Diana’s gaze fell to the board and the knife. She cut a few more bits from the beet.
“Your dealings with Greg MacLeod,” Alasdair reminded her.
“I would not be surprised,” she answered, “if Mr. MacLeod saw Dunasheen as a cut-rate shopping mall, but I know nothing of his plans. I knew him only from his e-mails asking about our history and then booking a room.”
Once again Gilnockie pulled the business card in its plastic bag from his pocket, and laid it on the counter, first one side up, then the other. “Have you seen this before?”
Diana wiped her sleeve across her forehead. Granted, Jean thought, the blazing overhead lights and the huge Aga stove warmed the room, but seeing Diana sweat was like, well, like seeing her in a passionate embrace with Colin. “Where did you find that?” she asked.
“I found it,” said Jean.
“In the pocket of your raincoat,” Gilnockie added.
“Then someone placed it there,” replied Diana. “That’s not Colin’s handwriting. If he wanted to speak with me, he’d ring me. And in any event, we didn’t meet at the church at three.”
Young muttered something, the words unintelligible, the tone skeptical.
A scowl flew across Diana’s face like the bird’s shadow had flown across Jean’s. She gestured toward Young with the knife, the beet juice on its blade thin and watery. In spite of herself, Jean saw the dirk striking upward into Greg MacLeod’s chest. Blood is thicker than water.
Gilnockie asked, “You’re saying that someone might be stitching you up for the murder?”
The knife swung toward him. “Or someone might aim to put Colin in the frame.”
“You’re thinking of Pritchard, are you?” Alasdair asked.
Without answering, Diana went back to the beet, cutting so briskly that several small red cubes rolled like dice onto the counter.
Young spoke up. “Why don’t you just sack the man?”
“Who else would do the job, then?” Diana answered. “My father’s already doing the work of three. As am I.”
Jean thought again of devils and deep blue seas. And of Fergie, a well-meaning soul if ever there was one. Diana’s fourth job was watching out for him. Jean hazarded, “Maybe the CU on the card is an e-mail or texting abbreviation, meaning ‘see you.’ Maybe someone was trying to lure Diana out of the house by sending her a fake note from Colin. Maybe that particular raincoat isn’t Diana’s. There are two more hanging over there by the door.”
With a quick dart of blue in Jean’s direction, Diana responded to her cue. “Many people in these parts have yellow raincoats. Last month Lionel Pritchard and I accidentally swapped ours—we’re much the same size. Rab’s there is quite large, and Nancy’s has a floral lining.”
“The coat was too big for me, but not big enough to have been Rab’s or Fergie’s. And it had a plain fabric lining.” And it smelled good, Jean added to herself.
Gilnockie said to Young, “Sergeant, bring the raincoat hanging in the cloak room, please.”
Young threw down her pen and sidled away crab-wise. In the moment the door was open, Jean heard Pritchard’s oily voice. “. . . move the man on, P.C. Thomson.”
“I canna be doing that, sir,” replied Thomson, “Inspector Gilnockie asked Mr. Urquhart to stop here.”
Diana scraped her handiwork into piles, wiped off the knife, and rinsed her hands. Taking off her apron, she said, “I believe that was Pritchard going into my father’s office, where he does the accounts. Shouldn’t you be questioning him about that note?”
Instead of asking, “Who’s in charge here, anyway?” Gilnockie said, “Aye,” and started for the door.
Jean realized she was still holding the cold, wet cube of rutabaga. Setting it down on the table brought her within range of the row of cookbooks beside the television. No, none of them were by the cooking-school maven they’d encountered in August. No omens there.
Alasdair held the door for her, his expression, if not icy, not warm either, but carefully neutral.
They followed Gilnockie down the corridor and around the corner. Diana peeled off the procession when they passed Thomson and Colin. The clan print hanging between them was, appropriately, “MacLeod,” a tartan-clad figure encircled by sprigs of juniper and a scattering of dark berries. Juniper, Jean thought. She’d just heard that, and not in reference to gin and tonic . . .
