Turned out my problem was easily solved. Artair knew almost everything about everything, and he was one of my dinner dates that evening.
Tom had prepared dinner for the two of us, which turned out to be the three of us. He made his famous seafood pasta and invited his father to join us. Artair had told him he had some information he wanted to pass along to me.
Tom lived by the sea. In a small blue house that was from another time. It was squeaky and drafty and held one of my favorite places in the entire world: a big old chair by a front window and a fireplace, from which could be seen a view of the North Sea while one lounged, under a quilt preferably, and read book after book.
The old two-story house was tucked between two larger, also older, buildings that had been turned into apartments. Artair had purchased the house when he and Tom’s now deceased mother had first gotten married. The garden in front of the house was as close to a magical garden as I’d ever seen. No one had ever requested that the house be torn down to make way for other, taller buildings that could hold more people or bring in more money.
Artair had eventually aged to the point that it was more work than enjoyment for him, so he gave the house to Tom and moved to a flat closer to the university library, where he spent most of his time anyway. Tom had proved to have just as green a thumb as his father, but the lines of the garden had apparently changed, become somehow more modern. I hadn’t seen it pre-Tom so I didn’t quite understand what that meant, but he and Artair had spoken about it a few times, neither of them giving way to how they thought a garden should look. Their garden stubbornness was only one of the many things they had in common.
“No, we didnae experience the 1960s the same way ye Americans did,” Artair said. “However…” He scratched his cheek as he sat across the small kitchen table from me. “No, the rebelliousness that came along with yer hippies didn’t happen here, but something else did. There was an undercurrent of change that would happen more in the 1970s and that could be seen and felt mostly with the literature of the time, the poetry too. Counterculture was quieter here, citizens finding their explorations in books or quiet clubs. I knew of a club in Glasgow. Can’t remember the name offhand, but I went a time or two.”
“Who were some of the writers of the time?” I asked.
“If I remember correctly, and I can look it up for you, I believe a group of them were given some sort of title like ‘justified sinners of the sixties,’ even if their words didn’t become imbedded deeply enough to cause any sort of large movement. John Calder, Jim Haynes, Ian Finlay…”
“Someone recently brought a first-edition Ian Finlay into the bookshop,” I interrupted.
“Aye? Weel, meebe there’s still hope that the books will be read and thought about, but it’s been a long time.”
I looked at Tom before I continued. I didn’t sense that Artair was as conservative as my parents back home. I didn’t want to say anything too scandalous, but I couldn’t think of a more delicate way to phrase my question.
“So, if a woman back then was uncertain of which man of three was the father of her child, how would that have been received?” I said.
Artair laughed. “Not weel at all. No woman in her right mind would have admitted tae such a thing. And if she wasnae married, she’d be smart tae get married before the pregnancy showed. No, that wouldnae have gone over weel. It was a different time tae be sure. I remember the sense of wild freedom that we saw coming from America. I believe many of us found it interesting, but also somewhat frightening. No love and peace here. ’Twas a much more conservative time for us.” He held up two fingers in an arthritic peace sign.
The pose didn’t seem awkward on the older man with the slightly too-long hair and bushy eyebrows. Tom and I shared a smile.
Clarissa and the three men in her life had been faced with a difficult situation. She’d given her child to the man who might have been the biological father, but there must have been so much more involved. Big emotions, big feelings, ultimately more painful than joyous.
But the group of friends had been faced with at least one other difficult situation too. The death of their fellow society member.
“Artair, I found out what ‘SPEC’ means.” I shared Edwin’s definition and his explanation of the group’s intended motives. “It was a short-lived secret society that Edwin and his friends started. The letters stood for society, propriety, excellence, and calling. Does it sound more familiar?”
“Aye, now it does. I did a little research.”
“They had a member fall off a boat and drown.”
Artair nodded. “There was some suspicion around the death though. That’s what I found.”
“Oh?” I said.
He leaned over and pulled a file up from out of a bag he’d placed on the floor beside his chair.
“It was ultimately covered up, I think. That’s what’s bothered me the most when ye first mentioned it.”
“Covered up?” I said.
“Aye, or mistakenly reported.”
Tom and I shared a curious look before I took the pieces of paper that Artair handed me. He kept hold of them too for a moment and looked me in the eye. Artair was a playful man with a kindness that overlapped into everything he did. I’d never seen such a serious expression on his face. I gave him my undivided attention.
“Delaney, the only reason I knew tae look for this is because I’ve been at the library a long time, over thirty years. But when I first started working there, I was curious, energetic, and ambitious. I’m still curious.” He half smiled. “Deep in the archives I came upon something that made me wonder—had someone gotten away with murder? It leuks as if that moment, that time when I sat on a cold floor with open boxes around me and a mind tae put them in order, has come full circle, and here we are.
“All those years ago, I read a story about a man who had died on a boat, had been stabbed on accident by a dirk and then had gone over the side, his body being retrieved not too much later.”
“So he was stabbed?” I said.
“The top paper is a copy of that story.”
The article wasn’t from the university newspaper, but from The Scotsman. It was short and to the point. University students had been out on the water, there had been a tragic accident, and charges were expected to be filed, but no names were being released until further facts could be verified.
I flipped to the next page. It was an article from the university paper. It stated that there was a mistake in The Scotsman’s report that a stabbing had occurred. None had occurred. The accident was a drowning, that was all.
