Aunt Dimity and the Deep Blue Sea

by Nancy Atherton

  You must tell Damian about the light.

  I sat up a bit straighter. “It wasn’t Brother Cieran?”

  Definitely not. Much of what Sir Percy told you about Brother Cieran is true, but the poor soul left the islet some centuries ago. He is no longer “in residence,” as you so tactfully put it, nor is the old earl. I don’t know what created the light you saw, and I don’t like not knowing. If Abaddon is hiding out on Cieran’s Chapel,

  “How could he be?” I cut in. “How could he know where we are? Even if he did find out, how could he follow us so quickly? We’ve been here for less than twenty-four hours, Dimity. And how on earth could he get out to that forsaken chunk of rock?”

  Anyone can hire a boat, Lori, and e-mail can be sent from anywhere. Abaddon may have already been in Scotland when he started sending his vile messages to Bill. I don’t know how he could have discovered your present location, but you mustn’t assume he hasn’t.You must tell Damian about the light. Let him investigate it. It may have nothing to do with Abaddon, but surely it’s better to know one way or the other.

  I leaned my chin on my hand, grimacing. “Damian’s going to be incredibly unhappy with me for not telling him the truth right away.”

  Are you a timid mouse quaking in the corner or a bold lioness defending her cubs? Put some starch in your backbone, Lori, and tell Damian.

  I cocked an ear toward the foyer and heard the familiar thunder of little feet. “I’ll tell him, Dimity, but I have to go now. My cubs are on the prowl.”

  I managed to stash the journal in the bedside drawer mere moments before Will and Rob came scampering into the bedroom. Clad in sweatshirts, jeans, and sneakers, they bounced onto the bed, demanding that I get dressed.

  Rob sprawled across the duvet and kicked his heels in the air. “We’ve been awake for ages, Mummy.”

  “Andrew wouldn’t let us come down until a decent hour,” Will informed me.

  “It’s a decent hour now,” Rob pointed out.

  “Time to rise and shine,” Will declared. “Andrew’s taking us to the beach after breakfast.”

  “And the sun doesn’t last all day,” Rob concluded sagely.

  “Andrew?” I called. “May I speak with you?”

  The young man came into the bedroom. He was wearing another colorful rugby shirt, jeans, and sneakers, and looking rather anxious, as though he expected me to scold him for setting the boys loose on me.

  “Thanks for keeping Rob and Will occupied for so long,” I said. “I haven’t slept past six since they were born. When’s breakfast?”

  A relieved smile swept across Andrew’s freckled face. “It’ll be here in ten minutes. Rob and Will thought it would be a nice surprise.”

  “Ten minutes is all I need.” While Andrew retreated to the sitting room, I shooed the boys off the bed and got ready to face the morning.

  Damian joined us for breakfast in my sitting room, and although he wasn’t the life of the party, he’d at least dressed down for the day, in a blue crewneck sweater, khakis, sneakers, and a loose-fitting rain jacket. I’d followed my sons’ example and donned sweatshirt, jeans, and sneakers. After we’d eaten, I followed Damian’s example and added a rain jacket.

  Andrew hoisted a large day pack to his back. He’d filled it with plastic buckets and spades, the twins’ cricket bats, and their rain jackets. When I asked if he’d included a bottle of sunblock, he nodded.

  “Rain gear and sunblock,” he said, chuckling. “Tells you all you need to know about April in Scotland.”

  “Which is why we should be going,” said Damian, getting to his feet. “The weather could turn ugly in an instant.”

  On that optimistic note, we boarded the elevator, descended to the tower’s ground level, and entered a circular chamber that had been converted into a changing room for beachgoers. It held a shower stall, curtained cubicles, marble benches, and open shelves filled with fluffy towels. There were no windows, but the plastered walls had been decorated with trompe l’oeil paintings depicting seaside scenes.

  Damian led the way to a side door and nodded casually at another door half hidden in shadows on our left.

  “The emergency stairs,” he explained. “They lead here, and from here you can get outside.” He tapped a sequence of buttons on a wall-mounted keypad, presumably to disarm the alarm system, and pushed the side door open.

