The Blue Hackle (34 page)

“Never underestimate the power of a legend,”
Jean told Alasdair rather than Fergie.

Fergie was off again. “Although the shape of
the Flagon’s handles is suggestive, isn’t it? Like wings. In
Egyptian iconography, wings are protective and feathers mean truth.
The feathered serpent is a major part of Mayan iconography. We talk
about the winged flight of the soul. It was once customary to carve
winged skulls on tombstones.”

“Oh aye,” said Alasdair beneath his breath.
“So it was.”

“Wings, angels, flight, heaven is up, hell is
down. Sacred stones fall from the sky. Early figures like Krishna,
Buddha, Jesus worked miracles and beat death itself. All together,
there’s only one logical conclusion. It’s staring us in the
face.”

Not Alasdair’s face, revealed as another work
of stone when he lowered his hand and looked in appeal at Jean. She
looked from the manger scene on the mantel to the dark lump of the
Coffer to the pale, elegant Flagon, which seemed to glow against
the dark backdrop of the bookcases.

Bookcases holding books about alien
astronauts.

“You’re remembering the old science fiction
writer.” Jean paused to clear her throat. “The writer who said that
any sufficiently advanced technology would seem like magic to those
less technologically advanced. Except you’re not thinking magic.
You’re thinking miracle.”

Fergie applauded. “Yes! Well done, Jean! I
must say, Alasdair, you’ve chosen yourself a very clever lady
here.”

Especially when you took into account
Alasdair’s first wife’s own capacity for bafflegab —a calculation
that, judging by Alasdair’s slightly crossed eyes, he was making.
He opened his mouth, shook his head, closed it again, and waved his
hand toward Jean.
It’s all yours
.

No, it was all Fergie’s. “When you look at
the stars,” he said, “at the vast array of the heavens, how can we
be the only sentient creatures in existence? What if other cultures
had head starts on ours, and explored Earth millennia ago, helping
our own ancestors down from the trees and up into civilization?
Fairies are racial memories of the inferior beings our ancestors
once were, of the beings we can still be, whilst our deities are
superior beings who came to us from the sky. There’s evidence all
over the world. Look at the Maya tomb clearly depicting Lord Pacal
as an astronaut, for example. Look at the faces on the Easter
Island statues.”

Well sure, look at the way an inkblot clearly
depicted your mother-in-law. Jean tried to pull Fergie back to an
object more solid than ink. Or moonshine. “Greg MacLeod may never
have actually seen the Coffer, but you must have sent him
photos.”

“Oh yes, I did, to whet his interest. He
offered to pay out of his own pocket to have it tested, inside and
out. We have the residue of the ages in the tracks of the
inscriptions. We have blood, ashes, scraps of cloth adhering to the
interior walls. A shame the lid’s gone missing, but then, you have
the symbol of the empty tomb, don’t you? Carbon-dating, DNA
tests—they can do amazing things with tiny bits of DNA.”

“Like on the
C.S.I.
shows?”

“Well yes, I expect so, but I was thinking of
medical equipment—Emma, mind you . . .” Fergie slumped, the light
fading from his eyes, then pulled himself up again. “Finding DNA of
Jesus Christ would set the world on its ear. Sequencing the DNA,
proving it to be that of an alien—oh my. What a glorious moment in
human history that would be. Proof, absolute proof.”

“Of alien astronauts?”

“Yes, yes, of course. But also of life beyond
this earth, beyond this reality. It would prove the truth of all
the world religions in one
coup de foudre
.” Pressing his
lips together, perhaps to still their trembling, Fergie turned to
lean his forearm on the mantelpiece and his forehead on his
arm.

It wasn’t done to show strong emotion, was
it?
Jean wondered vaguely if Fergie was on some kind of
medication—although it seemed unfair to attribute such a formidable
flight of imagination to an array of chemicals, or to try and
ground it with another array.

Coup de foudre
. A lightning bolt from
the blue. Like love at first sight, not something that had happened
with her and Alasdair. Whether it had happened to Fergie and Emma
didn’t matter, not now.

Alasdair gazed bleakly at the silver buttons
on the tails of Fergie’s formal jacket. It wasn’t done, either, to
put your arm around an old friend suffering from lost love.

Through the heavy panels of the door came the
rumble of the drinks trolley.

