Shadows in Scarlet

by Carl, Lillian Stewart

  “I must be going,” Duncan said. “Confirmation class.”

  “Won’t you stay to lunch?” asked Norah.

  “Much as I hate to miss out on Irene’s cooking, no. I’ll ring you about the services.”

  “Righty-ho. Thank you for collecting Miss Witham.”

  “Amanda, please” said Amanda, and to Duncan, “Thanks a lot. Sorry I’m so spaced—er—disoriented.”

  “Quite understandable. And you’re welcome.” Smiling pleasantly, Duncan climbed back into his car and drove away. The masons fumbled a stone block and danced aside, laughing and swearing. Amanda picked up the crate. Funny how it seemed heavier now than it had back at Melrose.

  Inside the box something moved. Amanda stopped dead, every sense alert. James? But she heard, saw, felt nothing. A piece of bone had probably been jarred loose—baggage handlers took “Fragile” as a challenge—and had rolled against the wood. But whether his spirit was still out and about didn’t matter. When she fulfilled her promise to him that weary spirit could rest at last.

  Amanda carried the box toward the house, her steps muffled by the green, green grass of home.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The dog trotted at Norah’s heels as she led Amanda beneath an arched gateway—Amanda glanced up to see whether guards were getting the boiling oil ready—and through a huge iron-bound wooden door. Inside, a whitewashed passage floored with stone led to a spiral staircase, its treads hollowed by generations of feet. Amanda inhaled eagerly of the musty odor of age, finer than perfume.

  Up the stairs they went, Amanda starting to pant beneath the weight of the box, and into the medieval great hall. The hammer-beamed ceiling was two stories high. Heraldic flags hung above the wainscoting. A fireplace big enough to spit and roast Wayne Chancellor filled one wall. A sideboard groaned beneath pewter goblets, platters, and pitchers. Among all the artifacts—antlers, paintings, a faded tapestry, pikes and axes—Amanda focussed on one.

  Inside a display case, on two wooden cradles, lay a sword. A basket-hilted eighteenth-century sword. She set the crate down with a thunk and bent over, so close to the glass her breath misted it.

  This was exactly what she expected. Every curlicue of the brass guard was polished bright and smooth. The blade was a length of shining steel. A sword I’d be loath to lose, James had said. Little appetite as she had for weaponry, Amanda could see what he meant. This sword was a work of art.

  A small plaque on the floor of the case read, “James Charles Edward Grant, 1755-1781. Fraser’s Highlanders. 71st Regiment of Foot. Died in the service of his country.”

  Well, Amanda thought, he’d certainly been prepared to die in the service of his country.

  “We were most intrigued to hear you’d turned up the man himself after all these years,” Norah said.

  “Mr. Duncan called him a black sheep.” Amanda stood up. The shine of the steel floated ghostlike behind her eyes.

  “He was a rogue, right enough, but when he’s this far removed that just makes him all the more glamorous.”

  Glamorous. Oh yeah. “It wasn’t his cousin Archibald who was, well, kind of a problem?”

  “Archibald? I believe his service in America was the only interesting moment in his long and fearfully dull life. But then, the dull men are the ones who settle down and beget descendants like us.”

  So the Grants didn’t know the truth. Great.

  “You’ll be wanting a wash and brush up and a meal,” Norah went on. “We’re not waiting lunch for Malcolm. Lindley told you, I suppose, he was called away up the glen. The shepherds were in a bit of a stramach with their program and he went to sort it for them.”

  “The shepherd’s program?” repeated Amanda, imagining some sort of Nativity pageant.

  “One of Malcolm’s undertakings,” Norah explained, “is organizing the estate’s business on computer as well as making plans for restoring, renovating, and conserving the house. He does contract work for other properties in the U.K. as well—he has his own company, Preservation Imaging. And in his spare time, what there is of it, he’s putting the family history on computer.”

  That made sense, Amanda thought. But since there was no way Norah could have any children older than thirty, Malcolm must be a flabby computer nerd, Carrie’s chinless wonder.

  Norah squared the packing crate beneath the display case. “How are the mighty fallen, then, and other appropriate lines. Lindley has the ceremony well in hand, so I’ll let him wax the poetry. Let me show you to your room.” Norah walked toward the door.

