With a slight shrug, Alasdair turned from the old castle toward the new. “Old Tormod was transported rather than hanged, and in those days judges and juries weren’t likely to split hairs. He may have killed the man in self-defense. Or else the jury was packed with MacLeods. At any rate, Greg’s right, there’s more to that story. Eighteen twenty-two’s a bit late for a clan feud. And for religious conflict, come to that.”
“I wouldn’t think even your finetuned instinct for the criminal could do much about a two-centuries-old case,” Jean told him.
“Does anything need doing about it? Other than you writing it up for Great Scot.”
“Well, no,” conceded Jean. Several raindrops raked her face.
They walked on toward the welcoming, if expensive, glow of Dunasheen’s windows and what had to be a mile and a half of fairy lights. Her ears and nose felt brittle as ice, and her hair waved so wildly around her wool scarf that the chill wind penetrated to her scalp. A flock of black-and-white birds whorled upward from the moor, their cries eerier than those of the gulls. Gulls sounded like rusty screen doors. The cry of the oystercatchers, though, carried a trailing bittersweet that made Jean think not of soon-to-depart souls, but of lost ones.
The call of the birds faded into the silence. Or, rather, into the absence of human noise—no car engines, no voices, none of the constant electronic hum of modern life. All Jean heard was their own footsteps, the sigh of the wind and the unceasing rise and fall of the sea, like distant thunder. The snap and flap of the blue-and-white Scottish flag flying from Dunasheen’s highest tower. And the ring of a telephone.
Hiking up his coat, Alasdair dug into the pocket of his jeans and eyed the glowing screen of his cell phone. “Ian said he’d phone before the office closes down for Hogmanay. Half a tick, Jean.”
Typical Alasdair, to set the ring tone of his mobile to the ordinary double bleat of a British telephone. Typical Alasdair, to double-check with his provider before leaving Edinburgh and make sure his mobile would work here in this remote northwestern corner of Skye. He’d been dependent on her phone when they were in the United States in November. Now she was the one restricted to Fergie’s land lines. Funny, Jean thought, how even a portable phone on a base unit looked like an antique while a rotary dial seemed antediluvian.
Beyond Alasdair and his electronic umbilical, the faintest of blushes still tinted the waves of the loch. Loch Roy probably meant Red Lake, from ruadh, red. Although the stones here weren’t red, not like those on the far side of Skye. Had the waters of the loch been tinted red with blood from various clan battles? More likely, the name came from a person’s name—Rory, also from ruadh, as in red hair. Or, considering the climate, red face, red from the cold or red from the reaction to that bright yellow globe in the sky when it condescended to appear.
Did he have red hair, the ill-fated Rory MacLeod who had chosen the hard place below old Dunasheen over the sharp edge at his back? How about Greg’s ancestor Tormod, of dubious but intriguing memory?
Alasdair said, “It’s by way of being a fake, is it? Well then, the Duke has no call claiming a large insurance settlement.”
Cold as they were, Jean’s ears twitched, and she abandoned her wordsmith’s reverie.
A pause while Ian, whose virtues lay in method rather than imagination, spoke. Then Alasdair replied, “No, it’s not at all surprising. Crusaders, soldiers, toffs on their Grand Tours, they’d bring back loads of art, antiques, artifacts, holy relics—not all of it legally, mind you. And half the time not knowing what they had, nor caring, come to that, so long as they put on a good show. There’s a trait’s not yet died out, not by a long chalk.”
No, it hadn’t, Jean thought, with another look at the castle. But she couldn’t criticize Fergie and his daughter and business partner—who, despite Alasdair’s “wee,” was almost thirty years old—for trying to present a good enough show to hang onto their house, the physical representation of their own family tree.
“Cheers, Ian. Enjoy your holiday.” Tucking the phone into his pocket, Alasdair turned to Jean.
Her feet in their wellies were so cold she felt as though she was wearing ice buckets, and shuffled rather than stepped. “Tea,” she reminded him. “Coffee. Maybe a wee dram, even. A warm fire. One of Fergie’s dogs or our own cat, whatever, as long as it’s got fur. I’ll get my notebook and lie in wait for Greg and his murder story. Or Fergie and his plans for saving the estate, whoever crosses my bow first.”
“Right,” Alasdair said. Once again, they started off toward the house, this time walking even more briskly.