  We stepped out into the cool, sunlit morning. When I glanced upward, I realized that we were standing on the strip of headland directly below my balcony. I was surprised to see how low the cliffs were—they’d looked much higher from above. The strip of headland looked different, too, now that I was standing on it. It was wider, and slashed by a sunken path that ran in both directions along the cliffs.

  “The coastal path,” Damian explained, following my gaze. “It goes all the way around the island.”

  “Sounds scenic,” I said as the brine-scented breeze tossed my curls. “Could we walk it tomorrow? If we’re still here, that is.”

  Damian tilted his head back to look at the sky. “I don’t see why not, if the fine weather holds.”

  “We want to go to the beach,” Will reminded us determinedly.

  “So you shall,” said Andrew, and he crossed the sunken path to a pair of stone pillars that stood at the grassy strip’s outer edge.

  The pillars marked the top of a set of stairs that had been cut into the cliff. Although the staircase was equipped with a rope railing threaded through a series of iron posts, I took hold of Rob’s hand and Andrew grabbed Will’s before we started down. Damian took up the rear.

  Andrew used the time we spent on the stairs to lecture Will and Rob about the dangers of rip currents and the way high tides could creep up and swallow unsuspecting little boys. Before our sneakers touched the sand, he made them vow solemnly that they would never go to the beach on their own. I could have kissed him.

  I was even more grateful to him once we’d reached the beach. Although the tide was on its way out, the belt of broken shells and drying seaweed left behind by the high tide was well up on the sand. Anyone caught in the cove when the tide was in would have to scramble to reach the safety of the stairs or risk being drowned, swept out to sea, or battered to death on the jagged rocks I’d seen from my balcony.

  The sun had not yet climbed over the cliffs, so the cove was still in shadow, but the sea glittered and the white sand glowed invitingly. Will and Rob swiftly divested themselves of shoes and socks and engaged their grown-up companions in a fast-paced game of tag that somehow turned into a cricket match with driftwood wickets and Mummy fielding balls. Once the twins had burned off their excess energy—and batted three balls into the surf—they settled down with the buckets and spades and began to construct a miniature version of Dundrillin Castle. Andrew and I acted as architectural consultants, but Damian strolled away on his own, to stand at the edge of the sea.

  When we finished the sand castle, Andrew headed off with the boys to search for seashells and tide pools. I waited until they’d disappeared behind a cluster of barnacle-encrusted rocks, then took a deep breath and walked over to stand beside Damian. I had a strong suspicion that my bodyguard was about to lose his temper, and I didn’t want him to lose it in front of my sons.

  Damian acknowledged my arrival by pointing to a flock of small birds skimming the waves between the beach and Cieran’s Chapel.

  “Puffins,” he said.

  “Oh, how splendid!” I watched in delight as the flock flew in tight formation mere inches above the foaming crests. “I wish I’d brought my camera.”

  “You can bring it when we walk the coastal path,” he suggested. “I’m sure we’ll see them again. They nest in the western cliffs.”

  “You know a lot about Erinskil,” I observed. “Have you been here often?”

  “I’ve never been here before,” he replied, “but I can read and I know how to listen. Sir Percy provided Andrew and me with detailed dossiers on Erinskil. We supplemented the dossiers by spend
ing a few hours in the pub on the night we arrived.”

  “Good thinking,” I said. “If you want to know what’s going on in a place, spend time in the local pub. Church bulletin boards are helpful, too, and a post office can be almost as helpful as the pub, especially if the postmistress is as nosey as the one in my village. She’s better than a local newspaper for—”

  “Lori.” Damian interrupted the flow of nervous babble before it could become a torrent. “Is something bothering you?”

  “Well . . . yes.” The moment of truth had come. “Remember last night, when I told you I’d seen a meteor? It wasn’t a meteor.”

  “What was it?” Damian asked, frowning slightly.

  “A light. I saw a light on Cieran’s Chapel. It came and went so quickly that I wasn’t sure I’d seen it, but I am now.” I hunched my shoulders and braced myself for a tongue-lashing. When nothing happened, I added, in a small voice, “I’m sorry, Damian. I shouldn’t have lied to you. Feel free to yell at me.”

  To my utter amazement, Damian simply rocked back on his heels, shook his head, and smiled.

