The Blue Hackle (22 page)

“Everything’s tidy inside, save for this. An
empty bag of crisps.” Alasdair held up a gaudy plastic bag. “The
lock on this door was picked, not expertly, but effectively. I’ll
be having a word with Fergie about installing ones a bit more
complex. And perhaps adding an alarm system, but then, there’s no
electricity here, he was blethering on about lamps and candles and
the like yesterday.”

“So someone breaks into the church, eats a
snack, and then leaves again, closing the door. Fergie said he
found Colin Urquhart here once, but . . .”

“But.” The smile ebbed from Alasdair’s face.
“Time we were getting ourselves back to the house and having words
with more than the laird.”

Lunch passed in silence except for the
occasional slurp and crunch. Dakota kept darting wary glances from
Scott to Heather and back again. Each of them ate with head down,
the better to ignore the other—and to ignore Jean and Alasdair and
the inconvenient murder case—and peeled away in opposite directions
the moment the last of the fruit salad with heavy cream had
disappeared.

With a backward look at Jean she interpreted
as
don’t worry, our secret is safe
, Dakota, too, made her
escape—only to be stopped in the hall by Sergeant Young, whose
astringent voice ordered the entire family into the incident room.
As Heather’s equally astringent protestations faded into the
distance, Jean said, “Gilnockie’s not planning to interview all
three of them at the same time, is he?”

Alasdair arranged his napkin into a linen
pyramid. “I told him everything you told me is all. What he’s doing
with it is his own affair.”

Yeah, right
. Jean noted the tension at
the corners of Mr. Truth, Justice, and the British Way’s mouth and
in the creases beside his eyes. She knew how he felt. So much for
the positive effects of fresh air and exercise, not to mention that
bolt of joy from, paradoxically, a ghost. It was the other ghost of
Dunasheen, Rory MacLeod, who captured the mood of the place. You
could scream on the way down, but it wouldn’t soften your
landing.

Fergie looked either at Diana at the other
end of the table, or at the portrait of her mother just beyond. His
expression wobbled into that of a child who’d anticipated a special
holiday toy—or guests delighted with holiday festivities—but
instead received a set of underwear, and dirty underwear at that.
Then his chins firmed and his upper lip stiffened. “What difference
does it make if they’re interviewed together?”

Before Alasdair could answer, Diana said,
“Separately, the interviewer can catch out any discrepancies in
testimony. However, I expect it usually isn’t done to interview a
child without the parents present.”

Not by Gilnockie, anyway. Jean didn’t look at
Alasdair, in case her look reminded him of an incident last
August.

Diana asked, “Coffee, Jean? Alasdair?
Father?”

“No thank you,” all three said in unison.

She scooted back from the table and stood up.
Something moved in the depths of her eyes, blue as her ancestor
Seonaid’s—amusement, perhaps. Or perhaps no more than an
intelligent assessment of the situation. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m
booked for an interview myself. Alone.”

Not in tandem with Colin, Jean finished for
her. During his brief encounter with Gilnockie and Young before
lunch, Colin had offered nothing more than the equivalent of name,
rank, and serial number. Now he was on hold in the staff sitting
room, Thomson in attendance, awaiting not Alasdair’s pleasure but
his reluctant duty. “We’ll have another interview after your meal,”
Gilnockie had told Alasdair equably. “No need to go interrupting
your holiday.”

Alasdair had replied to that with body
language Jean hoped Gilnockie didn’t speak, but fully deserved, and
in great-stone-face mode had repaired to the dining room.

“Alasdair, Jean,” Fergie said, “if you’ll
meet me in the library at six, before we begin our New Year’s Eve
festivities, I’ll finally be able to show you the Fairy Flagon and
another artifact I think you’ll find quite interesting.”

Alasdair’s smile and nod were stiff but
gracious. He said, “Speaking of your collections, Fergie, Jean
overheard Scott Krum speaking to Pritchard about how he’d visited
here in September, when you and Diana weren’t home.”

“Ah. Well.” Blushing, Fergie looked down at
his empty plate. “That’s the, I mean, Emma’s family’s had dealings
with the London branch of Scott’s auction house, and he was touring
about the U.K. appraising old family mathoms, so he asked if he
could stop by.”