“You think it got covered up from one story to the next?” I said.
“Leuk at the last page,” Artair said.
It was another article from The Scotsman. Again it was short and to the point, claiming that the publisher of the paper stood by the reporter who first reported about the stabbing. They believed that the university was trying to cover up the event, but they had no further proof and the police weren’t cooperating. They would continue to try to gather more evidence or proof.
I looked at Artair. “Any other reports?”
“Not that I could find.”
“So a stabbing would be murder, a drowning an accident.”
“Even if the stabbing had been accidental, someone might have had tae pay the price for their carelessness. As it was, the story could have been that the young man fell off the boat of his own accord.”
“Well, this is certainly suspicious,” I said. “The contradictions, I mean.”
Who’d either lied or been mistaken, Edwin or Rosie?
“Aye. More memories came back after I started searching. This box was hidden in the depths of the library and when I brought it up so that I might ask questions all those decades ago I was told tae put it back where I found it. Quickly, at that.”
“Why wasn’t it all just destroyed?”
Artair smiled and lifted his eyebrows. “Like I mentioned tae ye at the library, we like tae keep a record of everything, us librarians, even if we’re told tae hide it away. Someone back then wanted the facts tae remain somewhere, I suppose. Probably wanted someone like me tae find them someday.”
I nodded. Proof was in front of me that something murderous or accidentally homicidal might have happened many years ago. But, other than Edwin and Rosie’s differing stories, what more did that mean—particularly to Billy Armstrong’s murder?
I had no idea.
“Do you think this ties in with Billy Armstrong?” I said.
Again, Artair shrugged. “Dinnae ken. It’s just something tae keep in mind for now.”
“I’ve got something else you might want tae keep in mind, Delaney,” Tom added.
Artair and I watched him as he stood and walked around the corner and into the front room. He brought back his own file folder.
“I have something I want tae show you,” he said as he opened the file. “I would not have found this on my own, of course. Da’s the one for research. But Rodger overheard us talking about William Wallace and the reenactments. He had this at his home and brought it tae me.”
Tom handed me the paper over the table. I held it so Artair could see it too.
“Another article,” I said. “From three years ago.”
“Rodger’s brother was a William Wallace reenactor back then,” Tom said. “Something happened.”
Artair and I read silently.
William Wallace Reenactor Gilroy Wyly was killed yesterday at the William Wallace monument in Stirling. In what witnesses say was an accident, Wyly was killed by a dirk. Witnesses say some of the reenactors were “playing around” with the dirks and this one accidentally stabbed Gilroy in the heart. The incident is under investigation.
Additionally, it was noted by the reenactors that the dirks weren’t used for the reenactments. The use of dirks would have been historically inaccurate.
“Well, that’s terrible,” I said. “And oddly similar to the boating story, or at least one of them.”
“Look at the picture of the group of reenactors,” Tom said.
In another less tragic setting the picture might have been comical; a group of almost identically dressed men standing together and looking equally circumspect and confused. There were no names under the picture but I recognized Billy Armstrong. I couldn’t help but feel a sense of loss yet again for the man. He had been handsome with intriguing eyes. I pushed away a wave of sorrow.
“Okay, now look at the bottom picture,” Tom said.
The smaller inlaid picture was a dirk.
“It looks like the dirk I found,” I said. “Maybe.”
“Aye, the picture is fuzzy,” Artair said.
“It might be,” Tom said. “I have no idea what that might mean except I think it’s something that might be of interest tae someone, maybe the police, but maybe not. Here’s something else Rodger gave me. You might understand his interest in collecting these stories after you see this one.”
It was a copy of another short newspaper article. This one talked about another William Wallace reenactor named Donnan Lawson and the automobile crash that killed him. There were signs his vehicle had been tampered with, and Lawson’s death was also under investigation.
“Do you know the results of the investigation?” I asked.
“Rodger didn’t know and I didn’t take the time tae try to search. Da?” Tom said.
“I think we can look more closely at this too,” Artair said.
“Some sort of conspiracy?” I said. “Against reenactors?”
“Meebe,” Artair said with a shrug. “It’s worth a leuk.”
“And it might be an angle the police haven’t considered.”
Tom and Artair looked at me.
“Someone who has something against William Wallace and what he stood for? Maybe?” I said.
They looked at each other; in tandem their spines straightened and their mouths formed hard lines.
“They wouldna be a Scot then,” Artair said.
“Right,” I said. That Scottish pride again. I cleared my throat.
“Do ye ken the angles the police have considered?” Artair asked.
“No. Inspector Winters wouldn’t tell me much.”
“I had a feeling you’d talked to him.” Tom smiled.
“I did. Just today, actually.”
“Let’s do some research first thing tomorrow,” Artair said.
“I’ll be there,” I said.
We put away the files, ate dinner, and then moved on to more pleasant subjects for the rest of the evening. Artair told me stories about Tom as a child, which were funny and appropriately embarrassing, but my mind was never fully in the current moment. Was the past to blame for Billy Armstrong’s death? Could there possibly be some sort of conspiracy against the reenactors? Was Edwin lying, and did that matter?
Artair left soon after dinner with the promise that he’d see me in the morning and a wink toward his son. I liked those winks, and I hoped I’d get to pretend I didn’t see them for a very long time to come.