Cameron slammed the door. “Are you driving or not?”
“I’m driving.” She started the car and sped up the road as fast as she could without careening into the heather. A dirt road ran off to left and crossed a small bridge. The length of Loch Arkaig’s choppy gray water was concealed by mist. What she saw, what she felt, was Cameron silent beside her. So he hadn’t stooped to the grand gesture of walking back in the rain. It was obscurely comforting to know he was smart enough not to cut off his nose to spite his face.
The constable at the gate, bright as a canary in his yellow slicker, waved them through. Jean didn’t exactly squeal the wheels on the drive’s switchbacks, but she didn’t go slowly, either. The second she pulled into her usual parking place at the side of the courtyard, Cameron was out the door and away into the house, spine straight, like a duelist advancing onto the field of honor.
Jean now knew, with a certainty like a shot between the eyes from a dueling pistol, why he made her nervous. Unlike Fiona’s serenity, rueful and untouchable, Alasdair Cameron’s stillness was that of an unexploded bomb.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Making a fist, Jean came within an inch of punching the dashboard. Like that would prove anything, she told herself sternly, other than that her own prickly shell had thinned way too much. That she’d rediscovered her emotions with a vengeance. She flexed her fingers and reached for her bag.
What? She’d gotten personal, knowing how Cameron would react, just because she was beginning to realize how much she had in common with him? Because she was afraid she was almost sort of beginning to like the guy and he was almost sort of beginning to like. . . . Don’t go there. There be dragons.
She slammed the door of the car so hard the report echoed like a gunshot off the trees and the façade of the house. She’d breached his shell, all right. While her sapping expedition had been motivated by issues of truth and trust, it had also been motivated by fear. By retreating to safety, truth and trust be damned.
The problem with finding herself was that she wasn’t exactly comfortable with what she found.
She retrieved her computer from the trunk of the car. Okay. She couldn’t go back to Edinburgh and Dougie and Hugh’s music filtering through the wall instead of Rick’s incessant sound system. She couldn’t ignore Cameron. Having a conscience could be very annoying. He probably felt the same way. Not that she cared how he felt.
Finding one more yeah, right in her gut, she deployed it in his general direction and trudged through the rain toward the Glendessary house.
Which was looking more mysterious than ever this dark afternoon. Even the windows that glowed with light seemed more secretive than welcoming, as though the acts played out in those rooms wouldn’t bear scrutiny by daylight. Jean tried to open the front door. It was locked. She rang the bell. Toby answered, his round face pleated in what he probably intended to be a smile of greeting but which came across as a shell-shocked grimace.
“How’s it going?” asked Jean, with her own fixed grin.
“Just grand, Miss,” he replied, and locked the door behind her.
“I think I’ll find a book in the library and read. If you’d like to join me, I’ll tell you about my articles for Great Scot.”
“That’s right obliging of you, Miss, but Vanessa has me washing dishes and dusting and the like. Exclusive dinner party tomorrow night, she says.”
“Some other time, then.” What she wanted was to pump him for information, but it seemed only fair to contribute to his literacy program in the process. Assuming she wanted to be alone with him, Jean thought as went up the stairs. With any of the suspects. Playing decoy wasn’t in her job description. But then, neither was playing detective.
An electronic mutter seeped through the doors of Rick’s office. From the hall outside her door, Jean could hear a murmur of voices from the police incident room. Cameron had said he was searching for the truth. Well, he’d gotten it. So had she. The problem was, it was a truth peripheral to the investigation.
She unlocked the door of her room and scanned the area. The bed was made, her tea things washed, and her basket of cookies refilled. So the lock was for decorative purposes only. Gritting her teeth, Jean searched the room—no one there—and sat down with her notebook, laptop, and Rick’s press kit.
The hidden speakers were playing a vapid version of “Will Ye No Come Back Again,” making the song sound less like a yearning summons than a perfunctory farewell. Even after the Bonnie Prince had been reduced to the bitter dregs of alcoholism, he refused to admit defeat, still thinking he would go back again, that he was entitled to the throne of a country that didn’t want him. More. That he’d been cheated out of it. . . . She yawned, the heavy lunch settling into her limbs like lead.
