The Blue Hackle (25 page)

Instead of asking, “Who’s in charge here,
anyway?” Gilnockie said, “Aye,” and started for the door.

Jean realized she was still holding the cold,
wet cube of rutabaga. Setting it down on the table brought her
within range of the row of cookbooks beside the television. No,
none of them were by the cooking-school maven they’d encountered in
August. No omens there.

Alasdair held the door for her, his
expression, if not icy, not warm either, but carefully neutral.

They followed Gilnockie down the corridor and
around the corner. Diana peeled off the procession when they passed
Thomson and Colin. The clan print hanging between them was,
appropriately, “MacLeod,” a tartan-clad figure encircled by sprigs
of juniper and a scattering of dark berries.
Juniper,
Jean
thought. She’d just heard that, and not in reference to gin and
tonic . . .

Colin lurched into Gilnockie’s face. “Leave
her. She’s done nothing wrong.”

Gilnockie acknowledged him with a polite nod,
but he didn’t break pace.

Diana set her hand on Colin’s arm and said
something in his ear. His eye expanded and then shut and pain
washed over his face. “If only you’d told me—” he began, before she
shushed him.

Did he mean,
If only we’d synchronized our
stories, we’d not have contradicted each other about your being at
the lighthouse?
And yet, if either Colin or Diana was the
killer, surely he or she would have made a point of synchronizing
stories.

Judging by the Alasdair-like crevice between
Thomson’s black eyebrows, he was thinking the same thing.

In Fergie’s study, Pritchard was seated at
the computer, a spreadsheet displayed on the screen before him. He
spun around when Gilnockie and Alasdair walked in, Jean forming a
hypotenuse at their backs. “What’s this?”

Alasdair batted a glance over his shoulder
and Jean returned it. Yes, it could have been Pritchard who’d
looked up Greg MacLeod on the Internet.

Gilnockie was tracking a different trail.
Without speaking, he presented Pritchard with the evidence-bagged
business card, first the front, then the back.

Pritchard’s shoe-button eyes hardened and his
narrow moustache writhed. “What of it?”

“It was found in the pocket of your
raincoat,” Gilnockie told him, fudging for effect.

“Oh, I very much doubt that.”

“Are you accusing me of framing you, Mr.
Pritchard?”

Pritchard’s lipless mouth opened and shut,
emitting something between a snort and a hiss. He snapped back
around to the computer. “If you’ll excuse me, I have work to
do.”

Alasdair seized a paper lying next to the
keyboard. “You wrote this, did you?” Craning her neck, Jean saw a
list of expenses—food, cleaning supplies, repairs—written in
smooth, small handwriting, the occasional lower loop protruding
like a mocking tongue.

“Yes,” said Pritchard.

In other words, that wasn’t his writing on
the card, either. But didn’t its presence in his pocket indicate
that he’d had an appointment at the church? With Greg? What would
the call record on his phone reveal—one to or from Greg at just
about three p.m.? Just because he said he’d been in Portree didn’t
mean he actually was.

“Mr. Pritchard. Were you after doing business
with Greg MacLeod behind your employer’s back?” Anyone else’s
voice, even Alasdair’s, would hold a subtle menace. If Gilnockie’s
held anything, it was disappointment at the human condition. “Have
you done business with Mr. Krum behind your employer’s back?”

Pritchard’s hand tightened on the mouse.
“You’ve got no evidence to back up either charge.”

“That’s our job, looking out evidence. In the
meantime, I’m wondering if you intended switching your raincoat for
Miss MacDonald’s. Seems a simple-minded way of stitching someone
up, though, either her or Mr. Urquhart.”

“What the hell are you going on about?”
Pritchard spun the desk chair around, using its momentum to propel
him to his feet. The scent of after-shave or cologne, one hinting
at damp sweat socks and musk-ox breath, surged from his wool jacket
and then dissipated.

Colin shouldered into the room. “You bastard.
You’ve been watching Diana. You’ve been making suggestive remarks.
Planning on having yourself a posh wife, were you? And an estate to
plunder as well? But she’s too clever by half for the likes of
you.”

Jean took a giant step into the corner as
Thomson dragged Colin back to the door and handed him over to
Diana. The chatelaine of Dunasheen was actually starting to look
frazzled—one golden lock of hair escaped its ribbon and dangled
beside her no longer ivory-pale but pastry-pasty cheek.