  “I’m not going to yell at you, Lori,” he said. “I’m not surprised that you thought you saw something on Cieran’s Chapel last night. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’d seen a chorus line of chanting monks. You’re under a great deal of mental stress at the moment. Sir Percy’s story was bound to affect you. I thought it ill-advised of him to share it with you, and you’ve proven me right.”

  “But . . . but I did see a light,” I protested, but I got no further, because the twins chose that exact moment to shout “Mummy!” at the tops of their lungs.

  Damian and I took off at a run, spraying sand in our wake as we rounded a massive outcropping of rock. Andrew, Will, and Rob were standing together at its base, staring upward. I looked up, too, and felt a sliver of ice slide down my spine.

  A human skull sat wedged in a crevice near the top of the rock, well above the high-water line. It stared down at us, grinning its timeless, maniacal grin, and for a shattering moment I thought that its fleshless maw had emitted a cackle of laughter, but it was only the shriek of a passing gull.

  I drew a quick, shallow breath and forced a smile.

  “My goodness,” I said shakily. “That certainly beats the lobster pot Daddy found in Skegness.”

  If I was worried about my sons’ being traumatized for life, I was overestimating their sensitivity. As it turned out, the little ghouls were thrilled by their find.

  “Andrew won’t let us fetch it down,” Will complained.

  “He says it’s dirty,” said Rob, “but we can wash it in the ocean, can’t we?”

  “When it’s clean, we can take it home,” said Will.

  “No, we most certainly cannot,” I stated firmly, and quickly improvised a reason for the ban. “It’s . . . not ours. It belongs to Sir Percy.”

  “Sir Percy will let us keep it,” Rob said confidently, and he was probably right.

  “I’m sorry, boys,” Damian interjected, “but I can’t allow you to take the skull home with you. Andrew, would you please get it down?”

  Andrew tipped seashells from the plastic bucket he was carrying and hooked the handle over his wrist. While he climbed up to the skull, I scanned the looming cliff tops, then backed slowly away, pulling Damian with me.

  “It’s him,” I whispered urgently when the twins were safely out of earshot.

  “Whom?” he asked.

  “Abaddon.” Dimity’s words came flooding back to me in a panicky torrent. “He followed us to Erinskil yesterday, camped out on Cieran’s Chapel last night, and left the skull here this morning as a . . . a sick, demented calling card.”

  Damian glanced toward Rob and Will, then pulled me even farther away from them.

  “Lori,” he said, with the patient air of one pacifying a frantic toddler, “I want you to calm down.”

  “Calm down?” I snapped. “You’re the one who said he might cut my throat on the beach!”

  “But he couldn’t have known you’d be on the beach this morning,” Damian pointed out. “He couldn’t have known it would be such a fine day.”

  “Look,” I began testily, but Damian cut me off.

  “Hold on, Lori,” he said. “Let’s ask ourselves a few questions, shall we? How did Abaddon follow you to Erinskil? He didn’t come on the ferry—it’s not due for another four days. If he acquired a boat privately and dropped anchor in the harbor, I’d have heard about it—the harbormaster reports to me. Sir Percy’s private cove is the only other reasonable landing place on the island, and it’s been under electronic surveillance since Mrs. Gammidge arrived. No boat has come ashore, and no one’s been seen decorating the beach with skulls.”

  “There are other beaches,” I said. “I saw them from the air.”

  “Beaches, yes. Landing sites, no.” Damian shook his head. “It’s not easy to land a boat in Sir Percy’s cove, Lori. It’s ten times worse at the other beaches. They’re fenced in by all sorts of underwater obstacles—rocks, reefs, snags. I wish Abaddon would try to land at one of them. He’d drown before he ever stepped ashore, and we’d be finished with him.”

  I folded my arms and eyed him skeptically. “I suppose the skull sprouted wings and flew up there?”

  “The tide washes up all sorts of strange objects,” said Damian in an infuriatingly reasonable tone of voice. “Storms deposit them in unexpected places.”

  I recoiled, aghast. “Are my sons likely to find more body parts?”

  “It’s not as uncommon an occurrence as you might think,” Damian explained. “There’s a small section in the Stoneywell churchyard reserved for the burial of bones returned by the sea.”