There was something to be said for Neil’s and Meg’s careless attitudes. Be merry, for tomorrow you die. Not that there was anything wrong with merriment, but since your time was limited, it was better spent in work and relationships that demanded some effort. . . . She yawned again, having used up a lot more adrenalin on Cameron than he deserved.
Her marriage to Brad had been worth having, but they’d stayed in it much too long, not so much trying to make it work as refusing to admit defeat and let it go. But neither of them had ever felt as bitter about their marriage as Cameron felt about his. Marriage was like sandpaper. It could smooth and polish or could rub raw. . . . Jean’s eyelids went down for the third time. To hell with it.
Throwing herself down on the bed, she found herself running through smoky dream corridors trying to find her classroom—it was time for class, she was late—there was an exam in tartan weaving, but she couldn’t remember the MacLyon sett. Footsteps marched up and down the halls, entire squadrons of soldiers chanting her name.
She jerked awake. Outside the windows the dark day had deteriorated into dark evening. Neil’s voice accompanied a brisk cadence of knocks. “Jean?”
She staggered across to the door, opened it, and only then realized how bleary she must look. Well, that was nothing new.
Neil, as always, looked like a figment of an early morning wet dream. He grinned. “Toby’s laid on a supper of sorts. At least Fiona’s had a hand in, there’s hope for us yet.”
“Thanks,” Jean told him, and watched the view as he turned and walked away. She could still look. Looking was free.
She freshened up and hurried downstairs, turning on lights as she went—darkness was already oozing into the hall. Outside the silvery mist congealed into charcoal fog that pressed against the windows. And she’d felt claustrophobic earlier.
In the dining room Jean served herself leftovers from silver-plated chafing dishes, and ate a few bites while Vanessa chattered about the dinner. Rick, back in civilian clothes, slumped over his plate when he wasn’t talking arcane cyber-sentences on his phone. The sound system whined away in the background, like a gnat hovering next to Jean’s ear. Like the bland American voices of her hosts.
When they moved to the media room, Jean went along, safety being in numbers and all of that. She hadn’t quite ratcheted her paranoia to the point of thinking they had all done it.
Vanessa and Rick, each holding a remote like a pistol, started dueling over which DVD to watch. Rick wanted Braveheart or Rob Roy. Vanessa wanted a Julia Roberts comedy. They compromised on Tunes of Glory, the 1960 classic. Good. Jean wasn’t up for either the violence or the historical howlers of the more recent films. She sank into a recliner as the glorious strains of pipe music overwhelmed the cautious bleat from the speakers in the ceiling.
Toby plunked a bowl of popcorn onto the table and himself onto the floor. Neil and Fiona tiptoed in and found chairs of their own. Clarinda clambered from lap to lap like an amiable tiger and finally settled down with Fiona. Jean tried to enjoy the movie—it had always been a favorite. Now, though, her mind bounced around like a grasshopper. Means, motive, Mad MacLyon.
Just as another stirring skirl announced the end credits, two or three cars started
up outside and drove away. Must be the end of the shift in the incident room. Which of the cops spent the night here? Someone had to keep an eye on the equipment and the evidence. Jean wondered if anyone was keeping an eye on her.
Neil flipped through the rack of DVDs. “What do you fancy for the second feature, Rick? Terminator? Matrix?”
Since no one was offering one of The Lord of the Rings films, Jean seized her chance to escape, following Fiona into the corridor. Fiona set Clarinda on the floor and asked, “Everything all right for you then?”
Jean didn’t have a chance to answer before Clarinda meowed softly, a low guttural trill that sounded like Marlene Dietrich clearing her throat. Both women looked around.
The cat looked toward the entrance and crouched, ears back, tail bristling. Slow footsteps walked down the opposite hall. Jean could see nothing. Not the least shape passed through the soft light of the sconces and their mock candles. But her sixth sense, the one sense that wasn’t already stretched to its limit, went to red alert.
