The Blue Hackle (35 page)

“Greg MacLeod scored a goal with the Pilate
inscription, so meant to . . .” Alasdair’s keen blue gaze skidded
back to Jean’s face. “Half a tick, now. Rebecca was saying that
testing the inscription showed dust and debris from the right
era.”

“And if the BHRS bought the Coffer from Greg
and actually tested it, they’d find the same. Probably exactly the
same. Soil samples from an archaeological dig aren’t all that hard
to come by, even in Australia, not if you’re a resourceful guy like
Greg.”

Alasdair’s brows lofted upward even as his
head canted to the side.

“When I talked to Michael yesterday, he said
Rebecca herself had just been involved in a case at Holyrood, a
collar supposedly belonging to Mary, Queen of Scots. The collar was
genuine sixteenth-century, fine, but someone very recently sewed
Mary’s monogram on it, scuffed the new stitches around to make them
look worn, and then smeared them with period dirt. But there were
traces of polyester on the actual thread.”

“Ah. Clever, that.”

“There’s been more than one case of genuine
Bible-era artifacts enhanced with inscriptions or whatever, to make
them more valuable. And forgers and fakers are learning how to
outsmart sophisticated scientific equipment.”

Alasdair nodded, sorting, processing,
filing.

Jean picked up her cup and Fergie’s glass and
headed back to the trolley, more in the interests of tidiness than
thirst. Her buzz might be evaporating, but still, more wassail now
and she’d be under the dining room table by the end of the evening
meal.

“You know,” she went on, with another look at
the manger scene, “by definition, faith is evidence of things
unseen. I don’t understand why so many people think it has to be
supported by ‘seen’ evidence. That makes faith into a house of
cards. A church of cards. You pull one out and the entire structure
is worthless. If your faith is that precarious, then why bother
with it at all?”

“Is that what Fergie’s on about? Proving the
supernatural underpinnings of religious faith and therefore proving
the after-life?”

“I’m not sure Fergie knows what he’s on
about. At least he’s not holding Emma here as a ghost—she’s not the
Green Lady, Seonaid is. I don’t know what Rory down at the old
castle is.”

“An old soul looking out a soft landing,”
said Alasdair.

Heavy footsteps approached and the door
opened, shoved by Fergie’s shoulder. He was carrying a tray piled
with bits of fruit and veg on toothpicks. He set it on the trolley
and stared at it, not exactly frowning, but his face so tight Jean
expected it to bow into a frown at any moment.

“Lionel Pritchard?” suggested Alasdair.

“Bloody cheek!” Fergie exclaimed. “He only
just handed in his resignation before I sacked him. I told him to
vacate his cottage straightaway—we can settle your guests there, if
necessary.”

“You fired him?” Jean asked.

“He said he’d been harassed by the police,
that Colin’s detracting from the tone of the place and is likely
the guilty party, and that Diana’s a hypocrite, hoity toity to a
fault but with a taste for the rough in Colin. Damn the man!”
Fergie didn’t specify which man. “Lionel feels he was perfectly
justified in—well, I can hardly credit his confession. The
neck!”

“Confession?” Jean and Alasdair said
simultaneously, and Alasdair added, sidling toward the door, “He’s
confessed to killing Greg, has he? The Portree alibi’s a
setup?”

“Ah no, no. Sorry.” Fergie turned his red,
indignant face toward Alasdair. “He was right chuffed to tell me
he’d found that, that damned business card, the one Greg gave or
sent to someone—likely his killer, I realize that—Pritchard found
it in the parking area soon after returning from Portree, and—I ask
you! He realized the implications, yes, but did he take it to the
police? No, he put it in the pocket of Diana’s coat so she’d assume
Colin was the murderer, and turn against him. Then Pritchard
himself would move in for the kill. Not his words, mind you, but
mine.”

Jean didn’t point out that no matter what
Pritchard had done, Colin was still a suspect, or that everyone up
to and including the local sheep had walked through the parking
area potentially dropping business cards the afternoon of the
murder. A break in the case—or a hairline crack—was still a break.
She said, “Those initials weren’t Colin’s. They’re shorthand for
‘see you.’”

“So it seems. Now. And now we’re obliged to
do without a manager—economizing on his salary, that’s all to the
good . . .” Fergie sputtered out.

