Charm Stone

by Carl, Lillian Stewart

  Throwing down his napkin, Alasdair reached for the phone and punched in a number.

  “You know what Barbara said to me, outside the church?” Jean frowned, trying to remember the exact words. “There aren’t many insults as bad as ‘old woman’, because that implies not just weakness but incompetence, even invisibility.”

  “She’s been invisible, right enough. No more, though. Stephanie, good morning, we’ve been thinking . . .”

  “But if the motive is revenge,” Jean said aloud, if not directly to Alasdair, “we’re back to wondering how Sharon’s killer knew she killed Wes? And why, if it was Barbara, didn’t she just go to the police and say she knew?”

  Just as his bright blue gaze acknowledged her caveat and filed it away, the telephones sitting on the desk and beside the bed rang in concert, like alarm bells in a fire station. Jean got to the one on the desk before they rang a second time. “Hello?”

  “Hullo, Jean. Ian here, from P and S in Edinburgh. Alasdair asked me to ring him the day, once I’d dug out some answers for him.”

  Alasdair walked into the bedroom, having a heart-to-heart—or more likely, brain-to-brain—with Stephanie. “Aye, she’s fit enough to have got the best of Sharon. A wee bit scraggy, but fit.”

  “He’s on the other, well, not line,” Jean told Ian. “He’s on the other phone. Can I take a message?”

  “Oh aye, that you can.”

  Jean grabbed the hotel-logo pad and pen. “Shoot.”

  “First item. Blair Castle’s got no clue whether they’ve ever had a note from Charlotte Murray, Lady Dunmore, with a sketch of the Witch Box.”

  “That’s helpful,” Jean said.

  “No, I’m afeart it’s no helpful at all,” said Ian.

  Okay, he didn’t have the world’s best sense of humor, but he was a good steady helpmeet, probably providing serious relief to Alasdair after her comical flights and dips.

  “Second item. I’ve tracked the company shipping the stolen replica. United Parcel Service. That is, they’ve shipped a sturdy parcel from Kelly Dingwall in Edinburgh to the U.S.A., express. I’m thinking Alasdair will be wanting that checked out in the event it is the replica.”

  “Yes, he will. Where was it sent?”

  “The parcel was addressed to a Robert Mason in Williamsburg, Virginia.”

  “Robert Mason?” For a moment Jean saw a shipping box sitting on the grave behind Bruton Parish Church. Then she asked, “What’s the address?”

  “Seven-fifty-six Columbia Road, apartment number two-oh-five.”

  Jean copied that down, telling herself she knew that address, she’d seen it before . . . Her memories obligingly fell into place, if with a sound like the clattering of garbage cans down an alley. Dunwich Grove. Wesley Hagedorn’s apartment complex. “Ian, I don’t have my computer here, could you do a search on that address, see who it belongs to? It’s not Robert Mason’s, I can tell you that.”

  “Oh aye. Half a tick. Well, likely a bit longer than that.”

  Alasdair emerged from the bedroom shutting the phone. “Is that Ian?”

  “Yes. Kelly sent the replica here. To Wesley . . . Wait a minute. You said Wes’s apartment was on the ground floor. The package went to apartment two-oh-five. That’s the second floor. The first floor, y’all would say, which makes no sense, but we’re not discussing semantics.”

  Alasdair plucked the phone from her hand. “Ian? Alasdair here.”

  Jean paced to the window and looked out at the misty, moisty morning, translucent wool concealing anything beyond the front gate, as though Williamsburg had been whisked away and stored behind the stage.

  She paced back again. She finished her coffee and ate two more bites of her omelet. She needed calories. She had work to do.

  “Well, well, well,” said Alasdair, with a relish that sounded positively Miranda-like. “That’s Barbara Finch’s address, is it?”

  Whoa, Jean thought, and the forkful of egg and cheese skidded greasily across her stomach lining. It wasn’t surprising that Barbara Finch lived in the same apartment complex as Wesley. But Kelly had sent her the replica?

  “Oh aye, thank you kindly.” Alasdair flicked the phone shut and turned to Jean with a humorless smile, every tooth glinting like a panther’s when scenting prey. “Look for the woman, I said, by way of making a joke, but I wasn’t far wrong, was I?”

