The Blue Hackle (15 page)

Dougie stood up, yawned, and moved to a spot
at the foot of the bed. He kneaded the duvet, plucking it with his
claws, and settled down again.

Last night he’d found himself shut into the
sitting room listening to the rhythmic squeaks of the ancient
four-poster. Jean and Alasdair hadn’t accomplished their purpose
without pausing half a dozen times to laugh—no matter what
arrangement they’d attempted, the bed squeaked. That left the room
something to be desired as a honeymoon suite, although with those
same thick walls, neither squeaks nor ensuing laughter would dampen
the honeymooners’ enthusiasm.

A murder, now, that was a damper.

Tonight Jean dozed off yet again in
Alasdair’s arms, this time fully clothed and chilled rather than
sweaty, and woke repeatedly with images of hackled bonnets,
cornflower blue eyes, and bloodstained shingle clinging to her
mind. When she at last fell soundly asleep, she dreamed the same
images and more, struggling through faceless shapes holding
flashlights.

The beam of one flashlight pierced her
eyelids, sending a flare of crimson across her vision—blood, fire,
and swords gleaming . . . She opened her eyes to see a thin ray of
sun stretching from the gap between the curtains and hitting her in
the face.

Not just morning, but also sunlight, what a
concept. And either the ambrosial aroma of coffee hung on the
still, cold air, or her caffeine receptors were going into
withdrawal.

With an insistent meow, Dougie hopped up onto
the bed. At least he hadn’t waked her with a claw in one nostril,
as he’d once done. She crawled to her feet and dispensed cat
comestibles.

Alasdair rolled out of the bed, saying, “It’s
gone nine” with resignation rather than disapproval. There were
nights when quantity of sleep had to make up for quality.

They walked warily down the turnpike stair,
finding no Green Ladies in residence. Nor was Sanjay Thomson still
guarding the entrance hall—only the hooks showed where the two
dirks had hung. Jean hoped that Gilnockie’s forensics team had
worked late rather than started early, allowing the constable to go
home for the night.

Chafing dishes lined the sideboard in the
dining room, steaming with sausage, bacon, eggs, kippers, baked
beans, grilled mushrooms, and tomatoes. Racks held crispy if cold
pieces of toast beside bowls mounded with butter, jam, and
marmalade. It was all insulation against the cold, like the
sumptuous dinners, Jean supposed, although considering those
dinners, she’d just as soon have had a bowl of porridge this
morning.

A tea pot and a coffee pot sat on the table
beneath cozies shaped like a chicken and a pumpkin, respectively.
As befit their national origins, Jean took coffee and Alasdair
tea.

They didn’t eat alone, not with all the
eagle-eyed soldiers looking down from the surrounding
photos—especially the third man with Allan and Fergie Mor, whose
bunched eyebrows indicated that he was either facing the sun or he
had sensed his dirk would one day serve as a murder weapon.

Jean shifted her gaze to the tall windows,
which now revealed a shimmering vista of gold and green land, gray
stone, and blue sky with clouds like smears of whipped cream. Her
feet twitched eagerly. No surprise that a trio of empty plates
occupied one end of the table, along with the dregs of two coffees
and one cocoa. The Krums were already up and about.

Jean was draining her second cup of
life-affirming liquid into a grease-lined stomach when Nancy Finlay
bustled through the swinging door, Rab at her heels less bustling
than dawdling with broom and dustpan. “Good morning,” she said.
“I’ll be clearing away now.”

“We’ve got the polis in the old kitchen,”
said Rab, in such a dark tone Jean expected him to add, “and we’re
phoning the exterminator.”

“That puir Mrs. MacLeod,” Nancy said,
“putting up such a brave front, coming down for breakfast and then
not eating more than a bittie toast, and here’s me making her up a
nice plate of bacon and sausages and sitting down to keep her
company.”

Jean’s gaze glanced off Alasdair’s. No
surprise Tina might find sausage, bacon, and small talk a little
hard to stomach. Although, once again, Nancy meant well.

“Fancy,” Nancy went on, “paying guests and
now the polis at Dunasheen, poking and prying. I’m afeart it canna
be helped.”

“The old laird, Fergus’s uncle, he’s likely
birling in his grave,” concluded Rab.

At least Jean and Alasdair weren’t paying
guests themselves, although their raison d’etre was to create more
of the same. “Where is the old laird’s grave?” she asked.

