The Burning Glass (5 page)

“Two Edinburgh know-it-alls, right?” Jean
asked, at the exact instant Michael stopped playing. Her statement
came out more loudly than she’d intended, hanging in the
still-vibrating air like a fart after a dinner party. Wincing, she
lowered her voice. “And now Angus is missing.”

Michael strolled across the garden,
graciously accepting the plaudits of his audience, and laid his
pipes across the table. They deflated with a sound between a groan
of weariness and a sigh of repletion. “Hullo, Jean. Come to look
out the local mysterious events, eh?”

“Stanelaw seems to be teeming with mysterious
events,” she answered, without pointing out she was hardly looking
for them.

“Development,” said Rebecca. “Tourism. Money
makes things happen, good or bad.”

Michael leaned into the pram and smoothed the
Black Watch tartan blanket over Linda. Then he sat down beside
Rebecca. “There’s a resort, a golf course, and a water park across
the river, and St. Cuthbert’s Way just beyond, and the cooking
school here in Stanelaw. Now Ciara Macquarrie’s turned up with her
New Age conference center and spa—excuse me, healing center—at
Ferniebank.”

“Who’d she buy the property from, anyway?”
Jean asked.

“Themselves, Councillor and Mrs. Rutherford.
Angus and Minty. No surprise that Stanelaw Council granted planning
permission for the renovation of the castle and a new building down
by the chapel.”

“Ah,” said Jean. “No surprise at all.”

“The—ahem—Royal Commission for the Ancient
and Historical Monuments of Scotland funded a dig and a bit of
stabilization work in the nineties, and the Rutherfords opened the
place to trippers through a management agreement with Protect and
Survive. Pity the chapel was already a ruin.”

“Pity about it all becoming just another
product,” Rebecca said.

“Without folk like the Rutherfords and Ciara
Macquarrie,” said Michael, “secondary sites like Ferniebank would
be piles of rubbish plowed under for car parks. Your Alasdair’s
arriving just in time to organize the transition from scheduled
site and listed building to money-making facility.”

Everyone was noting that Alasdair was, in
however awkward a fashion, hers. Maybe she’d come to terms with
that concept herself some day—and with its corollary, that she was
his. Jean had only recently come to terms with the concept of
selling history like a commodity. But then, if it came to a choice
between marketing and oblivion, she’d have to choose marketing.
“Too many of these places are no more than white elephants. I can’t
fault Macquarrie for hoping Ferniebank will be a money-making
facility, even if it means exploiting all the publicity about
Rosslyn Chapel—that bestseller claiming that Mary Magdalen was
buried there, for a while, at least.”

“Ferniebank Chapel was built by the Sinclairs
as well,” said Rebecca, “and dedicated to Saint Mary—the virgin,
not the Magdalen, I bet—near the same time and in the same style as
Rosslyn, which was dedicated to Saint Matthew, not that anyone
remembers that.”

“Except for Rosslyn being bigger and in
better shape,” Michael said.

“And for Ferniebank having a perfectly
genuine fourteenth-century clarsach instead of a collection of
hare-brained, half-baked, off-the-wall legends. Just the sort of
legends,” Jean added with a shameless grin, “that are my stock in
trade.”

“Just the sort of legends that give
historians and curators like us the cold shivers,” said Michael,
“but they go down well with the consumer.”

A man wearing a green apron high as a
cummerbund came strolling across the garden. If Michael had been
standing up, the publican would have been a head shorter and twice
as wide. His genial face had nothing in common with Logan’s
saturnine features and Minty Rutherford’s stony elegance. An
interesting cast of characters, Jean thought, here in Stanelaw.

He handed Michael a pint glass brimming with
a foam-flecked dark liquid that wasn’t Coca-Cola. “There you are.
Well done.”

“Cheers.” Michael took a deep drink. “Aah. My
compliments to the brewer.”

“Jean,” said Rebecca, “this is Noel
Brimberry. Noel, Jean Fairbairn. She’ll be staying at Ferniebank
for the next couple of weeks.”

“Good to meet you,” Jean said, secretly
delighted. The man not only looked like a hobbit, he had a hobbit
name. She was surprised the pub wasn’t named the Green Dragon or
the Prancing Pony after one of Tolkien’s fictional inns, but then,
Brimberry had probably bought it as a going concern, Sinclair
attribution and all. The expected influx of tourists would be
gratified either way.