Ahead of them, the courtyard gate opened and shut with a clang. A woman hurried across the gravel terrace and up the path, arms knotted across the chest of her fake leopard skin coat. One hand held Fergie’s largest flashlight tucked below her elbow like a semi-concealed weapon. Luxuriant golden-blond curls bounced around her pert, tanned face. Her tight red mouth loosened far enough to say, “Hello there. Have you seen a bloke in a red jacket?”
“Greg MacLeod?” Alasdair returned. “He walked down to the old cas—”
“Stupid sod! I told him he could wait ’til tomorrow, we’ve just arrived, not even unpacked, but no, we’ve come halfway round the world, he said, what’s a few more yards, dark or no flipping dark?”
This was “the wife.” At first glance, Jean thought she was twenty years younger than Greg. At second glance, Jean realized that she wasn’t at all younger, she was simply fighting gleaming tooth, painted nail, and hair color a shade too bright for her complexion, against the forces of entropy.
“I’m Tina MacLeod, Greg’s, well, Greg’s been going on for years about this godforsaken place, imagine that!”
God had phoned it in a few times out here, thought Jean, but you could say that of Sydney or Brisbane, too.
Alasdair’s expression remained neutral.
“London was good, lights, a hotel, nightclubs, but no, that’s not enough, he’s stuck on the flipping family tree, been rattling on about it for flipping years. Here we could be sitting at the C Bar back home, having a cold one beneath the palms—do you know Townsville, that’s in the tropical part of Queensland—I read a brilliant story about a miniature dinosaur in the back garden, made perfect sense.”
Alasdair managed to get a word in. “He’s gone down to the beach and round to the left.”
“I’d better yank in his lead, then, it’s almost time for tea. Or drinks, more likely. Anti-freeze. Ta.” She picked her way past, the wellies she, too, had liberated from the stash by the back door slapping along the path. A few paces away, she switched on the flashlight. A bubble of luminescence danced before her like a will o’ the wisp leading unwary travelers to their doom.
“Have a care,” Alasdair shouted after her. “The path’s right slippy.”
“Ta!” Tina said again, without turning around.
They waited while the light disappeared down the slope to the bridge, reappeared at the hulking shadow of the ruined castle, vanished behind the wall. Faintly, Tina’s voice called, “Cooeee, Greg!”
It was bad luck for a woman or a blond or red-headed man to be first across the threshold at the new year, although whether Fergie’s Hogmanay package included that old custom, Jean didn’t yet know. He could have a twofer with Tina MacLeod.
Exchanging dubious smiles, she and Alasdair turned away from the old castle, a dark shadow against the clouds. Great minds thought alike, but his was less likely to be visualizing will-o’-the-wisps and doom than pondering how dangerous ruins could be, and not from anything paranormal . . . It was the sky that was ominous, Jean told herself, not Skye. A year ago she’d learned that seasonal affective disorder was a real threat in the depths of a Scottish winter. It said something about the national temperament.
As long as the free-range Aussies made it past the castle, they’d be okay. Even Jean, whose middle name was not “Grace,” had managed to get from church to castle along the pebbled beach without mishap.
She and Alasdair pressed on across the gravel and stepped through the gate into the courtyard. The damp cobblestones inside glistened with streaks of gold, red, and green. The arched door in the angle of the wall displayed a wreath of holly and ivy tied with MacDonald tartan ribbons, hung so that the Green Man knocker—one of Fergie’s artistic endeavors—peeked mischievously from its center.
They walked up the three steps to the door. Alasdair set his hand on the iron handle. From inside came a barely perceptible strain of music.
Then a long, wavering, shriek, pulsing with anguish, echoed across land and water and set the gulls to screeching and flapping upward like winged ghosts.
Jean spun around, her heart lurching. “That’s got to be Tina!”
Instead of leaping back down the steps, Alasdair threw the door open. Sweeping Jean with him, he lunged inside and shouted, “Fergie! Diana!”
She blinked at what seemed like a flood of light, although it was only the contrast—the aging ceiling fixtures weren’t emitting more than a yellow glow. This was the back door, the postern gate, where old and mismatched boots, limp hats, and a couple of tall vases bristling with umbrellas, walking sticks, and fishing rods had come to roost.
“Fergie!” Alasdair bellowed, drowning out the music Jean could now identify as the CD she had given Fergie, the latest from her friend and neighbor Hugh Munro, who was singing lustily about heaving away and hauling away, bound for South Australia.
