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

by Lillian Stewart Carl

  “You majored in theater arts in college?” Jean asked.

  “No, accounting and business, in case the acting stuff didn’t pan out. I guess it did, though.” Vanessa waved her hands, taking in the hallway, the house, and, presumably, Rick upstairs.

  Maybe their relationship was a commercial arrangement. Maybe it was part of Rick’s fantasy life. Maybe it was none of her business, Jean told herself, but without conviction. George’s death made it her business, however indirectly.

  She had expected to find Vanessa annoying. In reality she found her take-no-prisoners attitude refreshing. The young woman combined the self-absorption of an actress with the calculation of a corporate CEO. She was bored, yes. The question was whether she was actually spilling her guts to a stranger, and a reporter at that. Maybe this tour, with its spate of gossip and commentary, was a disinformation campaign designed either to soften Jean up for Rick’s interview and/or conceal a murder.

  If nothing else, Vanessa mixed bits of British dialect with her contemporary American syntax. Jean asked, “Did you meet the MacSorleys when Rick was looking for property in the area?”

  “No, it was the MacSorleys who recommended the place. Rick knew them before he knew me, met Kieran through some genealogy seminar ages ago.”

  “Oh.” That wasn’t Charlotte’s version, but the inconsistency could be a simple mistake. Not that anything else was simple around here, Jean thought as she heard the faint wail of a siren in the distance.

  Vanessa headed down the hall that ended in the billiards room and waved at two doors, one open, one shut. “Media center. And that’s my office.”

  Jean glimpsed several easy chairs, a big screen TV, and an impressive collection of speakers layered incongruously onto a room with the same wood-paneled ambience as the sitting room.

  “Now,” announced Vanessa, “it’s happy hour.” She darted across the hall, into the drawing room Jean had seen Tuesday. Its eighteenth-century blue walls, white dado, reefed draperies, and gilded picture frames didn’t clash as badly with the predominantly blue colors of the MacLyon tartan carpet as they would have with a period Turkey rug.

  Vanessa made a beeline for a mahogany cabinet. “I’ll say one thing for Fiona, she fixes a good martini, and on schedule, too.”

  “Should we wait for Rick?” Jean asked.

  “Naw, he’s having his upstairs. I’m sure the happy housekeeper’s already taken it up.” Producing a silver shaker misted with condensation and a long-stemmed glass, she poured and offered the drink to Jean.

  “Ah, no, thank you.” Alcohol tended to make her flirtatious and giggly. “I see some Perrier. . . .”

  “Sure. It’s okay. Some people have this thing about booze, you know?” Skillfully Vanessa assembled ice, lime, and water. “Here you go.”

  “Thanks.” Jean sipped, the bubbles tickling her nose. She looked up at the portrait of Charlie and Jenny Cameron that hung center-stage, then noticed a painting of Clementina Walkinshaw hanging next to the one of Flora MacDonald. Both Flora and Clementina were painted in similar styles, typical of the times—level gaze, high forehead, a sadness around the lips. “Charlie had a way of leaving women sad,” she commented.

  “I hear he beat up his wife, what’s her name?” Vanessa said. She fluffed her hair in the mirror mounted above the cabinet.

  “Louise of Stolberg. I’d like to think the abuse was propaganda, but I’m afraid it wasn’t. He was brutal to Clementina there, too, even after she left Britain and joined him in France. Even after she bore his only child.”

  “Rick says he had a bunch of kids.”

  “In legend, yes. I suppose Clementina Sobieska Douglas, a.k.a. the Finsthwaite princess, might’ve been legit—that is, actually another daughter by Miss Walkinshaw, not legitimate. Charlie used to call himself Douglas, after all, when he wanted to go around incognito.”

  “You really are up on all this stuff, aren’t you?”

  Vanessa’s tone was respectful, not sarcastic. Jean took the plunge. “The Forty-five is a fascinating subject. Miranda was telling me about your Jacobite Lodge. Do you think I could join? I’d love to swap war stories with some other enthusiasts.”

  Vanessa’s green eyes narrowed, suddenly wary. “Ask Rick about that,” she said, and turned toward the French doors.

  Jean eyed her back. All this ducking and weaving was making her more and more curious about the Lodge. It was like hearing a siren in the distance, a sure sign that something was up.