“Is that true, Miss MacDonald?” Gilnockie
asked. “Has Mr. Pritchard been paying you unwelcome
attentions?”

“It depends on your definition of
‘attentions.’ He’s always polite.” But an edged undertone in
Diana’s voice belied her words—
as well it should
, Jean
thought, remembering Pritchard’s snigger—even as a flash of steel
in her eyes asked Gilnockie to back off. Then she herself backed
off, murmuring to Colin, “They’re sorting it. Leave it,
please.”

He shuddered as though every muscle in his
body clenched and then, as though to his direct, conscious command,
loosened.

And here came Young, carrying a yellow
raincoat over her arm. Without any such niceties as “pardon me,”
she elbowed past Colin and Diana and handed Gilnockie the coat.
Everyone leaned forward as he held it up. Inside the lining of the
collar was sewn a neat label: “Diana MacDonald.”

Gilnockie turned out the pockets, finding
nothing but a few dried shreds of vegetation, a flower picked in
the summer, perhaps, and a lump of tissue stained with pink
lipstick. Then he lifted the lining of the coat to his face and
inhaled. “The fabric’s smelling of your perfume, Miss
MacDonald.”

Diana’s smile was narrow as a needle. “It’s
my coat, then, isn’t it? But we’ve come back round to the
start—I’ve never before seen that note.”

Jean said, “That’s the coat I borrowed last
night, the one with the card in the pocket. I guess that’s the one
that was hanging wet on the hook by the back door when Alasdair and
I heard Tina screaming from the beach.”

“No way of knowing otherwise, not now,” said
Alasdair.

Gilnockie handed Diana her coat, retrieved
the business card in its bag, and took Pritchard’s elbow.
“Sergeant, let’s be getting Mr. Pritchard here back to the incident
room.”

“Hang on,” protested Pritchard. “We’ve just
established . . .”

“. . . who owns the raincoat is all. Now I’m
after discussing your dealings with Mr. Krum and Mr. MacLeod.”

Pritchard shot a venomous glance toward
Diana. “So that’s it. If you can’t put me in the frame one way,
you’ll find another.” And, his glare shifting toward Gilnockie,
“I’ve told you, I was in Portree when MacLeod was killed. I never
met the man. And I had no dealings with Krum that Fergus wasn’t a
party to.”

“We’ll be seeing about that.” Young took
Pritchard’s other elbow and steered him down the corridor, snapping
as she passed, “You, Urquhart, don’t be leaving the place, eh?”

Colin half-smiled at that, probably having no
intention of abandoning Diana to be bothered and beset at
Dunasheen. Together they retreated, Thomson behind them like a
sheep dog poised to direct any strays. Diana could no longer
pretend to the local constable that there was nothing between her
and Colin, but the moment of truth with Fergie was yet to come.

In the suddenly quiet room, the hum of the
computer sounded like a hornet’s nest. Alasdair saved and closed
out Pritchard’s program, then looked slowly around the room.
Fergie’s room.

Jean’s brain felt like a pillow squashed flat
in a sleepless night. Sighing, she looked up at the chubby orange
face of Ganesh, who was supposed to avert bad luck—although what
was going on here wasn’t luck at all, but human choices. She
suggested, without much conviction, “Maybe the card’s been in
Diana’s pocket for a month and has nothing to do with the
murder.”

“It would be a bit more ragged, then. This
one’s only stained with damp.” Alasdair leaned over the desk, eyed
the Excalibur letter opener, and delicately, as though sifting
through eggshells, moved the papers around. Picking one up, he
stared at it, handed it to Jean, and turned to face the window.

On a notepaper headed
From Fergus’s
desk
was written a recipe for steak pie. Dripping or butter.
Stewing beef, diced. Onion. Puff pastry. Heat the dripping, toss
the meat in seasoned flour, and brown all over . . . a tiny bolt of
lightning shot through her, making her hand clench on the paper.
The letters were as jagged as a stock market summary, similar to
those on the back of the card. Similar, but not identical—they were
not pressed as heavily into the paper, and they slanted more
strongly to the right. “Is this Fergie’s handwriting?” Jean asked
Alasdair.

“Writing changes,” he said to the sky above
the shadowed kitchen yard. “I’ve not had anything but e-mails from
him for donkey’s years.”