Alasdair fished the telephone from his
sporran and punched a couple of buttons. “Well then. Pritchard and
I are going to be having us a wee word about concealing police
evidence. Jean struck lucky finding the card, it might have been
days before Diana turned it up, if ever. Hello, Patrick, Alasdair
here . . .” Closer to spitting than sputtering, he vanished out the
door.

“Good man, Alasdair,” Fergie said stoutly.
“He’ll sort things.”

Jean nodded agreement, if more flabbily than
stoutly, but then, positive thinking never hurt.

Chimes ranging from deep-throated to tinny
resonated in the corners of the house as all the clocks struck
seven. American accents wafted up the hall—Heather’s snarky whine,
Scott’s edgy rumble, Dakota’s hesitant trill.

Here they came, dressed to the nines. Scott’s
dark suit was impeccably tailored and color-coordinated with his
shirt, just as his yellow power tie matched the handkerchief square
in his pocket. Heather’s dress was draped just so, clinging here,
flowing there. The fabric was printed with a retro groovy
psychedelic pattern, man—starbursts and daisy chains in shades of
purple. Dakota wore decorative flats, a pink dress, and a sweater
appliquéd with cats, if not the frilly-socks-and-petticoat of a
little girl, then not the mini-hooker style that Jean blamed on
marketers gone wild.

“Ah, bang on time!” Finding his second or
perhaps third wind, Fergie once again donned the mantle of genial
host. “Come in, come in. Here’s your wassail—a fine tradition,
wassail. And here’s another tradition, the holiday boar.”

Heather’s eye-roll implied she’d heard that
as “bore.” Scott eyed Fergie’s kilt with a half-concealed
snicker.

Fergie went on, “In place of the boar’s head
that our ancestors would have had for their holiday feast, I’ve had
Nancy make us one from half a pineapple.”

Everyone leaned closer. Sure enough, the
toothpicks holding morsels of fruit or olives resembled bristles
rising from the half-mound of a pineapple. Two maraschino cherries
and an apple slice formed a face, and a curled licorice whip a
tail. Even as she handed Dakota a melon square and helped herself
to a stuffed green olive, Jean imagined what Nancy—or, more likely,
Rab—had said about such whimsy, especially when the holiday boar
was an olde English custom, not Scottish.

She drifted away toward the tree, inhaling
its head-clearing pine fragrance. The Christmas tree was another
English custom late coming to Scotland. So was wassail, for that
matter. Fergie’s “old-fashioned” Hogmanay was as much imagination
as tradition—not that there was anything wrong with that.

He carried on to the Krums about the
exceptionally humorless Scottish Protestant Reformation, and how
Hogmanay had become more important than Christmas, since Christmas
was seen as Catholic, even pagan. Christmas Day wasn’t a holiday in
Scotland until the 1950s, about the time Fergie was born.

So, Jean thought, Norman the Red’s folly of a
chapel with its Catholic features would have brought down the
disapproval of the local community within living memory, never mind
in Norman’s era. . . . She cast a sharp glance at the Coffer just
as Scott strolled toward it.

Dakota hung on Fergie’s every word, blinking
owlishly and seizing the occasional grape from the back of the
boar. “The days between Christmas and New Year’s are the Daft Days,
it being the time of year for role reversals, the lairds and ladies
serving the tenants . . .” His gaze strayed to where Scott was
circling the Flagon and the Coffer like a shark scenting prey.
“Excuse me, please.”

“More family heirlooms, like Diana’s
necklace?” Scott asked as Fergie hove to beside him.

“Why yes, they are that.” Fergie proceeded to
deliver a sales pitch in which he confined himself to the facts,
such as the facts were.

Wassail in hand, Heather sat down next to the
fire. Her strappy sandals with spike heels enclosed purple
toenails—from polish, Jean assumed, not the cold.

From outside the window came the emphatic
slam of a car door, followed by the sounds of its engine starting
up and pulling away into the distance. From the corridor came
Alasdair, doing his best imitation of the Sphinx. He nodded a stiff
greeting to each of the Krums and joined Jean in the lee of the
Christmas tree. If he noticed each set of American eyes focused on
his tartan-clad nether regions—Scott skeptical, Heather intrigued,
Dakota impressed—he ignored them.

“Well?” Jean asked, lowering her voice.

“I put a flea in Pritchard’s ear, right
enough, and had him show me where he found the card, just next a
flower pot to the left of the porch.”

“Out of the rain, sort of.”

