suede pantsuit and a Hermes scarf might want even more money… .
Rebecca leaped from the bed and raced upstairs. It could be—it had to be. It took her five minutes to find the letters in the bedside table. She knew she’d seen at least two from that ashram; here were two more. The most recent read, “Thank you for your contribution. Your generosity is much appreciated. Upon receipt of the rest of your pledged amount, we will name the new contemplation center the Christopher Garrity Memorial Pavilion.”
Certainty cascaded through Rebecca’s mind. Maybe Adele had been after Sheila. Maybe she’d found out about Sheila’s search for the treasure and thought it would be poetic justice to find it herself and buy her son, Sheila’s victim, a memorial. Maybe Sheila had never laid eyes on Chris Garrity. It didn’t matter. It all came back to the treasure. And that came back to the clues in the tomb.
Beneath the pile of letters was a leaflet describing the Ruthwell Cross. Adele had stopped there on her way back from Whithorn. “The Dream of the Rood” was carved in runes on the Ruthwell Cross. The psychic power of stones, Adele was fond of saying.
“Come on,” said Rebecca aloud. “Adele’s an amateur. I’m a professional and if I can’t figure this out I ought to be flogged with a typewriter ribbon.” Swearing, she tucked the letter and the leaflet in her pocket and ran back downstairs. She pulled Michael’s attaché case from under the bed, opened it, and dumped out the contents. There was the picture of him standing next to the wheel-cross. There was the extra page from Pringle’s history of Rudesburn. Robert the Bruce, he of the wandering heart, had set up the second cross on the Law. Not so much as one verse from the “Dream” had ever been recorded on either cross.
And yet Anne had written the verses and drawn the pattern of crosses and wavy lines twice. Rebecca frowned—dammit, still all she could see in that drawing was a knitting pattern. It was an optical illusion. Everything was an optical illusion. She was still in that hotel room in Ayr, dreaming the entire scenario with its interlocking conspiracies and clashing personalities. Soon the phone would ring, and Colin would tell her about Sheila.
Colin. The wheel-cross. Not the poem, but its title—the rood itself. Rebecca grabbed Michael’s address book and her jacket and headed for the hotel.
The spotlights at the Festival field were so bright the rest of the village was pitch-black by comparison. At least two sets of bagpipes and three electric guitars launched into “Scotland the Brave”. Voices cheered. Although shadowy figures surged up and down the sidewalk, the hotel was deserted. A young waiter drummed his fingers at reception, obviously not thrilled to have been assigned guard duty.
“Come on,” she said under her breath as she dialed the telephone, “be home, be sitting there admiring your Trooping of the Colors… .”
“Hello, MacLeod here. “
“Colin? It’s Rebecca, at Rudesburn. “
“Well then, how’s it goin’?”
“Sorry, I don’t have time to even begin to explain. Just answer one question, please. Is the wheel-cross outside the west door of the church carved out of rock from Battle Law? Is the cross on Battle Law cut out of the same stuff?”
“That’s two questions, lass. But, aye, that they are. The Law is an igneous intrusion. Whinstone, it’s called, extra hard, resists weatherin’, though a right bugger to carve back then, I suppose.”
Rebecca tapped the receiver against her temple. The rocks. The Law. The treasure. Anne. She couldn’t quite see it. Like the case against Adele, it just wasn’t all there yet.
Motive, but not opportunity. Adele had been seen in the cemetery at eight. She said she’d walked through the village at 8:15. That was hardly enough time to find Sheila and drag her into the church. If only there were a few more moments unaccounted for, time enough to kill.
Colin was talking. With an effort Rebecca tuned in. “Anjali liked the bear with the wellies—thank Michael for the advice. And the wee Queen looks a treat on the mantel. A good thing it was an important day for the shopkeeper or I’d never have been able to afford it.”
A bubble burst in the back of Rebecca’s mind. A cool spray of inspiration washed the dust of preconception from her thoughts. The shopkeeper had closed early the night of the wedding, the same night Sheila was killed. What if, in the excitement of the day, he hadn’t wound the clock in his store window? What if it had stopped at eight? That would explain Bridget’s thinking Rebecca had come into the Craft Centre later than eight. She had.
“Wish Michael a happy birthday for me,” said Colin with a chuckle. “Ring me back when you’re ready to visit.”
“Sorry, Colin. I will. Soon.” She hung up and sat with her hand on the phone, her eyes slightly crossed. I saw Elaine. I saw Laurence. I saw Winnie… . She ran from the office into the shop and danced impatiently while Winnie sold three cans of
Citrus Spring and a roll of biscuits.
