by Kennedy Kerr
On the table was a ragged poppet doll; on its head was sewn grey wool to represent hair and the Dalcairney crest was drawn on its chest. It was pinned by its hands and feet to a piece of cardboard covered in white cotton and a strip of the white material was tied around where its eyes should be, as if to blind it.
Angus went to pick up the doll, but Temerity batted his hand away.
‘Don’t touch it,’ she warned. ‘It’s a poppet doll. And unless I’m very much mistaken, it’s one representing Lady Dalcairney.’ Temerity could feel the intent that had been infused into the doll and it wasn’t pleasant. Just being near it made her feel choked and confused. She stepped away, looking around her.
‘What’s a poppet doll? Like a voodoo doll?’ Angus made a repulsed face. ‘I didn’t know anyone actually did stuff like that outside the movies.’
‘People do stuff like this,’ she answered grimly. ‘You can use poppets for good magic, healing, love spells, that sort of thing, too. But I don’t think this is good. Look, she’s being pinned to a bed. Blindfolded. Whoever made this wants Lady Dalcairney out of the way for some reason. Not dead, but incapacitated. Which she is.’
Angus raised his eyebrows.
‘We’ve just seen that she can’t get out of bed. But surely that’s because of some kind of illness.’
Temerity gave him a look.
‘Really? Even when you’ve seen this, you think she’s just poorly? She’s not. Someone’s controlling her. They could be drugging her, too.’ Aaaand we’re back to reality, Temerity thought. Magic versus logic. Only, I’m being completely logical here. No more B-movie heroines.
Angus nodded.
‘It definitely doesn’t look good, I’ll agree with you there,’ he conceded. ‘What’s that?’ he knelt down, pointing the torch at a box under the small table. ‘Here, hold the torch.’ He passed it to Temerity and opened it.
‘Well, these look familiar.’ He held up two Russian matryoshka dolls: one featuring a blue patterned dress and black hair and one with a yellow and pink colour scheme.
‘Wow. That seems a pretty unlikely coincidence.’ Temerity held out her hand for one of the dolls; she knew that Angus was, like her, thinking of the red matryoshka doll that had sat on the windowsill of Molly Bayliss’s room.
‘Agreed.’ Angus shook out the box but there was nothing else in it apart from dust. ‘We should see if there are the same kind of markings in these. Even without that, it’s incriminating. Especially found under this.’ He indicated the altar. ‘We could probably get a handwriting expert to look at the markings on Molly’s doll and compare them to those –’ he nodded at the blood sigils, soaked into the white cotton – ‘plus there’s DNA testing. If that blood’s human.’
Temerity could hear Angus, but she had closed her eyes instinctively on touching the wooden doll. She took a deep breath and saw a tunnel spooling in front of her; his voice was suddenly a distant echo.
What are you, where have you been, matryoshka? she asked the toy, inside her mind. The tunnel continued on: grey, without feature. No pictures or words came to her. However, Temerity was suddenly aware that though she wasn’t receiving anything visual apart from the tunnel, she was getting a feeling and it was sadness. No, something a little different, loneliness even. And something else. A fierce sense of protection which was almost motherly.
She opened her eyes.
‘I lost you there.’ Angus looked concerned. ‘You all right?’
‘I’m fine.’ Temerity remembered the last time she had performed her talent in front of Angus; he’d admitted there was something in it, but she knew he remained unconvinced. She thought, for now, she would keep her feelings to herself. ‘What were you saying?’
‘Blood. On the… napkin thing. Whatever it is.’
‘It might be animal blood,’ Temerity said, pulling herself together. ‘But you should probably confiscate this entire shed. I mean, whoever this all belongs to is doing some shady stuff,’ she added. The emotions were still with her. She placed the doll on the altar table, not wanting it in her hands; as soon as she put it down, the feelings evaporated. A terrible kind of gnawing sadness and fear. And that maternal sense of having to protect someone or something. What did that mean?
‘Well, it can only really belong to the Laird or Liz,’ Angus replied. ‘Or Sally. Or it could be someone else.’
‘Probably not Ben McKinley, though, right?’ Temerity met his gaze.
