Highland Laddie Gone (11 page)

“Isn’t he beautiful?” said Elizabeth. “I remember when he was just a puppy.”

“By the pricking of my thumbs
 …” muttered Geoffrey as Marge approached the wooden duck box.

The three of them were sitting with a group of pipers in full costume. The piping events were next on the program, and the young men had brought their instruments and a deck of cards to while away the time before their performance. Cameron was watching the card game with a studied air of nonchalance, but he kept glancing nervously at the field.

“This is a wonderful event,” Elizabeth prattled on. “Would you like me to explain it to you?” She waved encouragingly to Marge and Somerled.

“I would thou couldst,”
Geoffrey intoned.

Elizabeth frowned. “Are you barding again?”

On the field, the dog was wriggling with anticipation as the door to the box swung open. Five white ducks waddled out uncertainly into the sunlight and began to wander off in five different directions. Somerled, whose first job was
to march the feathered troops through a concrete pipe, crouched before one duck, intending to drive it back into the group. Unfortunately for the veteran collie, it was a rookie duck. Instead of trotting back to the platoon, it emitted a honk of outrage and flapped its wings. This gave Somerled pause: in his experience, ducks never argued back. He lunged at the left flank of the rest of the group, attempting to steer them toward the pipe. More honking and flapping.

“That’s odd,” said Elizabeth. “I wonder what’s the matter with the ducks.”

One of them had broken away from the group and was making a determined rush toward the crowd. Somerled abandoned the rest and gave chase, trying to circle in front of the deserter. Marge’s look of astonishment had turned to anger, and she was conferring with the competition judge, who kept shrugging and shaking his head.

“Good gracious!” said Elizabeth. “You’d think those ducks had never seen a dog before!”

“Bring me no more reports; let them fly all!”
moaned Geoffrey.

Cameron, who had once played Malcolm in the sixth form, replied,
“I’ll to England.”
Geoffrey threw him a look of gratitude.
“To Ireland, I.”
He nodded, getting to his feet.
“Our separated fortune shall keep us both the safer.”
“What is the matter with you two?” demanded Elizabeth. “Oh, dear, look at that duck!”

Standing up was Geoffrey’s chief mistake: Marge recognized him. She made it to the edge of the crowd almost as fast as the duck had, and pointed accusingly at Geoffrey.
“You! I saw you messing with that herding box yesterday! What is wrong with those ducks?”

In considerably less than Shakespearean tones, Geoffrey told her; but Walter Hutcheson, who had been watching from the other side of the field, had not stayed to see the confrontation. He had seen the fiasco made of Somerled’s herding efforts, and immediately suspected sabotage. Several bystanders distinctly heard him say “Colin Campbell!” before he stalked away.

Afterward, everyone agreed that things could have been much worse. Geoffrey hadn’t been seriously injured, and the piper found, after playing a few trial notes, that his bagpipe hadn’t been damaged at all.

Andy Carson looked at his watch for the third time in as many minutes. The parade of the clans should have started ten minutes ago, even allowing for the usual tardiness. He wondered if he should go ahead and start his speech and let the stragglers catch up. Still, he didn’t like to begin with a clan chief missing. It was hot, though; and Scotch and Gatorade had turned out not to be such a brilliant idea after all.

“Is Ramsay here yet?” he asked Margaret McLeod.

“Yes, he just arrived. Everyone has signaled ready except the Campbells.”

Andy shrugged. Normally, Colin Campbell was the first one on the field and the most vociferous complainer about latecomers.

“Shall I go and get him?” asked Margaret, consulting her clipboard.

“I suppose. I’ll do my introductory speech while you’re gone. Just do hurry him up, will you?”

Elizabeth, who had changed back to her kilt for the ceremony, was present but not yet in place. “This won’t take long,” she promised Cameron. “You have to be wearing the clan colors to participate, though, so I’m afraid you’ll have to watch it from here. Hold Cluny’s leash, will you, while I tie his tartan ribbon?”

Cameron took hold of the leash and looked around at the mass of people crowding the field. He didn’t see any signs of weapons, though. “Just what is going to happen now?” he asked uneasily.

“The parade of clans. The master of ceremonies will make his speech, and introduce guests, and then each clan will march out on to the field, shout its battle cry, and stand off to the side until all the clans have been presented.”

