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

by Lillian Stewart Carl

  If it was too late for George, it was too late for Neil as well. She couldn’t ruin the life he had already destroyed.

  Footsteps came down the hall. Archie’s feet, Jean thought, no matter how insubstantial, were going to wear a track in the carpet. But the steps didn’t turn up the staircase. They came on, to the door of the billiards room.

  You could see the light beneath the door from down the hall. Cameron must have finally escaped the dining room and come to see who was here. Amazing, what a relief it would be to see the man.

  The door opened. In the gap between the lights and the equipment-strewn table, Jean could see the bottom of a jacket and the top of a kilt. A kilt in Royal Stewart tartan, not Cameron.

  “There you are, Jean” said Neil’s light, supple, seductive voice. “Whyever are you hiding yourself in here?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Ohgodohgod. . . . Jean’s stomach bounced like a basketball into her throat and back down again. Act casual, she told herself, and said, “Oh! Hi!”

  Damn, her voice squeaked. She stepped away from the row of kilts. If she started hurriedly bundling them back into their bags he’d notice her—well no, it wasn’t her guilt that mattered here. But she bet she was the only one feeling any.

  Neil started toward her, leaning over so he could see her face below the lights. His smile was broad and brilliant and just about as sincere as the smile on the face of the tiger. “Old Dour Cameron will be ticking you off right and proper if he sees you in here messing about with his bits and pieces. His evidence.” His voice put quotation marks around the word “evidence.”

  Ohgod . . . She edged away, but not too far. She didn’t want to look like she was frightened of him. She didn’t want to be frightened of him, but she was. Give her an old familiar fear—a dark hallway, a newspaper headline. . . . She had to say something. With an effort she came out with, “I left the press kit Rick gave me in here. I came to get it.”

  “Oh aye. Poor old Rick. Barking mad. But you’ve noticed that. What are you after doing with his press kit, papering the loo with it?”

  “That might work,” she said, all too aware of the doppler effect in her voice.

  He was halfway along the side of the table. While he might be a murderer, he wasn’t stupid. He knew something was up. “Asking more questions, are you? Have you got any I could be answering for you?”

  “I don’t think so, no.”

  Neil reached the corner. He saw the kilts arranged in their row, each lying on top of its plastic bag. The bags labeled with the wrong names. Jean took two slow half-steps toward the opposite side of the table.

  After a long moment his eyes rose to meet Jean’s and his lips curved in a brave little smile, trying to hide his hurt and disappointment. She should have known he’d try a charm offensive. “All good journalists—and you’re a good journalist, aren’t you, Jean—know ‘evidence’ can be twisted about. Cameron and his lads, now, don’t you know they’re being pressurized into finding a guilty party. Any party will do.”

  “I’m sure they want to solve the case.”

  “Enough to cheat, Jean? Enough to find some poor muggins of an innocent bystander and fit him up?”

  At least he respected her intelligence enough not to try the Toby ploy again. Jean closed her eyes. If she didn’t look at that handsome face that had morphed into a murderer’s mask and yet, horribly, remained the same, maybe she could think of something to say. But what came into her mind were Cameron’s words, killers of my acquaintance.

  She heard Neil’s footstep and her eyes flew open. He’d come around the corner of the table and was two arm lengths away. The low lights painted his face with harsh downturned shadows.

  Talking. Along with everything else he was good at, he was very good at talking. “That’s a good photo of you,” she said, pointing. “I bet you could use that for publicity when you go on the road. All the women will be throwing their room keys at you.”

  “Ah, Jean,” he said, “I was thinking you found me repulsive.”

  “No way.” At least, she added to herself, I didn’t used to.

  He shook his head sadly. “You’re winding me up, Jean. All you’ve done is push me away.”

  She wished he’d stop saying her name. He sounded like a salesman. But then, he, too, was trying to establish a false intimacy.

  “Or is there hope for me yet? I’ve done you no harm, have I, Jean? I’ve enjoyed chatting you up. A shame to leave it there. Come away with me. We’ll drive west, to the islands. I know a small hotel on Skye, brilliant food, a view of the sea, soft beds.”