  So James was home, Amanda thought. She’d got him as close to his sword as he was going to get—funny, how it was in better shape than the man himself. As for her telling his story, if Malcolm was putting the family history on computer he must have some original sources.

  Right now, though, Amanda wouldn’t stop to pick up an original source if it fell at her feet. She wanted a bath, fresh clothes, and some food, or she’d slip into a coma. Turning her back on the sword and the crate, she followed Norah from the room.

  Still hauling the suitcase and the camera bag, Norah led the way along a couple of corridors, up a short flight of steps, and through a sitting room furnished with easy chairs, a couch, and a TV set.

  “Dundreggan is a lot bigger inside than it looks outside,” Amanda said. “I’ll have to roll string out behind me.”

  “It’s hardly a model of domestic planning,” Norah told her. “Every generation’s had a hand in, with predictable results. Here you are.”

  All right! Again, just what she’d—well, maybe not expected. Hoped. The bedroom had a beamed ceiling and a four-poster bed. A sixteenth-century hooded fireplace contained an electric heater. The window was cut in a wall so thick its sill made a cushioned seat.

  Norah put the camera bag on a chair by the hall door and opened another door beside the bed. The bathroom plumbing dated to the turn of the century, but there was a modern shower over the claw-footed tub. A vase of flowers stood in the window alcove. “Switch on the towel rail here,” Norah said, indicating a set of thick, fluffy towels draped over metal tubing. “For the shower, turn this knob to heat the water.”

  Amanda tried out the controls, got hot water, and promised to be ready for lunch in an hour.

  “Can you find your way? Back down the spiral staircase and turn left until you smell the food.”

  “I’m in great shape. Thank you, Lady Norah.”

  “Norah, please. The ‘Lady’ makes me feel like a pedigree horse or dog.” And she disappeared through the door, leaving an elusive scent of green leaves and rose petals behind her.

  Amanda tried to catch her breath. The crisp white pillowcases and thick comforter were tempting, but if she lay down she wouldn’t get back up until tomorrow morning. Instead she unpacked, took a shower, and discovered why heated towels were such a big deal—the window in the bathroom let in a draft Norah might have said was brisk but which to Amanda was downright cold.

  It woke her up, though, and as she dressed in jeans and one of Carrie’s sweaters she remembered the chilly draft that had always announced James’s arrival. She’d thought that was some kind of ghostly energy conversion. Now she began to wonder if he was merely recreating the temperature of home. She hoped she wouldn’t get the bends from such an abrupt change of climate.

  Allowing herself fifteen minutes to find her way through the house, Amanda set out in quest of lunch. She only took one wrong turn, which brought her to a long room fitted out with bookcases. Ancient morocco-bound books stood cheek by jowl with this year’s paperbacks. A state of the art computer set-up, complete with laser printer, scanner, and fax, covered the top of a massive Victorian desk. The aroma of leather and paper hinted at scholarly doings. Everything was so totally perfect, Amanda told herself, that something had to go wrong.

  Every corridor and alcove was hung with pictures and photographs, most of which glided past Amanda’s glazed eyes in a jumble of faces and fabrics. But one set of portraits on a landin
g of the spiral staircase leaped out at her.

  A small painting to one side was identical to the miniature of James at Melrose, except it was full-length. Yep, there he was, coat, kilt, and shoulder belt, frozen forever in youth. What in the miniature was ironic self-awareness looked in this larger and presumably original version like arrogance. So maybe this portrait was accurate. She’d kind of suspected the man hadn’t often turned the other cheek.

  The portrait must have been commissioned by James’s parents when he joined the regiment. It sounded like he’d been packed off to the army to keep him out of trouble. There was a lot she didn’t know about him. A lot she’d never know. She’d better be happy that she’d known, and made a difference to, his ghost.

  She identified the two large portraits hanging side by side by brass labels on their frames. Archibald was depicted in middle age, his face drawn downward by his dark suit and the gravity of his social position. Amanda glimpsed something of James’s sardonic humor in the height of Archibald’s forehead and the angle of his brows. But James was formed from light and air. Archibald was molded from clay. He looked every bit as solid, and as stolid, as Norah implied. And why not? As a murderer he hadn’t had even fifteen minutes of fame. By the time this portrait was painted he’d rationalized it all away.