No surprise Fergie used the same word
Alasdair had,
mathom
, Tolkien’s designation for souvenirs,
gifts, the objects one generation loved that the next loathed—all
the things that accumulated like lint on laundry in the back
corners of any home, no matter how well maintained.

“Pritchard showed him round the place,”
Fergie went on, “and he offered on a few small items. Some day,
when we’ve made a complete inventory, we might find . . .”

“He did not offer on the regimental dirk
that’s gone missing,” said Alasdair, without hinting that it was
missing no longer.

“I’ve got no clue where that got off to, or
when. Scott never mentioned it. I suspect he’s brought his family
here on holiday looking out more items.”

“You think?” Jean asked. “He was checking
over that ivory-inlaid chest across from the door of the Charlie
suite. The one about the size of a laundry basket.”

“Was he now? The chest beside Seonaid’s
tapestry?” Fergie arranged several stray crumbs.

Alasdair repeated, “Seonaid’s tapestry?”

“Well, technically a tapestry is woven, and
this is petit-point,” Fergie said. “She was after providing
employment for the village girls, and stitchery was seen as
appropriate.”

“I’ll take a closer look.” Jean knew she
wasn’t the only one wondering if Scott’s interest extended beyond
the chest to the almost two-hundred-year-old needlework.

“I expect Scott wants that portrait of
Seonaid in my office. It’s a David Wilkie, you know, fairly
valuable, but I don’t want it to leave the family. Doesn’t she look
like Diana, though?”

“Yes, she does,” said Jean, with certainty
not based only on the portrait. The only works of David Wilkie she
knew off the top of her head were those depicting George IV,
Georgie-Porgie, in Edinburgh in 1822, a nightmare in tartan and
flesh-colored tights.

If Alasdair was seeing any nightmares at the
moment, they were ones of Fergie not being as on top of the
situation as he—either “he”—assumed. “Greg MacLeod was by way of
being an art dealer as well.”

“Oh, well,” Fergie told the plate, “yes, he
meant to do a bit of business whilst on holiday. He was interested
in the antiquity I’ll be showing you. I wonder if Scott heard about
that as well.”

The hall door opened and Rab stamped in as
though he was knocking snow from his boots, if he’d been wearing
boots instead of old athletic shoes. “I’ve fitted a bolt on the
vestry door. Folk breaking into the chapel and leaving rubbish . .
.” His voice trailed away into a mutter Jean translated as
this
never would have happened in the old laird’s day.

“Thank you, Rab,” Fergie said.

“Nancy’s carried a tray up to Mrs. MacLeod,”
Rab went on, “and she’s saying she’s feeling much better, thank
you, and she’ll be coming down for the dinner and cabaret.”

“Festivities,” Fergie corrected, if in a
murmur.

Rab turned to Alasdair. “The wee McCrummin
lass is asking if you’ll be wanting her to stand guard the night as
well.”

“That’s for Inspector Gilnockie to say,”
Alasdair answered.

“Ah well, you’ll be asking him, then.” His
beard leading, like a broom sweeping clean, Rab stomped on into the
pantry.

Alasdair’s hand landed on his napkin,
squashing it flat. “Aye. Speaking of the chapel, and Rab as well,
come to that—he was telling us that there’s no one buried there,
but Jean found a headstone beneath that huge tree.”

Jean added, “It says, ‘A stranger known but
to God.’”

“Oh, that.” Fergie leaned back in his chair
and folded his hands on his stomach. She expected him to begin,
“Once upon a time,” but what he said was, “The gardeners turned up
a human skeleton round and about 1885, some poor chap buried in a
shallow grave not so long before.”

“Any associated artifacts?” asked
Alasdair.

“Bits of cloth, the odd buckle and button, a
few coins, an old bonnet tucked up with sprigs of juniper, or so
the story goes. The minister in Kinlochroy was the traditional
sort, and wouldn’t have the bones in the churchyard, since he had
no way of knowing the man’s religious views. So my
great-grandfather, the laird, had them reburied where they were
found, installed a marker, and that was that.”

“A shame there was no one to do a forensics
workup,” said Jean, envisioning Seonaid’s ghost vanishing at the
grave.

“My great-grandfather had photos taken.
Brenda at the local Heritage Museum’s got them on file, if you’d
like to see them. And the buttons and all as well.”

“I’d like to see them, aye,” Alasdair
said.

