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

by Lillian Stewart Carl

  By the time you slogged into middle-age, you pretty much had the face and form you’d earned. Look at Sawyer, pulled down by the weight of his own self-importance. Or Rick, his muscles sucked away by the energy it took to feed his brain. Or Cameron, cloaked by a deliberate minimalism. As for Jean’s own body, its not-terribly-ample curves were a compromise between her appetite for food and her appetite for movement. Her antsiness, Brad had called it. She could have made a recording of his exasperated voice: Can’t you sit still!

  Neil turned around, sensing he wasn’t alone. Probably, for that matter, sensing that he was being admired. “Jean! Here for your interview, are you?”

  “Yes, I am. And I’ve been invited to stay the weekend.”

  “Oh aye, I had a word in Vanessa’s ear, told her a friendly journalist is all to the good, eh?”

  So Charlotte knew from Neil that Jean was booked for the weekend. There was one minor mystery solved. “I had tea with your mother on my way here.”

  “Sorry to hear that.” Neil left the cloth on the fender and walked toward Jean, wiping his hands on his denim-clad flanks.

  With an effort she kept her eyes on his face. “I hear you’re off to university soon. Which one? Glasgow? Edinburgh? Further afield?”

  “Mum’s at it again, is she? I looked over the University of London in March, aye, but I’m not away to university just yet. Some day, I reckon, but life’s too short to spend it swotting up old books.”

  “Those old books have their moments.”

  “Aye, that they do. Especially to Rick.” Again Neil advanced to just within her comfort zone. Again he unleashed his smile, knowing exactly what its effect was, admitting it, making no apologies for it.

  Oh the heck with it, Jean thought, and leaned toward him, into an aura warm and intimate as a caressing hand.

  “I’m not after keeping you from your work,” Neil went on, “but some time when Rick’s busy with his books and his computers we could take his car here for a wee ride, eh?”

  “Joy riding?” Jean teased.

  “Rick lets me take out the cars whenever I like. I play the tour guide to his clients. And Vanessa won’t drive herself, being nervy about heading up the wrong side of the road, as she says it.”

  Jean barely heard him. His eyes were the dark blue of the sea with its unexplored depths. He exuded a slightly musky young-animal smell. She’d thought her pheromone receptors had burned out long ago, but no, there they were, jumping up and down like teenagers at a rock concert. She might have had a maternal moment with D.C. Gunn, but she didn’t feel the least twitch of maternal now. With Neil she was on estrogen overload.

  Not that there was anything wrong with that. During the lawsuit she’d had to cloak herself as strictly as Cameron—contents under pressure. But now. . . . Well, some day she might figure out how to let go again, but now she told herself that anyone as attractive as Neil had to have a girlfriend. She stepped back. Recess over. Back to work. “Tell me, Neil. Are you a member of Rick’s Lodge?”

  The word didn’t spook him. If anything, he looked a bit embarrassed. “In a way. Sort of swept along with the group. Harmless loonies, if you ask me. And you are asking me, eh?”

  Harmless loonies. She’d take Neil’s word for that, although someone who was manifestly not harmless had murdered Lovelace. “So what. . . .”

  The front door slammed open. “. . . signed on to cook,” shouted a man’s gruff voice, “not to be handed this sort of aggro.”

  As one, Neil and Jean turned to look. Fiona stood in the doorway, Toby hovering behind her, at least so far as a man his size could hover. Spurting through the portico came a much smaller man carrying a suitcase. His face looked as though it had been pressed in a vise, top to bottom, so that his chin curled up to meet his brow ridge and his lips jutted petulantly. With the addition of his round stomach and short legs, he reminded Jean of a garden gnome. An irate garden gnome.

  “Norman,” said Fiona in dulcet tones, “Mr. Hawley, could you at least stop over the weekend? We’ve got guests to feed. . . .”

  “You’ve got a house full of police, lassie, that’s what you and your Yank friends are having.”

  “Could we discuss a rise in wages? I’m sure Rick. . . .”

  Norman—the cook, Jean realized—kept right on walking. “A man returns from his day out and finds a poor old sod hanging from a hook in the back room. You can’t pay me that much I’d hang about with murderers.”