“Oh aye,” she answered Rebecca’s breathless question. “I was shakin’ a rug from the window when you walked by. It was eight-fifteen, right enough. The telly was just changin’ programs, and I couldna decide between ‘The A-Team’ and ‘The Brothers Karamazov’, so I turned it off.”
There it was. Methodical Colin and his notepad had just missed it—Winnie Johnston hadn’t attended the inquest, and none of the people who had questioned her since then had known what specific question to ask her.
An adrenalin rush, Rebecca decided, was right up there with a glass of good Scotch. She thanked Winnie and plunged back into the night. The band was playing “Maggie Lauder”. Whoops emanated from the Festival grounds. A huge orange moon was a carnival mask peering over the eastern horizon. Several people stood warily along the perimeter fence, but the priory itself was still and silent, its lawns a dark velvet pall. Children ran from the safety of the lights into the darkness and back like swimmers testing cold water. I’m a fool, Rebecca thought. I should’ve seen it all along.
But it was an optical illusion; one had to look at it from the right angle. Even Mackenzie had never seen the angle of the letter and the leaflet that crinkled in her pocket as she strode across the New Bridge. Adele hadn’t walked through the village at eight-fifteen. Rebecca had been there, and she hadn’t seen so much as one of Adele’s gray hairs.
With mingled rage and elation she told herself, I have them now, motive and opportunity, and I’m going to give a damned good go at the treasure, too. That tile floor around the broken cross, that would do nicely for a start. She was going to end this charade, once and for all. She was going to end it now.
1
Chapter Twenty-eight
“Take thought for the morrow,” Rebecca repeated under her breath. She liked Anne’s version. Nothing happened in a vacuum.
A wave ran through the people ranged along the perimeter wall, paper cups of beer going down, heads coming up, children recalled. A white shape flicked across the streamers of light and shadow the Festival spotlights sent across the lawn. Anne, Rebecca wondered, or Adele?
The shape disappeared into the cloister. A mutter of excitement ran through the watchers, like spectators at a football game commenting on an interesting play. Adele had read the notes on the inscriptions. She might be one jump ahead… . No, Rebecca called silently to the invisible figure, you don’t deserve the relics Anne died for. I won’t let you steal them.
She plunged into the Festival, elbowed her way past a booth selling pungent meat pies and sausages, dodged around one offering cassette tapes, and darted between a couple dressed in full sixteenth century finery. The faces of the crowd seemed to stretch and smear like balloons. There was Michael at center stage playing “Highland Laddie” to the accompaniment of two lasses with accordions. The lights were in his eyes—he’d never see her in this crowd. If she waited for him to finish, she thought, she’d lose Adele.
One part of her mind wanted to solve the mystery without him—that would serve him right. Another part of her mind knew that would be cutting off her nose to spite her face. He had said, “I want you to make a decision you can live with.” She couldn’t live with playing damsel-in-distress. If she solved the mystery alone, then she’d made her decision. Her elation ebbed into a desperate resolve.
Mark and Hilary were clapping time in the front row. Grant was sauntering along with his hands folded quietly behind his back, his expression abstracted, as if he had a stomach ache. No need to disturb them yet. Rebecca fought her way to the Plantagenet van. Dennis stood on the step, two still cameras draped around his neck, the video camera on his shoulder. The whirring of sound equipment contributed to the din of music and voices, and she had to shout. “When Michael gets done playing, tell him I’ve gone into the priory. Do you have a flashlight in there?”
“Sure, but why… .”
She leaped up the step and grabbed the flashlight from its bracket. “Adele’s the killer. I’m going after her.”
“But she has Michael’s knife!”
“I’m only going to follow her until she does whatever she’s going to do and goes back to the cottage. Then we’ll call Grant. Don’t worry—I’m younger than she is. Angrier, too, if not quite as crazy. I’ll watch out.”
Away from the crush the breeze was cleaner and cooler. Rebecca brushed by the goggle-eyed faces along the wall and hurried across the grass. Gasps of awe followed her. She turned and curtseyed to her audience. She rounded the corner of the church and stopped, blinking. Like when Jenkins turned off the lights in the crypt, the contrast between light and dark was absolute. But until she knew where Adele was, she didn’t dare turn on the flashlight.
She picked her way across the cloister, into the south transept door, and up the tower’s spiral staircase. The hollowed steps were treacherous in broad daylight; at night they were deadly. She braced her hands against either wall, feeling her way upward with fingertips and toes. Grit and fuzzy lichen crawled over her fingers. The chill wind, channeled through the narrow passage, raised the hair on the back of her neck.