  “One of these days it has to warm up,” Vanessa said. “I’m going to throw a garden party. We’ve got the lights and the electronics all ready to go, we just need something for the midges. Flamethrowers, maybe. Look, there’s Neil.”

  He was standing in front of a tall yew hedge, next to a row of bushes that were probably roses, still dressed in jeans and T-shirt—his kilt had been confiscated by the police, more’s the pity. He lifted his bagpipes, set the mouthpiece between his lips, and with a wheeze and a wail began to play “The Flowers o’ the Forest.” That was the last sound George Lovelace had ever heard. Jean shuddered. Someone she knew was a murderer. Maybe even the personable young woman standing beside her.

  “Again with the depressing stuff,” Vanessa groaned, then, “Oh, here we go! Yes!”

  One lingering note leaped suddenly upward in a smooth change of tempo. Neil’s fingers danced on the chanter and the first notes of “Andy Renwick’s Ferret” made Jean smile in spite of herself. Yes, indeed!

  He began to pace back and forth. For several minutes both women stood and enjoyed the show, music that stirred the heart and the feet and a man who stirred the areas between. Then Jean glanced over at Vanessa. Surely her own face didn’t look like that, lips parted and moist, eyes blank and dreamy. . . .

  Oh boy. Vanessa had gone to London a couple of months ago. Neil had looked over London University in March—a couple of months ago. If he chauffeured her around, what better opportunity for cozy chats? What better opportunity to find a bit of privacy, for that matter? They were certainly on excellent terms, close to the same age and of similar disposition.

  Jean informed herself that if leaping to conclusions were an Olympic sport, she’d be up for the gold medal. If she hadn’t been suspicious of the entire household to begin with, she’d never be assuming anything more than a flirtation—which seemed to be Neil’s specialty. However . . .

  Vanessa turned toward the door. “That’s the tour. The cops are in the billiards room, no need to stick our noses in there.”

  “No,” Jean stated, with absolute certainty for once.

  The grandfather clock showed five to seven as Vanessa, martini glass at point, guided Jean into the opposite hall. The air was redolent of subtle spices and warm carbs “You saw the sitting room on Tuesday. Toby’s office and the game larder are at the end of the hall, but you know that, too. It’s time to turn the game larder into an exercise room, like I wanted all along, never mind what Kieran says.”

  Jean was about to ask just what Kieran was saying when Vanessa raked her with another shrewd look. She leaned in so closely Jean smelled the gin on her breath. “Before we go in to eat, I have a confession to make.”

  No way was it going to be the confession Jean wanted to hear. “Yes?”

  “It’s one of the reasons I wanted you to spend the weekend. I was afraid I was losing it, you know? Going nuts.”

  She hardly felt qualified to analyze anyone’s sanity. “Yes?”

  “George. He’s still here.”

  He’s still. . . . Good Lord, had the paranormal allergens in the sitting room been strong enough that Vanessa had sneezed? “He’s what?” Jean asked, committing herself to nothing.

  “The last couple of days I’ve heard footsteps here, in the hallway, when there was nobody there. Things move around in the sitting room, but the staff knows better than to move things around. Poor old George was murdered just down the hall. I figure he’s unhappy. He wants revenge.”

  Maybe so, maybe not. Jea
n managed to keep her voice neutral. “That is a motive for haunting.”

  “You write ghost stories. Can you make him go away?”

  “I’m a historian, not an exorcist. Still, please tell me. . . .”

  The clock struck seven. The dining room door swung open. Fiona stood in the opening. “The dinner is ready. I’ll fetch Rick, shall I?”

  Vanessa plunged into the dining room. Jean followed, but not without a long look at Fiona’s face. How long have you been standing there? But Fiona walked on down the hall, impassive as ever.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Jean enjoyed “The Antiques Road Show” more for the historical anecdotes and human interest stories than for the furniture. Even so, she recognized a Chippendale table and ditto sideboard in the dining room, both polished into mirrors. Real or reproductions?

  The walls were lined with copies of historical tableaux such as Bonnie Prince Charlie’s entrance into Edinburgh. A copy of the omnipresent painting of him bowing over Flora MacDonald’s hand hung above the sideboard. . . . Wait a minute. In this version the woman under the green velvet bonnet looked like Jenny Cameron. Except Jenny had been twenty years older than the prince, which gave the lie to this woman’s minuscule waist and simpering pose.