  “Oh,” I said, momentarily taken aback. “Is that why you asked Andrew to get the skull? Are you planning to bury it?”

  “I’ll send it to the forensics lab in Glasgow first,” said Damian. “If they can’t connect it with a crime or an accident, it’ll probably end up in the churchyard.” He put a hand on my shoulder. “Are you okay now?”

  “No, I’m not,” I said crossly, and shrugged off his hand. “What about my light? Someone should investigate it. Abaddon could be out there, spying on us!”

  “I doubt that Abaddon would choose such a prominent landmark as a hiding place,” said Damian. He peered at me closely, then seemed to reach a decision. “But of course we’ll look into it. If it will put your mind at ease, we can go out to Cieran’s Chapel right now.”

  “How?” I asked.

  He pulled out his cell phone. “Say the word and I’ll have a boat pick us up in thirty minutes.”

  I looked over my shoulder at the expanse of choppy water stretching between me and the wave-lashed islet, then looked back at my precious babes, who were bent low over Andrew’s bucket, holding a cheerfully bloodthirsty discussion about the skull’s possible origins. Was I a timid mouse or a bold lioness?

  “Make the call,” I said.

  Nine

  I avoided mentioning the upcoming boat ride to Will and Rob. They were so eager to show the skull to Sir Percy that they didn’t object to being sent back to the castle, but if they’d known what they were about to miss, they wouldn’t have gone quietly.

  I was raring to get out to the islet. I didn’t particularly want to discover Abaddon’s campsite—I wanted my insane stalker to stay far away from Erinskil—but I hoped we would find something. If Damian went on treating me as if I were an excitable schoolgirl, I wouldn’t be responsible for my actions. I had to prove to him that the dim golden glow hadn’t been a figment of my overstressed imagination.

  My determination was shaken slightly when the boat Damian had ordered came into view, bouncing from wave to wave as it rounded the headland. I’d expected some sort of fishing vessel, not an inflatable rubber dinghy with an outboard motor. I zipped up my rain jacket and glanced nervously at the whitecaps blooming between the cove and the islet. The wind was picking up.

  Damian seemed to sense my misgivings.
He pointed to a line of swirls and eddies about twenty yards offshore.

  “You see those little ripples out there?” he asked. “The snags beneath them will tear the keel out of a boat faster than you can say snap. Luckily, we’re nearing low tide, when they’re easier to avoid, but finding the right channel still requires local knowledge, a high level of seamanship, and a boat with an extremely shallow draft. Sir Percy’s yacht wouldn’t be any good to us at all.”

  “Who’s our . . . er, driver?” I asked.

  “Mick Ferguson will be our pilot,” Damian informed me. “Mick was born and raised on Erinskil. He knows what he’s doing.”

  I watched in consternation as Mick Ferguson threaded the dinghy through the swirls and eddies, then drove it at full speed straight at the beach. At the last minute, he cut the power, tilted the motor up out of the water, and allowed momentum to carry the dinghy onto the sand. It was a virtuoso performance and did much to restore my confidence.

  Mick Ferguson was a short, burly man with curly salt-and-pepper hair, a grizzled beard, and bright blue eyes set deeply in a face pleated with wrinkles. He was wearing a fluorescent orange rain jacket with matching rain pants and a pair of black rubber boots that reached nearly to his knees.

  “Mick, this is Lori,” said Damian, when we reached the dinghy. “Lori’s a guest of Sir Percy’s.”

  “You’ll be the one who came yesterday, in the helicopter.” Mick’s blue eyes narrowed shrewdly. “With the two wee lads.”

  “That’s me,” I acknowledged. I wouldn’t have been shocked to discover that Mick already knew what I’d had for breakfast and possibly my shoe size. I’d lived in Finch long enough to know how quickly news spread in a small community.

  After Damian and I had zipped and snapped our rain jackets, Mick put out a hand to help me aboard, directed me to sit on the wooden bench that straddled the dinghy’s midsection, and passed me a life vest. He checked to make sure I’d fastened the straps correctly, then hopped out of the boat to help Damian push it back into the water. Damian’s khakis were wet to the knees by the time the two men climbed aboard, but I felt no guilt. The dinghy rode so low in the water that my jeans wouldn’t stay dry for long.