The Burning Glass (36 page)

“If you pair the patterns with musical notes,
you’ll have yourself a melody,” Ciara went on. “And if you play
this melody with the proper medieval instrument, the resonations
will dislodge stones and reveal a secret chamber. That’s the
significance of the clarsach.”

Jean opened her mouth, shut it, and said,
“Has anyone actually tried doing that?”

“Gerald did do. Well, he concealed the
particulars, just as he concealed Isabel’s true story. Wallace
spent years working it all out, and was after completing the
pattern and revealing the contents of the secret chamber when he
passed on. And then the clarsach—well, we all make . . .” Ciara
pressed her lush pink lips together, keeping back the rest of the
sentence.

We all make mistakes?
Did she take the
harp to test out the hypothesis and—well, dropping it wouldn’t have
dismantled it. And something as cumbersome as breaking and entering
hardly seemed Ciara’s style. “The archaeologists took up the floor
of the church and didn’t find any secret chambers.”

“They’d no longer be secret then, would they
now? But these sorts of spiritual explorations have nothing to fear
from hard science.”

Hard science being just another belief
system, Jean supposed. “Is this all connected with the Harp Line
that was on the map in your press release?”

Ciara beamed. “Oh, very good! You’ve got the
Rose Line extending from the south of France through
Rosslyn—Rosslyn, Rose Line, right? And you’ve got the Harp Line
defined by the arrangement of the four border abbeys. Melrose to
Dryburgh to Kelso makes your upper curve, and the line extending
down to Jedburgh is the back brace.”

“And the arms of the harper form a line
pointing from Rosslyn to Ferniebank.”

“So they do. Well done, Jean!”

Sarcasm was lost on Ciara, Jean told herself.
“And what’s going to be exposed in this secret chamber. Hole.
Thing.”

“Well now. That’s the secret of Isabel’s
grave inscription. They thought they could keep us from making our
discovery by removing it, didn’t they? But no.”

Jean didn’t bother asking who “they” were.
There was always a “they” preventing the dissemination of truth,
justice, and the way of the weird.

“That right angle in the
er
of
Sinncler. That’s the set-square of the Templars and the Master
Masons. It means et reliqua, the remains or the relics are here.
And when you add in the ‘m,’ well then!” Ciara spread her
hands—look at me, I can pull a rabbit out of a hat!

Minty probably had recipes for
hasenpfeffer
or
lapin en croute
. Jean, though, played
along. “Well, Isabel’s remains were there, yes. But . . . Ah! That
memorial stone to a Henry, maybe Henry the Navigator, that’s got
the same angled er.”

“And the same wee ‘m’ as well.”

“Well, the stone’s so badly damaged, I
couldn’t make that out.”

Behind Jean’s back, billiard balls clonked
decisively and a player whooped. Michael’s music slowed to a
pibroch, a lament. Jean recognized the piece as “Lament for the
Harp Tree.” Or Key, depending on who you asked. The front door
opened and Alasdair and Delaney walked in, this time with
Kallinikos and W.P.C. Blackhall in attendance. They—there was a
“they”—stood in a prickly knot just inside the door. Shannon
approached them, exchanged a long, gratified look with Kallinikos,
then pointed toward the snug . . . Jean dragged her attention back
to Ciara.

“You’ve seen the burning-glass,” Ciara was
saying.

“It’s actually a mirror.”

“It was Isabel’s mirror, buried in her grave
with her bones. She signaled to Edward Tempest at the monastery
with it, and the flashes of light attracted her murderers.”

“Edward who?”

“Edward Tempest. From one of England’s old
Catholic families. He was helping Isabel save the relic from the
iconoclasts, the ones who exiled Mary and later had her killed.
Ironic, isn’t it, how in the sixteenth century the relic—or the
word of the relic rather, in the beginning was the Word—any road,
in the sixteenth century the Catholics were saving the relic from
the Protestant oppressors, but one hundred and fifty years earlier,
the Templars were saving the relic from the Catholic oppressors.
Soon as a religion establishes itself, it turns from the true
stories, doesn’t it?”

Jean felt as though her brain was shrinking
away from her ears, but she kept doggedly writing.