  “They’d already carried him away before you came back,” observed Neil as Norman stumped by.

  “And now they’ve turned over my room as well, haven’t they?”

  “The police are searching the entire house,” said Fiona, the voice of reason. Toby’s head pivoted worriedly from face to face.

  “Murders, secret societies, Yanks poncing about like royalty, no thank you, I don’t think so, I don’t think so at all. I’m away, back to the restaurant in Inverness—manager’s a right prat but we’ve got only the odd drunk, no murderers.” Norman opened the door of a battered car parked on the far side of the courtyard, threw his suitcase inside, climbed after it, and drove away in a spray of gravel.

  Neil made a warding movement in front of Jean, but the bits of stone pattered down harmlessly. She waited to hear the sound of rending metal from the end of the drive—did everyone drive like a maniac here?—but didn’t.

  With a heartfelt sigh Neil picked up his cloth. “A wee bit on the nervy side, our Norman, but he knows his way round a cooker. Venison collops in raspberry wine sauce. Smoked haddock over lemon caper linguini. Ginger crème brulée with soft fruit. We’ll be eating mushy peas now, mark my words.”

  The words Jean remembered were George Lovelace’s, describing a modern meal as a few stunted vegetables in a pool of muck. Yes, Norman’s sort of cuisine was intended more for the eye and the tongue than the stomach, but it wasn’t Lovelace who’d paid his salary.

  Fiona stepped back from the door. “Toby, Norman’s cooked the dinner already, all that needs doing is the final touches. I’ll lend a hand once I show Miss Fairbairn to her room.” She swept Toby into the recesses of the house and beckoned Jean inside.

  “See you later,” Jean said to Neil and received The Smile, Variation C, wistfully lopsided, in return.

  She dragged her suitcase across the portico, asking herself just what it was she was doing here, hanging about with murderers.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Fiona led the way past the grandfather clock and up the stairs. Jean spared a glance for Toby, ambling dejectedly toward the kitchen, and hitched her bag up the steps behind Fiona’s trim pants and blouse outfit. “I must apologize for subjecting you to such a scene,” the housekeeper commented, eyes front.

  Jean didn’t reply, No problem, it’s all grist for my mill. She said, “I hear great cooks are temperamental sorts. Nervy, as you’d say around here.”

  “Jumpy, as you’d say in the States. I’m afraid so, aye.”

  “Anyone would be jumpy after what happened Tuesday. But Hawley—that’s his name, right?—he wasn’t here then. Even though y’all were entertaining the Lodge.”

  Fiona glanced back over her shoulder, but if any expression crossed her face Jean didn’t catch it. The woman’s emotions were as closed-off as Alasdair Cameron’s. Maybe they were long-lost brother and sister, like Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker. Except Fiona hadn’t yet turned out to be one of the good guys. She could have told Rick that Lovelace’s body was in the game larder, but Jean hadn’t told her. She hadn’t even seemed surprised by what Jean did tell her. And why did Fiona seem to recognize Jean at the front door? There was nothing wrong with her eyesight.

  “Rick finds Norman Hawley’s name to be a bit awkward,” said Fiona, as though sensing that any explanation would be better than none. “He told him to have his day out the Tuesday instead of the Wednesday. Toby and I fixed the scones and sandwiches.”

  “Fixed” the scones? That was an Americanism, too. “His name. . . . Oh,
I get it. General Hangman Hawley, one of Butcher Cumberland’s right-hand men, who left a trail of death, destruction, and degradation across the Highlands in the aftermath of the Forty-five.”

  “That’s it in one.”

  “Hawley doesn’t seem too fond of Americans. Or the police. Although Cameron would make Mother Teresa feel guilty.”

  Did Fiona chuckle at that? Or was she just breathing hard after the long flight of stairs? Whatever, she ignored Jean’s bait and led the way past closed double doors into an open area lined by tall windows and furnished with couches and tables.

  What Jean took to be a striped bolster laid across a love seat opened clear golden eyes. Oh, it was the cat she’d seen looking through the balusters. She was relieved to see it again, not being ready to add ghost animals to her paranormal vocabulary. The cat sniffed at her extended hand, then yawned. “I know tabbies run large,” Jean told Fiona, “but she’s a real Amazon. Like something out of a Popcom game.”