“In the graveyard at Kinlochroy.” Nancy
stacked plates so briskly they pealed like bells.

“No one’s buried at St. Columcille’s? The
new—newish—chapel?”

“Not a bit of it, no.” Rab seized coffee and
tea pots. “Not a proper church, is it now? Never consecrated, not
after the murder and all, though it’s registered for weddings, no
worries there.”

Jean and Alasdair had chosen the chapel and
an Episcopal priest for a religious ceremony not only to reflect
their own family traditions, but because a civil wedding lacked any
resonance of the history, mystery, and myth that had drawn them
together to begin with . . . “What murder?” she asked, just as
Alasdair asked, “What murder?”

Rab answered with a scowl. “That was a right
scandal, the laird ordering all the pernickety, papish, carved bits
for his church, and the apprentice stone mason outdoing his master,
and the master that jealous he stitched him up for the murder of
the laird’s wife, or so it’s said.”

“There’s a similar legend associated with
Rosslyn Chapel in the Borders,” Jean replied. “Was she murdered in
the chapel?”

“No, no, they found her here at the house, on
the staircase, strangled by a strong pair of hands, like those of a
stonemason.”

“Or those of someone with a right good
temper.” Alasdair cocked an eyebrow at Jean, daring her to guess
just which staircase had seen the dreadful deed.

“That story’s not half fancies and lies,”
Nancy stated, and headed for the pantry. “Off we go, Rab. It’s the
last day of the year and the house is wanting a thorough
clean.”

Making a face at her back, Rab followed. The
door swayed back and forth and stopped.

“Oh boy.” Jean met the flare in Alasdair’s
eye with a flash of her own. “The chapel is Gothic Revival, meant
to evoke a medieval Catholic church, what the good Presbyterians of
Skye would call ‘papish.’ It had to have been built in the early
1800s. The Green Lady’s wearing clothes from the early 1800s. Greg
said his ancestor Tormod was transported in 1822.”

“You’re thinking Seonaid MacDonald, the Green
Lady, was murdered? And that Tormod was the apprentice? But if it’s
known he was framed . . .” He pushed back from the table. “No need
to go manufacturing a case from whole cloth. We’ve already got one.
Let’s have ourselves a visit to the incident room.”

He led the way down the back hall, past the
new kitchen with its contemporary stainless steel, to the old with
its soot-stained stone vault. Jean kept herself from ducking—the
ceiling wasn’t that low—as she stepped down a short staircase onto
linoleum that a century or so ago had been stylish and trendy.

Two electric bulbs dangled like spiders from
the ribs of the vault, emitting a tentative glow. No surprise a
couple of police people were setting up not only tables, chairs,
and computers, but also lamps. An electric kettle stood amid a
collection of mugs and tea bags beside a stone sink big enough for
Dakota Krum to bathe in. On the far side of the room, looking very
small and lost, Fergie inspected a bulletin board set in the maw of
a vast fireplace. Alasdair made a deliberate right-face away from
Fergie, picking his way over cables and cords toward two windows
like super-sized arrow slits.

Below them, Gilnockie and his sergeant,
Lesley Young, sat across from Tina MacLeod. They’d obviously tried
to make her as comfortable as possible, with a cushion on her
folding chair and a cup and saucer on the plastic tabletop before
her. Still, she sat in a nervous huddle, limbs knotted, curls
springing in all direction, leopard-skin coat draped over her
swaying shoulders like a gutted pelt hung out to dry. “. . . no
threats,” she was saying, her voice featureless as the Nullarbor
Plain. “No problems at all. He had the museum, meetings with
planning commissions, receptions, golf holidays—loads of exciting
things. Even the genealogy was exciting to him. He was a happy
man.”

Gilnockie acknowledged Alasdair’s presence
with a grave nod, then leaned back in his chair, at ease. An old
briar pipe would have completed his image, except Gilnockie’s lips
were too thin, too ascetic, to grasp something so self-indulgent.
“You arrived here at a quarter past three. Then what?”

Tina didn’t seem to notice the newcomers.
“Greg took himself off to the church.”

“Was he meeting someone there?”

“Not so he told me, no.”

“Did he seem to be in a rush, as though he
had an appointment?”

“He was driving too fast for those roads.
They’re no more than bitumen laid over sheep paths. But then, he’s,
he always drove too fast. Ken used to say—Ken, he . . .” Tina
stopped, and pressed her pale, almost gray, lips so tightly
together her chin looked like a prune.