  How he’d ever won Isabel’s affections Amanda couldn’t imagine. She stepped to the side to check out the portrait not of James’s fickle fiancée, but of Archibald’s wife. Isabel, too, was painted in middle age. Her eyes were large and dark, and the fine bones of her chin and cheekbones supported rather than hid behind the added flesh of her matronly years. Unlike Archibald she was smiling, or at least considering a smile, if not necessarily pleased with herself then at least contented with her lot.

  Put modern clothes on them all and the story would make a pretty good movie of the week. Amanda went on retracing her steps, and sure enough smelled the aroma of baking bread at the foot of the staircase. She passed a dining room with a medieval barrel-vaulted ceiling, its furnishings an assortment of styles dating from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and stepped into a stone-flagged kitchen whose cupboards and appliances were younger than she was. Herbs grew in pots along a windowsill. A wine rack stood beside a shelf of cookbooks. The dog lounged picturesquely underfoot, accompanied by two cats, one a striped tabby like Lafayette, the other ginger-colored.

  Norah stood at the counter cutting vegetables. She now wore chino pants and a turtleneck. An older, shorter, and rounder woman stirred something at the stove. At a refectory table sat a similarly rounded elderly man and the two stone masons, their clothes gray with dust but their hands and faces scrubbed pink. Each man nursed a tall glass of amber-colored liquid Amanda doubted was iced tea.

  “Here’s the American lass,” said one mason, a man about her own age. “And a right bonny one she is, too.”

  “Hello, lassie,” said the other, an older version of the first. Their smiles were open and friendly.

  So were everyone else’s. Amanda felt like Miss America posing on the runway in Atlantic City.

  “Amanda,” Norah said, “This is Irene and Calum Finlay. They’ve lived at Dundreggan longer than I have and are absolutely indispensable. And two John MacRaes, father and son. Our walls would have come tumbling down long since if it weren’t for several generations of MacRaes.”

  “Nice to meet you,” said Amanda, aiming for the Miss Congeniality award.

  “Sit yourself down,” Norah told her.

  Amanda took the closest empty place and tried to exchange small talk with Calum and the Johns. But while Norah’s accent was only a bit thicker than Duncan’s—Amanda suspected a posh girl’s school in England—the others spoke such rich brogues she not only had to listen carefully but to stare at their faces, taking in every visual cue. They’d think she was some sort of moron. But no, they were staring back. Her accent was giving them just as much trouble.

  “Here you are,” said Irene, setting a plate before Amanda. “This’ll put roses in your cheeks.”

  “Thanks,” Amanda said, and dug in.

  She ate salmon that was so meltingly fresh even her numb tongue could tell it was not shoe leather, served with homemade mayonnaise, tomatoes, cucumbers, and cress. She ate vegetable soup dense enough to float a spoon. She ate crusty warm bread and sweet butter.

  In spite of Amanda’s good appetite, the MacRaes excused themselves before she finished, as did Calum, and Irene started washing the dishes. Norah lingered politely over a second cup of coffee, her alert blue eyes sweeping the room with satisfaction, and, Amanda felt, gratitude.

  Amanda savored the last bites of her gooseberry pie, drank a cup of coffee, and leaned back, satisfied. Funny, how both food and sex left you mellowed out. Something about sensory overload.

  Norah’s fingernails were short, clean, and bare. Her only make-up was pink lip gloss and a dash of mascara. The wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and mouth were smile-lines. Her chestnut-brown hair, swept back from her face, displayed its silver streaks like a veteran displaying her medals. She wasn’t a petite woman, but her posture was regally unaware that hourglass figures were out of fashion.

  There was the difference between a real aristocrat and a wannabe like Cynthia, Amanda thought. Norah didn’t have anything to prove. If Cynthia thought that was eccentric, then that said more about Cynthia than it did about Norah.

  Irene scooped some leftover salmon onto a saucer and set it down in the corner. The cats roused themselves and raced toward it. The dog looked up hopefully, tail patting the floor, until Irene gave him some, too.

  “The dog is named Cerberus,” Norah said. “We took him in as a charity case. As a sheep dog he’s a disgrace to his profession, sits there with a fatuous smile while the sheep run amok. But he’s a fine pet.”

