The Secret Portrait (A Jean Fairbairn/Alasdair Cameron mystery Book 1)

by Lillian Stewart Carl

  At the counter he ordered a cup of coffee. So did she. He paid for his, she paid for hers. Without stopping to doctor the coffee with sugar or cream—maybe he regarded them as affectations—he strolled to a table in the corner farthest from the door, took off the bulky jacket he wore over his suit, and sat down with his back to the wall.

  Jean emptied a plastic pot of artificial cream into her paper cup and took a chair on the opposite side of the table. The odors wafting from the kitchen implied fried fish and chips. Fried sausage and chips. Fried haggis and chips. A sign advertised American hamburgers, and bags of spongy white buns stacked on the counter backed up the claim. None of it did anything for Jean’s appetite. Besides, eating in front of Cameron would be like having lunch with the head of the tenure committee—she needed her full attention to keep her balance.

  The detective gazed around the restaurant, evaluating the decor and the diners both. He took a healthy swig from his cup. Only then did his arctic eyes meet hers.

  Let’s get this over with. “This morning I went out to George Lovelace’s house in Corpach. . . .”

  Cameron listened. Every now and then he’d blink, slowly, or nod, even slower. If he already knew what she’d found out about the Jacobite Lodge or the Hogmanay party, he offered not a clue. By the time she finished with the suspicious incident of Toby Walsh in the hotel and the amazing episode of the pollen, she was beginning to wonder if he was the scientific experiment, a new variety of robo-cop.

  “I told Sawyer all of this,” she concluded, “and he said he was capable of doing his own research.”

  “Andy Sawyer’s a wee bit ambitious,” Cameron said, as though ambition were a handicap.

  Jean agreed with that, too, but her opinion of Sawyer was worth as much as he was paying for it. She went on, “Lovelace could have bought the coin from a dealer, but he wouldn’t get any more for it than he spent on it. It all boils down to why he deliberately misled me.”

  “If he misled you about being known to the Museum, how else was he misleading you?”

  “About where and when he found the coin, but I can’t see why.”

  “Could be the coin was only the means to an end. You.”

  “You mean the whole charade was to get him in to see me? To get me to write about—if not the coin, what? Charlie?”

  “Lovelace was working for MacLyon, mind.”

  “If MacLyon wanted to suggest an article, he could have picked up the phone and called me, he didn’t have to send Lovelace with a line of bull.”

  “Oh aye.” Cameron said softly. He turned to look at the windows at the front of the cafe, which lightened in a gleam of sun and then darkened again. Several drenched and bedraggled backpackers walked in the door, teasing each other in German.

  Jean sipped at her coffee—it had the muddy flavor and watery aroma of instant—and considered Cameron’s profile. His features weren’t distinctive—not handsome, not ugly, just symmetrical and proportional. His skin was fair, but not pasty. His ears lay flat to his head, reserved. His appearance wasn’t ascetic so much as it was pared to a monastic minimum—except for the elegant ogee curve of his lips, like the tracery in a Gothic window. A stone window. Maybe his own face had become as much protective coloring as his suit. Maybe he was curious over and beyond conscientious. Maybe still waters ran deep.

  She should have learned from his rebuff yesterday not to get curious about his private persona. Assuming he had one. For all she knew, he lived in a locker at Northern Constabulary headquarters. Retracting her antennae, she asked, “Has the postmortem been done on Lovelace yet?”

  Cameron’s head swiveled toward her. “Aye, the report’s come in.”

  “Tell me about it. I promise not to get the vapors.”

  His right eyebrow actually rose a millimeter, as though he really were amused with her, but his voice was hard and matter-of-fact. “Lovelace was garroted, then hanged.”

  Oh. The facts of the matter not being at all amusing, Jean tried to copy his detachment. “I’d thought that it would be hard to hang someone who was conscious and fighting back. How can you tell he was garroted first?”

  “Clear ligature marks in the creases of the skin—bruising and swelling—on front and both sides of the throat. Horizontally. The marks from the hanging, a v-shape up the back of his head, are much fainter.”

  “The killer sneaked up on him from behind and twisted a cord or rope around his neck.”