  “We knew Barbara tried to help Sharon out, just like she helped Jessica, before everything went wrong, but she was helping the Dingbats with their movie? Good God, there really was a conspiracy!”

  “And like most conspiracies, it could not be sustained without one conspirator breaking away. A falling out among thieves, oh aye.” Again they stared at each other, dire surmise ebbing into dread certainty.

  “Maybe,” Jean essayed, “Kelly just saw Barbara’s place as a convenient mail drop. Sharon and Dylan had already burgled one apartment there, and Kelly couldn’t have known Wesley had been murdered when she put the replica Box in the mail, and . . .” She ran down, not just losing the thread of her thought but realizing it was no more than cobweb to begin with.

  “No one saw Wesley walking down to the pond on the Friday afternoon,” said Alasdair, trying a thread that had already been tested. “No one saw anyone else. But an old woman, a resident herself, would anyone have noticed?”

  “You’re not thinking Barbara killed Wes? All the evidence points to . . .”

  “. . . Sharon. No, I’m thinking Barbara, say, had herself a dauner down to the pond, set on reminding Wesley of the reception that evening, and overheard the stramash between him and Sharon.”

  “And, being a discreet older lady, she withdrew. Or maybe she thought Wesley was plotting with Sharon and went off in a huff. Either way, she didn’t find out about Wesley’s death until the reception, Matt said. I saw her sitting there with her fists clenched, pretty upset.”

  “Still, though, why did she not come forward with her information? If Stephanie had collected Sharon on the Friday night, or on the Saturday, come to that . . .”

  “. . . she’d be in jail but she’d be alive.” Certainty, oh yes. “Barbara thought if she’d intervened in the argument, Wes would still be alive.”

  “And she’s set herself up as judge, jury, and executioner, then.” His features now set in a scowl, Alasdair snapped off the last bite of his toast.

  The cell phone erupted and Jean grabbed it. Yes! “Hi, Miranda. Sorry to be asking questions so early, but we’re onto something.”

  “You’re never suspecting Barbara Finch to be Sharon’s murderer?” asked Miranda, her voice fully alert and beautifully polished, never mind the hour.

  Yeah, Jean thought with a smile, every time she thought she had her ducks in a row, here came Miranda with swans doing water ballet. “Yes, we’re suspecting Barbara,” she said, and filled her colleague in on last night’s apprehension and subsequent interviews. “What did Barbara say when you were chatting with her outside the church—inside the lobby of the bell tower, wherever—to make you think she was a keen gardener?”

  “She did not say a thing about gardening. I was generalizing from what I was seeing and . . .”

  “She had scratches on her arms and told you she’d gotten them pruning roses?”

  Miranda emitted her usual throaty chuckle. “The night was right cold, Jean. Even if she’d been exposing her arms, I’d not have asked her about a few scratches.”

  “Oh.” Jean saw not ducks, not swans, but wild geese chasing away into the distance. “What was she wearing?”

  “A polyester coat, the sort that’s knit—” Jean heard the delicate shudder in Miranda’s voice, “—one that looked to be a size too large. With a whacking great ladder in one sleeve, as though she’d caught it on a nail.”

  A runner in one sleeve, Jean paraphrased. And yes, maybe she had caught it on a nail. One of Sharon’s. Gesturing patience at Alasdair, who was hovering, she went on, “But the gardener . . .”

  “She tucked a pair of
gardening gloves into her pocket just outside the door, as she was paying close attention to wiping her shoes. She was still carrying a bit of a manure pong when she came in.”

  “Gloves! Something they can test! And a smell of manure? Y’all say ‘manure’ when you mean garden-variety fertilizer—or were you smelling actual horse manure?”

  “Horses, I’m thinking. I’ve got a right sensitive nose, as you’re knowing for yourself, the times I’ve taken a glass of plonk from your hands and offered you a better vintage or a finer distillate, depending.”

  Alasdair leaned in close enough to hear Miranda’s voice issuing from the tiny speaker. “Oh aye,” he muttered. “She’s got a pernickety palate, if she says she was smelling manure on Barbara’s shoes then she was, there was enough of it beneath the tree, some of it mashed into the leaves and loam by the struggle.”

  “That’s what you’re on about,” said Miranda, her hearing being finely tuned as well. “And such a polite lady. Well, you’d best be getting onto your American detective, then.”

