Ashes to Ashes (24 page)

“He has his talents, definitely.” Jan peered upward. Her son had disappeared around the bend. “Brian?”

“I’ll check on him.” Halfway up the stairs Rebecca heard Brian’s voice in James’s old bedroom, not words, just the bright polite tone the boy used when speaking to adults. Who was he talking to? Michael’s footsteps loped down the stairs above her, returning from stowing the claymore.

Brian stood in the middle of the room, alone, looking at the rocking chair. He must’ve just climbed out of it; it was rocking gently. He turned as Rebecca entered and said gravely, “The man’s scared.”

“What?”

“The man’s scared.”

The nape of Rebecca’s neck chilled. Michael rounded the angle of the staircase and she gestured at him to keep quiet. “Who’s scared?”

Brian pointed at the chair. It rocked twice more, then stopped. “That man there. The old man, like Great-grandpa.”

Rebecca shot a sharp significant glance at Michael. He blinked. She asked Brian, “How do you know the old man was scared?”

“He said,” the child answered, “no, don’t push me, help.”

“Don’t push me,” Rebecca repeated. God almighty. Don’t push me.

Michael muttered something that was either Gaelic or profanity, and added, “The wean’s scared o’ the staircase, Rebecca.”

“Yeah, that’s it. Just an imaginary situation. Kids don’t have preconceived ideas of how things should be.” No, children see things the way they are. They speak to ghosts, and we only hear their steps. I only saw James the once, before I started watching for him.

Michael shied away. “The weans brought a ball, did they? I’ll get the broom from the kitchen and teach them tae play shinty. Show Jan yon scrapbooks. Photos o’ the old days.”

“Okay,” said Rebecca. She stood, fixed to the floor, while Michael ushered Brian down the stairs, collected Mandy, sent Jan up. That’s all they needed, she told herself, to imagine that poor James had been murdered. On the garbled evidence of a three-year-old. Even Eric would be laughed out of court with nothing better than that.

“I’m hallucinating,” Jan announced. “I thought I heard a bachelor say he wanted to play with my kids.”

“He misses his nephews,” explained Rebecca.

“You sure are pale. Did you run into one of the local ghosts?”

Rebecca forced a laugh. “Brian was talking to some imaginary playmate. Gave me a chill, that’s all. This place does get on your nerves.”

“He does that all the time.” Even so, Jan looked over her shoulder. “It is kind of chilly in here. Michael said you had some pictures to show me?”

“Yeah, sure.” Shaking herself, Rebecca opened the top scrapbook.

The first photograph was of a garden scene. John and Elspeth sat in lawn chairs at the side of the castle. Beside them the child James in his sailor hat and short pants clutched a disgruntled ancestor of Darnley’s. John’s face was that of a hawk, beady-eyed, stern, and keen. Elspeth was smiling, a coquettish laugh frozen in time, her eyes turned toward the man standing behind her. He wore a black suit and was proffering a tray with a cup and saucer on it. His dark good looks were no less keen, but much warmer. He, too, was laughing, secretly.

“Ooh,” said Jan. “How’d you like to have that for a butler? The man looks like Valentino. And he knows it, too.”

“So does Elspeth— look at the way she’s eyeing him. And she was so much younger than John. I bet he was jealous of her.”

“If he was he kept it quiet. Louise says he lived for the opinions of his neighbors. We’ll ask her if there’s any juicy gossip from back then.”

“Great.” Rebecca turned the page. There was a casual picture of the girl in the studio photograph, the dark face younger but no less petulant. “Katherine Gemmell (Katie),” read James’s neat handwriting. “There’s a formal picture of her in a diary,” she told Jan. “So she is the Gemmells’ daughter. There goes my story of a tragic love affair between her and James.”

“Why?”

Rebecca laughed. “I only had time to glance at the diaries, but I do remember references to a ‘KG’. And they weren’t flattering. Apparently she took advantage of the expansion of female horizons in the twenties and did some work as an actress. James disapproved.”

“A man of his generation would.”

“Afraid so.” Jan and Rebecca sat turning the pages, wandering among the static images of long ago. Athena Gemmell, it turned out, was a plain, rather dour woman with a white apron. Pairing her with the elegant Rudolph was like mating a pigeon to a falcon, Rebecca thought. I’d be dour, too.