“It’s a recipe. It could be Diana’s or
Nancy’s.” She put the paper back on the desk and scanned the
others, but saw nothing else handwritten, just several signatures
at the bottom of letters and printed application forms. Fergie’s
Dunasheen
resembled a squashed thistle, a bit spiky, yes, as
though his rounded body and low-key personality had to break out
somewhere. Still . . . her mini lightning bolt fizzled into ashes.
“He couldn’t have killed Greg.”

“I know!” Alasdair’s expression split the
difference between irritated and frustrated.

Yeah, frustration and irritation were going
around, like a rash. “Even if Fergie wrote the note on the card, it
doesn’t mean—”

“He’s telling Patrick he’s never before seen
that card.”

“Oh. Well, then, maybe Greg himself wrote it.
Tina must have . . .”

“. . . a sample of his handwriting.”

Of course Alasdair would have the same idea.
They needed to convince Tina to trust them with the full story,
whatever the full story was. “Although,” Jean said, “even if Greg
did write the note, who did he send it ahead to? It didn’t crawl
into Diana’s pocket by itself.”

“Just now,” said Alasdair, “I’d credit
Fergie’s fairies and Greg’s ancestral spirits with the entire
plot.”

Jean shot Seonaid an accusatory look.
Who
walked into you at the garden gate last night?
Seonaid looked
back—or beyond, as the case might be—offering no more helping
hands. “We’re not getting any testimony from her short of a séance,
and maybe not even then.”

“Please do not give Fergie any such idea.”
Alasdair turned toward the door just as regular footsteps heralded
the arrival of P.C. Thomson.

“Colin’s helping Diana in the kitchen,” he
reported. “He’ll do for now. Inspector Gilnockie’s setting me to
asking round the village, seeing who was out and about yesterday
afternoon. Other than me, that is.”

Alasdair nodded. “If you’ll hang on a tick,
we’ll come along and ask a few questions as well. The daylight’s
getting away, and,” he added to Jean, “Tina’s not.”

Getting away. What a concept
. “Great
idea. Let’s get our coats.”

Leaving Thomson waiting in the front porch,
they jog-trotted up the stairs, pausing very briefly at the
tripping stane and the tremor of Seonaid’s incorporeal being.

While Alasdair unlocked the door of the
Charlie suite, Jean took a second look at Seonaid’s tapestry. The
colors were faded and the human shapes, folk-arty primitive, were
rather lost amid exuberant trees, tumultuous waves, and fanciful
ruins . . . no. Those ruins weren’t fanciful at all, but were those
of old Dunasheen, rendered by the authoritative hand of someone who
knew them well. Was that a tiny figure plummeting from the tower?
The thread was a bit frayed.

Unfrayed, in the foreground, stood Fionn, the
once-mighty Irish warrior with his battered armor and gray beard,
and Grainne, his much younger betrothed, with flowing red hair, and
Diarmuid, Fionn’s follower, tall, muscular, and suitably
noble-browed. She was offering Diarmuid a cup of love potion,
magicking him into eloping with her.

Interesting, how Seonaid had chosen to
illustrate that particular moment of the legend, not Grainne and
Diarmuid’s subsequent adventures or his death at Fionn’s hands.
Interesting that she’d chosen that legend at all. Had she seen
herself as Grainne—or as Isolde, in a related story—living a tale
of high romance, of a passion so strong it swept all before it and
therefore justified everything from ambiguity to outright sin? But
Grainne had survived to tell her tale. Seonaid had not. Neither had
Rory, for that matter.

Jean ran her fingertips down the decorative
border of the tapestry, feeling the soft nubble of stitches and
stirring up several dust motes. She’d have to ask Rebecca to lay
her hands on it, see if she sensed any lingering emotion, be it joy
or melancholy or . . . what did teenage Seonaid feel as she
stitched the tapestry? Destiny unfurling and tragedy looming? Or
had she merely been caught by the high romance of the era—ruined
castles, brooding hillsides, strong emotion—oblivious to playing
with forces beyond her control?

Diana knew what she’d taken on with Colin.
She was stitching together a human being, not a myth whose knots
had been loosened by time and repetition.

The tapestry rippled and one end flapped in
the draft escaping the open door of the Charlie suite. “Well then,”
Alasdair called, “your moggie’s made—”

A woman’s cry of terror sliced the stillness
like the sudden slash of a razor blade, sharp and short. A heavy
thud seemed to come from everywhere at once, their own room, the
turnpike stair, the vacant, secret corners of the house.