  “Thanks, Miranda. Stand by.” Jean barely punched the “end” button before Alasdair whisked the phone out of her hands and once again called Stephanie.

  Jean allowed herself a very brief and somewhat shamefaced vision of Stephanie’s forensical boyfriend examining Sharon’s shoes, with Barbara’s soon to come, a clothespin on his nose.

  She poured herself a second cup of coffee, added milk, and then jerked around at a knock on the door. Eric, come to collect the dishes? She opened the door to reveal not the black pawn but the white. “Come on in, Sergeant Olson,” she said, and took the opportunity to check out the front walk. No cats, although they could be just outside the gate, where a police car was no more than a darkish patch in the mist.

  Olson stepped inside, his fair cheeks encrimsoned by the damp chill, and handed Jean a file folder. “Here you go. It’s the fax from the Folger. A fully authenticated and, they say, very valuable transcript of a scene from Macbeth.”

  Never mind caffeine. Every nerve in Jean’s body sat up, took notice, and palpitated in anticipation. She opened the folder and pulled out another ordinary piece of copy paper.

  Alasdair appeared at her side, saying something to Olson about Monday morning, when all the tradesmen return from their weekends, but she didn’t really hear him. There, before her, was a slightly smudged typeface with its trailing s’s, in two columns. Quickly she scanned the text—which broke off with a smear in mid-dialog, leaving a quarter of the page empty.

  “What else did the cover letter say?” she asked.

  “Basically, you wanted to see this, here it is,” Olson answered. “And something about, we’re studying this further, it might well be unique.”

  “Unique?” asked Alasdair, and leaned over her shoulder.

  “Could be,” Jean said. “This looks like a printer’s experimental version, rough draft, reject. See how it stops in the middle of the scene?”

  Olson retreated. “I need to go. We’ve got uniforms on their way to Barbara Finch’s apartment. And one heading for the UPS depot, too, to intercept that package.”

  “Good lad,” said Alasdair, beaming, although the moment Olson walked through the doorway, Alasdair’s beam collapsed. He wanted to be in on the—not the kill, the capture. Well, surely Stephanie would let him sit in on the interview.

  Barbara. Jean felt sure it had been her idea to put Mason’s name on the package—it seemed too subtle a joke for Kelly.

  Matt’s mother, Rachel’s grandmother. Accomplice to theft. Murderer.

  Slightly sick, but not from the omelet, Jean turned back to the paper and eyed each line, only aware she was thinking aloud when Alasdair reappeared in her peripheral vision. “This is from scene three, I think. The three witches are talking to each other and one of them’s mad because a sailor’s wife wouldn’t share her chestnuts. Second witch: ‘I’ll give thee a wind.’ First witch: ‘Thou’rt kind.’ Third witch: ‘And I another.’ First witch: ‘I myself have all the other . . .’ They’re cursing the sailor. ‘. . . He shall live a man forbid, Like ill-famed Francis tried, Banished, set aside. Weary sennights nine times nine, Shall he dwindle, peak, and pine, No pork to break his fast, Nor calm before his mast. Though his barque cannot be lost, Yet it shall be tempest-tossed. Look what I have.’”

  That didn’t sound quite right. She waited for a bell to chime but none did.

  She went on, “Second witch: ‘Show me, show me.’ First witch: ‘Here I have a charming stone, And a bit of flesh and bone, Here I have a pilot’s thumb, Wrecked as homeward he did come.’ And then there’s the stage direction, ‘Drum within’, as Macbeth shows up and the witches tempt his ambitions by calling him Thane of Glamis, Thane of Cawdor, and king hereafter. And Banquo questions the witches. ‘If you can look into the seeds of time, And say which grain will grow and which will not, Speak then to me.’ And that’s the end of the page.”

  “A charming stone?” asked Alasdair. “That’s why the scholar-villain . . .”

  “Malone.”

  “. . . gave the page to Lady Dunmore?”

  “And probably the ‘Francis’, too. The whole play was supposedly written to flatter

  King James who, also supposedly, was descended from Banquo. So the banished Francis might have been Francis Stewart, James’s cousin, Lord Bothwell, the witch. The ‘charming stone’ may be the one on our, so to speak, Witch Box. The thing is . . .” She trawled through her hazy memories of Macbeth but came up with nothing. The last time she’d read or seen the play, Francis Stewart and his charm stone had been sailing well below her event horizon. She could call Louise and ask if this was a slightly different version—unique, the Folger had said—but she’d already taken advantage of the woman once. This time honor would demand that she reveal all, and all wasn’t yet ready to be revealed.