“Because you don’t know what’s important,”
said Fergie with an
I get it!
smile.

Alasdair’s smile was much more wry. “You
never ken what’s important in a murder investigation, no. Although
I’m thinking the odds of your unknown body being important to
either today’s murder or the one in 1822 aren’t so good.”

“Rab gave us one version of what happened in
1822,” said Jean. “What’s the official one?”

“Tormod MacLeod was an apprentice stonemason
working on the chapel,” Fergie said. “His carvings were finer than
his master’s. The master schemed to get rid of him, putting it
about that he was having an illicit affair with the laird’s wife,
Seonaid.”

Alasdair asked, “Were they having an affair,
then?”

Fergie shrugged. “The laird believed they
were. He was twice her age, and had served with the Cameron
Highlanders against Napoleon and been badly injured at Waterloo.
Quite spoiled his looks. His disposition, they say, was never
good.”

The more things changed, Jean thought, the
more they stayed the same. But if Fergie drew any connection with
Colin Urquhart, he showed no sign of it.

The pantry door opened and Nancy shot into
the room. “You’re still sitting about, are you? You’ll not mind me
clearing away?” Without waiting for an answer, she started
collecting plates.

“But his first wife had died childless,”
Fergie went on, “and he needed an heir. So he married the local
beauty—a fisherman’s daughter, or so the story goes.”

“Not a love match, then. And I bet she
already knew Tormod.” Jean imagined young Seonaid dazzled by the
laird’s attentions, and her family urging her to better them all by
making such an advantageous match. “Sounds like a cautionary tale
for Jane Austen, about the dangers of letting your head rule your
heart.”

“If the story is true,” Fergie said, “then
Seonaid’s heart won out and she went on with young Tormod after her
son was born.”

Alasdair asked, “Who killed her, then? The
laird himself, out of jealousy?”

“Sounds like the plot of
Othello
, with
Othello strangling Desdemona because of Iago’s lies,” Jean said.
“Except I gather the master mason’s story wasn’t entirely a
lie.”

Two plates clashed together in Nancy’s hands,
making a sound not unlike that of the bell at the chapel. “Stories
get twisted round in the telling. Chinese whispers. That’s the way
of these things.”

“Undoubtedly so, but there’s a fair amount of
documentation,” Fergie told her. “Old Norman was named ‘the Red’
because of his temper—he had dark hair, before it went gray. I’m
never pleased at possibly having a murderer in the family tree,
mind you.”

“Didna fash Greg MacLeod, did it? Coming all
this way looking out such a story, imagine that! Though I reckon he
had other reasons for coming, poking and prying just like the
polis.” And Nancy popped back through the swinging door like a
cuckoo back into its clock.

“The poor soul hardly had time to poke and
pry,” said Fergie to the slow swing of the door. “And if my
ancestor murdered Seonaid, then Greg’s didn’t.”

Jean silently repeated Miranda’s mantra:
The staff sees all, knows all, and is likely to tell all unless
you make it worth their while not to.

Fergie shrugged. “Rab and Nancy have been
here so long I suspect they were born in the attics. When I was a
child her brother would show me all the little hidden places, until
he was obliged to find work elsewhere—haven’t seen him for donkey’s
years, he’s too successful for the likes of Kinlochroy now, sends
Nancy tidy sums. In any event, you can’t blame Rab and Nancy for
being a bit possessive.”

The kink in Alasdair’s right eyebrow attested
that yes, he could blame them. He said, “More people than the
Finlays work here, you were saying.”

“Yes, God knows there are cleaners,
gardeners, tradesmen of all descriptions. No stonemasons like
Tormod MacLeod. Though we’ve just thrown up another murderer,
more’s the pity. A genuine murderer, this time round.”

“I reckon Tormod was transported rather than
hanged,” said Alasdair, “because the local jury knew he wasn’t
guilty of murder.”

“Even as the laird insisted that he be
disappeared. Hustled off to an emigrant ship heading Down Under, in
other words, a pretty grim fate in those days, but hardly worse
than death.” Jean imagined the echo of Greg’s voice, like an
antipodean banshee. “If Seonaid died from following her heart, that
takes her story out of an Austen drawing room, into, oh, a Thomas
Hardy dungeon. You know, life’s a bitch and then you die.”