Chapter Twenty-two

Diana made her entrance to The Chieftains’
“The Mason’s Apron.” But blaming the convolutions of western
history on the Freemasons, Jean thought, was about the only
variation on a theme—on a vastly overused and overrated theme—that
Fergie hadn’t played. Yet.

Diana looked from face to face to the back of
Fergie’s head. Her features, now lightly touched with cosmetics,
set themselves sternly. “Father, Mr. Pritchard would like to see
you in your office.”

“Oh. Well then.” Fergie straightened. When he
turned back around he was smiling bravely, although the glitter in
his eyes was now less gloat than grief. With an admiring glance at
the Coffer and the Flagon and an affectionate pat on Diana’s
shoulder, he walked away down the hall.

Alasdair rested his elbows on his thighs and
contemplated his clasped hands against the tartan apron of his
kilt. Jean closed her notepad and tucked it back into her bag. Even
though her stomach had sunk into her knees beneath the weight of
Fergie’s castle in the air, she managed to get to her feet and stay
on them. “Beautiful dress,” she told Diana. “Is it the one in your
mother’s portrait?”

Diana smoothed the dark green velvet panels
of her skirt, her throat and head rising from the satin shawl
collar like the classical bust of a goddess. “Yes, it was her
favorite. If we’d buried her, we’d have buried her in it, I
suppose—I do beg your pardon, that was a morbid remark.”

Alasdair’s gaze shot upward from beneath his
eyebrows.

Good lord, Fergie had Emma cryogenically
frozen, waiting for the aliens and their miracles to come back
.
Jean asked, half-strangled, “Your mother wasn’t buried?”

“She was cremated,” Diana said. “We scattered
her ashes amongst the daffodils here at Dunasheen.”

Alasdair closed his eyes. Swept with relief
and embarrassment, Jean began, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to
pry.”

“Not to worry.” Diana’s stern face softened
into sadness. “I know what Father’s been telling you. He’s gone
round the bend. Mother’s death, and the pressures of running the
estate, and, well, I tried to spare his feelings by hiding my
relationship with Colin. Hindsight being what it is, we realize
we’ve made a mistake when it’s too late to mend the damage it’s
caused. Was it you asked for wassail? Would you prefer whisky or
something else?”

Jean detected a request to change the
subject. “The Krums were asking for wassail. But I’ll take some,
too, thank you.”

“I’ll have the whisky, cheers.” Alasdair
almost concealed his groan as he stood up.

Diana wielded cup and ladle, glass and
bottle. “There you are.”

“Thank you. Can I help in the kitchen?” Jean
asked.

Turning up her lips in a smile, Diana stepped
over the fireplace and grasped the poker. “Thank you, no. Since
Inspector Gilnockie asked Colin to stop here tonight, he’s set
himself to work preparing food for the police officers in the
incident, erm, old kitchen. I dare not send anyone else into the
new kitchen, Rab’s muttering in his beard about folk underfoot and
Nancy’s threatening to wallop him with her spoon. Rab, that is,
though I expect Colin’s on her hit list as well.” She jabbed at the
fire. Sparks flew. Flames leaped.

Alasdair tossed back a swig of his whisky,
the water of life. Jean could trace its path through his mouth,
down into his stomach, up into his head, by his features once more
becoming pliable and the sheen of steel draining from his eyes.

She gulped thirstily at her punch. The sharp,
sweet spices cleared the acid from her mouth and eased her clenched
stomach. Another gulp, and she was surprised to see the cup empty.
Every object in the room slipped into higher resolution, even as
the floor executed an infinitesimal shimmy beneath her feet.
Whoa.

“Father and I are making contingency plans,”
Diana said to the images writhing in the fire, “in the event your
friends arrive Saturday but Inspector Gilnockie hasn’t released the
Krums or re-opened the Queen suite. We’d meant to put your Mr.
Munro in our single, the Robert the Bruce room, but Colin’s there
just now. He’s still a suspect. But as ex-police, Alasdair, you
know that.”

“Aye.” Alasdair’s tone was gentle, his
message not.

Diana spun around, her eyes a blue blaze.
“Colin couldn’t have killed Greg MacLeod. He’d never met the man.
He had no motive.”

Couldn’t have
, Jean thought, rather
than
didn’t?

“You were with him at the time of the murder,
then?” Alasdair asked.