  “Just leave? Just like that?”

  “Oh aye. We’ll leave Rick and the polis behind. Disappear. Start over again. You did that yourself, when you left the States.”

  “Yes, I did.” How long could she keep him talking before someone came looking for them? Before she saw a chance to bolt, bolting being a much better option than going off into some lonely place with him.

  He was listing toward her, balanced on the balls of his feet. Great. She wasn’t fooling him one bit. He was coming after her here and now. Although what he thought he was going to accomplish by attacking her with Cameron and the others in the house. . . . She already knew his mind didn’t work the way most people’s minds did. At least he wasn’t going to take her by surprise, the way he did George.

  “Or would you rather I went away on my own?” Neil asked. “Have you turned against me?”

  Yes. God, yes. She leaned up against the table, the CD sticking to her rib cage. Funny how hot it was in here. The wool of the kilts prickled the palms of her hands the way Cameron’s gaze pricked her skin.

  “Is that it, then? You’re that repressed you can’t thole a man who’s comfortable with his own sexuality? Is that why you’re always doing over the poor young sods who never did you any harm?”

  Of course he’d use that ploy. From his perspective she was betraying him, not the other way around. “There’s harm, Neil, and there’s harm.”

  “Ah, Jean, you’ve given me no choice, have you now?” He lunged.

  And he hadn’t given her any. Jean’s hands closed on one of the kilts. She whipped it from the tabletop and across Neil’s face, deliberately aiming for his eyes. His cry of surprise and pain told her she’d connected.

  She wrapped the length of fabric around his head. Then she dropped it, set her hands on his chest, and pushed with all her adrenaline-pumped might. He fell backwards against the easel holding the chart. It crashed to the floor, Neil on top of it, clawing at his head and face, legs flailing. How about that. He wasn’t wearing anything beneath his kilt.

  Jean hiked her skirt up to her thighs and ran, blessing God and Naturalizer for sensible shoes. Into the chill air of the corridor. Past the doors of the drawing room. Past the media room. Into the entrance hall.

  He was behind her, she could hear his steps, and the pipe music, and Charlotte’s voice echoing down the stairwell, “A truly distinguished gathering, how honored we are to be included.”

  Jean sent the dining room door crashing open and catapulted through. No one was there. The table was littered with empty glasses, half-full bottles, and an ashtray like a miniature volcano emitting a tendril of sickly sweet smoke. The candles guttered in the sudden draft from the hall.

  Shit! The gentlemen had gone to join the ladies upstairs. That was why Neil had come looking for her. She inhaled to scream. Surely, even in Glendessary House, someone would hear her scream. . . .

  A violent tug on the trailing end of her sash pulled her backwards, choking her cry in her throat. She glimpsed Neil, eyes red and watering, face contorted in rage, just behind her.

  Jean twisted away, almost tripping herself up on her own skirt. Her blouse ripped, leaving him holding the sash and the brooch—damn, the sash was still looped around her waist—with a desperate wriggle and spin she was free. She hitched up her skirt again and sprinted for the kitchen door.

  Swearing, Neil threw the sash onto the
table. It knocked over a candle. A tiny flame started somewhere on the tartan cloth of either the sash or the runner, Jean didn’t hang around long enough to see. Better and better, now the house was on fire. Again. There had to be an extinguisher in the kitchen. . . .

  Neil burst through the door behind her. The door into the garden was closer than that into the hallway. Without stopping she propelled herself toward it, praying it was unlocked.

  It was. She threw it open and raced outside, for once appreciating the darkness. Plants grasped at her ankles and she felt her stockings rip but she kept on going. The bushes, the trees, the mountains were all indistinct smudges in the night. . . . The hedge. She dived behind it and crouched, pretending with all her might to be a rose bush, and dared a look back.