“And the glass! The Sinclairs had it etched,
very cleverly, so it looks to be no more than the oxidized backing
of a mirror, with the map of North America’s coastline. The
Templars brought their relics to Scotland under Robert the Bruce
and his Sinclair allies, and then Henry Sinclair the Navigator took
Mary’s relics away to safety. It’s plain as the nose on your face!”
Ciara grinned, but the grin wasn’t expansive enough for her, and
segued into a merry laugh.

Jean could only see her own nose when she
crossed her eyes. “Mary’s relic? You mean the one mentioned in the
letter in the museum? Mary Stuart, as distinct from Mary of Guise,
her mother, who had something going with the Sinclairs at
Rosslyn—they might have been lending her money. Maybe they were
custodians of Templar treasure or crown jewels of Scotland, who
knows?”

“Oh aye, they’re all named Mary. Ferniebank’s
well is St. Mary’s well. Coincidence?”

“Sure it is. People and wells were named
after popular saints . . . Oh no.” Revelation swept over her like a
cooler of Gatorade over a winning coach. Jean dropped her forehead
onto her hand in lieu of beating her head against the table. That’s
why Minty had stumbled over the name “Mary.” That was her and maybe
Angus’s problem with Ciara’s plans. Which weren’t only blasphemous,
they were absolutely bonkers. “Mary’s relic. Not a relic owned by
Mary, but a relic of Mary, and you don’t mean any of the
sixteenth-century Marys, you mean, so help me God, Mary
Magdalen.”

“Very clever!” Ciara patted Jean’s shoulder.
“I knew we’d get on swimmingly, never mind the po-faced
policeman.”

Through her fingers Jean could see several
po-faced policemen, Alasdair the coldest and stoniest of the lot,
turning toward them.

Ciara went blithely on. “There you have it.
The letter thanking the Saint Clairs for their role in hiding the
relics. The burning-glass as a hint to the significance of the
conspiracy. The musical notes that will reveal where the map
locating the relics is hidden. The grave inscription proving that
the relics were those of Mary Magdalen—she was known as the
Beautiful Sinner, hence the ‘catin.’ The cenotaph of Henry Sinclair
proving that he took those same relics to America. Taken all
together, you have overwhelming evidence that Mary, Queen of Scots,
and her allies meant to protect that secret knowledge. Where’s your
bestseller now, eh?”

There was a rhetorical question for you, Jean
thought, just as Detective Inspector Delaney stopped at Ciara’s
shoulder.

She looked up at him with a warm smile.
“Hullo, Inspector. Alasdair, Sergeant Kallinikos, please join
us.”

“Ciara Macquarrie,” said Delaney, “I arrest
you in connection with the murders of Wallace Rutherford and Angus
Rutherford. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your
defense if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you
later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in
evidence.”

The music stopped, the voices stopped, all
motion in the room seemed to stop as Jean’s already uncertain
breath escaped in a whoosh.

Ciara’s smile withered into bafflement. “I
beg your pardon, Inspector Delaney? Alasdair, what’s all this in
aid of?”

Alasdair mumbled something beneath his breath
that sounded like “stupid cow.” His eyes, Jean saw at second
glance, weren’t cold as sea-ice after all, but scorched by
heat.

Blackhall took Ciara’s arm and pulled her
unresisting from the chair. “Is this your bag? I’ll just bring it
along, then.”

Briefly Jean saw with Ciara’s eyes—her own
features registering shock and awe, Alasdair smoldering, Delaney
smug. And beyond, every face in the pub turned toward her,
sentences hanging half-finished, glasses and forks suspended in
mid-air, billiard cues held aloft. “Oh,” Ciara said, her voice
suddenly very small. “Here’s me, thinking they simply passed over.
But they died defending secret knowledge, just as Isabel did. Her
romance is going on, and we’re playing our own parts in it.”

And that, Jean thought, her gaze glancing off
Alasdair’s like a water droplet off a hot iron, that was what was
wrong with romance.

Kallinikos cleared a way through the crowd,
people stepping back as though from a procession of lepers ringing
their bells. Stuffing her notebook into her bag next to the box
with the ambiguous burning-glass—yeah, fires can really get away
from you—Jean followed Alasdair and Delaney. Photographers
materialized and cameras clicked. Outside, in the sudden sunlight,
Logan and two other constables formed a human dam.

Two patrol cars waited at the curb. Ciara
went quietly, allowing herself to be placed into the first car with
Blackhall as companion.