  Well, playing fast and loose with history was part of Rick’s job description. And if he wanted to tartanize his house into a stage-set for his own private production of Brigadoon, that was his business. The house had more personality than many more pedantic restorations.

  Jean eyed the door leading into the hallway, envisioning each room beyond consumed by shadow. Each artifact, each architectural detail, each antique, whether faux or genuine, faded into the darkness and yet was still there, like memory. Like a ghost.

  Had Vanessa heard George Lovelace’s ghost? Was the ghost in the sitting room his? Vanessa seemed to be a practical, unimaginative person, not the spooky sort like Jean herself. But a sudden death, like a murder, could leave strong emotional resonances that could sneak up on the unsuspecting passerby. Jean had to wonder, though, if the ghost story was a gimmick like Lovelace’s “help me with the coin,” calculated to snare the interest of a helpful journalist.

  Now Vanessa stood by the window drinking her martini, watching Neil pace through the lengthening shadows outside, and offering no more clues, legitimate or otherwise. Seizing her chance to tackle someone else, Jean pushed through the kitchen door.

  Good! Toby was alone, standing over the stove and stirring a pot with the same partly panicked, partly deliberate air as a paramedic who finds himself delivering a baby. He looked around. His eyes widened. He said, “Oh, hullo Miss Fairbairn,” and turned abruptly back to his task.

  “That smells wonderful, Toby.”

  “It’s Norman’s sweet potato and lemon grass soup. A right mixtie-maxtie of odd things, hardly worth the eating.”

  “You’re not a big fan of Norman’s cooking?”

  “I’d just as soon have a fish supper, meself.”

  There was as much to be said for fish and chips as for George Lovelace’s chop and veg. “George would, too, I bet. Did you know he came to Edinburgh on Monday to see me?”

  “The polis told me so, aye.” Toby bent even closer to the pot.

  She hated to make him uncomfortable, even as she wondered whether his discomfort signaled anything more than grief. “Did George get you your job here?”

  “That he did. He and me granddad was old army pals.”

  “You must miss him.”

  “That I do.”

  Gritting her teeth—she was far from comfortable herself—Jean asked, “Didn’t I see you in the hallway at the Mountain View Hotel on Wednesday, Toby?”

  The spoon banged against the pot like a clash of cymbals. “I—erm—Mrs. MacSorley told me to sit with her car at the garage, make sure the mechanics didn’t scratch it or nothing, but there they were, finished, and no sign of Mrs. MacSorley, so I had meself a dauner up the High Street.”

  “And you saw me going into the hotel?”

  “Aye, that I did.”

  “I’d just come from George’s house in Corpach. Someone broke in.”

  “The polis, they was telling me that, too.”

  “Did you want to talk to me, Toby? Is that why you came to the hotel?”

  “Just thought I’d have a blether about your writing,” he said to the soup. “George was helping me learn to read and write proper. He had me reading your magazine. But then I thought, no, not polite to follow you when you was away from work, so to speak. George was always helping me with my manners as well. And Fiona.”

  That was smooth. But then, Toby had had time to come up with an excuse and try it out on Sawyer or Gunn. Or his story could actually be true. Someone around here had to be telling the truth. And in spite of Vanessa’s remark about sandwiches and picnics, Toby seemed more uneducated than stupid.

  He’d reminded Jean yet again that George had been a fan of hers. That he’d expected her to do—something—for him. Jean was becoming increasingly convinced that that something was not so simple as taking the coin to the Museum. Which made Cameron right yet again, drat the man. “When I get back to Edinburgh, I’ll send you some back copies of the magazine.”

  “Thank you, Miss,” Toby said. “Right kind of you.”

  “Yo, Jean!” called Vanessa from the dining room. The door slammed open, missing her shoulder by a hairsbreadth. “Rick’s here.”

  Jean went back into the dining room to find Fiona herding Rick to the head of the table. He was shambling along with his cell phone pressed to his ear, wearing khakis and a polo shirt. Tuesday, in his kilt and Argyll jacket, he’d seemed taller than the five foot ten of his biography. Now his shoulders were rounded and his head outthrust, as though he’d frozen in the over-the-keyboard hunch that was only too familiar to Jean herself.