Colin lurched into Gilnockie’s face. “Leave her. She’s done nothing wrong.”
Gilnockie acknowledged him with a polite nod, but he didn’t break pace.
Diana set her hand on Colin’s arm and said something in his ear. His eye expanded and then shut and pain washed over his face. “If only you’d told me—” he began, before she shushed him.
Did he mean, If only we’d synchronized our stories, we’d not have contradicted each other about your being at the lighthouse? And yet, if either Colin or Diana was the killer, surely he or she would have made a point of synchronizing stories.
Judging by the Alasdair-like crevice between Thomson’s black eyebrows, he was thinking the same thing.
In Fergie’s study, Pritchard was seated at the computer, a spreadsheet displayed on the screen before him. He spun around when Gilnockie and Alasdair walked in, Jean forming a hypotenuse at their backs. “What’s this?”
Alasdair batted a glance over his shoulder and Jean returned it. Yes, it could have been Pritchard who’d looked up Greg MacLeod on the Internet.
Gilnockie was tracking a different trail. Without speaking, he presented Pritchard with the evidence-bagged business card, first the front, then the back.
Pritchard’s shoe-button eyes hardened and his narrow moustache writhed. “What of it?”
“It was found in the pocket of your raincoat,” Gilnockie told him, fudging for effect.
“Oh, I very much doubt that.”
“Are you accusing me of framing you, Mr. Pritchard?”
Pritchard’s lipless mouth opened and shut, emitting something between a snort and a hiss. He snapped back around to the computer. “If you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”
Alasdair seized a paper lying next to the keyboard. “You wrote this, did you?” Craning her neck, Jean saw a list of expenses—food, cleaning supplies, repairs—written in smooth, small handwriting, the occasional lower loop protruding like a mocking tongue.
“Yes,” said Pritchard.
In other words, that wasn’t his writing on the card, either. But didn’t its presence in his pocket indicate that he’d had an appointment at the church? With Greg? What would the call record on his phone reveal—one to or from Greg at just about three p.m.? Just because he said he’d been in Portree didn’t mean he actually was.
“Mr. Pritchard. Were you after doing business with Greg MacLeod behind your employer’s back?” Anyone else’s voice, even Alasdair’s, would hold a subtle menace. If Gilnockie’s held anything, it was disappointment at the human condition. “Have you done business with Mr. Krum behind your employer’s back?”
Pritchard’s hand tightened on the mouse. “You’ve got no evidence to back up either charge.”
“That’s our job, looking out evidence. In the meantime, I’m wondering if you intended switching your raincoat for Miss MacDonald’s. Seems a simple-minded way of stitching someone up, though, either her or Mr. Urquhart.”
“What the hell are you going on about?” Pritchard spun the desk chair around, using its momentum to propel him to his feet. The scent of after-shave or cologne, one hinting at damp sweat socks and musk-ox breath, surged from his wool jacket and then dissipated.
Colin shouldered into the room. “You bastard. You’ve been watching Diana. You’ve been making suggestive remarks. Planning on having yourself a posh wife, were you? And an estate to plunder as well? But she’s too clever by half for the likes of you.”
Jean took a giant step into the corner as Thomson dragged Colin back to the door and handed him over to Diana. The chatelaine of Dunasheen was actually starting to look frazzled—one golden lock of hair escaped its ribbon and dangled beside her no longer ivory-pale but pastry-pasty cheek.
“Is that true, Miss MacDonald?” Gilnockie asked. “Has Mr. Pritchard been paying you unwelcome attentions?”
“It depends on your definition of ‘attentions.’ He’s always polite.” But an edged undertone in Diana’s voice belied her words—as well it should, Jean thought, remembering Pritchard’s snigger—even as a flash of steel in her eyes asked Gilnockie to back off. Then she herself backed off, murmuring to Colin, “They’re sorting it. Leave it, please.”
He shuddered as though every muscle in his body clenched and then, as though to his direct, conscious command, loosened.