Michael’s and the children’s shouts echoed from the lawn, Phil’s hammer tapped away downstairs, and Dorothy’s vacuum cleaner emitted its banshee wail. Some time later Peter called, “Jan? We need to be going.” Just as Rebecca closed the album she caught a faint whiff of lavender. If Brian were here, would he start talking to the beautiful lady?

Jan was already out the door. Rebecca followed precipitately. They and Peter met Michael on the main staircase. He was flushed and out of breath, and the wind had made the shorter strands of his hair stand on end. “The bairns’re pettin’ the moggie,” he said to Jan, and as her face registered alarm, amended, “The cat.”

“Oh,” Jan said. “Poor little critter. I’d better go rescue it.”

“Here,” said Peter, pulling a wrinkled, legal-sized envelope out of his pocket. “This was under the desk. Just saw a corner of it when I was packing my tools. Fell off the top, I guess, maybe months ago.”

Rebecca took the envelope. The paper was grainy with dust. It was sealed, but nothing was written on it, even though some kind of paper was inside. “Probably soup-can labels or coupons for candy bars,” she said. “I’ve found both in that desk. Thanks anyway.”

She laid the envelope on Queen Mary’s marble bodice as they trooped out onto the lawn. Darnley had managed to escape Brian’s and Mandy’s attentions and was disappearing into the dovecote, the children in hot pursuit.

Jan, Peter, and Rebecca followed the children around the side of the dovecote to its alternate, paradoxical face. Here, on the north side of the structure, the bright afternoon winked out and they plunged into shadow. Brian, unperturbed by the grim ambience of the place, ran up and down the steps while Mandy knocked on the door of the tomb calling “Anybody home?”

Jan snatched her away. “What if somebody answers?”

That was a real possibility, Rebecca thought. Every time she’d come out here she’d had that same sense of being watched, although never as intensely as the first time. Maybe if James and Elspeth’s spirits still moved in the house, John’s was trapped in the mausoleum, his raptorial gaze fixed on his part whimsical, part lunatic castle, waiting possessively for his family. She looked narrowly at the lock. No new scratches. Whoever had the key hadn’t used it.

Back in the sunlight Michael was putting Peter’s toolbox into the Sorensons’ station wagon. The adults strapped the children into the car and said their goodbyes. “Keep me posted,” whispered Jan to Rebecca. “About Eric, you know.” She grimaced, attempting a lascivious leer. But her good-natured features simply couldn’t achieve such an expression.

Rebecca ignored her implication and called, “See you at Louise’s party Sunday,” as they drove away and disappeared.

Michael said from the corner of his mouth, “That’s all right, sweetheart, I counted the silver.”

“That’s the worst Bogart imitation I’ve ever heard,” Rebecca retorted. “Where do you get off going through Peter’s things, anyway?”

He looked at her indignantly. “I thought everyone was a suspect in this little caper. Includin’ you and me.”

“But they’re my friends!”

With a pitying smile Michael shrugged and turned away.

Today Dun Iain was wearing its guise of fairy-tale castle. The afternoon sun slanted through the bare branches, turning the beige harl of the castle to rose and gilding the roofs and dormers. Even the telephone and electricity lines shimmered like dewy spiderwebs where they looped through the trees. The resident ogre, Steve, materialized from wherever he had been lurking and let Slash out of the shed. The dog cavorted around him like some grotesque shadow, then sped off into the trees. The white mail truck advanced up the driveway.

Michael took the mail, handed it to Rebecca, and stood chatting with the young, blond mail carrier. Ever since the woman’s first encounter with the blue eyes and the enticing accent, she’d started bringing virtually everything up to the house. Today it was a package. Rebecca would have recognized those precise letters printing her address as Ray’s even if the postmark hadn’t been Dover.

With a sigh she flipped through the letters. Several ads, an official-looking envelope addressed to James Forbes from the Bright Corporation, and a note from Rebecca’s oldest brother, Kevin. Or from his wife, to be exact. Her family, steady and virtuous people, hadn’t the foggiest comprehension why she was spending three months at an old castle in Ohio, and had been stunned to hear she’d broken up with Ray.

Three blue British airmail envelopes peeked out below the others. The Sheffield postmark was Michael’s sister Maddy, whose husband had been reduced to one of those soddin’ great factories in England. The Fort Augustus was Michael’s chum Colin MacLeod. The third envelope was printed, “Tighnabruaich, 10 Ness Bank, Inverness”, his parents’ hotel.

The mail carrier drove away, Michael waving. Rebecca handed over his letters. “You’ve hit the jackpot today.”

“All right!” he exclaimed.

