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

by Lillian Stewart Carl

  “Well, yes, but. . . .”

  “I’ll collect you in the car park at half-past nine.” He wiped his hands on a napkin, threw it down, and vanished as abruptly as he’d appeared, leaving Jean with her spoon still halfway to her mouth, dribbling milk back into the bowl.

  Men! she told herself, and hurried to finish up.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Just rewind to before yesterday’s—confession, confrontation, whatever—Jean told herself. That’s what Cameron was doing. No need to re-establish any boundaries when none had been trespassed. No need to talk about what had happened. It was talking that had made it happen to begin with.

  Shells all around, then, like an oyster bed. Or like a weapons dump.

  She met him in the parking area at nine-thirty. Without saying a word, she pitched her computer into the back seat of his car and climbed in. Without cracking an expression, Cameron drove away. She waited until he’d maneuvered through the gate to ask, “Have you heard from D.C. Gunn about the documents?”

  “Oh aye. Deliberate fraud, I’d say.”

  “Rick told me he got them from Kieran. He and Charlotte have been to Italy—they could have picked up the paper there. They could have had the forgeries made there, for that matter. Venice is known for its skilled forgers.” She looked past Cameron’s carved-in-granite profile toward the blue water of the loch. Deep blue, with a slight silvery tint.

  Cameron glanced at her, his eyes the same color. “Anything else?”

  Jean nodded, then, figuring he couldn’t hear her head rattle, said, “Yes. It turns out that Archie MacSorley died the same day as the fire at Glendessary House.”

  “The military records say he was killed in a live-fire accident. No pun intended.”

  Of course Cameron had already checked the official records. “If Archie really died in the fire, then the authorities covered up the truth, either to spare the feelings of his family or to cover themselves. The question is why Archie was in the infirmary to begin with.”

  “I doubt George Lovelace was involved.”

  “You doubt . . . oh.” Linguistic whiplash. “You suspect he was involved.”

  “Although if MacSorley had been murdered, Lovelace would have been brought to trial.”

  “So either it was an accident or George somehow got away with murder. I’d vote for the former, myself.”

  Cameron abstained. Raindrops spattered across the windshield. The Dark Mile was gloomy and wet, and the MacSorleys’ house huddled truculently in its garden. The silver car was poised at the end of the drive, Charlotte leaning forward over the steering wheel to peer up the road. Shooting a wary glance in her direction, Cameron speeded up.

  Jean watched in the side mirror as Charlotte turned toward Glendessary House. “Here’s a thought. I overhead Vanessa urging Rick to go ahead and come clean about something that turned out to be the Charlie stuff, even though she knows it’s a delusion. What if she’s just trying to get it all over with?”

  “Make the announcement, watch his castles in the air collapse, and get on with her life, either as Mrs. MacLyon or otherwise.”

  “Maybe she has Neil in mind as the otherwise. Do you think Rick is the jealous type?”

  “Hard to say.” The car passed back into the sunshine, even though the mountains to the east were still draped with wispy curtains of gray.

  “So when are you going to blow up Rick’s castle?” Jean asked. “At the dinner party tonight? You’ll have all your suspects together, that would be a great time to announce the name of the killer.”

  “I don’t know the name of the killer. As yet.” Cameron slowed the car and turned through the gate into the tree-lined drive leading to Achnacarry Castle and the Museum.

  “What about the Lodge members? How many of them are true believers?”

  “I’ve sent the lads round to have another go at them.”

  The trees parted to reveal a collection of buildings, among them the white-painted Clan Cameron Museum, nestled beneath an escarpment studded with scrubby trees. Jean’s particular nemesis of a Cameron turned into the parking area and stopped. At least he was still willing to talk about the case with her, she thought as she stepped out into the cold wind. “Was it Ogilvy’s idea or yours to meet here?”

  “His. He’s donating several artifacts to the Museum.”

  “And he wants to see me?”

  “So he said.”

  The caretaker, a man in a dark blue sweater, was unlocking the door of the building. “Alasdair! Good morning to you. And this is. . . .”