  “She’s mine, actually. Rick and Vanessa have been kind enough to take her in as well.” Fiona scratched the cat behind the ears. “She’s part Scottish wild cat. In a moment of sentimentality I named her Clarinda. I suppose I should be apologizing to her for that.”

  “Nothing wrong with a little sentiment,” Jean stated. What she saw was the plain gold band on Fiona’s left hand, glinting against Clarinda’s soft fur. She was married, then. Or had been. Burns’ poem about Clarinda was about love and loss, after all.

  Fiona headed off down the hall, Jean hurrying along behind. “You’ve picked up some American expressions from the Mac—from Rick and Vanessa.”

  “I’ve studied in the U.S.”

  “Really? Where? What’s your field?”

  “University of Pennsylvania, library science.”

  “Ah.” Housekeeping, Jean supposed, segued more naturally from library science than from, say, microbiology. Was part of her job description, then, working with Lovelace in MacLyon’s library?

  Fiona opened the door of a room labeled “MacPherson.” “Here you are. This all right for you?”

  Jean had seen five-star hotel rooms less well appointed than this bedroom with its paneling, plaster, and fabric embroidered in Jacobean designs. “It’s lovely. Thanks.”

  “As Rick prefers eating his dinner early, usually it’s served up at half-past six. Today, though, we’ll be serving up at seven. No need to dress.” Fiona turned back toward the door.

  Jean accidentally-on-purpose blocked her way with the suitcase. “Are you feeding the police dinner, too? Was that one of Norman’s complaints?”

  “No,” replied Fiona. “To both questions. Although I daresay Norman might have fancied the opportunity to rant about Philistines who don’t appreciate good cooking.”

  “Philistines like George Lovelace? Or maybe D.C.I. Cameron?”

  Fiona’s face went from impassive to a studied blankness. She said quietly, “Policemen aren’t necessarily Philistines. Nor are old men. George might have been a bit old-fashioned, but then, he was going on for eighty years old.”

  She hadn’t taken the bait with either name. Jean tried again. “Were you helping George put together Rick’s library?”

  “In a way, aye.”

  “I only met him briefly, but even so I’d say George had his own rants, about contemporary manners and morals.”

  “He was an honorable man. Too much so for his own good, I’m afraid. If you’ll. . . .” Fiona feinted toward the door.

  Jean stood her ground. “Years of studying the eighteenth century, not to mention living through World War Two, can affect your perception of antique notions such as honor.”

  “Someone once said the past is another country.”

  “Yes, but we’ve all lived there.”

  “Oh aye,” agreed Fiona, her words trailing off into a sigh.

  “So why was George too honorable for his own good?”

  “Sometimes it’s better to let. . . .” The corners of her mouth tucked themselves in protectively.

  “. . . sleeping dogs lie?” suggested Jean.

  “To let well alone.”

  “You mean he shouldn’t have come to see me in Edinburgh?”

  Fiona ducked that question by dropping her gaze to the floor and crossing her arms across her rib cage.

  Jean was beginning to interpret her blankness as stubborn refusal to acknowledge the issues, let alone talk about them. She persisted. “Do you know why he came to see me?”

  “Miss Fairbairn,” Fiona said to her shoes, “the dinner needs seeing to. If you’ll. . . .”

  “Did someone kill George because he came to see me? Coincidences happen, yes. So does cause and effect.”

  “There’s no avoiding one’s fate.” Fiona looked up, meeting Jean’s curious gaze. Her uncanny eyes were calm, collected, closed. Not hostile, not even stubborn, simply closed and locked.

  Did she think murder was fate? Was she entirely passive? Or . . . Jean tried a stab not in the dark but in the twilight. “Did you call my flat, trying to warn me off by telling me George was trouble? Is that why you acted as though you recognized me?”

  “You had an appointment. You arrived early.” Fiona’s gaze didn’t waver.

  Jean couldn’t remember whether a steady gaze or rapid blinking was a sign of a liar. She tried another question. “Was George trouble enough that someone murdered him? Why?”