  “Eh?” Alasdair prodded.

  “If those lines were in the original, would there have been as much fuss over the Charlotte document? It’s valuable, yes, but on more than one level.”

  “Ah, I see your meaning. Sharon and Tim are thinking ‘Francis’ and ‘pork’ are code for ‘Francis Bacon.’ This page is by way of being their cipher.”

  “Oh yeah. Tim said something about if Bacon wrote Shakespeare then that proved he came up with the plans for world peace and so on ad nauseam. I bet they’re seeing hidden meanings in this, all right, while the grave stone is important for the names and the charm stone slot.”

  “Right,” Alasdair said, just as the cell phone in his hand trilled again. “Hullo, Stephanie. How . . . What? Oh aye. We’ll be there, soon as may be.”

  “Where? What?” Jean reluctantly slipped the paper back into the folder along with her copy of Charlotte’s note and document, and tucked them into a drawer.

  “Barbara’s not at home. Matt’s saying she’s got a breakfast meeting at the Williamsburg Lodge on the Mondays, some sort of psychical society.”

  “A psychical society? Is that what she meant with her heaven and earth, Horatio?”

  Alasdair was already halfway to the bedroom, and his “Eh?” flew back over his shoulder like a pinch of salt.

  “And last night, she said that Matt’s father was never far from her while she was raising him. What, has she been talking to him at seances? Alasdair, the Dingwalls have made a big deal out of not believing in the paranormal, supernatural whatever, but Barbara does.”

  “Mmph,” Alasdair said, probably around his toothbrush.

  The minute he left the bathroom, Jean hustled in, utilizing toothbrush and cosmetics, and noted as she left that their toothbrushes were now nestled cozily together. Maybe that was an omen.

  She found Alasdair considering the mantelpiece with its clock and antique cooking implements. “Have you seen the wee bottle?”

  “Oh. No.” Jean looked around—desk, coffee table, pantry, dresser, it wasn’t in any of its usual haunts. “It’s gone.”

  “And just now we’d best be getting on ourselves.” Al
asdair opened the door and stood poised on the threshold.

  With one last, futile glance around the house, Jean threw the phone into her bag and the coat onto her back and joined him.

  Chapter Thirty

  Side-by-side, they walked quickly toward the Lodge, or, rather, where they knew the Lodge to be. Tree branches materialized overhead and faded again, not one leaf stirring. To their left, the white Williamsburg Inn was no more than thickening of the fog, an ideal of elegance. If the mist suddenly lifted, Jean asked herself, would they find themselves in a completely different place? Faerie, perhaps, surrounded by archers, arrows nocked? Or a Scottish moor, a battlefield littered with fallen bodies, torn standards, broken weapons? Was that the music of the pipes she heard?

  No, she was hearing a weed-trimmer. A gardener was cutting the verge. “Has Stephanie released Jessica?” Jean asked. “How about Matt?”

  “Neither’s been exonerated yet,” replied Alasdair.

  “Well, no.” Jean shrugged her bag further onto her shoulder.

  The loggia edging the Lodge’s facade appeared from the mist, three cars lined up before it. A bellman was negotiating away from the van at the back with a pile of luggage. In the center, big and black as a funeral coach, Barbara’s SUV stood with its hatch gaping open

  Jean grabbed Alasdair’s arm and yanked him to a stop. “That’s hers, that’s Barbara’s car. There she is.”

  The tall, thin figure straightened from setting a plastic bin down on the sidewalk and reached back into the car’s storage area. She pulled out a couple of flat boxes, the sort a bakery would use for doughnuts, and piled them on top of the bin.

  Alasdair jerked forward, Jean beside him. “Good morning, Mrs. Finch.”

  She looked sharply around. “Already detecting, Mr. Cameron? Miss Fairbairn?”

  “Oh aye, that we are.”

  Jean wrapped her arms around her coat, warding off not only the chill of the mist but the chill radiating from Barbara’s honey-brown eyes. Car exhaust added a foul smell and a murk to the mist—knowing she couldn’t park beside the loggia, Barbara had left the car running,