  A slender, kilted figure stood outside the kitchen door, head turning right and left. He made a frustrated gesture and cursed, the word falling short and sharp into the cold night air. Jean had always wondered why a word describing the physical act of love also meant any number of harmful things. It showed you the ambivalence of sex.

  Her heart tumbling in a syncopated rhythm, she gasped, exhaled, inhaled again. Maybe she could sneak around the corner of the house past the game larder, into the parking area. And then what? She didn’t have her car keys or anyone else’s. But a constable was stationed at the foot of the drive—unless, he, too, had the night off.

  She peered out between the yew branches. A twig scraped her glasses and another snagged in her hair. The house looked like a game board, each window a square of clear bright light against the shadowed stone. Except for the dining room window, where the light was a flickering smoky orange. . . . A smoke alarm started shrieking. At long bloody last! That should get everyone’s attention.

  Either Neil had gone back inside or he was sneaking up on her. With a yank on her hair she jerked away from the hedge, her eyes darting from side to side. The bushes and flowers shifted and rustled in the wind, in the darkness, but she saw no human figures. There were plenty of shadows large enough to hide one, though. As much as she’d like to light a candle, all she could do right now was both curse the darkness and use it.

  Still crouching, she shuffled along behind the hedge until she came to its end. She peeked again. Through the dining room window she saw Fiona lifting a red fire extinguisher and letting fly with a stream of white foam.

  Bent double, Jean plunged out into an open area. A sudden explosion pushed a squeak of terror from her throat. Convulsively she leaped and flattened herself in a flower bed, and only then remembered that some of the plants were supported on stakes. But it was the edge of the CD box that stabbed into her ribs. She hadn’t impaled herself.

  Neil was shooting at her, and not with a paintball gun, either. What, didn’t he care how badly he incriminated himself? Or had he decided that since it was all over, he’d go out in that blaze of fury many men equated with glory?

  Jean crawled through the flower bed until she came to another segment of hedge. She rose to her feet, folded her skirt up above her knees, and dashed for the corner of the house.

  There were the louvered windows of the game larder. There was the back door, its indented porch a block of dense black shadow. . . . Something leaped from the darkness. An arm like a steel bar wrapped her waist and dragged her toward the house. A hand set itself snugly over her mouth. She emitted a terrified scream, muffled against those firm fingers. Part of her nervous system went limp as a noodle, but another part sent her elbows and knees flailing, twisting, desperately trying not so much to attack her attacker as to get free.

  “Hush,” whispered Cameron’s voice in her ear, the word expelled on a gust of breath as her jabbing elbow found his solar plexus.

  “It’s you,” she wheezed, freezing. His hand tasted of soap. His broad chest behind her back seemed steady as a stone wall.

  “It’s no one else, is it? I saw you from the window, reckoned you were heading round this way. Come back inside.” Settling her back on her feet, he removed his hand from her mouth and his arm from her waist.

  She turned on him, her hand pressed to her chest to keep her heart from falling out at his feet. “Inside?” she hissed in his face. “In case you haven’t noticed, Detective Chief Inspector, I am now officially in danger.”

  “Oh aye, I’ve noticed.” His breath was scented with single-malt but not with cigar smoke, thank goodness. “A proper hash you’ve made of escaping. Why didn’t you fetch me?”

  “I tried to! You weren’t there!”

  “I was taking a leaf from your book, paying a visit to the loo.”

  No, she was never going to live that down. Jean tried to pull together both her wits and the gaping tear in her blouse. If Cameron noticed she wasn’t exposing a Victoria’s Secret bra but a simple full-coverage number he showed no sign. Good. She liked a man who had his priorities straight. “Neil’s the killer. He set up his alibi using a CD of his own piping. Here it is.”

  “So I was thinking.” He took the CD and tucked it away in his sporran along with the cell phone she only now noticed in his hand. Then he peeled off his coat and held it while she slipped it on.

  “No you weren’t thinking that,” she said, settling the coat’s much larger shoulders over her own. “You didn’t have a clue.”