Steve, absorbed in rewinding his Walkman as he strolled toward the pickup truck, almost collided with them. With muttered apologies everyone dodged. Steve climbed into the pickup, clamped on his earphones, and closed his eyes, effectively raising a “Do Not Disturb” sign.

Rebecca went into the house wondering whether Phil had ever noticed the distinct odor of marijuana clinging to his son. Maybe he thought it was after-shave, like Eric’s sandalwood scent.

She picked up the envelope she’d left on the sarcophagus and found Michael in the kitchen chuckling over his letters. “You’ll like this,” he said, handing her a snapshot. “Only my mum would think of sendin’ it on.”

Oh my, she thought. There he was, kilt, stockings and sporran, brass buttons on his high-necked jacket, plaid over his shoulder. It wasn’t his contemporary haircut that was incongruous, but the ease of his pose. The camera had caught him striding forward, hand upraised, starting to speak some pleasantry. She’d seen him laugh, and his grin was dazzling, but never this open and unaffected, hiding nothing. Body language indeed— here was an honest, happy man. “I’m impressed,” she told him, handing the picture back. “You have very handsome knees. When was this taken?”

“Thank you kindly. At Glenfinnan last August, my farewell appearance wi’ the band. You have tae settle doon sometime, you see.”

“I see.” Maybe she should urge the mail carrier to take him out some evening and loosen him up a bit.

She opened the package. Inside were layers of sprigged tissue paper emitting a flowery perfume that clashed with the odor of soup. Inside that was a lacy semitransparent black negligee. Rebecca held it up, gaping. Ray, spending good money on something like this? Not counting the recent spate of flowers, the last present he’d bought her was a toaster oven.

She crushed the negligee back into the box and glanced at Michael ostensibly reading his sister’s letter. He didn’t betray by so much as the flick of an eyelash he’d seen the filmy garment, but she knew he had. She ransacked the package. No letter. Nothing except the suggestive and damning garment. She jammed the top onto the box.

“Here’s another,” said Michael, with downright malicious nonchalance. She looked blankly at the photo he gave her, then focused. Michael and a wavy-haired man stood on a rocky snowfield wearing parkas, heavy hiking boots, and backpacks. “That’s Colin. I go hill climbin’ wi’ him, he listens to my music. Though I prefer hikin’ and he prefers Bruce Springsteen.”

“Compromise,” Rebecca agreed, “makes the world go ‘round.”

On the remaining envelope James’s name was typed, not a mailing label. The Bright Corporation. Sounded like business, not an ad. She’d give it to Eric.

And there was the packet of coupons or whatever Peter had found beneath the desk. Rebecca slit open the envelope and pulled out the one long paper folded within. The letters, typed on the same ancient manual as the diaries, strobed before her eyes. “I’ll be damned,” she murmured.

“What is it?” Michael asked, tucking his snapshots away.

“The last will and testament of James Ramsey Forbes.”

“What!” He peered over her shoulder. His breath would’ve raised gooseflesh on her cheek if she weren’t already chilled with bewilderment. “His will was probated months ago. That’s why we’re here.”

“Look.” Rebecca indicated the bottom of the paper. There was James’s shaky, almost illegible signature. Below it were lines for two witnesses, only one of which was filled with firm letters reading, “Warren H. Lansdale.” “If the sheriff knows about another will, why hasn’t he told us?”

“Either none o’ our business, or no important,” answered Michael. “This will isna legal, is it? Dinna you need two signatures?”

“I think so. It’s dated August 24; when was the legitimate will dated, do you know? Maybe this is a rough draft of it.”

“No.” Michael pointed at a block of type. “Naething aboot passin’ the goods onto relatives. They all go right tae the museum and the state.”

Rebecca’s mind felt like her stomach did when she’d skipped a meal. “Eric said something about James changing his mind right before he died because he was fed up with paying taxes. I guess this is the version he started out with, and then made the other one once he’d decided.”

“The probated will’s on file somewhere.”

“Of course it is. I’ll ask Eric. He’ll know all about it.”

“Oh aye,” Michael said. He began stirring the pot of soup so vigorously broth splashed over the sides and sizzled on the burner.

“Is something burning?” asked Dorothy from the doorway.

How long had she been standing there? Rebecca shifted her jaundiced gaze from Michael to the housekeeper. “What day did James die, Mrs. Garst?”

“August 27. And yes, he made a new will right before he died. Eric was such a help to him. Don’t know how we’d have managed without him.”