“And then what?” No cannons, either.

Elizabeth smiled. “Then I change back into my sundress, and you take me to lunch.”

“Right. How’s Geoffrey?”

“He stayed at the cabin with a washcloth across his forehead, doing the death scene from
Hamlet.”

“As whom?”

“Oh, everyone. Geoffrey feels that death is too important to be enacted only once.” She took back Cluny’s leash. “Time to join the clan. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Margaret McLeod clasped her clipboard protectively to her chest. Rousing the Campbell boar from his lair was not her idea of a pleasant morning’s work, and she wished she had thought to tell someone to go and get the blasted chief, but there was no time for that now. She could already
hear Dr. Carson’s nasal tones droning over the loudspeaker.

Another disagreeable thought occurred to her. Suppose Campbell was drunk. He would hardly be alone in experiencing that condition, she thought ruefully, but it might make it difficult to get him to the ceremony. She should have brought help, she thought, looking up at the camper door. Oh, well … She tapped gently. “Dr. Campbell? It’s late! The ceremony has begun!”

Nothing.

“Dr. Campbell! Are you in there?” Margaret tried the door handle, hoping that she was
not
about to find out what Colin wore under his kilt.

The door swung open, and she found herself face-to-face with the clan chief himself. “You’re late!” Margaret cried, before she got a good look at him and discovered that he was indeed the late Colin Campbell.

   T
HE
forest clearing had that strained sound of great activity striving for silence: the scrape of boot leather against brush; the faint click of metal; and through it all the rhythmic current of breathing. Gray-clad bodies, blending like shadows into the broom-sedge, edged up the hill with their Enfield rifles, slowly and silently creeping toward the boulder at the summit. A pebble dislodged by a boot heel made scarcely as much noise as a sweatbee hovering overhead.

Behind the troops, a hawk-faced man with silver sideburns and officer’s braid sat astride a bay mare, his hand upraised to signal the charge.

Everything was as still as a Matthew Brady photograph of Shiloh: Confederate troops prepare to advance! The soldiers looked back for the go-ahead, but it was forestalled by a spell-breaking sound from the colonel’s belt. Brrrh! Brrrh!

Alexander “Lightfoot” MacDonald’s voice shattered the stillness. “Stop the goddamn war! I got to answer the phone!”

Margaret McLeod had had the presence of mind not to scream. A nurse for several years before she married Peter, she knew how to handle death scenes. Quickly veritying
her first impression that Colin was indeed dead, she hurried back to the grandstand where Andy Carson was continuing to delay the ceremony by prolonging his opening remarks. The wool-clad troops, many of whom had been toasting each other’s health all morning, were growing restive.

Margaret caught Andy’s eye, and motioned for him to let someone else take the podium for a while.

“What is it?” he hissed. “I was just coming to the punch line!”

Seeing his face drain of color when she told him, Margaret concluded that her punch line had been better than his. “What should we do?” he whispered, casting an anxious glance at the field full of suspects.

Margaret had already thought this out. “You go up and announce the coming events for the rest of the day, and read the names of the competition winners if you have to. I’ll go to the rescue-squad truck and get them to radio the sheriff.”

Andy Carson looked down at his sheaf of notes, and back at the sweaty crowd on the field. “How long will it take him to get here?” he whined.

The sheriff was on the scene in less than ten minutes, but this was ninety per cent luck and only ten per cent departmental efficiency. When the squad radioed in about a possible homicide at the Scottish festival, dispatcher Charlotte Revis weighed the two relevant facts in the matter: that it was Sheriff MacDonald’s day off, and that he was actually in Glencoe Park, within a mile or so of the death scene. Ranking business before pleasure, Charlotte
put through a call on the sheriff’s mobile telephone to relay the message.

“Damnit, Charlotte, what is it?” rasped the sheriff’s voice in her ear. Beep!

“Where are you, sir?”

“Fighting the Battle of Wicker’s Ford Hollow! Over!”

Lightfoot MacDonald was the colonel of the local Civil War reenactment militia, and as Charlotte knew, the troops were having a dress rehearsal for next Saturday’s mock battle in Glencoe Park. If she knew her park geography, the battle site should put the sheriff within a mile of the Scottish festival.

“We have a ten thirty-three out where you are. Can you ten twenty-one, please?”