  “You do that,” Rick said into the phone. “Take care of it. Now.” He switched it off and set it down next to his fork, just another utensil.

  Toby peered around the door. “I’ll start serving now, shall I?”

  “Go for it.” Sitting down at the other end of the table, Vanessa tossed off her martini and handed the glass to Fiona. “Thanks. You can go now.”

  Wordlessly, expressionlessly, Fiona glided into the kitchen. Neil stopped playing and marched away around the corner of the house. Was that a last echo of the music lingering on the air, or another distant siren? What was going on in the real world, anyway?

  Jean took the third place, on the long side of the table. Putting down her Perrier, she considered the wine glass poised at the end of her knife. Maybe just a glassful. . . . Toby emerged from the kitchen door and plopped an ice bucket and a bottle of chardonnay down in front of Rick, who poured for himself and passed the bottle to Jean. Since chardonnay held all the charm of varnish, she passed it on. Vanessa filled her own glass to the brim.

  Toby dealt out a soup tureen, a basket of rolls, and several covered dishes—in his huge hands they looked like a child’s tea set—and then disappeared into the kitchen. Vanessa filled bowls and passed them down the table. With his best boarding-house reach, Rick grabbed a roll. He crumbled it into his soup and started ladling the resulting lumps into his mouth. “What about the police?” he asked Vanessa between bites.

  “What about them?”

  “Did you ask them if they needed any food?”

  “We can’t feed a dozen people, not without notice. Besides, most of them went charging off up the road a while ago.”

  “They did? Why?”

  “They sure as hell didn’t stop to tell me.”

  Jean dabbled her spoon in her soup, reminding herself that if any more stuff was flying toward the fan, she’d better take nourishment now.

  “Norman took off, too,” Vanessa added.

  Rick’s pale eyes blinked. “With the police?”

  “No, he just quit is all.”

  “Did you try offering him more money?”

  “What do you think?�
�

  “Shit,” said Rick. “Still, some of that stuff he fixed was pretty weird, you’ve got to admit.”

  “Innovative. Creative.”

  Jean wanted to say something about being a slave to trendiness but the soup was good, neither as heavy in texture nor in flavoring as she’d feared.

  The door to the hall opened. Vanessa glanced around so quickly Jean winced, feeling sympathetic whiplash. Oh, it was Clarinda, the huge cat, pushing wider a door that hadn’t been completely shut. She wore a collar, a tartan band with a gold dangler. In a house this size, what she should be wearing was a GPS unit.

  Rick took the lids off the serving dishes, helped himself, and thrust them at Jean. Since she’d been spared any food allergies—divine compensation for her sixth sense, perhaps—she took a bit from each dish. Crab ravioli with artichokes. Lamb pie baked with Guinness. Slightly overcooked baby vegetables and light-as-air potato blini. Very good.

  Incongruous, she thought as she chewed, that while the gold-rimmed china was so delicate it chimed like a bell at every stroke of her silver fork, the MacLyons’ style was so casual your average barbecue seemed top-heavy with protocol. Charlotte would have had a hissy fit. Maybe Vanessa ran a tighter ship when the MacSorleys were there. Maybe, defiantly, she didn’t.

  Rick hunkered over his plate, forearm resting on the table. Every now and then he’d straighten into a regal posture, then slowly slump down again. Vanessa slipped a bit of meat to the cat, who was circling the table like a shark around a life raft.

  “Fiona says not to feed her,” Rick commented to his ravioli.

  “This is my house, not Fiona’s,” retorted Vanessa.

  “Yeah, but it’s her cat.”

  Elaborately, Vanessa wiped her hands on the crisp linen napkin. “Shoo, Clarinda. Go find Mummy.”

  With the feline equivalent of a shrug, the cat trotted back to the doorway and squeezed through.

  In the silence Jean could hear Neil’s voice in the kitchen, along with a subtle jangle of dishes and pots. Vanessa sat cutting her food into tiny bites, but not, apparently, eating them. Was she anorexic or embarrassed? Jean should open a Ghosts Anonymous chapter, like Alcoholics Anonymous, where people could get understanding, not ridicule.