“What are you hearing?” Fiona asked.
“Footsteps. You can’t hear them?”
“No. I sense the future, not the past.”
Clarinda leaped for the stairs and scuttled upwards. The footsteps advanced into the entrance hall. Now Jean could see the shape, the commando with his belt and boots. But no beret, because he’d died before he graduated. She beckoned Fiona to the side of the corridor, out of his way, and whispered, “It’s Archie MacSorley.”
“Not George? Vanessa was thinking the footsteps were George.”
The shape became more and more solid. By the time it passed within an arm’s length of them it looked like an ordinary human being, except for a lack of definition around the eyes and the mouth, where an ordinary human being would show emotion. Again Jean smelled smoke.
Fiona watched Jean watch Archie climb the stairs by the billiards room, the ones he remembered. “Have you told Alasdair what you’re seeing?”
“Oh yeah. He’s seen it too.”
“Well then,” Fiona said, as though that cleared everything up. “Good night.” She walked down the hall, toward the bar of light that extended from beneath the door of the billiards-cum-incident room. Someone was still there. Cameron? Maybe Fiona wanted to touch bases with him. Maybe she was simply going up the back stairs to bed.
Jean scuttled up the main staircase as fast as the cat, and made it safely to her own room, where she locked the door and braced the desk chair beneath the knob. She tried rearranging her notes, but no patterns leaped out at her. She wished she’d brought her knitting. The quiet repetitiveness was always soothing. But then, sitting here knitting she’d feel like Madame de Farge beside the guillotine.
When she went to bed, she expected to lie awake listening for more steps, but she didn’t. She slept long and hard, and swam up through the mist gathered in the low places of her mind to find thin sunshine gleaming through the curtains. She’d barely finished washing and dressing when her cell phone rang. Eagerly she snatched it up. “Hello?”
“Good morning, Jean,” said Michael’s voice. “Only you’d have me working on a Saturday.”
“You got the papers all right.”
“Oh aye. I’d have been in trouble at home for stopping late at work except Rebecca was here as well, having a good look.”
“And?” Jean asked.
“Fine examples of the forger’s art. Paper’s almost right, size, shape, age. Except it’s all from Italy. The ink was made up specially, so as to fade properly. The penmanship is spot-on. So is the spelling and word use. The forger even made a good fist of creasing the letters, so they’d look like having been folded for a couple of centuries.”
“But they’re forgeries?”
“Oh aye. Dead wrong. What’s written on that brilliant Italian rag paper is a pack of lies.”
She heard Cameron’s voice saying, That’s one bet I’ll not be taking. She sat down, her notebook open and her pencil poised. “I know you’ll have to make an official report, but what can you tell me now?”
“Enough to be going on with, I reckon. The genealogy charts here, gey detailed, the places and dates and titles all perfectly logical.”
“Just not true.”
“Oh, real people are grafted on, right enough, but taken out of context in some way or another—married to the wrong person, or died at the wrong time.”
“Hi Jean,” said Rebecca’s voice on another extension. “One of these papers is supposedly a page from the birth register at Bannockburn kirk. Born to Charles Edward Sobieski Douglas and Jean Cameron his wife, a son. Only problem is, the real page for that date is tucked away in the Stirlingshire archives. This one was hand-copied and the relevant line added in.”
“So,” Jean said, “it would include the magic words ‘Sobieski’ and ‘Douglas,’ the names of Rick’s parents.”
“Is that what brought all this on?” asked Rebecca.
“An ungodly brew of things brought all this on. I hope to be back in Edinburgh telling you about it real soon now.” Jean sent a pleading look heavenwards. “What else do you have?”
“Letters from Jenny’s friends and relations saying what a fine lad the child is, the very image of his father. Ditto from Charlie’s henchmen about the child after he was taken to France.”
“If they were trying to hide the kid from Hanoverian spies, they’d have burned letters like that immediately. Or, even better, never written them.”