‘Probably not,’ Angus agreed. ‘But just because we’ve found a suspicious lair in the grounds of Dalcairney Manor doesn’t mean Ben isn’t Molly’s murderer.’
‘That’s true.’
Temerity didn’t want to be there any more; the energy of the whole place was hateful. As someone who was used to raising power, she could feel all the magic that had occurred there, but she could also feel how different it was to what she was used to. She could recognise power, but this was like the discordant hum of a child in a horror movie instead of an angelic song. It was all wrong; the shed was wrong, the altar was wrong, the Russian doll was wrong. Tilda would have a big word for this, but it’s… yucky, she thought. Top marks for vocabulary, Temerity.
‘What is it… Occam’s Razor? The thing that people like you tend to quote?’ she said, wrapping her arms around herself.
‘People like me?’ He glanced at her, but she couldn’t make out his expression in the dark.
‘You know. Self-professed logicians.’
‘Ah.’ Angus was searching the shed, but there didn’t seem to be anything else particularly obvious. ‘You mean, the likeliest person is the killer? If it looks like doggie doo and smells like doggie doo, then it is doggie doo?’
‘If you want to put it that way, yes.’ Temerity really wanted to leave, but she couldn’t help smirking at Angus’ obvious attempt to avoid swearing.
‘Well, that is often true. But not always. McKinley might have been here. He’d been up at the house, after all. Or he could be in league with someone else. This isn’t a crime scene, but it’s suspicious enough to be relevant to our enquiries. And if it provides evidence that McKinley isn’t the murderer, then we need to know that, too. On the other hand, this could relate to a separate crime. If we can in some way prove Lady Dalcairney’s being drugged, that’s another investigation.’
‘Can we go now? This place is giving me the heebie-jeebies.’ Temerity stamped her feet both to drive out the cold and the sense of foreboding and sadness about the place.
‘I’m going to need to come back and dust this whole place for fingerprints and take proper pictures. I’ll have to see if Alf’s up for coming up and doing some DNA analysis, too. I’m guessing as it’s not an official crime scene, we won’t get the paperwork sorted to allow forensics up here until tomorrow now.’ Angus sighed and looked at his watch. ‘The Inspector’s not going to be happy and I’m going to be up late.’ He took out his phone and snapped pictures of the whole shed, close-ups of the altar, the poppet doll, the Russian dolls.
‘Come on. Let’s go.’ He took Temerity’s arm and manoeuvred her out of the shed, snapping the padlock shut behind them.
‘Whoever owns all that will know we’ve been in there,’ Temerity said in a low voice, as they made for the edge of the loch.
‘How? We didn’t disturb anything. I closed that box back up.’
‘They’ll just know. Energetically.’
‘Well, maybe that will force their hand in some way,’ he said as he took her hand; the muddy edge of the loch was uneven as it had been before. ‘That’s when criminals get sloppy; when things happen they weren’t expecting and they have to react fast.’
It was a relief to have Angus Harley’s strong, broad hand gripping hers. Warmth started to spread back into Temerity’s fingers and toes.
She told herself that it was walking that was making her warm again; the benefit of movement and the relief at being out of that spooky wooden shack. But as they walked and the track levelled out onto an even pathway, Angus kept a hold of her hand
and Temerity didn’t do anything to stop him.
29
The next morning, Temerity found Angus with the Inspector sitting at their usual table in The Singing Kettle. Temerity made her order with Muriel at the counter for a bowl of porridge with honey and a large mug of tea; she’d come straight from home without even having breakfast, curious about what the Inspector would say when Angus recounted the events of the night before at Dalcairney Manor.
She’d lain awake for most of the night, thinking about it and she couldn’t get the Russian doll out of her head. There was no doubt in Temerity’s mind that whoever had given Molly Bayliss a Russian doll as a child was the same person as the inhabitant, or user, of the wooden shack, but that meant someone at that house had known Molly when young. How had they known her and why had they given her gifts? Had this been a close relationship or an occasional one? It made no sense, except that it did, somewhere along the line and Temerity was irritated that she couldn’t work out where yet.