  “A length of twine. Good-sized spool of it in the garden shed. The murderer looped the twine round Lovelace’s neck, inserted a stick into the back of the noose and rotated. Quicker than some forms of strangulation, for what that’s worth. An old guerilla trick. Takes a bit of strength, but with the surprise, not so much as you’d expect. Lovelace wasn’t a young man.”

  “He wouldn’t have put up much of a fight, no.”

  “He was hauled up on the hook either just before or just after death.”

  “How can. . . .” Jean began.

  “After death, the blood coagulates in the lowest part of the body. In Lovelace it was in his legs and feet, meaning he was pulled upright straightaway. That’s no trouble at all, just lower the hook, catch up the cord, and haul away with the block-and-tackle rig.”

  “So any reasonably fit person could have killed him.” Including Fiona or Vanessa. Or me. But Cameron didn’t have to make that point.

  The police knew how Lovelace had been killed. An old guerilla trick. An old commando trick. A trick used on an old commando. But how wasn’t why. How was only a means to why. She looked up at Cameron. He was watching her like Dougie watching a mouse hole. To him, she was only a means to why. “Go on,” she told him.

  “The medical examiner sent a number of items to be analyzed. The contents of Lovelace’s stomach. Bits of plants and threads clinging to his clothing. A stick lying on the floor, probably the one used in the garrote. We’re analyzing the fingerprints in the room as well.”

  “Mine are on the doorknob. I never said I wasn’t there.”

  “No, you’ve not,” said Cameron mildly, menace scaled back to caution.

  “So unless you think I’m capable of some sort of fake-out-the-cops scenario, I’m not your number-one suspect.”

  He didn’t react.

  “I did almost interrupt the murderer in the act. If nothing else, they probably intended to have a lot longer time before Lovelace was found.”

  “You might have upset someone’s plans, right enough.”

  Jean hadn’t really wanted to consider that, not least because she sure didn’t want police protection. But she couldn’t hope for a broad perspective in others and refuse to use one herself. “What about Toby Walsh? He was hanging around my hotel room a little while ago.”

  “Walsh said he saw Lovelace sneaking into the house.”

  “With some sort of video surveillance system?”

  “No. From the upstairs window. The CCTV’s not been installed yet.”

  “Oh. Okay,” Jean said. “Is Toby telling the truth, though? If he killed Lovelace, he might be trying to fudge the time.”

  “The coach driver saw Lovelace as well. Time of death is not in doubt.”

  Well no, it wasn’t. Ogilvy had seen Lovelace leave Corpach and the bus driver had seen him arrive at Glendessary House. Walsh’s sighting hadn’t been a crisis apparition. You didn’t go for paranormal explanations until all the natural ones were exhausted, and that could take a long time—especially with Cameron on the case. No matter how she looked at it, she’d come within a gnat’s eyelash of interrupting a murder in progress. Her hand tightened around her paper cup and the vile coffee brew surged up toward the rim.

  “Walsh has previous track,” said Cameron.

  Jean released the cup. “A criminal record?”

  “He was sent down for breaking and entering several years ago.”

  “Lovelace’s house was broken and entered this morning. Toby was in the area, and with the MacSorleys’ car, too.”


  “We’ll be looking into that.”

  “Any one else with criminal records?” Jean asked, hoping he’d explain his odd reaction to Fiona’s name.

  “Rick MacLyon was done twice for drink-driving in the States.”

  “That’s downright conservative behavior these days.” Jean frowned, trying to remember the exact sequence of events at Glendessary House. It would help if at certain moments whistles had blown and bells rung—pay attention, this is going to be important! “I assume the people from the bus are MacLyon’s Jacobite playmates. Their meeting or pep rally or whatever was going on at two, with Neil’s musical accompaniment outside, although I don’t know whether MacLyon himself was there then. Or Vanessa.”

  “They’d both arrived by half-past two, we’re told.”

  “I heard Rick’s voice while I was wandering around the back hall. Fiona, though, I only saw her for a few seconds when I came in. . . .”

  Cameron made a quick, sharp gesture, like shooing away a fly. Have it your way, Jean thought. “I assume you’re tracking down the Lodge members.”

