Charm Stone

by Carl, Lillian Stewart

  At the top of the stairs, galleries opened right and left. Since a crush of warm bodies filled the entrance to the Dunmore exhibit, Jean tugged Alasdair in the opposite direction, past long curving platforms studded with chairs, desks, and chests of drawers like jeweler’s windows set with gems. Wood shone like satin and intricate carvings cast even more intricate shadows. Jean caught a faint whiff of linseed oil and another of pesticide.

  Alasdair looked around politely, but then, he dealt with antiques like these every day, many of them even older and most of them still in use. When they stopped in front of several marriage chests, wooden sarcophagi painted with flowery designs, he said, “There’s a custom lasting several centuries, the bride setting off to her new home with a supply of linens and the like.”

  “My mom had what she called a hope chest, though by the time I came along it was the place you threw games and puzzles missing half their pieces. It sure wasn’t anything as interesting as Charlotte Murray’s Witch Box. Which probably wasn’t a marriage chest—it’s too small for linens.”

  Jean leaned forward to peer more closely at the band of script running around the top of one box, but it was in German and she could read only Gott mit uns. God with us or God help us, which was just the sentiment probably felt by a newly married couple.

  Alasdair pulled her back. “Lean too far and I reckon you’ll go breaking a laser beam and setting off an alarm.”

  “Oh. Yeah.” Jean glanced up at the metallic tracery of the ceiling—it no doubt concealed cameras as well as virtual trip wires. “I did that at the Smithsonian one time. Scared the heck out of me. But you’d think a criminal would be careful not to do that.”

  “The alarm at Blair Castle worked a treat for the criminal.”

  “That took teamwork.” Her nostrils caught another scent—Rachel’s perfume. Her ears picked up a faint giggle that sounded much too girlish to come from the studiedly sophisticated young woman. But there she was, emerging from behind a temporary partition, her face as red as her dress, her hair rumpled. A young man walked not so much beside her as entwined with her. His long, carrot-red hair tied back with a ribbon, his white neckcloth and high collar tucked beneath his chin, his long tailcoat and embroidered waistcoat above breeches, stockings, and buckled shoes all proclaimed him a member of the landed gentry. Or an interpreter playing one.

  His sharp, pointed, fox-like features turned toward Jean and Alasdair. Tightening his grip on Rachel’s infinitesimal waist—if she’d been wearing a colonial gown, she wouldn’t have needed stays—he made a very contemporary “Ya wanna make something of it?” face, pursed his reddened lips, and guided her away.

  Again Jean and Alasdair exchanged glances, this time suffused with laughter. “That must be the unsuitable boyfriend,” she said. “I bet Mom would think any man was unsuitable.”

  “No flowers, but hearts beating as one, if hearts are the relevant organs.” Alasdair urged Jean in the opposite direction, back toward the Dunmore exhibit.

  Speaking of the family Finch, there was Matthew himself, hurrying his steps to match those of an older woman. She wore silver lamé sneakers below a royal blue satin sack of a dress, which, with the white hair piled atop her whip-thin body, gave her a passing resemblance to a cotton swab. A tall cotton swab. She was almost Matt’s height, and he had to be six feet.

  Jean glanced back over her shoulder, but Rachel and Unsuitable had disappeared around a corner. Matthew stopped dead. “Jean Inglis, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” she replied. “And no. I’m no longer married, I went back to my maiden name, so I’m Jean Fairbairn now. This is Alasdair Cameron, from Scotland.”

  “You don’t say?” asked the woman. Her honey-brown eyes took in the entire scene, from Alasdair’s shoes to his collar to his glance at Jean. Her own smile, turning every wrinkle upwards, revealed the even white teeth of a denture commercial. She extended her hand. “And here I thought you were Chinese. Barbara Finch, mother emeritus. My son, Matt.”

  “How do you do,” Alasdair returned, with polite handshakes back and forth. “Mind you, Jean here’s a journalist, with a talent for stating the obvious.”

  Jean laughed, if dryly.

