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

by Lillian Stewart Carl

  She let “detective friends” pass without comment. “It has to.”

  “Well then, I’ll be waiting for—what’s his name? Gunn?”

  “Yes. Detective Constable Gunn. He should be there by three or so, barring any Friday afternoon traffic jams.”

  “All right then.”

  Jean left Michael girding his loins for historiographic battle, punched Great Scot’s number, and told herself she was going to wear a rut in the carpet. “Gavin, it’s Jean, is Miranda there?”

  “Ah,” said Miranda’s voice a moment later, “Jean Fairbairn, girl detective.”

  “Actually I’m more of the straight woman. Get this.” Once again Jean started at the top with the coat of arms and The Lyon in Mourning and wended her way down to the leather portfolio, now on its way to meet its destiny in Edinburgh.

  Just as Jean had predicted, Miranda erupted into shrieks of laughter. “The man’s bloody daft! Hasn’t anyone told him he has no clothes? Are they all scared of him?”

  Scared? Of Rick? Yes, maybe they were. “Humoring the guy with the money has been part of the toady job description since long before the Bonnie Prince himself. And speaking of toadies, this whole—plot, scheme, whatever—reeks of Kieran MacSorley. Did you find out whether he actually has a paying job with Rick?”

  “He earns a small salary as the local justice of the peace, but if he’s making anything off Rick legitimately, it’s not been reported to Inland Revenue.”

  “Why am I not surprised?” Neither was Jean surprised that Miranda had sources among the tax collectors just as she had sources in the Vatican. “Can you answer one more question?”

  “That I can,” said Miranda, not waiting to hear what the question was.

  “Archie MacSorley, Kieran’s father. Can you find me the exact date of his death? And the date of the fire at Glendessary House?”

  “Piece of cake. What are you on about?”

  “Maybe no more than another ghost story. I’ll let you know. Right now, though, I’m out of here. I’ll call you tom . . .”

  “Half a sec, I’ve another answer for you. You asked about Fiona Robertson.”

  “Oh. Yeah.” Funny, Jean thought, how in spite of everything she’d almost taken Cameron’s word that Fiona was an innocent bystander.

  “Her husband was Kenneth Robertson, a police detective in Inverness. Three years ago he was caught taking bribes from drug dealers. Tried, convicted, and sent down to prison. Where he killed himself.”

  “Oh my God. Poor Fiona.” Jean stopped dead in the middle of the room, smacking face-first into an invisible wall. Now it was her turn to look down shamefacedly. Fiona was a suspect. A suspect’s private life might become the detective’s business, but sometimes the detective got her fingers burned. . . . “Wait a minute. Inverness? Was Alasdair Cameron involved?”

  “He was Robertson’s partner. Blew the gaff when he realized he’d gone wrong. Testified against him. Earned Cameron a promotion and one more commendation to add to his collection.”

  Like that mattered to him. She collapsed on the edge of the bed, weighed down first by knowledge, then by sympathy. Poor Alasdair. If Fiona had been numbed by tragedy, then he had been eviscerated by it. He wasn’t a stone, he was a shell.

  “Rumor said he did Robertson over because he was having an affair with Fiona.”

  “No way!” blurted Jean, and then reminded herself that motives could be slippery.

  “I’ve no way of knowing, right enough, but his own divorce happened round about the same time. The rumormongers made a meal of it.”

  Jean never thought she would identify with Cameron, but she did now. Except her own exercise in whistle-blowing was starting to sound like a very small toot.

  “You’re quick enough to defend him,” said Miranda. “A good man, is he?”

  Jean could answer that, she just wasn’t sure she should. Thank goodness the sound system had lapsed into something innocuous. . . . No, it was Hugh’s version of “The Water is Wide.” That one would wring tears even from Alasdair Cameron. And she wasn’t going to psychoanalyze him. Right. “Miranda, I’ve got to go see if I can track down my wits—they’re chasing haggises through the heather right now. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  “All right then. Cheers.”