  “The coach company was very helpful.”

  “Has anyone contradicted anyone else?”

  “No. No one’s agreed too closely with anyone else either. They’ve not sat down together and planned out their stories.”

  Jean had had that same thought, at the foot of the staircase yesterday afternoon. Great minds, and so forth. “Several people had the means and the opportunity.”

  “True, but at the end of the day it’s the motive that matters, or so I’m thinking.”

  “I’m thinking that too. And while I was upset that Lovelace was jerking me around with the coin, that’s hardly a motive to kill him.”

  “Motives can be right slippy,” Cameron said, noncommittal. Again he turned toward the window, this time with his arm propped on the back of the plastic chair. His posture indicated he’d much prefer being somewhere else—pushing a pencil, maybe, or climbing a mountain.

  His suit coat fell open. A copy of Great Scot was tucked into its inside pocket. It was the issue with her article on Bonnie Prince Charlie, the one that had attracted Lovelace’s attention. Jean pointed. “Checking all my angles?”

  “I’ve looked out your academic work and your magazine stories, aye. The former is history, straight. The latter runs to legends, second sight, ghost tales. True ghost tales, you’re saying.” Turning, he leaned across the table and focused on her face.

  Even without trying she could sense an energy field emanating from the man, like a tickle in her follicles. What if it was positive curiosity, like her own, rather than negative hostility? Ordering herself not to shrink away, she said, “Ghosts are supposedly transmitted emotion. Some people can pick up paranormal transmissions, some can’t. Some can only pick up certain ones. I happen to . . .” She checked herself in mid-phrase—she only owed Lovelace a certain amount of self-revelation—and finished, “. . . think that ghost stories can be true.”

  A crease appeared between his eyebrows. Ghosts, he was going to say. Hearsay. Irrationality. Emotions. Sissy stuff, like romance. Personally, Jean felt that romance was only for the strong of stomach.

  “Aren’t Scotland’s ghosts getting a wee bit tired by now?” he asked.

  Whoa, a mild response. Keeping her balance with him was even harder than she’d expected. “Not necessarily. It depends on whether they’ve got what they want. Acknowledgment. Not so different from what most living people want. And, speaking of dead people . . .” Time for a preemptive strike. “I’m not going to give up on Lovelace’s story, the treasure hunt and Charlie and everything. Of course it’s gotten way the hell away from me, but . . .”

  “. . . it’s a murder mystery now. Proper tabloid material.”

  “You’ll have noticed that Great Scot is no tabloid.” She leaned across the table herself, into that elusive energy field, so close she could count the creases at the corners of his eyes. “Don’t tell me this story, this case, is none of my business. It is my business. Lovelace came to me for help, even if he wasn’t honest about his motives. I need to know whether I had anything to do with his death, and, if possible, I’d like to help catch his killer.”

  For a long moment Cameron returned her steady gaze. He might be trying to intimidate her, or assessing her own motives, or he might simply be counting the rods and cones in her eyes. At last he said, “I’m thinking that if I tell you to stop asking questions you’ll only become more curious. Or so you were telling me yesterday.”

  “Call it a matter of ethics. A search for the truth. If you checked up on my history back in the U.S., you know that I value the truth.”

  “You reported a PhD candidate for plagiarizing. Put the boot right in, didn’t you?” Cameron leaned back. Even though his eyes didn’t waver, she had the feeling that he was finally allowing her a few inches of wiggle room.

  “Yes, it would have been a lot safer to keep my mouth shut. He started a propaganda campaign, claiming we’d had an affair and I was trying to punish him for jilting me. The university fired me without checking out his story. But you know that, too.”

  “You had your position back when you won your wrongful termination lawsuit. Then you resigned, divorced your husband, moved house.”

  “It was time to move on. I may be a historian, but I’d also be the first to admit that if you dig yourself too deeply into the past . . .”

  “. . . you’ve got no future.” Cameron’s eyes lost their focus and looked past her. The crease between his eyebrows deepened, plowed by memory.