  “Cerberus,” Amanda repeated. How appropriate for Dundreggan to have a dog named after the guardian of the gates of hell.

  “The cats are good mousers,” Norah went on, “although I confess we’ve made pets of them, too. My son, with his appalling sense of humor, named them ‘The Catchers’, Margaret and Denis, after the former prime minister and her husband.”

  Amanda laughed. “Which of your sons has the appalling sense of humor?”

  “They both do, but Malcolm’s the one at home and so most likely to inflict it upon us.”

  “Mr. Duncan told me your son Archie is a pilot. It’s traditional for the younger one to join the military, isn’t it?”

  “Oh aye, but we’re doing it backwards this century, since the two great wars took everyone. Archie’s the elder. He inherited the title when my husband Alex died, but little of Alex’s affection for the property, I’m afraid.” She frowned slightly, and then her brows shrugged the frown away.

  Amanda nodded. Cynthia had, of course, gotten it all right. Being a widow, Norah was “Lady Norah,” not “Lady Dundreggan.” Malcolm was “the Honorable,” not “Lord Dundreggan,” therefore he was the younger. “Neither of your sons is married?”

  “No, not yet. Malcolm is looking more seriously than Archie, I believe. There’s certainly no new Lady Dundreggan in the offing.”

  “A’ titles are little mair than words noo,” said Irene from the sink.

  “They’ve never been anything but,” Norah said with smile. “Games of power and precedence that would be ludicrous if they weren’t so deadly. It’s the land that matters, the land and the family.”

  Amanda nodded agreement.

  “I understand,” Norah went on, “you’re writing a book on James Grant’s life and death in America?”

  “One of our librarians is writing an article, and I’ve promised to bring her material. It may balloon into a book.”

  “Alex’s father organized the family papers a good many years ago, before my time. Malcolm and I have a squint at them every now and then, but we’ve never focussed on any particular period.”

  “But he’s putting it all on computer?”

  “Oh aye. He’
ll be glad to find the appropriate material for you. There’s an unpublished autobiography written by James’s cousin Archibald, I believe. He inherited Dundreggan on James’s death. But you were asking about him earlier.”

  An autobiography! Yes! Amanda considered high-fiving Norah but contained herself. “The museum in Edinburgh sent us a copy of the letter telling James’s family of his death. It mentions Archibald.”

  “The letter written by Lindsay of Balcarres. Malcolm Major must have been right pleased to uncover that one. I believe he donated it to the museum with a few notes attached.”

  “Yes, he did. The notes were really helpful.”

  “I hope his notes turn out to be only the tip of the iceberg, then.” Norah drained the last drops from her cup and stood. “You’re welcome to copy anything you find. We have a small photocopier in the library.”

  “The government and its paperwork,” added Irene.

  “Dundreggan is a listed building, which means we have to obtain consent from the bloody great bureaucracy if we want to so much as repair a window.” A rueful smile turned up one side of Norah’s mouth. “If you’ll excuse me, I’d best go deal with some of that paperwork now. If you’d like to explore the library… .”

  Amanda stood up, folding her napkin. Despite the coffee she was so sleepy Norah’s voice advanced and receded like an ocean wave. “Thanks, but I’m still under the influence. Maybe I’ll just look around, if that’s all right.”

  “By all means. We don’t have any mysterious locked dungeons, although you’ll find quite a few lumber rooms filled with things I keep hoping are valuable antiques but which I suspect are rubbish. Dinner is at seven.”

  “Thank you.” Amanda turned to Irene. “Can I help with the dishes?”

  “Ah, no, away wi’ ye,” the woman replied, her mock ferocity making it clear no one invaded her domain except Norah.

  Amanda walked back upstairs to her room and perched on the window seat, feeling like Rapunzel in her tower. Below her lay a walled garden teeming with roses of every color. Beyond it stretched the lawn and the driveway and the outer wall where the masons tapped away. Calum stood nearby, smoking a pipe and either offering advice or gossiping. Beyond him spread the awesomely beautiful landscape of stone, sky, and mountain… . Amanda’s eyes closed. She sat up with a jerk. If she went to sleep now she’d never sleep tonight.