From the open door behind her came a cold draft and an ominous—no, not silence, a distant sobbing, wailing sound that was neither wind nor sea. And Jean doubted it was a banshee, although on Skye, you never knew.
What had happened? A path given way, a stone turned beneath an unwary foot, slippery mud, the force of the wind, the darkness—it was Greg, wasn’t it? He’d been wearing athletic shoes, not wellies, not that wearing wellies was a guarantee of traction. Or had Tina herself fallen?
Jean ran back out onto the stone step, but heard nothing. Funny how her face was now hot, so that the wind felt like a slap with a wet fish.
Two shapes rushed at her through the kaleidoscope of light and shadow and with a gasp she jerked back against the door frame.
A big black lab and a little white terrier swarmed around her legs, leaving mud and damp on her jeans and the aroma of wet dog in her nostrils, then stampeded into the house. The last time Jean had seen them, they’d been dozing in front of the fire in the drawing room, inert as hassocks.
She reeled back through the doorway to find Alasdair pulling out his notepad and wallet—there was the phone. He punched three numbers. “We’re needing an ambulance, someone’s injured at old Dunasheen Castle—Alasdair Cameron, at the new castle—Kinlochroy, aye—very good then.”
He clicked his phone shut, jammed it into his pocket, and bellowed, “Fergie!”
A wet yellow raincoat fell off its hook, crinkling to the floor. Hugh sang the old sea chantey about South Australia full of rocks, and fleas, and thieves, and sand. The dogs had vanished, leaving only a trail of muddy paw prints across the tile floor.
In a stately home, no one could hear you scream.
“No one heard you. No one heard Tina, either.” Jean jittered to the door and the darkness outside, then to the row of coat hooks, where she replaced the raincoat, then back across the tile floor to the cabinet where Fergie kept the flashlights. She grabbed two and handed one of them to Alasdair. “There’s a bell pull in the drawing room, Fergie used it this afternoon.”
“Give it tug then, see if it rouses Fergie or Diana, or one of the Finlays. If not them, then the manager’s cottage is next the garden. The constable at Kinlochroy’s been alerted. I’m away back down to the old castle.”
No point trying to convince him to stay put and wait for help. The roses in his cheeks had perished under a drift of snow, and his features tautened into his I’m in charge here expression. When he paused on the doorstep to throw her a crisp, ice-blue glance, she forced her chin up and lifted her left hand in a wave. “I’ll catch up with you. Be careful!”
And he was gone. The rapid crunch of the gravel beneath his boots faded. The gate clanged.
Her hand was still extended toward the darkness. The diamond on her ring finger glinted, a micro-prism clarifying the brassy ceiling light.
Don’t think about it. Find Diana. Find Fergie.
Jean spun around, spun back again, shut the door, and realized she’d tracked mud across the scratched tile floor—well, who hadn’t, the dogs’ paw prints were only part of what looked like a child’s finger painting project.
Dumping the flashlight on the nearest surface and stuffing her scarf and gloves into her pocket, she pulled off her wellies. Where were the shoes she’d left here earlier? No time to search.
In her thick wool socks, she skated rather than ran down the dimly lighted corridor, around a corner, and up a short flight of steps beneath a moth-eaten stag’s head sporting a Santa Claus cap. The doors of the Great Hall, the door of the library . . . She threw open the door of the drawing room, zigzagged around the furniture to the Gothic Revival fireplace, and yanked the tasseled end of the bell pull—to no discernible effect. Whether some distant jangle would attract the attention of a MacDonald, or of one of the Finlays, resident caretakers and chief bottle washers, she had no way of knowing. Come to think of it, this afternoon Fergie had supplemented his yank at the bell pull by shouting down the hallway.
Alasdair should have phoned Fergie, too. Where the hell was everyone?
A movement in the corner of her eye jerked her around toward the tall windows. But it was only her own reflection wavering in their black, mirrored depths, her crown of auburn hair turned inside out, her shoulders up around her ears, her stance that of a prizefighter in a corner of the ring.
What she punched was the “Stop” button on the CD player. Sorry, Hugh. His voice halted between one beat and the next. Were those footsteps? Jean spun toward the door. No. She was hearing the tick of a clock.