  “Jean Fairbairn,” said Jean.

  Wispy sideburns framed the man’s long face and impish smile. “Welcome, welcome. Any friend of Alasdair’s and all. Have a tour on the house.”

  “Thank you.” Leaving Cameron at the front desk, she strolled into the display area. The first glass case held the battered kilt of a Queen’s Own Cameron Highlander, the last kilted regiment from World War II. The World War I Germans had called the Scottish soldiers “ladies from hell.”

  Behind her, the caretaker was chatting with Cameron about various relatives and their activities. Whoa. The man had relatives. He hadn’t sprung full-blown from the brow of the Chief Constable. And he wasn’t as hostile to his own history as he claimed, either, if he’d participated in clan gatherings and commemorations. Although Jean had already noticed he was a deep and complex individual.

  She scanned an exhibit of material from the commando school. Beyond it other cases displayed memorabilia from Bonnie Prince Charlie and his long-suffering Cameron supporters, the huge boots of an earlier Cameron, the dress of the Cameron who was a bridesmaid at the wedding of the present Prince Charles, and a set of dishes from the replica Titanic built for the movie directed by, yes, a Cameron.

  History and culture under glass, Jean thought. Museums put human history into compartments, filed away the rough edges, made it look tidy. Reminded you that this too shall pass. . . . Yes! In the back corner of the back room hung an etching of Jenny. The picture was even more idealized than Rick’s drawing, so that what might have been a stubborn chin in the real woman was here innocuously plump. Words were handwritten below the picture:

  Miss Jenny Cameron, a genteel handsome woman with pretty eyes and hair as black as jet, of a sprightly genius and very agreeable conversation. So far from accompanying the prince’s army, that she went off as soon as she had accomplished leading up the Major’s (her brother) men, neither did she ever follow the camp nor ever saw the prince but in public and when he had his court in Edinburgh.

  So, Jean thought with a grin, spin doctoring was not a modern phenomenon. Someone had waded in with a nicely balanced defense, supporting Jenny but not criticizing Charlie. The fine calligraphic handwriting and syntax could be eighteenth century or later. Without an analysis of the paper and faded sepia ink, she couldn’t tell.

  Male voices spoke hearty greetings from the other end of the building. Offering Jenny a conspiratorial wink, Jean headed in that direction. Sure enough, Ronald Ogilvy was standing there with Cameron and the caretaker, a plastic carrier bag clutched in his hand. His round rosy cheeks and bulbous nose made him look like a cross between a cherub and a camel.

  “Miss Fairbairn!” he called. “Good to see you again.”

  “You too, Mr. Ogilvy.”

  “Very good of you both to meet me here, indulge an old man.”

  “No problem,” said Cameron. “Let’s sit down outside.”

  Two leather-jacketed bikers were just coming in the door. Everyone jockeyed around each other, mumbling apologies. Cameron herded his flock to a bench next to a World War I artillery piece, mopped the rainwater up with his handkerchief, seated Ogilvy in its center, and sat down himself on the far end. Jean winced at the chill of the wooden slats, like the spank of reality at birth.

  Cameron did Ogilvy the courtesy of not mincing words. “We’ve released Mr. Lovelace’s body to his family.”

  “Good, glad to hear it. Time the man was laid to
rest with all the proper observances. His daughter and her family stopped in at the house Thursday, cleared some things away, tried to make arrangements—you know how it is, with the shock and all.”

  Jean didn’t, thank goodness, know how it was to cope with a murder in the family, but she nodded sympathetically.

  The old man reached into his plastic bag. “George’s family thought the Commando Museum at Spean Bridge might like to have these. I suggested the display here. George always liked stopping by here on his way home from Glendessary House. Said he enjoyed the peace and the quiet all these years on—goes to show you that time heals, eh?”

  “Oh aye,” said Cameron, but he didn’t sound convinced.