  Matt considered her face as if gauging how much she’d changed since they last met, and trying to remember what facade he’d presented then. She considered that the fringe of hair around his scalp, an academic tonsure, and his tidily-trimmed goatee had gone iron-gray. The furrows cut horizontally across his forehead and vertically down his cheeks were now deep enough to plant herbs in, and Jean was willing to bet that those herbs were bitter ones. What had happened to him?

  The prototypical Mrs. Finch, Barbara, was saying, “Welcome to the Old Dominion State, Alasdair. You probably have a lot of relatives here you’ve never even heard of. The Scots, they got around. Look at Rodney Lockhart, Lockhart is an old Scottish name, I bet he’s got a Scot or two in the family.” And she added to Matt’s small noise of objection, “You’re the expert on Scots settlers.”

  “I’m not disputing your facts, just the way . . .”

  “That’s the one good thing about getting old,” Barbara concluded, “you can damn well say what needs to be said and do what needs to be done. I gather you’ve been here before, Jean.”

  “Yes, more than once, actually. The last time was an archaeology conference a few years ago. I heard Jessica speak about the artifacts of witchcraft.”

  “Do you want to tell her,” Barbara asked Matt, “or shall I?”

  The light flashed off Matt’s glasses like a warning flare beside a traffic accident. “I’m no longer married, either. And Jessica didn’t even go back to her maiden name—she made one up. Evesdottir, daughter of Eve or something like that.”

  “Clever,” said Barbara. “Tips you off right up front that she’s a rabid feminist. Although she would have gotten more mileage out of ‘Lilithsdottir’. You know, Lilith the demon?”

  Matt’s wince half-reversed itself into a smile, vinegar-sweet as pickled watermelon rind.

  Jean caught Alasdair’s nod from the corner of her eye. So it was Jessica who was the target of Sharon Dingwall’s lawsuit. Surely Matt and Barbara knew about that. And just as surely it wasn’t a good topic for reception chitchat. She ventured, “We saw Jessica and, er, Rachel . . .”

  “Rachel.” Matt looked around the atrium, but the scarlet girl wasn’t in sight.

  “. . . on the elevator. Is Jessica still at Charlottesville?”

  “No, she’s at the college here. In my department.” His eyebrows tightened and then rose, rejecting further comments or second thoughts. “I’ve been offered a position with an imagineering company, if you’ll excuse the neologism on the company letterhead. A place that designs historical exhibits for an audience that has the attention span of fleas—and therefore believes the sort of pseudo-history that you’ve always worked to debunk, Jean.”

  She wouldn’t necessarily use the word debunk—that implied reality was set in stone instead of in little human gray cells—but it was close enough.

  “Ah,” said Alasdair. “Those of our properties in Scotland that have the money are after doing the same, setting up videos and the like.”

  “Do the dog and pony shows make it all more accessible, or is it just one more example of dumbing history down to the lowest common denominator?” Jean asked, having more than once had this same conversation with Miranda about her stable of dogs, ponies, and Loch Ness monsters.

  Matt’s head made a circular motion, both nodding agreement and shaking in protest. “If I take the job I’ll have sold out. I’ll have run away.”

  “Now that I’m working for Great Scot, I’ve been accused of selling out and running away. But I see my work as publishing without worrying about perishing. Not perishing at the hands of a tenure committee, at least.” But the terrifying moments of the last few months, thankfully shared with Alasdair, counted as too much information.

  “Jessica’s just had a book published, Witches and Wenches
in Colonial Virginia, about witch hunts as a function of gender politics. She’s been on a lecture tour. She’ll be speaking here tomorrow night, Halloween. She’s a fine scholar, better than most.” Matt’s hands clenched into fists at his sides. “Take my advice. Never marry someone in the same profession as yours.”

  Jean didn’t point out that Michael and Rebecca were in the same profession. The wounds of Matt’s divorce were still raw. So were the wounds of Jessica’s academic competition, the thick heels of her shoes bruising Matt’s shoulders as she climbed past him, not that his shoulders had been supporting much of a reputation to begin with, unfortunately. Did he have anyone to pat him on his baby-bottom-smooth head and reassure him? Jean tried a smile blending rue and sympathy, but his molasses-brown eyes were focused on the far distance. And a bleak distance, too, it appeared.

  “You’re in the history business, too, Alasdair?” Barbara asked.