Around the corner from the beer garden came
the sandy-haired detective constable and O. Hawick. Hawick was
actually grasping Keith’s arm, even though he gave the impression
he was hauling Keith along by the scruff of his neck. Keith
stumbled and his glasses slid down his nose. His gaze darted here
and there like a mad mouse ride at a carnival and then crashed to a
halt on Jean’s face. “You gotta call my firm in Glasgow, the
American ambassador, whoever. I’m in deep doo-doo here.”

Jean opened her mouth, but the only sound
that came out was a squeak.

“I shoulda bailed out ages ago. They’re nuts,
all of them—that damn Angus, face of a horse, jawbone of an
ass.”

“D.C. Linklater,” said Delaney, “did you not
caution the man?”

“That I did,” Linklater replied, with a
shushing gesture toward Keith.

Keith spotted Ciara’s wan but very brave face
in the rear window of the car. “Okay, okay, she’s a lot of fun
already, but I’m not going to jail for her.”

Linklater seized Keith’s other arm and with
Hawick frog-marched him to the second car, where Kallinikos was
holding the door open. “We all ate the same stuff, when Angus went
green around the gills I figured he had an ulcer or something—hey!”
Keith protested as the three men packed him into the car, an
operation that reminded Jean of cramming Dougie into the pet
carrier.

Even after Kallinikos climbed in behind Keith
and shut the door, she could still hear the young man’s flat but
far from soft voice, “Come on, people, this is all a really big
mistake.”

“Away with you. I’ll catch you up at Kelso.”
Delaney gestured and two or three more police people sorted
themselves into the vehicles. “Logan, bring a car round for
me.”

The police cars headed out, each trailing
reporters like a honeymooner’s car dragging tin cans and old
shoes.

Pushing aside the leftover gawkers, Logan
marched toward a third patrol car down the street. His face, Jean
saw, was set with satisfaction. And she also saw, across the way,
Minty standing with her usual brittle dignity in the doorway of the
museum. But even as Jean watched, her lips parted in an unusual,
slow, and even sensual smile.
So the interloper’s turned out to
be the murderer. She’ll get her comeuppance, then.
But if Jean
couldn’t see Ciara breaking and entering, she certainly couldn’t
see her killing.

A murmur was Alasdair and Delaney speaking
fast and low, each voice overriding the other. “ . . . Roddy Elliot
about the inscription,” said Alasdair.

“I know, I know,” Delaney replied.

“Shannon, Zoe, their parents . . .”

“ . . . I’m on it.”

“. . . that answerphone tape—it’s never
Ciara. And the keys, have you . . .”

“We’re on it.”

“Valerie Trotter . . .”

Logan’s car pulled up. He leaned across to
open the door. Alasdair stepped toward it, but Delaney cut him off.
“No.”

“Gary!”

“No! Love her, hate her, makes no matter to
me. You’re too damn close to her. That’s all.” One meaty hand
shoving Alasdair aside, Delaney wedged himself into the car and
slammed the door.

The car sped up the street, leaving Alasdair
standing on the curb. The crowd eddied around him, then dispersed.
Jean tried to take a deep breath but it caught like a thistle in
her throat. Delaney had just thrown Alasdair off the case because
of his previous marital track.
Bloody hell
.

A movement in the corner of her eye was
Michael, the bag of his pipes beneath his elbow and the drones
resting on his shoulder like a soldier sloping arms. Beside him
Noel was wringing both his hands and a dishtowel. “They ate
here—why weren’t the lot of them poisoned as well as Angus—no one
will stop here ever again.”

“Not a bit of it. I’m thinking you’ve got a
right tourist attraction here.” Michael indicated the people
surging back into the pub, the door swinging as though it was the
revolving variety.

So many others were swamping the garden
gateway that Zoe was pressed up against the side of the wall. “Dad?
We’ve got orders but Val cannot help, she’s away with Derek.”

“I’ll play again, shall I? Music having
charms, savage breasts, and so forth.” Michael nudged Noel toward
the influx, called over his shoulder to Jean, “I’m expecting the
full account soon as possible,” and was swept away with the
others.

With a feeble nod, Jean looked around. Minty
had vanished and the door of the museum was shut tight. Alasdair
was standing as still as the statue of some historical worthy, set
up in the marketplace only to be forgotten, useful to no one but
roosting pigeons. Damn Delaney. Damn Ciara—there was the jawbone of
an ass, not Angus.