“You’ll be Mr. Cameron’s wife, then,” said
Brimberry, his plump cheeks puffing up in a smile so broad his eyes
disappeared.

“Ah, no, we’re not . . .” Jean saw Michael’s
blue eyes dancing, and Rebecca’s pink lips crinkled with a
suppressed grin.
To heck with it
. She finished, “I’m sure
we’ll be in for a meal and music.”

“And right welcome you’ll be. Good job we’ve
got Protect and Survive’s top man here. A former police detective
with a grand reputation, is he? With all that’s on, both good and
bad, he’ll be finding work enough. A shame about the clarsach going
missing, as well as . . .” Several people walked in the gateway and
headed for the back door, probably following the seductive odor of
garlic and baking bread—pizza, perhaps. “No rest for the weary.
Leastways, none for those tugging our forelocks for a living.”
Brimberry scuttled toward the newcomers.

Beside the cast of characters in Jean’s
program book, she jotted down the hint of social friction. “What
was he going to say, a shame about Angus’s disappearance?”

“Everyone seems to think that Angus will find
his way back to the stable,” said Rebecca. “At least, no one’s
assuming there’s foul play involved.”

“Yet,” Michael added ominously. “Although I’m
hearing that he goes walkabout every now and then. It wasn’t Minty
reported him missing, but his council colleagues.” He drank again,
and wiped his mouth. “I reckon Noel was saying a shame about the
Ferniebank caretaker.”

Ah. Yes. With a shudder that bracketed horror
and sympathy, Jean said, “I heard about that, too. Gave me one of
your shivers. Was he a local man?”

“Oh aye. Wallace Rutherford, Angus’s
uncle.”

“And no indication of foul play there,
either?” Except for Alasdair’s
I’m not so sure
, Jean added
to herself.

Rebecca shook her head. “People were shocked
about him dropping dead the week after Helen Elliot dropped
dead—she was Noel’s mother-in-law, lived at Ferniebank Farm across
from the castle. Neither death’s suspicious, no.”

“These things come in threes,” cautioned
Michael.

“Not necessarily,” Rebecca told him.

Amen to that
, Jean thought.

“Wallace died,” Michael summarized. “The
castle closed down, then the sale and the consent for alteration
went through, and Alasdair arrived. And that’s where we’re standing
now.”

Jean glanced at her watch. “Except I’m
sitting here instead of standing there. It’s already past
five.”

“We’re expecting tonight’s guests at the
B&B.” Rebecca piled her crockery on the tea tray. With one last
swallow, Michael added his glass to the collection.

A faint gurgling came from the pram. Jean
smiled again on the wriggling baby, who was now as bright-eyed as
her parents, then wrinkled her nose. Linda was leaving a bit of a
vapor trail. But then, that’s what the gurgling signified, a
request for nutritional and hygienic assistance.

Their chairs scraped on the concrete. Rebecca
gathered up a bag patterned with Kelly green Loch Ness monsters, a
baby gift from Jean. “Michael’s parents put us on to the Reiver’s
Rest. The owner went off to Canada for a family wedding.”

“Which was not scheduled for the convenience
of people in the hospitality trade,” said Jean.

“Good job all round,” Michael added,
collecting his bagpipes. “We’re outwith Auld Reekie during the
Festival and turning a few bob from renting our own place. I’m
driving into the National Museum twice a week and the rest of the
time we’re working via internet, phone, and fax.”

“And Noel’s daughter Zoe helps with the
cooking and cleaning at the B&B.” Rebecca stowed the bag
beneath the pram and wheeled toward the gate.

When Jean opened her car, Dougie let out an
inquisitive mew, the feline equivalent of, “Are we there yet? Are
we there yet?”

“Bring Alasdair round for a meal,” Michael
instructed Jean. “It’s well past time we were making the man’s
acquaintance.”

“I warned him about y’all, but he still says
he’s looking forward to meeting you.” Jean slid in behind the wheel
and called through the open window, “See you soon!”