  Ogilvy produced the photo album that Jean had last seen on George’s coffee table, and the shoe box from his upstairs cabinet. “Here are his beret and his medals, just need a bit of a brush-up is all. He kept the album with them and the gold coin, and showed me them the day before he went to see you, Miss Fairbairn. The album here, he said everything was in it, all the answers or something to that effect. Puzzled me a bit at the time, but—well, maybe I’m understanding a bit better now.”

  Aren’t we all, Jean told herself.

  “Mind you, George rarely talked about the war. Too many losses, he’d say. Memories too painful. But your chap Gunn,” Ogilvy said to Cameron, “fine lad, make a good detective, he will. Some of the questions he asked made me think about what George did say. And you, when you phoned last night, did I know what George might owe Kieran MacSorley. So maybe I’ve put two and two together and come close to making four, if you take my meaning.” He gazed out over the grassy field across the road, past the delicate green of the trees, to the bank of ash-gray clouds seeping down the far mountainside.

  Jean squinted to see ruined walls emerging from the undergrowth, the gravestones of a vanished culture. A young George Lovelace had trained in this rugged, heather-clad landscape, which had changed little between his day and Prince Charlie’s. If anything, it was more desolate now, after two centuries of depredations both military and economic.

  Cameron, of course, was fixed in the here and now. “Did Mr. Lovelace know Kieran’s father Archie?”

  Ogilvy brushed the top of the book as though dusting it. “That’s what’s in the album here, photos of him with a man labeled by that name. George talked once or twice about his ‘oppo,’ his opposite number. They were assigned to train together and support each other here at the commando school. He never mentioned his name. Must have been Archie, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, I do think,” said Jean. “Archie died here in nineteen forty-two. Do you have any reason to believe that George contributed to his death? Accidentally, of course. No malice aforethought or anything like that.”

  “I think that’s what happened, yes. A thing like that would prey on one’s mind, wouldn’t it? No wonder George never talked about it.”

  “Aye,” said Cameron, the word a chip of ice.

  “That’s why George felt he had to work with Kieran,” Jean said, not expanding on just what she meant by “work with.”

  Ogilvy opened the box, peered at the contents as though for inspiration, and closed it again. The medals clattered like a distant machine gun. “George and his oppo were injured abseiling down a cliff. The high one, beyond those houses.”

  The only cliff Jean could see was the one behind the Museum, and it looked bad enough, a minefield of gravel, loose boulders, and brittle branches.

  “They were sent to the infirmary at Glendessary House,” Ogilvy went on. “Once past those bare facts I’m forced to—well, triangulate, you might say, from different things George said over the years. He tended to ramble a bit, probably told me the entire story in bits and pieces. If only I’d known, I might could have helped.”

  If only I’d known. Those words served as the motto beneath the coat of arms of the human race.

  “I think what happened was this. Late one night George and Archie and several other soldiers were playing poker by the light of a lantern. One of the men had a bad run, lost all his money, so he laid on the table a gold coin he’d found whilst on maneuvers in Glen Camgarry at the head of the loch.”

  “One of the places the coins were traditionally hidden,” said Jean.

  “George described the shine of the coin, the fine etching of the face, and the inscription. Even as a lad he had a taste for history. That’s why he wanted the coin, not for its value as gold.”

  The Louis d’Or had gleamed seductively beneath her desk lamp. She’d thought then that many a bad deed had been done for that glow, whether it was the glow of gold or of a history burnished out of all recognition, with no rough edges, dark blotches, or uncertain provenances.

  Ogilvy sighed. “George held the winning hand and won the coin. And the man who found it went for him. Maybe playfully, maybe seriously, I don’t know. He never said it was Archie, mind.”

  Cameron spoke, slow and measured. “The lantern was overturned. The house caught fire. Archie died.”

  “Yes.” Ogilvy’s voice stretched like a rubber band, “George shouldn’t have kept it all to himself. There’s too much of this ego business nowadays, showing your innermost feelings off in public as though they were something to be proud of. Still, keeping every last bit of it tucked away is no good either. Leaves you with rotten spots in your mind, like abscesses.”

  Jean couldn’t stop herself from looking at Cameron, on Ogilvy’s other side. He was scanning the horizon, his stiff upper lip firmly in place against its opposite number, displaying no stress fractures. The only thing moving on his body was his short hair rippling in the wind.

