08 - The Highland Fling Murders

Table of Contents

 

 

I used my foot to slide the box partially off the body, enough to see the face belonging to the foot and leg. Looking up at me was the round, ruddy face of Daisy-I didn’t know her last name—the young woman who had served us dinner the night before at Sutherland Castle.

 

 

My fist went to my mouth to stifle the anguished cry about to erupt. A pitchfork rose from Daisy’s chest. The handle had been broken off just above the metal tines. Brown dried blood surrounded each tooth.

 

 

I crouched lower. I hadn’t seen it at first glance. Carved into her throat was a small, bloody cross.

 

 

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For Laurie, Pamela, Billy, Marisa,
Alexander, Zachary, and Jacob.

 

 

Ah, youth!

 

 

And for my father, George Sutherland Bain,
who left Scotland to seek a better life
in America when the herring stopped running
in Wick, and who taught me
“Set a stoot hert to a stey brae.”

 

 

“The harder the task,
the more determination is needed.”

“Before Candlemas we went by East kinloss, and then we yoked a plewghe of paddokis (frogs or toads). The divill held the plewghe, and john Younge in Mebestone, our officer, did drwe the plewgke. Paddokis did draw the plewghe as oxen, quickens
(twitch-grass)
were somes (traces), a ram’s horn was a
cowter;
and a piece
of ram’s
horn was a sok (yoke). We went two several times about; and all we of the covin went still up and down with the plewghe praying to the divill for the fruit of that land, and that thistles and briers might grow there.”

 

 

“I thought they spoke English there, Mrs. F.,” Cabot Cove’s sheriff, and my good friend, Mort Metzger, said after reading what I’d handed him.

I laughed. “They do, Mort. But this was the way they spoke in sixteen twenty-two.”

Mort had just read part of a confession made in 1622 by Scotland’s most celebrated witch, isabell Gowdie. It was, she’d told her accusers, a special curse often used by her coven. George Sutherland, my Scottish friend and a chief inspector with Scotland Yard in London, had included it in a long letter to me, which I shared with my friends at Boston’s Logan Airport while waiting to board our British Airways flight to London.

“Gives me the chills,” said Alicia Richardson as she read George Sutherland’s description in his letter of how Isabell Gowdie had died—a pitchfork through her chest, pinning her-to the ground, her throat slashed with two strokes of a knife, creating a cross. According to George, a descendant of Isabell had settled in his hometown, Wick, Scotland, and had died in the same manner only twenty years ago.

“Lot of nonsense,” Sheriff Metzger muttered. “Sounds like your friend Sutherland is a mite
queeuh.”

Alicia’s husband, Jed Richardson—Alicia was his third wife; she was twenty-six, Jed forty-seven—a former airline pilot, was now owner, operator, and only pilot for Jed’s Flying Service, operating out of Cabot Cove’s tiny single-strip airport. He said of his pretty, bubbly redheaded wife, “Alicia won’t sleep a wink while we’re there. She believes in ghosts.”

“I do not,” she said, waving his comment away with her hand. “Still-”

There were twelve of us from Cabot Cove about to embark on a trip to Great Britain.

Our plans to travel together had coalesced quickly. It started when my British publisher, Archibald Semple, persuaded me to come to England to promote my latest mystery novel there. His edition had just come out, and he felt it needed the sort of boost only the author can provide by appearing on radio and television, and giving interviews to print media. I agreed, of course, and called a friend, Susan Shevlin, owner of Cabot Cove’s best travel agency.

After planning and booking my trip, Susan suggested that she and her husband, Jim, who’d recently been elected mayor of Cabot Cove, accompany me to London. That started the ball rolling. Soon, through Susan’s efforts, nine others had signed on: Morton and Maureen Metzger; Dr. Seth- Hazlitt; the Richardsons; Peter and Roberta Walters, owners of Cabot Cove’s small and only radio station; Charlene Sassi of Sassi’s Bakery and Restaurant, and husband, Ken, the area’s best fishing guide; and, of course, Susan and Jim Shevlin.

But then the plot thickened, as they say.

When I told George Sutherland I was coming to England, he insisted I extend my trip to spend time at his family’s castle in Wick, Scotland, on the northernmost coast.

“I really can’t, George,” I replied. “I’m traveling with other people. Eleven of them.”

“Not a problem, Jessica,” he said. “The old family homestead has fourteen rooms. Since I seldom have a chance to get there, and because it costs a bloody fortune to maintain, it’s rented out as a hotel most of the year. There’s a staff, a fine kitchen and chef, the works. Bookings have been slow. There are only two couples booked in for the time you and your friends would be there. Please. You know I’ve been trying to entice you to Wick ever since we met. Say yes.”

“Yes,” I said. “I’ll check with the others and let you know how many can extend their trip.”

As it turned out, everyone decided to venture north with me to George’s castle on the tail end of my book-promotion tour.

The announcement that came through the lounge’s speakers sent a tingle of pleasure through me, as it always does. I’m an unabashed Anglophile, and that includes British Airways and its unrivaled
service to London: :“British. Airways flight two-oh-seven, service to London, is now boarding at gate number four.”

“That’s us,” Seth Hazlitt said, slinging his carry-on bag over his shoulder.

We made our way to the gate, checked through, and settled in our seats in the spacious 747 aircraft. Had I been traveling alone, I would have been booked in first, or business class, compliments of the publisher. But with my friends seated in the back, it would have been insensitive, to say nothing of depriving me of the fun of being with them on a long flight. Spirits were high, conversation sprightly, and the trip went by quickly.

We landed precisely on time at Heathrow Airport, and passed through Customs. A long line of those wonderful, civilized black London taxis stood waiting just outside the luggage area. We picked up our luggage and put them on free trolleys available to arriving passengers. It took three cabs to accommodate us, each driven by polite, intelligent drivers who put cabbies everywhere else in the world to shame.

“You say this Athenaeum Hotel is a classy place?” Ken Sassi, the fishing guide, asked.

“Oh, yes,” I said. “I stayed there the last time I was in London.”

“Thought you were partial to the Dorchester,” Charlene Sassi said.

“I was. I am. I love it. But the Athenaeum has a special—a special
feeling
to it. You’ll love it. Trust me.”

The twelve of us had no sooner stepped into the small, stylish lobby off Piccadilly, when Sally Bulloch burst from the elevator, saw me, closed the gap between us in a flash, and gave me a big hug. “I’ve been waiting for you,” she said. “Good flight? They feed you good? My goodness, Jessica, you look splendid. A new book in the works? I picked up your latest. You’ll sign it, of course. These must be your friends—”