She squeezed her vehicle between cars parked
haphazardly at the sides of the road and picked up speed at the
edge of town, where the road curved up a hill. Then she tapped the
brakes. Behind a lichen-encrusted stone wall rose a similarly
lichen-encrusted church, its slate roof sagging with age. The
square, stumpy tower and slits of windows testified to the way this
building had served as a physical sanctuary as well as a spiritual
one. But then, neither Scot nor Sassenach had hesitated to burn
down a church with the congregation inside, an act that surely
merited a special place in Hell. Depending on how you defined Hell.
Much of the conflict in the Borders stemmed from religious
conflict, Catholic against Protestant, Protestant against other
Protestants.

The road lay empty in the afternoon sunshine,
a gray-black ribbon between the fields on her right and the trees
concealing the river on her left. Jean stopped the car.

The church seemed deserted, doors shut,
windows blank. But a notice board out front was freshly painted,
reading: “The Church of Scotland. Rev Janet Wilkins, present
incumbent. Church open by appointment—contact Mrs. Rutherford at
Glebe House. Services every Sunday at 12 noon.” So there was some
divine life left in the old shell yet.

From the cemetery in front of the church rose
polished granite headstones inlaid with gilded letters, very recent
burials, if not as recent as the one closest to the road, a long
pile of wilted flowers extending from the vertical of wooden plank.
Jean couldn’t make out the name painted on the temporary marker,
but she could guess. This was the grave of the luckless caretaker.
Not far away lay a second grave with a temporary marker, a few days
older—the flowers were well on their way to mulch. Mrs. Elliot, no
doubt.

Shaking her head at these intimations of
mortality, Jean accelerated past a grove of trees, then braked
again in front of a handsome stone mansion. Since its dormers and
gables didn’t rise to the full excess of Scots Baronial, the place
had likely been built when Victoria was a slip of a lass. A small
sign on the front gate read: “Glebe House.” Casa Rutherford, in
other words. Jean wondered whether she’d get points at Minty’s tea
for knowing that a glebe was land that paid rent to a church.
Assuming Minty carried on with the tea.

Jean coasted on by, noting the police car
parked in the driveway next to a no-nonsense Range Rover. A
movement in the bay window fronting the house might be a woman in
tweed and leather, or it might not . . . Jean wrenched at the
steering wheel to keep from driving into the weed-filled ditch
between the road and the wall enclosing the lawn. When she looked
back, every little pane of the mullioned window met her gaze
blandly.

Behind the house, in the place that might
once have been taken by a barn, stood a contemporary timber and
glass Euro-insipid building. A large but still tasteful signboard,
reading “Cookery at the Glebe” rose beside a second drive. The
Rutherfords had not been strapped for the money to invest in their
cooking school, then, even before de-accessioning a property.

Onwards, then, over the last half-mile to
Ferniebank. Which wasn’t going to be as peaceful as Jean had
intended. As for Alasdair’s intentions, professional or personal,
she probably didn’t need to fill him in on the question of the
missing councillor or the case of the stolen clarsach. And the
unfortunate incident of the caretaker was already on his mind.
Forewarned was forearmed, she told herself, a concept that applied
to relationships as well as to crimes, ghosts, and Borders
warfare.

A farmstead appeared on her right, complete
with hillside pasture dotted with black and white cows. Here the
sign was a simple painted shingle wired to the fence: “Ferniebank
Farm.”

The trees on her left opened ranks and shed
some of their thick undergrowth. Ash, rowan, alder, oak, birch,
willow, hazel—she knew them by reputation, if not personally. Their
long shadows reached down to a sparkle that was the River Teviot,
then suddenly were enclosed by another stone wall of such antiquity
that the one around the church might just as well have been made of
Legos. This one stood eight feet in height and was topped by jagged
stones, here and there clumsily cemented into place. Above the
stone teeth rose the dark gray walls, parapets, and chimneys of
Ferniebank Castle, even on this sunny August afternoon exuding the
grim chill of long winters and longer warfare.

Jean took the left turn through the narrow
gateway with care. Alasdair’s Renault and a mini-bus sat in the
gravel-paved courtyard defined by the perimeter wall, the castle’s
sheer facade, and a low structure roofed with corrugated metal. It
sported the plate-glass window and door of the ticket office and
shop, while a second door was marked “Toilet,” and a third was
blank. Park benches and some potted plants proclaimed a welcome
that dashed itself futilely against the forbidding face of the
castle.