  Jean put her all-too incriminating notebook into her bag and gathered up her computer. She went out into the rain, stowed the laptop in her trunk, and climbed into her car. The chill interior felt soothing, like a cool compress on a fevered brow. She took several deep breaths while her thoughts did a pinball routine, caroming from rampant lions to domestic ghosts to enigmatic police detectives and similarly enigmatic housekeepers. Okay, she told herself firmly. She had misjudged Cameron. That didn’t mean her pendulum had to swing so far and so fast the other way.

  Not that he was the issue. George Lovelace was the issue. Rick MacLyon was the issue. The congruence between the two of them, aided and abetted by Kieran MacSorley, whether Vanessa or Neil or Toby had any role in it or not, that was the issue. Just because she tended to break into a rash at the word “conspiracy” didn’t mean conspiracies didn’t happen—if in much simpler patterns than conspiracy buffs liked to believe.

  Her breath was leaving a sparkling fog on the windshield. She started the car, switched on the defrost, and headed down the drive. Droplets tambourined onto the roof from the overhanging trees. The bear sculptures atop the gates looked dingy and dismal. Only a couple of media vans were still parked outside, lights gleaming in their windows.

  Jean could barely see the loch for the mist and rain, let alone the distant mountains. Her headlights felt their way along the narrow road and through the Dark Mile, which lay in such impenetrable shadow the back of her neck crawled. Bonnie Brae Cottage looked more ashen than white. Across the road, a huge tow truck plunged and struggled in the mud like some antediluvian beast, winching Norman’s car from the cold waters of the loch. Jaw clenched, Jean focused on the road.

  Achnacarry, Gairloch and the Caledonian Canal, the Commando Memorial, the bronze soldiers still keeping the faith—each materialized from the mist and then disappeared behind her, phantoms from an uneasy dream. At last she came to the white buildings of Spean Bridge and went to ground in the dining room of the Montrose Inn, named after a famous warrior who had fought for both sides and, in time-honored Scottish fashion, gave his life for the losing one.

  Spicy mulligatawny soup and toasted cheese sandwiches warmed her stomach, and a gooseberry tart washed down with cappuccino quelled the anxious shrieks of her nervous system. One of these days, Jean told herself, she needed to stop sublimating her overactive senses with food and music. Maybe she should try a formal workout instead of her usual exercise of bouncing off walls and jumping to conclusions.

  There, in the hallway running between reception and the dining room, stood Fiona like another figment, this time of Jean’s uneasy conscience. That’s right, the Montrose Inn was catering Rick’s announcement party tomorrow night. Jean was debating whether to stare out the window or wave a greeting when Fiona glanced into the dining room. Her casual pose stiffened into that of a bird dog at point. Jean tried a pleasant nod.

  Instead of turning her back, Fiona walked up to Jean’s table. “May I sit down?”

  “Please.” Now what?

  Fiona pulled out the second chair. The teenaged waitress wafted in their direction. “Nothing for me, thank you.” Gathering up Jean’s empty dishes, the waitress wafted away again.

  Between the dark day and the discreetly lit restaurant, Fiona’s spilled pupil was barely noticeable. Her face was as pale and fine as exquisitely molded but unpainted porcelain. Even the wave of red hair that edged it was drained of color, its fire extinguished. Something immeasurably sad moved in her eyes.

  No. Something beyond sadness, immeasurable calm, perhaps, radiated from her eyes, her face, her clasped hands resting on the tablecloth. “Rick told you of his plans, did he?”

  “Oh yes. D.C. Gunn’s taken hi
s documents to the Museum of Scotland.”

  “He’ll never believe they’re anything but divinely inspired.”

  “No, I don’t guess he will.” Jean didn’t need to add any cheap psychoanalysis about rationality and ego.

  “If it were only his own—his own private game—it’s not my place to criticize . . .” Fiona looked out the window. “I don’t know why George kept on catering to Rick’s fancies. He knew better. But he only brought you the coin? He never mentioned Rick’s name?”

  “Only when I asked him, and very noncommittally then.”

  “Right.” Fiona turned back to Jean, spreading her hands with their long, fragile fingers flat on the tabletop. The gold wedding band looked like brass. “Aye, it was me who phoned you. Disguised my voice and all. When George told me he was intending to talk to you, I thought for certain he’d made up his mind at last, was after speaking his piece, and I was scared for him.”