On the counter, next to the cutlery, which was arranged in pottery jars, and the sauces – plastic bottles of ketchup, mayonnaise, mustard and brown sauce – was a pile of smallish pamphlets. Temerity picked one up, recognising the home-made appearance. She frowned at it and dropped it on the table before taking off her coat and hanging it on the nearby coat–stand.
‘I see T.L. Hawtry has been at it again,’ she said, dryly. ‘New volume. This time it’s A History of Lost Maidens Loch. Less immediately sensational, I suppose.’ She smiled as she sat down. ‘There might even be some facts in this one, you never know. Did you ever find out who was producing these things? Morning. Sorry.’ Temerity remembered her social graces a little late.
Kim Hyland was halfway through a full Scottish breakfast and mopped up his baked beans with his potato pancake with a contented sigh. ‘Never mind that, ye couple o’ hoons. More like ye tell me what ye thought ye were doin’ up at Dalcairney Manor without a warrant last night.’
Angus had nodded to Temerity as she sat down; she felt herself blushing, thinking about her hand in his on the entire walk home last night. He’d walked her to her door and for a moment she’d wondered if he was going to kiss her, but he had merely squeezed her hand and thanked her for her help. If last night was a date, it was the weirdest date in the history of romance, she thought.
‘It was my fault. I suggested going there. Angus and I happened to meet in here for dinner last night and—’ Temerity started, but the Inspector shushed her.
‘I didnae need tae know aboot that. What I need ye to tell me is, this witchcraft stuff that Angus is tellin’ me. It’s not, I, how shall I say it? I’m not goin’ tae go up there an’ embarrass the Laird’s religion or his, errr, kinky predilections, like? Because that could be quite awkward.’
Temerity remembered the Laird leaving the house for his fundraising dinner, saying that the Inspector would be there. They probably knew each other quite well; they were roughly the same age and they were both, in different ways, powerful figures in Lost Maidens Loch.
‘I don’t think so. I think it’s real witchcraft and, in this case, malignant. I think someone in that house has put some kind of a curse on Lady Dalcairney. And we think the whole place needs to be fingerprinted and tested for DNA. Has Angus mentioned the blood?’
The Inspector sighed.
‘Aye, he has. I just wanted tae check with ye that ye thought it was connected tae the case. Thing is, I’m very friendly with the Laird, so… I want tae have good reason to have tae fingerprint the man.’
‘I understand. But we don’t think you can ignore this.’ Temerity nodded at Angus. He showed the Inspector the photos he’d taken and the Inspector’s expression changed from his usual easy calm to a deep frown. Yep. Pretty gruesome, Temerity thought. ‘The biggest link from the shed is the Russian doll at this stage. If we can prove it’s the same make as the one Molly owned, it would suggest a link from someone at Dalcairney Manor to her.’ Temerity frowned. ‘Though, admittedly, a weak link. It’s all connected somehow, though; the witch mirror, the altar in the shed, the love potion. I think whoever put that mirror on the body is the same person that uses the shed. And that means they’ve put some kind of curse on Lady Dalcairney,’
The Inspector raised his eyebrows.
‘Good Lord,’ he muttered.
‘There’s something else,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t mean anything in particular, but I’ve been… seeing signs,’ she said, trying to work out how to explain the feathers.
‘Signs?’ Hyland asked.
‘Yes. Like… portents. Not road signs.’
‘Portents of what, lassie?’
‘Umm… well, Tilda and I did a, err… ritual a few weeks ago. Like a kind of meditation,’ she added hastily, seeing both Hyland and Harley’s expressions cloud over. ‘I was told in that… meditation that I would start seeing feathers on people whose judgement was coming.’
‘And you’ve seen them?
Temerity nodded.
‘On three people so far. Beth, Ben McKinley and Liz up at Dalcairney Manor. Well… Liz’s skirt had a feather pattern on it, I took it as the same thing.’
‘And you think this means they’re guilty? Of the murder?’ Angus asked.
‘No. But it’s guilt of some sort. Involvement somehow. Beth Bennett was charged with shoplifting. We know McKinley’s involved in Molly’s death somehow. Liz, I don’t know.’