“Oh aye,” Michael said. “We’ve got some later documents as well, bringing us up to the present day—birth and marriage notices, transcripts, ephemera. If there’s anything right in all this other than Rick’s own birth certificate, I’ve not noticed.”
“What’s both funny and irritating,” said Rebecca, “is the letter that’s supposed to be from Michael himself, testifying that all this is genuine.”
Michael harrumphed. “The letterhead and my signature were copied from my letter certifying two amen glasses.”
“But” Rebecca added, “this letter has Michael not only saying all the papers are genuine but recognizing Rick as Charlie’s legitimate descendent, as though it was all up to him!”
“Some cheek,” concluded Michael.
Jean shook her head, not that she was going to turn her other cheek. A lot of work had gone into making Mr. MacLyon look good, too, but he wasn’t right, either.
“We’ve muckle work as yet,” Michael went on, “but since the papers are evidence in a case of murder, just now D.C. Gunn’s carried them to police headquarters for fingerprint analysis.”
Yes, the papers were evidence, but only indirectly. Somebody somewhere down the line might get a good civil suit out of them, whether or not Cameron solved his murder case.
“If you don’t mind our taking the rest of the weekend off,” said Rebecca with a laugh, “we did have plans.”
“Please, go have a nice weekend. Thanks.”
“Just doing our bit for truth, justice, and the Scottish way,” Michael told her. “It being our civic duty to debunk this sort of rubbish, even if there weren’t a murder involved.”
“I know a police detective who would agree with you,” returned Jean. One who had a way of being right. And solving cases, she bet. She punched Miranda’s home number into the phone.
Miranda’s voice mail answered. “If that’s Jean Fairbairn, hello, I’m away just now. Aye, the date of Archie’s death is the same as the date of the fire, if that’s what you’re wanting to know. If that’s anyone else, leave a message. Cheers!”
Yes, that was what Jean was wanting to know. Part of it, anyway. Official army records must list the details of Archie’s injury, but government offices would be closed until Monday. She’d have to talk to Ogilvy again, even it meant shoving Cameron out of the way, an image that did not fill her with anticipation.
She wondered where Miranda had gone. Away with Duncan to Paris or Barcelona, probably, on what the Brits called a dirty weekend. She allowed herself a mo
ment of envy. One of these days she was going to have sex again, expanding sensitivity into sensuality, really she was. Just as soon as she figured out how to balance selling her soul and being lonely.
Right now, though, breakfast would have to fill in the empty spaces. She stopped on her way downstairs to appreciate the vista of green and gold and blue framed by the windows in the sitting area. Ragged streamers of cloud spilled over the mountains but overhead the sky was clear. The sun sparkled off every tender green leaf, every pale stone. The sight alone was cheering. So was the dining room, empty except for an array of cereal boxes and racks of cold toast with all the fixings. A pot of coffee sat on an electric ring.
Jean filled a bowl with raisin bran, smeared butter and jelly on two pieces of toast, and sat down. Rattles and clinks in the kitchen next door, not to mention the odor of silver polish, informed her that the dinner campaign was under way. Through the windows Jean could see Neil in the garden, pruning shears, weed digger, and spray bottle—of what? varnish?—in a basket at his side, the sunlight gleaming on his auburn hair.
The door to the corridor opened. “There you are,” said D.C.I. Cameron.
Jean pretended she hadn’t jumped, and emitted a “Good morning” that was much too strained for her comfort.
Taking no notice, he walked across to the sideboard, dressed a bit of toast, and bit it in half. “You’d better be getting on with your breakfast. We’ve got an appointment with Ronald Ogilvy at the Clan Cameron Museum.”
“What?”
“We’ve got an appointment. . . .”
“I heard that. You mean you want me to go with you?”
Cameron crunched down the other half of the toast. “He’s wanting to see you. And I thought you were wanting in on the case.” His face was deadpan as always. Any gleam in his eye was hidden as well as the sun behind storm clouds.
The Secret Portrait (A Jean Fairbairn/Alasdair Cameron mystery Book 1) Page 26