  “You were scared for him? Why?”

  “Because I’d seen him hanging in the game larder, seen it so strong I fell sick.” Her eyes gazed unblinking into Jean’s.

  “You saw him . . .” Vanessa had interpreted Fiona’s cool neutrality as disapproval. It wasn’t. It was just that Fiona’s stillness, like Cameron’s, could make you nervous. If she was lying, Jean would never trust her perceptions again. . . . She suddenly realized just what kind of perception was at work here. “You have ESP. Second Sight. You’re clairvoyant. You catch glimpses of the future. It’s not quite the same way I—well, I can see ghosts, but the two abilities, skills, curses—they’re on the same paranormal continuum, in a way. And neither kind is voluntary.”

  Fiona nodded, unsurprised. “There’s a stream near my grandmother’s croft on Mull. She’d never go there at night for fear of seeing the beann nighe, a sort of banshee, washing out the clothes of the next person in the village to be dying.”

  “And what she saw, what you see, can’t be changed?”

  “No.”

  “But you have to try,” Jean said, putting words in Fiona’s mouth. “You have to fight, no matter what.”

  Fiona clasped her hands again, but not before Jean saw them trembling. “I might have agreed with you, once. I’ve tried in the past to change fate, and I’ve failed. I failed this time as well. Trying, fighting, it only hurts you and those around you. The Buddhists have it right. No desire, no pain.”

  Jean almost retorted, If there’s no desire, what’s the point, or That’s throwing the baby out with the bath water, but no, the woman had a right to her own feelings.

  “I saw you as well, standing on the doorstep. I’d seen your photo in George’s magazines, I knew it was you. I knew there was some connection between you and George’s death, but I didn’t know what it was.”

  “You thought if you warned me off then he’d be all right. But your warning just made me all the more eager to get out here.”

  “Aye, it did.” Fiona’s porcelain face creased in a grimace of pain, quickly smoothed away. “Rick had already told George not to come in the Tuesday. I told him myself, there’s no need to be driving all this way, have a day out. Still he crept into the house.”

  “Why? To meet someone?”

  “I don’t know. If I did, I might could help.”

  “We all want to help,” Jean said. “I guess if you’d told the police the murder was going to happen you’d either have been laughed at or arrested.”

  “Not if I’d told Alasdair. But then, what could he have done? Telling him would have been handing him one more burden.” Fiona tilted her head to the side. “You know about my husband and Alasdair, do you?”

  “Yes,” Jean admitted. “Sorry.”

  “Alasdair agonized over his decision to grass up Kenny, not least because he and I were friends. But he had to do the right thing. I knew he was after doing it. I knew it would be Kenny’s death. I’m not blaming him for it.”

  “He blames himself,” Jean stated.

  “He does that, aye. For the rumors as well, the scandal about him and me. His marriage was over then, that had nothing to do with me, but the timing was bad.” Fiona looked out the window again, as though searching for something in the rain-draped hillsides but not finding it.

  “Cameron didn’t know you were working at Glendessary House, did he?”

  “No. I wanted a clean break with the past. I was denied a widow’s pension, under the circumstances, so I answered an advert in the newspaper and Rick and Vanessa took me in. They’ve been kind to me. I’ve encouraged Rick’s view of destiny, though, and now he’s gone round the bend.”

  “He’s gone way around the bend, but I doubt if anything you said pushed him there. It’s probably the cumulative effect of years of brooding and scheming.”

  “Thank you for that.” A dry and distant amusement moved in Fiona’s eyes and softened the set of her mouth and chin. “You can’t make a clean break with the past. Ever. All you can do is surrender to it.”

  “And appreciate its ironies.”

  “Oh aye.” Hitching her handbag over the shoulder of her raincoat, she stood up. “Have a care, Jean.”

  “You, too.”