‘Right. Well. Lots of guilty people in the world, lassie. But we’re investigating one murder, aye. Still, it’s good tae know.’ Hyland smiled at her. ‘We’ll drive up tae the Manor in a wee while an’ I’ll talk tae Liz and David aboot all this. Might as well eat first.’
Muriel brought Temerity’s porridge and tea to the table and placed it in front of her.
‘More propaganda, Muriel?’ Temerity held up the pamphlet with one hand and sipped her tea with the other.
‘Aye, well, in a place like Lost Maidens Loch, there’s a lot of history.’ Muriel bridled. ‘It’s not like ah wrote it. Just doin’ a public service, stockin’ them. Fer tourists and the like.’
Temerity opened it towards the middle of the brochure to a double page of black-and-white photos that looked as though they weren’t taken very recently; it was entitled Lost Maidens Memories. Her eyes skimmed the captions which had been typed on what looked like a manual typewriter, cut out and stuck under the pictures with glue before photocopying.
Misty Loch, 1991. Sutherland’s Boat Hire, 1968. Dalcairney Manor staff, 1979.
The first picture, of the loch, was identical to how it looked now on a misty day. The picture of Sutherland’s Boat Hire featured what must have been the previous Mr Sutherland with, Temerity estimated, a four- or five-year-old Henry Sutherland, the current owner, standing next to his father and squinting up into the camera. Temerity ate a spoon of porridge and revelled in its sweet creaminess.
The last picture was of a group of men and women. The women wore maids’ uniforms. Even though the picture was dated the late 1970s, they wore black dresses with white pinnies and the little white caps Temerity would have guessed belonged to the 1940s or before. Next to the four women, who looked to range in age from teens to middle age, there were two men in smart suits standing next to a couple of expensive-looking cars. The chauffeurs, maybe, or a butler and a driver.
As Temerity peered at the faces of the women in their ridiculous caps and aprons, she could swear that one of the younger ones – maybe she was twenty? – was Liz. Temerity spooned up more of the porridge.
Temerity passed the open pamphlet to Angus across the table and tapped the picture. Muriel had returned somewhat huffily behind the counter.
‘Look familiar?’ she asked. He stared at the picture and frowned.
‘Liz?’
‘That’s what I thought.’
‘It does look like her. But I didn’t know she’d been at the house that long.’
‘She told me she’d been employed as housekeeper a few years ago.’ Temerity look
ed up at the Inspector, who was finishing a sausage. ‘How long has the Laird’s housekeeper worked for him? Liz?’ she asked.
‘Aye, Liz has been there forever,’ Kim replied. ‘Knew her a bit when she started as a maid. I was just the Constable then. She used to be friendly with Mrs Hyland. That’s how we met, in fact. Time was that the young Laird would go tae discos and parties with some of the girls on the staff. Not very seemly, I suppose, but they were of an age. I think Liz was keen on him, but o’ course nothin’ was ever goin’ tae happen. A wee while later he met Emma, his first wife.’
‘Liz had feelings for the Laird. All that time ago,’ Temerity said slowly, piecing it together in her mind. She remembered the terrible feeling of sadness she’d felt in touching the Russian doll. If it was Liz that used that shack and everything in it, maybe she had a grudge against her employers. Maybe the Laird had broken her heart, once, when they were young. But what was the link to Molly? And why stay in a job that makes you wait on a man that spurned you?
Angus looked at the pamphlet again.
‘It does look like her,’ he admitted. ‘So why lie about it?’
‘I don’t know,’ Temerity mused. ‘It seems odd.’
The Inspector pushed away his empty plate.
‘Come on, then. I take it yer comin’ with us, Temerity Love? I can’t see ye stayin’ away, not with that inquisitive look on yer face.’
‘Yes, please,’ she said and followed the Inspector outside where the patrol car was parked. Yet, as soon as they left the café, Temerity knew something was wrong.
The normally clean, cold air of Lost Maidens Loch smelled of Tilda’s occasional log fires when she burned wood that was too green. It was the smell of smoke and instinctively Temerity looked over, across the loch.
On the opposite side of the loch, a huge cloud of grey smoke was billowing up into the morning air. Beneath the smoke, they could see fire flickering up against the walls of the tall stone house.
Dalcairney Manor was on fire.