  “I did so have a clue, I was locked down in the dining room with that blasted background music drilling a hole through my head.”

  “Well, you didn’t try laying all the kilts out in a row, did you? Then you’d have seen that Neil switched kilts with Toby.”

  “Can’t say I’d never have thought that hypothesis worth testing. I’ve seen muckle kilts round and about the night.”

  “So have you bothered to phone for help or would you rather critique the way I’ve been running for my life?”

  “The cavalry’s not so far away. Until then. . . .” He pulled something out of his sporran, something that gleamed darkly in the shadows.

  “Oh. You have a gun.”

  “Not the sort of thing you’d be expecting a policeman to carry about with him, is it? Come along.”

  “I repeat. Inside?”

  “If I was thinking you’d gone round the front, then so can he. And you can see who’s shooting at you when you’ve got a bit of light. I’m sorry I’ve got no time to write it out and let you sign off on it.”

  Rolling her eyes as much in gratitude as exasperation, Jean let Cameron grasp her hand and draw her silently into the door and along the corridor.

  Smoke hung in the air, but the alarm was no longer shrieking. Neither was any music playing. The office was dark. Somewhere male voices were shouting—Kieran restraining Neil, with any luck—and a female voice was scolding—Charlotte bawling him out, hopefully. Too late. Years too late.

  The dining room door opened onto the wreckage of the feast, blackened tablecloth, broken dishes, flecks of white foam mingled with tumbled white flowers. The red cylinder of the extinguisher lay on the floor abandoned. If Fiona had any sense—and she had a lot—she was hiding somewhere.

  The door of the sitting room stood ajar. Cameron pushed it open with his foot, slowly, then darted inside, gun at point, Jean jerked along behind. This room was also dark. She could see the furniture dimly outlined by the light from the hall. The glass covering Jenny’s portrait reflected the glow, then went black as Cameron pushed the door back to its original position.

  “Now what?” Jean asked, trying to see through the shadows gathered in the far corner, behind a chair.

  “Go to the window, tell me what you see.”

  Jean released his hand, leaving her own feeling slightly scorched. With a sense of déjà vu that would have been unsettling had she not already been thoroughly spooked, she edged around the furniture and peered between the drapes. “Neil’s out front, carrying a rifle or a shotgun. Waiting for me to come around the corner of the house, I bet.”

  “So I said,” he replied, which was marginally better than I told you so. “Although he might could be
watching for the constable to come up the drive as well.”

  “Will he come up the drive?”

  “If he’s following orders, he’s behind the garage, waiting for reinforcements.”

  “And we wait to see who gets here first?”

  “Oh aye, that’s. . . .”

  In the center of the room something moved. Several somethings, shades of darkness, shapes in shadow, Cameron’s face a pale blur beyond—no, through—them. She’d thought her senses were already at battle stations, but no. Now her sixth sense rose up like a commando out of deep water. Every hair on her body twitched erect. She forced her knees upright and into a locked position.

  Several men leaned into the small pool of light cast by a lantern, their faces sharply etched, their backs dissolved into darkness. A young George, his arm in a sling, laid down his cards and picked up a large gold coin. Archie swore and threw his own cards down onto the pile of matches they were using as chips. He punched George’s good arm. George punched back. They were laughing. . . . The scene wavered as though it were being projected on smoke. When it steadied again only Archie was left, hollow-eyed and blank-faced. The reek of smoke filled the air.

  That was spectral smoke, wasn’t it? It wasn’t the fire in the dining room rekindling itself. Cameron looked toward the door.

  “Maybe we’d better go check.” Jean stifled a cough.

  “No.”

  From down the hall came a nasal female voice. Charlotte’s. “Smell that? The fire’s started up again.”

  “Where’s Cameron?” asked Kieran.

  “Took to his heels, I expect. Trust Rick to invite a policeman to a formal dinner. He’s never had one jot or tittle of class, has he?”

  “Damned sneaky fellow, Cameron.”

  “Looked the sort to scarper. He’s got his position by fraud and treachery, I expect.”