Something white leaped out at her and with a rush knocked her backward. Strangling a cry, she fell. Her knees and elbows jarred against cold, hard stone. Her hands clawed at a projecting rock and stopped her plunge. She huddled against the wall, catching her breath.
She’d frightened the owl. That hadn’t been draperies but beating wings. She laughed, as much to keep herself from screaming as because it was funny. Her leg hurt, wrenched the wrong way. Her bruised shoulder twinged. Her fingers were scraped raw. She reminded herself how angry she was; anger was stronger than fear.
Rebecca hobbled up the staircase. She strained to hear something, anything, a laugh, or steps behind her, or the elusive chanting that emanated from the stones of the priory itself. All she heard were voices and music from the field. She recognized Michael’s touch on a pipe solo and mouthed the words, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me…”
She was at the top of the tower. Through the eastern window slit was the pallid face of the moon, riding higher now, its light tinting the clouds around it. Below her the priory grounds lay cool and mysterious, dappled with shadow. A white shape glided beside the infirmary. Was that Adele, acting out her fantasies of love and revenge? Or was it Anne?
“I once was lost, but now am found…” Cold spilled over her. Rebecca spun away from the window. On the staircase glimmered a swirl of draperies. “Where did you hide it, mother prioress?” she whispered. “On the Law?”
The gleam was gone. Rebecca edged back to the window. Darkness, and the white shape—Adele—moving over the lawn. The moon was so bright it would have cast a shadow, but the Festival lights swallowed its light in their own. The shadow of the tower stretched south toward Battle Law. In the summer, the sun was in the north. The English came to Rudesburn in the summer.
“Was blind, but now can see.” Rebecca clutched at the windowsill. The tower, the straight line of Anne’s cryptic drawing. The wavy line, the Law. The two crosses were made of stone from the Law. In Anne’s time the broken cross had been intact.
The shadow of the tower touched an outcropping of rock on the west side of the hill, a mound of stone and gorse that had once been a low barmkin wall, not far from where she and Michael had sat the day they’d found the warrant. If the tower and the crosses made a triangle, a plumb bob dropped from the apex would touch that outcropping. Anne must have been a latent archeologist. Rebecca grimaced in triumph—she knew she’d been on the right track.
But first she had to follow poor sick Adele, who was drifting toward Battle Law as slowly and ceremoniously as a priest in a religious procession. Worshipping a golden calf, no doubt. Rebecca started down the stairs. Michael began playing “The Flowers o’ the Forest.” The music was high and clear, bright and bittersweet.
She muffled the beam of her flashlight in her jacket and took one step at a time. Someone slow on
the uptake was still singing “Amazing Grace”. A rat scrabbled in the church. Once outside she turned off the light and, wincing, started around the buildings. She felt eyes watching her. She knew she felt eyes watching her. It was just the atmosphere of the priory, she told herself, and scuttled toward the inky bulk of the Law.
The priory buildings blocked the Festival lights, leaving only the moonlight to spangle the Law’s rocks and leaves. Rebecca slipped behind a ruined wall and crouched, catching her breath. Where had Adele gone?
If she called everyone now, she thought, they’d come shouting and waving flashlights. Adele would do what she’d done so many times before, slip quietly into the hotel or the church and pretend she’d been there all along. No. She had to do this by herself.
Rebecca climbed toward the outcropping. She thought she heard a quick scrape above her. She stopped, willing her heart to stop pounding so loudly. Nothing. She moved on.
Each scuff of her sneakers against stone was the thud of a kettle drum. Each brush of her jeans against a branch was cymbals clashing. Her own breath was a banshee’s wail. Still she climbed. The outcropping of the Law was a jagged line against the night, just above her. A cloud drifted over the moon.
The shadows were so dense she could see nothing. If Adele had worn black, instead of masquerading as the ghost—or as Sheila, her victim—now that was an interesting twist of psychology… .
Hands grabbed her. Involuntarily Rebecca’s breath expelled itself in a scream. The sound was weak and ineffectual, absorbed by the stones and underbrush and the distant music. Damn—she was following me!
One of the hands crushed her mouth. The arm pinning hers was clothed in black. She read my mind, Rebecca thought. But the arm wrapping her waist and the body pressed against her back were not those of a woman.
“Bloody hell!” she shouted. The words were smothered. She twisted, jackknifing violently, but the grasp was incredibly strong. Her feet kicked backward at the man who held her, outward at the slippery rocks. Her feet struck a stone. Bracing herself, she pushed backward.
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