  Odd, that a cop would understand what she meant when many of her academic colleagues did not. What was in Cameron’s past? His left hand wrapped around his empty cup displayed no wedding ring. . . . Don’t waste your time and energy psychoanalyzing the man, she told herself. “My name used to be Jean Inglis. Scots for ‘English.’ I’d say something about irony but there’s no need to hammer it home.”

  With the merest trace of a shrug he focused back on her face. “Jean Inglis. Jean Fairbairn. All the same to me.”

  It hadn’t been all the same to Brad. Not by a long shot. But gender politics wasn’t the issue.

  “Ask your questions, then,” Cameron went on. “Just mind how you go. Don’t overstep yourself. And keep in touch.”

  She almost said, Sure, if you’ll keep in touch with me, but decided she should quit while she was at least neck-and-neck. “Is that it? Can I go now?”

  “Oh aye, that’s it. For the present.”

  Was Cameron hoping that if he played out the line she’d eventually snag herself even more securely on the hook? Suppressing a sigh of aggravation—he didn’t deserve that—Jean gathered up her bag and her umbrella and held the door so it wouldn’t slam in his face.

  She hadn’t felt claustrophobic until she stepped outside. Blue sky glinted between swags of cloud. Sunlight flowed across the distant hills, across the loch, up the street, and then vanished on the mountainside like the beam of a lighthouse sweeping across the landscape. What had Ogilvy said about Lovelace’s desk lamp, that it shone every night like a lighthouse?

  The pedestrian mall teemed with shoppers and tourists and, Jean supposed, reporters. The seagulls were making their rusty screen door cries. The wind keened through the chimneys and telephone wires like the sound of bagpipes. . . . No, she really was hearing the sound of bagpipes, issuing from the tartan tchotchke shop down the street. From the pub next door came the thump-thump of a rock band. Combine the two and you had rock ‘n’ reel, the sound the blood made going though your heart.

  Cameron probably preferred light jazz, something she found annoying as water torture. She glanced over at him, but he was already walking away, head down, cutting through the crowd without so much as a “Good-bye,” let alone a “Cheers.”

  He’d drawn her in by challenging her assumptions, hadn’t he, then fed her just enough information about the case to draw her out. Offering no reaction was an old interviewer’s trick. Feeling uncomfortable
with the long silences, the subject spills her guts. Jean almost had. Cameron was playing good cop to Sawyer’s bad cop, keeping his friends close and his enemies closer.

  But she wasn’t his enemy. They were on the same side—or should be. Sawyer to the contrary, all she’d done was be in the wrong place at the wrong time. And according to Cameron’s analysis of the secret portrait, that produced a right.

  Are you for real? Jean called silently after him. And answered herself, oh yeah, he was for real, even if he did keep his personality locked away, safe from any awkward emotion. She didn’t know what to think of him. Not that she needed to think anything of him. He was simply part of the municipal facilities, after all.

  Jean jammed her fists in the pockets of her coat. Great. She still had Cameron’s handkerchief. She took two steps after him, then stopped.

  Fiona Robertson was standing on the doorstep of a clothing store. Dressed in a shapeless coat and scarf, she was as incognito as a beautiful woman could ever get, less animated than the sweater-clad mannequins in the window behind her. But when Cameron materialized beside her, her head jerked toward his. He stepped into her personal space the way Neil had stepped into Jean’s. They spoke in words but not in the least bit of body language, like Princess Grace exchanging statistics with Mr. Spock. Then Cameron did his disappearing act again, leaving Fiona to walk briskly in the opposite direction.

  So, Jean thought, as her eyebrows drifted back down from her hairline. Fiona wasn’t known to the police in general, but only to one policeman, personally. Coincidence? Or conspiracy? There was one more question for her ever-lengthening list. Because Fiona wasn’t part of the municipal facilities. Fiona was a suspect.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Jean stopped her car in a passing place and indulged in a moment of appreciation. Below her Loch Lochy glowed enough shades of blue—aquamarine, azure, sapphire—to beggar a thesaurus. The light of the afternoon sun made etchings of the ridges beyond, the western sides glowing green, the eastern sides shadowed into olive-drab. Billows of white cloud seemed substantial enough to pick up in handfuls, like clotted cream. Hard to believe they were only water vapor that would vanish in a breath.