Another beep. “I rode the horse over behind some trees, so I can talk now. What is the nature of the ten thirty-three?” He listened, dodging tree branches while Sorrel switched and stamped at botflies. “Right,” he said at last. “I’ll go over there now. Put in a ten seventy-nine to meet me there, please. Out.”

Lightfoot MacDonald stopped long enough to turn over his command of the rehearsal to Wilburn Blevins, saying only that he had “police business,” and then he cantered Sorrel up the nature trail toward the Glencoe meadow.

Andy Carson mopped his forehead and ventured a smile at the glowering crowd in front of him. “I apologize for the delay,” he said again. “But it shouldn’t be much …” His voice trailed away into an open-mouthed stare.

Coming toward him from a break in the pines was a Confederate army officer on a large brown horse. The apparition, complete with sword and canteen, trotted across
the field, skirting clumps of clansmen, and stopped beside the speakers’ platform.

“I’m Sheriff Lightfoot MacDonald,” said the soldier. “I’m here in response to a call you people put in for assistance.”

“Yes. Mrs. McLeod can show you where he—the—it is. Can I go on with the ceremony?” The natives looked not only restive but, in some cases, a few over the limit, as well.

Lightfoot shrugged. “Sure. As long as nobody gets in my way. You might ask anyone with information to come forward.” He leaned back on his horse to wait for the announcement.

Dr. Carson wandered back to the podium. “Fellow Scots,” he began. He wondered who had snickered when he said that. “It is my sad duty to announce to you that the presentation of the clans has been delayed because of the untimely passing of the chief of Clan Campbell, and we have reason to suspect foul play.”

Lightfoot MacDonald looked up sharply at this; but before he could interrupt, a wobbly fellow in a blue kilt shouted, “This is Glencoe! It’s the MacDonalds who got murdered, isn’t it?”

“We’re paying them back!” shouted a wag from the MacDonald ranks, waving his hip flash.
“Return to Glencoe!”
“Hell, you didn’t do it!” roared a Murray, not to be outdone in the joke. “The Murrays owe the bastards for Culloden!”

“Up the Stewarts! Up the Stewarts!” chanted a red-kilted bunch in center field.

Someone eise countered with, “Down with Campbells?”

Andy Carson looked helplessly at the grim-faced sheriff.

“What’s going on here?” hissed the sheriff.

Carson sighed. “They think it’s a joke, I’m afraid. Because he’s a Campbell.”

Lightfoot shook his head. “I’ll talk to you later,” he said, turning his horse. “I’d like to see the body now.”

“Of
course
I didn’t touch anything,” said Margaret McLeod in her calm, efficient voice. “I could see that he was dead. I used to be a nurse.”

Lightfoot grunted. “We’ll go over the place when my deputy gets here. Did you notice the cause of death at the time?”

Margaret nodded. “I could see the blade sticking out of his chest, and of course I recognized it.” Seeing his look of surprise, she hastened to add, “I don’t mean that I know who it belongs to. I mean that I knew what it was.”

“A dagger.”

“No. A
skian dubh.
Well, I guess it is a dagger, but it’s the one that men wear in their kilt hose when they’re in Highland dress.”

The sheriff thought back to the crowd assembled in front of the speakers’ platform. “You mean all those jokers were armed?”

“Most of them,” Margaret admitted, though she wouldn’t have thought of it that way herself. She looked pointedly at Lightfoot’s cavalry sword.

“Now, just what had this man done to make all those people hate him so much?”

Margaret McLeod hesitated. “You mean personally or … otherwise?”

The sheriff blinked. “There’s an otherwise?”

“Oh, yes. He was a Campbell, you see.”

“So who would want to kill a Campbell?”

“Why, everybody.”

Half an hour later, the site examination was well in hand, and the sheriff was able to turn things over to the deputy and the coroner, and to proceed with the questioning of witnesses. He had taken over the hospitality tent as a makeshift headquarters—with Sorrel tied to one of the support posts.

“Now, let me get this straight,” he said to the still-fidgeting Andy Carson. “You people are all mad at this fellow over something that happened in 1746?”

Andy searched for common ground. “Well, Sheriff,” he said brightly, “it was
their
Civil War.”

“Uh-huh,” said Lightfoot. “But
we’re
not still stabbing people.”