  “Do you think George had abscesses in his mind?” she asked Ogilvy.

  “He insisted on working for this MacLyon chap, didn’t he? There was more to that than I thought. I expect MacSorley had a hand in. Here.” Ogilvy handed the photo album to Jean. “Have a look at this, use it to write up an article on the commando school. George would like that. It might could ease his mind a bit, even now. You can send the album back here when you’ve finished.”

  The book’s leather cover was clammy against her fingertips, a hand reaching from the grave. “I’d like to do an article on the commando school. Thank you.”

  “And you, Chief Inspector.” Ogilvy turned to his other side. “You don’t yet know who killed George, do you?”

  “No,” said Cameron, voice tautly at attention. “You yourself saw Charlotte MacSorley at the time of the murder, did you?”

  “Yes, afraid so. Always thought the woman was a bit of a witch, but still, she can hardly be in two places at once, can she?”

  “Peter, the caretaker here, saw Kieran MacSorley at the same time. Even if MacSorley hid a car amongst the trees, he could hardly have reached Glendessary House before Miss Fairbairn found Mr. Lovelace.”

  Jean’s lips thinned. “And I both saw and heard Neil MacSorley playing his pipes outside the house at the time of the murder. I don’t see how he could be involved at all, unless you believe in guilt by association. The sins of the fathers visited upon the sons. Or the grandsons.”

  With a snort of something that might have been agreement, Cameron stood up and offered Ogilvy his hand. “Thank you very much, sir, for your help.”

  “The least I could do. I’ll hand these other things in to the caretaker, shall I? And tell him to expect the album at some future date. Good morning, Miss Fairbairn. Chief Inspector.” Ogilvy walked haltingly away toward the door of the museum, bent beneath the burden of time and memory.

  A fine spray of raindrops brushed Jean’s face and misted her glasses. She pulled up the hood of her coat. The wind was brisk and bracing, like a scouring pad across the smudged recesses of her mind. Something was starting to gleam down there, but she couldn’t quite make it out.

  Cameron stood with his hands in his pockets, contemplating whatever plane of existence he was usually contemplating. She held the album toward him, having to actually poke his arm with it to
get his attention.

  He focused, taking the book from her hands. “Aye?”

  “I’m going to walk back to the house. Not by the road, that swings all the way out to Clunes and then back in, makes an acute angle. By that path, there. According to the map inside the museum it runs past the Castle, crosses the bridge, and comes out just past the waterfall.”

  His head turned in the direction she was pointing. “Oh aye. The hypotenuse. If you run you might catch me up.”

  “I’m no commando, fifteen miles to Ben Nevis and then up the mountain in a full pack. But I’ve got to get some exercise, my brain is sluggish.” And if her nerves weren’t shot, then they were at least standing against a wall, blindfold in place.

  “All right then. I’ll have this album and your computer in the incident room.” He turned toward his car, casting an analytical glance at the two black and chrome motorcycles parked nearby.

  Instead of carrying her bag over one shoulder as she usually did, Jean hoisted it onto her back. She stepped out down the road, arms swinging, breathing deeply of the fresh damp air with its scents of mold, mulch, and an elusive tang of the sea. There was Achnacarry Castle, a tidy, square-cut early nineteenth-century mansion with regular ranks of windows and decorative turrets ranged above. It wasn’t nearly as pretentious as Glendessary House, even though it was the home of a genuine clan chief, the present Lochiel.

  She marched on, avoiding the puddles in the gravel road. The sun came back out with the force of an explosion. Through the tumbling leaves of the trees ahead she caught the glimmer of Loch Arkaig.

  The hypotenuse. The straightest way between the corners of the triangle. Maybe the same triangle Ogilvy had used to put together George’s story. Like Occam’s Razor, stating that the simplest, straightest explanation, no matter how little you want to believe it, is the right one. Sherlock Holmes had said something similar. And yet Holmes, like Cameron, admitted that people’s motives were rarely simple.