  “Oh aye. I’m heading up Protect and Survive, providing security to historical sites. You might could say I’ve sold out as well—I was a police detective ’til August.”

  “Is that how you met Jean, did you arrest her?”

  “I only just avoided arresting her,” Alasdair answered blandly.

  Barbara grinned. “How romantic!”

  That was one way of looking at it. But before Jean could change the subject, the harsh jangle of an alarm ricocheted off the marble walls, blanking out the murmur of music and conversation, and was followed a nanosecond later by a woman’s piercing scream.

  Chapter Three

  Jean clapped her right hand to her right ear and hit herself in the left ear with her sequined bag. Spinning around, Barbara got tangled up in her own feet, but in a smooth, athletic move had already steadied herself before Matt clutched her arm.

  Alasdair took one step forward, then stopped, poised on the balls of his feet, tartan swirling around his knees. Williamsburg wasn’t his patch.

  It was the patch of a security guard in a neat blue suit, who strode purposefully but unrushed up the stairs. Another, walkie-talkie in hand, pushed past several rubberneckers into the exhibit.

  The alarm stopped, leaving Jean’s ears ringing, but not so loudly she didn’t hear two voices raised in protest. The man’s words and the woman’s overlapped and intertwined like the parts played by the different instruments in Pachelbel’s Canon, just not nearly as melodious.

  The second guard strolled into the exhibit and a moment later retreated, his expression more cautious than concerned.

  “Someone leaned too close to a display,” Jean said.

  Alasdair nodded. “Someone had himself a wee false alarm. Bit of an epidemic of false alarms, eh?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t see anyone making off with the original Witch Box.”

  Alasdair muttered something about lads crying wolf just as a very familiar face and form appeared next to another End of Empire sign. Miranda Capaldi looked around, homed in on Jean, and beckoned.

  “There’s my partner. Excuse me, duty calls,” Jean said to Barbara. And to Matt, but he had spotted Rachel at the far side of the atrium, standing alone beneath a portrait of a woman hemmed in by the folds, frills, and multiple fabrics of her dress. Rachel was unaware of the contrast between her clothing and that of the portrait—her head was bowed and her hands together, not in prayer but in the throes of texting a message on her cell phone.

  Barbara followed Matt’s tight-lipped gaze at his daughter and said, “Good heavens, she looks like she’s wearing a handbag. The jewelry’s lovely, though. She made it. Very talented child. All she needs is opportunity and direction.”

  Smiling and mumbling excuses, Barbara and Matt headed one way while Jean and Alasdair, muttering pleasantries, went the other. Rachel might not appreciate being directed, but the jewelry was beautifully imagined and made.

  Miranda was waiting, one stylish but reasonably heeled pump tapping the floor.

  “You made it in one piece, I see,” Jean said.

  “British Airways being dependable as always,” returned Miranda. “First time I’ve seen you in your glad rags, Alasdair. You’ve missed out your sgian dubh.”

  Alasdair waggled a sock-clad calf, innocent of the small dagger usually considered part of Highland dress. “The natives might be objecting to a semi-concealed edged weapon.”

  “No kidding,” said Jean.

  Most people would have been glassy-eyed and gray-faced with jet lag. But not Miranda. Her flowing garment of ice pink and mauve threaded with gold—colors that would have made Jean’s skin look like cheese—flattered her exquisite Scottish complexion and glistened in eyes as clear as her discreet diamond jewelry. For twenty years now, Jean had accepted Miranda as a force of nature, like a rainbow. And what was there to resent in a rainbow?

  With a twitch of her golden-red head and a meaningful arch to her eyebrows, Miranda indicated the two voices in the gallery—sober, oh-so-reasonable voices that Jean now heard were lecturing the guard. “. . . Hair-trigger mechanisms frightening your visitors . . . should try for a higher standard . . .”

  “What are they on about?” Alasdair asked.

  “Sharon Dingwall leaned over the railing, having herself a closer look at the Witch Box,” explained Miranda. “The alarm went, and so did she.”

  “We heard. I wondered if they’d been invited tonight.” Jean gave Miranda a quick abstract of the Blair Castle situation.