“No I wasn’t, more’s the pity. I stopped in
at the lighthouse but he wasn’t there. Nor did I see him in the
gardens. You could hide a small army there, even in winter.”

Yeah.
Jean remembered her impression
that someone was following first her and Dakota, then her and
Alasdair. She’d assumed it was Pritchard, but she’d been wrong many
times before.

“Colin wouldn’t hide from me,” Diana
concluded.

Not unless he was up to no good
, said
Alasdair’s frown. He finished off the whisky.

“Did you go by the old church?” Jean
enunciated with her slightly benumbed tongue. “Did you see anyone
there?”

“No. I walked through the far end of the
garden. In the murk, I could barely see the church. Someone might
have been standing behind the walls.” Diana clanged the poker into
its stand. “I didn’t kill Greg. His purchase of the Coffer would
have made quite a difference to our, erm, to us. I don’t know where
we’ll find another dealer with, with less than . . .” She bit off
her sentence.

With less than a full deck of
scruples?
Yes, Greg knew exactly what he’d have bought.

“Well then. I believe Scott Krum deals in art
rather than antiquities, but you never know what might interest
him.” Diana’s shoes clicked briskly across the room.

Alasdair leaped forward to open the door, but
she was already through it and away. He shut it instead. The fire
popped. The Chieftains fell silent. Jean realized she was still
holding the cup, and put it down next to Fergie’s empty glass.

“Fergie’s gone daft,” said Alasdair.

“Well, it is the Daft Days, not that I think
he’ll snap out of it at the stroke of midnight.” Jean walked over
to the table holding the two antiquities, antiquity being
relative.

“I knew he enjoyed reading about alien
astronauts and the like,” Alasdair went on. “I did not know he’d
launched himself into outer space. You’re always reading that sort
of rubbish, you’re writing about it, but you’re knowing what’s real
and what’s not. Most of the time, leastways.”

She could hear the wry half-smile in his
voice. “At least Fergie’s not wearing aluminum foil on his head to
keep the aliens from reading his mind.”

Glass rang, probably as Alasdair returned his
tumbler to the trolley. His solid shape stepped up beside her. “You
cannot write about this. He wants you to, I know that, but . .
.”

“I’ll figure out some way of presenting it in
the context of, ‘Hey, travelers, Dunasheen is a great place to
visit.’ God knows I’ve wanted to make fun of some of these people,
but this is your Fergie Beg. There’s publicity and there’s
publicity.” She touched the surface of the Flagon, so smoothly
polished it felt like cold butter. “I can’t help it, Alasdair. The
true believers, they get me at ‘what if.’”

His forefinger flicked the alabaster, which
replied with a sound between a chime and a thunk. “That’s the
problem. Fergie’s not saying ‘if’ nearly often enough. Here’s the
poor sod thinking that selling the Coffer’s the answer to their
financial prayers. But there’s no saying what hopes I’d be clinging
to, if I’d lost—you.” He folded her in his arm and pulled her
close.

She slipped her arm around his waist,
reveling in the living flesh beneath his coat. “Poor sod, yes. He’s
grasping at every possible straw. Well, almost. For a minute there
I expected him to segue into the old wheeze about the plots of the
Freemasons, especially since there really is a stone mason involved
with all this.”

“Tormod MacLeod, aye, and his descendant
going into the trade in holy relics. You were thinking earlier
about Greg selling the Pilate inscription, were you?”

“Yep.” Jean peered critically into the dank,
scrubby interior of the Coffer. “God only knows what was in here.
They find so many ossuaries in the Holy Land that people use them
as flower pots.”

This time Alasdair’s finger-flick produced a
dull clunk. “I’m no geologist, but that’s looking to be basalt,
same as the inscription, eh?”

“I’m under the impression that the most
common stone in the Holy Land, that every provenanced ossuary, is
limestone. You’re thinking what I’m thinking, aren’t you? The
Flagon really did come from Egypt at some time or another, but the
Coffer didn’t come from anywhere. It was made here, from local
stone. Just like Greg’s Pilate inscription.”

“One test, and Fergie’s house of cards will
come tumbling down.” Alasdair glanced at the painting over the
mantle, Calanais beneath not a rising moon but a landing
spaceship.

“People used to see angels. Now they see
UFOs. Seeing is believing, and believing is seeing. Never
underestimate either the will to believe or the will to exploit
belief.”