  Jean watched her walk away, thinking that graceful surrender to circumstance was all well and good, and yes, a sense of humor was a much underrated virtue. But Fiona was wrong about one thing. All too often passivity meant leaving ragged ends for other people to sew up. If sewing up her own ends meant not leaving well enough alone, or going out on a limb, or making waves, well, so be it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Jean was standing on the hotel doorstep, trying to decide whether to while away some time at the Weaving Mill Shop or the Commando Museum, when her cell phone chirped. She unzipped her bag, found her car keys immediately, then excavated the phone from beneath her billfold. “Jean Fairbairn.”

  “D.C.I. Cameron here.” Even filtered through the tiny speaker, his voice was unmistakable.

  “How did you—oh, I gave you my business card.”

  “You’re in Spean Bridge, are you?”

  “Yes.” She looked around the parking lot, at the windows of the surrounding buildings, up the street. Aha! The third or fourth house beyond the hotel displayed a blue sign reading “Police.” Sure enough, there was Cameron, standing between a police car and a child’s swing set, his hand to his cheek.

  Jean waved her phone at him, then put it back to her ear. “I thought you were interviewing Meg.”

  “She’s just now gone away in her posh sports car, trailing clouds of one of those perfumes named Guttersnipe or Rubbish Tip.”

  Whoa. The man had made a joke. Smiling in something close to gratitude, she said, “Gunn’s taken the car to Edinburgh, so you’re angling for a ride back to Glendessary House, right?”

  “Aye, if it’s no trouble.”

  “No trouble at all,” Jean said, then remembered that she hadn’t had time to digest what she’d learned about him, let alone decide whether she should pretend she didn’t know it or go ahead and admit she did.

  Too late now—Cameron was closing in fast. She’d just have to see what circumstance and the man himself demanded. She switched off her phone and stowed it in her bag. Now her car keys lay at the bottom. She was fishing for them when he appeared in her peripheral vision. “I was by way of phoning for a taxi when I saw you.”

  He’d probably been evaluating the countryside for snipers or something. “I was going back to the house anyway,” she told him, without adding, “eventually,” and opened the car doors.

  He strapped himself in the passenger seat and pulled a tape cassette out of his pocket. “I can pay my fare with the interview.”

  Good, she wouldn’t have to talk to him just yet. She negotiated a tricky right turn across traffic and took off up the road. “Why did Meg refuse to go to the house? Did she see the ghost, too?”

  “No, no ghost. Have a listen.” Cameron plugged the tape into the dashboard. His recorded voice identified the place, the time, the people pres
ent, the interviewee. Then it asked, “Why would you not come out to Glendessary House?”

  “After what Rick said to me? I don’t think so,” said a female voice in the sort of elite screech, all tortured vowels and buckshot consonants, that Jean had thought was a Monty Python joke until she heard it for herself.

  “What did he say to you?” asked Cameron’s voice, while the actual man contemplated the water-colored greens and browns of the landscape behind the thinning veil of the mist.

  “He said I was a traitor, that I ought to be horsewhipped through the town. I thought he was winding me up, but no, he was dead serious. I expected him to take that precious dagger of his and run me through.”

  “His dirk?”

  “The one he wears when he’s done up in his kilt, yes.”

  “Why did he call you a traitor?”

  “Because I told my pal Derek at The Sunburn I’d write an article, behind the scenes at a millionaire’s mansion or some such rubbish.”

  “What was going on behind the scenes?” asked Cameron’s voice.

  “Rick’s mad for Bonnie Prince Charlie. Dresses up in full Highland rig and all. Jolly good wheeze, I thought, no worse than people I could name dressing up in leather and chains, but Rick didn’t think so.”

  “You were planning to expose his plans for the future?”

  “His plans?”

  “Involving the Jacobite Lodge.”

  “Oh. Them. They’d sit about talking about royals dead and gone ‘til you ran screaming mad from the room. Don’t know what sort of plans he could have made for them, bar burial plans.” Meg heehawed.

  Jean imagined a stylish young woman so self-centered she generated her own gravity field, a time-honored human trait if ever there was one.

  Cameron’s voice asked, “What were your duties at Glendessary House?”

  “Word processing, filing, writing copy for the games. Ringing up libraries and antiques dealers looking out old books and letters. Naff sort of work, but Vanessa handed me a good reference, an apology for Rick, I expect, and now I have a positively brilliant job with a PR firm in London.”