  Miranda’s eyes brightened even further. “Well, well, well.”

  She also recognized Alasdair’s cogitational crease, which had reappeared at the words “Dingwall,” “alarm,” and “Witch Box.” “All the better to be keeping Mr. and Mrs. Dingwall under surveillance, then.”

  “Good man, Alasdair. Over the top!” Miranda led the way inside past the hapless guard, who was making tracks out of the exhibit.

  The 1765 Joshua Reynolds portrait of John Murray, Lord Dunmore, hung just inside the entrance. The soon-to-be governor of Virginia stood proudly, swathed in a great kilt of brown-toned tartan material, with a red-and-black tartan coat and waistcoat and red-and-white checkered socks. A diagonal black belt suspended a basket-hilted sword at his side. From beneath an early version of a Balmoral bonnet, he peered off into the middle distance, no doubt at the unlimited horizon of his ambition.

  Dunmore’s ensemble might have seemed like a cacophony in pattern—to modern eyes, anyway—but it delivered the message. The noble pose, the showy clothing, the unlined face set in the calm confidence conferred by noble birth and an advantageous marriage, all proclaimed the privilege that attracted power.

  “He must have found it incomprehensible,” Jean mused aloud, “the way events in 1775 slipped through his fingers like sand through an hourglass.”

  “The American Revolution was all part of the master plan,” said the already-familiar male voice several paces away. “Dunmore was no more than a pawn for the genuine movers and shakers, the ones who have been secretly orchestrating our history since time immemorial.”

  Oh yeah, that was Tim Dingwall. Instead of the great man theory of history, it’s the great conspiracy theory of history. Jean turned around to see what appeared at first to be John Paul Jones, a tall, heavyset man encased by a navy blue and white colonial admiral’s uniform.

  Miranda opened her mouth and inhaled. Before she could speak, the admiral stepped forward. The lights illuminating the portrait glinted off his scalp between the stiffened strands of his comb-over. “You are Jean Fairbairn. Miranda here says you will be conducting the interview tomorrow.”

  “We read some of your articles on the Great Scot website before we agreed. It’s okay, you can write.” The little woman beside him—and she was little, shorter than Jean—was enveloped in a Martha Washington-style get-up, ruffled cap, billowing skirts, and all. Except the first First Lady had no doubt worn a fichu, a fine cloth tucked into her bodice, and Sharon Dingwall did not. Her breasts bobbled between the ridges of her collarbones and the rim of her bodice like two bowls full of jelly.r />
  Jean sensed rather than saw Alasdair’s eyes cross. “Thank you,” she replied to Sharon’s comment, swallowing the, I think.

  Smiling her most gracious smile, Miranda tried again. “Mr. and Mrs. Dingwall, may I introduce my friend and partner, Jean Fairbairn? And this is her companion, Alasdair Cameron, head of Protect and Survive in Scotland.”

  Companion was as good, and as neutral, a description as any, Jean thought as she shook hands. Tim squeezed too hard and Sharon barely squeezed at all, as if afraid she’d catch something from Jean’s grasp.

  His smile polite but cool, Alasdair gripped Tim’s hand back again, drawing the slightest of winces from Tim’s plump face.

  Tim said, “Protect and Survive. That’s the British security agency.”

  “We handle security for historical properties such as Blair Castle.” Alasdair was looming, Jean noted, as much as he could loom when he was only five-eight, not that anything about Alasdair was “only.”

  Tim’s considerable height, on the other hand, was crouched combatively. Whether that was a reaction to Alasdair’s mention of Blair or his habitual stance, Jean didn’t know. He said, enunciating clearly to the fools who surrounded him, “This museum’s security arrangements are in dire need of updating.”

  His jaw set, Alasdair stepped back, but hardly out of the line of fire.

  Two spots of color burned high on Sharon’s cheekbones and her eyes glittered—she was angry at the alarm rather than embarrassed at her scream. Her head didn’t even come to Tim’s shoulder. For just a moment, Jean imagined her seated on his knee like a ventriloquist’s dummy. But she was perfectly capable of speaking on her own. “We were just telling Miranda, Jean, what a good thing she’s not trying to drive here, on the right side of the road and everything.”