And here came Young, carrying a yellow raincoat over her arm. Without any such niceties as “pardon me,” she elbowed past Colin and Diana and handed Gilnockie the coat. Everyone leaned forward as he held it up. Inside the lining of the collar was sewn a neat label: “Diana MacDonald.”
Gilnockie turned out the pockets, finding nothing but a few dried shreds of vegetation, a flower picked in the summer, perhaps, and a lump of tissue stained with pink lipstick. Then he lifted the lining of the coat to his face and inhaled. “The fabric’s smelling of your perfume, Miss MacDonald.”
Diana’s smile was narrow as a needle. “It’s my coat, then, isn’t it? But we’ve come back round to the start—I’ve never before seen that note.”
Jean said, “That’s the coat I borrowed last night, the one with the card in the pocket. I guess that’s the one that was hanging wet on the hook by the back door when Alasdair and I heard Tina screaming from the beach.”
“No way of knowing otherwise, not now,” said Alasdair.
Gilnockie handed Diana her coat, retrieved the business card in its bag, and took Pritchard’s elbow. “Sergeant, let’s be getting Mr. Pritchard here back to the incident room.”
“Hang on,” protested Pritchard. “We’ve just established . . .”
“. . . who owns the raincoat is all. Now I’m after discussing your dealings with Mr. Krum and Mr. MacLeod.”
Pritchard shot a venomous glance toward Diana. “So that’s it. If you can’t put me in the frame one way, you’ll find another.” And, his glare shifting toward Gilnockie, “I’ve told you, I was in Portree when MacLeod was killed. I never met the man. And I had no dealings with Krum that Fergus wasn’t a party to.”
“We’ll be seeing about that.” Young took Pritchard’s other elbow and steered him down the corridor, snapping as she passed, “You, Urquhart, don’t be leaving the place, eh?”
Colin half-smiled at that, probably having no intention of abandoning Diana to be bothered and beset at Dunasheen. Together they retreated, Thomson behind them like a sheep dog poised to direct any strays. Diana could no longer pretend to the local constable that there was nothing between her and Colin, but the moment of truth with Fergie was yet to come.
In the suddenly quiet room, the hum of the computer sounded like a hornet’s nest. Alasdair saved and closed out Pritchard’s program, then looked slowly around the room. Fergie’s room.
Jean’s brain felt like a pillow squashed flat in a sleepless night. Sighing, she looked up at the chubby orange face of Ganesh, who was supposed to avert bad luck—although what was going on here wasn’t luck at all, but human choices. She suggested, without much conviction, “Maybe the card’s been in Diana’s pocket for a month and has nothing to do with the murder.”
“It would be a bit more ragged, then. This one’s only stained with damp.” Alasdair leaned over the desk, eyed the Excalibur letter opener, and delicately, as though sifting through eggshells, moved the papers around. Picking one up, he stared at it, handed it to Jean, and turned to face the window.
On a notepaper headed From Fergus’s desk was written a recipe for steak pie. Dripping or butter. Stewing beef, diced. Onion. Puff pastry. Heat the dripping, toss the meat in seasoned flour, and brown all over . . . a tiny bolt of lightning shot through her, making her hand clench on the paper. The letters were as jagged as a stock market summary, similar to those on the back of the card. Similar, but not identical—they were not pressed as heavily into the paper, and they slanted more strongly to the right. “Is this Fergie’s handwriting?” Jean asked Alasdair.
“Writing changes,” he said to the sky above the shadowed kitchen yard. “I’ve not had anything but e-mails from him for donkey’s years.”
“It’s a recipe. It could be Diana’s or Nancy’s.” She put the paper back on the desk and scanned the others, but saw nothing else handwritten, just several signatures at the bottom of letters and printed application forms. Fergie’s Dunasheen resembled a squashed thistle, a bit spiky, yes, as though his rounded body and low-key personality had to break out somewhere. Still . . . her mini lightning bolt fizzled into ashes. “He couldn’t have killed Greg.”