“Aye, but still, it had not been lying there
long when he picked it up.”

Nibbling a bit of pineapple off its
toothpick, Dakota drifted past the tree toward the bookshelves.
Heather leaned back in the chair, crossed her legs, and let her
sandal dangle from her toes.

“Maybe Greg never sent or gave the card to
anyone. Maybe it fell out of his own car. Although,” Jean added
before Alasdair could, “he had to have intended to give it to
someone, to remind them of their appointment. Unless Pritchard’s
lying about finding it where he did.”

“I’m seeing no reason for that. He’s enjoying
the stramash caused by one wee bit business card.”

Scott said to Fergie, “Yeah, there’s a lot of
money in that sort of thing. The problem is . . .”

“Patrick,” Alasdair went on, “is saying that
he’ll stop by the hospital soon as Tina’s coherent, may or may not
be returning here the night, depending.”

Dakota’s voice came from the far side of the
Christmas tree—for a fraction Jean thought it was a robin ornament
speaking. “What business card is that?”

“A bit of evidence.” Alasdair peered around a
tinsel-hung branch.

Dakota peered back again. “Tina. That’s the
Australian lady, right?”

“Right.”

“Why’s she in the hospital?”

It was just as well the Krums had been
wandering around Kinlochroy and missed the entire episode. “There
was an accident,” Jean said, “and she fell, but she’s going to be
all right.”

Her words plummeted into the room like Tina
from the window. Heather said, “You told us the man had been hurt
in an accident and it turned out to be . . .”

“Heather,” said Scott.

“I’m just saying,” she retorted. “What’s
going on here, anyway?”

“Madam,” Alasdair told her, “that’s what
we’re after finding out.”

The door opened and Diana swept in. “Well
now, isn’t this jolly,” she didn’t ask but stated, with the air of
Captain Picard on the bridge of the
Enterprise
saying, “Make
it so.”

“Is that a vintage dress?” Heather asked.

“Why yes, it is.”

“Nothing like recycling other people’s old
stuff, is there?”

Diana’s smile froze rather than faltered.
“More wassail, Mrs. Krum? What are you having, Mr. Krum?
Dakota?”

Dakota started to speak but Heather beat her
to the draw. “No more for her. The kid’s gonna spoil her dinner
with that fruit stuff. Isn’t it time to eat yet? All they had at
the pub in the village was chips and peanuts, no Buffalo wings or
regular food, you know.”

Fergie didn’t know—or so his blank expression
attested. But he rallied quickly. “Yes, yes, let’s go on to the
dining room. I’m sure Nancy’s almost ready to serve the starter
course.”

With one last look into the Coffer, annotated
by a slow nod, Scott rounded up his womenfolk and followed Diana
toward the dining room.

Fergie stayed behind to stow the Coffer and
the Flagon in their cabinets. Locking the doors and slipping the
key into the breast pocket of his jacket, he turned to Jean and
Alasdair and said, “Well then. All might not be lost after
all.”

“Did Krum have himself a look at the Coffer
when he visited last autumn?” asked Alasdair.

“No, he wasn’t familiar with either it or the
Flagon. Or so he said,” Fergie added, his hand raised in a
placatory gesture. “I know, I know, if Pritchard did show Krum the
Coffer when he was here, then maybe he wanted it badly enough to
bump off, to rub out—” Jean heard the quotation marks in his voice.
“—a rival from Down Under. Pity, that. If the two men had started
bidding against each other—but no, no, mustn’t be greedy. A man’s
life has been lost. Dinner?”

“We’ll be along straightaway,” Alasdair told
him, and, after Fergie had made his exit, “Greg was a freelancer.
Krum works for an auction house.”

“Yep,” said Jean, starting for the door,
“Scott would need more than Fergie’s ‘what-ifs’ to justify buying
the Coffer. He’d need tests.”

They dodged as Rab plunged through the
doorway like a wild boar on his way to a china shop. Despite his
barrel chest and short legs, his suit was as well cut as Scott’s,
even though its rusty blackness evoked mortuaries rather than art
auction houses. “We’ve seen the back of Pritchard, have we?”

“Aye, that we have,” said Alasdair.

“Good riddance. We’ve got more than enough
incomers as it is.” Rab shut the doors between the library and the
drawing room, switched off the lights and the CD player, then
seized the drinks trolley and with many a clink and gurgle charged
back through the doorway and trundled off in the direction of the
Great Hall.