  “Maybe he was killed because he asked too many questions, Miss Fairbairn. I suggest you save yours ‘til your interview with Rick. Now I must be getting myself to the kitchen.” Fiona pushed gently but firmly past Jean and paced off down the hall.

  Jean stared after her, trying to read the set of her shoulders or the rhythm of her walk, but found herself suddenly illiterate. Fiona’s last statement, though, hadn’t sounded like a threat, just a statement of fact. Maybe Fiona did see herself as life’s spectator, not participant. Fatalistic. Or maybe she had a sluggish nervous system or a thyroid problem, some condition that was the flip side of Jean’s hyper-alertness.

  The only time Fiona had bristled, almost imperceptibly, was when Jean asked what George’s mission to Edinburgh had been. Not when she asked about the telephone call. Although once she’d asked the former question, the latter wasn’t a surprising follow-up—assuming Fiona was the anonymous caller.

  Maybe Fiona was hiding what she knew because she was frightened of her employer—Rick fired Meg for talking to the press. However, it seemed more likely that Fiona was keeping quiet out of loyalty to her employer. In the end, Jean told herself, the question was not why Fiona wouldn’t talk to her, but whether she would talk to the police, especially to Cameron. Her friend, relation, adversary—something.

  Before shutting the door Jean made sure it had a functioning lock with a nice, heavy, old-fashioned key. Jumpy? she asked herself as she swung her suitcase up onto a rack. You bet. Fiona wasn’t the first person to think Jean never left well enough alone, either. But she’d much rather regret something she’d done than something she hadn’t done.

  She checked that the massive wardrobe didn’t have a false back. Ditto the headboard of the canopied bed. She inspected the basket of soaps and lotions in the bathroom. She examined the tray holding a china tea set, tea bags, and cookies. She poked through the vase of roses on the table in the window. She looked inside the lamps and behind the brocade curtains and beneath the top of the toilet tank.

  No secret passages, no microphones, no poison darts, nothing that didn’t belong in a luxurious bedroom. Still Jean felt like a character in something between an Agatha Christie mystery and a P. G. Wodehouse farce.

  Miranda had called Meg, the ex-secretary, a character out of Wodehouse. Charlotte, on the other hand, had called her a libertine. Why? Because Meg, who presumably had as much estrogen as Jean but perhaps less skepticism, had gone beyond flirting with Neil? You’d think Charlotte would be glad to see Neil involved with a young lady of hyphenated name, but she was probably aiming higher, for Princess Bea
trice, at least.

  As for Neil, he probably couldn’t resist flirting with every woman in sight any more than a dog could resist watering a fire hydrant. And for much the same reason, to mark his territory. . . . Sometimes Jean wished that either the cynicism or the romanticism would win their tug of war in her psyche.

  Again she pulled out her notebook and made notes. She’d have to transfer everything to her laptop when she turned it on for Rick’s long-delayed and much-anticipated interview. Now she had some good snooping time before dinner.

  Jean locked the door of her room, stowed the key in her jacket pocket, and walked back into the sitting area at the head of the stairs. From somewhere came a listless easy-listening version of “Wild Mountain Thyme.” Humming, she zeroed in on the cat.

  One of the set of doors at the top of the staircase opened a crack. A female hand with long shimmering purple nails wrapped around its edge and a flat American voice, pitched low and urgent, leaked through the aperture. “You can’t stick to the original timetable. You’ve got to go public now, while you can still put the right spin on it. Before that mob at the gates and the police figure it all out and we lose control.”

  A masculine mumble came from further inside the room.

  “I set you up with this woman, Rick. If you don’t take advantage of having her here, I will. I mean it.”

  The door opened further, then stopped as the male voice spoke again.

  Jean backpedaled, hustling toward the far end of the hall. Well, well, well. Her—and Cameron’s—nasty suspicious natures had it right. Two days ago her interview would have been about the restoration of the house, but now Vanessa, at least, wanted to use Jean’s media connections to . . . what? Not confess to a murder, that was for sure. Announce a new game, one that would provide a grand unified theory of physics and cure cancer all at once? Wait and see, she ordered herself.