“I know!” Alasdair’s expression split the difference between irritated and frustrated.
Yeah, frustration and irritation were going around, like a rash. “Even if Fergie wrote the note on the card, it doesn’t mean—”
“He’s telling Patrick he’s never before seen that card.”
“Oh. Well, then, maybe Greg himself wrote it. Tina must have . . .”
“. . . a sample of his handwriting.”
Of course Alasdair would have the same idea. They needed to convince Tina to trust them with the full story, whatever the full story was. “Although,” Jean said, “even if Greg did write the note, who did he send it ahead to? It didn’t crawl into Diana’s pocket by itself.”
“Just now,” said Alasdair, “I’d credit Fergie’s fairies and Greg’s ancestral spirits with the entire plot.”
Jean shot Seonaid an accusatory look. Who walked into you at the garden gate last night? Seonaid looked back—or beyond, as the case might be—offering no more helping hands. “We’re not getting any testimony from her short of a séance, and maybe not even then.”
“Please do not give Fergie any such idea.” Alasdair turned toward the door just as regular footsteps heralded the arrival of P.C. Thomson.
“Colin’s helping Diana in the kitchen,” he reported. “He’ll do for now. Inspector Gilnockie’s setting me to asking round the village, seeing who was out and about yesterday afternoon. Other than me, that is.”
Alasdair nodded. “If you’ll hang on a tick, we’ll come along and ask a few questions as well. The daylight’s getting away, and,” he added to Jean, “Tina’s not.”
Getting away. What a concept. “Great idea. Let’s get our coats.”
Leaving Thomson waiting in the front porch, they jog-trotted up the stairs, pausing very briefly at the tripping stane and the tremor of Seonaid’s incorporeal being.
While Alasdair unlocked the door of the Charlie suite, Jean took a second look at Seonaid’s tapestry. The colors were faded and the human shapes, folk-arty primitive, were rather lost amid exuberant trees, tumultuous waves, and fanciful ruins . . . no. Those ruins weren’t fanciful at all, but were those of old Dunasheen, rendered by the authoritative hand of someone who knew them well. Was that a tiny figure plummeting from the tower? The thread was a bit frayed.
Unfrayed, in the foreground, stood Fionn, the once-mighty Irish warrior with his battered armor and gray beard, and Grainne, his much younger betrothed, with flowing red hair, and Diarmuid, Fionn’s follower, tall, muscular, and suitably noble-browed. She was offering Diarmuid a cup of love potion, magicking him into eloping with her.
Interesting, how Seonaid had chosen to illustrate that particular moment of the legend, not Grainne and Diarmuid’s subsequent adventures or his death at Fionn’s hands. Interesting that she’d chosen that legend at all. Had she seen herself as Grainne—or as Isolde, in a related story—living a tale of high romance, of a passion so strong it swept all before it and therefore justified everything from ambiguity to outright sin? But Grainne had survived to tell her tale. Seonaid had not. Neither had Rory, for that matter.
Jean ran her fingertips down the decorative border of the tapestry, feeling the soft nubble of stitches and stirring up several dust motes. She’d have to ask Rebecca to lay her hands on it, see if she sensed any lingering emotion, be it joy or melancholy or . . . what did teenage Seonaid feel as she stitched the tapestry? Destiny unfurling and tragedy looming? Or had she merely been caught by the high romance of the era—ruined castles, brooding hillsides, strong emotion—oblivious to playing with forces beyond her control?
Diana knew what she’d taken on with Colin. She was stitching together a human being, not a myth whose knots had been loosened by time and repetition.
The tapestry rippled and one end flapped in the draft escaping the open door of the Charlie suite. “Well then,” Alasdair called, “your moggie’s made—”
A woman’s cry of terror sliced the stillness like the sudden slash of a razor blade, sharp and short. A heavy thud seemed to come from everywhere at once, their own room, the turnpike stair, the vacant, secret corners of the house.
This time Jean didn’t have to stop and ask. Tina!