After a moment, Gilnockie asked, “What did
Ken say?”

After another moment, Tina replied, “No
matter, not anymore.”

Young’s limp dishwater-brown hair was scooped
carelessly back, ends straggling beside her lean, keen face with
its pointed chin. Her hand and arm close to the torso of her
button-down blouse and jacket, as though defending herself, she
held up Greg’s cell phone. It was one of those so sophisticated it
probably brushed teeth. “You took the phone from Greg’s pocket
whilst he was lying dead on the beach.”

“I don’t remember picking it up, but there it
was in my pocket.”

“Bits of the phone’s memory have been
erased,” said Young. “There’s no record of activity before the
three calls made late last night to Australian numbers.”

“It’s Greg’s phone. He could take photos and
text and the lot. All I can do is make calls.”

“There are no texts here,” Young pointed out,
“Only photos of your relations.”

“Who did you phone last night, Mrs. MacLeod?”
Alasdair asked.

Young sent a sharp, almost hostile glance up
at him. Gilnockie said nothing, his calm gaze remaining on Tina’s
face.

Her red, swollen eyes, embedded in dark
pouches large enough for koala embryos, looked up at Alasdair, then
back at Gilnockie. “I phoned the family in Townsville. A friend in
Sydney. And Kenneth, Greg’s brother. I had to tell him myself. I
couldn’t let him read it in the papers.” Tina picked up her cup,
stared at it, then let it crash down to the tabletop. Her face
twisted. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Thank you, Mrs. MacLeod. Lesley, escort her
back upstairs, please.” Gilnockie stood up, leaving Young to grasp
Tina’s shoulders and maneuver her to the door as though she was
loading furniture on a truck. As soon as she was out of earshot he
added, “Poor woman. Dreadful state she’s in.”

Alasdair’s eyebrows tightened, creating the
vertical cogitational crease that Jean knew only too well. But he
offered no opinions about Tina, Young, or Gilnockie himself, who
gestured toward the bulletin board where Fergie still stood. “We’ve
downloaded the photos from your camera and printed them out. The
others are coming in. There’s nothing from forensics just yet. Mrs.
Finlay’s saying she doesn’t have enough hands to be dusting the
weapons in the front hall every few moments, and she’s got no idea
when the dirk disappeared, and not to trouble her when she has
cleaning and cooking to see to. Rab was saying the same thing, if
more, ah, assertively.”

Jean could hear them, muttering about the
good old days when assisting the police in their inquiries wasn’t
part of their job description. “What did Diana say?”

“We haven’t interviewed Diana yet. She’s
running errands.”

“But you’re thinking the dirk’s the murder
weapon?” asked Alasdair.

“That’s my theory just now. The postmortem
shows that Greg was stabbed twice by a blade eighteen inches long,
a right-handed person striking from below. He died instantly.”
Pulling a pen from his pocket, Gilnockie mimed two thrusts into
Alasdair’s chest.

“None of this clumsy overhand business like
you see in the cinema, then,” said Alasdair. “That’s flashy, but
not as quick or as effective.”

Visualizing the famous shower scene in
Psycho, Jean nodded. “So the killer was very efficient. Someone
who’d had military training, maybe?”

“I beg your pardon?” Gilnockie turned a
puzzled glance toward her.

But Alasdair had learned to follow—not her
train, her carnival ride—of thought. With something between a
grimace and he grin, both quickly suppressed, he produced from his
own pocket the small white square of a business card. “Jean found
this bittie paper in a raincoat hanging by the back door. It looks
to be someone was making an appointment for the time and near the
place of the murder. The ‘CU’ might be a chap named Colin Urquhart,
who supposedly’s an ex-soldier.”

Fergie was turning away from the bulletin
board, too far away to hear Alasdair’s “supposedly,” which was
ordinary police-speak but which did cast doubt on Fergie’s
information. Jean moved to intercept him, hoping to keep him too
far away to hear Diana’s name. “Good morning.”

“Good morning, Jean. Lovely day, isn’t it? I
told you we’d be seeing the sun yet.” His amiable smile lit only
the bottom half of his face. His eyes still reflected the photos,
the harsh, cold light of camera flashes illuminating a harsh, cold
scene.

“Yes, you did. Beautiful day. Have the Krums
gone out already?”