Dunasheen wasn’t one of those stately marble-halled homes tricked out with gilt cherubs, the sort of place that made Jean feel as though she was dragging the knuckles of all ten thumbs on the floor. This drawing room was friendly and functional with a Persian rug, needlepoint chair covers, a piano. The holly jolly crimson and tinsel of the season decorated mantelpiece and chandelier, while odds and ends from Chinese snuff bottles to Roman coins to prehistoric fish hooks were installed on every horizontal surface. An antique screen decoupaged with flowers, fairies, and saccharine Victorian angels almost managed to conceal a flat-screen TV set the size of a coffee table.
Jean wondered how many of Fergie’s family antiques, artifacts, and holy relics had been sacrificed to fund Dunasheen’s upkeep. But he had enough left to make that good show, spiced with his own paintings and sculptures.
Was that low murmuring wail, almost a voice but not quite, the wind in the chimney? Was it Tina screaming again? Alasdair might not have reached her yet. Maybe he’d slipped himself, and fallen, and lay broken and bloodied on the rocks . . . A chill puckered the back of Jean’s neck.
Come on, come on! She yanked the bell pull again, then jogged to the door, looked down the hall, and shouted, “Fergie! Diana! Mrs. Finlay!” Her voice died away into silence.
Dozens of painted and photographed eyes gazed accusingly down from the Pompeiian red walls, not least those of Fergus Mor and Allan Cameron. Fergie’s and Alasdair’s fathers wore the kilts, tunics, and bonnets or tam o’shanters—stiffened berets with wool pompoms—of the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders, an old and greatly honored regiment. Each bonnet, adorned with a badge and the colored feathers of a blue hackle, was bent toward the other. Or Fergus Mor’s, rather, was bent down toward Allan’s, demonstrating the maximum allowable versus the minimum allowable regimental heights.
Breathe, Jean told herself. In with the good air, out with the bad.
The embers piled in the grate emitted more of an ashy breath than warmth, and the castle’s scents of baking and furniture polish were tinged with mildew. Perhaps the house had become the terrestrial version of the Marie Celeste, abandoned to its ghosts.
Although if new Dunasheen had any ghosts, neither Alasdair’s nor Jean’s sixth senses had picked up on them in the few hours since their arrival. It was her five ordinary senses that at last detected footsteps in the hall. She wouldn’t have to run down to the manager’s cottage after all.
Jean popped out of the drawing room to see Fergie ambling toward her, round face and round glasses gleaming with good will. With his lavender sweater and slippers and bulky physique, he looked ready to host a children’s television program, welcoming them to a neighborhood where he played the part of a purple dinosaur. “Ah, it’s yourself, is it, Jean? No worries, we’re making the tea, though you’re good for a dram as well, I should think.”
“Tina MacLeod’s down by the castle, she was screaming, Greg must have fallen, Alasdair’s already called 999 and he’s gone back down there.”
Fergie gaped at her, pale blue eyes bulging, mouth working. “The old castle? But he went round the back—”
“One of the Aussies may be hurt!”
His lips snapping shut on a four-letter word, Fergie gesticulated frustration to heaven and the gods of the historic homes business—rising damp, mounting bills, and now this. And then with a grimace of contrition, for, after all, the welfare of the guests came first, he said, “I’ll organize the menfolk, if her, him needs carrying—though if there’s a broken limb involved, we shouldn’t—blankets, tea—if you could ask Diana to find the first-aid kit . . .” Mumbling beneath his breath, pirouetting so swiftly his long gray ponytail swung in an arc behind him, Fergie loped back the way he’d come.
“Where’s Diana?” Jean called after him, but he didn’t hear.
If she remembered their arrival tour, and there was no guarantee she did, then he was heading for the new and pricey commercial kitchen and his command center at the garden end of the house.
Jean started after him, only to stop dead in the center of the antechamber, foyer, lobby—she couldn’t remember what Fergie called the room that was the formal entrance hall. She’d sounded the alarm. Now she needed to get back down to the castle.
In the distance, a door opened. A gust of canned laughter blew down the hall and was then choked off as the door shut again. Aha, the Finlays were in the kitchen watching a TV show or listening to the radio or doing something that, along with the thick stone walls, had muffled Alasdair’s shouts. That’s why Fergie himself had finally answered the bell. As for Diana, who knew?
I’m coming, Alasdair! She made a U-turn. Flashlight. Boots.
The massive wooden front door at the far side of the room vibrated beneath a rain of blows. A muffled voice shouted, “Hey! Anyone home? Answer the door, already!”